Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [316]
Yet even at this moment of crisis, he did not despair. Perhaps the shock even gave him strength. If the inheritance was gone, he must think of some other way to get money. All morning, grimly determined, he pondered this question. His aims were modest: the days of Bobrov the gambler were long over. He would pay off his debts and put a little money by. It might take years and sometimes be humiliating, he did not care. He would make a start, right away.
And so it was that, at midday, he came out, kissed his wife, and ordered his best carriage and horses.
He was going to Empress Catherine’s summer palace.
It was in the early afternoon that, unbeknownst to Alexander, Tatiana and her children set out in a modest hired carriage, and crossed the Neva to Vasilevsky Island. When they arrived at Countess Turova’s house, however, it was not to her door that they went.
It had not been easy for Tatiana. But the Frenchwoman is the only person, she reasoned, who might get me in to see the countess. If it meant she must suffer the small humiliation of asking her husband’s former mistress to save her, so be it. And when the children asked who they were going to see, she told them: ‘An old friend of mine.’
Her plan was quite simple. Once the countess knew she was in the house, surely she would see her. And when the old woman saw the children, could it fail to soften her? Then Tatiana would explain everything. It was a mother’s plan.
And so it was that an astonished Adelaide de Ronville found herself confronted with three little children and their mother who, staring with clear, blue eyes straight into hers, declared simply: ‘We are in your hands.’
‘Mon Dieu.’ Adelaide gazed at the children. Alexander’s children. She realized, to her surprise, that she had never seen them before. Then she looked quickly at this simple, strong woman, their mother. And because it had happened so unexpectedly, leaving her no time to prepare herself, she experienced a sudden, terrible sense of loss and loneliness so that, for a moment, she found she could not speak.
‘Wait here,’ she said after a few moments. ‘I promise nothing, but I will do what I can.’
She was gone some time. While she waited, Tatiana looked around her curiously. Though she had little understanding of what she saw, she perceived that there was something about the subtle arrangement of the Frenchwoman’s salon that was charming in a way that no room of her own could ever be. Yet what was it? Some of the hangings were old and worn. The colours were muted compared with the bright blues and heavy greens of the Bobrov house. Yet this, it seems, is what he likes, she realized. That the art of Adelaide’s seduction lay in the mind, that the joy of the room’s restful silence was that it evoked a whole civilization – said, in effect: ‘In this house there are countless rooms in which your imagination may wander’ – never occurred to her.
She sat there, holding her children, for nearly an hour. Then Adelaide returned, looking grim.
‘She won’t see you. I’m sorry.’
And this, too, Tatiana was not able to understand.
The Catherine Palace. The huge park containing the imperial summer quarters lay only a short distance to the south-west of St Petersburg. Alexander had reached it in under two hours. He loved the place.
For if anything symbolized the cosmopolitan era of eighteenth-century Russia, it was this building. Like the huge Winter Palace, it had been principally designed by the great architect Rastrelli in Empress Elizabeth’s reign. It was the Russian Versailles. The ornate, rococo façade of the central section was three storeys high, and stretched for well over three hundred yards. Pilasters, caryatids, windows and pediments were picked out in white; the walls were painted blue. At each end, a little cluster of onion domes served to emphasize even further the incredible horizontal line of the place. Catherine had abolished some of the formal gardens for an English park, laid out by John Bush. She had also decided