When a new lover was chosen, he could usually expect a present of a hundred thousand roubles after the first night. After that… Potemkin, it was said, had received close to fifty million! Had the empress secretly married Potemkin years ago? No one knew for sure. But whether he was her husband or not, one thing was certain: ‘It’s Potemkin who chooses her new lovers,’ the courtiers would say.
It had not been difficult for Alexander to make friends with the great man because he really admired him and had become one of his most loyal men. And when Catherine’s poor young lover Lanskoy had suddenly died two years ago before – having ruined his health with love potions, the court whispered – Alexander had seen his chance and gone straight to Potemkin, to put himself forward.
It had been close. A young guards officer had been sent in just before him and had found favour. But Potemkin had been impressed by Bobrov as a prospect, not least because he trusted his loyalty. ‘Even I have enemies,’ the older man confessed. ‘They’d love to see a man in that position who could be turned against me.’
Several times Alexander and his patron had discussed the matter. ‘If things don’t work out,’ Potemkin had promised, ‘I’ll send you in to see her. After that…’
That had been a year ago. Alexander had waited anxiously. He knew the young officer slightly and now he gathered every scrap of information about him that he could. He had several friends at court. They soon told him the young man had cast amorous glances at one of the court ladies, and that he was tiring of his position. Within months he might even get himself dismissed. And then, by God, it will be my turn, Alexander had promised himself. How he would astonish her! She liked men who were daring and intelligent, and he was both. He was sure he would charm her.
Only one worrying thought had crossed his mind: could he satisfy her? The empress had never been beautiful. Though her strong, German face and broad, intellectual forehead were fine, she was squat and frankly stout these days. She was fifty-seven and, he’d heard, sometimes a little short of wind.
But she was also Catherine, Empress of all Russia. In all the world there was no other being like her. Her power, her heroic position, her extraordinary mind – all these, for a man like Bobrov, in search of the summit of the world – made her desirable beyond all others. And, anyway, if there’s any problem in bed, I know how to get by, he considered. He was strong, fit, and not too sensitive. I’m always all right if I eat a good meal, he reminded himself.
And then… what a destiny! Mother Russia and all her mighty empire at his feet: he would be one of the innermost circle who ruled with the empress. There was no greater position in all the world. If he could just hold out a little longer.
Outside, St Petersburg slipped silently by, huge and magical. They were coming into the huge expanse of Peter’s Square, in front of the Admiralty. On his left he could see the long pontoon bridge that stretched across the frozen Neva to Vasilevsky Island. The bridge was not really needed, for the huge lagoon of ice was a busy thoroughfare in these winter months. Huge fairs were held upon it. He could see half a dozen roads across it, marked out by avenues of cut trees, or lamps which gleamed dimly until they almost faded in the darkness by the distant northern shore. A bonfire burned by the tip of the island. Further away, opposite the Winter Palace, was the faint shape of the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral’s slim spire against the night sky.
And it was now, as he came out on to the big expanse of the square, that something else, quite nearby, caught his eye: and for a few moments he seemed to forget himself, pulling the window of the sled open, letting the icy air freeze on his face as he gazed at it, with a look so strange that one would almost have thought he had been hypnotized.
It was the Bronze Horseman.
This huge statue, which had taken the French sculptor Falconet years to make, had only been put up recently; but already it was the most famous statue in all Russia. On a colossal granite rock a mighty horse, three times life size, reared up on its hind legs. Below it lay a serpent. And astride the horse, dressed in a Roman toga, was the living image of great Peter himself. In his left arm he held the reins, while his right, in a tremendous, imperial gesture, was stretched out, pointing across the broad Neva that lay before him.
Nowhere in the world, they said, was there a greater block of granite; never had such a huge casting in bronze been made. The splendid horse, copied from the finest in Catherine’s stables, seemed to be launching itself in an almost impossible leap forward into space. And now, as it did every time he saw it, the great statue took Alexander’s breath away. All his dreams and ambitions seemed to be expressed in this huge bronze hymn to Russia’s might. It had to be huge: had not Russia already cast, in Moscow, the biggest cannon and the greatest bell the world had ever seen? Of course St Petersburg should cast the largest statue in bronze. And although the narrow-minded priests had objected to Peter’s Roman, pagan dress, Bobrov saw that the French sculptor had captured the very essence of the new, imperial destiny that Peter had created for his country, and the genius of Catherine would complete. Russia, by her unconquerable will, would make a final, mighty leap and rule half the world.
The statue’s huge, granite plinth bore only the simple legend:
Like a great phantom it dominated the dimly lit square. It was unassailable. And as Alexander stared, the statue seemed, like the inner voice of his own ambition, to speak to him and say: ‘Little man: would you turn back now?’
No, Alexander thought. No, I cannot turn back. I have come too far. Better to gamble – to win an empire or lose all – just one more time.
And he took the silver coin he was to have tossed, and threw it out of the window, into the night.
‘Dear Alexander!’ She was smiling. ‘I am so glad you have come.’
‘Daria Mikhailovna.’ He bent down to kiss her. ‘You are looking wonderful.’
In fact, the countess wasn’t looking too bad. One could even see that she had once been attractive. Her little face, rather too heavily painted, always reminded him of some bright bird’s, especially as now, with age, her hooked nose had become more prominent. Her small, blue eyes were lively, darting glances from place to place. She was wearing a floor-length antique dress of mauve gauze, decorated with white lace and pink ribbons, which made her look like a figure of the previous generation from the French court. Her hair was fine; but somehow, despite the fact that it was powdered, it had a strange yellowish tinge at the sides, like tarnished silver. It was swept up high above her head into a daunting coiffure topped with curls and decorated with pearls and a pale blue ribbon.
To receive her guests, Countess Turova was seated on a gilt chair in the middle of her salon, which lay up one flight of the staircase in the great marble hall. Like most such rooms in Russian palaces, it was huge and magnificent. Its ceiling was over twenty feet high; its gleaming parquet floor contained at least a dozen woods. A gigantic crystal chandelier glittered above.
The guests were still arriving; many of them Alexander recognized. A German professor, an English merchant, two young writers, a distinguished old general, an even older prince: it was one of the pleasures of St Petersburg that one might find people of all nations and classes in such an aristocratic setting. For there was a warmer and easier spirit in Russia than in the noble houses of western Europe.
And it was a long tradition that, once a week, such people should come to the great Turov house on Vasilevsky Island. For the count had been a remarkable man. He had helped the great Shuvalov found Moscow University thirty years before; the writers of the mid-eighteenth century – the first such intellectual group in Russia – counted him their friend; even Lomonosov, Russia’s first philosopher and scientist, used to call upon him. Turov had travelled widely – even visited the great Voltaire – and brought back many treasures of European painting, sculpture and porcelain as well as a fine library, all of which were still housed in this splendid palace. And the countess, whose magpie mind had picked up a number of ideas in the course of her life with him, now clung to these with a tenacity which was in perfectly inverse proportion to her understanding of them. She kept open house for the intellectuals who, partly from habit, and partly amused by her eccentricity, continued to come. ‘They rely upon me,’ she would say. ‘I am their rock.’ She was certainly unchanging.