Far Flies the Eagle (28 page)

“You're being very good to me,” he said suddenly. “Few women would share my feelings over a child which wasn't theirs.”

“She was a sweet child,” Elizabeth answered him. “And you loved her. No one can understand better than I can what you're suffering. I too lost my daughter.…”

He struggled to remember, and then realized; the child born of her lover Okhotnikov, prematurely born and dead in so short a time, thanks to the shock of the cornet's murder. She had come to him once, asking him to protect her against Constantine, and he'd sent her away.…

How much she must have suffered in the years since he had married her! Parted before they ever had a chance to come together, driven to the Countess Golovine and then to Adam … paying for thirty years for his adolescent inexperience and the self-disgust of that first night with his grandmother's procuress.… May God forgive him! But how could He? His sins were numberless, his guilt beyond expiation.… He should have lived chastely with his wife, his good, gentle wife whose failings were nothing compared to his own.… He thought of Marie with loathing, a subconscious loathing which emerged the moment Sophie died. But for Marie and the fulfilment she had given him he might have treated Elizabeth less shamefully.…

“Life has been sad for us both,” the Empress said. To her surprise he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Do you remember when we first married, Elizabeth?” She flushed at the question. In all her life she had been unable to forget.

“I remember, Alexander.”

“We should have been happy,” he said slowly. “Have you ever wondered what went wrong with us?”

“I spent many years of my life wondering that,” she answered, and her voice shook.

“It was mostly my fault. I was selfish with you and you were very young.… We were foolish, Elizabeth, and had no one to guide us properly. But it's different now.”

She stayed very still while he talked, her heart racing in the disturbing way it did lately if she became upset or excited. He was distressed and nostalgic, she told herself quickly, only a fool would interpret his words as anything more.

“We're not young any more,” he was saying. “We've both made mistakes and wronged each other.…”

Adam. Thoughts flew through her mind; Adam and her desperate love for him and the brief reunion at Vienna after years of separation … the young Okhotnikov, the gentle lover who was murdered because she favoured him, the loneliness and humiliation of her life; her own reflection in the mirror, old and prematurely faded.

“Elizabeth, will you forgive me for making you unhappy?”

“I have nothing to forgive,” she stammered. “You are the one …” The colour was rising in her face and neck; a tiny pain needled her heart, a pain of happiness, she thought hazily. Happiness and struggling hope.

“Then we forgive each other,” he said eagerly. “The past is wiped out between us. Elizabeth Alexeievna, will you come back to me?”

For a moment she sat without moving or answering, feeling as if a bond which had become part of herself was suddenly splitting open. It parted then, and the full force of her love for him overwhelmed her, the love which had never died at all.

She was on her knees beside him, pressing his hand to her lips when he smiled down down at her. “Will you? I need you very much.”

“Oh, Alexander! How I've prayed that one day you might ask me.… I always loved you. always.… And now I'll make you happy.”

“My dear wife,” he murmured, and for the first time in over twenty years he kissed her on the mouth.

Elizabeth's passion only slept; it woke then as he touched her, with the fever of the young girl whose inexperience and sensuality had once repulsed him. She was his wife and they were reconciled, but the man who held her in his arms and went to her room that night was a man in whom passion was dead; a sick, tired man, who laid his head on her breast and went to sleep. And in the darkness she submitted to this unspoken condition; her disappointment faded in gratitude for an end to the estrangement. Though he never indulged in sexual relations with her, she did her best to make him happy, and he seemed happy for the first time in ten years. They spent quiet evenings together, the Empress sewing while one of her ladies read to them aloud. Often she looked up and exchanged a smile of understanding with her husband, while the Court discussed the situation with amazement and giggled behind their backs. The hero of 1812, the fabulous sensualist who'd followed his grandmother so faithfully, was actually settling down to a stolid domestic life with his own Consort! It was almost indecent, the wits declared, until it became known that the idyll was platonic. The Court physician, Sir James Wylie, retorted that the Empress's heart was weak.

In the first months of 1825 she became very ill; she fainted and complained of an agonizing pain in her breast; in the same spot, she thought one night, which used to ache for Alexander when she was a young woman.…

He kept a long vigil by her bed, patting her cold hand, and his presence gave her strength.

“I need you,” he insisted, and she struggled against death for his sake more than her own.

By summer she was convalescent at Tsarske Seloe, and Alexander returned from one of his inspections of the countryside to confer with Sir James Wylie.

“She's better, Sire,” Sir James admitted. “I must say I didn't expect her to recover, but she has great will power. I believe her devotion to you really kept her alive.”

“What do you recommend for her complete recovery, Sir James?” the Emperor asked.

Wylie hesitated. He was a shrewd man who'd served the Imperial family for many years, and was in no doubt about who really cared for whom. “Poor lady,” he used to murmur, watching the Empress convulsed in one heart attack after another, and he said it to himself at that moment as he prepared to answer Alexander. “Poor lady, if he knows the truth perhaps he'll be extra thoughtful to her.…” Pity made him unusually abrupt when he spoke.

“There'll be no complete recovery,” Wylie said. “Forgive me for being blunt, Sire, but the Empress cannot live long. With great care her life might be prolonged a little, that's the most we can hope for. The first requirement is a change of climate for the winter. She needs to go somewhere where it's warm and mild. I can't answer for it if she spends another winter in St. Petersburg.”

Alexander had walked away and was looking out of the window.

“I imagined you might advise a change, Sir James. I shall certainly take the Empress out of the Capital this winter. By September we shall be on our way to Taganrog.”

“Taganrog!” The word escaped Wylie like an oath. “But Good God, Sire, Taganrog's on the Sea of Azov, it has a vile winter climate! Why the winds alone will be enough to kill …”

“Taganrog will be most suitable,” Alexander interrupted, and suddenly Wylie left his protest unfinished.

“We are going to Taganrog in September,” the Czar continued. “I have already told the Empress and she is looking forward to it. You may go now, Sir James.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Just before dawn on the 13th of September, a carriage drawn by three horses reined in at the barrier before the city of St. Petersburg. The hood was lowered, and a tall man dressed in a plain military uniform and greatcoat, stood upright and looked out over the scene.

The night was very still; the dark tide of the Neva lapped the stone parapets, a few lights twinkling in the houses along the bank were reflected in the black water; sentries stamped and marched along their beats under the city walls; the sharp spire of the church built on the St. Peter and Paul Fortress stood out in the sky, outlined against a faint glow where the night was fading.

Petersburg. The great Admiralty building, the splendid Nevsky prospect with its lovely mansions, the trees and park-lands, the towering churches and the dazzling façade of the Winter Palace, rising like a cliff from the banks of the great river. Petersburg, the monument of a crazy, epileptic Czar who'd built it on a foundation of sinking marshland and the bones of thousands of serfs. Alexander Pavlovitch, Czar and descendant of Peter the Great, stood for some moments looking down on the city which had been the scene of so many of his triumphs, the city which stood in all her beauty, unscathed by the war which had destroyed Moscow. Petersburg, untouched and unoccupied; the monument to his victory and the defeat of the French.

He prayed for his Capital of the North, for God to protect it and its people, because God knew now that he would never see it again. In the monastery of St. Alexander Nevsky, he had just attended his own Requiem and heard the monks sing a solemn Te Deum in thanksgiving for his glorious reign. He had knelt alone in the vast church, joining in the service for the repose of his own soul, with the doors bolted and the plain carriage waiting for him outside, and fervently offered his past life with all its imperfections to Almighty God.

The reign of Alexander I was coming to an end. He sat down and gave an order to his coachman. The hood was raised and the horses whipped; dawn was coming up behind St. Petersburg as the carriage turned on the road that led southwards to Taganrog.

“Whatever possessed them to come to this place!” Sir James Wylie exclaimed. “There's not even a proper house for them. These quarters are cramped and the winter winds will be enough to kill the Empress!”

The Russian Court Doctor, Tarasov, shrugged.

“The Czar likes informality,” he explained. “They live a simple domestic life here, and the Empress and he seem very happy.”

“Hmm,” Wylie snorted. “The Empress isn't well again, and the Czar's leaving for this tour of the Crimea to-morrow; I'll admit
he's
taken a new hold on life, I've never seen a man so pleased with himself! Why the devil he's taking us on the tour with him when it's the Empress who needs attention, I can't imagine!”

“The Empress has her own physician here,” Tarasov said quickly. He disliked the conversation and dreaded being overheard. Wylie had a loud voice and tactless opinions; he curbed neither, and Tarasov's long experience of the Czar warned him that he was planning something, and that he and Wylie and Taganrog were all part of that plan. He knew as well as the Scot that the Empress was a dangerously sick woman who needed more than one doctor to attend her, but he also knew better than to call attention to the fact.

“If you'll excuse me,” he murmured, and hurried away.

Wylie stood looking after him. “Will ye look at him scuttling away like a scared rabbit!” he demanded aloud, lapsing into his native accent. “There's some damned mystery going on here!”

“Try not to be away too long, Alexander; you don't know how much I shall miss you.”

Alexander bent over Elizabeth Alexeievna and kissed her.

“I won't be long, my dear. How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” she smiled at him. He sat beside her and she slipped her arm through his. It was true; she felt almost well as long as he was with her and prolonged this platonic honeymoon which was happier than any other relationship she had ever known. She wanted so often to tell him she loved him, was indeed in love with him, but some instinct advised against it. He was a strange man, her husband; if anything upset him and things changed between them, she would never be able to bear it again.…

“What have you been doing to-day?”

“Walking through the town,” he said. “You know, it's a wonderful feeling, Elizabeth, just to be able to walk down the streets like any ordinary person … nobody recognized me,” he added in an odd voice. “Nobody. I could live here or anywhere far from Moscow or Petersburg and no one would ever know who I was.”

“It wouldn't be possible,” the Empress said. “People in our position often envy their subjects their private lives, but we couldn't exchange; I could never forget my birth and live in some miserable little town without an equal to speak to; neither could you.”

He stared over her head.

“I suppose not,” he answered. “As you say, my dear, it wouldn't be possible. It's just a dream, that's all. A King's dream.…”

“More like a nightmare if one did it,” Elizabeth retorted. “Tell me, are you looking forward to this Crimea trip?”

“Very much,” he said cheerfully. “Very much indeed. I hope I shan't ever have to make another.”

He left Taganrog on November 1st, and made an extensive tour of the Crimea, reviewing his fleet at Sevastapol, visiting towns and villages, inspecting hospitals, churches and arsenals. The melancholy of the past years seemed to have left him; his carriage was upright and his old charm shone forth, recalling that splendid figure of repute, ‘the autocrat of waltzes and of war' as Byron called him. This line was quoted all over Russia; the rest of the poem, a bitter attack on Alexander's suppression of liberty and the tyranny of the Holy Alliance, was not printed.

He found kind words for everyone, even the most pompous officials were received graciously. Nothing was too much trouble, no ceremony too long or journey too far; his temper, usually so capricious, was even and cheerful. He seemed a happy and contented man, determined to fulfil his duties as well as he could. He looked out on his fleet with tears of pride, saying a private farewell as he had done to his beloved St. Petersburg. He was leaving it all, and with it a tradition of glory which would live on long after he was dead. His great antagonist was dead, and legends were gathering like mourners round the grave at St. Helena. Now he too must die, the public death of a Czar of All the Russias.

Everyone who saw him agreed on one impression of him afterwards. He combined dignity and grace with the most striking humility.

When his duties were over for the day, he prayed with ecstatic concentration, and on the 15th of November God solved one vital problem for him. The courier, Maskov, who brought State papers from Petersburg, was killed when his carriage overturned on the road. The Emperor sent Tarasov to find out if the man were really dead; when the doctor confirmed it, the Czar wept for him, but not before Tarasov had surprised an expression of excitement on his face.