The Updated Memoirs of Princess Dashkova

Epilogue

After the coup, when Catherine was firmly instated on the throne, awarding me the Star of the Order of St. Catherine, already making changes for the benefit of the Russian people, did our visits become less frequent. Her disinterest grew like mold, slowly enough that it was noticeable, then uncomfortably evident, demanding your notice. At the time, all I felt was hurt. The slow dismantling of a friendship I had given everything for. It is years, and years later, that I understand why she distanced herself from that nineteen-year-old girl, a girl too similar to herself, a girl whose intelligence threatened her power, who threatened her legacy.

After her coronation, the whispers of me, Catherine the Little, rose to their peak. At first, Catherine laughed when I regaled her with the stories, exaggerated tales of heroics and intelligence. I was too blind to see how her lips downturned, her eyes grew less bright. She exchanged time with me for Potemkin. Too often did I wait outside her meeting rooms eager to discuss my books, my writings, my recent correspondence with this new, brilliant thinker in the West, Voltaire, but all I received was the swish of her gowns as excuse after excuse balanced up precariously like the books in my study.

I sometimes wish women conducted friendships like men, where they spoke their minds simply, rather than edging away from each other in the form of polite niceties, maybe then, the end wouldn't hurt as much. Catherine had always been insecure before she was Queen, but then I was her confidante, it was I who was able to assure her of her place, but my role had changed: I was the threat. Power had made two intelligent women enemies.

But Catherine did not begin as just my friend, she was my mentor, my hero, my sister, sestra.

The court is a different place when you are not in the favor of the Queen. It was a painful decision to leave St. Petersburg, but I had no place there any longer. Mikhail and I departed to Trotskoye, where we raised our children for two years until Mikhail acquired a cough. That dreaded, stricken cough. The cough that labors far into the night, louder than the owls, deeper than the stars, the one I could not love to health again. Mikhail died, holding my hand, in 1964.

He was twenty years old.

I fled to Europe with my children. Russia held no hold on me any longer.

It is today that I return to St. Petersburg to come face to face with Catherine again. I am a different woman, twenty years later: a mother of two grown children, a widow, an author, a philosopher in my own right. It was only months ago that I received the letter from Catherine, the handwriting as familiar as my own, inviting me back to St. Petersburg, back to the Palace: Catherine the Great had a request.

The rhythm of tying up my hair, slipping into the formal dress of the court after so many years preferring men's breeches back in Europe, sent me right back to being that nineteen-year-old, that girl with so much to learn of the world. I strode down their halls, no longer self-conscious of my step. I did not owe them anything anymore.

There were new faces in the court, but otherwise, it was as if walking into a mirror, a mirror I gazed into twenty years ago.

The doors swung open to the throne room. And there, at the end of the longest carpet, sitting on her throne: Catherine.

She stood when she saw me, granting me the same respect, as a visiting dignitary. Her eyes were older now, darker, more tired. "Kat," she called out, the nickname she had once called me, long ago.

I curtsied. "Empress Catherine." My voice was guarded, shielded by the hurt her words had caused.

She smiled, "Don't you think we are beyond that?" Her words were an echo of a conversation from years past. Stepping off her pedestal, she walked toward me. Her next words were spoken louder, meant for the nobility to our left and our right, hyenas for gossip, for the return of the princess. "Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova, I would like to appoint you the director of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science." Each word was a statement in and of itself. There had been no female director of an Academy of Science–ever. I studied her like an old, favorite book I had picked up again.

"To live, again, in St. Petersburg?" I questioned hesitantly.

"I think that would be most efficient," a smile outlined her words. "What do you say?"

Maybe, it was that Catherine wasn't threatened by me any longer, maybe she trusted my intelligence, and the depth of my knowledge, maybe she knew directing people, projects, coups, was a skill I relished, but maybe, maybe it was because Catherine the Great made a mistake many years ago, maybe history does have room for two powerful women, maybe our legacies do not have to cancel each others' out, and maybe, we can lift each other up, together.

I nodded slowly, then surely.

Catherine the Great hugged me tightly, "Welcome back. Sestra."