Read Online The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak - Free Book Online

asked me many questions that morning. He wanted me to tell him where I was born and why my parents had come to Russia. He was disappointed to hear that my father had been a bookbinder, not a soldier. “Don’t the Poles like to fight?” he asked.
    When I said I didn’t know, he told me not to worry. Life carried many surprises. He’d always thought he would be the King of Sweden. “You may still marry a soldier,” he said.
    This is when I noticed a hoop skirt lying on the carpet, flattened and stained.
    To my relief, Professor Stehlin did not object to a reader. And so, every morning, I arrived at the Imperial Study, ready for my new duties. “Keep your eyes opened,” the Chancellor had said. “Remember, you are watching your future Tsar.”
    There was a lot to read. Excerpts from foreign dispatches and newspapers, descriptions of fortresses from
Sila Imperii
or from
Galerie Agréable du Monde
. Passages about the habits of various animals, and the anatomy of plants, about the layout of St. Petersburg canals and the treasures of Kunstkamera.
    Every passage I read became the theme of a lesson. A military fortress called for an explanation of a mathematical formula, a dispatch for tracing the boundaries of foreign lands and positions of various countries on the map. And—if the Grand Duke became restless or tired—Professor Stehlin ordered a walk: to the gardens, to the streets of St. Petersburg, the city his famous grandfather Peter had coaxed out of the marshes and the sea.
    The future Tsar, I thought, had a wise teacher.
    “Speak,” the Empress commanded the night when I was summoned into the Imperial Bedroom. On my way there I had seen a sobbing maid, her arms huddling her thin body. The door through which I entered was hidden in the carved paneling; it opened without a sound. A tongue was not to be seen.
    Her Majesty was lying on her bed, poultices on her eyelids. Two cats stretched beside her, fast asleep. I seated myself beside the bed on a small embroidered footstool. “Flatter her. Tell her stories she wants to hear,” the Chancellor had urged me. “Make her wish you hadn’t stopped talking.”
    “Professor Stehlin said Your Majesty looked ravishing in the Preobrazhensky uniform at the last masquerade,” I began.
    “To whom?” She did not remove the poultices from her eyes.
    “To Count Lestocq. It made him bite his lips.”
    It seemed easy enough, the fine curl of Elizabeth’s smile urging me on.
    From behind the door came the shuffling of feet. Elizabeth’s courtiers were eagerly awaiting their turn.
    “Is my nephew making good progress at his lessons?”
    “Yes, Your Majesty.”
    “Does he fancy any of his maids-of-honor?”
    “No. He never singles out any of them over another. But they imagine that he does. Especially Mademoiselle Gagarina.”
    There would be no dearth of stories. From my tiny nook of a room with its flimsy wall, I had spied on the maids-of-honor and heard their foolish chatter. In the Grand Duke’s rooms, their eyes slid over me as if I were made of air, but their thoughts were already mine. This one tried to tempt the Grand Duke with the sight of her bare breast. That one sulked, for the Grand Duke complained she couldn’t sing a note. I had heard their childish confessions of first kisses and secret vows; I had carefully weighed their desires and their fears.
    They were such easy prey. Too pampered to watch behind their backs, too sure of themselves to take note of anyone not like them.
    The Empress sat upright, wiping the poultices off her eyes. “Light another candle, Varvara. It’s too dark in here.”
    I rose from the footstool. I lit a new candle from the old one and placed it on a side table right beside the Imperial Bed. I heard a cat’s husky purr. The Empress was running her long, tapered fingers through its coppery fur.
    “Mademoiselle Gagarina, Varvara?” she said, chuckling. “Tell me: What does the silly goose want?”
    The Grand Duke had many