The gostiny dvor was no jumble of stalls covered in canvas. It was carefully planned and laid out two storeys high, built in brick, just for shopping, every day and all the year around. The entrance and space around it were as busy as a beehive. I craned my neck: arcade after arcade housed different shops and tradesmen flitted in and out carrying boxes and bales. Servants shouted at messenger boys, happy with their little show of authority, and maids followed their ladies, eyes lowered, yet casting discreet glances at the waiting footmen and burly porters, who hung about at the building’s entrance, wolf whistling and chewing and spitting tobacco-stained saliva.
‘Come,’ Daria said to me, walking with all the pride that her birth and rank as Menshikov’s mistress gave her, head held high, knowing exactly where to go. I followed after, but soon trailed behind for all my looking and touching. The shops sold things I hadn’t known existed: ivory and ebony, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl, enamel, porcelain and more pearls, gemstones, silk and velvet, leather and feathers. More treasures than I had thought possible. I tried to carry myself as Daria did, but poverty – its scent, posture and fears – clings to you like leeches in a pond. When spotting me on my own, the shopkeepers guarded their bales of silk with their body or busied themselves in front of their drawers and shelves of lace and ribbons, lest I nick a roll or two.
I hurried on towards where Daria was standing with a lithe man. I tried to summon haughtiness to my features but it wasn’t necessary – the man’s eyes shone like wet gravel, while the ends of his thin black moustache curved in a second smile. His eyes took measure of me and then he kissed my fingers, as if I was a lady.
‘Mistress Marta. What a pleasure. I am Maître Duval. Do come in, I have exactly what you need,’ he said in Russian that sounded even funnier than mine, ushering us towards his shop. He’d made no empty promise. His tailors measured me and in turn whispered with the apprentices. The boys unrolled yard upon yard of silks at my feet and held them to my face while I checked their effect in a plate of polished metal. Daria and I sipped chai with fresh, thick smetana and nibbled on pistachio biscuits dripping in honey while Maître Duval helped me make a choice that flattered me.
‘The colours of spring are best left to Mistress Daria,’ he said, squinting at her rosy, fair beauty. ‘Your skin is like dark gold and your hair like polished ebony. Let’s try jewel shades, shall we?’ He held swathes of ruby-red velvet and bales of sapphire blue and burnt orange silk to my cheeks, before searching in his stockroom for an emerald-green wool cloak. ‘Another lady’s loss is your gain. This is just wonderful for you, as it matches your eyes,’ he decided, and clapped his hands in joy when I tried it on. I could not help but turn and turn, until the heavy folds of fabric swirled all around me. Once all the orders were placed, he clicked his tongue. ‘What a lady wears underneath is as important as her gowns,’ he said, lowering his voice a bit, while holding yards of gossamer-thin and finely patterned lace up against the shop’s lights.
Daria giggled: ‘Go for it, Marta. You might still teach old Sheremetev a thing or two?’
When I had paid Duval what he asked – and certainly far more than seemed necessary – and we finally got to leave his shop after his many bows to us, walking backwards, kisses to fingers and demands for further visits, we dropped in at the furrier’s to choose fox skins to line my cloak. The man asked me to return the next day to see better stock, but for that he generously offered me a matching cap there and then. I wore it as a young lady of good family would: proudly, perched to the left with my hair hidden underneath, and felt more giddy and light-hearted than I had when pinching some of my father’s chewing tobacco as a child.
In my thoughts I sent thanks and kisses to Sheremetev. Perhaps I should have spent less, but having my own money to spend at will was simply too much for me. After all, if I wanted to live the good life, I had to look the part. How Christina would have loved this, I thought with a pang, as the coachman swayed towards us, of course legless after his visit to the kabak. Daria and I pelted him with snowballs to sober him up. As our sleigh slid through the darkness, the bells of the Archangel Cathedral – Moscow’s highest spire – tolled into the lively night. Fresh snowflakes froze on the slush and made the streets and squares slippery: we saw many people fall, which made us laugh even more. The joy of Yuletide was upon us.
In the courtyard of Menshikov’s house the groom bowed when helping me out of the sleigh. Only then did he recognise me and stared hard while taking the reins from the coachman. Both men led the horses away, looking back at me over their shoulders, smiling, until the dark of the stables swallowed them. Up the stairs, at the threshold of the door, two maids curtseyed to us and then did a double take on noticing me. Jealous expressions marred their young faces as they started to whisper, but I decided not to care. Daria and I linked arms, giggling and joking, as we entered the house.
As I bent down to wipe the snow off the hem of my new cloak, Varvara approached, hearing our voices. She came up to greet us as she would her equals, with a wide smile and outstretched arms, the offer of food and drink on her lips. Only at the last moment, when I straightened up, did she recognise me and stop, taking in my new look. Her face clouded and she dropped her arms, turned on her heel and went back to her rooms, even though Daria called after her light-heartedly: ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport, Varvara. Stay with us!’
That night I slept with my fox cap on as it made me happy to wear it even in my sleep.
In my childhood the Russian monks reckoned the dawn of time from God’s creation of the world, but Peter changed even that. Henceforth the years were to be numbered from the birth of Christ; New Year now fell on the first of January instead of in early September. The festivities, though, lasted from the beginning of December right through to Epiphany in early January: every night there were dinners, parades, games, masquerades, fireworks and balls.
‘The Tsar is in town soon,’ Daria said to me one morning, holding a scroll. ‘Menshikov sent word.’ Varvara left for the gostiny dvor to buy more dresses and jewellery. I mustered my own gowns, which had been delivered by Duval’s boys. I touched the fabric, the stitching and the lace again and again. Would they be suitable to wear while meeting the Tsar and make me look like a lady? I had to trust Daria’s judgment. The thought of seeing Peter again unsettled me: would he remember the night when I had held him so close, chasing away his demons and giving him peace? Of course not, I scolded myself: the Tsar had countless arms to hold him, be he in battle or at home.
Still, I remembered the feeling of his hot breath on my breasts and how he had calmed in my embrace, like a fractious child. But of course only I remembered; he would not.
It was clear what was at stake for Varvara in meeting the Tsar again; she was catty and cruel. When a young maid burnt one of her dresses while ironing it, Varvara had her strung upside down until her face turned blue, before herself driving sharp splinters of wood underneath the girl’s fingernails. The poor thing survived, but barely. I felt sorry for her, but kept out of it, as I didn’t want to share her fate. I thought of Olga’s words: Don’t help me. You can’t. Help yourself.
Two days before Yuletide, Moscow reared like a horse under the lashing of a whip: the Tsar, his son the Tsarevich Alexey and his thousands of men galloped into the city, unleashing a storm of festivities. The city threw itself at its master as a puppy might, clumsy and overjoyed, knowing it would be abandoned again soon.
30
Our sleigh moved as soundlessly as in a dream along narrow alleyways and the streets leading to the Red Square. The Yuletide feast was held in the Kremlin’s main hall with hundreds of people invited. To me, the Arsenjevas looked impossibly beautiful, even though foreign envoys were said to laugh at the Muscovite women, calling them provincial and grotesque. On Daria’s advice I wore a dress of flame-coloured silk and her maid had braided some strings of her pearls into my loose curls; other than that I wore no jewellery, but was proud of a little golden lace running around my should
ers. ‘Sheremetev should like you,’ Varvara said, mustering me. ‘The man has no taste anyway.’
The Kremlin towered above the Red Square in all its regal power. It was bathed in torchlight and the warm shine of lanterns as the shops in the three-storey houses all around were still busy. In the coffee houses, which Daria said had opened in Moscow only a few years before, every table was taken and the windows were steamed up. Servants ran last errands, girls of easy virtue shivered while waiting for customers and beggars searched, mostly in vain, for a warm, dry spot for the night. In the morning their frozen corpses would be thrown outside the city walls into clay pits, from where wolves dragged them into the forest.
Daria pointed to the highest of the neighbouring St Basil’s Cathedral’s towers: ‘This is the bell tower that Ivan the Terrible built after he killed his son.’
‘He killed his own son?’ I repeated in disbelief and crossed myself with three fingers: what a terrible sin.
‘Yes. He killed thousands and thousands of people. The whole populace of Novgorod was forced under the ice and drowned. His son he killed in a fit of anger. The tower was built so that he could do penance. Whenever his demons haunted him, he’d run up and toll the bell for hours on end.’
Varvara giggled at the story, but I looked outside. The Kremlin rose like a dark wall all along the Red Square, a defiant, gloomy fortress clashing with the gaiety of the cupolas of St Basil’s Cathedral right next to it. When we crossed the lowered drawbridge, my heart beat faster and I clasped my fan and my purse tightly. I was spellbound and wanted to keep this moment – the moon, the snowflakes, the guards, the torchlight and the other sleighs full of gay, beautiful people – forever in my heart. Couldn’t I make time stop?
‘What happens now?’ I whispered to Daria.
She opened her fan and I peered at it: on its silk fabric a picture showed a rosy, chubby blonde girl being mounted by a man with a ram’s horns and feet. I thought of the lust I had felt in Anton’s arms so long ago.
‘Now, Marta, the world turns upside down. You wouldn’t believe it if you hadn’t seen it.’
Shadows gathered in the endless corridors of the Kremlin. They smelt of tallow and smoke as well as the frankincense and herbs smouldering in the corners. Every stone spoke of the Tsar’s glory and power. Our steps echoed on the flagstones as we followed a servant to the great hall. The eyes of countless icons hanging on the sooty walls followed me in cold mockery: what was a soul like me doing in the heart of the realm? The courtiers looked like children playing dress-up, moving about gingerly in their Western-style breeches and embellished, knee-length coats. A group of priests in long black robes, each adorned with a golden panagia, eyed us with disdain. I could not care less if looked like a foreign whore to them. Yet the rooms made me shiver: was it here that the boy Peter had watched his family being hacked to death; where the Streltsy had dragged him by his hair, calling his mother a whore? Surely, nobody would want to go on living in a place filled with such memories. But suddenly a pair of doors flew open and we stepped forward into light and merriment, and heard music, shouting and singing as well as a steady, upbeat drum roll. I squinted my eyes at the dazzling brightness of the long hall before us.
Daria told me: ‘Eat, drink, laugh, Marta, and be grateful to be here.’
Richly dressed people stood grouped around small tables. The music I could hear wasn’t heavy with longing like Russian melodies but tinkled like water. Servants carried platters groaning with food: whole boar roasted in beer and honey, the snouts stuffed with apples and chestnuts; pies of fish and vegetables in a thick golden crust; bowls of creamy soup; huge salmon surrounded by walls of caviar and towers of blini, pots of smetana and slices of lemon. Waiters filled jugs full to the brim: the goblets we drank from reached from my fingertips to my elbow. People drank like horses, vodka dripping from their mouths, carelessly soiling their beautiful clothes. I heaped some caviar on a blin; it was so delicious that I had a second and then a third one straight away. Who knew how long my luck would last?
Daria and Varvara whispered and I strained my ears. What was going on?
‘Look, there is the Tsarevich. Alexey has grown up . . .’
I craned my neck with curiosity: Alexey was a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age and didn’t seem grown up at all to me, still very much a child in his simple, dark clothes, with his pale face and dark eyes.
‘And over there is the widowed Tsaritsa Praskovia with her three daughters. She so wants to marry them well, though everybody knows that Ivan the Idiot, Peter’s half-brother, didn’t sire them,’ Daria said.
Varvara giggled: ‘She lives surrounded by loafers and beggars, soothsayers and palm readers, like courts used to be once. When I last visited, a gypsy girl danced for us, naked. Her breasts dangled like the balls of an oxen and her bush spread over her thighs.’
I had no idea what courts used to be like, but after Menshikov’s parties, absolutely nothing surprised me.
The drum roll grew stronger, until a kettle drum took the lead: everyone was silenced, even the Tsarevich stood to attention. The musicians rose in a wave, the doors of the hall flew open, and a group of men stormed in, shouting and cheering, carrying a sedan chair on their shoulders. The man sitting on it wore a clumsily wrapped white sheet and a crude copy of the Tsar’s crown. I stared open-mouthed as the procession paraded past me, the men throwing rose petals and paper balls, hooting, blowing on pipes and spinning rattles, inviting everybody to join in. People bowed to the shockingly ugly, virtually deformed man on the throne. I looked around, wondering what was happening and who the imposter was.
When I saw the real Peter my heart leapt up into my throat. He was taller than everybody else by a good head or two and dressed like a sailor in narrow, side-buttoned breeches, tight yellow leggings and a short navy jacket with gold buttons over his white shirt and red neckerchief. What was going on? Menshikov smiled and waved to him. I spotted other faces I knew, too: princes and boyars who had fought alongside Sheremetev at Marienburg. I could not see the general himself and felt strangely relieved at that.
When the sedan chair was lowered, Peter bowed mockingly to the throne. ‘Hail, Prince-Caesar!’ he shouted, and the crowd repeated his words, the call rising and falling like the tide. ‘We beg you, let the Drunken Synod begin!’ Whoever the toad on the throne might be, the guests knew how to tell the game from reality and obeyed when Peter commanded them, ‘Drink, all of you, and as much as you can!’ He forced a young woman’s jaws open and poured a whole jug of vodka down her throat. She swayed, glassy-eyed, pale and gasping, until Peter kissed her on her lips, smacked her bottom and let her go.
‘Why is another man sitting on the throne?’ I asked Daria.
‘I told you, tonight the world is turned upside down. The Tsar is but a Friesian sailor and one of his friends, the so-called Prince-Caesar, rules.’ The crowd roared a bawdy song and Peter clapped while they cheered, ‘The Drunken Synod! Let’s start the Drunken Synod!’
I looked for the Tsarevich: he was standing by Menshikov, not cheering or singing. Menshikov was nudging him, to get him to join in. Daria approached them, smiling at her lover, who greeted her warmly and then smacked the Crown Prince. The boy’s eyes filled with tears and he retreated deeper into the hall where I couldn’t see him.
‘Silly man.’ Daria smiled tenderly in Menshikov’s direction when she’d settled back next to me. ‘Will he ever propose?’ she asked, sounding a bit too casual, while opening her fan.
‘Of course,’ I soothed her.
‘I would love to be at home, raising our children and being a good wife to him. But living like this, I have to play by his rules . . .’
‘Nobody leaves this room anymore under pain of hard labour,’ Peter shouted. ‘Also, there is no more Rhine wine to drink, only Tokay and vodka. Whosoever cheats has to drink double the measure.’
The fake Prince-Caesar now climbed onto a donkey; his sheet had slipped down to reveal a loincloth. Oblivious,
his worshippers followed him. I almost choked with laughter, seeing the procession of half-naked whores, their faces gaily painted and panagias dangling between their naked breasts; blond angel-faced boys with laurel wreaths in their hair skipped after them, playing flutes and waving flags on which two tobacco pipes formed a cross.
‘Patriarch Bacchus, give us your holy juice,’ the crowd howled, reaching out to the rider, the whores and the boys. It was so funny that I laughed tears: that served the ugly priests with their stinky garlic breath right – too often had I felt their bony fingers pinching my bottom at the monastery. The Prince-Caesar sprayed the crowd with vodka; people caught the blessing with their tongues, pushing and shoving each other to receive it. Some younger princes wanted to kiss the donkey but he bucked and kicked, so they pulled his tail until he brayed in pain.
The Arsenjevas sat with Menshikov, but just when I was about to join them, a slender hand grabbed me around my waist and played with the ribbons of my bodice. Peter pressed me against his broad chest, whispering in my ear, ‘How do you like my party, matka?’ My heart somersaulted. He remembered me and once more was calling me his old girl. I looked up at him: his face was flushed from vodka, the heat in the room and the revelry all around us. He swayed as he held me. The Prince-Caesar rode past and splashed me with vodka. ‘A special blessing for you, my girl,’ he roared, trotting on.
My cheeks and forehead were sticky with alcohol: ‘Ha! That calls for vengeance. Hold the donkey’s head, starik!’ I called.
Tsarina Page 18
