The Winter Palace (29 page)

“Serge!”

I saw Catherine throw her arms around her lover’s neck. I heard her pleading, “I wait every night … I cannot … please … it hurts so much.…”

“But I’m here now.”

Catherine’s fingers adjusted the embroidered edge of her lover’s collar, lingering there. Beside them, Bijou stood on his hind legs, ignored, dancing for a treat.

I gave Prince Naryshkin a warning glance and stepped back. As we left, I caught a glimpse of Serge Saltykov, his handsome face soft with concern. He took Catherine’s hands gently and clasped them between his.

“Shh …” I heard his thick murmur. “Haven’t I found a way? Just as I’ve promised.”

“It has begun.”

The midwife sent her message at dusk. With it came a request for fresh butter, ashes, rhubarb water, wine and vinegar.

The Empress rushed to the delivery room. The midwife was proud to announce that the waters in which the child had bathed in his mother’s womb were reddish, a sure omen that Catherine would deliver a boy.

In the Empress’s rooms the court ladies-in-waiting gathered to wait and pray. They were all from Elizabeth’s entourage, I noted, when I took my place in the corner, awaiting my summons. Only five of Catherine’s maids-of-honor were there, heads bowed, prayer beads slipping through their fingers. The crowded room smelled of jasmine and candied orange peel, the Empress’s latest weakness.

The walls of the Summer Palace were thin, and we could hear Catherine groan. Sometimes she gave a yelp of pain like a dog struck with a sharp stone. A few times the Empress urged her to be brave, but mostly we heard the midwife’s voice instructing her to breathe deeply, to swallow what she was given to drink, and to push, push.

It was a cool September night. Restless, I rose and parted the curtains. Through the crack I could see the moonlit branches of an oak swaying in the wind.

Let this child come fast
, I prayed.
Let it bring her peace
.

The Grand Duke arrived. I could hear him step noisily into the delivery room, mumbling something that I hoped was encouragement. I heard the Empress ask him where he had been and why he was not wearing his Russian uniform.

He said he had been mustering his Holsteiner troops. They had to be ready for a parade. “For there will be one, won’t there?” he asked in a petulant voice.

Minutes later we heard him depart.

After an hour, the Empress, warned that the waiting would be long, emerged from the delivery room. Countess Shuvalova hurried toward her with a small comfit pot.

She would retire to her bedroom, the Empress announced, slipping a piece of candied peel into her mouth. She would wait there until the labor came to fruition.

By midnight we were still waiting. Unable to sleep, the Empress had called her ladies-in-waiting into her bedroom, to pray with her, but Catherine’s maids-of-honor had been sent away. The Summer Palace, Elizabeth declared, was not built for crowds. The baby would need air to breathe.

By two in the morning I ventured into the delivery room, to ask if anything might be needed. The mattress on the floor was circled by ten thick wax candles, and I crossed myself, unable to stop the thought that it resembled a catafalque. Moonlight bathed the room. Apart from the midwife and her attendant, a young kerchiefed woman, no one else was allowed to stay while the labor was in progress.

The crisp, clean sheets that had been laundered and scented for the imperial delivery were now crumpled and stained. Catherine, her robe opened, her dark hair loose and matted with sweat, lay shivering. Her flesh was pasty, her breasts swollen.

Seeing me, she gasped and tried to lift herself. “No one told me it would hurt so much,” she said and moaned, pointing at the huge mound of her child. “Do you think I’ll just burst?”

“A few more hours and you won’t even remember.”

“When will the Empress come?”

“Very soon.”

“Varenka, please. Don’t you lie to me. Not you.”

The midwife clicked her tongue in annoyance, so I didn’t reply. Her reddened hands were gently bringing the baby down the birth passage.

“No danger of breech birth,” the midwife told me. “You can tell that to Her Highness.”

The floor squeaked as I knelt beside the mattress. On the table, by a porcelain basin, lay white swaddling clothes.

“Be off with you,” the midwife snapped.

I rose and left.

Two of Catherine’s chambermaids lingered in the hall, pretending to dust the railing or wipe some invisible stain from the floor. I wondered which one of them was a tongue.

“What do you think you are doing?” I snapped. They scattered like rabbits chased by a hound.

No one but the Empress, the Grand Duke, and five of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting were allowed to witness the final moments of the delivery.

The whispers grew still, and then I heard it: the baby’s first shaky cry, drowned in explosions of joy.

In the Imperial Bedroom I crossed myself and gave thanks. It was a boy.

I imagined what I couldn’t see: Catherine’s son placed between his mother’s legs, the cord around his body. The midwife waiting for the first cry so that the cord could be cut and removed.

There were three knots on it, I heard, predicting three future pregnancies. The afterbirth was expelled swiftly, without much pain. The infant was given a spoonful of warm red wine sweetened with honey to cut through the phlegm. He was washed and swaddled.

Through the wall I could hear Catherine’s joyous sobs.

In the Imperial Bedroom the curtains were pushed open. The dawn was milky and shrouded in fog. Outside, cries of joy mingled with musket shots and cheers. And then the church bells rang, one by one, announcing the good news.

There are so many words for love:
my dove, the apple of my eye, my honey, my falcon, my hawk
. The Empress muttered them all as she came back to her bedroom, the swaddled newborn in her arms, her ladies-in-waiting behind her. I had never seen her look so ecstatic.

A tiny reddened face, eyes squeezed tightly shut. A whimper chased away with a kiss.

I lingered as visitors arrived, declaring themselves speechless with awe. The little Tsarevitch, Peter the Great’s great-grandson, was a marvel of strength and beauty. Russia’s great future was secure.
“So handsome … so peaceful … a little man already.”

They all crowded around the Empress, making sure she was aware of their presence. Princes, counts, courtiers. The Chancellor of Russia peeled off his gloves, easing them off finger by finger, before making a sign of the cross over the infant’s head. Ivan Shuvalov, newly appointed the curator of Moscow University, his voice rich with emotion, recited an ode
To the precious one who brought Minerva joy
.

Satisfied, Elizabeth waved them all away. Even Ivan Ivanovich was told to leave. In the gray light of dawn, the canopied crib where she carefully placed the baby seemed to take up half of the room. Settling in a chair beside it, she began rocking it gently.

I turned to depart with the rest, but the Empress stopped me.

“Go to her now, Varvara,” she ordered, in a small, strained voice.

I thought:
She cannot even bring herself to say Catherine’s name
.

“What shall I tell the Grand Duchess, Your Majesty?”

“Tell her that I’m pleased with her.”

I nodded.

“Tell her that I’m tired. That she kept me waiting all night.”

The baby was quiet. The Empress rose and let her loose velvet cape slip off her shoulders. In a white shift of quilted cambric, she looked like an awkward moth. From the shadows of the bedroom came the rustling sound of a mouse scurrying along the wall.
Where are the cats when one needs them
? I thought.

Then came the words I dreaded.

“This child is mine. And you make sure
she
doesn’t give me any trouble.”

This is what it means to be Empress. Take what you want, discard what you no longer need. Live in a world that allows you to do as you please, for in this world fortunes and lives depend on your whims.

I knew it, and yet I still lingered, hoping the Empress would offer some consolation I could take to Catherine. A time for her visit, perhaps, a promise of a swift reunion with her own child.

For a moment, Elizabeth looked as if she might toss Catherine some scraps of her benevolence, but then the baby whimpered in his crib, and she turned away to bend over him.

I entered the delivery room with a heavy heart. I had not expected Catherine to be alone, but to my astonishment she lay without even a maid to assist her, shivering from the cold. The bed linen was soaked from her sweat. Even the candles had vanished.

She had wrapped her arms around her chest, her empty arms.

I smoothed Catherine’s moist hair and tried to comfort her sobs. “He will die,” she insisted. “He’ll die without me.”

“The Empress won’t let any harm come to him,” I assured her. “He’s safe and warm. His cradle is lined with silver fox.” I described her son to her. The tiny face, the pink lips, the big, gray eyes.

“Did she say when I can see him?”

I shook my head.

“Why, Varenka?”

“You know why.”

Catherine’s fingers dug into my arm, deep into my flesh. I heard her gasp. I heard her wail.

She had been robbed and left for dead. She was bleeding, not the woman’s blood that had to flow but the man’s blood that called for revenge. In the chilly light of dawn, I caught a glimpse of her hatred.

“I want her to die, Varenka.”

She let go of my arm. I covered her lips with my hand, to silence these dangerous words, but she pushed it away.

“I want to see her take her last breath. I want to look into her eyes when she does it. I want to watch when she struggles for air that will not come.”

I made another gesture of warning—the walls were too thin, the shadows not dense enough—but Catherine would not be silenced.

“I don’t care if anyone listens. I want her dead. I can’t live like this anymore.”

I let her cry in my arms until we heard the steps of Madame Vladislavova, the Chief Maid, who entered and declared herself on an imperial errand to check on the Grand Duchess.

She gave me a reproachful look. “The Empress wants you back with her, Varvara Nikolayevna,” she said sharply.

Already
? I thought.
Another whim? Or suspicion that I might disobey her?
No—I was certain it was merely the desire to hear that I had carried out her cruel wish.

Of all the time’s currents, I decided, the imperial ones run swiftest. Patience is not an imperial virtue.

My hand was still smoothing Catherine’s hair, and I could feel the velvet softness of her ear underneath my fingers. I knew that in my absence she would not be able to ask anyone about her child. If she did, her questions would be reported to the Empress.

“Tell the Empress I’ll be there soon,” I told Madame Vladislavova, knowing I was merely buying a few more moments. “The Grand Duchess still needs me here.”

An hour later when I returned to Catherine’s side from Elizabeth’s room, I discovered that Madame Vladislavova had been of no help. “The midwife will come soon” was all the wretched woman had said. She didn’t order the wet linen changed. Later, I learned that she didn’t even give Catherine a drink of water or help her move to a bed away from the drafts. I returned to find Catherine still on the blood-soaked mattress, shivering from exhaustion and pain.

Ringing for maids, ordering fresh linen, water, and a heavy throw, I raged. Where were they now, I thought bitterly, all these grand friends of hers? Those who fed on her largesse? Where was Naryshkin or his sister? Where was Saltykov?

Did they all wish her dead?

I kept these questions to myself as I helped Catherine rise from the mattress and wash. Her emptied belly still swollen, a brownish streak running like a gash from the navel down. Leaning on my arm, she got into a freshly made bed.

“Varenka?” she asked.

“She named him Paul Petrovich,” I answered, knowing what she sought.

“Paul,” she repeated.

“He is strong. He is not crying. He would not suckle, though. He fell asleep as soon as the wet nurse pushed a nipple into his mouth.”

Catherine’s eyes were on me, greedy for every word.

“The wet nurse is clean,” I assured her. “Not a spot on her body. Her milk is plentiful. Everyone rejoiced at the full moon last night. It will bring him strength. He has tiny, perfect fingers, with rosy nails.”

“Perfect,” she repeated. Her smile trembled.

“Are you in pain?” I asked.

She shook her head, but I could tell by the pallor of her skin that she was lying.

I thought of the moment the midwife had placed Darya in my arms, my daughter’s first soft whisper of a breath. I couldn’t be the one to tell Catherine that these would not be her pleasures.

“I’m strong, Varenka,” she said huskily. “For I have you. I ask for nothing more.” She took my hand in hers and kissed it. “You will help me. And my son.”

“Yes,” I said. “I will.”

Journal of the Court Quartermaster
reported that on September 20, 1754, toward morning, Her Imperial Highness Her Majesty Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alexeyevna gave birth successfully to a son. God has sent His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Paul Petrovich.

The cannonade from the Petropavlovsky Fortress announced the birth of an Imperial Heir. Throughout the city, banners were raised. Jubilant crowds cheered.

In the eleventh hour
—the
Journal
reported—in the presence of Her Imperial Majesty, the child was carried from the chambers of Their Imperial Highnesses to the inner chambers of Her Imperial Majesty.

A lie, I knew.

Not
in the eleventh hour
, but the moment the cord that attached him to his mother had been cut.

“Tell me everything, Varenka,” Catherine pleaded. “I don’t want you to spare my feelings.”

The Grand Duchess is making a spectacle of herself.… Poor Saltykov is trying his best to free himself, but a man has his limits.…

At the beginning of November the court moved back to the Winter Palace, patched up for the coming months, awaiting the time when proper renovations would begin. Half of the Imperial Bedroom had been turned into the nursery, and this was where Elizabeth spent her days, with the baby, jealous of the wet nurses. Little else interested her. I even saw her shake off Ivan Shuvalov’s hand.