Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [144]
Six in the morning. For the last time she saw her father’s face, Marie’s sweet face, the empress’s mournful face. And Nicholas’s calm face.
The carts got under way. Gilliard’s three pupils ran down the halls of Freedom House—three sobbing girls.
THE FINAL JOURNEY
Avdeyev galloped alongside the cart where the tsar and the Central Executive Committee’s plenipotentiary were sitting. Up ahead were carts carrying Red Guards and three cannon. Cavalry detachments rode in the lead and at the rear of the sleigh train. Way up ahead galloped the scouting party.
Thus, accompanied by dashing horsemen (his whole life was “accompanied by,” at first to protect him, now to guard him—what did it matter!) on their hot Siberian horses, his final journey began.
He had missed this freedom, this air of freedom. How little one needs: to breathe and be free. The road was difficult, and he suffered for her.
What about her? She was darkly silent. She was thinking about Alexei, still hearing his cry. A fracture had rent her soul. The luxurious yachts, the carriages on soft springs with rustling tires—all was coming to an end in these pathetic, filthy carts.
Carts, carts. Soon, in this same kind of cart, very soon, their bodies would be taken away.
Nicky talked to Yakovlev without letup the entire way. They found they had something to talk about—the former terrorist and the former emperor. The coachman driving them later told how all the way they argued about politics. Yakovlev would attack—“skewer the tsar”—but the tsar would not give in.
While responding to the former autocrat and joking with him, however, Yakovlev was thinking about something completely different.
Patrols left by Yakovlev stood all along the route from Tobolsk to Tyumen, and fresh horses awaited them. But his patrols were so few. How would Busyatsky, who was in the van, behave? Would he stay scared for long? The people he had left along the way were scarcely going to be able to restrain Zaslavsky’s numerous detachment. Yakovlev realized that he was traveling between two detachments of Uralites, one in back and one in front, squeezing him like pincers. That was the reality! He kept wondering whether they would dare attack.
Nicholas’s diary:
“13 [25] April. Friday.… At 4 in the morning said goodbye to our dear children and got in the tarantasses. Yakovlev, Alix and Marie, Valya [Dolgorukov] and Botkin, and I. The people who went with us: Nyuta Demidova, Chemodurov, and Sednev. Eight sharpshooters and a 10-man mounted Red Guard convoy. It was cold, the road very difficult and terribly bumpy from the slightly frozen ruts. Crossed the Irtysh through quite deep water, had four changes of horses, arrived at the village of Ievlevo to spend the night. We were quartered in a large, clean house and slept soundly on our cots.”
The tsaritsa wrote in her diary as well: “Journey by carriage.… dead tired & aches all over.”
At dawn the journey continued. At Ievlevo cold water was already running over the ice. The wind lashed at their faces. They went into the water in their carts. Alix refused to ride on water. Planks were brought from the village, they fashioned a bridge, and the empress and Marie, leaning on the arms of gallant Valya (as once at balls in the Winter Palace) and the good doctor, crossed the water over the boards. That day they reached Pokrovskoe.
She saw Rasputin’s house and was happy: a sign, a promise of future luck.
She wrote in her diary: “14 (27) April. Saturday. Journey by carriage.… About 12, got to Pokrovskoe … stood long before our friend’s house, saw his family & friends looking out of the window at us.”
Thus the Holy Devil blessed them for death.
Now the last stage remained to Tyumen. Should the Uralites decide to attack, it would happen here. Yakovlev’s