Empress of the Night (34 page)

The Regent, not pleased to change the subject but not ready to insist, confirms the validity of her praises. The air is indeed excellent. The grounds spacious. The Swedish royal palace is comfortable and well thought out. The library is particularly charming, with paintings copied from Herculaneum on the walls. A Gothic altar serves as a stove. And there is a Chinese temple in the gardens. Right next to a Greek
temple. No one can accuse Sweden of not knowing that chinoiserie is de rigueur.

“And how many rooms does it have?” Catherine asks. “I always find exact numbers important. Don’t you agree?”

Well before midnight, the Empress retires to her inner rooms. The young should be left alone. Her presence can easily become a hindrance, and she doesn’t wish to spoil their joy. She remembers the days of her own youth only too well. Mother’s cutting admonitions still ring in her memory.

Le Noiraud is the only one who accompanies her, his lips curved in a painful grimace. All evening, Platon has made no attempt to dance with anyone, although Princess Dolgoruka tried to coax him into a polonaise. He stayed faithfully at his Empress’s side, amusing her with his witticisms: “It’s sometimes necessary to play the fool in order to avoid being deceived by cunning men.” Or trusting the diverting power of gossip: The Regent’s wife is in love with a fat Frenchwoman. Prince Adam—“Why does he stick to Alexander like a burr to a dog’s tail, Katinka?”—has Ambassador Repnin’s eyes and Repnin’s chin, but his mother’s Roman nose.

Alone with her, Le Noiraud is no longer able to hide his fury.

He has been humiliated. He has been slighted. Not just the Prussian Ambassador but even that Swedish runt, the Regent, has addressed him as
Mon Prince
.

Anger makes him taller, chisels his features. He pulls at his chemise, ripping off buttons that roll under the bed. Mother-of-pearl, set in gold. Vishka will have to retrieve them in the morning.

“Keep your voice down,” she says impatiently. She doesn’t think the little Regent could manage to bribe anyone close to her, but she believes in caution. She wants to rest, not relive another imagined slight. Her leg is tugging at her again, pulsating on the threshold of pain.

Le Noiraud perches at the edge of her bed. Dark curls show through the opening in his chemise. “Katinka,” he says, and his voice breaks. He throws his arms around her to kiss her, but she turns her head abruptly and his lips land on her cheek.

He blinks, startled, suddenly close to tears.

It’s his fragility that tugs at her heart.
Without me
, she thinks,
he’ll perish
.

Settling beside Le Noiraud, she puts her hand on his. It is late. Even with the windows closed and curtains drawn, the sounds of the ball filter through to her bedroom. Laughter, the staccato of dancing feet. It’ll be hard to fall asleep, and she has work to do in the morning.

“Madame Lebrun was quite taken with the shape of your lips,” she recalls. “Or was it the patrician line of your forehead?”

Platon’s hand still quivers under hers, but he is smiling already, her flighty butterfly, so easily satisfied with even a tiny victory. He rests his head on her lap.

“Would you let her paint you, Katinka? If I asked you?”

“And would that please you?” She closes her eyes. She longs for darkness. Snuffed candles. The sound of Platon’s feet as he climbs the stairs to his own rooms upstairs.

“Yes.”

“Then I will.”

“When?”

“As soon as Alexandrine leaves for Stockholm.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

The aftermath of victory: Stanislav August Poniatowski, the King of Poland, is in Grodno on her orders. In the last months, horse riding has become his all-consuming passion. The landscape around Grodno apparently invites dreaming. The silver ribbon of the Niemen River enchants.

Prince Repnin, who is in charge of the royal prisoner, warns that Stanislav is writing his memoirs.
Confessions
, he calls them, in the manner of that detestable Rousseau.

The Empress doesn’t need warnings. The Polish King’s archivist is one of her best spies.

The King’s letters are opened and read, his papers copied. All visitors coming or leaving the Grodno palace, family and friends included, are
thoroughly searched, their movements recorded and timed. Catherine knows to whom Stanislav has written in cipher, begging for a condemnation of Poland’s dissolution. She knows who has—so far—evaded an answer and who has complied and why. She knows that Stanislav frets over his “secret” wife’s fainting spells. She also knows who steals bottles of claret from his cellars and how much perfectly good lace is claimed to be damaged in the wash and is then sold in the town.

The Confessions, so far, dwell on the time of their first meeting, forty-one years ago now. He a Polish Count visiting St. Petersburg, she a Grand Duchess with an uncertain future.
Sophie
, he calls her … 
her shining black hair … her lips begging for a kiss … such was my lover, the mistress of my fate … to whom I gave all of myself … offering what no one else has possessed …

He knows she is reading these words. What does he want her to remember? Old promises? Old dreams?

The Empress has no patience for dreamers.

As the guillotines fell and Parisian gutters were overflowing with the blood of his betters, Robespierre was dreaming of his Republic of Virtue. Of free people, gentle and filled with wisdom, walking its streets. Of garlanded girls in flowery robes gliding through colonnades of white marble. Of all sins eradicated, a world without jealousy, hypocrisy, superstition.

Dreamers are not harmless. They drag suffering in their wake.

She scans the list of the King’s expenses: food, salaries, candles, wine cellar, sweets and coffee, stables, and fuel. When Repnin suggested she double the King’s “pocket money,” she agreed. On the enclosed ledgers, she can see Stanislav’s signature acknowledging three thousand ducats per month:
Stanislav August Rex
.

I’ve been generous
, Catherine thinks.

He signed an act of abdication. She didn’t force it. It was a straightforward choice. Cling to symbols and grand gestures and go bankrupt. Or surrender and your debts shall be paid and you and your family kept in comfort. But her generosity has not sufficed, for Stanislav floods her with petitions. Can so-and-so’s sequestered estate be freed? Confiscated lands returned? A penalty for anti-Russian actions reduced? A Russian pension granted? The newest Russian subjects cling to a conviction that
their onetime King still has influence in St. Petersburg. And he, the wretched dreamer he has always been, believes that, too.

I made you King
, she answers him in her thoughts,
and what have you done? Let yourself be ruled by anyone who stomped his feet and screamed at you! Allowed the revolutionary fever to consume your people! Tried to scheme against me with the Ottoman Porte and France!

She goes through the sheaf of papers with growing impatience. The tedious and mundane obscure what might be important.

For instance: At six each morning, the King’s chamberlain brings him a cup of thick bouillon. It is made fresh every day, the cook locking the kitchen door as he prepares it.

Is the King afraid he might be poisoned?

Every day, Stanislav goes for a ride. Lososna is his favorite destination. Once there, he always alights and crosses the bridge to the other side of the Niemen River.

For what reason?

Why are these questions not asked until she asks them? How many times does she have to stress the importance of vigilance? Is Bezborodko the only one she can fully trust?

She takes a fresh sheet of paper, dips her quill, and, in her reply to Repnin, asks for an investigation. Not too obvious or crude. No direct questions.
Observe and draw conclusions
.

And then she adds:
Since the act of abdication, Stanislav August is a
former
King. We wish this fact reflected in all future correspondence
.

“Prince Repnin tries his best, Your Majesty,” Alexander Andreyevich replies when she shares her indignation with him at the morning briefing. “In his own cautious way.”

She takes it for what it is. A reminder that a perfect courtier does not reveal his feelings to anyone. So she stops herself from quoting another of Repnin’s revelations that suspicious-looking men have appeared in Grodno.
Wearing round hats, Your Majesty, which signals revolutionary inclinations
.

Pani, having devoured her blood sausage, settles underneath the desk and tries to lick her mistress’s leg. Her snout roots underneath the clothes; her tongue pushes against the raw skin.

“Now, about Gustav Adolf, madame,” Bezborodko begins, rubbing his hands.

The King spent another morning traversing the city on foot with his uncle, refusing all offers of carriages or horses. In the streets, much merriment has been made of the dress of the Swedes, their short coats, cloaks, and round hats.

The two have been to the Academy, admired the wax figure of Peter the Great, the pair of shoes he made with his own hands, and a pair of stockings he mended. They admired her manuscript of the Code of Laws. The King wished to know how many of these laws had been implemented. Then nodded when told that wise Sovereigns have to exercise patience in such matters, for there is a difference between writing on paper and writing on human skin.

Her minister delivers his report with a flickering smile of pleasure, from memory, without opening his folder, which—as she well knows—will confirm his accuracy word for word. “In short, Majesty, we are making excellent progress. It is openly said that most of the King’s attendants are already counting the largesse associated with a royal wedding.”

Other developments are far less welcome.

The French, having brutally murdered their King and Queen, have announced their unalterable will to fight for the liberation of all Europe. At least for now, this means invading Italy. This is worrisome in spite of the dismissing snipes about the sorry state of the French troops. If the French troops are as ill-shod, hungry, and dressed in rags as they are said to be, the Austrians should’ve defeated them long ago.

“Venetians are terrified, Your Majesty,” her minister concludes, “scrambling for support. But who will fight for them now?”

Pani, who senses the end of any visit, wags her tail and stretches her slim, agile body, her long, graceful neck. There are thick drops of pus in Pani’s eyes. Queenie must have forgotten to rinse them with a chamomile infusion. Catherine feels a tweak of annoyance.

The smells that waft into the room, the scents of drying leaves and wood smoke, are no longer those of summer. The warm months are so fleetingly brief. It is only the Russian winter that drags on.

“One more thing, Your Majesty,” Bezborodko says, having already
asked permission to leave. “Grand Duke Constantine …” He pauses, a pained smile on his face.

“What has he done this time? And how much will it cost me?”

It turns out that Constantine loaded a cannon with live rats and fired them at a wall. Inside the Marble Palace. Ruining the fresh wallpaper she had ordered from Milan. Frightening his wife senseless.

Why? Why do the young disdain what is offered to them? Where does it come from, this need to spoil all that is good? To waste away the hours? To destroy rather than build?

Anger churns in her, even as her minister offers his consolations. The excuses are almost the same he has used when reporting on the escalating debts and Orlov-style gallivanting of her younger son, Alexei.

“Most young men need to blow off steam, Your Majesty. I was also quite reckless at his age.”

“Give me your hand, Katinka,” Le Noiraud insists.

She extends her right hand and he holds it between his palms and rubs it until she feels her blood quicken. Then he pulls at each of her fingers, to loosen the joints. His own hands are warm and dry. His skin soft. “You don’t spare yourself,” he says. “I protest.”

“Is your sister keeping well?” she asks.

Le Noiraud’s eyes, almond-shaped and so beautifully framed in black, look at her with childlike amazement. Is the Empress clairvoyant? Can she read his mind? He was just about to speak to her of his sister.

Her lover places her right hand back on her lap and takes hold of her left one. His gestures are slow and languid.

“I hate the summer here,” he says. “We shouldn’t have left Tsarskoye Selo so early.”

His sister’s dacha is his only escape in the city. He was visiting her only yesterday. Lambro-Cazzioni was there, too. “You must remember him,” he says. “He has served as Admiral under Prince Potemkin. A Greek.”

She doesn’t remember.

“I’ve known him for some time now,” her lover continues, “but it takes a woman to discover a man’s hidden virtues.”

Catherine closes her eyes. Le Noiraud’s fingers linger at the swollen knuckle of her left hand. His voice still carries in it some of the amazement of yesterday’s discovery. “So incredibly propitious,” he says.

It was Le Noiraud’s sister who found out that the former Admiral is also a healer. She had this skin lesion on her arm for some time, and the Admiral noticed it fester. He begged to be allowed to treat it. His remedy was simple. He learned it at sea, from an old Greek sailor. Daily baths in cold seawater. No blistering, no bleedings. After a week of treatments, his sister’s wound was completely healed.

“Will you let him see your leg, Katinka?” Le Noiraud asks, kissing her hand. “If I beg you to?”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t have time to waste with some quack who—like all of them—will beg for a pension.

But Le Noiraud insists. He folds his hands as if in prayer. He whispers, “You promised me to take care of yourself. It won’t take long. He is waiting outside. Do it for me. I beg you.”

He has changed in the last few months. The air of unease around him has thickened. His liveliness has faded.

You were not sure about him, Potemkin
, she thinks,
but look. He doesn’t just think of himself. He is concerned with my health. He worries about me
.