Rebel Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

the face and streamed over his wig and upon his coat like blood.
    A torrent of profanity in Russian and French poured from Elizabeth’s painted lips, and the Grand Duke cowered under it, suddenly brought to his senses by the terrible anger his drunken insults had aroused. Wiping his streaming face on his sleeve, he burst into tears and, with a look of mortal hatred at the Empress and Augusta, rushed from the banqueting hall, crying out to be returned to Prussia. His last words rang out in a wail of defiant entreaty:
    â€œSend for Ivan! Make him your heir, I want none of this damned country or your throne! Send for Ivan, Ivan!”
    In the midst of her rage Elizabeth paled under her rouge. At Peter’s challenge she sank back upon her throne while Rasumovsky tried to comfort her. Watching them, Augusta forgot her own humiliation as she sensed that in that innocent name lay Peter’s talisman of safety from his aunt. Who was this Ivan, that the mere mention of him could make the Empress of Russia tremble?
    It was almost dawn as Augusta confronted her mother in the privacy of their own apartments, aware that the scene had left its mark upon Johanna, for she was pale and restless.
    For a few moments the mask of charming benevolence had slipped from Elizabeth’s lovely face, revealing a furious barbarian beneath the trappings of Western dress and manner. Despite herself, Johanna shivered; suddenly the task set her by Frederick of Prussia seemed both difficult and dangerous. She turned impatiently upon her daughter, that innocent bait that she had helped to thrust into the merciless trap of imperial politics.
    Augusta’s voice was only a whisper as she asked the question that thousands of humbler people had suffered torture and banishment for voicing.
    â€œMama, who is Ivan? What did the Grand Duke mean?”
    Johanna gripped her in fierce anxiety.
    â€œHold your tongue, in God’s name! Did you not see the Empress at the mention of him? Do you want us to be banished, perhaps imprisoned, for your foolish curiosity? Were it not for the succession, I’ll swear she’d have Peter’s head as satisfaction for his words tonight.…” The Princess of Zerbst glanced fearfully over her shoulder, then bent down to the shrinking Augusta and whipered quickly:
    â€œFor all our safety I must warn you never to speak that name. Ivan is but a child, yet a child anointed and crowned rightful Czar of all the Russias! The Empress seized his mother, the Regent, and dethroned him; the boy is confined in some fortress, but already rebellion has broken out in his name. ’Tis said that a lady-in-waiting had her tongue torn out for being implicated in the plot. Let that satisfy you, little fool, and remind you that it is safest to forget what you have heard!”
    But Augusta did not forget and, during the long hours of the night when sleep eluded her, hideous images besieged her bed. This then was the true nature of her changed estate; a cruel young imbecile, himself haunted by fear, was the man to whom she must give her heart and body, and the prize for this fearful bargain was to be a usurper’s crown. Somewhere in the blackness of a dungeon the rightful lord of Russia lay captive, and the shuddering Augusta recalled that her mother described him as only a child.
    For the second time within twenty-four hours of her arrival in Moscow, Princess Augusta Fredericka wept, unhappy, hysterical tears.
    During the days that followed the young princess found herself involved in an endless round of pleasure, the recipient of almost daily gifts from the Empress Elizabeth who overwhelmed her with favor, and the subject of universal attention at court.
    Her early pleas to Johanna to return to Germany had been savagely refused, and it came to the Czarina’s ears that on the morning after her arrival in Moscow, the elder German princess had begun it by slapping the future Grand Duchess.
    Elizabeth, who struck