Her mother lay on the daybed complaining of a headache and covered her eyes with a cloth, while her father paced up and down, sucking on a pipe, his cheeks hollowed and his brow creased in worry. Maria went through to the sitting room to help Demidova, her mother’s maid, search for some headache powders. Their luggage had been tossed around during the weeklong journey from Tobolsk and a perfume bottle had smashed, its scent cloying and no longer pleasant. She found the powders and took them to her mother with a glass of water, then wandered idly around their accommodation, looking out of windows at the yard and the city beyond: tree-lined boulevards, leafy parks, and, in the distance, factory chimneys belching smoke. Several doors were locked on their floor of the house, which was annoying as they could have used the extra space.

If only her sisters had come with them. Maria missed them terribly, especially Anastasia, two years her junior, who would no doubt be up to some mischief or other were she here. But her siblings had stayed behind at the Governor’s House in Tobolsk to look after her little brother, Alexei, who was poorly after a fall had caused bleeding in his groin. Maria had been chosen to accompany her parents to this, their next prison. Why must they be here? Ekaterinburg seemed a strange destination if they were to be shipped into exile, as they hoped, because it was in the landlocked dead center of the country.

There was a guard standing by the top of a second staircase near the bathroom, and Maria said good afternoon before recognizing his face and squealing with delight.

“I know you! You used to work at Livadia. How wonderful to see you here!” The Livadia Palace in Crimea had been the Romanovs’ spring retreat. Although it was still winter in St. Petersburg at the end of March, flowers and fruit trees were already in bloom in Crimea, and the sun was warm. They all loved Livadia. “Forgive me,” she added, “for I have forgotten your name.”

He bowed his head. “Ukraintsev, ma’am. Konstantin Ukraintsev.”

“You were the beater at Uncle Michael’s hunts, were you not? And I remember you playing croquet with us on the lawn. You always let me win.” Maria wanted to dance with joy at coming upon a friendly face.

“Indeed, ma’am.”

“Tell me, how is your family? Did they come here with you?”

“I married an Ekaterinburg woman and have been working in the city for some years past.”

“Do you have children?”

He told her of his wife, his two children—a boy and a girl—and she asked about their characters, their interests, drinking in the information. She would embroider a cushion for them, she decided. As an Easter gift.

“Whose house is this?” she asked. “I find myself looking at the furniture and wondering whose hand chose it.”