Rebel Princess (28 page)

Within ten minutes she was dressed, her hair secured with a few pins, hurrying in Orlov's wake towards the waiting carriage. As he helped her inside she saw that the first red tinge of sunrise was beginning to color the delicate roofs and colonnades of Peterhof, and every bird in the hundreds of trees were singing in jubilant greetings to the coming day. Opposite her sat the white-faced lady-in-waiting, too dangerous to be left behind.

Sitting in his corner, Alexis observed her with admiration and masculine amazement. Despite her beauty, her charm and sensuousness, he saw the contradiction in her that had enslaved and since infuriated Gregory, the deadly force of character which so belied her womanhood, the courage and coolness which made her smile in the very teeth of death and danger. Small wonder that Peter Feodorovitch had known he must kill her in order to be safe.

“Alexis,” she said suddenly. “How long since Passek was arrested?”

“Last night, Madame,” he answered.

“Then by now news must have reached the Emperor at Oranienbaum. God knows what may not have been forced out of Passek; we must abandon all thought of Gregory's plan. What does he contemplate?”

“A revolution, Madame, but how it is to be achieved I do not know.…”

Catherine leaned forward and touched his arm.

“Well, friend Alexis, I think that I do! Tell that fool to whip up the horses; the sun is risen and we have no time to lose! If all goes well with me, I shall know how to reward you for your help this day!”

In obedience to her command, the carriage increased its speed, lurching and swaying from side to side so that its illustrious passenger and her escort were almost flung from their seats. Yet Catherine cursed the slowness of the third-rate horses, as she watched the sky turn lighter.

Just before they entered St. Petersburg another coach appeared, driven by Gregory Orlov himself, who transferred his mistress from the shabby
calèche
into a vehicle befitting her status. Alexis drove.

All St. Petersburg was still asleep. Only the Orlovs and their fellow conspirators knew of the blow that had fallen, and they had spent the night in fevered preparations to receive the Empress and do battle for the throne.

Panin had promised to support her in the Senate, the Dashkova had hurried away to inform her intimates that Catherine might be expected in the capital at any hour and that the rising must take place that day.

Listening to Gregory's account, Catherine sensed the panic and confusion which had engulfed her partisans and which not even the iron courage and resourcefulness of her lover had been able to stem. With Alexis and his brother once out of the city, who knew what treacherous forms that fear might not take?

“I see the Ismailov Barracks.… Tell Alexis to stop the coach!” Gregory glanced at her in surprise.

“What madness is this? I tell you we have no time to lose. I must lodge you safely in the palace before I can begin to act.”

“I am not going to the palace. I am halting here. I have changed the plan, Gregory, I changed it on the journey and I order you to stop the coach!”

For a moment he hesitated, and Catherine thrust her head out of the window and called herself, careless of the anger on his face at her defiance or his resentment at her tone.

Obediently Alexis drew on the rein and jumped down. Catherine opened the door and alighted; then suddenly she turned to Gregory and the hardness had melted from her eyes and mouth.

“Forgive me if I was abrupt, beloved, but my instincts in this tell me that they must be followed. I trust no politician; their ways are not your ways and I fear they might forfeit my life and their promises to me without a qualm. Come, Gregory Gregorovitch, trust me and forgive her who loves you and cannot bear to see you angry! From this moment I am in your hands and in the hands of those who know and follow you!

“Rouse the soldiers of the Ismailovs. Tell them their Empress is in danger and appeals for their protection! As you love me, go!”

The start of Catherine's revolution was a strange scene; half-dressed sleepy soldiers emerging into the street outside their barracks, summoned by a single drummer's echoing beat, a tiny nucleus of moving men beneath the early morning sky who heard the declarations from the lips of their Empress. She, the magnificent Catherine whose health they had drunk and whose beauty they had coveted in the manner of all men, was in danger of her life and stood there pale and dignified, fair as a goddess in her plain black gown, asking the protection of her people.

Simon Goronov, soldier and son of a freed serf, broke the silence that had descended upon them once their Emperor's wife had spoken. For a moment they had hesitated, waiting for someone to take the lead, to speak first in the cause of what they knew in their hearts to be treason, while Catherine's face drained deadly pale and the Orlovs' hands crept to their swords.

No scruples troubled Goronov; he wore upon his back a Prussian uniform, for months he had drilled endlessly in the hated, unfamiliar German fashion and dreamed day and night of cutting the Czar's throat as reprisal for these humiliations. Now, as by the gift of God, his opportunity had come in the person of the Empress.

He flung his hat in the air and roared with all the power of his great voice.

“Long live our Little Mother Catherine! Death to the German pig!” On the instant that cry was taken up.

Every man among them joined with the giant Goronov, who had fallen to his knees and was kissing the Czarina's hands with tears of rage and emotion running down his leathery face and into his black beard, cursing and swearing eternal loyalty. Catherine found herself surrounded by hundreds of shouting enthusiastic men, struggling to be near, to get a close glimpse of the legendary Catherine Alexeievna, to hear her voice or touch her gown.

It was useless for Gregory and Alexis to thrust and elbow their way into that crowd, for none could have reached her, neither friend nor enemy. The officers of the Ismailovs had begun to mingle with their men, and at last the wildly cheering troops made a pathway for their Colonel, who fell on one knee before Catherine and kissed her hand in homage.

“God be praised, Your Majesty! The Ismailovs will fight for you to the last drop of their blood!”

Dozens of reverent hands lifted the Czarina into her own carriage, and a forest of naked swords surrounded the vehicle as still more soldiers hurried up. Alexis jumped onto the step and his brother sprang into the coach with Catherine. In one corner Madame Chargorodsky crouched silently, her hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. Orlov cast one contemptuous look at the shivering bemused woman and then caught his mistress in his arms. Someone among the crowd peered through the window and set up a mighty, envious cheer at this mark of imperial preference for the army.

Breathless and trembling, Catherine tore herself free.

“Not yet, my Gregory. We are not sure of victory yet. But it is the right beginning. Tell them to move on!”

Someone had fetched the regimental priest to give his blessing to the proceedings, and priest and crucifix were hustled into the front of the procession which began to move slowly forward, hemmed in by its escort of yelling soldiery, in the direction of the Semionovsky barracks.

There the troops had been already warned of Catherine's approach, and a horde of officers and men came running down the street to greet her. Again she ordered the carriage to stop and alighted in the midst of the enthusiastic Semionovsky Regiment, giving her hands to be kissed, unaware that she herself was crying with emotion, knowing only that even if the day ended in her defeat and death she would never forget the love these people had shown her in her hour of greatest need.

But time was short; the streets had begun to fill with civilians who approached this fantastic sight with caution, while the whisper spread throughout St. Petersburg that the Empress had entered the city to raise an army for protection against the Czar.

That rumor reached the Preobrazhensky Barracks deeper in the center of the town. Among the first to hear the news of Catherine's approach was Elizabeth Vorontzov's brother, who commanded the Grenadiers.

He and several other officers who had received or expected favors at Peter's hands called out their men and reminded them of their oath to obey and succor the Czar against all comers. It was no less their duty to defend his throne against the treacherous onslaught of an unfaithful wife.

Watching Alexis, Catherine sensed a change in his expression as the vehicle turned into the broad sweep of the Nevsky Prospect. She leaned out and pulled at his sleeve.

“What is it, Alexis? What is wrong, we have almost stopped?”

“It is the Preobrazhenskys, Madame, and by the look of them they are come to fight us, not to join our cause!”

By this time the coach had halted, hemmed in on every side by the ranks of the Ismailovs and their brothers in the Semionovskys. The long expanse of the Nevsky Prospect was quite silent except for the ominous tread of the third regiment with Count Vorontzov at its head, which advanced with weapons drawn and muskets leveled towards Catherine and her troops.

Gregory leaped out of the carriage, pausing at the window to order Catherine to kneel on the floor when the first shot was fired.

His face was a mask in which his light eyes glittered dangerously; the fighter rejoiced in spite of himself in the chance to do battle. This was his
métier,
the world wherein the sword was arbiter, and the strongest triumphed without mercy over the weak. Until this moment Catherine had given the lead; hers was the victory, won by the strategy of cunning which he would never understand or practice with success. Now his fierce pride saw a chance to prove himself, to win all things for the woman he loved by virtue of sheer valor, and to establish more firmly the domination over her destiny which he had fought so jealously to maintain.

He did not want to win the Preobrazhenskys to her side, when he could annihilate them and cover himself with glory.

In that quick exchange of glances Catherine knew that unless she acted he would give the word to fire, and the earliest stage of her
coup d'état
would end in a welter of her people's blood. She, the liberating Empress who promised to free them from the Prussian yoke, would have begun by engulfing them in civil war.

Without a moment's thought of danger, she opened the door and stood on the coach step within full view of the Preobrazhenskys. And Orlov swore a fearful oath and lowered his pistol.

He swung round and tried to thrust her into the interior of the carriage, cursing and pleading with her to obey.

With his hand upon her arm, she hesitated for a single moment, bracing herself against the lintel of the door, and looked out over the heads of her men to where the serried ranks had halted only a few yards away.

That sight of her and the fanatic shouts of her supporters broke the spell. Suddenly Count Menshikov remembered that he stood by the side of the hated Elizabeth Vorontzov's brother, that he and his men were about to attack the woman whom he had liked and admired for years, and to shed blood in order to keep Peter Feodorovitch upon a throne he was unfit to occupy.

It was his voice that rose from the ranks of Catherine's enemies, loud and ringing with excitement.

“Long live our Little Mother, the Empress of Russia!”

The next moment there was pandemonium, a shouting, surging chaos in which the Count Vorontzov found himself disarmed and made prisoner by his own men, while the rest of the Guards ran in droves towards that carriage, cheering and brandishing their weapons, fighting to get to the coach and its royal passenger, crying their loyalty and contrition with hundreds of eager voices.

The crisis was past. The army was going over to Catherine Alexeievna, and there in the open city streets they dragged the priest into their midst and knelt in homage, while Peter's wife was proclaimed Empress of all the Russias, and every man among them swore allegiance.

Swelled by thousands of townspeople, the procession made its way to the very heart of St. Petersburg, joined by regiment after regiment who hastened to put themselves under the new Empress's command. Gregory Orlov's own troops handed her the keys to the city arsenal, and the historic coach halted finally before the great doors of the Kazan Cathedral. There, where she had stood beside Peter as a bride of Sixteen, Catherine Alexeievna took the oath as Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias.

There, too, she received Nikita Panin, who had been hurerid to the cathedral by Alexis Orlov, and there she embraced her shrinking son whose throne she was usurping.

Orlov had discovered the Count in his bedroom in the palace, feigning sleep and apparently deaf to the tumult of revolution which was taking place beneath his windows. Panin the conspirator had awakened to find his Czar deposed, and not Paul Petrovitch but the German-born Czarina proclaimed in his stead.

He came to the cathedral, dragging the Czarevitch by the hand, to make obeisance to the woman he had foolishly thought to use for his own ends. But he was wise enough to recognize defeat and bow before her to the ground.

Catherine greeted him with the effusion she knew how to express so well. Panin was powerful still and cunning; at all costs he must be retained among her friends.

“Of all my subjects you are the most welcome, my dear Count! From this day I shall have ever greater need of your counsel and support. Come to me in the Winter Palace when this service is ended.”

Panin murmured his gratitude and backed away from her. As usual her grasp of human nature had chosen the exact amount of flattery and promise to decide him in her favor.

When Catherine emerged once more from the church she saw a sea of faces stretching before her, overflowing from the square into the surrounding streets, and for a moment she paused on the steps, waiting as she had done on the day of her wedding all those years ago, to acknowledge the cheers of the people who filled the air with the sound of their happiness and acclamation.