Petrushka braved the cold to greet the regiments that were to stand guard over his winter wedding, thousands of men, acknowledging them one by one, like a good and gracious Tsar. In all he spent four hours on the ice. Afterwards, he mounted the same light sled that had carried Katja and him away from Buturlin’s scaffold, standing upright behind the seat, exposed to the freeze that kept even hardy Muscovites in their homes. Katja wore a tight bodice of blue velvet adorned with golden toggles to match her sparkling eyes and display her famously full breasts; her fine-boned face was haughtier than ever. Sapphires and diamonds sparkled in her ears. Two dozen horsemen in silver livery accompanied them, musicians played and pageboys ran alongside, showering the couple with scented petals on this bleakest of midwinter days. Petrushka bowed to Katja, complimenting her on her beauty: whatever dark force had driven him to this engagement, he seemed determined to carry it through in style.
As Katja was whisked away to recuperate in a hot banja, Petrushka returned to the Kremlin. One hour later he complained of a searing headache. He was served steaming glasses of grog before being wrapped in heated furs. Although his fever soared, his attendants wasted hours before calling in the doctors. The Tsar’s teeth chattered, his limbs trembled; he was unable either to stand or to sit for crippling backache. When diarrhoea and vomiting set in, his physicians were finally called.
Petrushka was confined to a darkened, overheated room where he lay delirious.
As I left Izmailov, the sky hung low over the palace, ready to spit with sleet. Laden bushes and trees groaned for fear of further snow; crows’ sooty wings covered the heavens. In the waiting sled, a maid placed a hot copper pan at my feet and another one beneath my blanket. She curtsied and kissed my hand, crying and taking leave for good: ‘God bless you, Tsarevna Elizabeth. Russia loves you, and always will.’
As my sled set off, the first pustules had appeared on Petrushka’s young face, neck and shoulders: searing, angry and ruby-red. Smallpox took just hours to blossom. The boils burst, spreading their vile pus, before turning scarlet and scabby. He screamed, pleading to scratch, but his physicians forced his hands into mittens and bound his wrists to the bed. They bled him and kept the room, which was stuffed with fearful courtiers, heated at banja level. The Tsar gasped, suffocating and begging for air, yet no one dared give the order to open the window. In the Dolgoruky Palace, Katja had been locked in her apartment where she howled, unhinged by the news that had upended her life once more.
No one dared approach her.
I was oblivious to all this when I arrived at the Kremlin in the early-morning hours, preferring to journey on through the darkest of nights than stay at a grubby inn, its windows nailed shut against the cold and hung with wax cloth, the straw on the floors soiled and rotten. My sled’s torches ate into the inky blackness, their tar dripping into the snow and making a hissing sound, keeping wolves, bears and highwaymen at bay. I held my whip and Lestocq and Schwartz their pistols at the ready. The Kremlin’s steward was sleepy and half-dazed with drink; the rooms he allotted me were much too mean for someone of my rank. My mounting dread rendered Lestocq’s laudanum useless. I could not sleep even as my lids burned with fatigue. I avoided the mirror in my room: soon, I should be shorn-headed and lacking any last traces of finery. I was twenty-one years old yet felt I had already endured enough for ten lives if I added up all my loves and losses. I paced the room, torn by fatigue and fear.
Lestocq, who had gone to make enquiries, came rushing back. ‘Tsarevna!’ he gasped.
’What is it?’ I readied myself. Had a convent been chosen? Instead, he threw himself on his knees and seized both my gloved hands. ‘The Tsar is dying,’ he said, his breath hot on my wrists.
‘No. This can’t be,’ I protested.
‘The smallpox is taking him,’ he said. ‘He has but hours to live. We have to be quick. This is the moment. Go and claim the throne of your father.’
‘The Tsar is still alive?’ I pulled my hands away, sickened by the memory of Augustus’ suffering. Must I also lose the last adult member of my closest family to the dread illness?
‘But for how much longer?’ Lestocq rose to his feet, a vein throbbing in his temple. ‘If you do nothing, you betray your own blood.’
‘I should send you back to Versailles with your tongue in your hand! What do you know about loyalty?’ I held my head as my thoughts raced. ‘Perhaps you can save the Tsar. Do something… ’
The flames in the grate threw tall shadows, making his face hard to read. ‘I can’t,’ he said, but the real answer might well have been, I will not.
‘But I can!’ I pushed him aside and flew out into the corridor, where I seized a torch and ran. I could only remember the lonely little boy Petrushka had been, not the spurned suitor who viciously schemed to cause me misery. My steps echoed down the dark passages of the Kremlin, the torch chasing away shadows. Tar dripped from it, sizzling on the icy stones. I reached the Tsar’s rooms with my ribs heaving and aching from a stitch. People blocked the corridor, some still fully dressed, some in their nightgowns, all looking bewildered. The crowd parted as I stepped towards the dim lights and hushed murmuring within the Tsar’s bedroom. When I slipped past Alexis Dolgoruky, I heard him saying to Ostermann, ‘She has to sign our conditions. No signature, no crown!’ He stopped short upon seeing me.
I stared at him, not sure if I had heard right.
A low moan forced my attention elsewhere.
‘Petrushka!’ I moved towards his bedside, bracing myself.
The Tsar lay slack-limbed upon the bed, looking as if he had been tossed there. His chin had fallen, and with each rasping breath, his lungs rattled as if drowning in liquid; a sound that was almost too painful for me to endure. D’Acosta lay curled up like a kitten at Petrushka’s feet but stirred and rose when I felt for the Tsar’s limp, hot hands. He did not turn his head, but his eyelids fluttered once or twice when I touched him. I so hoped that he sensed me by his side when he whispered, ‘Let us get the horses ready for the hunt… ’
‘Yes, Petrushka. We shall ride in the morning,’ I said in a voice choked by tears. My vision blurred. I barely took in the courtiers’ avid watchful faces, the fire’s thick smoke, the
flickering candles. I could hear whispering all around, like a flood rising against a dam. On the other side of Petrushka’s bed, Count Ostermann kept close watch beside Alexis Dolgoruky, their faces grey from worry. Past and future hung in the balance. Petrushka’s hand slackened in mine; the Imperial seal hung loose on his thin finger; the crimson double-headed eagle glinted like fire.
If he still felt my caress as I stroked the inside of his palm, I could not tell. His skin felt parched and his eyes rolled up, showing livid, mottled whites. His cracked lips pulled back from his gums as he grimaced in pain and then calmed, his head rolling to one side. His utter helplessness made me forget all my fear and sorrow. I dipped a crumpled silk handkerchief in a glass of water, dabbing his lips with the moist cloth. ‘Sip, Petrushka,’ I whispered, but my hand, hovering over his mouth, felt no further breath. The sudden stillness was terrifying. Droplets of water ran down Petrushka’s slack jaw. On the Red Square, the clock struck three o’clock in the morning. I dropped the handkerchief and hid my face. As I looked up, my eyes met Count Ostermann’s hooded gaze, for once recognising his true feelings: deep grief, anger at fate’s injustice and utter despair.
‘The Tsar is dead,’ I said, my voice brittle, holding on to Petrushka’s purple velvet bed-curtain as I pulled myself to my feet. It was incredible the frightening precision with which fate had struck once more. Petrushka had perished the very morning he was to wed Katja Dolgoruky.
The Tsar is dead. Voices started up beyond the smoke and incense, shock and excitement rising like a wave.
‘The Tsar is dead. Katja stands to inherit! She should rule as she would have been his Tsarina. I claim the throne for my daughter!’ Alexis Dolgoruky acted quickly, lacking all shame.
Ostermann snorted. ‘Katja? Do not be ridiculous! Not a drop of royal blood runs in her veins. And she is compromised by her dalliance with Count Melissimo.’
‘Watch your dirty mouth or I’ll smash your teeth in,’ Dolgoruky growled. ‘My family founded Moscow. I descend from Ivan Grozny.’
‘Maybe. But who knows from whom Katja is descended, pretty as she is. No. Why not let us get the little prince from Holstein, Tsarevna Anoushka’s boy?’ Ostermann suggested.
‘He is a German and barely one year old. A long Regency is the last thing the country needs,’ Dolgoruky objected.
Ostermann looked at me, his cunning gaze never leaving my face. My heart pounded; I could not help it. Me? Was I ready, having passed the last time I sat at fate’s gaming table, folding my hand.
‘What about Tsar Ivan’s eldest daughter, Tsarevna Ekaterina Ivanovna?’ That was Dolgoruky once more.
‘For her awful, estranged Mecklenburg husband to move in with her in the Winter Palace? He’d be here in a flash and Russia ruined,’ Ostermann dismissed the suggestion. ‘No. We know the way forward. We discussed it as soon as the Tsar fell ill. Let us announce the new Tsarina.’
His eyes were fixed on me, gleaming like wildfire.
Me!
My head felt light, as if I were breathing among the clouds, yet I let go of the heavy curtain. In the past five years, the Russian throne had been vacated three times. I looked down at my bare hands. The lack of sun in the winter months and the candlelight had turned my pale fingers to alabaster. The Imperial seal weighed heavily on any hand, I told myself, getting ready, as d’Acosta slid up to me, staying close. He had never been far away during any of the decisive moments of my life, for better and for worse. Go and claim the throne of your father. If you do nothing, you betray your own blood. In my mind Lestocq’s words blended with the Leshy’s prophecy.
Count Ostermann stepped closer to me. Surely, at this fateful moment, all our former differences were forgotten. Only time would tell if I was a deserving ruler; if I had watched and learned more than Mother had. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, and kissed the Tsar’s veined hand, whispering in his former pupil’s ear, caressing his sweaty hair. Tears ran down the German’s stubbly, sagging cheeks. Most of the little happiness Petrushka had known in his short life, Ostermann or I had given him. If we ourselves had not seen eye to eye, I was ready to overlook our previous differences. A ruler needs wise counsel, I thought, as Ostermann eased the Imperial seal off the dead Tsar’s finger: Petrushka had grown so frail during his short suffering that the seal slipped right off.
I readied myself to feel its weight on my finger. Blood raced through my veins. The courtiers fell to their knees, bowing their heads and holding their breath, awaiting the announcement as eagerly as I did. I felt their probing, fearful glances and spotted Lestocq leaning on the threshold, face pale with excitement, biting his lip. Behind him, Schwartz’s face bobbed like a lantern. I read their gamblers’ minds: one game was over, a new one was about to start. Ostermann closed his eyes, gathering himself, closing his fingers and hiding the gold and ruby seal from view. I felt as lonely as any ruler is once the full weight of the task settles upon him – or her.
‘The Tsar is dead!’ Ostermann’s voice resounded through the chamber just as Tsar Ivan Grozny’s Kremlin bell started to toll, low and steady. The winter wind carried the sound away into the vastness of the Empire. Was Russia ready for another Tsarina? After all, it had been my mother who had been the realm’s first female ruler. Did she pave the way for me?
‘Long live the Tsarina!’ Ostermann bellowed.
I closed my eyes, fighting tears, my breath halting, as the court gave a single roar. Exhausted onlookers were stumbling to their feet, ready to bow once more. Lestocq straightened in anticipation, his eyes gleaming. Schwartz slapped the Frenchman’s shoulder, looking delighted. I savoured the moment, my heart racing. After all, I had been born for this, I would show myself worthy.
Ostermann swapped a quick glance with Prince Dolgoruky, who nodded. ‘Long live the Tsarina!’ he repeated. ‘Long live Her Imperial Majesty Anna Ivanovna Romanova, widowed Duchess of Courland, second daughter of our beloved Tsar Ivan V!’