Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [143]
She: “I had to decide to stay with ill Baby or accompany him. Settled to accompany him as can be of more need & too risky not knowing where or for what (we imagine Moscow). Horrible suffering.… Took leave of all our people after evening tea with all. Sat all night with the children. Baby slept & at 3 went to him till we left. Started at 4¼ in the morning.”
Thus the entire family sat in the sleeping boy’s room.
Yakovlev did not sleep that night either. While Avdeyev was rushing around town scavenging horses and carts, Yakovlev was preparing for the trip. As if for battle. He called in the commander of the second Ural detachment, Busyatsky.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“ ‘I charge you with the task of guarding the road out of Tobolsk.… It is your responsibility to guard my passage. You and your detachment will answer with your heads for our safety.… If anything happens, you will be the first shot.’ Busyatsky was standing in front of me as white as a sheet.”
Busyatsky was broken for the time being.
Yakovlev had ordered one of his most desperate Miass robbers to guard the exit from Tobolsk. He and his men must occupy the Tobol crossing and try to keep the other, very dangerous Ural detachment—Zaslavsky’s—from leaving town for as long as possible.
Dawn. The readied “carriages” stood in the yard. They were Siberian carts, called koshevy—woven baskets set on long poles—no seats; one sat or lay directly on the bottom.
There was only one covered cart, which Commandant Avdeyev had managed to find in the town, in which the tsaritsa was to ride. A mattress was put in there and hay thrown on top.
At five in the morning they started carrying out their things.
From Yakovlev’s memoirs:
“Sobs were heard from every corner of the house. The Romanov daughters and their entire staff had gone out on the porch. Nicholas was going from one to another, making the sign of the cross over his daughters with convulsive movements. His proud wife bore up to her daughters’ tears. Each of her gestures said: you must not display weakness before the ‘Red enemy.’”
A long, hard journey lay ahead of them: to traverse the 300 kilometers to Tyumen in these carts with the roads so bad, switching back and forth from sleighs to wagons (in many places the sun had already melted the snow) and back again to sleighs. Farther on by train—into the unknown where Commissar Yakovlev was supposed to take them.
They seated themselves in the carts. Alix wanted to ride with Nicholas, but Yakovlev explained gruffly that he himself must sit with the former tsar. She got in silently with Marie. She would “maintain this persistent silence” nearly the entire terrible way.
Three servants were sent along with them: the tsar’s valet Chemodurov, the parlormaid Demidova, and the lackey Sednev. Also taking their seats in the carts were Dolgorukov, from the suite, and Botkin, as the physician. This was all Yakovlev would allow.
The tsaritsa had begged Gilliard not to see them off, so he was sitting in the darkness by the sleeping boy.
“Is it really possible that no one has made the slightest attempt to save the tsar’s family? Where, finally, are those who remained loyal to their sovereign?” Thus this strange Swiss, loyal to the Russian tsar to the very end, exclaimed in his diary. Now he realized there was no one.
From a neighboring house, yet another witness looked on: Dr. Botkin’s daughter.
She was seeing her father for the last time. He had blessed his daughter in parting and kissed her, but she kept watching as he crossed the street in his civilian coat and felt hat. Previously her father had worn a general’s greatcoat. But after the order to remove the epaulets, he had not wanted to remove Nicholas’s initials, so he exchanged his greatcoat for a civilian coat (and immediately changed once he put his civilian’s coat on, as Baron Tuzenbakh had in Chekhov’s Three Sisters).
The night before, they had come for his suitcases and his fur-lined fur coat. And here was the dawn and she saw