Empress of the Night (45 page)

So the matter is closed.

In one of the paintings in the Winter Palace bedroom, Sarah, old and shrewd-looking, brings Hagar to Abraham. The patriarch, his torso bared, is sitting in bed, staring at Hagar’s rosy and glowing skin. The girl averts her eyes, but her anticipation of her deflowering is visible.

How easy, one might think, to foresee the future. Two women. One young and fertile, the other old and believing herself barren, desperate for the young woman’s womb.

But it is withered Sarah’s son who will inherit his father’s kingdom. And beautiful Hagar will be left in the desert, her child an outcast.

Catherine likes to study Sarah’s face in the painting. What is the old woman thinking as she leads the beautiful slave to her husband’s bed? That youth and beauty do not last? That wisdom is a far better bet?

“Different parts of the body are more prone to certain diseases, Your Majesty,” Rogerson says. “Breasts and testicles are the seat of cancer. Legs carry our weight and are thus prone to bone and skin fatigue.”

He cannot hide his pleasure at the evidence that her leg is not improving. In two places, the skin between her toes has begun to blacken. So has the ball of her foot, after a pebble got into her shoe and she did not feel it. Her thickened, hard nails are now surrounded by a layer of yellowed skin, which Rogerson presses with his finger. There is a grimace of triumph on his face. Valuable time has been lost. Damage now has to be undone. Drastic measures must be considered.

“How drastic?” she asks.

“It is too early to say, Your Highness.”

“How drastic?” she repeats angrily. Why do people insist on hiding the truth from her?

“I might have to amputate the toe, madame,” Rogerson answers. “But only if it doesn’t improve,” he adds hastily.

The word
amputate
is terrifying. It conjures up the surgeon’s saw cutting through a living bone. Muscles sliced open with a lancet. Veins tied up and cauterized. There is searing pain and a fountain of blood. Soldiers who lose limbs at war are young and strong, but even Valerian, who wears his wooden leg like a badge of honor, wakes up at night screaming.

The doctor avoids blaming the Empress directly, but he cannot resist exposing Lambro-Cazzioni’s cure for what it is. Trickery. Unproven wishful thinking. A triumph of persuasion over knowledge and experience.

A quack, he implies, will remain a quack.

She lets her doctor lecture her, though her mind wanders from fear to resentment. Rogerson claims great authority, he uses Latin terms and fancy words, but under his care her legs didn’t fare any better.

“Perhaps it won’t have to come to that, Your Majesty,” Rogerson continues. “There is no point in fearing what is not here yet.”

Bleedings will have to resume, and purgings. The ulcers will have to be cauterized. She will also have to take five grains of James’s powder every morning, together with two grains of calomel.

“James’s powder?” she asks. “Don’t you always say that it is good for fevers?”

“And the rheumatic affliction,” Rogerson states, his voice firm, secure in his victory. “Because it contains antimony, madame, known to reduce inflammation of tissue.”

Catherine nods, resigned. The specter of an amputation is enough to make her agree to submit to Rogerson’s treatment. Vishka will be trusted with telling Lambro-Cazzioni not to come again in the mornings. A suitable gift should soften the Admiral’s disappointment. Something he can use at court gatherings, impress others with. A jeweled snuffbox with an appropriate naval scene? The victory at Chesme would be best. At least two dozen of them must still be available from the last shipment.

“As little walking as possible, madame,” he advises. “We don’t want unnecessary pressure on the bones and ligaments. And it’s best not to
dwell too much on the source of aggravation. The mind is a healer, but it can also irritate the noxious matter. Cheerful disposition is critical. Distractions do work.”

Rogerson, Vishka tells her, has rejected his cousin’s proposed purchase of an English estate because it was not grand enough.
In Russia
, he has written,
I have learned to aim higher
. Profits come not just from his hefty fees but also from selling his tonics.

“Countess Betskoy has left St. Petersburg. She will not attend her daughter’s coming-out ball,” he remarks, as he gathers his instruments.

Her legs, bound tight, seem even more lifeless. Her lips are parched in spite of all the water she has drunk. Why would she care about Countess Betskoy?

“Her goiter has grown considerably in the last months. It is now too big to be covered with ruffles and fichu.” Rogerson bows. “The Countess decided that the sight would endanger her daughter’s chances for a good marriage.”

The Empress doesn’t say anything.

Le Noiraud enters in his embroidered dressing gown, enveloped in the woody, earthy smell of expensive musk. He brings her a basket of fresh apples. An offering of the fall.

There is a frown on his high forehead. The beauty of his face softens her heart. He is still so young, so impossible to warn against the vagaries of fortune.

The apples he has brought her are red and shiny.

She won’t tell him that she still prefers cherries, won’t remind him how Potemkin always sent her a bowl of them. Not in the summer, when they were plentiful, but on the first day of the New Year, when he brought them at great expense from some southern orchard and rushed them to the capital in a heated carriage.

“Let me, Katinka,” Le Noiraud says. Slowly, with a silver pocketknife, he pares an apple in one continuous peel, until it falls softly on the carpet. A red ribbon he leaves for the servants to pick up.

She should chasten him. Tell him this is not the way to earn the servants’ loyalty, though he won’t understand her objections. He frowns
whenever she does anything out of such scruples. Lights her own fire in the morning, or inquires after the stoker’s children. Remembers names of her maids, their parents, their siblings. “Not that much of an effort,” she explained to him. “And it goes further than the most costly gift.”

Le Noiraud thinks such gestures charming, divinely good of her. But he doesn’t believe her calculations.

Now he cuts the peeled apple into two halves, removes the pits, and hands her one half. He makes a tired joke on how it should be her tempting him with an apple, but she smiles nevertheless. It pleases her to see him so lively.

“A man in London,” he tells her, “invented a machine not bigger than a toothpick case that is capable of destroying a whole building.”

“How?” she asks.

“Reduces it to ashes.”

“You speak in riddles, Platon. Who is making such a claim?”

“I don’t know his name,” he confesses. “But he is a famous inventor. I can find out if you wish me to.”

“It’s not that important.”

Le Noiraud gives her a pained look and turns his face away from her. It is a studied gesture, meant to be noticed.

“What is it?” she asks. “What have I said that has hurt you?”

“Nothing.”

She will have to pry it out of him, the price of whatever misdemeanor she has committed. He will deny a few times, then beg her pardon for being too forthright. The very thought of these rituals irks her. Why can’t people say what they mean? “I need to know what bothers you. Without it, how can I know what you really think?”

Le Noiraud confesses that it is the Admiral’s dismissal. Why did she have to send him away? Didn’t she say that the seawater baths were making her feel better? Why did she stop them? Is it because it was his sister’s idea?

“Who told you that?” she asks.

“My valet heard rumors.”

“Your valet needs to concentrate on the state of your wardrobe,” she retorts.

Catherine feels anger rise, a surge that quickens her heart, but just
then Le Noiraud falls to his knees. The Admiral is not that important. If he knew that his stupid cure wasn’t helping, he would have thrown him out of the palace himself. “On his face. Into the gutter,” he gushes.

“Make me useful, Katinka,” Le Noiraud blurts out. “Send me where I can do something that matters. You tell me I have talents. Abilities. What are my tasks, though? Such as anyone could accomplish! I’ll be twenty-nine soon. I want to prove how much I can do for you. Days drag so much when I find my occupations are mere trivial amusements.”

“Not quite that trivial,” she protests.

“You know what I mean. I know how to be helpful in small things. But this is not all I want.” She hears the rattle of self-pity in his voice.

“All right,” she says. “Prepare the betrothal contract. Negotiate the final wording of the clauses. Morkov will help you.”

“Is that all?” Le Noiraud asks sullenly. “Is this Bezborodko’s idea? Is this what he thinks I’m only good for?”

“No,” she says, still patient. “It’s mine. But I expect no apology. I like my apples too much to make you sulk.”

On his face, disappointment and amusement wrestle.

She takes the apple from his hand. She doesn’t want to hurt him. Or belittle him. She shouldn’t have mentioned Morkov. She should’ve let him choose his own advisers, but it is too late for that.

“I agree that it is not the most difficult of tasks,” she continues, watching the frown on Platon’s forehead deepen. She concedes that the conditions have been agreed upon in principle. But it is always the final wording of documents that is of the essence. This is what she entrusts him with.

Something in her words soothes him. He does not rise from his knees, but he does look up. His eyes brighten with some thought she will not inquire about. And then he buries his face in her lap. She can feel his hot breath penetrate through the dressing gown. He moves his head gently, nestling into her.

She lets him hold on to her, burrow deeper. Nothing inside her stirs in response. It is as if her blood stopped short of flowing into the extremities of her body.

“I always disappoint you, Katinka,” Le Noiraud murmurs.

“You don’t.”

He lifts his head. There is fear in his eyes. Fear she kisses away, until he smiles.

Only later, much later, when the apples are all eaten and they have watched the Neva from the palace window—the illuminated barges on which merry crowds explode with laughter and Gypsy songs—only then does she allow herself a few reminders:

“
Fortirer in re:
Give up no point. Accept no lessening of conditions until necessity forces you to. And even then, give in inch by inch, disputing them as you go on.

“But at the same time remember to gain his confidence.
Suaviter in modo
. Engage his heart. And when you have it, then impose on his understanding.

“Do not confuse your opponent with your enemy. Remember that the manner is as important as the matter.”

He listens.

He nods. He caresses her hand, kisses each finger, traces the palm of her hand with his lips.

He promises to remember each and every word of her advice.

And then he tells her that when the Swedish negotiations are over, he will conquer China for her. “I swear, Katinka. You’ll have real pagodas for your gardens. Trees you have not seen before in your whole life. Flowers that will astonish everyone who visits. Birds of unimaginable colors.”

She laughs. “How will you do all this?”

He will march an army through the interior of Russia. He has already charted the route, past the Ural Mountains. The Chinese will never expect an attack from the north. “Valerian agrees,” he says, and only when he brings up his brother’s name does it occur to her that this is not a lover’s teasing. Her beautiful Le Noiraud is deadly serious.

He wants to be like Potemkin. A Viceroy. A conqueror.

“If Valerian agrees,” she says, trying to suppress the slightest sign of laughter, “then I’ll consider it.”

This is when, for a brief unsettling moment, she feels as if an iron hoop has encircled her chest, making her fight for breath. A bright flash coming from somewhere inside her makes her eyes blink. Her lips quiver. There is a slight tingling in the tips of her right hand.

She forces herself to take a deeper breath. Then another.

It’s nothing
, she thinks.
It’ll go away
.

It does.

It is still hard to believe her eyes. Has Bezborodko opened his folder? Taken a sheet of paper from it? Could it be that time makes a dent even in his infallible memory?

She is going to jest about this, but something in his countenance stops her.

“These pages have been found hidden under a floorboard in Prince Adam’s room,” Bezborodko says. “I would like to read them to Your Majesty in their entirety.”

There have been moments in our past conversations when the Grand Duke stopped in mid-sentence and hesitated as if wishing to say something before changing his mind. There have been hints: “We are not always trusted, my dear Adam, we are being pushed where we do not wish to go.” Once, when we found ourselves ignorant of some aspect of the American principles of government, he exclaimed, “If only La Harpe were here, he would instruct us well! He knew how to inspire a young mind! We are blind like moles without him!” With tears in his eyes the Grand Duke confessed to me how much he missed his Swiss tutor. On another occasion, as we were watching the antics of kangaroos in the Tauride garden, the Grand Duke expressed a wish to buy a small estate, somewhere in Switzerland, where he could live with his wife as a private citizen and cultivate his garden. “For I have resolved to rid myself, in the future, of my burden,” he said
.

I didn’t say anything then
.

Ardent hope is not the best of advisers. My countrymen have learned this painful lesson well
.

Yesterday the Grand Duke wished to see me alone. “Let’s not waste such a gorgeous day sitting inside,” he said when I came to his room, proposing a stroll in the gardens
.

We walked briskly through the park, which, although rather small, has been cleverly designed in the English style with meandering paths, dense shrubbery, and unexpected clearings. When we were away from the palace his voice turned into an urgent whisper. “Please don’t stop, no matter what I say to you now. Please continue walking at the same pace, without looking at me more than you always do.
”