Zoya

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 to appoint 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 to her that this was more than ordinary rioting, that it was in fact a revolution.

In the midst of a blizzard General Khabalov sent the Tsarina a message the next morning. He insisted that she and the children leave at once. He was holding siege at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg with fifteen hundred loyal men, but by noon they had all deserted him. And still the Empress did not understand it. She refused to leave Tsarskoe Selo before Nicholas returned. She felt safe with her most loyal sailors, the Garde Equipage, standing by, and besides, the children were still far too ill to travel. By then Marie had also developed pneumonia.

That same day, mansions around the city were being looted and burned, and Konstantin had all the servants burying silver, and gold and icons in the garden. Zoya was locked in her grandmother's pavilion with all the maids, and they were frantically sewing jewels into the linings of their heaviest winter clothing. Natalya was running shrieking through the main house, running frantically in and out of Nico-lai's room where his body remained. Any attempts to bury him were impossible with revolution blazing everywhere around them.

“Grandmama,” Zoya whispered, as she forced a small diamond earring inside a button she was going to sew back on a dress, “Grandmama … what are we going to do now?” As she attempted to sew in spite of shaking fingers, her eyes were wide with terror and they could hear gunfire in the distance.

“We cannot do anything until we finish this … hurry, Zoya … there … sew the pearls into my bluejacket.” The old woman was working furiously, strangely calm, and Konstantin was at the Winter Palace with Khabalov and the last of the loyal men. He had left them early that morning to go there.

“What will we do with …” She couldn't bring herself to say her brother's name, but it seemed so awful to leave him lying there as they sewed jewels into the hems of her grandmother's dresses.

“We will take care of everything in due time. Now be quiet, child. We must wait for word from your father.” Sava lay whimpering at Zoya's feet as though she knew that even her life was in danger. Earlier that morning the old Countess had attempted to bring Natalya to the pavilion with her, but she refused to leave the main house. She seemed half mad as she kept speaking to her dead son and assuring him that everything was all right and his father would be home soon. Evgenia had left her there, and taken all of the servants to her own home to do as much as they could, before the rioters broke in and took everything. Evgenia had already heard that Kschessinska's mansion had been looted by the mobs, and she was going to save as much as she could before they came to them. And as she sewed, she wondered if they could reach Tsarskoe Selo.