money Clayton had given her when he left. It would be enough for her to live on for the next year, if she lived carefully, and for the first time in years, she had no desire to dance now. She never wanted to see the ballet again, never wanted to do anything again. She just wanted to sit there with her dog and die quietly. And then she thought guiltily of how angry her grandmother would be at her for those thoughts. Her grandmother had been committed not to death, but to life.
She lived quietly for a week without seeing anyone, and she looked thinner and very pale, when Vladimir knocked on her door. He looked quiet and strained, and he was obviously worried about her, and she was startled when she saw that there was someone standing just behind him in the dark hall when she opened the door. Perhaps he'd brought the doctor to check on her, but she didn't want to see anyone, and the doctor least of all. She was wearing black wool stockings and a black dress, her red hair pulled severely back in sharp contrast to her ivory face.
“Yes?” Vladimir hesitated as he spoke. He had almost been afraid to bring him there, afraid the shock would be too great for her, but he knew that they had to come. “Hello, Vladimir.” Without saying a word, he stepped aside, and she gasped as she saw Pierre Gilliard behind him.
His eyes filled with tears as he looked at her, it seemed a thousand years since they'd last met on the day she left Tsarskoe Selo. He took a step toward her and she fell into his arms. And then she looked up at him, begging him, barely able to speak through her sobs.
“Have they come at last?” Gilliard was the tutor the imperial daughters had studied with all their lives, and Zoya knew he had gone to Siberia with them, but unable to speak, he only shook his head in answer.
“No …” he answered finally. “No … they have not… ” She waited for more news from him, and feeling her body turn to stone, she walked inside to the ugly living room, as he followed her. He looked thin and worn, and desperately pale. Vladimir left them alone then. He closed the door softly as he went, and with head bowed, walked slowly down the stairs to his taxi.
“Are they all right?” Her heart pounded as she waited for Pierre Gilliard to speak, and as they faced each other in chairs, he reached out and took her hands in his own. Hers were like tiny icebergs, as Gilliard began speaking.
“I have only just now come from Siberia … I had to be certain before I came … We left them in Ekaterinburg in June. They told us we had to leave.” It was as though he wanted to apologize, but all she wanted to hear was that Mashka and the others were all right. She sat in stunned silence, amazed just to see him there, as she clung to him with her icy hands trembling.
“You weren't there then when … when Nicholas …” She could not bring herself to say the words to him, but he understood and miserably shook his head.
“Gibbes and I had to leave … but we went back again, in August. They let us into the house, but there was no one there, mademoiselle.” He couldn't bring himself to tell her what they'd found, the bullet holes, and the pale traces of washed blood. “They told us they had moved them somewhere else, but Gibbes and I feared the worst.” She waited for the rest with a pounding heart, sure that there would be a happy end to it. After all this time, there had to be. Life surely couldn't be so cruel as to let the Bolsheviks kill the people she loved so much … one frail little boy, and four girls who had been her cousins and friends and their mother who loved them. It was bad enough that their father had died. It couldn't possibly get any worse than that. She watched his face as he went on, he closed his eyes, and fought back tears. He was still exhausted from the trip, and he had arrived in Paris only the night before, determined to see her.
“We arrived back in Ekaterinburg on Alexis's birthday, but they were gone by then,” he sighed. “We've been there ever since.