The Winter Palace (25 page)

I thought of Darya’s eyes, round and wet like black pebbles.

If I died, what would happen to her? Would her father’s expectations be enough to assure her future?

I thought of Serge Saltykov, of the cards that appeared where he wanted them to. I hoped Catherine didn’t love him, hoped that all she wanted from him was a child to quiet Elizabeth.

A child, and a few moments of pleasure.

The Chancellor was true to his word. The following day, a letter from the palace ordered me to present myself to the Chief Steward.

“What is it about?” Egor asked. Sprawled on the floor, he was helping Darya build a precarious tower of wooden blocks.

By then, my husband and I had reached a kind of weary peace. As rumors of the approaching war intensified, he began declaring that the army offered a far superior path to advancement than the Palace Guards. He had not yet applied for a transfer, but he must have spoken of his intention to do so widely enough to extend our credit. The butcher no longer glared at me when he saw me but doffed his hat and inquired about my health.

“Look, Maman, look!”

The block tower was swaying, to Darya’s shrieks of delight. Egor’s question was still unanswered when the tower crashed. A temptation entered my mind to tell him of my expectations, but it didn’t last.

“I don’t know,” I lied, stooping to help Darya pick up the scattered blocks. “It’s an imperial command.” My hands, I saw, were trembling.

Egor’s eyes rested on me, assessing, but he said nothing.

In the bedroom, I powdered my hair and put the Virgin pendant around my neck. The dress I selected was a cotton one, brown and unadorned, its hem recently turned.

“Again, Papa,” I heard Darenka’s cry. “Again!”

There is nothing as difficult as escaping what profoundly pleases you
, Catherine had written in her last letter to me.

My pulse was racing, my stomach felt hollow, but in the dressing mirror my face looked bright and eager, as though a flash of summer light had come into the room and colored my thoughts with hope.

I waited in the mirrored antechamber. A cold draft seeped through the cracks in the paneling, and I scolded myself for not taking a warm shawl. The courtiers who rushed past me did not stop. One of the Empress’s cats kept coming back to rub itself against my ankles.

I was still waiting when the light began to fade, as the palace readied itself for the night. Behind the drafty paneling, I could hear a banging and a shuffling in the service corridors. Something heavy was being moved. My fingers stiffened with cold, and I tried to warm them with my breath.

It was well past sundown by the time I was ushered into the Imperial Bedroom, into the soothing circle of heat radiating from the crackling fire. The Empress was alone, reclining on her bed, a woolen shawl over her pink nightdress. A fat white cat was trying to touch her chin with its paw. Was that old Pushok? I wondered.

“You have astonishing news about my nephew?” the Empress asked as soon as I rose from my curtsy. “Truly astonishing?”

There was a note of derision in her voice.

I spoke plainly.

“There had been no coitus, Your Highness, and there can be none if His Imperial Highness insists on denying his infirmity. It’s common talk among the officers. And if the guards know, anyone might question the child’s rights in the future. Your Highness understands that more than I do.”

“Infirmity?” Her eyes narrowed.

“The surgeon would explain it better, Your Highness. It’s the scar that holds the foreskin. Apparently, it’s a common enough problem. A simple incision should be enough. But the Grand Duke will not let the surgeon touch him.”

There was only one candle burning in the candelabra, but I could see that time had not been kind to Elizabeth in spite of her young lover. Her face looked bloated. I saw her clutch at the carved post as she rose from the bed, her arm trembling with exertion. The white cat slid away into the shadows.

“Why wasn’t I told before?” the Empress demanded. “Why was I made to wait all these years in vain?”

She cursed the Choglokovs. Called them idiots who should be flogged with the knout.

She cursed the Grand Duke.

She cursed Catherine. Called her a dim-witted bitch who should have come to her long before with the truth. Why was the stupid girl putting on an act all these years? What was she hoping to hide?

She was coughing now, wiping her mouth with a handkerchief, waving me away furiously.

I bowed and hurried out, knowing that a storm had to run its course.

In the morning the Chancellor sent word that two of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting were hastily packing their belongings. One of the Duke’s valets had been sent away, too. Bestuzhev was especially pleased to inform me that the Empress had ordered me back to the palace to rejoin her retinue.

Madame Malikina: Lady in Attendance of the Evening Toilette
, the Chief Steward wrote in the Court Journal. I was to present myself in the antechamber of the Imperial Bedroom every evening. Quarters in the palace had been set aside for me and my family.

As the day of our move approached, Darya’s excitement grew. She loved running through emptying rooms, hiding in open crates or jumping onto the piles of linen. Masha had taught her to curtsy, which my daughter did with surprising grace, especially in her new gown, of buttercup-yellow silk embroidered with flowery sprigs, Egor’s far-too-expensive gift.

I didn’t ask what my husband thought of this sudden change in our fortunes. He had been an officer of the guards long enough to know that if an order came from the palace, it must be obeyed. You do not reason with a flood. You look for anything useful that might float your way.

On the day of our move, seeing the apartment on Apothecary Lane strewn with trunks, baskets, and crates, I expected to feel sadness, but there was none. The porters had chipped the doorframes, left scars on the wooden floors. The stripped rooms looked blank and frayed.

It seemed as if I had never lived there at all.

Masha didn’t mind that our new quarters were in a distant section of the Winter Palace, close to the stables. She didn’t mind the noise, the barn smell of rot and urine that seeped inside every time a window was opened. Instead, she rejoiced that there was no rent to pay, that our five rooms came with a generous supply of wax candles, that we had the right to eat at one of the imperial tables, and an allowance for clothes, which included discarded dresses from the Imperial Wardrobe.

Freed from many of her former duties, Masha found her passion in taking detailed inventory of our new possessions. As soon as our furniture was all in place, trunks and crates unpacked, she would trail me with a sheet of paper, demanding I write down a list of our new acquisitions.

Two dressing gowns, one of calico and one of striped silk, worth six rubles.
A pair of white broadcloth pantaloons, five rubles.
Twelve Dutch linen chemises with ruffles, ten rubles.
A fox-fur coat, lined with woolen cloth, forty rubles.

To Darya, Masha would point out the rich gilded furniture, the thickness of the carpets, the tall mirrors, the machine that spread the scent of roses as it was rolled through the rooms. She trailed the chambermaids, hoping to learn the secrets of keeping the brass so shiny and the crystal so bright. She did not believe them when the maids told her they used the same water with vinegar she always used.

The surgery was swift. It happened without the Duke’s consent or knowledge, for when the Empress took matters into her own hands she did not bother with trifles.

Two of his Holsteiner officers were to suggest a peeing contest. Later, this would become the explanation for the soreness of the Duke’s instrument. Opium was added to his wine, though the Grand Duke got quite drunk without it and, after one goblet, passed out. Count Lestocq was waiting next door, his bag with scalpels at the ready. The operation took mere minutes. The cut made the Duke wince and murmur something that caused everyone to laugh. “You must have pulled it too hard, Your Highness,” the Holsteiners told him in the morning, when Peter complained of soreness.

But Elizabeth left nothing more to chance. To redeem themselves, the Choglokovs were ordered to find a suitable candidate for initiating the Duke. A certain young widow was contracted, Madame Grooth, big, plump, and of rosy flesh. The court surgeon declared her clean and made sure she understood the nature of her task. She was not to let the Duke withdraw too early.

She swore she would not.

Nothing spreads faster than gossip tacitly encouraged.

The act took place in the Winter Palace. Madame Grooth wore a pleasing gown, laughed eagerly at the Grand Duke’s jokes, allowed him to suck her nipple, held him tight until he came inside her.

This was not the time for modesty or silence. The witnesses, four officers from the Preobrazhensky Guards and four Holsteiners, were ordered to watch through a spying hole. No one would ever be able to claim that the Grand Duke was incapable of siring a child.

During the evening toilette, when the Empress received the last visitors of the day, Peter came into the Imperial Bedroom. He seemed taller than I remembered him, and lankier, but also more clumsy.

The Empress pushed away the hairdresser who hovered over her, trying to adjust the embroidered cap that held her powdered locks in shape.

“Peter,” she said, turning to her nephew. I saw the French Ambassador edge forward to have a better view. I saw Countess Shuvalova make room for him.

“Do be more discreet in the future,” Elizabeth continued. The Grand Duke winced at the sharp tone in his aunt’s voice. His pockmarked face reddened with unease. “Not everyone in the world has to know that you have a lover.”

What a spectacle it was! Elizabeth at her dressing table, her body still locked in shape by the boned bodice, her eyes bright with glee. “I’m not asking you to refrain, but at least exercise some discretion, my dear child. Think of your wife’s feelings. Think of her humiliation, if this becomes known.”

Imperial diamonds flashing in candlelight, the scented dress rustling. “Can you promise me that much, Peter?”

I watched the Crown Prince of Russia lick his lips as he nodded. I watched him beam with relief, his mind no doubt already churning up his own tales of the encounter. A hare imagining he had outwitted a fox.

The Russian play unfolded before my eyes, I thought, in all its magnificent artifice. Elizabeth the Terrible, Peter the Fool, and Catherine the Wise had made their appearance. Now the moment came for the spectators to choose whom to fear and whom to despise.

I recalled the Chancellor’s words:
Saltykov did what he was told. Catherine is carrying an heir.… But we have to be quick before the Imperial Heir is declared the imperial bastard
.

One of the maids began unpinning Elizabeth’s hair, a sign for the visitors to leave.

“Go after them, Varvara,” the Empress said, when the last of the courtiers had left the Imperial Bedroom. “I want to know what they’ll talk about.”

Coded secret dispatches reporting on the Duke’s sexual performance were sent to all major European courts. They detailed Peter’s confident grins, the lively glances cast at any woman who approached him. They reported, too, Madame Grooth’s disappointment when the payment she received for her chore proved to be only half what she had been promised.

Cutting Madame Grooth’s payment had been the Empress’s own idea. “Bitterness,” she said, as I massaged her tired feet, “is always far louder than satisfaction with a reward.”

The Chancellor’s red-walled office smelled of camphor and mold. He raised his eyes from the files he was working on and studied me through his monocle. Then he pushed the papers aside.

“You’ll find much changed here, Varvara Nikolayevna. We are more fearful. Less patient. Much is again expected from the intercession of saints.”

I had been back at the palace only a few days, but I had already noticed that the confidence with which Bestuzhev used to approach the Empress was gone. There was a new note of servitude in his voice, overflowing with praises for her wisdom and foresight, praises Elizabeth waved off impatiently.

The day was warm, sunny. Through the palace window I could see ice floes on the Neva, strewn with the debris of winter: fir trees from the winter road to the island, a carriage pole with a wheel still attached.

I, too, had changed. I was no longer alone.

“Take a look at this,” the Chancellor asked, fishing a print from the documents on his desk.

The print he handed me depicted Ivan Shuvalov, his naked member flagging. The Imperial Favorite was flanked by actresses with ostrich plumes in their hair, their breasts spilling out of low-cut gowns, as he lamented:
My instrument may have taken on more than it can handle
.

The Chancellor laughed softly. “I never underestimate the concerns of the people, Varvara Nikolayevna. Don’t you think the Empress should come across this rather soon?”

I folded the print and slipped it inside my sleeve.

There was no need for words. The palace game had not changed. The dangers had not disappeared because the Grand Duchess was with child.

I rose.

“You haven’t backed the wrong horse, Varvara Nikolayevna,” the Chancellor called, as I turned away. “I haven’t hurt you, after all.”

When I opened the door I almost knocked over a chambermaid who gave me a frightened glance and blushed to the roots of her hair.

Serge Saltykov was back in St. Petersburg.

I had seen him in Elizabeth’s antechamber, his black hair combed back, his eyes brimming with glee, assessing the women who passed by. Country life was boring, he declared. Oranienbaum was a backwater. The Grand Duke was a cherished friend, and one shouldn’t question a friend’s judgment, but how could he stay there for months at a time? In the company of gardeners and magpies! Life was here, at the Winter Palace. Or beyond it, in the courts of Europe. The King of Sweden, he had been told, kept an excellent stable.

From Oranienbaum, Catherine wrote:
Tell me where he is, please. Find out why he is not coming here anymore. Is it because of his wife? Or has La Grande Dame found out about us? Or is it the Soldier who opposes his visits?