Read the Romanov Prophecy (2004) for Free Online Page A

glass in all the windows smeared with lime and iron-barred, none to be opened on pain of being shot. All the doors had been removed from the bedrooms and lavatories. He’d been forced to listen while his family was jeered with insults, compelled to view without comment lewd pictures of his wife and Rasputin scrawled on the walls. Yesterday he’d almost come to blows with one of the impertinent bastards. The guard had written on his daughters’ bedroom wall: OUR RUSSIAN TSAR CALLED NICK. PULLED OFF HIS THRONE BY HIS PRICK.
    Enough of that, he thought.
    “What time is it?” he finally asked the guard standing over him.
    “Two AM. ”
    “What is wrong?”
    “It is necessary that your family be moved. The White Army is approaching the city. An attack is imminent. It would be dangerous to be in the upper rooms, if there was shooting in the streets.”
    The words excited Nicholas. He’d heard the guards’ whispers. The White Army had stormed across Siberia, taking town after town, regaining territory from the Reds. Over the past few days the rumble of artillery could be heard in the distance. That sound had given him hope. Perhaps his generals were finally coming and things would be put right again.
    “Rise and dress,” the guard said.
    The man withdrew and Nicholas roused his wife. His son, Alexie, slept in a bed on the far side of the modest bedroom.
    He and Alexie quietly dressed in their military field shirts, trousers, boots, and forage caps, while Alexandra withdrew to their daughters’ room. Unfortunately, Alexie could not walk. Yet another hemophilic hemorrhage two days before had crippled him, so Nicholas gently carried the thin thirteen-year-old into the hall.
    His four daughters appeared.
    Each was dressed in a plain black skirt and white blouse, their mother following, limping with her cane. His precious Sunshine was barely able to walk anymore—sciatica from her childhood had progressively worsened. The almost constant worry she endured for Alexie had destroyed her health, graying her once chestnut hair and fading the loving glow in eyes that had captivated him since the first day they’d met as teenagers. Her breath seemed to come quick, many times in painful gasps, her lips occasionally turning blue. She complained about her heart and back, but he wondered if the afflictions were real or just side effects of the unutterable grief she experienced, wondering if today was the day death would snatch her son.
    “What is this, Papa?” Olga asked.
    She was twenty-two, his firstborn. Thoughtful and intelligent, she was in many ways like her mother, occasionally brooding and sulky.
    “Perhaps our salvation,” he mouthed.
    A look of excitement crept across her pretty face. Her sister Tatiana, one year her junior, and Maria, two years younger, came close, carrying pillows. Tatiana was tall and stately, the leader of the girls—Governess, they all called her—and she was her mother’s favorite. Maria was pretty and gentle—eyes like saucers—and flirtatious. Her desire was to marry a Russian soldier and have twenty children. His two middle daughters had heard what he said.
    He motioned for silence.
    Anastasia, seventeen, lingered with her mother, carrying King Charles, the cocker spaniel their jailers had allowed her to retain. She was short and plump with the reputation of a rebel—
a monkey for jokes,
her sisters would say—but her deep blue eyes were charming and he’d never been able to resist them.
    The remaining four captives quickly joined them.
    Dr. Botkin, Alexie’s physician. Trupp, Nicholas’s valet. Demidova, Alexandra’s maid. And Kharitonov, the cook. Demidova likewise clutched a pillow, but Nicholas knew this one was special. Sewn deep within its feathers was a box containing jewels, and Demidova’s task was never to allow the pillow from her sight. Alexandra and the girls likewise harbored treasure, their corsets concealing diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and ropes of pearl.
    Alexandra