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Interlude

Tatiana: Dear Aunt Ella

Despair is a sin.

It was that thought that kept me company in the middle of the night as I lay there, exhausted, yet unable to sleep.

If I slept the nightmare would come back. I’d been snatching bits of something I could not call rest ever since the night that Olga was violated.

Raped. She was raped.

I sat up and threw the covers off, adrenaline coursing through my veins, heart racing. Clumsily, I shoved my feet into slippers and rooted through the blankets and coats atop my bed for my robe.

My fingers were still shaking as I cinched the robe tight. Given what had happened—Raped. She was raped.—I shouldn’t have dared leave our room, shouldn’t have dared leave my sisters, but I also couldn’t spend another moment curled up like a child, hiding under the blankets, pretending sleep while I waited for Olga to start muttering and whimpering to herself.

I blundered my way past my sisters’ beds, through the quiet halls to my father’s study. There was something about its musty smell, the aroma of cigars, the lingering scent of uncleared glasses and ashtrays that soothed.

My fingers found the lamp and clicked it on.

One of Mama’s blankets sat in a pile nearby. I picked it up to fold it, defaulting to habit, succumbing to the need to do something. Instead, I draped it around my shoulders, sat down, and pulled a few blank sheets of paper and a fountain pen from one of the drawers.

Dear Aunt Ella, I wrote. The tip of the pen paused at the start of the next line. A drop of ink pooled at the tip as I pressed it into the paper.

I eased it off before it could bleed more of its black blood.

I wanted to write about cheerful things, the kind of normal, frivolous things that make up happy times. Instead, my heart bled all over the letter.

I wrote about what happened, about Yermilov, the man who defiled my sister, who took all of his hatred of us and used it to hurt her, to tear her body and mind and soul apart.

My hand trembled as I wrote, distorting the script.

A tear dropped, hitting the fresh ink, spiderwebbing the black blood from the pen with its misery.

I could see Yermilov’s hatchet face, his dark eyes, alive with hatred. Hatred for Russia, for us Romanovs, for royals and nobles.

God help me, but I could feel his hot breath in my ear, putrid and wet. It wasn’t Olga he was hurting. It was me. And then Maria. And Anastasia. Alexei.

The ink on the paper no longer formed letters or words, or even lines. My chest was shaking like it did when it was too cold and I couldn’t stop it.

The things I saw in Yermilov’s eyes. The power. Power over us, our lives, our bodies, our minds. I wouldn’t understand it until years later that what he had done was for power. Finally, he was, at least in his own mind, equal. The Romanovs had been brought down. One of us, and in some ways, all of us including Mama and Papa, were under him, at his mercy, crying, begging.

All of us bled for him.

What a rush of power it must have given this small, angry, despicable creature that thought of itself as a man and what it could do as manhood. What a rush to put the mighty in their place, to fuck an uncommon girl, to hurt her, put her in her place, to give her what she and her kind deserved.

Finally, for once in his life, he had power over all the wrongs done to him, and somehow he thought that they could be remedied with raping an innocent who had no power, no say, in whatever injustices the world had dealt him.

And it would be many years before I could understand my own guilt because there was a part of me that was glad it hadn’t been me, that all I had to complain about were my bad dreams. And I was glad that Yermilov was dead and that the little ones—my dear sisters and brother—would not have to fear him.

By the time the ink was dry, both my pen and my eyes were empty.

I felt wrung out, my limbs heavy, but I could finally take a breath without shaking. I thought that I could sleep again, at least for a little while, without nightmares. My eyelids drooped and I pushed away from the desk so that I would not doze off.

I gathered the sheets together, stacked them neatly, and took them to the hearth.

One by one, I ripped the sheets into small pieces, scattering them into the pile reserved for kindling. I dared not send the letter. Papa must not know. Not now, not ever. It would destroy him.

The last sheet shook in my hands, the last few legible words, No one cares. The world has forgotten about us, glaring back at me.


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Framed