“Can we go somewhere to talk?” Vladimir looked around the crowded lobby and back into Clayton's eyes. He had a great deal to tell him. Clayton looked at his watch. He had two hours before he had to be anywhere. He nodded and followed Vladimir outside to the conveniently waiting taxi.
“Just tell me, man, she all right? Has anything happened to her?”
The Prince looked sorrowful as he started the car, his frayed cuffs and worn jacket looking worse than ever, but the clipped moustache was still impeccably neat, the snow white hair. Everything about him bespoke nobility and distinction. There were so many like him in Paris now. Counts and princes and dukes and just men of good families, driving taxis and sweeping streets and waiting on tables.
“Nothing has happened to her, Captain,” he said, and Clayton heaved a sigh of relief. “At least not directly.” They drove to the Deux-Magots, took a table in the back, and Clayton ordered two cups of coffee. “Her grandmother died three weeks ago.”
“I was afraid of that.” She had seemed so ill and so frail when he left Paris more than a month before.
“But worse than that, Pierre Gilliard came from Siberia to see her. The news was terrible. She hasn't left the apartment since he told her. I'm afraid she'll lose her mind, just sitting there, grieving for them. It's too much for her.” There were tears in his eyes and he was sorry Andrews hadn't ordered something stronger. He could have used a stiff vodka. Just thinking about her broke his heart. Too much had happened to all of them, and now especially to Zoya.
“Was Gilliard there when they killed the Tsar?” He had a heavy heart himself, just thinking about it, although he had never known the man. But Zoya had brought him to life, with her tales of Livadia and the yacht and Tsarskoe Selo, and now he felt almost as though he knew him.
“Apparently the soldiers of the Soviet sent him and the English tutor away shortly before, but they came back two months later, and they've been speaking to soldiers and guards and local peasants in Ekaterinburg for months, helping with the White Army investigations. They know most of it and he wants to go back and talk to them some more. But it doesn't matter anymore.” His eyes were old and sad as he looked at Clayton Andrews. “They're all dead … all of them … murdered at the same time as the Tsar … even the children.” He was not ashamed of the tears that rolled down his cheeks. He cried every time he thought of it. He had lost so many good friends. They all had. But Clayton Andrews looked shocked, horrified, and he knew what it would do to Zoya.
“Marie as well?” It was a last hope … for Zoya's sake … but Vladimir only shook his head.
“All of them. Gone.” He told Andrews details that Gilliard hadn't even dared to tell Zoya, of acid and mutilation and burning. What she knew was bad enough. They had wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth, without a trace. But you cannot wipe out beauty and dignity and grace, kindness and compassion, and people who were so profoundly good and loving. In effect, they had not succeeded in destroying what they represented. Their bodies were gone but their spirit would live on forever.
“How did Zoya take the news?”
“I'm not sure she will survive it. She grows thinner day by day. She won't eat, she won't talk, she won't smile. It breaks my heart just to see her. Will you go to her?” He was ready to beg him. She must live on. Her grandmother had been old at least, but Zoya was young and alive, at nineteen her life was just beginning. He could not bear to see it end now. She had to live on, to carry with her the beauty they had all seen, into a new life, not bury it with her, as she was doing.
Clayton Andrews sighed, pensively stirring his coffee. What Vladimir had told him was shocking beyond belief, and more than that, it tore at his heart … even the boy … it was what Pierre Gilliard had said himself when he first heard the news, “The children! … not the children….” But he looked sadly at the Prince, thinking of Zoya again. “I'm not sure she'll see me.”
“You must try. For her sake.” He didn't dare ask the man if he still loved her. He had always thought he was too old for her anyway, and he had said as much to Evgenia. But he was the only hope left, and he had seen the light in Clayton's eyes the year he'd gone to Christmas services with them. At least then, he had loved the girl deeply. “She doesn't answer the door most of the time. Sometimes I just leave some food outside for her, and eventually she takes it in, though I'm not sure that she eats it.” But he did it for her grandmother. He would have wanted someone to do as much for Yelena. And now he was begging Clayton Andrews to go and see her. He would have done anything to help her. He was almost sorry Gilliard had come, but they needed to know, they could not go on hoping forever.
