The Winter Palace (39 page)

Masha kept the tally of chores. Master’s dress uniform had been torn at the sleeve and had to be mended. His pockets were stained, for he had carried carrots and lumps of sugar there, for his horse. He needed fresh handkerchiefs. He needed a few jars of her own shoe polish, which she concocted from wax, tallow, and tar, so much better than what the army could provide.

Our bedroom smelled of saddle soap and snuff. I’d return after my shift in the Imperial Bedroom to hear Egor’s triumphant grunts as he counted out the last of the hundred push-ups with which he started his days. Next door, where his valet slept, my husband’s trunks were filling up, but the things he always kept with him were neatly lined on the side table. The toiletry set, his saber, his pistols, all in cloth covers that Masha had washed and ironed, all tied with string.

During the day Darya never left his side. She carried a doll he had bought for her, refusing to part with it, even when Masha was giving her a bath.

“Flowers have roots that drink water from underneath the earth. Birds eat seeds, Papa.” I heard her voice, serious, insistent. She never stopped, as if every thought had to be turned into words, every mystery examined.

“Masha says that swans lose their feathers every spring and then they cannot fly. Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Can they not find them?”

“They have to grow new feathers. They have to wait.”

“Why?”

“It takes time to grow.”

“How much time?”

With Egor there was no shyness in her, I thought, no hesitation. She either knew something and announced it or did not know and wished to find out. If an answer did not satisfy her, she would not stop. Precision pleased her, certainty of facts that fitted together snugly.

“Sometimes she is no longer a child,” Egor said.

“Only sometimes,” I said, laughing.

Evenings that August were chilly. On Egor’s last night at home, we sat on the garden bench, watching the deepening shadows. Darya, the doll propped beside her, was drawing something in a sketchbook Egor had given her, the tip of her tongue extended in fierce concentration. She was already trying to contain his looming absence, asking when he would come back. “How many weeks?” she would ask, spreading the fingers of her right hand, hiding her left hand behind her.

The birch leaves were already beginning to yellow. Soon the earth would be carpeted with amber and gold.

I told Egor about the dancemaster I intended to hire soon, to give our daughter dancing and deportment lessons. I wondered if the one hour a day I now made Darya walk in high heels, with a book on her head, was enough to keep her spine straight.

The gardeners had been burning twigs and dead leaves, and the air carried the sharp bite of smoke.

“It’s not right,” Egor said, as if he hadn’t heard me.

I fell silent.

He lowered his voice as he spoke, staring at the polished tip of his jackboot. “Bribery and soul-buying,” he muttered.

On his knee, his hand curled into a fist. On his tensing jaw, a shadow of black stubble quivered.

He had seen deserters, he told me. Many more than he’d thought possible. Men were poking out their eyes, crushing their toes, cutting off their fingers, or knocking out their teeth. Anything to avoid the army.

The Yaroslavl’ villagers had been caught buying serfs in another village to serve in their place. “Three hundred and sixty rubles,” Egor continued. “That’s the going rate for a good recruit.”

The villages that did send their own recruits did not give them adequate provisions, often less than half of the flour required for the simple bread the soldiers baked in earth ovens. How long would it last them? A month? Two? How was he to keep his men strong on flour and water? Soldiers needed vegetables and some meat or fish. The Russian army would starve even before the marching orders came.

Why was there money for a new palace when the soldiers didn’t even have enough bread? Why had Apraxin been made Field Marshal? That old fart who forbade his aide-de-camp to wake him up before ten?

He was struggling to understand.

He was failing.

He believed that virtue, not fickle fortune, made the army.

“Remember the Orlov brothers,
kison’ka
?” he asked, his fingers skimming over his chin.

I remembered the two young officers who had listened to Egor so intently at the gatherings in our parlor. Grigory, the handsomer of the two, Alexei with the scar on his face. The Orlovs were no longer in St. Petersburg, Egor said. They had followed his example and had applied for active duty with the army.

“Excellent officers, both of them, but only Alexei shares my worries,” my husband continued. Alexei didn’t have Grigory’s devil-may-care conviction that everything would turn out well in the end, that victory came to those who dared. “We rage,” Egor confessed, “while Grigory is chasing another mistress. Time will tell who has got it right.”

He halted for a moment to seek my eyes. I looked at the weathered skin of his face, at his thin lips, set tight, steeling for a bad situation to become worse.

“True nobles … service nobles.” I heard Egor’s bitter voice. The likes of the Shuvalovs and the Vorontzovs on one side, the likes of the Malikins and the Orlovs on the other. The old distinctions refused to go away. True nobles grew up hearing stories of great deeds done by those whose names they bore, whose flesh made theirs. Service nobles rose up the ranks through merit or favor, not birth, accused of pandering to the Sovereign’s passions, using base means to acquire the Empress’s goodwill.

Allowed to imitate their betters but not to be one of them.

“Until we force our way,” Egor said, words spoken too loud, making Darya flash us a quick look before returning to her unfinished drawing.

I placed my finger on my lips, but Egor shook his head. “You know that, too,
kison’ka
,” he said. “You have always known it. Haven’t you?”

I felt a knot of tension dissolve in my throat when his hand touched mine.

In the morning, after Egor’s carriage left, Darya was silent and pensive. “You have to be strong,” Egor had told her. “You are a soldier’s daughter.” She nodded nervously when I assured her that Papa would be back soon, but she didn’t ask when it would be.

It was the absence of Egor’s things that I recall, the empty bedroom table, the fading scent of saddle soap and snuff. And the thought that Russia is not yet at war. The belief that a recruiting station is out of harm’s way.

Five days after Egor’s departure, news came that Frederick of Prussia had crossed the Saxon border, his army pouring through Leipzig into Dresden. In September, by the time the court moved back to St. Petersburg for the winter, the Prussian army reached Dresden. In October, at Pirna, the Saxon army surrendered.

The Empress wished to hear of little else. Saxony was an Austrian ally. Maria Theresa of Austria may be a liar and a hypocrite, but she had been wronged and slighted. The Prussian bully had crossed one line too many. Russia wouldn’t stand idly by.

The Chancellor of Russia was no longer kept waiting in the antechamber. I’d hear his voice from Elizabeth’s inner room, praising the wisdom of her decisions. Field Marshal Apraxin was reporting the Russian army ready for combat. As soon as winter was over it could start marching west. “The whole world awaits Your Majesty’s command.”

Catherine was growing impatient. The Chancellor still had no news for her about Stanislav’s appointment, and the invasion of Saxony meant another delay.

“I’m asking for so little,” Catherine had told him. “If you cannot do this for me, what is the value of your help? Perhaps I should listen to Ivan Shuvalov, after all? Consider
his
offer of friendship?”

There had been no offers, just hints, but Sir Charles’s letters made Catherine bold. She would show them to me. Letters in which she underlined whole sentences:
Claim the throne of Russia, and make Stanislav King of Poland. This is a destiny worthy of your talent
.

I turned the pages in my hand, hoping Sir Charles did not keep copies and that Monsieur Bernardi was not losing his touch. It did not soothe my worries to notice the old subterfuge: Sir Charles had addressed the Grand Duchess as Monsieur. I resolved to urge him for more secrecy next time I saw him.

“Please burn these letters,” I pleaded with Catherine. The lock in her escritoire could be picked with a flick of a hairpin. Her secret drawer opened with a push of one of its wooden columns.

“Sir Charles is quite sure the Empress doesn’t have long to live,” Catherine said, ignoring my plea. “Do you think he is right, Varenka?”

I shrugged. “I don’t claim I can predict the future. But I know she is thinking of Christmas. She is being fitted for a cream satin dress, with ermine trim.”

Finally, in November, the Chancellor told Catherine the good news.

The King of Saxony and Poland had appointed Count Poniatowski his Envoy
extraordinaire
to the Russian court. Stanislav set off for St. Petersburg at the beginning of December, promising in his letter to Catherine to arrive before Christmas. But Christmas came and Stanislav still was not here.

Catherine tried not to worry. Winter was harsh; delays were inevitable.

Every day I sent a servant to the Saxon mission, only to be told that Count Poniatowski was on his way. Then, on December 28, at midday, he arrived.

The boom of the midday cannon still lingered when I rushed to Catherine’s room. The day was very cold but bright, the snow piling up alongside the Great Perspective Road. The Saxon mission was a short carriage ride from the temporary palace.

“Take this to him, Varenka,” Catherine ordered, placing a sealed letter in my hand. “Tell him I’ll come as soon as I can.”

The footman took me to the receiving room, kept warm by a blue-tiled stove and a fireplace. The windows were covered by elaborate curtains. On the wall hung the portrait of Augustus
III
,
by the grace of God, King of Poland and the elector of Saxony
. A big man with an arrogant stare and full, ruddy cheeks, his body barely contained in a blue jacket, embroidered with gold. I recalled Sir Charles’s stories of his “sitting-down hunts” in the Polish forests, wolves and bears pushed from scaffolding so that he could shoot them from his chair. “Saxony would have to suffer his bloodline,” Sir Charles had told me once. “But Poland doesn’t have to. There are advantages to being a country that elects her kings.”

Stanislav was still wrapped in furs when he entered, as if unable to believe that his long journey was truly over. A powdered wig made his handsome face leaner than I recalled it, older and more thoughtful. His hands were warm when he held mine and raised them to his lips.

“Dear friend,” he said. “How is she?”

“Better. Now that she knows you are here.”

I handed him the note from Catherine and watched him break the seal with trembling hands. He kissed it after he read it.

“You surely kept us waiting,” I teased.

“I had to take a longer route.” He turned his face toward the fireplace, toward the dancing flames. “I had been warned of an ambush … right after I crossed the Russian border.”

“Warned?” I asked, concerned. “Who warned you?”

He gave me a bemused smile. “Let me tell her that myself.”

I felt a pang at these words, a reminder not to feel more important than I was.

Outside the receiving room, something heavy was being dragged along the floor. We heard footsteps approaching. The door opened, and one of the mission servants appeared, asking if refreshments would be required. Stanislav looked at me, but I shook my head. I had to hurry back to the palace.

Stanislav waved the servant away and offered to walk with me along the Great Perspective Road.

The glittering winter sun had been swallowed by a heavy cloud, and now big flakes of snow were falling on our faces as we walked. He asked me many questions, and I answered them all.

Catherine was well. She was wearing her hair shorter but still unpowdered, just the way he liked it. No, he could not go to see her right away. It was too dangerous. She would come to the Naryshkin palace as soon as she could. Not earlier than eleven, though.

He should wear a disguise and come through the service door. A musician’s costume would be best.

I would tell her he was well. I would tell her he would be counting every second that kept him away from her.

I did not let Stanislav walk with me for more than a few minutes. Even in the street, too many curious eyes lurked.

When it was time for him to turn back, I watched him walk away, slowly. A beggar stopped him, and Stanislav extracted a coin from his pocket. A moment later, the beggar’s wail turned into a loud litany of blessings.

With the anticipation of Catherine’s joy came the thought of my own unease. Egor had sent a note that he’d been ordered to take his recruits west, in the direction of East Prussia. The Orlov brothers, he assured me, had sworn to take care of me and Darya, should anything happen to him.

That night, when I escorted Catherine to the Naryshkin palace on the embankment, I caught a glimpse of Stanislav through one of the ground-floor windows, a pale, serious shadow of a face, a waving hand.

In the light cast by a lantern, Catherine’s face wavered. Impatience suited her. Her cheeks, reddened with frost, needed no rouge; her eyes needed no belladonna to glitter.

No more loneliness for her
, I thought.
No more waiting
.

Catherine glanced at me only once before hurrying inside. “Thank you, Varenka,” she breathed, smiling. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for us.”

Something about her troubled me, but I couldn’t think what it was. Only later, I realized that her lips were drawn in what looked to me surprisingly like her mother’s selfish smile.

How droll
, I thought,
and how impossible
.

The court welcomed the new year with fireworks and cannon salutes. The Empress held the New Year’s ball in Peterhof. Before she left St. Petersburg she prostrated herself in front of the Holy Mother of Kazan. She prayed for forgiveness.
Please
, I heard her mutter,
do not punish Russia for my own sins
.