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For Liz and Brett
Prologue
ST. PETERSBURG
1837
A man says he will die for you. A woman is taught to lower her gaze and blush before hiding once more behind a silken fan. Men are given to self-aggrandizement, while women flatter egos and keep men tied to this earth. Such is the way of the world, or so I was taught in the days before I gained a reputation as the villain of St. Petersburg.
I know better now.
When a man declares he will die for you, sometimes a woman must take him at his word. For to allow one’s husband to perish on the field of honor is a shameful affair, worse even than murdering him by your own hand.
* * *
The solemn men who gather at our flat fall silent as my husband draws his final breath. A prickly chill, like the first wave of a fever, washes over me as I realize my husband is gone. The sorrow tightens my chest and clamps down, squeezing until I think my body will snap in two. I sway on my feet and believe I will faint. Only the invisible force of my will keeps me upright. Dark blood still seeps from his abdomen and a sharp metallic scent clings to the air.
For two days my husband had been one of the waking dead, suffering a cruel and lingering death. Though I was not present at the duel where he fought to defend my honor, the image of Alexander collapsing, his blood staining the snow crimson, haunts my every thought. I have slid into despair, veering between hysteria and hopelessness, while Alexander’s wound festered and his once vibrant face distorted with agony.
His friends stand in a semicircle around his body, backs erect, mouths set in stern lines, and expressions stoic even as their eyes dampen with tears.
“What a waste,” I hear one of them mutter. “A genius lost over a woman.”
The words echo in my head. I was the wife of a distinguished man of letters, the greatest in our land, and I let his life slip through my fingers. These men suppose I care only for material comforts and romantic diversions and don’t believe I possess the wits about me to appreciate my husband’s talent. Rumormongers have convinced them I love the empty-headed Georges d’Anthès or have fallen prey to the advances of our iron-jawed tsar. They consider my behavior traitorous, as terrible in its own way as if I had joined the ranks of the Napoleonic soldiers who once threatened our very heartland.
I will confess to basking too long in the attention of Georges and even the tsar himself, yet I am no Jezebel, merely human, as vulnerable to flattery as any other creature. Much as I may wish to do so, I cannot change the past. The damage is done. A fresh wave of tears threatens and subsides, as though nothing remains inside me to expel. I wonder how long I will live with the torment of my guilt and the censure of those who claim to love my husband.
At the moment I feel lowest, I hear faint voices below our flat call Alexander’s name, and I tear myself away from the death mask that was once my husband’s face. When I cross the room to stand at the window, the world outside blurs, the ice-encrusted buildings blending with the storm-clouded sky. My spectacles are in a beaded reticule hanging at my side. I place them on the bridge of my nose.
People have congregated outside in overcoats and fur hats and cloaks dusted with snow, holding candles with fragile flames that twist in the wind. I quickly lose count of the number of admirers, a hundred perhaps. They wave copies of Alexander’s works; I spot Evgeny Onegin and an edition of his Russian fairy tales in verse. One of the women has affixed a jeweled pendant to the scarf around her throat, a portrait of Alexander placed in the center. A few mourners catch sight of me at the window, and I wonder if I should withdraw and return to my private grief, but my feet will not budge. Women call my name in high, sweet voices. To my surprise, they aren’t angry. They don’t consider me a villain, but a gatekeeper: the guardian of my husband’s works and memory.
As I watch the women shield their flickering tapers with small, mitten-clad hands, I wonder if there might yet be time to recast my role in this drama, to make a sacrifice and prove my worth. I must ensure Alexander’s words remain freely available to the people who gather below our flat in the snow. I may have failed my husband in life, but in death, I will ensure he is never forgotten.
My vision mists with tears and my shoulders tremble, but I now cling to a bittersweet hope. I make a silent vow that the world shall know the truth of our story, the power Alexander and I held over one another. It may not have the happy ending of a fairy tale, but deep in my heart I know it is a tale of true love.
One
MOSCOW
DECEMBER 1828
I didn’t want to attend the dance master’s ball that night. If my sisters hadn’t insisted, I never would have met the greatest poet in Russia, and my life might have taken a different course altogether.
Admission to the ball cost five rubles each, and Mother had made a grand show of dispensing the needed coin. While my sisters spritzed one another with the lavender-scented perfume our aunt procured on a recent trip to France, I cast a longing look at the mahogany writing table, blemished with age, in the opposite corner of our sitting room. There I kept my leather-bound notebook, feather quill, and embossed inkwell atop red linen embroidered with curving black arabesques. Though always in need of a sturdy book to prop a broken leg in place, this table was my favorite spot in the house and certainly preferable to the bedroom I shared with my sisters. Over the winter holidays, I had reviewed my French translations and an essay on the history of Russian poetry. I wished to spend the evening engrossed in that work.
Instead, I was expected to make myself pretty and amicable for the benefit of strangers, gentlemen I would not even truly see. My vision compromised by shortsightedness, I could hope to gain no more than fuzzy impressions of their faces from a distance, and would need to wait until they drew near in order to determine whether or not they were handsome. Tonight, my spectacles remained safely encased in their fabric cover on the writing table. Mother might allow for a fashionably discreet lorgnette at the ballet, but the last time I tried to wear spectacles outside the house, she told me I looked like a man and threatened to grind the lenses under the heel of her boot.
Ekaterina and Azya pushed in front of me, leaned in closer to our looking glass, and pinched their cheeks to make them glow. Mother sat before the dying fire in the hearth, perched in her favorite armchair—generously proportioned rosewood with worn floral cushions frayed at the edges. The quivering shadows made her high cheekbones appear even more severe than usual. Though busy mending a pair of stockings, she caught me gazing at my writing table. I turned away quickly, as though I’d been caught staring at a clandestine lover like some swooning girl in a gothic romance.
Slowly, Mother set her yarn back in her wicker sewing basket and rose to her full height. Dressed in gloomy black from head to foot, with her hair pulled under an old bonnet, she towered over us. When she wasn’t speaking, she appeared
more a statue than a living being. She approached the looking glass where my sisters and I had gathered.
“I trust you will be on your best behavior.” Mother reached out to adjust my cream-colored cambric gown, revealing more of my décolletage. I was sixteen, hardly a spinster, but the need for a husband had been made clear since I had my first monthly cycle three years earlier. “And I trust you will display every courtesy to the gentlemen present.”
I caught Mother’s judgmental eye in the mirror before I realized I’d been biting my lower lip, a habit I had tried and failed to break. I forced a smile.
“Natalya still looks grim as a constipated granny.” Ekaterina’s rectangular face had an honest, salt-of-the-earth quality that might have been appealing had she a more pleasant manner.
“This will cheer Natalya … and attract an eligible gentleman!” Giggling, Azya waved a tiara crafted of faux gold in the air. Her merry pink face flushed with pride, she placed it over my hair, centering it on my forehead. Her wide-spaced, light brown eyes were tender as she worked. “Like Venus herself.”
I moved closer to the looking glass, squinting to better see my reflection, the pale contours of my face and the glint of gold against my dark auburn hair, which had been pulled back into a loose bun with curls framing my face.
“Quite suitable,” Mother said in her husky voice. “You should thank your sister for her generosity. She could have kept the bauble for herself.”
“Or given it to me.” I couldn’t quite see Ekaterina’s expression, but her tone sounded surly enough.
“Jealousy is hardly becoming,” Mother warned my sister. “Now off with you.”
We headed in a line to the foyer, where our pelisses hung neatly on hooks by the door. Outside, it was snowing, and I would have much preferred an overcoat, as men wore. We would freeze, but I supposed this small sacrifice well worth the charming picture we would create in our snug, fur-lined garments.
Our three brothers, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty, lined up by the door, pretending to be footmen. As we approached the gabled entranceway, their ruddy features took on garishly pompous expressions. The eldest, Dmitry, played the charade best, but then God had granted him a handsome face and blond hair, an anomaly in our family, and he did most everything best. Our middle brother, Ivan, was also well formed, though his pale forehead loomed too prominently even in the dull lamp light. Little Sergey, long since deemed the runt of the litter, had already gone plump, though sweet-faced enough if you could tolerate his habit of holding one hand to his mouth and blowing hard into it to imitate the sound of an old man passing wind. As I stepped around him, Sergey’s eyes crossed and I stuck out my tongue. Unfortunately, while my sisters had remembered to lift their gowns above their ankles, I neglected to do so and stumbled over my own feet.
“You must be more careful, Natalya,” Mother intoned. “And stop squinting or you’ll be wrinkled before your time. All of you, take care you are home by midnight. You wouldn’t want to upset your father.”
Ekaterina and I exchanged looks. For all our disagreements, we united in our poor opinion of our father. How I wished Mother would stop talking about him as though he were still an active presence in our home. One of Ekaterina’s supposed friends had made a catty remark about seeing my father stumble home from a tavern in the Arbat, vomiting on the street as the girl’s family passed by on a sled. To Ekaterina’s credit, she had lunged at the girl and I held her back. When one of our brothers got into a scuffle, Mother’s anger was the raw material of legend and I could only imagine how she might react if one of her girls came home with a blackened eye.
Azya gave a nervous glance in our direction, her face clouded with worry. “We will, Mother.”
“Your behavior in public is a reflection on our family, and your success in society an important step toward securing your futures. Be kind to the gentlemen. After all, one of them might wish to make you his wife.”
Sergey sputtered at that. I tried to kick him, but he was out of reach.
Mother returned to her armchair. Her lazy brown tabby had sprawled on the faded Persian rug before the hearth, hind feet twitching in a dream. She bent down to stroke the cat’s fat stomach and I considered the once proud animal’s willingness to submit to such degradation. As terrified as I felt about going to this ball—and how much I dreaded being evaluated like fresh fruit at a market—staying here forever under Mother’s thumb, soul slowly crushed, would be far worse.
“I shall expect a full report in the morning,” Mother said. “Take advantage of this moment and your beauty. Make your family proud.”
* * *
I’ve heard it said the Christmas season is a magical time in the countryside, with all manner of opportunity for fortune-telling and mischief with comely boys. Living in Moscow, I had not yet experienced such pleasures. Despite my reservations, I hoped the dance master’s ball might mark a change in direction of what often felt like a dull and hopelessly domesticated life.
When my sisters and I entered the ballroom of the mansion, I remembered to hitch my dress to make it easier to walk across the smoothly polished floor. I tried to picture myself as a ballerina gracefully taking the stage, though I knew I’d never have made it as such without my spectacles. “Your face is your fortune, Natalya,” Mother often told me. “That and your figure. Perhaps you have not been blessed with the ability to determine this for yourself, so trust me on the matter.”
I focused on the exquisite surroundings nearest my line of sight, drawing in the woodland scent of pine boughs and holly mingled with the heavy aromas of melting wax, French perfume, and hair pomade. Gilt candelabras lined long side tables heaped with iced sherbets, jewel-toned sugar plums, and delicate Viennese pastries dolloped with frothy cream. A tingling sensation teased the back of my shoulders, and I felt alive with the possibilities of the night. I tapped the modest heels of my satin slippers to the lively tune of a mazurka. On the dance floor, underneath a banner emblazoned with the imperial double-headed eagle, gentlemen lifted their ladies from the floor and turned them with brisk and powerful steps.
All schoolgirls practiced this popular dance with one another, though I had once thought such lessons a waste of time. Now, I nervously eyed the row of men to the side of the floor, turning their heads this way and that, trying to look blasé as they evaluated potential partners, and felt grateful for the instruction. As we made our way farther inside, several heads swiveled. My face grew warm and yet I confess I enjoyed the attention.
Azya looped her arm around mine and stood taller so she could whisper in my ear. “The men are all dressed in elegant brocade evening coats and have the shapeliest legs in their breeches. The women’s dresses are wonderful confections as well, so colorful they make us seem like simple country maids.” She covered her mouth as she emitted a nervous snicker. “We must convince Mother to spend more on our gowns. Oh, but the mansion is decorated so beautifully for Christmas, Natalya! Can you see the tree on the other end of the ballroom?”
I squinted and made out a green pine. Glowing candles in copper holders were fastened to its branches, along with dangling silver trinkets, beaded garlands, and fragile glass balls.
“A tree like the Protestants have in the Prussian lands?” Ekaterina’s head bobbed in distress. “Inappropriate for an Orthodox celebration, if you ask me.”
“Oh hush,” I told her, irritated. “Since when do you care what Protestants do in their lands? I think the tree looks pretty.”
Ekaterina’s cheeks flushed pink. Too pink. I wondered if she hadn’t snuck some rouge from an apothecary.
“And you need to stop acting like her crutch.” Ekaterina turned to Azya. “What would Mother say if she heard you whispering to Natalya like some foreign trickster begging for kopeks? Do you want everyone to know our sister is blind as a mole?”
“I only want her to enjoy the night,” Azya whispered fiercely.
“She’ll enjoy it.” Ekaterina jutted her prominent chin at the tiara. “
With that bauble on her head, the gentlemen will mistake her for some sort of countess. And what does that make us? Her daft ladies-in-waiting?”
“Still preoccupied with the tiara?” I hissed, touching the gold circlet on my forehead. Even I had seen in the looking glass that it flattered my hair, whereas it would have been lost in Ekaterina’s mousy mess of curls. “How would you like it if I threw it at you?”
“You couldn’t hit me if you tried, you blind bat.”
“I can see well enough to hit your giant jaw.”
“You try throwing that thing at me and I’ll pop you in the nose.”
“Ladies, I trust you are all behaving? Your mother asked me to serve as your chaperone and I do want to be able to tell her how admirably you conducted yourselves this evening.”
At the sound of the refined female voice, we pivoted in unison and curtsied. Mother’s half-sister and Ekaterina’s namesake, Aunt Katya, was nearing fifty years of age, but her features retained a softness our mother’s lacked. Her hair was still jet black and her lips so full and rosy that a gentleman young enough to be her son stopped to give her a bold wink. Over the years, Aunt Katya’s looks had served her well; she had a seemingly endless supply of dramatic gowns and expensive jewels to show for her success at court and wore a peacock-blue ball gown with puffed sleeves and richly embroidered gold floral designs at the hem of her full skirt.
“Now, enough of that. Mind your manners.” Aunt Katya tapped the base of her lace-and-gauze fan gently against Azya’s bare shoulder, thin and vulnerable in her slim gown. My sister winced. “I’m sure the gentlemen want the favor of seeing your lovely faces. No kitten fights.”
Azya and Ekaterina quickly righted themselves and searched the room for potential dance partners. I wished I could convince Azya to walk with me to the tree. I wanted to see the decorations up close and gave not one whit if the tradition came from the Protestants. Even without my spectacles, I could tell the tree was divine.
The Lost Season of Love and Snow Page 1