Page 5 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“You can’t truly mean to do this,” I said, gulping around my horror.
“But I have already done it.”
I stopped fighting the arms that held mine.No physical constraint could bind me worse than my new status.
“Have my years of devotion meant nothing to you?”
“How you squawk!”She paused with that accusation and then laughed, her entire face lifting in almost girlish delight.“If you squawk so easily, Mikhail, I will make sure you have plenty of opportunity to do it for everyone.”She flicked her eyes to the guards and waved her hand dismissively.“Show him to his new accommodations and ensure he makes himself fit for his next appearance.”
My dry mouth prevented me from saying anything else, either in protest or my defense.
She hadn’t killed me, but I wished she had.
II.
Delivered from guardsto household staff, aprons replaced gold braid, and burnished glittering halls devolved into dark, cramped corridors.When deposited in a barren communal room, a servant demanded my clothing, and I did not protest.I sat near the fireplace, too stunned to care about my nudity, wiping down with a dirty rag from a basin of water whose bottom I could not see.I passed the stained, scratchy cloth over my skin dozens of times, no cleaner for the multitude of attempts at making myself so.Even the ache from sitting on the stone hearth could not pull me from my numbness.My head swam while the rest of me continued to go through the motions.
My naked ring finger finally brought tears.
Someone eventually pointed me to a straw pallet on the floor.I just nodded and retreated to it.No worse accommodation than in prison then, but I lacked the privacy to lick my wounds and indulge in self-pity.Instead, I stared at the ceiling.
Tomorrow, I told myself, reasoning with panic and misery.Tomorrow, I could think about it seriously and fully and find a solution to it.Tomorrow, I could figure out where it had all gone wrong.Tomorrow, I could worry about the future.
For now, I would just stare up at the ceiling, my wet hair plastered to my head, my nakedness covered only by a scratchy blanket, and try not to think about anything at all.
I failed miserably.My younger brother’s face haunted me through the night.A grown man, of course, but all I saw was a terrified little boy who realized that even his older brother could do nothing to keep him safe.Not now.He had done what I expected him to do, and, though painful, I would never have wanted him to get pulled into any of this anyway.
But when tomorrow came, nothing happened to torment my imaginings or fulfill my fears.The day after too only saw me shelling peas and scrubbing floors in the kitchen with coarse draw-string trousers borrowed from another.Glances from those around me slid in my direction when they thought I would not notice or would not see, but each smug look burned like spitting embers from a fire.
And I kept silent.
Silence was the last bastion of dignity.
It was not humility that frightened me.The military did not skimp on physical challenges, filthy work, or menial tasks.I had put my hands to many an occupation that, outside of royal uniform, might have been consigned to serfs.I had toiled beside commoners in pursuit of a military goal.I had shared in labor and victory with all walks of life during my military career.My wealth, family name, titles, and personal achievements had cushioned the harder realities of life after I retired from the military, but few things held the power to frighten me at my age.
It was the other thing that frightened me, the word the tsarina gave me of which I had no personal knowledge beyond some court entertainment: jester.
