Free Empress of the Night by Eva Stachniak

tiny child cries, his lips searching for her in vain. A baby born to a world in which his mother is forbidden to touch him, to rock him in her arms, to kiss his tears away.
    Even a cow is allowed to lick her newborn calf. Smell its skin, its breath.
    Is a Russian Grand Duchess a lesser being than a cow?
    “Shh … you have to stop crying … someone might hear you. You don’t want the Empress to think you don’t trust her. That she cannot take care of your child.”
    A heart can take only so much hardening before it breaks.

    “Listen to me, Varenka! Stop talking and just listen.
    “I want her dead! I want to see her fight for her last breath. I want to watch her die. Alone.
    “I will say what I want. I don’t care who is listening!”
    There is fear on Varvara’s face. Her eyes dart sideways. Her left cheek twitches. She shakes her head, claps her hand over her mouth. “Shh,” she whispers. “It’s just your pain speaking. It’s not you. Shh.”
    Some lessons Catherine has failed to understand. Why? Because she was harboring illusions. She flattered herself. Refused to consider the evidence of her own eyes. Assumed that in the empire of love, some things are sacred.
    Serge said, “There is no world without you,” and she believed him.
    Serge said, “I’ve given you a son. I’ve made you safe, but now I have to stay away. It hurts me more than it hurts you,” and she believed him.
    Serge said, “You have your fate in your own hands now, Catherine,” but this she did not believe.
    It is winter already. She has ordered her bed to be moved into a small alcove, pushed against a blocked door. It is the drafts that she wants to escape, she tells her maids. Ever since she gave birth, her flesh cannot hold the warmth. She cannot stand upright for more than a few minutes before her feet begin to swell. In her tiny nook of a room, curled under a down coverlet and a fur blanket, she reads or—if words stop making sense—stares at the barricaded door. The ridges of the wood grain form an intricate pattern of horizontal lines; the holes show where an old lock has been carelessly replaced. Sometimes the wood creaks, especially at night, when all sounds are magnified by the cold and the silence.
    Her belly still aches. The pain begins in one spot, where the baby’s head ripped her open, and then travels upward. Catherine tries not to think of the son whom she is not allowed to see for longer than atearstained blink. A swaddled baby with watery blue eyes and a tuft of blond hair.
    Sometimes she succeeds.
    Serge, her beloved, has raven-black tresses and black eyes. Could it be that Paul is Peter’s child after all? The possibility fills her with revulsion. Not only because the very memory of Peter’s clammy hands sickens her, but because there is nothing in him she wants her son to inherit.
    Sometimes a well-meaning maid-of-honor comes with news of how little Paul cried all night. Or yawned with the most amusing grimace. Or sucked on his clenched fist. Or peed on the wet nurse when she removed the swaddlings.
    After she was delivered of her son, a black stripe appeared on her belly. The skin has stretched and the old firm tightness of her muscles is gone. Would Serge like her the way she is now? She thinks of him in faraway Sweden, where the Empress has sent him so “the Grand Duchess will no longer debase herself.”
    He hasn’t written to her. It’s too dangerous. She doesn’t even know when he will be allowed back. When this thought comes, she buries her hand between her thighs and presses hard, but such paltry measures always disappoint.
    Now that Russia has a Tsarevich, the Grand Duchess cannot be that easily pushed aside. Court calculations have been adjusted. Is it better to back the Crown Prince or the mother of his heir and successor? Who will last longer, once the Empress closes her eyes? Who will withstand the palace intrigues? Please more hearts? The results of this hesitation are beginning to