‘No! I will not have you ask for mercy. Not for him.’

‘For her, then. For Matrena.’ Willem Mons’s other sister, who’d been fool enough to join him in his scheming and was also now in prison and awaiting trial. The Empress told her husband, ‘She is young still, and so beautiful.’

‘You think I value beauty? Do you?’ Suddenly a great resounding crash made Anna jump, as though the Tsar had smashed a window with his fist. He shouted, ‘Thus I can destroy the thing of greatest beauty in my palace!’

Anna thought that, had she stood in front of him herself, such violence would have stunned her into timid silence, but the Empress Catherine only said, with admirable calm, ‘And have you made the palace any the more beautiful in doing so?’

The Tsar, confronted with that gentle challenge, did fall silent. Then he asked, in pure frustration, ‘What am I to do with such a woman?’ And his booted feet stomped heavily across the floor before a door slammed, hard.

A male voice close to Anna’s shoulder said, ‘Good evening,’ and she jumped again, and wheeled to face the man who’d so surprised her. He was not a guard. His clothes were richly made, embroidered heavily with silver, and he wore a long grey wig in the French fashion. ‘I am told you have a letter you would like to give me.’

Anna tried recovering her earlier composure. ‘Yes,’ she answered him in Russian, as he had addressed her. ‘From Vice Admiral Gordon, for the Tsar.’

She took the letter from her pocket and, her ears still ringing with the Tsar’s impassioned speech on honesty, she said, ‘He sent me with a payment I should give you for your trouble, but the watchman would not let me pass unless I paid him also, so I fear that I have nothing I can give you.’

He considered this.

Still holding out the letter, Anna added, ‘I am sure Vice Admiral Gordon will be pleased to send you payment by another means tomorrow. I will come again myself, sir, to deliver it, I promise you. But he did say this letter is most urgent.’

‘Many things are urgent.’ He assessed her with a gaze that lingered too long for her comfort. ‘I suppose you are a maiden still? A pity, for that might have made a more diverting payment. Very well. That is a charming ring you wear. I dare say that will do.’

‘My ring?’

‘Yes. It was not expensive, surely? And I have a daughter of my own who would admire a ring like that.’

The ring, a simple gold band with a tiny pearl, had been a final gift to her from Jane, Vice Admiral Gordon’s luckless stepdaughter, before she died. It was a token of affection, not a thing that she could lightly part with. Even as she clenched her fingers in a small show of protection, she was saved from answering by the approach of footsteps and a swish of skirts behind her.

‘Then, perhaps,’ the Empress Catherine said, ‘this girl will share with you the jeweller’s name, so that you may commission such a ring for your own daughter, for that is a lovely thought, Sergei Ivanovich.’

Anna had never before been so close to the Empress. A part of her wanted to stand there and gape, but she quickly dropped into a low curtsey, bending her head in respect, her heart beating.

The man she’d been speaking to bowed as well, deeply and gracefully.

‘Sergei Ivanovich,’ said Empress Catherine, ‘I thank you for greeting our young guest so kindly. Now, if you would please fetch a maid with a broom, that would be very useful. A mirror has broken.’

She sounded so calm and composed, as though having the Tsar shout and rage had in no way affected her, that Anna could not help but marvel at her self-containment.

‘Yes, of course,’ said the man.

As the sound of his sharp heels receded, a hand lightly brushed Anna’s head. ‘You may stand, child.’

She straightened, still keeping her eyes lowered. The fine silken brocade of the Empress’s gown filled her vision, a woven enchantment of branches and birds on a field of pale blue speckled richly with pearls that were larger by half than the one in the ring Anna wore. That the Empress had helped her to keep.

Since the Empress had already spoken to her, Anna reasoned it could be no breach of good manners to say in reply, ‘I do owe you my thanks, Your Imperial Majesty. You are most kind.’

‘You are Vice Admiral Gordon’s young ward, are you not?’

In amazement that someone so high should have noticed someone like herself, Anna nodded. ‘I am, Your Imperial Majesty.’

‘And you are here on his business, I gather?’

Again Anna nodded, and held out the letter still clutched in her hand. ‘I was sent to deliver this.’

‘Ah. For my husband, I’ll warrant. I’ll see he receives it,’ the Empress said, taking it into her own softly elegant hand.

Anna thanked her, and waited, aware that she could not depart without being dismissed. The pause seemed to stretch overlong; then the Empress remarked, ‘The vice admiral speaks beautiful Dutch, but he stumbles in Russian. You seem not to have the same trouble – you speak Russian beautifully.’

Anna accepted the compliment with proper thanks, but in Gordon’s defence added, ‘But the vice admiral speaks French also, fluently, and I cannot.’

‘You are loyal.’ The words held the trace of a smile, and approval. The hand of the Empress touched Anna again, this time under her chin, and she lifted her head in obedience, raising her gaze.

It was commonly known that the Empress had not been born royal, nor yet even noble; that she’d begun life as a peasant. A servant. Some dared even gossip that she had consorted with other men before she’d captured the heart of the Tsar, and they spoke of her bloodline with open disdain, and dismissed her as common and plain.