The Tsarina's Legacy (23 page)

Zubov was already approaching Grisha's room, working his way through the musicians, glaring as they continued to play. He wore a greatcoat and clutched a walking stick with a gilded eagle attached to the end of it, as though taking a stroll through the palace.

“The prince is following doctor's orders?” Zubov asked Anton. “He looks a fright.”

Anton ignored Zubov and bowed his head in Grisha's direction. “Your Highness, I asked him to wait at the door. I am sorry.”

“The empress of all the Russias is sick with worry over her old friend.” Zubov glanced at Anton with no more concern than a cat might give a small bug before crushing it. “She wanted me to see the prince with my own eyes.”

“I'm fine,” Grisha said, gesturing impatiently. “Come. Come. Only don't take too much of my time. We have much to accomplish. Anton, tell the musicians they may take a break.”

“Yes, the prince and I require privacy,” Zubov said, raising his thin and haughty voice to be heard above the music.

“It's all right. I trust Platon Alexandrovich will not see anything shocking. Perhaps he might even report back to the empress if he finds anything under the robe noteworthy.” Grisha gave a slight laugh.

“I suppose if Platon Alexandrovich need not wear a wig to call on us, you need not bother to dress,” Anton said.

“What?” Zubov snapped.

The fierce loyalty in Anton's eyes touched Grisha's heart. He couldn't have been prouder if Anton had been his own son. He let his next laugh ring out heartily. The boy nodded and backed out of the room.

Zubov waited until the musicians had moved and their footfalls were no longer audible. Then he tossed his pretty black hair out of his face and began to remove his coat, revealing a velvet frock underneath. Grisha slipped the silk dressing gown over his shoulders, fussing with it. He should have asked Anton to help him. The effort hardly seemed worth the time. He let the robe fall carelessly to his sides.

“Is it true you are married?” Zubov asked.

So he had heard Grand Duke Paul muttering after all. Their long-kept secret was out. Perhaps it had never been much of a secret in the first place. Grisha thought back to the modest ceremony over candles so many years before. They had been entirely enraptured with one another. Such love had filled Catherine's eyes. But he could not bear for anyone to think him an indulged pet and Catherine was not one to share her hold on power, even if a slip of paper made Grisha co-regent. They had promised never to speak of their union to others.

Now the truth was known. Still, it needn't be a weapon for Zubov to yield. Grisha fumbled with his robe again, playing the invalid, and then drew the silk around his shoulders as he rose from bed, feet only slightly unsteady. He didn't bother with slippers, nor to gather and tie the dressing gown around his expansive stomach. He found a few jewels in a small crystal dish on the nightstand. He gathered them in hand and began shifting them from palm to palm. “If I had a wife, she would hardly allow you to see me this way.”

“You understand my meaning. Don't pretend otherwise. You and the empress. Are you married? I understand legal documents exist but are buried.”

“If the papers are buried, surely a marriage is no longer valid. This seems just as good as one of the pagan divorces the Anglicans obtain when the mood strikes them.”

“No one wants it known the empress is an adulteress, even if the one wearing cuckold's horns is a worn-down, overweight, pompous ass whose time has long since passed.”

The insult had been calculated to prick Grisha's ego in tender spots, but the boy's rage was clearly born of fear. Zubov tried to retain a passive exterior, but Grisha noted the twitch in his pretty lips and his fingers curling. Grisha almost felt sorry for him. He sank back on his plump pillows. “You heard Grand Duke Paul speak of this alleged marriage?”

“You still evade the question? Fine. If I withhold information, I know you will only send your spies hunting.” Zubov took a seat on the same large Turkish divan Praskovia had lounged on the night before. “I have no legal papers in hand, no proof such a marriage exists. But yes, I heard Paul. And we discussed this topic last night, Catherine and I. Truth be told, we quarreled. She called you husband. It slipped. So now I ask you plainly.”

He imagined Zubov and Catherine whispering in the dark over silk pillows. Perhaps Zubov had mounted some tepid insult in his direction, trying to confirm the veracity of what Paul had said. Catherine would have tapped Zubov on his broad shoulder and insisted he not make remarks about her “dear old friend and husband.”

Grisha let the jewels sift through his fingers and back into the dish with a clatter. “If the empress wishes to tell you she will. I am at her command.”

“If it is true, why not press a claim to the throne?” Zubov spoke so slowly, so carefully, it grated on Grisha's skin. “The empress has made her share of enemies. If you are the legal consort, it would be easy enough for you to gain favor. You might have ascended to power.”

“I do not wish it.”

“All men do. You styled yourself an emperor in the south. Even this so-called casual dress you wear … that Oriental robe and outlandish scarf. You look the pasha. All you need is a turban and a few more diamond rings to complete the masquerade.”

“I am no emperor. I am a servant under the empress's command.”

“It's not as though you lack ambition. You and I share that distinction from Catherine's other favorites.” He leaned in close with a smug smile, voice lazy and measured. “Reconsider our previous conversation. We would make a powerful team were we to work together rather than indulging in these petty squabbles. Perhaps we might view your mosque as the first of many fruitful collaborations.”

“You don't know me as well as you presume,” Grisha said. “Ambition is a fleeting pleasure and I treat it as such. I nearly pursued a life in the service of God. Perhaps I still might.”

“That is merely a different type of ambition. Now speak freely. Why have you left the throne to her alone when it might have been yours as well?”

“The truth? I loved Catherine. The throne is everything to her. Why would I try to take it? Why would I betray her that way? What does it all matter in the end?”

“Do you love her still?”

Grisha remembered Catherine's soft hand on his shoulder, the scent of her perfume. She was older now, but still beautiful as a sunset. When he had loved Catherine there were no dark days. Perhaps it was that memory he loved, and yet he saw no point in hiding this part of himself from Zubov. In truth, he wanted to see the boy squirm with jealousy. “Yes.”

“And so you must hate me.”

“I do not hate you. But Catherine's life, her command, and her legacy are all I have left in this world. Otherwise I merely linger uselessly in this life until God calls me to the next. You will understand when you are older.”

“And you hold a special place in her heart even now,” Zubov said.

The words pleased him, but Grisha merely shrugged.

“It is the truth. I should be a fool not to see it. I think you might destroy the empire and she would only say Prince Potemkin set the stage for the next incarnation of Rome. I could tie you to every woman in the capital and she would only praise your prowess.”

Zubov must have sent Praskovia. But it would take far more to turn Catherine against him. Their relationship had moved past the shallow jealousies that plagued its infancy. Then again, that all might have been part of an elaborate act, her masquerade as all-powerful empress. Who could rise above such jealousy?

But Catherine had been born to play that role. The masquerade was her true self.

“Why won't you see me as a friend? What do you think I will do?” Zubov said. “Why must you stand so steadfastly against me?”

“I believe you are in league with Grand Duke Paul to undermine the empress's power. If I'm right, end it. End it all now. He is not worth your time. Only Catherine is worth your time. She is a great empress who has made history. He is a pimple. Hundreds of years from now people will speak her name with reverence and they will laugh at his, the same way they laugh now at his pathetic father.”

“Why tell me all this, Prince? Is this part of an even grander plan? Perhaps you're not content to be emperor of the south alone. Are you looking for a crown in Poland?”

Grisha turned so that Zubov could see his face full on, even his dead eye. He remembered Praskovia in the instant before she registered his presence in the room, perusing the tracts. He had made plans to seek refuge and title in Poland in the event Catherine should perish before him without naming Alexander as her successor. He knew there would be no place for him in Russia under a Tsar Paul. “I look to preserve the empire and Catherine's legacy. That is all.”

“Then why not support her in confronting those English fools? She could redirect troops from the south. Surely we do not need so many there anymore. We'll withdraw and let them run matters on their own. Aren't you supposed to negotiate peace with the barbarians? Hasn't the empress ordered you to return to your true place in the south?”

“The English will back down. We should wait it out and let them. A war on multiple fronts will destroy the Russian military.”

“Grand Duke Paul supports war.”

“The grand duke is a fool.”

“I've seen his plans and they are well thought out. He's always had a special passion for military maneuvers. I don't think he's the fool you take him to be.”

“That's because you never knew his father.”

Zubov snorted. “Of course! Poor befuddled Tsar Peter III. Catherine's late and not lamented first husband. No, I did not have the pleasure. Died of hemorrhoids, did he? I suppose the Orlov brothers just happened to be in the same room when the attack struck.”

Grisha willed himself not to chew on his fingernails. It was an open secret that the Orlovs murdered Peter and the story of hemorrhoidal colic had been an inelegant cover at best. Now Paul thought he could conjure his father's murdered ghost, as if he were some sort of modern-day Hamlet. And Zubov no doubt took tea with the grand duke and listened to his sob stories, lips twisted into phony concern.

“I'm not old enough to have known Paul's father, unlike…” Zubov pointed his hand in Grisha's direction. “But I do not think the two are anything alike at all. I understand the man was a petty and cruel sort of creature, no matter how Paul might sanctify his memory. No, I am no fan of the late tsar. Yet I think Paul is his mother's son, not his father's.”

Grisha stumbled to his feet. “You wouldn't dare put Paul's priorities before those of the empress.”

“Really, Prince.” Zubov bowed his head. “Surely even the Asiatics you adore so much would feel some shame in the presence of other men.”

His robe had fallen open, revealing his hairy chest, his bloated stomach, and parts farther south. He gathered it around his belly once more and adjusted the sash.

“You still insist on holding this ball in honor of yourself?” Zubov asked.

“Not in honor of myself. In honor of the empress's military triumphs.”

Zubov rose to his feet. “I take it you will secure the empress's safety. Who knows what fellow, sick in mind, might take it upon himself to jump out of some shadowy corner and try to stick a knife in the empress over some drivel.”

The image left Grisha so horrified that for a long moment he could not respond. “Every precaution will be taken.”

“It is only that you are so clearly a man of another time, and I am a man of this age. I wonder sometimes if you consider the dangers that lurk in this new world. Honor is no longer in fashion.”

“I will not jeopardize the safety of the empress.”

Zubov nodded. “Consider coming aboard with us. We should make our own triple alliance, you, Paul, and me.”

“You no longer consider such an alliance treason?”

Zubov twirled his walking stick, making it spin like a top on the floor. “I see now that the empress needs us united.”

“The empress needs to avoid another war,” Grisha said. “And take care around her son. He is more dangerous than you think, even if he is a fool.”

“Every fool has his day. But then that day ends soon enough, I suppose.” Zubov gestured in Grisha's direction. “I came here to see if you were indeed the empress's true husband or if that was merely another trick. I see now that it matters not one whit. You are ill and weak enough to sleep with a silly girl if she looks at you with big eyes. I was wrong to fear you might have some hold on the empress. She has affection yet but sees you only as an old friend with a damaged ego in need of her attention.”

Grisha tried to straighten his back, but even as he did the weight of the boy's words sat heavy on his chest, paralyzing him. As Zubov took his leave, Grisha glanced back longingly at the quilt on his bed, wishing to sink back down under the covers once more.

He heard the patter of feet and Anton appeared at the door. “If he had not left of his own volition I would have escorted him to the door on his arse, Your Highness.”

Grisha laughed, but ended up coughing. Anton frowned.

“I need paper,” he said between hacks. “And a fresh pot of ink.”

“If it's a letter you need, I can write that for you,” Anton said. “My handwriting now mirrors your own.”

“This one must be written by my own hand,” Grisha said, glancing at the arabesques on the quilt. “It is to be in a code of my own devising and I will deliver it personally to the empress.”

Twelve

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESS CONFERENCE SCHEDULED FOR ROMANOV HEIRESS
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

Dmitry Potemkin, spokesman for the Russian Monarchist Society, is delighted to confirm that Dr. Veronica Herrera will speak with reporters later this week to make an official statement regarding her ceremonial title and her role in Russian culture and politics.