Silver Nights (16 page)

An afternoon of interrogation had produced nothing but the confused tales of the terror-struck, all trying to escape blame. Now, as he looked at his wife, he sensed that he was losing. There had been a moment of supreme gratification that morning when he had brought her to her knees, a supplicant whose prayer he had denied. Now she seemed to have regained some core of strength. She curtsied as meekly as ever, her eyes lowered, her voice soft, but there was a vibrancy about her now, a rich luster
to match the Golitskov rubies clasped with such defiant insolence around the slender throat.

Sophie felt the impotence of his rage and reveled in her private rejoicing. She knew now what she must do. In the decision to take action, desperate though that action was, she found herself again. No longer the passive, bewildered recipient of inexplicable hurts, she was again capable of implementing change.

She was going to appeal to the czarina. Annulment by imperial manifesto was not unheard of. Surely, when Catherine learned of the full catalog of the prince's enormities, she could not fail to grant her subject permission to return to obscurity. Dmitriev would still hold title to her fortune, and he would be free to find another wife.

And Adam? Thoughts of Adam followed the previous thoughts as naturally, as inevitably, as day follows night. What part had he played in this? How could she be so certain that he had had a hand in it? But she
was
certain. The current that flowed between them told her so, even when he was not with her.

For the same reason the sound of his voice in the hall came as no surprise, although Prince Dmitriev frowned. A visit from his aide-de-camp at this time of day could only mean regimental business, and he had thought they had dealt with everything earlier in the day.

“Colonel, Count Danilevski, Highness.” Nikolai bowed in the door, and Adam stepped through.

“Your pardon for disturbing you, General, but I thought you would wish to see this dispatch from the Crimea immediately. Princess, pray forgive this intrusion.” He bowed toward Sophie, who remained seated.

“Please do not mention it, Count,” she said softly. Her eyes looked the question. He nodded fractionally, but it was enough. Boris Mikhailov was safe with Adam, that was all she needed to know. And it was to tell her that, that he had come here this evening.

Dmitriev looked up from the dispatch. “There appears no special urgency, Colonel, but I commend your diligence in bringing it to me on such a night. Let us have supper.” He z135" />glanced coldly at Sophie. “I suggest you sup abovestairs, madame. Your presence can add nothing to our discussion.”

“As you command, Paul,” she murmured, rising immediately. “Count, I bid you good-night.”

With a soft rustle of rose silk she had gone, brushing so close beside him that her special fragrance—one that always reminded him of spring flowers—lingered in the air he breathed. The warmth of her skin burnished his own. A smile riveted to his lips, murder in his eyes, Adam turned toward his general.

It was four weeks later, on the night that the first snow of the winter fell upon St. Petersburg, when Sophie finally had her opportunity to seek private audience with the empress.

Soon after the disappearance of Boris Mikhailov the winter season had fallen into full swing. Catherine laid down a strict program for court life, functions taking place each day according to schedule. Russian and French theater productions, comedy, tragedy, or opera were all assigned a place in the weekly calendar, as were balls and the official, ceremonial “court” on Sunday evenings. In addition to these formal requirements, the salons of St. Petersburg hummed as hostesses vied to provide the most innovative entertainment, the most distinguished guests, access to the most scurrilous morsels of gossip.

Prince Paul permitted his wife to attend the Sunday court, where appearance was
de rigueur
. It was a cumbersome, tedious affair, regulated by ritual and the rules of etiquette as decreed and enforced by the Grand Mistress. The czarina rarely graced the occasion for more than an hour or two, and Sophie found it impossible to approach her in private. Infrequently, Paul would accompany her to the Hermitage for some theatrical performance, but Sophie was aware that these outings were carefully chosen, and not for their entertainment value. Her presence on the grandest occasions was designed to give the impression that Princess Dmitrievna was very much an active participant in court life, when, in fact, she remained immured in her palace for the most part. She re
ceived some calls, paid a few to the most sedate matrons, the arbiters of St. Petersburg society, but friends she had none.

On this snowy afternoon at the end of November, the occasion was a little different. The czarina herself had bade Sophie attend a private gathering in the Hermitage, where the empress liked to amuse herself in the company of close friends playing cards, literary parlor games, or impromptu charades. It also provided the opportunity for Catherine to cast a kindly eye on members of her court in whom she took a special interest.

Sophie was, for once, without her husband's escort because Paul was attending a regimental function. Much as he would have wished otherwise, refusal of the empress's invitation was unthinkable, so Sophie, wrapped in sable, was alone in the traveling carriage taking her through the increasingly heavy snow to the Hermitage. She used the short period of solitude to rehearse the speech she had had planned for the last weeks, awaiting the opportunity for delivery. She had lived on her plan, drawing nourishment for the soul from the prospect of taking action. It had enabled her to withstand Paul's icy anger, which led him to humiliate her in front of the servants whenever the opportunity arose, and it had enabled her to bear Adam's absence. He was in Moscow, and she had no idea when he would return. She could not ask her husband, even supposing he would deign to answer her, because why would she be interested in the movements of his aide-de-camp? Prince Dmitriev must never suspect for one minute that such a question held an all-absorbing fascination for his wife.

Catherine had built the Hermitage as a place for retreat and as an intimate theater. Sophie, still huddled in her sable against the bitter cold, walked quickly along the covered passageway connecting the empress's retreat with the Winter Palace. In her anxiety, she stepped out as if she were striding through the halls of Berkholzskoye, remembering to moderate her step to one more suited to court decorum only as she was announced at the door of the gracious, velvet-hung chamber where Catherine was entertaining her select group,
very much in the domestic manner of any lady at her own fireside.

“Sophia Alexeyevna, come by the fire,
ma chère
.” She held out her hand as Sophie crossed the rich Astrakhan carpet. “It is not the weather for venturing forth. I am deeply complimented by my dear friends who have shown themselves willing to honor me with their company.” She smiled with warm friendliness around the group, drawing Sophie to the fire's warmth. “Are you acquainted with the French ambassador who has just come amongst us—Comte Louis Philippe de Ségur?” She beamed as she made the introduction, and it was clear to Sophie that the count had found favor in the empress's eyes.

“Good evening, Comte.” She curtsied, smiling, and received from the worldly, charming, thirty-two-year-old diplomat a smile and a most careful appraisal in return.

“
Enchanté
, Princess.” He raised her hand to his lips, looking deep into her eyes, and Sophie understood exactly why the ambassador had found favor with the empress.

She turned to greet Prince Potemkin, whose one eye looked fondly upon her, and then paid due reverence to a beautiful young officer of the guard, Alexander Mamonov, who presently graced the favorite's apartments adjoining the imperial bedchamber.

“Come, Monsieur Redcoat,” Catherine said playfully to her youthful lover, “you are challenged to compose a quatrain for us.”

As the evening progressed in laughter and the exercise of wit during various literary parlor games, Sophie began to wonder whether she would find the opportunity to request a private audience with the empress. But if she did not do so this evening, there was no knowing when another chance would be given her. As they moved into the supper room, she took her courage in both hands.

“Madame, I wonder if you would grant me a few minutes in private?”

Catherine looked startled, and just a little disapproving. The young woman had an overly serious expression suddenly,
the dark eyes intense, her mouth set with anxious determination. It spelled trouble, and Catherine did not like the intrusion of unpleasantness on these domestic evenings. “Must it be tonight, Sophia?”

Nervously, Sophie moistened her lips. How could she explain publicly that if it weren't tonight, there was no knowing when she would again succeed in evading her husband's surveillance? “If you please, Madame,” she answered, her voice low but nonetheless firm.

Catherine frowned. “Very well. Before you return home, then.” That promised, the empress dismissed the disturbing matter from her mind for the remainder of the evening.

Sophie found it much harder to do so, but she forced herself to behave as if she had nothing on her mind beyond the need to keep her wits sharp in this cultivated, amusing company. At last, however, everyone but the empress, Mamonov, and Sophie had gone in great good humor out into the bitter, snowy night.

“Now, what is it that is so urgent and so private, Sophia Alexeyevna?” Catherine spoke briskly, implying that she considered her guest's importunate request to be out of place, a faux pas on such an occasion.

Sophie looked desperately toward the guards officer, in his red uniform, lounging on a sofa while eating bonbons with apparent absorption. She could not say what she had to in front of that beautiful young man, even if the empress, deluded as always by passion, considered his presence indispensable at all times.

Alexander Mamonov looked up as if he felt Sophie's anguished glance. The appeal in those dark eyes was unmistakable. He rose from the sofa. “I think I'll go to my apartments,” he said, taking his mistress's hand, raising it to his lips. “Do not be long.”

Catherine smiled joyfully. “I will come to you soon, my love.”

Even in her distress, Sophie could not help wondering how that virile young man could possibly sacrifice himself night after night upon the altar of that corpulent, wrinkled, sagging
body. It was amazing what people would do for power and money—both of which were inevitable concomitants of inhabiting the favorite's apartments. Yet Catherine, lost in a self-delusion bordering on the irrational, actually believed the love was shared. It was an amazing delusion for such a brilliant woman to harbor.

The door closed on the favorite. “Well, Sophia?” Catherine reposed herself in a silk-covered armchair.

In the absence of an invitation to seat herself, Sophie remained standing to tell her tale and make her extraordinary request. Her voice was strong, the tone unemotional, but even as she talked she could feel her heart sinking. The empress looked utterly dumbfounded, and not in the least encouraging.

Catherine was incredulous. This young woman was asking for an annulment of her marriage—a marriage promoted by the empress with the most benevolent intentions, a marriage celebrated a mere four months previously under imperial auspices with the greatest ceremony and distinction. And she was asking for this amazing thing simply because her husband was not treating her exactly as she would like. That was really what all this talk of serfs and horses came down to. What on earth did Sophia Alexeyevna expect? She was a Russian woman married to a Russian man.

Since her arrival in Russia at the age of fourteen, Catherine had made herself Russian. She had adopted the country, its people, its language, and its customs to such an extent that she was as at home ruling this land as if, indeed, she had been born to it. But occasionally the purely Germanic heritage of a princess of Anhalt-Zerbst would raise its head, and she would find herself contemplating the paradoxes and peculiarities of her adopted country with the objective dispassion of an outsider. She was doing so now, listening to this young woman who was asking for the impossible while denying the truth. They were a strange race: revering motherhood, they beat their wives as a matter of course, without thought or compunction; detesting war, they fought with demonic courage; indolent in the extreme, they worked like
dogs. They certainly did not make considerate husbands, as Catherine, after eighteen wretched years of her own marriage, would contest without a qualm. But that was a woman's lot—a Russian woman's lot.

“My dear Sophia Alexeyevna,” she said, when Sophie had fallen silent. “I will do you the kindness of forgetting the request you have just made. You must realize how impossible such a thing would be. Your life is not endangered. You are merely not completely happy. I will give you some advice: One must be cheerful. That is the only way to overcome and endure everything. I, too, had much to endure from my husband. Why, he kept his mistress in his apartments in the palace and lost no opportunity to humiliate me, even threatening to have my head shaved in a convent!”

And all the while you were enduring so cheerfully, you were plotting and planning, until the moment came when you overthrew him and had him assassinated, Sophie thought bitterly. Could the czarina not hear her own hypocrisy? Or did she simply consider that there was one rule for women and one for the empress?

“Do not look so dejected,
ma chère
.” Catherine leaned forward to pat Sophie's hand. “Marriage always comes as something of a shock, and you have led such a sheltered life. It is only understandable that you should find certain…”—she looked for the delicate way of putting this—“certain aspects of marriage strange…distasteful, even. It is often the way at the beginning.” She smiled her toothless smile. “In time, you will become accustomed to these things. Now, I think you should go home and have a good night's sleep. Things always look better in the morning. And remember: Be cheerful. I am sure Prince Dmitriev does not enjoy such a long face around the house all the time. It must annoy him. Why do you not try to smile a little, Sophia?”

And that was that. Only now did Sophie truly realize how much she had relied upon this meeting, how every hope had been fixed upon it. Now, that hope shattered, she felt as empty as a hollowed-out gourd, scraped clean of all expectancy, all trust, all aspiration; a hollowed-out shell, she would
grow sere in her hopelessness, unnourished by the rich moisture of possibility. Long ago—oh, so very long ago—her grandfather had said that if she had to leave her husband, she was resourceful enough to find a way. But she could not even leave the house undetected. The servants were her enemies, forced into that position by the prince and the savage reprisals he had taken after her ride. She should have gone, then. Astride Khan, she could have ridden to the frontier. What dangers could she have faced worse than the deadliness of her present existence?

All she could do now was curtsy, thank the empress for listening to her, apologize for the unseemliness of her request, and go home, back to the connubial attentions of her husband, who would be waiting for her.

Catherine, her equanimity annoyingly disturbed, frowned as the door closed on Sophia Alexeyevna's departure. The princess did look somewhat peaky. Potemkin had commented on it, also. But when innocence was violated, as it inevitably was in the nuptial bedchamber, there was always some shock. Somehow, though, she had thought the Golitskova to be made of sterner stuff than the usual. The empress rose from her chair, still frowning. She liked Princess Dmitrievna and had no desire to see her unhappy. Perhaps a tactful word in her husband's ear would help. Men never saw what was in front of their eyes. A mild suggestion that he treat his bride with a little more gentleness would not come amiss.

On this happy resolution, Catherine went off to enjoy her own night in the arms of Monsieur Redcoat.

 

Two days later, General, Prince Paul Dmitriev, in answer to an imperial summons, stood in the czarina's study rigid with mortification, rage, and shocked disbelief. Sophia Alexeyevna had complained to the empress of his treatment, and the empress was now taking him to task! Admittedly, she was doing so following her oft-repeated maxim that while she praised loudly, she scolded in a whisper, but to be upbraided, even in this soft manner, was insupportable.

“She is so much younger than you, Prince,” Catherine
finished with an agreeable smile. “And she has had a somewhat unusual upbringing. I am sure, now you understand the situation, you will be able to put matters between you to rights.”

“I trust so, Your Majesty.” The prince bowed low, hiding behind drooping lids the savage fury blazing in his eyes. His thin smile flickered. “I am most grateful to Your Majesty for pointing out to me Sophia Alexeyevna's grievances.”