Granny Dan

But much to her surprise, when she reached St. Petersburg, she saw people milling about in the streets, shouting and demonstrating against the Czar, and there were soldiers everywhere around them. She had heard nothing of it in Tsarskoe Selo, and was amazed to find the atmosphere in the city unusually tense. But she forced it from her mind as she made her way to the ballet. Her thoughts were on Madame Markova, and she hoped her mentor and old friend was not desperately ill. And she was dismayed to find that in fact she had been, and as had happened once before, she had grown very weak and very frail from her illness.

Danina sat beside her every day, fed her soup and gruel, and begged her to eat it. And within a week, she was relieved to see some slight improvement, but the older woman seemed to have aged years in a few brief weeks, and she looked intolerably fragile as Danina looked at her lovingly and held her hand.

Nursing her, the days seemed to fly past her, and Danina fell into bed at night feeling utterly exhausted. And moving around as much as she had, had caused her ankle to swell painfully again. She was sleeping on a cot in Madame Mar-kova's office, her old bed having long since been assigned to another dancer. She was fast asleep on the morning of March eleventh, when crowds gathered in the street not far from the ballet. The shouting and the first gunshots woke her, and she rose quickly and went downstairs to see what had happened. Dancers in the long hallway had already left the classrooms where they'd been warming up, and a few of the bravest ones were peeking from the windows, but they could see nothing but a few soldiers galloping past on horseback. No one had any idea what had happened until later that day when they learned that the Czar had finally ordered the army to quell the revolution, and more than two hundred people had been killed in the city. The law courts, the arsenal, the Ministry of the Interior, and a score of police stations had been burned, and the prisons had been forced open by the people.

The gunshots had stopped by late afternoon, and in spite of the alarming news of the day, that night seemed relatively peaceful. But in the morning, they heard that the soldiers had refused to follow orders and shoot into the crowds. They had retreated, in fact, and returned to their barracks. The Revolution had started in earnest.

A few of the male dancers ventured out into the street later that afternoon, but they returned very quickly, and barricaded the doors of the ballet. They were safe there, but there was shocking news from beyond their little world, and it grew more horrifying day by day. On March fifteenth, they learned that the Czar had abdicated on behalf of himself and the Czarevitch, in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael, and was on his way back to Tsarskoe Selo, from the front, by train, to be arrested. It was impossible to understand, much less absorb, what was happening all around them. Like the others, Danina was unable to understand all that they heard. The information was conflicting and confusing.

It was fully a week later, on March twenty-second, when Danina finally got a hastily scribbled note from Nikolai, brought to her in the hands of one of the guards who had been allowed to leave Tsarskoe Selo. “We are under house arrest,” it said simply. “I am able to come and go, but cannot leave them. All of the Grand Duchesses have the measles, and the Czarina is desperately worried about them, and Alexei. Stay where you are, stay safe, my darling, I will come to you when I can. And I pray that we will be together very soon again. Know always that I love you, more than life itself. Don't venture out in the midst of this danger. Above all, stay safe until I come. With all my love, N.”

She read the letter again and again, and held it in trembling hands. It was beyond belief. The Czar had abdicated, and they were under house arrest. It was impossible to believe it. And she was desperately sorry she had left them. If they were to be in any danger, she would have preferred to be with him. To die with him, if need be.

It was late March when Nikolai finally came to her, looking exhausted and disheveled. He had come on horseback all the way from Tsarskoe Selo, but it had been the only way he could travel. The soldiers guarding the Imperial family had allowed him to leave, and promised he could return. But he had a look of desperation as he sat with her in the corridor outside Madame Markova's office, and told her in no uncertain terms that, as soon as they could arrange it, they would have to leave Russia.