The Winter Palace (5 page)

Madame Kluge took out her horse whip and lashed it across my shins. I felt a searing flash of pain, then another. I watched the skin of my legs turn white first, then red.

I clenched my teeth and vowed never again to cry.

A month later I was still waking up long before dawn. I would slip out of the chilly room where the sewing maids slept, and wander through the corridors like one of the palace cats. The Empress, I had heard, didn’t sleep much at night. Perhaps, if I kept walking through the palace corridors, I would run into her or the Grand Duke. I heard of the liking he had taken to a Blackamoor his aunt gave him as a welcoming present. He had made the black-skinned man his adjutant. Wasn’t I as worthy? All I craved was a chance to remind the Empress of my existence.

At first I sneaked into the palace kitchens, tempted by the smells of the rich food that never made its way onto the maids’ table, but the pantries were always locked, and in the storage rooms all I ever found in abundance were cheap tallow candles. Sometimes the guards asked where I was going or coming from, but I would look them in the eye and say something saucy, like that I was not in the habit of divulging my mistress’s secrets. A few younger guards always tried to steal a kiss as I passed, but I was nimble and all they ever managed was to brush my gown with their groping hands.

I didn’t encounter the Empress, but I discovered rooms where tables were covered with carpets and where the cupboards were full of odd-looking musical instruments, rooms crammed with discarded furniture, paintings piled against walls. In such a room, I found a crate full of old books.

One by one, I took them out and wiped each clean of dust. They were mostly science books, on astronomy and medicine, books about tools and plants I had never seen. The bindings were simple, without adornments. My father would have frowned at the loosening seams and dark spots of mold on the pages.

It was on such a night that he found me—Count Bestuzhev, the Chancellor of Russia.

“Who are you?” he asked.

I hadn’t seen him enter the room, absorbed as I was by the volume I’d pulled from the crate. Above its musky odor, I could detect the scent of vodka on his breath as he towered above me. There was another smell about him, too, an acrid smell of something I had no name for yet.

I knew who he was, for I’d often seen him walk through the palace corridors as if he were the lord of creation. His velvet ensembles, I heard, came from Paris. The handles of his canes were made of silver and whalebone. The seamstresses whispered that he frequently warmed the Imperial Bed and speculated how he looked in a woman’s gown when he danced at the Empress’s masquerades.

“I’m a palace girl, a seamstress,” I replied.

“A seamstress who reads German books?”

In the room’s semidarkness, I could feel his eyes on me. His fingers pressed under my chin as he tipped my head up and examined my face.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“You’re a slippery eel, a cunning fox,” I answered evenly.

He laughed.

“How do you know that, palace girl?”

“I listen when I sew.”

“And what is it that you hear?” He touched the nape of my neck, stroked the chain with the Virgin pendant my mother had given me. “Tell me.”

“Chevalier Duval is lusting after the stable boys,” I said boldly.

“Is he? How do you know?”

“Anton says so.”

“And who is Anton?”

“The Grand Duke Peter’s footman. The tall one, with crooked teeth. Anton is sweet on the Chief Seamstress and always tries to kiss her, but she thinks him a wastrel. All his talk is for nothing, she says.”

My heart pounded. The book slid from my lap and fell to the floor, but I didn’t bend to pick it up.

“The Saxon Envoy has had his mercury cure,” I continued. “That’s when the doctors make you drink lead and pray to the Greek gods.”

“Is that so? And tell me, palace girl, do your ears ever hear talk of the Empress?”

“Sometimes.”

“And what is said?”

“Madame Kluge says that the Empress shouldn’t forget that Count Razumovsky loves her. I think Madame is in love with him herself. She blushes every time anyone mentions his name. I’ve seen her hide in the service corridor to hear him sing.”

“Madame Kluge? That fat German nobody who fancies herself so important?” the Chancellor asked.

“She pinches her lips to make them look fuller. She pads her breasts with sashes.”

He laughed again, a soft, throaty laugh of amused delight.

How deceptively simple and easy are the steps that change our lives. I didn’t know the habits of the Empress then—the changing bedrooms, the eager lovers who awaited her midnight summons. Luck had brought the Chancellor of Russia here, I believed, into this forgotten part of the palace. Luck had made him talk to a clumsy seamstress of the Imperial Wardrobe. And luck would take me to the Empress’s side.

There were more such nights in the months that followed. Nights wide-eyed and hopeful, nights of easy laughter and confessions I offered the Chancellor willingly, grateful for the luxury of his attention.

Madame Kluge kept a bottle in her drawer. She said it was eau de cologne, but I saw her and the Mistress of the Wardrobe take sips from it. Many sips.

Anton, the Grand Duke’s footman, said he wished to crack the Blackamoor’s skull against the wall.

Countess Golovina kept a serf girl under her bed at night to tell her stories when she could not sleep.

It wasn’t hard to learn which of my stories pleased the Chancellor.

“Can a palace girl keep a secret?” the Chancellor asked me once.

“Yes,” I told him.

“There is more to this palace, Varvara, than the Imperial Wardrobe.”

I nodded.

“And there are more important stories. Only you must know where to look.”

The Chancellor of Russia put his hand on mine.

I lowered my eyes, fixing them on the silver buckles of his shoes. They were square, encrusted with gems.

I listened.

He told me of godless people who plotted against our Empress, who wouldn’t hesitate to raise their hands against her. Cunning and shrewd, they knew how to hide their thoughts, to bury them in false professions of friendship and loyalty.

They were everywhere, but they were hiding. The Empress had to know who they were and what evil they were trying to do.

There was no laughter in his voice. His eyes did not leave me when he spoke.

The righteous had to be rewarded, the evil punished. The wheat had to be separated from the chaff. My father had brought me here to the Imperial Palace for a reason. My father had trusted his Empress. His daughter could learn to be more important than he had ever thought possible—she could become the eyes and ears of the Empress.

Her tongue.

Her gazette.

The teller of the most important of stories.

“Someone the Empress can trust, Varvara,” the Chancellor said. “And someone I can trust, too.”

I was sixteen years old. I still believed in the common fantasy of the powerless that rulers would rule differently if only they knew what was concealed from them. I believed that eternal stuff of teary narratives in which kings or queens, sultans or emperors, change their hearts after learning the joys and sorrows of the common man.

“Look at me, Varvara,” the Chancellor said. The hand that covered mine was heavy but warm and soft on my skin.

I raised my eyes, high enough to take in his clean-shaven face, the dimples at the corners of his mouth.

He had been watching me long enough, he told me. I was clever with languages. My Russian was impeccable. He had heard me speak German to one of the Grand Duke’s footmen. I knew French, too. And Polish.

“Do you want to learn what I can teach you?”

I moved closer toward him, close enough to see tiny shapes of my own pale face reflected in his eyes.

I nodded.

Excitement rose in me like my mother’s sweet raisin dough. I thought it easy, childishly simple. All I had to do was to learn from him and my life would take a turn for the better.

I didn’t know yet how dangerous stories could be—that Chevalier Duval was already paying for the favors of stable boys with the secrets of the French king or that Anton would soon be interrogated and dismissed from the Grand Duke’s service. But even if I had known, I wouldn’t have stopped telling the tales that made the Chancellor of Russia see me.

Not then.

Not yet.

The white nights had barely ended when my lessons with the Chancellor began.

The first one was short.

The Chancellor pointed at a spying hole in the paneling.

“Stay here and watch,” he said. “When I come back, you will tell me what you’ve seen.”

Alone in the service corridor, I looked eagerly through the spyhole. I glimpsed the shadowy figure of a woman, sitting alone at her escritoire, reading by candlelight. There was nothing remarkable about her appearance or actions, and after a while I found it tedious to keep watching, but I did. An hour later, the woman put the book away, yawned, extinguished the candle, and left the room.

I thought of abandoning my hiding place to follow her, but I didn’t know my way out of the secret corridor, so I stayed where I was. The day had been hot; the corridor was stuffy. My throat felt raw from breathing in the dusty air. A rivulet of sweat was running down my spine. I kept pinching my arm to keep myself awake.

The Chancellor asked me many questions when he came to fetch me. Did the woman wear a beauty spot? On which part of her face? Did she toy with her bracelet as she read? With her chatelaine, perhaps? How many buttons were there on her sleeves? How often did she turn the pages of the book?

With each unanswered question, my hopes sank. I felt tears sting my eyes. Nothing would ever change for me, I thought, bracing myself for my dismissal.

But the Chancellor of Russia lifted the sleeve of my dress, to display the bruises my pinching had left.

“Impatience is the only flaw you cannot afford,” he said, smiling. “Everything else I can teach you.”

There had been many lessons since that first one. Soon I knew how to pick locks with a hairpin, how to tell by the grain of wood where concealed drawers were hidden. I knew how secret pockets could be sewn into belts and traveling sacks, letters hidden in secret compartments of clocks or in the lining of shoes, tucked away in chimneys, the vents of stoves, beneath windowsills, inside cushions, or in the bindings of books.

I learned how to trail someone without being seen, to tell the true smiles from those that masked treason, to sneer at the flimsy hiding places underneath loose floorboards or under the pillows, places even the least apt of thieves could find.

I learned the virtues of distraction and the blessings of routine. I learned how to make my face blank, how to fade into the background.

Being invisible, I learned, was a virtue of spies.

A secret passage, narrow and steep, led up to the Chancellor’s rooms. When he wanted to see me, a red kerchief appeared under my pillow, but on this chilly August night the Chancellor of Russia had sent one of his own footmen for me. I shivered with anticipation. The Empress had just moved back to the Winter Palace after the summer months spent at Peterhof. Could it be that the Chancellor would finally take me to her?

Quietly, careful not to wake the sewing maids, I slipped into my best dress, of white muslin, one of my mother’s. The seamstress my father had hired before he died had to take it in, but when I caught the glimpse of myself in the mirror, the dress looked as if it was made for me. The shoes I wore were less accommodating. My mother’s feet had been smaller than mine, and my toes felt pinched.

He was waiting for me in his chambers, the Chancellor of Russia, sitting in an armchair by the window, watching with narrowed eyes as I approached. He had taken off his wig, and I thought that without it, his head looked smaller, less imposing. I took in a bald patch on top of his head, the thick golden ring on his finger. I decided that the black velvet with silver trim suited him more than red, and that the lace collar looked particularly fine.

Was he the powerful man from my mother’s dream?

“Come, palace girl.”

There was a playful note in his voice that made me feel important, marked for grand things. My timidity peeled off like onion skin. Now he will take me to the Empress, I decided, but I knew enough to hide my joy. Hadn’t he once said impatience is a flaw?

To break the chill of that August night, a birch log was burning in the fireplace, wet, for the wood hissed and smoked.

“I’ve sent the servants away,” the Chancellor said, waving toward a small table set for two. “But you will not leave hungry.”

I made a step toward it. It looked like an ordinary table, and the plates were empty.

“It’s a mechanical table.” The Chancellor laughed, seeing my bewilderment. “Just like the one the Empress has in her suite. You better learn how to use it.” He motioned for me to sit. I did.

“Lift it,” he said, pointing at a china plate. Underneath, there was a wooden lid.

“Open it,” he said.

Inside, there was a pencil and a piece of paper.

“I know what mushy gruel Madame Kluge feeds the maids, so write what you fancy most,” he told me. “Don’t be shy.”

Sturgeon soup
, I wrote.
Roasted pheasant
.

“Anything you like. Go on.” I smelled vodka on his breath.

Oysters
.

Angel cake
.

He pulled the strings that made the table descend down the shaft concealed beneath the floor. The boards closed over it. When the floor opened again, the table was laid with dishes, covered with silver lids. He lifted them one by one.

“Eat,” he said. “The Empress doesn’t like skinny girls. They make her feel clumsy.”

His plate remained empty.

He watched me fumble with the oyster shells, fork up the morsels of cold, lemon-scented flesh. The fish soup was hot, and I ate too fast, scalding my tongue. Strands of smoked sturgeon lodged themselves between my teeth. I tried to loosen them with the tip of my tongue, but they wouldn’t budge.