Curse Not the King (8 page)

He held her in a grip that almost cracked her narrow spine, the blood rushing into his face, his carefully disciplined passion shedding the bonds of self-control.

“Natalia, my darling, I have wanted you so desperately.… Oh, God, come to me then. Come now.”

He never thought to question her experience, to wonder at the sensuous cunning of her caresses, of how her lips, supposedly untouched by any mouth but his, could inflame him with a kiss that he had never taught her. In the blindness of his love and the ecstasy of that night he accepted the transformation as a miracle; the passive, obedient bride had revealed herself as ardent and demanding of the love he only longed to give her; in the mutual fulfilment of their passion he fell asleep, unsuspecting and utterly content.

And Natalie slept also, slept deeply for the first time in weeks with Paul's head cradled on her breast, the barrier between them broken, but broken, as with so many human obstacles, too late.

Meanwhile, Catherine waited. She waited to trap Natalie and punish Paul's disobedience with the patience and clarity of purpose which had eventually cost Peter Feodorovitch his throne and his life. And towards the winter of that year it seemed as if the reckoning would not be delayed much longer.

The great Pugachev Rebellion had halted. The masses of wretched, ignorant people who had followed the Cossack leader had dwindled to a disorderly rabble of drunken looters; and the ending of the Turkish war provided the monstrous General Panin with a new influx of troops.

The danger had come very close to Catherine and she knew it. While her letters abroad dismissed the revolt with careless levity, and her cunning found a witty nickname for the shaggy, illiterate Pugachev, Catherine admitted angrily to herself that she would never trust her people again. With that admission, the first part of a new era for Russia began.

The second phase opened one evening in the Winter Palace.

As usual after dinner the Empress sat down at the card table with a select circle of friends, among them the intimate of many years, Leo Naryshkin, and the man lately returned from the Turkish wars, he whom Panin had saluted that morning many weeks before. No one could have called him handsome, yet none who saw him could help but look again. He was very swarthy, his nose aquiline and long in proportion to his face, and the black patch which covered the mutilated socket of his left eye heightened the general impression of a Turkish potentate turned pirate who had somehow wandered into the cultured environs of Catherine's Court. His physique was remarkable even in an age and nation of giants; his clothes were colourful and enhanced by many jewels, the whole effect upon the eye was extraordinarily vivid, vulgar and powerful.

He sat in the place of honour on the Empress's right hand, and Catherine turned to him, smiling and fascinated in spite of herself.

“M. Naryshkin thinks you must find Court life tedious after the excitements of campaigning,” she remarked mischievously. Gregory Potemkin glanced across at the man he sensed to be a rival and nodded in acceptance of the challenge. The eternal suitor, he decided contemptuously, still waiting in Catherine's shadow, waiting and hoping for another's leavings. Potemkin noted his grey hairs and sneered with all the arrogance of youth.

“M. Naryshkin is mistaken,” he said in his deep, resonant voice. “The source of all excitement, and pleasure, is to be found in Petersburg. A smile from you, Madame, and any soldier would declare the stimulus greater than cannon!”

Leo opened his mouth to retort, then the sight of Catherine's hand resting upon the other's arm restrained him. He examined his cards closely, struggling with his jealousy and the certainty of defeat. This ugly barbarian had already been selected. He knew it. At that moment he raised his eyes and found that she, the idol of his life, was looking at him; Catherine smiled and he read the message in that smile. It was a gentle, regretful, final ‘no' and he acknowledged it with an answering smile, which promised that the war of words was at an end between him and the victor.

“I hope you'll forsake your battlefields and remain long in Petersburg, General.”

Potemkin bowed.

“The length of my stay depends on the Empress,” he said boldly and turned his single blazing eye upon her.

Catherine lowered her cards, sustaining that imperious, ardent gaze, aware that he had drawn very close to her, and that the fierce masculinity of the man transcended his appearance. The climax of twelve years of patient wooing was about to overtake her.

Now Gregory Orlov was gone and his old rival had returned, courting her by letter and in person, displaying gifts of charm that made the luckless Vassiltchikov seem even duller than he was.

“How much longer must I wait, Madame?” he whispered. Catherine stared down at her cards, hesitating, knowing that those who played with them were watching. The fate of Russia, the future happiness of the Empress, the ultimate destiny of Paul hung in the balance and were suddenly resolved.

“We've both waited long enough, my friend,” she said quietly. She threw down her cards and rose from the table.

“I'm tired to-night,” she said. Then turning, she placed her hand upon Gregory Potemkin's arm. “General, will you escort me to my rooms?”

For weeks after that night the whole of Petersburg held its breath, watching the new favourite with the Empress, seeing the special marks of affection that had once been Orlov's privilege; and this fresh scandal thrust Paul and Natalie into the background.

When he heard of it, the Czarevitch told Natalie and raged against his mother. Every instinct of a son jealous of the love which was his due, no matter how he thought he hated, rose in rebellion at the sight of yet another common paramour: Catherine the ruler, symbol of power and authority, was bad enough, but the crude associations of sex filled him with repulsion and fury.

The men his mother loved were always big, tall and broad-shouldered like Russian Hercules—Orlov, Vassiltchikov, and now this Gregory Potemkin. For twelve years the favourites had towered above him, and a proud, primeval instinct hated to be overshadowed. As he had loathed Orlov and despised his unintelligent successor, so he became Potemkin's enemy.

And with this resolve Paul began a personal war that was to wage for over twenty years.

In December messengers hurried to Catherine with momentous news. Panin's opinion of human treachery and greed were fully justified at last: the huge reward of 100,000 roubles offered for the capture of Emilian Pugachev had proved too much of a temptation. As he lay drunk in the ruins of his camp, surrounded by those he thought to be his friends, his followers had seized him and delivered him to the forces of the Empress. He was already on his way to Moscow in chains.

The Court was in residence in the Wooden Palace in the heart of the old Muscovite capital, and Paul insisted upon watching the triumphal entry of the defeated Cossack. Unlike her ladies and the general populace, Natalie had no appetite for horrors and no wish to see the sufferings of the man who had so nearly dragged the great Catherine off her throne. But for once Paul would not yield. They could watch from a window in the palace, he said stubbornly, and there was no need for Natalie to sicken since his mother's talent for well-timed mercy had changed the ferocious sentence of torture to one of simple execution. Not even to her would he admit that a doubt tormented him, born of rumours and uncertainty, the phantom of his own childish longing for a miracle to raise the dead. He wanted to see the man who claimed to be his father.

They had put Pugachev into a great iron cage, and drew it slowly along the streets of Moscow, ringed by troops to keep the crowds at bay, and as he stood by the palace window Paul Petrovitch watched the procession pass under a thin cloud of gently falling snow.

For some moments he looked on the prisoner, chained and exhibited like a wild beast: the man was a giant, black-bearded and swarthy, his clothing in rags; with both hands he steadied himself against the bars of the jolting, swaying cage, unable to shield himself from the showers of filth that rained in upon him from the hands of the howling mob. The same mob, as Paul thought grimly, who would have knelt to do him homage in the streets had fate given him the victory instead of Catherine.

There was a moment when the eyes of the two men met, high above the heads of the crowd: the big Cossack, helpless now, but savage with pain and humiliation, stared into the face of an ugly young man, saw the fixed expression that none might read, the prominent brow and flattened nose, caught the brilliant flash of a great diamond in his cravat, and insensible to anything but the ordeal of his approaching death, looked on the Czarevitch whom his mad imposture had claimed as his son, with uncomprehending animal eyes, dark and wild with suffering.

As the cage passed, Paul turned and slammed the window, to the great chagrin of his attendants, who wished to see the execution. It was not until he took Natalie in his arms when all had been dismissed, and kissed her with desperate tenderness, that the truth occurred to her.

Pugachev was beaten. At that very moment his head had fallen, judging by the great shout which had gone up from the crowd outside. The Turkish war was over, the rebellion broken. Catherine was seated firmly on her throne and could afford to give the succession where she pleased.

Paul's threats availed him nothing any longer. Both he and Natalie were left at Catherine's mercy.

4

“It's the waiting, Paul, the dreadful waiting, day after day, pretending that nothing is wrong, listening for footsteps, seeing their eyes on us! I tell you it's driving me mad!”

They were alone in their suite in the Wooden Palace, alone to all appearances, though God knew who spied and eavesdropped in the crevices of that grim building.

“I can't bear it much longer, I really can't.… I almost wish she'd have me arrested and get it over!”

He tried to comfort her, lying and making light of their danger, blinded by love to the selfishness of that refrain in which the dominant note was always of fear for herself.

“Please, Natalie, try not to worry. It's two months since Pugachev was executed and she's made no move. That's a good sign, my darling; it means she hesitates … I've told you she daren't touch you without harming me, that is our safeguard!”

“Safeguard! Oh, my God, Paul, you know that isn't true! She hates you, you said so yourself and now she can do what she likes … Oh, the suspense! And this palace! This awful gloomy place—caged in here for weeks on end—spied on … I know we're watched—my women watch me, I've caught them listening—and the Empress. I'm so terrified that when I see her I feel I'm going to faint. Oh, Paul … Paul …”

She came close to him and caught him by the breast of his brocade coat, gazing up into his face. He put his arm round her shoulders and kissed her tenderly on the forehead, his heart contracting with pity, for she was dreadfully pale and her eyes were dilated with fright.

“Paul, I have an idea,” she said urgently, gripping him tightly in her agitation.

“What is it, my love?”

“Let's go to her and beg for mercy!”

“That would be quite useless.”

“Oh, don't look like that … wouldn't it be better to try, wouldn't anything be better than waiting to be buried alive in some prison before they decide to murder us? If you went to her, Paul, if you humbled yourself … she might relent.…”

Gently he released himself and taking her hands in his, led her to a chair.

“Listen to me, Natalia. If I thought it would save you I'd go on my knees to my mother this moment; but all she'd do is pardon me on condition that I divorce you, and you know what that means.… Whatever we did or said, she'd separate us.”

“But why? Why?” she sobbed. “She knows I'm innocent.… Why does she want to persecute me …?”

One lover, Natalie thought desperately. And she has had so many, the hypocrite.

“Why does she hate me?”

Paul turned away from her and went to the window, unconsciously adopting Catherine's favourite attitude.

“I am the one she hates. I love you and you've made me happy, and that is something she can't bear. And there's no child of our marriage. I believe that is her main reason.”

“No child … so that's why.” She stared at his broad back and touched her dry lips with fingers that trembled.

“Then there's no hope for me.…” She might have betrayed Paul with a dozen men or stayed as chaste as he believed her, the result would have been the same. They wanted to get rid of her because they thought her barren.

“But I'm only nineteen,” she whispered, so low that he did not hear. “Surely there is still time.…” There must be time, someone must beg the Empress to grant them a respite, and even as the thought of falling at Catherine's feet occurred to her, she saw the hopelessness of what she contemplated. Paul was right; Paul with his fierce pride and reckless courage, he knew that there was nothing to be gained by pleading or he would have sued for pardon long before in order to protect her.

“Natalie.”

He stood before her holding out his hand and she rose with his assistance.

“Come in to supper, my little one, and I beg of you, eat something. You're growing so thin and pale. And try to calm yourself; God will protect your innocence.”

The idea that Divine intervention depended on her virtue struck the Grand Duchess as a joke that André would have relished; André who worshipped nothing and believed in nothing. How he would laugh if she could tell him … if she could only get near him, see him for a minute, speak to him.…

Looking at her across the table, Paul noticed that her eyes had filled with tears, and that she had eaten nothing.

Would to God that she were pregnant, he thought, his heart breaking with love of her. Then they would have their heir, their substitute for him. And they could kill him if they wished, so long as she were safe.