The Tsarina's Legacy

by Jennifer Laam

  Michael stopped short.

  “Is this another scam?” the reporter asked. “Do you have a comment?”

  “No. No comment. No.”

  “It is not small thing to impersonate member of royal family. Why are you here with latest Romanov heiress?”

  Michael turned to Veronica. “I’m sorry.”

  So that was why the floor attendant back at the hotel recognized Michael. Michael had lied, but only because he thought it would protect her. Veronica hadn’t realized this would come back to haunt him once they were in Russia. She had a sudden flashback to Michael’s home in Los Angeles, how good it had felt to curl up with him on the couch, his chow panting at their feet. She couldn’t bear to see him hurt because of her.

  “Leave him alone,” she snapped at the reporter. “You don’t know the whole story.”

  “Would you like to tell it to me?”

  Dmitry leaned in to pick up on the conversation. He put a hand on Veronica’s arm and shook his head. “No, she would not.”

  “You don’t need to defend me,” Michael told her. “I’ll be fine.”

  He walked down the steps, hands stuffed in the pockets of his own new wool coat. He had forgotten to cut off one of the tags and it hung loose from his sleeve.

  “I will never let anyone hurt you,” she said quietly, though she knew Michael could no longer hear her. “And I’ll try not to either.”

  Seven

  ST. PETERSBURG

  MARCH 1791

  “You’ve lived in the capital for years now,” Grisha said, “and this is the first you’ve seen of this magnificent monument?”

  Anton glanced behind at the horses standing patiently in front of Grisha’s carriage while the driver took a quick sip from a cheap leather flask. Anton ran his hands up and down his arms. The tip of his nose was pink and he shivered in the frigid evening mist. Grisha made a mental note to ensure the boy had a heavier coat by morning.

  “I have heard of the monument, Your Highness. But I’ve avoided it until now. It’s too frightening.”

  “Frightening?” Grisha chomped on an apple he’d found in the pocket of his greatcoat. The vast square around them remained strangely quiet, save for a woman with a bright red muslin scarf wrapped around her neck who passed them, trudging through the snow, pulling a whimpering hound dog in a sled behind her. Grisha smiled at the woman and raised his apple in greeting, but she passed without so much as a hello.

  “I heard an old man say the horse comes to life at night and chases people.”

  Grisha laughed and tossed the apple core into the snow. He wished he could show the boy more of the city. He wanted to tell Anton not to believe any nonsense about a ghostly horse, but then the pasha’s face appeared in his mind, a mere apparition and yet very real. Such a fragile line existed between this world and the next. The imaginations of St. Petersburg’s drunkards were notoriously grand, but for all Grisha knew, the tale of a phantom horse had merit. Considering the number of men who had died to forge the new capital from the marsh, he could well imagine their anger forcing bronze to life. A poet was sure to write of it one day.

  “Even so, perhaps you might take a moment to savor the sight,” Grisha said. “One of your empress’s greatest accomplishments. This is our new Russia. Grandeur and enlightenment. Fearless expansion and unparalleled beauty.”

  Reluctantly, Anton threw his head back to take in the wild-eyed, rearing steed and then the grim countenance of Peter the Great. His long arm stretched forward, pointing to the marshland on the other side of the river, where his capital would first rise forth despite everyone’s objections. They had told him it was all wrong: the northerly location, the rampant disease, the abysmal weather.

  Grisha regarded Peter’s head atop the statue, his familiar mustache and the garland of laurels meant to make him a true “caesar.” Peter had stayed firm in his choice. And so here they stood, a short distance from the shores of Europe but far from the central heart of their own country. Grisha agreed with the naysayers. He thought it a mistake to locate the capital away from the core of the Russian soul—Moscow. Nonetheless, he admired Peter’s resolve. Peter was quite the bon vivant in his time, despite the stern military bearing. He’d been fond of good food, intrigue, clever inventions, lovely women, and perhaps even a lovely young man or two if palace whispers were to be believed.

  He wondered if he might share the story of the horse coming to life with Catherine. Of course, if he caught her in a foul mood, the image might rub her the wrong way. What are you really trying to say? Do my own people fear me?

  “And why would the horse bother to chase anyone?” Grisha asked, chewing on his thumbnail.

  “They say the souls of those who died making the city reanimate the beast.”

  Grisha forced his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat. His thumbnail was inflamed and aching. He located a few random jewels, as well as a radish for later. He rolled a small ruby between his thumb and forefinger to keep his mind from its darker impulses. The words of the ghostly pasha rolled through his mind. White demon. Giaour. Revenge had reanimated his old foe as well. Only the construction of a Russian mosque would soothe the restless pasha’s spirit.

  “Any further word on Zubov since we were last at the palace?” Grisha asked. “Any rumors making their way round the kitchen? Other women in his life?”

  Anton lowered his face and kicked at a pile of dirty snow. “None that are spoken of, Your Highness. But I did hear he has been seen with the Grand Duke Paul.”

  “Any word on what they say?”

  Anton shook his head. “I suppose that is for us to consider and guess.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” Grisha caught the eye of his carriage driver, who quickly capped his flask and took the reins of the horses.

  “May I ask a question, Your Highness?” Anton stepped closer. “What’s different about Zubov? Why is he so vexing? You’ve gotten along well with the empress’s previous favorites.”

  Grisha thought back to the man who had captured Catherine’s heart earlier in her reign: her great favorite, the handsome Grigory Orlov. He and his brothers had bothered Grisha, but of course he hadn’t said anything. He still couldn’t. The Orlovs had brought Catherine to her throne. The men who followed Grisha into Catherine’s bed later in her life had all been young, sweet faced, even-tempered, and willing to learn, to treat Grisha as a father figure as the empress wished. They would never have objected to any project of his.

  “Platon Alexandrovich is overly ambitious,” he told Anton.

  “You are ambitious. So is the empress. You taught me ambition isn’t a bad thing.”

  “It’s not his ambition, but the potential fruit of that ambition. He is vain, superficial.”

  “The empress cannot see this in Zubov herself?”

  “The empress is aging. As we age our vision clouds. We rely on the help of others to see the truth.” Without thinking, Grisha reached up to the space in his breast pocket, under his greatcoat, where he had placed a few of Catherine’s old letters, bound together with a velvet ribbon.

  “We should be on our way to your appointment, then. You said you would pull the ‘tooth’ once and for all, remember?” Anton chuckled.

  “Yes, yes.” The laughter that had come so easily a few minutes before now felt a lifetime away. He was sinking. A voice rang in his head: “Still planning a march to Constantinople, crusader? Is that why you delay?”

  Grisha spun around, expecting to see the pasha. But the voice died in the wind like a candle snuffed between two fingers. He rubbed his forehead and felt a trace of perspiration.

  Anton touched Grisha’s sleeve. “I’m sure Zubov would not mind if you waited to see him.”

  “I am quite sure he would not mind at all,” Grisha said, suddenly cold and wanting back inside the waiting carriage. “That is why I must go now.”

  * * *

  “I’m surprised you showed your face here again after the stunt you pulled at Catherine’s supper
the other night,” Zubov told him. “I was certain she’d have you barred from the palace. Or at least sent back to your negotiations with the Turkish devils.”

  “It seems I can still make it past the guards,” Grisha said. “Perhaps they are not so selective when it comes to admitting visitors to see you.”

  Grisha nibbled on a bitter radish. It kept him from his thumbnail and besides, he liked the effect the spectacle might have on Zubov. Sure enough, he caught Zubov giving him a look of thinly veiled disgust. Grisha wondered if the boy’s monkey would try to steal the radish, and then realized the creature wasn’t in the room. He hoped Catherine had not turned into a simian caretaker. She had far more important things to do with her time.

  “Besides, I only spoke the truth to the empress,” Grisha added.

  Zubov adjusted the cravat at his neck. He smelled of too much cologne and hair powder. “Catherine never can stay angry with you for long. I wouldn’t have bothered to take a meeting with you at all except if I refuse you will tattle.”

  Grisha rolled his head to take stock of the room. Zubov may have agreed to see Grisha only to avoid Catherine’s tears, but he had insisted on meeting in not his own study but a coldly elaborate receiving room: marble floors, mosaicked ceiling, and long mirrors around the walls reflecting their images in multiplicity. He supposed the boy thought this ostentatious display reinforced his power, that he could receive in such a majestic setting, as though he were a consort rather than a mere favorite. Likewise, Zubov wore a diamond-seamed coat with silver braiding and red boots that cut off at his ankles, showing off his fine silk leggings and the bulging muscles in his calves.

  Grisha may have had a diamond or two sewn into his own coat. Nonetheless, he thought it all a tad desperate. “You dismissed my project without the empress’s knowledge,” he said. “You acted as a ruler rather than a subject. If you feel confident in this role, why shouldn’t it be known? I believe in transparency.”

  Zubov took a seat and leaned back in the chair, tapping his fingers on his knee. “Transparency? I find that difficult to swallow.”

  Grisha bit into the radish with aggression but smiled placidly. “How so?”

  “After your little display at Catherine’s supper, I did some asking around about you.”

  “I am well-known enough. Had you no interest in politics before securing your apartments in the Winter Palace?”

  “People say you’re not known for your plain truths. Take Catherine’s grand tour of your precious southern provinces, for example.”

  Grisha knew what was to come. His free hand curled in and out of a fist.

  “We have all heard the stories. You created happy villages out of cheap plywood, paying peasants to wave and smile when the empress rode past them with her entourage.” Zubov did a quick imitation that made him look like a marionette in a vulgar French comedy. “You took advantage of poor Catherine’s bad eyes. And what of when she left? Crumbling stacks of nothing. But I did not realize there is actually a name for your creations: Potemkin villages.”

  Would these rumors never pass? One of his old foes had commissioned tracts to circulate behind the empress’s back, illustrated with caricatures. Grisha, bloated and covered in furs, the preening Cyclops with devil’s horns on his head, rested his hand on Catherine’s back while she squinted desperately at two-dimensional structures, doors with nothing behind. Someone must have told Zubov this was a particularly sour point. “All lies.”

  Zubov tossed his hair, black powdered with silver. A few strands fell into his eyes, making him seem even prettier and more useless. Grisha wouldn’t have thought it possible.

  “This mosque of yours will be the same. All smoke and mirrors. Nothing of substance.”

  Grisha tried not to shiver. He wished he had not left his cloak with Anton, for the room still held a strong chill. The pasha hid in the room somewhere, he was sure, frowning and disapproving of this conversation. Silently, Grisha implored the pasha to be patient. “It is still the empress’s decision to make. You overstepped your boundaries.”

  “I am not the one who styles myself emperor of the south.”

  “Your style”—Grisha looked the boy’s outfit up and down and waved the radish in his direction—“leaves much to be desired.”

  “I don’t expect a man of your age to know the latest fashion,” Zubov said. “I’ve heard it said a man prefers the style of the era in which he felt most vibrant. Perhaps fifteen years ago in your case?”

  “I’ve never heard the empress complain about my manner of dress.”

  “She never complains about much when it comes to you, does she? Her anger flashes and then disappears. Is it true she pays your debts? Such a strain on the treasury. But then the old dear clearly has a soft spot in her heart for a friend. Still, I believe I will speak to her of it.”

  The smugness of the boy’s tone aggravated him and Grisha hated to hear even the suggestion he might have to concern himself with the pedestrian matter of his own bills. But Zubov’s lower lip trembled. He wasn’t as confident of his position as he wanted everyone to think. This could be useful. Grisha stepped forward, ready to finish this once and for all.

  “Listen to me,” Grisha said. “And listen well.”

  Zubov made a snorting sound but didn’t budge.

  “I know you warm the empress’s bed.” Grisha remained alert to the slightest creak at the door, the possibility of a servant on the other side. He waited until the silence in the room was absolute. “And I know she can’t see straight as long as you excel at that particular task.”

  “Once Catherine knows you’ve spread filthy rumors—”

  “Please, boy. Do you really think your talents in the boudoir are a state secret? Your whimpering will accomplish nothing, only lower your manhood in her eyes. And that is something you can ill afford.”

  Zubov’s tongue moved flaccidly under his lips. This reaction pleased Grisha, and yet he began to feel light-headed, the room wobbling around him.

  “I’m sure you do a fine job on that front,” Grisha continued. “I also know the empress is a jealous woman nearly forty years your senior.”

  “The empress is ageless,” Zubov declared.

  Anton may not have heard anything about another woman in Zubov’s life, but Grisha felt the time had come to make a gamble. “I find it hard, appealing as the great woman is, to believe you don’t have … shall we say, another affair of the heart to occupy your time?”

  Zubov gave a stiff laugh, so Grisha knew he was onto something. He continued to play his hunch. “I doubt any young woman loves you so much she would turn down the money I could offer her to talk in detail about how you seduced her behind the empress’s back.”

  “No woman would be so foolish. Catherine would send her to Siberia.”

  “The empress is not the sort to turn on her own sex over a man.”

  Zubov fished an enameled ruble out of a crystal dish of coins on the desk and began flipping it in his hand. The sight made Grisha dizzier. “Catherine might have my head, but she would have the other woman’s as well. Who would risk that only to help a deviant like you?”

  “The empress would be furious at the man who caused such a travesty, no matter how nimble his performance in the bedroom. Particularly if she were given to believe his heart hadn’t carried him to her, but rather his lust for power.”

  Zubov caught the ruble in his hand. “You are one to talk!” he snapped. “All you have ever desired is power.”

  “From the beginning of my relationship with the empress, I was clear as a summer day about my ambition. You have not been so forthright.”

  “You’re bluffing. She no longer trusts your word.”

  “If I had tried this with every man who made his way to her bedchamber it wouldn’t work, or at least it would no longer work,” Grisha said. “But I choose my battles wisely.”

  “I assume there’s an ‘unless’ in this tiresome monologue?”

  “The mosque,” Grisha said, “
as first requested. Stop blocking its path.”

  Zubov gave another sputtering laugh, only now it sounded more like a girlish giggle. “That can’t be all you want. They say you are an Asiatic now, what with your robes and jewels and harems in your ungodly palaces in the south. Still, I doubt you converted to the religion of our cohabitants. Why is this project of such importance to you?”

  The temperature changed abruptly, and the room grew suddenly warm. Grisha felt beads of perspiration gather behind his ears and the oppressive heavy fabric of his European uniform pulled tightly over his flesh. “It is a symbol of our new Russia: an orthodox power, a Christian empire, but a land of tolerance as well.”

  “Drivel,” Zubov muttered.

  “In addition, you will cease to meddle in my future plans and projects,” Grisha said. “Those affairs are between myself and the empress only. You have no place in them.”

  “Well,” Zubov said, exhaling slowly. “This is quite the passionate soliloquy, Prince. I shall have to consider all you have said.”

  “You will consider it this moment. And you will give me your answer now.”

  “Such a rush! Off to gamble? Bed a woman of low confidence?”

  Grisha managed a smile. “As you are so quick to point out, I am but a fading old man. Time is not on my side.”

  Zubov may have been a pompous ass, but his instinct for self-preservation was well honed. He twisted his lips and again regarded Grisha’s face. “I still disagree with you on the endeavor’s merit, but I suppose there is more than one way to look at such a project. I might suffer a concession to our Mohammedan cohabitants in the interest of a stronger peace.”

  Zubov looked far too pleased with himself. Grisha nibbled on the radish once more to soothe his troubled stomach, unable to fully savor the moment. “I’m glad you see it my way at last.”

  “Can you at least put that damned vegetable away? I feel as though I’ve been bested by a rabbit.”

  Grisha shrugged, snapped off one last bite, and wiped his hands. “I’m finished anyway.”