Rebel Princess (33 page)

“Are you very tired, Madame?” he asked anxiously.

Natalie Alexeievna managed to smile in denial.

“No, thank you, Highness. You show me too much kindness.…”

That at least was true, and as she looked at him, Natalie's heart softened in gratitude and pity. For all his chivalry, his assumption of courtesy and grandeur, Paul Petrovitch of Russia was perhaps the ugliest man she had seen in her life. So ugly, indeed, that unlike his delighted reaction to their first meeting, his future bride had wept with disappointment. From his earliest years, the extraordinary likeness to his dead father Peter the Third had been a source of comment to the Court and of horror to his mother. Since birth, rumour had declared him a bastard, son of Catherine by a Russian lover, but seeing him there were few who doubted his paternity.

The Mask of Peter the Third, so a tactless observer had named him, and the remark was repeated to the Empress. It did nothing to lessen her hatred for the innocent boy. A reminder of treason and murder was growing up in her sight and in the view of all those who cared to remember the past.

But Natalie Alexeievna saw her husband with an unbiased eye; there was no memory of the dead Czar to influence her judgment. Paul Petrovitch strongly resembled his mother.

Every feature of the Empress was reproduced in her son; her broad forehead was there, only accentuated to the point of baldness, her fine Grecian nose had been inherited, but flattened and misshapen, giving the Czarevitch a cruel, juvenile look, and her splendid eyes were set in his head. They might have redeemed the travesty of his appearance, had their expression been less fierce and tragic.

To such a man Natalie Alexeievna had been delivered, and despite the heat of that vast banqueting hall and the weight of her elaborate clothes, the Grand Duchess shivered at the thought. His gentleness and generosity made the burden of her state a little easier to bear; in all the strangeness of that teeming Court, she had one friend. It was her misfortune that he must also be a lover.

From the comparative peace and security of Darmstadt, the seventeen-year-old Princess had been thrust into this background, and the only support offered to her had been the blind, clumsy devotion of the overshadowed Paul.

Instinctively she feared the Empress. Her youth and inexperience shrank before the immense personality of the older woman, and her narrow judgment recoiled in loathing from the crimes attributed to her.

Paul was frighteningly ugly, and physically the thought of him repulsed her, but she clung to him desperately, and in the few weeks before their marriage, a strange bond of fear and dependence had been forged between them. Left undisturbed, it might have grown into mutual love, but already events were moving to determine otherwise.

Among the young men who attended upon the Czarevitch was a certain André Rasumovsky. Son of a family ennobled by the late Empress Elizabeth, Paul's equerry was gifted with good looks only exceeded by his charm. Some four years older than his master, he was the perfect model of a young nobleman who had grown to maturity under the protection of Catherine Alexeievna. Cynical, gay and without moral scruples, he liked Paul Petrovitch as little as he understood him.

He was tall and gracefully built, carefully veneered by the manners and dress of western culture, but the narrow, hot, black eyes and sensual mouth betrayed him. A scratch upon the polished surface quickly revealed the lustful unscrupulous barbarian, true descendant of the savage Muscovite boyars whose adoption of European customs dated back less than a hundred years.

Fate opened the first phase of triple tragedy when it sent him among the escort which brought Paul's bride by ship to Russia. Rasumovsky had noticed her immediately, drawn by her personal beauty and by the novelty of her obvious virginity. Desire was easily kindled in him; but the treasure destined for his hated master was strictly guarded, so that the equerry was left at the mercy of his own sensual imaginings and a longing increased by the knowledge of the difficulties in his way.

In Petersburg, his duties kept him chained to Paul's side and he came near enough to Natalie Alexeievna to inflame his interest to the point of frenzy. Day by day he watched the Czarevitch with his beautiful betrothed, watched and listened to the clumsy, boyish gallantries that he longed to be allowed to make to her himself. Perhaps the greatest irritant was Paul's gruff admission that he was very much in love, accompanied by his usual nervous blush. Instinctively Rasumovsky had drawn himself up to his full height, conscious of the other's short stature, and congratulated him with an angry sneer that his master failed to notice.

Would to God that Paul Petrovitch was just another man and not the heir to the Russian throne.… He might then fear to match his manhood against André Rasumovsky.… Thoughts like these, shot with hatred and treasonable design, possessed the mind of the young man as he endured the wedding banquet, staring at the Grand Duchess Natalie, his caution evaporating under the influence of quantities of wine. Beautiful, fragile, virginal, she aroused in him a degree of longing that was composed equally of attraction and the challenge of a man in love with what belongs to someone else. A faint element of pity crept into his emotions, and it crystallized sharply as he met her eye for a brief moment. Across the tables she stared at him, and the loneliness, weariness and uncertainty that he read there caught at his heart. The Grand Duchess looked away quickly, and Rasumovsky saw a hint of colour rise in her pale face. Then and there the wavering intention hardened into a fierce resolve: the wish to cuckold Paul, whom he hated and was forced to serve, became a vow to do so, and Rasumovsky was a man who had often risked his life in pursuit of his own will.

Little did he guess that the gentle, shy Grand Duchess, now firmly wedded to an infatuated bridegroom, was even at that moment staring at her plate in mingled confusion and despair at her own feelings.

Something stirred in Natalie at the sight of that young foreign nobleman, something quickened her blood and troubled her unawakened senses, so that she both longed and dreaded to come face to face with him. For all her inexperience, the Grand Duchess's instincts warned her that he was in pursuit and that her exalted rank and married state were no protection. Only Paul stood in the way, a safeguard against a danger that she suspected had an origin in her own heart.

She looked up at Paul, considering that grotesque profile, and for the first time an impression of something that was less than human came to her. It was a young face, but in it there was neither youth nor the composure of a mind which had matured. There was purpose in that grim, narrow mouth and arrogant chin, but it was of a quality that inspired uneasiness rather than admiration, and the expression in his pale blue eyes was empty and soullessly unhappy, as if his sight turned inward to some secretly contemplated grief. Only when he regarded her did his expression soften, becoming warm with tenderness and life. The knowledge of that transformation had done much to please her childish vanity.

She touched his sleeve and smiled at him; it was a subconscious gesture of defiance, aimed at his mother who despised him, and at men like the Minister Panin, but more than any of these, it served as a rebuff to that impertinent young Russian in Paul's service who dared raise his eyes to her in challenge and in pity at her fate.

Outside, the palace sentries stamped and shivered, closing their eyes against the sheets of driving snow. Beyond the walls, all Petersburg was celebrating, and the sound of singing drifted across the frozen surface of the Neva. By morning, many of those who feasted would be dead, frozen to death in their rags, slain by the cold and the free wine which lulled them into a sleep from which they never awoke. On this, the night of their future Emperor's happiness, the poor of his capital ate and drank their fill, and in the glow of these strange luxuries, they lay down in the snow and died. Death came mercifully to them at their first taste of plenitude: they were fortunate, these corpses that the next day's sun discovered, more fortunate than their Czarevitch, who might well have envied them their painless, peaceful end.

In the small hours of that morning a single horseman galloped through the outer gates and drew rein in the inner courtyard of the Winter Palace. He was covered from head to foot with snow and his mount stood trembling with fatigue.

A groom held the reins while the traveller dismounted and showed his warrant to a sentry, who examined it under the light of a spitting pitchpine torch.

“Royal Courier … You bring your congratulations late, messenger. The Czarevitch is most likely already tumbling in his marriage bed! Pass!”

“I bear no pleasant tidings. I carry despatches from the Urals and God pity me that I must deliver them.…”

He was a peasant, this courier, and when, in answer to his insistence, he was taken to the banqueting hall to deliver his message personally to his Empress, he hesitated on the threshold, blinking in the light of thousands of scented candles, his tired legs trembling under him.

He was the last of a series of couriers who had ridden for days across Russia, carrying with them the most evil tidings of an uneasy reign. His tired eyes saw the Empress, seated on the dais under the velvet canopy, and his heart bounded with fear. But she was merciful, he remembered. The people said of her that she had never caused an innocent messenger to be put to death or tortured, no matter how bad the news he brought. Pray God that this was so.…

A page led him to Catherine; with shaking hands he drew the despatch from its leather case, not daring to raise his eyes, and sank down on the steps of the dais.

The Empress turned to him, and seeing that he cringed with fear, smiled and spoke graciously.

“What message do you bring me?”

The courier looked up at her and stammered.

“Imperial Majesty. Little Mother … pardon me. I bring bad news. From Orenburg.…”

Orenburg? … The great fortress town on the Urals. Catherine held out her hand and took the scroll from him, aware that many eyes were watching her. With a murmur of apology to her immediate neighbours she broke the seal and began to read.

A lifetime of self-discipline enabled her to receive the news without a change of colour or expression. Calmly she folded the paper and passed it to Panin.

“I think you should see this at once, Nikita. I shall end the banquet now; wait for me in my room.”

One of her aides went to the back of Paul's chair and informed him that the Empress was ready for him to retire with the young Grand Duchess. At the given signal Catherine rose, and the assembled hundreds stood while she left the room, followed by the Czarevitch and his bride.

The ceremony of preparing the new Grand Duchess for her husband was duly carried out. Catherine and her ladies undressed the exhausted Natalie, and according to custom the Empress gave her daughter-in-law her blessing and extended her hand to be kissed.

Sitting up in the enormous State bed, Natalie obediently touched Catherine's fingers with her lips, so tired that she was near to tears, and aware that the expression in the older woman's eyes was not unkind.

“Good night, my child. May God's blessing be upon your union.”

A few moments later Paul Petrovitch entered the room. He stood there shyly for a moment, the nerve in his left cheek twitching, as always in moments of stress. He had just parted from his mother, and their meeting had been marked by stiff formality. The Empress spoke no words of personal affection to Paul; there was no stirring of maternal sentiment in her heart. They bade each other good night with the phrases custom put into their mouths, antipathy and pride rising between them.

“God bless you, my son.”

As Catherine had spoken the words the memory of the despatch which awaited her brought a harsh note into that level voice. A ghost stood at the Czarevitch's elbow, a stunted figure, wearing the outsize wig which accentuated his ugly physical proportions, and it seemed to the Empress as if the shadow of the murdered Peter the Third mocked her salutation, before melting into the living body of her son.

Thousands of miles from Petersburg another phantom had arisen; a man claiming to be the late Czar led an army of her discontented subjects in rebellion, and with this hideous reminder of the past which she had hoped to bury, Paul's fair colouring, his ugly features and nervous manner seemed a reincarnation of the man she had hated and finally done to death.

Her much vaunted rationalism always suffered a check in the presence of her son. The knowledge that the heir to Russia's throne was a bastard, the love child of her first liaison, fought a continual battle against the superstition which his appearance inspired in her. He was the son of a Russian courtier, Catherine reminded herself angrily, while her expression hardened with dislike and the empty words of affection and goodwill were exchanged between them. Though Paul aped Peter Feodorovitch, not a drop of Romanov blood flowed in his veins. The Empress had often reflected angrily that her son lavished loyalty and love upon the memory of a man who would have eventually put him to death for his bastardy.

Whatever Catherine's feelings, those of her son were rooted in implacable enmity, and as usual he made no secret of the fact. He was still tense and angry when he came into the bedroom and stood looking at his wife. Then he noticed the signs of recent tears, and instantly he softened. He sat down on the side of the bed and took his bride's small hand in his.

For a moment there was silence, then the Czarevitch raised his wife's fingers to his lips and kissed them gently.

“Are you unhappy, Natalie?” he asked her suddenly.

She managed to smile through her tears and shook her head.

“I am only tired, I think. Forgive me, my husband.…”

Paul gazed at her with such a mixture of pleading and adoration that she turned away, disconcerted and filled with an uprush of pity for the extremity of loneliness she sensed. If only he were not so ugly, she thought, and blushed as if he could read her thoughts.