The Winter Palace (15 page)

“The messenger was stopped,” the Chancellor told the Empress. “None of this filth got out of Russia. But that’s not everything. Tell Her Majesty what you’ve seen, Varvara.”

I prayed the earth would open and swallow me. I wished I would die before my words would hurt Catherine’s future. But I had no choice.

“What is it, Varvara?”

The Empress frowned, both curious and disdainful. In her loose silk dishabille, she looked enormous and fluid, her body threatening to spill its boundaries at any time.

“Princess Johanna, Your Highness—” I said.

“What about her?”

“A midwife came. I saw her leave Princess Johanna’s room with bloodied rags and a bowl covered with a cloth.”

“Princess Johanna? How do you know that she wasn’t bled?”

“The midwife, Your Highness … I saw her bury what was in the bowl in her own garden. The Princess paid her a hundred rubles and promised her another hundred after her daughter is married.”

“Where does this midwife live?”

“On Monetnaya Street, Your Highness. Her house is painted blue. She buried the thing in the back.”

The Empress, flushed, rose from her bed and began to pace the room. Her hand clenched at her skirts.

“A woman who murders her own child!” the Chancellor began. “Who lets the midwife’s knife cut up the life God entrusted her with!”

He was driving his point home, without subtlety.
Daughters are like their mothers. Ruthlessness runs with filial blood
. “Is nothing unthinkable, Your Majesty? Is nothing sacred anymore?”

The Empress was breathing heavily, her eyes puffy and red from all the sleepless nights. Hell was on her mind, the sulfurous fumes of eternal damnation, devils in short German jackets poking out the eyes and tongues of sinners.

She picked up a fan, her newest, made of swanskin and black feathers, a gift from Count Razumovsky. She drew her neck down between her shoulders like a giant tortoise.

The Chancellor took her silence as a good sign. The glint of pleasure in his eyes meant that he could already see Catherine and her mother in tears, packing their trunks.

Disgrace brings forth the vermin
, he had told me many times.
When the mighty fall, enemies crawl out of darkness
.

I watched the Empress break her fan in half and throw it to the floor, like a bird’s wing, maimed, useless.

Russia would soon turn to England or Austria for her allies, just as the Chancellor had wished. All would be well in the mighty Empire of the East.

The spring would come. At night the ice on the Neva would crack like musket shots, and big pieces of drifting ice would float out to the sea.

But I would no longer have a friend.

In the morning, Catherine went for a walk by the banks of the Neva, with just a maid at her side, away from the hollow walls, away from the two-sided mirrors, spying holes, and treacherous ears of the palace. Snowdrops, Catherine’s favorite flowers, were beginning to pierce through snow in the meadows, and she was eager to find them.

I waited until the maid with her tarried, her skirt snagged by the sharp prickles of a thistle, and then I approached the Grand Duchess.

“Please, I don’t have much time. It’s better that no one should see us.”

She gave me a playful look. “But why, Varenka?”

“Something terrible has happened. I’ve come to warn you.”

The smile waned on her lips.

The maid was heading back toward us, a crushed thistle head in her hands. I put my finger to my lips.

Catherine asked the maid if she had seen her kerchief. “I must have dropped it,” she complained. “The red one Maman gave me.”

It was a thin excuse, but the maid had no choice but to turn back to look for it.

I spoke hurriedly. I was blunt. “Your mother has written letters to the King of Prussia. Letters the Empress will never forgive.”

Fear gushed into Catherine’s eyes.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I heard the Chancellor speaking with the Empress. A messenger has been intercepted at the border.”

Catherine bit her lip, hard.

“The Empress is furious. She will summon you tonight. Both of you. The Chancellor is certain she will send you back home.”

Catherine cast a furtive glance behind us. The maid was still far enough away for us to speak.

“I don’t want to go back, Varenka.” I felt her gloved hand clasp my arm and quickly let it go. “Not in disgrace.”

“The Empress doesn’t want you to go back. But you have to make her see that you are not like your mother.”

I couldn’t tell her everything. I could not confess to spying. All I could offer was a gambler’s bet. Point to a narrow path away from the brink and pray it would work.

“Fall to your knees, Catherine. Kiss her feet. Cry. Tell the Empress that you have no mother but her. This is what she wants to hear. If you don’t …”

Catherine flinched.

“Fortune is not as blind as people think, but you have to take your own steps,” I insisted. My voice was strong, unwavering, as if I had not just told her to cut herself off from the woman who had given birth to her.

The maid had tired of searching for the phantom kerchief and was approaching fast. I bowed my head.

“I have to go now,” I told Catherine.

“Thank you, Varenka. I’ll never forget your kindness. I’ll repay it, too. I promise.” She turned to the maid. “Never mind the kerchief,” she called. “I’m so forgetful. Perhaps I didn’t take it with me, after all.”

I lingered in the antechamber that night, waiting to be summoned, but the Empress was in no mood for gossip. Inside the room where the Empress would sleep, I heard the Chancellor’s voice followed by someone’s nervous laughter, but I couldn’t tell whose it was.

The service bell rang, and I watched a footman, a young, lithe man I had not seen before, go in. “Get both of them here,” I heard the Empress yell. “Immediately.”

It didn’t take long. Footsteps became louder, heels pattered on the bare wooden stairs. A scream, a stumble. Another scream, closer now.

I slipped behind a curtain, my heart hammering. Johanna and Catherine came running, escorted by two sentries, mother and daughter yanked out of their beds, hastily dressed, with buttons and clasps undone—disheveled and terrified, just the way Elizabeth wanted them to be.

Princess Johanna was thrashing her arms about her like a bird shot down from the sky, but I gave her only a passing glance. It was Catherine I watched. Her face was flushed from running, her eyes red-rimmed. Her whole future depended on what would happen next.

The door opened, and the sentries led them in to the Empress.

Outside the antechamber where I hid, the muffled steps of the Palace Guards thickened. Humiliation of the mighty always made for excellent entertainment. In the morning, I knew, everyone would hear of undergarments stained from fright, of fingernails bitten to the bloody quick, of trembling hands unable to hold a cup of coffee.

The Empress’s voice was a roar.
Barbarian land? … a vain, deluded woman who thinks herself worthy to rule it!

She had been deceived. She had allowed a viper to coil itself on her breast. Russia had been slighted, maligned, humiliated. By a nobody. By a German whore.

Is this how Germans repay hospitality?

Is this how Germans treat their benefactors?

Is this the German understanding of loyalty and gratitude?

Ungrateful bitch!

Traitor!

Then I heard Catherine’s voice.

“Your Highness, you saved my life. You treated me like your own beloved child. Like your own daughter. You have done so much for my family, and I have tried to be worthy of your trust, but now I’m left with nothing!

“I don’t have a mother, for I cannot call a mother a woman who has betrayed my Benefactress. I’ll leave with her, as Your Highness has commanded, but please do not make me leave without your blessing.”

“Listen, you ungrateful wretch!” I heard the Empress scream. “Listen to the words of the daughter you don’t deserve! Get out of my sight! Out!”

Something crashed to the floor, and then came the words I, too, had been waiting for.

“
Alone
!”

The door opened and Princess Johanna stumbled out, humiliation a hard lump in her throat, like a nut swallowed whole.

I slipped out of my hiding place, my heart pounding. I walked past the footman and the guards, ignoring their avid looks. I found myself praying:
Let this be the new beginning, an omen for the future. Let it be a lesson learned and always cherished. A lesson remembered when the times turn black again
.

I walked, the floorboards creaking under my feet. In the dry winter air, the wood was losing its moisture. By the time spring came, the paneled corridors of the Winter Palace would be even more porous and cracked.

Let us be watchful
, I prayed.
Let us hide our true hearts from those who think they know us so well. Those who believe they own our bodies and souls
.

I didn’t have to see the Chancellor’s face to know he had covered his disappointment well. He would have gathered Johanna’s foolish letters, bowed, and left. He would be in his room, staring into the flames, a bottle of vodka on a tray.

He would not summon me for a while. He needed lips more pliant, hands more willing to soothe him, thoughts he didn’t have to watch and stamp out. He needed to see himself in eyes empty of doubt, in a heart softened with fear.

Don’t ever cross me
, he had said.
Don’t get too clever, Varvara
.

I didn’t care. Catherine would not be sent away. She was safe.

I was no longer alone.

That night I waited for her outside her room for hours. Finally, released by the Empress, she arrived, tears glistening on her cheeks. I cradled her in my arms as if she were a child, hushing her sobs, smoothing her silky hair.

“It’s all over,” I murmured. “You are safe now, Catherine. Everything will be fine. Did the Chancellor say anything before he left?”

“He said that he trusted Elizabeth’s judgment. That he knew the Empress had nothing but Russia’s precious future in mind. But he kept showing her the letters.”

His was the cleverness of a fox, I thought. Guilt by association. Guilt by the ties of kin. He could not oppose Elizabeth’s mercy, but he could fan her anger.

“She told him to take his filthy letters away, Varenka,” Catherine said. “She threw them to the floor, and he bent and picked them up. One by one.”

Catherine raised her head and smiled for the first time. I felt an instant of surprise, for it was the mischievous smile of a child.

For three April days in 1745, to the sound of drumrolls, heralds rode through the streets of St. Petersburg announcing that the imperial wedding would take place on August 21. Soon, by the imperial order, top nobles would receive advances to equip themselves for the great day. As soon as the Baltic thawed, ships began bringing in cargoes of cloth, carriages, French toiletries and wines. In St. Petersburg only English silks were more popular than silken cloth from Zerbst, especially white and light colors decorated with large flowers of gold and silver. Catherine’s father sent a shipment of Zerbst beer, but it was declared thin and flat.

The Empress supervised every detail, changing her mind at the slightest pretext. For a time the Amber Room was where she wished to bless the young couple before they left for the cathedral. Then she decided it too small. A
berline
was ordered in France, with glass panels that would make the coach look like a giant jewel box so that the people of Russia could admire the ducal pair as they rode with her in the wedding procession. Should it be adorned with flowers, she fretted, or should the elegance of its golden trim be its only decoration? Then, on the day she was to sign the order for the carriage maker, a bird crashed against her bedroom window and there was no more talk of glass panels.

The Chancellor had not sent for me since Princess Johanna’s humiliation, but the Empress kept me too busy to give this but a passing thought. Losses never stopped him before, and this time—as he always did—he had recovered his balance quickly. With each visit to Elizabeth’s receiving room, he praised the soon-to-be imperial bride as if he had never wanted her gone.

You do not have friends, Varvara
, he used to tell me.
You have aims and goals. Time changes them all. Learn from both the fox and the lion. For a fox cannot defend itself against a pack of wolves, and a lion does not know how to avoid a snare
.

The Empress decided that Princess Johanna would not leave before the wedding. “I don’t want any vile rumors,” she said. Not all daughters were like their mothers, her eyes said each time she took the measure of her defeated rival. Betrayal was not contagious.

For her part, Princess Johanna did what she was told. She suffered the sugar-sweet praises of her child and the Empress’s sharp looks. She turned away all visitors. Every time I passed by her rooms, I heard the sounds of packing. Maids hurried in and out with baskets; footmen brought trunks and braids of straw.

I spoke to her only once before the wedding day. She had ventured outside of her room on some errand, furtive and uneasy, her pupils enlarged with belladonna. When she saw me she stopped abruptly and—perhaps noting that two Palace Guards were within earshot—forced herself to greet me.

“Are you well?” she asked, her voice tight with strain.

“Yes,” I answered. “How kind of you to inquire, Princess. I trust you, too, are well?”

“I am. I’m glad to be going home. I have other children who need me. More than Sophie does.”

I fixed my eyes on the moon-shaped beauty spot glued to her upper lip, ignoring the sarcasm in her voice. I didn’t even care if she suspected me of betraying her. This woman had very nearly destroyed her daughter’s life. And for what? Her own vanity, her own lust.

Princess Johanna glanced in the direction of the guards, and I followed her gaze to see that they were watching us intently. The taller one winked at me and placed an open palm on his heart.