The Kitchen Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

respond at once,” she said. “But who knows if we’ll ever see any of the nuns again?”
    “Leonka,” said Dr. Botkin, who towered over me, “who was this soldier? The note says something about a soldier that we may trust, yet you say the note came in the stopper of the milk bottle from Sister Antonina?”
    “Da-s, da-s,
Yevgeny Sergeevich,” I replied. “Sister Antonina brought the milk and eggs. As usual, she was accompanied by Novice Marina. There was a guard in the hall, but that was the only one I saw.”
    “And which guard would that be?”
    “The one with the blond beard.”
    Of course there were many guards in and around The House of Special Purpose, but they all knew who I meant, for there was one guard whose beard in particular was very light in color. He was also the youngest, twenty at most. Just last week he’d made Tatyana Nikolaevna sit down and play revolutionary songs at the piano.
    “Nyet-s,”
said Nikolai Aleksandrovich, brushing at his mustache. “Trusting one of them – it’s too dangerous. We simply can’t.”
    “But-” the Tsaritsa began, her skin turning red and somewhat blotchy, because she was very strong willed, very determined.
    “Absolutely not. I forbid it. What if it’s a trap of some sort?”
    This didn’t please Aleksandra Fyodorovna much, for she was quite eager to make contact with the letter writer, and she said, “But, Nicky, if you don’t think we can trust any of the guards, then surely we must find someone else to take our reply to them.”
    There’s been much speculation as to how these replies were smuggled out of The House of Special Purpose. Some have suggested that there was in fact a guard loyal to the Tsar working in the house – some have suggested it was indeed him, the young one with the blond beard – but they’ve never been able to identify him by name. And that doesn’t make any sense, because if there’d been such a hero wouldn’t he have presented himself to the Whites once they took over Yekaterinburg? Of course! Others have suggested that it might have been the Heir’s doctor, Dr. Vladimir Derevenko, who took these notes out. After all, Derevenko was virtually the only person authorized to come and go at the Ipatiev House, which he did – he came every day to check on Aleksei. You see, there wasn’t enough room in the house for all of us, so Dr. Derevenko and his young son, Kolya, lived across the street. So since Derevenko could come and go, many have assumed it was he who carried the secret notes, that it could have been no other. But this too is false. One hundred percent false.
    At first Botkin did in fact suggest, “What about Doctor Derevenko?”
    “Nyet-s,”
replied Nikolai Aleksandrovich. “That wouldn’t be wise. Derevenko is our friend and is therefore always suspect to them. Two days ago the guards at the gate even searched his medical bag and the pockets of his coat. Furthermore, he is always accompanied by the
komendant
when he visits our rooms, so it’s impossible to say anything to him. We must find someone… someone totally innocent, someone they wouldn’t even think of searching.”
    To me it was instantly obvious. In any history book, I, Leonid Sednyov, am nothing but the smallest footnote in the remarkable story of the murder of the Romanovs. There have been some absurd speculations, but to serious historians I am still to this day nothing more than the “little kitchen boy.” Even to Nikolai Sokolov, the investigator the Whites brought in to try to determine what happened – they couldn’t find the bodies, so no one was really sure if the Tsar was truly dead or if perhaps the entire family had been smuggled away. But even this Investigator Sokolov fellow didn’t bother to search me out for an interview. Can you imagine anything so stupid? Such an idiot. He should have tracked me down, for I was with the Romanovs right up until a few hours before their end, so as far as the world knows I am the only