The Winter Palace (6 page)

Two glasses stood by a half-empty bottle of cherry vodka. He filled them both to the brim.

“A gift from the Empress,” he muttered. “A sign of imperial appreciation and gratitude.”

If there was bitterness in these words, I ignored it.

“Her favorite drink, Varvara. Taste it!”

I took the glass in my hands, as carefully as I could, but I did spill some on the table. There was no tablecloth to absorb it, so I wiped the wood with my sleeve.

He laughed.

“Go on,” he urged, his voice softer now. “It’s really good.”

I tasted the pink-colored liquid. It burned my throat. I put the glass down hastily.

He leaned toward me and raised his glass, emptying it in one gulp.

“Only a sip of imperial gratitude?” he mocked me. “You need to drink more of it.”

I drank more. I felt a surge of dizziness. The room swirled and wobbled. I dug my fork into a thick slice of cake, smeared in whipped cream and covered with chocolate.

The warmth in my stomach filled me with pleasure. My lips tasted of sturgeon and whipped cream.

Where does destiny end and choice begin?

He was watching me when I finished my meal, when I wiped the silky grease off my lips, when I tasted the sweetness of molten chocolate, when I drank more of the cherry vodka. When he spoke, his voice was smooth and fluid.

“You are a pretty girl, Varvara, but the Empress doesn’t care for women in that way. You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you? You should.

“You should know that she is at heart a peasant’s daughter. She likes her men simple and strong. She likes to be flattered and desired, but she also likes novelty more than anything else.

“I can make the Empress summon you, but I cannot make her interest in you last. You’ll have to know what to tell her. And for that you’ll need me more than you think you do.”

I watched the bald patch on the top of his head. His jacket was open, his chemise loosened. Something thickened in my throat, and I closed my eyes. He rose and came up to me. I felt his warm hands sliding inside my dress, touching my breasts. I felt the stone of his ring snag the lace on my mother’s dress.

“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured.

I let him pull me toward the ottoman. I felt my skirt rise, then my petticoat. Through the thin cambric of his shirt, I felt his heart beat so hard and so fast that I was terrified he would die. What would I tell his servants when they found me in his dead arms? Would the footman have to break them to free me?

His fingers closed harder on my wrists. Something in me closed and folded.

He guided my fingers to the scar on his chest. Three white lines just above his heart, and the fourth, the deepest of them, where my whole finger could hide.

He guided my hand inside his breeches, closed my fingers on his member. My hand was all wet and sticky. Then he put his hand between my legs, and I felt something soft and sinking give in, like soot falling down the chimney.

When it was over, he asked, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” I said. “You did not hurt me.”

I believed it then.

“Nothing happened. I didn’t take anything from you, Varvara. You are still a virgin.”

He slurred his words.

I watched his head loll on the ottoman, his red-rimmed eyes heavy with sleep.

I stood up, wobbly on my legs. My mother’s dress was wet with his seed. My shoes were lying under his desk. I bent to pick them up but did not put them on. As I walked to the door in my bare feet, I could hear the Chancellor snore. I turned toward him. My eyes avoided the opening in his breeches. In candlelight, the bald patch on his skull shone like a polished shield.

Outside the Chancellor’s room I could no longer hold off the sickness of my stomach. I vomited into a giant vase that stood in the corridor, but my head was still spinning from vodka, and the sour taste in my mouth did not go away.

By the time I got back to the room where I slept, the vodka rush had worn off. My hands were sticky, and my fingers smelled of vomit. The jug in the room was empty, so I peed into a chamber pot and washed my hands as best I could in my warm piddle. Then I took off my mother’s soiled dress and tied it into a bundle. When no one was watching, I would scrub it clean.

I fell into a shallow sleep, and when I awoke that night I saw the moon, its face veiled with luminous mist.

I do not remember my dreams. In the morning, when the chambermaid filled the water jug, I hurried to it, pushing the other girls on my way. I tried not to think of the Chancellor’s hands on my breasts, of my mother’s dress, crumpled and soiled.

Nothing happened. You are still a virgin
.

I dipped my hands in the water and washed them with soap. Then I washed them again. Through the palace window I saw the Neva, the edges of the gray waves sparkling in the morning sun.

“Spying, Varvara,” the spymaster of the Russian court would tell me later, “is the art of using people who do not believe in loyalty, whose appetites are enormous and unpredictable, and whose motives are always suspect. Anyone working for us can be bought by a higher bidder. The best spies are not those who work for money or out of fear. The best spies are those whose deepest desires are fulfilled by their master.”

There were so many lessons. There were so many such nights. Nights soaked with promises, rewarded with praise. I was smart. Clever. Pretty. I was nimble and quick. I knew when to keep silent, and when to speak up. I listened and remembered all I had heard.

I was no longer a seamstress, a nameless palace girl, a stray without a soul in the world who cared if I lived or died.

My future was bright, the moment of my triumph near.

In the corridors of the Winter Palace, on my way from the Chancellor’s chambers to the Imperial Wardrobe, I warmed myself with such thoughts.

The summer was long gone, the court had settled back in the Winter Palace, but I still had lessons to learn. Nothing was quite what it seemed. Those who wouldn’t deign to look at me in the hallways had secrets dirtier than mine.

If I had any doubts that there were other, faster ways to the Empress’s good graces, the Chancellor dispelled them: “The Empress is fond of weddings,” he would say. “If she doesn’t find you irreplaceable, she will marry you off to the lowest of her lackeys and dance with the bridegroom. Anyone you fancy already?”

“No.”

A caress, a warning, a promise. And then, underneath it all, the conviction of my own importance, dulling my senses, pushing me where I would never have gone alone.

“Listen.

“Watch.

“Remember.

“Lie to anyone, but never to me and you won’t regret it.

“Come back.”

I never refused. It is like opium, the power of knowing what others believed hidden.

I didn’t know then that the Chancellor’s voice would grow louder in me and more insistent, suffocating my own thoughts, insisting it was the only voice worth hearing.

Don’t say too much. Watch out for those who ask too many questions. Follow the sweaty palms, the nervous looks. Remember that there are no safe places and no room can be entirely sealed. Do not believe the displays of kindness: All gifts and smiles are bribes
.

I didn’t know then how addictive secrecy is, how impossible to escape.

On the last night of September the Chancellor took me to the Imperial Bedroom.

The heavy curtains were drawn. On a marble tabletop I saw a bottle of cherry brandy, half empty, slices of lemon gleaming in the spilled liquid. The cat that stretched by the fireplace wore no velvet jacket. The Chancellor’s cane rested against the mantel, the silver tip of its handle reflecting the flicker of the flames.

I thought the bedroom empty, until, in the semidarkness that hid the canopied bed, I heard a dance tune whistled.

“There she is, Your Majesty,” the Chancellor said. “Just as I promised. This one will not disappoint.”

“Bring her closer,” the Empress ordered, emerging from the shadows, shielding her eyes from the pale beam of light sneaking in through the crack between the curtains. I noted her scarlet lips and her nails, stained pink with rose-hip oil.

How she differed from the resplendent figure I recalled from that day, more than a year ago, when my father had brought me here to the palace. Her loose hair now seemed thin and limp, her face bloated. Her pink muslin negligee revealed the wrinkled skin of her breasts. When she settled into an armchair I saw a slipper dangle on her bare foot.

“Your father was a handsome man,” the Empress said, playing with a golden bracelet on her wrist. I caught a sour whiff of brandy on her breath. “Very handsome. What was it he did, again?”

“He was a bookbinder, Your Highness.”

She giggled. “You have his silky eyes.”

I knelt and kissed her hand, soft, fragrant with the attar of roses. She brushed my shoulder, smoothing the sleeves of my dress, and waved me away.

From the corner where I removed myself I heard her lower her voice as she spoke to the Chancellor. I knew they were deciding my fate. I heard the words
Grand Duke
mentioned, and
maids-of-honor
. Questions were followed by swift answers, which I took for assurances of my skills. Once or twice the Empress cast a glance in my direction, as if to test the truth of the Chancellor’s promises. I waited, my heart beating wildly, my hands clasped, straining my ears.

Finally the Chancellor bowed and turned toward me.

“You may thank Your Majesty, Varvara,” he said. His face was flushed with pleasure.

I turned my eyes to the Empress. I saw her nod.

This is when I rushed toward her and threw myself at her feet.

When we left the Imperial Bedroom, the Chancellor told me I would be assigned to the Grand Duke’s court. “A maid of the bedchamber,” he said. The work was not too taxing, as the Grand Duke cared little for his clothes and never allowed bedchamber maids to touch his military uniforms.

“Watch his maids-of-honor, his footmen, his valets,” the Chancellor said. “Know who is cheating him at cards and who is trying to gain his trust. Remember, you are watching a future Tsar.”

I nodded.

“The Empress will send for you at night,” the Chancellor continued, his words punctuated with the thump of his cane against the floor. “When she does, make sure you have good stories to tell her. You are not the only one of her tongues.”

I nodded again.

I felt his finger lifting my chin.

“I’ve kept my word, haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And you are grateful?”

“Yes.”

His hand caressed my cheek for a brief moment, and then fell limp.

“The Empress wants her stories, and I want mine, Varvara. I protect, provide. You listen and obey. You are my eyes and ears, too. Keep them open. Lie to anyone, but never to me.”

I thought it such an easy promise to give.

From the Empress’s bedroom came the sound of a man’s bold laughter followed by the plucking of guitar strings. Whoever he was, he must have come through the secret passage as soon as we had left.

I followed the Chancellor of Russia, along the empty corridors of the Winter Palace, to his rooms.

In the morning, in the Imperial Wardrobe, Madame Kluge’s face seemed even more sour than usual. Back at my seat, my eyes red and smarting from too little sleep, I began ironing the ribbons for the new gown.

Madame Kluge didn’t look at me.

Ever since the court had returned from the summer retreat in Tsarskoye Selo, the seamstresses gossiped about how the Empress frowned when she heard her Chief Maid’s name mentioned, or how she called Madame Kluge “a German blockhead who could never do anything right.” There were more and more mornings when Madame Kluge returned from the Imperial Bedroom in tears, with the pandoras smashed, the clothes torn off them and crumpled. On such occasions the Mistress of the Wardrobe ordered us to drop everything and hurry to dress another set of dolls for Madame Kluge to present.

This morning, to everyone’s relief, the pandoras came back intact, and we all busied ourselves with the hurried preparations of the Empress’s newest outfit, snipping off all loose threads, ironing the hem, feeling the fabric for a forgotten pin. When the gown was ready, swaddled in a length of silk, Madame Kluge took it to the Empress.

I watched her hurry out of the room. I watched her when she came back, to fetch one of the seamstresses for some last-minute adjustments. For a time I feared that nothing would happen, that the Empress had forgotten her promise.

But then Madame Kluge returned and I saw her say something to the Mistress of the Wardrobe, who nodded.

They were both looking at me.

I began basting ribbons to a crimson evening gown. I smoothed the ribbon in my hand, placed it on the silk, and began threading a needle as Madame Kluge approached me.

“The Empress wishes you to take care of the Grand Duke’s wardrobe.” Her voice was strained and uncertain, and I did nothing to hide my delight. “When you are done here today, pack your things.”

I heard the other seamstresses whisper.

The ribbon and silk slipped from my hands to the floor, but neither Madame Kluge nor the Chief Seamstress scolded me or told me to wipe the smile off my lips.

That evening, when I finished my work in the Imperial Wardrobe, Madame Kluge led me to a small room in the west wing of the Winter Palace, next to where the Grand Duke Peter’s maids-of-honor slept.

I was to empty my own chamber pot, she told me, but I could have as many tallow candles as I needed, as long as I brought back the melted ends. A scullery maid would fetch me a jug of water each morning for my toilette.

“You can have a shelf, too,” she said, as she walked me to my new lodgings. On the stairs, I noted, her hand was clutching the railing with more force than necessary.

“A shelf, a table, and a wooden chest for your things, Varvara Nikolayevna,” Madame Kluge said when she opened the door.

I felt a surge of pleasure at the sound of my full name.

The room was an old alcove, boarded up with thin paneling. I looked at the bare floor, the ceiling streaked brown with damp, the thick dust on the windowsill and a little table. There was no fireplace. From behind the flimsy wall came the easy laughter of the maids-of-honor, getting ready for the imperial masquerade, where all women would dress as men and all men would wear women’s gowns. In another room someone was playing the violin.