A night to remember...
We all said it would be a night to remember.
And it was.
But not as we had dreamed. No one could have imagined the events that would befall us.
I am the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Dagmar of Denmark and Empress consort of All the Russias. And they were the worst nights of my long life.
But let me start at the beginning.
There was a time, not very long ago, when we lived in an enchanted world of elegant palaces and grand parties.
The date was March 6th, 1913. My son Nicholas was the Czar of Imperial Russia. He and his wife had four beautiful daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and a handsome young son named Alexei.
Nicholas was a good man. But some people like Julius Martov have said he did not rule wisely. Some have said he was blind to the poverty and hunger that tore at his people and ravaged the country from the various wars and assassinations that already took the lives of two of my younger sons.
I do not know much about what the people had to say. I only know that he was a good soon and a loving father. My daughter-in-law, not so much.
The stars shone brightly that night as my carriage raced through the darkness. The horses' hooves clattered on the cobblestone streets. The light from the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo lit up the night as the gates swung open for my carriage. I joined the rest of my family, who were dressed in their finest suits and gowns.
We were celebrating a special anniversary. A tercentenary. Three hundred years of Romanov rule. And that night, so star burned brighter than my youngest granddaughter, our sweet Anastasia.
All eyes were on her as she danced with her father, the Czar. Her long brown curls shone in the light from the chandelier. She was only twelve, but she danced with spirit and grace.
When the dance ended, she curtsied to her father. Then she saw me. Laughing, she ran into my arms.
Why were the two of us so close? I do not know. Perhaps she reminded me of myself at her age. We were the best of friends.
But I was spending most of my time abroad and I was going to leave soon. She had begged me not to return to England to visit my favorite sister Queen Alexandra. So I had made a very special gift made for her birthday. I hoped it would make the separation easier for us to say good-bye.
Smiling, I pulled the gift from my bag.
"For me?" Anastasia said as she reached for the silver gift. "Is it a jewelry box?"
I shook my head. "Look."
I held up a key: a small flower on a silver neck chain. I showed her how to fit it into the tiny hole at the back of the box. Then I wound it.
A haunting melody played as the ballerina spun on the top of the box.
Anastasia clapped her hands. "It plays our lullaby!"
"You can play it at night before you go to sleep," I told her. "You can pretend I am singing to you."
And then I sang to her the words that would haunt me for years to come:
"On the wind, 'cross the sea,
Hear this song and remember,
Soon you'll be home with me
Once upon a December..."
I handed Anastasia the key. "Read what it says."
Anastasia peered at the tiny letters engraved on the key. "Together in Copenhagen," she read. Then she looked at me with her beautiful blue eyes. "Really?"
I smiled and nodded.
"Oh, Grandmama!" She threw her sweet young arms around my neck. We hugged as if we would never let go.
Suddenly, about a year later, Russia went into war with the rest of Europe. The orchestra stopped playing. The laughter died. Anastasia and I were seeing less and less.
The crowd men parted like dry leaves before a wind when they marched into battle against the Germans.
During a quiet, cloudy day at home in November of 1916, a man swept toward us—an old friend. He was tall and thin, dressed in long black robes. His gleaming black moustache and beard hung below his waist.
His name was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, we knew that he was a holy man and a mystic who healed my grandson from hemophilia, but others believed he was power-mad and had a dangerous influence on my daughter-in-law.
Slowly the man made his to the Czar. His hypnotic eyes blazed with fear beneath thick black brows.
Nicholas met his gaze, unafraid.
"You think you can live this far?" the man cried. His lips curled into a quiver. "By the mystic powers invested in me, I have come to warn you! Mark my words: at the end of twenty five years, not one nobleman will be left in Russia. Brother will kill brother, everyone will kill each other and hate each other. None of your family, none of your children and relatives will live more than two years."
Anastasia clung to me as Rasputin's words echoed through the great ballroom: "The Russian Land will perish. And I perish, I have perished already, and I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family."
Then I noticed a familiar object hanging from a chain around Rasputin's waist. Looking closer, I saw that it was a rosary—a fancy crucifix about eight inches tall. Its jewels glowed like devil's fire.
Eyes crazed, Rasputin left the palace and muttered a few words. A bolt of lightning shot across the sky, and it crashed to the ground. People scattered as the sky plunged into darkness.
The servants rushed to light the candles around the room.
Anastasia and I trembled in each other's arms until the soft glow of candlelight filled the room. I left shortly after for the Yelagin Palace.
Rasputin had been killed by my grandson-in-law Felix Yusupov and several of his friends in retaliation of his negative influence on Alexandra.
No one danced another step after Nicholas had been abdicated by a politician named Vladimir Lenin. Rasputin's death had stolen our joy.
On the night of November 7th, 1917, as I got ready for bed, I heard an angry crowd of demonstrators outside the gates of the nearby Winter Palace.
"Death to the Czar!" they shouted. "Let the people rule!"
A cannon from a cruiser fired off, followed by the shattering of an elegant palace window.
Lenin, I thought. He was a communist who hated the Imperial Family. Some said it was because of our poor performance during the war that he distrusted our efforts. Did he have a hand in the terror of those events? My guess was correct.
I only know that the spark of unhappiness in our country was fanned into flames—flames that would destroy our lives forever.
Later that night I awoke to a loud knocking. I flung back my satin coves and hurried to my bedroom door.
The maid Anna Demidova had come to warn me: revolutionaries led by Lenin and his ally Leon Trotsky had broken through the gates. They had toppled a statue of my late husband Alexander III. Now they were trying to break into the palace. They meant to kill the royal family and the chairman of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky.
The next thing I knew, we were all running down a darkened hallway. There was little time to pack our belongings and dress in warm fur coats. I clutched the hand of the sleepy Anastasia as we ran. But suddenly she stopped, pulling her hand free.
"My music box!" she cried. She turned back to get it.
I tried to stop her. But she was so like her father—as stubborn as a black bear. As I ran after her, I wished to heaven that I had never given her the tiny music box. For now, she was risking her life for it.
"Anastasia!" I begged. "Come back, come back!"
But she would not listen.
At last I found her in the room she shared with her older sister Maria, hugging the music box to her chest. Alexei was also there, looking for his diary and several of his other belongings. Before I could speak, shots rang out—from the cruiser!
I whispered a prayer as I reached for my granddaughter and grandson's hands.
Suddenly a secret panel in the wall slid open. Out stepped a young kitchen boy named Leonid Ivanovich Sednev, whose uncle, Ivan Dmitriyevich Sednev, was the man-servant for the children. The older Sednev came out of the wall as well, keeping an eye out from the window, watching the destruction unfold.
The palace had two secret passageways. Nicholas himself had played hide-and-seek in them as a child along with his siblings.
Now my grandchildren and I ran to hide in them, but this time it was not a game. We were running for our lives.
"Come this way!" Leonid urged us. "Uncle Ivan and I will take you through the servant's quarters!"
My old bones creaked as I ducked through the doorway. "Hurry, Anastasia! Alexei, go with her!" I scolded. Fear made my voice harsher than I meant it to be.
Then Leonid thrust Anastasia and Alexei in behind me. I forgave his rudeness in shoving the Grand Duchess and the Tsarevich given the danger we were in. But in his haste he caused her to drop the music box.
Her hand shot out to grab it—just as Yakov Yurovsky, a fellow Bolshevik, arrested the remaining members of the family and noticed our absence.
"We're missing the others!" the man shrieked as he went off to find his superior.
That was when I realized we were being hunted not only by the revolutionaries, but by Lenin as well!
"Go, go!" Leonid shouted. He and his uncle slammed the secret panel shut behind us.
Frozen in fear, we paused in the darkness and listened.
Heavy footsteps rang out as angry revolutionaries stormed into the room.
We heard a loud slap. "Where are they going?"
"Far away from you," his uncle replied.
Such bravery, I thought, in a boy so young.
Then we heard a gunshot, a thumping noise and a sharp cry. It sounded as if the man had shot Mr. Sednev and struck his poor nephew with his rifle. I covered Anastasia and Alexei's mouths with my hands to stifle her gasp. There was no way to help the boy or his uncle, no time to thank them. I dragged the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchess away down the dark passage.
We escaped from the palace through the servants' entrance and fled into the frost darkness. We had not run far when a dazzling light lit up the night. I glanced over my shoulder.
The palace was in flames!
I had no idea where my son and the rest of his family had gone. I only knew I must save Anastasia and Alexei.
"Keep up with me, darlings," I told them. "I'll take you to Aunt Xenia and Uncle Alexander and your cousins."
They nodded at me, trying to be brave.
We dashed toward the pond in the backyard of the palace, shivering in our thin gowns. The water had frozen over, and we slipped on the ice as we raced beneath the bridge. My old heart beat out the precious seconds as we ran.
Suddenly I heard Alexei scream. I whirled around.
One of the Bolsheviks had found us! He jumped from behind and landed hard on the ice. Cracks spread out like spiderwebs around his dark body as he grabbed Alexei by the ankle.
He screamed again. "Let me go!"
The man's snarl rumbled like midnight thunder. "You'll die with your father, child. DEATH TO THE TSAREVICH!"
Then the ice beneath him broke with a terrifying CRACK!
I gasped in horror. Surely they would both drown!
Just as the river nearly swallowed them, Anastasia looked with a shout. She scrambled across the ice and fell gasping upon her sinking brother.
The child glanced back. The man's furious eyes seemed to hypnotize her. I feared she would rise and go to him. Then she pulled her eyes free, lurched to her feet, and ran to save her brother, but it was too late.
"Nastya!" Alexei screamed as he dug his finger-nails into the ice. Then the river's swift current sucked him and the man down into the freezing waters.
The diary he had thrown from his coat skittered across the ice. Anastasia scooped it up, then we disappeared into the dark night.
At last we made our way to the Nikolaevsky railway station. We were freezing, frightened, and cared nothing for how foolish we must have looked running through the streets in our coats.
All around us, about thirty or thirty-five of my relatives and hundreds of other people shoved to get on the train. I could recognize my grandson Andrei Alexandrovich helping his father onboard. The Grand Duke Nikolasha was also there next to my sister Xenia and her only daughter Irina. I gripped Anastasia's hand with all my strength as I forced our way through the crowd. "Hurry, Anastasia," I panted.
The whistle blew. The train jerked and slowly began to move down the track for the Crimea. It couldn't leave without us!
I reached up, begging for help. My relatives on the packed train grabbed my hands. My arms ached as they pulled me upward. I nearly wept with relief.
"Grandmama!"
I looked around. Anastasia! Where was she?
And then I saw her. She was still running alongside the train! Desperately I reached for her. "Hold on to my hand!"
Our fingertips touched. Then I felt her hand grip mine.
"Don't let go!" she cried.
I held on tightly as I gazed down into her frightened young face. But an old woman's arms are very frail. The train began to chug faster and faster out of the station. "Help me!" I begged to Olga and Xenia.
But then I felt her small hand slip from my grasp.
"Anastasia!" I screamed.
Horrified, I watched her stumble and fall. Her head struck the platform. And then she lay still.
"Anastasia!"
I tried to jump from the fast-moving train, but the strong hands of Felix and Nikolasha held me back. I suppose they feared I would be killed if I jumped. Perhaps I might have, but all I wanted to do was help my granddaughter. I fought, but they would not let me go.
They knew who I was, or who I had left behind.
I stared at my dear, granddaughter, Russia's youngest Grand Duchess, lying helpless on the ground.
And then a sea of people swirled around her, growing larger and larger until I could not see her anymore.
So many lives were killed that night. What had always been was now gone forever. And my Anastasia, my beloved grandchild...I never saw her again.