The Girl Who Fought Napoleon: A Novel of the Russian Empire Read Online Free PDF

finger. As quietly as I could, I rummaged for a loaf of white bread. I cut a few ragged slices and reached into the cupboard for the sugar bowl and sprinkled the bread until it glistened with sweetness in the candlelight.
    Sheltering the guttering flame from the drafts, I slipped silently into the night.
    The moon cast shadows on the gardens. The birch trees loomed like white giants, their black shadows stretched before me. I could hear the snorting of the horses, the restless commotion as they sensed the new horse stabled among them.
    Alcides kicked the stall partition that separated him from my father’s gray gelding.
    “Easy!” I said to him. “Easy, Alcides!”
    The stallion leapt back at the sound of my voice and the flame of the candle. He snorted from the corner of his stall.
    “Come here, boy,” I said, putting the candle down carefully on the stone floor. I stretched out my hand with the sugar-coated bread.
    “Here! Look what I brought you, my friend.”
    The gelding in the stall next to him stuck his nose through the bars. He was greedy and smelled the sweetness of the treat. He made a low nicker, his lips probing.
    Alcides was less sure. He flattened his ears at the searching lips of the gelding, though I kept the bread just out of his reach.
    “Come, now, Alcides. My mother would beat me for stealing our sugar. Come, you take a risk for me now.”
    I do not know how long I stood there, though I had to tighten my wrap in the drafty cold of the stables. My teeth chattered and I stamped my feet to keep warm. But eventually Alcides took a few steps toward me, his hooves rustling the straw.
    He took the sugared bread from my outstretched palm, nibbling it as gently as a rabbit. At last he took the whole slice in his teeth, shaking it up and down.
    “No! You will spill off all the sugar!” I protested. I reached up and pressed the slice into his mouth. He did not draw back.
    After that first night, Alcides would nicker and paw the ground when he heard my approaching steps, knowing it was me who brought his evening snack.
    And the maid complained there was never enough sugar to make the weekly cakes. Lucky for me she blamed it on the house spirit—for every Russian household had one—the mischievous domovoy .
    “It is his doing!” she proclaimed.
    I said a silent prayer for our Russian superstitions and left little pancakes on the windowsill for our domovoy as a thank-you.

Chapter 7
    Gatchina
    August 1789
     
    When he reached the age of twelve, Alexander was permitted to spend more time with his parents at Gatchina, a luxurious fortress, its massive limestone facade stately, if not elegant. Flanked by two lakes, the White and the Silver, Gatchina was isolated in the depths of a thick forest, sixty versts from St. Petersburg and a half-day ride from the summer palaces of Tsarkoe Selo, the imperial village where the St. Petersburg Court spent the months of June through August.
    The vast southern facade of the palace, its central block adorned with pilasters, open galleries, and two towers, loomed in a semicircle over the parade ground. Here Paul drilled his twenty-four hundred horse soldiers obsessively, cultivating the Prussian precision of a military cavalry.
    Alexander reveled in the military colors and pageantry of maneuvers. Soon, his father began to teach him how to command the troops, how to issue the orders for the complex and precise formations. The young boy didn’t care about horsemanship, but orchestrating the movement of thousands of horse soldiers was another matter. While other Russian children were content with toy soldiers, Alexander had his own live cavalry with which to play.
    Paul frowned at his son.
    “Your heels should be down,” muttered the grand duke, who sat astride a large-boned warhorse. “And you sit too far back in the saddle, like an old man. There should be a plumb line from the tip of your nose to your knee to your heel.”
    The young boy shifted discreetly in the