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

ALSO BY EVA STACHNIAK

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Garden of Venus

The Winter Palace is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2012 by Eva Stachniak

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stachniak, Eva.
The Winter Palace: a novel of Catherine the Great / Eva Stachniak.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90804-6
1. Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 17291796Fiction. 2. RussiaHistoryCatherine II, 17621796Fiction. 3. EmpressesRussiaFiction. 4. Courts and courtiersFiction. 5. IntrigueFiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.S728W56 2011
813.6dc22 2011004928

www.bantamdell.com

Jacket design: Marietta Anastassatos
Jacket images: Martin van Meytens, portrait of the Empress Maria Theresa (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Bridgeman Art Library International); doors of the picture gallery of the Ekaterinsky Palace (Tsarskoye Selo, Pushkin, Russia/Bernard Cox/Bridgeman Art Library); double-headed eagle (Maslov Dmitry/Shutterstock)

v3.1

For Szymon and Chizuko

S T . P ETERSBURG , O CTOBER 17, 1756

Three people who never leave her room, and who do not know about one another, inform me of what is going on, and will not fail to acquaint me when the crucial moment arrives.

from the letter of Grand Duchess of All the Russias (later Catherine the Great) to Sir Hanbury-Williams, British Ambassador to the court of Empress Elizabeth

he spies you learn about are either those who get exposed or those who reveal themselves. The first have been foolish enough to leave a trail of words behind them; the second have reasons of their own.

Perhaps they wish to confess because there is nothing else they have but the arid memories of their own importance.

Or perhaps they wish to warn.

I was a tongue, a gazette. The bearer of the truth of the whispers. I knew of hollowed books, trunks with false bottoms, and the meanders of secret corridors. I knew how to open hidden drawers in your escritoire, how to unseal your letter and make you think no one had touched it. If I had been in your room, I left the hair around your lock the way you had tied it. If you trusted the silence of the night, I had overheard your secrets.

I noticed reddened ears and flushed cheeks. Slips of paper dropped into a musicians tube. Hands too eager to slide into a pocket. Too many hurried visits of a jeweler or a seamstress. I knew of leather skirts underneath fancy dresses that caught the dripping urine, of maids burying bloodied rags in the garden, of frantic gasps for air that could not frighten death away.

I couldnt smell fear, but I could see the signals it sent. Hearts speeding up, eyes widening, hands becoming unsteady, cheeks taking on an ashen hue. Words becoming abrupt, silences too long. I had seen it grow in rooms where every whisper was suspect, every gesture, or lack of it, was noted and stored for future use.

I had seen what fear could do to your heart.

could have warned her when she arrived in Russia, this petty German princess from Zerbst, a town no bigger than St. Petersburgs Summer Garden, this frail girl who would become Catherine.

This court is a new world to you, I could have said to her, a slippery ground. Do not be deceived by tender looks and flattering words, promises of splendor and triumph. This place is where hopes shrivel and die. This is where dreams turn to ashes.

She has charmed you already, our Empress. With her simplicity, the gentle touch of her hand, the tears she dried from her eyes at her first sight of you. With the vivacity of her speech and gestures, her brisk impatience with etiquette. How kind and frank Empress Elizabeth Petrovna is, you have said. Others have, too. Many others. But frankness can be a mask, a disguise, as her predecessor has learned far too late.

Three years ago our bewitching Empress was but a maiden princess at the court of Ivan VI, the baby Emperor, and his Regent Mother. There had been a fianc lost to smallpox, there had been other prospects derailed by political intrigues until everyone believed that, at thirty-two and without a husband, the youngest daughter of Peter the Great had missed her chance at the throne. They all thought Elizabeth Petrovna flippant and flighty then, entangled in the intricacies of her dancing steps and the cut of her ball dressesall but a handful who kept their eyes opened wide, who gambled on the power of her fathers blood.

The French call her Elizabeth the Merciful. For the day before she stole the throne of Russia from Ivan VI, she swore on the icon of St. Nicholas the Maker of Miracles that no one under her rule would ever be put to death. True to her word, on the day of the coup, she stopped the Palace Guards from slashing Ivans infant throat. She plucked the wailing baby Emperor from his crib and kissed his rosy cheeks before she handed him back to his mother and packed them both off to live in prison.

She likes when we repeat that no head has been cut off since the day she took power but forbids us to mention the tongues and ears. Or the backs torn to meaty shreds by the knout. Or the prisoners nailed to a board and thrown into a freezing river. Mercy, too, knows how to deceive.

Here in the Russian court, I could have warned the pretty newcomer from Zerbst, life is a game and every player is cheating. Everyone watches everyone else. There is no room in this palace where you can be truly alone. Behind these walls there are corridors, a whole maze of them. For those who know, secret passages allow access where none is suspected. Panels open, bookcases move, sounds travel through hidden pipes. Every word you say may be repeated and used against you. Every friend you trust may betray you.

Your trunks will be searched. Double bottoms and hollowed books will not hold their secrets for long. Your letters will be copied before they are sent on their way. When your servant complains that an intimate piece of your clothing is missing, it may be because your scent is preserved in a corked bottle for the time when a hound is sent to sniff out your presence.

Keep your hands on your pockets. Learn the art of deception. When you are questioned, even in jest, even in passing, you have mere seconds to hide your thoughts, to split your soul and conceal what you do not want known. The eyes and ears of an inquisitor have no equals.

Listen to me.

I know.

The one you do not suspect is the most dangerous of spies.