The Winter Palace (41 page)

There was such warmth in her embrace when I sobbed.

Egor’s embalmed body arrived in St. Petersburg for the funeral, waxy and pale. A gash on his forehead had been sewn tight. One of the eyebrows looked crooked. His neck shriveled as if he was tensing his shoulders even in death.

In the Court Journal my husband’s name was inscribed well below Prince Trubetskoy’s youngest son, who had also died at Gross-Jägersdorf. A true noble and a service noble would never be equal, I thought with bitterness. I had been granted two months’ leave from my duties. The Empress did not wish a fresh widow around her. In the Imperial Palace, death was considered contagious.

With Masha’s help I turned all mirrors in our rooms against the wall so that my husband’s soul would not get trapped. We tied a black crepe ribbon at the corner of Egor’s portrait. As custom demanded, I sent out mourning cards, their border ornamented with a death’s-head and crossbones, announcing Egor’s passing, inviting visitors to pay their respects.

My daughter held my hand all through the service. A tight grip of a child’s small hand. I did not have the heart to scold her for her chapped knuckles, her bitten nails. Before the casket was closed, I kissed Egor’s cheek. It was hard and cold. I lifted Darya so that she could kiss it, too.

“You are a hero’s daughter, Darenka,” Catherine had told her. “You have to be brave.”

At the St. Lazarus cemetery with so many fresh graves, we prayed by the simple headstone with brass letters:
Egor Dmitryevich Malikin, May 15, 1725–August 30, 1757. May the Lord grant him eternal rest
.

On our way back, the city smelled of refuse and pine resin, of wet cloth and smoke. By the embankment the scaffolding around the new Winter Palace had been mostly cleared, but workers still carried lumber inside, and the courtyard was littered with bricks and broken tiles.

When we got home I cradled my daughter’s small body in my arms, and she clung to me as if she were about to drown. Later I discovered bruises on my arms where she had dug her fingers into my flesh.

“A soldier’s widow, Varvara Nikolayevna, will never be alone,” Alexei Orlov assured me.

He had come to St. Petersburg as soon as he could after hearing the tragic news. Grigory, too, was on his way. They had not been at Gross-Jägersdorf, and their leaves were short, but the eldest Orlov brother, Ivan Grigoryevich, had already pledged his assistance. The house on Millionnaya Street was at my disposal. A messenger from the temporary palace could reach it in minutes.

I let Alexei speak. The last time he had seen Egor, the three of them went to a
banya
. My husband had just received the marching orders. He was in excellent spirits. He spoke of me and of his daughter. He had asked Grigory’s advice on what gift to get for me on his return. He joked that he was asking a man nine years his junior. “But my brother, Varvara Nikolayevna”—Alexei flashed a pale smile—“is quite a ladies’ man.”

He had promised Egor that no harm would come to me or Darenka. I must remember that. Always.

My eyes rested on Alexei Orlov’s scar as he spoke, a wound now completely healed.

That day, before leaving, Alexei Orlov asked to be allowed to say one more thing. He had made inquiries and learned that Colonel Zinovev, Darya’s godfather, had been dead for three years.

“You would do me a great honor, Varvara Nikolayevna, if you would think of me as Darya Egorevna’s godfather.”

I nodded.

He clasped my icy hand and pressed it to his heart.

Before I could think of what assistance I might need, Alexei Orlov had brought two guards to stand at attention by our door. “A great loss,” I heard his voice, greeting visitors in the corridor leading to our rooms. “The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe.” The two youngest Orlov brothers, Fyodor and Vladimir, had been directing the footmen who took care of the constant stream of hats, canes, gloves, and calling cards. The Orlovs’ servants served refreshments and tea. The flowers that kept coming had been placed in vases; the scent of them was everywhere.

The honey Masha sweetened our tea with came from the Orlovs’ country estate. So did the chunky white cheese and cured hams. “Day after day, without fail,” Masha said, as baskets from Millionnaya Street arrived at our door. “Always with a kind word.”

All five Orlov brothers signed the notes that came with the gifts:
Ivan, Grigory, Alexei, Fyodor, Vladimir
.

Dressed in black, I sat on the ottoman in my tiny parlor, my thoughts slowed with laudanum. At times the visitors resembled marionettes, powdered heads bobbing on their shoulders in some grotesque dance, each repeating its scripted phrase.
Consider your blessings. Submit to God’s will. The hammer shatters glass but forges iron. Think of the strength of friendships and the consolations of motherhood
.

It was the laudanum, I thought, that made me wish them all to leave. Laudanum made me long for sleep, night and day alike, with Darya beside me, my knee touching the tender crook of her leg.

And yet on the day the mourning visits ended, I found the emptiness unbearable. Masha had taken Darya to the market, and I had no duties to attend to. I tried to read, but the words swam in front of my eyes.

In the street someone laughed. A horse snorted and neighed. I closed the window and drew the curtains. By then Grigory and Alexei Orlov had already left the city, assuring me that my husband’s name would not be forgotten.

I sat in the empty parlor in my widow’s weeds, staring at Egor’s portrait, the bright reds and greens of his uniform. The painted face resembled the original vaguely. Was it the fault of the wrinkles on his forehead Egor had demanded? Or was the nose too straight? The chin too rounded?

I thought of the palace girl I had once been, orphaned, lost, hugging myself in the dark, shivering for attention. I thought of the palace spy seduced with promises of her own importance, her eyes set on the life that wasn’t hers. I thought of a young bride blinded by grand thoughts of her own destiny, unable to see happiness within her grasp.

I thought of what might have been but never would be.

The agony of loss that washed over me was unstoppable, like an ocean wave after the earth shakes.

I hardly recognized Sir Charles in the man who waited for me by Egor’s grave one afternoon in late September. A day still warm, although I had already seen the first twirls of withered leaves scattered by the northern wind.

Seated on a small wooden bench, he cut a poor figure. Bloodshot eyes, razor nicks on his chin, his gray traveling coat crumpled and not too clean. Sir Charles rose and extended his arms when I approached, as if he meant to embrace me, before dropping them abruptly.

Darya’s hand tightened in mine.

“He is an old friend,” I whispered to my daughter. “It’s all right.”

“Papa’s friend?” she asked, still doubtful.

“Yes,” I said, lifting the black muslin veil from my face. “And ours.”

Sir Charles offered his condolences and apologized for not visiting me earlier. “I had not been well. I hope I can make up for it now.” His voice was hoarse, feverish, almost.

This is not why he came here
, I thought.

But it was only on our slow walk back to the carriage, with Darya ahead of us, that Sir Charles asked me to warn the Grand Duchess.

“Tell her not to write to me,
pani
Barbara. My letters are being opened. My servants have all been bribed.”

The Shuvalovs were poisoning the Empress’s mind against Field Marshal Apraxin. The victory of Gross-Jägersdorf paled beside the rumors of the Russian commander’s massive incompetence. Supplies missing, detachments sent into the wrong towns, orders signed too late, for the Field Marshal refused to be woken up before ten in the morning.

I winced at the mention of Gross-Jägersdorf, but Sir Charles was not looking at me. He spoke in short, abrupt sentences.

“I only hope that the Grand Duchess didn’t do anything rash,” he said. She had been seen with Bestuzhev far too often. What was the Chancellor pushing her to do? She wasn’t foolish enough to show her support for Apraxin, was she?

I felt a pang of impatience. Is that all that mattered? Palace rumors? Intrigues? Is nothing more important?

In front of us Darya skipped, only to stop and cast me an uneasy look.
Can Papa’s soul see me
? she had asked that morning.

“Will you remind the Grand Duchess that Apraxin is thought of as Bestuzhev’s man?” Sir Charles continued anxiously. His fingers toyed with the silver buttons on his coat. I smelled the mustiness of wool.

“Yes,” I said, not trying to hide resentment in my voice. “I will.”

Beside me, Sir Charles stopped abruptly and gripped my arm. He was not wearing gloves, and I caught sight of his whitening knuckles.

“You haven’t been in the palace,
pani
Barbara, so you don’t know,” he said, and I felt the fine mist of his spit on my face. “The Empress is dying, and no one but Catherine is capable of ruling Russia.”

I put my finger on my lips to warn him to lower his voice, grateful that only a few steps separated us from the wrought-iron gate of the Lazarus cemetery.

“Tell the Grand Duchess,” Sir Charles continued, ignoring my gesture, “that I’ll never abandon her. I’ll help her when the moment comes. And, dear
pani
Barbara, that moment is coming soon.”

“Sir Charles is warning you to be careful,” I told Catherine that evening. She had sent her maid away and was resting on an ottoman in her bedroom, a book propped over her protruding stomach, her feet buried in a bearskin. The woodstoves in the temporary palace gave little heat.

She closed the book.

“I don’t need his warnings, Varenka. I’m not witless. I’m sorry he put you through so much trouble on my account.”

I looked at the mound of her belly. The baby was due in two months.

An image flashed through my mind, a gardener in Oranienbaum with his bucket of brine, plucking the snails from a bed of dahlias and drowning them. Catherine, straightening to ease her back, complaining that the Lower Gardens had been infested all summer.

“
The Empress is dying
?
When the moment comes
?” I repeated Sir Charles’s words. “What was he talking about?”

Catherine motioned for me to sit beside her. “Sir Charles has been odd in the last weeks. I didn’t tell you, for you have enough of your own troubles.”

“Odd?”

“Forgetful. He ordered his china plates to be packed, and then accused his servants of stealing them. Stanislav, too, is worried.”

I waited for her to say more, but Catherine took my hand and placed it on her belly, so much bigger than it had been when she was pregnant with Paul.

“The midwife tells me to keep warm, Varenka. Do you think there might be twins inside?” she asked with a smile.

In November, the court celebrated Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, the thirteenth year of her reign. She was forty-eight years old.

I had turned thirty, a widow of three months, with an eight-year-old daughter and no family. Only a few friends and an old servant to look after her if I died.

I resumed my court service. The chambermaids let it slip how in my absence the Imperial Bedroom had not functioned as it should. This or that lady-in-waiting had not come when she was meant to, another left too early, as soon as the Empress dozed off, and was not there when the Empress awoke. Cats had been locked out, left meowing in the cold. Candles smoked. Another thief had been caught hiding in the closet, his pockets padded with the Empress’s silks.

“Madame Malikina,” the hushed voices of the chambermaids trailed me. “A terrible loss,” they called Egor’s death, while their faces urged me to remember their sympathetic words, to judge them worthy when the time came to assign duties, distribute rewards.

The Empress let her gaze slide over my black dress.

“Bring Darya to the nursery,” she told me. “The Tsarevitch knows that soon he will have a little brother. He is jealous. Darya can play with him.”

“My daughter is not well yet, Your Highness. She won’t eat,” I said, thinking of how Darenka’s bony shoulders stuck out of her dress.

You are contradicting me
, the Empress’s face said. I waited for her voice to harden, but to my surprise, it didn’t.

“Bring her tomorrow, Varvara,” she said gently. “Children need to play.”

With the accession banquet over, the palace readied itself for the second imperial birth. No one would mention the cause for the planned feasts—it would have been unlucky before the baby was safely delivered—but I watched whole carcasses of lambs, calves, and pigs carried into the house opposite the temporary palace, rented for its deep cellars. Hares, pheasants, and capons arrived in huge baskets. Barrels of wine and beer were rolled inside. In the palace itself, right above the kitchen, the smells of baking wafted every time the windows were opened.

The banquet room was scrubbed and polished. No chip in the gilded chairs went unnoticed, no crack in the paneling unpatched. The maids burned sweet perfume pills to infuse the room with the scent of roses. The footmen, in felt slippers, walked on the giant banquet table, waxing and buffing the surface inch by inch.

In the churches across the land the Russian people prayed for the safe delivery of the Grand Duchess and for another grandchild of Peter the Great.

“I want Stanislav to be with me when it happens,” Catherine told me.

“Think of a way, Varenka,” she ordered, when I raised my eyebrows. “You do everything
she
asks of you, don’t you?”

“He’ll have to hide.”

“Then he’ll hide. I don’t want to be alone! Not this time.”

The bedroom in the temporary palace where she would give birth was large and drafty. It was not difficult to persuade the Empress that it needed a screen that would make it warmer. With a few adjustments, a small closet attached to the bedroom could be easily turned into an antechamber, with a narrow bed Stanislav could use. This is where Catherine’s lover would hide, in the closet, behind the screen, able to come out the moment Catherine was left alone.