Rebel Princess (6 page)

He had insulted her, snubbed her mother, avoided her whenever possible, but however he might try to wound and break her spirit, as his had been broken by Elizabeth, he could not feel at ease. Somehow her personality always emerged the stronger … that was it, he thought, and in spite of the stuffy atmosphere of that overcrowded room, he hunched his shoulders up and shivered.

There was strength in her ready smile, her eagerness to please; unlike him, everything she did drew admiration, even his aunt's savage despotism had succumbed to her charm.

In the midst of these reflections his eye met Augusta's, and she summoned a dutiful smile; as always her amiability made his flesh creep, and he looked down, scowling.

“God damn her,” he muttered savagely under his breath. “How I hate that bright, terrible look of hers! How am I to lie in her bed, as everyone expects me, when I cannot bear to touch her? Why didn't she die? If only she had died I need not marry till I wished, and then to a wife of my own choosing.…”

For the only time in their lives the Grand Duke and Bestujev were in complete agreement.

Within the month she made a short appearance at a court ball given in her honor, and all over Russia the church bells pealed in thanksgiving. A magnificent necklace of brilliants was added to her jewel casket by Elizabeth, and a ruby watch was Peter's unwilling gift.

It was a brilliant season, and the future Grand Duchess recovered rapidly. She was taller now, and quickly maturing into a lovely girl whose witty company was increasingly sought by the young and gay at court, particularly Leo Narychkin, whose harmless devotion to her was a general joke.

Through narrow eyes the Chancellor watched Augusta, noticing that her shyness had given place to a poise and practised charm capable of winning many hearts. But there was something a little too boisterous for a girl, despite her outward meekness. Bestujev felt that he was in reality watching a young lioness who had escaped her cage and was too busy roistering in her new-found freedom to try her claws.

And she had claws. The Chancellor, like Peter, saw her more clearly through the eyes of hate, and he promised solemnly that she would never use them in Prussia's interest.

From April until the end of May the court exhausted itself with gaiety, and Augusta entered wholeheartedly into a breathless whirl of pleasure. Watching her, the Empress approved her choice anew. If Peter could resist the lure of such a creature, then Elizabeth's long succession of lovers had taught her nothing about the weaknesses of men.…

With an easy mind the Empress abandoned her pleasures and, dressed in sober garb, set out for her annual retreat to the Troitsky Convent, there to fast and purge her soul in peace of its ancient cloisters, while the court amused itself at Moscow in her absence.

Two days after her departure on the 1st of June, a furious summons arrived at the palace, and an extremely agitated Johanna was bundled into a coach, together with her daughter and the Grand Duke, and the party was driven off at speed to the Troitsky Convent.

Bestujev had gained his audience at last.

The next hours were a nightmare of anxiety for Augusta, played out in the long cold room of the convent where she and Peter sat waiting, listening to the sound of Elizabeth's voice raised shrill with anger, and the muffled pleadings of Johanna behind the door of an adjacent room.

There was the short glimpse of Bestujev's figure outlined in a window as their carriage stopped; then the ordeal of Peter's stupid, curious conversation, maliciously light-hearted in the conviction that no danger threatened him, and still the terrible waiting, until it seemed as if Johanna would never emerge alive.

“What has happened, what has my mother done?” The question repeated itself fruitlessly in Augusta's mind. “God in Heaven, don't let me suffer for my mother's folly! Don't let them send me back to live with her again!”

In her agony she turned to the smirking Peter, desperate for comfort, even from him.

“Your Highness,” she said, unable to restrain her tears, “I beg of you, plead with your aunt on my behalf. Whatever has offended her I swear to you that I have committed no crime. My only thought had been to please, and my mother's faults are not my doing. Peter, remember that one day I shall be your wife, and show me a little kindness I beseech you! Do not let them send me home.…”

For a moment the Grand Duke stood there, pondering the spectacle of the proud, successful creature who had so completely overshadowed him until this moment and who now, catching his hand in hers, knelt in tearful supplication at his feet.

But even as he looked at her his feeling of malicious triumph changed to revulsion and hate, while the old sensation of uneasy dread clutched at his heart.

Savagely he snatched his hand away and drew back from her.

“The only plea I'd make of my aunt would be to send you back to Germany, as no doubt she will! Ask nothing from me, Madame. My only wish is to see the last of you, and by God as soon as I rule this heathen country I shall put you where you'll never trouble me again, and marry whom I choose!”

As his shrill voice rang through the long room, Augusta heard another sound; the sharp click of the communicating door behind which her fate had been decided.

Hurriedly she stood up, a crumpled, tearful figure, her cheeks scarlet with shame at Peter's brutal rebuff, and turned to face none other than the Empress. One glance at Elizabeth's flushed and angry countenance froze the words of entreaty on her lips. She had humbled herself unbearably once, and the hurt of the Grand Duke's words gave her unexpected courage.

She was a princess born, and her ominously square jaw set hard with resolution. She would not beg.

There was absolute silence as Elizabeth advanced into the room, while a shaking, weeping Johanna leant against the doorpost for support.

The Empress's dilated eyes rested upon Peter, who looked down and kicked sullenly at the floor: the sight of him inflamed her.

He was another Prussian, an ugly, graceless German imbecile, as treacherous to Holy Russia as the deceitful, spying Princess of Zerbst. Only let him father a child, said an evil whisper deep inside Elizabeth, then perhaps he need never succeed to the throne at all. Still without speaking, the Empress swept across the room to where Augusta stood.

Whatever Johanna had done, the marriage must go through. Elizabeth could not endure the strain of another choice, another courtship. She bent and kissed the astonished girl, and patted her arm reassuringly.

“Dry your tears, my little Catherine,” she said gently, and the Grand Duke started at the name.

“You are not to blame for your mother's crimes. She returns to Germany as soon as you are married; for your sake I will not punish her as she deserves. Come now, it grows dark and you must return to the palace.”

The Empress favored Johanna with a withering glare of rage and contempt.

“As for you, Princess, for your own sake spare me the sight of you as much as possible until you leave the country. Your King and your husband are assured of my sympathy, but I have no doubt that the former will know how to deal with you. I hear he does not suffer fools or shrews with patience!”

With a final nod to Augusta, Elizabeth walked out of the room, and the sparsely furnished chamber echoed to the slam of the door behind her. It seemed to Johanna that with that sound she heard the knell of all her hopes; the door of opportunity had closed upon her for ever, and the future held nothing but a terrifying picture of Frederick of Prussia, that cold, merciless man, sitting in judgment upon her, demanding explanations.…

As the carriage sped away from the Troitsky Convent, Johanna wept nervously and Peter sulked in a corner.

She had won again. There was no escape from her, and he looked at Augusta's dim profile with something like horror. She had come to Russia and some malignant fate had determined that she should remain.

On the 29th of June, the day after her baptism into the Orthodox Church, Catherine Alexeievna knelt before the High Altar in Moscow Cathedral and heard the Archbishop of Novgorod pronounce her formal betrothal to the Grand Duke Peter Feodorovitch, at the same time conferring the rank of Grand Duchess upon her.

Dazzled by the light of hundreds of wax candles, her senses bemused by the heat of the church, which was filled to overflowing, and the mingled smell of perfumes and incense that hung heavy upon the air, Catherine's thoughts flew back many hundreds of miles, far across Russia over the border to Zerbst … Zerbst, which she had left as a penniless, browbeaten little creature all those months ago, her foolish head filled with romantic notions concerning the repulsive youth who knelt at her side.

Part of the dream had come true: wealth, grandeur and eminence were now hers indeed, as the Archbishop's words sent Augusta, Princess of Anhalt Zerbst into eternal oblivion and summoned Catherine, Grand Duchess of Russia in her place.

Closing her eyes, she bent her head as if in prayer, and a fierce determination welled up in her, born of Peter's unforgettable threat in the Troitsky Convent.

Everything desirable in life was within her reach, and surely love in some form or another would not be for ever denied to her. Fate would not withhold that from her when it had bestowed all else with such a lavish hand.

And no one in Heaven or earth should take away what Fate had given.

On her knees, Catherine swore that in her heart, though she did not call upon the gentle, painted Christ that watched her from the jeweled ikon on the altar.

Elizabeth, with her cruelty, treachery and immorality, spent hours in prayer, while the boy Ivan rotted in a dungeon, black and silent as the tomb.… Catherine remembered him and shuddered.

The God of Holy Russia was no more her God than the fierce German divinity to whom she had addressed her frantic pleas for help and guidance on the eve of her journey from Zerbst. She swore by neither of them; her touch-stone was herself alone, and on her own life, with all its aspirations, she made that vow.

Many among the hundreds in the church, noting that bowed head, remarked upon the humble piety of the young Grand Duchess.

Only Bestujev, watching the defeat of his plan, doubted these qualities. He knew a deal too much of human nature to trust that charming, bright-eyed foreigner who had wormed her way into everyone's favor. She was far from humble, only careful because her position was still insecure; her conversion left him entirely unmoved, for the mark of the voluptuary was, in his judgment, stamped all over her, and he suspected that the change of creed had been an easy matter.

But she was yet too young to be of any danger, and her mother had been exposed and rendered powerless.

There was still time to build a cage about her, a bright gilded cage suitable for a Russian Grand Duchess, but with bars of iron beneath the gilding.

The celebrations that followed the betrothal lasted day and night until even the Empress's appetite for pleasure was appeased, and Catherine's strength exhausted.

Then without warning Elizabeth sank into one of her moods of abysmal melancholy, convinced of the ultimate damnation of her soul as punishment for her sinful excesses at the table and in bed. Her gorgeous dresses were put away, Rasumovsky retired discreetly, and the whole court was ordered to prepare for a pilgrimage to Kiev.

The journey took three months, for the pace was set by the Empress, who walked at the head of the procession, murmuring endless prayers, covered from head to foot with dust, while her courtiers rode in comfort. It was an extraordinary sight, that vast procession of carriages and litters crawling in the wake of the weary, footsore Elizabeth, and her company of chanting priests.

Watching the endless landscape, the hundreds of villages and towns, Catherine gained an everlasting impression of the vastness of Russia, of the sweep and power of Elizabeth's domain, broad and barrenly magnificent, like its ruler, indelibly marked by the Orient, neither truly East nor West.

The people fascinated her; they came in droves to do homage to their Empress, kneeling in an endless line along the roadside, and the sight of their rags and faces gaunt with hunger stirred Catherine with strange tenderness and indignation.

Elizabeth did public penance for her sins, an exhibition which struck Catherine as foolish and undignified, when the Empress thoughtlessly squandered millions of roubles, paid for by the sweat of those dumb, nameless crowds who worshipped her.

Again and again Catherine turned to Peter, hoping for some sign of interest or enthusiasm similar to her own, but the Grand Duke spent his time quarreling with his tutors and jeering loudly at the whole affair. Otherwise he made fun of the luckless Johanna, whose disgrace with Elizabeth made her a safe target for his malicious tongue. Catherine found herself wondering what evil star had chosen to deliver Russia into such hands as Peter's.

On their return to Moscow there followed months of comparative quiet, pleasant enough for the young Grand Duchess, for all contact with her erring mother was discouraged by Elizabeth and the only trial put upon her was an hour or two each day of Peter's presence.

These interviews were compulsory, and their object was to perpare the way for the more intimate relationship that the two young people would soon share.

Day by day Peter sat sullenly in her room, gazing morosely out of the window, while Catherine worked at her embroidery frame, miserably aware that the atmosphere between them was growing more and more strained.

Steeling herself, Catherine determined on a last effort to gain his friendship. He had a weakness, and one which was heavily punished by his aunt if she discovered its indulgence. Catherine knew that weakness; she had seen it to her horror, and the memory served her purpose now.

During the Grand Duke's daily visit they were left diplomatically alone, and one afternoon she got up from her embroidery frame and walked over to the window where he slouched in boredom.