His sled was coming. There was much to do that night.
Before Alexander, on the big mahogany table, were several dishes: a chicken, bought frozen from the market that morning, a bowl of sour cabbage, a plate of rye bread, beluga caviar, and a glass of German wine. But he had scarcely tasted anything. He was dressed for the evening now, in a blue velvet coat, and, nervous though he was, his face wore the gambler’s impassive expression.
He gazed round the large, high room. Its walls were papered dark green. On the side walls hung biblical scenes done in the classical manner, with sombre backgrounds. In the corner stood the big stove, tiled in green and red. The solemn effect was lightened, however, if one looked closely at the tiles: for half of them depicted some heavy, usually dirty, joke. These tributes to Russian humour were to be found everywhere, even in the formal rooms of the imperial palaces. At the far end of the room hung a portrait of his great-grandfather Procopy, the friend of Peter the Great, staring down morosely and looking rather oriental. Alexander had been brought up to revere the great man. ‘But I wonder if you ever attempted anything like this,’ he murmured.
It was time to go and face Countess Turova.
Though the empire’s hierarchy – the fourteen ranks – was open to any gentleman, there were still families who commanded special status outside the official system. There were a modest number of old boyar and gentry families, like the Bobrovs, who had managed to survive through the turbulent centuries; there were men with old princely titles – descendants of either the Tatar Khans or of St Vladimir himself; there were men with foreign titles, usually of the Holy Roman Empire; and nowadays there were also families with new titles, created by Peter and his successors for their favourites – princes, counts, and barons. Count Turov had been one of these, a formidable man. As for his widow, Countess Turova, even Alexander had to admit he was afraid of her.
She was his father’s cousin. She and the count had lost their two children, and at his death the magnate had left a portion of his huge estate to his widow, absolutely. ‘She can do what she likes with it,’ Alexander’s father had always told him. ‘Perhaps you can get your hands on some of it – though don’t ever count on her,’ he had added. ‘She’s always been eccentric.’
Yet this was Alexander’s dangerous mission tonight.
He could not ask the old lady for money outright. He knew she would show him the door if he did that. But was there a chance of an inheritance? There were other cousins who were also candidates: but a quarter of her fortune, even an eighth would do. Bobrov sighed. Although he had paid court to her for years, he still had no idea what his prospects were. Sometimes she showed him marks of favour, at others she just seemed to enjoy taunting him.
And what if, tonight, she said yes? His calculation was simple. She was over seventy now: the prospect of a legacy would give him confidence to take the extra risk; he even knew one or two moneylenders who would let him have enough to tide him over another year on the strength of it. Then he would turn down the German girl, burn his boats, and wait out events.
It was a horrible risk, even so. After all, his gamble might fail. Or what if, after promising him, Countess Turova changed her mind? Or what if she lived to be ninety? ‘The old bitch!’ he suddenly swore.
But he had taken his decision and he would stick to it. It was very simple. He felt the little silver coin in his hand. When he got to Countess Turova’s he would toss the coin just once. ‘If it’s tails, I marry the German girl. If it’s heads, and the old woman promises me a legacy, I’ll take a chance.’ He liked that kind of gamble. There was something almost religious about tossing a coin to decide one’s life. He smiled: he knew a card player who used to say that gambling was a kind of prayer.
The sled raced through the icy streets of St Petersburg, the faint glow from lamps and lighted windows rushing by in the gloom. A few stars could be seen.
The sled was splendid and enclosed. Two lackeys clung on behind; on the box in front sat the coachman – a huge fellow wrapped in a sheepskin, his big boots lined with flannel, a fur cap on his head. His neck, in the Russian peasant manner, was bare. Like all Russian drivers before and since, he drove at breakneck speed; and although there were few people about at such an hour, he still found the opportunity to cry out: ‘Na prava – keep to the right! Look out, soldier, damn you! Careful, Babushka!’
A boy rode on the offside horse. Both he and the coachman whipped the horses along unmercifully. What did they care? They were not Bobrov’s horses. For though he had fine horses of his own, the State Councillor preferred, like most people in St Petersburg, to use hired ones for ordinary journeys like this; and so these wretched beasts would be driven by all and sundry until they dropped and were replaced, in the usual careless Russian manner.
Bobrov sank back into the rich upholstery. The south bank of St Petersburg was divided into inner, middle and outer half-rings by three concentric canals. The outer canal, the border of the city’s rich heartland, was the famous Fontanka. Bobrov’s house lay in the fashionable First Admiralty quarter, in the middle ring, and his route soon brought him out on to the granite embankment of the great, frozen Neva. As the sled raced eastward, the ice of the river appeared on the left, the big, solid houses of the English merchants on the right. In a few moments they would be at the very heart of the capital.
He took the coin out and held it in his hand, feeling it in the darkness. What an astounding gamble it was: he was going to toss a coin for the whole Russian Empire!
This was the prize in the secret game he had been playing for so long. This was the reason why he did not wish to marry, and why he needed to keep afloat financially, just a little longer. For the prize was still, tantalizingly, in sight – perhaps only months away. The most brilliant position in the Russian state.
For Alexander Bobrov was planning to become the official lover of Catherine the Great.
It was no idle dream. For years he had been carefully manoeuvring towards his goal. And now at last – he had it on the best authority – he was the next in line. He had been promised the position by the man who was, almost certainly, Catherine’s secret husband.
At the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, there were a number of paths to power. But for a truly ambitious man, no career offered such brilliant prospects as those available to the man who shared her bed.
Though sometimes portrayed as a monstrous consumer of men, Catherine was in fact rather sentimental. Having been humiliated in her marriage, her own letters make clear that most of her adult life was spent in the search for affection and an ideal man. Nor was she hugely promiscuous. History records the names of less than twenty lovers.
But the opportunities for those who held this position were almost boundless. Mostly they were men from families like Alexander Bobrov’s, though some were more obscure. Their names were to go down in Russian history: like Orlov the brave guardsman who had won her the throne and whose brother had killed her hateful husband. Or Saltikov the charming aristocrat: was he, as some said, the real father of Catherine’s only official heir? Or Poniatowski: she had even made him King of Poland! And greatest of all, that strange and moody genius, the one-eyed warrior Potemkin who was now her mighty Proconsul in the Crimea, where he was building her a new imperial province greater than most kingdoms.