Peter chose the trees he deemed right and chopped their trunks to the length he needed, before building our hut with his own hands, sweating, laughing and loving every moment of it. I held the nails as well as other bits and bobs and played pranks on him by hiding his hammer and chisel. Once finished, the little house was barely wider than it was long, comprising a small hall, a kitchen, a living room and bedroom. The hearth was fired up throughout the year, as Peter hated the cold, and I cooked our kasha and chai on the open fire, stacking our bowls as I had done as a child in our izba. Peter made our wooden furniture himself: a table, two benches and our bed, as well as a lockable chest. When working with wood he had his best ideas, he claimed. The only sign of Peter’s wealth and rank was an icon of heavy gold, studded with pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, which hung on our bedroom wall, right next to a map of Europe.
This hut was the root from which Peter’s paradise was to grow and blossom; his New Jerusalem, glowing in all the colours of the rainbow. If he himself was content with his hut, he drove his architects and stone masons mercilessly to build bigger and better, a city such as the world had never seen. The glory of Russia was at stake.
Peter ordered orange and lemon trees to be brought from Persia, and had roses, mint and camphor planted in the gardens to scent and sweeten the air. He was beside himself when a messenger brought a sample of the first-ever blossom from the Summer Palace’s gardens out to the field, as we stood once more in battle. The gardener had soaked the flower in olive oil to keep it fresh, but it had made the petals rotten and slimy. The Tsar knouted the messenger and ordered his gardeners to send him proof of the next blossom with the flowers wrapped one by one in tobacco leaves instead.The first streets and prospects were lit by lanterns with candles and oil – their glass of course made in Menshikov’s workshops – such as had never been seen in Russia. Heavily guarded barriers – shlagbaumy – were put up on the main roads and the bridges linking the forty islands. Nobody but doctors, or people whose visit was expected, was allowed through without a pass. When I looked out of the window after Peter’s death, I knew that just behind the splendour of the palaces lay the first modest wooden houses, and before them row upon row of izby made of straw, clay and moss, and before that squalid, ragged tents. This city mirrors your world, Peter, whether you want it to or not.
St Petersburg grew quickly in the first twenty years of the new century. I remembered our senseless joy when the first Dutch frigate, bobbing on the already icy waters, weighed anchor. It delivered salt and wine for the long winter ahead and its arrival was reason enough for a feast so wild that it stunned even Menshikov, not to mention the visiting Dutchmen. Peter had the men drink mercilessly, before asking us all to go out for a sail on stormy waters in the morning. The rolling waves sobered us up fast and the Dutch were happy to leave with a present of five hundred gold ducats in their pockets. Peter promised each ship anchoring in the bay within the year the same generous gift.
I cooled my forehead on the windowpane. My thoughts were racing and I was laughing and chatting with Peter as if he was still alive; as if I could place my feet on his thighs and he’d squeeze and rub them, making my little bones crack, warming my muscles, and tickle me until I squealed. He’d do that until I had the fire in my thighs that he liked.
The glass mirrored my feverish face. I gathered myself for the long wait that still lay ahead, before Russia could begin praying for the soul of its new ruler.
For the time being Menshikov snored like a bear. His heavy body sprawled somehow in that small chair, head lolling to the side and his mouth open. The fire had burnt down and a chill crept through the thin pane. I still waited for the Privy Council, Ostermann, Tolstoy and Jagushinsky. Why were they not in the palace at their dying Tsar’s side? Were they avoiding my call? I had saved them all countless times from Peter’s anger, but people forget so easily when it comes to saving their own skin.
Had it been safe to entrust my secret message to the young servant? The Winter Palace looked so welcoming and gay during the day, its stunning shades of blue and green mirroring the Neva in springtime. Yet at night it had its own life of countless dark corners and secret passageways that led to the dark, icy waters of the river. The rats didn’t even scuttle when a body splashed into those floes. Fishermen would find the corpse, or what was left of it, in their nets much later, once the ottepel had been and gone. How stupid of me. I chewed my wrist with anger. If my messenger had been caught, questioned and killed, then the Dolgorukis knew about my plan and, even worse, I’d have lost valuable hours. I should have sent Menshikov and the Imperial Guard. Menshikov coughed and sat up, shook himself awake like a dog casting off water, and then stretched the sleep from his tall body. A short slumber refreshed him as much as a whole night’s rest, as I knew from the many times I had been in the field with him.
When he stepped up to me, the vodka, sweat and tiredness of his long wake at Peter’s deathbed blended with his perfume of musk and sandalwood. His hair was messy, his full lace collar had slipped, and a red wine stain shone brightly on his crumpled shirt. I smiled and tenderly straightened his collar: he kissed my hand, surprised. This was the man I had shared everything with, even my husband’s love, and now we shared a common fate.
Menshikov tore the window open and rubbed his face with some snow. ‘Brrr! Cold. Looks as if we are in for a storm, don’t you think?’ he asked, eyeing the sky. ‘Winter in these swamps is always to be relied upon.’ Now wide awake, he shivered, closed the window again and stoked the fire with logs from the basket. The flames licked over the wood, burning brightly and spreading a dry scent, like a walk in a summer forest. He raised his eyebrows.
‘Where is the Privy Council? I thought you had sent for them?’ I gnawed my lips. ‘By God, Catherine. How much time do we have left? Say something.’ The tone of his voice angered me: at least I had done something. ‘If you hadn’t been so drunk I wouldn’t have needed to rely on a little soldier, would I? Perhaps the lad has had his throat cut. I might as well shave my head for the nunnery, I suppose.’ I heard the fear in my voice when Menshikov placed his hand on my mouth to silence me.
‘Psst,’ he whispered. ‘Do you hear that?’ He looked at the little door that led over to Peter’s bedroom. I frowned. He was right: somebody was sobbing in there. Menshikov stayed by the fire when I tiptoed to the door and opened it soundlessly. Peter’s chamber was bathed in candlelight: he looked as if he was asleep, even if death already spread its sickly-sweet shroud over the room. In front of the bed knelt a girl wearing a dark, hooded velvet cloak. Her shoulders heaved as she kissed his fingers, which were beginning to stiffen.
Doctors Blumentrost and Paulsen started when they saw me and cowered in the corner: they had failed to obey my strict order to protect the Tsar’s corpse. I felt cold anger, but grabbed the girl, pulling her to her feet and forcing her to face me. Then I let go of her in surprise when she looked at me fearlessly and stubbornly, as had ever been her way, her pretty face and her light blue eyes – Peter’s eyes – swollen with tears.
‘Elizabeth!’ I said. ‘What are you doing here? Why are you not in bed, like your sisters?’
The dark cloak made her look regal: I still saw her as being as harmless as one of her own dolls, yet she had grown into a woman long since.
‘How did you get in here?’ I asked. If she had managed it, others could too.
‘Easy,’ she said. She licked her lips, her eyes as lively as a young bird’s despite her sorrow. ‘The corridor was as good as empty and Madame de la Tour was minding little Natalya. The poor thing is coughing like death itself and so the French locust stayed away from me. And Anna . . .’ Her voice trailed off. I knew that my eldest daughter was busy dreaming of her wedding with the German Duke Charles Frederic of Holstein. With his narrow shoulders and terrible stammer, he wasn’t the most physically appealing prospect, but his family did rule most of Northern Europe. At first, he had asked for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, but Peter gave him our
eldest daughter instead. Their wedding day was close and Anna could speak of nothing else.
Elizabeth was hell-bent on angering me. ‘There was only a young and handsome guard outside my father’s door and I have my ways . . .’ she said, showing her small, sharp teeth like the cat that got the cream. My heart sank. My daughter, Tsarevna of All the Russias, was only fifteen – a year younger than I had been when I had been sold to Vassily – but she already had the worst reputation of all the royal Princesses of Europe. Being born out of wedlock to a former serf and washerwoman didn’t help. Peter had sent her portrait to every court with an eligible crown prince, and the painters didn’t even need to flatter my daughter. Elizabeth was a beauty with no cleft lip and no pockmarks for a gifted brush on canvas to have to hide. Peter was puzzled when no engagement came to pass; why did Versailles keep on delaying their answer in such an insulting way? Who else could the young King of France be happy to marry than Peter’s Lizenka, lively and beautiful as she was? Yet in the end, young Louis settled on the daughter of the deposed King of Poland, a dull girl with no dowry. Peter saw in Elizabeth what he wanted to see: his strength and his zest for life, his ruthlessness and his sensuality. Unlike all her brothers she had simply refused to die, neither at birth nor throughout the many illnesses that blighted a child’s early life.
Her birth had been the most difficult of the thirteen times I had been brought to bed: she was born with her feet first, the very day that Peter celebrated his biggest victory of the Great Northern War. The midwife had crossed herself with three fingers, pale with fright, when she spotted Elizabeth’s tiny soles where her head should have been. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she had called, her face smeared with blood and sweat. ‘Born feet first under the December stars. She’ll be a wolverine.’
‘What will happen now?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘Who will the next Tsar be? Did Father settle on little Petrushka after all? He’s not even the Tsarevich.’
He decided nothing, I thought, but said, ‘Yes, but he is Alexey’s son. And soon, he will be a man. That’s enough of a claim.’
‘A man!’ Elizabeth said gaily. ‘Do you know what the dark cells of the Trubetzkoi bastion or the dank cellars of the Schlusselburg can do to a man’s body and mind?’
It seemed Peter’s soul had slipped into his daughter’s body. She’d make love standing up to a soldier outside this door, she’d sob her eyes out at her father’s deathbed and she’d banish her little nephew to a musty dark cell. She was a true Russian and a stranger to me.
‘Whatever happens, Elizabeth, nothing is to befall Petrushka. Whoever hurts him will be a murderer in the eyes of all other European courts. Do you want to start a reign like that?’
She shook her head, albeit gingerly, and said, ‘Well, if Petrushka is not even the Tsarevich, and if my elder sister marries Holstein, and all my other brothers have passed away, then . . .’
‘Then?’ I asked icily.
She shrugged and smiled brightly. ‘Then I should be Tsarina next! Father loved me and he made me Crown Princess two years ago, together with Anna. Why shouldn’t I rule?’
I felt like crying, thinking of Peter’s vast realm with its millions of people. Their fate, be it war or peace, hanging on her playful fingertips, which men liked to kiss after a masterfully danced minuet or a quadrille? Her little head that had so far mainly been used to show off the latest fashionable hairstyle, concerning itself with politics?
‘Elizabeth!’ I giggled instead, then laughed so hard that the doctors looked worried. She lunged at me like one of the small monkeys she kept in Peterhof Palace, battering me with her fists. Menshikov hurried into the room.
‘What’s this din?’ he hissed, grabbing her arms. ‘We are not in a kabak.’ She winced, but he held her around her plump waist and lifted her up, carrying her into the other room. She wriggled and kicked; her red-hot anger left me speechless, yet I remembered a ball where Elizabeth had slapped another girl and torn a bushel of her hair out in front of the whole court, because both of them wore pink dresses and the other one looked prettier in hers. Peter had laughed himself to tears at it, but I had had the fight stopped and married the other girl off well, topping up her dowry. Perhaps I was a better mother to my dead sons than to my living daughters.
Elizabeth’s squirming wound down. ‘Will you behave now, Tsarevna?’ Menshikov asked, lifting his hand off her mouth. She smoothed her cloak and raised her chin, which made her heavy diamond earrings sparkle. I closed the door to the other room, glowering at the doctors. My order was to be upheld and no one was to see the dead Tsar’s body. They nodded, pale with dread.
Menshikov, Elizabeth and I were alone.
The new fire had warmed the small library. When Menshikov served us wine, Elizabeth downed hers in one go, smacking her pink lips.
‘You drink like a peasant,’ I scolded her.
‘Well, you should know,’ she said tartly.
‘Stop it,’ Menshikov cut in. ‘Tsarina. Elizabeth. We don’t have time for this.’
She spun around and stared at him, her eyes icy. ‘What did you say? Tsarina?’ She lengthened the word to its full size and power, before turning to me. ‘But of course. That’s it. Now I understand: you want it all for yourself. Was that your plan from the beginning?’
I slapped her so hard, her lip split open. She gave a muffled scream and touched the wound.
‘Don’t,’ Menshikov pleaded, and handed her his lacy handkerchief. We sat in silence while some logs crashed in the fireplace, making embers fly. Elizabeth dabbed her lip, looked at me darkly and slipped off her cloak, stuffing the handkerchief into the seam of her tight sleeve. Against her richly embroidered emerald-green silk dress and the foaming lace of her bodice, her shoulders looked like polished alabaster. Following the fashion of Versailles, the dress was so deeply cut that I could almost see her nipples; diamonds rained down from her neck into her cleavage. Countless peasant families could survive for centuries on these jewels alone. Was she on her way to a feast? I had long since lost track of her comings and goings. How did I lose interest in the strongest and merriest of my children?
Elizabeth moved her chair closer to the fire, kicked off her silk slippers and warmed her feet in their sheer silk stockings. She seemed happy to be here, in the middle of things, and asked, ‘So, tell me, Menshikov. What is it that you want to do? You are never short of an idea or a plan, are you? Do you want to rule together with my mother, or do you want to seize power all by yourself? Shame on both of you: this palace still breathes with my father’s soul. The water on the windowpane is not dew, but the sweat of your fear. Do you sleep with each other, now and then?’ She smiled and I wanted to slap her once more.
Menshikov stayed calm. ‘One day, Tsarevna Elizabeth, you will understand how hurtful and stupid those words were,’ he said.
‘No, Alexander Danilovich. I shall always sleep with any man who takes my fancy. I shouldn’t hesitate if you wanted to be the lucky one?’ she teased him.
I held my breath. Did she truly just offer him her bed, her birthright, in return for his support? How would he resist that? A ruler’s world was made up of only friends and foes, even among their blood relatives. I looked beseechingly towards the door, begging the Privy Council to come. Ostermann, Tolstoy and Jagushinsky – I needed them all. I forced myself to sip some more wine and said, ‘Prince Menshikov is right. One day you’ll learn that it might be better not to sleep with a man just to secure his loyalty.’
‘One day? When I am old and no one wants me anymore?’
I didn’t want to have heard her; she knew how to wound. The flames danced, soothing my spirit and making me tired. ‘The Dolgorukys will try to enthrone Petrushka. If that happens, we are all done for,’ I said curtly.
‘But Vassily Dolgoruki is my godfather. He would never . . .’ she started.
‘He would, though, wouldn’t he? For Alexey’s sake.’
‘Yes,’ she said, eyeing Menshikov, who twisted and turned the colourful Venetian goblet i
n his hand as if he had nothing to do with all this. But Elizabeth wasn’t finished. ‘Oh, yes. For Alexey’s sake. My brother. Oh, Alexander Danilovich, your sled to Siberia won’t even have a cushion or a blanket. You’ll burrow in straw like a pig in winter. Perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll get enough kopeks to buy an axe once you make it there. If not, just chew the wood off a tree, as a beaver would. Build a hut, and get on with it. But you’ll have to wait until summer, when the ice melts.’
Her laughter rang out like the silver bells she tied around her dwarves’ necks so as to be able to find them in the darkness of the palace corridors. Menshikov let the joints crack in his fingers, tweaking them. He, too, I was certain, felt like hitting her.
‘If Petrushka gets to be Tsar, I will be nothing but your father’s whore and you, Elizabeth, will be a bastard born out of wedlock. Petrushka might still have to fear your bloodline and your birthright, but he will leave St Petersburg forever . . .’
‘No!’ She shot to her feet. ‘Never! That would be a betrayal of everything Father lived for,’ she gasped. ‘It would be like a second death for him. That’s horrid.’
What a strange girl she was: to her, betraying her father’s dream was worse than being buried alive in a nunnery.
‘Well, then, you will have to sit and wait with us,’ I said.
‘Wait? What for?’ She sat down again, eyeing me over the rim of her glass.
‘The Privy Council,’ Menshikov said.
She laughed. ‘Those old fools? Ostermann has the gout whenever he sees fit, Tolstoy is so fat he needs two or three chairs to support his big bottom, and Jagushinsky stinks as if he’s rotting from the inside. Which one of them will share your hut in Siberia, Menshikov?’ She dug her toes into his thighs.
Tsarina Page 16
