The Tsarina's Daughter Read online

  THE TSARINA’S DAUGHTER

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Tsarina

  In your end lies your beginning. No man shall disappoint you as a woman will. An angel will speak to you. The lightest load will be your greatest burden.

  Prophecy of the Golosov Ravine

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

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  17

  18

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  41

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  49

  50

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  67

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  89

  In the Winter Palace, St Nicholas’ Day, 6 December 1741

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Cast of Characters

  ELIZABETH’S FAMILY

  Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova/Lizenka, daughter of Tsar Peter the Great and Catherine I

  Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich Romanov of All the Russias, the second Romanov Tsar; Elizabeth’s grandfather

  Tsar Peter the Great of All the Russias, also known as Peter Alexeyevich Romanov, batjushka Tsar, Peter I; Elizabeth’s father

  Catherine Alexeyevna, former serf, once the mistress and then wife of Peter the Great, later Tsaritsa, Tsarina Catherine I of All the Russias; Elizabeth’s mother

  Evdokia Lopukhina, Peter the Great’s first wife, formerly Tsaritsa of All the Russias; mother of Tsarevich Alexey

  Tsarevich Alexey, Peter the Great and Evdokia’s son and his original heir; Elizabeth’s half-brother

  Peter Alexeyevich Romanov/Petrushka, Alexey and Sophie Charlotte’s son, later Tsar Peter II; Elizabeth’s nephew

  Anna Petrovna Romanova/Anoushka, daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I; Elizabeth’s sister and mother of Karl Peter

  Karl, Duke of Holstein, husband of Anna Petrovna; father of Karl Peter

  Regent Sophia, Peter the Great’s half-sister; Elizabeth’s aunt

  Tsar Ivan V, Peter the Great’s half-brother; Elizabeth’s uncle

  Tsaritsa Praskovia Ivanovna Saltykova/Pasha, Ivan’s widow; Elizabeth’s aunt

  Tsarevna Ekaterina Ivanovna, daughter to Tsar Ivan V; Elizabeth’s cousin

  Charles Leopold, Duke of Mecklenburg, husband of Tsarevna Ekaterina Ivanovna and father of Christine, the Regent Anna Leopoldovna of All the Russias

  Christine, born Elisabeth Katharina Christine, Princess of Mecklenburg, daughter of Ekaterina Ivanovna, later adopted by Tsarina Anna I and styled Crown Princess, Tsesarevna and Regent Anna Leopoldovna of All the Russias; Elizabeth’s cousin

  Anthony, Duke of Brunswick, husband of the Regent Anna Leopoldovna; father to Tsar Ivan VI

  Tsar Ivan VI, Ivan Antonov, infant son of the Regent Anna Leopoldovna; Elizabeth’s cousin

  Tsarevna Anna Ivanovna, daughter to Tsar Ivan V, Duchess of Courland, later Tsarina Anna I of All the Russias; Elizabeth’s cousin

  Duke of Courland, husband of Tsarevna Anna Ivanovna

  Augustus, Prince of Holstein, cousin of Karl, Duke of Holstein; fiancé of Elizabeth Petrovna

  AT THE RUSSIAN IMPERIAL COURT

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

  Princess Maria Menshikova, daughter of Menshikov and fiancée of Tsar Peter II

  Feofan Prokopovich, Archbishop of Novgorod, confessor and adviser of Peter the Great, Catherine I and Elizabeth Petrovna

  Prince Alexis Petrov Dolgoruky, godfather to Peter Alexeyevich Romanov (Peter II)

  Princess Katja Alexeyevna Dolgoruky, daughter of Prince Alexis Dolgoruky, later engaged to Peter II

  Count Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy, courtier and confidant of Peter the Great and Catherine I

  Alexander Borisovich Buturlin, an officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, lover and supporter of Elizabeth Petrovna

  Ernst Biren, Count de Biron, a groom and stable-boy, also known as de Biron, Duke Biron of Courland, Regent of Russia; lover and adviser to Anna I

  Margarete de Biron of Courland, de Biron’s wife

  Charles, Peter and Hedwig de Biron, the Biron children

  General Ushakov, Head of the Secret Office of Investigation

  Maja, maid to the Ivanovna family

  Lt Semyon Mordvinov, a sailor who carries letters between Anoushka and Lizenka

  Prince Avram Volynsky, Russian Ambassador to Persia

  Prince Antioch Kantemir of Moldova, Russian Ambassador to London

  THE EUROPEANS

  Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, Peter the Great’s ally and interim King of Poland

  King Louis XV of France

  Maria Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislas Leszczyński, King of Poland, princess of Poland; wife of Louis XV and Queen of France

  Jean-Jacques Campredon, French Ambassador to Russia

  Duke of Liria, Spanish Ambassador to Russia

  Jan d’Acosta, a Portuguese Jew, jester to Peter the Great, Catherine I, Peter II, Anna I and finally Elizabeth

  Jakob Schwartz, an Austrian spy, cellist, music and dance teacher

  Jean-Armand de Lestocq, French aristocrat; Elizabeth’s physician

  Andrej Ivanovich, Count Ostermann, original German name Heinrich Johann Friedrich Ostermann, Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of Peter the Great, Catherine I, Anna I and the Regent Anna Leopoldovna

  Liebman, a Jew and Court Jeweller to Tsarina Anna I

  Count Moritz Karl von Lynar, Saxon envoy and lover of the Regent Anna Leopoldovna

  Julie von Mengden, Baltic baroness, Ostermann’s niece; Imperial nurse to Ivan VI and lover of the Regent Anna Leopoldovna

  Count Alessandro Melissimo, an Austrian diplomat and engaged to Katja Dolgoruky

  T’o-Shih, head of Chinese mission

  AT KOLOMENSKOYE

  Illinchaya, the childhood nurse of Anoushka and Lizenka

  AT THE PECHARSKY MONASTERY

  Abbess Agatha, a friend of Catherine I

  Alexis Razum/Razumovsky, a Ukrainian shepherd and soloist with the Imperial Choir of Anna I; Elizabeth’s lover

  Prologue

  IN THE WINTER PALACE, ST NICHOLAS’ DAY, 6 DECEMBER 1741

  My little cousin Ivan is innocent – he is a baby, and as pure as onl
y a one-year-old can be. But tonight, at my order, the infant Tsar will be declared guilty as charged.

  I fight the urge to pick him up and kiss him; it would only make things worse. Beyond his nursery door there is a low buzzing sound, like that of angry bees ready to swarm the Winter Palace. Soldiers’ boots scrape and shuffle. Spurs clink like stubby vodka glasses and bayonets are being fixed to muskets. These are the sounds of things to come. The thought spikes my heart with dread.

  There is no other choice. It is Ivan or me. Only one of us can rule Russia, the other one condemned to a living death. Reigning Russia is a right that has to be earned as much as inherited: he and my cousin, the Regent, doom the country to an eternity under the foreign yoke. Under their rule the realm will be lost; the invisible holy bond between Tsar and people irretrievably severed.

  I, Elizabeth, am the only surviving child of Peter the Great’s fifteen sons and daughters. Tonight, if I hesitate too long, I might become the last of the siblings to die.

  Curse the Romanovs! In vain I try to bar from my thoughts the prophecy that has blighted my life. Puddles form on the parquet floor as slush drips from my boots; their worn thigh-high leather is soaked from my dash across St Petersburg. Despite my being an Imperial Princess – the Tsarevna Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova – no footman had hooked a bearskin across my lap to protect me against the icy wind and driving snow while I sat snug in a sled; I had no muff to raise to my face in that special graceful gesture of the St Petersburg ladies, the damy. My dash towards my date with destiny had been clandestine: snowfall veiled the flickering lights of the lanterns and shrouded the city. Mortal fear drove me on, hurrying over bridges, dodging patrolled barriers – the shlagbaumy – and furtively crossing the empty prospects, where my hasty passage left a momentary trace of warmth in the frosty air.

  This was a night of momentous decision-making that I would have to live with forever. An anointed and crowned Tsar may not be killed, even once he is deposed, as it sets a dangerous precedent. Yet he may not live either – at least not in the minds of the Russian people or according to the diplomatic dispatches sent all over Europe.

  What then is to become of the boy?

  I feel for Ivan’s limp little hand. I simply cannot resist – never could – nuzzling his chubby, rosy fingers, which are still too small to bear the Imperial seal. We call this game a butterfly’s kiss; it makes him giggle and squeal, and me dissolve with tenderness. I drink in his scent, the talcum powder blended for his sole use in Grasse – vanilla and bergamot, the Tsar’s perfume – carefully recording it to last me a lifetime. The men outside fall quiet. They are waiting for the decision that will both save and damn me. The thought sears my soul.

  In Ivan’s nursery, the lined French damask drapes are drawn. Thick, pot-bellied clouds hide the December new moon and stars, giving this hour a dense and dreadful darkness. During the day, the seagulls’ cries freeze on their beaks; the chill of night grates skin raw. Any light is as scarce and dear as everything else in St Petersburg. The candle-sellers’ shops, which smell of beeswax, flax and sulphur, do brisk business with both Yuletide and Epiphany approaching. On the opposite quay, the shutters on the flat façades of the city’s palaces and houses are closed, the windows behind them dark. They are swathed in the same brooding silence as the Winter Palace. I am in my father’s house, but this does not mean that I am safe. Far from it – it means quite the opposite. The Winter Palace’s myriad corridors, hundreds of rooms and dozens of staircases can be as welcoming as a lover’s embrace or as dangerous as a snake pit.

  It is Ivan or me: fate has mercilessly driven us towards this moment. The courtiers shun me: no one would bet a kopeck on my future. Will I be sent to a remote convent, even though I do not have an ounce of nun’s flesh about me, as the Spanish envoy, the Duke of Liria, so memorably recorded? I had once been forced to see such an unfortunate woman in her cell; as intended, the sight instilled a terror that would last me a lifetime. Her shorn head was covered in chilblains and her eyes shone with madness. A hunchbacked dwarf, whose tongue had been torn out, was her sole companion, both of them shuffling about in rotten straw like pigs in their sties. Or perhaps there is a sled waiting for me, destination Siberia? I know about this voyage of no return; I have heard the cries, seen the dread and smelled the fear of the banished culprits, be they simple peasants or even the Tsar’s best friend. By the first anniversary of their sentence, all had succumbed to the harsh conditions of the East. Maybe a dark cell in the Trubetzkoi Bastion, the place nobody ever leaves in one piece, will swallow me; or things will be simpler, and I am fated to end up face down in the Neva, drifting between the thick floes of ice, my body crushed and shredded by their sheer force.

  The soldiers’ impatience is palpable. Just one more breath! Ivan’s wet-nurse is asleep, slumped on her stool, resting amidst his toys: the scattered pieces of a Matryoshka doll, wooden boats, a mechanical silver bear that opens its jaws and raises its paws when wound up, and a globe inlaid with Indian ivory and Belgian émaillé. One of the nurse’s pale breasts is still bare from the last feed; she was chosen for her ample alabaster bosom in Moscow’s raucous German Quarter. Ivan is well cared for: Romanov men are of weaker stock than Romanov women, even if no one ever dares to say so. I celebrated his first year as a time of wonder, offering my little cousin a cross studded with rubies and emeralds for his christening, a gift fit for a Tsar, and put myself in debt to raise an ebony colt in my stables as his Yuletide present.

  Ivan’s breathing is growing heavier. The regiment outside his door weighs on his dreams. As I touch his sides, his warmth sends a jolt through my fingers, hitting a Gold in my heart. Oh, to hold him one more time and feel his delightful weight in my arms. I pull my hands back, folding them, though the time for prayers has passed. No pilgrimage can ever absolve me from this sin, even if I slide across the whole of Russia on my knees. Ivan’s lashes flutter, his chin wobbles, he smacks his pink and shiny lips. I cannot bear to see him cry, despite the saying of Russian serfs: ‘Another man’s tears are only water.’

  The lightest load will be your greatest burden. The last prophecy is coming to pass. Spare me, I inwardly plead – but I know this is my path, and I will have to walk it to the end, over the pieces of my broken heart. Ivan slides back into slumber; long, dark lashes cast shadows on his round cheeks and his tiny fists open, showing pink, unlined palms. The sight stabs me. Not even the most adept fortune-teller could imagine what the future has in store for Ivan. It is a thought that I refrain from following to its conclusion.

  Beyond the door utter silence reigns. Is this the calm before the storm my father taught me to fear when we sailed the slate-coloured waters of the Bay of Finland? His fleet had been rolling at anchor in the far distance, masts rising like a marine forest. ‘This is forever Russia,’ he had proudly announced. ‘No Romanov must ever surrender what has been gained by spilling Russian blood.’ In order to strengthen Russia, Father had spared no one. My elder half-brother Alexey, his son and heir, had paid the ultimate price for doubting Russia’s path to progress.

  Steps approach. My time with Ivan, and life as we know it, is over. I wish this were not necessary. There is a knock on the nursery door, a token rasp of knuckles; so light, it belies its true purpose. It is time to act. Russia will tolerate no further excuses. The soldiers’ nerves are as taut as the springs in a bear trap. I have promised them the world: on a night like this, destinies are forged, fortunes made and lost.

  ‘Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova?’ I hear the captain of the Imperial Preobrazhensky Regiment addressing me. His son is my godchild, but can I trust him completely for all that? I feel as if I am drowning and shield Ivan’s cradle with my body. In the gilt-framed mirrors I see my face floating ghostly pale above the dark green uniform jacket; my ash-blonde curly hair has slid down from beneath a fur cap. On a simple leather thong around my neck hangs the diamond-studded icon of St Nicholas that is priceless to me. They will have to prise it from my dead body to take it from m
e.

  I am almost thirty-two years old. Tonight, I shall not betray my blood.

  ‘I am ready,’ I say, my voice trembling, bracing myself, as the door bursts open and the soldiers swarm in.

  Everything comes at a price.

  1

  EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER – SPRING 1723

  We had gone to Mother’s palace in Kolomenskoye, as always when we needed safety, solace and strength. Ever since my elder half-brother, the Tsarevich Alexey, had died, Mother had struggled to give Father, Tsar Peter the Great of All the Russias, an heir to the world’s largest and wealthiest realm. A couple of weeks prior to our departure, she had been delivered of yet another still-born son.

  It was a relief to leave St Petersburg shortly after Easter: I had hardly known my half-brother as Alexey had been eighteen years older than I. Mother’s recent misfortune weighed on me more heavily. Still, we had celebrated Easter, the most joyous and sacred of Russian holidays, as usual by handing out brightly painted eggs to all the courtiers and wishing them well: Christ had risen. While our own plates remained as good as untouched, we watched them feast on kulich – a sweet, yeasty dome-shaped bread – and pashka – a custard made of cheese curd, almonds and dried fruit.

  When I stepped out of the Winter Palace shortly after dawn, I felt like drinking in the cool spring air, to chase away any memory of the long, stuffy, dark months of winter and the atmosphere of dread and sorrow that still lingered inside. Morning slid into the dawn light as smooth as a dove’s wing, offering us a first glimpse of the sunrises of summer: a hazy blend of mauve, mustard and mother-of-pearl. The ottepel, or great thaw, had begun and already winter’s stark handover from day to night was beginning to fade; the harsh contrasts softening. No change in Russia comes about easily, not even the shift in the seasons. The ottepel ’s strength shocked us anew, year after year, as it made rivers swell and tore open the earth. Our jaded spirits lifted as snow and ice receded, the light lingering longer day upon day for the span of a cockerel’s crow. Sunshine warmed the frozen earth and thawed the frost and rime from our veins, stirring the blood, quickening the heartbeat. The spring winds scattered seeds over the land, bringing with them the promise of fertility; they blew the cobwebs from our minds, rousing Russia from its drowsy stupor.