The Winter Palace Read Online Free PDF

to eat quickly, for Madame Kluge had no time to waste. I was not to speak, for Madame Kluge did not care for what I had to say. When I finished, Madame Kluge led me to the servants’ quarters. There were seventeen of us in a room reeking of chamber pots and mold. Mice scurried under the beds, hid in our shoes. The Empress’s cats, I heard, were fed too well to bother with vermin.
    “Be ready when I come for you in the morning,” Madame Kluge told me and was gone.
    I sat on the hard, narrow bed, the only empty one in the room. I kissed the Virgin pendant my mother had given me. At first the other girls cast curious glances at me, but when they saw me cross myself the Latin way, they looked right through me.
    I slept badly, the noises of the room stealing into my sleep: grinding of teeth, moans, wind smacking the frozen windowpanes. The room was icy. Once I woke startled, feeling someone’s hand sneaking underneath my thin blanket. I sat up in my bed, my heart thumping, and looked around, but everyone in the room seemed sound asleep. I bit myself on the arm to see if I had not dreamed the clammy touch. Next to me, a girl groaned.
    When I finally fell into deep sleep my mother came to me and brushed my hand with something wet and warm. “Let’s go, Basieńka. The Empress is waiting for you,” she said, and I followed her ghostly, flickering form through the darkness.
    In the morning, when I thought no one was looking, I hid the coins I brought with me under a loose floorboard next to my bed. That evening, when I lifted the floorboard to check on my inheritance, I found the rag limp and empty, my money gone.
    Madame Kluge returned later in the morning, just as she had promised. She had found a place for me in the Imperial Wardrobe. She hoped my mother had at least taught me how to sew.
    She didn’t even stop to hear my answer.
    I walked behind her, her voice a scolding din in my ears. She knew my kind. Stray cats expecting bowls of cream. People were having children right and left, and then wanted others to care for them. Far too many people were taking advantage of the Empress’s good heart. Rubles didn’t grow on trees. Sausages and loaves of bread didn’t fall like rain from the sky.
    In the Imperial Wardrobe, Madame Kluge told me to make myself useful. “And don’t let me hear any complaints about you, girl.”
    My embroidery brought me no praise. My stitches were crooked, and I mixed up my colors. My mother did not raise me well, I heard. When I was given buttons to sort and sew on, I struggled to thread the needle, making a knot at the end that was too big and did not hold.
    No one spoke to me, except to give me orders. The other seamstresses, deft and fast, bent over their work, busy talking of Russia’s new Crown Prince. They pursed their lips and called him a poor orphan deprived of his mother’s love. I heard that he was witty, and kindhearted. That he remembered the name of everyone he had ever met and every tune he had ever heard. Merely a year since he arrived and his Russian was good enough to give orders and understand what people said to him. His Orthodox name, Peter Fyodorovich, fitted him so much better than the German Karl Ulrich. He liked
bliny
and sturgeon soup. He liked kasha and mushrooms. In the Winter Palace the grandson of Peter the Great was growing healthier and stronger with each day.
    Now that Russia had an heir to the throne, the seamstresses predicted balls and masquerades. The Empress would need many new outfits and gowns. There would be no idle moments in the Imperial Wardrobe.
    By the end of each morning, my feet were numb from the cold, my fingers swollen with needles’ pinpricks. I had but a slice of black bread to eat, with nothing but a weak tea to soften it in my mouth.
    “Is that all you’ve accomplished?” Madame Kluge scolded, snatching the dress I had been working on and waving it like a standard to spark a chorus of giggles.
    I bent my head and wept quietly. Madame