The Winter Palace (31 page)

Love was like an illness ravaging her body. If, at that moment, Sergey opened the door and walked in, she would not have resisted him. There was enough poison in her to make her listen to some tall tale of why he could not come. A chance encounter, an order from the Grand Duke that he could not disobey.

Catherine lifted her head. Her hair, escaping her combs, covered her neck and shoulders, thick and dark and silky. Shadows danced on the walls, waves of warmth touched us from the flames.

We both heard the sound of steps outside the door. Had Sergey come, after all?

Catherine froze.

The steps continued past the room, toward the Grand Duke’s apartments. A knock on the door was followed by a howl of laughter. I recognized
Das Fräulein
’s giggling.

“Did you know, Varenka?” Catherine asked softly.

“That he wouldn’t come tonight?” I asked. I leaned over and placed my hand on her forehead. It was hot.

“You know what I’m asking. Did
she
order him to seduce me? Was this her plan all along?” Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but Catherine made no effort to wipe them.

I couldn’t speak. On the night table, a half-burned candle was smoking, for the chambermaid had not trimmed the wick.
Is it so important to know everything? Aren’t lies sometimes the kindest response?

“Look at me, Varenka. I’m her cow. Worse than a cow, for even a cow does not have her newborn calf stolen from her right away!”

She put her hand on mine, her skin hot and dry. “Did you
know?
”

I nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Varenka?”

I could not answer her.

“In the future, would you be so good as to let me be the judge of what’s best for me? From now on and always.”

Was it her voice that hurt me the most? So cold and harsh that it didn’t seem to be hers at all? Or was it the fury in her eyes? She rose and walked away to open a window, letting in loud whistles and cheers, musket shots and bursts of fireworks that greeted the dawn of New Year’s Day.

“I wanted to protect you,” I muttered. “That is all I ever wanted to do.”

I must have wept then, for the next thing I remember is the window closing and feeling Catherine’s fingers touching my face.

I didn’t have a choice. I told her her own story as seen through the spying hole from the moment she arrived at the palace. I told her of the wagging tongues, of the schemes to defeat her, and the bragging of the seducer. Of the Empress’s order to send her lover away from her to Sweden, as soon as the New Year’s festivities ended.

Catherine sat motionless as I spoke. Only her fingers moved, running over and over Bijou’s fur, twisting it into curls.

“Is that everything?” she asked, when I’d finished.

“Yes,” I said.

In the glow of the fire I saw that she was biting her lip so hard a spot of blood had appeared.

I tried to say more, to remind her how far she had come since those dark days ten years before when she could have been sent home at a moment’s notice, but she stopped me. “Go, Varenka,” she ordered. “I need to be alone.”

I obeyed her.

I did not return to the ballroom. Around me, in the cold, drafty corridors of the Winter Palace, merry voices exploded, feet pattered down the wooden stairs. I hurried to my quarters, deaf to Masha’s warnings, her talk of God’s will, inscrutable in its intent. I slept deeply, and did not remember my dreams.

I
n the first weeks of 1755, right after
Krieszczenskije morozy
, the icy-cold days of mid-January, talk of the coming war had intensified.

In the New World, the French and the English were testing their hold on the land. These faraway hostilities were casting shadows across Europe. The French had allied themselves with Prussia, England with Austria, though loyalties were constantly shifting. At the Russian court, the English were considered perfidious, the French deceitful. If Russia was leaning to the side of Britain, it was because Elizabeth hated Frederick of Prussia more than she detested the Empress of Austria.

The way she saw it, an insolent bully trumped a scheming hypocrite.

To get Elizabeth’s attention these days, a courtier was wise to call Vienna dingy, its narrow lanes full of filth and mud. Or to dwell on the fact that in the Berlin palaces gilded copper passed for gold. In the Chancellor’s chambers, clerks pored over spy reports in search of royal name-calling. It mattered when and to whom Frederick called the Russian Empress a whore, a cunt, or a flat-chested bitch. Or how often Maria Theresa declared Elizabeth a shameless sinner who would burn in hell.

In the intrigues of the court, anything was of use if it could fan imperial rage.

On the last day of January Egor received word that his army commission was on its way. Not artillery, as he had been promised, but infantry grenadiers. By then he didn’t mind. What mattered was that he would not spend his best years entangled in “the battlefields of the boudoir.” He laughed at Saltykov, cooling his heels at the Swedish court, scarcely arrived and already asking when he might be allowed to return. The imperial stud had learned the hard way, my husband said and sneered, what passed for gratitude in the palace games.

It was not Egor Malikin’s way.

His honors would come from the heat of battles, from victories that would bring Russia her glory and him the rank of at least Lieutenant Colonel. Advancement was possible at a time when the maps of Europe were constantly being redrawn.

Waiting for his commission papers to arrive, Egor practiced fencing and boxing. He came home from his matches bruised and sweaty, joking about having grown stiff standing guard for years. He was fitted for new breeches, new boots. He bought a brass traveling kit of toiletries and writing instruments that fascinated Darya so much that he allowed her to keep one of the crystal bottles of ink.

He had also ordered a portrait of himself, in full uniform, a sword at his side, standing with his right leg forward, hand cradling a shako. I thought that the artist, a serf who taught himself painting, captured his likeness in the first sitting, but Egor was not satisfied.

“Give me a few wrinkles,” he ordered the painter. “And straighten these lips. I don’t want my grandchildren to see me grinning like a fool.”

In the Winter Palace there was no one Young Court anymore. There was Peter’s court and Catherine’s court. His was the domain of the Shuvalovs, presided over by
Das Fräulein
. Catherine was on her own, and I was her tongue.

“The Empress has to trust you, Varenka,” she counseled me. “She has to let you stay with her when others are sent away. Tell her what she wants to hear.”

In the Imperial Bedroom, when Elizabeth tired of denouncing Prussian lies, I reported on the Grand Duchess’s gambling debts, debts that did little to stop purchases of ruby pendants, or yet another pair of silk shoes with silver buckles. I called Catherine cold and calculating, having time only for those who could do something for her. There was little need for more specific accusations, for any mention of Catherine made Elizabeth’s voice harden. An evening spent playing cards or a failure to show up at a palace ball was proof that the Grand Duchess was reckless or too proud. The daily assurances of Catherine’s gratitude, her insistent praises of everything in the Imperial Nursery, did not soften the Empress. A smile was as suspicious as a tear.

“We never much like those we have hurt, do we, Varvara Nikolayevna?” the Chancellor remarked.

I want to know everything. However insignificant it may seem to you
, Catherine had said.

And so I reported everything I saw. A shallow breath, swollen hands, a nightmare broken by a scream or the frantic clutching of a Holy Icon. Another bloodletting, the surgeon’s frown, Elizabeth’s dark, thick blood. The pain in the belly, her insistence on looser clothes. She fainted. There were convulsions.

I told Catherine of long visits the Empress made to the chapel, muttering her confessions, bargaining with God. In the middle of the night a hooting owl was chased away with musket shots. Birds were shooed if they even approached her windowsill. A sick valet had been sent home and never spoken of again.

In the Winter Palace the word
death
had been banished from all speech.

“His words, Varenka,” Catherine would insist, when I mentioned Bestuzhev’s name. “Tell me exactly what he says.”

The war is unavoidable
.

The time of war is rapacious, fraudulent, and cruel, calling for extraordinary measures
.

A knockout blow is always better than a long war of attrition
.

A skillful ruler must do more than react, but for that clear plans and purposes are needed
.

Everyone knows that the Grand Duke admires Frederick of Prussia. But is this where his wife’s loyalty lies as well?

Tell the Grand Duchess I wish to advise her. Tell her to trust me, to start thinking of me as her friend
.

“Should I trust him, Varenka?”

Some thoughts are like shadows, fortified by darkness, multiplying and dancing around, reappearing where they are not expected. Thoughts that never reach the stage when they can be called decisions, though they turn into them.

I didn’t decide I would turn my back on Bestuzhev, try to beat the Chancellor of Russia at his own game.

How he wanted her out of Russia
, I thought, instead.
An empress of some cabbage field! Does he think his treachery forgotten?

I told Catherine of the files Bestuzhev kept, whom he thought
nasty and toadlike …
who
had the bearing of a peasant …
who was
devious and very slippery
. Who was looking for a protector, a sinecure, or merely a wealthy wife. Who collected money from his estates, and who had to sneak out his back door for fear of creditors. Who held a grudge against the Grand Duke, and who was secretly hoping for the Shuvalovs’ fall.

The map of desires
, he called it,
written on human skin
.

“He will support you as long as it is in his interest,” I said. “He will betray you the moment a better opportunity arises.”

Seated at her desk she’d brought from the Oranienbaum palace, Catherine picked up a clean sheet of paper and smoothed it with her sleeve. “I don’t know what I think, Varenka,” she had told me once, “until I write it down.”

Her index finger, I noticed, was blackened with ink. She noticed it, too, for she licked the stain and began rubbing it with her thumb.

“Tell the Chancellor that I’m considering his offer, Varenka. Make him think I need more signs of his loyalty. Let him prove himself first.”

When the ice fields on Lake Ladoga began to break up and enormous ice floes rumbled noisily down the Neva, the reconstruction of the Winter Palace finally began. At first only some sections of the building had been cordoned off, far away from the Imperial Suite of rooms. Newly arrived sculptures stood everywhere, bundled in burlap and straw.

For a time the Empress still received visitors in the Throne Room, but soon the hammering and sawing made it impossible. In the courtyard the British Ambassador had slipped on a patch of wet plaster and sprained his ankle. Countess Rumyantseva ruined her shoes when she stepped in a pool of tar. When even Ivan Shuvalov began to complain of headaches from persistent noise, the court began to pack up for a big move.

By the time bird cherries were covered in white blossoms and wildflowers carpeted the banks of the Neva, the new temporary palace at the junction of the Great Perspective Road and the Moyka Canal was finished. It had but one story and an attic. The walls were flimsy. The entire floor shook when anyone walked down the hall. It was easy to foresee problems. The wooden panels would freeze in the winter; the windows and doors would warp. There wouldn’t be enough room for all the courtiers to reside there.

“It’s only for one year,” the Empress said impatiently. She cut off all jostling for space. There would be no more petitions. No more complaints. Having said that, she departed to Peterhof with her ladies-in-waiting. Catherine and Peter moved to Oranienbaum for the summer. Everyone else was ordered to help with the move.

A court in transition
, I thought,
considering its options
.

Catherine’s new rooms, I discovered, would be far away from the Grand Duke’s and the Empress’s but close to mine; perhaps Elizabeth was making some amends after my assurances that Catherine had accepted her fate.

Charged with supervising the move of the Imperial Bedroom, I spent the lilac-scented summer days in endless deliberations on what should be put in storage and what should be unpacked in the Empress’s temporary suite. Tense days, I thought them, filled with grumblings and complaints, days of trailing the maids and the footmen, of teary investigations when yet another swanskin fan went missing, not to mention the Venetian smelling bottles or the Empress’s favorite tortoiseshell comb.
What will be next
? I asked myself.
Her shoes?

Elizabeth’s cats, brought to the temporary palace, promptly disappeared. But a few days later I saw them come back, one after another, to scrape their faces against the furniture and doorframes, to lie on one of the Empress’s shoes, or on her pillows.

My new bedroom was too small for anything more than a bed, a dresser, and a chest of drawers. Most of my wardrobe had to stay in trunks in the attic, brought down only when necessary.

The move exhausted me. At night, when I closed my eyes, I was haunted by the images of hands groping for crates, burlap, and braids of straw.

Oblivious to all this, Darya rejoiced. In my daughter’s imagination empty palace rooms turned into oceans, shrouded ottomans became deserted islands. In the attic where the washerwomen hung the laundry to dry, she loved to watch the cats rolling in the baskets of freshly folded linen. “Look, Maman,” she would call, pointing out their antics, but I took note instead of loose boards and the chinks in the attic floor.