The game was up: there was no coming back from this, no further conspiracy. The Tsarina was still the absolute ruler of Russia, as the Tsars had always been. Ekaterina Ivanovna, Christine and I followed Anna as her ladies-in-waiting arranged the Tsarina’s heavy train. Alexis Dolgoruky rose reluctantly, unable to refuse her invitation. A terrible understanding dawned in his eyes.
The same evening, the strangest lights showed in Moscow’s inky sky, tearing the night apart and criss-crossing it in bold flashes of every colour of the rainbow, from a riverine green to the richest crimson and vermilion. The horizon looked as if it had been dipped in blood.
63
The servant girl’s high-pitched voice was to be heard through the door to the Tsarina’s bedroom. I stopped to listen: ‘As the robbers entered the castle, they found the duchess on her window seat—’
Anna clapped her hands, delighted: ‘Slow down, slow down. This is my favourite bit!’
‘Please, Your Majesty. I am so tired. I have been telling stories since sunrise and had no food.’
‘Tired? One moment, let me give you something.’ I heard a sharp slap and then a muffled sob. Maja, who led me, shrugged and averted her eyes, so I guarded myself from making any comment. I was already sure my every move was being reported to Anna. It was only two months ago that she had seized absolute control of Russia, but already I felt exhausted by the scale of the changes in life at court.
‘Lean against the screen, girl. You, d’Acosta, stand there so I need not see her leaning. Otherwise her hands and nose would be chopped off for insulting My Majesty and we do not want that, do we?’ The Tsarina’s silky voice veiled her terrible threat thinly.
‘As the robbers entered the castle—’ the girl carried on, her voice shrill with terror.
‘You may enter, Tsarevna,’ Maja lisped. ‘The Tsarina is trying on robes and jewellery for her Coronation.’
‘Thank you, Maja. How lucky the Tsarina is to have such a loyal servant.’
She blushed, unable to suppress a pleased smile, and curtsied. ‘I am still grateful for your generosity in my day of need, Tsarevna, back when the Tsaritsa Praskovia died. You are truly your mother’s daughter.’
‘I was glad to honour your service to my Aunt Pasha and the family,’ I said.
‘Not everyone would be,’ she said, averting her gaze.
Anna’s rooms were as dusky as a dressing-room in the gostiny dvor. A curious smell lingered in the air – flesh, sweat, the vanilla and bergamot of her perfume, spilled vodka, and another note that I could not name, resembling cooling ash. The Imperial apartment looked as if a cannonball had hit it. Robes lay everywhere, many dozens if not hundreds of them, piled on top of overskirts, stomachers, lace collars and capes. Thick velvet and fine wool cloaks were carelessly tossed about; priceless furs flung to the floor, and silken stays, lacy undershirts and tight whalebone corsets stacked up on her bed, chairs, chaise longue and stools – a pair of silk stockings even dangled from the screen where the young storyteller half-leaned, exhausted, d’Acosta hovering in front of her. When he saw me, he clapped his hands, calling out, ‘Look! It’s lovely Lizenka, visiting the enchanting Tsarina!’ His voice blended with the silver bells that were tied to his ankles and wrists, and he winked at me, like an old friend, of which I had none.
‘Shut up,’ Anna snapped, not enchanted at all but busy eyeing me, taking it all in: my fresh, flushed face after the morning ride – I needed neither crimson paint on my cheeks and lips nor kohl to accentuate my dark lashes and arched eyebrows – the neat bun at the nape of my neck, which hardly contained my thick honey-coloured hair, as well as the slim-cut, knee-length coat and tight breeches that showed off my hips and my legs in their high, mud-splattered riding boots.
‘Why do you come dressed as a boy?’ she asked, pushing her fists into her blue dressing-gown’s pockets. She wore it open and was naked underneath, a shocking sight: her breasts dangled – the nipples were large, pink and absurdly long – and her vast, protruding belly was lacerated with white stretch marks, as if an animal had clawed her. ‘The masquerade is planned for after the Coronation if I am well informed?’ She beckoned me closer, unsmiling. Everything inside me quivered, on the alert. The scolding was over, though.‘Look,’ she breathed, sounding rapt, and pointed at a cask propped up on her bedside dressing table. It was a small chest locked by a spider’s web of chains. Anna had the key dangling from a thin necklace between her breasts. ‘You might recognise what you will see inside here,’ she said, giving d’Acosta a vicious kick when he came too close. ‘Away, misfit! This is not for your eyes. And you, shut up!’ she snapped at the storyteller, who had rattled on and now paused, gasping for breath.
‘Open the curtains,’ Anna ordered. ‘I need more light.’
At the windows I groped for the pulley of the heavily lined curtains but felt cold metal instead. ‘What’s this?’ I asked, recoiling: a gun was mounted on the windowsill, pointing towards the Red Square. Empty cartridges rolled at my feet, which explained the musky scent in the room. It was gunpowder.
‘My gun.’ Anna shrugged.
‘What do you do with it?’
‘Well, I shoot with it, of course. Silly you!’
‘Taking aim from the Kremlin’s window? At the Red Square?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the target? Or – who?’
‘Whoever walks there. They’d better do so fast. I don’t really want to hit them but sometimes it just so happens… ’ She waved her hand at me impatiently. ‘Go on, open up. Don’t dawdle, Lizenka.’
I obeyed. It was mid-April. The sky was of that dense, clean blue that heralded the end of the ottepel. Spring had settled in; the hours of daylight were lengthening. The people awoke from their winter stupor and Moscow brimmed with Russians from all over the realm, hanging around to witness Anna’s accession. Yet the Red Square, normally bustling at any hour, was almost empty. Instead, throngs of people pressed along the walls beneath the arcades of the surrounding houses, ducking for cover. Clearly, word of Anna’s pastime had spread. I touched my icon of St Nicholas in a silent, short prayer. ‘Is this better?’ I asked as the crisp light flooded the room, showing the full, formidable extent of the mess.
‘Better,’ Anna confirmed, letting the casket snap open, the chains slipping to the floor. The case’s sides opened like petals. I stood mute, staring at the splendour of my mother’s crown, for which Father as a sign of his love, respect and adoration had paid one million roubles only seven years before. It seemed an eternity ago.
‘So beautiful!’ I admitted, fighting my sadness.
‘Indeed. I have paid my jeweller, the little Jew Liebman, forty-five thousand roubles to improve it.’ Her finger brushed a newly set ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg. ‘This stone comes from China. The new rim Liebman has added from twenty-eight new diamonds, which are the largest ever found in my Siberian mines. The other two thousand stones come from all over my Empire.’
My mines. My Empire. Like sweets to be devoured, or toys to be played with. It pained me to see my mother’s crown altered like this, to be placed on another woman’s head. I told myself that was silly – a crown was an heirloom, intended and made to be passed on.
‘The Coronation will be a feast such as All the Russias have never seen,’ Anna said dreamily.
‘I shall be sorry to miss it,’ I said. ‘With your permission, of course.’
‘What?’ She turned to me. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘I came to ask for leave to go on a pilgrimage. I have been planning it since before Petrushka’s engagement. I have contacted the Pecharsky Monastery near Kiev and proposed that I should stay with them for a while. The Abbess there, Agatha, was a dear friend of my mother’s.’
‘Ah, yes. My little sunshine aunt. She was the only one who deigned to answer the many pleading letters I sent from Courland.’
I curtsied, anxious to please her further. ‘I implore you, allow me to go. My soul needs th
e calm and quiet of the convent. Too much has happened lately. Petrushka was the last male Romanov and I still mourn him.’
‘It is true. We are vastly diminished. That is why we have to stay close, Lizenka,’ Anna said. ’Who knows? You might enjoy the convent’s routine so much that you stay for good. What do you think, Maja?’
‘The Tsaritsa Praskovia always warned me not to get ahead of myself,’ Maja said demurely. ‘But the Tsarevna will surely benefit from the pilgrimage. And she shall hear all about the splendour of the celebration later, shan’t she?’
‘We shall miss you, dear cousin. But you are a lesser Imperial Princess, born out of wedlock. Whether you are present or not is of no real significance. By the way, Alexey’s mother, your father’s first and true wife, is to attend,’ Anna said.
‘Evdokia?’
‘Yes. She is still mourning Petrushka, of course. What suffering! My sister Ekaterina and my darling niece Christine will be my maids of honour, as they represent the elder Romanov bloodline.’
A lesser Imperial Princess. Your father’s first and true wife. The elder Romanov bloodline. My line of the family would be pushed into oblivion, if not extinction, should any ill befall my Holstein nephew.
‘When are you to leave?’ Anna asked.
‘I am dressed to ride,’ I said. ‘Lestocq is waiting for me at the Red Staircase.’
‘Ah, yes. Lestocq. The hired Frenchman. Your crony paid for by Versailles. Beggars cannot be choosers, as I know myself. We all have our vain hopes, so why not also the King of France? Is he hoping that you will be named my heiress? It is possible. But make no mistake: nothing of the sort is decided yet and my hand will not be forced.’ She admired the crown once more. ‘Safe travels, Lizenka. I have a lot to take care of.’
‘What is the first task of your reign? Fighting the famine?’ I wondered. ‘Russia has suffered for too long. People lock up their children in case they are stolen and eaten. Nobody in their right mind travels unaccompanied, and peasants bake pies out of sawdust.’
‘The famine? What on earth are you talking about?’ She looked at me sternly. ‘There is no famine in my realm. Never has been, never will be.’
I bit my lip, yet wanted to know more about her plans. ‘Or is the quarrel about the Polish throne keeping you busy?’ Rumour had it that Russia would soon be at war again, crushing the country with new taxes and duties.
‘You are as boring as Ostermann. He, too, harps on about the Polish succession and wants the throne for the Saxon Elector, while the French of course push for their Queen’s father, Stanislas Leszczyński.’ She cast me a mean glance. ‘Ah, yes. I had almost forgotten. You have a bone to pick with that line, don’t you? Didn’t his daughter once steal your handsome fiancé, the King of France, from you?’
I nodded, mutely.
‘Well, I might join the war after all. Even if it’s just to avenge your slighted honour.’
‘Would you?’
‘No. Of course not. A pretty face is not reason enough to send soldiers marching to their deaths. I am busy with other things: once crowned, I shall have a theatre and an opera company to supervise. Where do we find the best company of actors?’
‘D’Acosta might know?’ Maja suggested.
‘Oh, yes. Dear d’Acosta. He really knows everything, doesn’t he?’
The dwarf bowed.
I was dismissed.
Just days after I had left Moscow, Anna was crowned Tsarina of All the Russias in the Cathedral of the Assumption by Feofan Prokopovich, who blessed her face, shoulders, breast and both sides of her hands with chrism, gently dabbing her skin dry as chanting rose and he murmured his prayers in her ears. Anna’s strong neck supported the weight of my mother’s altered crown well. The gemstone-encrusted Imperial sceptre was so heavy that she had to change hands continually to support its weight; the golden orb, which measured two elbow spans, rested on a velvet cushion next to her. Anna retired early from the banquet and ball that followed to drive through the streets, where dozens of triumphal arches showed her image lit by 7,000 seven-foot-high candles, which the Spanish Ambassador, the Duke of Liria, had sponsored. Their glow held the night at bay and flattered the ladies as much as it encouraged men in their daring advances. The festivities lasted eight days, after which the waters of the Moskva were set alight by the reflection of a firework display not to be bettered anywhere else in the world.
By then, I had put as many versty as I could between Moscow, that snake pit of a city, and me.
The ride to Kiev, oldest and holiest of the original Rus’ cities, from which Grand Prince Vladimir had brought Christianity to Russia almost a thousand years earlier, spanned nine hundred versty. The mid-April sunshine did not last. Soon we rode through driving rain. In the fields the first green shoots drowned, their furrows filled with rain. Serfs desperately dug canals to steer the rising flood waters away, but in vain. I made a point of praying at every village, however backward, and tried to leave a gift with the priest for the neediest of his flock – yet there were so many, it broke my heart.
‘Must we?’ sighed Lestocq, as I once more got off my horse to worship.
‘What on this earth must we do on a pilgrimage if not this?’ I countered. ‘I thought the French were devout Catholics?’
‘Occasionally. Less so in cold and rain.’ He sniffed and waited for me, studying the wall-eyed virgin portrayed in the church’s icon and eyeing activity in the small mir with disdain. The flood water had flowed into the izby , spoiling furniture, food and clothes. Drowned sheep, goats and poultry drifted belly-up, floating towards the rivers and streams. People lay stranded, too drunk to move, on their large ovens, islands in the izby that had turned to ponds. There was to be no respite from the previous year’s famine. How could Anna Ivanovna as Tsarina deny their plight? Loving Russia meant loving her people.
On the first dry night, I chose to camp. Lestocq and I took turns to guard the fire, while the other slept on their bedroll like a proper pilgrim. The earth and the spirit of my country revived me: Anna’s sickly-sweet yet stinging words were suffocating me, making me feel like a wasp stuck in jam, unable to spread its wings, slowly perishing. Lestocq snored next to me and the embers of our fire still glimmered when I sat up and listened: truly listened. A pair of large grey owls had built their nest in the treetops above. With nightfall, the birds swooped over the countryside, their wingspan darkening the stars. They returned, sharp beaks filled with mice and other small mammals. Wild boars rustled in the bushes, poking their snouts deep into the moist ground, looking for acorns a squirrel might have buried, or better still, truffles. A lynx’s yellow eyes loomed at me from behind a screen of branches, lusting for the remains of our dinner – a sinewy hare – but the creature hesitated to pounce. The forest felt like a web in which I was swallowed up. I was at peace here, wrapping my cloak tighter around me and holding my icon, and yet I could not settle. My fingers brushed the earth next to my Tatar saddle, which I used as a cushion. The grassy ground was damp with dew. I clawed up a tuft from the coarse blend of sand, gravel and dust it was rooted in. This was the very backbone of Russia, the foundation on which my country was built. Warm and welcoming on the surface, but with a steady, steely chill lurking beneath. I hungrily stuffed the grass in my mouth, chewing on it, gulping, savouring its blue taste. Tears welled in my eyes then and streamed down my face, but they brought me comfort.
Whatever happened, I always had Russia for my bedfellow.
64
We reached Kiev by the end of May. The spring had curdled; the early summer drowned. The vastness of Russia might have turned into a lake for all I knew: I could not remember when I had last worn dry clothes. My nose felt runny, my throat sore. I shivered constantly. After weeks of travel my body was as sinewy as the creatures we fed on, if we shot any at all. With the famine, poaching was rampant, and the forests bare of game, let alone berries and roots.
I halted my horse upon approaching the city, taking in the sight. Dusk’s blue hour
had begun. Kiev’s golden domes rose from a slope on the Dnieper’s western bank. Their splendid colour gleamed in the evening sun, like a promise man might make but only God could keep. I stood briefly in my stirrups, then lost all strength and sagged in the saddle. My vision blurred.
‘Let us push on,’ Lestocq said, sounding worried. ‘Will you make it?’
My throat ached too much for me to answer and a cough wracked my chest as I nodded.
Our horses’ hooves sounded hollow on the stone paving when we approached the Pecharsky Monastery. The hour of almsgiving was long gone: no pauper was out, hungry for a last ladleful of thick pea soup; no groups of lepers lingered in corners, hoping for the impossible, such as a kind word. Shadows flitted by. Under cover of darkness a different side of life was revealed. A mother in need might leave her baby in the convent’s revolving door, and pickpockets – or worse – gathered here to plan their exploits for the night ahead.
‘Let me help you,’ said Lestocq when I struggled to dismount from my horse. I was uncertain if my legs would support me but shook my head. Anna’s scorn of him had hit home: why was he still with me – had Versailles doubled his salary, hoping that I might yet be made heiress to the throne? True loyalty in my life seemed an impossibility. I felt lonelier than ever. Yet he brushed away my objections, lifting me from the saddle with shocking ease. My jacket hung loose and I had added some holes to my belt, tightening it more with each day. At first my fingers missed the knocker on the monastery’s main door, but I clasped it at the second attempt, leaning against the door frame, as I waited for my summons to be answered. A window set into the gate was unbolted. An eye peered suspiciously at us through the small, barred opening.
The Tsarina's Daughter Page 31
