Rebel Princess

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Rebel Princess

A Romanov Saga

Evelyn Anthony

Foreword

In setting forth the life of Catherine the Great, I have treated the subject in fictional style, but with the exception of the Banqueting Hall scene after her arrival in Moscow, the arrest of Demoiselle Carr, Narychkin's plan of escape, and Peter's masque at Oranienbaum, the action of the story is mainly true to history and to contemporary reports by eye-witnesses.

It is the story of a remarkable woman, a foreigner whose name has become synonymous with that of her adopted country, Russia, and whose personality remains eternally vivid despite the passage of over a hundred and fifty years.

In dry documents and annotated biographies something of Catherine's unique fascination emerges through the letters and diaries of those who knew her. There were many who declared her charm to be equalled only by her crimes, but those voices were few and they spoke from a safe distance when they delivered judgment.

Little of Catherine Alexeievna's great achievements remain. Almost all her work, both good and evil, perished quickly after her, but the mark of her life upon world history is ineffaceable, and it is with the early and most decisive part of that life that this book is concerned.

Chapter 1

The peace of a snow-driven December night in the year 1743 was shattered by a horseman galloping along the road from Berlin, his mount slipping dangerously on the icy surface, the rider urging him on relentlessly, for he rode to the orders of one who would brook no excuse for delay.

He paused only once during that night to rein in at a wayside inn and swallow a cup of wine, not even waiting to dismount.

“Is this the road to Zerbst?” he asked.

“It is, Sir, about three miles distant, and a Merry Christmas to you,” answered the innkeeper, but his traditional salutation fell upon the empty air, for the horseman had already dug spurs into his beast.

The small German city lay grouped about the central pile of the castle, its towers half hidden by the veil of thickly falling snow.

By a window in the castle tower a young girl, muffled to the tips of her ears in a counterpane, knelt on her bed, looking out into the night. Princess Augusta Fredericka should have been asleep, but she was far too restless to lie there in the darkness without even the cheerful comfort of a candle. So it happened that the first person to see the horseman clatter into the castle courtyard was she whose destiny he carried with him in the despatch case strapped to his body.

The Prince of Zerbst was at table in the banqueting hall when a lackey announced that a messenger begged admittance. He was a big jovial man, fond of women and of wine, and the occasion was one of double celebration for him, for he had just succeeded to the Principality of Zerbst. As a gesture he had invited his poorer relatives to spend Christmas with him.

A long table piled high with dishes stood in the center of the huge room, whose walls were hung with faded tapestries that moved gently in the draught. The faces of the guests were illumined by the light of many candles, faces flushed with wine and the rich food they had eaten.

At their head sat the Prince, laughing with great good humor and surveying the scene with comfortable satisfaction. In the soft candle-light the cups and platters shone like silver and the uniforms of his lackeys gleamed with tarnished braid; it was difficult to notice the threadbare shabbiness of the family seat of Anhalt Zerbst.

The feast had been in progress several hours, and, in accordance with the customs of the age, most of the diners were drunk, their powdered wigs askew, while some lay sprawled asleep across the table, undisturbed by the talk and shouts of laughter that grew in volume as the wine flowed.

The floor at their feet was littered with bones, and winespillings dripped unheeded from the board, while the stolid German servants stood like statues behind their master's guests, refilling empty cups.

It was one of these who approached the Prince and murmured something so that he turned to his younger brother Christian and roared jokingly:

“Come, Christian, lay down your inward Bible and fill that empty goblet! There's a messenger outside, perhaps he's from Heaven in answer to your prayers? What if the King has given you a province at last?”

It was a tactless remark to make, for the comparative poverty and obscurity of Christian and his family were too sore points for any of them to appreciate the joke. Christian raised his head and looked about him with angry, somber eyes. The extreme piety that afforded him comfort in his misfortunes had become a standard jest among his more pleasure-loving, feckless kin and a source of impatient irritation to his wife, whose freezing, contemptuous glance met his across the table, and caused him to wince involuntarily.

“My lady wife has enough to say upon the matter without your jesting,” he muttered, half to himself, for the dark, quick-tongued Princess Johanna was of nobler blood than he, an advantage which she had never allowed him to forget, and was impelled by an ambition that her cautious, slow-moving husband had utterly failed to understand or gratify.

In the midst of the general din of conversation the Prince of Zerbst addressed the messenger, travel-stained and shivering, who bowed before him.

“Whom do you seek?” he inquired grandly. The answer was both unexpected and unwelcome.

“The Princess Johanna of Anhalt, may it please your Highness!” the courier replied.

The Prince frowned suddenly, all his boyish, blustering humor gone. “She sits over there,” he directed sullenly.

Johanna of Anhalt was a small dark woman in the early thirties, her carriage was upright and her expression sourly disdainful. Married at seventeen to the uninspiring Christian, disappointment had blighted her vivacious looks and destroyed those scant virtues possessed by a nature at once shallow and conceited.

Now she regarded the messenger with an indifferent hauteur, belied by the red patches of excitement that burned on either cheek.

She was poor and unimportant; no messages ever came for her.… But her hated relations must not see that the delivering of a letter had come to be an event in the monotony of her life.

“I am the Princess,” she said sharply.

The man dropped to his knee before her, unfastening the leather satchel which was strapped to his waist. He handed her a scroll.

Johanna took it from him with hands that trembled, for she recognized the emblem on the messenger's case and, as she broke the heavy seal, saw the same cypher repeated on the head of the document. There was a sudden silence at the table, and the Prince of Zerbst put down his wine-glass to stare at her while she read.

He too had seen the seal that dangled from its crimson ribbon—the dreaded double-headed eagle.

“What news, sister?” he demanded. “You look as if your letter contained something that we should be interested to hear.”

Johanna lowered the parchment into her lap so that her brother-in-law's sharp eyes should not notice how the paper wavered in her shaking fingers, and despite her efforts at composure, her voice was uneven with excitement as she replied.

“It is a message from my kinswoman … the Empress Elizabeth of Russia,” she announced. “It is a most cordial message, most cordial.…”

“Naturally,” the Prince answered impatiently, “but do not keep me in suspense, my dear Johanna. What does the message say?”

Johanna looked at him, remembering how he had sneered so often at her pitiful boast of kinship with the great. He would find out what the Empress had said soon enough. Insolently she ignored her husband; already she had determined what stand must be taken against him if necessary.

“I am summoned to go to Russia,” she announced boastfully, “and I am to take my daughter Augusta Fredericka with me. We are to leave without delay.”

There was an immediate babble of comment, but neither the Prince nor his brother felt the need to question the meaning of the summons; for they knew that it was the usual procedure with the Imperial Court to decide upon a bride for one of their number, and then to send for the girl without any previous warning.

Johanna's brother-in-law ventured one more question:

“And is there anyone in particular who desires to see Augusta, besides the Empress?”

“She is most anxious to present my little daughter to her nephew, the Grand Duke Peter,” replied Johanna venomously, for the Grand Duke Peter was none other than Elizabeth's heir.

In those few words she told them all that her daughter might well become the next Empress.

She herself had not quite realized the full import of her own words; excitement, vindictive satisfaction, and a sense of unreality vied for full possession of her feelings.

It was surely not possible that her daughter, the unremarkable Augusta Fredericka, should be called to such a destiny. But the parchment scroll still clasped in her hands proved it was true.

Johanna could not endure that smoking, shabby dining hall another moment.

“I must waken Augusta. I must tell her this news without delay. With your Highness's permission …”

The Prince of Zerbst nodded his dismissal, while Johanna swept him a proud curtsy and hurried from the room. She had to relate her story into a sympathetic ear, or at least into a submissive one, and the person least likely to interrupt or question was the fourteen-year-old Augusta who was upstairs in bed.

Discussion with Christian would be difficult, for she knew well that the roots of strict Lutheranism went deep within him and that the ridiculous conscience of which he made such boast might not be blinded by the brilliance of his daughter's future. His hatred and distrust of all things foreign were the only strong emotions, beside his long-dead passion for herself, that Johanna had ever known to possess him.