“Letters to whom?” I demanded.
Druschka lifted up her hands.
“She cannot read,” Manon explained.
I glanced down at the leather-bound volume the maid still clutched close to her heart. “Why, then, is this book so precious?”
“It is her mistress’s journal,” Manon replied. “This, alone, Tscholikova failed to burn. Druschka has been guarding it against the brother — Prince Pirov — for fear he will destroy it. She brought it to me in the hope I might decipher the words — tell her why her mistress died. The Princess wrote in French, voyez-vous. Druschka speaks that tongue, but the letters are foreign to her … ”
I held Manon’s gaze. “And this the Princess did not burn. Good God! What we might find there … ”
Manon crouched near the Russian maid, and spoke softly to her in French. Druschka cradled her head in her hands, the book sliding unheeded to the ground. A broken phrase fell from her lips.
“What can women hope,” Manon translated, “against all the power of the Tsar?”
“The Tsar!” I cried.
Druschka stared at me in horror, as tho’ I had uttered an oath aloud.
“But what has he to do, pray, with the death of Princess Tscholikova?” I pressed. And so she began her tale.
IT WAS A MEANDERING STORY, FULL OF INCIDENT and memory: the Princess as a child, consigned to her English governess from the age of seven and ignored by her bitter father; the Princess’s mother, dead in childbirth of a stillborn son; the elder brother, Prince Pirov, attached to the St. Petersburg Court, a glittering and distant figure, close to the young Tsar. Evgenia buried in the country, lonely but for her dolls. The wolfhounds by the fire of an evening; the sound of hunting horns in the freezing early dusk. Druschka was her nursemaid, banished by the young woman who journeyed all the way from London to instruct the Princess in French and Italian, watercolours and the use of the globes; but the Englishwoman was unhappy — she was a cold creature, colder than the steppes — and it was to Druschka the Princess came for stories at bedtime, Druschka who tended Evgenia when she was ill.
I watched as a few tears slid from the aged eyes, Manon’s voice a quiet whisper above Druschka’s own; the brisk wind of spring toyed with my bonnet strings and I shuddered, as tho’ I, too, felt the cold of the steppes in my blood.
When the old Prince died, Evgenia was summoned to St. Petersburg and the English governess was sent packing back home, no companion being necessary for a girl of fifteen on the point of her debut; Evgenia would live with her brother now, in the grand palace on the Neva, and her brother’s wife — a haughty woman with vast estates in her dowry, for all she was only a countess — would introduce the child to Society, and find her a husband. Druschka expected her young mistress to leap with joy at the prospect — she did not think the girl could pack her trunks fast enough — but to her dismay, Evgenia was afraid. She bore her brother no love and his wife even less; she feared that she might fail them — too stupid, too ugly, too maladroit.
This last word Manon handed me in its French form, with a sort of flourish; the maid was warming to her tale, I knew, and enjoying the fairy nature of it. But I read the future in the young girl’s palpitating bosom — for indeed, she had failed them all, she who married well but without love, then slipped into the reckless affairs of youth when once the cage was opened …
I waited until the Russian maid had explained how she came to accompany her mistress, the sole comfort the girl could claim from a past swiftly stripped from her; how Evgenia had been courted for her wealth by the most powerful men in Russia; how she had fallen in love with an hussar, and seen him killed. When at length Druschka arrived at Prince Tscholikov and his appointment to Vienna— I held up my hand, and said to Manon, “Ask her for whom the Princess abandoned her husband. An
Austrian? Another Russian? Who was the cause of her mistress’s downfall?”
But Druschka surprised me again.
“The Tsar,” she spat. “C’est lui.”
“The Tsar was her lover?” I blinked in astonishment at Manon. “I have certainly heard that he is a very fine figure of a man — and full young for the lofty estate he claims — but surely… was he not in St. Petersburg?”
“Non et non et non,” the Russian woman protested in a frenzy of frustration. She then broke into such a torrent of French that I was forced to be patient, and await Manon’s translation.
“It would seem,” she said at length, “that the Princess was ordered to meet with a foreigner attached to the Viennese Court. The world assumed this man to be her lover — but she met with him only at the behest of her brother, Prince Pirov, who said it was the wish of the Tsar. Druschka does not know why the two met, or what they did together; her mistress would never speak of it. But her husband grew jealous; in the end he accused the Princess of adultery, and banished her from his house. She went first to Paris, and then to London. Now she is dead, and Prince Pirov — the brother — will hear nothing of murder. The Prince does not wish for justice. He wishes for obscurity, and silence, and shame. Druschka believes that this, too, is at the order of the Tsar. And she cannot rest.”
My mind was in a whirl; the intelligence was too incredible to apprehend all at once. If Druschka could be believed — if she had not merely formed a tissue of sense from a smattering of facts, interpreted as she chose — then what she described was a woman who had sacrificed her reputation, her honour, her place in society, and eventually her life — for reasons of state, and policy.
“Who was this foreigner, Druschka?” I asked. “The one the Princess knew in Vienna?”
“Le français,” the maid replied. “D’Entraigues.”
Chapter 18
The Earl ’s Seal
Saturday, 27 April 1811, cont.
AS PRINCESS TSCHOLIKOVA’S JOURNAL WAS WRITTEN in French, we agreed that Manon would be charged with reading it — my command of the tongue being hardly equal to a native’s. I urged the maid to pay particular attention to the last few weeks of the Princess’s existence, and to report what she gleaned from the entries with as much despatch as possible. Then Manon and I parted from Druschka with firm promises of support, and adjurations to say nothing of all she had disclosed. Druschka appeared to live in such terror of the long arm of the Tsar, that I felt assured of her silence.
Once returned to Sloane Street, I went in search of Eliza.
She was pirouetting before the mirrors in her dressing room, all thought of the gallows banished. Her cold had very nearly gone off, and her plump countenance was pink with satisfaction at a new gown — a bronze-green silk with a high ruffed collar— which showed off her dark eyes to perfection.
“I might wear topazes with this,” she mused, “or perhaps my garnet earrings. What do you think, Jane?”
“Eliza, have you written to your friend the Comtesse?”
My sister pouted at me in disappointment. “I fully apprehend that we are a day closer to the horrors threatened by those Bow Street men — but can we not spend the morning in pleasure rather than the pursuit of villains? This is dear Henry’s last day for a se’nnight! And if you are gloomy, Jane, he will fear the worst — and believe me in ill-health. He will be such a prey to anxiety that he will never leave for Oxford on the morrow, and we will be forced to go about this havey-cavey business in the most underhanded fashion. It is vital, my dear, that we appear gay to the point of dissipation! Fashion must be our subject — millinery and shopping our sole pursuits — so that Henry may trot off to Oxford on his hired mare without a backward look!”