Curse Not the King (24 page)

“Come in, M. Zubov. What brings
you
to Gatchina …?” Paul's voice cracked ominously on the last words, and though his hand shook and the pain induced by any form of tension stabbed into his skull so that he winced, his fingers rested firmly on the pommel of his sword.

The brother of Plato Zubov did not answer. Instead he stopped close to the short, thick-set figure, rigid in the attitude of menace, and suddenly went down on his knees.

“God save the Czar!”

Marie Feodorovna's porcelain coffee cup fell from her hands and shattered to pieces; for a few seconds that seemed to endure for all eternity, that was the only sound in the room.

Then Paul spoke, spoke with difficulty, because his tongue was thick and stammering with excitement and unbelief.

“My mother … my mother is dead …?”

“Not yet, Sire,” Zubov told him. “But you must hurry to Petersburg if you would see her alive. She was found unconscious this morning, and they say she will not live for more than a few hours.”

“Why do
you
come to tell me this? … Where are my Ministers? … Where is my son?”

“I come to offer my allegiance to you, Sire. The Grand Duke Alexander is in the capital, waiting for you. And already half Petersburg is on the way here to acclaim you Emperor.”

Paul turned away abruptly and from the tall windows of his room looked out and saw a confusion of sledges being drawn up outside the palace; along the road into Gatchina a line of vehicles stretched back as far as the eye could see.

The sound of many voices came to him, the excited tones of his mother's courtiers who were at that moment besieging the entrance to his palace in order to throw themselves at the feet of the new Czar; those who had jeered at Catherine's ugly son and prophesied his disinheritance were now confounded.

The Empress who had begun to seem immortal had suddenly deserted them; she lay dying on the bed where Plato Zubov had made love to her the night before, the expected proclamation of her grandson Alexander had not taken place, and with the agility of rats abandoning a doomed vessel, the Court dissolved in a panic-stricken rush to make peace with the man who was already designated the Emperor Paul the First.

“It has come,” he muttered, and standing by the window, looking down on the scene of fear and contusion taking place below, he struck his aching forehead with his fist, mastering a sudden unmanly desire to shed tears of gratitude to the God who had permitted him to see this day.

Outside his rooms a crowd had gathered, murmuring behind the door, barred from his presence by the Gatchina sentries; Paul heard them, and suddenly he smiled to think that in the course of a few hours the order of things could be reversed so quickly and completely. There was no Palace Revolution to dispose of him, Catherine lay speechless in the face of death, unable to say the few words which would wreak her final vengeance on her hated son, and Paul guessed that Alexander had not dared to give the order to seize his father without the Empress's authority; that, in a moment of crisis, fear had made him hesitate.

So he was to succeed.

“Sire.…”

Nicholas Zubov ventured to interrupt his thought, anxious that since he and his brothers had declared for Paul, no
coup d'état
in Petersburg should supplant him in his absence.

“Sire. You must set out for the capital immediately. There's not a moment to be lost! The Empress may recover consciousness.…”

She might indeed, Paul realized, and knew that a few words bequeathing the crown to Alexander might yet effect the ruin of all his hopes. But one question emerged from the turmoil of his thoughts, one query that might explain why the plans of the most resolute and methodical monarch in the world had come to nothing, with her son succeeding to the power she had intended for another.… Paul turned and stared into the dark face of Nicholas Zubov, who had no cause to love his Czarevitch and offer his sword to his service.

“Who sent you to me?”

Back came the answer without pause, delivered with the brevity of the soldier whose concept of obedience embraces all the vagaries of men and circumstances.

“Alexis Orlov, Sire.”

The confusion in Petersburg was indescribable. Rumours that the Empress was dying, even dead, had seeped through to the people who left their homes and gathered outside the Winter Palace in shivering, speculative groups, watching the blind façade of stone and glass behind which Catherine the Great lay, spending her life with every halting breath.

No snow fell from the lead-coloured sky, so that it seemed as if the heavens had suspended their power and waited in unison with the people of Holy Russia for that one soul to pass into eternity; only a howling, bitter wind swept through the city, catching the dried snow off the streets and whirling it fiercely above the ground, creating a miniature blizzard. The Neva, frozen into a shining thoroughfare of solid ice, was dotted with sledges which cut across the great sweep of petrified water, passing the riverside entrance to the Imperial Palace where sentries stamped and marched to keep from freezing.

There were two currents of activity: the nobles deserting the Winter Palace and rushing towards Gatchina and an unknown future, and the humble gathered round the palace to pray for the woman who had ruled them for thirty-seven years.

There would be a new Emperor, the people whispered, but whether his name would be Paul or Alexander no one knew.

Paul—insisted the older of Catherine's subjects, the injustices of her long reign still fresh in their minds. Remember Pugachev, remember the horrors inflicted by her troops. Remember the ceaseless wars, the ruthless conscription of men for this new conflict against France.… Her extravagance, and her favourites—God save Paul!

But there were others who said nothing, others who had known the older Catherine Alexeievna and her handsome grandson, and to whom the name of the shadowy Czarevitch conjured up visions of savagery and madness, of vague crimes committed in the confines of notorious Gatchina. These gazed up at the great Winter Palace and in their hearts they prayed for Alexander.

The palace itself was silent, the vast, rambling buildings peopled only by servants, soldiers and a few who remained faithful to their Empress and kept vigil over her unconscious body.

Among these was her grandson, Alexander.

They had not allowed him to approach her bedside, and
they
consisted of men who had suddenly proved themselves friendly to his father and assumed control within the hour of hearing that the Empress had had a stroke and was about to die.

Rastopchine was among them, but Alexander had expected him to take the stand of loyalty; what he had never imagined was the emergence of Plato Zubov and his brothers into the ranks of the legitimist party, accompanied by his mother's Minister Bezborodko and others. Most fatal and astonishing of all was the action of that legendary friend of Catherine, the man whose hands were stained with the miserable Peter Feodorovitch's blood shed in that half-forgotten tragedy of nearly forty years before.

Alexis Orlov, who had more to fear from Paul than any man alive, swung the wavering balance in the Czarevitch's favour. Openly he urged Nicholas Zubov to ride at once to Gatchina and bring the rightful Czar to Petersburg.

“There's been enough bloodshed for this throne,” he shouted in his still vigorous voice, so that the shrinking Alexander heard him. “I bear the stain of it, my brother Gregory died in torment because of what was done. Listen to me, who have nothing left to fear now but the judgment of God! Give your allegiance to the rightful Czar …!”

And they had listened to him.

With a murmur of excuses the Minister Bezborodko removed the Empress's private papers, ignoring the pleas of the young Grand Duke, who saw that precious will carried into an inner room out of his reach. Plato Zubov hurried to the bedside of his dying mistress and knelt beside it, while Nicholas Zubov, closely followed by Rastopchine, rushed from the State apartments, shouting for horses to carry them to the Czarevitch at Gatchina.

Then the panic set in, and in hundreds Catherine's courtiers fled the palace, commandeering any vehicles that were available, fighting to show their loyalty to the new and dreaded Czar, taking the long, crowded road to Gatchina and submission.

Watching that open doorway, beyond which his grandmother lay on her deathbed, Alexander knelt, and wept with fear and disappointment. It was all over, the brilliant dream that they had shared together and discussed so often, the dream of his accession. Catherine's crown had been torn from her head while she still lived, and placed on the brow of the man whose enmity was now become a deadly danger.

It had only needed one determined voice to cry out in his favour, one man quick enough to get him Catherine's papers and proclaim him Czar according to the terms of her will, and the thing would have been done. But the voice was raised, the loyalty evinced on behalf of Catherine's abhorred son, and thus Alexis purged himself of the murder of Paul Petrovitch's father.

Thinking these thoughts the Grand Duke continued to alternately weep and pray for his own safety, until the sound of a great commotion brought him quickly to his feet, wiping his swollen eyes.

The cry came faintly at first, as it preceded the tramp of many feet, until it sounded in the main ante-chamber.

“Make way.… Way for the Czar!”

For a single instant of hysteria and hate Alexander wanted to rush out and meet them crying that his grandmother still lived, that his father whom they had both hated was not Czar of Russia yet.…

But the spasm passed. A chill of icy caution froze the impulse and stretched the Grand Duke's pallid features in a welcoming smile.

It was too late, too late for anything now but submission with the rest. And like them he would submit … for the moment.

His fine, ringed hands straightened his cravat and brushed the knees of his breeches where contact with the marble floor had soiled them. Then he went out to meet his father.

At a quarter to ten Catherine's physician Rogerson informed the Court that the Empress was dead. Paul, who had been standing by the bedside, gazing down at the motionless figure of his mother, suddenly realized that the stertorous, painful breathing had stopped. As the lids were pressed down over the sightless eyes, a priest of the Orthodox religion lifted her hand for Paul to kiss, but with a gesture of impatience the new Emperor turned away, unable to pretend to sorrow or affection when his heart was bounding with relief and joy.

She was dead, and with her had died an era hateful to him in every detail.

A new reign had just begun and all the terrible resolutions formed for so many years in anticipation of this moment came rushing in upon him.

Away with vice, with sloth, with hypocrisy.…

Savagely he turned on the murmuring priest.

“Leave her!” he ordered. “She never believed in you in life!” Then he pointed to the Minister Bezborodko standing in a corner of the room.

“Get me my mother's papers,” he commanded. “And bring them to me in here.” Then he walked into an ante-chamber adjoining the room where the Empress's body lay, and there he received visitors who side-stepped the stiffening corpse with horrified glances. Most of those who were granted an audience noticed the boxes of papers which were broken open, their contents scattered as if a frantic search had taken place, a search that must have proved successful, for the fire in the marble grate was damped down by a heap of charred and blackened parchment.

It was all that remained of Catherine's will and Alexander's hopes.

At midnight the ceremony of swearing allegiance to the new Emperor took place, and afterwards Paul retired to the sovereign's suite in the Winter Palace, where a number of rooms had been hastily cleared of Catherine's effects and made habitable for him.

There he sent for those who were to set the pattern of his reign, the men whose past would indicate the future.

A crowd of weary courtiers waited in the ante-room of the Czar, afraid to go to bed despite the strain and exhaustion of the day until someone remembered to dismiss them.

Among them were men whose achievements in politics and war would be invaluable to the new Emperor.

But no call came for their attendance. Only two persons passed beyond the sentries from the Gatchina garrison who already mounted guard, and remained shut up with him for several hours.

Those whom Paul had chosen were Rastopchine, and the sadist, Araktchéief.

The reign of Paul the First of Russia had begun.

Three days after the accession of the Emperor, a tomb in the cloister of St. Alexander Nevsky Church was broken open.

Inside, the Czar's emissaries discovered a skeleton, identifiable by the remains of a mouldering boot on the left foot. With great care the brittle bones were lifted out of the rotting casket, a few shreds of decayed uniform cloth clinging to them, and laid in a magnificent coffin upholstered in velvet and inlaid with gold and precious stones.

Then the Emperor was informed that the body of the murdered Czar Peter the Third had been disinterred according to his orders.

Katya Nelidoff was with him when the report was made, and she listened, horrified, to the description of the exhumation of a man dead for almost forty years.

Paul sat in silence, staring at the floor while the witnesses spoke, interjecting a question as to the condition of the corpse. He was particularly anxious that the skull should be in a good state of preservation, and he was quickly reassured on this point.

Still gazing at the ground he dismissed the officials, and only then he raised his head and looked at his mistress. To her astonishment she saw that the tears were running down his face.

With a sudden surge of tenderness she caught his hand in hers, forgetting the changed status which had removed him to a still more distant plane from the old loving relationship of nearly nine years before.