n the first days of the new year, when Egor and his fellow officers came to our parlor for a late-night faro game, I retired to my bedroom. Lean young dogs, I called them in my thoughts. Ruffling up their fur, baring their fangs. All muscle and speed, eager for a fight.
Government and the army, I’d hear their voices, the backbone of empires. And who does Russia have? Bestuzhev and his protégé Apraxin. Chancellor and Field Marshal. Two old farts, missing their birds at a hunt, growing too fat to mount a horse by themselves, fainting in the heat of banya. And trailing behind their backs, rooting in their waste, come the Shuvalovs. They have already pushed Ivan into the Imperial Bed. Now they are eyeing the future Emperor, slobbering at his feet.
I heard my husband’s voice rise above the din in an imitation of Countess Shuvalova’s syrupy praise: No one is more generous or more kind, Your Highness. Your memory is astounding. Your military interests a true sign of the Romanov blood. If it weren’t for your barren German wife, all would be well.
I got up and crept to the adjacent room where Darya slept, now that she had outgrown her cradle. Barefoot, for I didn’t want to wake her.
That afternoon Egor had brought her a fistful of last year’s chestnuts he had saved for her, glossy and plump inside prickly shells. They were now beside her bed, turned into fiery brown horses and soldiers marching to a battle that would vanquish Russia’s enemies.
“What kind of games are being played behind our backs?” I heard my husband continue a little drunkenly. “Does anyone at the palace care for Russia’s future?”
Darya stirred in her sleep. I opened the curtains and put my forehead against the cold glass. My breath misted the pane. Outside, on the Apothecary Lane, snow drifted.
There is regret in the memory of this moment. Regret that I did not hear the bitterness in my husband’s voice.
One moment my daughter was learning to take her first wobbly steps, grasping my hand, steadying herself as she clung to the folds of my dress. Next, she’d run to me giggling when I clapped my hands.
So hopeful, I thought, when I watched her, happily welcoming anyone she saw, a stranger or a friend. Toward her comes the world with all its cruelties and horrors. How can I protect her, teach her to know whom to trust?
Egor warmed to the slightest mention of Darenka. He marveled at the easy grace of her steps, the fierce energy with which she hurled herself into his arms. “Up,” she squealed, “up,” until he lifted her into the air. It was for her that he turned into a bear lumbering from the forest to snatch the dinner she didn’t want to eat, or to conjure up angels from shadows on the walls.
“You stole your Papa’s heart,” Masha would tell her in the months to come.
“How?”
“Like a thief does. Before he had the time to turn around and catch you.”
Children know that to bring people together one has to seduce them, just like one seduces a lover, slowly, patiently, with stories and secrets. Nestled on my lap, my daughter would call for Egor to sit beside us. Carried in his arms, she stretched her hands to hold on to me.
At night, she demanded stories of a little girl who came to St. Petersburg with her parents from far, far away, and of a little boy who built fortresses out of snow and who ate a bowl of his mother’s bliny dipped in sour cream until he got sick. She wanted to hear my mother’s Polish songs and Egor’s dumy about the wind in the steppes and the Cossack riding away from home.
I recall Masha asking her once, “Whom do you love more, Darenka—your Mama or your Papa?”
Her little face had reddened, and she burst into tears.
But children do not know that some secrets are too terrible to share and some dreams too powerful to die.
“What kind of future do you have in mind for her?” I’d ask Egor, standing in his path, holding another unpaid bill to his face. Loving a child meant more than spoiling her with gifts she didn’t yet need: a dress, a guitar, a set of tiny china cups for a dolls’ house, a telescope.
In a year or so a governess would have to be hired, a music teacher, a dancemaster. With what? Empty promises? More talk of yet another country estate we cannot afford?
I could hear it in my own voice, the cold, insidious anger of that first night of our marriage when I envied the death maidens, their bodies laced with poison.
“Do you ever worry what would become of her if you died? What can we count on then? Mercy? Charity?”
He’d stare at me, with Darya’s black eyes, before turning on his heel and stalking out.
Do not ask me about the “awaited news,” please, and so I didn’t. It had to suffice that in January of 1752 the Chancellor had relaxed his rules, that Catherine could write of sleigh rides and new ball gowns. The Grand Duke was busy training hunting dogs and made a terrible racket, but—Catherine wrote—Peter also presented her with a small English poodle dressed up in petticoats. They went to a wedding and danced rather awkwardly but together. The Empress invited them to her masquerade, and Catherine had a green Preobrazhensky uniform with red facings made for the occasion. One of the court fools handed the Empress a hedgehog she mistook for a mouse, and she almost fainted with fright. A country house collapsed moments after Catherine fled from it. Later she was told that some incompetent foreman had removed a supporting beam. She complained of a toothache, and then—when her tooth had been extracted, together with a piece of her lower jaw—she described how the surgeon’s five fingers had imprinted blue-and-yellow marks on her cheeks.
On our birthdays and name days, Christmases and first days of a new year, Monsieur Bernardi brought gifts from the Grand Duchess—a pendant for me, an icon on a silver chain for Darya, a pair of earrings, an amber brooch set in gold. As if these were not enough, whenever I brought any jewelry for cleaning or repairs, the jeweler brushed off my requests for a bill with a gruff “Settled already.”
Please refrain, dear friend, from all these expressions of gratitude, for they only embarrass me, Catherine wrote when I protested. Let me be the judge of what I owe you.
Nothing, no hopeful accounts of court amusements, no generosity so touchingly offered, could hide Catherine’s sorrow. Seven years after the imperial wedding, there was still no sign of an heir.
Regimental affairs began to occupy Egor more and more, peacemaking, resolving disputes that threatened to erupt and soil the regimental honor. Yet another of his officers was nursing duel wounds, the result of some drunken spat. Pointless, Egor called it, vile.
He had expected another promotion, another rise through the ranks, but it never came. He was still Lieutenant Captain while younger men were getting ahead of him, drawing on ancient family connections; once again, the old nobles had overtaken the new.
I’d watch my husband make another circle around the room, the heels of his boots drumming. The cane chair would crackle dangerously when he finally sat down.
“Angry, Papa?” Darya would ask, knowing he would protest with great force, and that soon he would sing her one of the funny songs he began making up for her then.
My little heart is full of mud.
My little hand is full of sand.
My little bed is full of lead.
But I have daisies on my head.
I have received an unexpected gift. I wish I could talk to you about it, but you’ll hear the rumors soon enough.
In St. Petersburg’s salons, the mention of Sergey Saltykov’s name brought knowing looks. He was the master of card tricks, I heard, the sleight of hand, the cull, the break, the color change. Under Saltykov’s fingers a mixed-up deck straightened itself out, the same card was revealed no matter where the deck was cut.
St. Petersburg hostesses were all eager to have him as their guest. A few months before, the Divine Sergey had astounded the court by marrying one of the Empress’s maids-of-honor. He’d seen her on a garden swing and had been struck with desire. She rejected his advances again and again, until he grew desperate and proposed marriage. A month after the wedding, after some tearful scenes, the new bride had been dispatched to the Saltykov family estate. “Have I changed so much?” the rumormongers reported she asked. “What do I lack that others have?”
You let him win, I thought. A foolish mistake.
I saw him many a time in those days. He was a coveted guest of honor at St. Petersburg salons, Serge with his hooded eyes, the raven-black thick hair he refused to cover with a wig, his husky voice. When he entered, the maids moved faster, tea was sweeter, the sour-cherry preserves he liked miraculously appeared on the tea tray.
He always greeted me with much flourish, inquired about my health. “What grace, what poise,” he murmured, planting a kiss on my hand. I took it for what it was. Serge Saltykov wished to remain in Egor’s good graces. Any man-about-town was in dire need of my husband’s betting tips.
At first Serge had declared himself merely the Grand Duke’s friend. The Empress, he bragged, thought him good company for her nephew, saying that he, a Russian, was “far better than Peter’s Holsteiner rabble.” This is why she ordered Bestuzhev to cast aside his rules and let the Young Court receive Sergey freely.
Saltykov was penniless, and yet in the spring of 1752 he never arrived in Oranienbaum without presents: an embroidered kerchief for Madame Choglokova, a box of sugared almonds for the Choglokovs’ children, a case of French wine for the Grand Duke, a book for the Grand Duchess.
I am being terribly flattered, and I do not believe a word of what I hear, Catherine wrote, but anything brings excitement into my days.
Serge’s victories were small but significant, a deepening trail in Catherine’s letters. The Choglokovs invited him to yet another evening at their hunting lodge. They made him stay overnight, for it started to rain. They insisted Catherine join their guest, to take her mind off all that tedious reading.
She refused to walk with him in the garden, and he wished to know why. Was it because of Madame Saltykova, whom he had not seen for months? Was Catherine jealous, perhaps, and why was that? She wasn’t? So why was she blushing?
Then came a reckless horse ride through the fields. A ride where Catherine got so far ahead of him, he had to whip his horse to catch up, drawing blood from his mare’s flanks.
I’d guessed it, by then. There had been too many signs.
“It’s either freezing your ass in army tents or comforting a lonely Hausfrau,” I heard Serge tell Egor at one of the soirees. “Can you think of other ways?”
Someone must have whispered to the Empress that the Grand Duke had had more than enough time already, that perhaps it was her nephew, not Catherine, who was barren. The Chancellor, I decided, for the Shuvalovs would not wish for such a turn of events. Was Saltykov the only one Elizabeth considered for the honor of fathering the Imperial Heir? Did she order him on his mission herself?
A son by any means, I thought, was Catherine’s only salvation.
Soon the Grand Duchess was writing to me less often, and the letters—when they finally arrived—were brief and vague. I want to live so much, she wrote in one of them. I want to run until I’m too tired to make another step.
My husband had claimed a small alcove next to our bedroom, and each morning I would see him there, flinching as he lifted a thick metal pole above his shoulders or, his fists padded with layers of quilted cloth, punched a bulky leather bag, training for one of the boxing matches that had become such a rage.
The smell of disappointment around Egor lingered like the sharp odor of singed hair. “Waste,” he’d grumble. “So much damned waste.”
How tired anger made him look, hardening his features, sharpening his gaze.
Flattery got you everywhere, I heard my husband’s voice boom at the nightly faro games. Not merit and hard work. Russia had once again given in to confidence tricks. To lust and wanton greed. In Russia, one could be a hanger-on, but one could do nothing of importance.
Sheer indolence kills the soul.
What Russia needs is a war.
The words I still hear mixed with the sounds of clinking glass and cards flipping, lingering like the smell of cheap tallow candles and sour breaths.
Nations steeped in idle luxury are like cattle led meekly to slaughter.… Nations need exertion, iron will.… War is like bloodletting … indispensable … our only cure.
There is another memory from this spring, of Darya trying to slip her small feet into Egor’s boots.
“Do you want to be a soldier when you grow up?” I teased her, laughingly, but she didn’t laugh back.
“Yes,” she answered. “Like Papa.”
“But you cannot be a soldier, Darenka,” I protested. “You have to grow up to be a lady.”
She frowned as though I had given her a puzzle to solve.
“When?” she demanded to know, her hands pulling at the fringes of her dress. “Tomorrow?”
“No. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll still be a child.”
“After tomorrow?” There was a wistfulness in her voice that rang like the chimes of Russian bells.
I smoothed Darenka’s hair, plaited and tied with colorful ribbons. Curly like mine but black like Egor’s. Her body seemed to me so beautifully unfinished, so full of possibilities. No matter how I longed to return to the palace, I knew it would grieve me to clothe my daughter in a stiff court dress and watch her sink into a curtsy.
In the first days of April 1752 a case of claret arrived on our doorstep, the burlap cover soaked with the last of the melting winter snow. A gift from the Chancellor of Russia, the messenger said, when the maids carried it into the kitchen.
The following day the Chancellor’s footman delivered a note.
“It’s urgent,” he told Masha.
I broke the seal immediately.
The Chancellor hoped his humble gift of wine had not been an imposition. There were matters he wished to discuss with me, matters of grave importance concerning someone I cared about. If I agreed, the footman who delivered the note would take me to him right away. His carriage was parked outside my door.
I felt a flare of anger. I was no longer a palace girl, or his tongue. What gave him the right to think that I would drop everything and rush to hear what he had to say?
I held the note in my hand, thick vellum paper with watermarks and gilded edges. The night before, I’d heard Egor denounce the growing Prussian appetite for conquest. The King of Prussia had already swallowed Silesia. Where would he go next before he would have to be stopped? Vienna? Warsaw? St. Petersburg itself?
Someone you care about.
Outside the window the air was misty, the sky leaden with heavy, dark clouds. Over the winter the cherry tree had lost half of its branches. I wondered if it would flower this year at all.
I told Masha to get my hooded overcoat and my gloves.
Chancellor Bestuzhev of Russia was waiting in a private woodpaneled room of an osteria by the Fontanka River, an aging man with sour breath who couldn’t hide his smile of triumph.
“What is this about?” I blurted, as he stood to greet me.
I felt his hand on my elbow. Firm but with an unmistakable tremor in it. Behind the closed door, a fiddler plucked the strings of his fiddle. A girl’s voice intoned a song about a mother mourning her soldier son.
“A prediction, Madame Malikina,” Bestuzhev said, motioning for me to sit. “Mine, of course. Soon our lives will take a different route.”
I lowered myself into the chair.
“The Shuvalovs are already celebrating their victory over me,” the Chancellor continued. “They forget that a wise Russian proverb warns against selling the skin of a bear that is still roaming the forest.”
I stirred, impatient, thinking, Why does no one but you matter?
“Listen, Varvara Nikolayevna. Big changes are coming. Big, sweeping changes of constellations that cannot be ignored, not if you still care about where Catherine’s star could be heading. And you do care, don’t you?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. He knew I cared.
“The Empress is not well,” he told me. “This is still a secret but not for long. The Grand Duke is nothing but a foolish child, too easily manipulated. The Shuvalovs are already making him dance to their tune. Theirs is a gloriously simple plan: Peter will rule Russia, and they will rule Peter. And Catherine? The fools think she is irrelevant.”
The door opened. A skinny boy walked in with a tray, placing it on the table, the cups filled with tea rattling on their saucers. I tried to catch his eye as he served us, but he kept staring at his own hands. In the front room the girl had finished her song and the fiddler had been joined by two more.
The Chancellor waved our server away. I stirred the steaming tea, watching the chunks of sugar dissolve. I took the first sip.
“Saltykov did what he was told,” he continued. “Catherine is carrying an heir. The Empress is quite willing to settle for Serge’s bastard. ‘Not the first one in our family,’ were her words. ‘Saltykov is good Russian stock.’ ”
My expression must have darkened, for the Chancellor paused, delighted with the effect his words had on me. My thoughts whirled. So what I’d sensed had happened. Catherine was carrying her lover’s child. But why didn’t she write to me about it? Did she not trust me? How long had she known?
The Chancellor’s voice broke through these thoughts. He wanted me back at the palace. Not among the officers’ wives, but at the Empress’s side again, whispering into her ear, planting seeds of doubt about the Shuvalovs. He needed me in Catherine’s rooms, making the Grand Duchess see how Chancellor Bestuzhev could be of service to the mother of a future Tsar.
“Obscurity is not for you, Varvara Nikolayevna. The game has resumed. And the stakes are even higher now. Isn’t your husband anxious to rise through the ranks? Buy an estate? Surely he must be thinking of your lovely daughter’s future.”
I tried to ignore the sarcasm in his voice.
“Are you listening, Varvara Nikolayevna?”
The clock on the mantel softly struck two o’clock.
I asked, “Why would the Empress want me back at the palace?”
“Because you shall tell her something she doesn’t know. Something the wife of a guard could easily have overheard.”
“What would that be?”
I studied his face, animated with a radiance that shed years off his life.
“Saltykov swore the Grand Duchess was as good as a virgin.”
I must have gasped, for he put his finger on his lips.
“The Grand Duke never got deep enough inside her, and there was no ejaculation. His instrument is bent like a crooked nail. The surgeon swears an incision will take care of it, but we have to be quick before the Imperial Heir is declared the imperial bastard.”
Did Catherine not know? I wondered. All these years? Was there no one around her with enough wits to help her? Did our old deception with the bloodied sheets work too well?
Outside the osteria’s window, birds were pecking at a slice of lard the tavern keeper hung out for them. My face must have betrayed my confusion, for the Chancellor leaned forward and urged, “Ask to see Her Majesty, Varvara, and I’ll make sure she receives you in private.”
He rose to escort me to the door. His carriage was at my disposal. He would find his own way back to the palace.
Spring in St. Petersburg sears the eyes with light. The powdery April snow tumbles in the air, iridescent tiny diamonds. The Chancellor’s carriage, still on runners, slid through the streets, past soot-covered mounds of old winter snow. Soon icicles clinging to the roofs would begin to drip, although, in the shade, the breaths of passersby still turned to white mist.
I thought of Darya’s eyes, round and wet like black pebbles.
If I died, what would happen to her? Would her father’s expectations be enough to assure her future?
I thought of Serge Saltykov, of the cards that appeared where he wanted them to. I hoped Catherine didn’t love him, hoped that all she wanted from him was a child to quiet Elizabeth.
A child, and a few moments of pleasure.
The Chancellor was true to his word. The following day, a letter from the palace ordered me to present myself to the Chief Steward.
“What is it about?” Egor asked. Sprawled on the floor, he was helping Darya build a precarious tower of wooden blocks.
By then, my husband and I had reached a kind of weary peace. As rumors of the approaching war intensified, he began declaring that the army offered a far superior path to advancement than the Palace Guards. He had not yet applied for a transfer, but he must have spoken of his intention to do so widely enough to extend our credit. The butcher no longer glared at me when he saw me but doffed his hat and inquired about my health.
“Look, Maman, look!”
The block tower was swaying, to Darya’s shrieks of delight. Egor’s question was still unanswered when the tower crashed. A temptation entered my mind to tell him of my expectations, but it didn’t last.
“I don’t know,” I lied, stooping to help Darya pick up the scattered blocks. “It’s an imperial command.” My hands, I saw, were trembling.
Egor’s eyes rested on me, assessing, but he said nothing.
In the bedroom, I powdered my hair and put the Virgin pendant around my neck. The dress I selected was a cotton one, brown and unadorned, its hem recently turned.
“Again, Papa,” I heard Darenka’s cry. “Again!”
There is nothing as difficult as escaping what profoundly pleases you, Catherine had written in her last letter to me.
My pulse was racing, my stomach felt hollow, but in the dressing mirror my face looked bright and eager, as though a flash of summer light had come into the room and colored my thoughts with hope.
I waited in the mirrored antechamber. A cold draft seeped through the cracks in the paneling, and I scolded myself for not taking a warm shawl. The courtiers who rushed past me did not stop. One of the Empress’s cats kept coming back to rub itself against my ankles.
I was still waiting when the light began to fade, as the palace readied itself for the night. Behind the drafty paneling, I could hear a banging and a shuffling in the service corridors. Something heavy was being moved. My fingers stiffened with cold, and I tried to warm them with my breath.
It was well past sundown by the time I was ushered into the Imperial Bedroom, into the soothing circle of heat radiating from the crackling fire. The Empress was alone, reclining on her bed, a woolen shawl over her pink nightdress. A fat white cat was trying to touch her chin with its paw. Was that old Pushok? I wondered.
“You have astonishing news about my nephew?” the Empress asked as soon as I rose from my curtsy. “Truly astonishing?”
There was a note of derision in her voice.
I spoke plainly.
“There had been no coitus, Your Highness, and there can be none if His Imperial Highness insists on denying his infirmity. It’s common talk among the officers. And if the guards know, anyone might question the child’s rights in the future. Your Highness understands that more than I do.”
“Infirmity?” Her eyes narrowed.
“The surgeon would explain it better, Your Highness. It’s the scar that holds the foreskin. Apparently, it’s a common enough problem. A simple incision should be enough. But the Grand Duke will not let the surgeon touch him.”
There was only one candle burning in the candelabra, but I could see that time had not been kind to Elizabeth in spite of her young lover. Her face looked bloated. I saw her clutch at the carved post as she rose from the bed, her arm trembling with exertion. The white cat slid away into the shadows.
“Why wasn’t I told before?” the Empress demanded. “Why was I made to wait all these years in vain?”
She cursed the Choglokovs. Called them idiots who should be flogged with the knout.
She cursed the Grand Duke.
She cursed Catherine. Called her a dim-witted bitch who should have come to her long before with the truth. Why was the stupid girl putting on an act all these years? What was she hoping to hide?
She was coughing now, wiping her mouth with a handkerchief, waving me away furiously.
I bowed and hurried out, knowing that a storm had to run its course.
In the morning the Chancellor sent word that two of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting were hastily packing their belongings. One of the Duke’s valets had been sent away, too. Bestuzhev was especially pleased to inform me that the Empress had ordered me back to the palace to rejoin her retinue.
Madame Malikina: Lady in Attendance of the Evening Toilette, the Chief Steward wrote in the Court Journal. I was to present myself in the antechamber of the Imperial Bedroom every evening. Quarters in the palace had been set aside for me and my family.
As the day of our move approached, Darya’s excitement grew. She loved running through emptying rooms, hiding in open crates or jumping onto the piles of linen. Masha had taught her to curtsy, which my daughter did with surprising grace, especially in her new gown, of buttercup-yellow silk embroidered with flowery sprigs, Egor’s far-too-expensive gift.
I didn’t ask what my husband thought of this sudden change in our fortunes. He had been an officer of the guards long enough to know that if an order came from the palace, it must be obeyed. You do not reason with a flood. You look for anything useful that might float your way.
On the day of our move, seeing the apartment on Apothecary Lane strewn with trunks, baskets, and crates, I expected to feel sadness, but there was none. The porters had chipped the doorframes, left scars on the wooden floors. The stripped rooms looked blank and frayed.
It seemed as if I had never lived there at all.
Masha didn’t mind that our new quarters were in a distant section of the Winter Palace, close to the stables. She didn’t mind the noise, the barn smell of rot and urine that seeped inside every time a window was opened. Instead, she rejoiced that there was no rent to pay, that our five rooms came with a generous supply of wax candles, that we had the right to eat at one of the imperial tables, and an allowance for clothes, which included discarded dresses from the Imperial Wardrobe.
Freed from many of her former duties, Masha found her passion in taking detailed inventory of our new possessions. As soon as our furniture was all in place, trunks and crates unpacked, she would trail me with a sheet of paper, demanding I write down a list of our new acquisitions.
Two dressing gowns, one of calico and one of striped silk, worth six rubles.
A pair of white broadcloth pantaloons, five rubles.
Twelve Dutch linen chemises with ruffles, ten rubles.
A fox-fur coat, lined with woolen cloth, forty rubles.
To Darya, Masha would point out the rich gilded furniture, the thickness of the carpets, the tall mirrors, the machine that spread the scent of roses as it was rolled through the rooms. She trailed the chambermaids, hoping to learn the secrets of keeping the brass so shiny and the crystal so bright. She did not believe them when the maids told her they used the same water with vinegar she always used.
The surgery was swift. It happened without the Duke’s consent or knowledge, for when the Empress took matters into her own hands she did not bother with trifles.
Two of his Holsteiner officers were to suggest a peeing contest. Later, this would become the explanation for the soreness of the Duke’s instrument. Opium was added to his wine, though the Grand Duke got quite drunk without it and, after one goblet, passed out. Count Lestocq was waiting next door, his bag with scalpels at the ready. The operation took mere minutes. The cut made the Duke wince and murmur something that caused everyone to laugh. “You must have pulled it too hard, Your Highness,” the Holsteiners told him in the morning, when Peter complained of soreness.
But Elizabeth left nothing more to chance. To redeem themselves, the Choglokovs were ordered to find a suitable candidate for initiating the Duke. A certain young widow was contracted, Madame Grooth, big, plump, and of rosy flesh. The court surgeon declared her clean and made sure she understood the nature of her task. She was not to let the Duke withdraw too early.
She swore she would not.
Nothing spreads faster than gossip tacitly encouraged.
The act took place in the Winter Palace. Madame Grooth wore a pleasing gown, laughed eagerly at the Grand Duke’s jokes, allowed him to suck her nipple, held him tight until he came inside her.
This was not the time for modesty or silence. The witnesses, four officers from the Preobrazhensky Guards and four Holsteiners, were ordered to watch through a spying hole. No one would ever be able to claim that the Grand Duke was incapable of siring a child.
During the evening toilette, when the Empress received the last visitors of the day, Peter came into the Imperial Bedroom. He seemed taller than I remembered him, and lankier, but also more clumsy.
The Empress pushed away the hairdresser who hovered over her, trying to adjust the embroidered cap that held her powdered locks in shape.
“Peter,” she said, turning to her nephew. I saw the French Ambassador edge forward to have a better view. I saw Countess Shuvalova make room for him.
“Do be more discreet in the future,” Elizabeth continued. The Grand Duke winced at the sharp tone in his aunt’s voice. His pockmarked face reddened with unease. “Not everyone in the world has to know that you have a lover.”
What a spectacle it was! Elizabeth at her dressing table, her body still locked in shape by the boned bodice, her eyes bright with glee. “I’m not asking you to refrain, but at least exercise some discretion, my dear child. Think of your wife’s feelings. Think of her humiliation, if this becomes known.”
Imperial diamonds flashing in candlelight, the scented dress rustling. “Can you promise me that much, Peter?”
I watched the Crown Prince of Russia lick his lips as he nodded. I watched him beam with relief, his mind no doubt already churning up his own tales of the encounter. A hare imagining he had outwitted a fox.
The Russian play unfolded before my eyes, I thought, in all its magnificent artifice. Elizabeth the Terrible, Peter the Fool, and Catherine the Wise had made their appearance. Now the moment came for the spectators to choose whom to fear and whom to despise.
I recalled the Chancellor’s words: Saltykov did what he was told. Catherine is carrying an heir.… But we have to be quick before the Imperial Heir is declared the imperial bastard.
One of the maids began unpinning Elizabeth’s hair, a sign for the visitors to leave.
“Go after them, Varvara,” the Empress said, when the last of the courtiers had left the Imperial Bedroom. “I want to know what they’ll talk about.”
Coded secret dispatches reporting on the Duke’s sexual performance were sent to all major European courts. They detailed Peter’s confident grins, the lively glances cast at any woman who approached him. They reported, too, Madame Grooth’s disappointment when the payment she received for her chore proved to be only half what she had been promised.
Cutting Madame Grooth’s payment had been the Empress’s own idea. “Bitterness,” she said, as I massaged her tired feet, “is always far louder than satisfaction with a reward.”
The Chancellor’s red-walled office smelled of camphor and mold. He raised his eyes from the files he was working on and studied me through his monocle. Then he pushed the papers aside.
“You’ll find much changed here, Varvara Nikolayevna. We are more fearful. Less patient. Much is again expected from the intercession of saints.”
I had been back at the palace only a few days, but I had already noticed that the confidence with which Bestuzhev used to approach the Empress was gone. There was a new note of servitude in his voice, overflowing with praises for her wisdom and foresight, praises Elizabeth waved off impatiently.
The day was warm, sunny. Through the palace window I could see ice floes on the Neva, strewn with the debris of winter: fir trees from the winter road to the island, a carriage pole with a wheel still attached.
I, too, had changed. I was no longer alone.
“Take a look at this,” the Chancellor asked, fishing a print from the documents on his desk.
The print he handed me depicted Ivan Shuvalov, his naked member flagging. The Imperial Favorite was flanked by actresses with ostrich plumes in their hair, their breasts spilling out of low-cut gowns, as he lamented: My instrument may have taken on more than it can handle.
The Chancellor laughed softly. “I never underestimate the concerns of the people, Varvara Nikolayevna. Don’t you think the Empress should come across this rather soon?”
I folded the print and slipped it inside my sleeve.
There was no need for words. The palace game had not changed. The dangers had not disappeared because the Grand Duchess was with child.
I rose.
“You haven’t backed the wrong horse, Varvara Nikolayevna,” the Chancellor called, as I turned away. “I haven’t hurt you, after all.”
When I opened the door I almost knocked over a chambermaid who gave me a frightened glance and blushed to the roots of her hair.
Serge Saltykov was back in St. Petersburg.
I had seen him in Elizabeth’s antechamber, his black hair combed back, his eyes brimming with glee, assessing the women who passed by. Country life was boring, he declared. Oranienbaum was a backwater. The Grand Duke was a cherished friend, and one shouldn’t question a friend’s judgment, but how could he stay there for months at a time? In the company of gardeners and magpies! Life was here, at the Winter Palace. Or beyond it, in the courts of Europe. The King of Sweden, he had been told, kept an excellent stable.
From Oranienbaum, Catherine wrote: Tell me where he is, please. Find out why he is not coming here anymore. Is it because of his wife? Or has La Grande Dame found out about us? Or is it the Soldier who opposes his visits?
Serge Saltykov never mentioned Catherine.
His wife was fine, he said, when I asked him. In good health.
“Happy?”
“What is happiness?” Serge replied. “I haven’t found out yet. Have you, Madame Malikina?”
He is here, I wrote to Catherine, making sure no one has reason to blame you. He is keeping silent about his plans, but I’ll keep listening.
It is so easy to lose a child, I thought. Once she gives birth to an Imperial Heir, I’ll find a way to help her forget.
“The Grand Duchess is enamored with her new Oranienbaum garden,” the Empress answered all official inquiries. “I have no heart to summon her back to the city, when her cherished tulips are in bloom.”
The floor of the Imperial Bedroom was still strewn with architectural drawings. Monsieur Rastrelli had again been derided for the smallness of his vision. The new windows had to be far larger, the façade more imposing. One thing, however, was beyond dispute. Before the renovations of the Winter Palace could begin, the court would have to move to a temporary palace.
Not a moment too soon, I thought. In our quarters the warped windows let in drafts, the walls were slimy with mildew. After our first week at the palace Darya began to cough, although she had no fever and the coughing eased when Masha gave her one of her infusions to drink. “No wonder Shuvalov wants this dump razed,” Egor grumbled, when a splinter from the floor lodged itself in his foot.
I spent long empty hours in the antechamber to the Imperial Bedroom, awaiting my summons. Other courtiers came and went, giving me unseeing looks, as if I would soon vanish and therefore did not merit closer scrutiny. I heard them inside, on the prowl, offering their clichéd praises, denouncing friends, asking for favors. Grabbing what they could get. When they left I heard the Empress call them good-for-nothing time-wasters or wonder how amusing it would be to let them in all at once, force them to hear their own treachery. I knew when Ivan Shuvalov read her yet another poem or a play; I knew, too, how often he dropped his voice to murmur something he did not want overheard. The Empress addressed her young Favorite as my sparrow. At every mention of the spring hunt, she vowed to give the most splendid chase in her lover’s honor.
Summoned at last, I’d watch the juicy bits of their intimacy, a show no doubt made sweeter for them by my silent presence. The Empress and her beloved, lying side by side, he with an arm behind his head, chest bare, his hair tied with a green ribbon. She with her nightdress loose, revealing the darkened hollows of her armpits, a lazy smile on her lips, her voice a soft purr.
I didn’t turn my eyes away. Of all Elizabeth’s sins, those of the flesh were not the worst.
At the end of my third week in the Winter Palace I noticed that the doors to the Grand Duke’s apartments were wide open. Surprised that he was not in Oranienbaum, I peeked through the doorway.
The Duke sat straddling an armchair, his long legs stretched out. He was complaining how the rotting beams of the Oranienbaum palace had forced him to move to the ground floor and eat his meals in a tent.
Two of his hounds sprawled on the carpet, asleep, their legs twitching in some imagined chase. The Duke’s companions, his maids-of honor, mostly, though I also spotted the blue uniforms of the Holsteiner officers, spread themselves throughout the room; two ladies sat on a divan, another half lying, half sitting on the floor. The carpet, I noticed, was already torn at the corners, no doubt chewed by the dogs. No one had opened the windows for some time, in spite of the warm weather, and the air was suffocating.
“Varvara Nikolayevna.” The Grand Duke waved his hand at me. “Come in, join all my pretty ladies.”
I walked into the room and curtsied.
“Where is your husband?” The smile that used to brighten Peter’s face had turned into a nervous smirk.
“I don’t know, Your Highness,” I answered. “He doesn’t tell me where he goes.” My reply brought a whistle of approval.
Egor Malikin, the Grand Duke announced, was a man of ambition and luck, a fine soldier who would go further if he stopped wasting his time in the Ladies’ Guard. If he joined the cavalry instead. “That’s where the future is,” the Grand Duke declared. “No matter how much a wife might object.”
“I have no objections to my husband’s decisions,” I replied.
My answer brought another approving whistle.
“Take the best seat, Varvara Nikolayevna.” The Grand Duke pointed at a low chair covered with a bearskin. I hesitated. The head of the hapless beast with its jaws agape was positioned on the floor. I knew I could expect some crude jokes, if I covered it with my skirts.
“Mishka won’t bite you,” someone said and giggled.
“Unless you wanted him to,” a woman’s voice added. She stood in the shadows, holding a battledore racket and twirling it in her hand. A shuttlecock, red and white, was lying nearby, too far for her to reach it with her feet, although she tried.
“If he dared,” someone else retorted amid more laughter. “But there are some women even Mishka may be scared to touch.”
A playing card landed at the toe of my shoe. The ace of diamonds. “Nosy Varvara went to market,” I heard a murmur behind me. “Nosy Varvara had her nose torn off.”
The woman with the battledore racket began reading aloud what at first I thought was the report of some military conquest. A distant and cold fortress had been stormed repeatedly; soldiers rushed up the hills, only to be repelled by strong defenses. “Very resourceful defenses,” she read, and giggled. “Very resourceful,” she repeated. The Grand Duke laughed heartily.
I recognized the woman. Countess Vorontzova, the homely, limping niece of the Vice-Chancellor Vorontzov. Das Fräulein, as she was called, was one of Catherine’s maids-of-honor. What brazen lies allowed this woman to abandon the Grand Duchess in Oranienbaum and come here?
The servants were pouring wine as soon as glasses emptied. A stack of empty bottles was piling up in the fireplace like logs ready to be lit.
“The fortress,” the Countess continued her reading, “has often been called proud and icy. Spies sent there spoke of jagged walls and a narrow tunnel.”
There was no doubt in my mind that it was Catherine she meant, a “fortress” finally conquered by her husband. Seven years after the wedding, if anyone in this room dared to count. Anger rose in me, searing hot, and I struggled to keep my look of indifference.
Das Fräulein gave the Duke another impish glance, jabbing the air with her fist, a not-too-subtle promise that he acknowledged with a titter. This was not some Madame Grooth who could be paid off and sent away. This was a court lady on the prowl. Das Fräulein, plain and lame as she was, had been known to hunt down wild boars.
“Finally the fortress gave in and a torrent of blood flowed, while from the rear bastion a triumphant shot announced to all who watched and listened from afar the completion of the victorious and gallant deed.”
More laughter and a few loud farts followed these words. The Duke’s wineglass was filled again, and he tilted it over the carpet, spilling half of it. Das Fräulein clapped her hands.
“May I be excused, Your Highness?” I asked him. The grin of pleasure on his face sickened me. “The Empress awaits me.”
He waved me away.
Even before I closed the door I could hear Das Fräulein’s shrill voice, mocking my request.
The imperial habits had not changed. The Empress rose late. Days were still a passage of tedious time that led to the evenings, hours filled with endless chatter. It was Countess Shuvalova, the mother of the Imperial Favorite, who led the gossip circle now. Ladies-in-waiting sitting with the Empress in her inner rooms until dusk, embroidery idle on their laps, delivered their accounts of broken hearts and thwarted expectations. The miasma of glee and poisonous malice filled the rooms of the Winter Palace. It was as if the seven years I had spent away from the court were but a flicker of an eyelid.
The arrival of the Imperial Favorite was a sign for the ladies-in-waiting to pick up their work-bags hastily and leave the inner rooms. When Ivan Shuvalov visited, the doors to the Imperial Bedroom were closed. No one was allowed inside. The evening meal was delivered on the mechanical table, pulled up from the kitchen below. Musicians waited in the service corridor for the Empress’s summons. If she wished it, they played or sang loudly, so that the music could penetrate the wall.
My time came when Ivan Shuvalov had departed to his own apartment, when all the cats who slept on the Imperial Bed came back from their wanderings. The bedroom was always dark and smelled of smoldering wicks, for most candles were extinguished by then, except the two votive lights under the Holy Icon of the Virgin of Kazan.
The time of imperial unease, I called it in my thoughts. The time softened by old fears. The time that would soon yield under my fingers, like wax. As long as I remembered how thin the walls were, how many ears might be straining to hear what I would say.
The time of caution, of feeling my way. Of learning what had been hidden, revealing what should be revealed.
The Empress still liked the stories of her own grandeur, of who found her ravishing and full of grace, more elegant than Maria Theresa of Austria, lighter on her feet. But she also craved other stories, of the blind dziad at the Tartar market who sang the old dumy of Romanov glory, of beggars on the Great Perspective Road who blessed the Tsarina’s good heart when the alms arrived from the palace.
“You have a daughter, Varvara,” the Empress said to me unexpectedly on one such night. “I wish to see her in the morning.”
“Mais, elle est charmante,” the Empress exclaimed when I entered the Imperial Bedroom with Darya—in her new yellow dress—holding my hand. “You must bring her to me often, now that you are all living here.”
“To play?” Darya asked with such joy that even Ivan Shuvalov smiled.
The Empress picked up a purring cat. “Naughty Murka,” she muttered into its face. “Where have you been all night? Where do you hide from me, you rascal?”
Before I could stop her, Darya had scampered to the Empress and was running her fingers through Murka’s fur, trying to guess the cat’s hiding places. “On the stove … under the bed … in the carriage … In there?” she finally said, pointing at the giant vase that stood by the door.
There she was, next to the Empress, my daughter, not yet three years old, utterly at ease.
I was right to return to the palace, I decided, delighting in a glimpse of my child’s future: a happy young woman with two or three pretty children about her feet. Behind her, an honorable man, his face still a blur.
Loved.
Safe, even if I died.
The maid entered with ice in a china bowl, for rubbing Elizabeth’s face. Behind her, the Chief Maid, followed by a footman carrying the basket with pandoras from the Imperial Wardrobe.
I took Darya’s hand and motioned for her to curtsy. My eyes were smarting from lack of sleep. I longed to be in my bedroom, with curtains drawn, to get some rest before the night’s summons.
“I’ll bring her as often as Your Highness wishes,” I promised.
Three days later, at dinnertime, a messenger arrived from Oranienbaum. The Grand Duchess had awakened with a sharp pain. The maid who had lifted her coverlet fainted. Catherine had been ordered to lie absolutely still on sheets wet with her blood until the doctor arrived and declared that there was no hope. The baby was dead.
They all blamed her. For her too frequent visits to the stable with its stench of animal excrement, for breathing in the smoke from extinguished candles, for letting the bad air penetrate the pores of her skin. The maids whispered that when a black cat dashed across her path, the Grand Duchess had refused to turn back, that she had laughed when the midwife brought her a pregnant stone—inside which small rocks rattled when she shook it—and told her to wear it on her arm. That she sat with her legs off the ground, that she’d played with newly hatched chicks.
No one talked of anything else. Even Darya wanted to know why the Empress was sad. “Does her tummy hurt, Maman?” she asked.
I hid my trembling hands, my voice that threatened to break.
The Empress’s inner rooms were crowded with visitors. The ladies from the gossip circle were clucking their tongues in disapproval, echoing one another’s vicious words. “Careless … Didn’t she know … How could she?”
The Empress sat motionless in a pool of light, her face flushed and creased with exhaustion. Beside her, Ivan Shuvalov shook his head in false amazement, his silver waistcoat shimmering. The maid who brought a platter of zákusky had been waved away.
The Imperial Surgeon was delivering his assessment of Catherine’s condition. Shifting from foot to foot, he denounced the marshes and the riverbanks exuding noxious miasmas, the legacy of a land not fit for human dwellings. The cold, the lack of light for so many months, they provoked miscarriages and the malformation of fetuses, he declared. He had seen it often enough.
“I cannot stay silent, Your Majesty,” he said. “Not anymore.”
The Empress gave the surgeon a disdainful look. The fan in her hand jerked.
“My father’s city,” she said, her voice seething, “is not killing babies in their mother’s wombs. It is the mother’s thoughts and fears that make them die.”
The surgeon attempted to say something, but the Empress was no longer listening. “He might as well start packing right now,” I heard someone whisper.
In the silence that followed, Ivan Shuvalov turned to Elizabeth. “The marshes? The lack of light?” he asked disdainfully.
I wished I could make him stop. I wished I could kill the words that followed, scrub his arrogant malice away. With turpentine and salt, I raged, just like the scullery maids wiped the bed frames where bedbugs hid.
“Is this what she is saying, perhaps? Are these her sentiments?” Ivan Shuvalov continued, as if he had forgotten Catherine’s name. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
I hurried out of the room, trembling. Then I stopped. Slipping into the Imperial Bedroom, I placed the print of Ivan that the Chancellor had given me in between the sheets.
Let the Empress find that tonight, I thought. I imagined Ivan Shuvalov, lips twisting, hands fumbling, a vein throbbing on his temple as he protested his innocence. Swearing that he had never looked at any actresses.
Let him taste his own medicine, I thought.
Let him feel his own smallness. Let him feel the sharp edge of Elizabeth’s wrath.
A few hours later, when I arrived in the antechamber to the Imperial Bedroom, I saw maids rushing in and out with jugs of hot water, towels, bottles of smelling salts. A fetid breeze drifted from the open window.
Count Lestocq had been called in to bleed the Empress, a round-faced maid with an armful of towels informed me, her voice brimming with self-importance.
Four ounces of blood.
Dark. Thick.
Her Majesty was calmer now, praise the Lord.
The storm had passed.
Man trouble, I could hear the whispers. No smoke without fire. Hit the table and the scissors will sound. The cat knows from which bowl of milk he has drunk.
From the bedroom came the sounds of pleading, broken with a sob.
“No one can see Her Majesty now,” the maid told me. “Ivan Ivanovich has just been allowed back in.”
Monsieur Bernardi had no letter for me. The Grand Duchess, he reported, is quite weak and has been forbidden all exertions. Her papers, her books, her quills, have all been taken away. All we can do is pray for her swift recovery. She is young; she has always been healthy. Perhaps the harm was not as grave as some are making it.
Your friends see many possibilities where there were few before, I wrote in my letter to Catherine, cursing the secrecy that made me choose such vague words. Solutions better than the ones lost.
I hoped she would understand.
This was her chance for another child, a child far less likely to be called a bastard. A child whose birth would repay her with joy for the loss that now seemed the end of everything.
I was right not to tell her of her lover’s indifference, I decided. Serge Saltykov would soon be ordered to go to her again, to complete what he had started. It was better for her to greet him with an open heart.
A whole month passed since the news of Catherine’s miscarriage and Serge Saltykov was still in St. Petersburg, gambling, borrowing money from everyone. Was the Empress giving Peter a chance to father a child? How long would she wait? I knew Catherine was anxious for news, but I had none.
Hoping the Empress would send me to Oranienbaum to check on the Grand Duchess, I began hinting at reports I would deliver if I only had a chance to see her myself. For days Elizabeth dismissed my promises with grim silence and then suddenly, when I least expected it, she ordered me to go.
It took me nearly a day to reach Oranienbaum. It was a tedious ride along the shore of the gulf, past Peterhof, with screeching seagulls and the smell of rot from the marshes.
In the Lower Gardens, by the canal leading to the sea, the gardeners in their straw hats jabbed at the earth, flattening the hillocks the moles had left. A bird was hopping on the grass, a long piece of straw hanging from its beak. I willed it to stop. The straw fell to the ground. I picked it up and turned it in my hands, releasing the seeds from the pod, scattering them into the air.
Then I saw her. Sitting in a wicker armchair, under a Siberian pine, with Madame Choglokova at her side. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I was glad there was no one to see them.
I watched Catherine pick up a book and cut the pages with a small dagger. The folds of her dove-gray morning dress were loosely draped over her stomach; her black hair was tightly pinned on the nape of her neck. Beside her was a table littered with the remnants of a blueberry tart and cups stained with afternoon chocolate.
Madame Choglokova, the onetime jailer and now the procuress, was embroidering a piece of cloth. There was no sign of her children. At the palace, Countess Shuvalova delighted in reporting Monsieur Choglokov’s complaints about his wife’s passage intime. “As wide as the road to Moscow,” he once said to a chorus girl.
Noticing me, Madame Choglokova cleared her throat.
Catherine looked up from her book. She was still very pale from her miscarriage but prettier and more delicate than I had ever seen her before. I didn’t like the sadness in her eyes, though, sadness that transcended the loss of the child, sadness that meant the Divine Serge was on her mind far more than he deserved to be.
A magpie descended on one of the branches overhead, screeching, its green-blue trim feathers shining in the sun. A thief, I thought, just waiting for his chance.
“Varvara Nikolayevna,” Catherine murmured. “So you have come back. After so many years. And I hear that you have a child.”
Madame Choglokova put down the embroidery and joined her fingers at their tips.
“Yes, Your Highness.” I lowered my eyes. “I have a daughter,” I added, for Madame Choglokova’s sake, as if Catherine knew nothing of my life. “She is almost three years old, and already thinks herself a perfect courtier.”
I began saying how sorry I was about her miscarriage, but Catherine stopped me. “I do not wish to speak of the past,” she said.
So instead we chatted about the particulars of my return to the court. The Empress’s promise that Egor and I would move to a bigger apartment in the new Winter Palace, once it was finished. When Catherine asked me again about Darya, I hesitated, thinking the subject too painful for her, but she insisted. She wanted to know of my daughter’s delight when the Empress gave her a doll with long black hair she could comb and dress. She wished to be told of Darenka’s dimpled cheeks, the lively eagerness with which she welcomed each day.
“She is so trusting, so loving,” I said. “Perhaps too much so.”
“She has her mother to look after her, doesn’t she?” Catherine said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then nothing else matters.”
We spoke like that for a while, a court conversation of puzzles and oblique allusions. Some sacrifices are not in vain. One has to do one’s duty, first and foremost.
I said I was glad to be back at the palace, to be of use to the Empress and my old friends who had not forgotten me. I talked of the splendor of the new palace that would soon replace the old one, of the architectural drawings I’d seen, harbinger of changes that awaited us all, while in my mind, I cursed Madame Choglokova’s stolid presence, her clasped hands and her frowns. Why could she not leave us?
Catherine did not interrupt, although sometimes she rubbed her eyelids impatiently and shook her head, as if something irritated her eyes.
By the Oranienbaum palace, the gardeners were watering giant pots of orange trees lining the terrace. Madame Choglokova planted herself deeper into her wicker chair, her jaw set, giving her the look of a mastiff. Her breasts threatened to spill from her low-cut dress, trimmed with frothy lace. She was determined to play her role to the end. She would not leave us alone. Whose side was she on? The Chancellor had hinted at her cooperation in making sure Saltykov had plenty of opportunities to spend time with the Grand Duchess in the past. But I suspected she was taking bribes from the Shuvalovs, too.
“Perhaps we could all have some chocolate?” I asked. “I heard it cleanses the blood better than nettle tea.”
Madame Choglokova retrieved a bell from under the table. She rang it and, satisfied with herself, returned to her embroidery. I watched her fat fingers push the needle back and forth. She was stitching a flower, a green stem with long leaves crowned with a pink bloom.
The servants brought more chocolate and tarts. The commotion was a welcome break I used to touch Catherine’s fingers with mine, my silent promise that she was no longer alone at court, that I was back in the Winter Palace to look out for her.
She gave me a quick smile, like Darya’s when she was on the verge of bursting into tears.
“The Empress has just returned from shooting cocks and is now determined to give a masked ball in Peterhof, Your Highness,” I chattered on. “The display of fireworks will be magnificent. Everyone at court is hoping Your Highness will be well enough to be there. Chancellor Bestuzhev said there is nothing like a public feast to remind us all that the good of Russia is our common goal. And Count Shuvalov agrees.”
In spite of Ivan’s constant presence at Elizabeth’s side, the Shuvalovs had not won as much as they’d hoped for. They, too, had learned that Elizabeth preferred to be courted rather than to surrender. Ivan could have his Russian Academy and his theater, the adoration of poets and scholars, but it was Bestuzhev Elizabeth entrusted with matters of state. How the Empress cherished it: two forces pushing with equal strength, a precarious balance of opposites. Both parties at her feet, unsure, as long as she lived.
At the mention of the Chancellor and Ivan Shuvalov, Madame Choglokova grew uneasy. Politics was a forbidden subject. Determined to steer our conversation in a different direction, she announced that Oranienbaum was far from being the backwater some courtiers might think. She launched into one of the long and tedious monologues she was so well known for. As I sipped the sweet, thick chocolate I shot Catherine an exasperated look. In response I saw a tiny smile of reassurance flicker on her lips.
“I’ve been reading a lot, Varvara Nikolayevna.” Catherine interrupted the flow of Madame Choglokova’s words. There was a glitter in her eyes, that reckless glitter I would see so often later. On that afternoon I thought it such a good sign. “True stories. Useful. I’ve resolved not to waste time.”
Russian history was Catherine’s favorite study now. The tales that made our empire grow, she said.
Madame Choglokova jerked her head, sensing she was being dragged into waters beyond her depth. A well-deserved revenge on a jailer, I thought, quite willing to play my part.
“The empire that manages to harness the strength of many nations will never be conquered,” Catherine continued. “Don’t you agree, Varvara Nikolayevna?”
“Most ardently, Your Highness. And so would our Empress and the Chancellor.”
Even now I can still see Catherine on that late afternoon, cheered up by Madame Choglokova’s growing unease, a note of spite ringing in her voice. Using phrases like grappling with the soil and weaving of faith into the imperial tapestry. Asking: “Wouldn’t we grow indolent and selfish, if sacrifice were not demanded of us?”
She had been hurt, I thought. She was in pain, but she was not defeated.
The wicker chair creaked. Madame Choglokova was wriggling in distress, a giant fat worm on a hook. Charged with repeating everything she heard to the Empress, she was trying hard to remember Catherine’s every word.
The approach of the Grand Duke—his Prussian blue uniform impeccably brushed, brass buttons and black boots shining—saved Madame Choglokova from further indignities. Having just arrived from St. Petersburg, Peter came to seek his wife’s advice on the Holstein beer tax. Should it be raised or kept unchanged? And then there was the executioner’s petition.…
“Good day, Peter,” Catherine said, pointing at the empty seat beside her. “Would you like me to pour you some chocolate?”
Peter’s tricorne hat cast a shadow over his face as he sat. His Blackamoor, once dismissed by the Empress from the Grand Duke’s entourage, was now standing behind him, holding a basket with documents. A sign, I thought, of Elizabeth’s satisfaction.
The Grand Duke acknowledged my presence with a nod and a wide smile as if he’d never witnessed my refusal to participate in the merriment at Catherine’s expense. Doesn’t he notice that the palace is taking sides? I wondered. That one supported either Catherine or Peter? That the treacherous territory in between was narrowing fast?
The Holstein executioner, Peter said, had protested the illegal dumping of carcasses on the town streets, where it was his duty and his cost to remove them.
“How many people signed the petition?” Catherine asked.
I watched the ease with which Catherine addressed her husband, the rapt consideration with which she listened to his explanations. Das Fräulein, I thought, did have her limitations, after all.
Madame Choglokova pulled at my sleeve, motioning for me to leave with her. That, too, was one of the imperial orders: Leave the married couple alone as much as possible. Appearances mattered.
“Shall I read it to you now?” I heard the Grand Duke’s shrill voice as I walked toward my carriage. “The man has a point.”
“The Prussians are asking to have their noses rubbed in their own filth,” Egor announced on one of the first dark afternoons of the fall.
He had just come home from his guard duty and sank into the ottoman in our parlor. His uniform needed a good brushing, I thought. The red facings were smudged with plaster dust.
It was not just him, Egor continued. Such had been the talk of the barracks and banyas. Frederick of Prussia—or the Fritz, as the officers called him—could fool the French, but he could not fool the Russians. The Fritz talked peace, for, having devoured Silesia, he needed a rest, but Prussia was still hungry. And hungry Prussia always looked east.
“There will be a war,” he said, slapping his knee. “Soon.”
The maid had set our silver tea urn on the side table and left to fetch the preserves. Next door, Masha was feeding Darya her dinner, fending off my daughter’s high-pitched protests with stories of children refusing to eat, only to be blown into the air and left there hanging, too light to get down. I fussed with teacups on a tray. Two of the saucers were badly chipped. I vowed to pack the china myself for the move that awaited us once the temporary palace was ready.
I sat down opposite my husband, arranging my skirts. A wave of weariness claimed me, and I wondered how many months more my body would endure all those sleepless nights. “You should lie down before you have to go tonight,” Egor said, frowning when I stifled a yawn. “What time is it?”
“Not yet five o’clock,” I said. Next door, Darya was quiet now, lost, no doubt, in one of Masha’s tales.
Egor leaned toward me. The war, he said, meant opportunities. There was a tone of triumph in his voice now. As if he had finally solved a puzzle that had defied him for a long time. “Real opportunities,” not empty promises of favors the palace was so full of, all so easily forgotten. There would be promotions, distinctions. Rewards for bravery. Battles he could tell our grandchildren about. Some of the Guards regiments would go; others would stay. In a moment of historical importance, it was essential to know where one wanted to be.
“We might have a future now, kison’ka,” I heard my husband say.
So that was it. No more hints and promises. My husband would leave the Palace Guards for the army. There was relief in this prospect. It seemed right. The true end to years of aimless floating. Egor could return a Major or even a Colonel. Our daughter would have a proper dowry. We could afford an estate.
“When?” I asked.
“Soon,” Egor answered, lowering his voice. “But don’t tell anyone.”
I nodded. I would not dispute the wisdom of not letting others know what you wished for.
“Any chance for that tea?” Egor was eyeing the tea urn.
The maid was taking a long time. I could hear her in the corridor, arguing with the footman.
“Serge Saltykov tried to borrow money off one of the new officers from the Izmailovsky Regiment. Orlov is the name. The man’s just arrived from Tver.” Egor’s tone was cheerful now. “Wants to put fifty rubles on some mare he’s spotted. Of rare strength and dexterity, he says. Wants me to check her out.”
“Tried?”
“Orlov is broke, like everyone else. Saltykov is going to Oranienbaum to ask the Grand Duke for a loan.”
Promising myself to scold the maid later, I opened the spigot, spilling hot tea on my hand; I rubbed it hastily away. “When?” I asked.
“He said tomorrow, but he says many things.”
“Let’s drink it while it is still hot,” I said, filling two cups. In spite of all my rubbing, the tea left a nasty red welt of a burn.
The conversation turned back to the chances of a war, but I no longer listened to what my husband said. Saltykov was returning to Catherine. Finally, she’d been given another chance. And this time, no one could question the paternity of a child that might be born.