Rebel Princess (12 page)

The object of her persecution sat in the opposite chair, her hands lying in sinful idleness in her lap.

The lovely girl in her teens who had stood in Elizabeth's bedroom and heard the sentence of this long martyrdom of spying and restriction passed upon her, was now twenty-three years old. She had grown to womanhood under the hostile, jealous eyes of Madame Tchoglokov; Peter's hated companionship and the lascivious furtive stare of the male Tchoglokov was the barren soil in which Catherine Alexeievna had bloomed to maturity.

The good Tchoglokovs were models of marital felicity, and the yearly fruitfulness of the unprepossessing, middle-aged guardian of her conduct filled Catherine with cynical disgust. On the subject of their two mentors, Peter and Catherine were in complete agreement, their hatred of the couple was only matched by the unbridgeable dislike they felt for one another, and since he dared not rebel against Monsieur Tchoglokov, it only remained for Peter to vent his misery upon his wife.

By day she must sit with her hands over her ears, while the Grand Duke scraped endlessly upon a fiddle, without tune or talent, and Madame Tchoglokov upbraided her for lack of interest in her husband's pursuits. This practice was suddenly abandoned when Peter installed a pack of hounds in the room adjoining hers, and there were times when Catherine thought to lose her sanity listening to the cries and yelps of the poor beasts as they tried to flee the lash their master wielded.

While the days stretched wearily ahead, each hour filled with empty tedious routine, the nights with Peter continued as before. In that lay the key to both their wretchedness. After seven years of marriage, Catherine's virginity was still intact. Not all the efforts and example of the Tchoglokovs had succeeded in forcing Peter to make love to his wife.

But in the midst of humiliation and unhappiness, Catherine had discovered an escape. A lackey had brought the antidote, wrapped in a parcel which had traveled some thousands of miles across Europe at the behest of the curious Grand Duchess, who was still at liberty when she dispatched the order.

That was many years ago, and in the same room where she had explored the contents of the first package, Catherine sat waiting for the arrival of another.

When the door opened she did not look up, knowing that the watchful madame was already beckoning the caller into the room.

“What is your business?” she demanded.

“I would deliver this to Her Imperial Highness,” replied the flunkey. Catherine raised her head.

“Give it to me,” she ordered quietly. The governess opened her mouth to protest at this boldness, but already Catherine's eager fingers had ripped the parcel open. It contained a quantity of books.

“What have you there, Madame?” demanded the Tchoglokov haughtily.

“Books,” answered the Grand Duchess calmly.

The duenna breathed hard with anger; Catherine's attitude of icy composure never failed in its object of enraging her, and she rose with difficulty from the chair.

“I am aware of that. What kind of books are these? Kindly do not touch them further until I have examined them!”

Catherine handed her the volumes and watched her shake them as a terrier does a rat, eager for some forbidden message to fall from the leaves or the binding, until, her hopes disappointed, she peered stupidly at them under the candlelight.

“The works of Voltaire,” she deciphered at length. “French, I presume?” The Grand Duchess nodded, aware that her companion was trying to hide her ignorance of the contents.

“What were those other books which came for you a little while ago?”

“The writings of Montesquieu,” came the answer, which told the questioner precisely nothing.

Madame Tchoglokov abandoned her pretence.

“What is the subject of all these books, may I ask? Her Imperial Majesty must have a report of your expenses, and it seems you are amassing a library!”

Catherine eyed the pregnant woman with indifference.

“They are works of philosophy; I find that they improve the mind.” The Tchoglokov sniffed indignantly and gathered up her embroidery.

“It would become you better, Highness, to study the Grand Duke and the state of your marriage, and leave such affectations alone! It is now time we retired,” she added.

The Grand Duchess rose obediently, collected her precious volumes and walked past into the ante-room of her bedchamber, the governess hurrying in her wake. At the same time Catherine caught sight of Peter stamping into his dressing-room, accompanied by his twin Tchoglokov.

There would be no time to read that night.

Within the covers of her slender library, Catherine the prisoner found such freedom as she had never dreamed existed. What had begun as a caprice, designed to lift her thoughts from the rut of sadness and unbearable ennui, had become a secret experience of extraordinary exhilaration.

Penned up in her gloomy apartments, month after month, year after year, Catherine's active mind explored the reasonings of the most brilliant and original brains of her century.

Within their pages she discovered theories which blew the accepted notions of her time away like so much dust.

Tyranny, they said, was the greatest evil which mankind could endure; the duty of the ruler was to protect and nurture his subjects. Mindful of her own oppressed state, Catherine agreed with all her heart.

Elizabeth, the great Empress, was only a despotic lunatic, invested with a power she was unfit to wield, and the thinkers declared, God, whom the tyrants and strumpets of the court professed to worship, and whose forgiveness they thought to buy with gold, did not exist. His name was only Conscience, and man is his ignorance had made a Being out of an Instinct.

Reason was Voltaire's divinity, and under his influence Catherine set up the twin idols of Intellect and Humanity in place of the Christian deity. The final rejection of all things mystic was an easy one for her, but it remained Catherine's most closely guarded secret.

Whatever her personal convictions, the Grand Duchess observed the religious formula of the time with scrupulous care. Peter might fidget and mutter in church, careless of what offense he gave to the devout among his future subjects, but his wife, who lived under a permanent cloud of disfavor, appeared the very model of piety.

Catherine had long since recognized that there would be no divorce, or Elizabeth would have made an end of the situation within the past few years; the Empress would not live forever, and thoughts of occupying that vacant throne possessed the Grand Duchess more and more.

She read and studied, deliberately training her neglected mind for the tremendous task ahead of her, and in the meantime she suffered Peter and the Tchoglokovs with what patience she could muster.

But the time was fast approaching when the gates of Bestujev's cage would open wide to Catherine, and the man who turned the key was none other than the Chancellor himself.

Elizabeth had a new favorite. At long last the devoted Rasumovsky who, some said, was secretly married to the Empress, had been dismissed, and the good-looking, ambitious Ivan Shuvalov took his place in the imperial bed.

It was an unfortunate exchange and the influence, political as well as amorous, that Ivan exerted over Elizabeth had begun to spell danger to the Chancellor.

The Empress was ailing in health, and her excesses with her new lover alternated with bouts of penance even more strenuous than before. Bestujev had not spent his life working for Russia to see it delivered into such hands as Peter's and possibly the Shuvalovs, if his Empress died.

First he must put an end to the feud between himself and the only person in line with the throne who seemed to care a straw for the country and, second, she must provide an heir.

With the plan already worked out in his mind, Bestujev went to see the Empress.

It was late afternoon and Elizabeth was still in bed when the Chancellor received his audience. The great bedchamber was in some disorder, and he noticed a heap of slashed clothing lying on the floor. Of late the Empress often retired to her room so drunk that her clothes had to be cut off, and Bestujev suspected that Shuvalov had only just left.

Elizabeth looked at him through aching, bloodshot eyes, forcing her weary muddled brain to concentrate, still vaguely disappointed that her beloved Ivan's curiosity should have insisted on her giving the old man this interview, when she only wanted to sleep the day away in his arms.

“Your Majesty,” he began dryly, “I have been giving thought to a matter of great importance to yourself and to the realm. I speak of course of the Grand Duke and Duchess.…”

Elizabeth's lips narrowed ominously.

“They have been married for eight years, and there is still no heir,” he added. The Empress raised herself in the bed and swore.

“God damn them both! Must you come here disturbing me to tell me that! The devils, impudent, disobedient devils.… Haven't I punished them enough, what more can I do? S'death, I do not even know for certain which of them is at fault any more. I thought it was Catherine, but now I am not sure.”

Bestujev interrupted the flow of her words with a gesture.

“If Your Majesty will permit me, I believe that the Grand Duchess is the least to blame.…” Elizabeth looked at him with a flash of her old shrewdness.

“What change of heart is this, my friend? Who besought me night and day to penalize her? Who assured me that it was she who repulsed Peter and would betray him with others if I left her free to do so? What is the true purpose in your cunning brain? Come, speak out! My head aches and I am in no mood for diplomacy!”

The Chancellor smiled; this was the Empress he loved and understood.

“I fear the Grand Duke to be impotent, and no amount of pleas or punishment can make a stallion out of a mule! He has never lain with his wife, nor with any other woman. These mistresses of which he boasts are nothing but a sham, Your Majesty. Russia awaits an heir from this marriage, and if Peter cannot father it, then we must provide someone who will!”

Elizabeth considered him in silence, battling with an upsurge of religious scruples which condemned in someone else the adultery that she committed so lightheartedly herself. Yet if a child was born, what a weight of anxiety would be lifted from her mind. Ten years of fear and disappointment would be wiped away, and no one need ever know that she had been involved in the deception.

“Whom had you in mind, Chancellor?”

“A man lately arrived in court, Your Majesty. A nobleman, healthy, and handsome enough to turn the Grand Duchess's head completely. And from his reputation an expert at seduction.… His great friend is Leo Narychkin, an intimate of the Grand Duchess in the past. The meeting should be easily contrived; a few words into the gentleman's ear, a promise or two, and the thing is done! His name is Serge Saltykov,” he added.

Elizabeth had already remarked the good-looking newcomer. Indeed she had even considered that once or twice while Ivan was away and she felt lonely.… Now it seemed that Catherine was to have him.

She looked away and drew up the bedclothes to her chin.

“It is an interesting plan, my friend, and the outcome would be a blessing to myself and to my realm. But, of course, my conscience cannot approve.…”

Bestujev left her, smiling in perfect understanding of the arrangement. He could proceed with Catherine's seduction as quickly as he pleased, but the Empress must never be supposed to know.

Three days later a startled Catherine was informed by Madame Tchoglokov that the Empress was not as displeased with her as before, and wished the Grand Duchess to move about the court more freely. She also handed her a note written by Bestujev, in which he desired to present his compliments to his old enemy at a near date.

Catherine stood with the letter in her hand, reading and re-reading the contents, pondering the meaning of this sudden
volte-face
on the part of the man who had hounded her without mercy for so many years. Elizabeth's message was obviously inspired by him; could it be that her punishment was being lifted? The sight of Madame Tchoglokov trying to soften her hard features in an ingratiating smile made her certain that this was more than a mere surface gesture.

After nearly eight years of semi-seclusion, her jailers had suddenly opened the prison door and were inviting her to step out as if nothing had happened. It was a miracle, but it might also be a trap.

The Grand Duchess smiled back at the detested governess, and declared herself delighted with the messages.

Madame Tchoglokov, still a little shaken and disappointed after her interview with Bestujev that very morning, suggested awkwardly that Her Imperial Highness might care to give a supper-party in her rooms one night … she had been so busy with her books, had seen so few people of late. The good woman shook her head with hypocritical admonishment as if the fault were Catherine's own, and the Grand Duchess heard her out with a look in her blue eyes that reminded Madame suddenly that she had not been altogether wise in persecuting the future Empress with such vigor.

Hastily she inquired whom Her Highness might wish to invite.

Catherine forgot her suspicions for a moment and an almost childish excitement took possession of her. Whom would she ask? What would she wear? Suddenly the prospect of a little gaiety drove all caution from her mind. The devil take the Tchoglokovs! The devil take their trap if it was one. She would make the most of the evening and let the outcome take care of itself.

“Ask Leo Narychkin,” she said immediately. “And Countess Roumiantzov.” The Countess had suffered in the general disgrace of Catherine and Peter, having lost her post and been persecuted for a time with the unreasonable malice peculiar to Elizabeth.

Catherine had heard of her misfortunes and promptly forgave the Countess her former harshness. Beside the Tchoglokov, Roumiantzova appeared as gentle as a lamb.

The next two days were spent in preparations, supervised by Catherine herself, and even Peter was roused out of his sudden lethargy by her invitation and the hint that their lives might be easier from then on.