The Winter Palace (50 page)

I noted the flash of pride when Alexei pronounced his nephew’s name: Alexei Grigoryevich. Son of Gregory.

Did I guess it already? The depth of the Orlovs’ ambition? The weight of debts she would owe them? If I did, I wouldn’t admit such thoughts. Not even to myself.

Egor flashed to my mind, his bitter voice complaining of the court intrigues that sapped the strength of the army. “As if Russia didn’t have true enemies,” he had told me. Thrusting our copy of the Court Calendar into my hands, Masha asked me to look for the names of soldiers from Egor’s regiment who had been decorated or promoted. There were so precious few of them. What could I tell my servant when she wondered what her master would’ve been had he lived? Still a Lieutenant? Still in debt?

I thought of Paul, in Oranienbaum, of the feverish chaos that would greet the first news of the coup. Empty corridors, distraught nurses.
Promise me you’ll keep him safe
, Elizabeth had said on her deathbed.
Swear it on your daughter’s life
.

“I’ll go to Oranienbaum,” I told Alexei Orlov. “I’ll take Darya with me. Paul knows us well. He’ll go with us when I tell him to.”

Alexei flashed me a quick, sharp glance. “You are not afraid?”

“No,” I lied. “Where is Grigory?”

Grigory was with his regiment, assuring the Izmailovsky support. The other three Orlov brothers were in their Millionnaya Street home, awaiting his orders.

In the other room, Darya was asking Masha, “Is it Uncle Alexei? So why can’t I see him, too?”

“I have to go, Varvara Nikolayevna,” Alexei said. “Tell Darenka I’ll come back.”

I told Masha to bring our traveling clothes. “Fast,” I urged. “We are leaving right away.”

I calculated the distance: twenty-eight
versty
from St. Petersburg to Peterhof. Fifteen more to Oranienbaum. Six hours in the carriage, if I changed horses twice on the way.

My old servant gave me a long, dark look with her good eye. She knew what was happening, for I had no choice but to trust her with our secrets. If the coup succeeded, I would bring Catherine’s firstborn son to the Winter Palace. There, guards from all regiments would protect him. If the coup failed and I was arrested, Masha would take Darya and go west, to Warsaw. Hidden in the double bottom of a leather trunk, beside gold ruble coins, there was a letter addressed to Count Poniatowski, a plea to take care of my child.

I heard Masha murmur a blessing. I felt her hand on my forehead. My servant’s fingers, I noticed, were beginning to bend at odd angles. I had seen her struggle to thread a needle.

Darya sensed that this was not an ordinary outing. “Where are we going, Maman?”

“To Oranienbaum,” I replied, trying to make my voice cheerful. “To visit the Grand Duke Paul.”

But I thought,
To keep an old promise, an oath I gave on your life
.

At the Oranienbaum palace I ordered the driver to take us to the back entrance. I hoped no one would pay attention to an unmarked carriage that would leave the moment we were safely inside.

As soon as we alighted, I straightened Darya’s dress and took her hand in mine. “Slowly,” I told her. “We don’t have to hurry now.”

We made it through the service hall, onto the back stairs to the second floor. At the top of the stairs I stopped to take a look at the corridor we had to walk along. It was deserted.

We walked past the portrait of Peter the Great on a horse, piercing a bear with his lance, past the billowing tapestry of Adam and Eve in Paradise, surrounded by cavorting lions and lambs.

From behind the nursery door came Paul’s laughter followed by a happy squeal and the patter of feet. Then, suddenly, the door banged open and the Emperor ran out, hands over his head. A pillow came after him but missed and landed on the floor. My heart thundered wildly.

“You didn’t get me,” Peter sang in a funny opera voice.

The nursery door closed with a loud thump. Inside, Paul screamed, “I did. I did.”

I hesitated, but we were too close to turn back unnoticed, and there was nowhere to hide. Not with Darya beside me, already anticipating Paul’s delight at seeing us.

The Emperor, in his worn blue housecoat, without a wig, was still laughing when he noticed us. “Varvara Nikolayevna. What are
you
doing here?”

I curtsied and pulled at Darya’s hand, and she followed my example. But the Emperor waved his hand.

“No need for ceremony. This is not the Winter Palace.” He winked at Darya, motioning for her to approach him. I let go of her hand, and she made a cautious step forward.

“The Grand Duchess sent me, Your Majesty,” I said, pointing at the nursery door. On the other side of the door came the thumps of someone running. “With a name-day present,” I added, quickly. And then I cursed my own stupidity. Anyone would notice that my hands were empty.

I wondered if the Emperor even heard me, for he was busy pointing to his pocket. I saw Darya’s hand dive there and retrieve a handful of bonbons.

“It’s a secret,” Darya chirped. “You have to promise you won’t tell anyone we are here.” She popped the bonbons into her mouth before I could stop her.

“Your Majesty …” I corrected her.

The Emperor giggled and raised his hand to his heart. “I promise.”

Then he turned to me. “So Madame Resourceful has come up with a surprise for her son?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Go inside, then,” he said carelessly, and walked away. I cast one last look at him as he left, a gangly, awkward figure, waving his long arms, muttering to himself.

Before I knocked on the nursery door, I peeled off my gloves. Only then I realized how damp my palms were. And how cold.

On the eve of the coup, Darya played with Paul, helping him erect fortifications from blankets and pillows. After a supper of pineapples and ice cream, he pretended to be a soldier storming a fortress while Darya happily played a captured princess rescued from attacking bears. “Don’t move,” Paul screamed his warnings. “Pretend to be dead.”

I looked at his face, reddened with exertion, eyes set wide apart, narrow lips, nose short, upturned. Peter’s features, I thought. To counter my growing unease, I recalled the night he was born, eight years before, and his mother’s pain when she could not even touch him.

In Peterhof, by then, the gardeners must have already moved the giant pots with citrus trees from the orangery and lined them up along the paths in preparation for tomorrow’s feast. This year’s imperial name-day celebration was to be particularly festive.

After the maids had put Paul to bed, he asked me to sit by his side. He closed his eyes and said nothing for a long time, but when I assumed he had fallen asleep and rose to snuff the candle, he spoke.

“She has come to me in my sleep.” He meant Elizabeth Petrovna, his great aunt. “She told me not to be afraid.”

“Why would you be afraid?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. I am sometimes.”

“Everyone is afraid sometimes.”

“Even Lieutenant Orlov?”

“Even he.” I wondered who had mentioned Orlov’s name to him and when.

In the Oranienbaum gardens, lilacs were in bloom, making the air heavy and almost sickly sweet. In the distance someone was plucking at guitar strings.

“Do you want to pray with me for Empress Elizabeth’s soul?” I asked the Grand Duke.

Paul gave me a sideways glance and nodded. His eyes began glistening with tears.

Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of thy departed servant.…
I intoned the prayer for the dead, but it was atonement I prayed for, and hope. So that all Elizabeth had destroyed could be repaired, all that she had filled with secrecy could be illuminated by the truth of the new reign.

While I watched over the sleeping children in Oranienbaum, two hours’ ride away, in Peterhof, an ordinary street carriage with two post horses waited in the small Monplaisir courtyard. In the silvery twilight of a white night, Catherine was dressing in haste to the sound of Alexei’s restless steps outside her bedroom. The maids had laid out her clothes: stays, chemise, petticoats, stockings, shoes, and her simple black mourning gown.

“All is ready for the proclamation. You must get up,” Alexei said when he’d knocked on her bedroom door.

“Now?” she asked. “Why?”

On the other side of the garden, the dogs had already caught the scent of a stranger. Their frenzied barking brought out the lights. Someone whistled loudly. A yelp of pain was followed by a whimper.

“Passek has been arrested. There is no time left.” Alexei’s voice was sharp with tension.

As the maids watched, Catherine crossed herself and bowed in front of the icon. Twenty-one years before, in a moment like this, Elizabeth had vowed that if God made her the Empress of All the Russias, no one would be sent to death on her orders.

If Catherine made a vow that dawn in Monplaisir, she never told me. She ordered the maids back to sleep and drank a few sips of water. Her carriage had to be on its way before anyone noticed Alexei’s presence.

Kozlov, her hairdresser, arranged Catherine’s hair as her carriage sped toward St. Petersburg. Two hours later, Grigory met her at the halfway point with fresh horses, just when hers were beginning to falter. They sped toward the barracks of the guards.

Alexei and Grigory had done their part. By the time Catherine rode into the barracks that dawn, the guards awaited her.

She alighted from the carriage and stood before them, solemn in black, her mourning dress a reminder that—unlike her husband—she didn’t wish to forget the late Empress. Her voice did not falter, her face did not flinch.

“The Emperor,” she told the guards, “is listening to the enemies of Russia. He has given orders to arrest me. I fear he wants to kill me and my only son.”

A barrage of angry shouts followed, shouts Catherine allowed to ring before she continued.

“The Emperor is denying me and my son our rightful place beside him. You, the best sons of Russia, know what our beloved Motherland needs. I have come to you for protection. I’m placing my fate in your hands.”

So much can be weaved into a voice: a sovereign’s assurance, a woman’s plea.

Wild applause greeted her words, a torrent of cheers rising from the barracks. “No one will touch you,” the guards shouted. “Not while we live.”

When the first
Vivat
sounded, Catherine knew she had won. Lit up, glowing, she stood tall and triumphant as, one by one, the regiments of the Izmailovsky, Semyonovsky, and Preobrazhensky guards swore their loyalty. Soldiers kissed her extended hands, the hem of her mourning dress, still dusty from the journey. They fell to her feet, trembling like mercury in a child’s palm, calling her
Matushka
, their Little Mother. Their Empress.

On their knees, their cheeks aflame, their eyes locked on her as if she were Russia’s only hope.

“A frenzy of joy, as the word spreads, Varvara Nikolayevna,” Count Panin told me when he arrived at Oranienbaum at noon to escort us to St. Petersburg. “Emperor Paul,” he referred to the Grand Duke, still convinced Catherine would rule merely as her son’s Regent.

You see what you want to see
, I thought.
You believe what you want to believe
.

Count Panin did not hide the raw urgency in his voice. We had to hurry before the news of the coup reached Oranienbaum. It was one o’clock already. We had at least six hours of the carriage ride ahead of us.

I crossed myself.

It has happened
.

Catherine is safe
, I thought.
Her son is safe. We are all safe
.

I walked to the window. Outside, the fountain in the Oranienbaum garden had just been switched on. The sun was weaving rainbows into the streams of water. On a stone bench, a group of musicians was playing a festive piece. From the open windows of Peter’s suite came screeches of laughter.
Das Fräulein
must have given her lover another name-day gift. For a moment I saw Peter himself leaning from the window, a blurry figure waving his hand.

The Emperor of Russia did not know he had already been deposed.

He’ll be a happier man than he’d be as an Emperor
, I thought.
Exile will please him in the end
.

In the courtyard, horses stomped their feet. Carriages were lining up, ready to depart for Peterhof. A gull cried.

“Are we going to see my Papa now?” Paul asked me, anxiously, when the maid led him in. His morning tutor had been teaching him a poem he was to recite at the name-day feast, and he still stumbled over the lines.

“No, Your Highness,” I answered. “We are going for a ride.”

“Is this a surprise?” Paul’s eyes opened wide in anticipation.

“Yes,” Count Panin said cheerfully. “Very well put, Your Highness. This is a wonderful surprise.”

Paul laughed. “It’s a surprise,” he said, giving Darya a conspiratorial wink. “For Papa’s name day.”

Darya jumped up and down. Paul began jumping, too.

“But it’s your name day as well, Your Highness,” Count Panin cut in, demanding his pupil’s attention. There was a tinge of irritation in his voice at having been ignored, and I should have paid more attention to it. I had been at court too long to underestimate the warning signs of jealousy.

“I have to practice my poem.” Paul’s eyes were still fixed on my daughter.

“I’ll help you,” Darya offered.

I saw the astonishment blossom in my daughter’s eyes when Count Panin ordered her to be quiet. A crimson blush rushed from her cheeks. “What did I do, Maman …” she began.

But there was no time to reassure her.

As our small party rushed toward Count Panin’s carriage, I blessed the comings and goings that preceded even the shortest of imperial journeys: seamstresses busy with the final fittings of the court dresses, footmen lugging trunks and boxes. Skittering cats and whining dogs.

MAKING
OF
THE
EMPEROR

The Lord took the strength of the mountain
The majesty of a tree …

These were the lines the Grand Duke began to recite as we sped along the St. Petersburg road, his voice small, unsure.