Empress of the Night (9 page)

Serge said, “You have your fate in your own hands now, Catherine,” but
this
she did not believe.

It is winter already. She has ordered her bed to be moved into a small alcove, pushed against a blocked door. It is the drafts that she wants to escape, she tells her maids. Ever since she gave birth, her flesh cannot hold the warmth. She cannot stand upright for more than a few minutes before her feet begin to swell. In her tiny nook of a room, curled under a down coverlet and a fur blanket, she reads or—if words stop making sense—stares at the barricaded door. The ridges of the wood grain form an intricate pattern of horizontal lines; the holes show where an old lock has been carelessly replaced. Sometimes the wood creaks, especially at night, when all sounds are magnified by the cold and the silence.

Her belly still aches. The pain begins in one spot, where the baby’s head ripped her open, and then travels upward. Catherine tries not to think of the son whom she is not allowed to see for longer than a
tearstained blink. A swaddled baby with watery blue eyes and a tuft of blond hair.

Sometimes she succeeds.

Serge, her beloved, has raven-black tresses and black eyes. Could it be that Paul is Peter’s child after all? The possibility fills her with revulsion. Not only because the very memory of Peter’s clammy hands sickens her, but because there is nothing in him she wants her son to inherit.

Sometimes a well-meaning maid-of-honor comes with news of how little Paul cried all night. Or yawned with the most amusing grimace. Or sucked on his clenched fist. Or peed on the wet nurse when she removed the swaddlings.

After she was delivered of her son, a black stripe appeared on her belly. The skin has stretched and the old firm tightness of her muscles is gone. Would Serge like her the way she is now? She thinks of him in faraway Sweden, where the Empress has sent him so “the Grand Duchess will no longer debase herself.”

He hasn’t written to her. It’s too dangerous. She doesn’t even know when he will be allowed back. When this thought comes, she buries her hand between her thighs and presses hard, but such paltry measures always disappoint.

Now that Russia has a Tsarevich, the Grand Duchess cannot be that easily pushed aside. Court calculations have been adjusted. Is it better to back the Crown Prince or the mother of his heir and successor? Who will last longer, once the Empress closes her eyes? Who will withstand the palace intrigues? Please more hearts? The results of this hesitation are beginning to reveal themselves. Gifts arrive with assurances of devotion: swaths of fabric, cases of wine, rare books, invitations to name-day celebrations, requests to join her at cards. Peter’s staunch supporters, Countess Shuvalova and her brothers-in-law, are still plotting against her, but Chancellor Bestuzhev—her onetime enemy—now pesters the Grand Duchess with promises of support.

In the Winter Palace it is either her or Peter.

The future Emperor comes to his wife’s rooms every evening. Sucking on his clay pipe, sending clouds of suffocating smoke in her direction, Peter delivers his revelations. Russian ships are so rotten that a royal salute
would sink them. Earthworms, boiled with oil and red wine, are the soldier’s best remedy for bruises. Peter’s eyes do not rest on her but seek her maids-of-honor, the true recipients of these daily visits. It is for them that Peter curls his wigs into fashionable pigeon wings and perfumes himself like a sultan. Or, rather, for one of them in particular. Elizabeth Vorontzova, whom everyone calls
Das Fräulein
. “Yes, Your Highness … No, Your Highness … How smart you are, Your Highness …” Vorontzova may be short, ugly, and coarse, but not to Peter.

She, his wife, tries to summon her rage, but fails. The truth is that nothing but her lover’s presence can rouse Catherine out of despair. She concocts Serge’s lean face out of memory scraps, searches for his low, thick voice in the voices of other men, imagines his touch, his caresses, until the pain of his absence stabs too hard. It feels as if she were slowly being torn apart, piece by piece.

“Your Highness must hear me out,” Chancellor Bestuzhev says. “There is no good way to say it. I won’t even try.”

In Sweden, Chancellor Bestuzhev informs her with a pleasure he doesn’t even try to hide, Serge Saltykov strides like a peacock, clad in the glory of his imperial love affair. “Frivolous,” the Chancellor says. “Indiscreet.” Serge boasts of the Grand Duchess’s passion for him, hints at what rewards it might yet bring.

“I don’t believe it,” Catherine screams. She has heard these words before. Rumors have always stuck to Serge. “Why does everyone wish me to stop loving him?”

The Chancellor of Russia nods gravely and changes the subject.
Das Fräulein
’s antics irk him more and more. Her preening. Her coarse jokes that make the Grand Duke laugh: A fly comes to the tavern and asks for a plate of shit with onions. “Only go easy on the onions,” the fly tells the tavernkeeper. “I don’t want to stink.”

The Chancellor sighs and suggests that such jokes are easy to reproduce. He could supply Her Highness with a whole line of them, grand lords and ladies with urgent needs to relieve themselves in most unusual places, or the usual permutations of sexual couplings. “Your Highness could also make her husband laugh, occasionally … knowing how laughter provides release.”

Catherine shakes her head.

Bestuzhev is not the only one who tries to poison her feelings for Serge. Everyone feels entitled to blacken her lover’s reputation. Varvara ticks off her questions on her fingers, one by one: “Hasn’t he sent his wife away just to be free of her tears? Hasn’t he pawned his mother’s jewels?”

Serge may be bad-mouthing her at the Swedish court, she concedes, but only because he believes that this is the only way to protect her. Put more distance between them. Stop the rumors that would hurt her and her son.

All she needs is to talk to him.

Hear him out.

Make him see that she has not changed.

And she will see him. As soon as he comes back to Russia for the New Year.

1755 will be the year of great changes.

She has begged Empress Elizabeth to excuse her from appearing at the New Year’s ball. And now, her request granted, dressed in a white muslin gown, she ties her hair with a pink ribbon and perfumes her body. Before leaving, her maid has been ordered to put more logs into the fire. Soon the bedroom is warm enough to dispose of thick stockings and fur slippers.

She waits. Across the corridors of the Winter Palace that separate her rooms from the Grand Ballroom, the music resounds. There is laughter and screams of delight. Revelers wander the palace unhindered; lovers seek empty rooms where they can hide. Footsteps approach and then fade away.

Catherine opens a book, closes it again. The flames of the fireplace provide a temporary distraction. When the anxiety becomes impossible to withstand, she takes a sip of laudanum straight from the bottle, without even diluting it with water. The bitter taste spills over her tongue, but moments later, the warmth in her stomach calms her.

She bargains with fate.
If he comes right now, I will give alms to the poor
. When he doesn’t come, she offers more.
I will sell my jewels and take five orphan girls. Ten, no, twenty orphan girls, and bring them up at my own expense. I will teach them to read, write, and count
.

Give them dowries
.

Find husbands for them
.

There is little she remembers from the rest of this night. A few of her friends come by—friends who’ve promised to keep an eye on Serge. They try to be of help. Yes, they have seen her lover. Yes, they have passed on her assurances. Yes, he knows that she is waiting. That she is alone.

“So why is he not here yet?” she remembers asking.

The memory of their answers eludes her. The drowsy, foggy thickness has made her thoughts laborious. Her words slur.

Didn’t Serge once say:
Aren’t you my beloved? The queen of my thoughts?
What could have changed?

He does come to see her, a week later. After she lets her hair turn oily and rank, when no admonitions or her maid’s coaxing could make her dress up and see anyone. When in the clouded palace mirrors her face looks frightened and starved. She looks, Catherine realizes, as if she has been quarantined during some plague to stop the disease from spreading.

Serge enters her room, unannounced, dragging in the smells of the road: bonfire smoke, wet leather, the sweat of horses. In his hand is a gift from Sweden, a bouquet made of pinecones and acorns, tied with a red ribbon.

“For Your Highness,” he says, as if he were giving her something precious.

She waves her maids away. When they are gone, she throws her hands around his neck, rests her head on his chest. His heart beats fast, but his hands do not lift, his arms do not embrace her.

It takes her a moment to register that what she hears is Serge’s tongue clucking with disapproval. “The Grand Duchess of Russia is making the court tongues wag. Haven’t you heard the names the Shuvalovs are calling you?”

He takes her hands off his neck and makes her sit down. “I’m here,” he says, “because you’ve forced me to come.”

She hears him and yet she doesn’t. She babbles of her pain, her fears, her terrible loneliness. She wants him to know how much she missed him.

When a tear rolls down her cheek, he wipes it with his finger. “I’ve never wished to hurt you,” he says.

Serge’s voice is soft. His words are ripe and fragrant, each bestowing pleasure. The court, he says, is a swamp of jealousy and intrigue. He has been warned that the Empress does not want him near her, and so he had to obey. He thought she would understand. Was he wrong? His lips glide down her bare shoulder.

“I understand,” she mutters, through joy and relief. Serge is back. He loves her. She was right all along.

She opens his breeches and slides her hand inside.

This is where he stops her. His grip is painful. Harsh. His words strike like lashes of the knout. “Other women can afford to be blind, Catherine, but not you!”

“What do you mean?” she asks, still uncomprehending.

“You’ve just believed another lie.”

“What lie?”

“Everything I’ve just told you is a lie. And you know it.”

She covers her ears with her hands, but he pulls them away. He whispers, but his whisper is shrill, chilling the marrow of her bones.

“I’m a liar, Catherine. I don’t care for any woman who has yielded to me. I wish it were not so, but this is how I am. I love only what I cannot have.

“No one has forced me to say it. I’ve given you many clues. But you’ve refused to see them. What other proofs do you want?”

She shakes her head to stop him, but he won’t.

“You want me to flatter your feelings, Catherine, but I won’t do it. Think of it this way: You spoil my game with your pain. You make me uneasy. I don’t want to think of myself as cruel. Or ruthless. This is why I have to shatter this silly dream of yours.

“Listen to me. I’m not the only man like this. Some of us really only want the thrill of pursuit.”

Later it will seem like one terrible nightmare, but at the time, each word is like a burning dagger thrust through her heart.

“I’ll go away and not bother you again. I’m being sent to Hamburg anyway, so you won’t have to see me. The Shuvalovs say—”

“Why should I care what the Shuvalovs say?” It takes all her will not to scream.

“Because every one of them is poisoning the Empress against you. Telling her that you are a meddler, just like your mother. That you want to steal her crown. That you will stop at nothing. And then, for good measure, they are telling your husband that you are unreasonable and arrogant. That you don’t deserve him. That he should take a lover who wishes to please a man, not dominate him. Is that what you want? To be supplanted by
Das Fräulein
or some other scheming witch? To lose whatever influence you still have with your own husband?”

Her lips move, but no words come.

“I have a gift for you,” Serge continues. “A better gift than some miserable pinecones I’ve just bought from a peddler in the street. A few words only: Your heart has room for far more than you think.”

She cannot stop sobbing. She doesn’t know how. Her shoulders heave; her throat threatens to choke her.

“Get yourself a new gown, Catherine. Do something with your hair. Put some rouge on your cheeks. Walk into the ballroom and show them who you really are.

“Not a duckling, Catherine. A hawk.”

Three years
, she thinks, when the door closes behind Serge.
I’ve given this scoundrel three years of my life
.

Fury racks her. Ancient, vast. Fury at Serge. At herself. Fury mixed with pity plunging into sorrow, to become fury again. She paces the room; her heels strike the floorboards like musket shots.

Her clenched fists beat her cheeks. She trips over something. It’s a pinecone. A pinecone she flings into the fire, astonished at how swiftly it burns.

Her body slumps into a chair. An image appears—of Serge lying beside her, dangling a straw from his lips by a single thread of his spit.

She shudders.

But another voice is sounding already. Small but clear.

Betrayal is like poison. A dose too small to kill strengthens you instead
.