Empress of the Night (12 page)

The maids will be fooled with monthly blood. The bowl of sickness will disappear.

“If I die, Varenka—”

“You won’t die. You are strong.”

Only Grigory wears his joy like a mantle. Peacock proud that his child grows in her belly. Bigger with each day. Kicking her inside. An Orlov boy, strong and brave, like his father and uncles.

Not
, he says, grinning,
like Saltykov’s son. Paul is scared by his own shadow
.

“If you are born to hang, you won’t drown.” Empress Elizabeth is panting, her wrinkled cheeks flushed. Her feet are so swollen that bruised flesh spills out of silk slippers. Inside her, death crouches, patient. “Destiny will sniff after you like a bloodhound, Catherine,” she says.

The dying Empress is mocking her. Elizabeth’s lips curl into a sneer. “A petty princess of Anhalt-Zerbst still trying to outdo me? To prove me wrong?”

Time makes leaps and reversals once thought inconceivable. In the new Imperial Bedroom, where even the stinging smell of fresh varnish cannot mask the stench of death, she, the Grand Duchess of Russia, is standing by a dying Empress’s bed. Inside her a child kicks, a secret love child that might get her banished to some monastery cell where she will grow gaunt and shriveled, choking on forced prayers.

Or worse.

They are alone. The servants and the ladies-in-waiting have been sent away. They are now biding their time outside the bedroom doors, straining
their ears, eyeing one another with suspicion. The palace spies—Catherine’s among them—fight their own unending battles. Who is received in the inner bedroom and who has to wait in the antechambers. Whose warnings are heeded and whose ignored. And—most of all—who is entrusted with the most precious of imperial secrets. For a secret withheld from one but entrusted to another turns into a bond as powerful as love.

Elizabeth lies on her high bed, on her smooth silk quilts, in this room where darkness is banished, where thick candles are never snuffed. Thoughts of hell haunt her. The earthly sensations that determined her pleasures now define eternal pain. Flames will burn her skin, whips will lash it, boiling oil will scald it. Wiry devils will pour liquid gold on the most sinful parts of her body, tear it with red-hot pliers.

“I shouldn’t have brought Peter here,” Elizabeth seethes. “I should’ve let him rot in Holstein.”

Her nephew is a fool. A runt. Peter is weak, wavering. He listens to anyone who flatters him. Peter will ruin Russia. Make it a Prussian footstool.

Elizabeth’s eyelids droop; her chest is racked by labored gasps. The corners of her mouth crack open, oozing yellow pus.

How much longer will this drag on? A month? A fortnight? A week? Doctor Halliday, the chief imperial physician, accepts the gifts she, Catherine, sends him only to throw his hands up, professing his helplessness. Patients have defied his expectations before. It is all in God’s hands.

The baby kicks right underneath her stomach, sending a wave of nausea up her throat. The Orlovs have planned it all. Grigory’s brother, Alexei, will create a distraction. Varvara Nikolayevna will smuggle the newborn infant out of the palace.

If this baby doesn’t kill her first.

The dying Empress stirs. “I shouldn’t have brought you here, either,” she mutters.

Bitter words. Gritty. Like ashes mixed with sand. “I know your secrets, Catherine. I know who spies for you and why. I know what you want.”

A cold trickle of sweat rolls down the small of Catherine’s back.

“Your Majesty is mistaken,” she replies. “I have no secrets.”

“They’ve been warning me.” Elizabeth speaks with what looks like a smile but is probably just a grimace of pain. “A consummate liar, they’ve called you … with no thought for anyone but herself.”

Catherine doesn’t ask who has thus condemned her. Not that she doesn’t want to know. But she won’t give Elizabeth the satisfaction. She will not be forced to root through the rotten debris of her past in search of traitors. It’s enough to suspect how much has already been betrayed. The belly tied with a girdle to make it look smaller? Grigory Orlov and Alexei, gathering support for her in the barracks? Enough to get them all arrested, executed for treason.

A ragged sigh escapes the Empress’s parched lips. Her face says:
I could destroy you, Catherine, expose your despicable ambitions, drag you through the mud, but I don’t want to
.

Before death takes her, Elizabeth wishes to drive a bargain. In exchange for the imperial silence, the Grand Duchess must swear to guard the throne for her son, Paul Petrovich. “Your last payment, Catherine, for bringing you here,” Elizabeth gasps. “To Russia.”

As if she, Catherine, hasn’t paid enough already.

“Do whatever you need, Catherine. Push Peter aside. Send him back to Holstein … Be Regent until Paul is of age. Until my precious boy can be Tsar!”

What will she do now, this dying old woman? Make her swear obedience on Our Lady of Kazan? St. Nicholas the Miracle-Maker? Or will she threaten to haunt Russia’s Grand Duchess in these rooms, a vengeful harpy of the underworld making sure she is obeyed even after death?

But the Empress of Russia knows that fear—however flimsy and desperate its source—is more reliable than trust. Or gratitude.

“There are those in the palace who know my will, Catherine.” Elizabeth’s feeble voice needles itself inside her. “They’ll always remind Paul what I wish for him. And they’ll watch you after I’m gone.”

In the dark night of the Russian winter, the Empress, from whom power is chipped away with each tick of the clock, whispers: “Do you know of black nightshade, Catherine? The berries taste sweet, but a small handful of them will kill a man in seconds.”

Perhaps
.

Perhaps not
.

“You are being watched, Catherine,” Elizabeth mutters. “Even now.”

This baby follows its own cocky ways, wakes up when she settles to sleep, flips inside her or rolls about, oblivious of all the dangers it has brought with it. In the months past she was still hoping for a miscarriage, but an Orlov child has no intention of letting go of life. The thought is pleasing, like all reckless courage. And chilling, too, for by December Catherine is running out of excuses. Swollen legs, migraine headaches have elicited snide comments.

A secret of this magnitude is an obligation that grows. Varvara appears each morning, before dawn, an exacting ghost, her tasks all planned and mapped out. Every month, for five days, the Grand Duchess’s sheets and undergarments are stained with blood. Every month, her belly is wrapped tighter, and the folds of her gowns are let out to accommodate it. Only on some evenings, with curtains drawn tight, with cotton swabs inside the keyhole, the swaddlings can be removed and the taut skin soothed with massage.

Even during the day Catherine fights sleepiness. Heavy deep sleep, dragging her into darkness. When she wakes she sometimes needs a moment to remember where she is, what danger she is in.

Five more months, four.

By the end of December, Varvara’s news from the Imperial Bedroom is more and more alarming. It is no longer just the fainting spells or screams of raw terror. The doctors have taken to desperate measures. Tried to tap Elizabeth’s swollen belly to relieve the pressure, let out the excess bile.

To no avail.

“This is the real end,” Varvara whispers. “The long-awaited moment. And the Empress has asked me to bring the Grand Duchess to her.”

By the time Catherine makes it into the Imperial Bedroom, tied up, swaddled in thick quilted petticoats, the room is swathed in darkness in spite of thick wax candles. Sobbing women surround the bed, refusing to
budge, Countess Shuvalova among them, flashing the Grand Duchess a scowling look of raw hatred.

She is thankful for it, really, this gashing reminder of what is essential. When a tree falls in the forest, it lets in more light and frees space for new growth. This is the time for the battle of displays:
Your tears against my devotions. Your gossip against my prayers. Your scowls against my trembling hands
.

One step, then another. A bow to the Holy Icons, fingers touching the floor, the shoulders. Gestures that say
God Almighty is my witness. Eternity is my scene. Russia is my conscience. Look at me, you all
, Catherine’s eyes say.
Look and compare
.

This is the battle she, the Grand Duchess, will not relinquish. Not when the Empress spurts blood from her mouth and her nose. When the old woman grips the sheets, thrashes about as if trying to keep afloat on a stormy sea. Not when the howling comes, harsh, high-pitched at first, then rolling, like that of a trapped fox. Not when her love child moves in Catherine, a twitch of pain and promise.

Not even when her husband comes and all fall on their knees before Emperor Peter III.

I refuse to believe the rumors
, Stanislav, her Polish lover who still considers himself the master of her heart, writes from Warsaw. Once he had been her true comfort. Her thoughts of him are still spiced with memories of long conversations on fate and destiny and the power of human dreams. Love is no less real even if it retreats, melts into the shadows.

I’m making arrangements to come to your side
.

Stanislav’s letters are written in cipher. The awaited news—the death of the Empress—has come and gone. The courtiers have rallied around the new Emperor Peter III. Russia has her new Tsar,
batushka
, the father of the nation. The merciful grandson of Peter the Great. Even in Warsaw, everyone knows that Peter has no wish to let his unloved wife near him. That he has humiliated her in public. That he appears everywhere with his mistress.

Deciphered, Stanislav’s letters yield concessions, make room for necessary transformations. His beloved Sophie is a woman in need of protection.
That
Orlov he hears about so often is a soldier, ready to die for her. Besides,
that
Orlov has many friends among the Palace Guards who can protect her and thus be useful. Such are the exigencies of life. The price to be paid. Hard, but unavoidable. Once Sophie is out of danger,
that
Orlov will be amply rewarded and sent away.

Catherine throws these letters into the fire. When her silence does not stop Stanislav, she writes:

I forbid you to come. I’m watched day and night. Your presence will only add to my peril. Even your letters put me at risk … especially since they are in cipher. Refrain from writing to me so often, or—better—do not write at all.

Grigory Orlov doesn’t know of this correspondence. “How could you’ve ever loved him, Katinka?” he has asked, laughing. Him, a delicate Polish count who believes that a turn of phrase is mightier than the thrust of the sword.

Secluded in her room, the Grand Duchess of Russia is like a queen bee, receiving reports from all quarters, each charting the expanding boundaries of her power.

Her friends, her supporters, her spies labor in the shadows, relentless, honey-lipped, armed with confidence and gold, fortified by threats and dire predictions about what must happen if things are allowed to go on as they are. The name of Peter III spells ruin for the Russian army and the Russian Church. Chaos and dissipation. Humiliation and defeat.

Power is built in increments, of bets of money and ambition, secrets entrusted and betrayed.

The Orlovs and their subalterns are whipping up the support of the Guards. Katya Dashkova carries imperial assurances and promises to St. Petersburg’s finest salons, while Paul’s governor, Nikita Ivanovich Panin, weaves his nets of courtly backing on the belief that Catherine II will reign as Paul’s Regent.

Whispers travel fast. Gold changes hands, emboldens the hesitant or
faint of heart. She, their future Empress, holds all the strings, knots them in ways only she knows how to unravel. Each knot is separate, connected by a stitch underneath the fabric. Together they form a pattern that dazzles the eyes and lifts the heart.

Don’t tell them too much, don’t give them too much to think about
, Catherine tells herself each dawn.
Keep your words simple. Straightforward. Easy to remember and repeat:

Freedom from tyranny! Escape from this foreign madman who thinks of Russia as his punishment! Who wants to turn us all into Prussians. Unlike his long-suffering wife, Catherine Alekseyevna, who never fails to show her respect for what is most sacred to us all.

St. Petersburg’s salons are tense with growing apprehension. In smoky back rooms, seasoned courtiers assess Catherine’s strength and measure it against Peter’s.

Her promises and pledges have already seeped all the way to the soldiers’ barracks, where men know how to argue the merits of a woman’s rule. The late mother of the nation served Russia well. Why not continue what has worked so well for so long?

Catherine’s growing belly is well concealed. As long as she sits at her desk, her visitors leave none the wiser of what she is harboring inside. By now, this reluctant game of deceptions has become a source of pride. In the mornings, before she is dressed, she puts her hand on her belly to feel an invisible hand or foot slide up and down under her fingers.
Restless
, she thinks.
Like his father
.

Childbearing is the time of reckoning. She is thirty-three years old, carrying her third child. Paul, her firstborn, barely recognizes her; Anna—her second—was kept away from her so even her memory is a mere flicker. A small, cold hand that Catherine kissed just before the coffin closed.

The child has grown so large inside her that the disguises threaten to break. Repeated too often, her excuses come back mauled and menacing. “Madame Resourceful is haughty as she has always been,” her husband declares. Katya Dashkova lets out a girlish cry and insists on fetching her
own doctor to examine her swelling feet. “You still don’t take care of yourself, Catherine,” she scolds. “So we, your friends, must.”

When the birthing pains come, when after a short stab the waters break and soak the bed, when the midwife arrives, whispering her prayers and admonitions, Catherine welcomes it all with relief. This birth will be a release. Necessary before she can take another step.