The Winter Palace (57 page)

I hear no more complaints about Warsaw. Darya sleeps well and wakes up determined to oversee the unpacking of her trunks. She will soon have to pack them again.

Now she walks into my room with that effortless grace Stanislav likes to praise. Her sleeves never brush against the arms of the chairs; her buckled shoes never tangle in the folds of the tablecloth.

“What have you found,
kison’ka
?” I ask.

My daughter sits on the ottoman and turns her face toward me. With a pang, I am reminded that she has Egor’s dark eyes.

“The birds I like.”

After looking at a dozen Amazon parrots and parakeets, pink, yellow, green, Darenka has finally selected Catherine’s promised birthday present. Her two birds are from the Indies, iridescent green with black ruffs. They don’t speak much yet, but she knows how to teach them. The lessons will take place in the evening, always at the same time. First she will have to give them a snack of bread soaked in wine, place a cloth over the cage, dim the lights, and repeat the words or phrases. Then, in the light, she will repeat the words while holding the mirror in front of the parakeets, so that they think another bird is talking.

I watch my daughter’s animated features, the smoothness of her cheeks, the glow of her eyes.

“Remember how the Empress feared you might want to free the birds in Oranienbaum?” I ask.

“What silly things you remember about me,” my daughter says and laughs, bright and gleaming. She rises and kisses me on top of my head, a new habit of hers that makes me feel small.

I summon all the strength I’m still capable of.

“I have something to tell you,” I say.

I poke at the birch log in the fireplace. It breaks into glowing cinders.

“What is it, Maman?” Darya asks. “Is it a surprise?”

I shake my head.

She wrinkles her nose like a rabbit. She is lovely, and my heart sinks.

“Listen,” I say. “I want to tell you a story.”

“Is this a true story?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “It is.”

1744–1765

The Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
, the younger daughter of Peter the Great and his second wife, Catherine I.

The Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich (Karl Ulrich)
. Later Emperor Peter
III
.

The Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeyevna (Sophie)
, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst. After the coup, the Empress Catherine II.

Princess Johanna of Anhalt-Zerbt
, Catherine’s mother.

Alexei Betuzhev-Rhumin
, the Chancellor of Russia to Empress Elizabeth: later replaced by Vice-Chancellor Vorontzov.

Das Fräulein
,
Countess Vorontzova
, one of Catherine’s maids-of-honor, the niece of the Vice-Chancellor Vorontzov and a sister of Princess Dashkova; also Peter’s Imperial Favorite.

Princess Dashkova
, a courtier.

Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov
, a courtier and Elizabeth’s Imperial Favorite.

Sergey Saltykov
, a courtier.

Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams
, British Ambassador to the Russian court.

Count Stanislav Poniatowski
, an Envoy to the Russian court. Elected King of Poland in 1764.

The Orlov brothers, Grigory and his younger brother Alexei
, officers in the Izmailovsky Guards.

Francesco Bartolomeo Ratrelli
, the imperial architect of Empress Elizabeth.

Count Alexei Razumovsky
, the Emperor of the Night and Elizabeth’s Imperial Favorite.

Count Letocq
, a French surgeon, made Count by Empress Elizabeth.

For Szymon and Chizuko

T
he Winter Palace
is a work of fiction, inspired and sustained by a number of excellent biographies of Catherine the Great and her court. I am particularly indebted to Virginia Rounding’s
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power
, Simon Dixon’s
Catherine the Great
, John T. Alexander’s
Catherine the Great: Life and Legend
, and Isabel de Madariaga’s
Catherine the Great: A Short History
. The Empress herself also wrote about her early life in her memoirs and letters, which I have often consulted, using her phrases and expressions across the novel.

Kate Miciak at Bantam Books and Nita Pronovost at Doubleday Canada have offered me their outstanding editorial guidance. Their enthusiasm and faith in the novel have been priceless, their advice and insights a lifeline. I cannot imagine better and more generous editors.

My agent, Helen Heller, has been an invaluable source of encouragement, inspiration, and wise counsel.

My trusted first readers—Shaena Lambert and Zbyszek Stachniak—have read the manuscript in its earliest stages with just the right balance of praise and meaningful objections.

Diane Paget-Dellio has made me see the cats at the Winter Palace.

I am grateful to them all.

E
VA
STACHNIAK
was born in Wrocław, Poland. She moved to Canada in 1981 and has worked for Radio Canada International and Sheridan College, where she taught English and humanities. Her first short story, “Marble Heroes,” was published by
The Antigonish Review
in 1994, and her debut novel,
Necessary Lies
, won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2000. She is also the author of
Garden of Venus
, which has been translated into seven languages. Stachniak lives in Toronto, where she is at work on her next novel about Catherine the Great, which Bantam Books will publish.