11

It was very quiet at Gatchina on that afternoon of the 16th November. The Czarevitch had not been well; an unusually violent headache and a succession of appalling nightmares had tormented him for several days. He emerged from his sick room pale and wasted, consumed by nervous tension.

For once Marie Feodorovna sat with him in his apartments, drinking coffee and watching her husband anxiously. Five years of battling with him had drained the spirit out of the Grand Duchess, five years of living under his displeasure had engendered a frantic desire for peace at any price, and the waning influence of the mistress had helped to assuage the pride of the discarded wife.

While she sipped her coffee, waiting for Paul to speak, Marie Feodorovna glanced idly out of the window, and it was she who saw a horseman galloping into the palace grounds, and, recognizing the rider, almost dropped her cup in astonishment.

“Paul! Paul, Zubov’s brother is here!”

“What!”

Instantly the Czarevitch sprang out of his chair and rushed to the window. “Where?” he demanded and caught her roughly by the arm. “Are you sure … which brother?”

Marie looked up at his white face and, reading the alarm in it, began to tremble as she realized the possible meaning of such a visit.

“It was Nicholas, I think,” she stammered, “Nicholas.… Oh, my God Paul, what is it?”

“A deputation from my mother,” he answered grimly, and then his grip on her relaxed for a moment and he regarded her with something strangely near to pity.

“We are lost, my dear,” he said quietly. “This was how my father met his end … at the hands of the favourite’s brother. I’ve felt it coming for days past. Go to your rooms, Marie, and stay there. They will be here at any moment.”

“They … but he was alone,” she whispered.

“Alone.…” Paul stared down at her frowning. “Are you certain?”

She nodded eagerly, realizing that no single man could hope to molest them in their own home, and at that moment she remembered Araktchéief’s garrison and gave thanks for them with all her heart.

Almost immediately a page entered and announced that M. Nicholas Zubov sought an audience of the Czarevitch.

“Admit him,” Paul ordered, and turning, he told Marie Feodorovna to sit down and appear undisturbed before their enemy.

The brother of Catherine’s favourite was very tall and muscular in the tradition of the Guards, but he lacked Plato’s grace and classical good looks. Nicholas, in company with the second brother Valerian, was fierce, brutal and of limited intelligence; his reputation for courage and unscrupulousness did nothing to reassure the fears of Marie or the suspicions of Paul Petrovitch when he first came into their presence.

For a second he hesitated, and as if in a dream the Grand Duchess heard the sound of horses stamping in the courtyard under their windows, and of voices shouting unintelligibly.

‘He was not alone,’ she thought mechanically, so terrified that her mind accepted the awful materialization of their lifelong dread with the detachment of one whom it did not concern.

‘He brought men with him.… Paul was right.’

“Come in, M. Zubov. What brings you to Gatchina …?” Paul’s voice cracked ominously on the last words, and though his hand shook and the pain induced by any form of tension stabbed into his skull so that he winced, his fingers rested firmly on the pommel of his sword.

The brother of Plato Zubov did not answer. Instead he stopped close to the short, thick-set figure, rigid in the attitude of menace, and suddenly went down on his knees.

“God save the Czar!”

Marie Feodorovna’s porcelain coffee cup fell from her hands and shattered to pieces; for a few seconds that seemed to endure for all eternity, that was the only sound in the room.

Then Paul spoke, spoke with difficulty, because his tongue was thick and stammering with excitement and unbelief.

“My mother … my mother is dead …?”

“Not yet, Sire,” Zubov told him. “But you must hurry to Petersburg if you would see her alive. She was found unconscious this morning, and they say she will not live for more than a few hours.”

“Why do you come to tell me this? … Where are my Ministers? … Where is my son?”

“I come to offer my allegiance to you, Sire. The Grand Duke Alexander is in the capital, waiting for you. And already half Petersburg is on the way here to acclaim you Emperor.”

Paul turned away abruptly and from the tall windows of his room looked out and saw a confusion of sledges being drawn up outside the palace; along the road into Gatchina a line of vehicles stretched back as far as the eye could see.

The sound of many voices came to him, the excited tones of his mother’s courtiers who were at that moment besieging the entrance to his palace in order to throw themselves at the feet of the new Czar; those who had jeered at Catherine’s ugly son and prophesied his disinheritance were now confounded.

The Empress who had begun to seem immortal had suddenly deserted them; she lay dying on the bed where Plato Zubov had made love to her the night before, the expected proclamation of her grandson Alexander had not taken place, and with the agility of rats abandoning a doomed vessel, the Court dissolved in a panic-stricken rush to make peace with the man who was already designated the Emperor Paul the First.

“It has come,” he muttered, and standing by the window, looking down on the scene of fear and contusion taking place below, he struck his aching forehead with his fist, mastering a sudden unmanly desire to shed tears of gratitude to the God who had permitted him to see this day.

Outside his rooms a crowd had gathered, murmuring behind the door, barred from his presence by the Gatchina sentries; Paul heard them, and suddenly he smiled to think that in the course of a few hours the order of things could be reversed so quickly and completely. There was no Palace Revolution to dispose of him, Catherine lay speechless in the face of death, unable to say the few words which would wreak her final vengeance on her hated son, and Paul guessed that Alexander had not dared to give the order to seize his father without the Empress’s authority; that, in a moment of crisis, fear had made him hesitate.

So he was to succeed.

“Sire.…”

Nicholas Zubov ventured to interrupt his thought, anxious that since he and his brothers had declared for Paul, no coup d’état in Petersburg should supplant him in his absence.

“Sire. You must set out for the capital immediately. There’s not a moment to be lost! The Empress may recover consciousness.…”

She might indeed, Paul realized, and knew that a few words bequeathing the crown to Alexander might yet effect the ruin of all his hopes. But one question emerged from the turmoil of his thoughts, one query that might explain why the plans of the most resolute and methodical monarch in the world had come to nothing, with her son succeeding to the power she had intended for another.… Paul turned and stared into the dark face of Nicholas Zubov, who had no cause to love his Czarevitch and offer his sword to his service.

“Who sent you to me?”

Back came the answer without pause, delivered with the brevity of the soldier whose concept of obedience embraces all the vagaries of men and circumstances.

“Alexis Orlov, Sire.”

The confusion in Petersburg was indescribable. Rumours that the Empress was dying, even dead, had seeped through to the people who left their homes and gathered outside the Winter Palace in shivering, speculative groups, watching the blind façade of stone and glass behind which Catherine the Great lay, spending her life with every halting breath.

No snow fell from the lead-coloured sky, so that it seemed as if the heavens had suspended their power and waited in unison with the people of Holy Russia for that one soul to pass into eternity; only a howling, bitter wind swept through the city, catching the dried snow off the streets and whirling it fiercely above the ground, creating a miniature blizzard. The Neva, frozen into a shining thoroughfare of solid ice, was dotted with sledges which cut across the great sweep of petrified water, passing the riverside entrance to the Imperial Palace where sentries stamped and marched to keep from freezing.

There were two currents of activity: the nobles deserting the Winter Palace and rushing towards Gatchina and an unknown future, and the humble gathered round the palace to pray for the woman who had ruled them for thirty-seven years.

There would be a new Emperor, the people whispered, but whether his name would be Paul or Alexander no one knew.

Paul—insisted the older of Catherine’s subjects, the injustices of her long reign still fresh in their minds. Remember Pugachev, remember the horrors inflicted by her troops. Remember the ceaseless wars, the ruthless conscription of men for this new conflict against France.… Her extravagance, and her favourites—God save Paul!

But there were others who said nothing, others who had known the older Catherine Alexeievna and her handsome grandson, and to whom the name of the shadowy Czarevitch conjured up visions of savagery and madness, of vague crimes committed in the confines of notorious Gatchina. These gazed up at the great Winter Palace and in their hearts they prayed for Alexander.

The palace itself was silent, the vast, rambling buildings peopled only by servants, soldiers and a few who remained faithful to their Empress and kept vigil over her unconscious body.

Among these was her grandson, Alexander.

They had not allowed him to approach her bedside, and they consisted of men who had suddenly proved themselves friendly to his father and assumed control within the hour of hearing that the Empress had had a stroke and was about to die.

Rastopchine was among them, but Alexander had expected him to take the stand of loyalty; what he had never imagined was the emergence of Plato Zubov and his brothers into the ranks of the legitimist party, accompanied by his mother’s Minister Bezborodko and others. Most fatal and astonishing of all was the action of that legendary friend of Catherine, the man whose hands were stained with the miserable Peter Feodorovitch’s blood shed in that half-forgotten tragedy of nearly forty years before.

Alexis Orlov, who had more to fear from Paul than any man alive, swung the wavering balance in the Czarevitch’s favour. Openly he urged Nicholas Zubov to ride at once to Gatchina and bring the rightful Czar to Petersburg.

“There’s been enough bloodshed for this throne,” he shouted in his still vigorous voice, so that the shrinking Alexander heard him. “I bear the stain of it, my brother Gregory died in torment because of what was done. Listen to me, who have nothing left to fear now but the judgment of God! Give your allegiance to the rightful Czar …!”

And they had listened to him.

With a murmur of excuses the Minister Bezborodko removed the Empress’s private papers, ignoring the pleas of the young Grand Duke, who saw that precious will carried into an inner room out of his reach. Plato Zubov hurried to the bedside of his dying mistress and knelt beside it, while Nicholas Zubov, closely followed by Rastopchine, rushed from the State apartments, shouting for horses to carry them to the Czarevitch at Gatchina.

Then the panic set in, and in hundreds Catherine’s courtiers fled the palace, commandeering any vehicles that were available, fighting to show their loyalty to the new and dreaded Czar, taking the long, crowded road to Gatchina and submission.

Watching that open doorway, beyond which his grandmother lay on her deathbed, Alexander knelt, and wept with fear and disappointment. It was all over, the brilliant dream that they had shared together and discussed so often, the dream of his accession. Catherine’s crown had been torn from her head while she still lived, and placed on the brow of the man whose enmity was now become a deadly danger.

It had only needed one determined voice to cry out in his favour, one man quick enough to get him Catherine’s papers and proclaim him Czar according to the terms of her will, and the thing would have been done. But the voice was raised, the loyalty evinced on behalf of Catherine’s abhorred son, and thus Alexis purged himself of the murder of Paul Petrovitch’s father.

Thinking these thoughts the Grand Duke continued to alternately weep and pray for his own safety, until the sound of a great commotion brought him quickly to his feet, wiping his swollen eyes.

The cry came faintly at first, as it preceded the tramp of many feet, until it sounded in the main ante-chamber.

“Make way.… Way for the Czar!”

For a single instant of hysteria and hate Alexander wanted to rush out and meet them crying that his grandmother still lived, that his father whom they had both hated was not Czar of Russia yet.…

But the spasm passed. A chill of icy caution froze the impulse and stretched the Grand Duke’s pallid features in a welcoming smile.

It was too late, too late for anything now but submission with the rest. And like them he would submit … for the moment.

His fine, ringed hands straightened his cravat and brushed the knees of his breeches where contact with the marble floor had soiled them. Then he went out to meet his father.

At a quarter to ten Catherine’s physician Rogerson informed the Court that the Empress was dead. Paul, who had been standing by the bedside, gazing down at the motionless figure of his mother, suddenly realized that the stertorous, painful breathing had stopped. As the lids were pressed down over the sightless eyes, a priest of the Orthodox religion lifted her hand for Paul to kiss, but with a gesture of impatience the new Emperor turned away, unable to pretend to sorrow or affection when his heart was bounding with relief and joy.

She was dead, and with her had died an era hateful to him in every detail.

A new reign had just begun and all the terrible resolutions formed for so many years in anticipation of this moment came rushing in upon him.

Away with vice, with sloth, with hypocrisy.…

Savagely he turned on the murmuring priest.

“Leave her!” he ordered. “She never believed in you in life!” Then he pointed to the Minister Bezborodko standing in a corner of the room.

“Get me my mother’s papers,” he commanded. “And bring them to me in here.” Then he walked into an ante-chamber adjoining the room where the Empress’s body lay, and there he received visitors who side-stepped the stiffening corpse with horrified glances. Most of those who were granted an audience noticed the boxes of papers which were broken open, their contents scattered as if a frantic search had taken place, a search that must have proved successful, for the fire in the marble grate was damped down by a heap of charred and blackened parchment.

It was all that remained of Catherine’s will and Alexander’s hopes.

At midnight the ceremony of swearing allegiance to the new Emperor took place, and afterwards Paul retired to the sovereign’s suite in the Winter Palace, where a number of rooms had been hastily cleared of Catherine’s effects and made habitable for him.

There he sent for those who were to set the pattern of his reign, the men whose past would indicate the future.

A crowd of weary courtiers waited in the ante-room of the Czar, afraid to go to bed despite the strain and exhaustion of the day until someone remembered to dismiss them.

Among them were men whose achievements in politics and war would be invaluable to the new Emperor.

But no call came for their attendance. Only two persons passed beyond the sentries from the Gatchina garrison who already mounted guard, and remained shut up with him for several hours.

Those whom Paul had chosen were Rastopchine, and the sadist, Araktchéief.

The reign of Paul the First of Russia had begun.

Three days after the accession of the Emperor, a tomb in the cloister of St. Alexander Nevsky Church was broken open.

Inside, the Czar’s emissaries discovered a skeleton, identifiable by the remains of a mouldering boot on the left foot. With great care the brittle bones were lifted out of the rotting casket, a few shreds of decayed uniform cloth clinging to them, and laid in a magnificent coffin upholstered in velvet and inlaid with gold and precious stones.

Then the Emperor was informed that the body of the murdered Czar Peter the Third had been disinterred according to his orders.

Katya Nelidoff was with him when the report was made, and she listened, horrified, to the description of the exhumation of a man dead for almost forty years.

Paul sat in silence, staring at the floor while the witnesses spoke, interjecting a question as to the condition of the corpse. He was particularly anxious that the skull should be in a good state of preservation, and he was quickly reassured on this point.

Still gazing at the ground he dismissed the officials, and only then he raised his head and looked at his mistress. To her astonishment she saw that the tears were running down his face.

With a sudden surge of tenderness she caught his hand in hers, forgetting the changed status which had removed him to a still more distant plane from the old loving relationship of nearly nine years before.

“Oh, Paul … Paul, don’t! Don’t distress yourself. Let me pour you some wine.…”

He shook his head, but his fingers returned the affectionate pressure of her own, and for a moment the staring, arrogant mask of the past few days vanished, and she saw only the tired, sick countenance of the man who had become more dear to her than life itself.

“My father …” he said slowly. “After all these years in an unworthy grave, I can give him the burial that is his due.…”

Concern for him blinded her then; seeing that terrible pallor, the throbbing cheek and red-rimmed eyes, she thought only of his health, of the excruciating headaches, the fits of melancholy which sometimes tormented him for days on end, racking his body and casting a terrifying, illogical cloud over his mind, and in her anxiety to protect him from himself, forgot the lesson that many a miserable quarrel had taught her. There were some lengths beyond which no one might safely go with Paul, some subjects, however dangerous or exaggerated, which were sacred to him and which must never be questioned or belittled. Urged on by selflessness and love she plunged into folly, and the treasonable words were spoken before she had time to realize what she had said.

“Oh, God, what does it matter! Why disturb the dead, why bring all this grief upon yourself, remembering a man you never really knew! Beloved, bury your father’s bones again and shut the past in with them. Begin your life and reign afresh; what’s done is done, and since you’ve pardoned Alexis Orlov, what use is this morbid vengeance on your mother!”

For a moment he said nothing, but the hand holding hers unclosed and withdrew with a violence that almost threw her to the ground.

“What does it matter?”

The question was unspeakably menacing, spoken in that soft voice through which anger sounded like a distant warning note.

“My father … usurped and strangled, my inheritance delayed for thirty-seven years … a lifetime of persecution, of suffering, of living under the shadow of death. You can dismiss it so lightly, Mademoiselle.… You think it of no consequence. I have pardoned the wretched tool of my mother, the vassal who slew on her orders, pardoned his life because he helped to secure me my throne.… Therefore you suppose all is forgotten!”

He had risen and stood over her, his clenched fist raised as if about to strike her where she half knelt at his feet, staring up at him in terror.

“If you loved me, you’d never have spoken those words!” He had begun to shout, rage and amazement flooding his heart and mind with a torrent of furious suspicion. How often had she said she loved him, repeating the formula like a hypnotic chant that robbed him of his judgment; kissed and clung to him, her body performing the motions of a passion that was obviously as spurious as her avowals! And for nearly nine years he had believed her, fallen dupe to a deception which she had just revealed in its true light.

“You fool! Are you so blind to your own ugliness that you think any woman could love you …?” Catherine’s taunt, spat at him concerning Natalie Alexeievna, sounded in his brain as clearly as if she had returned to life and spoken it aloud.

And in that instant of unbalanced grief and temper, stung by the jibe delivered all those years ago and afterwards proved right when his adulterous wife was safely dead, Paul answered his own doubt concerning Catherine Nelidoff, answered it finally and accepted it like a death blow.

If she had really loved him, she would have loved and honoured what was most sacred in his life. If she had ever been sincere, she would have shared his grief and borne the burden of his hatred for those who had attempted his destruction.… Slowly his hands lowered to his sides, the blood drained out of his face, leaving it livid and contorted with pain.

“For the love of God, Mademoiselle.… Leave me, I beg of you.”

She caught at his knees, weeping in an agony of distress, her excuses choking in her constricted throat.

He stepped back from her, and she fell forward on the carpet, sobbing.

“Paul … Paul, my love … please listen.…”

“As you persist …” he said, and walked into his bedroom, slamming the door shut.

A moment later she heard the bolt shoot into its socket; Catherine’s chambers which had never been fitted with locks were now equipped with every device necessary to guard against assassination. With the sound of final exclusion in her ears, Catherine Nelidoff fainted.

The news of the favourite’s disgrace spread like wildfire through the Court; within a few hours of the quarrel Marie Feodorovna heard that the liaison of many years had ended and that the unhappy Nelidoff was prostrate in her rooms, waiting for the Emperor’s orders to go into exile.

The new Empress was far less pleased than her informants had expected; the violent storms of the past had subsided, her husband’s mistress had long ceased to wield the main influence over him, her hold was sentimental as well as sensual, and lately the result of that placid relationship had been one of growing harmony between the trio.

Marie walked up and down her boudoir, frowning and biting her full lower lip, torn between wifely spite and the regret of her common sense which foresaw all sorts of complications should Paul replace the Nelidoff with a more ambitious woman.

It was too late for pride, she decided, and ordered her chattering ladies to leave her alone. Paul still slept with her at rare intervals, and her sexual jealousy of Catherine Nelidoff had died the death of acceptance and indifference to an unalterable situation. Gradually they had come to share him and, since he was Czar and prepared to endow her with the wealth and privileges of his Consort, Marie had not the slightest ethical or emotional objection to his making love to her unattractive maid of honour.

“Oh, dear Heaven,” she murmured, “why must the little fool contradict him.… I’ll swear that’s what she did.… Just when we had all settled down in peace.… I can see I shall have to do something.”

And she went in person to Paul to persuade him to take his mistress back.

He was signing papers when she entered, and the sight of Araktchéief standing behind his chair checked her words. Paul looked up and greeted her politely; he was very pale and his eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. Marie noticed distastefully that the nerve in his left cheek was jumping visibly under the skin.

“Sit down, Madame, if you please. M. Araktchéief is just discussing a few matters with me. We will not be a moment.”

The man who had just been created military commander of Petersburg bowed low to the Empress and regarded her with the hostility reserved for any woman connected with his beloved master.

Together they had completed the arrangements for absorbing Paul’s loyal Gatchina garrison into the guards regiments, always the forcing house of plots and counter-revolutions, thereby rewarding the most notorious collection of military ruffians in the country with all the privileges and honours enjoyed by the Russian nobility. Also the proposed war against. France had been abandoned, for Paul declared that he brought peace rather than bloodshed to his people. At the same time he ordered the imprisonment of one of Catherine’s favourite footmen for having been a witness of her amours; and signed the warrant for his removal to the Peter and Paul fortress where he subsequently went mad in an underground dungeon. There were others, Araktchéiet pointed out, while Marie sat on the edge of her gilt chair, her fear increasing with every moment as she listened to that cold voice, suggesting a long list of atrocities for the Czar’s approval.

The late Empress’s confessor was to be prosecuted, and had his Majesty forgotten that infamous woman whose part in the Revolution and death of his illustrious father would go down to history?

The Princess Dashkev, Paul echoed, remembering that his mother had abandoned her friend soon after the coup d’état, because her lover Gregory Orlov hated her. That old friendship had never really been resumed and the Princess now lived most of the time on her estates. “She is to be banished to Korotoya. I believe it is very cold.…”

Then two secretaries in the employ of Plato Zubov were consigned to prison, and having disposed of a host of lesser creatures, Araktchéief reminded the Czar of a much more powerful victim.

“What of Prince Plato Zubov, Sire?”

Paul looked up at him and smiled grimly.

“Patience,” he said quietly, “patience. We will come to him later. And to Alexis Orlov. Go now, my friend. I will attend the parade in an hour’s time.”

Marie Feodorovna rose from her chair and went to him, her plump legs trembling under her, having witnessed the downfall of a score of persons being sanctioned in the course of a few minutes. Unimaginative and stupid as she was, Marie had seen the true nature of her position, of the position indeed of every living soul surrounding Paul. His displeasure had always been a source of dread, even in the old days of his powerless youth; now the loss of his favour could mean death or exile to Siberia, or, if his mood was cruel, incarceration in some dank, airless hole beneath the level of the ground until the blind and half-crazed prisoner prayed to die.

She who had quarrelled with him, complained against him to Catherine, tormented the Nelidoff and incurred his wrath a hundred times in the past, now fell on her knees beside his chair, trembling in every limb, and tried to maintain their amiable truce and make amends for former folly, by pleading with tears for her old rival.

“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle, the Empress is here and wishes to see you!”

Catherine Nelidoff raised herself on the bed where she had lain for twenty-four hours, the prey of utter despair, refusing food and comfort.

Listening to the agitated page, she jumped to the conclusion that Marie Feodorovna had come to gloat over her enemy, or even to deliver Paul’s sentence of exile.

For all her weakness, her prostration in the face of her lover’s anger, she possessed her own brand of courage.

“Beg Her Majesty to allow me a few moments’ grace. I shall wait upon her as soon as I am dressed.”

The page withdrew, and Katya Nelidoff fastened a long velvet robe over her nightdress, sponged her face with toilet water and combed her dark hair into some semblance of order. Then she went into the room where Paul’s wife waited.

The sight of her fallen enemy shocked Marie Feodorovna, whose eyes were not deceived by the neat déshabillé and the formal curtsy with which the Nelidoff greeted her.

Instead she noted the desperate pallor, the nervously interlocking hands, and reflected that the other woman’s sallowness and irregularity of feature were now accentuated into ugliness by strain and grief.

“Sit down, Mademoiselle,” she said and her tone was unexpectedly kind. “You look ill. I am quite concerned about you.”

“I thank your Majesty,” whispered the unhappy Nelidoff, the ready tears filling her eyes, aware that the words were free from sarcasm.

Marie coughed awkwardly, until the memory of Paul sitting signing death warrants overcame her diffidence.

“I have good news for you,” she said. “I heard of your plight and interceded for you. The Emperor has decided to let you stay at Court.”

Catherine Nelidoff threw herself at the Empress’s feet and burst into a flood of tears.

“You interceded.…” she sobbed, overwhelmed with shame. “Oh, my God, how can I thank you …?”

“Please control yourself, Mademoiselle. There’s no need to cry now. I’ll grant you a few moments to recover and then I would like to talk to you.”

Paul’s mistress wiped her face with a handkerchief and rising, rang for her page.

“Will your Majesty have a little wine?” she asked, and sensing the other’s need of it, Marie nodded.

The Nelidoff seated herself once more, and drank a full glass of wine before the Empress judged her calm.

“I think the time has come for us to be quite frank with one another,” Marie remarked at last. “Therefore I wish you to understand that however I may have resented your relationship with my husband in the past, I have no objection to it now. The Czar is … er … difficult sometimes and I am aware that your good offices are as necessary as my own to keep him placid.… In the circumstances I am prepared to take you under my protection and offer you my friendship. My first duty is to my husband and I consider you to be a benefit to him.…”

Catherine Nelidoff’s face flushed to the roots of her dark hair as she gazed at the calm, colourless countenance of the woman who had been so long accounted a bore and a nonentity. For the first time she recognized a certain dignity and for an instant suspected that the Empress Marie was less of a fool than her enemies supposed her. That flash of insight was correct, for twenty years of living in the midst of fierce and tortuous intrigue had schooled the stolid German Princess in the art of guarding her own interests even at the expense of her pride.

The suspicion that she now befriended her rival in order to make use of her passed through the Nelidoff’s mind and was swept away on a flood of gratitude and thanksgiving.

She went down on her knees and pressed Marie’s plump fingers to her lips.

“You’ve been so kind, Madame; I’m in your debt for the rest of my life!”

“Not kind, my dear Mademoiselle,” the Empress responded. “Just sensible. Now I advise you to go and repair your toilette so that the Czar won’t see a pale face and red eyes at the reception this evening.…”

Once outside the Nelidoff’s apartments, Marie sighed with relief, confident that after that interview the lady’s gratitude would be unbounded.

“Thank God,” she mused, “as long as she’s with him I shall be safe. And so will Alexander!”

Then she hurried to tell her eldest son that he, too, must enlist the friendship of Paul’s mistress.

It was a clever move, and for a time the strong and secret faction who detested both Katya Nelidoff and the Empress Marie were confounded by the outward reconciliation. As always a crowd of parasites followed in the train of the Royal favourite and the generous and unsuspecting Nelidoff had secured posts for her relatives and friends in the Czarevitch’s Gatchina household and again on his accession to the throne, thereby incurring the hatred of many of Paul’s intimates who coveted these places for themselves.

For a year or more the jealous eyes of Koutaïssof, now waiting anxiously for the publication of his master’s Coronation Honours; the interest of Rastopchine, who mistrusted the truce existing between the mistress and the wife, believing as he did that the Grand Duke Alexander might use his doting mother for intrigue; and the deadly enmity of Araktchéief, had been turned upon the problem of ousting the woman who had held sway with Paul Petrovitch for nine long years. It was not immediately apparent that Catherine Nelidoff’s position was only nominal.

Paul took her back in public, moved by the pleas of Marie Feodorovna, who painted a pitiful picture of his mistress’s fear and misery as a result of his anger. He had loved her deeply once, relied on her for tenderness and compassion, burying his throbbing head in her breast and believing himself safe in the compass of her disinterested affection. But that comfort had been stripped from him; he no longer trusted her desperate avowals of love, and, afraid to fall a victim to a double practice of deceit, Paul gradually withdrew his confidence and affection from her in private, while saving her face before the Court.

Paul danced the minuet with her, invited her to his table in public and showed her every mark of favour before the eyes of her enemies, for he could not bring himself to abandon her, and there were still moments when the beseeching gaze of those gentle brown eyes gave the lie to his suspicions. But thanks to the lesson of his first wife’s betrayal, he was incapable of sustaining and conquering a doubt of that nature when it had once entered his mind, and when the Court receptions ended and the watch of prying eyes no longer followed him, the Czar more often wished Katya Nelidoff good night and passed into his heavily guarded bedroom alone.

At the most crucial moment of his life, he had retreated into solitude, bearing the burden of an immense kingdom in urgent need of reform, and endowed with a degree of despotic power which had turned the brain of many better balanced men. The throne was his, but among the fawning crowds who thronged his palace there were scores of potential traitors, friends of Catherine’s and partisans of the Grand Duke Alexander; Paul had never trusted Alexander; the latter’s submission on the day of Catherine’s death had not deceived that fierce, suspicious mind; and lately, watching her fluttering devotion to her eldest son, the Czar no longer trusted Marie Feodorovna either.…

They talked of that terrible funeral of Catherine for months to come; the silent crowds of Petersburg, speechless with horror, the frightened courtiers, the ambassadors, who hurried to report to their respective governments that the Emperor of Russia was undoubtedly mad. And over the years the story persisted, unexaggerated even by the most colourful relater, for no imagination could have improved upon the dreadful symbolism devised by Paul.

The whole city was silent, the streets hung with black, the blinds drawn over every window as a sign of mourning, and in this setting, the procession of burial for the late Empress wound its way over a long route.

It was no ordinary cortège, for a great catafalque of gold headed the line, and in it lay a skeleton, the bones cleaned of dust and the grime of decomposing flesh, surrounded by guards who marched with their heads bowed in grief.

Immediately behind this ghastly bier, a tall old man walked alone, walked in the van of the poor remains of Peter Feodorovitch, and seeing him the people pointed, whispering.

“That is the murderer, Alexis Orlov.…”

That was the judgment pronounced upon him by the Czar, and with the coffin of Catherine Alexeievna moving after him, Alexis trod that road of public penance, his white head held proudly before the curious, accusing gaze of thousands, closing his ear to their murmurs.

“Alexis Orlov … the murderer.…”

Immediate burial was not Paul’s plan, for an omission of his dead father’s reign had to be rectified.

Peter the Third had never worn his crown; Catherine’s rebellion had hurled him off the throne and into a premature grave before the ceremony of coronation.

Therefore Paul paid this gruesome honour to the dead, and while the cortège bearing Catherine’s coffin waited, the skeleton of Peter Feodorovitch was wedged into the Imperial throne, and the magnificent, blazing Crown of Russia solemnly placed on the yellow skull in token of the legitimate rule which a usurper had interrupted.

Then, in the chapel at the fortress of St. Peter and Paul, traditional burial place of the sovereigns of Russia, the body of Catherine Alexeievna was lowered into a deep grave, and with her they interred the remains of her mortal enemy, and sealed this posthumous reconciliation by closing the tomb.

It was dark when the crowds dispersed, muttering in fear and wonder; and by the time that Plato Zubov sat with his brother Nicholas in the former’s house outside the palace, it was nearly midnight.

At first they said little, the soldier drinking long draughts of wine, while Catherine’s favourite ate sweetmeats and reflected.

“How safe is this place?” Nicholas Zubov asked suddenly.

“Entirely safe,” his brother reassured him. “I am in mourning for the Empress …” He gestured towards the walls of the room which were swathed in black drapery. “Wishing to be alone in my sorrow, and to talk freely while I am still at liberty, I have also dismissed my servants for a few days.”

“What do you mean, still at liberty?” Nicholas questioned suddenly, and in answer Plato shrugged and smiled his handsome sinister smile.

“I don’t altogether trust him … do you?”

Nicholas stared into the bottom of his wine glass and then set it down slowly, formulating his thought into words, reassured by the knowledge that there was no one in the building besides themselves.

“Plato,” he said at last. “Plato, I think we made a mistake.…”

Catherine’s former lover nodded, and his black eyes blazed for a second, before the lazy arrogance habitual to him filmed over them like shutters.

“I think so, too, brother,” he said gently. “But mistakes can be rectified.… It may be possible with this one.”

On the sixth of December the whole Court was electrified by the news that the Czar had ceased his enigmatic game of friendship with Prince Plato Zubov. For weeks they had watched in wonder, while the Emperor acted a sinister comedy with his mother’s infamous favourite, setting out with the Empress to take tea with the Prince in his house, where the. frightened observers reported that Paul treated his uncomfortable host with an amiability more menacing than threats.

It was a subtle revenge, more distorted and less bloody than his subjects had expected, and for those few weeks Paul sat and savoured the spectacle of the languid, insolent male courtesan doubling himself to the ground in the effort to placate his sovereign.

Then, suddenly he struck.

The Prince was dismissed his numerous posts, prosecuted and banished. And before the Court had recovered its breath, Alexis Orlov, who had also received the same marks of macabre favour for a short period, followed Catherine’s lover on the road of exile.

Like a whirlwind, Paul’s long-delayed revenge was loosed upon the more powerful of his enemies; the prisons were already filled with lesser creatures and within months of his accession the way to Siberia was crowded with soldiers, with statesmen and nobles, many of whom were being justly punished for rifling the coffers of the State during the previous reign. Even Potemkin’s tomb was broken open and his remains thrown into the Neva. Every statue erected to his memory was destroyed, and any towns called after him renamed.

At the same time Catherine’s son set out to redress Catherine’s tyranny. The prisoners convicted by her courts were released, the exiles recalled, and the Polish captives employed under conditions of unspeakable brutality and hardship on the fortifications at Rogerwick were amnestied and sent home.

The nobility had always hated Paul, and Paul returned the sentiment with terrible intensity. They, the wealthy and high born, had laughed at him, snubbed him in his miserably unhappy youth; a dissolute aristocrat had seduced his first wife and turned the gentle virgin he had married into a deceitful whore.… They persecuted his people, ill-treated their serfs and squandered the country’s funds when in office.

“No more!” he vowed to Araktchéief, his voice raised to a roar of anger. “They’ve had too much freedom for too long! But I’ll break them, my friend … I’ll break them!”

No sentiment could have been closer to the feelings of the Commandant, born the son of a poor country gentleman, and for every snub received by the great nobles in Catherine’s day, he devised a humiliation which the Czar made law.

“Koutaïssof! Come here immediately.…”

The Turk had been dozing on a sofa in his master’s anteroom, when the sound of that familiar voice, harsh and quivering with fury, brought him running to the Czar’s study.

Paul sat at his desk, surrounded by despatch boxes which he had been opening; there were papers on the floor where his impatient hand had swept them, and with his knees knocking with fear, Koutaïssof bent to pick them up, only to be interrupted by a furious order to leave them where they were.

Paul’s face was livid with anger, the bounding pulse dragged at the corner of his left eye as it always did when his temper rose to danger point.

He held a despatch crumpled in one hand, and he threw it at the Turk’s head with the injunction to read it. Koutaïssof smoothed the sheets of paper and tried to decipher what was written on them, his brown fingers shaking with nervousness.

“Oh, God, how slow you are,” the Emperor snarled suddenly. “Give it to me, if you can’t read!”

“What is it,-Sire? Only tell me.… Have I done wrong?” Koutaïssof quavered, prèparing to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness before he even knew the nature of his fault.

“Not you … not you! What are you cringing for, fool? God’s death, have I ever mistreated you that you cower like a whipped dog? Listen to this, Koutaïssof …’ Since the former King of Poland did not arrive on time at Riga, the banquet prepared for him was held in any case, as Prince Plato Zubov was passing through the town on that date.…’ Zubov! Zubov whom I disgraced and banished, received at Riga and given royal honours! Ah, by God, no man shall dare insult me in that way.… Who is the Governor of Riga?”

“I don’t know, Sire,” the Turk replied, sweating with relief that this unknown was to be the culprit rather than himself.

“Then find out!” Paul ordered sharply. “Send for my secretary. I have a letter to dictate to this Governor who gives banquets to an exile.…”

And in due course, the letter was written, signed and despatched, and by that evening the incident had faded from Paul’s mind. In fact while that letter, the most fateful in consequence that he would ever write throughout the short time that remained to him, sped on its journey to Riga by special courier, the Czar dined and attended a play in the royal theatre. Throughout the evening he was in the best of humours, his manner marked by his old gentleness so that a good many of those who hated him since his accession watched him and wondered, their hostility towards him weakening.

But the letter addressed to the Governor of Riga travelled across Russia, bearing a furious rebuke and an ignominious dismissal for the man responsible for the foolish act of courtesy to Catherine’s favourite.

In a moment of rage, spurred by the jealousy, disgust and shame any reference to his mother’s sexual weakness always aroused in him, however distantly connected with the subject, Paul Petrovitch had humiliated the most dangerous, vindictive and implacable man in Russia. The enmity of Count Von Pahlen, Governor of Riga, was to cost him his life.