She went to collect her car from the rental agency, typed the zip code of the cabin into the Sat Nav and let the woman’s confident voice guide her off Long Island and due north towards the Adirondacks. It was 254 miles, she was told, and would take over four hours. Kitty was a confident driver, and she hoped to get there around lunchtime to give her time to decide in daylight whether the cabin was habitable.
The traffic thinned after she left the interstate and for a while the road skimmed the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake before heading up into the mountains. It was warm and sunny and the views were glorious: hills covered in forests like plush green velvet, a flash of blue denoting a lake between the trees, a few white clouds against a bright sky. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding though. She tried to find a music station on the radio but the reception was too crackly. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and her stomach growled, but she was pretty sure she would throw up if she ate anything. You bastard, Tom, she thought from time to time, but mostly she tried to keep her mind blank and focus on the driving.
Eastern Front, Prussia, January 1915
Postal deliveries to the front line were erratic but Tatiana wrote so frequently that Dmitri seldom had long to wait between her letters. He thrilled at the sight of her handwriting on the envelope, at the way she always called him ‘Malama sweetheart’, at the faint hint of her scent that he imagined he could detect on the pages, and at her sentiments, which became more affectionate with each exchange. She wrote that Ortipo’s snoring kept Olga awake at night, and that she had been playing a game called ruble with her sisters; she told him of her patients on the wards, of books she had read, and always she told him that she missed him.
Dmitri found it easier to overcome his natural reserve and express his feelings in letters than he had done in person, and Tatiana reciprocated his endearments. They became bolder and he felt he learned more of her character with each letter. He imagined she must seem very private and reserved to those who didn’t know her, but to him she wrote with a straightforward honesty that was unprecedented amongst the women of his acquaintance. There were no games, or sulks or flounces.
Was there a chance he might one day be her husband? Or did her parents have other suitors in mind for their eldest daughters? He plucked up the courage to ask and was overwhelmed by her reply:
Malama sweetheart,
You asked about the marriages my parents have considered for Olga and me and now I think I will make you laugh because we have endured so much speculation on the subject based on virtually no substance.
First of all, I am told that David, the eldest son of the British King George V, is believed to have taken a liking to me when we visited there in August 1909. Of course, I was only twelve and far too young to be aware of it, although I remember dancing with him at a ball on the Standart, while fireworks lit up the sky. He was rather a good dancer, and I recall he was wearing a uniform because he was at naval college, but I can’t remember making conversation. Mama said to me afterwards that she was only twelve when she first met Papa, and that it is possible to know your own mind at that age. I think she was keen that either Olga or I should one day be Queen of England but nothing came of it. We haven’t seen David since then and I imagine he must be terribly busy with the war.
Then in 1912, I think, the newspapers started reporting that Olga was to be married to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovevich – which was news to Olga, who had always found him rather coarse. The rumour persisted for years with absolutely no foundation, much to Olga’s annoyance.
You must have heard about the marriages with Balkan princes that our parents have been rumoured (erroneously, I believe) to be arranging for some time. For a while I corresponded with my cousin George of Battenberg, but never with any intention of marrying him, let me assure you! Olga was asked to consider Prince Carol of Romania, who came to visit us in Livadia last summer, but she does not want to leave Russia when she marries, so we came up with a cunning plan: we both suntanned our faces before they arrived, knowing that in royal circles it is considered paysan. We were polite to Carol but I think he took the hint because no further meetings have been arranged.
Olga and I are agreed on two things: that we only want to marry Russian men, and that we want to marry for love, as our parents did. I can imagine nothing worse than being forced to marry someone I do not like for political reasons, but am assured by Mama that will never be the case and that we may choose our own husbands. Now I am embarrassed to have told you so much, but you asked and so here is my answer.
I hope you are keeping warm, mon amoureux, and not straying into the way of any more bullets. Do you ever think of me or is your life too full of plans for defeating the Kaiser’s army? Are you comfortable in your bunker at night? Are you getting enough to eat? Is there snow where you are? The snow here is five foot deep and I worry that you may catch cold. Every night as I lie in my cosy bed, I worry about where you are lying and wish you could hear my thoughts through the frosty night.
Did you receive my letter in which I told you of Anna Vyrubova, Mama’s lady-in-waiting, being in a train crash? She is most seriously injured and we are all terribly concerned but at least she is conscious and able to eat a little. Mama is nursing her personally. She is so very dear to us.
As you are very dear to me.
Que Dieu vous garde.
Tatiana
It was minus five degrees outside but Dmitri was flushed as he sat in his bunker reading and re-reading this letter by candlelight. The earthen walls glittered with ice and his breath misted the air. We only want to marry Russian men and we want to marry for love. Surely it was a hint, perhaps even an invitation? He could imagine her blushes as she wrote and wished he could kiss those pink cheeks over and over.
All of a sudden he yearned for her with a passion that was tantamount to madness. He couldn’t bear their separation one moment longer; it was tearing him apart. What was it about her that moved him so? His feelings could not be reduced to logic; quite simply, he adored the very essence of her.
Dmitri felt so sick with longing that it could only be assuaged by writing back to Tatiana straight away and spilling his feelings on paper. Recklessness took hold and he wrote with the question that was foremost on his mind:
Mon Ange,
Your letter has filled me with hope and drives me to write that I wish with all my heart and soul I might one day be the Russian man you choose to marry. I don’t have royal blood or a fortune anything like the size of your family’s, but I promise I would alternately worship and tease you in exactly the right proportions for the rest of our lives. The possibility that I might have a chance of gaining your parents’ approval fires me with renewed determination to survive this grotesque war. My love for you gives me an invisible cloak that bullets and shells cannot penetrate.
Please do not tell anyone of this proposal lest your father think it disrespectful that I have not asked his permission first … but a private understanding between us would make me the happiest man in the world.
When the letter was finished Dmitri lay back on the wooden pallet that served as his bunk and daydreamed about marrying Tatiana. Maybe the wedding could take place in the Romanovs’ private chapel, the Grand Church at the Winter Palace, with its ostentatious gold stucco and its dome with lunettes picturing the Apostles. He imagined his parents and sisters sitting alongside the Tsar and Tsarina. His father was a stern,