The Warsaw Conspiracy

by James Conroyd Martin

  The speech had not gone well for Trembicki. General Potocki saw fit to speak now. “Halt, now, my good citizens!” he called. “You know me, General Stanisław Potocki. You know that in the past I have fought for independence for our great nation. I have gone gray in the service of our country. Like you, I would like nothing better than to return to the years of our Constitution.” As the general detailed his years in service of his country, the crowd stopped their forward movement and gave him their attention.

  “But, listen to me, patriots! Listen! It cannot be done in this ragtag fashion. Your venture is doomed. Your chances of success in this are non-existent. The day for freedom will come, but it is not today.” These were not words to assuage the crowd and the people set to pushing restlessly forward again. More than a few shouted their disapproval of the general’s prediction. Soon the catcalls were going up all around the generals. One man spat upon the ground very near to General Potocki.

  Two cadets came to the fore of the crowd. “We know you, General Potocki,” one of them said. “Your heart is with us if you listen to it. Say the word and you shall be Commander of the Army! Allow us to join the companies of the men behind you and we shall take the bridge to Praga.”

  Trembicki scoffed and cursed. Potocki was more sensitive in his reaction but negative nonetheless. Other cadets moved forward and urged Potocki to take command.

  “Do it, Stanisław,” Jan said through clenched teeth. “Take the chance and weigh not the odds.”

  Potocki was silent for some seconds, as if considering. The crowd paused, too, as the question hung fire.

  “I cannot consider such an offer,” he said then. “My duty as a soldier of honor is placed with the Grand Duke.”

  As these cadets implored Potocki to demonstrate his patriotism, other cadets and citizens became impatient and began calling to the light cavalry behind the generals. “Join us, Patriots,” they called. “Will you arrest and kill your brothers? Throw off the Russian bear! Let the white eagle soar once again!”

  Such calls grew in intensity. Several cadets bragged of witnessing successes that night against the Russians at different city locations. The generals loudly discounted such boasts but, Iza thought, if they were true, Poland might yet succeed and evict the Russians. She could no longer hear the exchange between the generals and the spokesmen for the cadets. Her attention and that of everyone at the casement window turned to the two companies of light cavalry who seemed to be responding to the cadets with war whoops of enthusiasm. They had made their decision, it seemed, a decision that went against their generals. The soldiers beckoned the people forward, toward Castle Square. The crowd, quickly becoming giddy at the offer, responded with full strides forward.

  “Is it a trick?” Zofia asked. “Are they being led to their arrest—or worse?”

  “I pray not,” Anna said.

  “I don’t think so,” Jan offered. “Look at the faces of the generals. They have lost control of their men. They know it. And I suspect they’ve been warned by those young cadets down there of what their own refusal to join the revolutionaries will mean to them.”

  The four at the window fell silent as they watched the crowd press forward. Men and women were so close to the officers’ horses that the generals could not maneuver a turnabout and return to their men. Neither could they proceed forward down Piwna Street. The multitude had become a mob.

  And then the inevitable occurred. Unruly citizens reached up and pulled Trembicki and Potocki from their horses. Anna gasped, but no one said a word as Zofia shooed everyone back from the window. She had only just closed the shutters when there came the sounds of several shots. Now her arms reached out to either side and she pulled tight the casement windows, latching them securely.

  Michał arrived breathless at Belweder Palace. He moved past the open gates and the two narrow guardhouses that stood empty. He paused for a moment. There was no motion to be seen, no sounds to be heard. All was dark but for the pale moonlight that lent a ghostly illumination to the whiteness of the building.

  His heart sank. He was too late. What had happened here? He saw a form lying prone and face down on the portico. He hurried toward it and was relieved to see the body belonged to a Russian officer. Kneeling down he turned the body over and recognized the bloodied man at once.

  It was General Gendre, a Russian general notorious in reputation. He had been dismissed by the late Tsar Aleksander for graft and other impositions, but Grand Duke Konstantin had taken in the outcast, making him Master of Horse, then general, and finally aid-de-camp to the Duke. All Warsaw—nobles, merchants, nearly everyone—knew him and his wife to be the boldest of swindlers. Just desserts, Michał could not help but think, wondering if the cadets knew whom they were killing. Had they mistaken him for the Grand Duke himself? There was a resemblance. Was it murder they had in mind for Konstantin? The outright murder of a Russian prince would tarnish Poland’s honor—and bring upon it unrelenting revenge from the his brother, the Tsar.

  Michał noticed now that the wounds in the body were many. More than a dozen. Clearly, he realized, the cadets knew their man, knew his reputation and had made a Julius Caesar of him, bayonet blades substituting for daggars.

  This was the first violent death he had observed since Waterloo and it made him shudder for a moment. For him this was the true start of revolution. Where would it lead? Where would it end? He stood and went to the broken front doors. Where was Józef? No one was in evidence anywhere, but he would not leave without investigating. Perhaps a servant remained who might provide information.

  Michał walked the long hall, checking the rooms to the right and left. His heels on marble echoed eerily in the empty palace. At the rear, he noticed that the doors to the garden stood open and that one of the glass panes had been broken to facilitate entry. Nothing else looked askew. He decided to walk the entire perimeter of the building before leaving the site, choosing first the left side. It revealed no hint of the attack. He found himself in front again and moved quickly past the body of Gendre and around to the right side of the palace.

  He had taken no more than twenty steps when he stopped, his heart accelerating. Another body lay on the ground. He knew by the uniform at once it was that of a cadet. He slowly moved toward it. The boy lay face down. He had received a lethal blow to the head. His czapek lay to the side so that his bloodied blond hair was visible. Blond hair. Was this his brother? Is this Józef? Tears formed at once in his eyes. His heart tightening, his entire body trembling, he knelt next to the boy, breathed a prayer that it was not his brother, and turned the body over.

  Relief flooded through him. It was not Józef. “Thank God,” Michał said aloud, “Thank God.”

  But as he stared at the boy’s regular Polish features, obscured at first by the death mask of pain, he did recognize the cadet. It was Józef’s roommate. He fought to recall the name. Marek, was it? No, not that. Marceli? No—Marcin, yes, that was it.

  His heart went out to Marcin, but his next thought was for his brother. If Marcin had been in on the conspiracy to confront the Grand Duke, he was certain his gut had been right all along: Józef had been here at the palace.

  He said the briefest of prayers for Marcin even as he stood, determining to return to the garden entrance and move through the building a final time before abandoning the site. On his third step into the dark interior, the toe of his boot struck something, sending it skittering several feet ahead. He halted at once and got down on his knees, his hands sweeping the floor as he crawled along. He found the small item and he ran his fingers over it, much like a blind man would inspect a foreign object.

  Michał clutched it in his hand as he stood and hurried toward the front of the palace where the moonlight would allow him to view it. But he already knew what the little treasure was.

  On the front portico he opened his hand, exposing his find to the dim light.

  Opening the drawstrings and withdrawing the treasure from the blue velvet pouch, he found himself
staring at the little portrait on ivory of a startlingly beautiful girl. Emilia Chopin. The little masterpiece was no doubt Józef’s most prized possession.

  But where was Józef?

  16

  IZA COULD SIT NO LONGER and left the reception room where her mother, Jan, and Anna sat in near silence, the tension thick as August heat. It was as if they were set upon staying there the night through, mourning a loved one laid out in a casket, as custom dictated. And although she had no doubt many had died this night, there was no body in their town house over which to toast, pray, and sing hymns. She quickly and quietly took the stairs, hurrying once again to her room. Going to the double casement windows, she unlatched them, pulled them open, and threw back the shutters.

  The street was empty of souls, Polish or Russian. She could hear the rumble of a crowd calling out their affirmations one moment, their disavowals the next, as one might hear the cheers and jeers coming from an amphitheater. She gauged the gathering to be a few streets away. She looked up now and saw the flickering glow of fire, a newly lighted fire meant as a beacon to beckon people. Turning, she grabbed up her cloak and left her room.

  Iza had nearly made it to the front door when she heard her mother behind her. “Izabel, where are you off to? I demand to know.”

  Iza turned around slowly. Her mother was the only one to ever call her Izabel. “I can’t stand merely sitting about. We can’t just wait for the morning Journal to find out what’s happened. What’s happening as we sit, stupid and idle, afraid to talk, afraid to know!”

  “Izabel!”

  “There’s a great gathering, Mother. Not a battle but a gathering. A huge fire was set to draw everyone to it.”

  “Like moths to a flame, no doubt. It’s dangerous to be out and about tonight. I won’t let you go.”

  “I’m of a certain age now, Mother, as you’ve reminded me from time to time.”

  “Don’t be impertinent.”

  “What is it?” The question came from Anna, who had trailed Zofia into the front hall. “Have you learned something, Iza?”

  “Only that there’s a great multitude converging, Cousin Anna, and I want to see for myself.”

  “Where?”

  “A few streets away. On Długa, I think.”

  Anna blinked at the news, the concern for her sons glistening in the green eyes. “Wait a moment, will you, and I’ll fetch my cloak. I’ll meet you on the portico.”

  “Anna!” Zofia exclaimed. “Must you always conspire with my daughter against me? Have you both gone daft?”

  “Oh, come now, Zofia, what’s become of that woman who sent me off across the bridge to escape the Russian lancers?” Anna had paused and focused on her cousin, but as she turned and moved away, she tossed off a deceivingly casual comment. “And you, Zofia, I might add, seated high in the saddle of a Russian lancer’s horse.”

  “What?” Iza blurted, giving no hint to her mother that she had heard the full story from Anna. “What’s this?”

  Anna had disappeared, leaving behind a cousin going red in the face. “Nonsense,” Zofia said, her voice faltering, “nonsense is what it is.”

  Having no reason to probe further, Iza smiled and moved out the front door and on to the portico. The sky was aglow with the fire and every so often a cheer went up. What did it portend?

  Iza did not have to wait long. When she heard the door open and movements of feet behind her, she turned to see a cloaked Anna along with Jan in his greatcoat. That Jan was coming was a surprise because—although in mind he had grown steadier by the day—he was still a bit unsteady physically. Iza’s attention to Jan, however, was eclipsed by another figure who now appeared in the doorway that commanded attention and no little astonishment.

  “I’m not to be left behind like some scullery maid,” Zofia said, advancing in her shimmering black silk cape as if she were going to a ball at the Royal Castle, as in the old days.

  The four moved away from the town house and started for Długa Street.

  Michał and Jerzy were proceeding away from the grounds of Belweder Palace where they had met, each with his own disappointing news regarding Józef. Their destination was a contained conflagration that seemed to light the core of the city.

  They heard the heavy hoof beats of a horse behind them and for caution’s sake drew to the side. When they sighted the Polish uniform of a cadet, they were quick to hail him in good Polish so as to let him drop his guard and halt.

  “What’s happening?” Michał asked.

  “We’ve just about taken the city!” the cadet exulted.

  A thrill ran through Michał. Was it possible?

  “Just about?” Jerzy asked. “Be more specific, lad.”

  “The latest news you can hear yourselves down there on Długa Street,” the cadet said, nodding toward the glow in the sky. “But what I do know is this: My company has routed the Russian barracks of Sapieha to great success. Other battalions have taken the Stanisław Barracks and Aleksander Barracks. The Russians foolish enough to give fight fell as our soldiers and even some of our citizens descended on them, all crying out, “Hurrah, hurrah!”

  Here was a cadet caught up in the bloodlust of his first battle, Michał thought. He had so much to learn, should he survive the next, and the next.

  “Polish generals,” the cadet went on, “who did not come over and who stood by the Grand Duke were the most foolish of all—and they paid the price.”

  “What of the Grand Duke?” Michał asked. Only later would he learn that, along with Trembicki and Potocki, who were killed nearly on the doorstep of the Gronska town house, Generals Hauke, Siemiontkowski, and Blummer had all been dispatched as instruments of Russia. “What of Konstantin?”

  The cadet shrugged. “Not sure. There were just a few assigned to take him. At first cadets came riding from the palace saying they had slain the duke, but then others claimed he had not been found and that it was the rogue bastard General Gendre who had been killed.”

  The cadet’s epithet for Gendre served to underscore the fact that the cadets indeed knew who it was they were bloodying their many blades on.

  “How was he to be taken, as you say?” Jerzy questioned.

  “Into custody, sir. Without harm. That was the order. But I’ve not heard anything.” The cadet adjusted his dented czapka on his head. “Now I need to make haste. I daresay every citizen in Warsaw has come out of their homes to hear the news and to celebrate. I can offer the more curious of you a ride if you wish, but I can spare no more time, if you please, sirs.”

  Neither Michał nor Jerzy considered the offer. They would find their way together on foot.

  The cadet made ready to give spur when Michał called, “Wait! Can you tell me if you know my brother? He’s a cadet, too—Józef Stelnicki.”

  The boy paused but a moment before shaking his head. “No, sir. I’ve heard the name, but that’s all. Sorry.” Another pause and then he gave spur to his horse.

  Michał and Jerzy set off in long strides toward the city center, neither speaking for a while. Michał was thinking of that young cadet, that boy so fired with zeal. In him he saw himself so many years ago when he was one of the Young Guard accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte to Russia. All the cadets had worshipped the little corporal for his acumen in battle and had blindly followed him east across the steppes, confident that his implicit promise to regain for Poland its independence was legal tender, and quick to cry out at every opportunity, “Vive l’Empereur!”

  There were battles along the march to Moscow, though bloody and not without significant losses, that served to nourish the young Poles set on excitement, glory, and heroism. It seemed to Michał now, in retrospect, that the issue of independence had been more important to the Polish Old Guard than to the cadets. For the young, the glory superseded everything.

  It was after Moscow had been taken that Napoleon revealed himself as incompetent when it came to strategic planning. Oh, he was a great opportunist, especially on the battlefield, where h
e was the shrewdest of tacticians, but after taking Moscow, with winter coming on and several massive Russian armies loosened and roaming like lionesses eager to protect the pride, what was he to do? He had faltered at strategy and hesitated too many weeks before choosing to abandon Moscow, a choice he refused to call a retreat.

  It was then that the Young Guard truly learned what war was. It was more than fighting impossible odds—Russians, Cossacks, lawless peasants—it was sleeplessly nursing wounds, holding back hunger, battling cholera and a half dozen other illnesses that could put you into the earth in a day’s time, all the while struggling with an impervious winter there on the frozen, wind-battered steppes of Eastern Europe. War was all of that and it was losing the cadet who rode and fought next to you. It was losing your comrade. And in Michał’s case, it was losing his brother Tadek. Where was the glory in that?

  And now, in what he saw in tonight’s events, in the cadet’s demeanor, it was all happening again. Would his father, who had fought to retain Poland’s independence more than thirty-five years earlier, harbor—despite renewed hopes—similar misgivings?

  Michał knew Jerzy had fought in the infantry years before and considered asking him about it, then thought better of doing so. Not now, he figured, but another time when his thoughts were more settled, when he had had time to consider the wisdom of this insurrection.

  He broke the silence with a question on a different matter altogether. “Jerzy, you loved Zofia once, did you not?”

  Jerzy turned toward Michał, breaking stride a bit, his facial expression barely discernable in the dimness. Michał couldn’t decipher a frown from a smile. When Jerzy didn’t answer, he said, “I’m sorry, of course it’s none of my business.”