I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

This impression could not be further from the truth. She has been many things through the years, but helpless is not one of them.

Gleb insisted on it, and in all the years she knew him, Gleb Botkin remained her truest friend, her staunchest champion. He’s been dead two years now.

She hasn’t forgotten what Frederick did, hasn’t forgotten the burn pile behind her cottage at the edge of the Black Forest. All those charred little bones. If the news had come from anyone else she would take the call. “I don’t want to speak with him.”

The last time Anna drank champagne she ended up naked on a rooftop in New York City.

“It was that photo, wasn’t it? The court must have seen it. There’s no other reason they would rule against you. Damn that Rasputin. Damn her!” Jack begins to pace again. “We could make a statement—”

lethargic flakes that drift and flutter and take their time getting to the ground. Lazy snow. American snow.

Jack’s only show of hesitation was a long, curious look at Gleb. Assessing his attachment and willingness to let Anna go.

This is how it is with them, apparently. Little wounds. Paper cuts. Just enough to sting but not really harm. Perhaps it’s best that they aren’t marrying each other after all.

“It is this or you return to Germany,” he says. “We are out of time.”

“I am to be married,” she asks, tilting her chin to meet those twinkling green eyes, “not by a priest, or a judge, but by a police officer?”

It is a distinctly American thing, Anna thinks, to have an entire conversation about the weather.

This woman is Russian. This woman is dangerous.

The thing Anna has always hated most about being a small woman is the disadvantage she has in situations like this. People assume they can touch you, pat you, shake your hand without permission. They assume that if your size is little more than that of a child, you must be one. That you can be talked down to or coerced. It is hard for a small person to be intimidating or to be taken seriously. This lack of stature has forced Anna to develop other skills through the years: to sharpen her wit, to treat her tongue like a blade and her mind like a whetstone.

“And of course you remember Maria Rasputin. As she tells it, the two of you have known each other since childhood.”

She is wary of Maria Rasputin and for good reason.

Grigory Rasputin was known to have those same terrifying, hypnotic eyes. Like father, like daughter.

“But I’ve also got a proposition for you.”

pity. International travel is so expensive.” Anna does the thing she’s been doing for decades. She tilts her head up and to the side. She gives this woman the ghost of a smile, a condescending smirk that suggests she won’t acknowledge the insinuation or admit that yes, she’s running out of money and has few options left.

“And what will you do when your visa runs out? Will you go back to Germany? To your friends in Unterlengenhardt? Your pets?”

The barb settles deep.

Maria clearly knows Anna doesn’t have a home to return to, that nothing remains but a mass grave behind the cottage she once called home. Maria’s involvement in those...

To her it is blackmail.

want to make this perfectly clear. You will not use me as a meal ticket.”

when she showed up unannounced in Unterlengenhardt and conspired to burn Anna’s world to the ground.

This Rasputin is nothing more than an old woman acting like a petulant child, punishing Anna for refusing to play along.

Anna drops her face into her hands. Here she is, cast once again onto a stranger. Beggared because her only friend has congestive heart failure. But it is her heart that aches at the moment. “If I marry him, I prove that Maria Rasputin was right all along.” “What do you mean?” “She said it was only a matter of time before I took up with

him. She implied that I look to benefactors, that I use people.”

“The last time that woman showed up at my door unannounced, I ended up in the hospital for three days.”

can hear rioting in the city and I know that fate has turned against us.

Mother clutches the amulet at her throat. It was given to her by Grigory Rasputin shortly before his murder last year and is identical to the ones she requires each of us to wear at all times. “We pray,” she says. —

“What did you put in that icon, Mother?” She smiles. “Oh, you are a clever girl.” “It wasn’t just a gift, was it?” “No. It was a message.” “What sort?” “The sort I hope we do not need.”

But what they do not understand is that it gives her the ability to remain invisible and to hide what she does not want seen.

but she cannot forgive him for allowing the town to gas and cremate her animals. Sixty-two cats—she knew each and every one of their names—and four dogs. Murdered. Gone. Euthanized and turned to ashes.

He could have made this one exception. But he didn’t, and Anna will never forgive him for it.

Anna regrets the way she kept Gleb at arm’s length, unable to surrender to his affections.

But his mistake in Wasserburg was the beginning of everything going wrong. Had it not been for the Private Investigator, she would have proved her case before the courts long ago and she wouldn’t have spent decades living in a ramshackle cottage waiting for the verdict of her appeal. She would have a title and an estate and the dispersed fortune of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

this point in Anna’s life, Baby is the closest thing she has to a real friend. Everyone else objects to the cats.

There are two letters in the mailbox. One from Gleb Botkin and the other from Maria Rasputin.

Jack is an academic who specializes in genealogy and family history. On a broader level he wants to set the record straight about her identity, and on a personal level, doing so would be the crowning accomplishment of his career. He’s honest enough to admit that outright.

I’ve never realized before how clearly men need leaders. How adrift we are without them and how the mere sight of one can breathe courage into a room.

hate him for making me feel small and vulnerable and so different from my elegant sisters.

“You are in a palace that belongs to the Russian people. As of today you and your family are prisoners. You may not leave and you may not speak to anyone from the outside.”

but the only thing I feel at this pronouncement is anger. I am like my father in that way, I fear. Anger first, reason second.

You have abdicated the throne, not only for yourself, but for your son as well. You are no longer emperor. Anything granted to you is by my good grace alone.”

“But who is going to be tsar now?” “No one.” “But if there isn’t a tsar, who will govern Russia?” Father grimaces. “You just met him.”

received from the empress’s sister. You place great weight on them given that she was a governess in the Romanov household.” “Not just a governess,” he says. “Anastasia’s governess.” Frederick leans toward Anna and whispers in her ear. “Shura died three years ago. Pierre hasn’t been the same since.”

“but I have learned the old adage well. Money cannot buy happiness.”

“Perhaps not. But it makes a nice down payment.”

“The Americans would call it an insurance policy,”