Rebel Princess (15 page)

Vladyslava freed herself and gathered the hysterical, shaking Catherine into her arms.

“Monsieur Narychkin told me, Madame. Think no more of him and do not cry like that, my little one, poor little one. He is gone and all your tears will not make a lion out of a jackal. No man is worth such grief. Perchance he will send word from Sweden.”

So the good Vladyslava lied and comforted, forbearing to tell the unhappy Catherine that her lover had departed laden with honors from Bestujev, without a thought in his handsome head for the woman he had seduced. His task was over, and he was only grateful that it had been such an agreeable one.

In the long night hours when sleep refused to come, Catherine Alexeievna lay and thought of Serge Saltykov.

At first she wept, silently, in hopeless loneliness and disappointment, mixed with traitorous longing. But self-deception had never been one of Catherine's failings. The change in Madame Tchoglokov's attitude, the behavior of Serge on that first night, his fearless pursuit of her at Oranienbaum and then Bestujev's intervention, it all added up to a single, loathsome conclusion. Her love affair was prearranged from the beginning.

For one thing only she was thankful. At least Elizabeth kept the child out of her sight. It had been christened Paul, with all the pomp so dear to Empress's heart; the ceremony was one to which the baby's mother was not even invited, and for this insult, too, Catherine was grateful.

The months dragged by, and the Grand Duchess kept to her room, sick in body and in mind, watched over by Vladyslava, who reported to Elizabeth that Peter's wife was fretting herself into a decline.

The Empress shrugged and dismissed her; let Catherine pine and keep to her rooms. She might have youth and beauty, those two gifts which were deserting the Czarina with such fearful speed, but Elizabeth had sent her lover away and taken possession of her child. Elizabeth had won after all.…

One afternoon Vladyslava entered Catherine's room to see her mistress seated as usual by the window, staring blankly out into the garden, her face supported by her hand in an attitude of utter listlessness.

“Your Highness, a gentleman wishes me to give you this.”

Catherine turned indifferently and stared at the little gilded box Vladyslava held out to her. She took it slowly and examined the delicate workmanship; it was a beautiful box and her fingers opened the lid with a hint of curiosity.

Some mechanism inside it whirred faintly and then a thin tune tinkled out of the bottom of the casket; inside a folded piece of paper lay boldly on a bed of crimson velvet.

Catherine smoothed it out and her eyes widened at the few lines of writing, crabbed and distorted in disguise.

“With the gift, the sender dares to offer his advice. It is time for the mother of the future Czar to show herself. Only the head can mend the heart.”

There was no signature.

Catherine closed the box and turned to Vladyslava.

“Who gave you that?” she demanded. Vladyslava did not know his name, but she gave a clear description of a Foreign Office clerk well known to the Grand Duchess.

So the box and the note came from Bestujev. It was so typical of him, the man of iron, to guess why she ailed and to add that single caustic line of reproof and advice.

“Only the head can mend the heart.…”

In other words she was a weakling woman and a fool, pining in solitude what he, Saltykov, amused himself in Sweden. One love affair and all her resolution fell to pieces.… In a sudden burst of rage Catherine flung the musical box across the room and its delicate mechanism scattered over the floor.

Vladyslava stepped quickly back; she expected tears and prayed for them that they might ease the weight of sadness which oppressed her mistress. But they did not come. For some moments Catherine stood looking out of the window, her hands tearing the note into shreds, while a voice inside her repeated the words of it over and over again.

The mother of the future Czar!

It was true, she was the mother of Paul Petrovitch, no matter how Elizabeth might try to make the world forget. And it was time she listened to her head and sacrificed her heart with all its weakness. She had sacrificed it when she married Peter. And for what?

Catherine knew the answer as Bestujev knew it. For the crown of Russia.

In a passion of relief she thanked him for reminding her. This last blow to her pride had crushed her long enough; the time for tears and sentiment was over.

Catherine turned round from the window and looked at the waiting-woman.

“How long have I been in Russia, Vladyslava?” Her voice was deceptively even.

“Almost twelve years, Highness. I saw you come to Moscow with your mother.”

“Twelve years,” repeated Catherine quietly.

Twelve years of misery and injustice at the hands of that same Elizabeth Petrovna who had kissed the shy Augusta and welcomed her so warmly. So full of promises of favor and friendship … it might almost have been yesterday that she had worshiped and imitated the beautiful Empress who protected her against Johanna's jealousy.

As she sat watching Vladyslava light the candles in her room, her thoughts scanned back across her life in Russia, piecing together the strange perverse pattern of events that had made her husband and the Empress into enemies, and turned Bestujev, the implacable, into a friend.

For twelve years she had been patient and loyal, counting on virtue to bring its own reward, arguing that the crown she coveted would pass to her by right as Peter's consort, bearing a burden of persecution and unhappiness that would have utterly crushed most women.

Well, it had not crushed her; marriage to a drunken idiot, impotent until his twenty-fourth year, snubs, loneliness and nerve-racking supervision, all these trials she had borne with a determination fed by the hope of a better future.

Now she had given them an heir, child of her adultery with a paid seducer, and Elizabeth judged her uses at an end. She was to be left to break her heart and sink into obscurity from which she could never hope to rise.

Catherine smiled grimly to herself. She had been hurt to the limit of endurance since her son was born. But the time for bearing wrongs was over; it had gained her nothing, and Bestujev, himself, now fallen from grace, so rumor said, counseled a decisive move.

He was right, and she knew it. Catherine Alexeievna, the obedient young woman whom no one feared, was dead and buried in the silence of that room, while Vladyslava sewed in a corner and the candles burned lower in their silver sockets.

Supper was brought as usual, and for the first time in many months, the Grand Duchess ate well and drank draughts of the full-bodied Russian wine. She needed physical as well as spiritual strength, for the battle ahead of her would be a trial of endurance and resolve.

“Vladyslava, tomorrow I want to see my dressmaker. And send my hairdresser and jeweler to me. I shall need a new wardrobe.”

“Yes, Highness, it shall be done.”

Suddenly the Grand Duchess appeared to her waiting woman almost a stranger; that square jaw, the hard-set mouth and the icicle coldness in her blue eyes robbed Catherine of her beauty in a moment; she did not even seem young, and despite herself Vladyslava shrank back.

If this was what the Empress and Serge Saltykov had done to the Grand Duchess, then she pitied them the results of their own harshness. This woman whose sufferings she had witnessed all these months had suddenly flung her despair to the winds; whatever the thoughts and feelings that possessed her, she gave no sign beyond the wild destruction of Bestujev's box, but sat calmly at the supper-table, giving orders.

“There is a deal to be done, Vladyslava,” Catherine continued, “and I would trust you with a message. Present my compliments to the Chancellor, tell him the contents of a box sent me by a friend have cheered my spirits greatly.

“And tell him that on my husband's birthday, one month hence, I hope to see him. I have chosen that day for my return to public life.”

Chapter 8

In a room at the British Embassy in St. Petersburg, the British Ambassador, Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, sat at his writing-desk, chewing the feathered top of his quill pen.

He had a dispatch to write that evening, and instead of the routine document he had sent home regularly since his arrival in Russia a few months past, there was now something of importance to record. Sir Charles was physically tired, he had journeyed back from Oranienbaum that evening, but his shrewd brain was excited and alert.

He had set out the tedious details of his activities and recounted the current political gossip going the rounds of the capital; admitted, too, that he had failed to interest the Empress in an alliance with England at the expense of France, a fact that would not please his superiors. In his own defence he had added that Elizabeth was obviously unbalanced and frequently drunk, and it was difficult to secure her attention about anything.

As for her nephew and heir, Sir Charles wrote contemptuously that his mental powers and conversational level would have disgraced a child of twelve years old.…

“But this day I was received by the Grand Duchess Catherine,” he wrote. “She is a most remarkable woman; her personal beauty is only matched by her extraordinary intelligence, and the charm which she displayed towards me might have deceived a less interested observer into overlooking a personality at once determined and ambitious.

“Her conversation at dinner showed her to be the most cultured and knowledgeable woman I have met in Russia so far. I reflected that she would one day be Empress Consort. As Elizabeth Petrovna is in very poor health that day may come sooner than expected, and I very much doubt whether the imbecile Grand Duke will retain his power for long with such a wife at his side.

“It seems she has been much persecuted in the past, and I cannot conceive of any action more foolish than to make an enemy of her.… It will certainly be in England's interests to secure her as a friend.”

Sir Charles completed his dispatch, sanded and sealed it carefully, and decided to see if his secretary had returned before he went to bed.

Stanislaus Poniatowsky was more friend and protégé than anything else, and the Ambassador regarded his civilized society as a boon; it was a relief to speak with an intelligent man of the world, after the hours he was forced to keep in the company of people he described as heathenish and quite incomprehensible by Western standards.

As he approached Poniatowsky's door, he saw a light shining from underneath it and without bothering to knock, Sir Charles opened it, and went in. The Count was sitting on his bed, still dressed, and he smiled at the sight of the older man.

“Good evening, Sir Charles, I thought you had retired.” Williams sat down heavily in a chair and stretched his legs.

“No, my dear Stanis, I've been penning damned dispatches most of the night. I'm devilish tired too, but for once the day was worth the fatigue! How was the Countess's card party?”

“Expensive but instructive. I lost quite a sum of money, but the talk was vastly interesting.”

“Humph! What was it?”

Poniatowsky lay back on the bed and clasped his arms behind his head. Looking at him, Sir Charles reflected that he was a handsome fellow, a trifle sensitive-featured for English taste, his appearance was usually described by ladies as “sad and romantic,” a description which fitted the young Polish nobleman exactly.

Fortunately he possessed other qualities besides social charm; he had sharp ears and a long memory, both attributes which the card players had forgotten that evening when they chattered so freely.

“The talk was mostly of the Grand Duke and Duchess,” he said. “It seems that the delightful Peter has a new mistress to whom he is more than ordinarily attached. A Mademoiselle Elizabeth Vorontzov; she was at Oranienbaum today.”

Sir Charles snorted in disbelief. “God's death, I remember her well enough and I don't believe it! She's pockmarked all over, a hideous creature with table manners that nearly turned my stomach! I wondered what the devil such a woman was doing at the Grand Duchess's board. D'ye tell me that Peter would look at an ugly wench like that when he has legal rights to a wife like Catherine?”

Poniatowsky nodded. “It must be true; he has strange taste in bedfellows. The Princess of Courland was a hunchback, remember. Now he declares he's lost his heart to the Vorontzova, and most of St. Petersburg thinks he actually has some affection for her. At any rate, it's whispered that he wants to divorce his wife.…”

“Does he indeed? Then the man is certainly mad!” declared Sir Charles. “You spoke to her, Stanis. What did you think of the lady? And don't tell me that you didn't notice her especially, for I saw the eyes starting out of your head during dinner!”

Poniatowsky laughed, but despite himself he colored as he answered the question.

“I'll be truthful, my friend. I thought her one of the most beautiful and fascinating women I've ever seen in my life. If you must know, I've thought of precious little else all day! Gossip declares that her son Paul is a bastard, born of a love affair with some Russian, and that she and Peter have never bedded together in all these years. It may be hearsay, of course, who can tell, but she seems a woman who has been much alone.”

Sir Charles looked at him keenly. “For a man of fashion, who's had his choice of many lovely ladies in several capitals of the world, and refused them all, you appear to be quite partisan to the lady. I dare say you would care to relieve her solitude, eh?”

His young secretary's mouth pursed in a disappointed line.

“I'm afraid I should have little chance. It's rumored that a certain Leo Narychkin, who has been a close friend for years, is about to be rewarded for his devotion. It is a year since the little Grand Duke was born, and that's a long time for a woman of her beauty and warmth to sleep alone. God knows, he's fortunate!”