Empress of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

signs with their hands, imitating a pair of horns on a man’s head. They wink at one another when they carry out basins of sop water from Mother’s rooms.
    Like mother, like daughter, Sophie hears. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
    Under a tapestry showing a stag pierced by an arrow, there is a hiddendoor. It is locked, and nothing but dense, murky darkness is visible through the keyhole. On her dressing table, jars of cream change places. In her drawers, even the locked ones, papers have been moved around. Someone must have opened the box with her beauty spots, for one of them has fallen on the carpet. Someone has gone through her linens, leafed through her books.
    The spies are watching her. What are they looking for? A mistake? Or merely proof of her willingness to be worthy?
    Bez kota mysham razdol’ye , her Russian tutor writes in big even letters for her to copy. Without a cat, mice feel free.
    With the Empress gone, the palace corridors have emptied. The servants whisper and laugh among themselves. Guards yawn. Pages fidget when summoned, forget what they have been asked to fetch.
    Peter has stopped speaking Russian. “Send your tutor to hell, Sophie,” he tells her. His writing table is still covered with papers, but it is no longer Passauer art. Peter has a new project. He wants to gather the maxims from all the letters he has ever received from King Frederick of Prussia: A general should never engage in battle unless he has an advantage over his enemy. A retreat is sometimes necessary .
    “Copy them for me, Sophie,” Peter orders. “Your mother says you have a very good hand.”
    Gde tonko—tam i rvyotsya . It’ll snap where it’s the thinnest.
    “Please, Mother,” she pleads.
    But Mother looks at her with the calculating eyes of a rival. “What do you want from me now, Sophie?” she snaps.
    “Send Chevalier Betskoy away. People are talking.”
    “People are always talking, Sophie.”
    Mother’s eyes say more. That her daughter knows nothing of her disappointments.That a woman’s happiness has to be snatched when it’s still possible. That even a good and honest man can leave a woman empty and wanting.
    “What if they tell the Empress?”
    Mother’s hand raises too fast for Sophie to duck. The slap across her cheek turns her head sideways. “I’m here because of you , Sophie! I’ve dragged myself away from my home for your sake! Is this how you repay me?”
    The cheek smarts and swells, pulsates with blood.
    “We are in Russia now, Mother.”
    “And what is this supposed to mean, Sophie? That we should forget who we are? Let these barbarians turn us into puppets dancing on their strings?”
    Mother’s hand raises again, but this time Sophie is faster and steps back. The hand hesitates in the air and falls limp to her side.
    During the day, when Mother leaves on her errands, elderly court women come and sit in her room. They are supposed to keep Princess Sophie company or watch over her when she rests.
    Anyone who matters a smidgen at court has gone with the Empress on the pilgrimage. The women who come to sit with the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst know that. They have become invisible, they joke. Too old for men, too insignificant for other women to bother with.
    They speak of the Moscow chill, hard on the bones. Of the servants, lazy at all times, who skimp on the logs to sell them on the side. Of the lackey who sold a canary at the market and replaced it with a dead bird, thinking his mistress wouldn’t tell the difference. Then they sigh and grow silent, racking their brains for topics that might amuse the young Princess of Zerbst.
    When she relieves them from their duty by pretending to fall asleep, they talk about her.
    “Poor Sophie. Weak, isn’t she? A child, really. At fourteen, they tell you how you are a woman, but you are not.”
    “Imperial marriages are bargains, and this one looks like a bad one …”
    With her eyes closed, her breath even and deep, Sophie