‘He takes all hurdles like no other. That is what I call a rider.’
‘Give her the spurs! Make her whinny!’
Alexey’s hair hung loose to his shoulders; his shirt was half open and glued to his glistening, sweaty body. He wore riding boots, but his breeches hung around his knees and a girl was lying on the table in front of him, her fat white thighs spread wide. He grunted as he fondled her plump breasts and slapped her buttocks until her flesh turned as red as a cherry. ‘Yes, my horsey. You must be broken in!’ he cried. I felt dizzy; the sight was too awful. Despite all the rough games I had witnessed in the tents, in the field or in the Kremlin, seeing this girl made me feel like a maid in Vassily’s house again on the first night he came for me.
Alexey’s companions neighed, whinnied and imitated the sounds of horses’ hooves, before howling with laughter. The girl herself screamed with joy. When I could see her face, her skin was very fair under thick red hair, but her tiny eyes and thick nose gave her a vicious look. I was about to leave when Alexey shouted, ‘Now witness me making a son and heir for Russia. My father and his whore only manage daughters and I’m not going to do it with that scrawny German cat.’ He rammed into the girl, who squealed and arched her back, her breasts bouncing, her nipples wide and light pink. Without thinking I lashed out, whipping the Tsarevich’s naked back. He reared with pain and spun around, foaming with anger and disbelief that anyone would dare, but at the sight of me his cock went limp.
‘Cover yourself, Tsarevich!’ I hissed with barely hidden rage and contempt. The girl sat up, looking at me almost defiantly, while Alexey’s friends fell to their knees, their heads bowed. I lifted the crop, ready to strike again.
‘Do as I say.’
Alexey pulled up his breeches, pale with rage. His eyes popped and his lips were pressed together in a narrow line. ‘Tsaritsa, what an unexpected honour. Why all this fuss? We are just having a little fun.’ He bowed to me mockingly. ‘What brings Your Majesty here?’
‘The same thing as you: my wish for an heir to the Russian throne,’ I said. ‘Come with me.’
He went ahead, blushing with anger. Around us the silence was deafening.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as I shoved him through another door.
‘Charlotte is waiting for you in your bedroom. You know the way better than I do.’ He shuffled his feet, walking as slowly as possible, but I thrust him in the back with the whip’s handle. ‘Move! We don’t have all day.’
‘I do not want to have anything to do with Charlotte. I love another!’ he shrieked.
‘Who is the lucky girl?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘You just saw her. Her name is Afrosinja. She was a washerwoman in the Finnish campaign.’ He looked at me defiantly, but all I did was chuckle.
‘And I suppose I’m meant to feel sympathetic to her on that account? You are mistaken about so many things. I love you, Alexey, and always have, so listen to me carefully. It would be far better for your health to love and impregnate your wife than some Finnish hussy.’
‘You’re just like my father!’ He spat on the elaborate parquet of ebony, ivory and ash. ‘I love Afrosinja and no one else.’
‘Your father would have killed you and Afrosinja in his rage if he had just heard that.’
I drove the Tsarevich to his rooms like a shepherd his livestock. There was no one to be seen, but I knew that these walls had ears. ‘After you,’ I said curtly as we arrived at his bedroom door. Marie had stoked the embers in the fireplace and Charlotte sat up in bed, almost disappearing in the vast frame, the curtains and layers of sheets. Her naked shoulders trembled. Her hair was limp and straight, chest as flat as a boy’s. I noticed a red bruise on her skinny arm marked the spot where the drunkard had pinched her.
‘I don’t want her. She disgusts me!’ Alexey screeched, reeling away and trying to escape me, but I kept him in check with the whip. Angrily he tore his breeches open: his long, thick cock hung down as limp as a worm. More than ever before he reminded me of Vassily, and I fought my disgust.
‘See how the German excites me? No wonder we have so many children,’ he said, mocking me, but on the verge of tears. ‘She reeks of beer and vodka, like a whore in a kabak.’
I laughed: ‘Well, if your Afrosinja smells better . . .’
Charlotte sobbed, and I hesitated briefly. Was I doing the right thing? ‘Stop crying. This is for Russia, and for your own good,’ I said to her, and then called, ‘Marie!’
The appearance of the pregnant courtier, her always full breasts now almost bursting out of her loosely laced silk dress, startled even me. With her auburn curls, moist pink lips and lively green eyes, she was a real beauty. No wonder she had shared Peter’s bed for so many years.
‘The Tsarevich needs to sire an heir. Help him,’ I said curtly, to hide my shame and horror at what was happening. Marie smiled, showing her small, pointed teeth, and knelt before Alexey. From the doorway, I cast a glance back into the room. Marie Hamilton had pulled her dress from her shoulders, showing her full white breasts. Alexey gasped when she took him between her rosy lips, closing her mouth around him. The prince clawed his hands into her shoulders and I saw him growing hard again. Somehow, I felt this was not their first time together.
‘Marie,’ I reminded her, ‘don’t forget: the best belongs to the Crown Princess.’
Alexey groaned with anger and disappointment when Marie led him to his marital bed, where Charlotte cowered in one corner, ashen-faced and hiccupping with fear. I left them to it.
Out in the hall, I sank onto my heels like the peasant girl I had once been, and tears came. I heard Marie talking and laughing, Alexey shout briefly in protest and then Charlotte cry out, again and again. I trembled and twisted my fingers until my knuckles turned white. What I did was for the good of Russia: when Charlotte bore Alexey a son, I, too, could breathe easier.
Peter, I was sure, would not have acted differently in my place. The thought of that made me weep even more.
56
When I joined Peter in Finland, I told him neither about Alexey’s problems with his wife nor about Afrosinja. I had better news to share: Charlotte was finally pregnant. The Tsarevich himself had told me, his face stony, before he, his retinue and Afrosinja left for Carlsbad to take the waters.
Peter shrugged and said, ‘With what sort of son am I punished? Oh, why does his weak health not take him from me?’ Then he ordered: ‘Replace all the foreigners in Charlotte’s court with Russians. Her ladies-in-waiting, her jesters, physicians, midwives: all of them. The child is not to be secretly swapped after its birth, be it boy or girl.’
Charlotte pleaded with him to change this cruel order; the ink of her dozens of letters to him was smeared with tears. No wonder she longed for her familiar ladies in this still so foreign court, but her pleas were in vain: she gave birth to her daughter surrounded by strangers whose language she still did not speak properly. It was clear that no one was willing to bet a kopek on the delicate princess’s future. The news of her being brought to bed reached us at Hangö Bay and Peter stared across the harbour’s grey waters. He looked once more like the young man I had met so many years ago in Marienburg: his skin tanned, his blue eyes sparkling, dark hair streaked handsomely by only a few grey strands, dishevelled by the wind.
‘A daughter!’ he spat, handing the letter to Makarov, who stuck it in his leather pouch. ‘Wipe your arse with it, if you want to. Daughters I have enough of myself. If only Alexey wasn’t so bloody useless.’
I laced my fingers over my stomach: I, too, was pregnant again. The morning light danced on the waves, and the coast of Finland was but a thin blue line on the horizon, where white clouds billowed like sails in the wind. A gull dived into the waves and did not reappear.
Two weeks later we surrounded the Swedish fleet in Hangö Bay. After the battle, the sad remnants of the enemy drifted on the waves: bloated bodies, tattered canvas and broken wooden planks. Back in St Petersburg I gave birth to my daught
er Maria – ‘I have a son called Maria,’ Peter wrote jokingly to Menshikov – but the little girl was too weak to survive the day of her birth. Peter kept her birth, as well as her death, out of the weekly bulletins that were sent to the European courts.
The young woman was in such a haste that she ran right into me; if I hadn’t caught her, we would both have tumbled to the ground. I was deep in thought, for Peter had just shown me his Kunstkamera, which was newly founded in the Summer Palace and open for all the people of St Petersburg to visit. Peter had told me: ‘Ever since my childhood, I have collected misfits of nature, rare weapons, animals of all kinds and souvenirs of my travels. Now everyone can see them, matka, and learn from them.’ He pulled me with him between the rows and rows of shelves full of glasses and containers: I saw lambs with three heads, the legless torso of a baby with four arms, twins that were joined at the breast – they made me think of Master Lampert’s Tent of Wonders so long ago! – as well as a child with a fish’s tail and two young dogs that were said to have been born of a sixty-year-old virgin.
‘Do you like it?’ Peter asked me, full of pride. I nodded, but he frowned. ‘What’s wrong? Are you sad?’
‘The Summer Palace was our home. We planned the house and the garden together; from here, we watched our city grow. Now everybody will take a walk in my garden, visit your collection in my salon, and get drunk on wine and vodka in my hall.’
‘Ah. Don’t worry. I’ll build you a palace that is much bigger and more magnificent than you can ever imagine,’ Peter promised before leaving me alone.
So I heard hurried steps on the gravel path, but only when the young woman pushed by me, and with a shout of ‘Damn!’, dropped her thickly filled pouch, did I pay any attention. My shoulder ached from our collision as she tried to gather up the dozens of scattered coins.
‘What a lot of loot,’ I commented, and she blushed.
‘Tsaritsa! Mistress, forgive me!’ She had refilled the pouch and was about to move off when I noticed her bright blue eyes and ash-blonde curls. I frowned.
‘Have not we met before?’
‘Yes, Tsaritsa. I’m Alice Kramer. We met at Boris Petrovich Sheremetev’s house.’
‘Of course! At Bobushka’s,’ I said jokingly. ‘Are you still in his household?’
‘No. His wife got so jealous, she forced him to give me as a gift to General Balk,’ said Alice, her pretty face darkening. I felt for her: how easily that could have happened to me as well.
‘But General Balk is married to Anna Mons’s sister. She’ll hardly tolerate you under her roof?’
Alice fought back tears. ‘Indeed. The Balks owed Marie Hamilton a favour and now I belong to her, as her handmaiden.’
‘I see,’ I said carefully. ‘Is that Marie’s money? Are you running an errand for her?’
‘Yes. I picked up money due to her from the jeweller Blumenthal. She has sold jewels to him.’ Alice sounded hesitant, even if this was nothing new in St Petersburg where Peter’s fondness for lavish, long-lasting festivals and amusements caused his courtiers a great deal of expense. Many damy shifted the family jewellery to pay for a seated dinner for three hundred or more guests.
‘Is Marie Hamilton not pregnant again? Isn’t this her second child?’ I said casually, but Alice paled with dread.
‘I know nothing about it, God help me!’ she whispered, pressing the pouch to her chest. ‘I must hurry, Tsaritsa, my mistress is a strict woman and I do not wish to be beaten and starved.’ She curtseyed to me and then ran on, her skirts flying.
I walked on, for the last time enjoying the privacy of the Summer Palace’s gardens before Peter gave them to the public. Marie Hamilton had been pregnant back when I’d forced the consummation of Alexey’s marriage. Had she given that child to an orphanage or was it being raised in the country because, from Alice’s reaction, I was sure her mistress was pregnant again. But why make a secret of it? I walked on, even deeper in thought.
57
Peter and I were sitting by the fireplace in his study while two footmen tried to impose order on his desk.
‘Let me show you the palace I will build for our summers together. You know that I never make empty promises, Catherine,’ Peter said. He stroked Lenta – he gave all his dogs the same name – and the dog growled softly with pleasure. When Peter gave her an old leather glove to chew, she settled down on the worn toes of his boots. He had taught her all sorts of tricks – taking off a hat, rolling over, giving her paw, jumping over a stick – but now she was where she wanted to be, at his feet, warming her hide.
‘Can we not simply live in the Summer Palace again?’ I pleaded once more. ‘Just us and the children? Perhaps we can house the Kunstkamera somewhere else?’ I sipped some of the bitter chai and added a good shot of vodka to my cup, as I felt the cold of autumn to my bones. My last pregnancy had drained much of my strength.
‘No. It is no longer just about us, matka. We must show Europe that Russia does not fear comparison to any other country; I am the peer of any ruler on Earth. Even the Winter Palace seems small and humble to me. But still, it can be my Louvre, and Peterhof my Versailles.’
‘Peterhof? Versailles?’ I looked at him, confused, but he caressed my hair.
‘She who has never seen Paris and the court of the Great Louis cannot understand this. But the Tsar of All the Russias can do anything the King of France can do. On top of that, Menshikov is building his summer place of Oranienbaum. His palace on the Strelka is already the most beautiful in the city. That dog shall not trump me in the country, too!’ Peter stood up. ‘I have been working on my ideas for Peterhof for almost two years, whenever I had time.’ He got up and searched his desk, before cursing and kicking the footmen. ‘Damn it! If you make order here, I’ll never find anything.’
Then he settled beside me on the carpet and dropped a dozen paper scrolls onto the floor. ‘But there was just too much else going on. The new law of inheritance alone has cost me months, and still my nobles and peasants refuse to leave their possessions and property to only their eldest son.’
‘No wonder. You’re not doing anything different, after all.’ I wanted to bite my lip from anger at my own stupidity then. How could I have said that?
Peter stayed silent but pulled at the glove in Lenta’s mouth in a playful tug-of-war; she growled and snapped after her toy. Then he sought my gaze pleadingly. ‘Give me a son, Catherinushka. Only then can I sleep in peace again. I need nothing so much as a son. Just one, please, so I am not completely dependent on Alexey. It’s for my beautiful Russia: I beg you.’ His eyes were dark with longing. My heart clenched.
‘If it was up to me, I would give you ten strong sons, my Tsar,’ I whispered, kissing his fingers.
‘I know, I know,’ he murmured. We heard a noise beyond the concealed door: ‘The Tsar and the Tsaritsa are not be disturbed,’ Makarov insisted, but between various male voices I could hear a woman’s whimpering. What was happening?
‘That’s Shafirov!’ Peter strode to the door and looked puzzled to see the guard holding back a ragged-looking old woman in shackles and a strange man, with Shafirov behind them. ‘What is it, Shafirov? Can’t you wait until suppertime?’
‘May we speak to the Tsaritsa?’ said Shafirov, who was pale with excitement, pushing his two companions ahead of him. Peter scratched his head, and I, too, was surprised. The woman reeked of sweat and vodka; her grey hair was all dirty and tangled, and her one good eye was hidden behind puffy bags of skin and wrinkles. The other was covered with a dark, dirty linen bandage. She wrung her hands in their shackles and her fingernails were long, filthy and curved. I pressed a perfumed handkerchief to my nose: ‘Yes? What is it?’
Shafirov forced the woman to her knees. ‘Lower your ugly face in front of the Tsaritsa!’ he said.
I rose and the scrolls with the plans to Peterhof slid from my lap, rustling. ‘Shafirov, who are these people?’
‘Speak, Uncle Blumenthal,’ he said to the old man, who wore the flat bla
ck hat, black cape and side-locks of the observant Jew. What had Shafirov called him – Blumenthal? I had heard that name before but could not remember where. The man bowed to me with quiet dignity then pulled a flat velvet box from his wide cloak. The old woman struggled for breath, too terrified to whimper, as Blumenthal opened the case. I came closer and had a look, without really understanding what I was seeing: in it lay the necklace of turquoises and diamonds I had worn when I had forced Alexey back to the path of marital virtue. By virtue of the unusual combination of stones, it was a unique piece.
Peter grasped the necklace in his fist. ‘Where did you get this jewellery from, old man? I myself gave this set to the Tsaritsa.’
The goldsmith bowed. ‘I recognised the noble origins of the piece and turned to my nephew Peter here.’
‘Who sold him this, Shafirov? And who is this stinking woman?’ Peter asked, pale with anger.
‘The old witch is an angel-maker. She ends the unwanted pregnancies of the damy of St Petersburg,’ replied Shafirov.
I looked at the disgusting fingers of the woman while she rocked back and forth in her shackles, on her knees, moaning. Her lips were trembling over toothless gums.
‘And the jewellery?’ Peter asked. My throat felt parched. Where was this leading?
‘Well, the jewellery was stolen and sold by Marie Hamilton. She needed money to have a pregnancy ended. Or rather several pregnancies, if the witch is to be trusted.’
All was silent. I did not dare look at Peter.
‘May I?’ said Shafirov, ramming his knee into the woman’s back. She fell forward, screaming. ‘Speak! Maybe you can save your skin,’ he hissed to her.
She looked up with her one good eye. ‘Marie Hamilton is a bitch on heat. And now I, a poor babushka, should pay for her sins? She used to come and see me every four or five months, crying and lamenting that she could not have the child. God knows with whom she whored. The whole of the town, I’d say,’ she shrieked. ‘But my work doesn’t come cheap.’
Tsarina Page 33
