Rebel Princess (35 page)

The presence of this other man had destroyed her chance of happiness from the beginning. From that first exchange of glances on the night of her wedding banquet, the eyes of André Rasumovsky had followed her everywhere, taunting her; his nearness and her almost daily contact with him had undermined her dignity and shattered her resistance. He spoke to her as often as he dared, he touched her as if by accident, so that she trembled and felt a burning, traitorous blush rising in her face, while the voice of her own rebellious heart told her that here was the man who could make the mockery of marriage into the reality of love.

This conflict within her only found peace in solitude, and since Paul sought her company throughout the day, Natalie was forced to invent a headache and escape to her rooms when she could; on those rare occasions when the Czarevitch went riding far out over the palace parklands, she slipped out of the Imperial suite and walked across the snow-covered lawns to the Grand Duchess's pavilion.

This was a small building, designed in the classical style; and despite the fact that it was unused until the summer months, the interior was luxuriously furnished. It stood on the edge of an ornamental lake, now frozen solid, where by tradition the Grand Duchess's swans circled gracefully on the pale water, and the ladies of the royal family spent the long hours of the warm summer days, feeding their birds from the steps of the pavilion.

The charming rooms had become Natalie's favourite retreat, a refuge from Paul, a haven from Rasumovsky and her own confused, often adulterous thoughts.

One afternoon in mid-January, she went there as usual, unaccompanied even by a maid, and since the palace servants knew of her habit, the pavilion was already prepared for her. With her eyes half closed against the dazzling glare of snow and ice, the Grand Duchess walked quickly up the steps and pushed open the heavy gilded door, brushing some of the feathery snow away with her gloved hand.

The room she entered was beautifully furnished, couches covered with exquisite thread embroidery lined the walls, tables of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl shone in the light of a gracious fire. There were mirrors in frames of solid silver hanging on the tapestried walls, and the inevitable ikons gave the chamber that air of incongruous piety peculiar to all Russian dwellings.

Natalie, who was beginning to hate the luxury and barbarity of the Imperial palaces, loved the pavilion, forgave it the riot of colour in hangings and ornaments, dismissed the dim, elongated Saints in their setting of jewels and gilt, and spent happy hours of peace within its walls.

She now unfastened her sable-lined cloak, threw it carelessly on a chair and advanced towards the wide fireplace, warming her small, chilled hands before the blaze. Her black hair was damp and shining, where stray flakes of snow had penetrated under her hood, and the hem of her blue silk gown was wet.

Natalie leant against the mantelpiece and closed her eyes. She felt exhausted and near to tears, two feelings which attacked her immediately she was beyond Paul's unwanted supervision. She wished for respite, for strength to bear the odium of a loving husband and the torturing desire to take refuge from him in the arms of an inferior. And above all, she was ashamed, ashamed of her own weakness, and a surge of vindictiveness grew out of her humiliation.

For the hundredth time she determined to have Rasumovsky dismissed from her husband's service. One word to Paul would be sufficient. She had only to express the wish, and without questioning her motive, the infatuated Czarevitch would release her from the strain of André's presence.

Natalie thought of him and trembled with simulated rage, playing with visions of imprisonment and even death as the fate which she could inflict on the destroyer of her peace.

In the midst of these hysterical reflections Natalie heard the sound of a door opening and then swinging shut; a draught of cold air blew through the room, and she swung round, suddenly frightened, believing that it was Paul who had followed her, Paul who had come into the pavilion to find her, to smother her with his love and forbid even this refuge in the future.

But it was not the Czarevitch. The figure outlined against the doorway was far too tall and as it came closer she recognized it.

Then for a moment there was absolute silence, as Paul's wife and his equerry stood facing one another.

“I followed you, Madame,” he said at last. “I've watched you come here several times and to-day I followed you.”

“How dare you, M. Rasumovsky! You know I'm unchaperoned. You must go immediately. I shall report this to the Czarevitch.…”

They were brave words but her voice quavered uncertainly, and Rasumovsky looked down at her and smiled.

“You won't denounce me to the Czarevitch,” he said softly. “He would have me killed. You won't deliver me to that because I love you.”

Natalie had begun to tremble. “You're mad,” she whispered. “Mad.… For God's sake, André … go now. I'll say nothing to anyone, I promise you.…”

It was as much a plea for herself as for him, a plea to leave her in peace, not to do the thing she dreaded and yet longed for; even as she spoke she knew that it was useless, and in her heart she surrendered and was glad.

“I am mad … mad with love of you. And you're not indifferent to me. Don't pretend, Natalie, you have betrayed yourself a hundred times.…”

As he advanced upon her the Grand Duchess backed away from him and, turning, tried to reach the window. It was a futile attempt at flight from the inevitable. There was no one to hear her cry or see her signal had she had time to make one, for Rasumovsky sprang forward and caught her.

When he first touched her she resisted; her small fists struck at him and she strained backwards, trying to avoid his kisses. He held her tight against him as she struggled, murmuring his love and need of her.

“You are so beautiful …” he murmured, aware that her small hands were clinging to him and that her resistance was turning to response.

“André … Oh, André …”

He picked her up and carried her to a couch which was pushed back against one of the tapestried walls.

“I love you,” he had said, over and over again, and for the first time in his life the empty formula had meaning. The fulfilment of desire had flooded him with a tenderness that he had never felt for any other woman, and in the face of this he became suddenly defenceless.

He looked up at her and smiled; they gazed at each other in silence for a moment, and in that moment expressed a love for which no words would have been adequate.

Rasumovsky raised himself upon one elbow, and touched her face with gentle fingers.

“You're more beautiful than ever, Natalie. They say a woman's beauty blossoms fully in the hour of love.… I am only afraid that anyone who sees you will suspect …”

“Beautiful? Like this … with my hair down like a peasant girl's?” For answer he wound a thick strand of her dark hair round his hand and kissed it.

“I love you, Natalie Alexeievna. You are revenged. No woman has heard that from my lips before without hearing a lie. But to you, I tell the truth. I love you and before God, I'm afraid for myself.…”

“Why afraid, my love?” she asked him gently, and sat upright so that she leant against his shoulder.

“Because I've lost my freedom … because I feel that if you deny yourself to me I shall never know peace again.… Do you love me enough to forgive me for what I've done to you and to myself?”

“I love you enough not to care,” she said calmly. “I must have always loved you, André. From the moment I saw you on the boat. Only I was a child then and didn't understand. With Paul I had no idea what love could mean. It was never love for me. But I know now, my dearest one.”

He bent and kissed her and when the embrace was over she rested her cheek on his shoulder and smiled absently, tranquil and dazed with happiness.

“It is snowing again, my love,” he said after a moment, looking out of the long window on the opposite wall.

“Thank God. It'll cover our footprints. Oh, André, why do we have to go back! I wish we could stay here for ever. Paul will be waiting for me, sitting in his rooms watching my door, like a lovesick dog.…”

“Don't speak of him!” Rasumovsky said savagely. “He has the right to you that should only belong to me.… I have to live with that. I have to wait upon him, see him looking at you, knowing that when you are alone with him he's making love to you.…”

“I'm not going to let him touch me, not now. I can't help it, André; I shall keep him away as much as I can. Then I can be with you.…”

“I have always hated him.… Now I could kill him, because you are his wife. Come here, my adored one, let me hold you again, forget the Czarevitch … forget everything but ourselves.”

It was quite dark when they parted at last, parted unwillingly and with the promise of a meeting the next day to sustain them.

“To-morrow, Natalia.”

“To-morrow, here and at the same time. I'll find some excuse for the Czarevitch. Farewell, my love. Until tomorrow.…”

Within a little while the fire in the grate flickered into a last false glow of life and then died out; the pavilion was dark and silent, its window panes coated with snow, the dim shapes of the furniture fading into a background of stillness and dusk, until it seemed a trysting place for ghosts, as if the lovers who had left it were already dead.

For a short period, Catherine returned to Petersburg, where Panin awaited her with grave news of the Pugachev rebellion. The troops and cannon sent to quell them had proved almost useless; the savage measures enforced against the rebels had done nothing to deter them; Catherine's lands ran red with blood and echoed to the hammerings of hastily erected gallows; the armies of both sides burned and slew without mercy.

But the revolt spread, thousands of starving, discontented serfs streamed to join the man they believed to be their rightful Czar, backed by the fiercely independent Cossack tribes.

Word reached the Empress that posters proclaiming her a traitorous usurper had been found in Petersburg itself, that daring voices had cried out for the Czar Peter the Third. And finally the dreaded sequel followed; the rebels in the Urals and the malcontents in the city had begun to mention Paul.

Panin and her councillors resumed their pleas for her son's imprisonment and death. It was the only way, they insisted; Pugachev was not the real danger; he would be routed, punished, publicly executed and the matter would end with him. But the true menace was the Czarevitch. It might even be that he was intriguing with his mother's enemies.

Catherine listened to them in silence, fighting the temptation to take their advice and humour her own wishes by serving her son as she had served her husband. Instead, she compromised. If Panin could show her that the Czarevitch was treating with her enemies, she would sign the order for his arrest and death within the same hour.

Satisfied, the Minister assured her that his spies were always active and departed, his heart lighter with the hope of catching out his enemy.

As an added precaution, he set a watch upon Natalie Alexeievna.

Early in spring the Empress returned to Tsarskoë Selo, and though she made frequent trips to Petersburg, and spent some time in Moscow, the Czarevitch and his little court remained at the Summer Palace. There were rumours of an impending change in Catherine's household, and the handsome favourite Vassiltchikov trod warily, confiding to some that the Empress treated him with growing indifference. Another rival had appeared, but no one knew for certain who it was.

While the Court gossiped and speculated, Paul pretended not to listen, and in fact those summer months at Tsarskoë Selo were among the happiest of his life. All those who saw him were aware of the change that marriage with Natalie had wrought in him.

The sullen, ugly boy, his awkwardness increased by an air of sour suspicion, had given place to a young Prince, a Prince who stood erect for all his short stature, and who had suddenly acquired dignity and self-assurance. Towards his mother and his enemies he did not relent, but his altered character now made his hatred a force to reckon with, and the court opportunists came flocking to right themselves as an insurance for the future. But flattery did not deceive him, for he knew its worth, and while accepting it he made a mental note of those to whom he owed past grudges.

One day there would be a reckoning; sinners who thought their crimes forgotten and unpunished would render him account in blood, and often his eyes rested menacingly upon the figure of the Guards officer, Alexis Orlov, and recalled that as a boy, trembling with hatred for his father's murderer, he had once vowed to match the jagged left-hand scar on Orlov's cheek with an identical incision, before the head was severed from the body.

But the matter of his revenge must wait, for love of his young wife took first place in his thoughts.

To him she was the embodiment of everything he worshipped; the missing comfort of his motherless childhood was waiting for him in her arms; she gave him the companionship denied the boy who never had a playmate or an animal to love, and she appeared the fair goddess of all adolescent dreams.

He was immensely proud of her, tender and unselfish, blundering only through ignorance, and completely blind to her tepidity and faults. Also he believed quite genuinely that she loved him with a passion as unbounded as his own.

Her health was the only blight upon his happiness, for his wife pleaded constant headaches and spent long hours ostensibly resting in her room. In his tenderness and anxiety, Paul humoured her lightest wish, and was comforted by the doctors when they assured him that though perhaps a little tired, the Grand Duchess was in good spirits and quite well. He became grateful for her companionship, and treasured their hours together; the smallest word or gesture of affection sufficed to please him, and since the physicians hinted that she was fatigued from love-making, he mastered his intense desire for her.