n St. Petersburg taverns, old men with wrinkled faces like to recall the disbelief of their youth when they heard how the vast expanse of flat land, with a few huts of Finnish fishermen scattered across it, would become a powerful, thriving city.n St. Petersburg taverns, old men with wrinkled faces like to recall the disbelief of their youth when they heard how the vast expanse of flat land, with a few huts of Finnish fishermen scattered across it, would become a powerful, thriving city.
The old men remember the Great Tsar. They speak of Peter the Great’s giant steps that made ordinary men run when he merely strolled, the deftness of his hands, the wood he carved, the icons he painted, the shoes he made, the teeth he pulled out.
“Delay means death,” they repeat, the Great Tsar’s favorite words.
With their blood warmed by vodka, the men whose eyes saw a city raise from the foggy marshes speak of soldiers and serfs whose skulls and bones are dug up every year when the shattering foundations of St. Petersburg are repaired.
There is no bitterness in their voices.
Wouldn’t these serfs and soldiers have died anyway? Wasn’t it better to die, if death made the future possible? To die for something that would last longer than an ordinary life?
From the crates and trunks that had come with us to our new quarters in the Winter Palace, I had unpacked many treasures: Darya’s drawing of a house with a guard standing beside it, tall enough for his head to reach far above the chimney. A note I found on my breakfast tray on the morning my daughter turned eleven: Maman, at what age did you have your own room? At what age did you start wearing long dresses? Can I now bathe in your bath? Now she copied the gestures of the court ladies, the careless, languid sway of their steps.
“The Empress is quite smitten by your daughter, dear Varvara Nikolayevna,” Princess Galitsina would stop to tell me.
Imperial presents of gowns and furs, invitations to a children’s masquerade, ballet lessons with the Grand Duke had all been noted, Galitsina’s eyes said. Before the coup, a glance over her shoulder would be all I could merit.
Where were you, I thought, when the Grand Duchess with no future needed a friend?
Right after the coronation in the Moscow cathedral, the Grand Duke collapsed, exhausted after hours of standing beside his mother, waving to the jubilant crowds. Carried to his room, hot and sweaty with fever, he screamed that snakes were crawling over him. His right leg was swollen and purple.
I sat at Paul’s bedside. I put a cold compress on his forehead. I washed the sweat off his chest. When icy water dropped down his temples, he opened his eyes and gripped my hand painfully.
“Am I going to die?” he asked, his voice small, frightened.
“No,” I replied. “Your Maman won’t let you die.”
He opened his mouth as if to ask me something, but he did not speak.
On the day when the Grand Duke was well enough to show himself to the people, a peasant woman wrapped in a black kerchief flung herself to the ground, shrieking, “Long live Emperor Paul Petrovich! Long live our batushka!”
Two guards had to make their way through the crowd before those around her scattered.
By the first anniversary of Catherine’s accession, there was no need for the guards’ vigilance. Fireworks lit the night with exploding wheels and flowers, and for a breathtaking moment a giant glittering C hung in the sky. The crowds applauded, drank greedily at the vodka fountains, and gasped as tightrope walkers took another precarious step on the rope suspended across the Great Perspective Road.
In the Grand Hall of the Winter Palace, tables decorated with the imperial eagles were lined against the gilded walls. Children ran from one to another, in search of their favorite treats. I saw the Grand Duke creep behind Count Panin and flap his arms like a giant insect. Count Panin pretended not to see it. I saw Darya, lovely in her green satin dress, sneak a glance at herself in one of Monsieur Rastrelli’s giant mirrors.
“If only Master lived to see us now,” Masha said and sighed. At the Tartar market, butchers now saved their best cuts for Countess Malikina, and the fishmonger put aside the choicest pieces of smoked sturgeon.
In the Imperial Suite, the maids pulled me aside to mention an ailing mother in need of money, a sweetheart who wished to propose if only they had the Empress’s blessing. “Just mention me to Matushka, our Little Mother,” they would plead. “She will listen to you.”
Every morning at five, I still waited for the Empress with the pot of coffee and her mail, which I placed on her desk. In the evenings, Catherine sometimes allowed me to linger in the Imperial Bedroom before Grigory stomped down the private staircase. And there were always the precious moments when her ladies-in-waiting were out of earshot, or a walk together in the garden at dusk.
How much can one say in such times?
It was better to listen.
“Whatever I do, Varenka, I’ll hurt someone.
“It pains me when even old friends watch me with terrified eyes, as if I were Medusa’s head. Does friendship always flee from Sovereigns, Varenka?”
Grigory Orlov was still finding Das Fräulein’s things in his apartment: a silk stocking, a fiddle bow, a shoe deformed by her limp. He brought them to Catherine like trophies. I saw him wait for her in the Imperial Bedroom, sprawled on an ottoman, flicking cards to pass the time. I saw him lift her off her feet when she arrived and whirl her around, making her breathless. I saw him caress her neck as she bent over her writing, his hand sliding into her hair.
In the marble corridors of the Winter Palace, Field Marshal Bestuzhev, cane in hand, was on the lookout for anyone willing or luckless enough to listen to his long, meandering speeches. Polite excuses were of no use; drunk or sober, the former Chancellor took no notice of hurried steps or impatient grins. Catherine gave strict orders not to admit him into her inner rooms. In the British Embassy, footmen were tipped double for prompt warnings of his approach. Everyone awaited the weeks in which Bestuzhev’s penchant for vodka won over his ambitions and he would be too drunk to pay his visits.
“One word, Countess Malikina. One word only,” he called in his hoarse voice when he spotted me. The gold handle of his cane, encrusted with gemstones, glittered in the light streaming through Rastrelli’s giant windows.
But by then I had learned to look and not see.
“Don’t go just yet, Varenka. I want to ask you something about Darya. But let me finish this first.…”
Among the many letters I had just brought the Empress on this chilly October morning, there was a note from Count Panin—or Nikita Ivanovich, as Catherine called him now—whom she’d put in charge of foreign policy.
I sat on a footstool by the fire in Catherine’s study and waited, listening to the sharp nib scratching over the thick vellum paper she liked the most.
As they frequently did these days, my thoughts drifted toward Darenka. I’d often come to our rooms at the palace to find her gone. “Summoned again,” her governess explained, pointing at the ceiling as if the orders came from God Himself.
When my daughter returned, her face colored with excitement, she was bursting with stories. She had been allowed to carry Catherine’s fan. She had been asked to read a passage from an old prayer book. Sir Tom had chased a cat down the service corridor, but she had brought him back.
“Who was there with the Empress?” I’d ask, watching her happy face as she described the visitors. Count Panin shuffled his feet as he walked, Darya told me. Uncle Grigory made the Empress laugh with shadow puppets dancing on the wall.
“What did he say?”
“That the Empress should find me a good husband. With a big house in the country.”
“You are too young to think of husbands,” I told my daughter, laughing. “You wouldn’t know what to do with one.”
But I felt a pinch of fear.
In the fireplace, as I waited for Catherine to finish her letter, the flames leaped and flared. I stared into them, thinking of my child leaving me. Next year she would turn fourteen, the age of Catherine when she came to Russia to marry.
I heard the crackle of paper folding, smelled wax melting over a candle.
“Ballet, Varenka,” Catherine said, turning to me as she set her quill down. “I want our children to dance together.”
The relief I felt brought hot tears to my eyes.
“I’ll tell you more,” Catherine teased me, “but only if you stop crying.”
It was Herr Gilferding—the Austrian dancemaster Catherine had brought from Vienna—who’d come up with an idea for a court performance. A ballet of his own creation, Acis and Galatea, would tell the story of a shepherd in love with a beautiful nymph. At its end, Acis, slain by the jealous cyclops Polyphemus, would be turned into a river by Galatea, and Hymen would end the ballet with a solo mourning dance.
Grand Duke Paul would dance the part of the god Hymen, and Darya would be the nymph.
“If her teary mother lets her, that is,” Catherine teased as I reached helplessly for my handkerchief, already enchanted by the image of my daughter dancing on the stage of the Winter Palace theater, applauded by the whole court.
“That’s settled, then.” Catherine waved away my gratitude and turned her attention to the letters I had brought. I saw her pick one and break the wax seal. Before I reached the door, however, she leaped from her chair and jumped up and down like a little girl. Sir Tom abandoned his cushion, barking, and began a mad chase after his own tail.
“King Augustus II of Poland has died,” she cried out. “Get Nikita Ivanovich here right away.”
But just as I was pressing the door handle, she stopped me and told me not to bother Count Panin just yet. She needed to gather her thoughts in private. Her voice, so joyful a moment before, became serious: “Now that I can finally repay an old debt to a dear friend, Varenka,” she told me, “I don’t want to make a mistake.”
Two weeks later, Count Keyserling left for Warsaw with instructions to assure Stanislav’s victory in the Polish royal election. By mid-November, Prince Repnin followed with assurances of more Russian help. He also carried Christmas presents for Stanislav: a box of black truffles, a bronze statue of Minerva, and a jeweled snuffbox with Catherine’s profile carved out of ivory.
Hazy with joy, I repeated Sir Charles’s words: Stanislav, the King of Poland; Catherine, the Empress of Russia. Bound by trust, ruling two great nations, in unity and peace.
An old dream, I thought, and yet how just, how timely, and how wrought with promise.
On the last night of November, unable to sleep, I sat alone in my parlor. I tried reading a book, but my eyes smarted from candlelight, and my thoughts stubbornly returned to my unfinished tasks: a painting from the last Parisian shipment that was still missing, the dwindling supplies of silk thread for Catherine’s new passion—knotting ornamental braids that she gave away as coveted gifts.
The clock in the hall had just chimed midnight when I heard a commotion in the antechamber. For a moment I feared Bestuzhev had managed to get past my footmen. In the last weeks he had begun to pester me with letters, all versions of the same request to help him obtain a private audience with Catherine.
But it wasn’t Bestuzhev.
The disheveled man, reeking of vodka and garlic, who stormed into my parlor, turned out to be Grigory Orlov. In his hand, he held a bowl of ice cream.
“For Darenka,” he told me. “Egor’s little sunshine.”
“Where did you get ice cream in the middle of the night, Grigory Grigoryevich?”
“The cook likes me,” he mumbled, drunkenly. “I don’t know why.”
I laughed. “My daughter is asleep,” I told him.
The ottoman gave a moan when he fell onto it, his arms extended stiffly, his offering melting into a sticky puddle.
Masha had heard the commotion and scurried in, her lazy eye trained on the ceiling. “Take this to Darenka,” Grigory slurred, as Masha deftly maneuvered the bowl from his hand and carried it away.
He staggered to his feet. “Why is she making him King of Poland, Varvara Nikolayevna? So that she can marry him?”
So this is what stung him, I realized, as Grigory’s words flowed like a torrent, curses dissolved in weeping and threats: Milksop … coward … plotting to get back at her side. He made a lewd gesture with his hand. “Is he still writing to her?”
“You have to ask the Empress that.”
“She won’t talk of him.” Grigory Orlov gave me an unsteady, out-of-focus stare. Behind him, a candle guttered out. I sat listening, fatigue weighing on my shoulders, wondering how much longer this jealous tirade would last.
“Alexei sent word that that Polish runt is still writing to her, wanting to come back.… Alexei says to watch out … that everybody is plotting against us …”
Grigory stood, swaying, towering over me, a mountain of flesh and muscle. And then he fell to the floor.
Worried that he had hurt himself, I bent over him. He snored. Masha fetched a blanket and a pillow. Grigory grunted when she took off his boots. “Don’t, Katinka. Not now.” This is how we left him, in the end, sprawled on the carpet, covered with a blanket, asleep.
I’d hoped we didn’t wake anyone, but when I got to my bed I heard Darya’s voice asking what had happened. She was sitting up, a slim figure in a white nightgown holding her knees, her nightcap gone, her black curls tangled.
“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep, kison’ka.”
“You never tell me anything.” She sighed with resignation. “Was it Uncle Grigory?”
“Yes.”
“Did he really bring me ice cream?”
“Yes. But let’s keep it a secret. He had a bit too much to drink.”
“I know,” she said, yawning. “I’m not a baby anymore.”
I pulled her toward me. Her hair smelled musty, even though it had been washed only the day before. I resolved to tell Masha not to spare the egg yolks next time.
Please don’t refuse my most sincere apologies and this small offering for Darenka, Grigory Orlov wrote in a note that came the next day. And please don’t mention it to anyone. I don’t want my Katinka to know what a stupid fool I can be.
With the note a whole basket of presents arrived: a set of sandalwood nesting apples, each enchantingly hidden inside another, a lacquered box with a lid showing a fairy-tale princess wearing a crown of peacock feathers.
My lips are sealed, I wrote back, and your gifts are too generous for one little girl who likes ice cream.
The reply came immediately. Grigory Orlov insisted I accept his offering. In Egor’s memory, he wrote. A token of old friendship.
In the months that followed, I didn’t think much of the events of that night. I understood Grigory’s jealousy, groundless as it was. There is power in an Empress’s bed. A widow can marry again. An heir to the throne can die.
I didn’t keep Grigory’s note, either. Why would I?
Among the constant flurry of hours and days, it was Darya’s dancing that occupied my mind.
“I’ll be a nymph,” Darya kept telling everyone, glowing with delight, always ready to demonstrate a newly learned gesture or passage.
I didn’t want to talk of envy. “If you let everyone in the palace see the pieces of the dance before the performance,” I said instead, “there will be no surprise.”
For the first round of rehearsals Herr Gilferding installed himself in the blue card room in the Imperial Suite so that the Empress could drop in on the children’s practice. No one else was allowed to watch.
This is what I remember from these winter days when I fetched Darya at the end of the rehearsals. Paul’s delight at his costume, the wig that he insisted on wearing all day. Darya greeting me with most light-footed circling of the room, her face framed in the oval of her hands. Excited voices, fierce frowns of concentration. Stories of near misses and unforeseen disasters averted at the last moment. An ankle twisted, a broken prop.
At the end of March, Herr Gilferding announced that the rehearsals would be moved to the court theater and a select audience would be allowed to observe.
I noticed that Darya did not seem as excited about this news as I’d expected, but I put it down to stage fright. So I was taken by surprise when she came into the parlor on that spring day. “Maman, would you be very upset if I didn’t dance in the ballet?” Her eyes avoided mine.
“Why wouldn’t you dance?” I asked.
Only the day before, Herr Gilferding had praised my daughter’s grace, her endurance, her expressiveness. “She may be only thirteen, but there is more poise in her than in the dancers of the Imperial Theater School,” he’d bragged.
“You can tell me,” I coaxed Darya when she didn’t answer. “Are you worried that you are not ready?”
She shook her head. I saw her bite the tips of her fingers. She had never been a nail-biter before.
I patted the spot beside me on the ottoman. Reluctantly, she sat down.
I told her how there was no need to be shy now. Once she was there, onstage, I promised, all these worries would vanish. Her father would have been so proud to see her dance with the Grand Duke, admired by the entire court. After all, hadn’t the Empress often said she wished to do much for her? And wouldn’t Catherine herself be in the audience that evening?
It was then that the gold pendant around her neck caught my attention. I hadn’t seen it before.
“Where did you get this from?” I asked, fingering it to take a better look at a cluster of gemstones set in the shape of forget-me-nots.
“It’s from the Empress,” she muttered, still not looking at me.
“Was it a reward for something you did? You don’t have to be shy about pleasing the Empress.”
She nodded, a nod of such slightness I might have missed it.
“Was it for your dancing?”
“Yes,” she said, too hastily, her cheeks turning crimson.
“So why this silly blushing, my love? You might as well get used to praises. If you ever stop slouching, you will be the most beautiful of nymphs.”
She straightened herself, immediately.
“So no more stage fright now?” I asked, and was relieved when Darya nodded.
I watched her as she walked away, her spine straight, her shoulders back, her head held high. Herr Gilferding’s tutoring had made all her movements languid and poised. A remarkable teacher, I thought. No wonder Catherine had been so eager to keep him at the Winter Palace. She would be pleased to learn he began talking about finding a house in St. Petersburg. Only to rent, his valet reported, but with an option to buy.
I am still not sure how Bestuzhev managed to get into my parlor.
Later, Masha assured me that she hadn’t heard anything. The servants swore on the Holy Icon they had not seen him come in, let alone accepted a bribe for defying my orders, but I didn’t believe them. It isn’t difficult to soften a footman’s or a maid’s resolve. I had done it many times myself.
The former Chancellor could barely stand up on his own. His breath reeked of vodka. His puffed eyes were glassy.
“You have not responded to my requests, Countess Malikina,” he slurred. “Did you ask the Empress to see me?”
I said I had many requests to consider.
“I remember you being far more willing to please me once.”
For a moment I thought I had misheard him. Then I saw by the smirk on his lips that I had not.
Blood drained from my face. “Get out of here,” I managed to hiss, reaching for the bell to ring for my footman.
But Bestuzhev was faster.
“Why are you so stubborn?” he asked coldly. “Because you are so sure she needs you? An old friend she has always trusted? You still don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” I stared at his sweaty red face, hating my curiosity, unable to stop myself from asking the question the Old Fox so clearly wished me to ask.
“That you were never her only tongue, Varvara. Even then, in Elizabeth’s bedroom, there were others.” He tapped at his own temple as if prompting me to think harder. “Many others. I often wondered when you’d find out, but you never did.”
I felt my knees buckle. A tremor shot up my spine. “Leave before I throw you out,” I said, ringing the bell.
“You did her bidding then as you do now, nothing more. You were commonplace, Varvara. Another disposable spy. The only difference with you was that you believed you were special.”
He blinked and turned away from me.
What is taking that damned footman so long? I raged.
But the former Chancellor was already opening the door, making the man jump with fright.
After he left, I sat alone. When Masha came in, asking if I needed anything, I sent her away.
I soothed myself with the memory of Catherine’s dismissive words as she set aside yet another of Bestuzhev’s elaborate plans for reforms. The previous batch had concerned foreign policy, which annoyed Panin. The current one proposed reforming the army, and made Grigory Orlov sneer.
This is who he is, I reminded myself. A has-been. A loser who cannot bear his own defeat. Trying to poison the well he can no longer draw water from.
I closed my eyes and waited until my heart stopped racing.
The court performance of Acis and Galatea was scheduled for the end of May. At the end of April, Catherine showed me the design for the invitations, which were to include a list of the cast members.
I hurried to our rooms to tell Darya the news, but she didn’t come when I called her, so I looked for Masha. I found her in the pantry where she stored our supplies, despairing, for mice had gotten there already. The sack of flour was chewed through, and mouse droppings were everywhere.
“Where is Darya?” I asked her.
“Asleep,” she said.
“In the middle of the day? Is she ill?”
Masha wasn’t sure. Darya had gone to the bedroom, she insisted, saying only that she wanted to rest for a bit.
“How long has she been there?”
“Ever since the cannon,” Masha said, meaning the noon blast from the Petropavlovsky Fortress. “As soon as the teacher went away. Our kison’ka is tired from all this dancing.”
“She has slept long enough,” I said, walking toward the bedroom. I pressed down the door handle, but the door did not give in. It was locked.
“Darya,” I called. “It’s Maman. Open up.”
I tapped gently at the door, then more firmly, for there was no answer.
“Darenka! Are you awake?”
There was no reply.
My heartbeat quickened.
I placed my ear to the door, but I couldn’t hear anything. Then I banged on it.
It was Masha who stooped and put her good eye to the keyhole.
“She is not there,” she reported.
I, too, peeked through the keyhole. In the light that came through opened curtains, I saw an empty bed.
For a dreadful moment, I thought she had fainted and rolled off the bed and was lying there unconscious.
I rattled the door handle.
Again, nothing.
In the next few moments the maids came running. Darya’s shawl was gone, they told me. So were her walking shoes, her hooded traveling coat. Finally, Masha found the bedroom key, left in the calling-cards tray.
I grabbed it, rushed to the bedroom, and unlocked the door.
Inside, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The bed had been carefully smoothed. Darya’s slippers were lined up by the footstool. Then I noticed that my old cedar trunk was opened. She must have searched for something there, for my mother’s white muslin dress had been pushed aside.
And then I saw it. Egor’s letters untied, a red ribbon cast aside. “I still talk to Papa.…” I recalled my daughter’s words, her pale face drawn and shriveled with sadness.
I guessed where she might be.
I sent the maid to get the carriage. I ordered the driver to take me to St. Lazarus Cemetery.
“Hurry,” I urged the coachman.
As the carriage sped eastward, past the Fontanka River, my eyes followed any girlish figure rushing through the streets. I thought of the time when Darya came to me to tell me how she didn’t want to dance in the court ballet. I remembered how I’d made her change her mind.
When the carriage stopped at St. Lazarus’s gate, I alighted, picked up my skirts, and ran down the gravel-lined paths. I ran awkwardly, in my silly heeled shoes, in my full court dress. I ran until I saw my daughter, a huddled figure at the foot of her father’s grave, her face hidden in her hands. On Count Orlov’s orders, my husband’s plain headstone had been replaced by a monument of marble: an imposing figure of a soldier leaning on a musket, skull and bones under his feet. His face, smoothly handsome, bore no resemblance to Egor.
“Darenka,” I called.
She raised her face, her face wet with tears, toward me.
I mumbled my relief, my accusations. Everyone had been so worried. We’d looked for her everywhere. Masha was beside herself.
“Don’t be angry, Maman,” Darya said.
“I’m not angry,” I said.
I took her in my arms and caressed her shiny black hair. No court honor, I thought, merited my child’s pain.
“You don’t want to dance in the ballet?” I asked, ready to admit my error. “You don’t have to, kison’ka. We will tell the Empress tomorrow to find someone else to dance your part.”
But Darya was sobbing, not at all appeased by my words.
“What is it, my love?” I asked.
Please tell me, I thought. Please do not hide from me. I embraced her, thinking how quickly her chest, once so flat and narrow, was taking on flesh.
“It’s all my fault,” she wept.
I pried it out of her, bit by bit.
At first she had noticed small things. Catherine’s glances had made her uneasy, though she didn’t know why. Maybe it was because of that silly thing Paul had said, that when he got to be the Emperor he would make Darya Queen of Poland. She’d even told Catherine that the Grand Duke was just saying such silly things, but he didn’t mean them. And the Empress said she knew that and that she was not cross at all.
Then the Empress started coming by every day to watch the ballet practice. She applauded and praised both Darya and Paul, and my daughter was deliriously happy. But one day, when the practice ended, Catherine called her aside and started to ask questions. Did she like the ballet they were practicing? Was Herr Gilferding truly happy with the Grand Duke’s progress, or did he say so only to her? Would Paul be ready for the big night?
Herr Gilferding thought that the Grand Duke was dancing very well, Darya assured the Empress. She also confessed that while she liked the story of Acis and Galatea, a nymph in love with a shepherd, she didn’t like the way it all ended.
“What don’t you like about it?” Catherine asked her.
“That the shepherd must die,” my daughter replied.
The Empress nodded and told Darya that she had a kind heart. But then the Grand Duke got impatient and began calling her, so Darya had run to join the other dancers.
The Empress came back the next day, and the next, and she always asked Darya something. Odd questions: Did she have her own bed, or did she sleep with me? Did she wake up at night? Was she allowed to stay up, and how long? Finally, Catherine asked, “Does anyone come to visit your Maman at night?”
My daughter answered that she went to sleep early and slept soundly, so she wouldn’t know. She didn’t even hear when I rose before dawn, as I always did.
“So you never heard anything?” the Empress asked. “Ever?”
This is when Darya remembered the ice cream she never got, and so she told Catherine of Uncle Grigory coming with a bowl of ice cream for her in the middle of the night. Of Masha having to throw it away because it all melted. Of the beautiful presents she got from Uncle Grigory the next day.
The Empress asked her many more questions then. How did Count Orlov look? What was he wearing? What did he say? What kind of presents did he send? And why didn’t she ever know about it?
Because Maman asked me not to tell anyone about them, Darya had answered, only then remembering the promise she had given me.
She must have looked worried and unhappy, for the Empress assured her that it didn’t matter. Then she gave her the pendant and told her not to tell anyone about their little talk. It would be their secret, she said.
So Darya had promised. She’d felt awful when she had to lie to me about why she got the pendant. And then Uncle Grigory started looking at her in a strange way, so he must know as well and must be angry with her, too.
“And today I found this,” my daughter sobbed, pulling something from her coat pocket. A slip of paper, folded in half. I thought she had taken one of Egor’s letters from my trunk and wanted to return it, but I was wrong. It was a crude drawing of two figures. A big fleshy man, his face distorted with a cruel smile, was stretched naked on a bed, reaching for the imperial crown with a two-headed eagle. A woman, with her nose torn off, was climbing into his bed.
“It means nothing,” I assured her, tearing the paper to pieces. Somehow I managed to keep my voice even.
She had found the drawing under my pillow, Darya confessed. She’d thought I had left her a secret message, like the ones Papa used to hide for her when she was little, to lead her to a surprise.
“I’m not angry with you,” I said, wiping tears off Darya’s cheeks.
I promised I would talk to the Empress.
I promised that all would be well.
When we returned to the Winter Palace, I questioned Masha and the maids if anyone had been to my bedroom that day. They all swore I had no callers. The day before, the Grand Duke’s footman had come to fetch Darya for her ballet practice, but the man was made to wait in the corridor and never crossed our threshold.
I sent them away.
It’s a nasty feeling, suspicion. The curse of all spies. The long minutes spent examining the seals on the letters I received. The voice that questions every cheerful smile, flares up at the first display of curiosity. Watches for the unusual and doubts what is routine.
What was the chambermaid doing in my room alone? Why this sudden flow of eagerness to scrape the grate of the fireplace?
I even checked the walls for secret doors. I found nothing.
Spiders spin two kinds of threads, I recalled. A smooth one to walk on, a sticky one to trap.
When Darya finally went to bed that night, teary but content, I hurried through the corridors of the Winter Palace, my figure multiplied in the gilded mirrors. I hurried by the still-unfinished wing, rooms left unpainted because Monsieur Rastrelli, offended by Catherine’s order to remove some of the ornate gildings from the Imperial Suite, had departed for Courland.
My heart pounded; I was dizzy with questions. Does friendship flee from Sovereigns? I asked myself bitterly. Or do Sovereigns flee from friendship?
I thought of Catherine in the Moscow cathedral, in her robe of silver trimmed with ermine and embroidered with two-headed eagles. Of Catherine taking the crown in her own hands and placing it on her head.
Bestuzhev’s voice kept encroaching on my thoughts: She is beginning to think she has done it all by herself.… Are you that sure she trusts you? … Another disposable spy … You believed you were special.
Darenka’s frightened face flashed through these words, my child in pain, coaxed into a betrayal. An innocent soul blaming herself for the court’s poisonous malice.
Is this what I want for my daughter?
I swept by footmen snoring over tables, guards squabbling over card games. I recalled the talk of vicious fights in the guards’ quarters, smashed skulls, broken limbs, skin slashed with knives. The Orlovs, I’d heard, were on the lookout for any man foolish enough to believe he could replace Grigory in Catherine’s bed.
How long had I been fooling myself? What else have I missed? What have I already lost forever?
Cats scurried away at the sound of my steps. The maids said that Murka had gone feral. They whispered that they sometimes saw Elizabeth’s old cat roaming through the gardens, stiffening at the sight of a sparrow, disappearing into the hedge if any human moved toward him.
It was almost five o’clock when I returned to our rooms to find Masha waiting for me.
She helped me change my soiled dress, despairing over my crumpled silks. I would catch my death from such running about, she scolded. Drag some misfortune home.
“The Empress must be up already,” she said.
“There you are, Varenka,” Catherine exclaimed when I walked into the Imperial Study, carrying the silver tray. “You’ve never been late before. I’ve been worried. Look at you, your hands are trembling!”
There was so much concern in her voice that for a moment it seemed that all I had learned never happened. That I had to be in the wrong, that Darya must have misunderstood Catherine’s intentions. These thoughts were so tempting, so enticing, that I stood motionless, as if in a haze, the words I had wished to say withering in my throat. “Darya is very unhappy,” I managed. “She doesn’t want to dance in the ballet.”
Catherine pushed aside a pile of papers and motioned for me to sit beside her.
“Is this because of the ending?” she asked, softly, when I hesitated. “But I, too, dislike it. Tell poor Darenka I’ve already spoken to Herr Gilferding. Why bring up these sad feelings in a story? I told him. Don’t we have enough problems in our own lives?”
I felt a brief flare of panic. Something was stirring inside me, some dark current of unease, pulling me and repelling at the same time. “It’s not about the ending,” I murmured.
I did not sit down, but Catherine had not noticed. She was outlining the changes to the tale she had made. Hymen would stop Polyphemus at the last moment. Polyphemus, overtaken by remorse, would hide his face with shame until he is forgiven. It would be a comic ballet. Herr Gilferding said her changes were brilliant. And then, realizing that I was still standing, she asked, “But why don’t you sit, Varenka?”
“It’s not about the ballet,” I said.
Catherine put her quill down. “What is it about, then?” Her eyes met mine, still concerned but already urging me to move on.
I blurted them out, if not the words I had wished to say, then their shadowy twins: “Did you really think I could’ve betrayed you? Have I not always been a good friend? How could you ask my daughter such questions about me?” Catherine frowned, but I would not stop. “Darya is not as we used to be at her age. She is still a child.”
Catherine stared at me as if I made no sense. No matter how incomprehensible it seems to me now, I still expected her to explain it all away. Tear what had happened, the way I tore the filthy drawing Darya had found. But the words I heard were curt and cold. “Aren’t you forgetting your place, Varvara Nikolayevna? What is it exactly that you mind so much?”
Tears stung my eyes. “You wanted my daughter to spy on me!”
“I merely asked her to tell me what had happened. For you did not!”
There was so much force in her voice that, to my astonishment, I began to defend myself, explaining the innocuous circumstances of my silence. “Grigory is jealous of Stanislav. He drank too much, and he came by to ask me if Stanislav was still writing to you. He fell asleep in my parlor. When he awoke, he apologized and begged me to keep his visit a secret. He was ashamed.”
“Do you have the note he wrote?” Catherine leaned toward me. Her eyes never left my face.
“I didn’t keep it. I didn’t think it was important.”
“I told you once to let me be the judge of what is important, Varenka.”
The memory that came to me then was that of a whip lashing my calves, sharp, biting, cutting the skin. And the bitter taste of my own impotence.
“You are the Empress,” I retorted. “You do what suits you.”
Catherine sighed, a mother despairing over her recalcitrant child yet ultimately sure of her own victory. “I don’t have time for accusations. I know you’ve not always been happy here. But there is no need for scenes of injured pride. Let’s not mention this again. Tell Darenka she will be a wonderful nymph.”
“She is not going to dance,” I heard myself say.
Catherine gave me an impatient look.
“Very well, Varenka,” she said. “Darya won’t dance in the ballet, if this is what you both wish. And now, I have important business to attend to, and you need to calm down before we speak again.”
I made a step toward the door. Then I could not resist.
“How many did you have?” I asked, gruffly.
“How many what?” she asked.
“Tongues. In Elizabeth’s bedroom. How many besides me?”
I saw her expression, a smile tinged with pity. I fumbled for the door.
Moments later, I was rushing blindly down the wide marble stairs of the Winter Palace, cursing my own tears.