Empress of the Night (20 page)

A folded piece of paper is attached to one of the reports. Catherine unfolds it to a flash of recognition. It is a drawing of an Empress talking to a boy-child. Signed with her own hand.
Ekaterina Imperatritsa
.

“How did this get there?” she demands, her mind scurrying back to the Moscow day when a Cossack boy told her of helping his mama cry.

The drawing was found hidden on the mutilated body of a young man. A promising Kazan clerk, particularly good at numbers. Betrothed to a local girl, a merchant’s daughter. Before he was murdered, he was made to watch his fiancée being raped by Pugachev’s henchmen. His tongue was cut off so that he could not curse them.

She tells it all to Grisha, sobbing in his arms. He rushed up from his rooms as soon as he heard her scream. He knows when she hurts beyond endurance.

She thrusts the drawing into his hand. The Empress seated on the throne extending her hand to touch a skinny boy with a serious face.

“It was hidden,” she weeps, “in the lining of his clothes. His most cherished possession. That piece of paper killed him. It’s so hard sometimes … to foresee … to know …”

Grisha’s hand smooths her hair. He doesn’t interrupt. When her voice falters, he bends his head closer.

This is what she tells him:

It hurts when an act of kindness kills the innocent. It is agony when the forces of darkness extinguish hope. When a mob brings out the worst in the human soul.

We are tiny boats of reason floating in the sea of ignorance.

Grishenka understands her with every fiber of his body. “I won’t leave until you smile,” he promises.

“When I grow up, Maman, I’ll make Darya the Queen of Poland! Varvara Nikolayevna told me an emperor can do anything he wishes to.”

Paul’s voice. Paul, who clings to the memory of a servant long gone. Paul, whom she, his mother, still believes repairable. With a soft cushion of fat around his waist. With a face free from sullen indifference. His flesh seems to slide from his cheekbones, making his eyes bigger and more liquid. Paul, who applies himself so diligently to his swimming practice. Draws the plants he has gathered during the walks with his tutor. Writes compositions in short sentences, but not quite deprived of charm:
Russian court is magnificent and polite. The Empire is greater than all the balance of Europe. Peter the Great was tall and well made
.

But then, on another day, Paul is lying on the floor, his body thrashing. His two playmates are holding him down; one is straddling him, his hands extended, gripping her son’s throat.

“What are you fools doing?” she screams, rushing toward them.

In an instant, the boy lets go of Paul’s neck. Her son, freed, is coughing, gagging. Saliva is dripping down his chin. “We are acting, Maman,” he mutters. There are bruises on his throat where the page’s fingers have dug into it. “It’s our play.”

“What kind of vile play?”

Paul falls silent and lowers his eyes. “It is just a play.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ve been trying out a scene.”

“Who were you?” she asks.

“A Tsar.”

“What did he try to do?” She points at the boy crouching under the table. “Murder you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To punish me.”

“For what?”

In response, Paul mumbles something about assassins lurking everywhere. About sin that flows like the raised waters of the Neva.

“Paul, who is teaching you this nonsense?”

When he draws away from her, she sees the large dark spot on his breeches where he had soiled himself. She rings for the maids. “The Crown Prince is not well,” she says. “Put him to bed at once.”

Neither boy can explain anything. Their fathers will of course promise to get the truth out of them, but in the end will come up with little more than contrition and letters of apology.

The pages are more forthcoming. Threatened with instant dismissal, they confess that His Highness wished to be strangled. “Not to the end,” they say. “Just a little bit.” At first the Grand Duke wanted his friends to use a string he had cut off a curtain. But then he decided to be strangled with bare hands. The boys didn’t want to do it, so he made them draw lots. Prince Kuriakin drew the strangler’s lot and had to smear his hands with soot. So that the Grand Duke would see the imprint of his fingers on his throat.

Why?

The pages swear they do not know. Further interrogation produces a curious admission that, after the pretended strangulation, Paul was to lie motionless and his two friends were to cover his head with a large piece of parchment. He has prepared it himself. It is stored in the heavy oak coffer by the window. It has something written on it, but the pages have not been allowed to see it.

The coffer is locked. There is no key.

She considers sending a footman for a crowbar, but then she decides that her son is not that clever. He would hide the key in some obvious place. She scans the room quickly, dismissing places where the maids would have found it.

Her eyes fall on the giant Chinese vase that stands on a marble column.

She slides her hand inside. Rummages through some sawdust, and there it is, the key to her son’s secret.

The coffer, opened, reveals a few surprises. A box with model soldiers. A curling iron. A polished musket bullet. A leather sash with brass buttons, all polished to a shine.

The parchment lies at the bottom of the coffer, wrapped in a layer of black silk cloth. It is barely large enough to cover Paul’s face. The inscription on it is beautifully calligraphed.

It says:
Prince of light and reason
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Court gossips recall the jesters of old. Anna Leopoldovna’s saucy dwarf, who called her mistress vile names and clucked like a hen. Or rode into the dining room on the back of a squealing pig. Or sniffed the courtiers and cried out the names of their sins: sloth, vanity, greed.

Lust, bold like a court jester, winks at Catherine from among the papers. Makes her hurry through the sparkling palace corridors. Her servants look away. They know when not to see or hear when the Empress rushes down the green carpeted stairs. She is a woman who cannot wait for the night.

The gilded doors open with a tiny squeak, revealing the wide bed with silk sheets, strewn with cushions. Some of them she has embroidered herself. With rich, bold patterns. A dragonfly with transparent wings. A parrot with a long tail of red and yellow feathers. When hands are busy, the mind focuses best on what is most important: This is when petitions are assessed, ukases locked into words, ideas born and rehearsed, chosen or discarded.

Not a flicker of time wasted. Sweet or useful, each moment. Everything else has to go.

The sun may be up, but Grisha is still asleep on the bed, dark shadow on his cheeks, his hands sprawled, claiming space around him. There is no stopping him, she hears. A racehorse chafing at the bit. Cocky, proud. As he should be. Even if he still needs to learn the tricks of the court: Hide what you really desire, calculate the odds, foresee your opponent’s moves well in advance.

Asleep, he grinds his teeth and turns on his side. Outside, in the palace
yard, servants are sweeping the debris from this morning’s storm. Broken twigs, torn leaves, clumps of straw.

She smiles as she warms her hands over the fire. Loosens her skirt, petticoats; sheds her court clothes like a snake sheds an old skin.

Grishenka mutters something in his sleep, still unaware of her presence, her warm fingers sliding down his belly, feeling him stir.

His good eye twitches, opens. His hands grip hers.

“Who are you?” he murmurs. “What do you want?”

She laughs in response, with pure joy. Throws herself into his arms, slides her bare legs down his body, feeling the shape of his muscles, the sprinkling of coarse hair. Takes him and is taken, melting with love.

Afterward, she doesn’t leave his bed. Sometimes these quiet moments are even sweeter than lust. She rests her head on his chest, listens to the pounding of his heart. He is her comfort and her refuge. With him, she can forget the onerous business that awaits her the moment she steps out of his room padded with velvet and plush.

Wait. Squirrel the longing away. Hide your joy and your pain. Love, too, needs its secrets to survive
.

One night she wakes up and finds his place beside her empty. The clock shudders and strikes two. In the garden, outside, an animal shrieks like a baby in fright. Groggy from sleep, still dizzy with memories of their lovemaking, she rises from her warm bed and goes in search of him. In her flimsy dressing gown, with bare legs.

“Master is not back yet, Your Majesty,” his valet tells her, so Catherine sits in the library outside Potemkin’s room, waiting. Shivering from cold. Three o’clock strikes, then four. The valet comes back, smiling in a silent apology for his master, yet unwilling to divulge another man’s secret. She refuses an offer of hot coffee. Or his master’s pelisse. Like a silly child, she wants to be sick, to punish Grishenka with worry.

Voices approach, laughter. The voices dissipate.

It is not him.

Is he hurt? Wounded in some brawl? Robbed in the back alley?
Stabbed with a dagger, bleeding to death? Or has he found another, someone more pliant? Younger? Was his love an act?

Her thoughts are a river of absurdities. One more proof of his supreme power over her.

At half past four, stiff from sitting, aching from jealousy and longing, she rises and walks back to her empty bed. She cannot sleep. He might come by at any time. “I didn’t know, Katinka, that you were up, worrying yourself into silliness,” he will surely say. “If I had, I would’ve hurried back.”

At six o’clock, the maid comes to help her dress. Told to be quiet, the girl strains her ears: “There is no one there, Your Majesty,” she says.

It is past ten when Grisha lumbers in. His hair is a mass of tousled curls. The patch on his eye is smeared with something white. Chalk? Face powder?

“Have you slept well, Katinka?” he asks, as if they were in the midst of the most ordinary conversation.

She shakes her head. She is choking, on the edge of tears.

“Didn’t sleep a wink, either,” he says, as if there were no difference between their nights. On him, she can smell snuff, vodka, and the sweaty, musky scent of exertion.

“Where were you?” she manages to ask. Her voice sounds raw, erupting with jealousy she’s furious to hear.

He frowns. “Just a night with my comrades,” he says, yawning and stretching his arms, one by one. “Boring,” he adds.

“I’m not interrogating you, Grishenka.” Her voice is no longer able to hide the stain of tears. Somewhere behind them, doors sigh, feet patter. In the yard, a horse neighs with impatience.

He is watching her. Silent. How can anyone look at anyone’s face so long, so intently?

“You are the Empress,” he reminds her. “You can do what you want. Interrogate me. Torture me. Throw me into a dungeon.”

This may be construed as surrender, only it isn’t.

Quietly, on cat’s paws, Potemkin walks toward the window, yanks the velvet curtains open. A clasp gives way, a fixture breaks from the wall. A
fine shower of powdered plaster sprinkles his thick auburn hair. For a moment it looks like he might shake it off like a wet dog. But he merely licks his index finger, swipes it over the plaster dust, and puts it in his mouth.

She stares at him until he leaves, and then she bursts into sobs.

I cannot live like this
.

In the morning, Catherine locks the door to her study. The guard is ordered to admit no one.

At her desk, she arranges the papers according to importance, picks up the sharpened quill. Love can be locked away, compressed like powder in a barrel.

She can hear Potemkin’s voice arguing with the guard. There is a thump, a clink of metal. The handle on her door rattles.

Flimsy
, she thinks.
It’ll break. Like a Turkish fortress
.

She braces herself for attack or surrender, accusations or confessions.

The door cracks open, but to her surprise he walks in slowly.

There is a droop to his bad eye; the eyelid never quite closes. She stifles the desire to lick the spot where the eyelashes sprout. A whack of a tennis ball, a poke of a billiard cue—she recalls the wild stories of his explanations for the injury. Like so many others, he doesn’t like to confess the source of his wounds. “This?” Alexei Orlov had asked with mock exasperation, his fingers touching the scar across his cheek as if he has just discovered it. No one likes to be reminded of a fight lost.

“How can we stop hurting each other?” Grisha asks her.

He repeats this question during the lover’s hour, entangled in the sheets, his naked foot ripping the fabric. His nightshirt is pulled up, revealing the pelt of curly fleece.

Only this time, he has the answer. It is hidden in a drawing he has brought with him. “What have I done with it?” he asks, groping beside the bed, his hand fishing blindly, pushing her jeweled shoes aside. “I must’ve put it somewhere,” he says, and leans out of the mattress, bending forward until his head is almost touching the floor. When he returns, there is a rolled parchment in his hands.

The drawing is beautiful. Leaves, roots, and a white cluster of flowers. “Did you make this?” she asks, but he shakes his head, pointing at the leaves crowned with spiked lobes. Some are opened like a flower with a red center. “Tempting if you are a fly,” Grisha points out. Some are closed on an earwig, so only the insect’s curled tail is visible. Others on a mosquito.

“An insect-eating plant,” Grisha explains. The trapping mechanism does not shut when a dead leaf or a blade of grass falls into it. Only a living prey will trigger it. If an insect is small, it can escape through meshwork, for it would be too much effort to digest it. If the prey is big and strong and struggles, the trap will tighten faster.

She frowns.

Is this botany’s answer? That she cannot free herself from his traps? That with each movement, she becomes more entangled?

Or has she trapped him? What will he accuse her of now? A look she gave or did not give? The days at court are filled with traps. She, whose gestures bestow power, cannot move without hurting someone’s feelings.