Curse Not the King (20 page)

He was tall, this partisan of a cause all men judged lost, and his features were too dark and saturnine for good looks. It was an intelligent, ruthless face, the face of one riven by internal contradictions. A wit and something of a scholar, a soldier and a polished courtier, he was at once simple, cunning, treacherous and brave; above all he was a patriot, and for this reason he espoused the rights of the man he believed to have been his country's lawful Czar for over thirty years. Instinctively Paul trusted him, where wiser men would have hesitated, and in the annals of treachery and baseness which were written in the years to come, that trust alone was justified.

Paul glanced round him contemptuously and then turned to his friend.

“This might be twenty years ago, when first Potemkin reigned.… Who is it? Just the ‘Adjutant General' or something more?”

“In this case, that is enough,” Rastopchine said quietly. “It happened quite suddenly. The Empress chose him, had him examined and tested by Countess Protassof, you know the ritual.…”

Paul, familiar with the degrading and cold-blooded routine by which his mother's lovers were selected, interrupted with a gesture of disgust.

“And then?”

“For a time all was well. The Empress was infatuated, but even that has happened before.… You remember: Mamanov, Lanskoy … they were all peerless, geniuses, the mainstay of her life. Until Potemkin told her to dismiss them and then the idol was pulled from his pedestal overnight. Well, the Prince took a dislike to this new favourite; it seems he was lacking in respect, so he suggested that Her Majesty replace him. And she refused.”

“But she will capitulate,” Paul told him in angry whisper. “She always has, and by God, you know that it matters little enough to her whether it is one scoundrel or another so long as he can satisfy her lusts! I'm afraid you're rejoicing too soon, my friend.”

Rastopchine glanced quickly round him; those standing near had moved away, leaving the Czarevitch and his companion in a small circle of isolation. When the doors of the favourite's bedroom opened and he appeared among them, no one wished to be noticed standing too near the Czarevitch.…

“I'd stake my head his power is at an end. The Empress is besotted with her ‘Adjutant'; the Court spends its mornings waiting here, instead of attending on the Czarina, who sends them to this creature with their requests! And Potemkin's apartments are almost deserted.…”

“What is his name?”

“Plato Zubov. But look, he comes!”

The gilded double doors guarding the favourite's bedroom were swinging slowly open, and at the same moment absolute silence descended on the crowded ante-room, and the hush spread out into the corridors. In an instant everything was quiet, except that the waiting assembly had divided itself in two, making a lane through which the privileged one could pass.

Paul stood very still, his eyes fixed on the doorway to that bedroom, a slow flush of anger rising in his face. He had lived too long away from Petersburg to view the scene with calmness, and all his fierce royal pride surged up in outrage at the honour paid to a vulgar Pompadour in masculine guise.

Yet when he saw the man his mother favoured, he stared despite himself.

He stood in the doorway, preceded by a bowing lackey, and a group of intimates hovered respectfully at his back; as he appeared, the watching courtiers sighed and a whisper of admiration disturbed their silent ranks. And even Paul, whose heart convulsed with instantaneous hate, admitted that Fate had gifted Plato Zubov with superb physical beauty.

He was above middle height, magnificently proportioned, and he moved with extraordinary, almost feline grace; his dress was splendid, and the breast of his gold brocade coat sagged with a weight of blazing jewels; an enormous order, encrusted with great diamonds, hung from a crimson ribbon round his neck, and within the circle of one arm he held a small monkey, collared in precious stones and tethered by a narrow golden chain. He stood outlined in the doorway, fondling the monkey and looking over the crowd with lazy arrogance. No one dared move while he was motionless. He wore a beautifully curled wig, but his colouring was very dark, and the hard, heavy-lidded eyes were black. By contrast to his muscular broad-shouldered body, his face was almost feminine in its handsomeness; the features were fine-drawn, the brows symmetrical, and the red-lipped mouth curved in an expression of extreme pride and superciliousness.

For all his splendour of looks and body, there was something indescribably vicious about Catherine's lover, so that it seemed to Paul that his great virility cloaked rottenness, and that he was in fact a travesty of what he represented.

In an instant his rage and loathing rose in a torrent, caution and self-control were swept away by an uprush of blinding fury, a fury streaked with a wild horror and disgust with his mother and what her association with such a creature indicated, that his hand was on his sword hilt and the blade half withdrawn before Rastopchine saw him. At the risk of his life, for he knew Paul, he seized his wrist.

“For God's sake! Don't.… If you touched him you'd be cut down. I beg of you.…”

Gradually Paul became aware of the pressure of Rastopchine's fingers, and the sense of that frantic warning whisper sank into his boiling, muddled consciousness.

He'd be cut down.… Of course, his mother's favourites had always meant more to her than her son.… After a moment his hand released the jewelled sword hilt, and the blade slid back into its scabbard with a thin rasp that could be plainly heard throughout the silent room. At the same time Plato Zubov ceased playing with his pet monkey, and his haughty gaze rested upon the short dark figure of the Czarevitch of Russia.

At the same instant he recognized him and a danger signal registered quickly in his mind. This was the madman of Gatchina, his fawning mistress's detested son.… Catherine had told him of her plans, for she told him everything, babbling State secrets like a garrulous schoolgirl in her anxiety to flatter him. Her son was not to succeed, she insisted, but in a second's lightning reflection, Zubov decided not to take a chance.

Catherine was old, weakened by flesh and overwork—exhausted by her own sexual mania. She might die.…

Turning, Zubov handed the monkey to an elderly nobleman who stood near, and this member of the ancient Boyar aristocracy creased his face into a smile and remained quietly waiting, while the animal screeched with rage and tried to pull off his wig.

Then facing the Czarevitch, Catherine's favourite swept him a graceful bow.

For a moment Paul stood rooted, so angry that he could scarcely focus, yet fighting for control.

Then he turned abruptly, presenting his back to Plato Zubov, and in a harsh, resonant voice, he spoke to the quivering Rastopchine.

“I suffocate. This place smells like a den of whores!” With these words he was gone.

In the weeks that followed, Paul Petrovitch saw Rastopchine's prophecy fulfilled. Potemkin, who had abandoned his conduct of the second Turkish war to hurry back and dispose of his young rival, found his adored Empress completely dominated by the pleasure Plato Zubov gave her. Outwardly alert, as smoothly gracious as ever, Catherine's infatuation with her lover was tragic in its senile submission.

Whatever her faults she had always been an honest sensualist, treating her favourites with generosity and kindness, even with motherly sentimentality in her later years, but in her relationship with the twenty-five-year-old former Captain of her Guard, there was no room for honesty.

Her senses were dulled by excess, but now for the first time in years he gave Catherine the illusion of her lost youth and fading vigour.

And in exchange Catherine seemed ready to sacrifice her dignity, her independence, and the man who had loved and served her so devotedly for twenty years.

Potemkin was her friend, her counsellor, the architect of much that glorified her name in Russia; the greatest triumph of her reign had been the Crimean Journey, undertaken less than ten years earlier. Though the gaily costumed peasants who stood waving to the Empress as she sailed down the Dnieper were herded into carts and transported bodily to the next stage of arrival as soon as the royal barge had passed, there to repeat their welcome; though the towns which delighted her eye were painted cardboard fronts, and the livestock grazing in such numbers were shipped out to grace another spurious scene of prosperity a few hours later, Catherine had no idea that what she saw was sham. Potemkin had performed a miracle for her, transforming the newly annexed Crimea into a paradise of riches and progress. The fertile, thriving land she glimpsed from her barge and from the window of her great sledge, was this extraordinary lover's crowning gift; her glorification was his life's work and at the time her pride and affection were unbounded. While the impregnable fortresses she had admired crumbled and fell into the sea at the first storm, since they were only built of sand, and the skeletons of towns, hastily constructed out of wood and plaster tumbled down and rotted, unfinished and uninhabited, the Prince of Taurus reigned supreme at Petersburg, and his position had never seemed more secure when he took command of his mistress's armies and went to win fresh laurels for her against Turkey.

He returned to find her in the arms of Zubov.

During one of the frequent banquets given in the new favourite's honour, Marie Feodorovna sat at her husband's right hand, and for the first time since they left Gatchina her spirits rose and a natural colour dyed her cheeks. She was richly dressed, for Paul was never mean, and she was enjoying the gaiety and consumed with curiosity over the Empress and her favourite.

Another reason for Marie's transient happiness was the renewed contact with her two sons.

The younger, Constantine, was shy and silent; already his grandmother's adoring slave, he fidgeted in his parents' presence, and watched his grim father with suspicious eyes. His mother aroused some degree of affection in him, but the emotion was spoilt by feelings of guilt, as if he betrayed his grandmother, who had so often hinted gently that she did not care for either her son or her daughter-in-law.

But it was Alexander who filled the Grand Duchess with an access of maternal pride.

He was so handsome, she reflected, glancing covertly at him, where he sat close to the Empress; his looks were her inheritance, the stately height and blond colouring mirrored her Teutonic youth, and for that, as well as for his courteousness and grace, his mother loved him passionately.

She looked quickly at Paul, who sat slowly sipping wine out of a golden goblet, and following the direction of his gaze, saw that he watched his eldest son. He was unaware that she observed him, and Marie Feodorovna watched him with a feeling of horror in her heart, knowing that the man she had lived with and whose children she had borne was still a stranger to her, that only now, and that by accident, she had discovered that he hated his son Alexander.

For a moment terror enveloped her, and with it the confused wonder which defied analysis. Paul had no real power; he lived by courtesy of that omnipotent woman who sat at the head of the Imperial table, talking gaily to her handsome, sinister favourite; Marie knew this well, knew too that his chances of succeeding to supreme authority were non-existent, that that destiny was already reserved for the son she championed in her heart against her husband. Yet in spite of all, she was afraid of Paul.

The knowledge that he hated Alexander filled her with overwhelming terror on the boy's behalf. He was her son, she thought in panic, and her own ambitions to become Empress Consort vanished instantly in the face of her fear for the child of her body.

Then and there, Marie Feodorovna swore a private oath, her eyes fixed on the watchful, unreadable countenance of Paul.

If ever the issue arose which must decide in favour of the father or the son, she would declare for Alexander.

It was the only decision that she ever made which was to be of any consequence.

On April the 28th Gregory Potemkin was giving a ball at the Taurus Palace. Invitations to over three thousand guests were issued in his name, asking them to an entertainment devised in honour of their Empress, and it was rumoured that this was to be the most sumptuous spectacle ever witnessed in Petersburg.

In the privacy of his apartments, Paul was arguing with Rastopchine, and the invitation from his enemy lay on a marble table in front of him.

“There's no necessity for me to go. I know his talent for debauch, I've heard my mother praised and fêted in terms of blasphemy a hundred times before. I shall refuse!”

Rastopchine frowned, and his thin dark face assumed that worried wolfish look that was so characteristic of the man.

“Believe me, Highness, this is no ordinary occasion! All Petersburg is alive with rumours. They say that Plato Zubov will stand or fall at this ball; it is the Prince's final challenge to your mother, his supreme attempt to win her back and trample the favourite in the dust.

“God knows which way the Empress will decide … you
must
accept, Sir, for if Potemkin triumphs, he'll be more dangerous to you than ever, and if he falls … who had more right to witness his disgrace than you!”

“No man on earth,” muttered the Czarevitch, and shrewdly, his friend waited for the suggestion to sink in and said no more.

“How will it end, do you think?” Paul asked him at last. The other shrugged.

“God knows. But if fortune smiles on us, the Tartar should fail. If anything happens to the Empress, we can deal with friend Zubov easily enough. But Potemkin would be another matter. I tell you, if Catherine abandons her Minister, the difficulties besetting your inheritance will be almost halved!”

“And my son, Rastopchine? What of my son?”

“May I speak freely, Sir?”

“I only tear lies, never the truth! Speak.”

“The Grand Duke relies on his grandmother to take the burden of his treachery upon herself. I've watched him carefully, and I think him a waverer and a coward at heart. Equally, he has no scruples. With a man of action to direct him, he'd do battle with you for the throne. With Potemkin, he would probably win. But not without him. That is what I believe.”