Their voices drifted up from the patchy garden.Rising above the voices was singing. Three of the sisters sang a lullaby that he recognized. At one end of the garden, the frail-looking boy and the girl named Anastasia sat huddled over a garden bench. Nearby, the ex-tsar chatted with his wife, seated in a wheelchair. All of them looked a little shabby, their clothes worn.“You know what I found strange, Commissar?” Yurovsky, the komendant, observed.“What?”“How Russia could believe the Romanovs were like gods. But they’re not, are they? They’re no more than educated peasants.”Yakov thought, He’s right. What surprised him was that they seemed so ordinary.On the way upstairs to the family quarters, Yakov passed a stuffed mother bear and its cubs on the landing. Down in the hallway he spotted a child’s battered wheelchair.The komendant said, “The boy’s a cripple, really. His legs are weak, and the father carries him everywhere. A rare blood disease can cause him to bleed to death, and he’s in a lot of pain because he bruises easily.
