Empress of the Night (15 page)

“Pick up the papers,” she orders.

The guard is young, smooth with easy grace. He lowers his eyes as he gathers the scattered sheets and hands them to her. She doesn’t want to imagine where his thoughts go. She points at the box, and he picks that up, too.

“Take the table away.”

The guard lifts the broken table, and she rings for her maid. She will need ice for her cheek. A new dress. A new pair of shoes.

“Good night, Count Orlov,” she says, turning to Grigory, who is
standing like a pillar of salt, struggling to understand what has just happened. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Whatever he thinks matters little. Far more important is what she, the Empress, now sees for the first time in her lover’s eyes.

Fear, not anger.

Supplication, not pride.

9:30
A
.
M
.

Her right arm is dangling, limp, as if it belonged to someone else. Pain shoots up inside her skull. Something is wrong.

Bezborodko, the best of her ministers, has warned her against French assassins sent to kill her. “They crossed the eastern border, Your Majesty. Two young men, posing as exiles deprived of their fortunes by the Revolution. They will take any chance—a ball, a masquerade, an audience granted out of compassion. One will have a dagger hidden up his sleeve. Another intends to fire a flint pistol.”

She has laughed it all off. “If they were truly on their way, would we know all that?” she has asked. “Should we fear an assassin who doesn’t know how to keep a secret?”

Has she been wrong?

The French are liars. They speak of liberty and brotherhood and then let the mob loose in the streets. Drag their king and queen to the gallows, in the name of justice. Like this charlatan Cagliostro, they claim to be able to create gold from urine. They forget that a barrier of fear, once broken, cannot be easily put back in place. That a man left to his animal instinct will not trade or build, but hoard and pillage.

Not much makes her sweat with horror. The thought of the mob does. Men who stick blades of scythes upright, who turn trees into gallows, ropes into nooses. And their women, who—like the French
poissards
told Marie Antoinette—wish to gather her entrails into their aprons and carry her head stuck on a pole.

Homo homini lupus
. A man is a wolf to man.

9:32
A.M
.

Heel taps in the antechamber are sharp, nervous. Someone is circling the room outside. Every third click of the heel is louder than the others.

“What are you doing here?” Queenie snaps at someone somewhere outside the privy door. “Go, go!”

Why is Queenie shouting?

A dog’s paws scratch the floor. A nose sniffs at the crack underneath the door. Impatient, whimpering uneasily. Pani? Smelling what a human nose cannot discern?

Her right hand moves only when she wills it to move. The shooting pain in her head has changed frequency. The jabs no longer follow one another closely. Her head feels fragile, porous.

Her left hand clasps the door handle. One more jerky awkward pull and she will lift herself from the commode.
As soon as the pain begins to fade
, she promises herself.

Ballet dancers, she recalls, glide across the stage even if it hurts.

Now
, she thinks.

Up
.

But the muscles and bones betray her. She slides to the floor, a marionette with cut strings. Like the ones Peter tinkered with until they walked with exaggerated swaggers. Or twitched their noses like rabbits. Or collapsed into a helpless pile of wooden limbs.

9:34
A.M
.

I’m not dead
, she thinks.
I’ve merely fallen
.

She repeats these words a few times silently, for each takes a long time to register.

I? Have? Merely? Fallen?

Her field of vision has narrowed to those few inches in front of her eyes. She sees the wooden boards of the commode, their intricate, wavy lines, the circles with flecks of lighter wood inside.

Incomprehensible but beautiful.

The veins in the marble tiles beckon. White, brown, gray, red, colors that seep in and out of tiny cracks. Then there is the skin on her hand, freckled and full of furrows and bulging veins. And the hem of her cuffs, the stitching so intricate that she cannot trace a single silver thread, for it melts into the oak leaves and acorns. If she lifts her head just a tiny bit, she can see the stream of light coming from the window. Tiny particles of dust dance in it, the ballet of joyful pirouettes and mad chases.

Outside, behind the swinging door, a man’s voice asks, “Have you seen Her Majesty this morning?”

Her servants are looking for her. Vishka, who always knows everything, swears she has not seen her mistress leave.

“Look,” Vishka insists, “the pelisse is still here. Her Majesty would not have gone outside in this cold without her fur.”

It’s a game of hide-and-seek, Catherine decides.

Merriment bubbles inside her, drawing her into an old memory of childhood pleasure. She is under a bed, holding her nose to stop herself from sneezing, for the maids do not dust under beds if they can get away with it. Someone walks into the room and she is sure it must be Babette in search of her, but her governess does not wear satin. And there is someone else, for she sees a pair of men’s shoes with silver clasps.

From under the bed, Sophie—for this is her name then—can see the hem of the rustling dress lift. A frilly petticoat drops to the floor, revealing white stockings tied with scarlet garters, satin shoes on tapered heels.

A man’s hand runs up the woman’s leg. “I’ve been waiting for so long,” a voice mutters.

The woman giggles, pushes the hand away.

“Now,” he pleads. “While they all think you are in the garden.”

“Is that what they think?” the woman’s whisper teases. Carefree, and yet familiar.

Mother?

Can it be you?

Amid hushed peals of laughter, the bed above begins to sag and shake. A vest lands on the floor, followed by breeches and a white corset.

Murmurs flow. Promises of love. Of longing.

When the moans of pleasure reach her, Sophie slides her hand underneath her own petticoat, into the spot between her legs. She holds it there. Presses tight. Tighter. Until she feels a tiny tremor. Sweet and sticky like honey.

“Her Majesty has not left her suite,” Vishka insists, and now her voice is husky with worry. “I was here all the time. Adrian Moseyevich is my witness.

“Knock at the door again, Zakhar Ivanovich,” Vishka urges. “Her Majesty doesn’t hear so well anymore.”

Zakhar Ivanovich obeys, and Catherine hears a distant knock on the study door and then her valet’s voice, loud and clear: “Madame, may we come in, please?”

9:35
A.M
.

Outside the privy, the banging does not stop. “Your Majesty,” Catherine hears. The man’s voice is scared. “Is Your Majesty there? Can any of us come in? Anna Stepanovna, perhaps?”

Anna Stepanovna? Queenie!

A dog barks. The bark turns to a whimper, filled with longing.
There have been so many dogs
, Catherine thinks. Bouncy, wheezing, wily, full of pranks.
Which one is this?

The pain inside her head has split into myriad small pains, some mere pinpricks, some searing blows.

Something has happened to me
, she thinks.

She manages to turn her head sideways. She is lying on the floor. But why? Has she fallen? When? And why can’t she get up? Or speak?

Something bad has happened to her. Something she has not anticipated. Something she has overlooked.

Am I sick? Poisoned?

Fear quickens her thoughts. Once fear is let into the heart, it will grow. There is a way to stop it, though. Think of faces with sneers stamped on them. Rejoicing at the thought of her misfortune. The faces of gossipmongers,
spreading their lies. Old or new, but always spiteful. How upon seeing her son for the first time she called him “a Kalmyk monkey” and refused to see or care for him. How she intoxicates herself every morning with champagne and Hungarian wine. How she takes on lovers and kills them when they no longer please her loins.

It always helps to remember the malice, the sniggers. Nothing builds defiance more. Charts the course of action.

I need help. Now. Fast
.

Mercifully, her servants have stopped asking their useless questions. Now they are trying to open the door. She can feel it push against her body. Hard. It hurts when they do that, for the sharp edge of the door is digging into the sore skin of her bad leg. Blood must be seeping into her petticoats, staining the fabric.

I need my blood to stay in me
, she tries to say, but her lips do not move. Neither does her leg, when she wishes to shift it out of harm’s way.

“Call Doctor Rogerson right away,” a man screams.

Zotov, his name is Zotov.

He is her valet. She knows him well.

Zotov is bending over her now. There is a mole under his eye. A bushy wisp of black hairs sticks out of his nostril. Catherine smells garlic on his breath, and yesterday’s dinner. Cabbage, sour cream, pickles.

A mole on a left cheek is a token of an unhappy life, Queenie has said. Or did she say the right?

Someone pulls her arm now; someone else lifts her legs. She hears grunts of effort. She is heavy, like earth itself.

The servants have put a mattress on the floor for her, as if she were to give birth again, but this is not possible, is it? She has already had her children. How many did she have? Three. What happened to them? One died. Another, Grigory’s son, she sent away, for he angered her with his recklessness.

There are people in the room. Many people tiptoeing around her, unsure what to do. Some she knows; others are familiar but their names elude her. Her two most trusted maids, Queenie and Vishka, bend over her, their faces crumpled with fear. Their lips move, but words come
much, much later, distorted, as if shouted into a barrel. “Is Your Majesty in pain? Doctor Rogerson is on his way.”

Catherine listens and considers the words she hears. The inside of her skull is like a seaside rock on which waves crash. Some waves bring pain; others merely muddle her thoughts.

Doctor Rogerson, her court physician, has come from Scotland. He is a gloomy gambler who likes to tell her that Scots do not like one another much. His hair is reddish and thick, like that of a shorn sheep. His cheeks are pockmarked, and there are livid bags under his eyes.

What will he say?

A bad migraine?

Poison? Aqua Tofana, perhaps?

Puzzling as they are, these questions are not particularly troubling. Or pressing. For the wave of pain subsides and now she feels calm. Her eyes close, and for a long while she floats above the marshy fields where green frogs croak among the reeds.

They are called
lagushki
, she remembers.

9:38
A.M
.

“No, Adrian Moseyevich,” Vishka screams. “You shall not leave this room. Not even for a moment.”

Gribovsky is my secretary. He is good. He can be trusted. Grisha chose him
.

What is Vishka so afraid of?

Vishka speaks too fast for her to catch all the words. “Anna Stepanovna, please, tell the doctor Her Majesty has fainted … but nothing more.”

Feet patter. A door opens and closes. Outside a dog is howling, though the sound is muffled.

The fear in Vishka’s voice is spreading like a fog over a field. It hangs heavy in the room, obstructs vision. This fear feeds on her limp body. On her failure to make her lips move.

A spring may seem to have dried out, but move a few rocks, wipe off the sand, and it comes back.

“Remember, Sophie? Remember our dreams?”

This is her lover’s voice. It has a tingling to it, evoking long evenings by the fire after a sleigh ride. Laughter and merry abandon. Long talks of taming the future. “Destiny, divine plan, cosmic forces,” Stanislav said. “Your own free will,” she replied.

Or this is how she wishes to remember it.

Monplaisir, on the gulf, with waves crashing on the rocks. A stone terrace. A long, wet, warm kiss. Sorrowful dog’s eyes of a man who has to go away. Not wishes to, Stanislav tells her, is forced to. For a reason still hidden to him. For a lesson both of them will have to uncover.

Happiness is possible, Sophie.

I’m not Sophie
.

We had a child. A daughter. Her name was Anna.

Anna died. Mother died, too. And Father. Father, who has not been invited to my wedding
.

I would believe that any other woman could have changed, but you?

I shall either rule or perish. This is what I’ve learned
.

There is a spatter of whispers, all tense, all marked with concern. Vishka is not whispering.
Stop fidgeting
, she barks. Bring a bucket. Mop up the mess in the privy. Don’t just stand there gaping, staring like a magpie at a piece of bone. Move.