The Girl Who Fought Napoleon: A Novel of the Russian Empire (14 page)

Alexander’s eyes darted to the parchment, now grasped firmly in Pahlen’s hands.

“What? How can that be?”

He collapsed back into his chair, his face ashen. His lips quivered, “I cannot . . .” he said.

“Get hold of yourself, Your Majesty,” said General Pahlen. “This is a moment for courage.”

Alexander felt the cold wind of a long-ago January evening biting his cheek, the bells of the sledge ringing over the fields of snow.

“Abdication—you, Pahlen! You all said
abdication
! Not murder!”

“You must act for all Russia now. Russia needs a strong leader. The people do not care how it came to be! Only that a strong hand holds the reins. What has happened is of no consequence now.”

“No consequence? No consequence! You are mad, Count Pahlen! I cannot go on with it. I have no strength to reign. I will resign my power and give it to whoever wants it!”

“Do not behave like a child, Your Majesty! This is no time—”

“Let those who have committed the crime be responsible for the consequences.”

Count Pahlen stiffened, rage filling his throat.

“The fate of millions now depends on your firmness, your strength. Go and reign, damn it!”

Grand Duchess Elizabeth flew into the room, the door banging behind her. She covered her mouth with her hand in horror.

She had heard everything from the adjoining room.

“Alexander!” she said. “Oh, Alexander!”

Alexander opened his arms to his wife. He sobbed into her white shoulders.

“Elise, what am I to do?” he cried. “What am I to do?”

“Calm yourself, my darling,” she whispered. “Send this wretched man away! We will think together, you and I. Just send him away at once!”

“Count Pahlen! Leave us,” said Alexander. “I will send for you later.”

“Your Highness, I will remain outside until—”

“Go!”

The door shut behind the count.

Elizabeth pressed her husband’s head to her breast. “I will stay at your side, always. We will make a plan, Alexander. Have courage, my love.”

He clung to her words like a drowning man.

The next morning, Alexander stood on the balcony overlooking the parade square of the Winter Palace.

Fighting for control of his voice, he addressed the soldiers and guards of the palace.

“My father is . . . dead. He died of an apoplectic seizure. I am now the Tsar. During my reign everything will be done according to the spirit and principles of my grandmother, the empress Catherine II.”

Without further remark, Alexander—now Alexander I, Tsar and emperor—withdrew into the castle.

How shall I have the strength to rule, plagued with the constant memory that my father was assassinated?

An hour after Emperor Paul’s death, Sir James Wylie, chief physician to the Romanov Court, arrived to prepare Paul’s body for viewing. Not long after that, Johann Jacob Mettenleiter, who had painted the delicately adorned panels for the state bedroom in Pavlovsk Palace, was summoned to make the corpse presentable. Escorted by the Imperial Guard, he carried his paints in a canvas satchel.

“Do your best,” said the Scottish doctor. “He was your patron—you know how he looked in life. Make him whole again.” Mettenleiter stared in horror at the task he had been given. As an artist, he had created great beauty. Now he painted a living face on a dead man, brutally mutilated. He tried to imagine he was painting a portrait on canvas, rather than the dead flesh of the man who had been his emperor. Mettenleiter disguised the gash from the gold snuffbox and tried to restore a normal color to Paul’s face. He painted over the many bruises and lesions.

When the artist finally left the bedchamber hours later, he was hunched and pale, visibly shaken. Sir Wylie bowed to Alexander, who was waiting anxiously outside the door.

“I pray you enter now, Your Highness,” said the doctor, bowing to the new emperor.

Alexander entered the chamber, falling to his knees beside the exquisitely painted doll who had been his father.

“Fetch my mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna,” he whispered. “She has sent word she will not recognize me as emperor until she has seen my father’s . . . corpse.”

Alexander remained at his father’s bedside, the shadows of the guttering candles illuminating the profile of the kneeling man, his tear-streaked face bowed in prayer. His right hand flew across his head and body in the sign of the cross.

Maria Feodorovna entered and stood speechless at the sight. She removed her dead husband’s tilted cap, her fingers hovering over the deep gash in his left temple.

She drew in a breath, fingering the wound camouflaged with thick paint.

“Where is the nightshirt he wore?” she asked.

“I do not know—”

“Send an order immediately. I want that nightshirt. Unwashed. I will keep it with me always,” Maria Feodorovna said, bending over her dead husband to kiss his forehead.

With the stoicism of a Romanov, she turned stiffly to her son and said, “I now wish you great joy, Alexander. You are emperor.” Her mouth puckered as if she were tasting a bitter herb.

“Mama, I—”

“You are covered by the blood of your father!” said Maria Feodorovna.

Alexander collapsed to the ground. His wife and those few other present thought him dead.

Chapter 21

Winter Palace, St. Petersburg

November 1801

Alexander often dined alone in the Winter Palace.

This night he dined with Empress Elizabeth, who desperately tried to soothe her young husband’s conscience as he teetered on the edge of collapse.

“Darling Alexander. You must deliver yourself from this abyss. Russia needs your leadership, your enthusiasm for the throne!”

Alexander stared at his plate.

“Even my mother calls me a murderer. How should I find this ‘enthusiasm for the throne’?”

“Oh, dear Alexander. Do you not see how she loves you? The shock induced such a rash accusation. She longs for her eldest son to serve Russia with honor. Above all things, she recognizes your good heart. Go to her and receive her blessing, I beg you.”

Alexander looked up through the flame of the candelabra at his wife, his lips trying to form a smile.

How good she is to me! I am not deserving of Elizabeth . . . or of Russia.

“You are right. I shall go to my mother. I must have her blessing or perish.”

“Emperor Paul was a tyrannical fiend,” said Elizabeth, folding her napkin.

“He was my father and I loved him,” said Alexander, holding up his hand. He said a silent prayer. When he looked up again, his wife’s eyes had dropped to her lap, filling with tears.

She would never hurt me, her heart is golden. How I wish I could leave Russia and take Elise away with me to live in obscurity, raising our children away from the sycophants and murderous schemers of this empire!

But how could I leave my Maria Naryshkina?

“Elise,” said Alexander. “I have sent for Adam Czartoryski.”

Elizabeth stiffened.

“He has been my closest and most faithful advisor,” said Alexander. “The two of you have been friends in the past. Before . . .”

Elizabeth nodded her head woodenly.

“I need him,” Alexander said. “I hope that you two can remain . . . friends.”

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. She looked out into the dark, where she knew the Neva still flowed through the night.

“Adam Czartoryski is indeed an honorable man,” she said. “But Alexander, after the death of little Maria, I don’t know if I can suffer any more. I simply . . . can’t.”

Alexander moved his chair closer to hers. He took her hand.

“I understand. I only want you to accustom yourself to the idea of Adam being close at hand. There are so few men I can trust. I am surrounded by sycophants, every one! I need Adam.”

Elizabeth nodded. “For you, Alexander. And for Russia. I will try to be his friend.” Then she dipped her head, not looking at her husband. “But every time I see his face, I see little Mäuschen.”

“With time you will heal, my dearest Elise. I pray for this.”

“But go now, Alexander. Speak to your mother. You will see how a mother forgives all.”

A servant approached Alexander with a silver tray. Alexander frowned knowing that only an urgent message would be presented to him while he was dining with his wife. He opened the envelope.

“What is it, Alexander?” said Elizabeth.

“A matter I must take care of immediately. Forgive me, my dear.”

“Of course.”

Alexander’s valet, Boris, stood waiting in the study. He bowed as the emperor entered.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty. My deepest condolences—”

“Boris, what is this urgent news?”

Boris glanced at the door.

“The late tsar’s head valet, Monsieur Littauer, has brought a document that was found in your father’s bedchamber. He asked me to deliver it at once to Your Majesty’s hand.”

Boris produced a scrap of linen stationery from a leather satchel strapped around his waist.

“I cannot say what it is, but as it is written in your father’s hand, Monsieur Littauer thought you should have it.”

Alexander looked at the piece of paper. It had been crumpled, but the creases had been smoothed.

A short string of random numbers were penned in black ink. There were two letters among the numbers: AP. Alexander recognized the flourish of his father’s pen stroke.

“It’s gibberish,” said Alexander.

“Perhaps it is not for me to say, Your Majesty. But I believe it is code.”

“Where was this found?”

“On the late tsar’s writing desk.”

“Thank you for this, Boris. And I shall thank Monsieur Littauer personally for his consideration.”

“At your service, Your Majesty,” said Boris, bowing.

Alexander stared at his father’s lettering.

AP . . . AP . . .

Adam Czartoryski sipped his cognac, looking out over the Neva. He was weary from travel.

I need you, Adam. I need your good counsel
,
the new tsar had written.

Keenly aware of Russian history, Czartoryski knew a weak or reluctant tsar was an extreme danger to Russia, especially as Napoleon gathered more and more strength, collecting lands and people throughout Europe.

Taking up his pen, Czartoryski wrote to his friend Nikolai Novosiltev:

The grief and remorse that Alexander relives in his heart are inexpressibly deep and troubling. He has mad hallucinations. He sees in his imagination Paul’s mutilated and bloodstained body on the steps of the throne which he has to ascend. Our dear friend whom we so heartily encouraged to be tsar has human sensitivity that is in total conflict with being the Strong Man of Russia.

The Pole blotted his letter and set it aside. He stared across the room at a fat fly, creeping along the edge of his plate, still resting on the dinner table.

Lazy winter insect!

Czartoryski waved his hand viciously at the pest and considered what must come next:

We will reverse the course Tsar Paul charted for us! We cannot remain allies with this fiend, Napoleon, or refuse Britain’s overtures. We will ally with the Ottomans if we must, but the French shall not be our masters, or our equals
!

I shall be the Tsar’s ambassador to Napoleon and say as much to his face.

Napoleon wasted no time sending his emissaries to the new tsar. His emissaries sent back reports filled with praise of Alexander. “How perfect is his French, with no telltale intonation of the Russian language. He employs such lofty expressions—obviously the result of a careful education. He knows all the writers of the Enlightenment and is well versed in French literature, music, and culture.”

“We shall be allies, this glorious tsar and I,” Napoleon declared. “Together we will rule the world.”

But the French emperor’s entreaties to Alexander were rebuked. Unlike his father, the new tsar wanted nothing to do with the Grand Armée or Paris. When Napoleon heard of Russia’s rapprochement with England, he was incensed.

“How dare he!” Napoleon shouted at Alexander’s emissary who brought word of the Tsar’s refusal. “We were to share in power. How can this man turn his back on so brilliant a future? He is so well versed in French, schooled in liberty and Enlightenment.”

The fire had been laid, the tinder was ready, and only a spark was needed. Napoleon provided the spark when he ordered the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, a member of the French royal family. When a commoner dared to touch a royal, all Europe’s sovereign families trembled with collective rage. This upstart Corsican had crossed the line, revolution or no revolution.

Tsar Alexander’s emissary, Adam Czartoryski, conveyed a message of disgust and condemnation to the French ruler.

And with that, Russia and France were at war.

Empress Elizabeth watched her husband slowly grasp the scepter.

She and the Kremlin advisors had begged him to step forward and fill the vacuum of power before vying nobility could attempt to usurp his right as the Tsar.

And slowly, each day Alexander became stronger, remembering his intentions to institute reform, pledged what seemed like a lifetime ago with his Committee of Friends. He set to work, aligning Russia once more with Great Britain as his grandmother had done.

“You will be a great and good tsar,” Empress Elizabeth told him. “You will protect us from Napoleon and unite Europe.”

Alexander shook his head.

“I wish I had the iron strength my forebears did. The only force that compels me is duty to Russia. And the need to control this mongrel who has usurped the French throne!”