Among the prisoners was an illiterate seventeen-year-old girl whom Sheremetev did not send to Azov but kept in his own house. In time, this girl would rise. Martha Skavronskaya, as she was born, would join the household of the great Prince Menshikov, become the mistress of the Tsar, Peter’s wife, and, finally, sovereign in her own right, Catherine I, Empress of Russia.
