“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “I am not a believer in God, but if there is such a thing, I cannot believe he is some tit-for-tat tyrant. Besides, it makes no difference what God wills when you are faced with a band of crazed men intent on murder.”

“Why did they want to murder us? I don’t understand.” She frowned and closed her eyes to hold back the tears.

He hesitated a moment, choosing his words. “The Bolsheviks have a black-and-white message: the old system under your father was corrupt and favored the few, while the new regime will make society fairer. They need to create demons in order to push through their reforms—and sadly they decided your family were those demons.”

Maria noticed he said “were.” Past tense. They were no more. “Do you think we were demons?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

“Yet you worked for the Bolsheviks.”

“I did. I believed—still believe—that the country’s wealth should be more fairly distributed, but I don’t think Lenin’s men are going about it the right way. It’s not necessary to destroy the old in order to bring in the new.” He stood up. “But it does no good to dwell on these matters. What’s done is done. I am going to find dinner. I will be gone no more than an hour.”

Maria opened her mouth to object, but he had vanished into the trees. She peered after him and suddenly remembered one of the guards telling her that there were brown bears and wolves in those woods. What would she do if a wild animal appeared? She couldn’t run; her injured leg wouldn’t take her weight.

A cloud passed in front of the sun and she shivered in the sudden chill. There was a rustle in the undergrowth behind her, but when she turned her head, there was nothing to be seen. Surely Peter would not leave her if there was any danger? Fear pricked the back of her neck and suddenly she was back in the basement, her ears ringing with the terrified screams of her sisters, crawling on her hands and knees across a floor that was slippery with their blood, the smell of gunpowder choking her. She saw her mother’s brains glistening, Anastasia whimpering by her side, her father falling as the bullets came thick and fast. She saw the hatred on that guard’s face as he thrust at her with his bayonet, heard the ugly crowing of the men as they plotted to scavenge their corpses. She covered her face with her hands and moaned but couldn’t make the images go away. There was the sound of repeated screams and she realized they were coming from her own lips, bursting out of her in staccato pulses.

“What is it? What happened?” Peter appeared from nowhere and crouched to put an arm around her shoulders.