Rebel Princess (21 page)

“Tell them to me.”

“Because you are beautiful, because you love like a Siberian tigress in spite of all your book-learning, because you are brave, and because you are going to be Empress of Russia!”

“I think my husband plans it otherwise! Will I be all these things to you when I'm in prison? Or will you make love to Elizabeth Vorontzov instead?”

Orlov pulled her down to him and kissed her. After a moment he pushed her aside and sat up.

“To the devil with your husband and his plans! I tell you 'tis time we made a few plottings on our own account. Act now, and I'll wager a year's pay that that crazy German cockerel will end in his own dungeon while you take his throne. Then you can do what you like with the Vorontzova!” he added.

Catherine shook her head.

“You are too impetuous, Gregory. The Empress is still living, and there is always her promise that she will name my son as her successor. I believe that she will keep her word, and when her wishes are made public it will be time enough to show our hand.

“Since I have you, nothing in heaven or hell can daunt me. Only give me time to strengthen my own forces within the court itself, find me an ally among the ministers, and prepare the way by stealth. When the moment comes, then you shall have all the action that that Tartar's heart of yours desires!”

Orlov got up and walked to the long window, where the rays of the setting sun streamed in and bathed his wrestler's body in a flood of warm golden light.

“You are a clever woman, mistress of my soul,” he remarked after a moment. “And I admire your cleverness. But all knowledge does not come from books and ballroom intrigues; you speak of friends with influence, of building a strong faction of your own.…”

He turned round suddenly and stared at her.

“What greater strength could you have than the army?” he said softly. “What revolution, including the little affair which placed our glorious Empress on the throne, has ever taken place without the Guards?”

Catherine frowned, mentally conceding him the point, remembering that all the ministerial protection of Russia had failed to save Ivan from Elizabeth and her handful of soldiers.

“That is the truth. Yet how am I to enlist the army in my favor? I am not even Russian.”

“Pah! Leave that to me; I'll sing your praises in the barrack rooms and messes until every little soldier in the regiment knows your fame! My brothers will take care of the army. Once win over the Guards, my Catherine, and the crown of Russia is as good as placed upon your head!”

“Yes, the army and the people. I need them both, Gregory, and from my heart I believe that they need me! I know too well what Peter Feodorovitch intends for them.…”

She rose and went to him, putting her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to reach his face.

“In a few days we leave for St. Petersburg, beloved, and our freedom with each other will be much reduced. But we will not be idle. We will work hard, you and I, that the day may come when Peter will have no power to separate us. Promise me, Gregory Gregorovitch, that you will make no move, that you will guard yourself and me for still a little while?”

Orlov held her close and his great arms trembled.

“Even in St. Petersburg, I shall find a way to see you every day. And tonight I will see my brothers and speak to them of the things we have decided.”

In his own rooms in the palace, the Grand Duke sat playing cards and drinking quantities of beer. The windows were tight shut, and a blue haze of pipe tobacco hung heavily in the airless chamber. Elizabeth Vorontzov sat at her lover's elbow, her attention wandering from the play; she was hot and rather drunk and the prospect of their return to the capital depressed her.

Stiff, etiquette-ridden St. Petersburg, with all its attendant drawbacks of waiting on the Grand Duchess and moving under the Empress's jaundiced eye, had yet another disconcerting aspect.

Her young and lovely sister, whose wealthy marriage had thrust the Vorontzova into the background until Peter's choice had fallen on her, was coming to court; and if there was one other woman whom she hated more than the Grand Duchess it was the fiery intellectual, Princess Dashkov.

Peter was merry that day; his reedy laughter echoed through the room and his limbs twitched with nervous energy. All was well with Peter's world that afternoon; the thought of assuming Elizabeth's crushing burden of responsibility and power, the unmanly qualms that Catherine's presence contrived to inspire in him, fear, indecision and sickness were distant and forgotten. The day and the hour were happy for him and utterly free from the morbid cares which normally beset him. But faint and indistinct as yet, the shadows had begun to gather about the head of Peter Feodorovitch.

It was Neo Narychkin who introduced the eighteen-year-old Princess Dashkov to the Grand Duchess.

The Dashkova was not a woman whom he could admire, despite her rare culture and intelligence. She was the sister of Elizabeth Vorontzov, and Narychkin instinctively withheld his trust on that account, and her dark, intense good looks did not appeal to him.

Yet when Princess Dashkov, gazing up at him with bright, intent brown eyes, asked for an introduction to the Grand Duchess whose charm and beauty were greater even than rumor painted them, Narychkin repressed the desire to despatch the lady to her sister with her request, and himself mentioned the new-comer to Catherine.

As always she greeted him with a smile and her expression told of a genuine affection that in its very innocence struck Narychkin to the heart. And while she spoke, he sensed immediately the change in her.

Never, even in Saltykov's day, had such an air of confidence and happiness radiated from her. The assurance she possessed came neither from her status nor the knowledge of her beauty. She moved and talked and laughed with the glowing poise of a woman supremely satisfied in love, and it seemed to him as if her liaison with Orlov shrieked its presence aloud to every man or woman who had eyes to see.

Of course she would receive the princess, and her full lips twisted mischievously; as a source of common interest there was always the charming Mademoiselle Vorontzov to discuss.…

But the subject of Peter's mistress never arose between them at that first meeting; to her astonishment Catherine from herself conversing with someone whose knowledge and precocity made an excellent foil to her own talents.

The young princess, slightly built and a head shorter than the Grand Duchess, had the air of a studious schoolgirl as she stood looking up at the older woman, her brown eyes wide and serious, her remarks accompanied by quick, nervously impatient gestures, while the imperial court stood by and watched them in cynical amazement.

The sister of her enemy and rival hung on Catherine's every word, and her reluctance to end the interview was both genuine and flattering.

The friendship and disinterested admiration of a woman was something new in Catherine's chequered experience of the vagaries of human nature, and the irony of the situation made her smile.

On the one hand Peter's grotesque bed-fellow, ugly and gross-mannered as the lowest strumpet who roamed the city's streets and alleys after dark; on the other, this serious vital girl, her youthful mind burdened with learning even as Catherine's own had been during the tyranny of Madame Tchoglokov, her innocent virtue charged with the idealism and fanatic principles of one whom time had yet to disillusion.

And her heroine was Catherine; the Grand Duchess, beautiful, gracious, gifted with a tongue as scintillating as her mind and garbed in the tragic robes of an illtreated wife, became the model of fine womanhood, the symbol of that tolerance and feminine superiority at which the Princess Dashkov aimed herself.

So in the weeks and months that followed, every instinct of her passionate, partisan nature fastened upon Catherine as an object for the pent-up love and hero-worship which had searched in vain for a satisfactory outlet. The Princess Dashkov, with all the ardor of her years and temperament, settled down at St. Petersburg to the championing of a cause.

And the cause was Catherine Alexeievna, abominably treated by a half-wit husband, whose disloyalty to his country was only equaled by his cruelty to his wife.

The Dashkova was a mere girl, but she was a passionate nationalist and no one denied that despite her pedantry and stainless reputation, she was clever and observant. She was also reckless, in the cold-blooded way of martyrs and great gamblers, and it was not very long before Catherine discovered that her plan with Orlov had also occurred to the calculating Katrina Dashkov, and that even as Gregory left her arms in the early morning to continue his work of sounding the army in her favor, so the charming companion of her leisure hours occupied her time in careful probings among Elizabeth's ministers.

At first the Grand Duchess attempted to dissuade her, fearful that in her youth and enthusiasm the girl might draw suspicion upon herself and her protectress, but the princess shook her small dark head and smiled.

“Believe me, Highness, I know how to guard my tongue! I would it were torn out at the roots before it caused you harm by even a single word.”

The two were seated in Catherine's boudoir, talking and sipping hot chocolate, and the Grand Duchess regarded the speaker quietly over the rim of her porcelain cup.

“If my husband had his way you would be sister to the Czarina; would that mean nothing to you? Why would you prefer my cause to that of your own flesh and blood?”

The Dashkova set down her cup hurriedly.

“Elizabeth may be of my blood, our mother was the same—but as to the fatherhood, God knows! As a sister she means nothing to me; she is an ignorant slut with a mind as graceless as her body. I hate her because she has made you suffer and added to your humiliations. I love and admire you, my dearest Madame, as the most wonderful woman I have ever met, but your patience terrifies me. The Empress is sick again; what if she dies and Peter becomes Czar? What will befall you?”

Catherine smiled and stroked the princess's arm, for she was trembling with agitation.

“Your friendship has touched me deeply, my little Katrina, and I am aware of your wisdom, but for the moment I can do nothing. Peter threatens, he has done little else since the day of our wedding, and I must know well whom I can trust before I dare to think of action.”

“I will find out those on whom you can rely, Highness. Everyone talks to me. They think me young and innocent, but they know how I adhere to you and many will hint to me what they dare not suggest to you. In fact there is one person whom I suspect to be as staunch a friend to you as he is enemy to the Grand Duke.…”

“And who is that?” Catherine questioned, suddenly alert.

“Your son's tutor, Count Nikita Panin!”

Panin, fat as Bestujev was thin and dry, unctuous and power-loving, in favor with the Empress and reputed to be ambitious for his charge—was he really well-disposed towards her? There might be truth in the princess's words, and Catherine recognized that the friendship of one so close to Elizabeth and with a finger in several ministerial posts would be invaluable. It would be well to seek him out.

Late that afternoon the Dashkova took her leave, and Catherine pondered with quiet amusement whether the entrance of a lover into the princess's life might not cool her devotion towards her friend.

How horrified the girl would be, still entrenched in mental virginity, if she were to discover that her idol often wore a fichu because her arms and breasts were marked by the impetuous brutality of Gregory Orlov, that the fair Catherine, garbed in vestal purity by her sycophant's jealous imagination, spent hours of passionate love-making, wild and abandoned as a Tartar woman of the steppes, in the fierce arms of the most notorious gallant in Russia.

Orlov came to her as often as he dared and, sitting together in her firelit chamber with Vladyslava keeping faithful vigil outside the door, he told his mistress of the progress of their plans. Grudgingly he admitted her caution to be well founded; the army murmured against the war, the lack of food and money, and the general corruption in high circles which was costing many soldiers' lives, but their loyalty to the Empress was as strong as ever.

Whatever the disasters that befell their arms, the pious Elizabeth, Little Mother of her people, still held their hearts with the legend of her vanished beauty. Rumors had reached the war front that she lay sick and near to death, and though many voices had been raised in curses against the thought of her nephew's assumption of imperial authority, yet no serious move to counteract the possibility was made.

The regiments at St. Petersburg had as little love for Peter as their comrades who were that moment fighting his beloved Frederick, but no revolt was really contemplated. They hated the Grand Duke and suspected his loyalty, but they knew of no one who could take his place.

That was where the Orlovs could provide a remedy.

Had nobody heard of Peter's wife … and son? The Grand Duchess was proclaimed the most ardent patriot next to Elizabeth herself, a woman whose beauty was only equaled by her brain and courage.

Alexis and his brothers, sensible of the glory such a boast reflected upon them, let it be widely known that the persecuted Catherine had fled to the arms of a Russian officer of the Guards for consolation in her misery and protection for her person.

Gregory, with money supplied to him from Catherine's purse, toasted her health in rivers of wine, and before long his position as her lover was a matter of personal pride throughout the army.

And through the mouth of Alexis Orlov a picture of the Grand Duke began to take ominous shape in the minds of his listeners. Peter was an imbecile, a drunken treacherous foreigner who threatened to deliver the whole country into German hands as soon as power was his. He wanted to ban the Church, the Orlovs declared with blasphemous oaths, and their listeners crossed themselves with superstitious horror. The whole army would be trained and uniformed in imitation of the hated Prussians, and at this threat there were many who sprang to their feet with drawn swords.