he dead come back, brush against me, thieves breaking into my nights, waking me up with a jolt of my heart, knocking about in the chimney. The wrong dead, unwelcome, unwanted, while those whom I love stay away. Go back to eternity, I say to their shadows.
But they do not leave. They know that I cannot bear their pleading. That my skin is too raw, my own doubts too grave, that I, too, am suspicious of the betrayals we who called ourselves Catherine’s friends delivered in these first six months after Elizabeth’s death.
In the corridors of the Winter Palace, where Elizabeth’s embalmed body lay in state, clothed in silver and crowned in gold, as her weeping subjects passed by the open casket, I felt like a gambler who had bet everything on one throw of dice: Let it be fast, so that what is new can begin.
But it didn’t begin, not for an agonizingly tense while. Those who had shrieked in horror at Peter’s antics when he was the Grand Duke were now fawning over him. After thirty-seven years, Russia was again ruled by a man! As if all that had gone wrong with Russia could be blamed on women and their whims.
There was no grand ceremony, no coronation at the Moscow cathedral. At the Senate Council, Peter III, the new Emperor of All the Russias, flanked by the Shuvalovs, fired off his orders. From now on, no noble would be forced to serve the Tsar against his will. No soldier would be flogged with the knout. Speaking against the Emperor would no longer be a crime, and it would not have to be reported. The Secret Chancellery would be abolished. The Good and Merciful Tsar, the true father of Russia, had no need to spy on his children.
Not a day passed without an announcement, a proclamation, a ukase, and yet another appointment.
Ivan Shuvalov, no longer satisfied to be a mere curator of Moscow University, was put in charge of the infantry, marine, and artillery corps in St. Petersburg. Two of his uncles became Field Marshals, though neither of them ever smelled powder or drew a sword. Most of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting left the court for their estates, but the ones who stayed received positions within Peter’s inner circle. The Emperor, I heard, wished to assure the future of everyone who had been of use to his beloved aunt.
In the temporary palace, I waited for summons, but none came.
“Ask Peter to assign you to my entourage, Varenka,” Catherine urged me. “Beg him if you must.”
Dressed in her taffeta mourning dress, a black fichu over her hair, Catherine never spoke about her own waiting for invitations that never came. “My friends haven’t deserted me, Varenka,” she told me once, when I brought her another letter from Stanislav. “Even if I couldn’t have been as true to them as I had wished.”
The Stewardess of the Household gave me a hesitant glance when I listed my old positions: the reader to the Grand Duke, the Chief Maid of the Imperial Bedroom. I kept my voice even, not too insistent. The large carved desk that separated us was covered with files tied with green ribbons. Behind her, her ashen-faced attendant was taking notes.
“I have been of use,” I said.
The new Winter Palace still smelled of paint, varnish, and wet plaster. Das Fräulein had claimed Ivan Shuvalov’s apartment, right above the Imperial Bedroom, from which carpeted private stairs led to the Emperor’s suite. Her entourage was twice as big as Catherine’s, who was not yet invited to name her own ladies-in-waiting. The day after the state funeral, the new Emperor’s official Favorite was seen wearing Elizabeth’s jewels.
The Stewardess of the Household sighed and told me to come back in a week. But when I did, she had no time for me at all. It was her assistant who assigned me to the Imperial Wardrobe. The Chief Seamstress, she lisped, needed help. The late Empress left fifteen thousand ball gowns alone. There were shoes and silk stockings. There were purses, parasols, gloves, kokoshniks, and fans to sort through.
“If it suits you, Madame Malikina, that is,” she said in a brisk voice.
“I’m most grateful,” I replied.
The assistant cast a quick glance at her notes, avoiding my eyes. My daughter and I could remain in the temporary palace for the time being, she told me, but I should soon start looking for my own lodgings. The quarters at the Winter Palace were not for everyone.
The memories of the days that followed come entangled in brocades, patterned velvet, and embroidered silk. They take the shapes of caftans, sarafans, and tulle veils. Panniers and wigs. Skirts and overdresses. Entire chests of drawers are filled with panels for the sleeves, trains, and bodices, ready to be assembled into an evening gown at a day’s notice. Baskets overflow with silk undershirts. Whiffs of sour air mix with faint scents of rose water and almond milk, and everyone repeats stories of the new Tsar.
In the evenings, I crossed the corridor to Catherine’s rooms armed with words that stained.
“Inspections,” the Emperor insisted, “unexpected and unannounced,” were the essence of governance.
He swooped down constantly on the army barracks to check the state of uniforms, on the mint to weigh the coins, into the government offices to find which senior official valued his morning sleep more than his duties.
“I didn’t think that they had so much love for me,” he said of the Palace Guards saluting him as he rode past.
He made faces at the crows circling the snow-covered fields. He lolled out his tongue at the Celebrant during Liturgy. He played his fiddle for four hours straight. He called Russia “an accursed land.” He threw himself on his knees before the portrait of Prussia’s Frederick the Great, vowing, “My brother, we will conquer the universe together!” He pushed the prettiest of his ladies-in-waiting into a room with the Prussian Envoy, urging them “to improve this barbaric race with some good blood.”
A moth, I thought of him then, drawn to the flame, blind to anything except the flickering candle. Such was our Tsar. Such was our future, if nothing was done to stop it.
Catherine listened as I spoke, looking up from her books and papers. The ample folds of her mourning dress hid her belly, heavy with child. Her dangerous secret was well kept, wrapped in excuses of migraines that demanded lying flat in a darkened room, with just old wheezing Bijou for company.
“Does he speak of me at all, Varenka?”
“I hear that he calls your mourning for the Empress ‘theatrics.’ Who is my wife fooling, he asks everyone, with these black shawls of hers? How long is she going to stand in the chapel like an ugly black crow, crossing herself?”
“Does anyone laugh?”
“A few.”
Quite a few, I knew but did not say.
The Shuvalovs cast their nets wide. Word had been sent out: Join us and you will be rewarded. As soon as it became clear Peter was not going to consult his wife on anything, those who had declared their support for Catherine began to waver.
At the new Winter Palace, Catherine’s name evoked frowns of concentration, as if the memory of her had to be dragged out from somewhere deep. The Emperor’s estranged wife, I heard dismissive whispers, hiding away. What shall it be for her? Some distant country estate? Or a monastery cell?
Ailing, I heard, pushed aside, visited by only a few.
Her ills were of little consequence. Like her friends. For what did they have to defend her? Stories of blunders repeated in desperation?
Was that all?
For the second time in my life, I thanked God for the Orlovs.
The Palace Guards, Grigory and Alexei assured me, did not forget their misgivings. They never failed to notice when the Emperor appeared in public not in the Preobrazhensky greens but in the blue uniform of a Prussian colonel. When he replaced the Russian Order of Saint Andrew with the Order of the Black Eagle, a treasured gift from the King of Prussia.
“Our time is coming, Varvara Nikolayevna. As soon as the baby is delivered. As soon as Katinka is well enough!”
The Orlovs’ time, I called it in my thoughts, heady, dangerous, and rushed. Grigory and Alexei on the prowl, gathering allies, promising, threatening, cajoling, haggling for support. Ivan, Fyodor, and Vladimir awaiting orders in their big house on Millionnaya Street.
The five Orlov brothers, thick as thieves. All behind Catherine, pregnant with one of the brothers’ child.
Grigory and Alexei didn’t care if anyone watched them. In the temporary palace, emptier with each passing week, the floors shook under their swaggering steps. Every evening, they brought news of yet another disgruntled officer, another member of this or that noble family pledging their support. When Catherine’s voice faltered, when she paused, when her hands rested for too long on the swell of her growing child, the two brothers would exchange glances and break the seriousness of the moment with one of their skits: The Orangutan and his Prussian Master, The Last Oranienbaum Feast. Not much more than youthful merriment, I decided, but enough to make Catherine laugh.
“We’ll push him to his knees … teach him a lesson he won’t forget.”
I, too, could not stop myself from giggling when Grigory Orlov, his voice turned shrill, waved his hands madly or marched with stiff legs in the imitation of a Prussian goose step.
Ever since the Secret Chancellery had been abolished, men calling themselves former spies peddled denunciations by the dozen or traded in seedy tales. Sins once entrusted to a priest at confession were sold by the dozen. “If you do not buy yours,” the sellers whispered, “someone else will.”
From his exile in Goretovo, former Chancellor Bestuzhev no longer complained that crows fighting over carrion provided his only entertainment. He had written to the new Tsar, begging to be allowed back at court, but his letter had gone unanswered. To me he offered the wisdom of country proverbs, which, he was sure, would also please the Grand Duchess: When the cat is away, the mice will play. When harvest is weighed, one cabbage can tip the balance.
I threw his letter into the flames. For me, time had assumed the shape of Catherine’s rounding belly, the tightening of her skin, the steady kicks of a baby’s foot.
A woman’s time brings its own conclusion, hopeful but unsure of its end.
By the end of February, Catherine only visited the Winter Palace to see her son.
Paul would turn eight in September. He was wetting himself at night and had started to suck his thumb again. On the day Count Panin told him that his father had become Emperor, Paul blinked his eyes and asked only what happened to his aunt’s cat Pushok.
The new Imperial Nursery with its view of the winter road across the snow-covered Neva was three corridors away from the Emperor’s suite, and Catherine could come and go without being seen by anyone except Count Panin, his Governor.
She told me of these visits when we were alone, her voice strained with pain. Did you sleep well? she would ask her son. Did you like the book I brought you? Will you show me your drawings? Paul would hide his face in the folds of his nurse’s apron and shake his head. If Catherine implored him to look at her, he would lift his head long enough to reveal his florid face and then hide it again.
“This is Peter’s doing, Varenka,” Catherine seethed. “He wants to keep me away even from my own son!” I didn’t like to see her eyes flare, her fingers snap. There was a baby in her womb. Babies were shaped by their mothers’ thoughts, harmed by them.
Nothing Catherine said or did in that nursery made any difference. Her son’s small face puckered in a stubborn grimace at the sight of her. What could she do but leave in tears?
“Can you go to Paul, Varenka?” she asked me after one such disastrous visit. “And take Darya with you?”
The thought enticed her, softened her face.
It would calm her greatly, Catherine continued, grasping my hand in hers, bringing it to her heart. The mere thought of our children playing together. The chance, however slight, I or Darenka might have to assure her son that he had a mother who loved him.
I can still hear Catherine’s plea. So fervent with hope.
“We have been friends for so long, Varenka. We both have witnessed the power of malice. We know how much has been destroyed already. We know what is at stake.”
How could I not agree?
By March, nightmares came. Dreams of bellies splitting open, of waters flooding the room. “As if sent by the Devil, Madame,” the trusted maid who had come to fetch me blithered.
I hurried across the corridor to Catherine’s bedroom. Her teeth were chattering; her lips were livid. She muttered about babies swaddled in cobwebs, babies with fins and flaps, babies with no mouths, with no eyes.
She, too, had been to Kunstkamera. She, too, had seen Peter the Great’s monsters.
Having sent Masha to Millionnaya Street for the Orlovs, I’d offer her tea sweetened with white honey, a glass of malinovoi, raspberry kvass. When these didn’t help, I’d suggest a brisk walk along the empty corridors.
By the time we returned to her rooms, Grigory Orlov would be waiting. “Silly Katinka,” he’d mutter, scooping Catherine up in his arms as if she weighed less than a feather.
I’d wait until the doors to her bedroom closed, and then I’d leave.
In the first week of April, Peter III, the Emperor of All the Russias, came to the Imperial Wardrobe on one of his famous inspections. He was dressed in Prussian blue. Das Fräulein was clinging to his arm, her black eyes gliding through the dresses spread on tables, assessing their worth.
“That was all hers?” she exclaimed. On her finger, a garnet ring flickered in the light. Blood-red, set in white gold. Elizabeth’s favorite. Her eyes passed me as if I did not exist.
The Emperor of Russia took off his wig. His thinning scalp was covered with blistering wounds, the result of constant scratching.
“So this is where you are now, Varvara,” he said, turning toward me. “I was wondering what happened to you. Have you been treated well?”
He put the wig back on, glancing at the dressing mirror to see if it was straight, but right away he noticed a basket filled with wooden dolls, Elizabeth’s pandoras. He picked up one of them, naked, with twisted limbs, and waved it over his head, like a trophy.
“Yes, Your Highness,” I answered. “I’ve been treated very well.”
“Good,” he said, tossing the pandora back into the basket. “Show me the ledgers, then.”
The Chief Seamstress handed me the heavy bound ledger and stepped back, marred with resentment for being overlooked. The other seamstresses bent over their sewing, trying to steal glances at the Tsar. I could already imagine their gasps after his departure. How handsome, how elegant, how splendid, how kind.
I opened the volume at random, pointing at the lists of evening gowns, morning dresses, costumes from Elizabeth’s masquerades.
Das Fräulein yawned, but Peter paid her no heed. He licked his thumb and turned the pages, staring at some of them longer than others. I wondered what caught his attention. The description? The price paid? The names of new owners beside the dresses that Elizabeth had given away as gifts?
He closed the ledger, frowning.
“It’s all in Russian,” he complained.
I kept silent. Would he order us to keep the books in German? Or French?
He didn’t. He handed me a sheaf of papers instead. Letters, I noted, petitions. In one of them, Mr. Porter, a St. Petersburg cloth merchant, complained of not being paid for his last delivery. In another, a wardrobe maid asked for a silk chemise the Empress had promised her before she died.
I said I would look into them right away.
“Good,” Peter said. There was a broad grin on his face. I could see Das Fräulein lean toward him, her fingers picking something invisible from his shoulder. A hair? A thread?
The inspection was over.
I was waiting for the Emperor to leave, but he turned to me one more time.
“You were my friend once,” he said, in a subdued, boyish voice I recalled from the time I used to read to him.
“I am still your friend, Your Majesty.” I tried to make my own voice steady and firm.
He looked at me with sharp intensity, as if considering my answer, but his next question had nothing to do with me anymore.
“I hear that the Grand Duchess is still writing to Count Poniatowski? Is this true, Varvara?”
I muttered some elaborate protestation, only to see it dismissed with a snap of his fingers. When his eyes narrowed, my heart skipped a beat. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. It was prickly and sharp.
“Some call me a fool, Varvara. But it is safer to deal with honest fools than with great geniuses. My wife will squeeze you out like the juice from an orange, and then throw away the rind!”
It was her third baby, and it came out without fuss. “I’ve gotten good at it, Varenka,” Catherine murmured, as the midwife fiddled with swaddling clothes.
On Thursday, April 11, I held Grigory Orlov’s newborn son, red-faced, sucking on my finger, but falling asleep as soon as I handed him to his mother. He was the first of her children that Catherine had been allowed to hold.
Outside the birthing room, Grigory Orlov was pacing the floor, waiting.
I opened the door. Grigory rushed toward me and grasped my hands. “Katinka?” he breathed. “Is she well?”
I nodded. I tried to tell him he had a son, but my voice choked with relief. I merely stepped aside to let him in and stood at the door, waiting for Catherine’s sign.
They didn’t have much time. Enough for an embrace, a few endearments. The letters Catherine had written to be delivered in case she died in childbirth were now burning in the fireplace, their seals intact.
Alexei Orlov had promised to protect us, and he had kept his word. With a few fellow guards—all members of the conspiracy to put Catherine on the throne—he had set fire to an abandoned house near the temporary palace to prevent anyone from hearing Catherine’s screams. It was a grand fire, I heard it described later, flames leaping through the walls and out of the windows. The ceilings crashed, the beams fell among the sparks and billowing smoke. Chickens flew from a coop, their feathers singed; squealing pigs ran madly around the courtyard. The throng of onlookers guaranteed that no one leaving the palace on the Great Perspective Road with a bundle in her arms would be followed.
It was Catherine who named the baby Alexei Grigoryevich.
She kissed her second son on his sweet lips before giving him to me and turning away. I bundled him in a beaver skin and took him to the couple who had agreed to keep him. The former valet and his childless wife cooed with happiness when I placed the baby in their arms. “Until his mother can take him back,” I told them. “Only until then.”
As soon as Catherine had delivered safely, révolution de palais was all we thought about.
The Orlovs had been right. Five months into Peter’s rule, the conspiracy was growing bigger than the suspicions of the Palace Guards.
In May, the Russian army under Suvorov took the fortress of Kolberg. The victory was considered decisive. Everyone spoke of crushing the Prussian forces and occupying East Prussia.
At first Peter did not hide his displeasure at the Prussian defeat, but then he did something much worse: He offered Frederick peace. “The miracle of the House of Brandenburg,” the King of Prussia would call it. Peace without strings, without demands, a turnaround that saved Frederick’s tottering kingdom.
St. Petersburg tensed with disbelief.
Is this our payment for the husbands, sons, brothers slaughtered in the battlefields of Gross-Jägersdorf and Zorndorf? people asked.
As more accounts of the Prussian rejoicing at their unexpected good fortune arrived, Alexei’s months of cajolings and promises began to pay off. Count Cyril Razumovsky, the brother of the former Emperor of the Night, pledged his support for Catherine. So did Prince Trubetskoy and Prince Repnin. Only Count Panin, the Imperial Grand Duke’s Governor, hesitated. He admired the Grand Duchess, he said, but he didn’t want another woman on the Russian throne.
“Not even as Regent for her son?” Alexei enticed him.
Every time I came to deliver my reports, Catherine looked more radiant. It didn’t matter that she woke up at dawn and stayed up late into the night. Her reading abandoned, she was sending requests for loans, negotiating securities, soothing the impatient with assurances of rewards. On Vasilevsky Island, a printer who had remembered my father and promised me utter secrecy was printing Catherine’s proclamation: … freedom from all dejection and offense … freedom from force and from fear. The promise that her Russia would be ruled by reason and law. Count Panin—finally convinced that Catherine would rule as Paul’s Regent—had joined Catherine’s conspiracy.
My daughter spent every Monday afternoon in the Imperial Nursery, playing with the Grand Duke Paul. Masha or I would take her there, and the maids let us in without fuss.
Darya delighted in these visits. There were charades to solve, spinning tops, whistles, a big rocking horse to climb. She and Paul ran along the corridors of the palace or played hide-and-seek in the empty rooms around the nursery. Sometimes Paul asked her to read him a story; sometimes she taught him a dance step she had just learned.
“Did you tell the Grand Duke that his Maman misses him?” I asked Darenka whenever I could.
She did, but her words never merited more than a shrug of shoulders or an embarrassed look.
It did not surprise me.
Paul doesn’t need words but time, I thought. Time with his mother. Time together. The quiet time filled with childish trifles. The time that healed.
But there was no point in telling Catherine what she already knew only too well.
In June, with the white nights, impatience set in. By the embankment, sunlit even past midnight, stray dogs roamed, filling the air with their snarls, growls, and yelps of pain. On the Great Perspective Road, smells of frying lard wafted in the air at all times, mixed with the aroma of bread baking and of malted barley.
At the Imperial Wardrobe, Elizabeth’s gowns that had not been claimed by Das Fräulein or the ladies-in-waiting were being disassembled, turned into panels of fabric and trims. Dressmakers of St. Petersburg’s fashion houses were making their bids, assuring the best lengths of ribbons, lace, and embroidery for their outfits. What wasn’t bought vanished. Scraps of imperial fabric were already sold in the stalls of the Tatar market, and soon Elizabeth’s favorite pink would flash in the trims of dresses merchant wives wore to Sunday Mass.
In the temporary palace, Catherine’s maids began packing, but it was not for the annual summer move to the country. This year, the Emperor announced his intention to go to Oranienbaum with Das Fräulein and his son. If the Grand Duchess wished to escape the heat of the city, she could stay in the old Monplaisir Pavilion, on the grounds of the Peterhof palace. And in August, as soon as the court is back in St. Petersburg, Catherine would have to move to her four rooms at the Winter Palace, five corridors away from the Imperial Suite.
The temporary palace had been an eyesore far too long. It would be razed to the ground.
In our own rooms, Masha had swathed Egor’s portrait in old sheets; she had gathered Darya’s old toys and dresses, ignoring my pleas to make presents of the ones she had outgrown to the scullery maids. “Never know what becomes useful,” she muttered, her lazy eye sliding away as I looked at her. Besides, there was no need to be stingy with space. She had heard that in the new Winter Palace even Das Fräulein’s maids had quarters twice as big as those we lived in.
“Isn’t it where we are going?” she asked. “The palace?”
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t believe in tempting fate.
The révolution de palais, I knew, was a gamble, like all palace games.
What would it be, victory or destruction? I asked myself when I looked at my daughter at her lessons or at play. In the last months, her body began to reveal her grown-up shape. And yet she’d often give me a soft, pliable look, as if she were still a small child. On the table beside my bed lay a book of fairy tales, beautifully bound and gold-tooled, a present from Count Poniatowski. He was hoping for news, however trivial, asking if I reminded Sophie of his promise to come back. Some dreams, he wrote, cannot be abandoned, without losing part of your soul.
I shuddered and chased the future away.
I didn’t want to think of my daughter having to live with only the memory of my touch.
And then, on the eve of the court’s departure to Oranienbaum, a troubling incident took place.
A the state banquet, Peter began the celebration with a toast to the Imperial Family. Everyone at the table rose with boisterous enthusiasm, ready to drink. Everyone except Catherine.
“To the health of the Imperial Family,” Peter repeated, staring at his wife.
Guests and courtiers froze, unsure of what they were witnessing. Did the Tsar want Catherine to stand up when he himself was seated? Weren’t they drinking to her health as much as to his? Surely he was not telling Catherine that she didn’t belong to the Imperial Family?
The silence that fell was long and uneasy.
“To the health of the Imperial Family,” the Emperor repeated, finally taking a sip of the wine, and everyone drank with relief.
The banquet continued, cups skating in their saucers, napkins soiled with trickles of butter and dark mushroom sauce, glossy lips opened wide. But as soon as the toast was complete, Das Fräulein had turned toward the Emperor. She shook her head and stroked his arm. He leaned toward her, craning his neck.
Moments later, one of the Emperor’s generals made his way toward Catherine. In a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, he said, “His Majesty wishes to know why Your Highness did not rise from your seat.”
“Doesn’t the Imperial Family consist of Your Majesty, myself, and our son?” Catherine had become very pale, but her voice showed no trace of hesitation. Everyone fell silent.
“Dura!” the Emperor screamed.
Fool. The Emperor had called his wife a fool.
I learned all this a few hours later, in Catherine’s room in the temporary palace, from Alexei Orlov, who had begged me to help his brother calm the Grand Duchess. “He’ll pay for it, Katinka, I swear.” Grigory Orlov’s enraged voice broke through Catherine’s sobs. “I won’t let him humiliate you like this.”
She was still in the same mourning dress she’d worn to the banquet, the milky-white skin of her shoulders gleaming through the black lace. Her sobs were muffled by Grigory’s broad shoulder.
“That coward. That milksop.” Her lover’s voice bounced off the walls freshly stripped of draperies. “He’ll beg for your pardon. For your mercy. You’ll see, Katinka. You’ll see.”
I added my voice to Grigory’s.
“Your friends are all behind you,” I told Catherine. “We are watching. We won’t forget anything.”
But Catherine would not be consoled.
“You’ll go to Peterhof, Katinka. You’ll wait there until we get everything in order. I’ll come to you with news every week.”
I saw Grigory’s big hand caress Catherine’s back, slide down the shiny taffeta of her mourning gown, linger at the base of her corset. “At the end of August, when he comes back to St. Petersburg, we’ll arrest him at the gates. We’ll bring him to you in chains.”
When she still did not raise her eyes, I prayed that we wouldn’t have to wait that long.
In the morning of June 28, the eve of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the name day of the Tsar and his son, Alexei Orlov burst into my parlor at the temporary place with the news: Our Lieutenant Passek had been arrested.
The Emperor was staying in Oranienbaum with Das Fräulein and the Grand Duke. Catherine was in the Monplaisir Pavilion on the outskirts of the Peterhof gardens, where, on the following day, the splendid feast would begin.
In his well-worn riding trousers and a tight-fitting jacket, Alexei looked like any young veteran of the Prussian War, unsure of what to do with himself. I smelled vodka on his breath.
“There is no more time left, Varvara Nikolayevna,” he told me. Passek knew the location of the printed copies of Catherine’s manifesto announcing her accession to the throne. One round of torture might be enough to expose our conspiracy. Catherine must be brought to the capital immediately. She must claim the throne now, while the Emperor was still in the dark.
Sweat was moistening the crease of my underarms and beneath my breasts. Through the crack in the curtains the morning light was streaming into the room as it might into a prison cell.
I studied Alexei’s face, the jagged shape of the scar across his cheek. A memory came of his joking explanations for its presence: a Prussian saber, a touch of the unicorn’s horn.
“I’ve taken him where he is safe,” Alexei said.
He meant Grigory’s son, his little nephew, who gurgled with pleasure when I bent over him. Last time I visited I’d heard his wet nurse call him “our golden Tsarevitch.” She’d given me such a pained look when I told her to watch her tongue.
I noted the flash of pride when Alexei pronounced his nephew’s name: Alexei Grigoryevich. Son of Gregory.
Did I guess it already? The depth of the Orlovs’ ambition? The weight of debts she would owe them? If I did, I wouldn’t admit such thoughts. Not even to myself.
Egor flashed to my mind, his bitter voice complaining of the court intrigues that sapped the strength of the army. “As if Russia didn’t have true enemies,” he had told me. Thrusting our copy of the Court Calendar into my hands, Masha asked me to look for the names of soldiers from Egor’s regiment who had been decorated or promoted. There were so precious few of them. What could I tell my servant when she wondered what her master would’ve been had he lived? Still a Lieutenant? Still in debt?
I thought of Paul, in Oranienbaum, of the feverish chaos that would greet the first news of the coup. Empty corridors, distraught nurses. Promise me you’ll keep him safe, Elizabeth had said on her deathbed. Swear it on your daughter’s life.
“I’ll go to Oranienbaum,” I told Alexei Orlov. “I’ll take Darya with me. Paul knows us well. He’ll go with us when I tell him to.”
Alexei flashed me a quick, sharp glance. “You are not afraid?”
“No,” I lied. “Where is Grigory?”
Grigory was with his regiment, assuring the Izmailovsky support. The other three Orlov brothers were in their Millionnaya Street home, awaiting his orders.
In the other room, Darya was asking Masha, “Is it Uncle Alexei? So why can’t I see him, too?”
“I have to go, Varvara Nikolayevna,” Alexei said. “Tell Darenka I’ll come back.”
I told Masha to bring our traveling clothes. “Fast,” I urged. “We are leaving right away.”
I calculated the distance: twenty-eight versty from St. Petersburg to Peterhof. Fifteen more to Oranienbaum. Six hours in the carriage, if I changed horses twice on the way.
My old servant gave me a long, dark look with her good eye. She knew what was happening, for I had no choice but to trust her with our secrets. If the coup succeeded, I would bring Catherine’s firstborn son to the Winter Palace. There, guards from all regiments would protect him. If the coup failed and I was arrested, Masha would take Darya and go west, to Warsaw. Hidden in the double bottom of a leather trunk, beside gold ruble coins, there was a letter addressed to Count Poniatowski, a plea to take care of my child.
I heard Masha murmur a blessing. I felt her hand on my forehead. My servant’s fingers, I noticed, were beginning to bend at odd angles. I had seen her struggle to thread a needle.
Darya sensed that this was not an ordinary outing. “Where are we going, Maman?”
“To Oranienbaum,” I replied, trying to make my voice cheerful. “To visit the Grand Duke Paul.”
But I thought, To keep an old promise, an oath I gave on your life.
At the Oranienbaum palace I ordered the driver to take us to the back entrance. I hoped no one would pay attention to an unmarked carriage that would leave the moment we were safely inside.
As soon as we alighted, I straightened Darya’s dress and took her hand in mine. “Slowly,” I told her. “We don’t have to hurry now.”
We made it through the service hall, onto the back stairs to the second floor. At the top of the stairs I stopped to take a look at the corridor we had to walk along. It was deserted.
We walked past the portrait of Peter the Great on a horse, piercing a bear with his lance, past the billowing tapestry of Adam and Eve in Paradise, surrounded by cavorting lions and lambs.
From behind the nursery door came Paul’s laughter followed by a happy squeal and the patter of feet. Then, suddenly, the door banged open and the Emperor ran out, hands over his head. A pillow came after him but missed and landed on the floor. My heart thundered wildly.
“You didn’t get me,” Peter sang in a funny opera voice.
The nursery door closed with a loud thump. Inside, Paul screamed, “I did. I did.”
I hesitated, but we were too close to turn back unnoticed, and there was nowhere to hide. Not with Darya beside me, already anticipating Paul’s delight at seeing us.
The Emperor, in his worn blue housecoat, without a wig, was still laughing when he noticed us. “Varvara Nikolayevna. What are you doing here?”
I curtsied and pulled at Darya’s hand, and she followed my example. But the Emperor waved his hand.
“No need for ceremony. This is not the Winter Palace.” He winked at Darya, motioning for her to approach him. I let go of her hand, and she made a cautious step forward.
“The Grand Duchess sent me, Your Majesty,” I said, pointing at the nursery door. On the other side of the door came the thumps of someone running. “With a name-day present,” I added, quickly. And then I cursed my own stupidity. Anyone would notice that my hands were empty.
I wondered if the Emperor even heard me, for he was busy pointing to his pocket. I saw Darya’s hand dive there and retrieve a handful of bonbons.
“It’s a secret,” Darya chirped. “You have to promise you won’t tell anyone we are here.” She popped the bonbons into her mouth before I could stop her.
“Your Majesty …” I corrected her.
The Emperor giggled and raised his hand to his heart. “I promise.”
Then he turned to me. “So Madame Resourceful has come up with a surprise for her son?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Go inside, then,” he said carelessly, and walked away. I cast one last look at him as he left, a gangly, awkward figure, waving his long arms, muttering to himself.
Before I knocked on the nursery door, I peeled off my gloves. Only then I realized how damp my palms were. And how cold.
On the eve of the coup, Darya played with Paul, helping him erect fortifications from blankets and pillows. After a supper of pineapples and ice cream, he pretended to be a soldier storming a fortress while Darya happily played a captured princess rescued from attacking bears. “Don’t move,” Paul screamed his warnings. “Pretend to be dead.”
I looked at his face, reddened with exertion, eyes set wide apart, narrow lips, nose short, upturned. Peter’s features, I thought. To counter my growing unease, I recalled the night he was born, eight years before, and his mother’s pain when she could not even touch him.
In Peterhof, by then, the gardeners must have already moved the giant pots with citrus trees from the orangery and lined them up along the paths in preparation for tomorrow’s feast. This year’s imperial name-day celebration was to be particularly festive.
After the maids had put Paul to bed, he asked me to sit by his side. He closed his eyes and said nothing for a long time, but when I assumed he had fallen asleep and rose to snuff the candle, he spoke.
“She has come to me in my sleep.” He meant Elizabeth Petrovna, his great aunt. “She told me not to be afraid.”
“Why would you be afraid?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. I am sometimes.”
“Everyone is afraid sometimes.”
“Even Lieutenant Orlov?”
“Even he.” I wondered who had mentioned Orlov’s name to him and when.
In the Oranienbaum gardens, lilacs were in bloom, making the air heavy and almost sickly sweet. In the distance someone was plucking at guitar strings.
“Do you want to pray with me for Empress Elizabeth’s soul?” I asked the Grand Duke.
Paul gave me a sideways glance and nodded. His eyes began glistening with tears.
Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of thy departed servant.… I intoned the prayer for the dead, but it was atonement I prayed for, and hope. So that all Elizabeth had destroyed could be repaired, all that she had filled with secrecy could be illuminated by the truth of the new reign.
While I watched over the sleeping children in Oranienbaum, two hours’ ride away, in Peterhof, an ordinary street carriage with two post horses waited in the small Monplaisir courtyard. In the silvery twilight of a white night, Catherine was dressing in haste to the sound of Alexei’s restless steps outside her bedroom. The maids had laid out her clothes: stays, chemise, petticoats, stockings, shoes, and her simple black mourning gown.
“All is ready for the proclamation. You must get up,” Alexei said when he’d knocked on her bedroom door.
“Now?” she asked. “Why?”
On the other side of the garden, the dogs had already caught the scent of a stranger. Their frenzied barking brought out the lights. Someone whistled loudly. A yelp of pain was followed by a whimper.
“Passek has been arrested. There is no time left.” Alexei’s voice was sharp with tension.
As the maids watched, Catherine crossed herself and bowed in front of the icon. Twenty-one years before, in a moment like this, Elizabeth had vowed that if God made her the Empress of All the Russias, no one would be sent to death on her orders.
If Catherine made a vow that dawn in Monplaisir, she never told me. She ordered the maids back to sleep and drank a few sips of water. Her carriage had to be on its way before anyone noticed Alexei’s presence.
Kozlov, her hairdresser, arranged Catherine’s hair as her carriage sped toward St. Petersburg. Two hours later, Grigory met her at the halfway point with fresh horses, just when hers were beginning to falter. They sped toward the barracks of the guards.
Alexei and Grigory had done their part. By the time Catherine rode into the barracks that dawn, the guards awaited her.
She alighted from the carriage and stood before them, solemn in black, her mourning dress a reminder that—unlike her husband—she didn’t wish to forget the late Empress. Her voice did not falter, her face did not flinch.
“The Emperor,” she told the guards, “is listening to the enemies of Russia. He has given orders to arrest me. I fear he wants to kill me and my only son.”
A barrage of angry shouts followed, shouts Catherine allowed to ring before she continued.
“The Emperor is denying me and my son our rightful place beside him. You, the best sons of Russia, know what our beloved Motherland needs. I have come to you for protection. I’m placing my fate in your hands.”
So much can be weaved into a voice: a sovereign’s assurance, a woman’s plea.
Wild applause greeted her words, a torrent of cheers rising from the barracks. “No one will touch you,” the guards shouted. “Not while we live.”
When the first Vivat sounded, Catherine knew she had won. Lit up, glowing, she stood tall and triumphant as, one by one, the regiments of the Izmailovsky, Semyonovsky, and Preobrazhensky guards swore their loyalty. Soldiers kissed her extended hands, the hem of her mourning dress, still dusty from the journey. They fell to her feet, trembling like mercury in a child’s palm, calling her Matushka, their Little Mother. Their Empress.
On their knees, their cheeks aflame, their eyes locked on her as if she were Russia’s only hope.
“A frenzy of joy, as the word spreads, Varvara Nikolayevna,” Count Panin told me when he arrived at Oranienbaum at noon to escort us to St. Petersburg. “Emperor Paul,” he referred to the Grand Duke, still convinced Catherine would rule merely as her son’s Regent.
You see what you want to see, I thought. You believe what you want to believe.
Count Panin did not hide the raw urgency in his voice. We had to hurry before the news of the coup reached Oranienbaum. It was one o’clock already. We had at least six hours of the carriage ride ahead of us.
I crossed myself.
It has happened.
Catherine is safe, I thought. Her son is safe. We are all safe.
I walked to the window. Outside, the fountain in the Oranienbaum garden had just been switched on. The sun was weaving rainbows into the streams of water. On a stone bench, a group of musicians was playing a festive piece. From the open windows of Peter’s suite came screeches of laughter. Das Fräulein must have given her lover another name-day gift. For a moment I saw Peter himself leaning from the window, a blurry figure waving his hand.
The Emperor of Russia did not know he had already been deposed.
He’ll be a happier man than he’d be as an Emperor, I thought. Exile will please him in the end.
In the courtyard, horses stomped their feet. Carriages were lining up, ready to depart for Peterhof. A gull cried.
“Are we going to see my Papa now?” Paul asked me, anxiously, when the maid led him in. His morning tutor had been teaching him a poem he was to recite at the name-day feast, and he still stumbled over the lines.
“No, Your Highness,” I answered. “We are going for a ride.”
“Is this a surprise?” Paul’s eyes opened wide in anticipation.
“Yes,” Count Panin said cheerfully. “Very well put, Your Highness. This is a wonderful surprise.”
Paul laughed. “It’s a surprise,” he said, giving Darya a conspiratorial wink. “For Papa’s name day.”
Darya jumped up and down. Paul began jumping, too.
“But it’s your name day as well, Your Highness,” Count Panin cut in, demanding his pupil’s attention. There was a tinge of irritation in his voice at having been ignored, and I should have paid more attention to it. I had been at court too long to underestimate the warning signs of jealousy.
“I have to practice my poem.” Paul’s eyes were still fixed on my daughter.
“I’ll help you,” Darya offered.
I saw the astonishment blossom in my daughter’s eyes when Count Panin ordered her to be quiet. A crimson blush rushed from her cheeks. “What did I do, Maman …” she began.
But there was no time to reassure her.
As our small party rushed toward Count Panin’s carriage, I blessed the comings and goings that preceded even the shortest of imperial journeys: seamstresses busy with the final fittings of the court dresses, footmen lugging trunks and boxes. Skittering cats and whining dogs.
MAKING OF THE EMPEROR
The Lord took the strength of the mountain
The majesty of a tree …
These were the lines the Grand Duke began to recite as we sped along the St. Petersburg road, his voice small, unsure.
“Added the calm …” Darya prompted, but Count Panin didn’t let her finish.
“Please, Your Majesty,” he said, his plump hand descending on the Grand Duke’s bony shoulder.
Paul cast him an uneasy glance.
“Did I make a mistake?” he asked.
“No, Your Majesty.” Panin’s voice took on the solemn, affected note of a courtier. “There is no time for poetry now. I have something very important to tell you.”
I tried to warn him. “Perhaps his mother should be the one to do it,” I said softly.
“Will you let me decide what is proper, Varvara Nikolayevna?” Panin snapped. The bookbinder’s daughter should mind her place, his eyes warned.
I fell silent.
Paul’s shoulders hunched. He looked at me. A child does not understand silence, cannot yet sift through what has been left unsaid.
I turned my head away. Darya curled deeper into the shadows, bewildered.
We sped toward the Winter Palace. Beside me, Panin was explaining to the Grand Duke what a coup was. And what the difference was between an Empress and a Regent.
It was well past six when our carriage finally rode through the streets of St. Petersburg, past the cheering crowds. Shouts of “Victory!” and “Long live the Empress!” flooded the evening, a white night, as bright as day. A tidal wave, I thought, recalling Alexei’s promises. Once set in motion, a wave so great it sweeps everything and everyone with it.
Count Panin’s restless gaze swept over the crowds. The children had been silent for hours. I was glad when we reached the yard of the Winter Palace and it was time to part.
The carriage door opened. Paul turned to me.
“Go, Your Highness,” I told him. “Your Mama is waiting.”
He scrambled out of the carriage. A step followed by another, still hesitant but irreversible now. Count Panin went right after, fast, as if he feared I would overtake him.
In a few moments the Grand Duke would be in his nursery, guards from four regiments stationed at the door at all times. Safe.
A hard lump formed in my throat, and tears stung my eyes. Darya and I, too, got out of the carriage. The air was freezing, and I shivered.
In Our Lady of Kazan, Catherine was taking her oath as Empress and Sole Autocrat. She would be nobody’s Regent. The Grand Duke would have the time to grow up before he took the throne after his mother’s death. As it should be.
I stood in the palace courtyard, suddenly not knowing what to do next.
“Why are you crying, Maman?” Darya asked.
I put my arms around her, too tight, for I could feel her squirm.
I saw Catherine an hour later, on the Great Perspective Road, wearing the Preobrazhensky greens. Saber in hand, oak leaves on her tricorne hat, she was riding Brilliant, her gray stallion, along the cheering street, from the Kazan church toward the Winter Palace.
People fell to their knees as she passed by, imploring her for her blessing, raising their children up in the air so that they would be closer to the Empress, could touch her black jackboots. The old and the sick were helped to the windows so that they, too, could see the miracle of the new reign.
I knelt on the ground, recalling that first time I saw her, a child of fourteen arriving in Moscow, unsure of her fate. I thought of the young woman she became, branded by injustice and pain, singed by humiliation. Much had been taken away from her, and yet her heart had not been broken. My Empress, I thought.
Catherine’s voice, loud and resonant, rang in the air: “I swear to Almighty God to make Russia greater than it has ever been before.”
Alexei and Grigory Orlov were riding right behind her, in the Izmailovsky’s steel blues trimmed with gold ribbons. Two brothers-in-arms, big, silent, and vigilant, their sharp eyes constantly surveying the crowd.
Around me hands rose, a sea of hands, waving, pounding the air: “Long live our Matushka! Long live our Empress!”
Weeping, I added my voice to these cries.
The streets of St. Petersburg filled with the aromas of roasting pigs, sauerkraut simmering with wild mushrooms, potato pancakes fried in lard. Vodka and wine were offered free in all city taverns. Soon the day of revelry turned into the white night of dancing and love-making, the time when more children were conceived than at the end of Lent.
The June children, I’d hear them called in the months to come.
“The great warrior hid behind the hooped skirts of his mistress.” Alexei Orlov laughed as the news poured in.
In Peterhof, Peter, by then the Emperor in name only, could not believe what stared him in the face. With growing annoyance, he surveyed the new orchestra pit, the rows of giant pots with citrus trees along the paths, lanterns hanging on the branches. It was his name day. Why was Catherine not greeting him upon his arrival?
He sent his footmen to the Monplaisir Pavilion with a message that she should hurry. When the footmen came back saying that the Grand Duchess begged for more time to get ready, Peter stood on the terrace of the Peterhof palace and watched the fountains of the grand cascade.
Half an hour later, when Catherine still did not come, he decided to fetch her himself.
Alexei’s booming voice rose and thinned when he imitated Peter’s cries, “Where are you? Where are you?” as the deposed Emperor ran from room to room of the Monplaisir Pavilion cursing the cowering maids, looking under the bed, in the wardrobes, even in the water closet, as if Catherine were a child playing hide-and-seek.
In the Throne Room, everyone desired Catherine’s attention. The giant mirrors reflected the silk court jackets and embroidered gowns, the uniforms, the sea of waving hands, the necks craning to get a glimpse of the new Empress.
Victory, I heard. Blessed day.
Catherine the Second, the Empress of All the Russias. She had put on a gown of plain ivory silk, decorated with the blue ribbon of the Cross of St. Andrew, reserved for the Sovereign. Beside her, Grand Duke Paul rubbed the green sleeve of his Preobrazhensky uniform, looking unhappy and confused.
I marveled at Catherine’s patience with the elaborate petitions thrust into her hands, with the long lines of courtiers jostling to kiss the hem of her dress. When Grigory Orlov tried to push them away, Catherine told him not to stop friends from expressing their joy.
I, too, knelt before her.
“Varenka,” she said.
Triumph made her eyes sparkle. Her hair shone; her cheeks glowed.
A throng of people behind me were pushing to get closer.
“Varenka,” she repeated.
She raised me and kissed me on both cheeks and then, placing her hand on mine, she asked, “Will you be of even more help to me now?”
I nodded, my voice caught in my throat. Catherine’s next words rose over the din of whispers.
“It is thanks to such friends as Countess Malikina,” she said to the crowd, “that I was able to deliver Russia from the perils of autocracy.”
A cheer resounded, then another.
She had made me Countess, and I didn’t even have time to thank her, for I felt an impatient pull from behind, a tug of my sleeve reminding me I was not the only one wishing to approach the new Empress. Beside me, Alexei Orlov repeated a plea that Catherine must show herself to the people.
In the streets of St. Petersburg, rumors flew: that Peter had come to the city in disguise to gather support, that the King of Prussia had already sent his troops to help him, that he was planning to kidnap Catherine or even that he had already kidnapped her.
“Right now, Your Highness,” Alexi Orlov kept saying, his voice hoarse from strain but still booming. “Please, Little Mother. They need to see you and the Grand Duke. To know that you are both safe from this monster.”
I remember how harsh this word sounded, and how unnecessary. For a brief moment I even waited for Catherine to chastise him, but then the sparkling, unbelievable happiness at our victory claimed my thoughts.
A coup is a debt, and after it, debts multiply.
Catherine, in the Preobrazhensky uniform, appeared everywhere. She hardly slept; she ate on the run, on the way to inspect the troops or meet yet another delegation. She was graceful and gracious, distributing rewards, bestowing titles, estates, and medals, granting petitions and recalling the banished.
I await you as soon as your horses can bring you here, she wrote to the former Chancellor Bestuzhev. Count Panin—reconciled by then that she would not be Regent for her son—sported a red, sliver-lined ribbon of his newly received Order of St. Catherine.
Grigory Orlov was named Adjutant-General. All five Orlov brothers became Counts. The top conspirators were offered six hundred peasants and a pension of two thousand rubles or twenty-four thousand rubles in lieu of land. I, a bookbinder’s daughter turned Countess, too could make my choice.
In the corridors of the Winter Palace, courtiers swirled, their numbers doubled and trebled by the giant gilded mirrors. They bowed when our eyes met, waiting for a chance to assure me of their longtime devotion. Count Panin walked about with brisk, determined steps, his rouged lips creased into a smile. What position had he been promised? A Chancellor? Will he replace Vorontzov? I heard.
But even the most generous rewards were not enough. Not a day passed without some guard attempting to return the Order of St. Alexander with which he had been decorated, calling himself the unhappiest of men, refusing to be consoled until Catherine took the petition he thrust into her hands, promised to reconsider a past judgment or restore old privileges.
“Every guardsman can say, ‘I made that woman,’ when he looks at me,” Catherine said to me in one of those rare moments when I found myself close enough to speak to her. “How long until they will start saying, ‘I can undo her’?”
She didn’t say, I want you to watch them, Varenka. I need you to listen to what they say.
She didn’t have to.
Here is what I heard in those fevered days.
From Oranienbaum the spies brought reports of a boat waiting, packed to the brim with supplies. The Holsteiners, they warned, were charting the shortest route to Prussia.
“No harm will come to him.” I still hear Alexei’s thunderous promise as he left to arrest the former Emperor and escort him to the Schlüsselburg prison, where it had been decided Peter would stay until Catherine decided his fate. “And he will cause you no harm, Your Majesty.”
The dispatches flooded in, as beaming messengers rushed in and out of the staterooms, heroes of their own stories.
A Schlüsselburg cell was not yet ready, so Alexei took Peter to the Ropsha palace, thirty-six versty away from St. Petersburg. He vowed to spare no effort to keep the former Emperor comfortable.
Yet Peter had complaints. His room was too small, his bed too narrow. He had no place to take his morning walk, and without exercise, his legs swelled up.
He was drinking. He refused to eat his breakfast and his dinner. He cried and asked for Das Fräulein’s presence.
I’ll go away and never come back. All I want is my dog, my flute, my Negro, and my mistress, he wrote to Catherine. I renounce the throne of Russia. I willingly swear allegiance to Empress Catherine II. I beg her forgiveness for all I have done wrong.
Amid the giddy promises of those first days of Catherine’s reign, I tried to push away the memory of the lonely wigless figure in his blue housecoat walking down the Oranienbaum corridor.
Peter has surrendered, I told myself. He is a better man than he is an emperor. A few months in prison will pass quickly. He will be happier for it in the end.
I still refused to admit that justice might merely be another name for getting even.
On the third day after the coup, at five o’clock in the morning, I waited for my Empress with a pot of fresh coffee, the coveted privilege I claimed as my right. From her new bedroom I heard Grigory Orlov’s voice: “Don’t think about it, Katinka. Push it from your mind.”
At the Winter Palace, Catherine had taken the Imperial Suite: the state bedroom and six adjacent inner rooms, all gold and white. Grigory Orlov moved into the apartment right above hers.
I heard a dog yelp. Old Bijou was no more. Sir Tom Anderson, an Italian greyhound, was now chasing away the palace cats, the few scraggly ones that still kept showing up, in search of Elizabeth. I no longer recognized them, though some had Bronya’s tortoiseshell fur and Pushok’s eyes.
Sir Tom began to bark.
“Stop it,” Catherine shrilled. The dog whined, and stopped.
Catherine said something I could not hear.
The sounds of her steps, fast, circling the room, were followed by Grigory’s booted stride.
“You have to stop the rumors, Katinka,” I heard him urge her. “Alexei says that he will turn his back on you and bite your hand.”
In the antechamber to the Imperial Bedroom, I straightened the tapestry on the wall. I picked up a soiled glove from under a chair. It gave off the odor of jasmine blossoms mixed with sweat.
I waited.
It was a quarter past five by the time Catherine walked in. She gave me a wan smile when she saw me. I could tell she had been crying.
“Everyone wants something from me, Varenka. I cannot please everyone.”
Before I could say anything, she put her finger on her lips.
The letter from Ropsha arrived on the fifth day of Catherine’s reign. The Empress was in the Throne Room, surrounded by courtiers. The messenger threw himself at her feet, bringing with him the rank smell of the road, the rot of the marshes, and rain.
Catherine broke the seal and read quickly, in silence. Her lips tightened. I saw her wipe her fingers on the silken folds of her skirt. She crushed the letter in her hands.
“I’m shocked and dismayed,” she said, raising her eyes.
I will never forget a single word on the crumpled sheet. Little Mother, your husband is no more. There had been a skirmish in Ropsha, an unfortunate skirmish, wished by no one. An argument turned into a quarrel, too swiftly to extinguish or control. Everyone who was with the former Emperor at that time was guilty, worthy of death. But it was Alexei, Count Orlov, who wrote, begging Catherine’s mercy, a pardon or a quick end.
Life’s not worth living, for I have failed you.
The jeweled heel of Catherine’s foot stomped on the floor. I heard voices rise and fall.
I did not listen.
Peter is dead, I thought.
Murdered.
I don’t know how I made it to our rooms in the temporary palace. Seeing Darya’s frightened eyes, I managed to smile and spin some lies. Nothing had happened, I assured her. I was merely tired. I needed to rest.
When my daughter left, I felt exhausted, as if I had climbed a mountain. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. Even the air I breathed seemed to hurt me. The light was too bright. I told Masha to keep the curtains drawn.
She called the surgeon instead.
I was bled. Bled again. Purged. Blistered. I slept for what must have been day and night, for the maid who brought me a cup of hot beef broth asked me if I knew what day it was. I wanted to answer, but when I opened my mouth, no words came.
I missed it all. The public announcement attributing Peter’s death to hemorrhoidal colic and violent stomachache, with which he was often afflicted. The sight of the Emperor’s embalmed body lying in state at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, thick kerchief tied around his neck. The whispers: A onetime baby Emperor was still languishing in the Schlüsselburg Fortress. What Empress could afford two deposed rulers? How long before some crackpot tried to free one of them?
Catherine wrote to me: Get well soon, Varenka. I need you at my side.
Grigory Orlov delivered the note himself.
“Katinka is concerned, Varvara Nikolayevna. Every day she asks me about you.”
He lowered himself into the armchair beside my bed, his handsome face serious, drawn.
I listened to his words: … terrible accident … Alexei shouldn’t have been drinking … shouldn’t have let himself be provoked … He knows it.… Katinka knows it.… The coup was a gamble.… Not everything can be predicted.…
Outside, a newspaper boy was shouting, “Great news in St. Petersburg Gazette.” A woman began to sing a ballad I did not recognize. A trumpet blew.
My mouth tasted sour from the fever. My leg hurt from the surgeon’s cut.
“He is here, Varvara Nikolayevna. He is leaving St. Petersburg tomorrow.” Grigory Orlov cleared his throat. “My brother begs you to hear him out.”
I felt my heartbeat quicken as I nodded my agreement.
Alexei must have been waiting right outside the door. He entered as soon as Grigory called his name. He took an awkward step toward me, straightening the steel-blue Izmailovsky tunic.
“I’m guilty, Varvara Nikolayevna.”
The scar across Alexei’s cheeks twitched as he spoke. His voice broke at times. He repeated himself. Catherine had ordered him to protect her husband, and he’d failed. He wouldn’t make excuses. What happened, happened under his command. He couldn’t undo what had been done.
The rough floors of the temporary palace squeaked every time Alexei shifted his giant frame from one foot to the other. Beside him Grigory, his hands clasped, nodded vigorously at his brother’s words.
“I’m ready to die. I’m a soldier. Soldiers die. But our beloved Matushka refused to punish me. ‘Will your death help me rule?’ she has asked. So I begged her to send me away. Every time she looks at me, she shouldn’t be reminded of the terrible price she had to pay.”
A soldier’s voice, strong and yet pleading. Simple words, impossible to refute. Words I would turn in my head for days to come.
“A terrible thing has happened, but we can make use of it.
“For the Empress.
“For Russia.
“For us all.”
I rang for Masha as soon as Alexei and Grigory left. Katinka, both brothers had said, had a whole empire to run. After years of neglect, so much needed to be cleaned up. Cleared. Repaired.
“Bring Darya,” I told Masha hoarsely.
Darenka approached me on tiptoes, my beloved child.
“What have you been doing today?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“I broke a cup.”
“Which one?”
“The one with red roses in the bottom.”
“We will get another one.”
“You are not angry?”
“No.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be. But Mademoiselle Dupont said I was negligent.”
“A bit. I wasn’t thinking of what I was doing.”
“Why not?”
“I was listening to what the doctor was saying. That the crisis was coming. But no one would tell me what crisis it was.” Fear flashed in her big dark eyes, and I felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m feeling better, kison’ka. You don’t have to worry anymore.”
She smiled, a burst of brightness, pain washing away from her face. She threw her hands around my neck. Clung tight to me.
“I don’t like the way you smell,” she said, wrinkling her nose, laughing.
By August, when I was strong enough to walk, Catherine’s Chief Steward sent word that our new quarters at the Winter Palace were ready. Four spacious inner rooms and an antechamber, just two corridors away from the Imperial Bedroom. Furnished and redecorated according to Her Majesty’s wishes. The temporary palace, once emptied, would be razed to make room for a small park.
There was no official appointment yet, only an invitation to join Her Majesty’s entourage. The Empress woke up at five and worked alone in her study until eight in the morning. Visitors and petitioners came as soon as she was dressed and coiffed. Five state secretaries took care of the daily flood of solicitations. Petitions had to be examined and filed, gifts acknowledged, impossible requests refused gently, and all that merited her attention prepared for her inspection. The afternoons were reserved for reading. Evenings for the closest of friends.
Her Majesty’s Chief Steward trusted that Countess Malikina would make sure this new routine was not needlessly disturbed.
It was an October afternoon, dark and lashing with rain, when a messenger from the British Embassy delivered a letter addressed to Madame Malikina. Someone had crossed off Madame and put Countess instead.
The letter was from Count Poniatowski.
He had been beside himself with worry. He had received no news from Catherine for fourteen weeks. He feared that his previous letters may have been lost.
Enclosed was a sealed note with For Sophie written on it and a request for me to place it directly into her hand.
It was still raining the following day when I entered Catherine’s private study with her morning coffee. The cherished moment, however brief, when I could be sure to see her alone.
I barely had time to light the fireplace when Catherine walked in, Sir Tom right beside her, prancing on his hind legs, awaiting his treat. Her face was drawn. The relentless whirl of imperial obligations was taking its toll. By then even the afternoons Catherine so much desired to keep free for reading were broken by constant interruptions.
I placed the tray with the coffeepot on its usual spot, beside the sharpened quills and a neat pile of foolscap paper. I poured coffee into a china cup and waited until Catherine took the first sip before giving her Stanislav’s letter. She opened it, glanced at it quickly, and handed it back to me. It was then that I saw it was in cipher.
“Burn it, Varenka,” she said. “Before anyone sees it.”
I threw it in the fire.
Catherine made room for me at her own desk. “Write, Varenka,” she ordered.
I wrote what she dictated: How reason demanded that we have to come to terms with circumstances beyond our control. How she had to guard herself at every step. How she was sorry, more than she could express, but such was the truth. Farewell, beloved friend. Life often brings strange surprises, but you can be sure that I will do everything I can for you and your family.
Catherine paused, as if considering something she might still add.
“There is no use fighting what cannot be changed, Varenka,” was all she said, slipping the letter, folded and sealed, into my pocket.
From the green velvet cushion beside her desk came the thumping sound of Sir Tom’s wagging tail.
Before I dispatched Catherine’s letter to the British Embassy with a request to pass it on to Count Poniatowski, I added a few words from myself. Don’t believe everything you hear. When you hurt, it is easy to assume the worst.
Later that day, when the rain had finally stopped, I took Darya for a walk I had long promised.
We climbed the stairs to the Petropavlovsky Fortress to look at the city below, at the splendid palaces facing the river, white and yellow walls lit by the warm rays. The deep waters of the wide Neva had been tamed, the red Finnish marble lining the embankment postponing the fury of the floods.
“I still talk to Papa,” Darya said. Her voice quavered.
“What about?” I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me, so I held her tight to my chest and let her weep.
Former Chancellor Bestuzhev had been back at court for more than two weeks, but I’d managed to avoid him. Now he had come to me, frail and hunched after his years of exile. His red-rimmed eyes assessed the burgundy curtains with gold tassels, the thick carpets, Egor’s portrait over the mantel.
I didn’t like the smile on his face; I didn’t like the amusement he didn’t bother to conceal in his voice.
“We’ve won, Countess Malikina. We’ve backed the right horse, you and I.”
He kissed my extended hand. I motioned for him to sit down, noting the wig plastered carelessly to his bald head, the yellow stain of egg yolk on his velvet vest.
His new title of Field Marshal was a meager consolation for the glaring lack of an official post. “Cabbage Field Marshal,” Grigory Orlov had sneered.
The former Chancellor opened a snuffbox and took a fat pinch of snuff. He offered me some; I declined.
“Curious,” he observed. “My doctor swears it is good for hangover, but I have yet to experience that. I go through five pounds of it a month, and the only thing it relieves is my purse.”
He placed the snuff on the hollow between his index finger and his thumb, sniffed, and waited for the powder to stir his nostrils. He sneezed and then examined the brown stain on his handkerchief. Then he started to speak.
“Very clever,” Bestuzhev called Catherine’s appointments. Letting Vorontzov keep the title of Chancellor but giving Panin foreign policy. Making Grigory Orlov preside over a brand-new Chancery for Foreigners, so that no one could say he had replaced anyone. Offering Alexei the imperial pardon but sending him off to the army barracks. Making sure no one was too strong, so that she could control them all.
I turned my head toward my parlor window. The sun over the Neva was pale and hesitant.
Bestuzhev gave a heavy sigh and frowned.
“Nothing has changed, Varvara Nikolayevna. You still have only two choices: be indispensable or be insignificant. I’ve tried a simple life. Its appeal has little allure, believe me.”
“Nothing has changed?” I asked, disbelieving. “When have you last seen an Empress work that hard?”
Bestuzhev looked at me carefully, a doctor considering his diagnosis.
“Have you forgotten all I’ve taught you, Varvara Nikolayevna? Or have you let yourself be dazzled by your new title? Need I remind you that titles come cheap around here these days? A gambling house doesn’t turn into a monastery just because there is a new owner.”
He leaned toward me, a sneer twisting his face.
“Do you know what some of your new friends call you? Nosy Varvara who needs to have her nose torn off.”
I rose.
“You better leave,” I said. “I have duties to attend to.”
His face reddened at the word duties, drops of sweat gathering at the edge of his wig.
“Is bringing her letters from her Polish lover one of them?” he taunted. “What is she telling him, I wonder? That she needs a Polish footstool for her tired feet?”
“I don’t see how it is any of your concern.”
“But it is,” he retorted, with a sudden glee in his eyes. “I find it irresistible to watch how our Catherine gets others to do her bidding.”
“God help you.” I was trembling. “Always seeing the worst in everyone.”
“She got to the top thanks to the people who supported her for their own reasons. Now she is beginning to believe she has done it all by herself. She’ll be shedding friends. It’ll get ugly very soon, my dear Countess. It always does, and you are no longer hidden in the shadows. You’ll soon acquire real enemies and you’ll wish for something more than memories of friendship to protect you. Are you that sure you no longer need me?”
“Leave,” I said, reaching for the bell to summon my maid. I wanted him out of my room. I wanted his voice to stop.