For a fortnight I was at death’s door, drifting between the earthly and heavenly realms, undecided as to where I belonged. My dreams were ridden by the past, memories blurring: Anoushka and I fleeing the Golosov Ravine; Mother’s tears at her failure to produce a male heir; Petrushka gifting me Molniya, who fell victim to his love for me later; Anna Ivanovna offering me the icon of St Nicholas… everything comes at a price; Father disappearing in a halo of light; Augustus holding me in the Bay of Finland; Menshikov’s gaunt and frozen face; Buturlin’s mouth gushing blood; Katja Dolgoruky mourning her losses; Ekaterina Ivanovna sneering; Christine smiling dully; Ostermann incalculable in his movements; Maja’s cleft mouth mumbling, Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Once the fever abated, I fell into a deep sleep.
Finally, reality regained its hold over me: Abbess Agatha slipped in and out of my cell. ‘No, I will not read the last rites. She will recover,’ she insisted to the fearful Lestocq, spoon-feeding me hot chicken broth laced with wine and smetana.
He checked my temperature and tapped my chest, hoisting me up to listen to my pained breathing. ‘There is no blood,’ he said when checking my phlegm, the relief in his voice palpable.
There was another presence, though, one I was unable to recognise. Someone floated alongside me, bravely, brazenly, crossing the twilight between life and death as soon as the Abbess and Lestocq had departed. Warm fingers held my hand. His touch cooled my fever; he dabbed my parched lips with a cloth soaked in water and vinegar. My soul rose to meet his fingertips as they circled my throat and neck, cleaning me with rosewater and almond milk. When I stirred, he said, ‘Shhh,’ holding me tight, as a brother would. To make me fall asleep, he sang to me, his voice a cloak that shielded me against the cold and darkness.
‘Don’t you dare!’ I heard him warn Lestocq when the Frenchman started heating up his cursed cups on an open flame, preparing to bleed me. I felt too weak to open my eyes and protest. The stranger objected for me: ‘Bleed her? For what reason? She is but a young woman. How can she have bad blood?’
What might have been a fleeting memory lost at sea became an anchor holding me safe on life’s ripping, roaring currents.
By midsummer I was back on my feet. Long hours of light still kept the darkness at bay, reducing the night to short, pale hours. The Abbess led me around the monastery’s cloistered courtyard, linking elbows, carefully adjusting her steps to mine. Every day I walked a bit further, soaking up the sunshine, until she led me back to my cell where I lay and rested. Agatha also offered me a kitten from a stable cat’s litter, which I spoiled with leftover smetana. The adorable little thing – silky black fur, three white socks and a white belly – kept on bumping into me: it took me a while to realise that it was blind. I had to dip its nose into the cream to make it feed.
Its helplessness made me love it even more: I felt needed.
Lestocq called on me every day, whether I wished to see him or not, as if there was a future to discuss. Wherever I hid, he found me: late in June I sat in a nook of the cloister’s walkway, making the kitten tumble from one palm to the other. He sneaked up on me, appearing out of the blue.
‘Tsarevna Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘You look well. Soon you will be strong enough to ride again.’
‘Surely not.’ The thought of returning to court made my stomach go cold, be it Moscow or St Petersburg. I might be shot at during Anna’s little morning practice when crossing the Red Square or serve as fodder for her birds and stinking giant porcupines. Compared to that, staying in a convent was a sensible choice. Anna was right: as things were, I only had a hired Frenchman to count on.
To hide my despair, I held the kitten to my cheek; it purred, closing its veiled eyes with pleasure. Its warmth reminded me of how life simply carried on: the Pecharsky’s grounds were teeming. Birds ruled the treetops, calling with the first light of the day, making us curse them despite the beauty of their song. Later on, they flitted across the courtyard, beaks filled with grass for their nests. Ducklings and goslings waddled about, getting under everyone’s feet; cygnets dotted the banks of the Dnieper. In the stables, calves sucked on my thumbs; I held the lambs to be branded and even helped the blacksmith turn a foal in her mother’s belly. It was born safely; we shared the mare’s pride once the little one rose, unsure of its own wobbly legs. I felt like a child again, back in Kolomenskoye.
‘I am not sure I will ever return to court,’ I said.
Lestocq stuck his hands in his pockets, weighing my words. ‘Of course, you will. Don’t you know who you are?’
‘Oh, I do. Who I am is the problem.’
‘Others would be delighted.’
‘Well, ask them to do your bidding then.’
‘Are you afraid?’ He bent until he was eye to eye with me. His gaze pinned me to the cloister wall; the cold of the stone seeped into my back. ‘Think about it. How did your father feel when the Streltsy slaughtered his family in front of his eyes? When his half-sister tried to assassinate him? When the clergy turned on him and his realm cursed him for his reforms? What were his thoughts the night before the battle at Poltava, which was to determine the fate of Russia forever? We do not know, yet one thing is for sure: he didn’t run and hide!’
‘He was not a woman.’
Lestocq gave me a surprisingly warm smile. ‘Your gender is of no importance. After all, you are the Tsarina’s daughter.’
‘My mother had my father and the support of his cronies.’ I fought back tears. ‘I have no one. You have seen my loneliness at court.’
He smiled with the same daring that had brought him, a Huguenot, to St Petersburg in the first place, and which had convinced Mother to end his banishment to Kazan to join my retinue. ‘Win them over then. And take heart: you still have me.’
‘You mean, I have Versailles?’
He shrugged. ‘Soit. That is more than most people will ever have. You ought to return. There might be a war against the French as the quarrel about the Polish throne intensifies. But even if Versailles fights Russia in Danzig, it still wants you back at the Tsarina’s side.’
‘When I last looked, I was a Tsarevna, not a French princess.’
‘Last time you looked is already much too long ago,’ he countered.
‘What’s the urgency?’ I tickled the kitten’s soft underbelly, smiling at its utter abandon: paws stretched, eyes closed, purring with pleasure.
‘The Tsarina Anna will have to name her successor. She needs an heir… or should that be an heiress?’
‘And that would be me?’
‘Who else? Sweden and France are ready to back your claim to be Crown Princess once more: Tsesarevna.’
His words were high treason. ‘They are both enemies of Russia! What, I wonder, am I supposed to do in return? Everything comes at a price.’
‘Well, yes. They demand the return of the Baltics, which your father took in the Great Northern War.’
I carefully placed the kitten on the floor and rose to my feet, fighting the lightness in my head. ‘Listen, Lestocq,’ I said, seizing his lapels. ‘If you suggest ever again that I surrender an arshin of land for which a drop of Russian blood has been shed, you can pack your stuff and leave.’
He looked at me, at first unsure if I was serious, but then seemed surprised at my determination. ‘Then you’ll be lonelier than ever. And penniless.’
‘You are the mercenary, not I. I should rather starve than be a traitor to my country. It’s called honour, Lestocq, a word that must be foreign to you,’ I said hotly, letting go of him.
He stroked back his hair, adjusted his coat and cleared his throat. ‘Well, then, return to court for Russia’s sake.’
‘Better not let Ostermann hear those words.’
‘Ostermann will not live forever.’ Lestocq smiled. ‘You have to be seen at court; people must not forget your existence. A Chinese delegation is approaching Moscow. They left Peking to celebrate Petrushka’s wedding but arrive for Anna’s celebration of six months as Tsarina. Also, the Shah of Persia is looking for a bride for his eldest son. Apparently, two thousand men and sixteen elephants, laden with gifts, are also closing in on Moscow. We could do with replenishing our coffers.’
‘Are you serious?’ I frowned. ‘You know my stance. I have rarely seen happiness arise from such marriages.’
‘It will be interesting nevertheless. One must think ahead, at least a step or two.’ He might as well have poured a bucket of icy water over me.
‘Even if I were ready, how is my horse?’ I said, to gain time.
‘It’s in the stable, all fattened up, ready for the ride back to Moscow. Eventually, I mean,’ he added, as my face fell. ‘That is, soon. Very soon. The best day would have been yesterday, actually.’
‘I shall see for myself.’ I scooped up the blind kitten and placed it in Lestocq’s cupped hands. ‘Here. Be careful it doesn’t bump into the pillars, will you?’ The clever thing meowed and clawed his fine, nervy physician’s hand.
‘Ouch!’ he complained.
I would have giggled had not his words about Father already wormed their way into my mind: he didn’t run and hide.
The June sun cast shifting shadows over the cloister’s flagstones as I stepped out into the walled rose garden. The air was heavy with scent and filled with the buzzing of bees. The white gravel of the pathway was blinding. Trying to calm the anger I felt at the dressing-down Lestocq had just given me, I turned into the monastery’s courtyard. Here nuns were returning from the market, the novices carrying baskets that were as full as the Mother Superior’s purses: the monastery sold as much as it bought.
The air was laced with smoke as the blacksmith hammered away, shaping a hot, gleaming iron bar. A carpenter planed heaps of rough timber into smooth planks for another outhouse, pigsty or chicken coop, while butchering the tune that he whistled. The tailor sat cross-legged at his work, his tongue sticking out between his lips and his eyes squinting as he threaded a needle. I crossed over to the stables; their roof was freshly thatched and the walls whitewashed with lime. A cat turned lazily on the warm cobblestones, her belly for once big not with kittens but the mice she had caught. Abbess Agatha ran a tight but happy ship. Damn Lestocq! The day I left here I would lose paradise.
At the trough outside the stable, a rider had arrived. He tethered his low, sturdy horse and pulled off his shirt to wash himself. I gasped: his back and shoulders were covered with scars from the lashes of a knotted whip. Some of them had paled and thickened, looking like bark. Others criss-crossed the shoulders like a fresh map of crime and punishment; blood and pus seeped onto the tanned skin. It reminded me of how Buturlin had looked upon leaving the Trubetzkoi Bastion. My heart was in my mouth at the memories the sight evoked.
‘What happened to you?’ I could not help but ask.
The man turned and gave me a ready smile. It was in stark contrast to the deep lines on his young face. This was the man from church; the monk who had saved my life. The memory of his strong arms carrying me gave me goosebumps.
I banished the thought immediately. This man was out of bounds.