Curse Not the King (9 page)

Nikita Panin was becoming increasingly angry and uneasy at the Empress's failure to take advantage of her strength and strike down her son. Daily he sought Catherine out and begged her to seize the Grand Duchess and put an end to the situation. Imprison her, he urged, and then make the Czarevitch re-marry; he would have to obey, Panin argued; there were always means with which to bend a stubborn will … the threat of ill-treatment for Natalie Alexeievna, perhaps even of death for her, might persuade him into obedience.… If Her Majesty was listening to the advice of others, he implored her to heed his counsel rather than that of her intimates, who were perhaps more familiar with soldiering than politics.…

Catherine listened in silence, aware that the words whispered into her ear behind the bed curtains were carrying more weight than all the Minister's clever diatribes. And Panin was mistaken when he dismissed Potemkin as an ignorant soldier. He was proving to be extraordinarily cunning, far-sighted and shrewd.

He shared her patriotism, her ambition, her passion for debate, and for weeks he had been ridiculing Panin whom she knew he hated. She told him he was jealous of the Minister for the joy of seeing him caricature his enemy, waddling round her boudoir with a cushion stuffed under his tunic, admonishing her in Panin's irritating falsetto voice.

Jealous! Potemkin roared, half laughing and half angry, jealous of that squeaking bladder of venom! Let him choke on his malice against the Czarevitch and his wife! Wait, wait, he begged her seriously; give the criminals a few months' grace, let Russia settle down after the tumult of rebellion before a court scandal of such magnitude was loosed. And Catherine listened to him.

“As you advise, my beloved,” she said to him. “I won't act against them yet, though Panin presses me to do so.”

So she promised Potemkin, anxious to flatter, and deny him nothing. When he had left her she went to her writing-desk and made a note in her journal to separate Natalie from Paul in the course of the yearly migration to Tsarsköe Selo, and divert her to the nearest prison. The date was fixed for the middle of summer.

A few weeks before the time limit set by Catherine, Natalie Alexeievna fainted at a banquet. She was carried to her rooms, followed by the Czarevitch, who rushed from the table without waiting for permission. While the royal physician attended her, Paul paced up and down in the ante-room, the sweat running down his face.

The tremendous emotional strain of the past months had shattered his unsteady nervous system and in his anxiety he walked up and down, weeping, his grotesque features contorted with grief.

When the doors of her bedroom opened he started forward and confronted the doctor, unaware of the strange spectacle he presented or of the other's quick recoil.

“What is the matter with my wife?”

The doctor tried to withdraw his arms from Paul's fierce, shaking grip and smiled uncomfortably.

“There is nothing wrong with her, Highness. No cause for alarm. Instead there is reason to rejoice.” He paused, until the strong fingers bit into his flesh.

Then, in one sentence, he reprieved his patient, and sentenced the listening Czarevitch to the fate his enemies had long intended.

“The Grand Duchess is with child.”

The same night Paul went to tell the Empress.

“Madame, forgive me for disturbing you but the Czarevitch is in the ante-room. He asks to see you.”

The Empress slipped her arms into the loose-sleeved Russian jacket that her robing mistress held out for her and then turned to the speaker.

“I will not see the Czarevitch,” she said coldly. “I am expecting General Potemkin, Bruce, and I don't wish to be disturbed. Tell him to come to-morrow, and to seek audience like everybody else!”

The Countess shrugged.

“I have already said that, Madame, knowing that you were receiving the General. But he refuses to be turned away. He seems very agitated. He says it concerns the Grand Duchess,” she added.

“Oh, I dare say! She fainted to-night during the meal and had to be carried to her rooms. Most edifying, in front of the English Ambassador, with my son running after her like a lunatic.…”

Catherine paused while her attendant fastened the red velvet jacket over her voluminous lace petticoats and smoothed back the écru lace from her breasts. Her ceremonial gown, stiff with jewels, had been put away, her diamonds removed, her hair brushed and loosened because it pleased her favourite to pull it down over her shoulders.

The Countess Bruce still hesitated, presuming upon her singular friendship with her mistress.

“I should see him, Madame; if only for a moment, to find out what he wants.… He might be willing to repudiate her now.…” she suggested.

“Repudiate her? No, Bruce, you don't know my son! Whatever he comes for, it is not to yield to me, be sure of that! Oh, very well then, admit him.”

The Empress sat down in a gilded chair, her beautiful hands gripped the arms, her face set with hatred and suspicion. He had sought her out at last, after months of waiting, and demanded an audience with his usual arrogance. This would be their first private meeting since that hideous scene when she faced him with Natalie's adultery, and the memory of it made her heart pound with anger. I know, she thought grimly, I know, that little slut is ill with fear for herself and he comes to me to beg! By God, I'll prescribe a remedy for her that shall put her out of her pain, whatever Gregory advises.…

“Madame.”

He was in the room, advancing towards her, his left cheek throbbing so violently that she frowned with distaste and looked away from him.

He paused in front of her, and then to her astonishment he knelt.

“It was very good of you to see me, Madame.”

Catherine looked at him in surprise. She ignored his remark and said angrily:

“Why did you leave the banquet without my permission? Or have you come to apologize for your ill manners and breach of etiquette?”

“I have news … important news, about the Grand Duchess.”

“Really? Then she's decided to admit her guilt, is that it?”

Paul looked down and bit his lip to stifle the furious retort that trembled on his tongue. How I hate you, he thought, how I would like to get up off my knees and spring at you, put my hands round your throat and squeeze the life out of your body as your friends did with my father.… He fought down the impulse, almost frightened by the suddenness and intensity of emotion which seized him as he listened to that mocking voice.

“My wife … my wife is pregnant. I came to tell you.…”

There was a moment of silence, broken by the musical chimes of Catherine's mantel clock. She counted twelve, her mind registering that the banquet had ended early, that by this time she should have been lying in Potemkin's arms … Pregnant, her son had said. Panin was wrong, they were all wrong; Natalie was with child.

She sat very still and said nothing.

Paul stared at her in desperation, trying to read that pale implacable face.

“I don't plead for myself,” he said hoarsely. “I only beg of you … receive Natalie in friendship. She's ill, Madame, she scarcely sleeps or eats because of your displeasure. Now she bears my child … your heir. For her sake, not for mine, reinstate her and put her mind at rest.”

Catherine looked on his bowed head and saw his hands clench to conceal their trembling.

“Go to the Grand Duchess,” she said at last. “Go and offer my congratulations. Tell her that all is forgiven. I'll receive her privately to-morrow, if she is well enough. As for Rasumovsky, whom you persist in defending, I shall send him abroad. There is an end of the matter.”

When he had gone she rose, hesitating with her hand on the bell-cord. Was it possible that he suspected what the birth of this child was going to mean for him, she wondered, and then dismissed the thought as fancy. No man was capable of love like that.

Within a year her problem would be solved and solved by means she didn't care to think about.

While the Empress lay in Potemkin's arms, Paul sat on the edge of Natalie's bed and told her that the danger of arrest was past. He held both her hands in his and reassured her eagerly, his voice unsteady with tenderness and pride.

“It will be a son, Natalia. I know that it will be a son. We will name him Peter … if that pleases you.”

The Grand Duchess glanced down at the bedcover and assured him that it did.

In actual fact she scarcely listened. She was safe: the living nightmare of fear and suspense was at an end because of the coming of an heir for Russia, yet she who should have been delirious with relief could scarcely find the words to try and echo Paul's enthusiasm. She felt faint and ill, and the knowledge of what her slight body carried frightened her: soon it would grow heavy and stir with life, and quite suddenly Natalie flung her thin arms round her husband's neck.

He felt her tears against his cheek and held her close.

“What is it, my darling one, what's the matter …?”

She lifted her head and looked at him and the sight of his ugly, worried face aroused the first spasm of genuine tenderness that she had ever known for him. She smiled forlornly, trying not to shiver.

“You're very kind to me, Paul Petrovitch,” she said gently. “I'm the most fortunate of wives. I only weep for happiness because of our son: and we will call him Peter as you wish. I think I'd like to sleep now, dear Paul.”

With his own hands he covered her and snuffed out all but the two candles by the bed. When he had gone her eyes flew open and the tears welled up and overflowed on to the silk pillow; for some time she lay quite motionless and wept, staring up at the heavy embroidered canopy over her head, while a presentiment of tragedy enveloped her.

Paul was delighted, the Empress appeased. A new chance of life and liberty stretched before her, but in the candle-lit gloom of her great bedroom, the Grand Duchess Natalie Alexeievna stared into the future with wide, frightened eyes and wondered why she felt so cold.

Two days later, while she was still confined to her rooms, André Rasumovsky left Petersburg to carry out a diplomatic mission. He left in thankfulness and peace, aware that the woman he loved was safe and that his only punishment was this period of banishment. It would not last for ever and when he returned he hoped to resurrect the past.

As he passed out of the courtyard he raised his eyes to the windows of her suite, the panes aflame in the summer sunlight, hoping for one last glimpse of her, but there was none. So he spurred his horse and rode out of the city. He never saw Natalie Alexeievna again.

That summer the Court left Petersburg as usual and Natalie was forced to follow the Empress to Tsarskoë Selo with all its poignant memories of her absent lover. She travelled in a titter, drawn at the slowest pace so as to eliminate the jolting which might bring on a miscarriage, and Paul walked his horse at her side, leaning down to ask anxiously whether she were comfortable and well.

Natalie managed to smile and reassure him, before sinking back upon her cushions, sick and faint, trying to watch the interminable Russian landscape, and the hundreds of poor people who waited for days by the parched roadside to see their Empress pass. Hour by hour the vast procession journeyed on, led by the great gilded coach in which Catherine sat, smiling and bowing to the crowds, and those who saw the figure of a man seated beside the Czarina, nudged each other and whispered that that was General Potemkin, the new favourite.

Many times in the course of that short progress, the cheering for the Empress was half-hearted and spasmodic: oftener the people sighted Paul astride his horse; for all his lack of height and personal beauty, he rode with the arrogance of a king, and a sudden roar of welcome would burst from hundreds of enthusiastic throats.

“Long live the Czarevitch!”

For all their stupidity the masses were not long deceived. They knew the Empress to be sitting in another's place, their sense of fitness was affronted by the sight of her lover travelling in the Imperial carriage, and the tales of her troops' cruelties in the Urals were still vivid in the minds of men. As Empress Consort they had worshipped her, but now, after twelve years of rule, they were hostile and looking to her son.

Paul heard the people's plaudits and his sallow face flushed red with pride.

“Long live the Czarevitch,” they cried, and in acknowledgment he raised one hand, aware that the demonstration of his popularity must gall his mother into bitter jealousy, and knowing that many Romanovs had suffered death because the masses showed them preference.

During that journey to Tsarskoë Selo he thought of his dead father for the first time in many months, mouldering forgotten in an unimportant grave, and told himself that all would have been so different had the late Czar lived.

But the dangerous worshipping reveries of his childhood did not last for long; the symbolic idol of his father had been almost entirely replaced by the living Natalie, and joined with her was the love growing in him for his unborn child. He, whose fury sent the culprits flying for their lives, nursed his wife with the tenderness of a woman, for as her time grew nearer the Grand Duchess became more miserable and ailing.

The fantasies that sometimes go with pregnancy took a strange form with her: she cried continually and couldn't bear the Czarevitch to go out of her sight.

To all his anxious questions she answered nothing, closing her swollen eyes and clinging obstinately to his hand, her slight body already heavy and grotesque.

Even André Rasumovsky seemed vague and far away, the whole pattern of her marriage was a blur, the only reality was Paul who loved her and would protect her to the end. And in the closing months they drew very close together; for the first time she began to understand him, and since she knew her part in it must shortly end, Natalie viewed the future without personal fear.

Often Paul sat beside her on the couch where she spent all her days, his arm around her shoulders, one small hand clasped in his, and like that they talked for hours on end. He was full of plans, and his optimism saddened her unbearably.