Sex with the Queen (35 page)

When Orlov pressed her to marry him, Catherine must have seriously considered his proposal. She sent an emissary to Alexei Razumovsky, the late Empress Elizabeth’s lover and reputed hus-band, seeking a precedent for a Russian empress to marry se-cretly. When questioned, Razumovsky opened a chest, took out a parchment scroll tied with a faded pink ribbon, and tossed it into the fire. “No,” he said softly. “There is no proof. Say that to our gracious sovereign.”43

Catherine, a student of history, found herself in the uneasy position of Mary Queen of Scots two centuries earlier. Though not directly involved in the murder of her idiot husband, Henry 1 5 8

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

Darnley, soon thereafter Mary married his murderer, James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell—who some said had been her lover—and the resulting uproar lost her the throne. Taking her cue from history, Catherine refused to marry Orlov.

One evening at a dinner party at the Hermitage Palace, Gre-gory Potemkin appeared. Catherine recognized him instantly.

She had been secretly watching over his career for years since that exhilarating day when he had presented her with the sword knot.

Though tall, vain, and authoritative like Orlov, Potemkin had less regular features. His wide slanting eyes and full sensual lips gave him a slightly Asian look. Hearing of Potemkin’s talent for mimicry, she asked him to imitate someone, and he mimicked her own guttural German accent. The guests were appalled at his boldness, but Catherine laughed heartily. In talking to him she discovered that he was highly educated, deeply religious, and po-litically brilliant. She enjoyed his conversation so much that the Orlovs became jealous. Potemkin disappeared.

Though Gregory Orlov still reigned supreme, gradually Catherine became aware that he was tiring of her as a woman. His lovemaking was no longer a pleasure but a boring duty with a woman grown heavy and middle-aged. His forceful taking of her had made her feel fresh and young again every night. But now the ardor had vanished, the ravishing had become mechanical groping in the dark.

The truth was that Orlov had fallen deeply in love with his young cousin. At forty-three, for the first time, Catherine felt she was growing old. Youth was slipping through her fingers like water, and even with the power of the empress of all the Russias, she could not hold on to it. All her wealth and majesty, her daz-zling intellect and steamy sexual passion could not compare with the soft budding charms of a fourteen-year-old.

Catherine was not one to scold and reproach. When peace talks with Turkey were required in the summer of 1772, she sent Orlov as her representative in a coat embroidered with a million rubles’ worth of diamonds. Glinting in the sunshine, he left.

“I cannot live one day without love,” she wrote.44 And now, with Orlov gone, she cast about court for a replacement. Her e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 5 9

glance fell on Alexander Vasilchikov, a good-looking twenty-eight-year-old with excellent manners. He was sweet and mod-est, with beautiful black eyes and a sensual mouth. Sensing the empress’s interest in the young man, Orlov’s enemies took ad-vantage of his absence to push Vasilchikov into the imperial bed.

Soon the young man was showered with valuable presents. By August he had been made gentleman-in-waiting. By September he was aide-de-camp and had moved into Orlov’s former rooms adjoining those of the empress. Courtiers were amazed that this quiet mouse of a man had replaced the magnificent Orlov. Most thought that the moment Orlov returned from his mission, the

“nonentity,” as he was called, would disappear in an hour.

When Gregory Orlov heard that his enemies had placed an-other man in the empress’s bed, he came thundering back to St.

Petersburg in a black rage. But Catherine, rather than taking back the man who had tormented her with his infidelities, bribed him to go away. She gave him one hundred thousand rubles outright and an annual pension of one hundred fifty thousand; the Marble Palace, which was under construction; the use of all palaces outside St. Petersburg until his own was com-pleted; and ten thousand serfs from the crown. In addition, she gave him all the furniture and paintings from his apartments in the Winter Palace, the Sèvres dinner service for one hundred guests that she had ordered from France the year before, and an-other dinner service in heavy silver.

As all expected, Vasilchikov did not last long. His perfor-mance in bed was evidently satisfactory, yet his intellect was lim-ited and his conversation dull. One contemporary described him as having his “head stuffed with hay.”45 Catherine was so-phisticated, cultured, and witty and needed a lover with whom she could discuss politics, art, and theology. Poor Vasilchikov seemed to have no opinions at all on these subjects. He grew peevish, felt himself outmatched, and claimed to be ill. “I’m just a little whore,” he sniffed, clutching at imaginary pains in his chest.46

In 1773 Catherine recalled Orlov to court but refused to take him back into her bed. Frederick the Great, never one to mince 1 6 0

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

words, reported that Gregory Orlov had returned to all his for-mer offices “except that of fucking. It is a terrible business when the prick and the cunt decide the interests of Europe.”47

By late 1773 the empress had admitted that Vasilchikov “bores me to tears.”48 She couldn’t stop thinking of the fearless Potemkin, now a general fighting on the Danube. There had al-ways been a sizzling chemistry between them, but the time had never been right to call him to her bed. On his periodic visits to St. Petersburg, upon encountering Catherine, Potemkin would drop to his knees, ardently kiss her hands, and openly declare his passion for her. The empress chuckled at these displays; courtiers hated him for his galling presumption.

Potemkin was, perhaps, the only man in the world who was Catherine’s equal physically and intellectually. Well over six feet tall, he had a broad chest and powerful shoulders. His thick, un-kempt tawny hair gave him a leonine appearance. Fearless, flam-boyant, and easily bored, Potemkin had a brash genius, a primitive brilliance.

But he was no longer the handsome lithe soldier who had pre-sented the brand-new empress with a sword knot. An infection had rendered his left eye clouded and blind and, though he was sensitive about it, he never bothered to wear a patch. Still power-fully built, there was a little too much swash in his buckle. Yet neither the disfigurement of his face nor the swelling of his physique diminished the man’s attractions. Potemkin was a raw force of nature against which it was futile to fight. His magnetism engulfed the most crowded ballroom. Women threw themselves into his burly arms. He was the man every woman wanted to sleep with. He was the man other men wanted to be, or to kill, or both.

But if his looks had deteriorated in the intervening decade, so had those of the empress. She looked older than her forty-four years, her waist had thickened, and her hair had turned gray. But like Potemkin, she was a force to be reckoned with and not only because she wore a crown. Her sparkling wit had, over the years, increased its luster. Her self-confidence was equal to if not sur-passing his. Her physical passions would forever remain e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 6 1

untouched by time, as would his. And like him, she had the face of a handsome middle-aged man.

Now, at the age of thirty-four, Potemkin received a letter from the empress, ordering him back to St. Petersburg “for the purpose of the confirmation of my feelings for you.”49 He had been waiting eleven years for this letter. But when Potemkin ar-rived in St. Petersburg eager to take up the appointment of em-press’s lover, he was furious to find Vasilchikov still sulking in the official paramour’s apartments. The truth was, Catherine hesitated to install Potemkin as her favorite with all the perquisites of wealth and power. Perhaps she instinctively felt that Potemkin would be unstoppable once unleashed. A tower-ing tidal wave, roaring toward shore, cannot be persuaded to turn back to sea. A thundering volcano, heaving burning ash and molten lava down the mountainside, does not reconsider and pull back. Nor would there be any half measures with that other oversized natural wonder, Gregory Potemkin.

The Orlovs, in particular, felt threatened by Potemkin as they never had by Vasilchikov. Potemkin, once rooted in the palace, would never permit himself to be dislodged. The tempestuous general threatened to upend the entire existing power structure at court.

One day Gregory Orlov was descending a staircase in the palace when he chanced to meet Potemkin coming up. Gaily, Potemkin asked Orlov whether there was any news at court.

Orlov replied, “Nothing very much, except that you are coming up and I am going down.”50

Potemkin, whose many virtues did not include patience, stormed and raged for Catherine to dismiss the mediocre Vasilchikov. Potemkin finally ran off to a monastery, vowing never to return until the young man was banished from the palace. The empress yielded and Potemkin returned. Buckling under the weight of valuable presents, pensions, and honors, Vasilchikov retired grudgingly to his new mansion and whined about his dismissal for decades to anyone who would listen.

With Vasilchikov gone, the empress could now focus exclu-sively on Potemkin. Grisha, she called him, a nickname for Gre-1 6 2

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n