Far Flies the Eagle (27 page)

“The King of Naples also granted a constitution,” Metternich pointed out. “If I hadn't been seriously alarmed over the situation, I wouldn't have suggested this Congress so soon after Aix-la-Chapelle. Secret Societies are spreading everywhere, Sire. We had to restore the Bourbons to their throne otherwise any adventurer could follow Bonaparte's example and make himself King.” He leaned forward.

“We re-established them, and unless we support them against this new Jacobinism, revolution will sweep Europe. And sweep more than the Spanish and Neapolitan monarchs off their thrones!”

Alexander understood his meaning only too well. Jacobinism, atheism, revolt … all revolutions began that way and culminated in the destruction of the monarchy. It was all the result of free-thinking, of this ignorant worship of liberty, of which he himself had been guilty in theory if not in practice when he was young. God, the folly of it, the bad example! That was another error he must purge.… Freedom is an evil, he thought violently, and startled Metternich by saying so.

“Even in Russia I've found these damnable tendencies,” he admitted. “But I've done everything in my power to stop them, and I shall do even more! God makes a King responsible for the protection of his people. I've always guarded that trust; it's every sovereign's duty to stamp out this moral disease!”

“You've given the world the solution, Sire,” Metternich said eagerly, “in the Holy Alliance! You said all nations should guarantee the rights of others and defend them if necessary. And I believe we have the right to protect the people of Spain and Naples from these revolutionary scum. I believe we should support their anointed rulers by force!”

He waited; this was the object of his invitation and his attempts to make friends with Alexander. He wanted him to authorize the invasion of any country which dared adopt a constitution.

The man who had protected the French people from the fury of their conquerors and interceded for political prisoners during the Bourbon Terror after 1815, now turned to the architect of reaction and said hotly: “Certainly, Count. The maintenance of Christian sovereignty is the prime purpose of the Holy Alliance! It's the plain duty of every Christian nation to protect religion and uphold the authority of Christ's anointed Kings. You can rely on as many Russian troops as you wish!”

Metternich bowed his head in acknowledgment and smiled. How easy it had been after all.… Prussia and France would follow the Czar's lead, and since he dictated Austrian policy himself, only England's reaction was in doubt.

“Russian troops won't be needed for Naples, Sire. We can deal with that. May I assume you support this idea, then?”

“With all my heart,” Alexander answered.

“We might call the resolution something special … the Protocol of Troppau, perhaps?”

“An excellent suggestion, my dear Count. We shall call it that.”

After Troppau, the Congress met again at Laibach. Austrian troops invaded Naples and Piedmont where a similar crisis had arisen; the constitutional Governments were abolished and full power restored to the Kings. The reformers were arrested and executed in hundreds. So, within six years of its inception, Alexander's plan for Christian rule in Europe had become the instrument of wholesale oppression

The only country who refused to join it and disposed of any idea that she might be bound by its terms, was England. And England was too powerful to be made to bend. By then Alexander had returned to Russia, and the misery and turmoil of unhappy Europe interested him less and less. His own country preoccupied him to such an extent that however opprobrious Metternich's suggestions for keeping the peace, he agreed almost without reading them. Let Metternich settle Europe's problems; he had his own to resolve, the dangerous and so often bloody issue of who should inherit the throne of Russia.

As early as 1819 he had made his choice; he merely began legalizing it. His younger brother Nicholas was to succeed him; Nicholas was obstinate and stupid, but he was reliable and married to a German Princess who was a model of wifely obedience. Sometimes Alexander laughed at the thought of the
bourgeois
respectability of the two people who would mount the thrones of his turbulent, bloody ancestors.

What a dull Court it would be after the splendours and catastrophes of his own reign! He had told Nicholas his intention and not been deceived by the humble pose adopted by the Grand Duke and Duchess. The more they protested their unworthiness the more certain he became of their delight.

But Constantine, Nicholas had asked, his rigid mind straining to overcome the obstacle of a succession which deviated from the rules.… Constantine was the rightful heir! On his way to Troppau Alexander saw his brother, and watched the grotesquely ugly features twist with fright when he mentioned the succession. “No. No!” he pleaded. He didn't want to be Czar, he had no ambition to follow his glorious brother … Nicholas was the one.… Alexander reassured him, knowing that behind his reluctance lay the memory of Paul's ghastly death. Weeping with relief the Grand Duke resumed his cruelties and debaucheries while his brother went on to the Congress. Later he was able to tell Nicholas it was settled; Constantine was only too eager to escape the awful destiny of ruling Russia. While he told the Grand Duke and Duchess, he thought how different it would have been had Catherine Pavlovna lived! Everything would have been hers; he could have made her a gift of the Crown she had coveted so fiercely, and then left Russia in the hands of a successor worthy of him. And what a reign hers would have been!

But she was dead and it was just a dream.… It must be Nicholas, as soon as affairs were put in order and his beloved daughter Sophie secured in a suitable marriage.

Alexander's spiritual adviser was then the famous visionary and ascetic monk Photius, head of the Yuriev Monastery in Novgorod. Photius was a wild-eyed fanatic, emaciated from fasting and self-discipline, who made prophecies and held conversations with God in his cell; he also had fits and hallucinations, and Araktcheief introduced him to the Czar. He was a mixture of charlatan and lunatic; his extraordinary personality and blistering denunciations of his sovereign as an idolater and a sinner brought the astonished Emperor to his knees at their first meeting. From that moment Photius's ascendancy was assured, and Araktcheief's power increased through the medium of his protégé. Whenever Alexander was troubled he sent for Photius or went to the monastery in Novgorod. There he knelt for hours without food or water, absorbed in passionate prayer, and Photius assured him that his daughter Sophie would be cured of her long illness.

He was sitting in her room in the first months of 1824, holding her hand and trying to convince himself that she was better. The active, high-spirited girl of a year before now lay all day on a couch by her window, coughing into a handkerchief. Alexander noticed the high flush on her cheeks and his heart lifted with hope.

“You're better, my dearest, aren't you?” he said eagerly. She looked up at him and squeezed his hand.

“Much better, Papa. I'm always better when I see you. Papa, I want to ask you something.”

“Anything, my Sophie, anything!” he promised.

“Do you think I shall be able to go out for a drive soon? I haven't been out for so long, and it's spring now and quite warm. Will you ask Mama for me? She worries and fusses so much, but I'm sure she'll listen if you ask her!”

“I'll ask her,” he said. “And you shall take your first drive with me! After the Guards Artillery Review we'll drive down to Tsarske Seloe. How would you like that?”

“Oh, I should love it! It's the most beautiful palace in the world! Let's do that, Papa; promise me we'll go to Tsarske Seloe when I'm better. We might even stay there for a little while …”

“For as long as you like. It's your home too, my darling child; all these palaces are your homes. You're a Romanov, Sophie; never forget that.”

“I don't,” she said sweetly, “but it only really matters to me because it means that I'm related to you. Sometimes I feel selfish because I'm glad you don't love Emmanuel or Zinaida as much as me.”

He shrugged at the mention of the other two children Marie had borne him. “I'm fond of them too, but you're my favourite.”

She smiled up at him, and he thought how pretty she was, and how the Romanov blood had come out in her. It was there in the set of the little head and the vivid eyes; she had the sunny temperament of the Great Catherine herself, and the bodily beauty of Marie Naryshkin, before the disease ravaged through her. He noticed that the hair curling over her forehead was damp with perspiration; he wiped her brow with his own handkerchief. She must get well! She must! He'd given alms in her name, ordered prayers to be said for her in monasteries all over Russia; Photius himself had petitioned God.… Everything good in himself he saw personified in the purity and gentleness of the eighteen-year-old girl; she was his sole justification for the years of adultery with Marie, for the sin and passion of that long, ill-fated love affair. He had sinned more with Marie than with any other women, even the well-bred sluts of Viennese society, because with Marie he had experienced the most breathless and consistent pleasure. Sophie was the result of that early passion before indifference and misunderstanding embittered their relationship. If God took Sophie from him, it could only mean he had not yet been forgiven.…

He had planned a splendid marriage for her, a semi-royal marriage with a suitor worthy of the Czar's natural daughter, while the smiling child who had climbed on his knee in her nursery grew into an accomplished, lovely girl. Whatever happened in Russia or the outside world, he could escape the ugliness and disillusion of it all by going to see his daughter and pretending for a few hours that he was not the Czar. He used to sit with his eyes closed, listening while Sophie played the piano and Marie sat on the opposite side, sewing, and his thoughts turned again and again to the day Nicholas would succeed him. How would he wear his great brother's mantle? Well, Alexander decided ruefully; imagination would never lead Nicholas to make his mistakes. Russia would be safe with him, he had been born an autocrat, he would never need to learn.… When Nicholas was Czar … after Sophie's marriage, of course.

But there would be no marriage for Sophie now.

“Dear Papa, please don't cry!”

She was looking up at him, one horribly frail hand reaching out to him.

“Really, I'm better. And we're going to Tsarske Seloe, just as you promised. You mustn't cry for me,” she pleaded, and in her distress the high colour and big hollow eyes were terrifying in the thin face. “I'm awfully happy. Papa. Even if I don't get well, you mustn't cry.…”

She stopped and began coughing violently; he held her in his arms, helpless and horrified until the spasm stopped. Then he ran to the door and flung it open, shouting for Marie. Slowly Sophie Naryshkin opened her eyes and breathed deeply. She turned her head and looked out of the window; it was May and the trees outside were flowering. It would be warm in the spring sunshine, warmer still at Tsarske Seloe where her mother had often taken her to see her father. It
was
beautiful, so vast and full of lovely things; strange to think the Czars and Czarinas who'd built and furnished and altered it were her own ancestors, that the Emperor himself was her father. She smiled as she thought of him, and then bit her lip as it quivered. She was a Romanov, and they were brave.… But she would have liked so much to go to Tsarske Seloe with him.…

“Alexander.”

Slowly he raised his head and saw his wife standing in the doorway of his study; she hesitated for a moment and then came towards him.

“Please don't be angry with me for intruding. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about Sophie.”

He tried to speak normally; in all the years of a nominal marriage he had never shown his feelings to this woman, this stranger who came now at one of the most wretched hours of his life.

“Thank you, Elizabeth. It's good of you to come.”

She shook her head. “I was afraid you might not want me, but I heard how upset you were.…” She shivered and said quickly, “It's so cold in here! Let me ring and have the fire built up. You'll be ill if you sit here like this.”

“I wanted to be alone,” he said. “When I saw her I couldn't believe she was dead, she looked asleep.… I can't stop thinking about it. It's God's judgment on me, Elizabeth!” He hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. The next moment she was on her knees beside him, her nervousness forgotten. Gently she laid her hand on his arm.

“She was very sick,” she whispered. “Nothing could save her, and remember she's in Heaven now.”

“That's what Photius tells me,” he mumbled.

“You mustn't let anyone see you like this,” she said. “I heard how brave you were when they told you, how you reviewed the Guards and gave no sign; you've got to be brave now.…”

Within a few minutes a fire was blazing and some brandy was brought to them on the Empress's order; she had taken control of the situation for the first time in their married life. When they were alone she made him sip the brandy, and drank a little herself; the candles were lit and the room grew very warm. He leaned back in his chair, and without speaking, took her hand in his; she sat with him quietly, glancing round the room she had seldom entered for more than a few minutes during the last years. It was a comfortable room, dominated by the huge desk, everything in it was heavy; the furniture, the deep-red curtains drawn across the tall windows, the ornaments, the massive silver candelabra which stood on his desk, and the portrait of Catherine the Great which hung the full length of one wall. Some of the most important hours of his life had been spent in that room, and he had taken refuge there after the death of his daughter.