Great Catherine (25 page)

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Peter might choose that time, when she was at her weakest, to declare her an adulteress and order her removed to a convent.

It was in the fall of 1757, Catherine wrote in her memoirs, when the empress was bedridden in the aftermath of her stroke, that she began clearly to perceive her choices for the future. Peter was angry at her during October and November, for her increasing heaviness made it difficult for her to preside at public functions—which meant that he was pestered by the court officials to do the honors. He disliked having his desires thwarted; when he was preoccupied with arranging his private arsenal or drinking with his mistress he hated having to be interrupted to do something else. Catherine saw him, and her own situation, through new eyes in those tense months.

"Three routes, all of them equally dangerous, lay open to me," she wrote. "First, I could share His Imperial Majesty's fortunes, whatever they might prove to be. Second, I could make myself vulnerable to whatever fate it pleased him to accord to me. Third, I could chart my own course, no matter what happened. Put more clearly, I could perish with him, or at his command, or else save myself, my children and perhaps the state from the shipwreck which threatened."

Only the third course made sense, though it took all of Catherine's vaunted daring to adhere to it. She resolved, in the final months of her pregnancy, to continue to advise Peter on those increasingly rare occasions when he came to her, but not to offer any views which might offend him, and for the most part to wrap herself in what she called "a doleful silence" and look out for her own interests and those of her children as best she could.

During the night of December 8 Catherine's labor pains began. She sent Madame Wladislava to announce the fact to Peter and, through Alexander Shuvalov, to the empress. The midwives assembled and the "bed of misery" was prepared. After several hours, with Catherine suffering intense but infrequent contractions, Peter entered the birth chamber.

He was in full battle dress, wearing his Holstein uniform,

booted and spurred and with a sash across his thin chest holding his gleaming medals. An immense sword hung at his waist.

Astonished at his appearance, Catherine forgot her pains and asked her husband why he had gone to such trouble with his toilette at two-thirty in the morning.

"Only in times of need do we know our true friends," he answered in a dull monotone. "In this uniform I am ready to do my duty, and the duty of a Holstein officer is to obey his oath and defend the ducal house against all its enemies. As you are ill, I have come to offer you my aid."

Catherine had to look twice to make certain Peter was not speaking in jest. He was a pathetically comic figure, standing there in his polished boots, his long sword at the ready, amid the heaped towels and steaming bowls of the birth chamber. Then Catherine saw his glazed eyes, and realized that he was so drunk he could barely stand. She urged him to go away and lie down, lest the empress see him and be offended both by his uniform— Elizabeth detested the sight of the Holstein uniform—and by his drunkenness. He was reluctant to go, but with the help of Madame Wladislava and the midwife, who assured Peter that his wife would not give birth for several hours at least, Catherine finally persuaded him to leave.

Soon afterwards the empress arrived, and demanded to know why her nephew was not present at his wife's bedside. She was placated with lies and, after satisfying herself that the birth was not imminent, she too left.

Exhausted, her pains subsiding, Catherine managed to sleep until the following morning, when she got up and dressed as usual. Apart from an occasional twinge, she felt well, and decided that the previous night's episode had been false labor. She ate a hearty dinner, and the midwife, sitting beside her as she ate, urged her to eat still more, saying it would do her good. Then, just as she rose from the table, a new and terrible pain gripped her and she screamed. At once the midwife and Madame Wladislava seized her arms and took her back to the birth chamber, and Peter

and the empress were summoned once more. Within a very short time Catherine was delivered of a daughter, and the empress, who barely managed to arrive in time to witness the birth, was informed that the baby was a girl.

Catherine asked to be allowed to give the baby the empress's name, but Elizabeth refused. She had already decided on a name: Anna Petrovna, after her own late sister, Peter's mother. So Anna Petrovna it was. Catherine barely had time to glimpse her daughter before she was snatched up and installed in the empress's apartments, along with little Paul.

Once again, in the aftermath of her delivery, Catherine was ignored and neglected. The empress gave orders that no one was to go near her. Madame Wladislava waited on her, but no one else came to inquire after her welfare or to congratulate her. "I was abandoned, left all alone like some poor wretch," Catherine wrote. "As before, I suffered a great deal from that abandonment." This time, however, she had taken precautions to remove herself from drafts and had arranged her bedchamber so that she had a great deal of privacy.

After a few weeks she discovered a way to circumvent the empress's ban on visitors and entertain her preferred companions—Poniatowski and several of her ladies—by concealing them behind a screen. When Peter Shuvalov, whom Catherine called "the court oracle," came in to spy on the grand duchess, he found her alone. (Her friends, holding their breaths and smothering their giggles, stayed hidden and afterwards laughed uproariously at how they had fooled the wisest man at the court.) With her pronounced taste for intrigue and adventure, Catherine loved these clandestine parties, yet at the same time she felt left out, knowing that, night after night, balls and feasts were being held to celebrate tiny Anna Petrovna's birth and she was not able to attend them. Peter and his mistress were prominent among the revelers, however, and Peter had an additional cause to celebrate; the empress sent him a gift of sixty thousand rubles—the same amount she sent to the new mother.

Now Catherine was the mother of two children whom she never saw. She seems to have accepted this unnatural and no doubt saddening situation as part of the high cost of her lofty position. One day, if the succession went as she hoped it would, her son would rule Russia; her daughter would enjoy a destiny nearly as exalted. Safe under the empress's care, the children were protected; should Catherine herself suffer disgrace, they would not be tarnished by it. That knowledge must have given her some comfort as the winter days wore on and she began once more to feel the noose of conspiracy tightening around her.

In February o£ 1758 a tremor shook the court. Chancellor Bestuzhev was placed under arrest, along with three others closely connected to him and to Catherine—the jeweler Bernardi, who had carried secret messages for Catherine and was privy to her political dealings, Ivan Elagin, a friend of Poniatowski's and a staunch supporter of Catherine's who believed that she and not her husband should succeed Elizabeth, and Vasily Adadurov, Catherine's former Russian tutor and for several years a close confidant of the chancellor. Bestuzhev's arrest was secret, but Poniatowski learned of it and managed to warn Catherine.

She knew at once that she was in great danger. Not only had she carried on a secret correspondence with Bestuzhev, but they had discussed at length the question of the succession—perfectly understandable in the circumstances yet treasonable nonetheless. Bestuzhev had sketched out an ambitious plan under which, when the empress died, Catherine would rule with the chancellor himself as her chief mainstay, holding most of the principal government offices. Catherine had not given her approval of this plan— in fact she had disapproved of it, showing more circumspection and caution than the aging chancellor. Still, the very existence of a secret correspondence between the grand duchess and Bestuzhev gave grounds for her arrest.

Fortunately for Catherine, the chancellor had burned his papers before Alexander Shuvalov and his army of agents and informants had time to find them. Catherine too burned her correspondence,

but she knew that simply destroying all evidence of secret dealings with Bestuzhev would not be sufficient to save her. Bernardi, Elagin and Adadurov were banished from court, Bestuzhev was divested of his offices and honors and handed over to a special commission of inquiry.

In April Catherine was summoned to the empress's apartments. She had been expecting, and no doubt dreading, this moment for weeks. She had already begun to feel the empress's cold hand reaching out toward her. Alexander Shuvalov appeared one morning at the door of Catherine's apartments and took away with him Madame Wladislava, Catherine's servant of long standing. She wept so bitterly at the loss of this trusted intimate that she melted the ferocious Shuvalov's heart, and he, in tears, assured her that the empress would speak to her about the matter herself. Catherine felt compelled to warn her other servants that they too might find themselves in peril, and became so agitated that she could do nothing but pace back and forth, unable to eat or sleep.

Catherine's interview with the empress took place after midnight. Alexander Shuvalov came to escort her through the torchlit corridors to the antechambers of the imperial apartments. Just as they reached the door of the gallery, Catherine saw Peter entering the empress's suite by another door. She had not seen him for a long time; like most of the other courtiers, he had been avoiding any contact with her—a sure indication, she thought, that she was under suspicion and at risk of arrest. She could only imagine what role he might play in determining her future fate. He wanted her out of the way, so that he could marry Elizabeth Vorontzov. Of that she had no doubt. He was full of long-held grievances and resentments. He would say anything to be rid of her.

Desperate to circumvent him, and in anguish, as soon as Catherine saw the aged empress she threw herself at her feet and begged her with tearful urgency to send her home to her relatives.

Elizabeth, disarmed by Catherine's capitulation, urged her to get up but she remained where she was, abasing herself before the empress like a repentant child.

"How can I send you back?" Elizabeth asked her, tears now standing in her own eyes. "Remember, you have children."

"My children are in your hands and could not be better cared for," Catherine replied. "I hope you will not abandon them."

"But how could I explain sending you away?"

"Your Imperial Majesty will simply explain, if you think it appropriate, that I have disgraced myself in your eyes and brought upon myself the hatred of the grand duke."

So far Peter had said nothing. Both he and Alexander Shuvalov continued to be silent as the conversation between the two women continued. There was no one else in the large room, though Catherine thought other witnesses might be hidden behind some screens that shielded the tall windows.

The empress insisted that Catherine get up and face her.

"God alone knows," Elizabeth said, "how I cried when you first arrived here and fell deathly ill. If I hadn't loved you, I never would have kept you here."

Catherine thanked her for all she had done for her. She would never forget her goodness, she said, and would always consider it her greatest tragedy that she had incurred the empress's disgrace.

But Elizabeth was no longer to be placated. Her eyes were dry as she accused Catherine of overweening pride, of imagining herself cleverer than everyone else.

"If I believed myself clever," Catherine retorted, "nothing could more strongly convince me otherwise than the state in which I find myself at present—this very conversation, in fact."

Peter began whispering to Shuvalov. Presently the empress joined their private conversation, adding her whispers to theirs. Catherine couldn't hear much of what they were saying, as they were a long way from her and the room was very large. She did, however, distinctly hear Peter say "She is dreadfully ill-natured, and terribly obstinate."

"If you are referring to me," Catherine replied, addressing Peter, "I am quite comfortable stating in Her Imperial Majesty's presence that in fact I am ill-natured toward those who advise you

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to act unjustly, and that I have become obstinate since I observed that my being agreeable brought me nothing but your hostility."

"There," Peter cried, "you see for yourself how ill-natured she is. She admits it."

The verbal sparring continued, but gradually Catherine came to be aware that Elizabeth's attitude was softening. Peter, however, was more alienated than ever when he discovered that, in an earlier conversation with the empress, Catherine had blackened his beloved Brockdorff. Other accusations were made.

'You have meddled in many things which have nothing to do with you," the empress said, coming close to Catherine. "I wouldn't have dared to do such things in the Empress Anna's time." She pointed to several letters in a large gold basin, and accused Catherine of having written to Marshal Apraxin—who had become one of Catherine's supporters—while he was leading the army the previous year. The grand duchess denied having done anything disloyal. She wrote to Apraxin solely because she was fond of him and took an interest in his well being. Besides, she added, one of the letters wished him a happy New Year and the other congratulated him on the birth of his son.

"Bestuzhev says that there were many others," Elizabeth said menacingly.

"If Bestuzhev says that, then he lies."

"Well then, since he lies about you, I'll have to have him tortured."

Catherine knew that Elizabeth was hoping to shock her, but she remained impassive. For an hour and a half the accusations flew, and Catherine parried them. The empress, wide awake, her physical symptoms in abeyance, hammered away at Catherine. She entered and left the room several times, now addressing Catherine, now Peter, and even more often conferring with Alexander Shuvalov. Peter and Shuvalov kept up a running conversation, most of which Catherine could not hear.

Peter, growing more and more rancorous, was quite carried away. In frequent angry outbursts he did his best to rouse the