‘Are all the stories true, sir?’
‘Yes. I can confirm that the press and rumour had it right all those years – he was indeed very ill. Terminally ill. Haemophilia. Inherited from his mother’s line and untreatable. The only relief from debilitating pain and the constant threat of death from uncontrolled bleeding seems to have been administered by the foul Rasputin. The Tsarina firmly believed so. The prince led a sheltered life, his every movement monitored by family members and servants.’
‘And friends. It says here that Anna was frequently with him, telling him stories, carrying him about, making him laugh. How does Bacchus know all this?’
‘None of your business, Wentworth. I can just say that the Branch and MI1b and c have done intensive research into the expatriate Russian community … compiled dossiers, listened intelligently to people only too happy to tell their tale.’ He smiled. ‘Articulate lot, Russian émigrés and they all have a blood-curdling story to tell.’
‘May I speak from personal experience, sir?’
‘One of the reasons you’re sitting here with me now, Wentworth. Fire at will.’
‘I know what it is to get fond of a … disadvantaged … younger boy. It can be a strong feeling. One combining the best impulses of sister, mother, nurse and friend. I think it’s a girl’s natural urge to care for something or someone smaller and weaker. A doll or a pet animal often has to substitute. Combine that love with an overriding belief in the divine right of the Romanovs to rule … It’s something a girl would sacrifice her life for.’
‘Would she sacrifice someone else’s life?’
‘To take vengeance of some sort? Yes. Possibly. Oh, someone ordinary like me would rage and fume and curse and plan all sorts of retribution but wouldn’t necessarily arm herself and put it into practice, but …’
‘But you feel you could do it? If you were pushed?’
Lily swallowed and hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I could. Women do. It’s not unknown. But it would take a frightful force to push me over the edge.’
‘We’ll press on and find the origin of this impulse to slaughter, shall we? I don’t think we’ve got there yet.’
‘And here it comes, in all its disturbing detail,’ Joe said some time later, turning the page they had just read. ‘I should tell you that no woman has been allowed a sight of these documents. Bacchus gave clear warning that the contents are not fit for a girl’s eyes.’
A different hand had written notes in the margins of the typed text. Watching Lily, Joe was aware that her breathing was increasing in speed as she read. He listened to her sighs and the small noise of pity that caught in her throat.
‘Are we beginning to see it, Wentworth – the motive for the wholesale slaughter of a section of the British Establishment?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Lily scanned quickly through the text again. ‘Am I to gather that her whole family was killed off? Anna is the last remaining?’
Keeping his voice level, Joe replied briefly. ‘It seems so. Apparently the family behaved with great courage. Father, mother, the girl Anna and two younger brothers followed the Romanovs into detention in Tobolsk in Siberia. Many – about fifty – of their devoted courtiers made the move with them. They tried to follow when the royal family were suddenly entrained and sent off south and east to Ekaterinburg. Fearing the worst, Anna’s father made a fuss and the local soviet, with the loss of temper and discipline that characterizes these people, had the whole family arrested – with others – and taken off by their guards. Seems to have been a favourite trick of the Bolsheviks – throwing families down mine shafts … alive …’
‘And dropping grenades on top of them? Until the screaming stopped?’ Lily’s voice was tight with horror.
‘The investigators report that some managed to crawl away down side shafts where they lived on for hours, perhaps even days, before succumbing to their wounds. Or starvation. When the bodies were recovered by a contingent of the White Army that swept through the region, Anna’s was missing.’
‘And all this happened in the dead of night. I can’t begin to imagine …’
‘That’s the way they do things. In the confusion and struggling … the father had armed himself and defended his family with some spirit … no one noticed that Anna was being bundled offstage by one of the guards. A young and impressionable lad.’ Joe sighed. ‘Had he fallen for Anna, are we to suppose? Some of the Bolshevik guards were anything but the sadistic fiends they have been portrayed as … One of the Romanov guards, in Ekaterinburg, with starvation stalking the streets, got hold of the wherewithal to bake a birthday cake for the archduchess Maria’s nineteenth birthday. She was a bonny lass, Maria, flirtatious and friendly. The guard was discovered being given a kiss of thanks and the poor lad was sent off to the front. To certain death.’