The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

his small wooden desk, where I might add not a single item was out of place. During his reign he never had a personal secretary, which was a point of pride to him, but to me now seems absolutely foolish. After all, the Tsar’s duties concerned one-sixth of the earth’s surface, not filing, not addressing envelopes.
    The Tsar stood and pulled me into his sphere with those remarkable eyes. He cleared his throat, stroked once the trademark of his face, his beard.
    “Your idea turns out to be quite a good one,
molodoi chelovek
,” young man, said the Emperor. “Are you still willing to act as our courier?”
    An odd noise came from the girls’ room and Alekesandra Fyodorovna hurried back to the doorway. A moment later, she turned to her husband and nodded the all-clear. For the rest of my audience, however, she remained thus positioned.
    He repeated, “Are you willing to act as our courier?”
    There really wasn’t any question in my mind simply because of what the Reds had done to my Uncle Vanya just a month earlier. My dear uncle, of course, had served the Imperial Family for years, and it was in fact he who had brought me to work for the Romanovs that previous year. He was deeply devoted to the Tsar, so that previous month when the soldiers’ committee decided that Aleksei didn’t need two pairs of shoes, just one, my uncle and Nagorny, the mansvervant who watched over the boy, loudly protested. And for this they were taken to the city prison. Right up until the end we thought the two of them had been dumped in a cell with Prince Lvov, the first minister president of the Provisional Government, who’d already been arrested for some other silly reason. It was only years later that I learned that my dear uncle and Nagorny hadn’t been sitting in jail all along, but had instead been shot just a few days after they were first taken. The prince, on the other hand, later escaped to France, where he wrote his memoirs.
    As I look back through all these decades it now seems obvious that the
Bolsheviki
knew all along what they were doing. So intent were they on liquidating the entire House of Romanov that they had started whittling away at our little group, getting rid of those who might be trouble, specifically the strongest among us. They’d already separated away Mr. Gibbes, the English tutor of the children, Pierre Gilliard, their French tutor, Baroness Buksgevden, a lady-in-waiting, all of whom survived, very likely because of their foreign-sounding names. Many other attendants were not so lucky. Countess Gendrikova, another lady-in-waiting, and Yekaterina Shneider, the children’s
lectrice
– reader – were shot in the city of Perm that September.
    So in response to the Tsar’s request, I bowed my head and said, “
Da, soodar
.” Yes, monsignor.
    He said, “Now, Leonka, you understand the seriousness of this, do you not? You understand that I am entrusting to you the safety of my wife and children? Do you realize how dangerous this is not only for us, but for you and everyone else as well?”
    “Da-s.”
    “Xhorosho.”
Good. “I know we can depend on you.”
    And how I wish they could have. How I wish they could have depended upon me to… to… ensure their rescue.
    The Tsar then asked, “When are you next scheduled to go to the Soviet for food?”
    “I am to go within the hour, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, to fetch more food for this evening’s supper.”
    “Excellent.” He turned to his desk and pulled two pieces of paper hidden beneath a book. “Here is the note which you brought us yesterday morning. On it we have written our reply. I am sending that along with this.”
    He held up a sheet of lined paper on which was drawn a map. Or more precisely, a floor plan. Nikolai Aleksandrovich then folded it into three, took an envelope from the drawer of his wooden desk, and carefully placed the two pieces of paper in that very envelope.
    “You must hide this on your body, Leonka,” he instructed.
    Of course