Tatiana placed a hand over hers. “Mashka, this has to stop. You heard Avdeyev. He is tightening the rules as a result of your flirtation, and no doubt we will all suffer.”

Maria pulled her hand away, pouting. “I think your only interest is in spoiling other people’s pleasure,” she accused. “All I was doing was trying to pass the time.”

“Find some other way,” Tatiana finished curtly.

* * *

On July 4, a week after Ivan’s arrest, the family was surprised when there was no roll call after breakfast. Instead, while they were having lunch, a group of men came into the dining room and announced that Avdeyev had been replaced by a new commander, Yakov Yurovsky. A man with bushy hair and a dark beard and moustache stepped forward. He looked humorless, Maria thought, and had dead eyes, like the stuffed black bear in the hall.

“I have orders from the Ural Soviet to take all of your jewelry,” he announced. “Please gather it and turn it over.”

“Is this truly necessary?” Nicholas objected.

Yurovsky insisted it was. “I am told you claim your belongings have been pilfered, so I would like to catalog them. Please produce the jewelry within the hour.”

They collected the pieces they were wearing and the ones still in their jewelry boxes but did not own up to the jewels hidden inside their clothing. Everything was piled on the dining-room table and Yurovsky came to collect it personally, wrapping it in a tablecloth to take to his office.

The following day he returned the jewelry in a box, along with a typed list of the contents, which he asked Nicholas to check, item by item.

“At least it seems he plans to be fair,” Nicholas remarked, but Maria did not have a good feeling about him. He never looked directly at any of them; it was as if to him they were not human.

* * *

Three days later, some new guards appeared, and Maria felt uneasy around them from the start. “Look at the buffers on her!” one remarked as she passed in the hall. He sounded foreign, although he spoke Russian.

Back in their room, Maria whispered to Olga, “What are buffers?” and repeated what she had heard.

“How coarse!” Olga exclaimed. “Bufera means breasts. I think you should ask Papa to complain to Commissar Yurovsky.” She shuddered. “That is unacceptable.”

Maria did not dare to tell her father about the comment, though. She would have been mortified, and she worried everyone would think she had encouraged the man.

After lunch there was another guard at the top of the second staircase, a young-looking man with a heavy brow and slanting dark eyes, like a wolf. She smiled politely, then tried to walk past.

“You are Maria, are you not?” he said, so she had to stop. “My name is Anatoly Bolotov.”

“Pleased to meet you.” She nodded.