Curse Not the King (12 page)

Paul glanced up at him suspiciously, wondering whether the King mocked him with that question, and then answered truthfully and with great bitterness.

“I am neither consulted nor included in anything my mother does. Her personal hatred of me is so strong that it's doubtful whether I shall ever succeed her! You were my father's friend. You know that shameful history. But you have no idea of the persecution I have suffered at her hands.…”

Frederick stared across at the twitching countenance, and read a record of fearful misery out of those few words.

Something that was almost pity stirred in him, but stronger than his pity was his purpose and his cunning.

He got up and stood by Paul, resting one thin hand upon his shoulder in an almost fatherly gesture. And because it suited him, the advice he gave was good.

“Because you are Peter Feodorovitch's son, you are dear to me, my friend. As dear as the son I lack,” he said, and he lied with such artistry that he surprised himself. “Will you listen to what I advise? I am old, and men say that I'm wily …” he smiled a little. He was wily, wily enough to help the Czarevitch against his mother, wily enough to fight her openly and in the dark, as he had done for nearly twenty years.

“First, do not underestimate the Empress: that was your father's error and he paid for it with his life. Above all, don't plot against her, you're not strong enough. Your only policy should be seclusion. Leave the Court with your new wife and live in the country where the intrigues of neither friends nor enemies can harm you and where you're not under your mother's eye as a reminder.… Opportunity will summon you, but until that moment comes, my advice to you is patience.”

Paul sat in silence, considering, and he who was neither subtle nor deceitful, was astonished by the wisdom and simplicity of Frederick's plan. For the first and only time in his life, he acknowledged the merit of retreat, and in his heart he knew that his shattered nerves were crying out for rest, for a truce in the bitter struggle for survival in the face of personal tragedy, friendlessness and danger. He sighed, and when he looked up, the King saw that there were tears in his eyes and knew that Catherine's son was near to breaking point.

A faithless wife and a tyrannical mother … Frederick reflected that Nature had been very cruel to Paul, moulding him with spiteful fingers into a caricature of human ugliness, yet giving him the sensibilities to let him see and know and suffer.…

He pressed the boy's shoulder once more and then sat down in his own chair, facing him, and waited.

After a few moments the Czarevitch turned away from the fire and looked at him.

“I will do as you suggest, Sire. Immediately after my wedding, I'll ask my mother's leave to retire from Court.”

“Good, my son. And never forget that I'm your friend.”

“I know that, Sire. And believe me I have need of friendship.”

Paul drank a little more wine, aware that the sudden uprush of emotion had subsided, that he felt warmed by the presence of his father's hero and calmed by a new sense of security. Here was one whom he could trust. One who had called him son and promised friendship. Frederick's manner and associations had disarmed him to the point of absolute confidence. And Frederick could talk of the subject dearest to his heart, his memories could bring the dead to life. With one hand Paul touched his breast, feeling the outline of the little battered miniature concealed under his coat.

“Sire …”

“Yes, my son?”

“Tell me about my father.…”

The following day, Sophia of Würtemberg was presented to her husband. She thought him hideous, prematurely old, hard-eyed and grim. Her first reaction was one of diffidence and fear, and these twin emotions were to characterize her married life. Paul judged her with absolute calculation. She was taller than he by several inches, which he disliked, plump, with very blonde hair and light blue eyes that made her general appearance so fair as to be almost colourless. No one could have called her pretty, and her conversation was confined to platitudes. The King of Prussia had recommended her as virtuous, obedient, and stupid. He was quite convinced of the last, determined to enforce the second, and cynical about the first. For her own sake as well as his, Paul thanked God that there was nothing in her to remind him of Natalie; neither beauty, delicacy, nor grace. It made the prospect of living with her easier to bear.

At the end of a very cordial stay, the Czarevitch set out for Russia, and he parted from Frederick with real regret.

Both men shared a passion for military reviews, and the displays organized for Paul's benefit aroused his fervent admiration. This, he declared to his host, was the model he would follow in the formation of his own country; the sense of order fascinated him.

Discipline for the army should be enlarged to include the whole state. Everything in this sparse, regimented country seemed the embodiment of masculine rule, while the corruption, sloth and laxity of Russia was synonymous with Catherine.

“You have shown me the road that I shall take, Sire,” Paul said to Frederick when he left. “For that, as well as for your kindness and advice, I shall be for ever in your debt.”

During the return journey to Russia, Paul saw little of his future wife and scarcely spoke to her; he had become the royal suitor of tradition, indifferent and strictly polite; the nature which had warmed with such a passion of love for the treacherous Natalie was frigid with reserve, and the sore, quivering heart of the Czarevitch was enclosed behind a façade of bitterness, boredom, inferiority and obsession.

He had long accepted the fact that love was not for such as he, that the ugly face and graceless body God had given him had placed him for ever beyond the reach of human tenderness.

Sophia of Würtemberg was certainly stupid, and it was fortunate that she was also insensitive. Though the prospect of marriage with this grim, silent young man depressed her to the point of tears, it never occurred to her to disobey or question the justice of her fate. But a streak of native sentimentality was outraged by his immovable indifference, his ugliness, and the rivalry of a dead first wife who was said to have been beautiful.

Her suite repeated their advice to concentrate on finding favour with the Empress; they hinted that Paul's life had always hung upon a thread, and that Sophia's first duty was to give the great Catherine an heir for her throne and ingratiate herself personally. Then whatever happened to the Czarevitch, she need not suffer with him. Please the Empress, ran the chorus, and all will be well.

With that object fixed obstinately in her mind, the future Grand Duchess Marie Feodorovna arrived in Petersburg.

On his return Paul found that many things had changed. During his stay in Prussia rumours had seeped through to him of some fresh scandal in his mother's private life, but, ashamed before Frederick he pretended to ignore them.

From the first moment of Potemkin's conquest of Catherine, tongues had wagged hopefully of a rift between them, and Paul was too familiar with the explosive quality of their relationship to pay any attention. He had seen the Empress alternately smiling or in tears too often to believe that any scene could oust the favourite.

It never occurred to him, or to anyone else, that Potemkin might have tired of the association.

For months Catherine had showed signs of strain and frequent quarrels with the man she had overwhelmed with honours were not improving her temper, for he was becoming more demanding, jealous and moody as his power over her increased.

He accused her of infidelities until she wept hysterically, spurned her desperate advances and declared himself restless only because he knew he was unloved.

The logical, patient Empress retired utterly defeated by this neurotic onslaught, enslaved by her own need of him and made miserable by the suspicion that after two years of mutual passion, he was tired of her and wanted someone else.

Her premonition of his real reasons was well founded, and because her lover was Potemkin, inevitable. One woman, even a sexual Amazon like Catherine, would never be enough; she was beautiful, practised, passionate and devoted, but he was already bored by her body while still infatuated with her mind.

The strain of their relationship was slowly destroying a union that, without sensual ties, must raise them both to heights of glory; Potemkin knew this, for all his jealousy; knew that it was better to leave her he loved before the fires of passion sank into extinction, before his need drove him to infidelity and the fate of Gregory Orlov. His intuition and greed for power pointed the way to freedom, emotional freedom from Catherine whom he no longer really wanted, and freedom from the insane fear of his replacement by another.

With great tenderness and a sense of drama that almost convinced him of his own sincerity, Potemkin told Catherine that he had determined to renounce her. He preferred to lose her body and retain her heart, rather than try to possess them and end by forfeiting both. He loved her above all human creatures, he declared with tears and ravings, and the intensity of his passion would be their mutual ruin if it continued. He begged her to accept his sacrifice, to bind him to her side with ties of office and responsibility while setting him free from this intolerable bondage of the senses.

Held in his arms, Catherine wept and tried to protest, aware that the fundamental truth of what he said was shaking her resolve.

They could not continue as before. They could no longer love and bicker and then confer about affairs of State with coolness and impartiality. As a Minister he had become invaluable, Panin was obsolete, powerful in name only; everything she did and said in connection with ruling Russia needed Potemkin's guidance and approval before she felt satisfied and ready to proceed. Others might succeed him in the arts of love, but never as friend, counsellor and audience.

It was Potemkin, whose jealousy had caused them both such torments in the past, who suggested that she take another lover. He urged it as the sole possible solution and added that his only condition would be that she must let him choose the candidate.

While the Czarevitch was still in Germany, the General left for a visit to Novgorod. Meanwhile his mistress had tearfully agreed to take one of her secretaries, named Zavadovsky, as her lover while Potemkin was away.

The day of Zavadovsky's installation caused the General's enemies to rejoice openly about his downfall, only to discover that on his return, his influence with Catherine was as strong as ever.

It was a brilliant stratagem, the greatest test of his power that Potemkin's egomania could have devised, and to the Court's astonishment it worked. Another man occupied his official place, but Catherine's former lover still lived in his old apartments underneath the Empress's, and his grip on policies and influence over her mind became a stranglehold.

This was the situation facing Paul on his return. Count Panin's star was waning, but the substitution of Gregory Potemkin altered nothing; it only caused a sickening scandal, since he and Catherine and the rather diffident Zavadovsky were always on the best of terms. As soon as he knew the Empress to be satisfied with her new toy, Potemkin seduced his niece, the pretty, wilful Varvara Englehardt, the first of five sisters who were to enjoy their uncle's favours.

Paul's betrothal was celebrated with great splendour, and enhanced by a sudden flowering of domestic harmony rooted in fresh adultery and incest. The Czarevitch recoiled from it with incredulity and horror, refusing to speak to the young secretary who now sat at his mother's elbow and escorted her publicly to her bedroom every evening; and he insulted Potemkin as much as he dared.

Controlling her anger, Catherine decided to ignore him, and to pretend also that the spiritless boy who had left for Prussia many weeks ago had not returned a brooding stranger, as hostile and obstinate as he had ever been … and suddenly much older and more significant.

Paul's second marriage took place before the end of the year, and life at his mother's Court became a tremendous strain upon him; he had no stomach either for gaiety or for the spectacle of his wife's humiliation, for the failure of Marie Feodorovna seemed a reflection on himself, and he turned savagely upon those who did not show her honour.

She was shy and dull and perpetually shocked; shocked by Potemkin, who frankly termed her a sexless bore; clumsy and tactless before the Empress, whose good opinion she was trying so hard to secure, until the jibes and sarcasm of Catherine made Paul writhe with fury. They dismissed his wife as a fool, and the knowledge that she was every bit as shallow-minded and provincial as they thought her, hardened the Czarevitch into a show of amity.

The retirement he requested was denied him angrily; he merely received a warning that his marriage was expected to be fruitful, and there was nothing delicate about the bride this time.

So the weeks went by and the Grand Duke and Duchess remained in Catherine's shadow until the sombre, watchful presence of her detested son reduced the Empress to fury and exhaustion. She could no longer smother her feelings towards him, for her iron will weakened before the force of her own hate and irritation, so that she declared the very sight of him to be poisoning her pleasures.

Then in May, 1777, the Czarevitch came in person to his mother with the news that his wife was pregnant, and immediately Catherine's ill humour lifted. Their interview was brief and formal; if either remembered the last time Paul had brought such tidings, they gave no sign. There was no hint of pride or joy or pleading in the Czarevitch's words or his expression. Nor did he show fear, and for that the Empress labelled him a fool, for he should have been afraid indeed.

The death of Natalie's child had spoilt her plans, but this quick fertility resurrected them; and in the dark recesses of her mind, the door of a cell in the Schüsselburg swung wide and shut fast upon her son, never again to open while he lived.