In the corridor, Lestocq stuffed his thin, long pipe carved from ivory with tobacco, his expression pensive. Behind him, Schwartz’s burly frame filled the narrow space. Buturlin slipped out of Petrushka’s sick chamber – against my orders! – closing the door firmly behind him. I drew my embroidered Persian shawl tighter, relishing its light softness: it was draughty in the passage and icy patterns of otherworldly beauty clung to the windowpanes, through which milky blue light seeped into the corridor.
‘Schwartz, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Moscow already. Though a merry tune might help the Tsar. And you, Buturlin, were told to stay inside,’ I said, already understanding: these men formed a Council of sorts, which was not meeting for the first time.
‘Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures, Tsarevna. Schwartz is waiting. I am waiting. We all are waiting,’ Lestocq said, looking me straight in the eye.
‘Waiting? We shall reach Moscow soon. The faster Petrushka is crowned, the better it will be. Summer in Peterhof will benefit the Tsar,’ I said. ‘I will do whatever it takes to restore him to health.’
‘I am neither speaking about travelling further nor about His Majesty’s convalescence,’ Lestocq said bluntly.
‘Why? Is there no hope for him?’ I remembered my doctor’s blunt but accurate judgment when Augustus lay dying.
‘There might well be. We are waiting for you.’ Buturlin’s gaze was lit by pride and belief in me, warming my heart.
‘I would like to bleed the Tsar,’ Lestocq said.
‘Bleed him?’ I peered at the door behind which Petrushka lay as pale as the linen that covered his gangly limbs, too weak to move, eat or drink. Bleeding him would make the life drip from his veins. The thought stirred me deeply, remembering Augustus’ final hours. I shook my head. ‘No. Never. That would kill him.’
Lestocq’s gaze held mine; Schwartz shuffled nearer, standing closer to my physician than France and Austria ever were. Buturlin leaned against the wall, crossing his arms, his face sombre. ‘Yes. It would,’ he said slowly. Lestocq squinted at the smoke that rose from his pipe. It thickened the dacha’s soupy air further, making it unbreathable. ‘Must we spell it out?’ he asked, his voice hushed.
I pressed my hands to my throat, feeling the St Nicholas icon. My half-brother Alexey had died at our father’s hand, bringing years of suffering to our family. In reparation I would shield Petrushka from all evil. This I had sworn to myself and I would not go back on my word, determined that no further drop of Romanov blood would be spilled. ‘How dare you suggest this to me?’ I protested. ‘My nephew is Tsar of All the Russias. To lay your hand on him is to flout the Divine will.’
‘The Tsar is neither crowned yet nor anointed with the sacred oil,’ Buturlin countered.
‘You have sworn allegiance to him!’ I hissed, raising my fists. ‘Shame on you, soldier.’
Lestocq checked over his shoulder and spoke on, low and urgent. ‘The Tsar is terribly ill. Great things are at stake here. If God decided to call young Petrushka to him, who would inherit the throne? Menshikov? You cannot possibly want that. You are next in line. Give Russia the stability it yearns for. Your father’s work is far from finished. Make his dreams come true. Set his legacy in stone. If the Tsar lingers on like this, Menshikov will seize power and then God have mercy upon your country – and you.’
I closed my eyes, put my hands over my ears and shook my head. ‘I can’t. It’s against everything I was raised to believe in.’ I had stepped into a circle of traitors and regicides! Schwartz, no longer the harmless musician he’d seemed to be, urged me, ‘Tsarevna Elizabeth, do you even know the state this country is in? The coffers are empty. No ruling is done. Everybody in any sort of authority fills their own pockets. Of a hundred roubles in tax, only twenty reach the Imperial administration. Alexis Dolgoruky will move all offices, privileges and duties back to Moscow. Russia will once more become everything your father feared and fought – closed to the world, small-minded and centred on Moscow.’
Despite the corridor’s chill, I felt sweat gathering in my armpits. You are next in line. I had always been a second daughter, loved and spoiled but of no real importance – other than as marriage material. Then, Mother had worn the Imperial tiara, slipping the almighty seal onto her own finger. So, yes: what if Petrushka perished, here and now? I fought the prospect with all my might: it was the Devil tempting me.
‘You can’t be serious, Lestocq. Is this what Versailles rewards you so royally for?’ I needed to buy time. ‘France can’t wish me to rule. It didn’t even want me as its Queen, preferring the dour daughter of the deposed King of Poland,’ I reminded him. The old wound still festered.
‘You will be better as reigning Tsarina of Russia than as a subdued, breeding Queen of France. Versailles knows that. De Campredon was no fool.’
‘So does Vienna,’ Schwartz cut in. ‘Let us not forget that Austria signed the Pragmatic Sanction, making Maria Theresa the Habsburg Crown Princess. She will rule, as might you.’
‘The Tsar and Maria Theresa are cousins,’ I said.
He bowed in a pre-emptive gesture of mourning and respect. ‘Vienna would deeply regret the young Tsar’s passing. But you are so young and so beautiful that many an archduke is ready to learn Russian and even convert to the Russian Orthodox faith.’
Lestocq frowned but his hands were tied. King Louis XV had had his chance. My physician beat his pipe against the raised sole of his boot. Burned tobacco fell in dark clumps on the whitewashed floor, thick as curdled blood. ‘What if Russia wants you?’
‘Who is to know what Russia wants?’
‘You do,’ Buturlin said simply. He pushed off the wall and kneeled down in front of me, seizing both my hands. His expression was adoring, his fingers warm, their gentleness known to me. I almost yielded; the intensity of his gaze was hard to bear. ‘You are Russia. Your father was the Tsar anointed by Heaven, your mother the Tsarina, a daughter of the land. Legend and lore, law and logic, are combined in you. The Russian people worship you. For any soldier, you are the Tsar’s daughter. But more so, you are the Tsarina’s daughter! Your mother has reigned. Why shouldn’t you?’ He kissed my fingers then placed his hand on his heart. ‘The regiments are with us, I promise.’
‘Whoever is favoured by the Russian regiments, is favoured by fate,’ Menshikov had said. The air thickened with tension. A mere nod of my head given in the frosty corridor of a far-flung dacha, somewhere between St Petersburg and Moscow, would suffice for Tsar Peter II of All the Russias to be bled to death. Yet I needed to think further. We were in the middle of nowhere and Menshikov on his way back to Moscow, where thousands of soldiers manned the barracks. He could beat me in claiming control in the event of Petrushka’s sudden death. That would mean the end of the Romanov Dynasty. I weighed the thought, barely able to breathe.
What should I decide?
Petrushka the lonely boy, had become the even lonelier man, lying desperately ill on his sickbed: if he had ever loved and trusted someone, it had been me. I had been all the family he had known. All around us, the dacha creaked. It felt like my nephew himself: frail and brittle, not made to withstand a winter, but in need of summer sun and gentle winds. Lestocq, Buturlin and Schwartz were serious. If I took Petrushka’s death on my conscience, I should be no better than Menshikov, the day he had pushed my father to kill Alexey. My uncertainty gave way to anger.
‘Get up, Buturlin! On your feet, soldier. Your limbs should be broken on the wheel for your treacherous thoughts, your entrails fed to the crows. What you think… worse, what you say… is punishable by death. I shall not betray my own blood, ever.’
Buturlin stumbled to his feet, shocked by my outburst. Lestocq’s fox-like face frowned. I clasped my thick shatosh to me, pulling it tighter around my shoulders. ‘You have served Russia well, gentlemen. I put your words today down to worry and shall forget and forgive. The Tsar is not to be bled.’
I turned back to Petrushka’s sick chamber. Buturlin opened the door, slipping into the room after me. ‘Lizenka!’ he whispered but I raised my hand, stopping him, fighting tears. He looked at me mutely, bowed and went to lean on the windowsill, once more standing there with a sentry’s patience, his gaze fixed on me. I longed for his embrace but settled at Petrushka’s bedside instead.
D’Acosta shifted his tiny backside, making space for me, still holding his ruler’s hands and humming songs, as if the Tsar were a sick child. Petrushka’s face was as waxen as the candle next to his bed, its light slicing the cool blue air. I patted the dwarf’s salt-and-pepper curls. ‘Go to the kitchen, d’Acosta. The hunters have brought back some hares and a wild boar. See if you can get yourself some of the grilled offal.’
‘Yes, go and stuff your greedy little dwarf face, creature!’ Buturlin snapped jealously.
D’Acosta put out his tongue at him and slid out into the corridor: Schwartz had disappeared and Lestocq retreated. The slight of him impregnating d’Acosta’s daughter and not marrying her surely not been forgotten, knowing the dwarf. Once the door had closed and all the footsteps had faded, I clasped Petrushka’s hands, ready to pray for his life. I felt a slight pressure against my fingers and opened my eyes, meeting my nephew’s amber gaze: It was the first time he had woken fully in days. His freckles looked like dark poppy seeds on yeast dough. ‘Lizenka. Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Was that Menshikov shouting at you earlier? He must not, ever. Did he make you sad? Tell me… ’
I kissed Petrushka’s hands, my tears falling on his parched skin. ‘He harasses me to no avail,’ I said stoutly, though the fear I felt was monstrous. With Petrushka’s life hanging by a silken thread, one snap of Menshikov’s fingers would suffice to get rid of me. ‘But I will not give in. Nothing but your health counts for me. We will spend the summer together in Peterhof.’
His face lit up. ‘Will we? Just the two of us? Together in Peterhof? I promise to get healthy. If I can only be with you… ’
‘Don’t you dare forget that promise!’ I replied, fighting the memory of Lestocq’s words that still dripped their poison into my soul. If Petrushka had no heir, Anoushka’s child and I were next in line to the throne. Menshikov would do everything he could to tear all of us, and Russia, apart.
My mind was made up.