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Blackamoor his aunt gave him as a welcoming present. He had made the black-skinned man his adjutant. Wasn’t I as worthy? All I craved was a chance to remind the Empress of my existence.
    At first I sneaked into the palace kitchens, tempted by the smells of the rich food that never made its way onto the maids’ table, but the pantries were always locked, and in the storage rooms all I ever found in abundance were cheap tallow candles. Sometimes the guards asked where I was going or coming from, but I would look them in the eye and say something saucy, like that I was not in the habit of divulging my mistress’s secrets. A few younger guards always tried to steal a kiss as I passed, but I was nimble and all they ever managed was to brush my gown with their groping hands.
    I didn’t encounter the Empress, but I discovered rooms where tables were covered with carpets and where the cupboards were full of odd-looking musical instruments, rooms crammed with discarded furniture, paintings piled against walls. In such a room, I found a crate full of old books.
    One by one, I took them out and wiped each clean of dust. They were mostly science books, on astronomy and medicine, books about tools and plants I had never seen. The bindings were simple, without adornments. My father would have frowned at the loosening seams and dark spots of mold on the pages.
    It was on such a night that he found me—Count Bestuzhev, the Chancellor of Russia.
    “Who are you?” he asked.
    I hadn’t seen him enter the room, absorbed as I was by the volume I’d pulled from the crate. Above its musky odor, I could detect the scent of vodka on his breath as he towered above me. There was another smell about him, too, an acrid smell of something I had no name for yet.
    I knew who he was, for I’d often seen him walk through the palace corridors as if he were the lord of creation. His velvet ensembles, I heard, came from Paris. The handles of his canes were made of silver and whalebone. The seamstresses whispered that he frequently warmed the Imperial Bed and speculated how he looked in a woman’s gown when he danced at the Empress’s masquerades.
    “I’m a palace girl, a seamstress,” I replied.
    “A seamstress who reads German books?”
    In the room’s semidarkness, I could feel his eyes on me. His fingers pressed under my chin as he tipped my head up and examined my face.
    “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
    “You’re a slippery eel, a cunning fox,” I answered evenly.
    He laughed.
    “How do you know that, palace girl?”
    “I listen when I sew.”
    “And what is it that you hear?” He touched the nape of my neck, stroked the chain with the Virgin pendant my mother had given me. “Tell me.”
    “Chevalier Duval is lusting after the stable boys,” I said boldly.
    “Is he? How do you know?”
    “Anton says so.”
    “And who is Anton?”
    “The Grand Duke Peter’s footman. The tall one, with crooked teeth. Anton is sweet on the Chief Seamstress and always tries to kiss her, but she thinks him a wastrel. All his talk is for nothing, she says.”
    My heart pounded. The book slid from my lap and fell to the floor, but I didn’t bend to pick it up.
    “The Saxon Envoy has had his mercury cure,” I continued. “That’s when the doctors make you drink lead and pray to the Greek gods.”
    “Is that so? And tell me, palace girl, do your ears ever hear talk of the Empress?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “And what is said?”
    “Madame Kluge says that the Empress shouldn’t forget that Count Razumovsky loves her. I think Madame is in love with him herself. She blushes every time anyone mentions his name. I’ve seen her hide in the service corridor to hear him sing.”
    “Madame Kluge? That fat German nobody who fancies herself so important?” the Chancellor asked.
    “She pinches her lips to make them look fuller. She pads her breasts with sashes.”
    He laughed again, a soft, throaty laugh of amused delight.
    How deceptively simple