The Winter Palace (52 page)

Life’s not worth living, for I have failed you
.

The jeweled heel of Catherine’s foot stomped on the floor. I heard voices rise and fall.

I did not listen.

Peter is dead
, I thought.

Murdered
.

I don’t know how I made it to our rooms in the temporary palace. Seeing Darya’s frightened eyes, I managed to smile and spin some lies. Nothing had happened, I assured her. I was merely tired. I needed to rest.

When my daughter left, I felt exhausted, as if I had climbed a mountain. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. Even the air I breathed seemed to hurt me. The light was too bright. I told Masha to keep the curtains drawn.

She called the surgeon instead.

I was bled. Bled again. Purged. Blistered. I slept for what must have been day and night, for the maid who brought me a cup of hot beef broth asked me if I knew what day it was. I wanted to answer, but when I opened my mouth, no words came.

I missed it all. The public announcement attributing Peter’s death to
hemorrhoidal colic and violent stomachache, with which he was often afflicted
. The sight of the Emperor’s embalmed body lying in state at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, thick kerchief tied around his neck. The whispers: A onetime baby Emperor was still languishing in the Schlüsselburg Fortress. What Empress could afford
two
deposed rulers? How long before some crackpot tried to free one of them?

Catherine wrote to me:
Get well soon, Varenka. I need you at my side
.

Grigory Orlov delivered the note himself.

“Katinka is concerned, Varvara Nikolayevna. Every day she asks me about you.”

He lowered himself into the armchair beside my bed, his handsome face serious, drawn.

I listened to his words: … 
terrible accident … Alexei shouldn’t have been drinking … shouldn’t have let himself be provoked … He knows it.… Katinka knows it.… The coup was a gamble.… Not everything can be predicted.…

Outside, a newspaper boy was shouting, “Great news in
St. Petersburg Gazette
.” A woman began to sing a ballad I did not recognize. A trumpet blew.

My mouth tasted sour from the fever. My leg hurt from the surgeon’s cut.

“He is here, Varvara Nikolayevna. He is leaving St. Petersburg tomorrow.” Grigory Orlov cleared his throat. “My brother begs you to hear him out.”

I felt my heartbeat quicken as I nodded my agreement.

Alexei must have been waiting right outside the door. He entered as soon as Grigory called his name. He took an awkward step toward me, straightening the steel-blue Izmailovsky tunic.

“I’m guilty, Varvara Nikolayevna.”

The scar across Alexei’s cheeks twitched as he spoke. His voice broke at times. He repeated himself. Catherine had ordered him to protect her husband, and he’d failed. He wouldn’t make excuses. What happened, happened under his command. He couldn’t undo what had been done.

The rough floors of the temporary palace squeaked every time Alexei shifted his giant frame from one foot to the other. Beside him Grigory, his hands clasped, nodded vigorously at his brother’s words.

“I’m ready to die. I’m a soldier. Soldiers die. But our beloved Matushka refused to punish me. ‘Will your death help me rule?’ she has asked. So I begged her to send me away. Every time she looks at me, she shouldn’t be reminded of the terrible price she had to pay.”

A soldier’s voice, strong and yet pleading. Simple words, impossible to refute. Words I would turn in my head for days to come.

“A terrible thing has happened, but we can make use of it.

“For the Empress.

“For Russia.

“For us all.”

I rang for Masha as soon as Alexei and Grigory left. Katinka, both brothers had said, had a whole empire to run. After years of neglect, so much needed to be cleaned up. Cleared. Repaired.

“Bring Darya,” I told Masha hoarsely.

Darenka approached me on tiptoes, my beloved child.

“What have you been doing today?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Why?”

“I broke a cup.”

“Which one?”

“The one with red roses in the bottom.”

“We will get another one.”

“You are not angry?”

“No.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be. But Mademoiselle Dupont said I was negligent.”

“Were you?”

“A bit. I wasn’t thinking of what I was doing.”

“Why not?”

“I was listening to what the doctor was saying. That the crisis was coming. But no one would tell me what crisis it was.” Fear flashed in her big dark eyes, and I felt a pang of guilt.

“I’m feeling better,
kison’ka
. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

She smiled, a burst of brightness, pain washing away from her face. She threw her hands around my neck. Clung tight to me.

“I don’t like the way you smell,” she said, wrinkling her nose, laughing.

By August, when I was strong enough to walk, Catherine’s Chief Steward sent word that our new quarters at the Winter Palace were ready. Four spacious inner rooms and an antechamber, just two corridors away from the Imperial Bedroom. Furnished and redecorated according to Her Majesty’s wishes. The temporary palace, once emptied, would be razed to make room for a small park.

There was no official appointment yet, only an invitation to join Her Majesty’s entourage. The Empress woke up at five and worked alone in her study until eight in the morning. Visitors and petitioners came as soon as she was dressed and coiffed. Five state secretaries took care of the daily flood of solicitations. Petitions had to be examined and filed, gifts acknowledged, impossible requests refused gently, and all that merited her attention prepared for her inspection. The afternoons were reserved for reading. Evenings for the closest of friends.

Her Majesty’s Chief Steward trusted that Countess Malikina would make sure this new routine was not needlessly disturbed.

It was an October afternoon, dark and lashing with rain, when a messenger from the British Embassy delivered a letter addressed to Madame Malikina. Someone had crossed off
Madame
and put
Countess
instead.

The letter was from Count Poniatowski.

He had been beside himself with worry. He had received no news from Catherine for fourteen weeks. He feared that his previous letters may have been lost.

Enclosed was a sealed note with
For Sophie
written on it and a request for me to place it directly into her hand.

It was still raining the following day when I entered Catherine’s private study with her morning coffee. The cherished moment, however brief, when I could be sure to see her alone.

I barely had time to light the fireplace when Catherine walked in, Sir Tom right beside her, prancing on his hind legs, awaiting his treat. Her face was drawn. The relentless whirl of imperial obligations was taking its toll. By then even the afternoons Catherine so much desired to keep free for reading were broken by constant interruptions.

I placed the tray with the coffeepot on its usual spot, beside the sharpened quills and a neat pile of foolscap paper. I poured coffee into a china cup and waited until Catherine took the first sip before giving her Stanislav’s letter. She opened it, glanced at it quickly, and handed it back to me. It was then that I saw it was in cipher.

“Burn it, Varenka,” she said. “Before anyone sees it.”

I threw it in the fire.

Catherine made room for me at her own desk. “Write, Varenka,” she ordered.

I wrote what she dictated: How reason demanded that we have to come to terms with circumstances beyond our control. How she had to guard herself at every step. How she was sorry, more than she could express, but such was the truth.
Farewell, beloved friend. Life often brings strange surprises, but you can be sure that I will do everything I can for you and your family
.

Catherine paused, as if considering something she might still add.

“There is no use fighting what cannot be changed, Varenka,” was all she said, slipping the letter, folded and sealed, into my pocket.

From the green velvet cushion beside her desk came the thumping sound of Sir Tom’s wagging tail.

Before I dispatched Catherine’s letter to the British Embassy with a request to pass it on to Count Poniatowski, I added a few words from myself.
Don’t believe everything you hear. When you hurt, it is easy to assume the worst
.

Later that day, when the rain had finally stopped, I took Darya for a walk I had long promised.

We climbed the stairs to the Petropavlovsky Fortress to look at the city below, at the splendid palaces facing the river, white and yellow walls lit by the warm rays. The deep waters of the wide Neva had been tamed, the red Finnish marble lining the embankment postponing the fury of the floods.

“I still talk to Papa,” Darya said. Her voice quavered.

“What about?” I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me, so I held her tight to my chest and let her weep.

Former Chancellor Bestuzhev had been back at court for more than two weeks, but I’d managed to avoid him. Now he had come to me, frail and hunched after his years of exile. His red-rimmed eyes assessed the burgundy curtains with gold tassels, the thick carpets, Egor’s portrait over the mantel.

I didn’t like the smile on his face; I didn’t like the amusement he didn’t bother to conceal in his voice.

“We’ve won,
Countess
Malikina. We’ve backed the right horse, you and I.”

He kissed my extended hand. I motioned for him to sit down, noting the wig plastered carelessly to his bald head, the yellow stain of egg yolk on his velvet vest.

His new title of Field Marshal was a meager consolation for the glaring lack of an official post. “Cabbage Field Marshal,” Grigory Orlov had sneered.

The former Chancellor opened a snuffbox and took a fat pinch of snuff. He offered me some; I declined.

“Curious,” he observed. “My doctor swears it is good for hangover, but I have yet to experience that. I go through five pounds of it a month, and the only thing it relieves is my purse.”

He placed the snuff on the hollow between his index finger and his thumb, sniffed, and waited for the powder to stir his nostrils. He sneezed and then examined the brown stain on his handkerchief. Then he started to speak.

“Very clever,” Bestuzhev called Catherine’s appointments. Letting Vorontzov keep the title of Chancellor but giving Panin foreign policy. Making Grigory Orlov preside over a brand-new Chancery for Foreigners, so that no one could say he had replaced anyone. Offering Alexei the imperial pardon but sending him off to the army barracks. Making sure no one was too strong, so that
she
could control them all.

I turned my head toward my parlor window. The sun over the Neva was pale and hesitant.

Bestuzhev gave a heavy sigh and frowned.

“Nothing has changed, Varvara Nikolayevna. You still have only two choices: be indispensable or be insignificant. I’ve tried a simple life. Its appeal has little allure, believe me.”

“Nothing has changed?” I asked, disbelieving. “When have you last seen an Empress work that hard?”

Bestuzhev looked at me carefully, a doctor considering his diagnosis.

“Have you forgotten all I’ve taught you, Varvara Nikolayevna? Or have you let yourself be dazzled by your new title? Need I remind you that titles come cheap around here these days? A gambling house doesn’t turn into a monastery just because there is a new owner.”

He leaned toward me, a sneer twisting his face.

“Do you know what some of your new friends call you? Nosy Varvara who needs to have her nose torn off.”

I rose.

“You better leave,” I said. “I have duties to attend to.”

His face reddened at the word
duties
, drops of sweat gathering at the edge of his wig.

“Is bringing her letters from her Polish lover one of them?” he taunted. “What is she telling him, I wonder? That she needs a Polish footstool for her tired feet?”

“I don’t see how it is any of your concern.”

“But it is,” he retorted, with a sudden glee in his eyes. “I find it irresistible to watch how our Catherine gets others to do her bidding.”

“God help you.” I was trembling. “Always seeing the worst in everyone.”

“She got to the top thanks to the people who supported her for their own reasons. Now she is beginning to believe she has done it all by herself. She’ll be shedding friends. It’ll get ugly very soon, my dear
Countess
. It always does, and you are no longer hidden in the shadows. You’ll soon acquire real enemies and you’ll wish for something more than memories of friendship to protect you. Are you that sure you no longer need me?”

“Leave,” I said, reaching for the bell to summon my maid. I wanted him out of my room. I wanted his voice to stop.

I
n St. Petersburg taverns, old men with wrinkled faces like to recall the disbelief of their youth when they heard how the vast expanse of flat land, with a few huts of Finnish fishermen scattered across it, would become a powerful, thriving city.

The old men remember the Great Tsar. They speak of Peter the Great’s giant steps that made ordinary men run when he merely strolled, the deftness of his hands, the wood he carved, the icons he painted, the shoes he made, the teeth he pulled out.

“Delay means death,” they repeat, the Great Tsar’s favorite words.

With their blood warmed by vodka, the men whose eyes saw a city raise from the foggy marshes speak of soldiers and serfs whose skulls and bones are dug up every year when the shattering foundations of St. Petersburg are repaired.

There is no bitterness in their voices.

Wouldn’t these serfs and soldiers have died anyway? Wasn’t it better to die, if death made the future possible? To die for something that would last longer than an ordinary life?

From the crates and trunks that had come with us to our new quarters in the Winter Palace, I had unpacked many treasures: Darya’s drawing of a house with a guard standing beside it, tall enough for his head to reach far above the chimney. A note I found on my breakfast tray on the morning my daughter turned eleven:
Maman, at what age did you have your own room? At what age did you start wearing long dresses? Can I now bathe in your bath?
Now she copied the gestures of the court ladies, the careless, languid sway of their steps.