The Winter Palace (40 page)

Seventeen fifty-seven would be the year of victory.

I thought of Egor, in the army camp, of his letters, simple and spare.
Winter is harsh, but I’m of good thoughts. Tell Darenka that I like her drawing of a horse best
.

After the New Year celebrations ended, I often saw Stanislav in Elizabeth’s antechamber, standing among other Envoys and Ambassadors, awaiting an audience.

Elizabeth never made him wait long. He had pleased her with his first official speech, with which he assumed his Envoy duties. Invasion of Saxony was not just an outrage but a sign of the future, he had said. Frederick of Prussia was
a Hydra with many heads
. If one of them was chopped off, two more grew in its place. This was why Prussia deserved no mercy.

The Empress liked that.

She was not the only one. A fluid, passionate speech, I heard it described. Loud enough to be heard but calm enough not to be dismissed as a young man’s rant.

As soon as I had the opportunity, I congratulated Stanislav on his success. “The Empress talks of little else.”

“The Empress is very kind,” he replied. “I watch the Russian court and I learn. Each day a new lesson.”

Lessons tailored for a star pupil, I thought. Sir Charles had begged Stanislav not to try to see him. Not even in secret. Ever since Prussia invaded Saxony, the British Embassy had been under tight surveillance. Every embassy servant was a Russian spy.
It is with a heavy heart that I stay away from both of you now, Monsieur, hoping it won’t be for long
, Sir Charles had written to the Grand Duchess.
One day Catherine the Empress of Russia and Stanislav the King of Poland will rule together, and I’ll be able to offer my help and friendship to both. But for this to happen, I cannot have other masters. This is why I’ve submitted my resignation, and I’m now awaiting a letter from London freeing me from my embassy duties
.

Stanislav called Sir Charles
La Sagesse
—Wisdom—and a true friend. Catherine told me that she would always consult him like the Delphic Oracle.

And I?

I thought of the force of words, repeated, mulled over. I thought of how they swelled, turning possibilities into desires. The Philosopher Queen. The Philosopher King. Vanity replaced by wisdom, sloth by hard work.

A better world. A world more just.

What else could be more worthy of my efforts?

By the end of February Catherine was again with child. Her appearances at the court functions became joyful occasions for concern. Maids were ordered to fetch cushions and place them under her feet. The Empress reminded the Grand Duchess of the importance of avoiding drafts and of the virtues of foot massage. The blood had to flow freely. The body needed to store strength. Baskets of delicacies for the Grand Duchess arrived daily from the palace kitchen, blancmange tortes with pineapples, boned quails, silver tureens with rich, creamy soups. The complaints about new debts or Peter’s drinking were replaced with loud praise of the strength of Romanov blood.

The ancient lineage, I heard, could not be suppressed for long.

I saw the Empress place her hand on the Grand Duchess’s belly, smiling as if she could already feel the child kick. Fears and ill humor ebbed from her. Birth trumped death, banished it to the shadows. Elizabeth never asked who was responsible for Catherine’s “delicate condition.” Appearances had been kept. The “moon children” shared their marital bed. Peter could not deny that the child might be his, and in the Winter Palace, that was good enough.

Stanislav, the Envoy
extraordinaire
of the Saxon King, attended all required audiences and receptions. In Elizabeth’s presence the Count used every opportunity to draw her attention to Saxony’s plight: Dresden destroyed by cannon fire, released criminals setting fires to houses and fields, Frederick issuing false Polish coins to buy supplies for his army.

The Empress praised Count Poniatowski’s deportment, his youthful charm, his impeccable elegance. If any of the Shuvalovs hinted at his passion for Catherine, the Empress changed the subject. She had more pressing matters on her mind.

In June, at Kolin, Frederick suffered his first defeat. He had not been such a great strategist, after all. The Austrians had forced him into an attack. His flanking strategy failed. It was the perfect time for Russia to deliver her blow.

The Chancellor spent more and more time with the Empress. I saw him enter her inner room with rolls of maps under his arm and papers to sign. Field Marshal Apraxin was marching the Russian army toward East Prussia. Egor would not come to St. Petersburg this summer. His letters were even briefer now—lighthearted accounts of blisters upon blisters, the long-forgotten joy of sleeping in a haystack. There was always a drawing for Darenka:
Papa by the bonfire, drying his breeches. Papa picking wild blueberries for dessert
.

I heard the Chancellor’s voice quieting Elizabeth’s doubts: Her officers were the best in Europe; her soldiers would die with their Tsarina’s name on their lips.

At dawn, drunk on cherry brandy, Elizabeth demanded my stories of Lev Naryshkin disguised in a musician’s garb, his carriage stopped by the Oranienbaum sentries. The Prince declared himself a member of the orchestra in the service of the Grand Duchess.

“What do you play?” the guards had asked him.

“A flute,” he responded.

“Show us your instrument, then.”

Imperial laughter, I thought, was as good as permission, as good as a truce.

In July, Sir Charles received an official confirmation that his request to resign his position as British Ambassador had been granted. His replacement, a Mr. Keith, would arrive in a few months. Until then, George Rineking, Sir Charles’s onetime secretary, was to perform his duties.

He bade an official farewell to the court. He was a free man.

“I don’t intend to leave,
pani
Barbara,” he told me. “Please assure the Grand Duchess that I’ll do everything to be around when she requires my counsel.”

It was Sir Charles’s choice, the tavern where we met, beyond the Anichkov Palace. The windows were steamy, the floors sticky from spit and spilled beer. On my way there, I saw dogs fighting over kitchen scraps and neighborhood boys pelting them with stones.

Sir Charles’s enthusiasm was contagious. On his lips, even the sordid accounts of Peter’s drinking bouts carried a tinge of promise about them. Debauchery was shortening the Grand Duke’s life. If he died, Catherine and Stanislav would be free to marry.

“I advise the Grand Duchess to watch and wait, assess all options, but hide her cards,” Sir Charles said. “To improve her relations with the Shuvalovs. To cultivate everyone. Not to reveal her position too early.”

In the murky corner by a window smeared with oily fingers, I nodded my agreement. On the thick wooden table, someone had carved a crooked heart pierced with two arrows. In his last letter, Egor had mentioned that his regiment had crossed the border of East Prussia, without even a skirmish. He had missed the siege of Memel by a few days, arriving in time for the victory celebrations.
We are heading west soon
, he had written,
though I won’t know when and where for some time yet
.

“The Grand Duchess can count on me,” Sir Charles continued. “Now that I am free, I intend to postpone my departure until I’m needed.”

He bent toward me, his eyes shining. “We are not soldiers,
pani
Barbara.” There was urgency in his voice. “You and I don’t fight a war. But we can improve the world our children will one day inherit.”

That summer I, too, thought myself indispensable.

I did not see us for what we were. A cabal of a former Ambassador and a bookbinder’s daughter turned imperial tongue, two figures willing the future to bend to their own grandiose wishes, while the truly important events of the time were relentlessly unfolding in their own way.

In the Imperial Bedroom thick wax candles never stopped burning. There were the nights when I found Elizabeth in front of the mirror, in her negligee, staring at the lines on her face, adjusting the lace around her cleavage. Without a wig, her head looked small and naked, almost childlike, and she would run her fingers through her hair, cut short ever since it began to thin. Her cats were squatting in the shadows, lounging, pouncing on dust balls, rolling over to expose their bellies, licking their hind legs thrust in the air.

I never knew what the Empress wanted from me when I entered her bedroom. Would she talk or would she want to listen? To judge or to plead? Sometimes she insisted I search her maids’ trunks for a missing comb, a bottle of infusion, a hairpin, or a ring. Sometimes she announced some newest order, such as forbidding court ladies to include pink lace and ribbon in their finery, for she wished to be the only one wearing it. One night she asked me if I ever dreamed of my father, but before I could answer she hid her face in her hands and began to sob. Once I found her sniffing the inside of her shoe, wrinkling her nose with disgust. “Is anything the matter, Your Highness?” I asked, but she looked at me as if she did not see me. “How difficult,” she muttered, “to keep the past away from the present.”

I thought of sand silently trickling in an hourglass.
Perhaps Sir Charles is right
, I thought.
Perhaps death and change are not that far away
.

The court had returned from Peterhof at the end of August. In the Empress’s inner rooms, opened trunks smelled of cedar and rosemary. The Empress had been restless, pacing the rooms, searching for distractions, awaiting the news from East Prussia. It wasn’t often that she cared if her tapestries had been aired.

I had just unfolded a pink damask dressing gown, one of Elizabeth’s favorites, when the Chancellor walked into the room, a dispatch in his hand. The Empress closed her eyes and clasped her hands in a silent prayer.

“Smashed, Your Majesty,” he cried, beaming with joy. “Decimated. And this is just the beginning. Your Majesty’s absolute victory is now assured.”

The Russian forces had defeated Frederick of Prussia at the village of Gross-Jägersdorf.

“Field Marshal Apraxin promises a proper report with next post. For now he sends a summary.”

“Read it,” the Empress ordered.

The Chancellor read slowly, each sentence a triumph. The Prussians attacked first. The Kalmyk cavalry and the Don Cossacks lured them into a trap, under artillery fire. The battle lasted the whole day. The surrounding villages had been set on fire to further disorient the Prussians. In the smoky fog the Russian bayonets had been far more lethal than Frederick’s muskets. Elizabeth Petrovna, the daughter of Peter the Great, had taught Frederick his first lesson. Now Prussia stood naked and helpless before the might of the Empire of the East.

When the Chancellor finished, the Empress ordered everyone in the room to pray with her to the Virgin of Kazan.

To give thanks for Russia’s triumph.

I was alone in my small parlor in the temporary palace when the messenger arrived with the news that Egor was one of the forty-five hundred Russian soldiers killed at Gross-Jägersdorf.

I listened but did not respond, in the strange, unreal way one hears such news. The messenger had perfected the somber look, the respectful glances, the bows and discreet withdrawal, and when he departed, I sat on the ottoman, too heavy to move.

In the room next door I heard steps followed by the governess’s voice. A plea to try harder. Darya was practicing her deportment.

I stood up and opened the door. My hand was trembling.

“Look, Maman,” Darya said when she saw me. She was walking across the room in her high heels without stumbling, her back perfectly straight, her curls tightly tucked under her laced cap.

I motioned for Mademoiselle Dupont to leave us alone.

Then I told her that her Papa was dead.

Darya stood motionless, frowning, trying to make sense of what I’d said. She knew of battles and wars. She had seen paintings of slain soldiers, hands still clinging to their muskets, left behind as their comrades charged bravely on.

She stepped out of her high heels gingerly.

“I must put my shoes away,” was all she said. She picked them up and wiped them against her sleeve.

I took her in my arms. I waited for her tears, but they did not come. Through the thin wall I could hear Masha scolding the maid.

“Cry, Darenka,” I whispered. “Cry.”

But she wouldn’t. Not until she heard Masha’s wailing, piercing and raw.

Only then did tears come, hers and mine. Silent and hot.

I stayed at Darya’s side that night until she fell asleep, one hand cradling her doll, another softening in mine. Our small rooms smelled of
ladan
, the Russian herbs of mourning, sweet and pungent, meant to dull the pain.

In the streets of St. Petersburg there were so many of us—wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, all swathed in mourning. We recognized one another through the newness of our black clothes, how we averted our eyes when the glorious victory was triumphantly proclaimed.

“Battlefields stink like a dunghill,” Egor told me once. “The dead soil themselves. Men and horses.”

Among the things returned to me were my husband’s sword, his seal, his pistols, and a wooden box with the two jars of Masha’s shoe polish.

They found his body three days after the battle ended. The army surgeon informed me that a bayonet gash had split Egor’s right thigh. There was a bullet wound in his left arm; the bone was smashed. If my husband had survived, he would have lost both his arm and his leg. I was to consider this very carefully, to think what kind of life would be his, had he lived.

“Oh, Varenka,” Catherine said. “My dearest girl.”

She had brought lace and satin ribbons for me, black for my mourning dress. She hung a golden cross around Darya’s neck. “I’m not even allowed to come to the funeral,” she told me, hand resting on her growing belly. “
She
says that a cemetery is not a place for me now. But why should I be surprised, Varenka? Did
she
not forbid me to wear mourning for my own father, for he had not been king?”