Rebel Princess (9 page)

Peter was a hideous imbecile, but other women had risen to prominence through marriage with such men.

It was Elizabeth who frightened her most. She had accepted her favor with intense gratitude, believing that at last she had found a woman who would be what her own mother had never been, affectionate and understanding. But it was not so. She had failed the Empress by fainting at the sight of Peter, and Elizabeth's friendship for her had vanished like the phantom it really was.

She had a wretched feeling that the Empress would have been just as amiable to any other candidate for Peter's hand, provided she was obedient and virtuous. One small slip, surely excusable, thought Catherine angrily, and Elizabeth had become the haughty, unreasonable, despot, whose will had been for once thwarted by a lesser creature.

Soon even Johanna would be gone and, with her, the last link with home. After the wedding she would be left alone, alone with Peter who hated her and was paying court to one of his aunt's maids of honor before her very eyes.

Quite often her ladies-in-waiting would surprise the Grand Duchess in tears, but they were tears for which she never gave a reason, and indeed no one pressed her for an explanation. Too many royal brides had wept in Russia's palaces, and vanished once their turn was served, to be shut up in some convent cell and forgotten until death released them.

It might well be that Catherine Alexeievna would be one of these.

Gradually the groups of admiring courtiers who used to surround her thinned out, and she found herself politely avoided by men and women who had fawned upon her only a week or two before.

The Empress's spies reported that Peter spent as little time as possible with his betrothed, and that his language and attitude towards her grew increasingly violent, also that he was indulging in a flirtation with the Labuchkin, and boasting of his conquest of her virtue before anyone who would listen.

Instantly Elizabeth put the blame for these developments upon Catherine's unhappy reception of Peter that fateful day.

In her heart the Empress doubted his boasted seduction of her maid of honor, but his preoccupation with her boded ill for his relations with his future wife, and Elizabeth's fury mounted as her anxiety increased.

Her resentment had to find a victim, and since it was almost impossible further to restrict and harass Peter, she visited her anger upon Catherine.

It was Countess Roumiantzov who delivered Elizabeth's message to her mistress, and she chose an afternoon when the two women were seated in Catherine's favorite spot in the palace gardens, a secluded arbor screened by trees and cooled by an ornamental fountain.

The Empress was disappointed and displeased, both in the conduct and relations which existed between her nephew and the Princess whom she had favored so generously. It seemed to her, the Countess continued, that the Grand Duchess had shamefully neglected her duties towards her future husband in abandoning him to the company of a mere lady-in-waiting, and the Czarina expected this situation to be remedied forthwith. Peter's rumored liaison was causing public scandal, both in Russia and abroad, and only his betrothed could put an end to the affair.

Catherine listened in silence to this rebuke, her cheeks scarlet, aware that Roumiantzova's pretty face was hard as marble, and that the lady's friendship had vanished at the first sign of Elizabeth's wrath.

Within three weeks she would be married, and the world would count her the most fortunate princess in Europe.

Some three days later Peter sat in his apartments, playing cards with Brümmer and two lackeys, when a messenger arrived announcing the Grand Duchess.

Peter flung his cards down and swore.

“Tell her I am engaged and cannot see her! Tell her to go to the devil!” he shouted.

Brümmer looked up and grinned. In one respect at least, the Grand Duke was proving an apt pupil.

The Grand Duchess and Leo Narychkin stood conversing in the State Ballroom, watching Elizabeth lead out in a gavotte.

“Only two days before your marriage,” remarked Narychkin.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes following the Empress's gorgeous figure as it gyrated and trod the graceful measure of the dance.

Narychkin studied her closely while she thought herself unobserved, and for a moment his feelings penetrated the light-hearted mask he always wore.

No man was less likely to risk his head and hers by trying to make love to the Grand Duchess than the careless court humorist, Leo Narychkin. But at that moment his expression devoured Catherine's face and figure with a passion that would have astonished even those who knew him best.

She was truly the loveliest woman in the whole of that great room, he thought. Her dazzling complexion and brilliant blue eyes were set off to perfection by the vivid scarlet of her velvet gown; red was a predominating color in Catherine's wardrobe, and, notwithstanding the Empress, she glowed like a mangificent ruby.

All her fresh, vital beauty, her courage that he had seen and admired so often, the driving energy that patience held strictly in rein; these things would fashion the girl in her teens into a magnificent woman. Others had possessed some or even all of these qualities, but they lacked Catherine's laughter and generosity, and her nature was devoid of that curious, twisted streak of cruelty that he had discovered again and again in the most fragile-seeming female.

Elizabeth and her ladies would amuse themselves by a visit to some of the palace dungeons, and sometimes pause to watch a flogging, as exhilarated by the sight of blood as a pack of she-wolves. But Catherine was never among them, and nothing would induce her to witness these diversions. Her dislike for the suffering of others was an unusual quality in that age.

All his life Narychkin had searched for such a woman and at length abandoned the ideal, only to meet it in the person of Peter's future wife, the most jealously guarded virgin in Russia. So many women could call forth desire, but only she had ever roused him to tenderness as well, and it was this feeling that held him in check.

The prize was Peter's, and the whole court knew that Peter did not want it.

“The Grand Duke is indeed the most fortunate man in Europe,” he said quietly, and the urgency in his voice escaped his listener.

Instead she smiled, and the smile was mirthless and bitter.

“Don't mock me tonight, Leo; no doubt you know that I am in trouble!”

The tall Russian opened a gold snuffbox and pretended to sniff the contents.

“I have heard things, Highness,” he muttered. “What is the matter? You can tell me, you know that I can be trusted.…”

“I know that! Of them all, only you have not deserted me. Peter was right, he told me this would happen and I didn't believe him. It seems that he knew more of the ways of courts than I!”

Catherine opened her fan and began to sway it idly as she talked.

“The Empress is furiously angry with me. You know of Peter and his affair with Demoiselle Labuchkin? Indeed, everyone knows of it and is talking.… Well, I was ordered to break the liaison.
I
, to whom he never speaks a civil word!

“Of course I failed; he would not even see me. So the Empress blames me, and every day her disfavor is made more obvious. The court has almost deserted me. But for yourself, hardly a person has dared to linger and speak to me tonight!”

Narychkin examined the lid of his snuffbox before replying.

“The Labuchkin is ailing, I hear,” he said casually. “I should say that the Empress has provided her own remedy for our Grand Duke's folly. I dare say the lady will retire to the country to recuperate rather than face the rigors of court life when she is better. That is, if she gets better …” he added.

Catherine went white.

“God in Heaven, Leo, you don't think that the Empress would …”

“I think she would and has!” he answered quickly, and then smiled at the horror on her face.

“But do not distress yourself; I imagine the Labuchkin will live to go into exile, with the memory of a stomach ache as proof of the Grand Duke's devotion!”

In spite of herself, Catherine had to laugh. He was an incorrigible jester and such a comfort in times of trouble and depression.

“Dear Leo,” she said impulsively. “What should I do without you?”

“You would do very well, Highness,” came the answer. “You will never be without followers, my humble self among them!”

Catherine pouted ruefully. “Well I don't see them pressing round me at this moment!”

Narychkin picked up her hand and kissed it boldly.

“Wait a while. Wait until men's eyes have recognized that a new star is rising over Russia. When the time comes they will know how to follow it!”

With that he left her, and she spent the rest of the evening pondering the meaning of his words.

A new star rising over Russia.

In the right order of things that should be no other than Peter Feodorovitch, but she knew in her heart that it was not the Grand Duke Narychkin had in mind.

The night before her wedding, Catherine sat down at her dressing-table; she had dismissed her ladies and was quite alone, for Elizabeth had excused her with the injunction to be fresh and rested for the ceremony next day.

The Grand Duchess was tired indeed; every moment had been filled with fittings for her wedding-dress, the choosing of jewels, the coiffure, and repeated rehearsals of the marriage procession, until her head ached with fatigue.

Somehow the bustle and excitement had failed to move her as she had always supposed it would. Tomorrow was the greatest day in her life, yet she felt none of the breathless happiness that was the romantic prerogative of brides. Triumph, yes; but it was a cold emotion, tinged with a vague fear.

She moved the candelabra closer, and the candle-light cast a soft glow through the spacious room, picking out the gilt furniture and the canopied bed.

Her eyes turned to the jewel casket. Slowly she lifted the lid and her fingers dislodged the bridal diadem from its velvet bed.

Standing before her mirror, she placed it on her head, and stood looking at her reflection as if watching someone else.

The woman in the glass wore no wedding veil, for it was not a bride reflected there, it was the future Empress of Russia, her brow encircled by a crown ablaze with diamonds.…

The sun shone down brilliantly on that day of August 25th in the year 1745, touching the roofs of St. Petersburg with gold and flooding through the great windows of Kazan Cathedral, where Russia's Grand Duke and Duchess were being joined in marriage.

The interior of the huge church was illumined by thousands of scented candles, and clouds of incense floated gently up to the gilded roof, while a hundred hidden voices sang the age-old chants of Russian worship.

Diplomats from all over Europe knelt among the congregation; Princes, whose blood and heritage were older than the Boyars who had served Ivan the Terrible, bowed down in homage to Russia's God and asked His blessing on the couple who would one day rule the land.

Bestujev closed his eyes in meditation, the subject far removed from the sanctity of his surroundings, while Leo Narychkin pondered on similar lines to the Chancellor, and wondered in agony what the pale Grand Duchess, a distant glittering figure kneeling at the high altar, would endure at Peter's hands that night.

While the ceremony proceeded inside Kazan Cathedral, a great concourse of people were assembled outside, overflowing into the streets and squares. It was a joyous crowd, its belly filled with free bread and its head swimming happily with the Empress's gift of wine that ran in unlimited supplies from every fountain in the city.

The people might perish of cold and hunger on every other day of the year, but on this day every man, woman and child could eat and drink their fill for nothing and scrabble in the gutter for the Empress's scattered largesse.

All the church bells in St. Petersburg began to peal in a swell of joyful sound as the doors of the cathedral opened and the Empress's magnificent state carriage drove up to the steps.

A tremendous roar of cheering greeted Elizabeth as she emerged from the cathedral and stood outlined in the archway. Hundreds of the devout among the pressing crowds sank to their knees, dazzled by the splendid figure of their ruler.

Elizabeth paused to acknowledge her people's homage, and then walked slowly down to her carriage. A thunderous shout told her that the Grand Duke and his bride had emerged from the church.

Every eye was fixed upon the couple who stood at the head of the cathedral steps; thousands of voices were raised in a roar of welcome to the future Emperor and his Empress; and the sight of Catherine on that day was to remain engraved on many humble hearts.

She lingered there, with her hand resting on her husband's arm, a picture of youthful beauty and grace, attired in a dazzling gown covered with silver and gold embroidery, diamonds blazing from her throat and hair.

The ceremony had lasted almost six hours, but she showed no signs of fatigue; a wave of color rose in her cheeks at the reception given them.

She stood rooted, detaining the impatient Peter with a firm hand, looking out on to the forest of heads and waving hands that surged about the cathedral, listening to the unforgettable cry of acclamation that drowned the joyfully pealing bells.

The people approved her; the great, shadowy masses of Holy Russia welcomed her and took her to their hearts as she waited there, smiling and kissing her hand to them while tears of emotion filled her eyes and her heart beat wildly with sudden, unbearable exultation.

The triumph of that day was hers. Russia had claimed her for its own forever, and with utter gladness she surrendered to that call.

It was not Peter the crowd cheered, for his gorgeous uniform and glittering decorations could not deceive the people; they knew him for what he was, a German through and through, ugly, sullen and alien.

It was Catherine's name they shouted, and Catherine knew it.