Tsarina Read online

  TSARINA

  To Tobias: Thank You

  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Interregnum, 1725

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  Interregnum, 1725

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  Interregnum, 1725

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  Interregnum, 1725

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  Cast of Characters

  Peter the Great’s family

  Peter the Great, Tsar and Emperor of All the Russias; also known as Peter Alexeyevich Romanov, batjuschka Tsar, Peter I

  Marta Skawronski, mistress and then wife of Peter the Great; also known as Catherine Alexeyevna, Catherinushka, Tsaritsa and Empress of All the Russias

  Evdokia, Peter’s first wife, mother of Alexey, formerly Tsaritsa

  Tsarevich Alexey, Peter’s son and original heir

  Charlotte Christine von Brunswick, known as Charlotte, Alexey's wife

  Petrushka, Alexey and Charlotte’s son

  Tsarevna Anna, Tsarevna Elizabeth and Tsarevna Natalya, Peter's surviving daughters by Catherine

  Ekaterina, Peter and Catherine’s daughter who dies in infancy

  Peter Petrovich aka Petrushka, Peter the Great’s preferred heir, Catherine’s and his son, dies young

  Regent Sophia, Peter’s half-sister

  Tsar Ivan, Peter’s half-brother

  Tsaritsa Praskovia Ivanovna, Ivan’s widow

  Tsarevna Jekaterina Ivanovna, Tsarevna Anna Ivanovna, Ivan’s daughters; also known as the Tsarevny Ivanovna (plural form)

  Duke of Courland, husband of Tsarevna Anna Ivanovna

  Duke of Mecklenburg, husband of Tsarevna Jekaterina Ivanovna

  Duke of Holstein, marries Tsarevna Anna, Peter and Catherine’s daughter

  At the Russian Imperial Court

  Count Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, general in Peter’s army and his trusted friend; also known as Alekasha, Menshikov

  Daria Arsenjeva, noblewoman, mistress and then wife to Menshikov

  Varvara Arsenjeva, sister to Daria

  Rasia Menshikova, sister to Alexander Danilovich Menshikov

  Antonio Devier, husband of Rasia Menshikova, head of Peter’s secret service

  Feofan Prokopovich, Archbishop of Novgorod, confessor to Peter

  The Princes Dolgoruky, supporters of Alexey’s son, Petrushka

  Blumentrost, Paulsen and Horn, doctors to Peter

  Anna Mons, the German former mistress of Peter

  Wilhelm Mons, her brother, a courtier and Catherine’s lover

  Marie Hamilton, courtier, Peter’s mistress

  General Marshal Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, Peter’s leading general

  Alice Kramer, German mistress of Sheremetev, later lady-in-waiting

  Count Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy, courtier and confidant of Peter

  Alexandra Tolstoya, Count Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy’s sister, lady-in-waiting to Catherine

  Pavel Jagushinsky, master of Peter’s household, Privy Councillor

  Peter Shafirov, Jewish courtier, Privy Councillor

  Ostermann, Peter’s Chancellor

  Jakovlena, Cherkessk maid to Catherine

  Boi-Baba, washerwoman, mistress to Peter

  Afrosinja, washerwoman, mistress of Alexey

  Andreas Schlüter, master builder and architect, creator of the Amber Room

  Domenico Trezzini, architect in St Petersburg

  In the Baltics

  Christina, Fyodor and Maggie, Marta’s half-siblings

  Tanya, Marta’s stepmother

  Vassily Gregorovich Petrov, Russian merchant in Walk, buys Marta to be a house serf

  Praskaya, Vassily’s mistress

  Nadia, Vassily’s housekeeper

  Olga, another of Vassily’s house serfs

  Ernst and Catherine Gluck, Lutheran pastor and his wife

  Anton, Frederic and Agneta Gluck, their children

  Johann Trubach, Swedish dragoon, first husband of Marta

  The Europeans

  King Charles XII of Sweden, Peter’s enemy in the Great Northern War

  Marshal Rehnskjöld, Charles XII of Sweden’s principal general

  Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony – Peter’s ally

  Frederick William, King of Prussia, the Soldier King

  Louis XIV of France

  Louis XV of France

  Jean-Jacques Campredon, French Ambassador to Russia

  Prince Dmitri Kantemir of Moldovia

  Princess Maria Kantemir, his daughter, Peter’s mistress

  INTERREGNUM, 1725

  He is dead. My beloved husband, the mighty Tsar of all the Russias, has died – and just in time.

  Moments before death came for him, Peter called for a quill and paper to be brought to him in his bed-chamber in the Winter Palace. My heart almost stalled. He had not forgotten, he was going to drag me down with him. When he lost consciousness for the last time and the darkness drew him closer to its heart, the quill slipped from his fingers. Black ink spattered the soiled sheets; time held its breath. What had the Tsar wanted to settle with that last effort of his tremendous spirit?

  I knew the answer.

  The candles in the tall candelabra filled the room with a heavy scent and an unsteady light; their glow made shadows reel and brought the woven figures on the Flemish tapestries to life, their coarse features showing pain and disbelief. The voices of the people who’d stood outside the door all night were drowned out by the February wind, rattling furiously at the shutters. Time spread slowly, like oil on water. Peter had imprinted himself on our souls like his signet ring in hot wax. It seemed impossible that the world hadn’t careened to a halt at his passing. My husband, the greatest will ever to impose itself on Russia, had been more than our ruler. He had been our fate. He was still mine.

  The doctors – Blumentrost, Paulsen and Horn – stood silently around Peter’s bed, staring at him, browbeaten. Five kopeks-worth of medicine, given early enough, could have saved him. Thank god for the quacks’ lack of good sense.

  Without looking, I could feel Feofan Prokopovich, Archbishop of Novgorod, and Alexander Menshikov watching me. Prokopovich had made the Tsar’s will eternal and Peter had much to thank
him for. Menshikov, on the other hand, owed his fortune and influence entirely to Peter. What was it he had said when someone tried to blacken Alexander Danilovich’s name to him by referring to his murky business dealings? ‘Menshikov is always Menshikov, in all that he does!’ That had put an end to that.

  Dr Paulsen had closed the Tsar’s eyes and crossed his hands on his chest, but he hadn’t removed the scroll, Peter’s last will and testament, from his grasp. Those hands, which were always too dainty for the tall, powerful body, had grown still, helpless. Just two weeks earlier he had plunged those very hands into my hair, winding it round his fingers, inhaling the scent of rosewater and sandalwood.

  ‘My Catherine,’ he’d said, calling me by the name he himself had given me, and smiled at me. ‘You’re still a beauty. But what will you look like in a convent, shorn until you are bald? The cold there will break your spirit even though you’re strong as a horse. Do you know that Evdokia still writes to me begging for a second fur, poor thing! What a good job you can’t write!’ he’d added, laughing.

  It had been thirty years since his first wife Evdokia had been banished to the convent. I’d met her once. Her eyes shone with madness, her shaven head was covered in boils and scabs from the cold and filth, and her only company was a hunchbacked dwarf to serve her in her cell. Peter had ordered the poor creature to have her tongue cut out, so in response to Evdokia’s moaning and laments, all she was able to do was burble. He’d been right to believe that seeing her would fill me with lifelong dread.

  I knelt at the bedside and the three doctors retreated to the twilight at the edge of the room, like crows driven from a field: the hapless birds Peter had been so terrified of in the last years of his life. The Tsar had called open season on them all over his Empire. Farmers caught, killed, plucked and roasted them for reward. None of this helped Peter: silently, at night, the phantom bird would slip through the padded walls and locked doors of his bedchamber. Its ebony wings blotted up the light and, in their cool shadow, the blood on the Tsar’s hands never dried.

  His fingers were not yet those of a corpse, but soft, and still warm. For a moment, the fear and anger of these past few months slipped from my heart like a thief in the night. I kissed his hands and breathed in his familiar scent of tobacco, ink, leather, and the perfume tincture that was blended in Grasse for his sole use.

  I took the scroll from his hand. It was easy enough to slide it out, although my blood thickened with fear and my veins were coated with frost and rime like branches in our Baltic winter. It was important to show everyone that I alone was entitled to do this – I, his wife, and the mother of his twelve children.

  The paper rustled as I unrolled it. Not for the first time, I was ashamed of my inability to read. I handed my husband’s last will to Feofan Prokopovich. At least Menshikov was as ignorant of its contents as I. Ever since the days when Peter first drew us into his orbit and cast his spell upon us, we had been like two children squabbling over their father’s love and attention. Batjuschka Tsar, his people called him. Our little father Tsar.

  Prokopovich must have known what Peter had in mind for me. He was an old fox with a sharp wit, as comfortable in earthly as in heavenly realms. Daria had once sworn that he had three thousand books in his library. What, if you please, can one man do with three thousand books? The scroll sat lightly in his liver-spotted hands now. After all, he himself had helped Peter draft the decree that shocked us all. The Tsar had set aside every custom, every law: he wanted to appoint his own successor and would rather leave his empire to a worthy stranger over his own, unworthy child. Alexey . . .

  How timid he had been when we first met, the spitting image of his mother Evdokia, with his veiled gaze and high, domed forehead. He couldn’t sit up straight because Menshikov had thrashed his back and buttocks bloody and sore. Only when it was too late did Alexey grasp his fate: in his quest for a new Russia, the Tsar would spare no one, neither himself, nor his only son. You were no blood of my blood, Alexey, no flesh of my flesh . . . And so I was able to sleep soundly. Peter, though, had been haunted by nightmares from that day on.

  My heart pounded against my lightly laced bodice – I was surprised it didn’t echo from the walls – but I met Prokopovich’s gaze as calmly as I could. I clenched my toes in my slippers as I could not afford to faint. Prokopovich’s smile was as thin as one of the wafers he would offer in church. He knew the secrets of the human heart; especially mine.

  ‘Read, Feofan,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Give everything to . . .’ He paused, looked up and repeated: ‘To . . .’

  Menshikov’s temper flared; he reared as if someone had struck him with a whip, like in the good old days. ‘To whom?’ he snarled at Prokopovich. ‘Pray tell, Feofan, to whom?’

  I could hardly breathe. The fur was suddenly much too hot against my skin.

  The Archbishop shrugged. ‘That’s all. The Tsar didn’t finish writing the sentence.’ The shadow of a smile flitted across his wrinkled face. Peter had liked nothing better than to turn the world on its head: and, oh, yes, he still had a hold on us from beyond the grave. Prokopovich lowered his gaze. I snapped back to life. Nothing was decided. Peter was dead; his successor unnamed. But that didn’t mean I was safe. It meant quite the opposite.

  ‘What – that’s it?’ Menshikov snatched the paper out of the Archbishop’s hands. ‘I don’t believe it!’ He stared down at the letters, but Prokopovich took the scroll from him again.

  ‘Oh, Alexander Danilovich. That’s what comes of always having had something better to do than learn to read and write.’

  Menshikov was about to give a stinging reply, but I cut him off. Men! Was this the moment for rivalry? I had to act fast if I didn’t want to live out my days in a nunnery, or be forced aboard a sledge to Siberia, or end up face down in the Neva drifting between the thick floes of ice, my body crushed and shredded by their sheer force.

  ‘Feofan – has the Tsar died without naming his heir?’ I had to be sure.

  He nodded, his eyes bloodshot from the long hours of keeping vigil at his lord’s bedside. In the manner of Russian Orthodox clerics, he wore his dark hair plain; it fell straight to his shoulders, streaked with grey, and his simple, dark tunic was that of an ordinary priest. Nothing about him betrayed the honours and offices with which Peter had rewarded him; nothing apart from the heavy, jewel-studded cross on his breast – the panagia. Feofan Prokopovich was old, but he was one of those men who could easily serve many more Tsars. He bowed and handed me the scroll. I thrust it into the sleeve of my dress.

  He straightened up. ‘Tsarina, I place the future of Russia in your hands.’ My heart skipped a beat when he called me by this title. Menshikov, too, raised his head, alert, like a bloodhound taking scent. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Go home, Feofan, and get some rest. I’ll send for you when I need you. Until then, do not forget that the Tsar’s last words are known only to the three of us,’ I said. ‘I hope you will serve me for many years,’ I added. ‘I bestow upon you the Order of St Andrew and an estate outside Kiev with ten – no, twenty – thousand souls.’ He bowed, looking content, and I thought quickly about whom to send into exile, whose property I would have to sequestrate, in order to reward Prokopovich. On a day like today, fortunes were made and lost. I gestured to the servant standing guard next to the door. Had he understood our whispers? I hoped not.

  ‘Order Feofan Prokopovich’s carriage. Help him downstairs. No one is to speak to him, do you hear?’ I added in a whisper.

  He nodded, his long lashes fluttering on his rosy cheeks. A handsome young boy this one was. His face suddenly recalled that of another. One I’d thought the most beautiful I’d ever known. Peter had put a brutal end to that. And afterwards, he’d ordered that the head, that same sweet head, be set at my bedside, in a heavy glass jar of strong spirit, the way apples are preserved in vodka in winter. The wide eyes stared sadly out at me; in the throes of death the lips, once so soft to kiss, now shrivelled and drained
of blood, had pulled back from the teeth and gums. When I first saw it and, horrified, asked my lady-in-waiting to remove it, Peter threatened me with the convent and the whip. And so there for a time it had stayed.

  Feofan Prokopovich laughed softly, his face splitting into so many wrinkles that his skin looked like the parched earth after summer. ‘Don’t worry, Tsarina. Come, boy, lend an old man your arm.’

  The two of them stepped out into the corridor. The footman’s pale, narrow-legged silk breeches clearly showed the outline of his muscular legs and buttocks. Was there any truth in the rumour that Prokopovich liked young men? Well – each to his own. I blocked the view of the Tsar’s bed with my body. Pale, frightened faces turned to gaze into the room: both noblemen and servants sat there like rabbits in a snare, craning their necks, awaiting their destiny. Madame de la Tour, my youngest daughter Natalya’s scrawny French governess, was hugging the little girl close. I frowned. It was much too cold in the corridor for her and she’d been coughing since yesterday afternoon. Her elder sisters Elizabeth and Anna were there beside her, but I avoided their eyes. They were too young; how could they understand?

  Nobody knew yet whether I was the one they had to fear. I searched the crowd for young Petrushka, Peter’s grandson, and the Princes Dolgoruki, his followers, but they were nowhere to be seen. I bit my lip. Where were they . . . busy hatching plans to seize the throne? I had to lay hands on them as soon as possible. I snapped my fingers and the closest guard leapt to attention.

  ‘Send for the Privy Council – Count Tolstoy, Baron Ostermann and Pavel Jagushinsky. Look sharp, the Tsar wants to see them,’ I said loudly, making sure that my last words were heard the entire length of the corridor.

  Menshikov pulled me back into the room, closed the door and sneered his disbelief at my audacity.

  ‘Come,’ I said curtly. ‘We’ll go next door, to the little library.’ Menshikov picked up his embroidered coat of green brocade from the chair in which he had kept watch at Peter’s bedside for the last days and weeks. A peasant household could easily have lived for two whole years on just one of the silver threads woven in its cloth. His ivory-handled walking stick he clamped into his armpit. In the hidden door that led to Peter’s small library I turned to the doctors. ‘None of you may leave this room and you are to summon no one.’