Chapter 11
XI.
The lock clicking open woke me. The hinges whined when the door swung out. All my lethargy fled. There could be no mistake about the meaning of an open cell door.
Today, I would die.
Four guards greeted me, two in front and two behind.
No one shackled or bound me. Perhaps they knew that they could have simply invited me to the scaffold, and I would have skipped up with a bounce in my step.
We marched along, not to any of the darker private rooms below the palace as I had expected for a beheading and not to a side outer courtyard where a block might have been prepared, but through the corridors and up into the palace itself.
There were not many people about: servants, a minister rushing through the halls with scrolls and books under his arms, secret lovers returning to their apartments. No one gave us attention.
Could a more public execution be planned?
Or maybe, instead of the beheading given to nobles, I had misjudged, and I was to be hanged like any commoner since my title had not been reinstated.
Perhaps the palace only retained silence because the majority had assembled elsewhere, awaiting me.
Would I have a final moment to speak? Should I have been coming up with a speech while imprisoned?
Surely the tsarina would know better than to give me another public platform to voice my impertinent grievances.
But we did not head towards courtyards, gardens, or public spaces.
We climbed the central staircase, upward to halls more expansive and sumptuous in decoration than the last. My bones and muscles recognized the passageways before I did, and I nearly stumbled.
Hair prickled on the back of my neck. My hands trembled, and I clasped them to keep from betraying my fear.
The guards walked through an open doorway, the room beyond illuminated by candles and the pale light filtering through uncurtained windows.
They paused in formation in the center of the room.
The two leading guards stepped aside, allowing a full view of the tsarina at a desk, piles of state documents in front of her.
She only looked up from her work when she finished reading the top document. She examined me briefly before shifting her attention to the guard in charge.
“Leave us now, but stay at the door.”
The guards bowed and turned, the lead giving me a skeptical once-over before departing.
“Facial hair suits you,” she said by way of greeting. “I might have to rescind the laws that prohibit it.”
I didn’t bow or speak.
“What a headache you are,” she said at long last. “Do you see all of these?” She gestured to the piles of documents and letters. “These are all the petitions I have received on your behalf since the ambassador's visit.”
I hated the flutter of hope that brushed my insides. “Alexei?”
She offered me an indulgent look, one she might have given a particularly stupid child. “As if a younger brother would petition on behalf of an older one when that brother’s absence grants him the entire power and property of his family.”
Not Alexei.
“Amazing how silent they stayed when you could still offer them amusement.” She gave the piles one last look before rising from her chair. “I’ve had to reconsider what to do with you.”
“You could exile me from the country?”
“If I wanted to,” she agreed. “But I thought of something better. Follow me.”
I followed her as she left the room, not seeing another choice. I gritted my teeth, remembering this walk. From the receiving room, through the sitting room, little dining room, Kilikwa dining room, drawing room, then to the monarch’s corridor. To her bedroom.
I stopped outside.
“I said no,” I called out, my throat hoarse but my will solid.
“You don’t know what I’m offering,” she said as she returned to the doorway.
“I can guess.”
“How little you know me.” She reached her hand out for mine. “I had a bath drawn for you.”
The unexpected offer of a bath overrode my other misgivings, and she caught my hand without me pulling away.
I did not resist when she led me in, my curiosity requiring the substantiation of her claim.
Self-serving, perhaps, but a bath encompassed the pinnacle of all physical comforts I could request in my current state.
The metal basin rested in front of the fireplace, the steam rising from the water twisting and curling in an enticing, sensual dance. I could not remember the last time I enjoyed a proper bath. I had long given up hope of ever being clean again.
“A bath for my submission?”
“A bath because you are filthy,” she said.
“What do you get from this?”
“I get to watch.” She released my hand. “You have been most amusing as my chicken, but we both know that isn’t what I wanted you for.”
“Watching also isn’t what you wanted me for.”
“Do you want the bath or not?”
I refused to let her know how much I wanted it, so I asked, “Do you propose I take it in costume?”
“I planned on letting you out of it.”
“For how long?”
“What if I tell you that I never expect you to wear that costume again?” She wandered around the basin and picked up an item from the low table with toiletries, towels, and folded black fabric. “I have something finer for you.”
Despite my mistrust, I could not see her advantage. There had to be one. She would not offer any of this if she had no motive, and yet, I did not see a gain except for mine.
“I accept the bath,” I relented.
She held up the object in her hand as she approached, a miniature set of scissors in the shape of a bird, the blades its beak, the fingerholds its legs. Embroidery scissors.
“They are accustomed to undoing mistakes.” She crossed behind me and began working on the stitches that kept the costume fastened. “You see, I am not so much the villain you think I am.”
I nearly scoffed at her calling my deliberate humiliation a mistake, but I clamped my mouth shut. I would wait until I was out of the costume. I would wait until I luxuriated in a bath. I would wait, but only until I could make a viable attempt at escape.
My shoulders relaxed as she cut the stitches.
The weight of the costume shifted and then fell away.
The stench overpowered my relief, and I gagged as it assaulted me.
I picked at the undershirt plastered to my torso by sweat and body oil, crust falling away as I pried it up.
I tore it off only when I ensured it would not take skin with it.
My tights and shoes too joined the pile of discarded clothing destined, I hoped, for a fire.
Although wishing to revel in my freedom, my filth tainted any fleeting notion of celebration.
I launched myself into the bathing tub, submerging my head and resurfacing only to wipe water and hair from my face, careful around the sores from the beak mask.
I leaned back against the basin and stretched.
“You look terrible,” the tsarina said as she took a chair that afforded her an unobstructed view of the basin.
“I wonder why.”
“It didn’t have to be like this.”
Refusing to dignify her statement with a response, I turned my attention to the table beside the basin to review the offerings. I lifted a small bottle, hand-blown, with only a third of the contents left. Her own toiletries.
“Couldn’t find anything less dignified for me to use?” I asked.
“I wanted you to smell like me.”
I set the bottle down and retrieved one of the towels instead, determined to scour myself until I bled in my bid for cleanliness rather than resort to using her items. While she said nothing, pretending to ignore her required more concentration than anticipated as I rubbed my skin raw.
I had never successfully ignored the possessiveness of her gaze, although I succeeded in hiding the shivers it inspired.
“Do I get to shave?”
“As if I would trust you with a razor right now.”
I grabbed one of the small towels, wet it, and laid it over my eyes. I slid down into the water up to my chin and marinated.
“Aren’t you going to ask about what I have planned for you?”
“And ruin the fleeting pleasure of a bath? Not likely.”
Maybe I should want to know what my future held. Maybe, if she told me, I could find a way out of whatever nefarious plan she had. But the future would come no matter what it held for me, and I could not endanger my fragile momentary delight for a miserable inevitability.
I only contemplated leaving the basin when the water chilled beyond tolerance.
Even then, I delayed, unwilling to abandon my place of relative safety for an ominous unknown.
When I finally rose from the water, the tsarina too rose from her seat, retrieving the final towel before I did, which she held out for me.
I tore it from her hands and began drying off.
“You said watch, not touch,” I reminded her.
“So I did.”
I toweled my hair off last, dismayed at its length and tempted to try the embroidery scissors on it.
“Your clothes,” she said, gesturing to the pile of black fabric now revealed with the removal of the towel.
“Mourning for my own death?” I didn’t dislike the color, but it boded ill given my situation. The clothes were little more than suggestions of a shirt and trousers, threadbare, patched, and more mending than material. “Couldn’t find anything worse?”
“I can always have you sewn back into your chicken costume.”
I heaved a sigh and began dressing to cover up the visceral fear of her doing just that.
If it had been an endurance test, perhaps I could have done it again, another few months, and then freedom and a forever farewell to Ilyichia.
But the only sure end to such torment would have been to outlive her, and I could not spend years trapped in a costume I could not remove.
For all my resilience, that would break me.
She crossed over to the door that led out to her balcony and pulled on a blue summer cloak and white kidskin gloves. She gestured towards another cloak waiting for me.