The Warsaw Conspiracy

by James Conroyd Martin

  Suddenly Viktor heard a noise out front and through the vertical slit in the drapes he could see Bartosz arriving on the platform of the snow-laden portico. Viktor was in the process of jumping up to go to the door in order to inquire about the uproar when his peripheral vision caught a second figure ascending the few stairs. His first thought: Bartosz had given him away! How much would someone pay for him to turn in Nikolai Novosiltsev’s deputy in charge of the Secret Police? A tidy amount, no doubt. That Bartosz would turn on him one day haunted him at night. But then he caught the voice of the figure, a woman’s voice. He dared to tug slightly on the curtains for a better view. She wore a cloak, the hood of which covered her profile.

  Viktor thought now that Barbara Anna had somehow found him. But how? And why? Had she had a change of heart? Later he would admit to himself that despite the complications his wife’s appearance would create, his heart had momentarily swelled with pleasure.

  He made for the front door at once, his lame leg in tow. From the peep hole he would be able to see her, face forward. But even as he moved he made the decision that he would not—could not—give himself away, even to his wife. Even to Barbara Anna.

  At the door he pulled back the tiny hinged cover of the peephole and brought his eye flush to the door. All he could see was the back of Bartosz’ hatted head. Damn the fellow, he cursed to himself. He heard his name now and froze.

  Bartosz was clearly trying to send the woman on her way. He took a step to his left, and at that moment Viktor got a clear view of the woman.

  Larissa. Only now did he recognize that the snow covered red bonnet and cloak were the same she had worn when she had stood in the square, pointing him out to Polish cadets.

  His heart came to a stop. He blinked, as if doing so could make her disappear. What in Satan’s hell is she doing here? How did she know? Was it a guess? A bullet in the dark?

  And then he recalled something else from his last visit to the office of the Imperial Commissioner. Just moments before Larissa arrived in the room, he had pulled General Rozniecki’s file from Novosiltsev’s drawer and placed it on the desk. Later, he had placed his gun next to the file. Had she taken note of the file? Likely so. Might she have guessed his motive in singling it out?

  And what did she want? She had already done what she could to see him ruined—to see him dead. He must keep her at a good distance.

  He listened closely. In low tones Bartosz was attempting to conclude their little encounter. “I assure you again, Mademoiselle, that he is not here.”

  “Has he been here?” Larissa asked. Her eyes became fastened to the door behind Bartosz, riveted like search lanterns. Viktor quickly took his eye from the peephole.

  “I’m afraid that I don’t know the man.”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  “It is true, Mademoiselle. In any case, no one is here.”

  “Would you allow me in?”

  “I have no authority to do so, Mademoiselle.”

  The conversation continued for a longer while than Viktor would have expected, growing quieter, more muddled. He could not make out the words and he dared not put his ear to the peephole. And so it went until he heard her voice receding. He sighed in relief, and yet he wondered if she had seen his eye in the peephole.

  The door opened and Bartosz slipped in, startled at first by Viktor’s presence and then by his intense demeanor, but his characteristic flippancy won out. “A friend of yours?”

  “No friend of mine,” Viktor snapped. “What did she want?”

  “You,” Bartosz said, giving a shrug. He started toward the rear of the house, tossing off some comment about women scorned.

  Viktor pulled him up short and spun him about. A package of meat fell to the floor with a thud. “Tell me!”

  Bartosz’ eyes widened. “She’s looking for you. Didn’t say why.”

  “What took so long out there? Damn you, what did you tell her?”

  Bartosz tilted his head as if humoring a child. “I told her I didn’t know you. Had never heard of you. That you have never been here.”

  “And?”

  “She doesn’t convince easily. But she went away, did she not?” Bartosz bent to retrieve the package. “Venison stew tonight?” he asked, in that irritatingly too familiar tone he had taken of late with Viktor. No “sir,” no title of any kind. And he didn’t expect an answer, it seemed, for he started to move toward the kitchen.

  “Wait a minute, Bartosz!”

  The servant turned about. “Yes?”

  “What in Hades is going on in the city? It sounds as if everyone has turned out of their houses ready to fight.”

  “Exactly that. The rebels have heard back from the tsar. Nicholas’ proclamation arrived from Moscow and has been posted in the squares. And the people are at arms about it. ‘To battle! To battle!’ they are crying. They are convinced war is the only way now.”

  “Let me guess the content of the proclamation. Nicholas condemns the criminality of the rebels and demands that armaments be turned over and all things be returned to the way of life before 29 November. It’s only in this way that Poland can be saved from self-destruction.”

  “A close enough summary. You must have gypsy blood.”

  Viktor ignored Bartosz’ impertinence. “Further, I would go so far as to say he has no intention of coming to Poland.”

  “And best for him if he doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the people are incensed and ready now to take to the field, but they are being urged to wait for the convocation of the Seym on 17 January. It’s expected that your tsar will be deposed as King of Poland.”

  “Foolish Poles,” Viktor muttered. “So it is to be war—full scale war.” He had begun to expect as much, but it still came as a shock.

  “War is an old friend of Poland,” Bartosz called back as he moved toward the kitchen at the rear of the mansion.

  Viktor returned to his lair behind the tapestry of peacocks where he would await the venison stew. He sat. He had hoped that Józef or one of the cadets would kill the Grand Duke so that the reign of fire from Russia would be immediate, uncompromising, and decisive. No great war would be necessary. And in the aftermath of tighter Russian control he would ascend the ladder. There would be promotions, recognition. In due course a title and an estate. But the entire affair had been bungled by both the Poles and the Russians. The Russians had waited too long already for this to be an easy thing. How could Nicholas not know the Polish temperament, the Polish spirit? His proclamation brought a full cauldron to the boiling point and there was no telling the consequences.

  How long am I to live in this non-existence? In his imagination the days and months stretched out like an uncharted, horizonless prairie.

  Viktor’s thoughts came back to Larissa. She doesn’t convince easily, Bartosz had said. He had that right. And neither does she give up, it seemed. What does she want? What would she try next? She would not give up on Bartosz. Even if she hadn’t noticed an eye in the peephole, she hadn’t believed him. She must know that—contrary to what Bartosz told her—the man who carried the Chief of Police’s payroll to Novosiltsev’s office would be aware of the identity of the Deputy Chief of Police. She must know that he was lying. She would bide her time. She would coerce him in some way for information. Bribe him—with what? Money? Herself?

  And, Viktor wondered, if he had to stay hidden for months, would Bartosz maintain his confidence? Perhaps he had tired already of Viktor’s domineering manner and irritability. Perhaps he had tired of preparing an interloper’s meals. Indeed, how easy it would be to stir poison into the stew—or to add the wrong sort of mushrooms to it. Deathcaps were the most deadly and not uncommon in Warsaw forests. Or—Bartosz could merely turn him over to the Poles.

  Bartosz brought in the venison stew a little later. By then Viktor had come to the conclusion that the man’s’ usefulness had reached its limit. And his recent thoughts caused him to taste the stew with
some hesitancy. After all, no manor house was without arsenic as a remedy for rats.

  Like most of Bartosz’ dishes, however, it was quite good.

  Part Four

  It Happens in an Hour that

  Comes not in an Age

  —POLISH PROVERB

  20

  12 February 1831, Warsaw

  “ARE YOU COMING, MOTHER?—MOTHER?”

  The voice jolted Anna from her thoughts. She had been standing at the window of the sitting room of her little suite atop the Gronska town house, vacantly watching unusually thick streams of Saturday worshippers converge on the snowy steps of St. Martin’s, then disappear beyond the doors. At dusk, it seemed to her that the bells of every church belfry had gone mad with the recent news: the first engagement of the enemy had taken place.

  Anna’s eyes focused. Blurrily reflected on the window glass was the image of her daughter’s face. Behind her, Barbara Anna stood in the doorway, her blonde hair covered by the hood of her cloak.

  “Mother?—Are you coming to Mass?”

  “No,” Anna said, without turning about.

  “Are you all right, Mother?”

  A long pause, then: “Yes, dear. You go on.”

  “The boys will be disappointed.”

  “And so they will learn. They will learn

  disappointment.”

  Barbara turned to go, then paused. “They say it was a Pole who fired the first shot.”

  “A cadet?”

  “Why—yes.”

  A few moments passed. The door closed then and Anna placed her cheek against the cool glass. How had it come to this? War. Yet again.

  Anna Stelnicka’s heart was coming apart, like a favorite garment worn to shreds. For the third time in her life her Poland was struggling to push back the enemy, to release her chains, to reclaim independence. What were the chances now? And now—again—the callous winds of war had hurled loved ones far from her.

  The thought was well punctuated by a second round of tolling from St, Martin’s heavy brass bells. The perimeters of the window panes had been sealed with wax against the winter winds, but the glass vibrated nonetheless in time with the deep clanging. Anna kept her cheek pressed against the glass.

  The bells had rung crazily that morning, too. She had gone outside to watch the strangest funeral procession she had ever witnessed. The dead person, Anna learned from some placards the mourners carried, was Jan Kiliński, the bootmaker and acclaimed patriot from the years of the Third of May Constitution. What made the cortege so odd was that Kiliński had died some years before, in 1819. The purpose of this mock funeral, an observer told her, was to agitate the citizenry against Tsar Nicholas and Russian domination. The organizers were hoping for the rise of a new Jan Kiliński.

  Jan Kiliński indeed! She could tell them a few things she had witnessed firsthand about Jan Kiliński. The memories came back in a dizzying wave. In 1794, he had led a secret insurrection within Warsaw against the occupying Prussians and Russians. Anna didn’t doubt his patriotism then or now, but the little group of patriots to which she had belonged all those years ago was convinced that any attempt by Kiliński prior to Tadeusz Kościuszko’s impending arrival would provoke a bloodbath—one that Russia’s Catherine would avenge a thousand fold—and so they engaged Anna to warn the king of the intended uprising so that he might convince Kiliński to hold off and wait for the level-headed Kościuszko and his troops. Anna’s attempt to see the king was foiled at first try, so she had had to impersonate Zofia—flamboyantly dressing and acting the part—to effectively gain an audience with King Stanisław, who had once had a dalliance with Zofia. The masquerade was a success, and the king appreciated Anna’s derring-do but seemed not to have any real influence over the rebels, who charged ahead with the rising. The occupiers were evicted from the capital but, as feared, the streets flowed thick and red with blood. And the prediction about Catherine materialized: she sent her most merciless general, Suworow, to take back Warsaw. He and his lancers came down on the suburb of Praga, massacring some 12,000 innocents before Warsaw capitulated. The king surprised Anna for her patriotic effort—however useless it proved in the end—by endowing her with the title of princess. The king had no power to do so according to Polish law—his power came, ironically, under the auspices of Catherine. Anna shook her head at the thought. A title given by a Russian Tsarina? It meant nothing to her.

  As for Kiliński—a hero? Perhaps, but one with more courage than cleverness.

  And now, years later, what of the cadets and their two leaders? Were they not made of the same cloth as Kiliński? Firebrands? What had they reaped?

  The Polish forces, some 50,000, had left Warsaw at the opening of the month, marching proudly through the capital’s avenues while lines of the senators and deputies of the National Government stood on either side. Cheering them on, too, was the entire citizenry, it seemed: man, woman, and child, both szlachta and peasant. It took little coaxing from a single firm male tenor to set the crowds singing their beloved national hymns, so long forbidden.

  Each day brought momentous news. The Dictator—General Chlopicki—had already been forced from his post for failing to ready the country for war in good time. People said he thought an end to differences between Poland and Russia would come only through negotiations. Nicholas’ proclamation in December refuted that notion, but while talking a good game, Chlopicki was doing precious little to build fortifications and to call up and train the large forces that would be needed. Time was lost because he had little hope for Poland’s besting the giant Russia. Now, since Chlopicki’s resignation, things certainly were happening with lightning speed. Prince Czartoryski had opened the Seym on 19 January, whereupon the senators and deputies made short work of creating the manifesto that deprived the Romanov family of Poland’s crown, absolved all Poles of their oath of loyalty to Russia, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the Polish nation.

  Anna thought now of young Józef’s homecoming in December. How bittersweet it was. “Mother!” he had called from the front entryway as he took his battered cadet’s czapka from his blond head. Michał, who had seen Józef home fresh from the grasp of Grand Duke Konstantin, stood proudly beside him. It was a miracle to see her youngest, alive and tearfully smiling at her. Had he run to her, or she to him? She couldn’t remember now.

  Another mother might have thought that that would be the end of things military for a son barely escaping execution. But not Anna. When he was called up again within a week, he was chomping at the bit. No, she was not surprised. He was now part of a battalion in Southeast Poland, somewhere between the Rivers Bug and Narew. It was a dangerous mission, she knew. The further east, the closer to Russia, the earlier that battalion would see action. Each morning she got down on her knees and prayed for his safety.

  Neither was she surprised when Michał rejoined the cavalry after so many years of civilian life—albeit a restless life. He had put in for a commission that would allow him to keep an eye on Józef, but it was not to be. Michał’s lancer unit had been assigned to the Modlin Fortress, north of Warsaw. It may be for the best, she thought now. Józef was on his own quest many more miles east of Warsaw. He had to rise or fall on his own. In any event, her sons were gone again. She could not help but think about Tadeusz, the one who had not come home. Somehow she felt confident that Michał would survive the coming storm—perhaps because he had survived so much already—but nonetheless he was there in her prayers along with Józef, for whom she had no such confidence. He was an artist, not a soldier. For that, she herself could bear the blame—or blessing.

  And the words of the gypsy woman Mira still managed to tunnel back to her through the years: The boy will one day bait the Russian bear.

  What did surprise Anna, however, shaking her to bedrock, was her husband Jan. She had never entertained the faintest idea that the man who had returned a white-haired ghost from the camps in Siberia would be strong enough to take up arms yet again. Oh, he had gained a little in we
ight and in strength—and mind—but he still seemed a shadow of his youth. His spirit was large, however, and he would not be held back. Having fought with Kościuszko in ’94, in the Italian campaign, and years later with Napoleon, and seeing his sons now take up the banner for independence, how could he not do so, he had asked her, his cobalt blue eyes brimming. He did ask Anna for her blessing. Could she refuse this man his final campaign? No more than she could try to douse the intentions of Józef or Michał. She sent him off as she had them: with no tears, until the door had closed behind him. Ironically, he was being sent the further: all the way to Zamość in Southeastern Poland, 154 miles from Warsaw. The reason for his assignment, he said, was his knowledge of the area, for he had relatives there and knew the terrain.

  Anna caught the thin, high sound of the twins’ voices now. She wiped away the condensation from the pane she had been breathing on, and from her vantage point she watched below as Barbara Anna and Iza shepherded the boys across the street, toward the church. What was it the one held in his hand? A little figure. Anna recognized it as one of the set of wooden toy soldiers her own sons had played with years before. Unexpected tears came to her eyes.