“Are you going to anyplace in particular?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
Beatrycze considered the man sitting across from her. He struck her as an honest man, though shy. Careful. He was clearly reluctant to tell her much about his past. Something he was ashamed of? Someone he was still afraid of? But surely, whatever it was that scared or shamed him was far back in Estonia. Here, in Silesia, he would be safe.
“Do you need a place to stay? Food to eat?” she asked.
He nodded. “I do not ask for charity. I can work. I had a farm back home in Estonia. I have worked as a farmhand as I have made my way south and west. Is there work here that I can do in exchange for a place to sleep and food to eat?”
“I am called Beatrycze,” she formally introduced herself. “My sister Sybilla and I live here with our brother Zygmunt, now that our parents have died. Zygmunt is at work already in the mine, and Sybilla works as a charwoman in the house of one of the wealthy German families who own the mines. Most of the wealthy Germans live further south, in Lower Silesia, but there are a small number here to oversee the mines because they do not trust us Poles. I spend the days here, tending our home and our few goats and chickens. If you need work, I am certain that Zygmunt can help you get work in the mines. And you will be welcome to stay here with the three of us.” She smiled at him.
The man looked at her directly for the first time since she had met him. “My name is Alexei,” he introduced himself. “I will be grateful to you and your family if you can help me. I will be happy to pay you for your kindness from any coins I can earn.”
Beatrycze shook her head. “Everyone deserves a chance to start their lives again, if need be,” she told him. “We would be happy to give it to you. Many come to Silesia looking for work. Even here, in our small miners’ village, we have many young men from Bohemia. My sister, Sybilla, is betrothed to a young man from a small town in Bohemia, near Prague—Benedikt, he is called. How can my sister wed an honest, hard-working man who has come here, but we deny such a chance to you?”
Alexei sipped from his steaming mug of tea. “Thank you. I am grateful for this chance to… begin again, as you say.”
Alexei had hoped that if the woman—Beatrycze—found him drinking from the water trough in the yard, she might feel disposed to offer him charity. After all, as he had stood among the trees that marked the border between the forest and the village, he had seen her bring out two large pieces of meat to feed two wolves that had been patiently sitting in her yard. The wolves had taken the meat, dipped their heads as if in thanks, and then melted back into the forest as Alexei stepped onto the road.
“Anyone who feels so kindly disposed to a pair of wolves might take pity on a wandering man,” he had reasoned. And he had been right.
As the day wore on, Alexei helped Beatrycze with the chores of the household, even repairing a portion of the tumbled-down fencing around the yard that her brother Zygmunt had not had the time to repair yet. The wooden posts and planks were all prepared and piled in the small yard beside the coops for the hens and the pens for the goats. That evening, a group of young men came trudging along the dirt road toward the collection of houses that stretched alongside the road fading into the tall grass beyond Beatrycze’s yard, their faces and hands dark with soot. The men were quiet, each step an apparent struggle after their long day in the mine. Exhausted though they might have been, they did not seem unhappy. Only tired and dirty. A couple of the men coughed, still trying to clear the coal dust from their throats.
One of the young men peeled away from the group as the men dispersed into the various houses along the road. This man, taller than the others and with a broad smile under the soot covering his face, came to the fence Alexei was just finishing repairing.
Beatrycze came running from the house, Polish words tumbling from her lips. The man looked from Alexei to Beatrycze and back to Alexei again, his smile growing even broader.
“Thank you so much, friend!” The man reached out to grasp Alexei’s hand as he spoke in German. “My sister tells me that you are in need of work and a place to sleep?” He nodded at Beatrycze, who had come to stand beside the two men. “And you repaired the fence for us? You are most welcome!” He shook Alexei’s hand and Alexei felt a wave of relief wash over him that this man—evidently Zygmunt, the brother Beatrycze had spoken of—would not object to the offer Beatrycze had made.
Zygmunt washed and changed his clothing. As Zygmunt washed, Beatrycze put the final touches on the meal she had spent the afternoon preparing. They all sat down together around the same table where Alexei had sipped tea that morning, and Alexei ate the plain but hearty supper with his new hosts. During supper, Zygmunt told Alexei of the work in the mines.
“It is hard work, my friend,” Zygmunt admitted as he finished recounting the events of the past day in the tunnels deep in the earth. “I do not deny that. But it is good work and work that pays well. And it pays consistently, unlike the work on a farm that depends on the weather and whether the crops grow well. Although the days in the mine are long, so were the days on the farm when we were children.”
Beatrycze nodded in agreement. “The work here is not easy, but it feeds and clothes us. Better than the farm work did. That is why our father brought us to this village, to be near the mines, so he—and Zygmunt!—could find work here. But now, as I said, our parents have both died, and my brother and sister and I live here.”
“Until I find a wife and bring her here to live as well!” Zygmunt exclaimed, laughing and clapping Alexei on the back.
“Until my brother finds a wife.” Beatrycze laughed with him. “And I will move into my husband’s home when I wed, which may be sooner than my brother brings a wife home! But our sister Sybilla will wed before either of us, as she has already found a Bohemian man, as I told you, friend Alexei. She will move out from this—our family home—to live with her new husband in a few weeks’ time.”
At that moment, the door swung open and a young woman walked in.
“Sybilla!” cried Beatrycze and Zygmunt together. Polish words tumbled out of both their mouths as they explained to their sister who Alexei was and why he was sitting at their table and sharing their supper. Sybilla happily kissed Alexei on the cheeks in greeting.
She was the darker sister of the two, Alexei saw. Although her hair was tucked up under her maid’s cap, a few tendrils hung around her face. Her dark eyes sparkled as she smiled at Alexei. Alexei could not choose which was the prettier, he decided. One fair, one dark. Both lovely.
Sybilla took a seat at the table and joined the supper. As she ate the supper Beatrycze put before her, she spoke to Alexi in broken German as well.
“You will be going to the mine tomorrow with Zygmunt to ask for work, friend? Then you will have a chance to meet my intended, Benedikt! He and Zygmunt work on the same crew!” Sybilla seemed excited at the possibility that the three men would know each other as they toiled side by side under the earth. “We will be wed soon and then I will be a proper wife!”
“Yes, so I have heard from your brother and sister,” Alexei congratulated her. “You will be moving with your husband to a new home.”
“And I will no longer be eligible to serve as a maid for the German family that oversees the mine!” Sybilla exclaimed. “I love Benedikt; I will be happy to wed him, even though he is a Bohemian. I think that Poles and Bohemians are not that different from each other, friend Alexei. But the Germans? They are a foul and wicked people! Especially this German family here. And the mistress of the house, Pani Berhta, is the worst of the lot! She thinks that she was given the right to rule and govern us, just because she grew up speaking German and we did not. She is always telling the maids in the household what they have done wrong—not only in her house, but in our own as well. I have heard her say that the Poles and Bohemians are all dirty and not much better than animals—talk about animals! You should see her wizened old face, friend Alexei! She looks just like a wrinkled old
goat—a hundred years old at least, and you should see the whiskers that sprout on her chin—or like a shriveled old plum! She hobbles around on a cane and a club foot—what we would call a goose-foot back home—and tells us Poles that we will lose our husbands to the German girls soon coming into Silesia because they are pretty and know how to spin properly, not like us Polish girls!” Sybilla spat into the corner by the hearth in her anger.
“Yes, the Germans are selfish and proud,” Zygmunt confessed to Alexei. “And many in the village, both men and women, feel as my sister Sybilla does. But in the past, such anger has gotten us nothing but more problems, so I try not to think of the Germans more than I must. Men speaking too loudly against the Germans or the German Empire have been turned out of their jobs in the mines, and I have no wish to be sent back to the countryside.” He shook his head, watching his sister Sybilla, who ignored him as she hungrily ate from the plate.
The next morning, before dawn, Zygmunt led Alexei to the paymaster’s office at the mine and arranged for Alexei to be hired and attached to the crew that Zygmunt led.
“I can train you in the ways of the miners,” Zygmunt explained to Alexei as they joined the long line of men descending into the dark tunnels. “Stay by my side and I will show you what you must do.” Another man came up to Zygmunt and greeted him. Zygmunt introduced him to Alexei.
“Alexei, this is Benedikt, the man my sister Sybilla will wed in a few weeks.” Alexei shook hands with Benedikt as Zygmunt briefly explained that Alexei was an Estonian farmer who had made his way into Silesia and was about to learn the miners’ trade.
Benedikt was tall and fair, much like Zygmunt and Beatrycze. He looked strong as well, a good match for the dark and headstrong Sybilla. The three men joked and laughed as they made their way down into the earth. Alexei felt like he had found two friends already.
Throughout the shift, Alexei met more of the men who toiled as members of Zygmunt’s crew. Alexei’s first tasks involved carrying away buckets of rubble as well as buckets of the coal the miners had been sent down to excavate. In the dark, Alexei lost all sense of time and was surprised when the men paused to eat. He and Zygmunt sat down with Benedikt and the others, unwrapping the bread and sausages that Beatrycze and Sybilla had packed for them.
Alexei’s muscles ached as the men ascended slowly to the surface of the earth at the end of the day. Carrying the buckets of rubble or coal away to empty and then return to fill them again had been simple work, but it felt good to be working again and not simply walking, walking. Walking. Always looking for somewhere that was south and west of Estonia, someplace where there was someone who might be able to help Alexei regain control of the wolf magic. Or rid himself of it. Work was honest. Work was good. Alexei looked forward to a hearty meal at his new friends’ table and then coming back to the mine again tomorrow. Life was better when he knew where he would eat and sleep and that there was work for him in the morning.
A few days passed quickly. The steady work in the mine and the hearty meals that Beatrycze and Sybilla both prepared helped Alexei regain the strength he had lost in his struggle with the man-wolf in Lithuania and his long walk into Silesia. On Saturday, the miners only worked a half-day shift and would have the next day, Sunday, free to spend with their families above ground. On Saturday afternoon, having come back up into the daylight, Zygmunt led Alexei to the paymaster’s office, where they joined the long line of men waiting to receive their wages for the week. Step by slow step, they approached the paymaster’s office. Alexei was surprised at the handful of small coins he received.
“I must repay you and your sisters something for your kindness and hospitality,” Alexei insisted as they walked away from the office with all the other soot-covered men. He held out a few of the coins to his friend.
“Nonsense!” cried Zygmunt. “We are happy to share what we have with you. Besides, you will need most of those coins for the tavern tonight!”
“Tavern?” Alexei asked.
“Yes!” Zygmunt laughed as he explained the weekly routine. “We work all week in the mine and get paid on Saturday. We give what we must to the women for household expenses—and the rest? The rest we take and make our way from tavern to tavern—there are three taverns in our village here—to drink and sing and celebrate the end of another week beneath the earth! The end of another week in which we have survived without the mineshafts collapsing onto our backs. Another week in which no one has died in the earth… and another week closer to the wedding of Sybilla and Benedikt!”
“Will drinking cause me to lose control of the wolf magic?” Alexei wondered as he washed off the soot and grime. “Maybe it would be best if I made an excuse that I am not feeling well and stayed here, at home, and did not go to the taverns with Zygmunt and Benedikt. When was the last time I was drunk?” He couldn’t remember. The loss of self-control that came with drinking frightened him. “I have so little control over the wolf magic as it is. What if the transformation comes over me while I am in a crowded tavern with these men?”
Alexei made his way back into the house, drying his hair with the towel that hung around his shoulders. He was surprised to find Benedikt and another man already sitting before the hearth, laughing with Beatrycze and Sybilla, who was sitting on Benedikt’s lap. Two other women he did not know were also in the room, helping Beatrycze with supper preparations.
“Alexei!” roared Benedikt, who had apparently already had a mug or two of beer from the pitcher on the table. “This is my best friend from home, in Bohemia, who came with me to Silesia to find work! This is Ctirad! Ctirad, this is Alexei! He has come to Silesia from Estonia and works on the same crew as Zygmunt and myself!”
Ctirad stood to greet Alexei and staggered, splashing the beer that was still in his mug onto the floor. He was a tall man, like Benedikt, but a ruddy man. His freshly washed dark-orange hair was slicked down across his head, and the rosy glow of his cheeks had been enhanced by the beer he had already drained from his mug. He reached out to Alexei and pulled him into an embrace, the mug striking Alexei between his shoulders.
“Ctirad is to be my best man at the wedding,” Benedikt told Alexei.
Ctirad released Alexei and fell back into the chair before the hearth.
“And that is my oldest friend.” Sybilla leaned away from Benedikt, whose arm was tightly wrapped around her waist. Sybilla laughed, gesturing to the one of the other young women working with Beatrycze.
Alexei gestured to Sybilla’s friend in greeting, and the young woman, a lovely dark-haired girl who could have been another sister in the family, smiled at him. “I am called Otylia.”
“She is to be my bride’s maid-of-honor,” Benedikt said, holding out his empty mug. Zygmunt, coming into the room from changing his clothing, picked up the pitcher from the table and refilled the mugs of both Bohemian men. He got himself a mug from the shelf and filled it as well.
“And our other friend,” continued Sybilla, gesturing, “is Renia! She is to be the other bride’s maid.”
Renia, a fairer girl, also smiled at Alexei. “I am happy to make your acquaintance,” she was able to say to him in German.
“As I am happy to make yours,” Alexei struggled to answer, bowing politely to the two women.
“Renia is the one I shall be escorting to the wedding feast,” Zygmunt added, “as I will be the groom’s man after Ctirad.”
Alexei nodded. “So it is to be a large wedding?”
“Large enough!” Benedikt insisted. “It has taken both Zygmunt—as Sybilla’s older brother and responsible for her after their father died—and me nearly a year to save enough to pay for it!”
“Finish dressing and come join us!” Zygmunt urged Alexei. “There is no reason to wait for the taverns to open before we start drinking!” The three miners laughed and the roomful of friends burst into a drinking song, beer splashing about as the smells of supper filled the room.
“I will! I will! Just give me a moment to finish dressing!” Alexei lau
ghed. The happiness of the room was contagious, and his fears of losing control of the wolf magic melted as he hurried into the other room to finish changing. He hadn’t felt so much friendship and happiness in a room since that Christmas Eve dinner with Vakarė and her family. How long ago that felt! He hurried into the clothes that Zygmunt had lent him and rejoined the party in the parlor room.
The three women were all cooking or bustling about the table when Alexei stepped back into the parlor. Beatrycze handed him a mug of beer, and he pulled a chair from the table over to join the men at the hearth. He sang what words of the drinking songs he could with the men, the women joining in as they worked to finish preparing or setting out the supper. Jokes and laughter continued throughout the meal, and when everyone stood to go out to the tavern, there was no question in Alexei’s mind that he would join them.
“But, the women?” Alexei asked in surprise. “They are coming as well?”
The friends all laughed. Beatrycze took Alexei’s arm as Renia and Sybilla took Zygmunt and Benedikt’s arms and Otylia took Ctirad’s.
“Is that not how it is in Estonia?” she asked, smiling.
“No, it is not,” Alexei was forced to admit. “In Estonia, the men would go drinking while the women cleaned and washed up at home.”
“That is how it was in most of Silesia and Poland as well,” Beatrycze explained. “But here, in the mining villages, many of the old customs are changing quickly, and women can go to the taverns with their brothers or husbands or fiancées. Never alone. Always with a proper chaperone. And never for long. We go to join in the drinking and singing for a mug or two and then we go back home to wash and clean up the supper table while our men stay to drink and sing late into the night. Some things change, my new friend, but not all things!”
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