Rebel Princess by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online

the Russias, had been eight years old before her mother had been lawfully wedded to Peter the Great and raised to consort’s rank.
    The first Catherine had been a simple woman, easily led by characters stronger than her own, a gentle plaything whose simplicity had pacified and endeared her to Elizabeth’s ferocious father.
    Catherine. It would suit Augusta of Anhalt admirably. Elizabeth determined that she would accept the honor and assume the nature of her namesake at the same time. Upon that resolution the Empress closed her eyes against the first faint light of dawn and fell asleep at last.
    In a wing of the Annehof Palace, Augusta lay wide awake, watching the early daylight seep through the curtains in her room. She waited until the chamber had become sufficiently light, then she reached out for a silver hand mirror that had been placed beside her bed in recent weeks.
    Anxiously she studied her own pale reflection, and the glass showed her a very different person from the plump, radiant princess who had left her native Germany with such high hopes all those long months ago.
    Sickness and disappointment had ravaged her face; the childish contours had melted away in the fever and delirium. A stranger stared back at her with wide, dark-ringed blue eyes, surprisingly high cheek-bones, and a chin so square that it betrayed will-power of a terrible degree in one so young.
    She was certainly not beautiful now, and her dark, abundant hair had fallen out in handfuls. It would be weeks before time had repaired the damage to her face and figure, and that meant peace and respite from Johanna whose presence, even during her daughter’s convalescence, had been forbidden by the Empress.
    During the critical weeks of her illness, the story of the foreign princess whose love of Russia’s language and religion had driven her to study barefoot in the middle of the night, had transformed the feeling of the court from watchful politeness to real enthusiasm.
    Little by little the tale spread across the country, from Moscow to Petersburg, carried by the boatmen whose craft sailed the broad waters of the Neva, through city and town, hamlet and village. The nobility talked of it and the simple serfs believed it; gossip painted a glowing picture of the unpopular Peter’s bride-to-be, and the prayers for her recovery were recited fervently from end to end of Holy Russia.
    The Chancellor heard the news of her recovery from the lips of her personal physician, and he received the tidings without comment. Fate had cheated him of the solution he had hoped for, and now it seemed that other means must be employed to prevent his marriage from bringing his beloved Russia to a state of German vassalage.
    Peter Feodorovitch, with his insane devotion to the Prussian King, was an evil for which there was no remedy, since the Empress refused to marry; but a bride of different racial leanings might perhaps hold the balance when Elizabeth Petrovna surrendered her power.
    The time had come when he must place the evidence of Johanna’s treachery before the Empress, and doubtless the Princess Augusta would also fall victim to the imperial wrath.…
    Bestujev arranged the documents in order and then rang for his most trusted clerk.
    That very afternoon Augusta was to leave her bed for the first time, and in her latest role of maternal affection, the Empress supervised the event herself. Bestujev’s messenger was waved impatiently aside as Elizabeth embraced the thin, emaciated figure of Augusta, leaning back weakly in a chair, while Leo Narychkin, he who had first welcomed her to Moscow all those months ago, kissed her hand in congratulation.
    On the fringe of the crowd, as usual, stood Peter, his ill-formed body clad in the inevitable uniform, an outsize wig perched on his bulbous head, fingering the gilt buttons on his coat with dirty, shaking fingers, a prey to hatred, jealousy and despair.
    Ever since her arrival in Russia, the sight