They’ve spent unending days clattering over broken, sledge-battered roads by the Baltic that seem to lead only to the polar ice-cap of the world. The speed of travel has hastened each single day. The imperial wedding is fast approaching (Archduke Paul will take Princess Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt for his lawful wedded archduchess); Narishkin, the good chamberlain, has a court reputation to maintain. By the time the splattered battered carriage rattles up to the black gates of Sankt Peterburg, tugged by shaggy Russian stage-horses, our man’s feeling more dead than alive. He’s iller with colic than he cares to admit, blear-eyed with sleepless nights of journey, worried about wolves and bears. His backside hurts like fury; heaven knows what’s happened to his night-shirt. As for his wig, that went missing some hundred leagues back – somewhere in Europe, sunlight and the past. The day on the true calendar is Friday, 8 October Gregorian. Here they call it something quite different.
