At first the new deference with which I am treated disturbs me. At the ball later that evening even people of rank bow and kneel and call me “Your Imperial Highness.” My face aches from smiling. I am only fifteen years old but I am the second-highest ranking woman at the court. No one but the Empress and Peter may sit in my presence.
Lest I become too high and mighty, Peter brings me down to earth. His valet, Roumberg, fills his head with advice on how to treat a wife.
“After we are married,” Peter says one day, “you shall not breathe unless I first give you permission. You shall say what I tell you to say and think what I tell you to think. A woman is her husband’s possession, nothing more. In any case I shall have to beat you now and then. Roumberg knows of such things and he says a wife must be given a few blows to the head to remind her of her place.”
I begin to fear our wedding night. I have come so far. So close to what I want. And what is that, I wonder at last. To please the Empress, a more affectionate mother than the one who bore me. To marry the man she has chosen to inherit her empire. To sit high among the stars. To shine.
During July the Empress leads her huge entourage, both court and household, into the countryside. Thousands of servants oversee a snaking train of carts filled with clothing and provisions, for she leaves nothing behind, not her gowns, not her icons, not her dogs.
Our noble procession denudes the countryside as we travel from town to town: all grain, livestock, cheese, fruit, and vegetables are devoured in a wide swath. The Empress enjoys herself with obvious ebullience. One day she hunts; another day she dances in peasant costume at a festival. The people worship her.
In August everything changes. The Empress puts on simple clothes, pulls on boots, and stamps along on foot to a shrine, a monastery, a convent. The whole court continues to follow now that she is a pilgrim, only they remain in their carriages, not quite so intent in their devotions. I marvel at the vastness of the land: the endless forests redolent of fir, the wheat fields swaying in the sun, the dewy meadows of chicory and daisies. I might have enjoyed it all if not for the presence in my carriage of Peter and Mama, the two never ceasing to find fault with each other and quarrelling without stop.
In October Peter becomes ill and is confined to his bed. At first I am relieved by his absence: no more talk of beatings or wifely obedience. But if he should die, my role here is finished. I am disquieted that I may be sent back to Anhalt-Zerbst, a German princess among many, all equally low of rank. To my relief Peter recovers. For a time.
A week before Christmas he becomes ill in earnest. It cannot be worse: he has smallpox. He is confined to his room with Dr. Boerhave and a few servants. No one is allowed in the room, but the Empress disregards the doctor’s protests and nurses Peter herself.
I continue to study Russian. I also pray for Peter’s recovery. Not entirely for unselfish reasons.
Peter is stronger than he appears, for after six weeks, he survives the smallpox. However in the battle for his life, the illness has scored some victories. His appearance has become hideous, his face still swollen and distorted with purplish scars from the pox. He wears a huge ridiculous wig since his own hair has been shaved off. How did this happen? How can I marry this revolting apparition?
His wispy hair grows back and his face returns to normal size, but he is no less vicious. His only saving grace is that he is not interested in me. On the dreaded wedding night I wait for him for hours with rising anxiety. I need not have worried. It is near morning when he staggers into the bedroom. Grunting in German, he falls dead drunk into the bed.
June 1746
The evening is finally drawing to a close and I am bored to a stupor with all the noblewomen in attendance around me. The weekly royal ball is opportunity for them to gossip and spread rumours about who is carrying on an affair with whom this week. Only half the nobles can read, and none, it seems, are interested in discussing art or philosophy.
Despite the high ceiling, the room is stifling hot and swelters with dancers swathed in many layers of silk, the air thick with sweat. Whenever I get up to dance, the eyes of those around me are drawn to my waist. Some aim at discretion behind their fans, but I know they are watching and whispering. A year after my marriage there is still no sign of a child. I am still thin and agile and wretchedly unhappy. The Empress has become impatient but I dare not confess to her that her nephew does not try to make love to me. That we have never made love. That he is, indeed, incapable of it. He is a child in all ways including the physical sphere.
He does, however, know how to torment me. There he comes with his narrow shoulders and plump belly dressed in his blue Prussian uniform, still bearing some scars from the pox. He is ready for the final salvo of the evening.
Stopping within my earshot he says to his servant, “Did you notice how pretty Fräulein Hesse is looking tonight? Far prettier than my wife. In fact, my wife looks inferior this evening, not at all pleasing.”
He delights in his petty cruelty. Fräulein Hesse is his current infatuation. Next week it will be another. Of course he is incapable of doing anything about it.
The Empress’s women prepare to find her a safe room for the night. Her anxiety rises toward the end of the evening when she must retire: will she survive another day? She sleeps in a different room each night to thwart the assassins that she is certain plot her death. Her scowling, muscled bodyguard lies at the foot of her bed. Even then she is afraid of the dark, afraid of being murdered in her sleep. She makes her women talk to her half the night, all the court gossip and rumours that stave off the dark. Do they repeat the murky intrigues of which I have caught whispers? That I am the chief spy, consorting with Frederick against the English faction? The Empress watches me with more and more suspicion, and I wonder which of the scheming courtiers have bent her ear. I no longer know whom to trust. I hear mutterings of “Traitor” behind my back. I have heard that the Empress suspects me of being a spy like Mama. Poor Mama, sent back to Germany in disgrace for her disobedience and disloyalty. The Empress’s eyes accuse me of the same. Disobedience, disloyalty.
My head aches constantly. I steel myself against the pain. One day I can endure it no longer and I call in the court surgeon. He cuts a vein in both my arms to bleed me. The women around me go pale while the blood drips into a basin. He has just finished wrapping bandages round my arms, the vise of pain circling my forehead is starting to abate, when all of a sudden the door to my room flies open and in marches the Empress. Her eyes are wild. I have never seen her so furious.
“The secret is out!” she cries. “You have been seen together, you and your lover!”
The surgeon and all my servants flee the room, terrified, abandoning me to the Empress’s wrath. How am I to defend myself?
“I have no lover,” I say, trying to remain calm.
Her face scarlet, she shakes her fist at me and steps closer, her huge figure looming. I take several steps backward. She prepares herself to strike me; her arms aquiver.
“Don’t lie to me! You have been seen! You are betraying your husband with Andrei Chernyshev. This is the reason you are not pregnant.”
Peter’s valet! Ridiculous. If I were going to betray Peter I would find someone more appealing.
The Empress presses closer. I keep stepping backward until finally there is nowhere left to go and her large body pins me to the wall.
“You cannot be a wife to Peter,” she is shrieking in my face, “if you love someone else!”
My chest convulses and I start to weep uncontrollably. This is the mother I thought would love me. I cannot breathe through my tears.
“It is your own fault you have no child!” the Empress cries, so close to my face that her hot breath sears my skin.
My servants have rescued me after all. They have summoned Peter, who walks in coolly in his robe. The Empress abruptly steps back from me. Her face softens, becomes normal, and she speaks to Peter with affection. Suddenly she is gone.
Great Chancello
r Bestuzhev, the man who advised the Empress against my marrying Peter, is up in arms. It seems that the only reason I have been brought to this godforsaken country is to bear a child and thus provide the empire with an heir to the throne. According to Bestuzhev, Peter and I are two wayward, spoiled children who need strict direction and discipline in order to fulfill our duty. Therefore, we are to be appointed guardians who will suffer no frivolity but will steer us toward our solemn obligations.
My heart falls when the Empress chooses as my chap-erone her first cousin, Maria Choglokov, a pretty but humourless young woman who takes her assignment seriously indeed. Maria is tiresomely fertile herself, ever pregnant by her husband, Peter’s new guardian. No doubt the Empress hopes Maria’s fruitfulness will be catching, like a cold. Maria suffers no nonsense. No one in the household is allowed to speak with me on pain of being reported to the Empress as an intriguer. I am left in stony silence most of the time. With the result that during the day I am quite alone and find myself more and more in front of my mirror, my only company the young Kalmuk boy who arranges my hair so skillfully. I have grown weary of staring at my own long, thin face, my jaw still pronounced, but now trembling too often with tears.
Any time that I feel even a little light-hearted about something and forget to dissemble, Maria announces, “I’m going to make my report to the Empress!” I must learn to better conceal my thoughts.
The Empress insists Peter and I attend not only mass daily, but now we must also go to chapel for matins and vespers. Peter despises the church but is too much of a coward to protest. He is unwilling to bring down yet another rant from the Empress that she will disinherit him after all.
When her temper is unavoidable and he is in distress he seeks me out. At such times I take pity on him and pet him like a lapdog for I am the only person he can talk to without risking committing an offence. Though he does go on and on about grenadiers and artillery manoeuvres until I am bored to distraction. I am so bored that sometimes I humour him and let him make me into a soldier. He teaches me to march and obey field commands in my silk gown. Then he hands me a musket and orders me to stand guard at the door of his room with the heavy gun on my shoulder. It amuses him to leave me thus for hours.
Sometimes when he comes back to dismiss me, I smell wine on his breath. He does not bother to moderate his drinking but indulges in it both in public at the Empress’s table and in private where bottles stand hidden in cupboards waiting for him. I have learned to avoid him after he has spent an evening of unbridled drinking with his servants.
The man who was supposed to tame Peter, Nicholas Choglokov, Maria’s husband, has failed utterly to bring him under control. Together, the Choglokovs have not found a way to resolve the impenetrable task at hand: to bring about my pregnancy.
February 1748
I have just had a bad shock after delivery of a letter: my dear beloved father is dead. I shall never see him again, the ballast of my childhood. The blunt, upright, scrupulously honest man whose face I have trouble calling forth now, after a separation of four years. My tears start to flow and no one can comfort me. He had none of the guile or deceit that surrounds me here but was the most genuine of men. He acted and spoke in a straightforward manner that would be all but incomprehensible in this court.
My tears do not abate. I weep copiously for eight days, but then Maria Choglokov tells me that I have cried enough, that the Empress orders me to end my tears since I am a Grand Duchess and my father was not a king. I am allowed to wear mourning, but only for six weeks.
July 1752
The insolent chamberlain called Sergei Saltykov watches me from beneath black eyebrows and lashes when he thinks I do not see. He is arresting with his swarthy complexion, such a startling contrast to Peter’s sickly white skin. Sergei is high-born like his wife, who is a lady at court. He attends every function and charms the Choglokovs with his compliments. I notice that my temple begins to throb when he enters the room. He is a known seducer — I have been warned about him, but he is relentless. He will not give up.
He must know, as does the entire court, that my marriage to Peter is a sham, that I am as virginal now as I was seven years ago when we married. Then Sergei also knows about the change of climate in the court. The Empress has had a bout of some illness of which she will not speak but which has made her all the more anxious about the succession. If she dies suddenly, what will become of the throne? There must be an heir, or all the rival factions at court will fall over each other to push Peter aside the moment the Empress is dead. Yet even she finally realizes that her nephew cannot father children. Her anger against him has been mounting.
One day, while passing the door of a room where she converses with an advisor, I overhear her say, “My nephew is a horror. May the devil take him!”
I am no longer watched for signs of flirtations with courtiers. Indeed, the Choglokovs, in an astonishing about-turn, encourage my attentions to Saltykov. They are quite impatient to leave us alone together. Since they take their orders from the Empress, it follows that the Empress has decided I must take a lover. She can wait no longer for an heir, and if my husband is unable to father a child, then someone else will have to.
The new desperation at court is not lost on Saltykov. He knows how to use it to his advantage. The Choglokovs arrange opportunities when Saltykov may seek me out without disturbance. A hunting party on an island in the Neva where only select courtiers are ferried for the day. While the others are off hunting hares in the field, Sergei pulls me playfully behind a thicket and confesses his ardour with long, honeyed phrases that reach into my heart. I am twenty-three years old and have never been made love to like a real woman.
His persistent attentions and declarations of love enthrall me. By September I succumb to his wooing. Within months I conceive a child.
In December the court sets out on the journey from Petersburg back to Moscow. The impatient drivers whip the horses over the rough, craggy roads at a frenzied pace. My carriage shakes and hurtles with a fury and I am thrown about without mercy. Before we arrive I am seized with pain and lose the child.
The Empress lodges me in a newly built wing of the Golovin Palace for my recovery. Its construction is so slipshod that the rats scuttle in and out of the already rotting wainscotting. That winter fires break out all over Moscow. One night, alone and ignored, as I have been since my return, I stand by the palace window to view the panorama of rooftops. I cannot believe my eyes: in the distance four — no, five — blazes are raging in different quarters of the city, sending up vicious flames, while smoke blooms into the black sky like a vengeful flower.
One spring day I enter Peter’s apartments and am startled to see a giant rat hanging from a gallows constructed inside a cupboard. Peter leans nearby, his head tilted back as he gulps from a bottle of wine.
“You see,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “this creature chewed into my favourite fortress and ate three of my best tin soldiers, though I scarcely think they tasted of much. A criminal act by any standards. Under the military code, the laws of war demand he must be executed and left on the gallows for three days as an example to other rats.”
During the summer Sergei is inconstant and temperamental. I have trusted him, but he toys with my heart. I do not enjoy the games he seems intent on playing. Yet I must persevere if there is to be an heir to the throne.
That November the unthinkable happens. I am listening to Maria Choglokov in her salon describing a dress she is having made, when shouts rise in the corridor. All of a sudden Sergei and Leon Naryshkin fly into the room. They scream, “Fire! A wing of the palace is on fire!”
I rush to my own rooms, where my servants are already removing as much as they can carry. I venture into the hall, where dense smoke immediately invades my throat. Twenty feet away the balustrade of the grand staircase is on fire. I am struck dumb to see thousands of rats and mice file down the staircase in an orderly procession. The flames have spread rapidly from
room to room, engulfing the worm-eaten wood in an instant. It is a picture of hell I pray I shall never see again. Maria and I run from the palace and find refuge in a carriage, from which vantage point we watch the devastation.
The fire burns for three hours. By nightfall there is nothing left of the magnificent Golovin Palace but an orange glow hovering over the smouldering, charred embers. While sitting benumbed in the carriage, gazing mutely at the walls as they crumble into nothing, I am filled with hopelessness. My life, like the palace, is collapsing into nothing.
January 1753
Six weeks after the destruction of the Golovin palace, a new palace has been erected by carpenters working furiously at the Empress’s command. I must take my lead from her. I must not allow obstacles to bar my way.
Though the Empress puts a cheerful face forward at banquets and balls, her health is declining. She can no longer climb stairs on account of the weakness in her legs. Special lifts have been constructed in her palace to take her from one floor to another. I have heard rumours about secret dispatches sent by foreign ambassadors at the court who conjecture how the new regime will take over when the Empress dies. All the court begins to look upon me differently. They know I would assume a large role next to Peter in the succession. My one failing — I have no child. I must find a solution for that.
I set my sights on Saltykov, my inconstant love, and early in the new year I am once again pregnant with his child. This time I am resolved not to lose it.
chapter fourteen
Sarah had three singing lessons scheduled for Sunday afternoon, though she felt restless and distracted from the day before. Despite all her experience with dead bodies during the war, it was still a shock to see one. Also, her back muscles were aching from the effort of helping Rebecca pull Michael out of the pool. But it went against her grain to cancel a lesson.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 39
