Rebel Princess (2 page)

As she mounted the stone stairs to Augusta's room, the Princess marveled at the choice of Russia's Empress. Of all the eligible royalties in Europe, why had she chosen the least important, a half-educated, precocious creature, who concealed her infuriating obstinacy beneath a manner at once brow-beaten and trusting?

Others, like her husband and that impudent French governess, might protest that her daughter exercised both charm and intelligence, but these qualities had never revealed themselves before Johanna.

Augusta Fredericka had long been a convenient butt of her ill-tempers and innate spite; it was no fault of Johanna's vigorous methods that the girl retained a spark of gaiety or spirit, and her mother's jealousy found vent in a half-recognized resentment that her child must share in the good fortune which had befallen them.

As she paused at the door of Augusta's room, her hand touched the miniature of Elizabeth of Russia which was pinned to her breast. The diamonds surrounding it were large, and the Empress's gift to her distant relative was the finest piece of jewellery that Johanna possessed. Soon there would be other jewels, other gifts.…

She delivered a pat of satisfaction to the painted features of her benefactress, and lifted the latch of the heavy door.

“Wake up, Augusta! Wake up this instant!”

The girl in the bed sat up obediently, drawing the covers around her for warmth, and regarded her mother's dim figure with misgiving.

Johanna seated herself upon the bed and, forgetting the dislike her daughter always inspired in her, related her story with a wealth of detail. Augusta was to go to Russia, there to meet the Empress Elizabeth and her nephew, heir to the throne. If she pleased them (and God help her if she failed), then she would be married to the boy. She would become a Grand Duchess, eventually an Empress.…

Sitting there, shivering despite the covering of bedclothes, Augusta remembered the horseman whose arrival had relieved the long sleepless hours of Christmas Eve, and knew then that the messenger she had glimpsed from her window had carried this summons that was to change the course of her life.

Augusta woke at dawn the following morning, and still in her night-gown ran down the castle's icy passages to find her French governess, Mademoiselle Cardel. She was a kindly woman, though strict, and a strong bond of affection had grown between the young Princess and her instructress.

Augusta knew better than to attempt to question her mother, but Mademoiselle Cardel might perhaps know something about the Russian court, its Empress and, more important, the Grand Duke Peter.

She had heard rumors of the fabulous Northern Empire, and strange things had been whispered about the woman who ruled over it, but the stories were vague, intangible scraps of gossip, half forgotten until now. It was said, of course, that the Empress was very beautiful, and the lovely face on her mother's ornament would seem to bear that out. But Augusta, with an insight beyond her years, felt that those surrounding Elizabeth could hardly say otherwise.

There had been talk that she was even a little mad and given to the eccentric tyrannies that seemed to amuse every ruler who sat upon the throne of the Czars, but the girl's excited mind refuted the idea. She must find someone to whom she could talk about her future, someone who could satisfy her curiosity.

But the room occupied by her governess was empty, the bed unmade. Johanna had obviously wasted no time in rousing her entourage; it behove Augusta to go back and get dressed as quickly as she could. Passing down the corridor on the way to her own apartment, she noticed that the door of her parents' bedroom stood half open, and she peeped guardedly inside lest the occupant be her mother. Christian sat propped up in the huge four-poster, its shabby curtains drawn aside to let in the morning light.

For a moment his daughter stood quietly watching him as he read the heavy Bible that she recognized so well. What would be his feelings on this great matter of her traveling to far-off Russia? Augusta did not think that he would share her own enthusiasm, and she sighed so audibly that Christian raised his head and beckoned her into the room. “Good morning, child,” he said gently.

“Good morning, papa,” she replied, kissing the hand he held out to her.

Seeing that she shivered in her thin night-gown and that her feet were bare, Christian dispensed with ceremony and bade her creep under the bed-cover. He had scarcely recovered from a biting argument with his wife, and now the object of it sat beside him, eager eyed and excited. How much impression had his frequent lectures and Bible readings made upon her mind, he wondered uneasily, and would her soul be asked as forfeit for the undreamed-of worldly eminence now offered her?

Johanna had dismissed his religious qualms with savage scorn, reminding him angrily that for a trifling change of creed her daughter was not going to risk the loss of the greatest imperial throne in the world. He would not be there to meddle in affairs above his understanding, Johanna had announced finally, for the Empress's letter expressly forbade Christian to accompany his wife and daughter. Only Augusta could set his conscience at rest, and he held out the leathern Bible for her to hold.

“You are going away, Augusta,” he said solemnly. “Far away into a foreign land, where I fear you will find customs practised that are very different from those of Stettin. Do not be swayed by wealth or strangeness, my daughter, nor by the promise of greatness in this world. Remember the good Protestant faith that you were born in, and I ask you to promise me, by the Bible, that you will never change it! Do you promise, Augusta?”

The girl dropped her eyes that her father might not read the disappointment in them. She reflected that such promises were easy for those whom life had left in a forgotten backwater of the German States like Stettin, or even Zerbst. Her decision was prophetic of the years to come. “If I refuse, it might be in his power to prevent my going,” she thought quickly, and her natural affection added that her reply would set his mind at rest.

Augusta smiled back at him. “I promise, papa,” she said. Christian sighed with relief. Doubtless, as Johanna said, his daughter's character had many faults, but to his knowledge lying was not among them, and he never doubted her sincerity.

In the midst of his reflections it occurred to him that it might go hard with his daughter at Elizabeth's court, with no one to protect and guide her but the self-seeking and incautious Johanna. Looking at her with more than usual interest, he noticed that she was quite a pretty girl, she had her mother's dark hair and his blue eyes, but her face had a vividness of expression foreign to either parent. She promised, in fact, to be a very handsome woman.

Since there could be no question of refusing the Empress's request, he salved his uneasy conscience with the promise he had just extracted from her and tried to dismiss the affair from his mind. After all, he considered, the courier that had arrived last night, almost on the heels of the Russian emissary, bore a message from their King, Frederick the Great, endorsing Elizabeth's invitation and even sending for Johanna to attend an audience with him before she left for Russia.

Christian was not a clever man, nor was he a coward, but he knew enough of the age he lived in to realize that, in sending for Johanna, something of further significance besides the marriage of Augusta was in the mind of his wily sovereign.

“It is time that you dressed, Augusta,” Christian observed awkwardly, somehow unwilling to look at his child. “You had best return to your own room.”

Augusta slipped to the floor, bobbed a quick curtsy and ran to her apartment, while her father opened his Bible and continued reading.

Once in her bedroom, she shut the door and climbed back into her own chilled bed, shivering with cold and excitement. The thought came to her that if the cold of Zerbst nipped her so cruelly, what of that land of furious ice and blanketing snow that was to be her home for the future?

Russia. She said the word aloud and then laughed in sheer delight. The morning before she had greeted the world as plain Princess Augusta Fredericka, daughter of a poor and unimportant prince, whose future appeared as bleak and uneventful as the flat marshes and barren lands of her native Prussia. Tolerated by her father, despised and bullied by her mother, without wealth or family connections, there had seemed but small chance that she would ever change her lot even by marriage, for who, as Johanna had inquired acidly in her hearing, would want to marry
her?

Yet she was mature for her years, tall and high breasted, her complexion radiant with health; there was grace in her carriage; humor, intelligence and animation in her conversation as she never failed to prove when out of ear-shot of her maternal critic. For these, perhaps, some German princeling might eventually have married her, and until now the prospect had always represented conflict in her mind.

Marriage should be a source of pleasure, an experience of those romantic and sensual transports that had been described to her in books and through the less cultured medium of the kitchenmaids at Stettin; the marital relationship was no secret to Augusta, for it was not a squeamish age.

But her innermost heart demanded that it should offer something else. All her life, she had cherished one strong, secret ambition; her childish mind had brooded over it, peopling her drab world with riches and fantasy, and her adolescence had strengthened the half-formed desire. She wanted to be a queen. She, the humblest princess in Germany without a dowry large enough to warrant marriage, longed and dreamed of power and the possession of a crown.

Now, as if by some miracle, Fate had provided her with the most eligible prince in Europe as a husband, a youth destined to wear an emperor's crown, and what was more, to share it with her.… She was not to know that in the eyes of the Russian Empress her very obscurity was her greatest asset. A princess of importance might prove difficult to tame, but not this little nobody, Augusta.

Suddenly she sprang out of bed, tearing off her night-gown, aware that the hour was late and that she had lain daydreaming and wasting time.

Augusta splashed her face and hands with water in which thin wafers of ice floated like transparent fish, and dressed hurriedly. Standing before the small, spotted mirror, she brushed her black hair and pinned the shining mass on her head, pausing to regard her own reflection, a new, disturbing question in her mind.

Supposing that she was not to this Grand Duke Peter's taste?

The image in the tarnished looking-glass stared back at her with large thoughtful blue eyes; it was an arresting face of brilliant complexion and gifted with a high broad brow, the nose was very straight and her jaw a little square; but when she smiled the reflection showed perfect teeth set in a soft mouth.

Augusta turned from the glass, her question answered.

The Grand Duke would find her pleasing, and he would find her loving also, for she would owe him much.

Two days later Johanna departed alone on her journey to Berlin in obedience to the summons of her King.

Frederick received her graciously, bade her be seated, and passed a few minutes in formal inquiries as to her health and her family's well-being, while he examined her with a look that held none of the amiability of his words.

Despite herself Johanna averted her eyes from that penetrating stare; Frederick of Prussia was a thin, dry man, whose presence filled his subjects with an awe out of all proportion to the mere physical aspect of their sovereign.

His voice and manner bore unmistakable traces of the restraint imposed upon him in boyhood by the maniacal hatred of his father, and his cold blue eyes regarded Johanna of Anhalt with an unblinking, hostile stare which weighed her character and intelligence and found small merit in either.

He judged her vain and hasty, of a jealous and overbearing temperament, without the personality powerful enough to inspire either confidence or fear, and even as she spoke he mentally regretted the necessity which forced him to employ a tool at once so garrulous and so conceited.

The purport of Frederick's summons, and indeed of many things, was made clear to her during the audience, while she fidgeted upon a straight-backed chair, and Frederick's dry voice explained that the House of Anhalt owed its change of fortune to his offices. He had recommended Augusta to the Empress, having noted her evident intelligence and pleasing looks during their last stay at court.

He wished to impress upon Johanna, he remarked at length, that she owed first allegiance to him, and as proof of that allegiance she would send secret reports to him from Moscow and undertake to influence the Empress Elizabeth against her Vice-Chancellor Bestujev, who was, the King added, a bitter opponent of her daughter's coming marriage and of Prussian interests. The future Emperor was his young friend and disciple, it only needed an Empress of similar sympathies to ensure that peace and security which was the natural outcome of Prussian domination. He felt sure that Princess Augusta Fredericka would remain loyal to the land of her birth.…

Fortified by promises of rich rewards should her espionage prove successful, Johanna returned to Stettin. To her husband's questions she answered nothing, and he decided that for his part it was safer not to know.

The person least consulted in these momentous days was the Princess Augusta. No one had bothered to tell her anything beyond her mother's outline of the Empress's message, so she had to fall back upon her imagination to fill in the gaps.

This was not difficult, but sometimes, especially at night, her day-dreams faded and she felt afraid. Russia was a strange land where terrible, violent things happened every day. Gossip painted a terrifying picture of the Czars and their courtiers. Elizabeth was a Russian, daughter of Peter the Great, the Emperor who had flogged his own son to death.… Augusta shuddered when she remembered it. But people said that she had never executed anyone. One would have to be wary, no doubt, not to displease the Empress, but as long as she obeyed, Elizabeth would favor her.