1
EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER—SPRING 1723
We had gone to Mother’s palace in Kolomenskoye, as always when we needed safety, solace, and strength. Ever since my elder half-brother, the Tsarevich Alexey, died, Mother had struggled to give Father, Tsar Peter the Great of All the Russias, an heir to the world’s largest and wealthiest realm. A couple of weeks prior to our departure, she had been delivered of yet another stillborn son.
It was a relief to leave St. Petersburg shortly after Easter: I had hardly known my half-brother, as Alexey had been eighteen years older than I. Mother’s recent misfortune weighed on me more heavily. Still, we had celebrated Easter, the most joyous and sacred of Russian holidays, as usual by handing out brightly painted eggs to all the courtiers and wishing them well: Christ had risen. While our own plates remained as good as untouched, we watched them feast on kulich—a sweet, yeasty, dome-shaped bread—and pashka—a custard made of cheese curd, almonds, and dried fruit.
When I stepped out of the Winter Palace shortly after dawn, I felt like drinking in the cool spring air, to chase away any memory of the long, stuffy, dark months of winter and the atmosphere of dread and sorrow that still lingered inside. Morning slid into the dawn light as smooth as a dove’s wing, offering us a first glimpse of the sunrises of summer: a hazy blend of mauve, mustard, and mother-of-pearl. The ottepel, or great thaw, had begun, and already winter’s stark handover from day to night was beginning to fade, the harsh contrasts softening. No change in Russia comes about easily, not even the shift in the seasons. The ottepel’s strength shocked us anew, year after year, as it made rivers swell and tore open the earth. Our jaded spirits lifted as snow and ice receded, the light lingering longer day upon day for the span of a cockerel’s crow. Sunshine warmed the frozen earth and thawed the frost and rime from our veins, stirring the blood, quickening the heartbeat. The spring winds scattered seeds over the land, bringing with them the promise of fertility; they blew the cobwebs from our minds, rousing Russia from its drowsy stupor.
My sister Anoushka was older than I by a year, and we knew Mother’s palace of Kolomenskoye well. We had spent the first years of our lives there, before our parents were married, and before each of us was proclaimed Tsarevna, Imperial Princess. Mother, the Tsaritsa, had always accompanied Father wherever he went, be it in the field of the Great Northern War against Sweden—a struggle for Russia’s survival that had weighed on our country for almost two decades—or on his travels to the West and all over Europe.
Despite being the Tsar’s daughters, at Kolomenskoye we roamed as freely as peasant children. Our nurse Illinchaya let us run barefoot in the red dust beneath the poplar trees, wearing loose plain dresses, and fed us soups and stews, staples of a Russian peasant kitchen. Under her watchful eye, we visited the dovecotes of the Tsar’s falconer and reared kittens in spring, picked berries in the forest or swam in clear lakes in summer. In autumn we foraged for mushrooms or played hide-and-seek in gigantic heaps of rustling leaves. In winter we went ice-skating and tobogganing or built igloos and once even a portly snow woman, which looked suspiciously like Illinchaya herself. She had laughed so much at the sight; she coughed and wheezed. In the evening she climbed into bed with us—“Come here, my little doves, and tuck your beaks beneath my wings!”—and told us old Russian fairy tales, all set in Kolomenskoye, which we were told teemed with evil spirits, beautiful maidens who were abducted, and strong young men who saved them. “This is old earth. I have seen these things happen myself,” Illinchaya declared and crossed herself with three fingers, signifying the Holy Trinity of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“I did not get to say goodbye to Father,” I said as Anoushka and I walked to the carriage. She shook her head at me in a silent warning, her gaze searching the windows of the Tsar’s apartment in the upper reaches of the Winter Palace. The curtains were still drawn; Father slept on after emptying at least two or three bottles of vodka on his own the evening before. A chamberlain’s bare belly would serve as his pillow. Only the warmth of flesh on flesh kept his demons at bay: he’d feared sleep ever since Alexey’s death.
“Nobody has seen Father since Mother was brought to bed last, Lizenka,” Anoushka reminded me, calling me by my pet name. “He had hoped so much for a son. Russia needs an heir. The Old Believers blight his life.”
The Old Believers hated the Tsar for his reforms and the change he had brought to Russian life: Father had twisted the country about like a doll’s head, making his people turn from the East to the West. The Tsarevich himself had been the leader of the Old Believers. When my half-brother had been accused of high treason and sentenced to death, the unthinkable had happened. Driven mad by disappointment and fear for the future of his realm, Father had executed his only son and heir with his own hands. Ever since, all mention of Alexey was forbidden.
“I need him,” I said, my voice small. Could I not simply sneak up into Father’s rooms and take my leave? No.
“Russia needs him more. Careful, Lizenka. Think of how he treats little Petrushka.”
Petrushka was Alexey’s young son. Father had removed the boy—his only grandson—from his and our lives, tearing our nephew from the family as he would twist a tick from behind his mongrel dog’s ear. Petrushka should not be a pawn in the Old Believers’ hands. Any chance of him, a traitor’s son, ever ruling, had to be eradicated. No wonder that nightmares plagued Father: the wardens in the Trubetzkoi Bastion, where Alexey had died, swore that the Tsarevich’s soul had fled his body in the shape of a crow. After that the Tsar had called open season on the hapless birds all over his Empire. Farmers caught, killed, plucked, and roasted them for reward. None of this helped: silently, at night, the bird would slip into Father’s bedchamber. In the cool shadow of its ebony wings, the blood on the Tsar’s hands never dried. It could be horrid to witness Father in the grip of this delusion: he roused the Winter Palace with his screams. Only Mother could soothe him then.
“Let us hope he will be better when we see him in June, to celebrate his name day,” I said. I was still not quite able to link the terrifying authority of the Tsar, who was tortured by his deeds, to the warm and embracing father on whose knees I loved to climb so that his dark, bristly mustache tickled me—“Come here and pull my whiskers, Lizenka!” He had taught me how to lathe a timber plank—“If my hands are busy I have the best ideas!”—and to tack a boat, the power of the wind delighting him: “Keep your head down and hold the rudder tight!”
“Come time, he will accept God’s will, as always. Now do not dawdle. Get in.” Anoushka pushed me inside the carriage, a gaily painted little house on wheels. Mattresses layered with thick polar bear skins and embroidered velvet cushions had been spread copiously for our comfort, but I loathed the journey: several arshin of ice and snow melting in the thaw had turned the roads to bog. Kolomenskoye lay a good six hundred versty away from St. Petersburg, which would take us only three or four days in the freeze while sitting in big, comfortable sleds, instead of the two weeks it would do now. The rivers were swollen and the barges leaky, while the roads were pockmarked with treacherous potholes and deep, muddy ruts. Inside the carriage we bumped into each other like hams dangling in the flue of a smokehouse. Normally these mishaps would make us laugh aloud, shoving each other even harder, breathless with mirth after taking tumbles. Now, though, we sat up again, resuming our former places, sighing but otherwise silent. Father had sent his favorite Portuguese dwarf, d’Acosta, along to amuse us. But after an ill-judged jest in which the imp had shoved a cushion underneath his shirt, moaning and arching his back like a woman suffering from birth pangs, Mother’s lady-in-waiting had slapped and gagged him. Now d’Acosta cowered in a corner, bound like a chicken for market, cheeks bulging and eyes watering. By the third day the gag was no longer necessary: he sat as silent and sullen as any of us—Mother, her lady-in-waiting, Anoushka, and me.
As any dacha along the road still lay deserted, we slept in inns. D’Acosta relished using his whip to chase grown men off the top of the gigantic flat oven—whose steady heat warmed the room, roasted the pork and poultry, dried the clothes, and served the innkeeper’s family for a bed at night—clearing space for our party. We rarely had our own rooms but stretched out on the rough benches or on bedding rolled over the soiled straw.
“Why can’t we sleep beneath the stars and cook on an open fire? That is what spring means to me,” I whispered to Anoushka one night, curling up close, my body pressed tightly against hers.
“You will have to wait for Kolomenskoye for that,” was the answer. “Mother needs to rest and try to forget her cares. Once she is more settled, you can do whatever you want.”
“I wish!” I giggled, then lay in silence, hoping to feel less sick in a while after yet another supper of kasha—a salted millet porridge greasy with bacon—or some fermented cabbage, the sauerkraut that innkeepers invariably offered us. At the end of winter, the storerooms and larders were emptying fast, and people scraped the barrel literally. For me this was yet another reason to look forward to the bounty of spring. It provided Russians with delicacies such as fish, pork, poultry, caviar, mushrooms, berries, and honey, while new crops of rye, wheat, barley, and millet allowed for our variety of breads, little pastries, pierogi, pelmeni, and pancakes such as blintshiki. At least we moved on quickly: in an inn we could easily change horses. D’Acosta took his pick from the stables, never paying.
What belonged to any Russian, first and foremost belonged to the Tsar.
“After everything that has happened, this will be good for us,” I said, as the six strong horses harnessed in single file before our carriage crossed the orchards and the vast park surrounding Kolomenskoye. An endless number of carts followed. They were laden with stout chests secured with chains and locks, holding all our belongings: furniture, rugs, china, crystal, bedding, and chandeliers. The Tsar’s palaces stood empty during his absence, as the risk of fire ravishing them, or else thieves burgling them while the guards lay in a drunken stupor, was too great to leave them fully furnished. Next to our wagon train roamed livestock—cows, goats, chickens, and sheep—to supplement the provisions in Kolomenskoye’s kitchen. Red dust billowed underfoot, suffusing the last pale rays of the setting sun. Our throats were parched as the dust passed easily through the mica panes of the ancient carriage’s doors, settling in our pores, eyes, mouths. I hoped Illinchaya, who now acted as a housekeeper for the palace, still had some of last year’s elderflower cordial left to blend with fresh cool water from the estate’s spring. It was so deliciously refreshing I would have liked to bathe in it.
“Why are you saying this?” Mother looked worn, I noticed, from her recent blood loss, exhaustion from the journey, and more. Her slanted green eyes lacked fire; her full lips seemed bloodless. Her maid had struggled to coif her dark tresses, which hung limp and dull.
I sat up defiantly. “We have to heal and not silence our sorrows. Feofan Prokopovich told me that grief swallows the soul. And isn’t he the Archbishop of Novgorod and the wisest priest in Russia, who always gives Father the best counsel?”
“Lizenka is right,” Anoushka chimed in. “We must not fear. We know how much Father loves us all, despite what he did to—”
Mother pressed a warning finger to her lips, reminding us that Father had forbidden us to speak Alexey’s name ever again. “Silence protects, too,” she said. “Least said, soonest mended.” Then, though, her eyes lit up. “Feofan Prokopovich has told me something, too.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Come the day of reckoning, I shall have given the Tsar an heir for Russia.” She crossed her arms defiantly, her fingers brushing the deep scars on her lower inner arms. When I had first seen these gashes some weeks ago, after Feofan Prokopovich had hastily blessed and buried my stillborn brother’s small corpse—much too small to go into the earth like that, alone—the wounds’ frightening precision had terrified me. “Why could God not leave me this son?” Mother had wailed, lying in her bed. “Why did he not take another … Anoushka, or you, Lizenka? You are only girls.” Her lady-in-waiting had ushered me out, whispering: “It is unbearable. The Tsaritsa has lost so much blood that the doctor has forbidden her any further pregnancies. There will be no son. Pray for Her Majesty, Tsarevna Elizabeth.”
“As you say, Feofan is the wisest man in Russia. So, all hope is not lost for me,” said Mother, pushing Anoushka and me into an answer that would ease this greatest of her worries.
“Of course not. You will give Father an heir. We will not stop believing this, whatever happens,” Anoushka said.
“You know what Father says: never give up!” I added.
“My girls. I love your spirit,” Mother said, a hint of pride in her brittle voice.
“Guess where we get it from,” I said, and gently took hold of her hands so that they no longer cradled her empty womb.
* * *
The carriage rattled on toward the palace: finally we had arrived! The poplar trees growing all around Kolomenskoye were in blossom. Wind-borne seeds—pukh—billowed in clouds like snow in spring and hazed the air. They settled like a halo over Mother and Anoushka’s dark tresses as I poked my head out of the window and quickly ducked back: the horses kicked up mud and loose stones that could take out an unwary traveler’s eye.
“I can see Kolomenskoye,” I shouted, delighted. “God, it’s been so long. Look! Just look!”
Anoushka and I scuffled for the best view: Moscow was a jumble of brightly painted wooden houses of every size crammed around its thousand churches and their spires. The city coiled around its dark and brooding heart, the Kremlin. Somewhere a church bell was always giving tongue in Russia’s former capital, calling for hours of devotion in a long service or else honoring a saint, rendering conversation impossible. The city had grown as rampant as a weed over the centuries, the stronghold of Rus, the territory from which our great country grew. By contrast, in St. Petersburg—Father’s shiny new “paradise”—every street and canal had been carefully planned, copying the best features of cities he had seen and admired on his travels in the West. The Italian envoy called it “a kind of bastard architecture, which steals from the Italian, the French, and the Dutch.” Palaces, mansions, and houses with elegant flat façades were strung like pearls along the Neva’s embankments and the dozen man-made waterways. Crossing the city’s streets on a stormy day was like a steeplechase: the wind dislodged any loose tiles, sending them crashing down, narrowly missing people, or not, as they ran for their lives, tripping and falling on the uneven, sloppily laid cobblestones.
Kolomenskoye, however, arose as if from an ancient dream: my grandfather Tsar Alexis, the second Tsar of All the Russias in the Romanov line, had built this palatial hunting lodge above the River Moskva. It sat on a ridge like the colorful crest of an undulating wave of green parkland, forests, brooks, and ravines. The ground floor, with its stables, storerooms, and pantries, was built from timber and now-crumbling wattle and daub—a mix of bleached clay, sand, and dung. Behind its tiny windows—mere unglazed gaps—the servants would huddle together with the livestock, bodies and breath mingling. Bundles of boiled moss still filled cracks in the rendering here and there, but the flaking patches of tar would not keep out the cockroaches this summer. Also the walls urgently needed new whitewash to prevent wasps building their nests on them. On the first floor, where we would live, light and a steady stream of drafts flooded the palace from its countless big, ill-fitting windows with proper glass panes, the timber surrounds brightly painted. Yet Kolomenskoye’s roof was the house’s crowning, messy glory, despite its myriad missing slates. It was inspired by the different shapes and styles of roofs throughout All the Russias: be it rising like a staircase, bulging out like onion-shaped Byzantine cupolas, lying hipped and deep-drawn like a Polish cap, or, in a finishing touch, piercing the late-afternoon sky with sharp spires as pointy as needles.
Even Mother pressed herself up to the window: “I love this place especially,” she said. “It was my first proper home. When your father gave it to me, I was not yet even his wife. He wanted to reward me for your safe arrival, Anoushka. And just a year later, you were born here, Lizenka, on the day of the big parade after Poltava—”
“—when Father and Russia celebrated his victory over the Swedish devils, under the December stars, with my feet coming first, and Illinchaya, who brought you chicken broth to help you recover your strength, paled with fear at this sign, while Father threatened to flog and flay her, but you pleaded for her life, saying she should not be punished for helping you survive such a difficult birth,” I rattled off. I had heard the story so often that I knew it by heart.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, we all laughed together—even the dwarf d’Acosta forgot all the callous jesting, slapping, and gagging—just as the carriage pulled up in Kolomenskoye’s graveled courtyard.
Copyright © 2021 by Sunbird Stories, Ltd.
