Tsarina

by Ellen Alpsten

  It rained on Easter Monday and the downpour washed away Glebov’s blood together with the last of the snow from the stones of the Red Square. I thought the horror had ended.

  The Great Northern War had been raging for almost twenty years. At last, Sweden seemed to give in and the struggle for supremacy in the Baltics was settling in Russia’s favour. Everyone was tired: the generals, who had been criss-crossing Russia and Europe for years; the soldiers, who had forgotten the faces of their families; the nobles, who told their sons to flee instead of serving in the Tsar’s army for life; the small landowners, who were burdened with high taxes; the souls, who could never hope to buy their freedom; Peter himself, who finally wanted to look from Peterhof over the Bay of Finland and say, ‘This is forever Russia.’ Above all Sweden, which no longer had a ducat in its treasury and was tired of the madness of a king who was a stranger to his own people. They all wanted an end to the war. In May 1718, Peter Shafirov, General James Bruce and Baron Ostermann were sent to the Åland islands to negotiate a peace. But the war had lasted so long that no one remembered its cause anymore, which made a settlement impossible. Shafirov and his companions came back to St Petersburg empty-handed. The war continued, but on Swedish soil alone.

  Spring comes to Peterhof on the Bay of Finland in May. The last ice and the remnants of dirty, slushy snow have melted by then and mild air chases away the memory of the cold. Fountains spew water as a marvel of pipes, canals and nozzles pumps salty seawater up from the bay and into the gardens, where it dances, sparkling, for our pleasure. The young trees, nursed overwinter in the orangery, blossom and bear fruit, and the sea sparkles below the long terraces. Stairs of grey marble lead down into the park, which Peter himself planned so that it is possible to catch a glimpse of our two pavilions: Marly, the marble house with its strict classical beauty, and Mon Plaisir, a simple structure and our first true house in Peterhof. How often had we waited there to watch for the boat from St Petersburg?

  Most of the time its passengers were soaked to the skin thanks to a sudden shower above the Bay of Finland. The ladies’ make-up would drip from their faces, and musicians were forced to shake water from their instruments. Peter and I would laugh ourselves to tears at the sight, while sitting warm and dry inside Mon Plaisir.

  Those happy days were gone forever, though, one morning in May, in the gathering light, when we waited there for Alexey to arrive.

  67

  I looked out over the troubled waters just to avoid seeing Afrosinja. She sat on a low stool, her face calm, but her loose, long hair flashing around her head like the flames of hell. She had given birth a few days before. Peter had had the child killed immediately. I blinked to chase away my tears, and tasted sea salt on my lips.

  Gravel crunched under the soldiers’ feet when they marched Alexey towards the house. Afrosinja exhaled sharply. She had not seen him since their separation in Venice a couple of months previously; Peter had sent him to the Trubetzkoi bastion in the Peter and Paul Fortress upon our arrival in St Petersburg. I shuddered. The complete darkness of the cells there shrouded the inmates’ minds and dragged them fast into death and despair. No man left those torture chambers in one piece or alive; or if he did, it was only to climb the scaffold.

  Peter stood in the middle of the room, his hands folded behind his back. We heard a knock on the door. Afrosinja straightened herself. I held on to the windowsill and glanced outside, to check that there was still life and beauty out there. If I took one step towards Peter, I feared I would fall and crumble to pieces.

  ‘In with the traitor,’ he cried, and soldiers placed themselves to right and left of the door as two bullish men dragged in Alexey. Behind them I could see two more soldiers. Alexey’s head hung listlessly. He had, if possible, become even leaner. Could he still stand unsupported? The light blinded him. He raised a hand weakly in front of his eyes. Afrosinja eyed her lover coldly and Peter curled his lip.

  ‘Is my son so dangerous that he needs six men to guard him? Look, he is trembling like pig’s blubber. Leave us.’

  Alexey cowered, burying his face in his bony hands. ‘The light . . . I can no longer bear the light. Father, I beg you,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Shut up,’ Peter told him. ‘I’ll decide when you can talk.’ My fingers busied themselves on the windowsill. Sobs shook Alexey’s exhausted body.

  ‘Look up,’ Peter coaxed. ‘See who is here.’

  Alexey finally spotted Afrosinja. He gasped and made as if to embrace her, but Peter roughly pushed him back. Alexey staggered and Peter seized his elbow: he probably did not want his son to fall and die in a stupid accident. No, he was not to escape so lightly.

  The girl looked quizzically at Alexey, weeping in Peter’s steely grasp. ‘Afrosinja! Are you all right?’ He looked at her body, which was still heavy, but clearly no longer pregnant. ‘What happened to our child?’

  She shrugged, a sullen expression on her face. Peter interrupted Alexey’s questions. ‘You can save your breath. I drowned your child like an autumn kitten and Afrosinja proved to be an upright and loyal subject of the Russian Empire.’

  Alexey stared at his mistress. The dawning understanding in his dark eyes was awful to see. He, the fanciful, moody, haughty Tsarevich, had really, truly loved her. Seeing Afrosinja there, sitting calmly amongst us in Mon Plaisir, tortured him worse than any interrogation so far had done. He buckled under the weight of her betrayal. His whole being dissolved in the spring sunshine. I felt like choking and crossed my arms so as not to reach out and comfort him.

  ‘Hand me the letters, Afrosinja,’ Peter commanded. She scrabbled in her bodice for a ribbon-tied bundle and she gave it to him with a bland smile. I felt like smacking her.

  ‘Catherine Alexeyevna, dearest stepmother,’ Alexey cried. In the mercilessly bright light his skin stretched yellow and waxy over his skull. I could see his ribs showing where his shirt was torn; his face and neck were bruised and swollen. I tried to smile at him encouragingly, but found I could not. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  Peter watched us from the corner of his eye, waving the wad of letters. ‘Alexey Petrovich Romanov, did you write these, and did you ask Afrosinja to burn them?’

  The prisoner nodded meekly.

  ‘Instead, she has kept the proof of your betrayal safe in her bosom. Close to her warm, soft flesh.’ Peter held the bundle under his nose, sniffing at it with exaggerated delight.

  Alexey sobbed, ‘Why are you so cruel, my father? How have I ever wronged you, apart from being born your son?’

  Afrosinja sat frozen on her stool, but Peter strode up to Alexey and kicked him hard, so that he toppled onto the marble floor. ‘I will deliver a fair judgment on you. Do not dare to accuse me of anything else.’

  Alexey bent double with pain. ‘I’m lost,’ he gasped.

  The sun warmed my fingers: the light, I had to stay close to the light, I thought desperately, and licked my salty lips as Peter circled Alexey like an eagle would a mouse. He read the first letter and shook his head. ‘In spite of all the efforts we made with your education, you still have impossible spelling and even worse handwriting.’

  Afrosinja gave a little laugh while mute tears ran down Alexey’s face. Peter leafed through the letters. ‘Ah. Here is a letter to the Emperor in Vienna. Let’s see what you had to tell the sot: “As your Majesty has heard, the bastard son the washer-maid has given my father is sick with fever. My father does what he wants, and God does what he wants.” What do you think of these words, my washer-maid?’ Peter mocked, looking at me. He knew how it hurt me to hear that. ‘What, in Alexey’s opinion, might God want to do with our “bastard son”? Let him perish, perhaps?’

  Breathing pained me. The air seared my lungs and hatred spread through my veins, poisoning my heart with its venom. Alexey hated my son; he wished for my boy to die. I avoided his pleading eyes. There were things I could not forgive. Peter knew that. He was like a puppeteer, pulling all the strings.

  Peter did not wait for my ans
wer but opened the next letter. ‘Ah, this one goes to your cousin Jekaterina Ivanovna in Mecklenburg. Listen to this, it’s just too amusing: “I hope for an uprising of the Russian troops in Mecklenburg, to put an end to my father.” ’ Here Peter paused.

  Alexey was deathly pale. ‘Father, please, I don’t have the strength for these games.’

  But Peter remained unmoved. ‘Just one more, for fun. Oh, it is addressed to the Senate of Russia! Brilliant. Listen carefully: “My father’s cruelty has driven me out of the country. Why does he hate me but love the children of his second wife? My half-brother Peter Petrovich is weak and puny. He could die at any time and the Tsar himself might leave us at any moment. I am destined to rule over Russia. Do not consign me to oblivion. It would harm you too.”’

  Peter paused and then read aloud, slowly and clearly: “If I am to be the Tsar, then I shall leave St Petersburg forever and return to Moscow. I shall burn the fleet, dissolve the army and drive away all strangers beyond the borders of our country. I will honour the Church and our God.”’

  The silence that followed was deafening. I knew that after writing these words, Alexey did not stand a chance. This was a fight to the death that fate had whimsically decreed between two men: father and son. Alexey lay on the ground as if already dead, and Peter towered over him. Afrosinja had buried her head in her arms. I dared not move.

  ‘Sit up, Alexey Petrovich Romanov,’ Peter ordered. Alexey forced himself up. Peter said solemnly, ‘As Tsar of All the Russias, I accuse you of high treason. Do you admit your crime?’

  I held my breath. Alexey looked at Afrosinja, but I read neither hatred nor anger in his eyes, only pain and loss. She met his gaze, crying by now. Alexey’s sallow features twisted in shame. ‘I do, my Tsar and father,’ he whispered. and his words were almost lost in the sound of the waves washing over the pebbles on the shore below Mon Plaisir.

  That moment, I split in half. One part of me stayed at Peter’s side, as his faithful wife despite all the hateful events of recent months. This woman would always belong to him and love him for their happy memories. She breathed the same air as he did and shared his bed if he were still to ask it. She shone in the brightness of his light so that no one else dared to approach her; no one heard the hollowness of her heartbeat.

  The other woman, though, broke free from the façade that Peter and I so carefully maintained and retreated quietly within. Peter would not get hold of her, no, never again, for she settled silently in the depths of my soul. She drifted there like a boat without a rudder, lost on the stream of my life, until one day another man’s love moored her in a last harbour, a place so full of beauty and belief, passion and peace, she could never have imagined it. One day.

  At moments I still taste the scented air of Mon Plaisir on my lips, and I hear the wind of Peterhof whispering words of wisdom about the colour of snow, the taste of tears and the vastness of the sea.

  68

  On the morning that Alexey’s fate was to be decided, somebody lightly touched my shoulder, but I slept equally lightly in those days.

  ‘Tsaritsa. You have a visitor,’ Alice whispered.

  My heartbeat quickened. A visitor meant nothing good at this ungodly hour of the day. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Boris Petrovich Sheremetev. I said it was too early for you to receive him. You are not presentable.’

  I climbed out of bed and chuckled. ‘If there is one man in the world who has seen me in a less-than-presentable state, it is Sheremetev. I’ll be right there.’

  I glanced across the quay and the river to the dark, brooding walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress. A beautiful June day was dawning: boats danced on the green waves, and the early, bright sun made the river sparkle when the iron Neva Gate opened. I saw a group of men leave the fortress and step onto the barges that awaited them.

  I frowned. ‘Should Boris Petrovich not already have taken his seat for Alexey’s tribunal?’

  Alice nodded mutely.

  ‘Hand me my dressing-gown. Hurry,’ I decided, running my fingers through my hair as a makeshift comb.

  Sheremetev stood by the window in my antechamber, his narrow shoulders slumped and his neck crooked. He looked small and very alone. My heart went out to him: what would his life have been like if things had taken a different course? He had loved Alice but had been forced to give her away. When I approached, he knelt with a sigh, his gout paining him. I pulled him up to his feet, kissing him three times as a sign of peace. He blushed and adjusted his coat. ‘Tsaritsa, thank you for receiving me at such an early hour –’

  Alice had stoked the embers in the fireplace while avoiding looking at Boris Petrovich. Sheremetev shuffled closer to the flames, hoping I would not notice.

  ‘I do not know how you feel, but I am so cold these days. Come, sit down with me,’ I said, settling on the sofa by the fireplace. He smiled at me gratefully – the warmth of the flames lessened the pain in his swollen limbs – but I knew I had to help him further.

  ‘I have not seen you for so long, Boris Petrovich. Does my old friend come to me only if sorrow weighs him down? But I have to warn you: if your son wants to grow a beard or your daughter wants to wear breeches, I can’t help you. Or do you want to own lands that belong to Menshikov? Forget about it, if so.’ There, that made him smile.

  ‘If only it were so easy.’

  ‘What is it then?’ I asked, taking his hand.

  ‘Tsaritsa,’ he said, ‘I have devoted my whole life to my Tsar and shall do so until my last breath. I’ll fight for Peter, I will ride, I will sail, I will kill –’ he gave a pained smile ‘– as I have done many times before.’ He wheezed between sentences. ‘But I cannot watch a father judge his own son. You know the verdict on Alexey is already settled.’

  If Sheremetev, the man of honour, said so, then it must be true. I bit my lip. ‘Tell me how I can help you.’

  ‘I asked to be freed from my duty as a judge at the tribunal, but the Tsar has beaten my messenger with his dubina.’ My old friend buried his face in my hands; his hair was as white as snow and thin as a spider’s web. When he looked up at me, he was weeping. ‘It is a yoke I dare not carry. This verdict is against every law of God and nature. A father who wants to try his son, asking for the help of the Church and courts – I cannot die in peace if I am part of this. I don’t like Alexey. Among all the bad people of Russia, he might be the worst. But still . . .’

  I pondered his words. ‘Go back to your palace, otets. I will sort it out.’

  I leant closer to him, breathing in his bitter scent of age and approaching death. ‘Are you sure the verdict is already settled?’ I whispered, as in those days the walls had ears.

  He looked at me, his eyes veiled. ‘Maybe not for the Church or the tribunal. But in the Tsar’s heart – yes, I am sure.’

  When he left, I took another look at the opposite shore: the boats had rowed over from the fortress to the Admiralty, where Alexey’s trial was to take place. Ferrymen leant against street lanterns, chewed tobacco and watched the girls passing by, whistling and catcalling at them. Children gathered around them, eyeing the number of barges and pestering the men with questions. I stepped away. As long as men like Boris Petrovich Sheremetev lived, there was still hope for Russia.

  But in the Tsar’s heart there was only death.

  ‘But the Tsar’s heart is in the hands of God; only He can find the just answer to all questions,’ wrote the court of the Russian Church, which refused to pass a judgment on Alexey. For them, the Old Testament, in which a father punishes his misguided and errant son, opposed the New Testament, which preached forgiveness and love.

  Peter was furious and called for a secular tribunal; a hundred and twenty-seven Russian dignitaries had gathered in St Petersburg. I myself saw him only once in those days. He took me by surprise, coming into Peter Petrovich’s nursery. I was pushing a small wooden boat across the parquet floor and my son made the sound of wind, waves and thunder. ‘Boom!’ he cried, clapping his hands, an
d I flipped the boat over as if it had been struck by lightning. He whooped and I embraced him, smelling the June sunshine and the first apples on the trees in his hair. I spent too little time with him alone, had been robbed of so many stages of his life. I held him closer, but he fidgeted and shouted, ‘Father! Batjuschka!’

  I had not seen Peter standing in the doorway with Alexander Menshikov, booted and ready to leave. My skin tingled as Peter lifted up our little boy: how small and vulnerable he looked in his father’s hands. Had he also held and kissed Alexey like this?

  ‘I see you’ve won a naval battle, Tsarevich?’ asked Peter. Our son nodded, his cheeks flushed with pride, and placed his hands trustingly on his father’s chest. ‘I am very proud of you. Let’s go to Peterhof soon and you can choose a boat for yourself.’

  I rose, forcing myself to sound cheerful. ‘Where are you going so early in the morning?’

  ‘To the fortress. The court needs more evidence of Alexey’s treason,’ Peter said casually.

  ‘More evidence?’ I folded my hands on my belly. It was a mere few weeks until I would give birth again. Menshikov laughed and playfully pinched Peter Petrovich’s cheek. ‘Thirty lashes with the knout loosens every tongue.’

  My stomach churned and I stepped up to Peter, ready to plead with him. He caressed my hair. ‘This is nothing a woman in your condition should worry about,’ he said, but I searched for his fingers, taking advantage of this rare moment of closeness.

  ‘Peter, I beg you,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t do this. Do not sully your glory with blood from your blood. Do not torment the flesh of your flesh. Ban him. Send him to the sawmills, to the mines, or to a monastery. But do not let his death come upon us and our children.’

  Peter’s expression was unfathomable. ‘Menshikov, call the Tsaritsa’s ladies. She is not well, she needs rest,’ he ordered. Before he left, our son pressed against him once more and Peter kissed him tenderly. He would not look at me anymore and my heart knotted with dread.