Empress of the Night (8 page)

Outside, in the garden, the sounds of pursuit. Meows followed by
barks, growls, a quavering howl. The guard dogs are chasing stray cats down the gravel paths. “Throw a bucket of water on that damn dog!” someone shouts.

This is the month of September. The time when the Empress—who calls herself a simple peasant girl at heart—likes to hear of the year’s abundant harvest. Haystacks fragrant with sweet meadow flowers. Cows fattened on summer grass, their udders swollen with warm milk. Birds flocking together, gathering on trees and fences, chattering away before they take off to warmer lands.

“Steady, Your Highness,” the midwife mutters, leading Catherine firmly by the elbow. Her growing belly has altered her balance. More than once she has tripped on a perfectly even floor.

The midwife—Elizabeth’s most vigilant spy—has guarded her from the time her menses stopped. Her shrill voice is spiked with constant warnings: “No necklaces, Your Highness, no beads, no raising your hands over your head … no sitting with your legs crossed …”

Month after month, Catherine obeyed, and the child grew and quickened and kicked inside her. Now, when her womb is about to release its prize, her hair has been combed and tucked inside a lace cap. The skin of her belly is sleek from goose fat, her bowels loose from rhubarb and prunes. It is only her trembling hands that betray her. Mother’s whisper echoes in her head:
You nearly killed me when you were born, Sophie. You ripped me open like a sackcloth
.

“It’ll be over soon enough!” The midwife is determined to soothe her, with lies if need be. The mother’s fear is dangerous. It can scar the child in the womb. Turn it into a monster.

By now, the Grand Duchess, the wife of the Crown Prince, knows loss and fear, humiliation and loneliness, and the long, dragging hours of boredom. She knows how it feels to believe that nothing will ever change. That all exits have been blocked, that no light will ever penetrate the darkness of one’s prison.

She also knows love. Love that makes her wake up at dawn with her lover’s name on her lips, her arms seeking his presence. Love that makes
her hungry, possessed. Love that prompts bold visions of imaginary escapes. In the one she evokes most often, Serge Saltykov climbs through the window and warns the midwife not to utter a word if she cares for her own life. “Come, Catherine, I’m taking you with me,” he says, arms outstretched. His beauty takes her breath away, the swirl of his black hair, the sparkle in his hooded eyes. An unmarked carriage, Serge says, is waiting at the entrance to the Summer Garden. They must be quick. A swift dash out of the city, a safe house where faithful servants await.

“This love is not good for you,” Varvara, who carries her own secrets, warns her. “Remember Serge Saltykov’s wife?”

Why dwell on what no longer matters? Catherine closes her eyes, smarting from candle smoke. The man who thinks of her safety and her comfort encircles her with his arms, she imagines. Kisses her and their newborn baby, whose soft whimperings melt her heart.

“Steady, Your Highness. This way.” The midwife’s voice interrupts these thoughts.

A mattress is on the floor. “Horsehair.” The midwife clucks her tongue approvingly. “The best. Won’t ever get damp. Or infested with bugs.”

Scents of rosemary and lavender waft by. Mixed with the heavy perfume of someone who has been in this room recently. The Empress herself? The Empress, who, having blessed her in front of the whole court, breathed a warning into her ear: “Hurry up, now, Catherine. Don’t keep me waiting all night.”

How does one hurry the time like this?

Her eyes slide over the table by the window, fresh swaddling cloths rolled up in a wicker basket. Bleached white in the sun. Towels, sheets. Soft, too, Varvara has assured her, before vanishing into darkness. Well worn out, freshly laundered.

It is in Varvara’s hands that she has placed a letter to her mother.
If you read these words, Mother, I’m no longer among the living
. A plea for forgiveness for any wrongs committed. A bequest of a few trinkets she can call her own.

From behind the thin walls voices seep, hushed, muted. Murmurs of prayers, of questions asked, answered, or ignored. Gasps of bewilderment at something said or implied. The Empress is there, with all her
ladies-in-waiting. Elizabeth of All the Russias, who still cannot decide if, by fetching the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst to marry her nephew, she has made a good bargain.

Her belly, big and bulging, is weighing her down. The child inside kicks. Sometimes a tiny foot or an elbow pushes against her skin.

“The blessed child is ready for this world, Your Highness,” the midwife mutters, when another sharp pang makes her moan. She needs the midwife’s hands to steady her as she lowers herself on to the horsehair mattress. They are the strong, capable hands of a woman who has eased many labors.

A deep breath. Then another, although she has heard that St. Petersburg air, thick with the vapors from the canals, is not healthy for the lungs.

A child, awaited for so long. Her payment to the Empress. Her ransom from the Empress.
A son
, Catherine prays.
Please, let it be a son
.

She hasn’t seen her lover for four weeks now. There have been no letters, but she hadn’t expected any. Serge Saltykov is not much of a writer. But still, she has been hoping for something. A flower, a book, a ribbon any serf girl might get from her beloved at a village fair. It’s his child she is carrying, after all. It’s his child that can kill her.

Her body longs for the caresses that would wash away the clammy touch of her husband’s hands. Peter’s heavings, his sweaty body reeking of nights spent in drink. It takes a moment, a mere flicker of time, to recall Serge’s voice: “You are unlike anyone I’ve ever known, Catherine.” To dismiss Varvara’s warnings: “He’s a philanderer. A seducer. Take your pleasure and the child Serge can give you. And then run.”

Fear is poison. It can undo a man. Or a woman. It is best to trample fear like grass fire, before it spreads.

On that long night, pain measures out time. Pain the midwife assesses like a shrewd shopkeeper. Good enough. Better. Excellent.

What does Catherine think of this child, which is still part of her? For nine months, she has tried to predict its nature. A strong kicker, a fighter.
A child mindful of its mother’s moods. If she is frightened, it freezes inside her. If she is happy, it melts and blends with her. If she forgets its presence, it moves to remind her that she is no longer alone.

If it’s a boy she wants him to resemble Serge, with his sharp, dark eyes and lithe body, graceful, and so pleasing to a woman’s eye. And her father, too. With his keen mind and the steady steps of an upright soldier prince.

If it’s a girl …

No, it cannot be a girl
. Her spies have already seen the imperial purchases. Not just sable and ermine for the cradle and silk coverlets, but a rattle with an ivory handle carved in the shape of a sword. And a tiny uniform of the Palace Guards. With red facings on the green cloth.

“Once this egg is hatched,” the Empress says meaningfully, and grins. Varvara, who comes every day with news from the imperial inner rooms, describes how Elizabeth insists on choosing the wet nurses herself. Village girls who have just given birth expose their breasts so that their
matushka
can inspect them for blemishes, pinch the nipples to check the flow of milk. “I haven’t seen the Empress that happy in months,” Varvara tells Catherine.

The body will remember the pain of the child inching its way out, toward the light. The slow tearing of muscles and skin. The cheeks burning, the pearls of sweat gathering on the forehead. Hair wet and tangled, teeth chattering from strain and fear. Legs trembling as if she has just climbed a mountain and must still keep on climbing.

And all the time, pictures flutter in her head: Peter, the future Tsar of Russia, her husband, is grinning. He has just sentenced a rat to death by hanging. “Why, Catherine? Because the vermin has dared to chew at my soldiers’ limbs.” Serge’s eyes slide off her unseeing. Why? Because he is chasing another woman, one who has not yet yielded to him.

From all these thoughts, the midwife’s sharp cries pull her back. “Push, push … keep pushing. Harder.” A slap on her face retrieves her from the soft, dark dream into which she’s sinking. “
Now
, Your Highness! One more time!” Until something sleek and oily pops out between her legs. A bundle of flesh. Her child. Her baby. Choking, crying, for this
must be a cry, this tiny jangled sound, a chime of such crystal clarity that her skin tingles. With longing. With love.

Catherine’s eyes sting with joyful tears.

“The egg has hatched!”

The Empress, wrapped in a blue satin cape, bends over the swaddled baby. Elizabeth is a big roosting hen, cackling, clucking her tongue. “My own blessed prince, my hawk, my treasure.”

Priceless … God-given.

The courtiers crowd around on tiptoes, peering for a better view. Intent on milking this momentous time for all it’s worth. They have dragged with them the whiff of the court, that unmistakable mélange of perfume, wood smoke, melted candle wax, and a discernible hint of excrement. It has been a long vigil.

For this moment they have abandoned slander. They gasp in admiration, shake their heads in awe. A prince is born. Russia’s new heir. Russia’s hope. The world has just become a better place.

Only the Grand Duchess of Russia lies forgotten.

It might be just as well, for Catherine detests pity. And false grins that try to pass for smiles.
Out
, she thinks.
All of you!

The Grand Duchess lies on the mattress with sheets crumpled and drenched with her blood, her insides torn and empty. Left in this drafty room of the Summer Palace, where in a dreamlike trance she perceives her own brother, long dead, pointing his thin, crooked finger at her. Crying: “Mother, come here. Sophie is making faces at me!”

Sophie, the Stubborn Child who never listens to her mother, who shall be buried alive, her hand popping out of her fresh grave. Sophie, whose arms and scalp were covered with scabs, whose bones threatened to bend out of shape.

Outside, in the corridor, voices, thumps, scrapes. “Growling bear,” someone says. “Sad destiny,” another voice adds. Is it her baby they are talking about? Or her?

And then she hears: “You are alive, Your Highness. I am here. And you have a son.”

It’s Varvara, her spy in Elizabeth’s bedroom. A crisp white bonnet covers her hair, making her look nun-like. Her chatter never stops, as if her words were a lifeline for a drowning woman. “When my Darya, my daughter, was born … when the midwife left … when I got over the fever … the first weeks are the hardest …”

Varvara’s hands are soft, capable as she wipes away the sweat and blood. Folds the soiled sheets. Fetches a glass of cold raspberry kvass. If only Varvara’s voice stopped wrapping itself around her, sneaking into the smallest of openings. Evoking images she doesn’t need. Of a happy mother in a quilted dressing gown, in bearskin slippers. Her arms cradling her baby daughter. Her lips brushing her daughter’s silky cheeks.

“Where has she taken my son, Varenka?”

“Into her own bedroom. He is safe there. She named him Paul. Paul Petrovich.”

“How does he look?”

“He is beautiful.”

What Varvara says is vague and trite and not very useful. Paul Petrovich is beautiful because he has beautiful fingers, tapered at the end, and a tiny tuft of hair. Paul is beautiful because he has a beautiful smile. “Please don’t cry,” Varvara pleads. “Please … It’s all over now.”

It’s not all over. It’s not right. It’ll never be. Somewhere behind these walls a tiny child cries, his lips searching for her in vain. A baby born to a world in which his mother is forbidden to touch him, to rock him in her arms, to kiss his tears away.

Even a cow is allowed to lick her newborn calf. Smell its skin, its breath.

Is a Russian Grand Duchess a lesser being than a cow?

“Shh … you have to stop crying … someone might hear you. You don’t want the Empress to think you don’t trust her. That she cannot take care of your child.”

A heart can take only so much hardening before it breaks.

“Listen to me, Varenka! Stop talking and just listen.

“I want her dead! I want to see her fight for her last breath. I want to watch her die. Alone.

“I will say what I want. I don’t care who is listening!”

There is fear on Varvara’s face. Her eyes dart sideways. Her left cheek twitches. She shakes her head, claps her hand over her mouth. “Shh,” she whispers. “It’s just your pain speaking. It’s not you. Shh.”

Some lessons Catherine has failed to understand. Why? Because she was harboring illusions. She flattered herself. Refused to consider the evidence of her own eyes. Assumed that in the empire of love, some things are sacred.

Serge said, “There is no world without you,” and she believed him.

Serge said, “I’ve given you a son. I’ve made you safe, but now I have to stay away. It hurts me more than it hurts you,” and she believed him.