The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘I drove Katinka straight to the quarters of the Ismailofsky guards, and she earned her crown that day—the 9th of July of glorious memory. Despite her exhausting experiences of the night she addressed the half-clad men with splendid fire and courage; telling them that being in peril of her life she cast herself on their protection. The sight of her beauty and distress melted the hearts of those rough soldiers as nought else could have done. The Chaplain of the regiment fetched the crucifix from the altar of the chapel and everyone of them swore to die in her defence.

  ‘By that time the Simeonofsky and Prébaginsky guards had heard the news and also declared for her; while Razumofsky, Volkonsky, Stroganof and others had arrived to form a brilliant company about her person. We all proceeded to the church of Kazan. The Archbishop of Novgorod had already been warned and came out with all his priests to receive her. At the high altar he placed the Imperial crown upon her head and proclaimed her Sovereign of All the Russias.

  ‘She then repaired to the old Palace of the Empress Elizabeth. There Panin brought her son to her, for ’twas on the excuse of assuring the succession to little Paul Petrovitch that the revolution had been carried through. She took him out on to the balcony and showed him to the people, whose plaudits redoubled in the belief that they were acclaiming their future Emperor. We had put it about the city that Peter had planned to put them both to death that very day, and ’twas that which raised so great an indignation among the populace as to counteract all thoughts of resistance. By nightfall of that glorious day we had fifteen thousand picked troops sworn to obey Katinka and the whole city was in our hands with not one drop of blood spilled.’

  As Orlof paused, at last, and took another gulp of brandy, Roger asked: ‘What part did Prince Petemkin play in these stirring events?’

  The High Admiral shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘None, worth the telling. He was but an ensign in the horseguards at the time, and if you have heard his name mentioned in connection with the coup d’état ’twas but as the result of an incident that has been made too much of since. When we had made certain of the city Katinka dressed herself in the uniform of a guards officer and rode out to review the troops. One-Eye was sharp enough to notice that she had no plume in her hat, so he galloped up and offered her his; but for the next eight years she scarce looked at him again.’

  ‘And what of the Czar Peter, all this time?’

  ‘He and his mistress had been drinking themselves stupid for some weeks at the palace of Oranienbaum, which lies some distance further along the Gulf than Peterhof. On the morning of the coup d’état they set out to return to the latter place, as Peter was expected to participate in the celebration of the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul there on the following day. As they were approaching their destination they were met by a Chamberlain on his way to inform the Czar that the Czarina had escaped during the night. Peter was alarmed, but lacked the will to take any action.

  ‘In the afternoon tidings of what was occurring in the city reached him from a French barber, who had sent his servant with a message. Peter was urged by Gudovitch his A.D.C. and the veteran Marshal Munich to call up his three thousand Holsteiners from Oranienbaum and advance upon the Residence; but he was too frightened to take their advice.

  ‘They then advised him to throw himself into the fortress of Cronstadt and secure the fleet, with which he might yet have reduced Petersburg. Again, he vacillated, but at length was persuaded to put off for the island in his yacht. Fortunately for us he arrived half an hour too late. Admiral Taliezin had just landed there and secured the place for Katinka; and the Admiral threatened to sink the yacht if Peter attempted to come ashore.

  ‘Marshal Munich then urged him to sail down the coast to Reval, take ship for Pomerania and put himself at the head of the army that he had assembled there for the reconquest of his native province of Holstein; then return with it and subdue his rebellious subjects. Once more he could not bring himself to act like a man. Instead, he took refuge in the cabin of the yacht and mingled his tears with those of the Vorontzoff and other women who were in the party. With his tail between his legs, he put back for Oranienbaum.

  ‘At six o’clock that evening Katinka again mounted her horse. With a drawn sword in her hand and a wreath of oak leaves about her brow, she led us out of Petersburg to defeat and subjugate her husband. But we were not called upon to fight. At the news of her approach, twice in the space of a few hours Peter wrote to her; in the first case offering to rule jointly with her, in the second begging her to let him retire peaceably to Holstein and grant him a pension. She disdained to reply to either missive.

  ‘Even at the eleventh hour old Marshal Munich urged him again to fight or fly, but he was too irresolute to do either. Katinka sent the Chamberlain Ismailof to him. Ismailof persuaded him to get into a carriage, drive to Peterhof, and there make an abject surrender. He was stripped of his Orders and Panin made him sign an act of abdication. Then, on the evening of the second day, he was taken under guard some twenty versts to the royal villa at Ropcha; and that was the end of the matter.’

  ‘No, no!’ cried Natalia Andreovna. ‘Tell us the rest of the story. Tell us how he died!’

  Orlof belched, loudly. ‘There is nought to tell. He died of a bloody flux six days later, on the 17th of July, 1762.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ she retorted with a sneer. ‘The official account of his death declared it due to piles, but no one ever believed that.’

  ‘It served well enough, and I’ve nought to add to it,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘You were there when he died,’ she insisted. ‘Come now! Tell the truth and shame the Devil.’

  It was now well past one in the morning. Since six o’clock Natalia had indulged her taste for heady wines at frequent intervals, and in the past hour she had put away the best part of a bottle of champagne. From the glitter of her green eyes and the flush on her thin cheeks Roger knew that she was three-parts drunk. Orlof, now lurching across the table, was very drunk indeed; and Roger himself felt far from sober! But he was sober enough to fear that the other two were about to enter on a violent quarrel, and made an effort to prevent it.

  ‘I give not a damn how Czar Peter died,’ he declared roundly. ‘But I’m mightily obliged to your Excellency for your firsthand account of so enthralling a piece of history.’

  Natalia ignored him and leaning forward focussed her eyes on Orlof. ‘Go on, Alexi,’ she muttered. ‘You told me about it once before. Tell me again how you and Teplof strangled him.’

  Orlof jerked himself back and, his muscles tensed, snatched up his heavy goblet. Roger half rose from the conviction that the drunken giant meant to hurl it in her face; but suddenly Orlof relaxed, set the goblet down, and gave a low laugh:

  ‘Since you know how things went already, what’s the odds? Katinka appointed the brothers Baratinsky to be his gaolers out at Ropcha. She had meant to keep him a prisoner, but the excitement of July the 9th had swept the troops off their feet, and a few days later a reaction set in. It was clear that if Peter Feodorovitch were dead no counter revolution could be launched in his favour. So Katinka sent Teplof and myself out there to see him.’

  ‘And then?’ whispered Natalia Andreovna, eagerly.

  ‘We asked permission to dine with him. Poison was put in the wine that he was offered before dinner. He drank it and was almost instantly seized with an acute colic. We urged him to drink some more of the wine and thus make a quick finish. But a coward to the end, he refused. I threw him to the floor and Teplof twisted a table-napkin round his neck. We pulled it tight. Thus died a weakling and a traitor.’

  ‘May God have mercy on your soul!’ muttered Roger, shocked into the exclamation by this barefaced confession to most brutal murder.

  Orlof swung upon him. ‘Keep your prayers for those who need them, boy! I was but a soldier executing orders. If pray you must, pray for the Empress, who sent me to do her husband’s business.’

  ‘I’ll not believe it!’ cried Natalia Andr
eovna. ‘Katinka has too mild a nature to initiate such a crime. ’Twas Gregory and you others who decreed in secret that Peter Feodorovitch must die, from knowing that as long as he lived your own necks would be in jeopardy.’

  ‘Aye, he had to die!’ shouted Orlof. ‘But ’twas the Empress who gave the order!’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I am not. ’Tis as I tell you.’

  As they glared at one another across the table Roger felt certain that next second they would fly at one another’s throats. But once again he was mistaken. Orlof suddenly kicked his chair from under him, lurched to his feet, and staggered across the room.

  ‘I’ll prove it!’ he cried, pressing his great thumbs against two carved rosettes in a heavy oak bureau. ‘May St. Nicholas strike me dead, if I don’t prove to you that Teplóf and I did no more than play the part of executioners.’

  The hidden locks of the bureau sprang back under the pressure and it opened. Roger saw him jab his thumb again against an interior panel low down on the right, and a door slid back disclosing a secret cavity. For a few moments Orlof rummaged in it muttering angrily. ‘Where is the accursed thing? I’ve not set eyes on it these ten years past; but I’ll swear ’tis here somewhere. Ay! This is it!’

  Turning he slammed a piece of yellowed parchment down on the table in front of Natalia Andreovna. Roger peered over her shoulder and saw that it was a brief letter signed ‘Katerina Alexeyevna.’ The note was addressed to Prince Baratinsky, the text was in German, and it ran:

  A new crisis menaces our authority and life. Therefore we have this day determined on sending Alexi Orlof and Teplof to have speech with the person whom you have in keeping. They have orders not to return until they can hail us with the cry ‘Live long, Czarina.’

  For a moment Roger was puzzled by the last sentence; then he recalled having heard that on the death of a Russian sovereign it was customary for those who brought the news to his successor to break it by using those words in salutation.

  He had hardly grasped the full significance of the note when he caught the sound of running feet outside on the landing. Next second a dishevelled officer burst into the room. Flinging himself on his knees before the High Admiral the breathless intruder panted:

  ‘ ’Tis war, Excellency! ’Tis war! Gustavus of Sweden has landed at Helsingfors with an army of forty-thousand men, and is advancing on Petersburg.’

  ‘Ten thousand devils!’ bellowed Orlof.

  Natalia Andreovna sprang to her feet, and cried: ‘I feared as much, although my father would not listen to me! With our armies dispersed all over Southern Russia what hope have we of saving the Residence from that treacherous toad!’

  Orlof seemed to have suddenly sobered up. Snatching the parchment from the table, he threw it among the jumble of papers in the bureau and snapped down the lid. With his heavily-pouched eyes showing something of their old fire he turned upon her. We still have the Fleet. St. Nicholas be praised that its sailing for the Mediterranean was delayed. It may prove our salvation yet!’

  Next moment he had grabbed up a great jewelled scimitar and brandishing it above his head ran from the room shouting at the top of his voice in a jumble of French, German and Russian. To arms! To arms! Find me Admiral Greig! Every man to his post! To arms! To arms! We are attacked!’

  The officer who had brought the news, Natalia and Roger all followed him at the run. Halfway across the landing Roger halted in his tracks and shouted to his mistress: ‘I left my snuffbox on the table. Don’t wait for me. I’ll get it and be with you again in one moment.’

  Swinging round he dashed back into the High Admiral’s foul-smelling den, went straight to the bureau and pressed the two rosettes, just as Orlof had done. The lid flew open. In frantic haste he searched among the papers. Suddenly his eye fell upon the note that Orlof had produced. Thrusting it into his pocket, he snapped down the lid again and ran to join the others.

  The impulse to steal the document had come to him on the spur of the moment. It had suddenly flashed upon him that it was probably the only existing proof in the world that Catherine II was a murderess; and had deliberately ordered the assassination of her husband. As such it was a State paper of incalculable value. Yet he also knew that if the theft were discovered and the paper found in his possession death under the knout would be his portion.

  15

  The Plot

  At the bottom of the staircase Roger caught up with Natalia. The scene had changed since they had come upon Orlof sitting there an hour and a half earlier. The long rooms were less crowded, the more respectable guests having gone home, but hundreds of people were still dancing and feasting, the great majority of them now obviously the worse for liquor. The veneer of civilisation symbolised by the minuets, gavottes and quadrilles, danced while the Empress had been present, had been replaced by Tsards, mazurkas and wild Russian country-dances; here and there men lying dead-drunk on the floor and couples were embracing openly in nearly every corner.

  Towering head and shoulders above the crowd, the giant High Admiral was running through it, bellowing for the bands to stop and beating the drunks he came upon into some sensibility with blows from the flat of his scimitar. Within five minutes the revelry had ceased only to be replaced by panic, as the drunken mob, believing the Swedes to be at the very gates of the city, began to fight its way towards the doors.

  Roger kept Natalia well back out of the press. After some twenty minutes it eased; a number of fainting women were carried back into the palace, and they were able to get out into the street. Having found her coach he took her home and it then carried him on to his lodging. He was now feeling cold and stale-tight from the amount of neat brandy he had drunk on top of a wide variety of wines; but little Zaria was, as usual, warming his bed for him, and, tumbling into it, he soon drifted off into a troubled sleep.

  When he got up and went out the following morning he found the city in a tumult. Everyone knew that North Russia was entirely denuded of troops, except for a few battalions of the Imperial Guard, and it seemed that short of an abject surrender by the Empress to any terms that Gustavus might dictate there was no way of preventing his army from taking and sacking St. Petersburg.

  It occurred to Roger that, since he was posing as a Frenchman, it might be thought odd if, at such a time of crisis, he did not place himself at the disposal of the French Embassy. On calling there he found a crowd of excited Frenchmen gathered round their Ambassador, who, it transpired, had returned from his fishing trip only the day before. The Comte de Ségur, proved to be a young man still in his twenties. He received Roger very affably and they discoursed for a little on their mutual acquaintances, then he remarked: ‘In the present emergency, Chevalier, you are no doubt anxious to place your sword at the disposal of the Empress?’

  Actually there were few things that Roger was less anxious to do than get himself sent to the front just when his introduction to the Court had opened a good prospect of getting to grips with his mission; but in those days, when all armies had large numbers of foreign officers in them, it was as natural to expect visitors who happened to be in a threatened city to participate in its defence as it is now for a house-holder to expect his male guests to assist him in catching a burglar.

  Faced with this dilemma Roger swiftly evaded the issue by replying: ‘It so happened, Comte, that I was with Admiral Orlof last night when the news of the invasion reached him, and I am in hopes that he may find some employment for me.’

  ‘I am delighted to hear it,’ replied the young Ambassador. ‘And, since you tell me that you have already been presented, you will doubtless now frequent the Court until you hear further from him.’

  Roger readily agreed to the suggestion, although not for the reason it was given; and offered to make one of Monsieur de Ségur’s suite should he be going there that evening. The Comte accepted the offer, so later that day Roger found himself one of a company of some dozen Frenchmen who set out in a small cavalcade of coaches for the Imperial
Palace of Peterhof.

  The Empress, perhaps feeling the need of her most intimate possessions round her, had moved on that day of crisis to her quarters in the Hermitage, and had announced the holding of a special court there for that night. This suite of so-called private apartments was in fact little less than a palace itself, as it consisted of a splendid pavilion containing many reception as well as living-rooms, an art-gallery, a library, various cabinets for the display of her collections of porcelain and coins; and a spacious winter-garden; the whole being connected with the main palace by a covered passage over an archway.

  As Natalia Andreovna had, for the first time, failed to visit Roger that afternoon, he was all the more eager to see her; and he had hardly entered the main salon in company with de Ségur when his desire was gratified by catching sight of her among a bevy of beauties behind Catherine’s armchair.

  A master of ceremonies having announced the Ambassador, the crowd gave way and he advanced to make his bow. The Empress gave him her hand to kiss and asked at once: ‘Since you are just arrived from the Residence, Monsieur, tell us what the people there are talking?’

  ‘They say that your Majesty is preparing to seek refuge in Moscow,’ he returned at once.

  Her fat little body bridled and her blue eyes flashed. ‘I trust then that you did not believe it. ’Tis true that we have ordered great numbers of post-horses to be kept in readiness, but only for the purpose of bringing up soldiers and cannon.’

  The Empress’s words, Roger soon found, were the keynote of the evening. Gustavus’s unprovoked aggression had caught her napping. There were plenty of defeatists round her who counselled a flight to the ancient capital of Russia, but she would not listen to a word of such talk. She had given orders for the mobilisation of every man available, even the convalescents in the hospitals, and the police. Couriers had been sent post-haste in every direction to summon such skeleton garrisons as had been left within five hundred miles of St. Petersburg; and she meant to remain, to fight the invader on the frontier with every resource she could command.