n the first weeks of 1755, right after Krieszczenskije morozy, the icy-cold days of mid-January, talk of the coming war had intensified.n the first weeks of 1755, right after Krieszczenskije morozy, the icy-cold days of mid-January, talk of the coming war had intensified.
In the New World, the French and the English were testing their hold on the land. These faraway hostilities were casting shadows across Europe. The French had allied themselves with Prussia, England with Austria, though loyalties were constantly shifting. At the Russian court, the English were considered perfidious, the French deceitful. If Russia was leaning to the side of Britain, it was because Elizabeth hated Frederick of Prussia more than she detested the Empress of Austria.
The way she saw it, an insolent bully trumped a scheming hypocrite.
To get Elizabeth’s attention these days, a courtier was wise to call Vienna dingy, its narrow lanes full of filth and mud. Or to dwell on the fact that in the Berlin palaces gilded copper passed for gold. In the Chancellor’s chambers, clerks pored over spy reports in search of royal name-calling. It mattered when and to whom Frederick called the Russian Empress a whore, a cunt, or a flat-chested bitch. Or how often Maria Theresa declared Elizabeth a shameless sinner who would burn in hell.
In the intrigues of the court, anything was of use if it could fan imperial rage.
On the last day of January Egor received word that his army commission was on its way. Not artillery, as he had been promised, but infantry grenadiers. By then he didn’t mind. What mattered was that he would not spend his best years entangled in “the battlefields of the boudoir.” He laughed at Saltykov, cooling his heels at the Swedish court, scarcely arrived and already asking when he might be allowed to return. The imperial stud had learned the hard way, my husband said and sneered, what passed for gratitude in the palace games.
It was not Egor Malikin’s way.
His honors would come from the heat of battles, from victories that would bring Russia her glory and him the rank of at least Lieutenant Colonel. Advancement was possible at a time when the maps of Europe were constantly being redrawn.
Waiting for his commission papers to arrive, Egor practiced fencing and boxing. He came home from his matches bruised and sweaty, joking about having grown stiff standing guard for years. He was fitted for new breeches, new boots. He bought a brass traveling kit of toiletries and writing instruments that fascinated Darya so much that he allowed her to keep one of the crystal bottles of ink.
He had also ordered a portrait of himself, in full uniform, a sword at his side, standing with his right leg forward, hand cradling a shako. I thought that the artist, a serf who taught himself painting, captured his likeness in the first sitting, but Egor was not satisfied.
“Give me a few wrinkles,” he ordered the painter. “And straighten these lips. I don’t want my grandchildren to see me grinning like a fool.”
In the Winter Palace there was no Young Court anymore. There was Peter’s court and Catherine’s court. His was the domain of the Shuvalovs, presided over by Das Fräulein. Catherine was on her own, and I was her tongue.
“The Empress has to trust you, Varenka,” she counseled me. “She has to let you stay with her when others are sent away. Tell her what she wants to hear.”
In the Imperial Bedroom, when Elizabeth tired of denouncing Prussian lies, I reported on the Grand Duchess’s gambling debts, debts that did little to stop purchases of ruby pendants, or yet another pair of silk shoes with silver buckles. I called Catherine cold and calculating, having time only for those who could do something for her. There was little need for more specific accusations, for any mention of Catherine made Elizabeth’s voice harden. An evening spent playing cards or a failure to show up at a palace ball was proof that the Grand Duchess was reckless or too proud. The daily assurances of Catherine’s gratitude, her insistent praises of everything in the Imperial Nursery, did not soften the Empress. A smile was as suspicious as a tear.
“We never much like those we have hurt, do we, Varvara Nikolayevna?” the Chancellor remarked.
I want to know everything. However insignificant it may seem to you, Catherine had said.
And so I reported everything I saw. A shallow breath, swollen hands, a nightmare broken by a scream or the frantic clutching of a Holy Icon. Another bloodletting, the surgeon’s frown, Elizabeth’s dark, thick blood. The pain in the belly, her insistence on looser clothes. She fainted. There were convulsions.
I told Catherine of long visits the Empress made to the chapel, muttering her confessions, bargaining with God. In the middle of the night a hooting owl was chased away with musket shots. Birds were shooed if they even approached her windowsill. A sick valet had been sent home and never spoken of again.
In the Winter Palace the word death had been banished from all speech.
“His words, Varenka,” Catherine would insist, when I mentioned Bestuzhev’s name. “Tell me exactly what he says.”
The war is unavoidable.
The time of war is rapacious, fraudulent, and cruel, calling for extraordinary measures.
A knockout blow is always better than a long war of attrition.
A skillful ruler must do more than react, but for that clear plans and purposes are needed.
Everyone knows that the Grand Duke admires Frederick of Prussia. But is this where his wife’s loyalty lies as well?
Tell the Grand Duchess I wish to advise her. Tell her to trust me, to start thinking of me as her friend.
“Should I trust him, Varenka?”
Some thoughts are like shadows, fortified by darkness, multiplying and dancing around, reappearing where they are not expected. Thoughts that never reach the stage when they can be called decisions, though they turn into them.
I didn’t decide I would turn my back on Bestuzhev, try to beat the Chancellor of Russia at his own game.
How he wanted her out of Russia, I thought, instead. An empress of some cabbage field! Does he think his treachery forgotten?
I told Catherine of the files Bestuzhev kept, whom he thought nasty and toadlike … who had the bearing of a peasant … who was devious and very slippery. Who was looking for a protector, a sinecure, or merely a wealthy wife. Who collected money from his estates, and who had to sneak out his back door for fear of creditors. Who held a grudge against the Grand Duke, and who was secretly hoping for the Shuvalovs’ fall.
The map of desires, he called it, written on human skin.
“He will support you as long as it is in his interest,” I said. “He will betray you the moment a better opportunity arises.”
Seated at her desk she’d brought from the Oranienbaum palace, Catherine picked up a clean sheet of paper and smoothed it with her sleeve. “I don’t know what I think, Varenka,” she had told me once, “until I write it down.”
Her index finger, I noticed, was blackened with ink. She noticed it, too, for she licked the stain and began rubbing it with her thumb.
“Tell the Chancellor that I’m considering his offer, Varenka. Make him think I need more signs of his loyalty. Let him prove himself first.”
When the ice fields on Lake Ladoga began to break up and enormous ice floes rumbled noisily down the Neva, the reconstruction of the Winter Palace finally began. At first only some sections of the building had been cordoned off, far away from the Imperial Suite of rooms. Newly arrived sculptures stood everywhere, bundled in burlap and straw.
For a time the Empress still received visitors in the Throne Room, but soon the hammering and sawing made it impossible. In the courtyard the British Ambassador had slipped on a patch of wet plaster and sprained his ankle. Countess Rumyantseva ruined her shoes when she stepped in a pool of tar. When even Ivan Shuvalov began to complain of headaches from persistent noise, the court began to pack up for a big move.
By the time bird cherries were covered in white blossoms and wildflowers carpeted the banks of the Neva, the new temporary palace at the junction of the Great Perspective Road and the Moyka Canal was finished. It had but one story and an attic. The walls were flimsy. The entire floor shook when anyone walked down the hall. It was easy to foresee problems. The wooden panels would freeze in the winter; the windows and doors would warp. There wouldn’t be enough room for all the courtiers to reside there.
“It’s only for one year,” the Empress said impatiently. She cut off all jostling for space. There would be no more petitions. No more complaints. Having said that, she departed to Peterhof with her ladies-in-waiting. Catherine and Peter moved to Oranienbaum for the summer. Everyone else was ordered to help with the move.
A court in transition, I thought, considering its options.
Catherine’s new rooms, I discovered, would be far away from the Grand Duke’s and the Empress’s but close to mine; perhaps Elizabeth was making some amends after my assurances that Catherine had accepted her fate.
Charged with supervising the move of the Imperial Bedroom, I spent the lilac-scented summer days in endless deliberations on what should be put in storage and what should be unpacked in the Empress’s temporary suite. Tense days, I thought them, filled with grumblings and complaints, days of trailing the maids and the footmen, of teary investigations when yet another swanskin fan went missing, not to mention the Venetian smelling bottles or the Empress’s favorite tortoiseshell comb. What will be next? I asked myself. Her shoes?
Elizabeth’s cats, brought to the temporary palace, promptly disappeared. But a few days later I saw them come back, one after another, to scrape their faces against the furniture and doorframes, to lie on one of the Empress’s shoes, or on her pillows.
My new bedroom was too small for anything more than a bed, a dresser, and a chest of drawers. Most of my wardrobe had to stay in trunks in the attic, brought down only when necessary.
The move exhausted me. At night, when I closed my eyes, I was haunted by the images of hands groping for crates, burlap, and braids of straw.
Oblivious to all this, Darya rejoiced. In my daughter’s imagination empty palace rooms turned into oceans, shrouded ottomans became deserted islands. In the attic where the washerwomen hung the laundry to dry, she loved to watch the cats rolling in the baskets of freshly folded linen. “Look, Maman,” she would call, pointing out their antics, but I took note instead of loose boards and the chinks in the attic floor.
How easy for anyone, I thought, wishing to spy on those below.
If there was emptiness in these days, I refused to dwell on it. Right before our move, Egor’s papers arrived. His departure was swift. One moment he stood in our parlor in his new uniform—gold buttons gleaming against his green coat—complaining that the collar was too tight. Darya was trying on his shako, and Egor bent over her to explain that the letters EPI crowning it stood for: Elizaveta Petrovna Imperatriza. Masha, red-eyed and sniffling, was hanging a Holy Icon around his neck. There were promises. There were jokes. There was Egor’s newly shaved face, flushed and happy, when he adjusted the red leather belt of his sword. There was a smile of triumph so clearly meant for me.
And then he was gone.
Every June 29, on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the court celebrated the name day of the Crown Prince. It was always a lavish day filled with music, dancing, and military parades, a day without end, for during the white night that followed, the sun dipped beyond the horizon only to rise again almost immediately, dissolving darkness into a foggy mist of blue and violet. In 1755, Peter’s name-day celebrations were more spectacular than ever. That year the Crown Prince shared his name day with his new son and heir.
“Go to Oranienbaum, Varvara,” the Empress ordered. Nothing more than three words were needed for a tongue.
By the time I arrived, the yard of the Oranienbaum palace had been fitted with a vodka fountain and barrels of German beer. An orchestra played in the garden, a violin quartet in the palace courtyard. Footmen made their way through the throng, balancing platters of crayfish and mounds of roasted meat, replenishing the food that vanished as fast as it was placed on tables. On one of the sideboards rose a turreted fortress made entirely of pastries and fruit. The Grand Duke was there, wearing a smart-looking emerald-green jacket with gold trim instead of his usual blue Holsteiner uniform, graciously acknowledging another round of musket salutes. Das Fräulein, I noted, was delighted to stand by Peter’s side to greet the visitors.
There was no sign of Catherine.
I walked across the courtyard toward the palace in search of her. Around me, lagging conversations became lively only when something disparaging was said. So-and-so made herself look ridiculous with too much Valenciennes lace. So-and-so spent five thousand rubles on a dinner party and yet the food was revolting. So-and-so was lusting for another man’s wife.
Enough gossip to keep the Empress satisfied, I thought.
In the palace hall the Chancellor stood by an open window, watching the courtyard outside.
“Spectacular entertainment, wouldn’t you say?” he said gleefully, seeing me. “The flower of the court. The old players and the new.” His shrewd eyes missed nothing. Das Fräulein’s sharp laughter, my anxious looks at the door where Catherine should appear at any moment.
“Look at the British Ambassador. He is trying so hard to impress our Empress these days.” The Chancellor leaned over the windowsill. “My old friend has brought reinforcements.”
Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, the British Ambassador to Russia, his ankle still not fully healed, hobbled beside a slim young man in a cherry velvet frock coat. No wig, I noted. The young man’s hair was frizzled and powdered, a black braid tied with a satin ribbon.
“Count Stanislav Poniatowski,” the Chancellor told me. “Straight from his European grand tour. He’s Sir Charles’s private secretary. And his protégé.”
Count Poniatowski, the Chancellor said, was taking his first steps into politics. His uncles had sent him to St. Petersburg to advance Polish influence at the Russian court. He had already been received by the best families. After an audience in Peterhof, the Empress gushed over his shapely calves so much that Ivan Ivanovich began to sulk.
In the courtyard Count Poniatowski gracefully returned someone’s bow, accepting a glass of champagne from a passing footman. Sir Charles was introducing him to Field Marshal Apraxin.
Beside me, Bestuzhev chuckled.
“The Shuvalovs think him quite dangerous, Varvara Nikolayevna. The dashing count should take it as a compliment.”
The medals on General Apraxin’s chest glittered. Count Poniatowski extended his hand.
“I should warn you that Countess Shuvalova has already started hinting at unnatural inclinations between master and pupil.” The Chancellor chuckled. “So don’t be surprised when the Empress becomes curious about our handsome Polish newcomer.”
So there is gossip already, I thought, listening to the rest of the Chancellor’s account of Count Stanislav’s first days at court. The French faction was eager to disgrace the British by whatever means.
I ignored the questioning look in Bestuzhev’s eyes. Tell him I change my mind every time you talk to me, Catherine had said. Let him grow desperate.
The time of war, I told myself, rapacious and fraudulent. Cruel.
When I entered her rooms, Catherine stood in a dazzling flood of sunlight, surrounded by her maids-of-honor, a constant buzz of talk around her. She was still being dressed. The maids were lacing up her stays, adjusting the panniers, tying the pockets around her waist. One of her maids was powdering Catherine’s hair, curled in elaborate locks for the occasion; another attached a beauty spot above her lip. A court gown of ivory silk was laid out, its skirt frosted with intricate silver lace.
“Varenka,” Catherine exclaimed, as I curtsied. She gestured for me to rise. “Is the move complete? Is the new palace as ready as everyone says it is?”
I wondered if it were belladonna or laudanum that made her eyes look so wide and so blue.
It was her son’s first name day. Had she at least been permitted to embrace and kiss him? Or did she have to hold back tears and speak of her gratitude for his well-being? Had she had to force herself not to reach for her baby, even when he extended his hands to her? The “darling boy,” the Empress ordered, must be spared the undue agitation of his mother’s presence. Longing for her son, I’d heard Elizabeth declare, would make Catherine’s womb more receptive for another pregnancy.
“The palace is awaiting Your Highnesses’ arrival,” I replied.
Catherine raised her hands so the maids could slip on her petticoats, inner and outer, and her stomacher. By the time she was ready for the gown itself, I had answered all her questions. The palace was small but clean. The Great Perspective Road was noisy in the morning, but her windows were facing the canal. Besides, Monsieur Rastrelli swore we would all be back at the Winter Palace a year from now.
The silk gown rustled softly as Catherine made a slow turn. The silver lace sparkled. The maids were now on the lookout for the smallest of imperfections, a loose thread, a fold too supple or too tight, a smudge of rice powder on her neck.
I thought Catherine hadn’t looked so fine for quite a while.
Outside, in the Oranienbaum yard, someone shouted, “Long live the Crown Prince!” The cheers that followed lingered. I thought of Das Fräulein’s eagerness to seize Catherine’s place beside her husband.
Another round of musket shots rang in the air.
I was relieved when after a moment of silence, tense and uncomfortable, Catherine smiled and told me that she was ready to join the Grand Duke at the feast.
“Who is he, Varenka?” Catherine wanted to know.
From a bowl of fruit Count Poniatowski picked out a pitted plum and slipped it into his mouth. Then he took another.
I repeated the Chancellor’s introduction. Count Poniatowski … the British Ambassador’s Polish protégé … his private secretary … but more like his friend and pupil.
“He seems to like plums,” Catherine observed. “Does your plum-loving Polish count have a Christian name?”
“Stanislav.”
“Has she seen him?”
I said that Count Poniatowski had been officially presented to the Empress several days before.
“Did she like him?”
“Yes.”
“More than her Shuvalov?”
“I don’t think so. He made a grave mistake.”
“He ate all her plums?” A playful flicker came into Catherine’s eyes.
“No.” I stifled a smile. “I heard that he quoted Voltaire before Ivan Ivanovich had a chance to do so.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Count Poniatowski bow in front of the oldest of Prince Kurakin’s daughters and lead her to the dance floor. The Count’s turns and steps showed the mastery of practice and a delight in his own dexterity. Each time he bent toward his partner, a warm smile softened the fine lines of his face. Not a smudge of Sergey Saltykov’s arrogant manliness, I decided, hoping Catherine would see it, too. Just the worldly ease of someone who feels at home everywhere.
It was then that the Grand Duke motioned for me to approach him.
“She doesn’t like my ensemble, Varvara,” Peter complained, pointing at Das Fräulein, who was hanging on his arm, sulking. “Tell her what you heard.”
He sounded like Darya when she needed my approval.
“Everyone remarks Your Highness looks especially fine today,” I said. “The Grand Duchess and Chancellor Bestuzhev particularly praised the choice of the jacket.”
Countess Vorontzova gave me a scowl.
“What do you have to say to that now?” the Grand Duke asked her with glee.
By the time I returned to Catherine’s side, she was standing by the refreshment table with Count Poniatowski, Sir Charles right beside them. Count Poniatowski was laughing at something Catherine had just said. Her lips were parted, and I thought her beautiful then, in that rare way joy can suddenly rearrange a plain face and make it sparkle.
“You are luckier than I’ve been,” I heard Catherine say. “I arrived here in the middle of the Russian winter, which is not for the faint of spirit.” She didn’t acknowledge my presence; I didn’t mind.
Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams limped away from Catherine and Stanislav and gestured for me to join him. The Empress, I recalled, liked to mock the Ambassador’s stout frame and full lips.
“It was entirely my fault, Madame Malikina,” the Ambassador said when I expressed my concern over his injured foot. His French, though fluent, carried the slight awkwardness of an English speaker who took to it too late in life. “I had been warned of the perils of renovations. I should’ve watched my step.”
It pleased me that he remembered my name. We had exchanged a few polite words when I came across him in the Empress’s antechambers, but this was the first time we talked without others present.
Sir Charles eagerly reported the details of the official introduction that had happened in my absence. “I called Count Poniatowski my political son, the child of my heart,” he informed me, “and the Grand Duchess most graciously congratulated me on my taste.”
Around us the din of voices melted into laughter. At the other end of the room, Chancellor Bestuzhev was explaining something to the Austrian Ambassador, placing his hand on his shoulder, a friendly gesture meant to be seen. Sir Charles didn’t hide how much he was taken with Catherine. “What intelligence, what grace,” he gushed. “No one else in this room can measure up to that smile.”
I let Sir Charles speak, but my thoughts drifted to Catherine and Stanislav. Not so much to what they said—for only snatches of their words reached me—but the subtle message of their gestures. Catherine’s fan touching her lips, a glitter in Stanislav’s eyes.
“I’ve been in Poland long enough,” Sir Charles continued, “to see the possibilities. A country half as large as France, intended by nature to be the granary of Europe, is rotting away in obscurity. Waste is not in Europe’s best interests. This is what we talk about with Count Poniatowski every day, Madame Malikina.”
Glancing at his protégé, who was bending his head toward Catherine, Sir Charles spoke of the balance of power needed to keep all players in check. France was reaching for more than was her share. France, who liked to form factions in every country with much passion, only to abandon them with levity. Poland had learned it already, to her detriment. Poland was looking for more solid alliances now.
“Poland and Russia, Madame, linked by common interest and common good.”
These were an Ambassador’s words, I thought. Sir Charles was planting the seeds of his mission, seizing opportunities whenever he could. To whom did he wish me to repeat his words? Elizabeth? The Chancellor? Or Catherine?
In the sunlight of the white night I heard Catherine’s voice, joyful, teasing, entangled in Count Poniatowski’s soft chuckles.
When the feast ended, I went into Catherine’s bedroom. In Peterhof the Empress awaited my report of the celebrations, and I needed to know what Catherine wished me to say to her.
But Catherine refused to talk about the Empress.
The chambermaids had left the windows open, and the curtains of thick crimson velvet billowed, letting in a breeze of cool, fragrant air from the sunlit gardens. I could smell lilac and heavy jasmine blooms.
“I asked Count Poniatowski about Paris, Varenka. Do you know what he said? That he loved its radiance. That cities are like people: They emanate their desires. Paris, he said, lives for pleasure.”
My carriage was waiting. I rose to leave, but Catherine stopped me.
“Do you ever think I will go there?”
“To Paris?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes.”
“If you truly wish.”
Her eyes narrowed and then softened, two shining pools of light. “I cannot live any longer without love, Varenka. Not one single hour.”
I smiled. “It seems to me you won’t have to,” I said.
The Empress sent me to Oranienbaum once more before the court came back to St. Petersburg for the winter.
This time it was the Grand Duke whom Elizabeth wished me to see. There have been complaints of the new regiment her nephew had summoned from Holstein. Unwelcome and annoying, when Russia was on the very brink of war with the Prussian King.
“Tell this fool, this nephew of mine, that my patience doesn’t last long, Varvara,” the Empress raged.
The Holsteiners in their blue uniforms camped at the outskirts of the Oranienbaum grounds. Food had to be carried to them from the palace kitchens. The footmen charged with the task were bitter about having to serve “these snotty Germans.” The Empress had already been approached a few times, begged to interfere.
I watched Elizabeth’s face, blotched and reddened with fury. I watched her circle the room, the sound of her heels on the floor punctuating her words. The problem was to go away. She didn’t care how.
“Make sure I don’t hear another word of this matter, Varvara.”
I curtsied and took my leave.
In Oranienbaum I asked to see the Grand Duchess. It was important, I told the haughty maid who tried to make me wait.
Catherine was in her study, writing, with just little Bijou for company. A bouquet of red roses stood in a crystal vase on her desk, with water stains around it, for the maid’s vigilance did not extend to bringing a doily. Seeing me, the Grand Duchess put the quill away. Too quickly, for she let a large drop of ink fall.
“Varenka,” she exclaimed, sanding the page to stop the stain from spreading. “Just the person I wished to see!”
I attempted to give her an account of my mission and of Elizabeth’s displeasure, but she hardly listened. Her skin glowed, her hair, left unpowdered and tied with a simple yellow ribbon, shone.
“He is here, you know,” she said. “Again!”
“Count Poniatowski?” I guessed.
She nodded. Count Poniatowski had been a frequent guest at Oranienbaum, she told me, for the Grand Duke wished to hear of his father’s military exploits. Forty-six years ago, at the Battle of Poltava, old General Poniatowski had fought at the side of Charles XII of Sweden against Peter the Great.
“War! That’s all they talk about,” Catherine said, rolling her eyes.
It was not the famous Russian victory over Sweden that excited her husband, not his grandfather’s strategy, nor his political vision. All he wished to know from his Polish guest was how the defeated King of Sweden managed to fool the Russians and escape from the battlefield with General Poniatowski’s help.
It was becoming too easy, I realized, reporting on the Grand Duke’s blunders.
“This is not quite what the Empress should hear now,” I warned.
“Why not, Varenka?” Catherine shot me a playful look. She bent over Bijou and scooped him up. “Perhaps this is exactly what she should hear!”
Tossed and tumbled, Bijou began to bark with excitement.
This hilarity was getting too loud. I put my finger on my lips.
Still laughing, Catherine set the dog down and embraced me. “I’m only teasing you, Varenka. Don’t be so serious, please. Let’s go to them now. Let’s have some pleasure, shall we?”
“May we join you, gentlemen?” Catherine asked, as we entered the Grand Duke’s study.
In the corner, Das Fräulein jumped up as if she saw a ghost.
The Grand Duke was tracing a line with his finger on a military map. He was back to wearing his blue Prussian uniform. I had seen his valet singe holes in it with burning coals, making them look like musket shots. Count Poniatowski stood beside him, nodding at something he had just heard. His colors were earthy, the warmth of clay and rust, his elegant fitted jacket lined with flecks of gold. At the sound of the Grand Duchess’s voice, both men turned toward her. Two faces, one pockmarked and reddened with excitement, the other handsome and composed.
Count Poniatowski bowed. The Grand Duke flapped his hand, waving us in. Das Fräulein was staring at the floor.
I wondered what pleased Peter more, our unexpected visit, which—judging by his triumphant glare—he took for the manifestation of Catherine’s marital interest, or Das Fräulein’s annoyance at it.
Catherine turned to Count Poniatowski.
“My husband assures me that you tell most amusing stories.”
“I try to please.” Count Poniatowski made another bow.
“Tell my wife of the maire of Paris,” the Grand Duke demanded, chuckling.
Such exchanges must have happened before, I thought. There was a note of amused indulgence in Count Poniatowski’s voice, a promise to please his host, even at the cost of repeating himself. His hand, emerging from a lace cuff, made sweeping movements as he spoke.
The mayor of Paris had received him in a pink bonnet, the Count told us, then led him to a room where chamber pots stood in a row, each half filled with sand. Every few minutes, the mayor begged his pardon and attempted to relieve himself. Each time into a different chamber pot.
The traveler’s charm, I thought, listening to the waves of laughter that followed these stories. Stories meant to please. Stories interspaced with praises of Russian warmth, Russian hospitality, the glories of St. Petersburg, the beauty of Russian women.
An hour passed, giddy and fading fast. The dark paneling of the Duke’s study softened with early August sunshine; from the Oranienbaum gardens came the smoke of burning twigs.
It was Catherine who firmly took Das Fräulein’s arm and proposed a stroll in the gardens. She wished to show Count Poniatowski her new aviary. She had a pair of Chinese pheasants, she told him, some quails, and the birds the Oranienbaum birdman had been trapping for her all summer. Thrushes, magpies, orioles.
“You go,” the Grand Duke said, ignoring the plea in Das Fräulein’s eyes. “I’ve seen it already.”
I, too, declined to join the party, eager for my chance to speak with the Grand Duke alone.
On the following day, in Peterhof, I assured the Empress that there would be no more complaints from anyone in the Grand Duke’s retinue. My success was the result of a simple discovery. The Grand Duke’s servants had not been compensated for delivering food to the Holsteiner troops. Once the Grand Duke agreed to remedy his oversight, the patriotic fervor of his footmen had died out and “serving the Prussians” became just another duty in their daily rosters.
The Empress was pleased.
She didn’t ask me about Catherine, and I didn’t mention the Grand Duchess or the Oranienbaum visitor. I didn’t mind being ordered back to St. Petersburg, either. The temporary palace was still half empty. The Imperial Suite was shrouded in linen coverings. The thought of Darya there, alone, with no one but Masha and the servants for company was enough to make me uneasy.
In mid-August, Egor returned to St. Petersburg for the first time since assuming his commission. Leaner and quieter, more of a guest than a man of the house as he inspected our new quarters.
Through the windows came the sounds of the street, the beat of horses’ hoofs, the rattling of carriage wheels, the enticements of sellers. The floors were bare, smelling of pine resin, squeaking under each step.
I watched Egor run his hand over the wooden wall of our small parlor, rub it with his finger. He knocked at it, judging its thickness.
“It’s only for one year,” I told him. “This is not home.”
“Still better than the soldiers’ barracks.”
I could see the tensing of my husband’s jaw when he said it.
During the day, Darya followed her father around, demanding stories of his army life, or showing him what she had learned in his absence: a cross-stitch, a French verse, a curtsy. Egor took her for walks along the Great Perspective Road, from which they returned with bags tucked under their arms. “Let me do it, Papa,” Darya insisted, as she fished their treasures out to show me: a china doll with black shiny eyes, birch-bark boxes with dried fruit and comfits, a length of pearly pink satin for a dress, a string of red beads.
“For me. For you, Maman. For Masha.”
The afternoons were still too mild for fires, too bright for candles. On the table in the parlor, Masha spread her treats: bliny, dumplings, bowls of steaming borscht, slices of smoked sturgeon. For Egor, for the visitors who flocked to our rooms, eager for the news.
War, I heard, demanded careful preparations. Gathering of strength. Loyalty. Fortitude. Strategy was paramount. One did not fight on a whim; one imposed the conditions on the enemy.
They listened, Egor’s former comrades, most of whom I recognized from my husband’s days in the guards. Among the newcomers were two Orlov brothers, Grigory and Alexei from the Izmailovsky Regiment. Both barely over twenty, both tall and powerfully muscular. Grigory was the more handsome of the two, though only because Alexei’s face was disfigured by a scar that ran across his cheek. They moved into a house on Millionnaya Street, I had learned, ever since their parents died, and brought the other three Orlov brothers to live with them. Egor praised them for being “thick as thieves.”
Crowding our small parlor, sprawled on the ottomans, perching on windowsills like some giant green birds, they all listened to my husband’s words.
It was the politics that Egor found an irritation. The ever-changing orders. Having to tell his troops that yesterday’s enemy had overnight become an ally. Soldiers needed a simpler world, clear-cut differences, plainly visible goals. They needed one voice issuing commands.
“Hear, hear,” I heard when he finished.
Egor’s former comrades did not lower their voices. They did not hide their tight smiles, the discontent in their eyes.
Bears in a pit, I thought. Oblivious of the foxes intent on outsmarting them? Or ruthless enough to ignore the peril?
On Egor’s last evening, after Masha had put Darya to bed, my husband and I finally sat together alone.
It was of Darya that we spoke first, how her French improved, how her drawing master praised her talent for capturing likenesses of people and animals. How Egor’s commission and my living at court now allowed us to put money aside for her dowry.
The possibilities flew quickly between us, without effort. A future added up, hopeful, expectant. But then silence came, hesitant at first, then darkening and swelling in the dusk.
One of the candles began to smoke. I rose to trim the wick, but Egor stopped me. His hand was cool and dry on mine.
“Please,” he murmured, as if I intended to leave him alone.
I sat beside him.
A shadow flickered across Egor’s face, making him look worn out, as if he had merely paused during some long trek he would soon have to resume.
In the quiet of the evening, his voice sounded hollow.
It was not just the politics that he could not understand, Egor told me. Not just the alliances, shifting from month to month, as if Russia had no one in charge.
Army sword belts fell apart after first washing. The last batch of new recruits had to practice with wooden muskets, for there was a shortage of real ones. There were limits to sacrifice. What was happening in the palace? Was Mother Russia forgetting her sons?
I stirred and cast my eyes toward the door.
“Hush, Egor. There are no safe rooms here,” I whispered. “No one is ever alone.”
He gave me a long look of bewildered hurt. As if my words were an accusation. As if I did not know him at all.
“You didn’t marry a coward,” he said.
I felt the grip of his hand on mine. Stronger than I’d remembered it.
Later, after Egor had left, I recalled these words every time I slipped into my bed at night, snuggling in the familiar spot beside my daughter’s warm, dreaming body. I turned them in my head, assessed their weight.
A boast?
Or a promise?
There is one more memory of this summer—of Darenka, in the Oranienbaum aviary, among parrots, parakeets, canaries, helping Catherine feed them, holding out her small hand, hoping they would come and peck at the seeds she held. The memory of my daughter asking Catherine if she could let the birds out, into the garden, where they could fly where they wished to.
I recall Catherine’s warning.
When she was a child, she, too, once wanted to free birds from her aunt’s aviary. And so she’d left the door to the cage open.
“And what happened?” Darya asked her.
I froze, knowing too well that Catherine would not indulge my daughter’s desire for smooth and joyful endings.
“To me or to the birds?” she asked. “I was sent to bed without supper, and that was that. The birds did not fare so well.”
I watched Darya’s face as she pictured the images of Catherine’s story. Parrots pecked to death by other birds. Sparrows and thrushes her aunt had saved from death an easy prey for cats and neighborhood boys. The bloody scraps, the feathers flying. A cat with a limp bird in its mouth, surprised, perhaps, by the lack of struggle.
“You won’t ever do that to my birds, Darenka, will you?” Catherine asked.
I saw my daughter shake her head, stern and pensive.
In September, the court returned to St. Petersburg and settled down in the temporary palace on the Great Perspective Road. The entire east wing of the palace was taken by the Imperial Suite, the nursery, and the rooms of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting. The Grand Duke and his entourage were allotted an apartment right beside the Imperial Bedroom.
Peter was not pleased. His Holsteiner officers had been billeted in the house across the street. Das Fräulein and his maids-of-honor had to share one room. He had no place for his military displays and his maps.
The walls were thin. If he sneezed, the Empress would hear it.
There was no room in the temporary palace for the government offices, either. The Chancellor and his clerks took over a house on Millionnaya Street. “Noisy,” Bestuzhev complained when I inquired of the new quarters. The hammering and the sawing in the old Winter Palace went on day and night. Monsieur Rastrelli was determined to move the workers inside before the first frosts.
In the palace on the Great Perspective Road, Catherine’s suite—four large antechambers and two inner rooms with an alcove—was in the west wing, close to mine. The Empress, I thought, still wished to keep her far away from her child.
With the arrival of the court, the calm of the summer months ended. Once again I was at the Empress’s beck and call. A servant and a spy.
On the day the Empress arrived, a thief had been caught in the palace yard, his pockets bulging with silverplate. The fireplaces smoked, the floors squeaked. The antechambers teemed with visitors and petitioners. Ambassadors, Envoys, foreign visitors rubbed shoulders with portrait painters and carpenters, nobles and merchants, hoping for a commission. Wisely, Monsieur Rastrelli was keeping out of sight.
“Send them all away,” the Empress ordered.
I did.
By the time I returned, the Empress was lying on her bed, propped up by two fat pillows. Her hands and feet were swollen, her face oily with sweat. One of her maids was sweeping broken glass from the carpet. Another was trying to draw the curtains tighter.
“Where is my rosewood dresser, Varvara?” the Empress screamed. “I want it here. Right now.”
She didn’t wish to hear any explanations.
I sent the footmen to the attic for the dresser. I waved the frightened maids away.
I spoke of good omens. A litter of kittens, a new moon, a four-leaved clover. The cuckoo who counted out the twenty years still left to her. I kept my voice soft and soothing. Next door, in the nursery, the Grand Duke Paul was whimpering, protesting some ministration he would have to submit to. The gossip was that the baby was easily terrified and woke up screaming at night.
Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams was as frequent a visitor at the Great Perspective Road as he had been in the old Winter Palace. As everyone expected, the colonial war between England and France had spilled into Europe, whipping up old conflicts, forcing new alliances. The British Ambassador was trying to secure a treaty between England and Russia, a treaty that Chancellor Bestuzhev was ready to support but the pro-French Shuvalovs tried to kill.
It always came to this, a battle for Elizabeth’s mind, a battle in which all moves were permitted. Visitors followed visitors, all armed with flattery and gifts, all hoping to sway her in their direction. To Masha’s delight, even my paltry position in the Imperial Bedroom merited baskets of delicacies and toiletries, gifts of kid gloves and ostrich feathers, lengths of lace and fancy ribbons. All to buy a chance to cross the Empress’s path, a hint when to come and when to wait.
Sir Charles flattered the Empress shamelessly, declared himself smitten by her beauty, longing for her presence, quoting her own words, which he claimed were “unforgettable.”
I had seen her take this in like an eager puppy.
Sir Charles’s specialty was gossip from all the European courts he had resided at or visited, gossip he milked for all its worth. I heard him assure Elizabeth that Berlin was a mere hamlet beside the magnificence of St. Petersburg. Without its garrison of fourteen thousand, the German capital was practically empty. And scrawny Prussian women could not compare to Russian beauties.
Polish royal hunts were no match for Russian ones, either. “The sitting-down hunts,” Sir Charles called them. In the Polish forest of Białowieża, boars, wolves, and bears were put in cages so that the King of Poland could shoot at them upon their release. “No chase, no thrill. Your Imperial Highness would find it tediously boring.”
The Empress made a little snort of pleasure.
Once I walked in on the two of them talking of England. Elizabeth was convinced that the Russian troops could march all the way from St. Petersburg to London in two weeks.
“I’d have to agree,” Sir Charles said with a deep bow. He was not going to mention the existence of the sea that would have interfered with Elizabeth’s will.
It was after one of Sir Charles’s visits that I remarked to him how well he kept the Empress entertained.
“I aim to please, Madame Malikina,” he replied, with a twinkle in his dark blue eyes and a flash of his monocle. “Though I would not like the Empress to question me too closely on whose pleasure is most dear to me.”
I hesitated.
“You must excuse my directness, Madame,” he said. “But your devotion to the Grand Duchess has not escaped me.”
“I, too, aim to please,” I replied, impassively.
His full face lit up, smoothing the wrinkles around his eyes, an intricate network of laugh lines that gave him the appearance of a naughty boy up to some prank. “Then we have more in common than I could ever have imagined.”
I was not surprised that evening when a messenger from the British Embassy delivered a case of claret and a basket of preserves.
By mid-October, the court had settled into a routine of receptions and soirees, Russian Theater nights, broken by frequent trips to Peterhof when the Empress wished for more comfort.
For Elizabeth it was the time of card laying. Seven of hearts: broken promises. Ace of spades: bad news. Six of spades: gradual improvement. Ten of clubs: unexpected gift. For a while the jack of spades appeared in these readings in awkward places, overshadowed by doubt. When she changed to the tarot deck, it was the tower that showed up repeatedly, another sign of tensions brewing, a prediction of a violent release.
Fortune-tellers, bearded dziady, babas with toothless mouths, mumbled their warnings of a treacherous woman, a child’s life threatened with a sword, a sudden flight of seagulls. The business of the Russian court hung on the Devil’s bile and the shadows cast by angel wings. Audiences were canceled at the last moment; urgent documents were left unsigned. A departure was either rushed or delayed, a route diverted, a return postponed.
The Chancellor bristled at the delays. Whatever papers he had brought, Elizabeth had me tell him, could wait for another day. Ruling the Empire had been reduced to a waiting game. Swooping on the moment of Elizabeth’s benign mood, softened by an auspicious card, a dream.
Many a time I saw him walk away, dismissed abruptly from Elizabeth’s rooms, his shoulders stooped, rolls of papers under his arm. Once when we found ourselves alone, he could not restrain himself any longer.
“Did you manage to remind the Grand Duchess of my profound respect for her?” he asked.
“What did she say?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
He was waiting for me to say more, but I didn’t. Anticipating his disappointment I slyly glanced at his face, but all I saw was a little light of contempt.
By the end of October, the evenings were windy and icy-cold. Horses, their backs covered with blankets, spewed soft mist with every breath. On the Great Perspective Road, coachmen in long sheepskin coats stomped their feet, slapped their palms together, casting anxious glances at the palace doors, waiting for their masters to emerge. Every so often a hand dipped inside a coat to extract a flask for a quick sip.
“What are they doing?” Catherine asked as we slipped secretly out of the palace.
“It’s vodka. To keep them warm.”
“The Grand Duchess deserves to live a little, too,” Prince Lev Naryshkin had said. It was his idea, these evening gatherings of friends in his sister’s house on the embankment, as soon as the imperial carriage left for Peterhof. “No one needs to know.”
I saw the flash of childish joy in Catherine’s eyes at his words. Leaving the palace without permission from the Empress? In disguise?
“Will you help me, Varenka?” she asked.
I swore to her that I would keep her safe.
I kept my word.
I still smile at the memory, our hands hastily undoing the buttons of our gowns, letting the petticoats fall, lacing our stays tighter to flatten our breasts. Hers refusing to yield until I remembered the length of wide linen ribbon the midwife had given her after the accouchement to wrap herself with. I had smuggled the uniforms of the Preobrazhensky Guards into Catherine’s room, and now we both donned our disguises: white breeches, black jackboots, the fitted tunics of dark green woolen cloth that made us look so lithe and light.
An officer and his escort, ready for their night on the town.
I remember Catherine, standing at attention, clicking her heels, saying, “To think that everything might become useful”—meaning the hours she had spent practicing Peter’s drills, presenting an imaginary musket, learning to walk with the arrogant wide stride of a man.
I remember a knock at the door, a moment of panic, then the unsure voice of Madame Vladislavova asking through the door if she would be needed again before the morning.
“No, no. Go to sleep. I have everything,” Catherine assured her.
The service door, warped already, opened with a piercing squeak. Shielding the candle flame with my hand, I led Catherine through the corridor, past a hall where a sleeping groom opened his eyes, gave us a dull glance, then turned away into his dreams. We hurried into the street, the frigid winter air pricking our lungs. The rays of the moon lit up the fresh layer of snow.
On the Great Perspective Road a rattling carriage made the horses raise their heads. One of the coachmen, well warmed by the vodka in his veins, crooned:
Be so kind, oh joy of mine
As to try an apple from my tree
The singer’s large mustache was frosty white.
“A night out, officers?” he muttered. He looked down at our jackboots, unable to decide if we were trouble or an opportunity.
“What do you want for a few good sips from your bottle?” I called up to him.
Before I could stop her, Catherine fished a coin from her pocket.
The bottle changed hands quickly. It was a vile concoction. A fiery snake, a viper going straight into our brains.
Catherine’s eyes flamed with joy. Her gloved hand grabbed mine, strong and firm.
They were waiting for Catherine at Princess Naryshkina’s palace.
“My sister brought your bijou here.” Prince Naryshkin meant Count Poniatowski. “Anna and I expect a hefty reward for my powers of persuasion.” In the next room someone sang “Awake Awake.” Someone else demanded more champagne.
I turned to leave, promising to wait for the Grand Duchess at the palace. To make sure no one saw her return.
“No, Varenka,” Catherine said. “I want you here, at my side.”
Hesitation flickered in Prince Naryshkin’s eyes. A warning for a bookbinder’s daughter to beware of recklessly crossing boundaries. But the warning died as swiftly as it had appeared.
“Madame Malikina is most welcome.”
I followed Catherine into the Naryshkin parlor, taking note of the velvet burgundy curtains drawn over the windows, the opulence of the soft carpet and gilded armchairs. On the marble mantel a golden clock chimed nine, the simpering cherub perched on top glittering in candlelight.
The guests all gathered around Catherine, maids-of-honor, princes and counts, raising champagne glasses, laughing as Prince Naryshkin did his imitation of the Grand Duke playing the violin, struggling not to fall down.
Count Poniatowski was their guest of honor. Impeccable in his white jacket trimmed with silver thread, he rose at the sight of Catherine. A smile lit his handsome face.
“Your Highness,” he said.
“Catherine,” she corrected. Christian names only tonight, she demanded. No titles. No fuss. No ceremony. Just Stanislav, Anna, Lev, Varvara.
I took a step back, into the shadows.
“I’ll call you by your true name, then. Sophie,” Count Poniatowski said, bowing to kiss Catherine’s hand.
Was it the uniform? The boldness of disguise? The freedom from hooped dresses and petticoats? The swirl of vodka in her head?
Clicking the heels of her jackboots, Catherine lifted Stanislav’s hand to her own lips.
For an instant he hesitated. Then his look of surprise melted in sheer delight, erasing the clanking of food trays, glances of other guests straying toward them, erupting in knowing smiles.
The hostess kept ringing for the servants, summoning more and more food. Botvinia with salmon and parsley, honeyed cucumber, bliny dipped in sour cream. Borscht and fish soup. Quails. Stewed mushrooms. Astrakhan grapes.
Catherine in the Preobrazhensky uniform, seated in a chintz-covered armchair, ankle crossed on her knee, seemed both recognizable and unknown. It was Stanislav she spoke to most often.
“So what else have you learned from your travels?”
“That people have far more in common than they believe. That all societies, no matter how different, tend to call good what they consider useful for their survival.”
Her questions were the most pressing. Her laughter the most resonant.
They read the same books; they admired the same philosophes. They agreed that wars could often bring about unforeseen progress. They declared their fascination with paradoxes: A man says, “I am lying.” Is his statement true or false?
True.
Then he is not lying.
False.
Then he is lying.
Neither true or false? But how is that possible? How can something be true and false at the same time?
Their heads, his dark and powdered, hers black and shiny, leaned toward each other. I listened to their voices and to a crack of silence between them. I watched them withdraw from the safety of the gathering, melt into shadows. Over a glass shelf covered with curiosities, by the window with a view of the Neva, I heard them exchange words that signaled the quickening of danger.
“Must duty wipe out all happiness?”
“Should marriage be a prison?”
It was well past three in the morning when, heavy from food and wine, Catherine and I set off for the Great Perspective Road. Stanislav and Lev Naryshkin insisted on seeing us off. By the embankment, the shores of the Neva had frozen already, the northern night broken only by the fires the sentries lit, in search of warmth.
Catherine and Stanislav walked slowly ahead, stretching the remnants of the night. Lev Naryshkin, forced to keep me company, tried chasing me with his groping hands and vodka breath, until I pushed him away.
I thought of Egor, freezing in some distant camp. No rashes or itches so far, he had written in one of his short letters, for which the Russian soldiers can thank the heat of the banya. One of the letters contained a drawing for Darenka, showing her Papa shoeing a horse. Trying to learn everything, the caption said. To be ready when the need arises.
The Great Perspective Road was deserted by that hour, the sleighs all gone, leaving behind trampled snow and hardened balls of horse dung, but I insisted that Stanislav and Lev must leave us and let us walk on alone.
“The things Stanislav has seen, Varenka,” Catherine told me as we hurried together toward the palace. “The people who love him!”
He had seen the pink dawn over Île de la Cité, the blossom-lined paths of the Tuileries, the tamed cranes in the ménagerie de Versailles. The birds follow the visitors there, he had said, for they want to be noticed.
“Do you know what else he said, Varenka? ‘Just say the word, Sophie, and I’ll take you to see them.’ ”
Catherine and Stanislav. When he smiled, she smiled; when she frowned, he became thoughtful. So why do I also remember sadness?
Accounts of the Lisbon earthquake were trickling in every day, hushed, impossible. A hundred thousand perishing amid the debris. Homes crumbling, crushing those inside. Bodies piling up, mountains of twisted limbs, cast aside by the surgeons as they tried to stave off gangrene.
“How can it be, Maman?” Darya asked me, afraid to fall asleep. “How can the earth move?”
I held her in my arms, wishing her never to know the swiftness with which life can turn upside down. I whispered promises that earthquakes did not come to St. Petersburg, that such grand upheavals happened far, far away. “I’m here with you,” I promised my daughter. “I won’t go anywhere.”
It soothed her for a few days, but then came the night when she woke up screaming, “Papa is far, far away!”
Nothing I did or said that night would console her. It was Masha’s voice that finally lulled her to sleep with the old song she used to sing to Egor when he was little:
In the night, when the seas are rolling in
In the night, when the stars are shining clear
All Catherine’s escapades that winter began with furtive signs exchanged among her small coterie led by Prince Naryshkin. A tap on the right shoulder at the opera, a beauty spot on the chin. No words were necessary. She perfected the art of feigning fatigue, locking the door to her bedroom, demanding to be left alone, so that she could sneak out in disguise.
Whenever I could, I helped her. But there was only one more time that December that I accompanied Catherine to the Naryshkins’ parlor.
Stanislav was already there when we arrived. I caught a whiff of violet water, mixed with snuff. Behind him, Sir Charles hovered.
“Look at them, Varvara Nikolayevna,” the British Ambassador said to me, drawing me aside.
Catherine and Stanislav had moved across the room, into the shadows beyond the circle of candlelight. That night her disguise was a simple maid’s dress, hair tied into a knot, so plain-looking beside Stanislav’s elegant court jacket, the color of ripe aubergines. Deep purple, I decided, suited him better than white and silver. Their heads touched.
At least they were away from the palace, I thought.
“Our children,” Sir Charles called them.
It was impossible not to look.
Outside the parlor, the Neva, frozen solid, snowbanks lining the streets; inside, the warmth of the tiled stoves, the smell of melting wax, and the flurry of voices. It didn’t surprise me how quickly the talk turned to the news from Lisbon.
“Fate,” I recall Stanislav saying that evening in the Naryshkin parlor. “The divine plan for which there is no remedy.”
“But surely God teaches us lessons,” a voice argued.
Stanislav shook his head. “Lessons for which we are not ready and which we cannot comprehend. In spite of all the signs, premonitions, the movements of the stars and planets.”
“Let’s drink to ignorance, then,” Prince Naryshkin quipped, raising his glass. “My virtue of choice.” At the other end of the room, someone giggled.
Catherine was shaking her head.
“No,” she said. Too loud, I thought. Too impatient.
There was a hush.
“A catastrophe is not merely an act of blind fate,” she continued. “And we can learn from it.”
Her eyes brightened as she spoke; her voice soared. Her argument was simple: Those in Lisbon on the day of the quake were doomed, but not by fate. Mankind could think ahead, prepare for contingencies. If those who planned the city believed in smaller settlements, in living closer to nature, in lighter houses, evacuation would have been possible.
“It is in the human power,” she insisted, “to limit suffering.”
“Hear, hear,” Sir Charles echoed. The British Ambassador, too, believed in the power of human will. “We have faculties of reason,” he said. “We have traits of character we can change.”
I watched Stanislav’s cheeks flush. “Fate does not free us from trying,” he countered, “but we are not omnipotent. Think of the stray bullet that ends a soldier’s life. How can his will stop it?”
Voices rose, some puzzled, some adamant. “What if he ducks?” I heard someone ask. Someone quacked in response. Someone else called for more civility.
I was no longer listening.
Was it will that took me out of the bookbinding workshop on Vasilevsky Island into this fashionable salon filled with people for whom my father would have been nothing but a tradesman? Or fate? Was it will or fate that placed me, a bookbinder’s daughter, among these perfumed counts and countesses? What would I hear about myself if I were listening through the panels of their elegant salons? For them, was I a nobody always trying to put herself in the Grand Duchess’s good graces? A guard’s wife desperate for advancement? A spy?
The parlor shrank and expanded, dimmed and brightened. Unwanted, other thoughts rushed in, too. Was I Elizabeth’s only tongue in this room? Was anyone else watching? Reporting the many indiscretions committed so very recklessly? And to whom? To the Empress? To the Chancellor?
In a corner Lev Naryshkin was amusing his guests with a crude imitation of Elizabeth’s walk, his chin held up to hide the “turkey’s throat.” Who was making note of those who were laughing?
“You’ve grown pale, Barbara.” Stanislav’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Is anything the matter?”
Barbara, he called me. My Polish name.
“Be careful,” I whispered, dizzy from my thoughts.
“I am careful,” he replied.
He knew what could happen to a foreigner who lets himself go too far with the Grand Duchess of All the Russias. He knew of Elizabeth’s wrath. Of the knout that breaks the back. He knew of the frozen fields of Siberia.
He brushed my hand with his. He smiled.
No one will find out, I promised Catherine. Not the Empress, not Bestuzhev. Catherine and Stanislav became my secret.
Alone with the Empress, watching her cradle Catherine’s son in her arms, I began mentioning Lev Naryshkin’s name.
“He meows,” I said, “before he knocks on the Grand Duchess’s door. This is their secret sign. That’s when she lets him in.” I wished the Empress to believe that Naryshkin was Catherine’s lover. Stanislav, I wished her to think, was of no importance. Merely a foreign guest in awe of Russian splendors. Amazed and humbled by everything he saw.
“Should I tell the Grand Duchess that Your Highness is not pleased?”
“No, Varvara. Let her play.”
There was more, I told the Empress. Lev Naryshkin was a philanderer. Catherine was on course for another bitter disappointment; she was wasting her time on the intrigues of the boudoir. Time, I hinted, she will not have for politics.
Elizabeth listened, still deciding what use all this was to her, what sordid details she could still get out of me. I could see it in her eyes, watery blue, shiny, studying me.
I thought how the guards raged when they heard that at the banya, Das Fräulein now called Catherine “a scheming bitch.”
“She slips out at night in disguise,” I told the Empress. “In a guard’s uniform … or in a maid’s dress. He waits for her in the street. They go to his sister’s palace. She never even asks me about her son now.… She told the Grand Duke she had a headache and could not visit him. She doesn’t sleep much.”
Elizabeth looked me up and down, making her calculations. This is how it was: Women had to be watched. The one overlooked could be the most treacherous of all.
A soft, malicious chuckle, spiced with jealousy. “And what does my nephew Peter say about Naryshkin’s latest conquest?”
“Peter doesn’t know.”
“Then he should.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I agreed without hesitation. “I’ll make sure the Grand Duke is informed.”
Another pause, another chance to slip in a few chosen words. I spoke of good omens: Darya’s dream of a baby with a golden crown. A baby just like the Grand Duke Paul. The future revealed?
“Only to the eyes of innocent children,” Elizabeth said and sighed.
The mere mention of the baby Grand Duke always altered the Empress’s voice, made it gentle, unsure, almost puzzled. The Tsarevitch smiled in his sleep. He cried when she picked him up.
In his great-aunt’s arms, Paul blew bubbles of spit and pulled at her hair. He was declared musical, like his father, for he moved his hips to the sounds of the fiddle as he crawled and he loved banging cabinet doors. He was brave, for he no longer shrieked with fear when the nursemaids sat him on the big rocking horse that stood in the center of the nursery.
Catherine was not allowed to witness her son’s first smile, nor when he raised his head or sat up by himself. In the first year of Paul’s life, she had seen him nine times only, and never alone. Her presence did not make his face light up with recognition. Her voice did not lull him to sleep.
“You cannot do anything about it,” I told her. “But you can bear it in mind.”
A bargain had been forced upon her. As long as the Grand Duchess did not try to take her son back, Elizabeth would let her have her trivial indiscretions.
In the winter of 1755, Catherine no longer cried about it.
One morning, in the first week of December, I entered Catherine’s bedroom and smelled the sweet scent of violet water. This is when I knew that I had not foreseen everything.
“Was Stanislav here?” I felt my throat tighten.
“He loves me, Varenka,” Catherine said, her eyes besotted, glowing. “And I love him.”
“Oh, Catherine! When did he come here?”
“Lev brought him. He pushed him in.” She giggled, her hand resting on her lips. “It was all his fault.”
She sprawled on the bed, in her cream-colored satin nightdress with pink ribbons, her black hair loose and tangled.
“Did anyone see him?”
“No, Varenka,” she answered. “He left through there.” She pointed to the window.
I prayed Stanislav was wearing a hooded cloak that hid his face.
I didn’t tell Catherine of the attic above the rooms, the loose boards that made it easy to see what was happening below. I scrutinized the bedroom for the traces of the night. The stained sheets, that sweet smell of his eau de cologne.
My face must have revealed my terror.
“It was late. No one saw him, Varenka. There is no need to fret!”
I sprayed the sheets with Catherine’s own perfume. I made her sit at her escritoire and write a note to Lev Naryshkin. Beloved friend … your most precious visit … still thinking of you. It would be left on the desk for the maids to see.
She watched me, bemused, shaking her head.
“If we are lucky,” I said, shivering, “we might fool the spies—this time. But only just.”
There is nothing that divides the court more than the frenzy of approaching war. Prussia, lean and hungry, was casting its eyes toward its neighbors. Everyone agreed that this was dangerous for Russia, for it upset the balance of power. But this was the extent of agreement. Depending on whom one listened to, restoring this balance called for different steps.
Arguments sparked.
In the New World the British were relentlessly pushing the French from the colonies. Should Russia cast its lot with France—as the Shuvalov faction advocated—or should she sign a treaty with England, as the Chancellor argued? Who would be more likely, when the time comes, to help clip soaring Prussian wings?
The inner rooms of the Imperial Suite turned into a war cabinet, each faction trying to sway Elizabeth’s mind. Ordered to keep all visitors away, to watch out for anyone trying to sneak within earshot, I heard muffled voices behind closed doors. Bestuzhev’s, Vorontzov’s, the Shuvalovs’. Angry words, threatening, pleading, faltering into resigned silence: a deal … a treaty … salvation … treason.
The Chancellor was winning. With Sir Charles’s help, the Russian treaty with England had been negotiated, written and ready for the royal and imperial signatures. But as the papers were couriered between London and St. Petersburg, another seismic shift ripped the shadowy mesh of diplomatic possibilities. Without warning, the King of England withdrew from an alliance with Russia and offered his support to Prussia and Frederick the Great.
The palace seethed with injured pride, and Elizabeth hotly declared the British Ambassador an unwelcome guest.
The Shuvalovs rejoiced.
The Empress was getting restless. Was it because of the British treachery? I wondered. Or the inevitability of battles that could be lost? In one of her dreams, someone whose face she could not see handed her a note. You have taken what was not yours to take. Your days are numbered. Russia will pay for your sins.
“It was him. It was Ivanushka.” She muttered the name of the deposed Emperor. “The guards say that lights and shadows come to him, that he sees the future.”
At midnight, having sent her Favorite away to his rooms, she demanded plates of food: selyodka, the fat herring from the White Sea; Russian bread smeared with Altai honey; sugared plums dipped in brandy; nuts in drops of chocolate.
Unable to sleep, she wanted to hear of Ksenia, the heartbroken young widow who gave away all her possessions, put on her late husband’s uniform, and roamed the streets of St. Petersburg. Massaging Elizabeth’s swollen feet, I told her stories of Ksenia’s miracles: A baker from Mieshchansky Street who gave her some bread began to prosper himself. A hackney driver who offered her a lift made more money in a day than he had made all month. A mother followed Ksenia with her little son, begging her to bless him, and when she did, the child recovered instantly from rickets.
My rewards were a sigh, a few words muttered under her breath, or her imperial hand, wrinkled and swollen, extended so that I could kiss it before she sent me away.
The Chancellor’s diplomatic failure had been the source of much merriment among the Shuvalovs’ supporters. The Old Fox was losing his famed touch. His rabid distrust of France had clouded his political judgment. Where were his spies when Russia needed them? How much had the British paid him?
Stories flowed of Bestuzhev’s servants dispatched to the taverns to search for their drunk master. Once, a hackney driver brought him home at dawn, half-naked and dripping with water, muttering curses about some Gypsy’s tricks. Ivan Shuvalov’s uncle called the Chancellor a “has-been” in the Empress’s presence, although she had pretended not to hear.
The Old Fox, I heard, was spent and tired.
He would stop me in the corridor, smelling of camphor and expensive musk, asking if the Grand Duchess was still infatuated with Naryshkin.
A sense of exhilaration was urging me on. A spymaster can be deceived, too.
“Oh, yes,” I assured Bestuzhev. I told him how the Grand Duchess and Prince Naryshkin sat together in the opera box, laughing at Das Fräulein’s derriere swaying as she walked. “Like a horse the Paris brewers would love,” I said in my best imitation of Lev’s crackling banter. “Not that Naryshkin has ever been to Paris.”
The Chancellor managed a faint, sour smile. Powder could no longer mask the bloated, ruddy skin of his face.
“He wears a blue waistcoat when they are to meet at the opera,” I continued. “Green for the Russian Theater. It’s not love, though the Grand Duchess likes to say she loves him. She is still young. She wants to dance. She wants to be told she is pretty.”
I met his eye.
I smiled.
The spymaster’s own lesson: Good liars look you in the eye and smile.
He’d taught me well.
“Talk to her of love if this is what she wants to hear, Varvara Nikolayevna, but keep reminding her that her husband does not know what it means to rule. The Empress is not going to live forever. Politics is Catherine’s game, and she knows that.”
“Tell her I’m on her side.”
“Tell her she only has to give me a sign.”
“Tell her she needs me.”
Among the daze of tulle, lace, and ribbons, I covered my lips with a fan and mouthed my promises before turning away.
For me, Sir Charles’s disgrace at the Russian court brought many discreet invitations to the British Embassy.
Sir Charles needed a go-between to carry his words to the Chancellor and Catherine. I needed stories about him to tell the Empress. For, having banned him from her sight, she now craved gossip that would justify her anger.
Our own private treaty, we called it. Our alliance.
The hours we spent together were rare islands of calm in these feverish days, for the Ambassador cared as much as I did for keeping Catherine and Stanislav’s secrets. In the Skavronsky palace he rented on the Great Perspective Road, liveried footmen came and went, carrying refreshments, while we talked.
He had made inquiries about me, I was to discover, for he kept referring to Egor’s military achievements and his prospects. “Field Marshal someday, perhaps?” he would say with a nonchalant gesture of his hand.
Listening to Sir Charles was like listening to a prophet who demanded that I follow him to the top of a mountain to see beyond what I’d ever seen before, to survey all the roads I could take.
“The Grand Duchess will not stay the Grand Duchess forever, pani Barbara,” he said. Like Stanislav, he now used my Polish name. “But she will always need friends.”
The court in St. Petersburg was but one player on the chessboard of Europe, he told me. Russia was like Lisbon before the earthquake—on the surface, people went about their business, but underneath, great forces were shifting, ready to collapse or explode. The outcomes could surprise us all.
“The land of your father is in need of a wise ruler, so that no one ever again will have to leave Poland in search of prosperity elsewhere.”
He knew how to find words that went right to my heart.
Catherine the Empress of Russia. Stanislav the King of Poland.
Some dreams are more seductive than love.
We hardly ever spoke of ourselves during this time, though Sir Charles did get me to confess the forced circumstances of my marriage, and he acknowledged the existence of Lady Frances, with whom he exchanged dispatches as if she were a business partner rather than his wife. In the cut-crystal tumblers, Hungarian claret shimmered ruby red as we drank to our ambitions.
To the future Empress!
To the future King!
To their friendship!
To their love!
“My political son,” Sir Charles called Stanislav. Saturn was in the ascendant when he was born. The sign of the return of the golden age, of triumph over obstacles. Some saw a crown over his head. A double crown.
“Stanislav is not a dreamer. He knows the limitations of your country, Barbara. He wants an enlightened leadership, and an end to corruption. He is not alone. He has the support of his uncles, the Czartoryski clan. This is why he is here in St. Petersburg—to learn what is possible.”
To make sure the servants didn’t understand us, we always referred to the Empress as “the Great Obstacle” or “Yesterday.” Catherine was Colette, Stanislav “Le Cordon Bleu,” the Grand Duke “the Soldier.” The Chancellor was “the Old Fox,” or simply “the Devil.”
“The Dream” meant a strong Poland and an enlightened Russia walking together hand in hand.
In these tête-à-têtes it all seemed possible: Catherine becoming the Empress of Russia, using her influence to have Stanislav elected the King of Poland. The two of them, united in love, bound by trust, ruling two great nations, in unity and peace. We hardly ever mentioned Peter, as if his withdrawal into oblivion was already certain. Sometimes I could almost see him in Oranienbaum with Das Fräulein and his fiddle, building a model fortress or marching his Holsteiners in perfect formations, a child left to his own happy amusements.
How many times we drank to “the Dream,” buoyed by the signs that Providence itself supported us in these chilly days of winter! Empress Elizabeth was fading. Her shortness of breath was growing worse. Once I saw her surgeon’s assistant leaving her bedroom with a big bowl of yellowish liquid. I didn’t need to ask. Her swelling belly threatened to burst and had to be tapped.
Catherine told me that Ivan Shuvalov had come up to her and asked why she avoided him. “Let me take this very moment to express my admiration for you,” the Empress’s lover had said.
Stanislav told Sir Charles that the Polish King was dying, which meant another royal election. His uncles wrote from Warsaw that he should consider returning to Poland, “for such opportunities will not last forever.”
By March clouds swept in from the Gulf of Finland, dumping more snow on the streets and frozen gardens of St. Petersburg. Sir Charles and I were still carrying on our feverish conversations, the consultations of the demiurges bent over the blueprint of their new world.
Dangerous delusions, I say now, for we were merely trying to cover our own impotence with these plans for those we held so dear.
In the first week of March, Monsieur Rastrelli declared that the old Winter Palace—which only months before was still to form part of the new structure—had become an obstacle to his grand vision. The ceilings were too low, the foundations too flimsy. If he was to deliver what was expected of him, everything would have to be razed.
“Another year,” he said, pointing to the model two attendants carried into the Imperial Suite, drawing Elizabeth’s attention to the magnificent windows he envisioned. “Some might call it a significant delay, Your Highness,” he said, his vigilant eyes scanning Elizabeth’s face. “I would call it an unavoidable necessity.”
The Empress paced the room in anger.
Monsieur Rastrelli was not pleading for time. He pleaded for a chance to make the Russian palace grander than Versailles. Everything in it would draw a visitor’s attention. Quadratura techniques would “open up” walls and ceilings, turn flat surfaces into domes and galleries filled with golden light. Sculptures would capture movement in stone. Paintings and tapestries would entice with scenes of passions so grand that no eye could glide over them unseeing.
Rich, he promised. Golden. Bright.
Work would go on through the winter, he continued. Stoves would be installed as soon as the external structure was ready, so that the plasterers and carpenters could move in, come the first frosts.
“The jewel of Your Majesty’s palaces,” he crooned. “A tribute to Russia’s power. A setting worthy of the victories that will soon come.”
The silence that fell was long and tense. On the Empress’s face, promises of glory battled with her impatience; her hand flexed like a cat’s claws.
But then Elizabeth smiled, and I knew that the temporary palace would have to serve the court for a long time.
For Darya’s name day, Egor sent her a headdress embroidered with tiny pearls. To adorn my dark-eyed flower, he had written.
As hard as a helmet, I thought, as I watched my daughter put the headdress on, slipping it over her hair, as black and shiny as her father’s.
“Will you take me to the Empress?” Darya asked, holding the headdress in place with her hand. “I want to show it to her.” She was twisting her body in front of the mirror, trying to see herself from the side. Catherine had once told her that she had a Grecian profile.
“Why would the Empress wish to see it?”
“Because she is my friend.”
“Who told you that?”
“She did.”
“When?”
“When I was playing in the yard. She called me. She gave me a sweet apple. She said I could come to see her if I wished.”
“Did she say it, or did you ask?”
The signs of impatience: eyes cast to the ceiling, fingers clutching at the hem of her dress.
“I didn’t ask. But I wanted her to say it.”
“You must never bother Her Highness, Darya. The Empress has little time for trifles.”
A moment of calculation, doubt, washed out of my daughter’s eyes as swiftly as it had appeared. “Papa’s gift is not a trifle.”
“No, it isn’t. But you are just a child.”
“I’m older than baby Paul. And I don’t cry as he does.”
“You cried when you were his age.”
“That I don’t remember.”
“But I do,” I said, wishing for Egor’s presence, for his words to add weight to mine.
The headdress, carefully wrapped in twill, went back into its box. I tried to think how soon Darya could wear it. On Sunday, perhaps? To church?
I hid a smile as my daughter made a stern face. “You are just a child,” she murmured in imitation of me, a finger raised in the air. “When will Papa come back?”
“Soon.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No, not tomorrow.”
She turned away quickly, to hide childish tears, her hand clasping mine, and I suddenly remembered my mother’s tapered fingers curling around mine.
To make the temporary palace habitable for at least another year, carpenters reinforced the weakest walls, added a few partitions, replaced boards crusted with mold.
There was much grumbling at the announcement of the delay in construction, but I liked anything that made it easier to hide Catherine’s love. I blessed the chaos, the constant flutter of plans, abandoned and resumed. Orders were forgotten almost as soon as they were issued. The hairballs gathered in the corners; half-packed trunks stood abandoned in the attic; rooms were reassigned at an hour’s notice to escape leaky walls.
The Empress may have granted her permission for the delays, but that did not make her less irritable. For days after Monsieur’s Rastrelli’s visit, anything could trigger a vicious fit of temper. She dismissed a chambermaid who tarried with teacups. She slapped a hairdresser who took too long curling her hair.
I, too, felt her anger when I could not come up with instant answers to her constant questions. A pinch of my arm. A shove. “Is she still with Naryshkin?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“She goes to see him at his palace?”
“Yes.”
“Does he think I might make her Regent? Does he want to rule with her, that clown?”
“I don’t know, Your Majesty.”
“Then find out, you fool. Are they plotting against me? Is this British traitor helping her? I want to know what she is thinking.”
I ducked to avoid a snuffbox hurled with a scream.
“Hurry up! You are not the only tongue I have!”
Some stories pacify more than others: lowly horseboys leaving the British Embassy at dawn with cheeky smiles, goldplate under their coats. Sir Charles cursing his own king. Saying that Britain was making a big mistake by kissing the Prussian Frederick’s ass.
Anything, I thought, to hide those near-misses that Catherine would tell me about with such reckless amusement. Stanislav took her for a ride in his sleigh. A sentry in Peterhof stopped them. Stanislav said he was a musician the Grand Duke had hired, while she, in man’s clothes, could hardly stop herself from laughing. Their sleigh hit a stone, and she was thrown out into a snowbank. She had been knocked unconscious, and he despaired over her senseless body.
Catherine let me see the bruises on her ribs from that fall. A deep purple patch I touched with my fingertips, fearful she might have cracked her bones.
It was nothing, she said.
She was strong.
Stronger than I’d imagined.
“I saw Stanislav cry, Varenka,” she told me that day. “He vowed he would’ve killed himself if I died. He swore he didn’t want to live without me. He promised that if there is ever a choice between his happiness and mine, it’s my happiness he’ll choose.”
And then, at the end of April, Catherine’s dog, Bijou, showed me how easy it was to expose the truth. Stanislav and Count Horn, the Envoy of the Swedish King, arrived at the palace to pay their respects to the Grand Duke. It didn’t take them long to find a plausible excuse to visit Catherine’s rooms.
“I hope this is not an intrusion, Your Highness,” Stanislav said, with an elegant bow.
“A welcome intrusion, dear Count,” Catherine replied sweetly. “We rarely do anything of importance here.”
They talked for a while of the last ball, of the astounding progress of the renovations—the envy of the Swedish King, as Count Horn repeatedly declared.
The conversation between Catherine and her guests took its courtly turns, and my thoughts drifted toward Darya, who was next door, playing with Bijou. Recently my daughter’s questions had begun to worry me. “What does uppity mean?” she had asked, her smooth face pensive, fingers tugging at her black curls. “Why has Countess Shuvalova called you a bookbinder’s daughter?” She was almost seven, still just a child, so easy to hurt.
The door to the room swung open, and Bijou left Darenka’s side to greet Stanislav with a show of exuberant joy. The dog began barking wildly at the only stranger among us.
Count Horn said nothing, but his thin smile suggested that the significance of this moment was not lost on him.
I scooped Bijou up and carried him out of the room, taking Darya with me.
Count Horn was not deceived. Later, Catherine told me that he gave Stanislav a lecture on the usefulness of little Bolognese dogs in spying on their mistresses. He himself was in the habit of giving one to any woman with whom he fell in love. When a suspected rival appeared, all he had to do was watch the dog’s behavior.
Horn assured Stanislav that he was a discreet man and wouldn’t do any harm to him or the Grand Duchess, but neither Sir Charles nor I was comforted by this. Too many people knew the secret. Elizabeth would soon learn the truth.
“If anything happens to Stanislav,” I warned Catherine, “you will never forgive yourself.”
I armed myself with arguments. If Stanislav were accused of seducing the Grand Duchess, I reminded her, nothing would protect him from Siberia. A diplomat would be expelled, but the Count was just a private secretary, a foreigner at the St. Petersburg court. Stanislav must go back to Poland and return to Russia as a diplomat, protected by the Polish King.
“Couldn’t he stay one more week?” Catherine begged. “Or just a few days more?” But she knew there was no other way.
As soon as Stanislav departed for Warsaw, Sir Charles sought every chance he could to soothe Catherine’s grief. He entrusted me with his letters to her, and Catherine showed me some of them: Your future is bright, and so is his. Love him with all your heart, and you’ll find a way to bring him back to your side.
In May of 1756 French troops attacked a British garrison at the island of Minorca. The war had finally come to Europe.
England was Prussia’s ally.
The King of Prussia was Russia’s enemy.
Even an Empress’s tongue could no longer risk a visit to the British Embassy.
Once again jeweler Monsieur Bernardi began smuggling letters.