Empress of the Night (38 page)

“I’m glad you have been silent about it,” she tells the girl. “That you have protected the innocence of others.”

Anna sobs now, a wailing sob of despair, a telling sign that some hints have been passed on, some confessions have been made.

“You are a clever girl,” Catherine continues. Her voice is harder now. There is no good way to say what she has to say. “I can forbid him to touch you. Is this what you want? To become an estranged wife a few months after the wedding? He is second to the throne, you know.”

If you want the balls, the dances, the glamour of the court, there are sacrifices to be made. You have to be silent. You have to be loyal to me. You have to find a way to cope. Get pregnant, give him a son, and take a lover. Let your husband have his pleasures, and take care of yours. This is how most people live. In this country and in others
.

“Do you want to go back to your mother?”

Anna Fyodorovna considers these words in silence. It’s hard to tell where her thoughts go. Pleasures or pains of being a Grand Duchess? Or does Anna still believe that she, her Empress, can change her husband’s ways? That she can save Anna from more pain?

She extends her hand and tucks a loose lock back under Anna’s ribboned cap. “How are the contredanse lessons progressing, my dear?” she asks. “Elizabeth tells me that you are more graceful than she is. Tonight I want to see you dance.”

The Tauride Palace, polished, buffed, tidied, and decorated with garlands of flowers and fresh pine boughs, is thronged with guests. Queenie reports that everyone admires the porcelain figures of the Russian peoples and the clever ways the refreshments have been arranged. Sturgeon mousse in the shapes of giant fish with cucumber slices as scales. Vodka bottles encased in blocks of ice, in which frozen white rosebuds appear to float. “The cook won’t tell anyone how he does it,” Queenie complains.

The Swedish King’s eyes pretend to slide off the riches he sees, but it is an act. Before he paid his reverences—referring to St. Petersburg as the magnificent Venice of the North—he stopped by Grishenka’s collection of old icons and whispered something to his uncle.

The ball in honor of the Swedish visitors is a fitting scene for young passion. The floors are gleaming with wax to make dancing easier. The
gowns are sumptuous; the jewels flash in candlelight.
Nature is our teacher
, she thinks.
Display the colors, get noticed, entice. We are all dancing the same dance
.

From her ballroom podium, Catherine watches Gustav Adolf approach Alexandrine. Her granddaughter wears pink satin; a gauze fichu hides her slim shoulders. Ringlets fall on her neck. Her eyes are bright and shining whenever she looks up, but she is shy and mostly stares at the floor.

Dear child. So much is still before her. The sweetness of the first kiss. The stirrings of desire, the ecstasy of release.
Take it all, my love
, Catherine thinks.
Drink as much as you can, for it vanishes so fast
. Desire is nature’s blessing. When it leaves, decay takes over. Rot and pain. Emptiness and grief.

Alexander is casting a gloomy eye at the Swedish King. Jealous, Catherine thinks, with the jealousy of an elder brother. Adam is tugging his sleeve, pointing at the orchestra, which is settling at the raised podium. In a deft imitation of a butterfly whirl, one of the contredanse figures, his long arm rests behind an imaginary lady’s back.

Alexander nods and laughs.

Paul has just arrived from Gatchina and is strutting toward her, always a reluctant guest, suspicious of everything around him. The Empress hears his loud snorts. The rasping sound, though familiar, is ever more annoying. Even breathing doesn’t come easy to this awkward son of hers.

He’s wearing the Preobrazhensky greens, a concession to her, Catherine knows. He prefers the tight-fitting blue Prussian uniform. At Gatchina, Paul calls her Imperial Guards spoilt and ignorant of proper military discipline. Unlike Imperial Field Marshal Suvorov, her son believes in the power of powdered wigs and polished buttons. It comes from inside him, this insatiable love of muskets, cannons, uniforms, bugles, and horses. The desire to see his soldiers move in unison, like wheels in some giant machine. The Prussian drill, the goose step, the tight-fitting blue uniforms. Suvorov may have beaten the Turks and the Poles, but her son still believes that Russians are not good enough to lick his Frederick’s boots.

They exchange greetings. Catherine asks about his health; Paul tells her about his wife’s plans to remodel this or that Gatchina room.

On the ballroom floor, a dance has just ended. Alexandrine bows gracefully and lets the Swedish King lead her back to her governess, both showing the unmistakable symmetry of attraction. Their heads tilt toward each other’s.

“Is Alexandrine not too young, perhaps?” Paul asks. “Wouldn’t it be prudent to prolong the engagement for at least a year?”

“Why?” Catherine asks bluntly.

Paul blinks. His pug nose twitches, and he rubs it with his knuckle. “My wife and I were thinking—”

“What does Maria Fyodorovna object to?” she interrupts. “Does she know, perhaps, of other illustrious prospects I’m not aware of?”

“No other prospects,” her son stammers in response. Then he changes the subject. The Gatchina gardens have been particularly lush this year. The roses thrived.

That, too, annoys her. How quickly he gives up. How does he think he might rule Russia? By deferring to anyone who is louder than he is?

Her son is still speaking, but she no longer listens.

Faithful, observant Vishka hovers, always ready to rescue her mistress. One gesture is enough for her to rush toward them with a worried expression on her wrinkled face.

“May I have a word, Your Majesty?” she asks.

The Grand Duke of Russia, the heir to the throne, lets himself be sent away like a schoolboy.

The Swedes, Vishka reports, are standing in the hall, awed by the presents they have received from the Empress, arguing about the best way to express their gratitude.

“Excellent.” Catherine nods when Vishka stops to catch her breath. “Now get me Constantine. I need to speak to him.”

From the corner of her eye, she can see Paul bend over Maria Fyodorovna, who is shaking her head in disbelief. When his wife asks him something, he shrugs his lanky shoulders and stalks away in a huff.

Pride, the Empress thinks, another failing of the weak.

Her younger grandson approaches, sweaty from dancing, his broad face brightened with a grin that reveals a set of strong teeth, the military recruiters’ dream. He is not as handsome as Alexander, but—like his older brother—the heir presumptive to the Russian throne takes after his mother. There is no hint of Paul’s pug nose or lanky limbs.

A memory flashes in her mind. The children brought in by the nurses to report on the activities of the day and to say good night. The two boys must have been breeched already, for she recalls Constantine standing behind Alexander, tugging at his trousers. She remembers how their faces shone, how their arms closed around her neck, how sweet their little bodies smelled.

“I need the Marble Palace, Constantine,” she tells him now. “I want to put Kosciuszko there.” She explains to her grandson that the defeated leader of the last Polish insurrection is ailing and needs more comfort than his current lodgings at the Fortress of Peter and Paul can provide. “In the meantime, you and your wife can live with me at the Winter Palace.”

She wants him to think she is confiding in him out of pressing necessity. He shouldn’t suspect his wife of confessing her sorrows.

“Some will envy you this proximity to my person,” she continues. “I know it won’t go to your head, but I’m not as sure of your young wife, so I’ll have to ask you to be vigilant.”

Anna Fyodorovna, she explains, is flighty and a bit vain. She is apt to take the move in the wrong way, as a sign of her superiority. “I shall expect to see her at my side daily, not to elevate her above her sisters-in-law but to give her more polish, more restraint. She needs my help to be groomed. More than I thought she would.”

Constantine grunts. “She is also mean, Graman! And silly. You should hear what she sometimes says!”

She lets this pass. She doesn’t want him to dwell on his wife’s shortcomings. Kosciuszko is a much better topic. Constantine, too, needs a lesson in governance.

Kosciuszko is a rabble-rouser, worse than Pugachev and his Cossack rebels have ever been. If she hadn’t stopped him, she would’ve had another
French Revolution on her hands. Nobles swinging from the lanterns. A guillotine in Warsaw. Serfs slashing their masters’ throats.

Kosciuszko rouses emotions abroad, anti-Russian sentiments. Indignation and sanctimonious protests have to be weathered. But some complaints can be disarmed, neutralized, turned into an advantage. She is angry at the rebel general, but she will treat him with kid gloves. “As you no doubt understand, Constantine,” she adds.

Her grandson nods, pleased to be taken into her confidence.

“Appearances matter,” she reminds him. She doesn’t wish to be accused of perfidy and cruelty. Most of all she doesn’t want Kosciuszko to become a hero, give him claims to martyrdom in a Russian prison. The Marble Palace will be a perfect place for him. He will enjoy full comforts, and yet he’ll be able to see the Fortress from his windows. A sight that will remind him of his defeat. There are other advantages of this move. The Polish prisoners in the Fortress will envy him. There will be accusations of collaboration. Hints of favors, perhaps even betrayals. “I don’t have to explain to you, Constantine,” she adds, “how this will be to Russia’s advantage.”

Her grandson gives her a bright look. He rubs his hands. Big, wide hands covered with reddish hair. His fingernails are filthy, but she refrains from pointing out the virtues of cleanliness.

“No, Graman,” Constantine says, his voice rising with excitement. “You don’t have to explain it at all.”

By the marble pillar, Count Bezborodko is talking with the Austrian Ambassador. The Empress gestures for him to approach her, but to her surprise it is the tedious Madame Lebrun who—having assumed the sign was meant for her—bows deeply and rushes toward the throne.

“I’ll get rid of her,” Le Noiraud offers with pleasing eagerness. As soon as Constantine went back to the dance, Platon appeared at her side. Unlike her grandsons, he always knows where he wants to be.

“No need,” she says, as Lebrun approaches with a blissful smile on her rouged face, two white ostrich feathers bobbing over her elaborate coiffure. “It would be too cruel.”

“Your Imperial Majesty looks like Minerva Triumphant,” Madame
Lebrun declares as she bends to kiss the imperial hand, praising “the incomparable interplay of deep blues and warm ocher” of the imperial mantilla. She is again smitten with Platon’s patrician profile, especially the fine line of his high forehead. “
Votre Altesse
must have some distinguished Greek ancestors,” she gushes.

Madame Lebrun is a painter. She came to St. Petersburg a year ago, armed with stellar letters of recommendation, and made it universally known that her portrait of Marie Antoinette had been declared brilliant in every court of Europe. This claim and the few portraits of the Imperial Family she has been allowed to paint have secured her commissions from the best Russian houses.

There has been adventure in Madame Lebrun’s past, which she will recount in excruciating detail if allowed. An escape by coach from Paris to Lyon and over the Alps to Italy dressed as a working woman, accompanied only by her daughter and the child’s governess. All out of fear of being dragged to the guillotine as Marie Antoinette’s most loyal friend.

“My beloved Queen, may her pure, tortured soul rest in peace,” she says now, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye, “came to me in a dream last night. Eating galettes filled with almond cream. Happier than she has ever been on this earth.”

Every French exile in Russia has been a dear friend of Marie Antoinette’s. Just as every Pole who comes to St. Petersburg begging for favors assures Catherine that only the few deluded hotheads she now keeps in prison participated in the failed insurrection. Everyone else in Poland always wished for the Russian rule. And every one of them has lost cartloads of silver dishes, stacks of priceless tapestries and paintings, and a superb wine cellar if even one Russian soldier happened to set foot on his estate.

Madame Lebrun casts quick, birdlike glances around to check how many eyes have noticed her elevation. She bows and gasps as she describes her efforts to do justice to her exquisite models. “The muse can be so hard to entice. Frequently I have to put the palette aside to lie down with wet sheets across my eyes and simply wait.”

Madame believes in the power of constant chatter and adoring phrases. Everyone she has ever painted possesses incomparable charm,
angelic sweetness, or extreme graciousness that are almost impossible to capture in paint.

They have not been off to a good start. Alexandrine and Yelena sat for their portrait first, and she, their grandmother, found the result disappointing. Madame Lebrun captured some of the girls’ freshness and vitality, but there is something wooden in the painting, too.