72
The very cold spring brought the first of four years of hail, devastating storms and famine to Russia. Locusts plagued the land, devouring all the grain and then even the stubble. Villages were haunted by hungry wolves and bears, and the village councils had to prepare for an autumn and winter of strict rationing. Everywhere in the country Alexey’s ghost was spotted. Wherever he stepped, so we heard, flowers bloomed and grain sprouted. Peter had the people who spread such nonsense, knouted or killed.
My son was to be born into a new era. In September 1721, Andrej Ostermann finally negotiated peace between Russia and Sweden, which ceased all counter-claims to the Baltics for eternity.
When Peter arrived back in Russia in the early-morning hours, he rushed straight into my bedroom, shaking me awake and shouting with joy. ‘Catherinushka, wake up! Do you know what has happened?’ He was jumping up and down on my mattress like a child, smelling of sweat, the sea and the wind. I rubbed my eyes, still half-asleep.
‘What is it, starik?’ I asked happily. He pulled me onto my knees on the crumpled sheets.
‘Listen,’ he said, raising one finger and holding me close. I held my breath just as the first bells of the city began to toll into the black stillness of the night. The sound filled the sky over St Petersburg as all the other bells joined in, their joy resounding in my heart.
‘These are the bells of peace, matka. The Peace of Nystad. The war is over!’
I started sobbing. The war had lasted my whole life. ‘Peace!’ cried Peter. ‘Mir!’ He leapt off my bed, ran to the door and tore it open. The young guard outside wanted to throw himself to the ground when he saw the Tsar, but Peter caught hold of him. ‘You – give me your gun, then you can kneel down. You do not need it anymore because there is peace!’
Peter ran to the window, holding the gun, and struggled with the curtains. I laughed as I saw him tangle himself up in the heavy fabric and rushed to help him. Together we pushed the window open and Peter fired shot after shot into the velvety sky of his city. People gathered on the quay and looked up to the Winter Palace: scared, yet full of surprise, as Peter shouted for more ammunition and then cheered, his voice breaking with sobs: ‘Peace! Mir! Mir! ’ He reloaded and shot another salute. I held him around his waist, so as to lessen the weapon’s recoil, sharing his laughter and his tears.
‘Do not be frightened, you asses!’ he laughed, waving at the people below. ‘Peace, we have peace! The Great Northern War is over,’ he proclaimed, the words drowned out by the volleys of shots that answered his own from all over town. The church towers of Russia carried the news far across the country. People ran onto the streets in their nightgowns, dancing, laughing and embracing each other. They grabbed everything they could find, as long as it made a mighty racket: drums rolled next to the rattling of pots and clinking of swords, sickles and scythes. Just a moment later fireworks lit up the sky above Menshikov’s palace. Peter watched with damp eyes. ‘My Alekasha. Let us go to him. Now, at once!’
Down on the quay musicians were playing, and those who saw Peter knelt and tried to kiss his feet. In the midst of that raging mass of people we set out in a ferry-boat for Vassilyev Island. The waters of the Neva mirrored flames from the bonfires lit all along the banks. No wonder a Russian calls peace and the world the same word: mir. People’s joy at the Peace of Nystad was louder than any battle-cry but sounded like the sweetest song.
It took Peter three full days to sober up enough to think about a suitable celebration for the Peace of Nystad in the cities of St Petersburg and Moscow. His fingertips were still blackened and blistered from the fireworks he personally had sent into the sky, and his arms ached from tirelessly hitting the drums in celebration, marching up and down the prospects of the city. Nevertheless, he reached for paper and ink. ‘Let’s start. I only want to hear new ideas. After all, this is the end of the Great Northern War,’ he ordered.
Maria Kantemir slid into the room and settled next to him. She was dressed according to the custom of her country, and the narrow tunics and embroidered leggings suited her as did her heavy silver jewellery. Her scent of musk and patchouli clouded my spirits: my damy whispered that she blended her perfume with some drops of her very own moisture, to make it more bewitching. Peter placed his hand on her knee and gave her his list of ideas: ‘Have a look and tell me what you think.’
She read and gave it a moment of thought. ‘All this sounds fitting, but it’s not quite enough. A ruler like you must add a strong, almost divine note.’ Her gold-flecked amber eyes challenged him.
‘What do you suggest?’ Peter urged, as if pearls of wisdom were about to drip from her full lips. Under my lashes I studied the others present: Peter’s friends, pupils and advisers, who were also the companions of my life. There was Menshikov, of course. My saviour Count Sheremetev, and Count Tolstoy, with whom I had faced my fate so many years ago, whose hair had since turned as white as snow. How did these men bear themselves towards Maria Kantemir? We had all fought and feasted together; many times I had saved them from the harsh punishments Peter could decree so easily in his anger. Thanks to me, their estates had escaped confiscation, they had avoided exile to Siberia and dodged death on the scaffold. But gratitude and loyalty are easily eroded by the first hint of impending disgrace, I thought. Was I being overlooked while they eagerly listened to Maria’s words? Currently she held the Tsar captive between her thighs. They nodded their agreement to her words, be it from fear, courtesy, diplomacy or true admiration.
‘Come as Poseidon, God of the Sea. Sail with the fleet that you have created up to the city you founded. Celebrate all your achievements, my Tsar. We can think about Moscow later,’ she advised.
Peter beamed at her. ‘My beautiful Maria, how clever you are.’ He kissed her and she pushed him away, her smile full of promise. ‘Later, my Tsar,’ she murmured, lowering her dark lashes. My fingernails dug into my palms as I forced a smile. This woman was more dangerous than hail, fire and plague put together. I placed my hands on my swollen belly, and the unborn child answered with a small kick. Whatever Maria Kantemir planned, it was I who bore the future Tsarevich underneath my heart. Any protest I made now would look like jealousy and drive him further into her arms. Only the sweetest of joys would win him back to my side – I prayed that God would grant me a healthy son.
I cannot fail Maria Kantemir’s work in planning the celebrations for the Peace of Nystad. We sailed up the Neva like an image from a dream; on the foaming grey-green waters flashed the brilliant, blinding white of the sails of hundreds of ships. Thousands upon thousands of bright flags, banners and strings of bunting fluttered in the breeze; the shores were black with people. I looked like a real Tsaritsa, wearing a dress of blue-green shining silk, my glossy, thick hair all piled up and secured with emerald combs. There was a heavy matching choker around my neck. Under my bosom, too, I wore a belt of emeralds and sapphires to distract attention from my already heavy stomach.
‘You shine like the sun, Catherinushka. No wonder even the magpies are jealous,’ Peter teased me after the holy Mass when we rode through the town for the whole evening before returning to the palace to change for a masked ball. I looked like a Dutch peasant woman, with flowers in my hair and a blue-and-white patterned dress, while Peter had dressed as a sailor from Friesland. So we mingled with the fools and the fairies, the shepherds and the Persian princes, until the early hours of the morning. I felt happy and strong, until Peter forced Maria Kantemir onto a divan near my throne, pushing her robe all the way up to her naked hips, spreading her thighs. The little bells she wore on her ankles and wrists clinked softly as he began to lick her. Her fingers laced his dense hair, like poisonous snakes in tall grass, and she let her head fall back, her eyes closed. After she gave a cry, he took a bottle of vodka in one hand and held her over his shoulder with the other. She hung as limp as a young cat when they disappeared into the corridors of the palace.
A week after the celebrations of Nystad I began to bleed in the ea
rly-morning hours and my little son was stillborn in the first days of October. Peter’s face was as ashen as the morning when he came to see me. After my body tore, my heart broke as well, seeing him like that.
‘What happened, Blumentrost?’ he asked the doctor, avoiding my gaze.
Blumentrost shrugged helplessly. ‘I do not know, my Tsar. He was a healthy and strong boy, but the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. He suffocated in his mother’s body. That’s why birth set in so early.’
Peter briefly cupped his face in his hands, his shoulders slumped. He would not look at me but rose, as if he had heard enough. Blumentrost however held him back. ‘My Tsar –’
‘Yes, what?’ Peter asked impatiently. Where was he going so urgently? Had Maria summoned him and would he leave me here, weak and alone after giving birth? I sensed the birds of sorrow settling upon me again, their claws sharpened. The prospect seared my soul.
Blumentrost sighed. ‘It was a difficult birth, my Tsar. The Tsaritsa has lost a lot of blood . . .’ I decided I would prefer not to hear his words but was too weak to place my hands over my ears. ‘I think it is better if the Tsaritsa does not have more children.’
I realised the seriousness of what he had just said; every word was another stone in the high wall that was rapidly growing between the Tsar and me. Twelve times God had given me the chance to give Russia an heir. Twelve times I had failed. That night, I heard, Peter attended a feast in Menshikov’s palace together with Maria Kantemir. Menshikov had arranged seats of honour for them in a little tent set back from the crowd where she drank from the Tsar’s glass and he fed her little bites from his own plate.
73
A few days later, while I dressed for the service to celebrate peace to be held in the Trinity Church, Peter came to my rooms. I was still weak and my ladies fluttered around me, attending to every detail of my appearance: ‘Keep going, my damy! I want you to be sure to make the Tsaritsa beautiful as never before today,’ said the Tsar. He winked at me and gave a secretive smile.
‘Am I not beautiful enough for the reading of the Peace Treaty?’ I said, forcing cheer into my voice. He gave me a peck on the cheek.
‘You never know what the day will bring,’ he said. ‘Agneta, adorn the Tsaritsa with the necklace I gave her on our wedding day.’ I was amazed by this order but Peter himself helped to place the heavy choker around my throat; the pearls cooled my skin, and the colourful gemstones in the wings of the Russian double eagle sparkled in unspoken challenge.
Peter tilted his head. ‘Not bad. Now the red velvet gown.’
I had wanted to wear the Imperial green silk, but he raised his hand. ‘Silence. Do not contradict me in front of your ladies or else I’ll have you whipped, matka,’ he joked. ‘That’s good. Let us go.’
He led me down into the courtyard where the sleighs were waiting. The servants jumped from foot to foot because of the early frost. In the carriage, Peter asked: ‘Do you think I need this wig?’ He had placed it haphazardly on his head, and his own hair, streaked with grey, hung out here and there above his ears and his forehead. I nodded and he shrugged. ‘Oh, well. So be it. But I feel like a monkey.’
Peter was unable to listen to Prokopovich’s address during the service of thanksgiving, his feet tap-tapping the floor. I looked questioningly at Alexander Menshikov but he just shrugged. I forced my thoughts back to Feofan’s words, which were like pearls on a string, echoing from the Trinity Church’s golden-domed ceiling. ‘I wish we all fully realised what our Tsar has done for us . . . For do we ever want Russia to suffer the same fate as the Greeks and their kings?’ I shook my head, without knowing what their fate had been. Alexander Danilovich did the same, and I stifled a giggle. We were both so simple.
But just as the crowd settled for a last prayer, Prokopovich gave Peter Shafirov a sign by touching the panagia on his chest. Shafirov rose: the once spindly man had grown into a powerful, self-indulgent prince. His blue silk coat did nothing to disguise his bulk and heavy legs. Even if the bows on the toes of his shoes made him look like a fool, he was a dangerous man: his five daughters had married into the best families in the country, he did lucrative business with Menshikov and was said to have offered a magnificent sapphire necklace to Maria Kantemir. When Shafirov took a scroll from his sleeve, Peter drew me to my feet.
‘Thanks to the Tsar’s glorious deeds, we have left behind the age of darkness and Russia has found her place on the world’s stage,’ I heard Shafirov say. Peter’s fingers squeezed mine. My eyes met Menshikov’s startled gaze. Alexander Danilovich clearly understood not only that something very important was happening, but also that Peter Shafirov had trumped him. I straightened my back, which still hurt from the hours of a labour that once more had been in vain.
Shafirov cleared his throat. ‘The Senate begs the Tsar to take the title of Emperor. You have risen from the East, now be a ruler of the West! Tsar Peter, become our Peter the First. Tsar Peter, become Peter the Great, Father of Your Country, Emperor of All the Russias.’
His last words were swallowed by an immediate outbreak of jubilation. Feofan made the Sign of the Cross over Peter’s head. Peter gave Shafirov the kiss of peace, looking surprised and embarrassed, and raised his hand. Silence fell in the church. ‘I cannot help but accept this honour,’ he cried, and I felt his pride and joy: Tsar was an archaic title for a ruler of the East, something akin to a king. He had risen above that in rank and power, shifting Russia to the West.
‘Vivant the Emperor and Empress of Russia!’ voices thundered a thousandfold, through the church and across the square, reaching the Neva and blending with the hundreds of celebratory volleys fired by ships’ cannon, before the waters carried the news far, far out into the world.
I was now the Empress of Russia. Imperatriza.
In the following weeks, the Neva began to rise. First, the waters reached the steps of the moorings, before lapping over the quay. The following morning, neither horses nor carts could pass through the flooded streets. Come nightfall, the courtyard of the Winter Palace and the castle’s ground floor were underwater. Footmen and servants barricaded the building with bags of sand, but the whiff of mould was tangible only a few hours later. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon and it began to rain. The sea raged into the river, tearing down houses and carrying away walls. Soon the bloated corpses of animals and human beings drifted in the flooded streets; disease and plague festered. Peter had dykes built. People drained water from their houses by forming long chains, passing full buckets and vessels of every kind from hand to hand. Yet still they clung to their accustomed way of life, playing cards on the roofs of their houses and wading through thigh-high waters to reach their flooded kabaki.
Despite the damage to his city, Peter celebrated St Andrew’s Day as usual with the first snowfall. Once again Menshikov had invited us to his palace, as Peter loved a spectacle of splendour without having to foot the bill for it. That evening our sleighs made their way through the city, horses snorting and bells jingling in their harnesses. Snow slanted in front of the glowing lanterns. Peter’s hopes and dreams for his New Jerusalem had come true: the shabby wooden structures that once stood here had been replaced by towering palaces and merchants’ houses, each three or four storeys high and blazing with lights. Church spires rose into the night sky. Pillars and posts along the quays and bridges were snow-capped; soon it would be time for the ferrymen to exchange their barges for sleighs as winter took hold. The barriers in the wide roads and prospects were all raised and people were out and about everywhere, clad in furs. The air was scented with roasted chestnuts, grilled meats and mulled wine. Proud frigates were rolling on the Neva’s steel-coloured waves next to broad-beamed barges. Wares were unloaded and new goods hauled aboard the bigger ships, while instructions, jokes and insults in all the languages of Russia and Europe could be heard, reminding us of the value the city’s ice-free harbour held for our country.
Peter sat next to me, warm underneath the bearskins the footm
an had hooked up to left and right of the sleigh’s door. I saw his face glow as he took in the impressive scene. He had willed this beauty of a place from nothing, I thought, and I had been by his side as it was built. I, no one else, least of all Maria Kantemir. Nobody could take that away.
Once at Menshikov’s palace, however, the feeling dissolved, like our breath and the moisture from our furs in the sudden warmth of fires and candles – thousands of them. Maria Kantemir leant close to Peter while they ate, telling him amusing stories about the floods. He laughed so much that eventually he pleaded for mercy, so she seized her whip and lashed Peter’s fools on their legs. ‘Don’t you see? The Tsar wants to laugh at the flood. Get on your boat or I’ll teach you a lesson.’ The fools hastily turned a small table upside down and hopped inside it, looking like two castaways on the Neva. Maria Kantemir circled them, whip in hand, looking as dangerous as the wild cats in her homeland’s mountains. Every time she came close to the boat, the two fools paled with fear and acted more and more wildly.
It was not until Peter raised his hand and gasped, ‘Enough, enough, I cannot laugh anymore!’, that she gave them leave to go. When she sat down with a haughty smile, Menshikov kissed her fingertips.
I returned to my rooms. Agneta saw my sullen mood and helped me out of my heavy dress, my petticoats and linen, without asking any questions. She didn’t need to. Everybody knew. When she unclasped the jewellery from my earlobes, throat and wrists, I breathed a sigh of relief. The tiled stove warmed the room pleasantly, and I looked at my bare, beautiful self while Agneta cleansed my face with rosewater In the dimly lit room, I saw the bed that Peter had avoided ever since I’d last given birth. Any reason for him to meet me there was gone. There would be no son for him from me, but rumour had it that Maria Kantemir laced Peter’s drink with love potions made from either the ground horn of an African animal or the dried, crushed sex of an Indian tiger, so that he would take her three or four times a night. I had also heard that she had not bled in the past months, which made my own blood curdle with fear.
Tsarina Page 42
