Rebel Princess (31 page)

There they took away his uniform and Panin, who had advised his death, had a last interview with his former Czar. In later years the count was to recall that day with horror, and the spectacle of Peter as the most pitiable of his life. He, the least sentimental of men, shrank from the visible evidence of grandeur fallen to such depths.

By five o'clock that afternoon a heavily shuttered carriage swept out of the drive and sped away from Peterhof. An escort of soldiers galloped alongside. By a window in the palace Catherine Alexeievna watched it go.

“Apartments are being made ready for the former Emperor in the Schüsselburg,” Panin reported conversationally.

The Empress and her army had returned to St. Petersburg after a triumphal march through the city, and she was now in residence at the Winter Palace. Panin had watched her and waited for a private audience. There was something weighing on her, despite her outward show of gaiety.

The fate of Peter Feodorovitch could not be deferred much longer, and had it been any other woman, Panin would have deplored the laxity which lodged such a dangerous prisoner in a mere fortified house like Ropscha instead of burying him in a dungeon at the Schüsselburg.

But the Empress procrastinated and hedged, saying openly that she had no wish to make her husband's lot more miserable then she could help, and that his prison must be fitted comfortably for his needs. Curiously, Panin believed her as devoid of spite as she appeared, but then malice or deliberate cruelty were not among her faults.

One thing alone belied this gentle attitude, and that was the refusal of Peter's last pathetic request for the company of Elizabeth Vorontzov in his banishment. Panin did not believe his royal mistress to be impelled by jealousy, and this single inconsistent act had roused his most acute suspicions. Now he had learned something which had just confirmed them and brought him hurrying to Catherine's private rooms.

The Empress had sent Alexis Orlov to Ropscha as one of Peter's guards.…

Catherine Alexeievna was seated at her desk. Panin noted that her usual brilliant complexion was extremely pale and that she played nervously with a quill pen. She regarded him with eyes dark-ringed with strain and for a moment did not speak. The count continued to watch her, a little careless smile on his fat face.

Suddenly the Empress rose and came round her desk towards him. She held a torn sheet of paper in her hand.

“My good friend. Support me in this dreadful hour! This confession has just reached me!” Panin took the parchment and began to read.

“Christus!” he said slowly. “Is it possible?”

Catherine retrieved the paper and began folding it into thin squares. Her hands trembled slightly.

“It is true. I know it is true. He says he killed him in a quarrel. He says that they were playing cards with Peter and that the Czar accused him of cheating. He says that it was done before he realized.… Tell me, Nikita, in God's name what am I to do?”

Panin eyed her narrowly; suddenly she made his flesh creep with fear.

“You can punish Alexis Orlov,” he said slowly. “You can execute him for the crime of strangling the former Czar.…”

Catherine glared at him in desperation. “That is impossible! I owe everything to him and his brother Gregory. Do you suppose that I dare act against them! I tell you there is nothing I can do. It is abominable! It is a dreadful crime! But as I value my throne and my own life, I dare not punish it. There is no course open to me but to forgive.”

“Then I counsel you to do so privately, for whatever bonds exist between you and these Orlovs, the world will not acknowledge them strong enough to protect your husband's murderer. Keep this news secret, and by tomorrow I will have a ukase issued from the Senate. We can say Peter Feodorovitch died a natural death.”

That evening the court was received by the Empress as usual, and Catherine danced a minuet with Gregory Orlov before the gaze of an admiring and indulgent crowd, while the Princess Dashkov watched with jealous, uncomprehending eyes these marks of continuous favor by her mistress towards an uncultured boor of lowly ancestry.

All who had witnessed Catherine on that evening agreed later that she had never looked more beautiful or shown greater animation.

Only Panin left the ballroom early, to lie in his bed and ponder the enigma of his sovereign's innocence or guilt.

The following day St. Petersburg received the news of Peter Feodorovitch's death from an attack of hemorrhoidal colic.

In the Czarina's bedroom in the Kremlin all was very quiet. Throughout the day those servants who were not employed in decorating and preparing the palace had been able to witness a magnificent spectacle, enacted not once but several times, as the rehearsal of the Empress's coronation was repeated for Her Majesty's satisfaction.

She had spent hour upon hour, weighed down by her heavy robes and immense yellow embroidered cloak, walking under the great canopy, taking measured steps in time to the fanfares and music which had reverberated throughout the ancient halls and galleries of the Old Palace.

In this, as in the smallest detail connected with her realm, only perfection satisfied her.

Now the day was over, the evening's banquet ended and Catherine Alexeievna had retired to her room.

The Kremlin state-rooms were small compared with the vast imperial palaces of later design, and the building gloomy despite its ornate magnificence.

The walls of Catherine's bedchamber were very old; they were frescoed in a religious design, and the dim faces of anguished Byzantine saints regarded the Czarina in her beautiful bed. The bed curtains were drawn and a fire burned in one corner of the room, casting a flickering red light over the furniture, gleaming on gold and inlay, the work of long dead hands, the treasures of ancient Muscovy Czars.

Here the women of the Tartar lords had passed their time in strict seclusion; Ivan the Terrible had paced this floor, leaning upon his murderous spiked staff.…

Catherine Alexeievna lay upon her back, her eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling. She stretched slowly, clasping her hands behind her head. That night, for the first time since her accession, the private door leading to her room would not open to admit Gregory Orlov. This night, he, the insatiable lover, whose passion for his mistress assumed aspects of terrifying jealousy, had been forbidden to disburb her, and none but a humble lackey snored on the threshold of her door.

Tomorrow she would made the state journey down the Beautiful Staircase, so aptly named, dressed in her gorgeous robes, and then to the Cathedral of the Assumption where every sovereign of Russia had been crowned since Ivan the Third.

There the magnificent crown of diamonds, specially made to her requirements, would be placed upon her head, and her brow anointed with the consecrated oil. There she would receive the outward signs of an authority already firmly in her grasp, and on this, the eve of her greatest public triumph, Catherine had not wanted Gregory. She had not wanted anyone, neither for companionship nor for love.

Catherine Alexeievna lay awake, watching the firelight playing on the walls, looking back over the past.

A procession of images flitted before her eyes.… Her father and mother, the one dead many years, the other an exile in Paris, living in luxury at the expense of the French king; Elizabeth Petrovna in the flush of youth and beauty, receiving the blushing Princess Augusta of Zerbst, and again Elizabeth, ageing and sick, bedaubed with paint and glittering with jewel's, advising her nephew's wife to take the throne. Peter Feodorovitch.…

Quickly Catherine closed her eyes, as if to preserve her sight from a fearful vision, the vision of Alexis Orlov's terrible muscular hands.

Bestujev had returned to court, promptly released from his Siberian prison, but of all the honors she bestowed upon him the Empress Catherine had decided that power should not be among them.

Panin was her chief minister; Panin who had helped her, and who was dangerous to offend … and she was stronger than Panin. He could never rule her as his old master had ruled Elizabeth Petrovna.

No man should rule her and no woman either, as the presumptuous Princess Dashkov was already learning.

She had so much to do, so many projects to fulfill, and still find time to love, to be a woman to the man she had loaded with riches, with positions and honors, and whom she knew to be dissatisfied with all but the one reward that she would never give him. She owed him her throne and her life, she owed him a hundred things, and to Alexis she owed something more … but she would never marry Gregory.

Tomorrow she would be crowned Catherine the Second, Empress and Autocrat of a vast country, ruler of millions of people, owner of incalculable wealth and power. Her childhood dream was about to be made reality forever. The annals of the history of the world would bear her name, and that was something which belonged to her alone.

Even as Russia belonged to her, and she held that submission in a sacred trust … all those plans with which she had beguiled the long, lonely hours of her marriage, plans for the betterment of her country, for the freeing of the millions of serfs, for building and education—plans lately conceived for conquest and glory, strategies which would enlarge her boundaries.…

The days would scarcely be long enough for the great work with which she would immortalize her people and herself.

In return for the crown she was to receive, she would care for her subjects and nurture them as tenderly and fiercely protective as the maternal namesake they had given her.

Mother and mistress she would be to Russia, and all the waters of the earth and the tumults of the future should never erase the mark nor deaden the memory of her name.

The fire was dying slowly and a line of dark shadow crept up the walls. Catherine Alexeievna closed her eyes to sleep and, all unbidden, conjured into consciousness by some foreshadowing fate, the dark fanatical Lieutenant whose sword knot she still retained among her most treasured mementos of that memorable day, recalled himself to her mind, and looked into her face with burning Oriental eyes.

She stirred a little, sinking deeper into the silken pillows, remembering that Orlov had told her the man's name during the course of that night march to Peterhof.

For a moment rest eluded her as she struggled irritably to recall it. Then her lips parted in a faint smile. She remembered it, her memory was always excellent, and she murmured it aloud with satisfaction:

“Gregory Potemkin.”

She would not forget it again.

Somewhere within the palace a clock in one of the courtyards began to chime the hour; within a while the sun would begin to rise, flooding the gilded cupolas and towers of Moscow with morning light, and the citizens of Moscow would stir and hurry to their places in the Kremlin square to glimpse the great procession of the crowning of their Empress.

Meanwhile the last flame of the fire in the royal bedroom grate flickered and died into a glowing ash. Within a second this too was extinguished and, in the final darkness before dawn, Catherine Alexeievna fell asleep.

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1

Catherine Alexeievna had been Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias for ten years. A decade had passed since a mysterious accident to her husband Peter the Third at his temporary prison in Ropscha had placed his crown firmly upon her head.

It had begun with many promises and plans, but in reality few changes had been wrought. Despite the upheaval of the throne, and the enlightened mind and Liberal leanings of the woman who had ascended it, the fundamentals of Russian life remained the same.

No less a person than the Empress herself acknowledged these facts; and she reviewed them one evening in 1773, seated before the dressing-table in her bedroom in the Winter Palace at Petersburg.

It was Elizabeth Petrovna's old room, and immediately Catherine pictured the dead Empress, the beautiful, vicious daughter of Peter the Great, and she smiled wryly at the memory.

The past seemed very close that night, and the Czarina could not account for it, for the habit of looking back was not one which she encouraged.

Perhaps it was the occasion itself which brought the ghosts of the last ten years crowding into her thoughts. She leant forward and regarded her own reflection in the mirror.

So many things had altered in her personal life, events had harried her almost without respite. Circumstances had delayed her splendid plans for the enlightenment of her country; expediency had decreed that she shelve her cherished project for freeing Russia's millions of serfs.…

Catherine frowned slightly. She had not forgotten her ideals, she merely waited until the time most suitable for their application.

It was an argument that she had found it necessary to employ too often in the beginning of her reign. Her conscience had been strong and strident then in its demands; she had been young and flushed with victory. The task of government seemed easy, her problems resolvable by honesty and reason. But the years had taught her the folly of that assumption, and the money she had intended to devote to the building of schools to educate her ignorant people had been poured into armaments for war; the reformer had plunged into a policy of ruthless conquest and expansion, urged on by the nationalistic leanings of her chief Minister, Panin, who had been one of the conspirators that had placed her on her husband's throne. But she remembered very well that her rise to power was never his original intention. In the beginning he had plotted for another … Her frown deepened at the thought.