‘Mamma!’
It was a cry that haunted him. He fled in fear and horror, sure that it would be fatal if the guards caught him there at that precise moment. They were an unpleasant lot. In his agitation, he wandered about the town, keeping as far as he could from that place of violent death. It was a long time before he finally found the courage to go home to his room in the Baoudins’ house. When he did get there, his landlady, Anna Baoudin, told him to stay out of the way. His room, she said, was not available to him for the time being. He asked what was happening, for she was agitated too, and kept going up and down the stairs with hot water. She would not say. Eventually, however, remarking that she trusted him to keep his mouth shut, she told him that Grand Duchess Anastasia was in his room, terribly wounded, and that one of the Red soldiers had brought her there. Kleibenzetl went up to the room with her, offering to give what help he could. He recognized the young Grand Duchess, seventeen at the time. She really was terribly wounded, the lower part of her body covered with blood, and her chin bones broken. She was as pale as death, and unconscious, but did open her eyes once, just for a moment. She had very blue eyes.
Kleibenzetl said she lay in that room for three days, her wounds being simply treated by his landlady. On the second day, some of the Red guards arrived. They entered the house. There was a hunt going on, a hunt for a young woman. But because he and the Baoudins were well known to the soldiers, they did not search the house. But they did say, ‘Anastasia’s disappeared. She won’t be here, of course, that’s for sure.’ And they went away, not realizing how close they had been to discovering her.
On the third day, the Red soldier who had rescued the Grand Duchess and brought her into the care of the Baoudins, returned for her and took her away.
Heinrich Kleibenzetl was questioned and cross-examined for over six hours in that Hamburg courtroom, but could not be persuaded to retract one word of his story. Steadfast and convincing, he declared he could not change what was the truth, or alter what was fact.
Despite his impressive stand and the production of supportive documents, and despite so much other convincing evidence in favour of the claimant, the judgement went against her, although not wholly so. The court decided, after the case had lasted for years, that in asking for recognition as Anastasia Nicolaievna, Grand Duchess of Russia, she had not been able to provide sufficient proof for such recognition.
‘I am who I am,’ she had once cried in despair, but as far as the Hamburg court was concerned, it seemed that a sufficiency of proof could only be provided by an act of God. It seemed that the Tsar himself was required to rise from the dead and acknowledge her.
An appeal was lodged.
It took three years to be heard. The tribunal judges gave it due consideration, but on 17th February 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of her suicidal leap into the canal, the appeal was dismissed.
The presiding judge said, ‘We have not decided the plaintiff is not Grand Duchess Anastasia. We have decided her claim is neither established nor refuted.’
They could not say she was Anastasia. They would not say she wasn’t.
In February 1984, the death was announced in Charlottesville, Virginia, of Mrs John Manahan, formerly the unknown Fräulein of Berlin. She was eighty-two.
Existing serenely in the tranquil twilight of her life, Mrs Natasha Gibson paid a visit to her church in a village in Surrey, England.
There she lit a candle to the memory of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaievna of the lost world of Imperial Russia.
THE END
About the Author
Mary Jane Staples was born, bred and educated in Walworth, and is the author of many bestselling novels, including the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family
Also by Mary Jane Staples:
The Adams Books
Down Lambeth Way
Our Emily
King of Camberwell
A Family Affair
Missing Person
Pride of Walworth
Echoes of Yesterday
The Young Ones
The Camberwell Raid
The Last Summer
The Family at War
Fire Over London
Churchill’s People
Bright Day, Dark Night
Tomorrow is Another Day
The Way Ahead
Year of Victory
The Homecoming
Sons and Daughters
Appointment at the Palace
Changing Times
Spreading Wings
Family Fortunes
A Girl Next Door
Out of the Shadows
A Signs of the Times
The Soldier’s Girl
Nurse Anna’s War
Other titles in order of publication
Two for Three Farthings
The Lodger
Rising Summer
The Pearly Queen
Sergeant Joe
The Trap
The Ghost of Whitechapel
Escape to London
The Price of Freedom
A Wartime Marriage
Katerina’s Secret
The Summer Day is Done
The Longest Winter
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NATASHA’S DREAM
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552150927
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446488263
First published in Great Britain in 1986 by
Severn House Publishers Ltd as The Woman in Berlin
under the name Robert Tyler Stevens
Corgi edition published 2010
Copyright © Robert Tyler Stevens 1986
Mary Jane Staples has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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