Empress of the Night (36 page)

It amuses her to hear that unseen wars are being waged in her palace. Cats from the cellar fight those from the attic. Woe to anyone who strays outside of their territory and is not fast enough. In the wine cellars, the cup-bearer pages often come across the wounded. If they don’t make it, their rotting corpses will betray their last hiding spot.

The palace servants, Zotov reminds her, have long memories. They recall the times when imperial cats wore velvet coats and feasted on roasted chicken breasts. “How the mighty have fallen,” they say now, as the cats dart away at their sight. The boys chase them. Cats not swift enough end up with their tails set on fire. Or have their heads pushed into a sack, left to run in all directions blindfolded.

Zotov pauses for a brief moment, considering the wisdom of telling her more, and decides against it.

Catherine is grateful. She doesn’t want to hear of eyes plucked out, or skins torn out of a live cat to cure some ailment. “I’ve something for you,” she says. “Madame Lievens swears Alexandrine is growing every night. She is taller in the morning by an inch.”

The Grand Duchesses are given a new pair of shoes each week, sixteen
dozen pairs of gloves a year. They have plentiful supplies of powder, patches, ribbons, combs, and silk hoops. For the summer, each is provided with three flowered coats, three plain or striped silk dresses, and one nightgown. Madame General Lievens, the chief governess of all the Grand Duchesses of the Imperial Household, had been ordered to prepare a trunkful of clothes to be given away.

“Take your daughters to her today,” she tells Zotov. “Let each choose a new outfit.”

Lucretius is what she settles on for this day’s reading: procreant atoms to which no rest is allowed, for their movement through the depth of space is incessant. Some of them collide and bounce far apart, others recoil. Entangled by their own shapes, they make a rock or the bulk of iron.

Power attracts its opposite. What cannot be diminished through force will be slowly chipped away.

“Atoms in the void?” Potemkin would’ve groaned. “Why don’t you pick up Plato instead, Katinka? Read of a beautiful young body that turns our thoughts toward perfection.”

But they won’t let her enjoy her musings and her solitude for too long.

“Your Majesty,” Vishka whispers, exposing her blackened teeth, crowding in her mouth like beggars at Easter. Her hair has grayed in the last months, and thinned. The baggy skin under her eyes gives her a bewildered look. Her second lady’s maid has an uneasy look about her, but the determination in her eyes is proof that, at least in her mind, the matter is important enough. While Queenie is sprawling, taking more and more space, Vishka is shrinking.

The book closes with a soft thud.

If Vishka is here, it must be time to go over the upcoming move to the Tauride Palace.
His
palace, Catherine still calls it in her mind. Prince Potemkin’s. Grishenka’s. She had bought it for him and then from him—so that he could pay his debts—and gave it to him again. Now it’s once again hers, her preferred summer residence in St. Petersburg, where no cannon salutes announce her comings and goings. Where petitioners are not admitted and empty court talk doesn’t have to be suffered.

Vishka has a whole list of matters awaiting her decision. Grand Duke Alexander is asking for permission to invite Prince Adam, and if permission be granted, he would like to house his friend in the Blue Suite. Alexandrine is begging to be allowed to return to the Winter Palace for the night, on account of Bolik, who might show up. The Tauride steward is reporting that all is ready to receive Her Imperial Majesty, but begs permission to hire an animal trainer. The kangaroos, the King of England’s sumptuous gift, are causing a small sensation. A special observation platform has already been built near their cages, but the experience of watching these splendid beasts would be enhanced if a trainer could orchestrate a clever show of their boxing skills.

“There is one more matter Your Majesty might wish to know about,” Vishka says when all is decided. (Prince Adam can stay, Alexandrine cannot keep going to and fro between two palaces, and the Tauride gardens shall not be turned into a circus!) Unlike Queenie, who believes herself an expert on love and finer feelings, Vishka delights in reporting petty sins, a valet who steals her ribbons to frequent tea taverns or gin shops, a maid who wraps herself in the imperial shawl when she thinks herself alone.

“Is it about Alexandrine?” Catherine asks.

“No, madame,” Vishka demurs, hesitating. As if, after forty years of service, she still does not quite trust her mistress’s benevolence.

One has to be patient with old servants. Coax the truth out of them slowly, without putting words in their mouths. There is such a brief moment before what is worth hearing turns into what they think would please you. Gestures work better than words. A squeezed hand, a smoothed cheek, followed by a look into their eyes, a promise of attention.

But this time the cause of Vishka’s agitation is Grand Duke Constantine, married only this February, with much pomp and expense. Vishka walked past the Marble Palace, where the young couple live. The windows were open, and she heard screams. “Like a cat skinned alive,” Vishka gasps.

Has she ever heard a skinned cat?

Constantine, for whom she, the Empress, once wished the splendors of the Byzantine Empire, who was to restore the light of Orthodoxy to
the darkened East, lead the Russian troops to Constantinople, defeat the Turks, and bring home the golden fleece to Russia, is a disappointment. Drunken evenings at taverns, smashed furniture, debts unpaid, creditors threatened with a thrashing have not ended in spite of numerous promises.

Casting an envious eye in the direction of the abandoned book, she calms her maid. Constantine is an unpolished bear. He has always been one, since he was a child. Even then his teachers complained that he was doing things in fits and starts. Translating Plutarch from Greek one moment, only to run away to shoot birds as soon as his tutor turned his back. No wonder he is impatient with his wife.

Vishka persists. At the Marble Palace, Grand Duke Constantine allows no one to enter his private study. If the smell coming out of it becomes offensive, Grand Duke burns a purifying cartridge there. The maids beg to be allowed to clean the room, but they are told to stay away. The walls of the main salon are stained with red wine. The portraits in the Gallery are riddled with bullet holes. Two have had their eyes cut out. The carpets in the bedroom are torn to shreds. “And now Grand Duchess Anna Fyodorovna is crying all the time,” Vishka adds slyly. “She won’t say why, Your Majesty.”

Anna Fyodorovna, to be truthful, is not the brightest of God’s creatures. A pretty face, yes, but her movements are awkward and her education has been neglected. Seven months in Russia and her Russian has barely improved.

There have been other reports already. Queenie has mentioned how the Princess reads French novels by the cartload and weeps over the travails of imaginary lovers. What is it that Anna expects? Flowery declarations of her husband’s passion? Adoring looks? Staring at the moon? Platon has summed it best: “She has the wit of a sheep. All she sees is her own misery.”

“Tell me everything,” she tells Vishka with a sigh.

Anna Fyodorovna is complaining that her husband is ignoring her. Constantine is complaining that his wife is always sulking.

More troubling is that Anna Fyodorovna and Alexander’s wife persist with their mutual visits in spite of having been warned of Her Majesty’s disapproval. And lately the visits have become clandestine. More than
once, servants have been bribed to take Anna through the back stairs, her face covered with a veil. Elizabeth, who should’ve refused such subterfuge, takes part in it. The two have been heard whispering together in German.

Oh, well
, the Empress thinks.
Silly girls cling to each other
.

“This will pass, Vishka.”

“This isn’t right, Your Majesty,” Vishka insists. “Grand Duchess Elizabeth has such a tender heart. It is so easy to burden her with troubles she should be spared.”

Faithful Vishka, the juggler of hints and suggestions. What her maid is really saying is that Elizabeth should concentrate on getting with child. And that she should be more mindful of her position at court. Place herself above her sister-in-law, keep her distance. Elizabeth, who one day will become the Emperor’s consort, should watch whose confidences she receives, whose whispers she heeds.

It is still summer, but outside, migrating birds are already gathering in fluttering crowds. From the meshed section of the winter garden comes the jittery commotion of her flock. Swallows, turtledoves, and orioles are nervously flitting from one branch to another.

Catherine is not looking forward to winter, to fur-lined boots, heavy pelisses. To stuffy rooms scented with hot vinegar and mint. Her aching bones have not yet soaked up enough of the warmth of the sun.

“This is why Constantine is angry with his wife,” Vishka continues, oblivious to the chattering birds. “Our high-and-mighty Princess doesn’t know when to stop. She expects attention, but how much does
she
give?”

Mercifully, Vishka doesn’t expect answers to these questions. Satisfied with the results of her confession, she concedes that matters are perhaps not all that bleak.

“That they quarrel,” Catherine says, “is a good sign. It means they are not indifferent to each other.”

Over the next weeks, many balls and festive suppers will be given in honor of the Swedish King. The first will take place at the Tauride Palace. “Wouldn’t the Winter Palace be more convenient?” Le Noiraud has asked already. “One story, no stairs,” Catherine has replied. “Much easier on
everyone’s knees.”
I have to lie to this beautiful child. You know that, Grishenka
, she thinks, and—in her mind—her Prince of Tauride chuckles at these words in reply.

After the news of Potemkin’s death arrived, she came to the Tauride Palace every day, even if for just a few stolen moments. It seemed to her that Grishenka might appear from behind the marble column, his dead eye half closed, his hair wet, for he had just doused it under a pump.

Le Noiraud’s beauty astonishes her every time her eyes rest on him—here in the corridors of the Tauride Palace, or on the gilded sofas in her inner rooms, where he likes to lounge dressed in his glittering velvets, smelling of musk and sandalwood, his feet buried in a deep soft carpet, his hooded eyes resting on the old paintings of faraway landscapes.

Now Le Noiraud has shoved aside Zotov and Queenie, who trot a few steps behind them, and pushes her rolling chair along the main Gallery, entertaining her with his descriptions of the visiting Swedes. The
Regent
, he mimics, minces his steps as he walks, as if he were trying to negotiate his way across a freshly washed floor without wetting his shoes.

The King appears in his monologue, too: Gustav Adolf does
not
approve of levity. Gustav Adolf prefers
serious
discussions to gallant
talk
.

“How serious?” Catherine asks.

“Oh, you know,” Le Noiraud replies airily. “The nature of man. The limits of reason.”

“That serious,” she teases.

It is a credit to Platon that he hasn’t mentioned Potemkin at all. “No need to be jealous of the dead,” she has told him more than once, but Le Noiraud cannot help himself. His complaints about the Tauride Palace are veiled in concern. He doesn’t like it because here his rooms are too far away from hers. The canal smells of rot. Unlike the free-flowing Neva, it gets clogged with debris. He mentions miasmas, putrid vapors, irritated lungs.

The palace teems with running feet and the vile tempers of servants in a hurry. The footmen are hanging the last of the chandelier crystals. Maids polish the doorknobs and hunt for smudges on the glass panes. Tables are swathed in white cloths and decorated with garlands of flowers
and ribbons. From the garden come the sounds of the orchestra practicing a contredanse.

The servants bow when her small entourage passes, but they do not abandon their chores. Across the main hall, her old housekeeper, Madame Bolyanska, is chastising a maid over something, her nagging voice rising over the melee.

Bolik is still missing. This very morning, Alexandrine asked Miss Williams if God is testing her with this loss. Then she wanted to know how it is possible to feel happy and miserable at the same time.

The rolling chair is a constant reminder of defeat. Even in this palace where there are no stairs to impede her, Catherine cannot walk farther than the length of a room. Memory pricks her: images of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna panting after just a few steps, her flushed cheeks, swollen feet, flesh spilling out of her slippers. What would she have said seeing her now? “Destiny sniffs after you like a bloodhound, Catherine”? There would be a sneer on her lips, too, and a taxing, sour look at Platon. “Wearing old gloves till we can get new ones”?

In the last years, Catherine has ordered some changes to the palace—added a theater and a chapel—but most of the rooms, Picture Hall, the Tapestry Sitting Room, the Chinese Hall, are the way Potemkin left them. She has not touched their old bedrooms. Both have narrow beds, plain wallpaper, and square tables made of birch wood, but there are differences. In hers—the larger of the two—goats and shepherds roam on the ceiling and there is an antechamber that she uses as a meeting room. His is a monk’s cell: A giant cross hangs on the wall; a threadbare carpet covers the floor. So far, Platon has not asked for permission to sleep there. She will never allow it, but it is better to leave such things unsaid.

The bedroom still carries the faint smell of burnt vinegar from a fumigation pastille, in spite of Queenie’s assurances that it has been thoroughly aired. Catherine leaves the rolling chair at the threshold. She has added only a bookshelf and a proper writing table.

Le Noiraud casts a curious eye over the bookshelf, his finger tracing the slim volumes she has brought here from her library. No murderous French instigations disguised as philosophy, she tells her lover. “This is my favorite,” she says, pointing at the four volumes of
Solitude Considered, with Respect to Its Influence upon the Mind and the Heart
. She tells
Le Noiraud that the author, Monsieur Zimmerman, is a physician to his Britannic Majesty at Hanover. She doesn’t tell him that she considers hiring a German to replace Rogerson.