Katja watched them, rapt. Her face was as bright as a jewel, so pleased was she with the honour the Tsar showed her father.
‘I need more than just your advice. I need your blessing,’ Petrushka said, his eyes burning with hurt, his mouth set with anger. ‘I request your daughter Katja Alexeyevna’s hand in marriage.’
Surely we had all misheard. There were so many Princesses Dolgoruky. Theirs was a vast family of varying degrees of fortune. But my friend Katja was already happily planning her wedding with a young man she loved.
‘No,’ she gasped. ‘That must be a mistake. I am spoken for! Father, please—’ She stepped up to him, leaning against his shoulder, frantically seeking his hand.
Alexis Dolgoruky dared to say: ‘My Tsar, Katja is engaged to marry. A date is set. It is a good match and the young people are in love.’
Petrushka shrugged, his face pinched. ‘Engagements are meant to be broken. Dates are made to be altered. And what is love anyway? Think of Maria Menshikova.’ The casual threat in his words was chilling as he held out the astonishing jewel to Katja. He was growing into a real Romanov.
‘Petrushka, please,’ I said quietly. ‘You can’t do this.’
He fought tears but turned to me and raised his chin determinedly. ‘Ah! Didn’t you say that the Tsar could do anything, always?’ He looked at Prince Dolgoruky. ‘Godfather Alexis, I haven’t heard your answer yet.’
Prince Dolgoruky bowed, his long-thwarted ambition vanquishing any fatherly concern for Katja. After all, who was Count Melissimo, a foreign diplomat, compared with the Tsar of All the Russias? Finally, Dolgoruky would be in position to achieve what he longed for: to obliterate all my father’s efforts. His eyes were hard when he clasped his daughter’s wrist, holding her firm. ‘What an honour! A wise decision, my Tsar. After all, the Dolgorukys are one of Russia’s foremost families. We founded Moscow, built the Kremlin—’
‘Yes, yes. Don’t bore me.’ Petrushka shrugged dismissively, while Katja struggled in her father’s grip. ‘No,’ she shouted, her voice drowning in tears. ‘No. Never! I will marry Alessandro!’ Her father slapped her hard, making her head jerk and her lip burst open. I recoiled at the sudden violence, mute with shock. My friend gasped and felt for the cut, touching her mouth with trembling fingers.
‘Give me this trinket,’ her father said, and twisted Count Melissimo’s engagement ring off her finger. Before she could prevent him, he threw it in the flames. Katja howled and made a foolhardy dash for it, but he seized her; his iron grip forced her to kneel in front of the Tsar. Wretched with tears, her hand slack, she watched Petrushka twist the huge, heavy Imperial ring onto her slender finger.
‘It fits,’ he said coldly, sounding pleased. In the fireplace, a furnace for Katja’s love, dreams and hopes, Count Melissimo’s ring melted. Petrushka took a deep breath and bowed to peck his fiancée’s cheek, next to her bleeding, trembling lip, as a brother might. ‘So, this is it then. Do not cry, dear Katja.’ He touched her tangled hair, looking down at her bent head. ‘It will pass. Everything does. Believe me, I know. We will be happy, whatever that means. I shall not hold a grudge against you for your reception of my proposal but prefer to think that you were beside yourself with joy.’ He turned to Prince Dolgoruky. ‘Godfather Alexis, take my beautiful bride home and, once she has calmed, let her pack. Henceforth she is to live in the Golovinsky Palace. The engagement is to be announced in a fortnight, and her title is to be Her Imperial Highness, the Bride Tsaritsa. Our wedding date will be the same as was set with Melissimo, for the sake of convenience.’
Prince Dolgoruky bowed, his puffy face reflecting feelings ranging from pity to pride. His daughter stumbled to her feet, her face ravaged by grief.
‘Come now,’ Prince Dolgoruky urged, pulling her towards the door, possibly afraid that Petrushka, or I, might change our minds. Yet on the threshold Katja turned to face me.
‘This is your fault. Life will make you pay, if not I myself,’ she raged, shaking her fist at me.
‘Don’t listen to her. Katja has been secretly besotted with His Majesty for a long time. She might need bleeding after all this excitement,’ her father said, dragging her out.
‘Father!’ she sobbed in the corridor. ‘Don’t!’ We heard another slap; a hard, determined palm hitting a young face. As the sound of their steps faded, I sank into a chair, my hand to my mouth. My palm still bore the faint scent of petals. The fire devoured the last of Melissimo’s ring. Petrushka gathered his gloves and adjusted the wolfskin cloak on his shoulder, looking as if he had aged by a decade during the last half hour. It broke my heart to see him like this.
‘So be it then, Elizabeth. I have achieved what I came for. I am engaged to marry, committed to honouring a woman and making her happy,’ he said, straightening his back. ‘But I am not quite finished with you yet.’ He toyed with his cloak’s fastening and gave a small nod to d’Acosta. ‘Open the door.’
To my surprise, a guard of soldiers belonging to the Imperial Semyanovsky Regiment entered.
‘Stay, Lizenka, my dove. And you, my friend Buturlin, as well,’ Petrushka said softly to us.
52
D’Acosta’s face was as keen as an unsheathed blade. Petrushka stood with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘As it has come to this, there is something else I would like to know. How, exactly, Tsarevna Elizabeth, my unmarried virgin aunt, would you know that you are barren?’
The blood drained from my head. At the door, Buturlin froze. Our eyes met; Petrushka’s lips curled but his eyes were sad. ‘I know how you know, my beautiful, beloved Lizenka. Because you have been whoring with my chamberlain for a year now, if Menshikov’s slander is to be believed. All through the summer months, when I thought we were courting; when I thought we were in love!’ Beads of sweat were glistening on Buturlin’s Tatar forehead; his eyes were wide with fear as he shook his head in denial. Petrushka spoke on: ‘Menshikov – whom I banished because I thought he hindered our match. And now, despite all the affection and favour I have shown you, you refuse to be mine. Buturlin, can any honourable man accept this? But then, what do you know about honour, compromising a Tsarevna as if she were a stable-maid?’
‘My Tsar!’ Buturlin fell to his knees, his hands outstretched, prostrating himself.
‘Too late.’ Petrushka clapped his hands, a short, sharp sound. The Semyanovsky Guard seized Buturlin, who shouted: ‘No! Let me explain… ’, and put up a brief struggle, fists flying, ribs crunching and uniform tearing, until a swing to his stomach made him double over. He wheezed with pain. When he tried to stand, a blow to his chin sent him to the floor. Buturlin groaned, curling up, sobbing, as kicks and punches started to rain down on him. ‘My Tsar, believe me,’ he begged, his mouth bloodied.
‘No. Quiet now. I have heard enough,’ Petrushka said, raising his hand to fend off Buturlin’s pleas, squeezing his eyes shut against the sight of his former friend, battered and bloody. The Tsar breathed heavily and blinked away tears before he addressed me. ‘Speak. Do you love him, Lizenka? So much that you truly forsake all others? Even me? Do you wish to marry him?’
I cast a look at d’Acosta. In Russia, the tiniest hand could spin fortune’s mighty wheel. ‘Don’t, Petrushka,’ I pleaded. ‘Please. Try to understand. I had lost both my parents. Augustus died. Anoushka left. I was terrified of Menshikov. Buturlin brought light into that darkness. I am grateful for it. But I shall never be any man’s wife.’ I reached for Petrushka’s hand but he jerked it back as if stung.
‘Do not ever touch me again. Buturlin shall pay for that.’ Petrushka’s face twisted with rage and pain.
‘Have mercy. Don’t kill him!’ I fell to my knees, wringing my hands. ‘He was the only one who always spoke on my behalf.’
‘I was your friend. I shall not kill him. Yet he shall never speak again.’ Petrushka stood, pale and shaking, horrified himself by the events of the past hour, and watched while the guards dragged out Buturlin – the man who had been his first friend and chamb
erlain, loyally shadowing his every move – onto the Fontanka quay, where a sled waited to take him across the ice to the Trubetzkoi Bastion.
He shall never speak again. Such was Petrushka’s sentence and such was to be Buturlin’s fate.
53
The lights and the shine of the Winter Palace’s long gallery during Petrushka’s second engagement feast blinded me. I felt like a prisoner emerging from the Trubetzkoi’s dark cells on execution day – a cell such as the one where Buturlin now lingered. Was I the only one thinking of him? I sent Lestocq there daily, taking food and warm clothes as well as money – a lot of money! – to bribe the wardens; I could not bear the idea that he should be hurt or tortured while being interrogated or awaiting his sentence. After all, no further questions needed answering.
Thinking of him in prison made the surrounding splendour unbearable to me: thousands upon thousands of candles bathed the palace’s vast spaces in light; uniform buttons gleamed and leather boots were polished to perfection. Women floated about in their splendid gowns, looking like blossom on a stream, jewellery like liquid fire pouring down rosy earlobes, smooth throats and slender wrists. Almond and orange trees scented the air – in which hothouses had these been reared to bloom in the bleak midwinter? – and dark green, fragrant hedging created arbours where tables groaned under the realm’s delicacies.
Wherever I walked, all conversation ceased. No one gave a kopeck for my future. There were no more suitors asking for my hand in marriage. My only option was the convent.
Katja and Petrushka received the well-wishers from a dais in the Throne Hall. The crimson velvet canopy floating above their carved and gilded thrones dwarfed them. In the two weeks since her engagement to the Tsar in the Summer Palace’s library, Katja had lost weight. Neither her pasty make-up nor her smetana-coloured dress, which hung from her bony shoulders, enhanced her looks, once famed for their perfection. Petrushka himself sat like a statue, his court clothes stiff with gold-thread embroidery, his gaze briefly sweeping the assembled court before looking far beyond the crowd.
As I entered, Count Ostermann stood by the high double-winged doors. Alexis Dolgoruky kept him at bay from the Imperial couple, as one dog might another, guarding the feeding bowl. He bowed half-heartedly to me, averting his slate-coloured gaze: ‘Tsarevna Elizabeth. Of course. As the Tsar’s closest living relative, you must be the first to congratulate him.’ If he was delighted that it was not I who sat on the throne next to Petrushka’s, he hid it well. What would it take ever to shake his self-control? One day, I should love to find out.
‘My duty, Count Ostermann? It is my joy and my honour,’ I coolly said: I knew how much he had feared a possible betrothal between Petrushka and me. Had I played into Russia’s and my enemies’ hands by refusing the Tsar? The thought was horrid, but I had to be true to my heart.
‘The Tsarevna Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova.’ The Court Marshal called my name. The crimson carpet stretched endlessly ahead; the courtiers parted like the Red Sea. People busily whispered their versions of the real reason for Buturlin’s disgrace. They loomed over me, lusting for my downfall. I would not do them that favour just yet, I decided, walking towards the dais. As I neared the thrones, I spotted Count Melissimo in the crowd and felt pity: for him, for Katja, for Petrushka, for me – for all of us. We were all the She-bear of Russia’s cubs, tossing and tumbling, hoping to humour her and keep ourselves out of harm’s way.
‘Your Majesty. My sincere congratulations.’ I curtsied to kiss Petrushka’s hand. He bowed his head, his pallid skin blending with his white wig, immediately retracting his fingers, true to his word that I should never touch him again.
As I turned to Katja, she clenched her fist as if ready to punch me.
I stepped back.
When it was the foreign dignitaries’ turns to congratulate the Tsar, Count Melissimo came forward. Had he been searched for weapons? A love as strong as theirs was bound to lead to foolishness. If he was noticeably unstable – he was unshaven, his black hair unkempt and oily – his elegant hands with their long, refined fingers shook too much for him to mount any assault; his chocolate brown eyes were red-rimmed and swollen from crying. Katja swayed on her seat, tears streaking her make-up. Petrushka turned his basilisk stare on Melissimo as the count was restrained from any further demonstration of his grief by two Tyrolean friends. The struggle was brief.
The Secret Office of Investigation handed Count Melissimo his laissez-passer the same day. He had no choice but to leave. His sled for Vienna departed two days later, where he arrived just in time for Yuletide.
Lestocq was by my side when Buturlin was led up the scaffold, which had been mounted next to the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, just a couple of days after the celebration of the Imperial engagement. He had bled me twice in the morning to calm me, in vain.
‘Did you manage?’ I whispered, my head spinning. ‘Has Buturlin been spared the worst?’
Lestocq shrugged: one could never be sure of the brutes working as wardens in the Trubetzkoi. Often, they pocketed the bribes and still tortured their prisoner. I sank lower in my seat, praying soundlessly, asking for strength. The St Nicholas icon was hidden beneath my voluminous fur collar. I dared a glance at the Imperial couple: Petrushka was bleary-eyed, yet cleanly shaven and looking splendid in the green cloth of the Preobrazhensky Regiment – clearly chosen to humiliate Buturlin further, as was the wolfskin lined with crimson velvet draped over his shoulder, which I had made him, together with the golden chain of links shaped like Imperial double-headed eagles. His fur cap tilted as he leaned in to Katja, listening to her whisper. On her throat, my mother’s twelve-row pearl and diamond choker gleamed in the dull morning. Ostermann had sent the Imperial Guards to collect the gems from me; the last remnants of my mother’s vast collection were gone. I had nothing to remember her by but my recollections of her tremendous spirit and joy in life. Had I inherited even a shred of her strength? I was not so sure any longer. My breath crystallised and I clenched my fists inside my mink muff, as if to hold my heart too tight for it to break.
Hundreds of people had gathered around the scaffold, their stench blending with the sickening smell of roast meat, hot chestnuts and mulled wine: at an event like this, street vendors prepared for brisk business. My stomach roiled as Buturlin’s regiment lined up in double file, the men’s faces set. In his shame he must walk between them. Warm breath clouded their horses’ nostrils as they scraped their hooves in the ice and snow, desperate for forgotten shoots of green. The crowd silenced in anticipation as a single brief cannon shot shattered the crisp morning air. The sound had been expected yet still caught me unawares, making me shudder to my bones. A murder of crows set off in a dark cloud from the winter trees, cawing in protest and leaving the bare branches reaching into a pasty sky. The birds would return soon enough, hoping for rich pickings.
Katja looked at me: her gaze was as shiny as wet coals, her face pale behind the veil of a slow snowfall. This is just the beginning, her eyes said. Just you wait.
There was a commotion at the Bastion’s Neva Gate. I clenched my fists inside the fur muff. People moved about like an army of ants at the prison walls. As Buturlin’s sled approached along the frozen river, Lestocq moved closer to me. His presence was a comfort, even if he was fiddling with something: the Tarot cards that had once predicted Buturlin’s future. A fool for love. Aware of my gaze, he slipped the cards out of sight, just as the sled appeared between the lines of soldiers. The Preobrazhensky Guards followed orders: they jeered, lashing out with their crops and spitting at Buturlin, their former officer and commander. I sank into my seat, trembling with dread and disappointment. My efforts to ease his lot had been futile, if not counter-productive: despite the freezing weather, he was stripped to the waist for all to see how savagely a whip had criss-crossed his back and shoulders, making the skin burst and each weal crust with blood. Once healed – if ever – the scars should chart a map of his suffering. He fell from the sled, crashing into
the snow, unable to stand. He gave a pained cry as the cool, moist flakes touched his wounds. Patches of his thick black hair had been torn out and his shoulders were out of joint, legs broken. He groaned as wardens seized him beneath the armpits, dragging him up the scaffold’s rough wooden steps where his tormentor waited. Buturlin crashed to the planks at the hooded man’s feet. A warden seized his head, hoisting him up, forcing him to see. He squinted through swollen eyes and howled with terror. The sound made my skin crawl and I struggled to sit still and swallow my sobs.
In a smouldering coal basin lay a large pair of red-hot iron pliers. In the Kolomenskoye stables I had helped the blacksmith shoe horses with such a tool; on my father’s wharfs the carpenters twisted misplaced nails out of a ship’s keel using it. As Buturlin shivered and sobbed, the torturer made a show of spinning the tool on its bed of coals; he held it up for all to see. The crowd sighed in fear and longing to witness suffering that for once was not their own. Through my veil of tears, their faces mercifully melted away.
The torturer twisted Buturlin’s head towards the Tsar. I leaned in to Lestocq, seeking warmth and human contact, and shut my eyes in prayer. Beneath my cloak, he gripped my elbow to steady me. Nobody saw his touch, but I would not have made it through without it.
‘Look, Lizenka,’ Petrushka called, beady-eyed, as a warden forced Buturlin’s jaw open and grabbed his tongue, clutching it firmly close to its root, deep down the throat. I felt cheated: the executioner had pocketed the last of my last gold so that he should apparently satisfy the Tsar’s order yet spare Buturlin the worst. But there was to be no mercy for my lover. The air sizzled as the searing pliers squeezed his tongue. A sickening scent of burned flesh rose in the clean winter air: Uuuhhh! went the crowd. I gagged as my lover arched and passed out with pain, hanging limp in the wardens’ grip. The torturer stepped back; the people cheered. As the wardens poured a bucket of water over Buturlin, he came to, gasping, the drops freezing on his body. The torturer placed the tongs once more and gave Buturlin’s tongue a short, sharp tug.
The Tsarina's Daughter Page 26
