In the distance she could see two men and a woman walking arm in arm down the path from the palace. One of them seemed unsteady on his feet and the younger man was helping him. As they passed the Grand Cascade and turned toward her, she recognized Stepan and Irina and waved. What was Irina doing here? Who was the older man, and why were they coming to see her? Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn’t think what.

They kept advancing, and when they were just ten yards away, Maria rose to her feet and blinked hard. The old man looked like Peter. Was her mind playing tricks? Was she going mad? Her heart began racing. His hair was silver, his face had deep grooves like the trunk of an ancient tree, but surely those were his eyes?

“Maria, my love,” he said, and it was Peter’s voice. But it couldn’t be. That wasn’t possible.

Maria screamed at the top of her voice, just as hard as she had screamed when Anastasia fell through the ice. She kept screaming, the sound erupting from her lungs in powerful bursts. The little ones were scared and scurried to hide behind their father. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. If this was a trick, it was the cruelest trick ever.

“It’s all right, Mama,” Irina said, reaching for her arm. “It’s him. It’s Papa. He’s back.”

Maria stopped screaming for a moment to stare at him, and that was when Peter stepped forward and pulled her into his arms.

Chapter 57

FOR SEVERAL MINUTES THEY STOOD, ARMS WRAPPED around each other. Maria breathed in the old familiar Peter scent, but still her brain kept protesting. It can’t be. This must be a dream. Any minute now I will wake up.

She pulled back to look at him and saw his cheeks were streaked with tears, like her own.

“You’re trembling,” he said. “I’m sorry to shock you.”

“I d-don’t understand,” she stammered. “I have been visiting your grave for over fifteen years. In Preobrazhenskoe Cemetery. This can’t be.”

His hand stroked her cheek and she felt self-conscious about her wrinkles and the hair that had gone white as goose feathers. She was no longer the pretty girl he had married but a plump elderly woman of fifty-three. Since the end of the siege she couldn’t stop herself eating. He was thin, so thin. She could feel his ribs through the coarse ragged cloth of his jacket.

“H-how is this possible? They told me you were executed.” Could he be a relative of Peter’s? No; she was sure it was him. She looked from Stepan to Irina, and they were grinning from ear to ear, her grandchildren puzzled but silent in Stepan’s arms.