by Jane Feather
Russia was not so consistent when it came to man’s dominion over woman. While it was absolute within the family structure, powerful women, as ruthless in the pursuit of that power as any man, were far from unknown in the political history of that country. Paul Dmitriev, while he would never utter a word of criticism of his empress and would never consider disobeying an imperial command, preferred to consider the presence of a woman on the throne of Russia as an aberration, one hopefully to be concluded on the death of the present empress and the accession of her son.
The image of his barren wife, never far from the forefront of his mind, rose clear before him; accompanying the image was the cold satisfaction that the moment was not now far off when he would be able to exact the penalty for the slights, the defiance, the near-unendurable frustration that somehow she had deprived him of his revenge against the Golitskovs. But he would have that revenge now. In the seclusion of Kaluga, far from imperial eyes, he would teach Sophia Alexeyevna the ways of the Sublime Porte.
On his arrival in St. Petersburg he presented himself immediately to the Winter Palace, where the court was but newly returned and was making preparation for its removal to Czarskoye Selo for August. A disconsolate air hung over those who now found themselves back on the ground, their fairy circle broken, their journey of illusion passed into history.
Catherine greeted her general affably, complimented him on his diplomacy with the Sultan, thanked him generously for his assistance. Then she told him that his wife had desired to visit her grandfather when they passed through Kiev.
“I gave her permission to be gone from us until December, Prince.” The czarina smiled her toothless smile. “I would have no objection if she wished to wait out the winter at Berkholzskoye, but, of course, that is for you to decide.”
“You are most generous to my wife, Madame.” The general bowed, concealing the violent surge of rage at being yet again balked. It was as if there was some conspiracy against him. “I do not think, however, that I will be able to tolerate a separation through the winter.”
“Then you must write and acquaint your wife of your decision,” said the empress blandly. “She will accept her wifely duty without demur.”
“I trust so,” returned the prince, a hint of acid in his voice.
The czarina’s gaze cooled. “Thank you, Prince,” she said, turning back to the papers on her desk, making clear his dismissal.
Four months. He had waited many years for the right combination of circumstances. He could wait another four months.
A strange thing happened after Adam’s departure. Sophie, usually so vital and outgoing, seemed to turn in upon herself, communing silently and constantly with the life burgeoning within. Her body, as if responding to the removal of the need for concealment, grew round in its fruitfulness. The dark eyes contained a serene smile, and she moved with measured pace, graceful as always, but with a smoothness to her step instead of the spring of the past.
Golitskov found her an abstracted companion, and whenever he attempted to broach the subject of selecting a family for the unborn, she looked at him as if he spoke a language she did not understand and changed the topic. It did not bode well, he thought with some apprehension, but she would have Adam, who, if anybody could, would be able to help her through the dire necessity of maternal separation.
Throughout the heat of August, she sat beneath the trees with a busily sewing Tanya, or walked slowly by the river. It was as if her mind were emptied of all fear, all memory, all thoughts of the future, and she grew round and tranquil in her waiting, surrounded by women who preserved her peace with their own knowledge of the processes by which body and mind prepare themselves for the delivery and nurturing of a new life.
It was late on a night in early September when Adam returned to Berkholzskoye. For the last few miles he had not been able to contain the surging panic that something had gone amiss in the weeks of his absence, that he would find Sophie…Images of Eva plagued him. Eva bleeding, so much blood, so red, so impossible to staunch. Her face graying as the blood ran from her, pooling beneath her. In all his years of soldiering he did not think he had seen so much blood spilling from one body….
The house gleamed in the distance, pale in the moonlight. He touched spur to his horse, in the dread conviction that ahead lay only despair and horror. So vivid was his certainty that when Gregory, drawing back the bolts on the great front door, greeted him calmly he could not believe the watchman’s statement that all was well with everyone in the house.
“Adam! I thought when I heard such tempestuous hoofbeats beneath my window that it must be you.” Prince Golitskov, in dressing gown and nightcap, came down the stairs. “Come into the library. Gregory shall find you some supper. I am sure Anna will have left a tasty dish or two in the pantry.” Nodding pleasantly, he led the way down the stone-flagged corridor.
“Sophie…?” Adam said, his haste and alarm sounding in the one-word question.
“She is very well,” the old prince reassured him. “I must say, I shall be glad of your company. The house has come to resemble a gynaeceum in recent weeks; I feel an interloper most of the time.” He laughed, but he was not entirely humorous. “I am surprised Sophie did not hear your arrival, but she retires early these days.” He poured vodka for his guest.
“That is not like her.” Adam tossed off the contents of his glass and refilled it.
Golitskov smiled. “You will find her somewhat different. The prospect of motherhood brings such changes, I have noticed. The tyranny of the womb, you might call it.”
Adam looked uncomprehending. “But she is quite well?”
The prince nodded. “Yes, but I have some fears, nevertheless.” He looked down into the empty grate, while Adam waited in growing, apprehensive impatience. “I do not think she will find it easy to part with the child,” Golitskov said finally. “If she cannot bring herself to do so, then she and the babe must flee her husband’s vengeance.”
“Must flee Russia then,” Adam said slowly. “Once I wished her to do that. Now I do not know how I could bear it.” His face twisted in that anguished helplessness. “If I were to leave Russia, I would stand convicted of treason and desertion, you know that, Prince. My estates would be confiscated, my mother left destitute, my family disgraced. How can I visit such a punishment upon the innocent?”
“You cannot,” Golitskov said firmly. “It is not going to be asked of you, either by Sophie or myself. I wished only to prepare you. If anyone can reconcile Sophie, then you will be able to.”
Gregory entered the library with a platter of smoked fish, black bread, and pickled beetroot. “This do you, lord?”
“Amply, thank you…. Do not let me keep you up, Prince.”
“I will bear you company if you wish it.” The old man looked shrewdly at him. “Unless you’ve a mind to be alone with your thoughts.”
Adam sighed, shaking his head. “I have been alone with them too long on the journey from Warsaw. Plagued with fears, with premonitions.” He speared a forkful of smoked sturgeon. “Perhaps the tyranny of the womb has a long reach.”
Golitskov laughed. “Eat and you will feel better. It is only natural you should have been worried when you were away, but Sophie is strong and healthy, and Tanya is an expert midwife. All will be well, you will see.”
It was an hour later when Adam, carrying his candle, entered the bedchamber in the west wing. The wind soughed softly, rustling the curtains at the open window, filling the room with the fresh night scents of the steppes. Shielding the candle with his hand, he stood by the bed. She was asleep on her side, her cheek pillowed on her hand. The candlelight caught the chestnut tints in the dark hair massed upon the pillow, threw into relief the rich sable crescents of her eyelashes resting upon her cheek. So peaceful, he thought, as his love flowed sweet, banishing fear.
Undressing swiftly, he blew out the candle before sliding into bed beside her, relaxing luxuriously into the body warmth beneath the quilted coverlet.
“Really me, sweetheart.” Sliding an arm beneath her, he rolled her into his embrace. “Have you dreamed of me every night?”
“Every night,” she averred, running her fingers over his chest in gentle rediscovery. “I have missed you most dreadfully.”
“You have grown most dreadfully,” he teased, caressing the hard mound of her belly. His hand jumped involuntarily, and he laughed in wonder. “It kicked me.”
“It kicks me all the time,” she grumbled in mock complaint. “Are you ever going to kiss me?”
“I’m thinking about it,” he murmured consideringly. “I’m trying to work out how to circumvent the lump.”
“Then allow me to show you.” Hitching herself upon her elbows, she leaned over him, bringing her smiling mouth to his. “See, it is quite simple.”
“So it is.” His hand slipped beneath the shining curtain of her hair to palm her scalp, to draw her mouth down to his again for a more thorough demonstration.
“I would like to make love,” Sophie announced, running the tip of her tongue over his lips. “Or are you too tired after your journey? Oh, no, you are not too tired, it seems.”
“Not in the least.” Gently turning her onto her side, facing away from him, he pushed up her nightgown, fitting his body to hers. One hand stroking softly over her belly matched the soft stroking within as he tenderly took her into the verdant valley of release, afterward holding her against him until the first jubilant cockcrow woke them and, with mischief in her eye and a resurgence of her old energy, Sophie demanded a repetition.
Adam’s return broke her self-absorption, much to Golitskov’s relief. He had been much afraid that increased introspection would only make more certain her refusal to follow the sensible course once the child was born. Adam denied her the opportunity to brood. He walked with her, talked with her, fished the streams with her, played cards in the garden in the autumn sun, exacting severe penalties for her cheating, none of which did the least good, and patiently he waited for her to bring up the subject of the baby’s future. She never did. Every time the words formed on his own lips, they died as he saw her joy in her pregnancy and he thought of the ordeal she must face to bring the child into the world. Condemning himself for cowardice, yet unable to face this responsibility now, he let the matter drift.
Sophie’s name day dawned green and golden. She was as excited as she always was on this day that was all her own. Last year it had gone all but unremarked, Prince Dmitriev not being in the mood to indulge his wife, but this year she was surrounded by people whose only object was to ensure a perfect celebration in Sophia Alexeyevna’s honor.
According to the tradition of her earliest childhood, the day was declared a holiday and all members of the estate and the village were invited to the celebration. They would pay their respects to the saint’s namesake, filing through the hall, some of them bearing little gifts that they would present to Sophie, standing at the foot of the stairs to greet them. The feasting that followed would take place in the great barn, with tables spilling out into the courtyard. Beer and vodka would flow unchecked from morning until the last reveler had collapsed. Boar and suckling pig, goat, oxen, and whole sheep were roasted over pits, and Anna, with every woman on the estate, was busy for days beforehand creating the delicacies, the cakes and jellies, pickles and breads that would be piled upon the long, groaning trestle tables.
After breakfast, Adam, smiling mysteriously, disappeared, refusing to answer Sophie’s importunate questions as to his destination.
“Is it my present?” she demanded. “Oh, tell me, Adam!”
“Now, what makes you think it could have anything to do with a present?” he mused.
“Oh, you know very well! Because it is my name day, of course. Everyone else has given me a present.”
“Then you cannot possibly need another.”
“Sophie, stop pestering,” Prince Golitskov reproved through his laughter. “You do not ask for presents, surely you know that.”
“Was she always like this?” Adam inquired in a tone of mild curiosity.
“Oh, much worse,” Golitskov told him. “Maturity has sobered her considerably.”
“Good God!” Adam cast his eyes heavenward. “You would describe this exhibition as maturity?”
“Oh, you are both impossible!” Sophie declared, marching to the dining room door. “You are supposed to be kind to me on my name day. I am going to see how matters are progressing in the kitchen.”
Leaving them both laughing, she went off to immerse herself in the masterminding of the various complexities attendant upon a production of this magnitude. Emerging from the kitchen an hour later, she went into the hall, where an army of serfs was busily hanging decorations, others coming in from the gardens, arms filled with foliage and flowers.
“Oh, no, do not put those there!” Sophie hurried up the stairs to where a lad, perched on a ladder at the head of the staircase, was arranging a wreath of dark green laurel leaves around a picture. “It looks positively funereal,” she said, beckoning him down. “I will put these instead.” “These” were field poppies with heavy scarlet heads. A drowzy, languorous flower of brilliant hue, it was one of Sophie’s favorites.
She was halfway up the ladder, her arms brimming with poppies, when Adam walked through the front door into the hall. The buzz of voices, tapping hammers, laughter, faded into the distance as he saw her poised so precariously at the head of the stairs, her belly pushing against her skirt, scarlet flowing from her arms.
He dropped the saddle of fine tooled leather, inlaid with gold, beaded with ivory: a saddle fit for a Cossack stallion and a Cossack woman on her name day. He flung himself up the stairs, his gray eyes pinpricks of fury in his whitened face. “Get off there! You reckless, mindless fool! What are you trying to do?” He pulled her off the ladder. She staggered slightly, off balance, staring stunned at this outburst. She put out a hand to steady herself against him. Holding her, heedless of the shocked faces drifting in and out of his blurred vision, he shook her. “Are you trying to kill yourself? How dare you behave with such criminal negligence—”
“Adam!” It was Prince Golitskov’s voice, cutting sharply through the tirade. Summoned by an alarmed servant, he mounted the stairs rapidly. “Get a grip on yourself, man!”
Sophie was no more than a limp rag under his hands; as his grip slackened, her knees buckled and she slid gasping to the ground, her skirt billowing around her. She looked up at him, incredulous, wounded to the core of her being. “Why?”
Adam took a deep, shuddering breath. “You are nearly nine months pregnant and you climb a ladder that is perched precariously at the head of a flight of stairs,” he articulated slowly. “I have never come across such stupidity!” His eyes filled with pain, and he passed his hand over them as if to wipe out the image…. He had put out his hand and she had fallen, rolled over, her body thudding sickeningly on each step, her cry hoarse in the silent house. He had hurtled after her, but she had tumbled to the bottom, inert, crooked like a child’s discarded doll…and then the bleeding had begun.
Grimly, Sophie seized the banister rail, pulling herself to her feet. Her grandfather cupped her elbow, assisting her. She moved her hand in dismissal, her eyes on Adam. She knew that haunted expression. It was the one he bore when he looked upon one of those bad moments in the past. She had thought them exorcised, but obviously this one had escaped the light of day.
“Let us go for a walk in the sunshine,” she said, her voice steadier than her knees, which were still wobbling in the most inconvenient fashion. “Come.” She held out her hand imperatively as she put her foot on the top step.
His eyes snapped into focus. This was Sophie, pale and resolute, hand outstretched. He became aware of Prince Golitskov’s grave stare, of the wide-eyed circle of serfs, looking at him with the fearful hostility one might evince toward
a mad dog.
“Come,” Sophie repeated, a hint of steel in her voice. “I’ll not be shaken like a rat in a terrier’s mouth without explanation. Particularly not on my name day. Take my hand, my knees are wobbly.”
Adam looked down the shallow sweep of stairs. The front door stood open, a broad road of yellow sunlight stretching from the door to the bottom of the staircase. He stepped toward her, took her hand. Her fingers closed over his and she remained standing, solid and steady on the top step.
They walked hand in hand down the stairs between phalanxes of questioning eyes, across the hall and out into the sunshine. A whisper rustled behind them, swelled to a babble. Prince Golitskov, leaving his household to the freedom of speculation and the luxury of gossip, returned to his library.
Outside, they walked in silence through the bustle of party preparations until they reached Sophie’s rose garden. At the stone sundial, she stopped. “How did Eva die?”
“She fell down the stairs,” Adam replied, looking past Sophie toward the dove cote in the corner of the garden. “I put out my hand…to steady her…I think to steady her.” The words came slowly as if torn from his soul, as, for the first time, he articulated the fear—the fear that in his anger and the rawness of his wounds, when she had stood laughing at his old-fashioned outrage, her belly swollen with another man’s child, the hand he had put out to steady her as she swayed in her laughter at the head of the stairs had pushed instead.
“The child slipped from her body in blood,” he finished on a sob of anguish. “There was nothing anyone could do. It just went on until she was drained.” He gripped the stone sundial with both hands, his knuckles white. “We were in Moscow. The court was at St. Petersburg. It was said only that she died as a result of an accident. The rest was assumed and I could see no reason to enlighten the gossips with the truth.”
“The truth that you murdered your wife in a fit of jealous rage? Or the truth that she slipped and fell?” Sophie laid her hands over his as they continued to grip the stone. “You did not push her, Adam.”