I looked up. ‘Does Christine hate her bridegroom, The Tadpole?’
‘Worse. She is full of contempt for him. No man can overcome that.’
‘And the Tsarina?’
‘She pushes for a speedy wedding as she wants another heir. That is the main reason for Christine’s elevation.’
‘So why are you still here?’ I asked Lestocq, sitting up. Alexis’ hands stopped caressing my bare feet. ‘Versailles must have found better investments than me?’
‘No. I convinced them to keep going with you. Not all is lost.’
‘In what way?’
Lestocq eyed his Tarot cards. The sight of them made me shiver. He frowned. ‘The country is unstable.’
‘How so?’
‘There was an uprising in Ukraine. A man there pretended to be your half-brother Alexey. The desperate people believed him, calling for a ruler with Russian blood. Villages emptied as he went by. When de Biron heard of it, he had the man impaled together with all his followers. Hundreds, if not thousands of them. A forest of bleeding bodies, dying on the ungreased stake. Anna Ivanovna in her clemency pardoned his village but razed the houses in midwinter.’
‘Her clemency!’ Truly Russia had fallen prey to wolves.
Lestocq walked over to the window, pulling back the lined Dutch brocade curtains. I winced at the draught and squinted through the dim, dirty light outside. ‘At least her Tsarina’s clemency is also keeping her handymen busy. Come and look, Tsarevna,’ Lestocq said. To my surprise Alexis rose and reached out his hand, ‘Yes. Do come and look, Lizenka. It’s a sight to behold.’
The pale sun bounced off the snowdrifts, its rays magnified. Amongst the Neva’s waves frozen in mid-ripple, where ships’ hulls rose like gigantic skeletons from the white surface, the ice-wedding was in full preparation. Men, horses, oxen and donkey carts were dragging thousands of blocks of ice up towards the Winter Palace. Guards shouted at them as they crawled like ants, their bodies in stark contrast to the bluish ice. Each block was cut like the next, to precise measurements; cranes stacked them on top of each other. Serfs poured water over the growing walls, making the glittering edifice look as if it was hewn from a single glassy piece of ice. They were a good ninety feet long and at least thirty feet high.
‘What are they building?’ I asked.
‘An ice palace. It costs a thousand roubles a square arshin. Small change given the scale of Christine’s marriage celebrations. She is the Tsesarevna Anna Leopoldovna after all. The Tsarina has loosened all purse-strings.’
‘But Christine and Anthony are not actually getting married in there?’
‘No.’ Lestocq chuckled, a short and joyless sound. ‘But Prince Alexis Dolgoruky is. He will be freed from his cage to wed the Tsarina’s Kalmuck dwarf, Buzhenina.’
‘Buzhenina. Isn’t that the name of a recipe?’
‘The Tsarina’s favourite stew of roast pork with spiced vinegar and onion sauce, to be precise. Once they are done, it will be Christine’s turn.’
As the Austrian Emperor in Vienna was the highest-ranking relative of Christine’s groom Prince Anthony of Brunswick, his ambassador, the Marquis de Botta, formally asked for her hand in marriage. At the ceremony, fresh tears ruined the paint on her face. She covered her mouth in disgust when Anthony pranced into the room, his white satin suit embroidered with gold, long fair hair curled with tongs like a girl’s. As Anna made them exchange rings, Christine shook with rage, her eyes constantly seeking Julie’s. I understood and pitied her: she was truly in love. Yet this marriage was the price to be paid for her adoption and elevation to Anna Leopoldovna Romanova, Tsesarevna of All the Russias.
Alexis and I followed the Tsarina’s retinue through the Ice Palace: Anna Ivanovna pointed out this and that, delighting in the sheer beauty of the building, its finesse and stunning details. A life-size elephant hewn from ice greeted us, spouting a twenty-four-foot jet of water. At night-time this would be changed to petroleum and set aflame. As I walked around the sculpture, a horrid sound scared the wits out of me – I jumped, but Alexis caught me, laughing: a man blowing a trumpet sat inside the frozen beast. The palace’s façade was marbled in green paint, and at either end rose thirty-foot trees, hewn from ice and painted to look like the real thing – down to the ice birds nesting in their branches. Above the elaborately carved entrance, a dozen fat little angels floated. De Biron referred to them as putti, looking knowledgeable and pretending to speak Italian. Inside, windowpanes fashioned from slivers of sheet ice allowed the wan daylight to flood this wonder.
‘Where shall we go first?’ Alexis asked, in awe, breath clouding from his lips. The Imperial retinue had moved on without us and we were like children discovering a new world.
‘How about here?’ I laughed. ‘It must be a drawing-room.’ An ornate ice table surrounded by a dozen ice chairs was topped by an ice clock, glassy enough to show its works. Frozen to the surface of the table lay real cards and counters. Shelves carried ice books; a sideboard groaned with ice replicas of dishes from all over the world, painted in their natural tint, next to a tea service, goblets and glasses, all shiny and frozen.
‘What is upstairs, do you think?’ Alexis pulled his fur coat tighter.
‘The bedroom, I suppose.’ I thought of Alexis Dolgoruky: was his fate of being a figure of utter ridicule truly better than his family’s demise in Beresov?
‘Come,’ Alexis said, pulling me up the vast ice staircase to the marital chamber where Dolgoruky would bed his dwarf tonight, the Tsarina and her court watching, roaring with laughter. We saw an elaborately carved and curtained bed. Even a nightcap had been chiselled with icy precision; on a stool I spotted two pairs of glossy, frosty slippers. In the fireplace opposite, ice logs were waiting to be set alight using petroleum, as were ice-sculpted candlesticks. Above a dressing table’s perfectly copied bottles and jars hung a splendid mirror of silvery ice, reflecting our astonished faces.
Prince Anthony of Brunswick arrived at the cathedral with pomp and ceremony, accompanied by the de Biron family: ten footmen in livery walked ahead and behind them, while Moors dressed in black velvet, wearing brilliantly coloured feathers in their silk turbans, ran alongside. When Christine stepped from her carriage, the grey sea of watchful, ragged people fell silent, staring at the spectacle. They looked like the walking dead: protruding jawlines, bodies skeletal, hungry eyes popping with disbelief from dark sockets. The bride entered the cathedral as reluctantly as if she mounted a scaffold, wearing a silver dress with a stomacher sparkling with diamonds. An exquisite gemstone-encrusted coronet was secured upon her shiny, dark Ivanovna curls. While Count Ostermann sat in the Imperial Loge, Christine’s lover Julie von Mengden had been told to excuse herself on health grounds.
At the Ice Palace, in the meantime, riotous mirth and outrageous joy foamed over like a shaken Champagne bottle. Three hundred couples from all over Russia – Finns, Lapps, Kirgiz, Bashkirs, Kalmucks, Tartars, Cossacks, Samoyeds and many more – had gathered to welcome Dolgoruky and his bride, who sat perched on the back of a real elephant. After a dinner in de Biron’s riding school – during which Dolgoruky was violently sick, as by now he was only used to his bird-diet of seeds, grains and the odd worm – candles were lit inside the Ice Palace. It shone like a giant lantern of terrifying beauty. The prince and his new princess were put to bed – Dolgoruky groping the Kalmuck woman Buzhenina, who lay back obediently – as the ice elephant roared and the guests and the court howled with laughter. The couple only survived the night because Buzhenina, thinking on her feet, traded her string of pearls for one of the guards’ goatskin coats.
Christine fled her wedding bed, appalled by Anthony’s clammy hands and clumsy, rough and tumble attentions. Instead, she spent the first night of her married life in Julie’s rooms, where Count Lynar joined them. When Anna heard about this, she slapped Christine so hard, and so many times, that the girl cowered at her feet, covering her head and begging for mercy. Maja gleefully spread word of it, taking reve
nge on Christine for years of unceasing scorn and unkindness.
‘The Empire needs an heir,’ Anna had screeched, yanking up Christine’s head by the hair, scaring the girl witless. ‘Spread your thighs. More is not required of you.’
The next evening, Prince Anthony was led into Christine’s bedroom for all to see. A couple of hours into the night, Julie von Mengden escorted him away, letting Christine melt into her and Count Lynar’s arms. Soon afterwards, my cousin’s pregnancy was announced.
Come the month of May, the Ice Palace had melted away. By now the Tsarina could hardly move for pain. She had her bed placed by the window, taking aim from there; furious at her failing strength, she shot whatever or whomever she could.
In late August, Christine was delivered of a son, Prince Ivan, an uncommonly fair and handsome boy. De Biron pretended to be overjoyed, emptying all the coins he had about him into the messenger’s hat. I pawned some exquisite Meissen I found in the Summer Palace’s pantry to buy Ivan a present, praying for his health and strength at my little altar on the morning of his baptism. When I was admitted to his nursery before his Christening, it took but one look for me to be smitten.
‘How can anything be so perfect as you?’ I cooed, delighted by the way his fingers clasped mine and the inquisitive expression in his huge blue eyes. I felt like choking. ‘May I?’ I asked pleadingly and reached out for him before I could help myself.
Christine looked at Julie von Mengden, who had been appointed Imperial nurse; she in turn checked with Ostermann, who shrugged. The wet-nurse handed me the infant from his solid golden cradle, which was lined in black fox fur.
‘Oh!’ I gasped, overcome by this sweetest possible weight in my arms. Instinctively, I rocked him, and he gave a little sound of delight, an adorable chuckle, that bowled me over. I rocked him a bit more and sought for his little feet beneath his swaddling, tickling them. He squealed, a sound that burst from him like a soap bubble in the bath. His smile of purest joy filled the deep void inside me.
I felt tears welling up as I looked around. ‘God, I could spend my days doing this.’
While Christine smiled at me for once, Ostermann nodded to Julie. She stepped up and took Ivan from me. ‘Good that you know what you are missing, Tsarevna,’ the Vice-Chancellor said.
My adoration for Ivan could not hide the bitter truth: ‘His birth as official heir to Christine – or the Tsesarevna Anna Leopoldovna, as I have to call her in my dispatches to Versailles, though that makes my quill curl in disgust – removes you not once, but twice and thrice, and thus forever, from the Russian succession,’ Lestocq said darkly, seeing the prospect of the Palace revolution he had hoped for since joining my service slipping inexorably further away.
‘He is my family!’ I said, though I reeled from Lestocq’s warning. He was right: Russia was doomed to be ruled by Tsars of German blood. But I had taken Ostermann’s bait: love for Ivan buried itself in my heart with barbed hooks.
85
It was a stormy night shortly after Ivan’s birth in the ninth year of Anna’s reign. There had been no golden autumn, no abundant harvest to fill the Russian barns, only rage as nature preyed on people’s distress. Winds whipped across the city’s prospects, making the Neva flood the quays. Once they had retreated St Petersburg smelled like a sea chest flung open after years stashed in a ship’s hull.
A raging thunderstorm almost drowned out the sound of fists hammering against the doors of the Summer Palace. It was too late for visitors. We sat by the fire, sipping hot, spicy chai, which Alexis had laced with more than one shot of vodka, listening to a story that Lestocq read to us. Schwartz plucked at his violin-cello’s strings. Our companionship felt like a small flame burning in the face of darkness.
‘Who can that be?’ I looked up, my heart pounding.
The knocking resumed, purposeful and determined. Schwartz’s fingers hovered on his strings. Lestocq halted mid-sentence. Alexis rose. ‘Let me see who it is, shall I?’ he said.
I followed him. Ever since I had felt General Ushakov’s flinty gaze on me, I had been dreading just such a moment. Uncertainty was a punishment in itself, expertly applied by Ostermann.
Only Alexis’ strength of spirit and my belief in God’s will still anchored me.
‘Don’t face them alone,’ I insisted, knowing the brutality of Ushakov’s men: I could negotiate Alexis’ safety if I gave myself up.
In the freezing corridor the draught almost snuffed out my light. I held my breath as Alexis unlatched and drew the bolt. The door opened with a whine. I raised the light, letting its feeble glow contest the darkness, rain and cold. I saw nothing – but heard quiet laughter.
‘Down here, Tsarevna.’ D’Acosta looked up at me, his eyes sad. He looked as wrinkled as a pair of unused bellows; clearly, he had not shaved for days. White whiskers sprouted above his lip to match his snowy, thick curls.
‘D’Acosta!’ I opened the door wider. ‘Is everything all right with the Tsarina?’
‘Yes, Her Majesty lives.’ He turned his head as if to summon a companion. Into the light stepped Maja. Her white hair was undone and spread like a spider’s web over the coarse, dark woollen shawl that had been hastily looped around her shoulders. Behind them a hired carriage disappeared into the darkness, leaving d’Acosta and Maja stranded.
‘Come in,’ I said, opening my door wide. Hospitality was sacred, even if I was being spied on more than ever these days. What could Maja, the Tsarina’s most trusted aide, want here?
‘God bless you, Tsarevna,’ she cried, and slid in, clutching a bundle.
‘What has happened?’
D’ Acosta shook himself as a dog might after a wet evening walk. He looked to be in dire need of a drink. ‘The Tsarina has taken Ivan away from his mother. The boy is to be raised by her. Christine may see her son for five minutes only every week, and never on her own. I dislike the Tsesarevna but the poor woman was beside herself, screaming and scratching the soldiers who came to collect the infant. It took both Lynar and von Mengden to prevent her from harming herself or the boy. They convinced her to relent. Any refusal would have looked as if she doubted the Tsarina’s capacity as a mother. Yet Christine made one condition.’
‘Which was?’ I asked.
D’Acosta touched Maja’s arm. ‘Forgive me, my friend. But Christine said, “My son is never to see the monster Maja.”’
The servant’s face melted into a mask of misery. ‘After all I have done for them! My mistress cast me out there and then. I was not even allowed to hold the baby once. De Biron, the swine, even kept the bag of gold the Tsarina wanted to give me,’ she cried. ‘I don’t know where to turn. You have always been good to me, Tsarevna Elizabeth. Have a heart… ’
‘She is not to enter the palace ever again,’ d’Acosta added while I hesitated.
‘You may both stay,’ I decided. ‘Take your pick of the maids’ chambers close to the kitchen, they are the warmest. All my staff has left so you may have a different room every night of the week. I can’t afford to pay you, but I can at least feed and house you.’
‘I would not have expected anything else. God bless you, Tsarevna.’ Maja fell to her knees, kissing my fingers. I felt pity for her, but also for Christine, who had suffered through long hours of labour only to have little Ivan taken from her. She had been but a means to an end; Anna would raise Ivan as her own son, the true heir to the Empire.
‘Are you sure that you are doing the right thing?’ Alexis asked me, his voice hushed, when d’Acosta walked Maja away to the kitchens.
In the following weeks, Ostermann refused to leave his house, claiming his gout was worse than ever, making him unable to move. It was a sign of great change and danger looming ahead. A month later, Anna Ivanovna’s condition worsened such that Ostermann had himself carried to the Winter Palace for a meeting with de Biron in the Tsarina’s antechamber. Anna Ivanovna was in such pain and screaming so loudly that the men could hardly hear themselves discussing the future of the Empire. Tw
enty-four hours passed without her being able to relieve herself. She lay bloated, writhing in agony. When de Biron finally sent the Imperial sled to take me to my last audience with her, Maja saw me off, her pale face blending with the empty sky. ‘Take leave for me, too. The Tsarina is the last of My Lady the Tsaritsa Praskovia’s daughters. I always kept my promise to guard them well for her. It was the Tsarina who sent me away.’
86
Tsarina Anna Ivanovna died on a wet October evening in 1740.
Eight horses carried me through a moonless St Petersburg night. The palace was hushed yet I sensed onlookers lurking everywhere. Three times over I had witnessed a Tsar dying; Russia was on its knees, praying. Even the city’s bells lay silent, waiting. The Tsarina’s rooms were filled with soldiers, government officials and nobles of every rank. In his cage, Dolgoruky sat tightly gagged; eyes bulging, cheeks suffused, unable to crow. His arms, too, were bound, so that he would not flap them. Breathing close to Anna Ivanovna’s bedstead left me gasping: the stench of sweat, pus and gangrene was suffocating. I silently prayed, touching the icon of St Nicholas at my throat.
The Tsarina lay in state well before her death, wearing a white lace dressing-gown. Despite being so close to her end, she was adorned with jewels – the gems catching the candlelight, shining in a ghostly nimbus. ‘Lizenka,’ she whispered to me, attempting a smile. I dropped to my knees as Christine entered the chamber, her hair loose, wearing a velvet dressing-gown. Since Ivan had been taken away, she refused to dress and spent hours in bed, reading soppy novels and making love with either Julie or Lynar: it was the talk of town.
Christine sank down on Anna’s far side, taking her aunt’s other hand. She squeezed the fingers as hard as she could, grinding the rings painfully into the Tsarina’s swollen flesh. There was a look of sheer hatred in her dark eyes.
The Tsarina's Daughter Page 41