The Winter Palace (53 page)

“The Empress is quite smitten by your daughter, dear Varvara Nikolayevna,” Princess Galitsina would stop to tell me.

Imperial presents of gowns and furs, invitations to a children’s masquerade, ballet lessons with the Grand Duke had all been noted, Galitsina’s eyes said. Before the coup, a glance over her shoulder would be all I could merit.

Where were you
, I thought,
when the Grand Duchess with no future needed a friend?

Right after the coronation in the Moscow cathedral, the Grand Duke collapsed, exhausted after hours of standing beside his mother, waving to the jubilant crowds. Carried to his room, hot and sweaty with fever, he screamed that snakes were crawling over him. His right leg was swollen and purple.

I sat at Paul’s bedside. I put a cold compress on his forehead. I washed the sweat off his chest. When icy water dropped down his temples, he opened his eyes and gripped my hand painfully.

“Am I going to die?” he asked, his voice small, frightened.

“No,” I replied. “Your Maman won’t let you die.”

He opened his mouth as if to ask me something, but he did not speak.

On the day when the Grand Duke was well enough to show himself to the people, a peasant woman wrapped in a black kerchief flung herself to the ground, shrieking, “Long live Emperor Paul Petrovich! Long live our
batushka
!”

Two guards had to make their way through the crowd before those around her scattered.

By the first anniversary of Catherine’s accession, there was no need for the guards’ vigilance. Fireworks lit the night with exploding wheels and flowers, and for a breathtaking moment a giant glittering C hung in the sky. The crowds applauded, drank greedily at the vodka fountains, and gasped as tightrope walkers took another precarious step on the rope suspended across the Great Perspective Road.

In the Grand Hall of the Winter Palace, tables decorated with the imperial eagles were lined against the gilded walls. Children ran from one to another, in search of their favorite treats. I saw the Grand Duke creep behind Count Panin and flap his arms like a giant insect. Count Panin pretended not to see it. I saw Darya, lovely in her green satin dress, sneak a glance at herself in one of Monsieur Rastrelli’s giant mirrors.

“If only Master lived to see us now,” Masha said and sighed. At the Tartar market, butchers now saved their best cuts for Countess Malikina, and the fishmonger put aside the choicest pieces of smoked sturgeon.

In the Imperial Suite, the maids pulled me aside to mention an ailing mother in need of money, a sweetheart who wished to propose if only they had the Empress’s blessing. “Just mention me to
Matushka
, our Little Mother,” they would plead. “She will listen to you.”

Every morning at five, I still waited for the Empress with the pot of coffee and her mail, which I placed on her desk. In the evenings, Catherine sometimes allowed me to linger in the Imperial Bedroom before Grigory stomped down the private staircase. And there were always the precious moments when her ladies-in-waiting were out of earshot, or a walk together in the garden at dusk.

How much can one say in such times?

It was better to listen.

“Whatever I do, Varenka, I’ll hurt someone.

“It pains me when even old friends watch me with terrified eyes, as if I were Medusa’s head. Does friendship always flee from Sovereigns, Varenka?”

Grigory Orlov was still finding
Das Fräulein
’s things in his apartment: a silk stocking, a fiddle bow, a shoe deformed by her limp. He brought them to Catherine like trophies. I saw him wait for her in the Imperial Bedroom, sprawled on an ottoman, flicking cards to pass the time. I saw him lift her off her feet when she arrived and whirl her around, making her breathless. I saw him caress her neck as she bent over her writing, his hand sliding into her hair.

In the marble corridors of the Winter Palace, Field Marshal Bestuzhev, cane in hand, was on the lookout for anyone willing or luckless enough to listen to his long, meandering speeches. Polite excuses were of no use; drunk or sober, the former Chancellor took no notice of hurried steps or impatient grins. Catherine gave strict orders not to admit him into her inner rooms. In the British Embassy, footmen were tipped double for prompt warnings of his approach. Everyone awaited the weeks in which Bestuzhev’s penchant for vodka won over his ambitions and he would be too drunk to pay his visits.

“One word, Countess Malikina. One word only,” he called in his hoarse voice when he spotted me. The gold handle of his cane, encrusted with gemstones, glittered in the light streaming through Rastrelli’s giant windows.

But by then I had learned to look and not see.

“Don’t go just yet, Varenka. I want to ask you something about Darya. But let me finish this first.…”

Among the many letters I had just brought the Empress on this chilly October morning, there was a note from Count Panin—or Nikita Ivanovich, as Catherine called him now—whom she’d put in charge of foreign policy.

I sat on a footstool by the fire in Catherine’s study and waited, listening to the sharp nib scratching over the thick vellum paper she liked the most.

As they frequently did these days, my thoughts drifted toward Darenka. I’d often come to our rooms at the palace to find her gone. “Summoned again,” her governess explained, pointing at the ceiling as if the orders came from God Himself.

When my daughter returned, her face colored with excitement, she was bursting with stories. She had been allowed to carry Catherine’s fan. She had been asked to read a passage from an old prayer book. Sir Tom had chased a cat down the service corridor, but she had brought him back.

“Who was there with the Empress?” I’d ask, watching her happy face as she described the visitors. Count Panin shuffled his feet as he walked, Darya told me. Uncle Grigory made the Empress laugh with shadow puppets dancing on the wall.

“What did he say?”

“That the Empress should find me a good husband. With a big house in the country.”

“You are too young to think of husbands,” I told my daughter, laughing. “You wouldn’t know what to do with one.”

But I felt a pinch of fear.

In the fireplace, as I waited for Catherine to finish her letter, the flames leaped and flared. I stared into them, thinking of my child leaving me. Next year she would turn fourteen, the age of Catherine when she came to Russia to marry.

I heard the crackle of paper folding, smelled wax melting over a candle.

“Ballet, Varenka,” Catherine said, turning to me as she set her quill down. “I want our children to dance together.”

The relief I felt brought hot tears to my eyes.

“I’ll tell you more,” Catherine teased me, “but only if you stop crying.”

It was Herr Gilferding—the Austrian dancemaster Catherine had brought from Vienna—who’d come up with an idea for a court performance. A ballet of his own creation,
Acis and Galatea
, would tell the story of a shepherd in love with a beautiful nymph. At its end, Acis, slain by the jealous cyclops Polyphemus, would be turned into a river by Galatea, and Hymen would end the ballet with a solo mourning dance.

Grand Duke Paul would dance the part of the god Hymen, and Darya would be the nymph.

“If her teary mother lets her, that is,” Catherine teased as I reached helplessly for my handkerchief, already enchanted by the image of my daughter dancing on the stage of the Winter Palace theater, applauded by the whole court.

“That’s settled, then.” Catherine waved away my gratitude and turned her attention to the letters I had brought. I saw her pick one and break the wax seal. Before I reached the door, however, she leaped from her chair and jumped up and down like a little girl. Sir Tom abandoned his cushion, barking, and began a mad chase after his own tail.

“King Augustus II of Poland has died,” she cried out. “Get Nikita Ivanovich here right away.”

But just as I was pressing the door handle, she stopped me and told me not to bother Count Panin just yet. She needed to gather her thoughts in private. Her voice, so joyful a moment before, became serious: “Now that I can finally repay an old debt to a dear friend, Varenka,” she told me, “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

Two weeks later, Count Keyserling left for Warsaw with instructions to assure Stanislav’s victory in the Polish royal election. By mid-November, Prince Repnin followed with assurances of more Russian help. He also carried Christmas presents for Stanislav: a box of black truffles, a bronze statue of Minerva, and a jeweled snuffbox with Catherine’s profile carved out of ivory.

Hazy with joy, I repeated Sir Charles’s words:
Stanislav, the King of Poland; Catherine, the Empress of Russia. Bound by trust, ruling two great nations, in unity and peace
.

An old dream, I thought, and yet how just, how timely, and how wrought with promise.

On the last night of November, unable to sleep, I sat alone in my parlor. I tried reading a book, but my eyes smarted from candlelight, and my thoughts stubbornly returned to my unfinished tasks: a painting from the last Parisian shipment that was still missing, the dwindling supplies of silk thread for Catherine’s new passion—knotting ornamental braids that she gave away as coveted gifts.

The clock in the hall had just chimed midnight when I heard a commotion in the antechamber. For a moment I feared Bestuzhev had managed to get past my footmen. In the last weeks he had begun to pester me with letters, all versions of the same request to help him obtain a private audience with Catherine.

But it wasn’t Bestuzhev.

The disheveled man, reeking of vodka and garlic, who stormed into my parlor, turned out to be Grigory Orlov. In his hand, he held a bowl of ice cream.

“For Darenka,” he told me. “Egor’s little sunshine.”

“Where did you get ice cream in the middle of the night, Grigory Grigoryevich?”

“The cook likes me,” he mumbled, drunkenly. “I don’t know why.”

I laughed. “My daughter is asleep,” I told him.

The ottoman gave a moan when he fell onto it, his arms extended stiffly, his offering melting into a sticky puddle.

Masha had heard the commotion and scurried in, her lazy eye trained on the ceiling. “Take this to Darenka,” Grigory slurred, as Masha deftly maneuvered the bowl from his hand and carried it away.

He staggered to his feet. “Why is she making
him
King of Poland, Varvara Nikolayevna? So that she can marry him?”

So this is what stung him, I realized, as Grigory’s words flowed like a torrent, curses dissolved in weeping and threats:
Milksop … coward … plotting to get back at her side
. He made a lewd gesture with his hand. “Is he still writing to her?”

“You have to ask the Empress that.”

“She won’t talk of him.” Grigory Orlov gave me an unsteady, out-of-focus stare. Behind him, a candle guttered out. I sat listening, fatigue weighing on my shoulders, wondering how much longer this jealous tirade would last.

“Alexei sent word that that Polish runt is still writing to her, wanting to come back.… Alexei says to watch out … that everybody is plotting against us …”

Grigory stood, swaying, towering over me, a mountain of flesh and muscle. And then he fell to the floor.

Worried that he had hurt himself, I bent over him. He snored. Masha fetched a blanket and a pillow. Grigory grunted when she took off his boots. “Don’t, Katinka. Not now.” This is how we left him, in the end, sprawled on the carpet, covered with a blanket, asleep.

I’d hoped we didn’t wake anyone, but when I got to my bed I heard Darya’s voice asking what had happened. She was sitting up, a slim figure in a white nightgown holding her knees, her nightcap gone, her black curls tangled.

“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep,
kison’ka
.”

“You never tell me anything.” She sighed with resignation. “Was it Uncle Grigory?”

“Yes.”

“Did he really bring me ice cream?”

“Yes. But let’s keep it a secret. He had a bit too much to drink.”

“I know,” she said, yawning. “I’m not a baby anymore.”

I pulled her toward me. Her hair smelled musty, even though it had been washed only the day before. I resolved to tell Masha not to spare the egg yolks next time.

Please don’t refuse my most sincere apologies and this small offering for Darenka
, Grigory Orlov wrote in a note that came the next day.
And please don’t mention it to anyone. I don’t want my Katinka to know what a stupid fool I can be
.

With the note a whole basket of presents arrived: a set of sandalwood nesting apples, each enchantingly hidden inside another, a lacquered box with a lid showing a fairy-tale princess wearing a crown of peacock feathers.

My lips are sealed
, I wrote back,
and your gifts are too generous for one little girl who likes ice cream
.

The reply came immediately. Grigory Orlov insisted I accept his offering.
In Egor’s memory
, he wrote.
A token of old friendship
.

In the months that followed, I didn’t think much of the events of that night. I understood Grigory’s jealousy, groundless as it was. There is power in an Empress’s bed. A widow can marry again. An heir to the throne can die.

I didn’t keep Grigory’s note, either. Why would I?

Among the constant flurry of hours and days, it was Darya’s dancing that occupied my mind.

“I’ll be a nymph,” Darya kept telling everyone, glowing with delight, always ready to demonstrate a newly learned gesture or passage.

I didn’t want to talk of envy. “If you let everyone in the palace see the pieces of the dance before the performance,” I said instead, “there will be no surprise.”

For the first round of rehearsals Herr Gilferding installed himself in the blue card room in the Imperial Suite so that the Empress could drop in on the children’s practice. No one else was allowed to watch.

This is what I remember from these winter days when I fetched Darya at the end of the rehearsals. Paul’s delight at his costume, the wig that he insisted on wearing all day. Darya greeting me with most light-footed circling of the room, her face framed in the oval of her hands. Excited voices, fierce frowns of concentration. Stories of near misses and unforeseen disasters averted at the last moment. An ankle twisted, a broken prop.