‘Give me the torch, midget,’ Buturlin commanded, joining us. ‘Otherwise I’ll crush you like an ant.’
D’Acosta arched his eyebrows: ‘Daring, dashing, dead. Remember, Buturlin, that’s how it goes.’
Buturlin kicked out at him but d’Acosta avoided the boot with a nimble twist, wiggled his pert backside at Buturlin and then walked ahead, gravel crunching under his small feet. An orange harvest moon hung above the Bay of Finland, drawing a silver path on the sea’s still surface. The night air was fragrant with wild roses, pungent elderflower and the yeasty smell of the harvested fields beyond. Buturlin’s anger and jealousy rippled towards me. I was careful to keep a distance between us.
‘I shall see the Tsarevna to bed, not you, little man.’ Buturlin shoved d’Acosta once more when we reached Mon Plaisir, tearing the torch from his hand. ‘Vile misfit! Your mother should have drowned you on the day of your birth. Though the sea itself would have cast you out in horror.’
The dwarf’s voice was tinged with hurt pride when he said to me: ‘Tsarevna Elizabeth, be careful. Please.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, though I was not sure of it.
‘If you think so, Tsarevna.’ D’Acosta bowed to me.
‘Go before I flog you, imp!’ Buturlin grabbed a fistful of gravel and chucked it after him.
‘You shouldn’t underestimate d’Acosta. Small does not mean powerless,’ I warned Buturlin once we were safely inside Mon Plaisir, surrounded by the gilt-framed mirrors in the entrance hall. I saw him reflected a dozen times over, tall, dark and handsome, jaw set, eyes glittering.
‘I am tired,’ I said.
‘Me too.’ He seized my wrists. ‘Tired of watching you being chased by other men while I have to linger in the shadows. I adore you, Lizenka,’ he whispered. ‘I could have killed the Tsar when he touched you. I could have killed you when you said: “I so wish I could.”’
‘I am yours,’ I said hoarsely, excited by his rage, kissing his fingers. ‘But I also belong to Russia.’
‘And I am yours as a Russian,’ he swore, his eyes bright with tenderness. We kissed and made up, whispering and laughing, feeling our hearts beat to the same rhythm, wild with passion and slow with sated desire.
50
When a slim new moon hung in the early-morning October sky and the Neva’s waterline was low, Major General Saltykov, a kinsman of Aunt Pasha and my cousins Ekaterina and Anna Ivanovna, landed together with a dozen armed men on Vassilyev Island, where Menshikov’s palace gleamed like a pearl in the wan dawn.
Menshikov was asleep in the arms of a nameless mistress. The plump girl was lucky to be left unscathed while he was forcibly restrained in a ball and chain and left kneeling on the marble floor, awaiting his fate. His wife, Daria Menshikova, was dragged from her rooms, fainting twice in the corridors and then once more when she saw her husband stripped of all his power and riches. Saltykov himself tore the Imperial engagement ring – an enormous pink teardrop-shaped Siberian diamond – from Maria Menshikova’s finger. It would return to the Crown, just like the rest of Menshikov’s worldly goods: the coal, gold, silver, copper and ore mines, the glass, garment and weapons factories, the spinning mills and weaving halls, the thousands of acres of pristine Ural woodlands, the carpentry workshops, the prime arable land bearing wheat, barley and oats, as well as his innumerable sporting estates and palaces throughout All the Russias – Menshikov could cross the realm and sleep every night under his own roof – and, last but not least, the hundreds of thousands of serfs, the unfree peasants bound to the soil they worked, the foundation of our Matushka Rossiya.
*
The Tsar refused ever to see Menshikov again. I, though, insisted on taking leave of him personally: he had bitterly betrayed too much that I loved and was loyal to, for me to miss this opportunity. Inside their simple carriage with its barred windows, Maria Menshikova still wore her nightgown; her eyes were veined with red and her dirty blonde hair straggly. Daria clung to her. Their two weeks in the confines of a dark cell of the Trubetzkoi Bastion – possibly the one where Alexey had once awaited his fate at Menshikov’s hands, beside himself with terror and disbelief – had slimmed her down and pushed her to the brink of madness. Menshikov sat hunched in one corner, banging his head against the side of the carriage. He cursed and grunted, tearing at the iron chain that looped through rings at his wrists and ankles, restraining him like a tethered bear at a spring fair; it had chafed his skin sore. I saw blisters and pus. He must be in pain. Good.
‘Alexander Danilovich,’ I said softly. I had taken great care with my appearance that day, wearing a gown of duck-egg-coloured silk intricately embroidered with pearls, crystals and a generous sprinkle of aquamarines and turquoises. It was low-cut for a day-dress but I should see the Tsar later on. My cheeks were flushed from the first autumnal chill and my blonde hair neatly wound in a crown around my head. Diamonds in my earlobes and at my wrists had been fashioned to match the frame of my icon of St Nicholas.
‘You!’ He sucked his teeth but dared not spit at me when Buturlin and two of his regiment’s soldiers stood tall behind me. They would finish him off, there and then, if he dared do anything, which might be a mercy compared to what lay ahead of him.
‘Me.’ I checked the carriage’s tattered mattress and half a dozen threadbare blankets, as well as its lack of cushions. I nodded my head, content to see it. ‘Are you sitting comfortably? You have a long trip ahead of you.’ Maria Menshikova buried her face in her hands as Daria lunged for my fingers. I crossed my hands behind my back.
‘Lizenka, please! For the love of your father!’ she pleaded.
‘The great Tsar whom you swindled as long as he lived?’ I asked.
‘The friendship of your mother—’ she continued.
‘The Tsarina from whose dead body you tore the jewellery?’ I reminded her, before adding: ‘And let us not forget my brother, the Tsarevich Alexey, whom your husband condemned to death and helped murder with his own hands.’
I had kept my voice low yet in the Winter Palace’s enclosed courtyard, the words gained force, lifting me up. I felt like a bird, circling high above Menshikov’s miserable carriage, taken higher and higher by the friendly wind. This was how Molniya my falcon felt when preparing to bring down her prey. It was exhilarating.
Daria Menshikova sank back in her seat, sobbing.
‘Where are we going?’ Menshikov’s eyes were crazed with fear. I saw his shoulders were bruised where his fine shirt was torn. There had been nobody who cared enough to bribe the Trubetzkoi Bastion’s wardens to spare him and his brethren from abuse and violence.
‘A place nobody ever comes back from,’ I said. ‘If they reach it at all. Beresov in Siberia.’
‘Beresov! But there is nothing there!’ wailed Daria Menshikova.
‘You will be there. And the Tsar in his mercy grants you this.’ Buturlin handed me an axe, which I lobbed into Menshikov’s lap. ‘Pray for the Tsar’s soul. With any luck you will have built your house before the snowfall is too bad.’ I met Alexander Danilovich’s desperate eyes, steeling myself. Menshikov deserved everything he got – and more.
‘It’s freezing there,’ he screamed. ‘We are wearing only shirts and nightgowns. Have pity… where are our sable coats?’
Oh, how I had waited for those words! ‘I still remember how you told me your daughter liked a good sable coat, Menshikov. But then, don’t we all?’
He stared at me, mute with the understanding of his complete and utter defeat.
‘Good riddance, Alexander Danilovich. As you said, there is always another possibility. For whomever, whenever.’ The look on his face was balm to the suffering he had caused me. I knocked on the carriage’s roof, giving the driver the signal to depart. A whip cracked and the stocky ponies pulled away. The carriage jerked, hurling the Menshikovs about as they were driven from my sight, forever. As they left the Winter Palace, the dark clouds above us thickened, promising thunder and lightning. It started to drizzl
e; soon the drops grew heavier, rain pouring down. I stood firm in the torrent and tilted back my head, opening my mouth: tears of rage and relief shook me as the rain poured down my throat. I howled into the storm, relishing its cleansing, nourishing power. Until this moment I had not realised how parched I had been. The floods eroded the walls that had held Alexey’s suffering secret and captive, bricking in the memory of him. I had set his soul free and now his name could be spoken without fear of reprisal. My family could finally heal and grow close once more.
When the Menshikovs arrived in Tver two weeks later, to be charged and sentenced, the first steady snowfall had set in. Daria Menshikova perished well before reaching Beresov. She was buried by the roadside in an unmarked grave. Maria Menshikova, the Tsar’s former fiancée, who had sat clothed in silk and decked out in diamonds by Petrushka’s side during his Coronation, followed her mother soon after – her grave was a ditch lost in the vastness of Siberia – dying delirious with fever and disfigured by smallpox. Menshikov himself perished within the year. Ever-resourceful, he had ventured out in the Siberian night in the middle of a raging snowstorm, trying to fix the roof of the cabin he had built with his treasured axe. In the morning, when the storm abated, his frozen body was said to have stuck out from the white Siberian plain like a sore finger. I had heard that freezing to death is a painfully slow death – the limbs failing and the organs shutting down one by one – and trusted that was the truth.
51
It was as if Menshikov had never been. After his old rival and crony’s fall, Count Ostermann – as wily and catlike as ever – was not to be seen at court, reportedly suffering from crippling gout, but still plying his former pupil Petrushka with letters brimming with ideas, instructions and suggestions. The Dolgorukys’ star was in the ascendant, and Ostermann stayed in hiding, taking care to be a dagger in nobody’s eye, only pulling strings while safely in the wings, ready to fight for the young Tsar’s soul. Reversing the Father’s reforms meant nothing but eternal damnation to Count Ostermann.
‘Stay, Katja. Sit, Lizenka,’ Petrushka ordered when he and d’Acosta, Prince Alexis Dolgoruky and Buturlin entered the Summer Palace’s small library one morning, unannounced. Winter had come. Snow lay high up a sled’s side and an icy wind bit to the bone, delighting in whirling caps off heads; people swore as they chased after them, floundering knee-high in the fresh, icy swathes. Katja and I were sitting by a roaring fire, both wearing warm, unlaced house gowns and nibbling sweet pierogi and chestnuts, their skin split just so by the heat of the grate. The samovar bubbled away with a low hum.
We had much to talk about: a wedding date for Katja and her handsome Italian Count Melissimo had finally been set. ‘Alessandro has offered me bales of Chinese silk for the wedding dress,’ she had said, delighted. ‘It is the most delicious shade of smetana. I will wear his family’s tiara of pearls, aquamarines and diamonds.’ We had met to arrange dried flowers; Buturlin’s first bouquet to me, that harbinger of hope, was to form the collage’s heart. The faded blossoms still bore a faint scent, which dissolved in the damp draught that Petrushka brought in with him today.
He threw his splendid wolfskin cloak – which I had had made for him – at d’Acosta to catch. The dwarf tumbled underneath its weight, drowning in its folds, struggling painfully to his feet. The sight made us laugh and he took the hint to tumble over, moving about beneath the velvet like a mole, again and again, until Petrushka said: ‘Enough, d’Acosta. We have business to attend to.’ He stooped to admire the dried blossoms. ‘Exquisite work, my beloved Lizenka. You have the hands of a fairy.’ He kissed my fingers then winked at d’Acosta who stood to attention, his face grave, the Imperial cloak at his feet and one hand flat on the pocket of his gaily coloured patchwork waistcoat. ‘But why ever are your hands so bare, Tsarevna?’
I laughed. ‘Well, I shall adorn myself as an Imperial Princess for the dinner tonight. I am so grateful for the remnants of my mother’s jewellery that you sent me – I love coloured diamonds. But here we are all cosy and private so I thought—’
He interrupted me, keeping hold of my hand. ‘No. It is now, and here, that you will be adorned. Our darling friends shall be my witnesses. And all the better if you love coloured diamonds.’ The room fell silent. Alexis Dolgoruky frowned as Petrushka pulled me to my feet. His godfather expected to be consulted upon all the Tsar’s decisions. Petrushka’s sudden move swiped the last of Buturlin’s dried petals to the floor in a shower of dreary dust. I bit my lip with regret. Once again, my past must be left behind.
The Tsar snapped his fingers at d’Acosta, who conjured up a purple velvet cushion and rummaged in the pocket of his waistcoat before placing a little jewellery case on it.
Katja gasped, ‘My God, Tsarevna Elizabeth! Is this really happening?’
D’Acosta’s eyes did not leave my face, his gaze as deep as a wishing well. Hot fear rose from deep inside me as Petrushka smiled tenderly, saying: ‘Just you wait, Lizenka.’ Katja craned her neck, clasping her hands at her chest, beaming at me. I sat petrified while Petrushka let the lid of the delicate case snap open, revealing the Imperial engagement ring, which he had been forced to offer to Maria Menshikova before it was snatched back once her father was disgraced. The pink teardrop-shaped diamond shone with a cyclamen-tinged fire; it was large enough to cover my finger, from the first to the second knuckle.
Alexis Dolgoruky looked aghast. He knew that as Tsaritsa I would never allow him to lead Russia back into its past, as he intended to do. Katja made a strange little hiccupping sound. Buturlin, standing guard at the door, looked thunderous. Only Petrushka’s dear face was openly hopeful, his eyes adoring as he offered me the ring, clasping my fingers in his.
‘Lizenka,’ he said, ‘be my wife. Be my Tsaritsa of All the Russias. I shall have you crowned. Be the mother of my children, the power behind my throne.’ Red patches of excitement showed on his cheeks and he started to cough. Alexis Dolgoruky steadied him, edging closer, his gaze as hard as flint, his face ashen, while Petrushka steered me towards the warmth of the fireplace. The ring mirrored the flames, trapping them in fiery prisms. ‘Be mine,’ Petrushka said, his voice pleading and warm. Desire darkened his eyes as he readied himself to place the ring on my finger.
‘I could not have hoped for more, Tsarevna Elizabeth. Both us will be happily married come the New Year. What bliss,’ Katja sighed.
I would have bolted then but, of all men, Buturlin blocked the door. Petrushka was my nephew; we were too closely related to marry. I loved him as my relative but never as a man. The memory of our dinner in Peterhof still made my skin crawl. Yet the determination in his face told me that he would find a way around anything that hindered the fulfilment of his wish. Excuses would not do. He had grown into his role as Tsar of All the Russias, which I had encouraged him towards.
‘I can’t,’ I said, pushing the ring away.
‘You – can’t?’ Alexis Dolgoruky was the first to repeat, a flash of delight in his eyes, yet sounding as incredulous as Petrushka looked. He was too stunned to speak, emotions chasing over his face like clouds across the sky. I forced myself neither to take his hand nor to embrace him. He was almost as pale as back in Tver when I had saved him from Versailles’ and Vienna’s murderous designs. All the hurt and contempt he had suffered in the past broke through the thin veneer of adulthood; the blanket of wealth and adulation only lightly covered that suffering. My heart went out to him, yet marrying him would make everything worse.
I kneeled before him, tears in my eyes, and kissed his fingers: ‘My Tsar, I am deeply honoured. I adore you and am forever faithful to your cause. But I love you as my nephew. I cannot be your wife. I am barren and of no service to further my house.’
Tears streamed down my face then. Barren. How short yet finite the word was as I faced the truth. After all the careless moments with Buturlin, night after night, I had never been with child. Had it happened, I would gladly have weathered the scandal, retreating to the country. You will be
a mother but have no child. Which cruel truth had the Leshy spirit been hiding behind those words, all those years ago, in the Golosov Ravine?
Petrushka still held out the ring to me, blinking with disbelief. ‘Nonsense, Lizenka. Who cares? I am not the last Tsarina’s son. We shall find my heirs elsewhere. I love you and I want to be with you.’ His honesty twisted my heart when he added: ‘Also a childhood such as mine was so terrible, lonely and deprived of love, that I do not feel the need to bring other children into the world. I can find an heir another way – Anoushka’s son maybe.’
‘I can’t,’ I repeated. Petrushka was loving towards me now, but what if he changed? I dared not breathe. My life hung in the balance, but I had to be true to myself.
‘Tsarevna, please.’ Katja held my shoulders. ‘Do consider it at least. This is more happiness than any woman could hope for.’
I closed my eyes briefly, shutting her out, and shook my head. ‘No. I am to be no man’s wife. Not ever,’ I said as I opened them and looked around. ‘I am grateful for the honour you do me, my nephew. But I implore you as my Tsar to find another woman and offer her this same honour and happiness – a woman who will gladly be your wife, and who can love and cherish you, as you deserve.’
‘Do not go against destiny,’ Katja warned me.
‘Who knows their destiny?’ I asked.
‘Another woman?’ Petrushka’s voice broke with hurt, disappointment and anger. ‘I have never been happy. And if I cannot be happy now, with you, then no one else shall be happy either.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I soothed him, once more not taking him seriously.
Petrushka turned to Alexis Dolgoruky. ‘My kum – godfather. You have always been like a father to me. Are you by my side?’
‘Always, my Tsar!’ Prince Dolgoruky beamed, standing to attention. He was more relieved by my refusal of Petrushka’s proposal than he could ever let on. ‘Do you need my advice? There is many a princess who will be delighted to be your wife.’
The Tsarina's Daughter Page 25
