Curse Not the King (14 page)

Catherine clung to him, imploring his forgiveness, beseeching him to stay, until Potemkin, who had never contemplated doing otherwise, allowed himself to be persuaded.

Her need of him always touched his heart; knowing that iron will and fearless temperament, he loved her for her weakness with him, though he traded on it shamelessly. What he had said and done to her was done for love; he had been brutal in order to save her from what he considered an act of desperate folly. In so doing, he had risked his influence, even his life, and he had won.

In victory he was generous; the full force of his great love for Catherine flooded him with tenderness and the need to make amends. He gathered his weeping mistress in his arms and treated her with an intimacy forbidden since they had renounced their old relationship.

And skilfully he put the blame upon Nikita Panin, assuring her that it was all due to his suggestions. His beautiful, wise, gentle Catherine was not to blame, he murmured, kissing her trembling mouth. She had been misled: but that would not occur again, and her whisper of agreement pronounced Panin's dismissal and disgrace.

But it was too late, she reminded him in sudden panic. By that time Paul had been arrested, but Potemkin smiled and shook his head. He had advised the Captain of the Guard to wait, he said, and asked her humbly whether she were angry with him.

Catherine acknowledged her extraordinary state of servitude to this dynamic man and shook her head. She was not angry; but she insisted upon one condition for Paul's continued freedom.

He must leave Petersburg, she told Potemkin. If her Grisha really loved her, he would arrange a speedy exile for her son.

With that promise Potemkin left her; and when he had gone, her overwrought nerves gave way and she wept. Paul was saved again, first by the death of Natalie's only child, now by the influence of the man he hated, a man who dismissed him as an ill-favoured fool whose unstable temperament rendered him an object of contempt rather than fear. But in her heart Catherine Alexeievna thought that judgment wrong, and in fact, of all the errors that Potemkin made in their joint government, the greatest was his opinion that Paul Petrovitch was not a person to be reckoned with.

When Paul heard the sound of footsteps halting by the entrance to his suite, he sprang out of his chair, sword in hand.

His pallor was grey and deep black rings of fatigue circled his eyes; the pain in his head was so intense that he could scarcely see.

“It is General Potemkin, your Highness,” whispered his page, and Paul stared at him in momentary surprise.

Potemkin, come to supervise the order and report to Catherine.… Paul's lips twisted back in a strangely wolfish smile.

His mother's former lover, the royal pander before whom all men trembled; he gripped his long, slim weapon firmly, weighing it in his hand, his spirit lightened by a fierce resolve to thrust it through Potemkin's heart.

When the door opened he saw that the General was alone. Potemkin's one eye flickered in the direction of the other's sword, then he advanced into the room, ordering the page to close the door behind him.

For a moment he considered Paul and read the message written on that ravaged, twitching countenance.

“Put down your weapon, Highness. No one is going to harm you.”

Paul answered him with a savage laugh.

“Where are your soldiers, General? Or do you come for me alone?”

Potemkin dropped into a nearby chair and thrust his hands into his coat.

“Enough of your heroics, in God's name,” he exploded angrily. “Be thankful the Empress has seen fit to spare your life!”

The steel tip of Paul's levelled weapon lowered until it touched the carpet.

“Do you come to tell me this? Or do you try to trap me …? Be warned, General, I can endure no more. Call in your guards, and then prepare for death! For I am going to kill you!”

Potemkin glanced up at him and then stared moodily down at the floor, the prey of a fierce reaction from his early fury; he was no coward and he respected bravery in others; for all his ugliness, Catherine's son had courage, and Potemkin conceded him that point at least. But he was tired, exhausted by his quarrel with the Empress and irritable with himself for having made her weep. He frowned, fighting the onset of one of his deadly fits of melancholy, his rage reborn in the knowledge that the cause of the unhappy scene stood before him, daring to threaten his life.

“I have a message for you,” he said harshly. “You've angered your mother and she's decided to exile you.”

The Czarevitch laughed shortly.

“To the Schüsselburg?” he sneered; and knowing how nearly right he was, Potemkin lost his temper.

“Hold your tongue!” he shouted, and sprang up, overturning his chair. “Another word and that's where you shall go! Now listen to me; after the christening you are to leave the Court, you understand? Make your arrangements, or by God, I'll make them for you! And watch yourself, Highness.… One more show of insolence towards the Empress and I'll rid the world of you myself!”

Then he was gone, and the door slammed after him with such violence that it broke the gilded catch.

Slowly the sword slipped from Paul's hand; he tried to shield his eyes with trembling fingers, suddenly blinded and almost insensible with the pain that stabbed upwards through his skull; the pressure increased in a matter of seconds until it seemed as if his eyeballs would shoot from their sockets. He moaned in agony and stumbled forward, blindly feeling for support until his feet caught in the legs of Potemkin's upturned chair and he fell face downwards to the floor. A few minutes later his valet found him, unconscious and livid, with a line of foam between his lips.

The mental strain that he had been subjected to had culminated in some kind of fit.

The baby Grand Duke was christened Alexander; the Empress poured out wealth to make the ceremony outstandingly magnificent in an age renowned for its extravagance, and everyone remarked on her attachment to the child. He was a beautiful infant, fair skinned and blond, with large, intelligent blue eyes, and Catherine, who had never loved the children born of her own body, held the baby in her arms and burned with tenderness and pride. He was her grandson, and she removed him from his mother and kept him in her rooms, forbidding the hapless Marie any maternal rights. The Empress nursed him, displayed him for the admiration of the foreign ambassadors and the Court, tended him and rocked his golden cradle with her own hands. She emerged from this domestic idyll to order that the country palace of Tsarskoë should be prepared for the reception of her son and his household. She ordered him to live there with his wife and stressed that his attendance at the capital was unnecessary except on State occasions. As for the Grand Duke Alexander, it was decided that he should remain at Court and be brought up with his grandmother.

A few weeks later Paul, accompanied by a weeping Marie Feodorovna, left Petersburg with a small retinue, departing into semi-banishment to the Palace of Tsarskoë which had been seldom used for nearly twenty years. Neither of them had been allowed to see their son.

The Years of Waiting

The days passed slowly, stretching forward into an interminable vista of weeks and months and years, years that followed one another at a creeping pace of boredom and frustration. Shortly after their retirement from the Court, the Empress gave them the Palace of Pavlovsk and they lived there with an extended household, but it was a household composed of all those whom Catherine considered dull or undesirable. The mediocre and the unimportant went to join the Czarevitch in his luxurious retreat. Occasionally they went to Petersburg or to Moscow, to find yet another youthful lover attending on the Empress, provided by the all-powerful Potemkin. And there Paul caught brief glimpses of his first-born son. The lovely infant had become a child of astonishing beauty, a serious, obedient, dignified little boy with a strangely opaque expression, who clung to his adored grandmother's hand and tried to turn away when his father approached. Catherine had added this factor to the long list of wrongs she had wrought against her son.

She had taught the Grand Duke Alexander to distrust and hate him.

And for Paul's part, they were mutual feelings. Somewhere in a corner of his mind there lurked a spark of jealousy, a subconscious resentment of his empty unaffectionate childhood, and the sight of his mother lavishing love upon his son roused him to fresh bitterness.

Another child was born to Marie, a second son, and he, too, was torn from them by Catherine, who named him Constantine as an earnest of her intention to subdue Turkey and ultimately make him ruler.

The crown of Russia, as none knew better than his father Paul, was destined to pass straight to Alexander on her death.

They were uneasy years for Paul, years of dangerous inactivity which encouraged brooding; there was nothing to do at Pavlovsk but ride, or regulate the household; no amusement but the pseudo-intellectualism of the Grand Duchess, who surrounded herself with mediocre poets, penniless writers bereft of major talent, and sycophants who flattered her with a fulsomeness that made Paul sick.

In 1781 the Empress sent for him. How would he like to make a tour of Europe, she suggested, and he hesitated, tempted beyond endurance by the promised change of scene, yet as always suspicious of her motives.

The years had not improved her; her beauty had faded rapidly, her supple limbs were fat, her expression hard and matronly. The same practised smile no longer suited her; it belonged to her vanished youth, to an era which permitted a young lover to stand behind her chair without the incongruity of twenty years difference in their ages. Go abroad, she urged her son, the accent of command emerging in her voice. Broaden your mind and take Marie Feodorovna to the Mecca of her intellectual dreams. Take her to Paris, and then to Vienna. Go, show yourself, my son, she ordered.

And when he had accepted she hurried to Potemkin with the news. Excellent, excellent, he applauded; let him descend upon the European capitals, equipped with all the eccentricities of manner that had grown so pronounced in the last few years.

Let them see him as he really was, a man so obsessed with the idea of assassination that a retinue of cooks and doctors and food tasters followed him everywhere; a master whose servants trembled in his presence and bore the marks of his fists upon their flesh.

He would be closely watched, the Empress added triumphantly; someone would hear him muttering aloud of his father's picture; he was certain to alienate and offend everyone with whom he came in contact. And later these things would be remembered as she intended they should … it would all help to smooth the path for her beloved Alexander.…

Paul and Marie travelled for twelve months under the pseudonym of the Comte and Comtesse du Nord and the journey turned into a triumphal progress. The plan of his relentless mother went completely awry, for no sooner did the Czarevitch pass beyond the Russian border than he became transformed. He treated his bewildered wife with gentle courtesy, smiled on his servants and overwhelmed his foreign hosts with graciousness.

In Vienna Catherine's ugly son displayed both gallantry and wit; even his enemies remarked that away from the hated influence of his mother, Paul's whole personality blossomed into amiability and humour. He breathed the free air of Austria and expanded in the luxury of being treated as an equal. He made friends among those most inimical to Catherine and so great was the impression of intelligence and dignity that he created, that his precautions against poison were treated with respect.

Once only, he betrayed himself. During a banquet in Florence Paul tasted something bitter in the wine and with a yell of terror he sprang up and made himself vomit, shouting that his mother's spies had tried to poison him.

For a moment the assembled guests glimpsed a less reassuring side of their royal visitor's mentality, saw his livid face and staring eyes, while the nerve of his cheek throbbed and throbbed, and his stolid wife sat speechless and trembling with fear at his side.

Receptions, banquets and balls were given in their honour and the delighted Grand Duchess found herself at last in France, in the centre of the brilliance and culture that she strove to imitate so desperately.

As for the Czarevitch, one memory of that Gallic visit never faded. For the rest of his life the mention of France evoked one picture, the picture of the lovely, laughing queen who had shown him especial graciousness, talking by the hour in her soft voice with the faint Austrian inflection, and on the day nearly thirteen years later when he heard that Marie Antoinette had died upon the guillotine, he turned away and wept.

When the time came for them to return to Russia, Marie Feodorovna sat in the carriage and cried; Paul only sat in silence staring moodily out of the window, the prey of resentment and despair. After a year of freedom, of friendship and honour, they were going back, back to boredom and uncertainty, to restrictions and idleness.

The Empress was in Moscow when they arrived; the reports of their success had infuriated her until emotion made her ill and she retired to bed to recover from her disappointment and rage.

As usual, Potemkin comforted her. Never mind the European tour, he argued; Paul was sick, sick in mind and, though the process was a slow one, he had thought of a way in which to hasten the symptoms. Pavlovsk was too small a residence; while it afforded no opportunities for plotting against Catherine, its lack of amenities prevented Paul from working mischief to himself.

Give him Gatchina, Potemkin whispered, and the Empress raised herself upon one elbow and repeated the name in surprise.

Gatchina? The home of Gregory Orlov?

Yes, Potemkin said eagerly. Orlov was dead and Orlov had died mad, fleeing from hallucinations of the dead Czar Peter the Third, crying out that the bloody ghost pursued him day and night. That vast gloomy palace would be excellent for Paul, with all its association of lunacy and horror. The Prince was a great believer in the power of atmosphere, and he had felt the dark oppressiveness of Gatchina for himself. Also, let the Czarevitch have men to play with, soldiers drawn from the lowest rabble, officered by petty tyrants renowned for cruelty and excess. Given these ingredients and a little authority over the inhabitants of the nearby town, the Czarevitch would fall into the infamous trap they set for him, and the stage would be set for Alexander after all.