Read Online The Tsarina's Legacy by Jennifer Laam - Free Book Online

do.” She pointed to the door. “Get out.”
    *   *   *
    Anton scuttled to keep pace with Grisha as they headed down the drafty corridor outside Catherine’s study. Grisha gnawed frantically on his thumbnail and nearly tripped on a yowling palace tomcat stalking a mouse.
    They were being followed. He knew it. He had known as soon as Catherine’s dog started growling, but he would not let Anton notice anything amiss. No need to frighten the boy. Grisha began to hum to himself, a little tune by Herr Mozart that pleased him. He stopped abruptly, reached into his greatcoat, and withdrew Catherine’s copy of Candide . “A gift from the empress,” he said, pushing the book to Anton’s chest.
    The boy’s countenance remained solemn, but his hand shook. “It is too much.”
    â€œNonsense,” Grisha said. “A monarch has a divine obligation to educate young minds.”
    Anton opened the cover and squinted at Voltaire’s scrawny signature. “My skills in the French language are too weak for this complicated work.”
    Grisha glanced at the inscription scribbled in French but couldn’t make out the words either. Voltaire had always been too bold by half with Catherine and had no doubt made some lewd comment veiled as wit. Such a reference might shock Anton, but then he was of the age now where he could use a shock or two to ready his path to manhood. “We’ll find a French dictionary. Now run and make sure our horses are ready.”
    Anton nodded and scurried ahead. Grisha waited until the clacking of the boy’s shoes against the tile faded. A pair of bonneted laundresses carrying a basket of linen passed. Grisha smiled and bowed, looking up while he did so to wink. The girls giggled, dipped their heads, and shuffled past him.
    â€œWhen will you speak to me, crusader?” The pasha spoke in the quiet, clever way he did whenever he visited Grisha.
    â€œI will not speak to you here,” Grisha said in a low voice. He knew the pasha was merely a figment, conjured from addled memories and imagination, and yet he responded to the apparition as he would to any earthbound man. Grisha feared a random servant might hear and pass word of his lunacy to Catherine. “I require privacy.”
    â€œThe construction of a mosque in Old Russia was to be a part of your legacy.”
    Grisha remembered the first time he was briefed on the once-great leader of the Ottomans: Ghazi Hassan-Pasha … the so-called Turkish “crocodile” of the sea. He looked much the same now as he did when his earthly life ended, only the sharp lines of his features seemed vague and softer around the edges. Silken robes were draped over his wiry, muscular shoulders and he wore blue pantaloons and a jacket with white sashes crossing his chest, in the mode of the Ottoman court. His high white turban stood proudly atop his head. The pasha’s face was still fierce, even though Grisha’s campaigns had destroyed him. A tamed lion had followed the man faithfully throughout his life. Grisha hoped the beast rested peacefully now.
    â€œThe mosque is the only way Allah will be satisfied when he reviews your crimes.” A footman headed toward Catherine’s study with a fresh plate of scones on a silver tray. The pasha eyed them with distaste. “Recall what happened to the Roman Empire when shallow luxuries and games took over palaces.”
    â€œA weakness for pastries hardly heralds the fall of an empire.”
    â€œYour strong woman is softening.”
    Grisha took care to make sure the footman had disappeared. “She is not my woman. Not anymore.”
    â€œAnd yet she calls you husband,” the pasha said. “If the marriage is true, you are as powerful as the sovereign, or at least it should be so.”
    â€œYou have never understood our ways.”
    â€œDo not forget I take as much interest in other religions as you. My