Authors: Eva Stachniak

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Historical Fiction, #Russian

Empress of the Night (54 page)

Look down on me from above, O Mother of God, and mercifully attend now unto the visitation that has come upon me, that, gazing on thee, I may depart from the body with rejoicing
.

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, and without light, nothing flowers. Jewels are important. Emeralds are fragile; they cannot be dropped. Gold has been melted down forever. That gold ring that is on your finger could have come from a pharaoh’s golden necklace.

Hermes, the messenger of the gods, wrote on an emerald tablet. When Satan fell from heaven, an emerald dropped from his crown.

Nero watched the gladiator games through an emerald lens.

Take my ring, Alexandrine
.

Take it now
.

“Come with me.”

Grishenka’s voice is soft, soothing.

She extends her hand to caress him. Stroke his back, slowly, his belly, his thighs. The creases of skin, the taut body, lying beside her. Her own body stretches in all directions, a sprawling fertile land with its rivers and mountains and valleys.

“I’m waiting for you,
matushka
. I’ve been waiting all these years.”

The lengths of their bodies touch. He is moist and soft and yielding. His lips seek hers, like a suckling baby.

There are slices of red melon on a silver platter beside the bed. On chunks of ice, to keep them cold. He feeds her the sweet, cold, melting pieces. Smears the melon juice on her lips.

I’ve tried
.

So hard
.

To dispel the darkness
.

To bring light
.

Blood pulsates in her temples, drains into the sweet spot between her legs.

Nothing is alien. All is one. She is all.

“Don’t speak, Grishenka.”

His finger touches her lips. It is hard and cool from the melon ice.

It melts her.

She is one with the night.

The girl who runs through the snow-covered palace park is slim and agile. Fourteen years of age, not pretty, but graceful and bursting with energy. By the big pine tree, she jumps up to knock a thick cone off the lowest branch. The cone falls down and tumbles on the powdery snow
.

The girl picks the cone up and raises it to her nostrils, for she has always liked the smell of resin. She doesn’t care that it has stained her gloves and made them sticky. When her mother will chastise her for her “willfulness,” as she is wont to do, she will keep her head down and think of something nice. Like the day the painter who had come to paint her portrait taught her how to mix colors on a palette, or when her governess took her for a walk into Zerbst to let her run along the old town walls and throw stones to the moat
.

She should not be outside at all. She should be getting ready for the New Year’s dinner. Her best dress has been hastily altered from her mother’s old one, and it is not at all becoming, for purple makes her complexion look pasty. But how long does it take to slip on a dress and have her hair pinned up? The maids are grateful not to have to fuss for too long over her—as they have to with the Princess herself
.

The palace entrance has been decorated with garlands of fir and pine. Two footmen in thick blue tailcoats and powdered wigs stand by the heavy carved doors. This is the first day of the New Year and dinner guests will begin arriving soon. Not quite as distinguished as the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst would have wished, but life is a disappointment in so many ways. The baroque portal has just been fixed, the doors repaired, though beneath the Prince’s study the masonry is crumbling, and some of the red roof tiles are missing above the garret
.

The messenger rides through the wrought-iron palace gate. The maid who spots him through the kitchen window makes a grimace. “If it’s bad news, mistress will be angry.” The cook is thinking of the roast that –if dinner is delayed—will dry out; the Prince likes his meat juicy and slightly pink
.

The messenger has been told to hurry
.

The letter from Russia is addressed to Princess Johanna of Anhalt-Zerbst
. Awaiting the honor of Her Highness’s immediate reply.

AFTERWORD

Gentlemen, the Empress Catherine is dead and His Majesty Paul Petrovich has deigned to mount the throne of All the Russias
.

Catherine II of Russia died at 9:45
P.M
. on November 6, 1796, thirty-six hours after a paralyzing stroke. It is impossible to determine now how much consciousness she retained, although eyewitnesses reported an attempt to speak and to squeeze one of her attendants’ hands.

On Catherine’s death, her son Paul Petrovich became Emperor Paul I, and for the next four years tried to undo everything his mother stood for. Catherine’s funeral became the first sign of this determination to erase his mother’s memory and legacy. At first, Paul didn’t want to give his mother a state funeral; he relented after it was pointed out to him that such a move would undermine the monarchy. He exhumed the body of Peter III, crowned him in a posthumous coronation, and placed his coffin in the Winter Palace beside Catherine’s. Later, the two coffins were on display in the Fortress of Peter and Paul before they were buried beside each other in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. The dates of their deaths were not inscribed on the tomb, giving the impression that the two reigned together.

In another manifestation of his hatred, Paul visited the imprisoned Polish general Tadeusz Kosciuszko, apologized for his mother’s actions toward Poland, and freed him and other Polish political prisoners. Paul also sent his messengers to Grodno and invited the Polish King Stanislav August Poniatowski to come and live in St. Petersburg as an imperial guest, offering him the Marble Palace as his official residence. The King, a broken man, died on February 12, 1798.

Alexander, who as Alexander I would vanquish Napoléon Bonaparte in 1812, paid dearly for his unwillingness or inability to honor his grandmother’s wish to succeed her. Forced to watch the increasingly mad rule of his father, he agreed to a palace coup that ended with Paul’s murder, an act for which he never forgave himself. In history’s many twists, one of the plotters was Platon Zubov, Catherine’s last Favorite.

Adam Czartoryski, the friend to whom young Alexander confessed his sentiments on Russia’s role in European politics, remained his friend. After becoming Tsar, Alexander made Czartoryski Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. With Alexander’s knowledge and encouragement, Adam confessed his love for Alexander’s wife, Elizabeth, a love they both shared and cherished all their lives. After Alexander’s death in 1825, Prince Adam turned away from Russia and participated in the Polish uprising of 1831. By the time Prince Adam Czartoryski died in France, in 1861, an uncrowned King of Poland in exile, his Parisian residence, Hôtel Lambert, had become a center of political and artistic life. This is where Frédéric Chopin often gave his concerts and George Sand read from her novels.

Grand Duchess Alexandrine Pavlovna did not hear from Gustav Adolf again. Three years after her grandmother’s death, she married an Austrian Archduke. She died in 1801, at the age of seventeen, giving birth to a stillborn daughter.

Gustav Adolf IV, King of Sweden since 1792, married Frederika of Baden and was forced to abdicate and flee Sweden in 1809 after what was considered an inept and erratic rule.

Constantine, who was once meant to rule Constantinople as the Emperor of the New Byzantium, continued to abuse his wife, Anna Fyodorovna, until, in 1799, she fled from him. In spite of many efforts to reconcile the two, Anna (who assumed her maiden name, Juliane Henriette Ulrike of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) refused to return to Russia. She lived out her life in Germany as a divorced woman.

Constantine married again, a Polish commoner, Joanna Grudzinska. Alexander made him the Governor of Poland, and he lived in Warsaw, where Chopin was often brought to him at night to play the piano, and thus quiet his notorious rages. He died in 1831.

Queenie, or Anna Stepanovna Protasova, remained at court long after Catherine’s death, a colorful and beloved presence. She became Maria Fyodorovna’s confidante and offered her support in the difficult years after Paul’s murder. Queenie died in 1826 at the age of eighty-one.

Vishka, or Maria Savishna Perekusikhina, Catherine’s attendant and one of her many spies, died in 1826.

To the memory of my mother

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Empress of the Night
, even though it is a work of fiction, could not have been written without existing books on Catherine the Great, and I am much indebted to their authors, alive and dead.

Douglas Smith edited and translated
Love & Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin
(Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), a fascinating account of the Empress’s relationship with the man who had been the greatest love of her life. I have used numerous expressions and phrases from Catherine’s letters to Potemkin and his responses to her throughout the novel. Equally compelling and rich in details is Sebag Montefiore’s biography
Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin
(St. Martin’s Press, 2000).

The report that the fictional Catherine reads on the relationship between Grand Duke Alexander and Prince Adam Czartoryski is based on Prince Adam’s published memoirs:
Pamietniki i memorialy polityczne 1776–1809
(
Memoirs and political treatises 1776–1809
) (Warsaw, 1986).

Always in the background as I wrote this novel were many biographies of the last Russian Empress. The latest two, Virginia Rounding’s
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power
(St. Martin’s Press, 2006) and Robert Massie’s
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
(Random House, 2011) were most influential, as well as Kazimierz Waliszewski’s nineteenth-century accounts of Catherine and her son Paul.

My editors, Kate Miciak at Random House Publishing Group in the
United States and Nita Pronovost at Doubleday Canada, have been invaluable in their help and guidance. I am indebted to their astute insights, guidance, and sharp eyes and immensely grateful for the time they have given me. I’d also like to acknowledge the tireless help and support of my agent, Helen Heller, and my husband, Zbigniew Stachniak.

Without their help, this book would not have come into being.

BY EVA STACHNIAK

Empress of the Night

The Winter Palace

Garden of Venus

Necessary Lies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E
VA
S
TACHNIAK
was born in Wroclaw, Poland. She moved to Canada in 1981 and has worked for Radio Canada International and Sheridan College, where she taught English and humanities. Her first short story, “Marble Heroes,” was published by
The Antigonish Review
in 1994, and her debut novel,
Necessary Lies
, won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2000. She is also the author of
Garden of Venus
and
The Winter Palace
, a novel of Catherine the Great, which has become an international bestseller. She lives in Toronto.