The Winter Palace (42 page)

“It has started,” I told Stanislav, when I rushed to the Saxon Mission on the night of November 29 with the news of Catherine’s labor pains.

In the mission parlor, with its portrait of Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and the King of Poland, proudly displaying his double chin, Stanislav made a sign of the cross: “May the Lord keep her in his mercy,” he murmured.

He fixed his solemn black eyes on me, as if I knew what the next hours would bring. Around his neck there was a golden chain, but whatever pendant it carried was covered by the folds of his cambric shirt.

“Please hurry,” I urged him.

As he was getting ready, I walked to the window and parted the curtain just a crack. Down in the street an open sleigh sped by, its harness bells ringing softly. Moonlight glittered on the thin layer of fresh snow. Egor loved to bring it to Darya, the first snowball of the season, melting in his big hands.

I didn’t wait long. In the last days, Stanislav had kept his clothes laid out, his carriage at the ready. All he had to do was gather a few things. Books to read to Catherine, paper and quills. Smelling salts.

“She is strong,” I promised him. “The second time is always easier.”

He gave me a grateful look, but I could tell my words did not reassure him.

During the short carriage ride along Great Perspective Road, the lifted curtain revealed the fleeting spectacles of the streets: a squealing pig escaping its owner,
murziks
in coarse knee-length sheepskin coats hauling bales of wool from the ship.

“I wish he were here,” Stanislav said, as we passed the British Embassy, its brown façade lit by smoking lanterns.

A month before, in spite of all his promises, Sir Charles had exhausted all means to postpone his departure. In the end even a feigned illness didn’t work. Now he was somewhere on his way back to London. There had been no letters.

“Did you see him before he left?” I asked Stanislav.

“Only for a hurried moment.”

“Did he seem odd to you?”

“Odd?” He laughed. “No. Sad, perhaps. Resigned. Why? Have there been more malicious rumors?”

The carriage swayed. If the snow holds, I thought, we would soon change into sleighs. I pulled the fur blanket over my lap, feeling the soft warmth of sable on my feet.

“There are always rumors,” I said.

The maid who opened the door to Catherine’s bedroom gasped with relief. “The Grand Duchess is waiting for you. She won’t let anyone else in.”

Only one candle burned in the candelabra, casting restless shadows on the wall. Catherine was lying in bed, her knees bent.

“Is he here?” she demanded, lifting herself up on her elbow. I saw her wince in pain. The contractions were getting stronger.

“Outside,” I said. “In the carriage. I’ll send the maids for the midwife and bring him in.”

Her face lit up with relief, but her hand when she squeezed mine was hard and moist, like a whetstone.

The waters broke after the midwife made Catherine drink some rhubarb tea, and soon the whole palace learned of the imperial confinement. Elizabeth arrived, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, and, after exchanging a few words with Catherine, demanded to see the soiled sheets.

“Are they pink?” she asked, holding them to the light for everyone to examine them. “Will it be another boy?”

“Pink,” the ladies-in-waiting assured her one by one, telling the Empress what she wanted to hear.

Elizabeth nodded and asked how long it would take before the new Tsarevitch would arrive.

“A few more hours, Your Highness,” the midwife said. “Your Highness should rest.”

The Empress asked three more questions. Was the Grand Duke told? Why was he not here? When was he coming?

As I hurried with answers, from behind the screen I heard Stanislav’s muffled stumble. I breathed a prayer, hoping that there was too much commotion in the room for anyone to notice, but the Empress turned her eyes toward the screen.

This is when Catherine gave a yelp of pain and rose from the mattress.

“Please,” she stuttered, her teeth chattering. “Please. It hurts.”

The Empress turned toward her with some soothing words. Moments later, she was gone and the midwife was waving everyone away. We were taking up too much air. The Grand Duchess needed to breathe. The Grand Duchess needed to concentrate.

In the room next door, among the throng of restless courtiers, I thought of Stanislav. The folly of Catherine’s need for him suddenly terrified me.
What if he cannot stay hidden?

But he did.

He stayed there, silent when the Grand Duke came to tell Catherine of a great parade he was planning as soon as he had another son. A hundred cannons firing all at once.

He stayed there when he heard the midwife say the word
breech
, and Catherine’s sobs that followed.

I wondered if his presence was helping her. If when the pains gripped her she looked in the direction of the screen.

Hours passed. Long, sweaty hours of birth. Hours of pain and fear and uncertainty. It was ten o’clock the next morning when the midwife opened the door and screamed for someone to fetch the Empress.

I ran across the length of the palace to the Empress’s inner rooms. I found her in bed, propped on pillows, covered with an ermine-lined mantle. Her arm had been freshly bandaged. The bandages were stained with blood.

The bedroom maids were evasive in their answers. The doctor said it was nothing, just a fainting spell. The doctor bled her right away, and Her Highness had been resting ever since. They were not to talk about it to anyone.

I approached the bed.

“Your Majesty,” I said.

Elizabeth stirred.

“The midwife says it’s time,” I continued. “Is Your Highness able to walk?”

The Empress opened her eyes. Her sagging cheek was reddened where it had pressed on the pillow.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked.

When she sat up, I saw that the maids had not removed her evening gown but merely opened it at the back. I fastened the hooks as quickly as I could. When I extended my hand to her to help her from the bed, Elizabeth slapped my hand and told me to stop fussing.

By the time the Empress reached Catherine’s bedroom, the baby had already slipped out.

“Your Highness. Paul Petrovich has a sister!” the midwife exulted, as she washed the slime and blood from the tiny body.

“A sister?” the Empress repeated.

The baby gave a soft squeal.

The midwife had not been able to keep the spectators away. Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting had poured in behind the Empress. Now they huddled, craning their necks. Keys, seals, looking glasses suspended from their chatelaines, tinkled softly.

I heard Catherine moan.

I held my breath.

“Perhaps this is for the better,” the Empress finally said. “Paul won’t be so jealous of a girl.”

A murmur of applause followed, whispers of approval.

I cast a quick look at the Grand Duchess. Her skin was blanched, her lips pursed to stop her teeth from chattering. She looked frail and feverish.

I was still hoping that the Empress might let Catherine hold her daughter. I thought of the sweetness of the moment when I’d cradled Darya for the first time, so small, and so very much mine. But as soon as the baby girl was swaddled, the Empress took her away from the room, her cooing voice fading in the distance. She didn’t even wait for the afterbirth, which did not come on its own and had to be extracted by hand.

The courtiers followed.

Go with them, Varenka
, Catherine’s eyes pleaded.
I need you to tell me what you have seen
.

I left.

Anna Petrovna, the Empress called Catherine and Stanislav’s daughter, named after her beloved sister, Peter’s mother. She ordered that the baby would stay in the Imperial Bedroom, at least for the first month of her life.

It was an endless day. Footmen had to fetch cots from the attic for the wet nurses. Furniture had to be rearranged, the place for the cradle found, not too close to the fireplace but away from the draft.

The visitors thronged to see the baby, delivering their predictable praises. “Beautiful … graceful … angelic … her face just like her aunt’s.”

Elizabeth beamed. Other than the bandaged arm, I thought, her fainting spell had left no trace.

No one mentioned the Grand Duchess. I comforted myself with the knowledge that this time, Catherine was not alone. Stanislav would wipe the sweat from her brow. He would hold her in his arms when she wept for their child.

I thought the Christmas celebrations that year particularly loud and lavish. Fireworks lit the December sky; laughter poured out of brightly lit rooms as the Empress announced the last Christmas at the temporary palace and the first Christmas for the new Grand Duchess.

In our small parlor, Masha hung a paper star and tied fir branches to the backs of chairs. In a leather-bound notebook Catherine had given her, Darya had drawn a manger with the Holy Mother and Child, surrounded by the shepherds and the animals who came to visit them.

It was our first Christmas after Egor’s death. I thought of Catherine’s baby, who would never feel the closeness of her own parents, and of my daughter, who would grow up without a father.

Elizabeth’s heart, I told myself, had known no laws but her whims. Her heart craved secrecy and deceit, for in secrecy and deceit lay her power. As long as she ruled, more soldiers like Egor would die, more children like Darya and little Anna would grow deprived of their parents’ love.

Death
, I thought. Death has to take the Empress away and give a new Empress a chance. A crack in the darkness, a mere slit, but the new Sovereign will make good use of it. She’ll force her way, and I’ll follow in her steps. Her helper. Her friend.

If she succeeds, Darya and I would never go without.

For a moment I glimpsed it: a world beyond deceit and malice, beyond fear. A new world, where words like
a bookbinder’s daughter
or
a service noble
were not the shackles that bound our steps. The vision may have been fleeting, but to me it shone like the tooled letters of gold on the spines of my father’s bindings.

E
very morning Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting visited Catherine’s rooms.

Anna’s crib was carved out of an ancient oak, they said, her clothes sewn of the softest cambric. When Anna cried, the Empress carried her in her arms, murmuring endearments.
My little soul, my life, my joy. Grand will be your dresses, your jewels. You will be beautiful and full of grace
. The Imperial Favorite was constantly at her side, declaring himself smitten by both the aunt and her grandniece.

“A blessed angel child,” they murmured.

“Her cabal,” Catherine called the ladies from Elizabeth’s entourage. “Sent here to spy on me, Varenka.”

By January she had seen her daughter only three times, and each time the baby was damp with sweat.

The questions she asked me were angry, smoldering with hurt. Didn’t the Empress ever allow air in the nursery? Wasn’t there anyone among the courtiers to put one good idea into her mind? Was that so difficult?

Ever since Anna’s birth, Catherine had kept to her bedroom, pleading ill health. Stanislav often stayed there with her, the little closet always a convenient hiding place when anyone came. Prince Naryshkin and his sister Anna, as well as Princess Dashkova, were also frequent visitors. Sometimes I’d hear their laughter, followed by the low murmurs of courtiers well accustomed to eavesdroppers.

“The Grand Duchess is eating for twenty.” The maids winked and giggled as they cleared empty plates. I warned them to keep their lips sealed if they wanted to stay with their mistress.

They swore they would.

Monsieur Rastrelli—so often chastised for the delays—proudly announced that the Winter Palace would soon be ready for the court to move in. In the meantime, to ease the waiting, he invited the Empress and her Favorite to inspect his progress.

Elizabeth didn’t mind that her visits were accompanied by the incessant hammering and banging of the carpenters and masons. She didn’t mind when pieces of plaster stuck to the soles of her shoes, or when her ladies-in-waiting tripped over pieces of tile and discarded stucco moldings. Leaning on Ivan Shuvalov’s arm, trailed by the courtiers, she swept through the finished chambers, gasping with pleasure.

“More light!” the Empress had demanded of her chief architect when he had brought her the plans ten years before. Monsieur Rastrelli obliged with big windows that let in the sun, gilded frames, and the sparkle of precious stones. He gave her gilded ornaments on white walls, mirrors reflecting candlelight, gleaming mosaics, and the rich, translucent glow of amber.

“The Russian baroque,” he told her as she inspected yet another glittering room, “has purity unknown anywhere else. This light will be Your Majesty’s lasting gift to Russia. This sparkle will make all of Europe take notice.”

The Empress liked that.

Monsieur Rastrelli was once again called a genius, even when it became clear that the sections or rooms he presented as finished were far from it. After the Empress left, teams of masons, bricklayers, carpenters, and painters descended on them to replace faux walls, to finish the rough floors hidden beneath carpets, or to swiftly dismantle what the Empress disliked.

Catherine was not impressed by the Russian baroque. “Gaudy and passé,” she told me, after she had accompanied the Empress on one such visit. I tried not to dwell on the venom in her voice. “Wait until another winter, Varenka. When these giant windows freeze over and crack.”

In the steppes of Ukraine, Egor told me once, a single cloud on the winter horizon foretold a blizzard. A traveler could count on a mere few hours to seek shelter before all roads vanished, carriages turned into awkward humps, like grave mounds in a white desert without signposts.

In the first weeks of 1758 the news from the front was greeted with growing disbelief. The spectacular victories of the previous year did not bring the expected offensive farther into East Prussia. Instead, with the first snow, Field Marshal Apraxin had ordered a halt of all army movements for the whole winter.