Empress of the Night (51 page)

When their eyes meet, there is a beckoning flicker of a fan. Not yet a sign, but enough of an encouragement to resume the game.

Now!

She stands up and approaches the dancers, making sure she is not too close to the Tartar eyes. When offered a questioning look, she pretends not to see it. But when D leaves the ballroom, she follows. Past the Guards standing at attention. Past the refreshment table, from which D picks up a pineapple slice and eats it greedily, letting juice drip down her chin.

Back to the ballroom.

You’ve stopped. You are waiting for me, but I won’t come too close
.

Now it is the Princess who cannot stay away. She maneuvers herself closer and closer, until they find themselves side by side, as if by accident.

She keeps her silence until, defeated, D turns to her, cheeks flushed, pupils wide. “Mask, can you dance?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s dance, then, shall we?”

The dance is a polonaise, slow and stately. Time lingers. The tips of gloved fingers can be gently pressed. An arm brushed in silence.

Imagine what I’m thinking. Imagine what I’ll tell you. Imagine what I’ll do
.

When the dance is over, D stops and hesitates. There is time to pull the top of her silk glove and kiss her white palm. There is time to mutter in a low, sultry voice: “What a happy man I am. You’ve granted me the honor of giving me your hand. Now I’m beside myself with joy.”

A mistake.

The hand is withdrawn. The fan, swanskin with peacock feathers, drops to the floor.

“But you are too sure of yourself, Mask. Have you forgotten that I do not know you at all?”

There is not time to answer, for D is gone.

Is everything lost? But why leave with such haste, then? And why drop your fan? To test my resolve? Or to make sure I follow?

“One word, Princess, I beg you!” The palace corridor is empty but for the maids who wait for their mistresses, pelisses in hand. “Please. Have mercy on my heart.”

“I still do not know who you are, Mask.”

Still?

Have you been making inquiries, then?

“I’m your humble servant. Try me out, and you will see how well I’ll serve you.”

“You are gracious and your voice is pleasant, Mask.”

“All this is a tribute to your beauty.”

“Do you really think me beautiful?”

“Unequaled!”

“Please say who you are!”

“I’m yours.”

“That is all very well, but what is your name?”

“I love and adore you. Show me that you care for me, and I’ll tell you my name.”

“Isn’t that asking far too much?”

But desire, once stirred, is too hard to resist. There are too many empty rooms in the palace, too many passages leading to hidden alcoves. In the darkness of the night, caresses need no names, no pedigree.

There is pleasure in hearing gasps of surrender. There is pleasure in feeling the quiver of a woman’s wet softness. There is pleasure in leaving her languid, spent, not knowing who has touched her.

Forever bewildered, forever puzzled.

Forever mine
.

2:05
A.M
.

A cool scented cloth touches her skin, mopping up sweat. Queenie’s hands tremble.

“A few more hours at the most, Your Imperial Highness,” a man’s cringing voice mutters. “Her Majesty is not suffering. We should be thankful for that.”

“Leave,” her son orders. “All of you.”

Footsteps scurry, fade away.

Her son’s eyes scrutinize her face, her bulging belly underneath the coverlet. His nose sniffs out her smell. Of urine and bile.

There is a pillow right beside her. Soft, pliant. It will take one push only. No one will see it. She cannot defend herself. Her body is useless. Her hands lie lifeless on the bed. Even if she managed to scream, it would be like screaming inside a vacuum tube.

Her son leans over her, and she can see his tobacco-blackened teeth.

Now?

Her heart beats wildly. Warm waves of urine sink into the mattress.

Now?

Her son licks his lips. He clears his throat.

“You’ve sinned, Mother,” he says, then straightens up.

Relief washes over her. He will not kill her. He won’t dare.

“God will punish you for what you have done … no woman will ever rule Russia again … I swear.”

Her son is speaking fast. His voice is shaking. In phrases he must have rehearsed over and over again, he accuses her of “usurping the crown” that was rightfully his, of “defiling her august position,” of “bringing shame on Russia” by her immoral conduct, of “pilfering the coffers of the state” to pay for her sinful pleasures. But his list of grievances is too long to be contained by the rehearsed words. The stiff phrases recede, give way to broken chunks of resentment. “You spied on my every move … You laughed at me behind my back … You let your lovers humiliate me … If I made a friend, you dismissed him … You didn’t let me fight in the war … You took my sons away from me …”

Go back to Gatchina, Paul. Lord it over your troops. There is nothing for you here
.

“Does the Empress of Russia have anything to say in her defense?” Paul asks in a loud voice he must consider solemn. His head jerks; his lips twitch.

You gave me my grandchildren. The only good that ever came from you. Alexander will rule Russia when I’m gone. You would’ve been a tyrant. Just like the man who called himself your father
.

He turns to someone behind the screen, a seated shadow. “No answer,” he says in that same affected tone.

Her eyes squeeze shut, blotting out her son’s presence, but she cannot silence his voice. “Write that the Empress has nothing to say to her son’s accusations.”

Behind the screen, a quill scratches over paper.

3:10
A.M
.

The light is dimming. Someone is taking the light away from her.

They are here in this room. They are gaping at her, peeping through the spying holes, two-way mirrors. Listening to the rhythm of her broken breaths. They want her alone. In the dark. At their mercy.

Her ill-wishers. Her defamers.

It is their hunger she fears.

They want to take all she has. They want the bed she lies on, the damask chairs, the gold cloth. They want her coffers, her paintings, her medals, her vases and urns, her dinnerware. They want her soft wool carpets, crystal chandeliers, bone-and-tortoiseshell-framed mirrors.

Her cameos.

Her china.

Her ostrich-feather fans, the rubies from her crown.

They want everything she has touched.

Greedy, sweaty hands. Grimy fingers. Grasping, clawing. Their eyes are as ravenous as their bellies. They wait for the moment when she is not looking.

They have sharpened their scythes and butcher knives on a whetstone. They imagine slashing her throat. Or plunging a knife inside her chest, right into her beating heart. Making her bleed like a slaughtered sow. Bayoneting the children, one after another.

Stop them
, she hears Potemkin’s voice warn from somewhere far away.
Now, Katinka. While there is still time
.

3:30
A.M
.

What happened yesterday?

Before the pain. Before the fall
.

Yesterday, the chill woke her up. It had settled in her bones, made them ache. The night must have been bitterly cold. Queenie, always weary of such wintry days, made her put on her thick quilted dressing gown trimmed with silver fox.

Someone came to see me
.

Le Noiraud!

What did he want?

Her lover is propped on his elbow, smiling at her. His hand moves playfully over the sheet, fingers curling and uncurling like a cat’s paw. When he dips his head, a raven-black lock tumbles over his brow. He always brushes it back with impatience.

His hair is soft and yet thick. Luscious.

He picks at something on the sheet, as if it were a scab over a closed wound. She takes his head in her hands and presses his face to her breast. He wriggles and then softens in her grip, kissing her exposed skin. He talks of battles and sieges, of fortresses yielding their treasures. “Why won’t you let me fight?” he asks, his voice muffled against her breast. “You always let
him
do what he wants.”

Him. Grishenka
.

Can’t you see that?

When he leaves, she buries her face in the warm spot among the sheets, moist and musty, where he had lain. Empty now, cooling, stiffening from his absence.

3:32
A.M
.

“Platon Alexandrovich is waiting outside. Shall I let him in?”

“Let him wait,” Queenie mutters. “What good can he do now?”

Queenie’s muttering is tinged with dark glee. The joy of seeing the once mighty fall.

Platon’s face is gray. He sinks onto her bed, the very edge of it, on his knees. He must have had a nosebleed, for a red smudge of dry blood is still visible on his upper lip.

And yet even in his misery, his patrician elegance has not abandoned him. The Roman nose, the unblemished skin, as if chiseled out of the best Carrara marble.

Her smooth-faced Platon knows what is said of him.

Fear has settled in his black eyes, in his clasped hands. Fear and grief for what he has lost.

Catherine thinks of him cast out of the palace. Chased away into the empty streets, where rats on the prowl scurry. Running past houses shut for the night, their foundations crumbling.

Peter the Great’s city has been built on shaky wooden poles, hammered into the marshes. If it is not constantly tended, it will collapse, slide back into the mud.

“Forgive me, Katinka,” Platon sobs. “I’ve failed you, but please forgive me.”

The candlelight shines on his beautiful face.

He casts a shadow; therefore, he is real.

8:15
A.M
.

Borders shift, vanish, or arise where they have never existed before.

Her heart pounds like a giant bell.

Queenie only stares at her with terror. Vishka, always practical, hating to waste even a sliver of time, straightens the frills on her pillows.

Is she still in Tsarskoye Selo, on her green ottoman? In the Gallery, overlooking the hanging gardens?

Someone is singing, in German.

Ach du lieber Augustine, Augustine
 …

She never could sing.

Notes make no sense to her ears. “It’s like a screech of chalk on glass,” Potemkin says, trying to describe to her what it means to hear a false note. “How can you not hear it?”

I don’t know
.

“So you, too, are not perfect after all,” Peter sneers.

The singing fades and now her heels stomp the marble floors. Each step is easy, strong, clear from pain.

Floor-to-ceiling mirrors line the corridors of the Winter Palace, the profusion of reflected light shimmering like a glossy shield. This is how Empress Elizabeth once hoped to deter death. But in Russia, Death is a crafty old woman who cannot be frightened away.