“I should have died too,” she said. “Then I would have gone to heaven with them. Instead I saved myself and that makes me a bad person. I wish with all my heart I were dead.”

Peter picked up an unused strip of petticoat and handed it to her to use as a handkerchief, his eyes downcast. On a tree branch nearby, a tiny bird with brown feathers and a ruby-red throat trilled urgently as if trying to tell them something. Its tone was pure and clear as a flute played by a world-class musician.

Chapter 14

Ural Mountains, July 1918

AFTER HER WOUNDS WERE BOUND, PETER LIFTED Maria onto his back, like a soldier’s kitbag. The position was immodest since her legs must wrap around him, but he said it would be easier for him to walk without stopping to rest.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as he headed back into the forest.

“West,” he said. “Into the mountains.”

They walked for many hours, stopping only for short breaks, and when night fell and it grew too dark to see, he laid her on the earth and found leafy branches to place over her bloodstained gown to keep her warm. He curled up nearby, keeping watch, and Maria drifted off to sleep within minutes, overwhelmed with fatigue. She dreamed that she was with Olga and Alexei, Anastasia and her parents, all of them playing with the dogs in the snow, laughing as they slid and fell. And then she opened her eyes to a Siberian forest dawn and the unthinkable truth.

Peter was crouched beside her, offering a handful of wild berries. “You must eat,” he said, but she turned her face away. How could she eat when her family were dead? How could she even think of it? What had been done to them felt unreal, like a grotesque nightmare. She couldn’t begin to comprehend the enormity of her loss.

For three days they headed west, most of the time in silence. Thoughts of death were never far from Maria’s mind. It was hard to understand the finality: that she would never cuddle Alexei or giggle with Anastasia again; that she would not see her parents anymore in this lifetime. Hopes of finding Tatiana seemed unrealistic; she could be anywhere. Maria often contemplated killing herself but worried that it would mean turning her back on God, and if she did so she would not be reunited with her family in heaven. Instead she murmured prayers for them, remembering the words of the memorial panikhidas as best she could: “O Lord, set to rest the soul of your servants who have fallen asleep, in a place of light, in a place of green pastures, in a place of rest whence all pain, sorrow and sighing have been driven away.”