Zoya by Danielle Steel Page A

think of was that only that afternoon she had called him “stupid Nicolai” … stupid Nicolai … and now he was dead … her brother was dead … she stared at her father in horror.
    “Papa, what's happening?”
    “I don't know, little one … they've killed my baby….” He held her close then as she sobbed in his arms, and a little while later he stood and left her in her grandmother's care. “Take her home with you, Mama. I must go to Natalya.”
    “She's all right.” Evgenia was far more worried about her son than his foolish wife. She feared that the loss of Nicolai might break him. She reached out and touched his hand again, and he saw her eyes, they were the eyes of wisdom and time and immeasurable sorrow.
    “Oh, Mama,” he cried, and held her close to him for a long, long time, while she held out a hand and drew Zoya to them. And then slowly he pulled awayfrom them, and went up the stairs to his wife's rooms, as Zoya stood in the hallway and watched him. Nico-lai's blood had been washed away from the marble floor, and the rug had been removed, and he already lay silent and cold in the room he had lived in since his boyhood. He had been born there, and died there, in twenty-three short years, and with him went a world they all knew and loved. It was as though none of them would ever be safe again. Evgenia knew it as she took Zoya back to her own pavilion with her, trembling violently beneath her cloak, her eyes filled with shock and horror.
    “You must be strong, little one,” her grandmother said to her as Sava ran up to them in her living room and Zoya began to cry again. “Your father will need you doubly now. And perhaps … perhaps … nothing will ever be quite the same again … for any of us. But whatever comes”—her voice quavered as she thought of her grandson dying in her arms, but as her thin hand trembled violently she took Zoya in her arms and kissed the smoothness of her cheek— “only remember, little one, how much he loved

CHAPTER
4
    The following day was a nightmare. Nicolai lay washed and clean in his boyhood room, dressed in his uniform and surrounded by candles. The Volinsky Regiment mutinied, the Semonovsky, the Ismailovsky, the Litovsky, the Oranienbaum, and finally the proudest of all, Nicolai's own regiment, the Preobrajensky Guard. All of them defected to the revolution. Everywhere were red banners being carried high, and soldiers in tattered uniforms no longer the men they once were … St. Petersburg no longer the city it once was. Nothing was ever to be the same again as the revolutionaries set fire to the law courts early that morning. Soon the arsenal on the Liteiny was in flames and then the ministry of the interior, the military government building, the headquarters of the Okhrana, the secret police, and several police stations were destroyed. All of the prisoners had been let out of the jails, and by noon the Fortress of Peter and Paul was in rebel hands too. It was obvious that something desperate had to be done, and the Tsar had to return immediately toappoint a provisional government that would take control again. But even that seemed an unlikely scheme, and when Grand Duke Michael called him at headquarters in Mogilev that afternoon, he promised to come home immediately. It was impossible for him to absorb what had happened in St. Petersburg in the few days since he had left and he insisted on returning and seeing it all himself before appointing any new ministers to deal with the crisis at hand. Only when the chairman of the Duma sent him a message that night that his family's lives were in danger did he realize what was happening. The Empress herself didn't understand it. But by then it was too late. Much, much too late for all of them.
    Lili Dehn had come to visit Alexandra at Tsarskoe Selo only that afternoon and found her totally occupied with caring for her sick children. The tales that Lili told were of disorders in the streets, and it still wasn't clear