The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great by Eva Stachniak

Author:Eva Stachniak [Stachniak, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780553908046
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

1755–1756

n the first weeks of 1755, right after Krieszczenskije morozy, the icy-cold days of mid-January, talk of the coming war had intensified.

In the New World, the French and the English were testing their hold on the land. These faraway hostilities were casting shadows across Europe. The French had allied themselves with Prussia, England with Austria, though loyalties were constantly shifting. At the Russian court, the English were considered perfidious, the French deceitful. If Russia was leaning to the side of Britain, it was because Elizabeth hated Frederick of Prussia more than she detested the Empress of Austria.

The way she saw it, an insolent bully trumped a scheming hypocrite.

To get Elizabeth’s attention these days, a courtier was wise to call Vienna dingy, its narrow lanes full of filth and mud. Or to dwell on the fact that in the Berlin palaces gilded copper passed for gold. In the Chancellor’s chambers, clerks pored over spy reports in search of royal name-calling. It mattered when and to whom Frederick called the Russian Empress a whore, a cunt, or a flat-chested bitch. Or how often Maria Theresa declared Elizabeth a shameless sinner who would burn in hell.

In the intrigues of the court, anything was of use if it could fan imperial rage.

On the last day of January Egor received word that his army commission was on its way. Not artillery, as he had been promised, but infantry grenadiers. By then he didn’t mind. What mattered was that he would not spend his best years entangled in “the battlefields of the boudoir.” He laughed at Saltykov, cooling his heels at the Swedish court, scarcely arrived and already asking when he might be allowed to return. The imperial stud had learned the hard way, my husband said and sneered, what passed for gratitude in the palace games.

It was not Egor Malikin’s way.

His honors would come from the heat of battles, from victories that would bring Russia her glory and him the rank of at least Lieutenant Colonel. Advancement was possible at a time when the maps of Europe were constantly being redrawn.

Waiting for his commission papers to arrive, Egor practiced fencing and boxing. He came home from his matches bruised and sweaty, joking about having grown stiff standing guard for years. He was fitted for new breeches, new boots. He bought a brass traveling kit of toiletries and writing instruments that fascinated Darya so much that he allowed her to keep one of the crystal bottles of ink.

He had also ordered a portrait of himself, in full uniform, a sword at his side, standing with his right leg forward, hand cradling a shako. I thought that the artist, a serf who taught himself painting, captured his likeness in the first sitting, but Egor was not satisfied.

“Give me a few wrinkles,” he ordered the painter. “And straighten these lips. I don’t want my grandchildren to see me grinning like a fool.”

In the Winter Palace there was no one Young Court anymore. There was Peter’s court and Catherine’s court.

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