Empress of the Night (11 page)

“It won’t be long now, Catherine. Your time is coming soon.”

She listens and hoards these offerings, words overheard in the Empress’s bedroom, the Chancellor’s office, the servant hall, words gleaned from letters or documents not meant for the Grand Duchess’s eyes. Secret, dangerous words she turns in her mind, commits to memory, which won’t betray her as paper might. They not only reveal what has been hidden. They also assure her that at this court, where some still call her “a
Hausfrau
with a pointed chin,” others are risking their lives for her. Not because they like or pity her, but because she allows them to dream their own sweet dreams.

I won’t disappoint you
, she vows.

“What is
he
doing here?” Katya Dashkova asks in a stage whisper. Her nose wiggles, like a rabbit’s. Her upper lip lifts in contempt.

He
is Grigory Orlov, a Lieutenant of the Izmailovsky Regiment, a hero from the Battle of Zorndorf, but Katya doesn’t care to remember his name, and even if she did she wouldn’t deign to pronounce it. A Vorontzov by birth, she thinks any Orlov an upstart.

Sometimes it is better to be a foreigner. Forced to befriend not only the spoiled princesses of the realm but those who desire to raise themselves up, to make their own destiny. Who never forget that the guards, these “makers of the Tsars,” once carried Elizabeth in their arms right to the Russian throne.

July days are hot, even in the morning, but a brisk walk through Tsarskoye Selo gardens is an irresistible temptation. Even if after a few rounds sweat soaks through Catherine’s linen shift into the corset and her petticoats. The exertion of this hour is what will sustain her through the long court day. Make her less restless, less impatient.

Katya has slipped her thin arm through hers and is holding it tight. Too tight, but this has to be endured. Small payment for the pleasure of conversing on Voltaire’s wit and
Das Fräulein
’s blunders at the Vorontzovs’ dinner table. Or of Moscow’s contempt for St. Petersburg, still a mere “garrison town” where greed runs unchecked and uppity “service nobles” dream of advance.

Mercifully, Katya never talks of her children.

Grigory Orlov happens to be in the palace gardens just as the Grand Duchess is taking her walk. Catherine suspects that someone, Varvara perhaps, has charted for him the route of her morning walks, for he appears before her with a predictable regularity. By the pond, at the end of the hedge-lined lane. By the oak tree. He is not shy: “You’ve been captured, madam,” he said once. “I’m not that easy to catch,” Catherine shot back.

In the flesh Grigory Orlov is always somehow bigger, more handsome than remembered. Massive, yes, but also agile and graceful. Taut and yet pliant. He holds his head high. His very presence makes her think of simple things. Bonfire flames lighting up the darkness. The sweet, thick treacle of honey. A feeling that no matter what the day has brought, nothing is going to touch her.

When she looks at him, he doesn’t avert his gaze.
Notice
, his eyes say.
Notice the cut of my steel-colored tunic, my shining high leather boots, the polished helmet I cradle in my hand. Give me the slightest sign, and I shall find my way to you
.

Why are you waiting?

She is waiting not because she doesn’t like the thought of his hands touching her. Not because of the letters from her Polish lover who had to leave and who—she knows it—will never be allowed to come back, long letters from Warsaw filled with tender but impossible dreams.

She is waiting because she is Russia’s Grand Duchess and she won’t be had cheaply. What is hard to come by will always be more precious.

“Shall we turn back?” Katya asks, shooting Lieutenant Orlov a look of annoyance that he doesn’t even notice.

“Yes,” Catherine replies, and she does turn on her heel and walk away. She feels Orlov’s gaze even with her back turned.

“If you don’t take care of yourself, Catherine,” Katya warns, “your friends will.”
Das Fräulein
is already making sketches on how she will reset the imperial jewels.

In the imperial nursery, Paul is drawing scaly dragons that spit fire and eat up naughty children for supper. “Have you ever seen a dragon?” Catherine has asked her son, and he said that he has. Many times. “In the corridor … under the bed … in the pantry.” Varvara tells her that at five, the heir to the Russian throne still wets his bed and won’t fall asleep in the dark.

Grigory Orlov trusts the bulk of a man’s body, the power of taut muscles and sinews. “Punch me in the stomach, Katinka,” he teases, laughing. When Catherine does, with all her strength, her knuckles redden as if she were striking a brick wall.

His skin has the glow acquired from riding fast horses. His teeth are even and strong. He doesn’t display them merely out of vanity. A soldier needs strong teeth to tear the musket cartridge. Once she saw him bend horseshoes with his bare hands.

Volkov boyat’sa—v les ne khodit’
. If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go to the woods.

“Not all brothers are like yours, Katinka,” Grigory tells Catherine when she recalls William’s childhood taunts. Grigory is not a man of many words. She has to coax stories out of him, patiently, as one extracts the meat from black walnut shells. Only when they lie together, spent and sweaty, will he let her see glimpses of his boyhood. Days spent climbing trees, catching fish in rushing streams, falling asleep in a haystack and waking up at night to the flaming torches of a searching party and their mother’s tears. Never alone, always with his brothers, though it is Alexei whose name comes up most often. Alexei, who climbed the church roof at night and rang the bell at the belfry. Stole the keys to the pantry and got them all sick gorging on
bliny
and roasted pheasants.

There is a small house on the Vasilevsky Island, two lanes away from Peter the Great’s museum, Kunstkamera. It has wooden stairs of polished pine, and banisters painted white. There are six rooms upstairs, a long parlor with a bearskin hanging over an ottoman, a dining room, a music room, and a kitchen on the ground floor. There are also servants’ quarters, but Catherine hasn’t seen them. The housekeeper and her husband, who live there, are Orlov serfs. So are all the gaily costumed servants: cooks, maids, footmen who peer at her from behind the doors, through the windows. Who whisper among themselves and laugh. The housekeeper, Annushka, remembers the young masters when they were boys. “All like whirling tops, always getting into mischief and bruises.” She sighs, and her watery eyes light up. “Though Master Alexei was the worst of them all.”

“Guest in the house, God in the house,” the Orlov servants greet the Grand Duchess when she arrives. Not that it stops the knowing looks, the bemused admiration for their dashing master, who, this time, has brought home the most precious trophy of them all.

In this house where she meets her soldier lover, Gypsy singers come to sing to them at supper time, or dance to the fiery rhythm of the fiddle. In this house she is spoken of as
nasha
—ours. “From here … one of us … bred in the bones …” With a family who will stand by her in the moment of need and the moment of triumph.

Katinka, he calls her. His Katinka. Grigory Orlov, a warrior who can slay an enemy with one blow, knows, with every fiber, every muscle of his body, that no one else, no other man, no other lover of hers, has ever been equal to him. He knows her hunger and her satiation. He knows that as soon as he touches her, the boundary between where she ends and he begins melts away.

The line between what is needed and what is loved can become thin.

Grigory Orlov calls Peter a pip-squeak and a monster. A German fiddler with a pocked face and a small, limp dick. No wonder, he says, that Peter couldn’t father a child. “If he dares to lift a finger to you, Katinka, I’ll slash his throat. I’ll tear him to pieces and nail them to the first signpost.”

Grigory Orlov will do what he says. Unless her fearless, reckless lover is killed first, leaving her to her husband’s revenge. Born of resentment, even a weakling’s rage can harm. Peter can toss her out, like a rotting piece of flotsam thrown into the Neva River.

In public, she still calls Grigory Orlov “that oaf.”

Dobroye bratstvo—luchsheye bogatstvo
. Good brotherhood is the best wealth.

“Men are like unbroken horses, Katinka,” Grigory Orlov says. “Learn how to make them follow.”

Catherine is an excellent horsewoman, but she has never broken a horse yet.

“Teach me,” she says.

Horses are about flight and fear
, he tells her.
A firm hand is needed to control them
.

All this and more she learns from Grigory Orlov’s lips. And from the sight of him walking into the pen where a stallion stands tethered. He is a giant of a man whose every pore exudes courage.
You have to frighten the horse first. Show him who is the true master. Then he will follow you
.

The Orlov lessons are simple, and Catherine has always been a quick study. Taming of animals and taming of men are two sides of the same coin.

Grigory has no talent for a clever turn of phrase. His wisdom has to be gleaned from clipped phrases, extracted from grunts and exaggerated sighs of impatience or derision. Like an alchemist, Catherine has to test and refine what she hears and sees, purify and transform what he tosses her way, until base metals turn into gold.

Don’t seek approval outside yourself. Know that you are in charge, and a horse will sense it and accept your conviction. But if you don’t have it in you, the horse will know it instantly and defy you
.

Why?

Because your body betrays you far more than you think. Because you cannot hide your thoughts. Banish the ones you don’t want
.

Grigory throws her the line attached to the horse’s halter. He stands back, watching her.

Nerves and muscles are taut, strung tight. Hoofs stomp the pen, ears twitch. Anything can alter the uneasy balance of this moment; anything could spark a blind panic that cannot be controlled. A passing shadow, a blinding glitter of a diamond pin, a screeching seagull on the lookout for spoils.

“Get him to retreat, Katinka. Keep going. Keep your eyes on his.”

Power is about will and direction
.

Power is about assuming your place with confidence
.

Power is about rewards bestowed for what you desire, and punishment for what you reject
.

Power is taken or lost with every step, every quiver of your voice. It’s not just the words that matter, it is their tone, their pitch
.

“Victory comes from confidence, Katinka. All soldiers know this.”

When it is time to mount her ride, fear descends. In a flash, she sees herself, limp, on the ground, trampled, maimed, her face pummeled to
a pulp. She doesn’t have a man’s body. She is not that strong. Her bones can be broken, her spine smashed. She has seen men crippled by falls. Pink foam on their lips as they mumble their pleas.

She lets the fear in, lets her heartbeat smash blindly against her rib cage. Plead for time, for more practice. Urge her to leave, invent some more important tasks. Admit her weaknesses, which—she knows—are many.
I’ll count to five
, she decides.
This is how long I have to be afraid
. Courage is distilled from moments like this. By the time her hand reaches for the reins, by the time she is lifted into the saddle, there is no trembling, no hesitation. Her heart is forced into an even beat, her voice firm and steady.

A smile breaks on Grigory Orlov’s lips. A smile of pride and praise.

It’s her body that betrays her. At first she still hopes her menses are merely late. But that bright August morning she wakes up feeling sick and dizzy and chilled by fear.

Her spies in the Imperial Bedroom are whispering of Elizabeth’s fainting spells and long processions of healers brought from the farthest reaches of the Empire. From her husband’s chambers come snippets of joyful anticipation.
Das Fräulein
, who has always trusted the language of the gutter, proposes locking “that haughty German sow in the nearest pigsty.”

This is not the time for a bastard birth.

“Mother of God, have mercy,” Varvara Nikolayevna whispers when she hears the news. “How long without bleeding?”

“A month … no one knows yet … only you, Varenka.”

Tears slip down Catherine’s cheeks. Bitter tears of humiliation and defeat. Perhaps it’s already too late. The Grand Duchess may hope she has avoided the watchful eyes, but her fall would make for such a tasty gossip. She who dares to think of the crown is defeated by her own belly.

For a woman, a bedroom can be a prison. And a tomb.

“Don’t cry, please.”

Varvara’s voice penetrates the chaos of panic. Deception is hard work.
It requires precise calculations. And the most trusted of servants. Varvara’s fingers tick off the coming months. The renovations of the Winter Palace drag on. The courtiers are moving back and forth. The Grand Duchess can develop some plausible ailments that keep her away from official appearances. The swelling feet? Back pain? With winter furs and lined bulky dresses, an April child can be hidden until the very end.