Curse Not the King (10 page)

With her head on his shoulder, Natalie stared out of the tall window on to the great vista of gardens that stretched around the Winter Palace at Petersburg. They had returned to the capital as usual and the first winter snows were falling.

“Promise me one thing, Paul,” she said gently.

“I promise anything that will please you. You need only speak.”

The Grand Duchess gripped his hand hard and turned a little more towards the window that he might not look down and see her face.

“I haven't been as good a wife as you deserve.… If you knew more.…”

With difficulty she restrained her tears and with them the hysterical impulse to admit that she was an adulteress, that she was utterly unworthy of the trust he lavished on her.

“But with all my heart I ask you this,” she continued, silencing his protests. “Be careful of the Empress, Paul. Be careful. I have a feeling that she's planning to do you some injury.”

For the first time she spoke of the thing that shadowed her, knowing that it would lend weight to her words in the future.

“If anything should happen to me, promise that you'll never plot against her … that no one shall persuade you to intrigue and give her the excuse to harm you.…”

Paul gathered her closely in his arms, turning her face towards him, and the strained, desperate expression terrified him.

“You're not to say that, Natalie. Never. Never speak of such a thing. I promise anything you please, if it will ease your mind. As long as my mother lives I'll stand aloof from all intrigue. You have my word. But I implore you, don't even think of danger to yourself.…”

He gazed at her wildly, holding her tightly against his heart.

“Why, if I lost you, my Natalia,” he said hoarsely, “I think I should go mad.…”

One evening in April of the following year Natalie's principal lady-in-waiting hurried to the Empress, who was dining quietly with Potemkin.

The Grand Duchess's labour had begun, she explained, breathing heavily, for she had been running in her excitement. The Czarevitch was already in attendance upon his wife.

Catherine despatched her with the answer that she would come immediately, then she turned towards her lover and laid her hand upon his arm.

“My dearest love, I shall have to leave you and go to the lying-in. Finish your supper here and go to bed. I'll come back the moment it's over.”

Gregory scowled in disappointment.

“I have no appetite without you and I certainly shan't sleep until you come.… Go then, beloved.”

“I go,” she murmured, resting her hands upon his shoulders to prevent his rising.

“Don't stand for me, Grisha …”

She bent down and pressed her lips against his mouth.

“And don't go to sleep, my bear! I shall want to celebrate with you. And pray, pray to all the gods and devils that it is a living, healthy child!”

As soon as the labour pains began, the ceremony for a royal birth was set in motion. The mattress was lifted from the great canopied bed and set down on the floor, the Grand Duchess was undressed and laid upon it, while scores of servants ran through the palace with the news. The Empress, the Grand Duke, the Ministers and officials of the Crown, the high Church dignitaries and all those members of the Court who could arrive in time, were permitted to crowd into the room and surround the mother on her mattress.

Paul was already at his wife's side, kneeling by the head of the mound of satin cushions and embroidered covers, trying to comfort her. Natalie paid no attention to him: she moved her head from side to side and moaned with pain.

The onset of the birth was going to be swift and her spasms were intense.

Vaguely she knew that the Empress herself was quite near, and that someone was bathing her forehead; she could hear a contused murmur from what seemed a vast crowd of people who were filling the room to overflowing, increasing the heat until it stifled her, and eating up the air she needed. There were periods free from pain when she opened her eyes and tried to focus on the wavering lines of faces, and instinctively she groped for Paul. His hot fingers found hers and closed over them in fierce tenderness.

With a great effort she looked up at him and whispered.

“The pain is so great.… Wnere's the physician …? It comes again.… Get the physician.…”

Paul glared round him like an animal at bay. The sweat was running down his face and his great eyes were starting from his head with agony.

“She suffers,” he said hoarsely. “The child will soon be born.… Where is the physician?”

The midwife, as anxious as he for help in the awful responsibility of her task, looked round helplessly and muttered that the doctor had been sent for.

The Empress turned to the nearest courtier and gave him a curt message. Human pain of any kind distressed her, and the spectacle of Natalie made her feel almost faint. In anger at the delay she phrased her summons carelessly, the hideous tortuosity of Russian minds forgotten.

“Go and find the physician!” she ordered. “Tell him if anything happens to the Grand Duchess I'll have his head!”

Then as the courtier pushed his way through the crowd, she turned to the mattress, and for a moment the eyes of mother and son met above the half-conscious form of the Grand Duchess. Paul was deathly white, his left cheek twitched convulsively, the hand holding Natalie's limp fingers trembled visibly, and when he tried to speak his lips moved but no sound came.

For a blinding instant it was the face of her dead husband that stared up at Catherine. Peter, the coward and degenerate, grown into a masculine travesty of himself … Peter, who hated her, gone mad with love and grief for someone else.

Quickly she stepped back, sick and furious, fighting a sudden onset of memories, memories of her own ordeal in that same room, lying upon the wide mattress, giving birth to the child Paul.

Everything to do with Paul had caused her pain, from that first dreadful day twenty-one years ago when bearing him had nearly killed her.

The terrible, primeval forces of hate and guilt rose in her like a burning tide as she stared down at her son: in her heart she hoped above all things that the coming child would live, no matter what befell the mother. Only let the child survive, and she would bury Paul in the darkest cell in the middle of the fortress where the guards had rid her of the burden of Ivan when she gave the word.

Slowly the hours went by, and the doctor who should have been attending Natalie repeated the Empress's ominous message to himself and hurried as far from the palace as he could.

If anything went wrong she'd have his head.… Examination of the Grand Duchess had convinced him very early that her chances of survival were almost non-existent. If she died, his ministrations could not be blamed as long as he wasn't there to give them.

And so, late in the night of the 15th April, aided by the terrified midwife and her assistants, the Grand Duchess gave birth to a son. One look was enough to tell Catherine that her plans against Paul had gone awry.

The child was stillborn.

Without a word she turned and left the bedroom pale with rage and disappointment: it mattered nothing to her what became of the mother; only the child was important, and the child was dead. Hurriedly the Court dignitaries followed in her wake, led by Nikita Panin whose annoyance was as great as Catherine's own. Within a few minutes the stuffy room was empty, except for the midwife, Natalie's chief lady-in-waiting, and the Czarevitch.

They had told Paul that his son was dead, but he gave no sign that he had heard. Instead he knelt by the mattress, his horrified eyes fixed on the face of his wife. Her skin was the colour of wax, and the surface shone glassily with sweat, the delicate, beautiful features were unrecognizable, her whole body lay broken and boneless under the coverlets. At last the midwife gave him her limp hand to hold, and he pressed it to his lips, his broad, short back heaving with sobs.

So great was his agony that he forgot that they were not alone, and his love and desperate pleading poured out in a flood of stumbling words, he chafed the small hand that lay between his own, and with shaking fingers tried to stroke her hair.

“Natalie … Natalie, my darling! It's all over, my sweet love; open your eyes and look at me, say one word that you will try to get better.… Here is my hand … here, hold it.… See, I am with you, caring for you. You will be well, my love, you
must
be well.…”

Some two hours after she had given birth the Grand Duchess turned her head; for a brief moment her eyes opened and she seemed to look at Paul. Then the tired lids closed over them, and a few minutes afterwards she died.

5

“This situation is ridiculous. I will
not
tolerate it any longer!”

Catherine was walking quickly up and down her boudoir, as she always did when angry or impatient. At the end of her sentence she stopped and swung round to the man who was listening, warming his back at the open fireplace.

That privilege had once been Panin's, but it was a sign of the times that it was no longer the Minister, but Gregory Potemkin, who held private counsel with the sovereign. While Catherine stormed, he said nothing, watching her out of his one eye, his ugly, expressive features set in thought.

He was so tall that his head topped the massive mantelpiece, his clothes were covered with gold and embroidery and blazing with jewelled orders, yet he was dishevelled and his wig lay carelessly upon a nearby chair.

“I have heard that he's grieving very much,” he remarked after a moment.

“Grieving!” Catherine exclaimed. “His servants tell me that he's scarcely slept or eaten, that he spends his days shut up alone with her miniature and that sometimes they can hear him weeping through the door! It's ridiculous, I say; to mourn with dignity, yes, but this foolish spectacle has got to stop.… I sent for him this morning, Gregory, to tell him that I expect him to attend at Court in future.” She paused, her full lips drawn into a line of unbecoming hardness.

“I also told him that he must prepare to marry again very soon.”

Potemkin moved from the fireplace and poured some wine into two golden goblets.

“And of course he refused you, my love. Defied you, declared that he would love the late Natalie until the day of his death, and that he wouldn't hear the mention of another wife.”

Catherine took the wine cup and nodded.

“Exactly. You've gauged his nature very cleverly, Grisha. Those were almost his very words. Oh, but he's such a fool! The girl deceived him with that young devil. Rasumovsky within a few months of their marriage! I reminded him of it and he shouted that I was maligning the dead and rushed out of the room.… What am I to do with him? He must remarry as soon as etiquette permits, but I don't think I can make him without using force.”

“One thing I can vouch for, my adored,” he said, “and that is that the Grand Duke will never yield to force. You may threaten, you may even act, but that's not the way to break his will. I am surprised, that for such a brilliant woman, you're always so stupid with your son.”

The great Empress, before whom Princes trembled, accepted this rebuke and only looked at him appealingly.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“If you wish to bend Paul, it is Natalie Alexeievna who must be attacked. She is the obstacle. He clings to her, you see; it is the nature of loneliness, and without her he is very lonely. As you say, he was a fool, therefore we must enlighten him!”

“How do you mean, Grisha? I don't understand you.”

“How many times a day do we write to each other, Catherine?” he asked, suddenly.

“Why, a dozen times at least,” she answered in surprise.

“Exactly, though I see you so freely, I'm always thinking of little things to say and sending notes to you. And you send notes to me. Because we're lovers, my dear, and it is the way of lovers to put down their love on paper. You have kept my letters, haven't you, Catherine?”

“Of course, my dearest one. You know I have them all. They're there, locked in my bureau.”

Potemkin put one great arm round her and smiled.

“Then doubtless that's where Natalie hid Rasumovsky's love letters. Have her apartments searched, and when you find your evidence, let it speak for you to the Czarevitch.…”

“My son has fought me successfully for years,” she said, “but I believe he's met his match in you.”

The following day Catherine's servants went into the dead Grand Duchess's rooms and made a thorough search. They unearthed a lot of fine jewellery which the Empress sent down to the Treasury, a mass of miscellaneous papers and household bills, and in a secret recess of her writing-desk they found a packet of letters tied up with ribbon.

That same evening Catherine and Potemkin retired early to her private suite, and one by one they read the letters, penned by the hand of André Rasumovsky to his dead mistress.

Potemkin folded the last of them and handed it to the Empress.

“No man's faith, however strong, can stand in the face of these,” he said.

Paul was in his study when a page brought him the package, with the message that these papers had been discovered among the late Grand Duchess Natalie's effects. The news that his wife's rooms were being searched had roused the Czarevitch to fury; that very morning he intended to go to his mother and protest, but instead he untied the piece of ribbon and, filled with fresh agonies of love by the memories invoked by anything belonging to his beloved wife, began to read.

At first he didn't recognize the writing. The opening words leapt at him with such force it seemed as if a voice had spoken them aloud.

“My adored one, my Natalia, I send this note to you because it might be a whole lifetime since we parted, though I know it is scarcely three hours since I left your arms.…

He read on, almost mechanically, while the nervous tic in his left cheek awoke and began throbbing steadily.