The Tsarina's Daughter

In the Winter Palace, St. Nicholas Day, 6th December 1741

Ivan is innocent – my little nephew is a baby, and as pure as only a one-year-old can be. But tonight, at my order, the infant Tsar will be guilty as charged.

I fight the urge to pick him up and kiss him; it would only make things worse. Beyond his nursery door, there is a low buzzing sound, like of angry bees ready to swarm the Winter Palace. Soldier’s boots scrape and shuffle. Spurs clink like stubby vodka glasses and bayonets are being fixed to muskets. These are the sounds of things to come. The thought spikes my heart with dread.

There is no other choice. It is Ivan, or me. Only one of us can rule Russia, the other one condemned to a living death. Reigning Russia is a right that has to be earned as much as inherited: he and my cousin, the Regent, doom the country to an eternity under a foreign yoke. The realm will be lost; the invisible holy bond between Tsar and people irretrievably torn.

I, Elizabeth, am the only surviving child of Peter the Great’s fifteen sons and daughters. Tonight, if I hesitate too long, I might become the last of my siblings to die.

Curse the Romanovs! I in vain try to bar the prophecy, which has blighted my life, from my thoughts. Puddles form on the parquet floor as slush drips from my boots; their worn, thigh-high leather soaked from my dash across St. Petersburg. Despite my being an Imperial Princess – the Tsarevna Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova – no footman had hooked a bear skin across my lap to protect me against the icy wind and driving snow while I sat snug in a sled; I had no muff to raise to my face in that special graceful gesture of the St. Petersburg ladies, the damy. My dash towards my date with destiny had been clandestine: snowfall veiled the flickering lights of the lanterns and shrouded the city. Mortal fear drove me on, hurrying over bridges, dodging patrolled barriers – the shlagbaumy – and furtively crossing the empty prospects, where my hasty passage left a momentary trace of warmth in the frosty air.

This was a night of momentous decisions that I would have to live with, forever. An anointed and crowned Tsar may not be killed, even once he is deposed, as it sets a dangerous precedent. Yet he may not live either – at least not in the mind of the Russian people or according to the diplomatic dispatches sent all over Europe.

What then is to become of Ivan?

I feel for his limp little hand. I simply cannot resist – never could – nuzzling his chubby, rosy fingers, which are still too small to bear the Imperial seal. We call this game a butterfly’s kiss; it makes him giggle and squeal, and me dissolve with tenderness. I suck in his scent of the talcum powder blended for his sole use in Grasse – vanilla and bergamot, the Tsar’s perfume – taking stock for a lifetime. The men outside fall quiet. They are waiting for my decision that will both save and damn me. The thought sears my soul.

In Ivan’s nursery, the lined French damask drapes are drawn. Thick, potbellied clouds hide the December new moon and stars, giving this hour a dense and dreadful darkness. During the day, the seagulls’ cries freeze on their beaks, the chill of night grates skin raw. Any light is as scarce and dear as everything else in St. Petersburg. The candle sellers’ shops, which smell of bees’ wax, flax, and sulphur, do brisk business with both Yuletide and Epiphany approaching. On the opposite quay, the shutters on the flat façades of the city’s palaces and houses are closed, the windows behind them dark. They are swathed in the same brooding silence as the Winter Palace. I am in my father’s house, but this does not mean that I am safe. Far from it – it means quite the opposite. The Winter Palace’s myriad corridors, hundreds of rooms and dozens of staircases can be as welcoming as a lover’s embrace or as dangerous as a snake pit.

It is Ivan or me: fate has mercilessly driven us towards this moment. The courtiers shun me: no-one would bet a Kopeck on my future. Will I be sent to a remote convent, even though I do not have an ounce of nun’s flesh about me, as the Spanish envoy, the Duke of Liria, so memorably described it? I had once been forced to see such an unfortunate woman in her cell; as intended, the sight instilled a terror that would last me a lifetime. Her shorn head was covered in chilblains and her eyes shone with madness. A hunchbacked dwarf, whose tongue had been torn out, was her sole companion, both of them shuffling about in rotten straw like pigs in their sties. Or perhaps there is a sled waiting for me, destination Siberia? I know about this voyage of no return; I have heard the cries, seen the dread and smelled the fear of the banished culprits, be they simple peasants or a Prince of Russia. By the first anniversary of their sentence, all had succumbed to the harsh conditions of the East. Maybe a dark cell in the Trubetzkoy Bastion, the place nobody ever leaves in one piece, will swallow me; or things will be simpler, and I am fated to end up face down in the Neva, drifting between the thick floes of ice, my body being crushed and shredded by their sheer force.

The soldiers’ impatience is palpable. Just one more breath! Ivan’s wet-nurse is asleep, slumped on her stool, resting amidst his toys: the scattered pieces of a Matryoshka doll, wooden boats, a mechanical silver bear that opens its jaws and raises its paws when wound up, and a globe inlaid with Indian ivory and Belgian émaille. One of the nurse’s pale breasts is still bare from the last feed; she was chosen for her ample alabaster bosom in Moscow’s raucous German quarter. Ivan is well cared for: Romanov men are of weaker stock than Romanov women, even if no one ever dares to say so. I celebrated his first year as a time of wonder, offering my little nephew a cross studded with rubies and emeralds for his christening, a gift fit for a Tsar, and put myself in debt to raise an ebony colt in my stables as his Yuletide present.

Ivan’s breathing is growing heavier. The regiment outside his door weighs on his dreams. As I touch both his sides, his warmth sends a jolt through my fingers, hitting a Gold in my heart. Oh, to hold him one more time and feel his delightful weight in my arms. I pull my hands back, folding them, though the time for prayers has passed. No pilgrimage can ever absolve me from this sin, even if I slide across the whole of Russia on my knees. Ivan’s lashes flutter, his chin wobbles, he smacks his pink and shiny lips. I cannot bear to see him cry, despite the saying of Russian serfs: ‘Another man’s tears are only water.’

The lightest load will be your greatest burden. The last prophecy is coming to pass. Spare me, I plea – but I know this is my path, and I will have to walk it to the end, over the pieces of my broken heart. Ivan slides back into slumber, long, dark lashes cast shadows on his round cheeks and his tiny fists open, showing pink, unlined palms. The sight stabs me. Not even the most adept fortune-teller could imagine what the future has in store for Ivan. It is a thought that I refrain from thinking to its end.

Beyond the door utter silence reigns. Is this the calm before the storm my father taught me to fear when we sailed the slate-coloured waters of the Bay of Finland? His fleet had been rolling at anchor in the far distance, masts rising like a marine forest. ‘This is forever Russia,’ he had proudly announced. ‘No Romanov must ever surrender what has been gained by spilling Russian blood.’ In order to strengthen Russia, Father had spared no-one. My elder half-brother Alexey, his son and heir, had paid the ultimate price for doubting Russia’s path to progress.

Steps approach. My time with Ivan, and life as we know it, is over. I wish this were not necessary. There is a knock on the nursery door, a token rasp of knuckles; so light, it belies its true purpose. It is time to act. Russia will take no more excuses. The soldiers’ nerves are as taut as the springs in a bear trap. I have promised them the world: in a night like this, destinies are forged, fortunes made and lost.

‘Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova?’ I hear the captain of the Imperial Preobrazhensky Regiment addressing me. His son is my godchild, but can I trust him completely for that? Suddenly, I feel like drowning and shield Ivan’s cradle with my body. In the gilt-framed mirrors I see my face floating ghostly pale above my dark green uniform jacket; my ash-blonde curly hair has slid down from beneath a fur cap. On a simple leather thong around my neck hangs the diamond-studded icon of St Nicholas that is priceless to me. They will have to prise it from my dead body to get it.

I am almost thirty-one years old. Tonight, I shall not betray my blood.

‘I am ready,’ I say, my voice trembling, bracing myself, as the door bursts open and the soldiers swarm in.

Everything comes at a price.

Excerpted from The Tsarina’s Daughter, by Ellen Alpsten (St. Martins Press). Reprinted with permission.