She had dreamt of Jan again, that first fateful meeting in the meadow at Halicz replaying in her mind. How handsome he had been—and how incorrigible in his teasing of her. A smile forced itself upon her—until she remembered that something had jarred her awake. What was it? She listened carefully. The house was silent as a well. Was it in the dream, some sense of unease? Anna found herself second guessing her part in allowing him to go off to war yet again—and at his age. However, she came to the conclusion, as always, that she would not have kept him home. Was he safe there at Zamość?
There had been little good news of late. Anna went to the window. These days the faces passing the town house to and from St. Martin’s were always serious, so serious. Women prayed while the men too old to go off and fight argued in the streets and squares about the tactics employed by certain inept Polish generals. News had come that General Diebitsch had died of the cholera the month before so that was a topic of great concern. No one knew what to make of it. Who would the Russians send next and what difference would the replacement make? And the rumor that cholera was spreading among both armies rang like an alarm bell through the city and especially in the hospitals.
Viktor sat at the great oak Rozniecki desk, the secret door open across the room, the peacocks painting ajar in case some danger of exposure arose. Larissa had been buried in the grounds in the rear of the mansion and posed no threat, but what if she had spoken of him to someone? What if someone came looking for her? It paid to be cautious.
He wondered if he was being cautious enough regarding Bartosz. Oh, the man had played his part well enough in the matter of Larissa, but he seemed increasingly hard to read. Viktor had thought he sensed for the moment—when the servant had come back from marketing with the news of the drubbing the Poles had taken at Ostrołęka—a fleeting resentment in his dark eyes against the Russian he was sheltering. Did this man who for years had abetted a notorious Polish traitor still harbor a sense of patriotism?
Viktor pushed aside the Polish journals. The Monitor had resumed its publication and depending on its availability Bartosz would bring copies home. A more militant journal, New Poland, had been introduced, too. Certain important details were to be found in these, but Viktor trusted Bartosz’s reports more. The word of the people on the street and in the squares made for a truer picture of events than newspapers that were likely tools of propaganda.
Viktor looked down at his own journal, an old account book of Rozniecki’s that had detailed—he imagined—a thorough record of the swindler’s doings. Viktor had torn out the used pages and, ignoring the vertical lines meant for numerical figuring, he regularly sketched in Bartosz’ nearly daily briefings, enumerating the events on the field and in the capital that had occurred since Ostrołęka, nearly all in favor of the Russians. At each recitation Viktor watched every muscle and line in Bartosz’ face, listened to every tonal shift in his delivery, analyzed each word choice. No, there was nothing more to indict the man. In fact, he recounted the Polish setbacks with an extraordinary indifference.
And the setbacks for the Poles were many.
Recently, word had come that Prussia was no longer pretending neutrality, that its government was openly aiding Russian troops. But Lithuania was a more important story. Early on in the insurrection, Lithuania had voiced its enthusiastic desire to join the Poles, yet the Polish military leaders dallied at the offer for so long that Russia had been given the time to entrench their forces in that part of the Commonwealth.
Too bad for the Poles, Viktor had written in the journal. Things in the city, too, were becoming more and more chaotic. The various factions in the Sejm had become polarized. A bill to distribute land to peasants and soldiers in return for service infuriated the conservatives. The Patriotic Society exerted a strong influence, calling for the freedom of serfs and a more concentrated war plan. Russia had replaced Diebitsch with General Ivan Paszkiewicz, who was each day enlarging and strengthening his stance, currently in the northern Vistula valley. Word coming back from the warfront had Sejm members calling for replacing General Skrzynecki, whose epithet The Delayer was heard daily in the Sejm. Not even Prince Adam Czartoryski escaped tongue lashings for his months spent on vain attempts to recruit other nations to Poland’s side. Unrest was decidedly heating up. Viktor would wait for the boil.
Viktor wrote now in the journal. Things are in a ferment here in Warsaw, becoming more chaotic with each day. I know that if I bide my time, when the Russian takeover occurs, I will find a way to ingratiate myself to those in charge, perhaps to Paszkiewicz himself. And so I wait. One day, too, I will have to make a decision about Bartosz.
So absorbed was Viktor in his journal that he failed to hear the front door or approaching footsteps until they were very close by. Startled, he closed the book and shoved it into the side desk drawer. When he looked up, he tried to mask the relief he felt when he saw it was merely Bartosz returning from Market Square.
“I took you by surprise,” Bartosz said through the open door.
“What? No, not at all.” Viktor attempted a smile, wondering if Bartosz had seen the book, then setting aside the concern. Why, he doubted the man could even read Russian.
“Come in, Bartosz. What news bring you today? Anything?” The servant’s eyes were wide, uncharacteristically so. “Come and sit.”
Bartosz drew up a chair to the front of the desk. He had a strange sort of look of amazement on his face. “The capital is abuzz with the news.”
“Tell me, damn it!” That Bartosz failed to address him as “sir” or “my lord” was a constant source of irritation.
“It’s the Grand Duke Konstantin.”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“What? How? Surely not on the field? The Poles?”
“Oh, no. It was the cholera. Died very quick-like in Minsk a couple of days ago.”
Viktor realized now that Bartosz was taking the measure of his reaction to the tsar’s brother’s death as a guide to his own reaction. “Just desserts,” Viktor said and he meant it. “He handled the crisis of his life here at Warsaw like a fool. He should have attacked the city at once, not shrink away into the night, as he did. The insurrection could have been put down in a heartbeat. What is of concern, however, is that cholera is on the rise. Is that the case?”
Bartosz nodded. “In both armies.”
“A level field, as they say.—There’s something else. I can see it on your face. What is it?”
“Well, my lord, a marvel of sorts—have you heard of the Russian Count Orloff?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of him.” Viktor was deliberately cryptic.
“He was visiting the Grand Duke after having been to Prussia on a mission from the tsar meant to secure even more overt help for Russia’s war effort. What’s unusual is that the story goes that the Grand Duke died suddenly the day after Count Orloff departed.”
“So?”
“The very day after!” Bartosz cried. “People are naturally suspicious.”
“Of a plot? It’s the cholera, for God’s sake. If anything it’s God’s plot.” Viktor could not help but wish that Konstantin’s death had come earlier—at the hands of Józef. Russia would have struck at Poland immediately and with decision. And I would not be in hiding.
“But back in June,” Bartosz was saying, “Count Orloff was sent to meet with General Diebitsch.”
“Yes?”
“The general died the day after Orloff left. Again, unexpectedly.”
“Ah, so the gossips have a conspiracy theory, one that traces back to St. Petersburg?”
Bartosz was paling. “They say it’s a poison that done it.”
“Do they indeed? One as clever as yours? What did you call it?”
“Belladonna.”
“Ah, well the truth will out, I expect.” Viktor wished he had bitten his tongue or uttered gibberish rather than bring up the subject of Larissa, for Bartosz’ wrinkled forehead and downturned mouth advertised his di
vided sensitivity at having participated in the killing of a woman.
After Bartosz managed an awkward exit, Viktor considered the coincidence of the deaths of a general and a grand duke. He knew, more than did Bartosz, that conspiracy was commonplace in St. Petersburg. Would Tsar Nicholas wish Diebitsch dead? He could have merely had him recalled. As for Grand Duke Konstantin, would the tsar have his own brother murdered? Murders within families were not unheard of in Russia, but Konstantin’s position had so devolved as to leave him without a power base, and therefore of little threat, so Viktor deemed murder as unlikely. No doubt there were other men who might wish Diebitsch and Konstantin dead. For one, he could imagine his own superior Nikolai Novosiltsev as harboring grudges—and he was more than capable of treason. Where was he since he had fled Warsaw?
Viktor’s thoughts came back to Count Orloff. Viktor knew quite a few things about the man, things he had kept from Bartosz. The count’s title Harbinger of Death was well known to the Russian people. It was an inheritance from his father, as well as from his grandfather. The latter had become an intimate of Empress Catherine through his part in poisoning and strangling of her husband Peter, while Orloff’s father had played a role in the undoing of Paul, the current tsar’s father. Harbinger of death—it was a family business, Viktor thought and laughed aloud. In light of his own miserable existence of late, it was at least something he could laugh at.
The memory of Bartosz’ face and demeanor, however, cut short his humor. Here was a man who seemed to have the poisoning of Larissa weighing on his conscience. And Viktor, who considered himself an expert in interrogation, now knew that—in the event of an inquiry into the missing Larissa—Bartosz would not withstand even the most rudimentary questioning. More importantly, might this delayed regret over the poisoning presage a similar reaction regarding Barosz’ divided political loyalty?
25
Modlin Fortress
MICHAŁ CLIMBED TO THE VERY highest battlements of the fortress. He looked out into the night, struggling to hold off depression. While General Skyzynecki and the Grand Army had come and gone, he had orders to stay at the fortress mentoring the Young Guards and even the peasants armed on their arrival with merely scythes from their farms. It was important work, he knew, and he did manage to insert himself into patrols that got caught up in skirmishes with Russians. The action kept him sharp, but less than satisfied.
His wish that the Russians would coalesce here at the little village of Modlin was just that, he thought in more sober moments, a wish. The longest citadel in Poland and perhaps all of Europe, Modlin Fortress sat at the confluence of the Rivers Vistula, Bug, Narew—and even the Wrka, a tributary of the Narew. It would be a hard nut for Paszkiewicz to crack. Warsaw, on the other hand, had the advantage of the Vistula that afforded considerable protection to the east, but its boundaries to the west were expansive and vulnerable. And Warsaw was the prize. It took no gypsy to predict that the real battles would occur at the capital. Paszkiewicz was being allowed days to assemble west of the Vistula and to bring in other armies. God rot him! It was enough to drive one mad! What was the reason for this inaction by Poles? How the Russian general had been allowed passage across the Vistula was a comedy of errors worthy of the history books one day. And each day word came back that Warsaw was in a state of near rebellion. No one was happy with the way the war was being waged, not the people, the military leaders, the members of the Sejm. And reports had it that Joachim Lelewel, one of the men Michał had accompanied to try to reason with the Grand Duke months ago, was now head of the radicalized Patriotic Society and beyond reason himself. The sum of these things would all work to the advantage of Paszkiewicz. The showdown would be at Warsaw, 30 miles to the south. Michał was convinced of it. And he would not be there.
It was a bitter irony, Michał thought, his notion of having Józef transferred to the Artillery Garrison at Wielka Wola—a little village that was no more than a suburb of Warsaw—for safety. In so doing he had placed his young brother in the direct line of attack. Well, he would see the action he craved, God help him.
Michał wondered about his father. Was he still in the south, at Zamość? A recent letter from his mother expressed her concern. Jerzy had been there, too, she wrote, but she had had no word of them even though she knew of other letters that had come through from Zamość.
And—other than Józef—what of the safety of his loved ones in Warsaw? His mother, Barbara and the twins, Zofia?
Michał stared up into the night sky searching in vain now for the North Star. His mind’s eye, however, mutinied, countering with a vision of Iza’s eyes of blue, beautiful cornflower blue. “Iza,” he said aloud. “Iza.” The two words were as serious a prayer as he had ever prayed.
August 1831, Warsaw
AT NOON VIKTOR WAS STANDING tucked into the shadows of the narrow alleyway between the town houses across from the Gronska home. He had been there since before dawn, waiting to broach Barbara. At first light he had seen Anna Stelnicka leave, dressed in her hospital blues. Then Iza had left at mid-morning in similar apparel.
Iza. He remembered standing just where he was now some months ago, having followed Iza home. It had been a foolish impulse. At the Chopin concert he had happened to notice that she was refusing a ride home from Zofia’s driver and so he had followed her. He thought it curious and wondered if she was about to meet up with Michał, in whom he and the Third Department were very interested. He remembered telling himself as much that night—and that he was seeing to her safety on the nighttime streets—but the truth was, he had found her quite attractive that evening, innocent and vulnerable. It was good fortune for both of them that she moved quickly, allowing him no time to catch up to her, to yield to temptation. He had been completely faithful to Barbara since their marriage. But for a moment that night he had dared fate . . .
Now, the great bronze bell in St. Martin’s bell tower blasted the first trio of consecutive strokes, calling people to pray the noon Angeles. It was deafening, but more than that, the bell was cracked, rendering the pealing cacophonous. Viktor started to curse, but when he noticed that the front door of the Gronska town house had opened, the oath fell away. He waited. No one emerged.
Then came the next three tolls, reverberating up and down Piwna Street, causing children to hold their ears. Of course! Just as people stopped in the street in prayer, so too had the person who opened the door. She stood in shadow.
Viktor waited patiently for the final three crashes of the clapper. They came in a timely fashion, augmented by the tolls of countless other churches, near and far.
When the tolling ceased and people resumed motion once again, Viktor saw the woman step onto the portico, broom in hand. It was Elzbieta, the young maid.
Damn! Viktor cursed.
The waiting continued.
Two hours later, a young man—probably a university student—came to stop on the street and happened to glance down the little alley, taking note of Viktor. Viktor turned away immediately, shielding his face and adjusting his stance so that it would appear as if he were relieving himself. He waited, half expecting the man to challenge him in some way. His hand went to and held the sheathed knife in the breast pocket of his frock coat.
Two minutes later he turned back to the street. The man was gone. It was a dangerous chance he was taking, especially these last two days. To his amazement, in the midst of war, a recent Military Sejm had been convened and Gereralissimo Skyzynecki had failed to win a vote of confidence from his commanders and had been relieved of his duty. Agreement on a successor was not so easy. Several generals had refused the post. All hell was breaking out in the capital. The Patriotic Society had become even more radical. Without the influence of Skyzynecki and the presence of Czartoryski, who had left the city, the Patriotic Society had seen to it that alleged turncoat officers, spies, demagogues, political critics and the like were put on trial. Late, two nights earlier, prisons had been forced and thirty-four men were killed, including four g
enerals. Order was restored just before dawn, the mob leaders were executed, and the Patriotic Society was dissolved. One particular group of three had been found halfway to the Russian camp with a letter to General Paszkiewicz, detailing the capital’s current weakness. It was an engraved invitation had they managed its delivery. The traitors were hanged at once from the nearest lamp post.
It was that gruesome little story that provided the seed of an idea to take root in Viktor’s mind.
But for now—after nearly three hours of waiting—Barbara appeared on the portico. She said something to the maid, took the three steps to the street and began to move toward Castle Square.
Viktor allowed her to move some fifteen or twenty yards before he followed her. He took care to put his hand to his hat and cover his face so that should Elzbieta look up, she would not recognize him.
It took some doing, but he caught up to Barbara in the square. She turned when he called to her, a shadow passing over her face at the sight of him. Her face hardened. “What is it?”
“I want to talk with you.”
Her mouth pursed a bit, the chin lifting. “Talk?”
“Yes, I want us to come to an arrangement, some agreement.”
The green of Barbara’s eyes seemed to darken in the way that he noticed her mother’s had when they told her of their engagement. “There will be no arrangement, as you say, Viktor.”
“You’re angry about my secrecy. I can’t blame—”
The Warsaw Conspiracy Page 33