Alexis astonished the household by his precocious understanding. “I begin to know the truth here. At Tsarskoe everybody told lies,” he remarked one day. “If I become Tsar, no one will dare to tell me lies. I shall make order in the land.” He combined his mother’s will with his father’s charm. Those who came to know the boy at Tobolsk are confident that he would have justified his words.
To a visitor at his bedside when he was ill, he spoke his thoughts about Razputin. The “saint’s” portrait had been placed by Alexandra near her sick son’s pillow. The visitor accidentally upset it. “Do not pick it up!” cried Alexis. “The floor is the place for it.”
. . . . . .
Towards the end of their exile, some, if not all, of the captives realised the desperate nature of their position, and had scant hope of surviving Bolshevist rule for any length of time. Pathetic evidences of their attitude were found among the papers that remained at Tobolsk and came into the hands of the investigating magistrate. Among them are two prayers written in verse—apparently composed by Countess Hendrykova and transcribed by the Grand Duchess Olga. Here is an approximate rendering of some of the verses:—
Grant us Thy patience, Lord,
In these our woeful days,
The mob’s wrath to endure,
The torturers’ ire;
Thine unction to forgive
Our neighbours’ persecution,
And mild, like Thee, to bear
A blood-stained Cross.
And when the mob prevails,
And foes come to despoil us,
To suffer humbly shame,
O Saviour aid us!
And when the hour comes,
To pass the last dread gate,
Breathe strength in us to pray,
“Father forgive them!”
CHAPTER VII
THE LAST PRISON
The intimate connection between Berlin and Moscow yielded many living examples among the visitors to Tobolsk. Many, if not all, of the spies, emissaries, and other agents appearing there had been at one time or another in the German capital. Yakovlev, the special commissary sent to remove the prisoners from Tobolsk, was no exception to the rule.
His appearance was preceded by certain events which must be related here. The soldiers forming the guard at Tobolsk grew tired of Pankratov and his everlasting speeches. By the end of the first week in February (1918) they had decided to get rid of him and of Nikolsky. On the 9th they turned them out of the Kornilov house and drove them out of the town. They then telegraphed to Moscow, reporting what they had done, and asked that a proper commissary—not an appointee of Kerensky—should be sent. But Moscow remained obstinately silent. The time for action had not yet arrived. Meanwhile, the Soviet at Omsk, representing Western Siberia, sent a representative to Tobolsk. He arrived on March 24th. This man was a certain Dutzmann, a Jew. He did not interfere with the prison régime; indeed, he never came near the governor’s house.
At the end of March, Alexis had a severe attack of his illness—the worst ever known. Both legs were paralysed. The pain was excruciating and unremitting. Day and night he cried aloud in his agony, and the aged and infirm mother had to sit by and comfort him. After a whole month of suffering the patient began to improve and the pains grew less, but he was still a cripple and could not be moved without serious danger. At this juncture appeared the Soviet emissary, Yakovlev. Neither the soldiers nor the captives were surprised. Only a few days later they understood what an important part he had come to play in their lives.
Yakovlev reached Tobolsk with an escort of 150 horsemen late in the evening of April 22nd and unobtrusively took up his residence in the Kornilov house. Colonel Kobylinsky saw him next morning. Yakovlev handed him an order from the Tsik, signed by Sverdlov, intimating that the bearer was entrusted with a mission of the highest importance and that he must be implicitly obeyed, but no hint was given as to the nature of the mission. Yakovlev then had the men of the guard mustered and showed them a similar document, by which they were informed that any disobedience to him would be punished with death. To sugar the pill, Yakovlev told them that he had brought them a lot of money, the Soviet having decided to pay at the rate of three roubles a day instead of fifty kopecks, the rate fixed by the Kerensky Government. Altogether, Yakovlev showed himself to be an expert in the art of handling peasant soldiers, but he had to overcome opposition of a more subtle kind from a Jew named Zaslavsky, who had insinuated himself among the guards as the representative of the Uralian Soviet. This man had previously caused no end of trouble by “discovering” “plots,” and had almost persuaded the soldiers on one occasion to insist that the Imperial captives should be transferred to the town lock-up. In fact, here once more it was only the coolness of the resourceful Kobylinsky that had saved the situation.