Empress of the Night (24 page)

Captain Zubov asks to speak. He is not just a Captain in Her Imperial Majesty’s army, he announces, he is a famous magician.

Alexandrine and Yelena turn toward him as he extracts a crimson handkerchief from his breast pocket and with elaborate effort pushes it inside his folded palm. “One, two,” he counts, “three,” and opens his palm to show that it is empty.

Yelena gasps with glee.

They are gathering around him now. Maria has left her nurse’s arms and is holding Alexandrine’s hand. Constantine is leaning forward to see better. The handkerchief has appeared again and is showing up in most unexpected places. Behind Maria’s ear. In Alexandrine’s hair, in the folds of Yelena’s gown. Each appearance is greeted with screams of ecstatic laughter.

Even Alexander has joined them and is standing beside his brother.

The handkerchief is lying abandoned now, for the Captain has asked Yelena to choose a card. She settles on the queen of spades, and the queen of spades appears on top of the deck.

“A diamond,” Maria decrees. Constantine rolls his eyes but doesn’t interrupt when Alexandrine explains that Maria has to choose a number or a figure, not just a suit.

“How old are you?” Alexandrine asks Maria, who puts up her plump hand showing three extended fingers.

“Three of diamonds, then,” Alexandrine tells the Captain, who shuffles the cards deftly and then, after a moment of suspense, draws one card for each letter of Maria’s name. When he reaches the second
a
, the card he uncovers is the three of diamonds.

Catherine, too, joins the applause. But the show is not over yet.

“Look,” Constantine cries.

One of the cards leaves the deck and hovers in the air as if hesitating where to turn. Captain Zubov makes first a quizzical face and then a happy one, for the card is clearly leading him toward her.

Catherine extends her hand to touch the card, but before she manages to do it, Captain Zubov catches it in midair and tosses it from one hand to the other. The card turns around as it floats back and forth.

Her grandchildren are bewitched. Maria stands with her mouth open. Alexandrine and Yelena applaud. Constantine demands to examine the card. “How does he do it?” he asks Alexander, who shrugs in response.

Ensnared in the hilarity of the moment, Catherine extends her hand again. Captain Zubov places the card on her open palm. His black eyes dance with joy. His skin has such a lovely olive hue to it. On his upper lip, a dark shadow marks the outline of where his mustache would be if he let it grow.

He places the card on her palm and then the card lifts up.

She laughs. The card floats down and settles on her palm. She tries to touch it with her finger, but the card lifts again. This time the Captain catches the card in midair and puts it back on top of the deck. He makes a gesture of surrender. His palms are empty. He can be searched but he has to warn everyone that he is very ticklish. To prove it, he shakes his whole body like a dog out of water.

Maria giggles.

Constantine settles himself beside Captain Zubov and pesters him with incessant questions. How old was he when he started riding his horse? Can he climb a tree to the very top? Can he swim across the Neva?

Platon Alexandrovich Zubov
, Catherine thinks. Such a long and heavy name for someone who has made her laugh again. Black hair, black eyes. It comes to her, then, her nickname for him. Le Noiraud.

“Will you tell me how you do it?” Constantine’s voice is tingling with eagerness.

Le Noiraud bends toward him and whispers loud enough for her to hear: “Only one person in the whole world can get the secret out of me.”

What comes next happens all at once. The folding table rocks, the cornets fall from the layered plate, the grapes spill out and roll among the dishes. The melon platter falls to the ground at her feet. Red stains appear on her lilac gown and when she steps forward she feels something soft and moist yielding under her satin shoe. The footmen rush toward them, picking up the fruit, the platter, pieces of broken china. The dogs begin to bark.

“I didn’t do it,” Constantine cries, for all eyes are on him.

It takes her a moment to acknowledge what, obviously, is the truth. But it is hard, for she has missed the moment Alexander extended his hand and pushed the folding table. By the time she turns toward him, her oldest grandson is no longer by her side. It is Platon Zubov who silently directs her eyes to the diminishing figure running toward the woods.

“No,” she says when Queenie asks her permission to go after Alexander. “The boy is in the mood for a quarrel. He will come back when he is ready to apologize.”

Alexander returns half an hour later, when all evidence of his outburst has been cleared. He is limping. His face is scratched, his clothes wet and dirtied with mud. The nurses and Queenie fuss over him, and he lets them wash the muddy stains off his cheeks.

When he does approach her, Catherine waves everyone away.

“But why you, my Monsieur Alexander?” she asks when he has whispered his apology. “Can you explain to me the reason?”

His eyes fill up with tears. He shakes his head.

She is still seething with incomprehension when she hears a galloping horse. Dogs are barking again. The grooms run toward the rider, who dismounts quickly. She recognizes the bearlike frame of Count Bezborodko—her trusted secretary—who hurries toward her.

The news must be important. He wouldn’t have interrupted her otherwise.

“News from Paris,” Bezborodko gasps, handing her the dispatch. His glove is torn at the base of his thumb; his stockings have slid all the way to his heels. There is a sleek stream of sweat flowing down his forehead. His horse neighs and stomps the ground. The dogs are still barking. “The mob is in the streets.”

She is still not sure why the news of a rioting Parisian mob could not wait for her return. And then she hears: “The Bastille fell, Your Majesty. This is just the beginning.”

There have been victories and quarrels. In St. Petersburg, Potemkin bangs doors, tramples her carpets with muddy boots, screams and bangs his fist on her desk. What are these storms about? He wants her to negotiate with England; she refuses. He urges caution; she wants to call their bluff. He rages. She has colics and spasms. “Go after him,” she orders Zotov when Grishenka leaves cursing her and slamming the doors after him. “Make sure he is all right.”

We always quarrel about power, not love
.

His ill-wishers poison her mind. No bounds, no shame. His mistresses are getting more greedy, knowing he’ll think nothing of sending his messenger across the country to fetch a swanskin fan or a pair of silk stockings. All five of his nieces (to make a harem of his own family!) swim in riches. While the peacock clock he ordered for his Empress in London has been paid for by the state funds. And while he keeps an apartment in town with shelves on every wall, each packed with banknotes.

Evidence?

Plentiful. Ironclad. Letters, orders, confessions. There is always someone
willing to testify to the sins of the mighty. Sloth, negligence, greed, vanity, lust for any woman who takes his fancy.

In the end, Potemkin always prevails. Turkish fortresses fall. The steppes turn into fields. Towns raise where only grass grew. The Prussians who plot against him are thwarted. “I don’t hide my passions,
matushka
, but if I take, I give back tenfold. What is mine is always yours.”

The ill-wishers scurry away. Until the next time.

The last party Potemkin gave for her was the most splendid. As if he knew nothing must be allowed to surpass this memory.

It was a rainy St. Petersburg day, and yet the Tauride Palace blinded her with radiance. Rows upon rows of torches illuminated the colonnade; light spilled from opened doors. The courtyard teemed with onlookers, craning their necks, pushing for a better view. Children perched on their parents’ shoulders, waved their hands.
Why so many people?
Catherine thought.
He knows I don’t like crowds
.

“Long live the Empress!” someone cried, and she acknowledged the answering roar from the crowd with a wave of her hand. The people cheered.

She saw Potemkin as soon as she alighted. Her one-eyed giant in his scarlet tailcoat, a gold-and-black lace cloak tossed over his shoulders. The diamonds sewn onto his coat and cloak glittered and sparkled as he began walking toward her through two lines of footmen. His head was bare, his bejeweled hat perched on a pillow his adjutant carried behind him.

“Too heavy for his head? Is Prince Potemkin perchance trying to discover how many diamonds one man can wear all at once?” These were Le Noiraud’s words, oozing with jealousy and envy. Platon Alexandrovich Zubov, the latest of her Favorites, does not take well to another’s glory.

“Enough,” she silenced him. He rolled his eyes and sighed, but obeyed.

When Potemkin approached her and kneeled, she raised him to his feet. He took her hand, ready to lead her inside, but then, suddenly, the human wave moved forward. Someone screamed in pain. A wooden barrier
fell. A burly man, shoved forward by some invisible hands, barely avoided crashing into her.

A revolution?
she wondered, terrified.
Here, in Russia? Like in France?

For a moment, she did think that this might be the end. That the crowd would trample them all. She read so many Parisian reports that the mind furnished her with vivid images. Men and women pulled out of carriages, thrown to the pavement with force that shattered bones and skulls. The enemies of the revolution bludgeoned, torn to pieces, their heads paraded on pikes. Street dogs feasting on their bloody remains.

Potemkin had seen the flash of fear in her eyes. “It’s nothing, Katinka,” he whispered.

It was nothing. Some foolish servant had missed the cue and opened the stalls with free food too early. Her people didn’t want to kill or maim. Her people wished to stuff their pockets with treats far more than watch the Empress walk by.

She hadn’t always been that easily frightened. Once she used to think crowds credulous, easy to sway the way she wished them to go.

“Come, beloved
matushka
. Three thousand guests are waiting for you.”

Potemkin led her toward the palace. Inside, in the Colonnade Hall, stood her whole family, dressed in their finest. Paul and his wife, Maria, flanked by Alexander and Constantine. Her granddaughters, in white frilly frocks, their cheeks flushed with excitement.

The fiery brightness came from fifty massive chandeliers, each with dozens of burning candles, more than twenty thousand, she was told. And then there were more torches, their light reflected by mirrored walls, by crystal pendants, by gilded walls and columns.

Behind the Colonnade Hall, the Tauride winter garden spread, exuding waves of moist, fragrant warmth. Hyacinths and orange blossoms. Roses and lilies. Blooming peonies beside snowdrops, a subtle hint that nature’s laws can be suspended, that some alliances can be forced. Lamps were hidden in clusters of mock grapes, pears, and pineapples. Silver and scarlet fishes swam in glass globes. The cupola was painted like a sky, with white fluffy clouds over Prussian blue. Paths and little hillocks led to statues of goddesses.

A temple to her stood in the garden center, with a statue placed on a diamond-studded pyramid. Underneath it, a placard:
To the Mother of the Motherland and my Benefactress
.

What an enchanted evening it was! Beautiful children dancing a quadrille, dressed in costumes of blue and pink and sparkling with jewels. Monsieur Alexander dancing a minuet with Alexandrine. Both so graceful, so light! And then, as darkness fell, Potemkin took them all into the Gobelin Room, where the tapestries told the story of Esther and where a life-size gold elephant stood, covered in emeralds and rubies. Once she took her seat, the tapestries rose up as if by magic, for her Prince had turned the Gobelin Room into a theater. There were two comedies, a ballet, and then the most splendid procession of all the peoples of the Empire. “Look, Graman,” Alexander screamed in excitement. “The captured Ottoman pashas from Ismail are here!”

Fete superb
, she thought.
This is how we conduct ourselves in St. Petersburg. In the midst of trouble and war and the menaces of dictators. Europe, take note!

“Don’t say a word yet, Katinka,” her Prince whispered in her ear when she turned to praise him. He led her back to the winter garden, to the statue of herself as goddess, where he again fell to his knees. And then he gave a sign, and from among the shrubberies a man’s resonant voice began to recite,
Grom pobedy, razdavaysya!

Triumph’s thunder louder, higher!

Russian pride is running high!

Russia’s glory sparkles brighter!

We have humbled Moslem might
.

Hail to you for this, o Catherine—

Gentle mother to us all!

Only when she wiped tears from Grisha’s eyes, when she embraced him and assured him that no joy could ever match this evening as long as she lived, did the orchestra begin to play.

The grand ball began. She didn’t dance.

She was too tired and her legs hurt. But she played cards with Maria
Fyodorovna for a while, ignoring her son’s forced smiles, too thin a cover for Paul’s disappointments. Watched the children dance for her again. Sat at her table, which was covered in gold, illuminated by a ball of white-and-blue glass, when Potemkin stood behind her chair and served her until she insisted he sit down beside her.

They didn’t have to talk to know their thoughts. The coded dispatches to Berlin and London would be filled with sneers at Russian extravagance and insufferable pride. What garish displays of Asian taste! What waste and arrogance! What unbridled lust! But the monarchs of Europe are not fooled. They will know: Russia, united, disciplined, and fearless, is the power to be reckoned with.