beyond the threshold that a curtain had been made for the window, my personal linens were already unpacked in the wardrobe, and the icon that had guarded my sleep since birth hung in the corner. I demurred, saying that I should be content to sleep with the servants, but Xenia shook off my protests.
“Nonsense. If it’s bad luck to buy the cradle before the child, maybe it’s just as bad to keep a room empty.” Her manner was so easy that I didn’t guess at the time what this kindness must have cost her.
The first year of their marriage had passed without any sign of a child, and then a year became two and then three. In the fourth year, she had got with child but her womb would not hold it and it was lost before it quickened. She rarely spoke of her disappointment, but after I moved into their house I came to sense that it was never far from her thoughts. She kept in her room a little icon of Saint Paraskeva, who gives children to barren women, and a candle was kept lit before it. Each month, when her blood came, she was prone to tears over the littlest things.
The Imperial family was also waiting on the Grand Duchess to produce an heir for the throne. From the start of their marriage, the Empress had insisted that the ducal couple should be locked together in their bedchamber each night, like prisoners, so that they might get a child. One of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting whispered that in this enforced privacy, Peter spent all night playing with his tin soldiers, lining them up in formation across the wide plain of their bed and engaging them in mock battles, or sawing on his violin whilst the Grand Duchess tried to sleep.
As time ticked on, the Empress was observed to be increasingly impatient and irritable towards her. She accused Catherine of conducting an affair and set spies on her to report her every move. The Grand Duke, meanwhile, showed no interest in his wife and flirted openly with the Princess of Courland, who was hideous and seemed to have nothing to recommend her save that she would speak in German with him.
It was rumored that in the end Her Majesty had given up and looked the other way so that Catherine might take a lover. Shortly after, she was with child. Rumors were thick that Sergei Saltykov was the father. If true, the child’s parentage became moot, for in May Catherine miscarried whilst traveling. Though she had made every effort to please her husband and her Empress, this grave failure could not be offset by any amount of charm.
Of course, I was not privy to any of this directly but heard it through Xenia, who heard it from I know not whom. Xenia felt a heightened sympathy for the Grand Duchess, and took Her Highness’s sorrow as her own. Every conversation turned to the loss of this child and would end in tears. The Grand Duchess’s circumstances merited sympathy, certainly, but hardly so extreme a response; in truth, I felt she became a bit tiresome on the subject.
We were dining one evening at the house of one of the Roslavlev brothers, a captain in the Izmailovsky Guards, and the buzz about the table concerned a Mademoiselle Shavirova, one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting, who was thought to be the Grand Duke’s most recent infatuation. That afternoon and in the presence of the Grand Duchess, the two of them had sat with their heads bowed together and giggled through most of the concert.
It is safe to say that no one at the table cared for the Grand Duke, but though tongues were loosened by a good deal of wine, they were not so loose as to say a word outright against him. Instead, their mirth was directed at the mademoiselle, who was, it was agreed, the least attractive of the Grand Duchess’s ladies. Someone ventured the opinion that love could not possibly be this blind. Another agreed that it was not love but spite against Catherine for her attentions to Saltykov.
This is the way of life in Petersburg—even the lowliest person in society watches the court from whatever his distance and follows the rivalries and intrigues like a sporting match—but Xenia could not treat the gossip as mere diversion. When someone at the table said that the Grand Duke must surely be deprived of his wife’s affection if he sought solace from such a toad, Xenia spoke as if she were defending her own honor.
“Does this not better prove that his wife is deprived of a child through no fault of her own?” She clutched her napkin so fiercely that her hand shook.
The hour was late when we left, and we had all drunk too much. The three of us stumbled into the dim interior of the hired carriage, and Xenia and I plucked pillows from beneath our skirts and fashioned little nests for our heads. Andrei slouched onto the opposite bench and was lost up to the waist beneath the foamy horizon of our skirts. As soon as I was off my feet, I was overcome by the groggy weight of my limbs. Reaching above my head, Andrei opened the pane of the carriage lamp and blew out the flame. The carriage’s interior disappeared.
I let my eyes close. The carriage lurched forward, and behind my lids the world rolled and swayed, my blood sloshing like a tide with the rocking of the carriage. I listened to the sounds of the carriage rattling, the steady drum of hooves, the creak of the wheels beneath us. I was faintly aware of low voices.
“My God, Xenia. Such a rash tongue.”
“I could not help myself. To think how she must suffer.”
“It’s bad, I’m sure. Still, I’m not inclined to suffer for her in exile. We’d make poor martyrs, you and I. At least I should.”
“Forgive me.” Her voice broke. “I want only to please you, and I am such a disappointment.”
“No, no. Not ever.” Andrei’s voice gentled. “You are as close to heaven as I am likely to get.”
“How could you not be disappointed?” she insisted. “I’m empty.”
“It will come. Give it time.”
She wept in soft, ragged breaths. “I pray. I search my heart. Why cannot I…”
“Darling.” His voice thickened. “Hush.” There was a long silence—just breathing—and a rustle of silk like dry leaves.
“She will wake,” Xenia whispered.
He hushed her again. Something brushed against me. I opened my eyes but saw nothing. And then the moon sailed out from the clouds and silvered the velvety darkness into forms: one white breast, freed from Xenia’s bodice and Andrei’s profile poised over it. His head closed over her, and he began to suckle like an infant. Xenia’s eyes were closed, her pink mouth slack, and I thought she might be asleep, except that she whimpered softly and sucked in her breath. Or perhaps this was me, for Andrei lifted his head. I clamped my eyes shut, shame flushing through me. When next I dared to steal a look, he had receded back into the dark. Xenia’s breast was tucked back into its corset, but her fingers stretched out blindly, catching air, opening and closing like a sea flower. She sighed, lolled to her side, and curled into herself. Andrei began to hum some air I did not know.
Perhaps she knew I had heard them. The next morning, she told me that she had been to a priest some weeks earlier. As she spoke, she held one hand in the other and absently dug a thumbnail into the soft flesh of her palm.
“I begged him to pray for me, to cure me of my barrenness.”
A practical man, the priest had first asked her whether she had sat on the ground as a child, for the cold might have made her infertile. No? That was good, he said. And did she ever lie with her husband on Saturdays or holy days? Xenia had replied that they refrained when it was right to do so. Well then, the priest pursued, when they did succumb, did she take pleasure from it?
“I had to confess that I could not help myself.” She studied her palm and made another mark.
Here the priest found his answer: this barrenness was God’s punishment for her lust. The act of fornication was evil, even between husband and wife. The only justification for this act was the children that came from it; without them, the soul remained stained. The cure was to repent of her sin and in future to avoid tempting her husband to his own damnation.
In desperation, she had proposed to Andrei that they should keep separate beds. But he could not be made to share her remorse and had laughed at the priest’s suggestion. If they kept themselves chaste, how might they get children?
“I am so weak, Dasha.” She looked confusedly at her hands, and her eyes filled. “Even at my soul’s peril, I cannot bring myself to stop.”
It may be that God looks with forbearance on such sinners. Night sounds from behind her door announced her continued failures, but within a few months of our conversation, I noticed that she had tied an acorn to the delicate cross and chain at her throat. Our peasant women wear them to assure an easy confinement. She did not speak of her expectation directly, though, for fear of bringing ill luck, nor would she suffer anyone else to. When she told her servant Marfa that her bodices should need to be let out, she answered the old woman’s happy tears with
