Curse Not the King (4 page)

“Who else? My enemy, Panin, and my rival. You say the Court would never conspire against me in his favour; but what of the people? If they'll follow an impostor like this Pugachev, how much more dangerous is my son.…”

Panin moved his chair a little closer to her.

“Perhaps your Majesty sees the wisdom of the advice I have given you these last few years. Imprison him, Madame. Abandon your maternal scruples and send him to the Schüsselburg. Return this child from Darmstadt to her home and let me arrest the Czarevitch. We can say he was implicated in the Pugachev plot.…” he added.

Catherine smiled cynically. “You're very anxious for his death, aren't you, Nikita? I'll swear there is a cell already prepared for him.…”

“It has been waiting for the past three years, Madame. Ivan's cell.… You have only to give the word!”

Catherine Alexeievna rose and walked to the window. She stood with her face in shadow, and he waited for her to answer.

One word, one sign, and he would be free to remove the greatest menace to her safety and his own. She was safe from palace revolution, he had said, but the statement was a lie.

It was true that the Court feared her too much to plot against her yet, but in Petersburg as everywhere else, there were malcontents, men greedy for advancement and riches who had failed to receive them at her hands. And then there were the people. He had not expected her to reckon with them, for she lacked his knowledge of the seething unrest among the overtaxed, ill-fed masses, still labouring in serfdom. Paul Petrovitch was the answer to the seditious hopes of Court and country, should they decide to rise against the usurper Empress, and Nikita Panin and his friends would never know peace or security until they had persuaded his mother to put him to death.

“I'm going to disappoint your hopes, my friend. You are not to lay hands on the Czarevitch. Whatever his disloyalty, he is still my son, and I can't bring myself to shed his blood.”

Panin bowed in submission, his fat face set with chagrin.

“As your Majesty commands. But I shall continue to have him watched, with your permission.”

Sensing the anger in his voice, Catherine left the window and came to him. She smiled, and instinctively Panin's hopes rose.

“Because I refuse your request, don't, think I disregard your warning. I have reason to respect your judgment, Nikita.… It's necessary that I should have an heir to stabilize the throne, you understand. When the Grand Duchess Natalie bears a child, we'll reconsider this question of my son's retirement from the world.…”

Apparently satisfied, the Minister kissed her hand and retired. On the way to his own apartments he passed the suite allotted to Paul for his wedding night and his pace became suddenly slower at the sight of a man leaning against the corridor wall, watching the entrance to the Czarevitch's rooms. A lackey stood guard by the ante-room door, and by the light of the candelabra which the servant held, Panin paused before the unknown.

“Are you keeping some vigil, friend, that you're not gone to your own quarters at this hour?”

The man he addressed raised his head and bowed unsteadily. To his surprise Panin recognized Paul's equerry, André Rasumovsky. He also noted that the young man was undoubtedly drunk.

“Well, André, what are you doing here? Watching over your master?” he asked smoothly, suddenly curious.

Rasumovsky bowed again.

“You must forgive my zeal, Count Panin. I came to offer my humble good wishes to their Highnesses … but I find them already retired.… Such haste is natural when the bride is so beautiful,” he said, and his tone was as strange as his expression.

Panin regarded him attentively.

“I advise you to go to bed, André. The Czarevitch has no need of your attendance at this hour. He is surrounded by those who wish him well. Now go to your rooms.”

Rasumovsky stepped away from the wall which had supported him and stood swaying in the middle of the corridor.

“I am obedient, my dear Count. I retire as you suggest.…” He turned towards the door of the bridal suite and swept the astonished lackey a deep, unsteady bow.

“God bless the Czarevitch,” he muttered savagely.

“And grant him long life,” responded Catherine's chief Minister smoothly.

Then he departed, walking with the soft-footed speed common to many fat men, and silence enveloped the dark palace corridors once more.

2

Four months after their marriage, the Grand Duke and Duchess followed the Empress to the Summer Palace of Tsarskoë Selo, and there, in a setting of perfect architectural and scenic beauty, Paul enjoyed greater happiness and freedom than he had ever known.

Etiquette was slack. Catherine herself relaxed from the business of affairs of State, gave intimate parties from which her son was naturally excluded, and generally left him to his own devices. He was at liberty to please himself, and the fount of all his pleasure, the mainspring of his life, was Natalie Alexeievna.

He was so hopelessly in love with her that his subjection would have been ridiculous if it had not strengthened him in other ways. He insisted on her company for every minute of the day, dismissed his equerries and her ladies-in-waiting, and, clasping her hand in his, hurried her away into romantic solitude. He never tired of watching her, of admiring her beauty, of listening to the tone of her sweet voice, and he loved her with a passion that was almost frenzy.

His shyness had given place to manhood and growing confidence, his step was firm, his glance direct, and in his treatment of his wife, he was tenderness itself. And like all lovers, he was mercifully blind. The essential shallowness of her nature and weakness of character eluded him; he worshipped in happy ignorance of the fact that his bride was neither in love with him nor as trustworthy as he supposed.

He never suspected that their long rides through the snow were nightmares of exercise and endurance to the shivering Natalie; that she was as bored by his lectures on military tactics and Russian politics as she was unmoved by his love-making. And he also failed to notice that her eyes followed the figure of another man, and watched him with an expression that was absent when she looked upon her husband.

Before she left for Russia, her advisers had warned her to expect little personal happiness; a loveless marriage was the lot of royalty, and Natalie was prepared for indifference and neglect. She knew nothing of what love might mean, and Paul's devotion bewildered and frightened her.

His tastes were alien; he revelled in exercise which she hated, bored her with intellectual discussions which were beyond her understanding, loaded her with priceless gifts whose value she did not appreciate, and in the middle of showing her some treasure in his library, he often threw the books aside and took her in his arms.

She thought him violent in his enthusiasm and unbalanced in his hatred of his enemies. And inwardly she shrank from his devouring passion for herself.

For the first time in his life Paul had a confidante, and the full flood of his grievances and hopes were poured into his wife's ear. The weeks in Petersburg had been a nightmare to Natalie; her early dislike of the Empress was increased a hundredfold by the tale of treachery and hatred that Paul told her, and often he repeated the story of the late Czar's death until her flesh crept with horror; and sometimes, taking her arm, he pointed out one of Catherine's most favoured intimates, a gigantic Guards officer, with one side of his face furrowed by a jagged sabre scar. That man, Paul whispered savagely, was the one who had strangled his father.

The other brother, Gregory Orlov, had returned to court after their wedding, returned, so rumour said, to oust the Empress's new lover, Vassiltchikov, and regain his former place in her affections.

Natalie only spoke to him once, when he was formally presented to her; and despite her rank, she blushed under that impudent, lustful stare, and for a moment understood why Catherine herself, whose word was the law of life and death, had run from a palace ballroom and hidden in her Minister Panin's rooms, when she first heard that Gregory Orlov had defied her and come back to Court.

She had never seen such men as these—giants and barbarians, without fear of God or man; the immensity of their build and personality terrified her more than it fascinated; she was not Catherine, who Could love an Orlov and yet remain free.

To illustrate the point of his mother's depravity and the kind of men she honoured, Paul repeated the old tale of the young Lieutenant Potemkin, another traitor who had helped the Empress to usurp the throne. He, too, had wished to become Catherine's lover, until the elder Orlov, Alexis the royal murderer, had dispensed with this rival to his brother's place by picking a quarrel with him during a game of billiards, and knocking his eye out with a well-aimed cue.

Armoured by inexperience, Natalie turned from the Empress and her Court in horror and disgust, unaware that her censure and dislike were rooted in jealousy and discontent. She hated Catherine, hated her for her brilliance and her power, for the freedom with which she ordered her life and arranged her love affairs, taking and discarding whom she would, while her daughter-in-law remained tied to an ugly, ardent husband and tried to pretend that her mind and body did not yearn for someone else.

At Tsarskoë Selo, Natalie finally ceased pretending to herself as well as to the world and to the unsuspecting Czarevitch.

The presence of this other man had destroyed her chance of happiness from the beginning. From that first exchange of glances on the night of her wedding banquet, the eyes of André Rasumovsky had followed her everywhere, taunting her; his nearness and her almost daily contact with him had undermined her dignity and shattered her resistance. He spoke to her as often as he dared, he touched her as if by accident, so that she trembled and felt a burning, traitorous blush rising in her face, while the voice of her own rebellious heart told her that here was the man who could make the mockery of marriage into the reality of love.

This conflict within her only found peace in solitude, and since Paul sought her company throughout the day, Natalie was forced to invent a headache and escape to her rooms when she could; on those rare occasions when the Czarevitch went riding far out over the palace parklands, she slipped out of the Imperial suite and walked across the snow-covered lawns to the Grand Duchess's pavilion.

This was a small building, designed in the classical style; and despite the fact that it was unused until the summer months, the interior was luxuriously furnished. It stood on the edge of an ornamental lake, now frozen solid, where by tradition the Grand Duchess's swans circled gracefully on the pale water, and the ladies of the royal family spent the long hours of the warm summer days, feeding their birds from the steps of the pavilion.

The charming rooms had become Natalie's favourite retreat, a refuge from Paul, a haven from Rasumovsky and her own confused, often adulterous thoughts.

One afternoon in mid-January, she went there as usual, unaccompanied even by a maid, and since the palace servants knew of her habit, the pavilion was already prepared for her. With her eyes half closed against the dazzling glare of snow and ice, the Grand Duchess walked quickly up the steps and pushed open the heavy gilded door, brushing some of the feathery snow away with her gloved hand.

The room she entered was beautifully furnished, couches covered with exquisite thread embroidery lined the walls, tables of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl shone in the light of a gracious fire. There were mirrors in frames of solid silver hanging on the tapestried walls, and the inevitable ikons gave the chamber that air of incongruous piety peculiar to all Russian dwellings.

Natalie, who was beginning to hate the luxury and barbarity of the Imperial palaces, loved the pavilion, forgave it the riot of colour in hangings and ornaments, dismissed the dim, elongated Saints in their setting of jewels and gilt, and spent happy hours of peace within its walls.

She now unfastened her sable-lined cloak, threw it carelessly on a chair and advanced towards the wide fireplace, warming her small, chilled hands before the blaze. Her black hair was damp and shining, where stray flakes of snow had penetrated under her hood, and the hem of her blue silk gown was wet.

Natalie leant against the mantelpiece and closed her eyes. She felt exhausted and near to tears, two feelings which attacked her immediately she was beyond Paul's unwanted supervision. She wished for respite, for strength to bear the odium of a loving husband and the torturing desire to take refuge from him in the arms of an inferior. And above all, she was ashamed, ashamed of her own weakness, and a surge of vindictiveness grew out of her humiliation.

For the hundredth time she determined to have Rasumovsky dismissed from her husband's service. One word to Paul would be sufficient. She had only to express the wish, and without questioning her motive, the infatuated Czarevitch would release her from the strain of André's presence.

Natalie thought of him and trembled with simulated rage, playing with visions of imprisonment and even death as the fate which she could inflict on the destroyer of her peace.

In the midst of these hysterical reflections Natalie heard the sound of a door opening and then swinging shut; a draught of cold air blew through the room, and she swung round, suddenly frightened, believing that it was Paul who had followed her, Paul who had come into the pavilion to find her, to smother her with his love and forbid even this refuge in the future.

But it was not the Czarevitch. The figure outlined against the doorway was far too tall and as it came closer she recognized it.

Then for a moment there was absolute silence, as Paul's wife and his equerry stood facing one another.

“I followed you, Madame,” he said at last. “I've watched you come here several times and to-day I followed you.”

“How dare you, M. Rasumovsky! You know I'm unchaperoned. You must go immediately. I shall report this to the Czarevitch.…”