‘With whom do the damy feast if the men are all in the field?’ I wondered aloud, but Daria only laughed.
‘That makes them all the merrier, silly. The Tsar has freed them from the prison of the terem. He wants us to live and laugh and gamble with the men.’
‘What an idea,’ I said. ‘What next – should we all light up pipes?’
‘He has seen court life like this in a palace called Versailles, in France, which he visited during his Grand Embassy. I tell you, the ideas he brought home! We women were not bojaryni – the boyars’ wives and daughters – any longer, but damy in our own right. Our families were scandalised, but the Tsar threatened us all – my father as well! – with hard labour should he dress in the old way, refuse to send my brothers to school or lock my sister Varvara and me up until we were married off.’
‘I hope I’ll see Moscow soon, Daria,’ I said.
‘Oh, me too, Marta. I can’t wait to go home! The sight of Moscow takes your breath away: a thousand spires and cupolas glitter in the sun and the mightiest houses sit right next to huts of mud and clay. It’s the mix that makes it so special. But the Moscow of my childhood is no more. Moscow was once the centre of a world, the meeting point of East and West. Never mess with a Muscovite. We are full of tradition and custom and yet so wonderfully wild, for at heart, Marta, we are all Tatars.’ She pulled at her eyes until they slanted.
I giggled, then asked: ‘Why is the Moscow of your childhood long gone, Daria?’
‘Well, what will happen if Peter really builds his new city, here in the West?’
‘A new city? Impossible. How would he do that, just hack it out of the ground? Where, and how, and when? In the middle of a war?’
Daria shrugged sullenly. ‘The Tsar can do anything. Whatever Russia has is his.’
I fell silent. If a noblewoman like this, who was so close to the almighty Tsar, felt helpless, what then did the merchant, the farmer and the serf in the field think?
Everything but boredom was welcome in Menshikov’s tent. Mornings might start with Mass for the generals and nobles, while a second service was held under the open sky for the tens of thousands of soldiers: Alexander Danilovich and his friends would pray, bow and cross themselves with three fingers as custom demanded, and they’d kiss the icons and ask for God’s protection. But in the evening an unbridled joy in life reigned; a haunted merriment, which was the other side of war’s terror. Live today because you’d meet God and Saint Nicholas soon enough for the day of reckoning. The Tsar was said to have given new marching orders, so the brief respite in Marienburg would soon to be over. What would happen to me then? I’d be looking for a roof over my head yet again and the thought filled me with dread as well as a deep fatigue. So all I could do was smile sweetly when Menshikov tugged my hair and drawled, ‘You never sleep, are radiant with beauty and drink every soldier under the table. Where do they bake girls like you? I’ll order ten of your sort.’
As Daria’s friend I was one of theirs by night, even if I washed shirts by day. The endless evenings were fuelled by wine, vodka and beer. No one here would drink kvass. I had never laughed and never drunk so much in my life.
‘Hurry, Marta,’ Daria would call, clapping her hands. ‘Alexander Danilovich offers us a world of wonders tonight.’ She’d squash my flesh into my bodice and lace me up brutally, to save time.
‘A world of wonders?’ That sounded like Master Lampert’s tent.
‘Yes, he has ordered in a group of Tatar acrobats who cartwheel and somersault, and dwarves who leap through rings on fire,’ she said. ‘I also asked for storytellers. Nothing like a good yarn, don’t you think?’
‘Indeed,’ I said smoothly, but she pinched me.
‘I know you are one for a story or two. I just love how you ran away from that merchant’s house after he died of smallpox and then refused the lusty priest’s son. I am sure you have so many more tales to tell me. With you, I am never bored.’
‘And never will be, I promise. And if I run out of stories, I shall make up some more. Just for you.’
No, we were never bored: the evening before, a Ukrainian magician had baffled us, and for tomorrow’s masquerade, Daria had some men’s clothes altered for us as well as some old gowns that had been ’specially let out. ‘Stunning,’ I exclaimed when I saw her dressed up as a man. ‘You look so much better than I do,’ I said, though I knew that the tight knee-length breeches showed off my long, slender legs as well as my round hips. The men were less lucky, their broad shoulders bursting out of dresses’ bodices, chest hair showing and big, clumsy feet tearing hemlines. Still, the sight of them left us in stitches.
Anyone who didn’t drink enough for Menshikov’s liking was forced to do so; he’d pick out his unfortunate victim and order, ‘You, over there, hold him down. Marta, force his mouth open – yes, grab his jaws. Daria, fill that boot with vodka and pour it into his mouth. A true Russian needs nine days’ drinking to put them in a proper stupor.’ Menshikov downed a huge cup himself to keep the poor, gargling and writhing man on his tent floor company, before he shouted: ‘Nine days. Three to get drunk, three to be drunk, three to get sober again.’
We roared, ‘Nine! Nine! Nine!’ and it seemed like the world’s best word until Menshikov’s guest passed out and was dragged from the tent to revive himself for further fun. Everybody who could, feasted with us: boyars’ young sons who had hardly grown moustaches yet, as well as old, dignified princes who shouldn’t have left their hearths. Peter hounded them all into his war. Apart from matushka Sonia’s whores, and the washerwomen – most of them girls taken prisoner at sieges such as Marienburg – Daria and I were the only women in the camp. I was lucky to be protected by Menshikov. Most of the girls, bless their souls, were easy meat for any soldier who cared to reach out. Still, sometimes while I was soaking and scrubbing the clothes in the buckets, a man would sneak up from behind and grab both my breasts with his grubby paws: ‘Lovely! They jiggle like an udder but are as firm as Crimean melons.’ Or they’d smack my bottom: ‘God, I could crack a nut on that one!’ and I would slosh them with a bucket of dirty water. If someone made a rude joke, I came back with a quick, jesty answer that left them red-faced.
So I found my place in the camp and stored up whatever I saw and heard in my mind like a farmer would his grain: my life was linked to those of my Russian captors. Then, in late autumn, word reached us that Daria’s sister Varvara and Menshikov’s sister Rasia were to visit. I was excited, but also a bit wary. Would they treat me with the same ease as Daria did? To her, I was neither a maid nor a prisoner-of-war, but a friend.
25
Rasia Menshikova was no beauty, though like Daria she covered her face in the fashion of Moscow in a thick layer of chalk-white paste and powder, whilst crimson paint enhanced her lips and cheeks. Her eyebrows and lashes were tinted black. But she had a kind word for everyone, listened more than she spoke and held herself straight, so that her bodice would push up what little cleavage she had. She was a wise woman.
It was the end of October when I joined Daria, her sister Varvara and Rasia in Menshikov’s crowded tent after my day’s work. ‘Come, Marta,’ Daria said and patted an empty cushion next to hers. I saw Varvara, beautiful in a way that was all white skin and dark red hair, raise her eyebrows and shoot Rasia Menshikova a look of surprise. I sat comfortably with them anyway as Daria’s guest, as if equal to the most powerful of the powerful. How had this come to pass? Life these days left me no time to marvel at its miracles. All I could do was run along with it and try not to lose my breath. I spotted Sheremetev amongst the guests, which was rare. He was sitting with the other generals so I waved to him and he raised his glass to me, smiling. The camp was buzzing, like bees ready to swarm. Were the marching orders well and truly given?
The evening’s entertainment hadn’t yet begun. People were sitting drinking and eating. Rasia Menshikova nibbled on a pastry filled with goose liver pâté, sipping some beer. She leant in. ‘Have you heard about the Ts
ar and Anna Mons?’
Daria and her sister shot each other a quick glance. ‘No. What is it, Rasia? Is Peter finally fed up with her?’
I felt a wave of Rasia’s heavy Persian perfume engulf me when she shook with giggles. ‘Yes! He’s finally accepted she won’t give him a child. My brother says that the Tsar is looking for a husband for her, which is quite generous of him really. She could just as easily have ended up in a nunnery like Evdokia.’
‘She isn’t in the least like a nun,’ Varvara pouted.
Rasia said, ‘She’s lucky, but whoever marries her isn’t. Anna Mons is as barren as a tundra bush. I have smuggled a loyal maid into her household who knows all her potions, so I am sure of it. It’s about time she stopped whoring on her father’s behalf, like all her siblings do.’
‘Anna Mons has siblings?’ I asked.
‘The Mons are worse than rabbits, there are so many of them, and each more beautiful than the one before.’
The Mons family, too, seemed to belong in that tent of wonders. The pace of the evening was different, though. By this stage in the festivities there were usually magicians performing with trained dogs and jugglers. Tonight would be different.
Menshikov clapped his hands. I looked around but Daria and Varvara recognised their cue. Rising, they sashayed towards him. He took them one on each knee and pulled their dresses off their shoulders, stripping them half-naked. They didn’t seem surprised in the slightest. A stillness settled over the gathering. The musicians sounded louder over the hush. Menshikov swayed to the rhythm with the girls; he roared out a song and started to fondle their full dangling breasts while his guests watched with hungry eyes. Rasia was hawk-eyed as the sisters started to kiss and caress each other: the flames of countless candelabras made their bare skin shimmer and their jewellery sparkle. They moved slowly, deliberately exaggerating their movements and their pleasure for the joy of those staring, licking each other’s lips, throats and breasts, lacing tongues, showing off their loveliness. Daria closed her moist lips over her sister’s nipple, sucking it, while she teased the other breast with her fingertips. Varvara arched backwards, sighing and moaning. Lust burnt in the surrounding men’s eyes and even Menshikov held his knees still, watching with intent.
‘But, Rasia, they are sisters!’ I whispered, shocked.
She shrugged. ‘The Arsenjevas are wild things, and there is nothing they haven’t done. Rumour has it that they have even slept with their brothers and their father! Perhaps that is why my brother and the Tsar like them so much. Our boundaries are lost; we live in new times. Perhaps we need that,’ she said, never taking her eyes off her brother and the Arsenjevas.
‘The Tsar likes the Arsenjevas as well?’ I asked carefully. Had Daria set her aim higher even than I had thought?
‘Well done, Marta. Chatting like a woman and listening like a man. Daria and Varvara hope to marry my brother and the Tsar, while sleeping with both. If Anna Mons’s reign is well and truly over, then of course this is their moment. Perhaps we’ll see the sisters fight? What fun,’ Rasia said, a sparkle in her eyes. Daria hitched up Varvara’s skirt and spread her sister’s naked thighs. ‘Any of them could be the next Tsaritsa.’
She rose and left. I sat alone next to the tent’s entrance, watching her go. Why was Rasia Menshikova herself here – on her brother’s orders? Was she also meaning to make use of the moment that Anna Mons left his friend available? It could certainly fulfil Menshikov’s – or anyone’s – wildest dreams.
26
The half-naked Arsenjevas were enlaced in Menshikov’s arms, Daria’s head buried between her sister’s thighs and Varvara sighing and moving her hips. Watching them made my mouth go dry. When I finally turned my head away, I spotted Sheremetev alone by a tent post. Both his plate of food and his jug of vodka were left untouched. What did he think of all this? His face was calm and unreadable as he watched the crowd. I dare say he didn’t approve.
I was about to join him when there was the sound of hooves thundering outside in the camp. It was long after midnight. Only a madman would travel at such an hour, I thought. But, yes: horses neighed and snorted and men called out, cheering and clapping. Before I could step aside, the tent’s waxed flap was flung open and hit me so hard that I stumbled and almost fell, but a man grabbed me by the upper arm. He was so tall that I saw nothing but his chest in a dark green uniform jacket and bright sash adorned with an order of sparkling diamonds. I looked up to check. It was the man from the painting.
Peter, Tsar of All the Russias, stood seven feet tall in his boots and his powerful body blocked out the candlelight, its flickering flame lengthening his shadow even further. His hand, which held me firmly, looked too dainty for his mighty frame. Still, when I tried to curtsey, he steadied me with ease and smiled: ‘Stop bobbing about, girl, that’s a waste of time. Can I let go of you now? Don’t fall. You might still be needed later on tonight.’ He winked and let go of me, stepping further into the tent, trailing scruffy, laughing men in his wake.
Silence fell when the Tsar stood amongst his soldiers and raised his arms. Then, all hell broke loose: I heard shouting, laughing, cheering and whistling. The princes and generals leapt to their feet, bowing and running to greet him; some of them sobbed and even hugged him, getting a pat on the back or kisses in return. Corks flew from bottles, the cup-bearers shouted, the cook and his helpers dragged in more food, servants raced around and the musicians played a wild tune. Menshikov’s merry court had found its true master.
I moved away from the entrance, settling down next to Sheremetev on my haunches. The Tsar greeted some of his childhood friends before he stepped up to Menshikov, who had set the Arsenjeva sisters down. They watched the Tsar like a mouse does a cat while Menshikov opened his arms wide.
‘Brother of my heart! I have missed you so much. Without you there is no joy,’ the Tsar called out in German. German! I was startled. Was that their secret language, ever since they had travelled together in the West? Well, if so, I, a serf, shared their knowledge – the thought stunned me.
Menshikov sobbed, speaking German as well. ‘My beloved! A day without you is a day wasted.’
The two men embraced, laughed, cried and swayed to their own secret rhythm, kissing each other’s cheeks again and again. Menshikov’s tall, muscular body was dwarfed by the Tsar’s powerful frame. How could a man of his build exist? Jugs were raised and voices cheered: ‘To our Tsar, the victor of the Great Northern War! To the battle of Marienburg – death and destruction to all Swedish worms!’
Daria, as always a quick thinker, clapped her hands. ‘Long live the Tsar! To the victor of Marienburg!’
Sheremetev almost choked on his beer and I gently patted his back to ease his cough. ‘No worries, Boris Petrovich,’ I said, ‘we all know who the true victor of Marienburg is.’
He pulled a face. ‘I could win a thousand battles, and give my life for Peter, but his heart will still always belong to Menshikov. Such a love cannot be forced. On the contrary, you go looking for it and it flees from you.’ His words gave me goose-bumps, and he took off his cloak with a rueful little smile and covered my shoulders against the night chill. ‘There you are. That’s better. No, Menshikov alone is the brother of his heart.’
‘Where do they know each other from?’ I asked, clutching the cloak that once before had warmed me so wonderfully. How could I ever forget what this man had done for me? I moved a bit closer and took a piece of cold lamb from his plate, nibbling on it.
‘Nobody knows where Menshikov stems from. Perhaps he sold pierogi in the streets Peter grew up in, or possibly his father was employed to drill Peter’s toy army – your guess is as good as mine. The higher Menshikov rises, the cleaner he sweeps his traces.’
‘How could he ever win the Tsar’s heart, behaving the way he does?’
The general watched the two men. ‘They were young together, Marta. Sharing the days of our youth is a stronger link than most. Soon, the Tsar himself might marry one of those Arsenjev
a whores, and Menshikov the other. Then they’d finally be family,’ he said, shuddering. I looked up: Peter and Menshikov were kissing the Arsenjevas. Menshikov took Daria’s breast in his mouth, the pressure of his lips making her moan. I lowered my eyes, cheeks burning, as it reminded me of the lust I had felt in Anton’s arms. The Tsar swung the half-naked Varvara over his shoulder like a sack of flour – fox-red locks flowing and her dress torn. Her laughter rang out like a silver bell as all four of them disappeared into the tent’s side room.
Well, at least we now have time and some calm in which to talk, I thought, and poured more vodka into both our jugs. Sheremetev smiled at me. ‘You are quite astonishing, Marta. Look at you: sitting here, laughing and drinking with the nobles of the Russian realm. Just some weeks ago things were very different for you.’ I blushed: he had neither forgotten my torn clothes nor my bare flesh. No man would. In the dusky tent, the look in his eyes was unreadable. I lowered my gaze.
‘What were we talking of?’ he asked, clearing his throat. ‘Menshikov,’ I helped him. I wanted to hear as much about the man as I could. ‘Menshikov is a mystery. Last week he had Prince Lopukin flogged, the brother of Peter’s wife, because he had joked about Menshikov’s low birth. He does what he likes and Peter allows it. The two of them are always, always together.’ Sheremetev’s voice sounded bitter.
‘I have even heard that . . .’ I began, but the general raised his eyebrows at me.
‘Mind your pretty ears or they’ll be cut off. Who has spoken out of turn? Menshikov and the Tsar are close, but I’ll dare anyone to speak ill of my ruler.’
I sipped some beer, feeling ashamed, but he squeezed my shoulder, pulling me a bit closer. ‘I am not surprised if people think such nonsense. They share everything, be it a plate at dinner, a tent or their women. Menshikov went with Peter on his Grand Embassy and studied with him in Holland. Well, kept him company at least, as Menshikov can’t even read. It was the uprising of the Streltsy guard that confirmed his standing. It was he who chased home and put it down mercilessly, by beheading one Streltsy after the next, hundreds of them, until his arms ached, his shoulders froze and he waded in blood. That’s just one more reason why Peter loves him so much . . .’
Tsarina Page 14
