But for now Anna was secretly elated by Zofia’s assurance that she herself had no interest in Jan Stelnicki. Anna would find some way to deal with her aunt, but if Zofia had expressed an interest in Jan, Anna would have been crushed. She would have stepped aside silently, not only out of a sense of honor, but also out of the belief that Zofia could not help but win any man she chooses.
Only weeks before when the Gronski family had come for her at her parents’ estate in Sochaczew, Anna had been astounded by her cousin’s metamorphosis. She remembered Zofia as a boyish, gangling girl whose constant complaint was that her older brother would not include her in his outdoor activities. She was spoiled even then and, invariably, Walter was made to look after and entertain his sister. Zofia had a certain inexplicable talent for dealing with her parents which Anna held in awe. Clever enough to realize that tantrums would not move the stalwart Gronskis, Zofia had honed to a fine perfection a kind of diplomacy which seldom failed.
Just five years later, Anna found her cousin a raven-haired, black-eyed woman of sophisticated beauty and bearing. No more did she allow anyone to call her by her diminutive, Zosia. As the carriage lurched and trundled on in the direction of Halicz, Anna’s gaze was kept involuntarily glued to Zofia. Anna marvelled at—and envied, too—her cousin’s great blossoming. Was it possible that Zofia was but eighteen, one year older than she?
Anna had never considered herself beautiful and certainly not the stunning creature that Zofia had become, but she thought that at times she could appear attractive. Her mother had told her that beauty is a beacon that emanates from within. And Anna would try to believe it, though sometimes failing to see past the irony that her mother was a great natural beauty.
Anna had grown to be as tall as most men, and her frame was at once sturdy and slender. “Your curves are still in evolution,” her mother told her when Anna came to her with concern over her slenderness. “Be patient. You are now half-woman, half-child, Anna Maria. In a very short time you will attract your share of men.”
Anna thought her hair her best feature. It had darkened slightly to a chestnut brown which in certain lights came alive with a reddish fire. At home she had worn it in the village fashion: in two thick braids that extended almost to her waist, but during this period of mourning she had taken to winding a single braid about her head. It was her emerald eyes, however, that most people commented upon, deeply set as they were and strikingly flecked with amber.
Anna now recognized in her cousin Zofia the same great dark beauty of her own mother. Zofia was perhaps even more striking. She sighed with relief: If Zofia had been attracted to Jan Stelnicki, she feared, all would have been lost.
For several days Anna stayed within the boundaries that her aunt had set, becoming acquainted with what the servants called the great house, which rested majestically on a bluff above the River Dniestr. Like her own home at Sochaczew and countless manor homes of the minor nobility that were the very soul of Poland, it was fronted by a covered porch with two sturdy columns of white-washed stone, a porch that promised Polish hospitality. The many rooms and niceties of the limestone home impressed Anna, but it was that it had a third floor replete with hooded windows jutting from the evergreen-shingled roof that made her think it as elegant as any city mansion. Outside, she took winding paths as she investigated flower gardens, orchards, a pond, the farm manager’s cottage, and countless outer buildings.
The majority of Count Leo Gronski’s multiple tracts of land were let to peasant families Anna never met, but she did come to know the extended family that ran the Gronski farm and household. One day she came upon Katarzyna and Marcelina, daughters of the farm manager, hard at work in the vegetable garden. She gave greeting and they curtsied nicely, but eyed her strangely as she made her way through rows of beetroot, peppers, cabbage, and onions.
At home Anna had enjoyed cultivating her own patch and so took an interest in one so large and varied. When she paused to comment on the variety of an onion, the girls stared, wide-eyed. It was unthinkable that a lady, a countess, should know about or concern herself with such things.
She could read it in their faces: Lady Zofia would never be found in a vegetable garden.
Anna was amused at their reaction but unashamed of her more rustic background. Her father had taught her to touch, to smell, to love and work the land. “If a Pole holds nothing more than his own patch of land,” he would say, “he is a wealthy man.” Still, Anna realized that there would be talk, and not wishing to irritate the Countess Stella, she declined to associate with the girls in the following days, hoping that the whisperings did not reach her aunt’s ears.
By the end of the week, Anna had fully explored the interior and exterior of the house. While she hoped that such activity would assuage the sadness of her parents’ loss, she knew at her core that she was trying to counter the strange and powerful force that ran through her like a river. Her thoughts were drawn, almost unwillingly, toward the vague yet mighty notions of a girl’s heart—and toward Jan Stelnicki.
Defying her aunt, she found herself in the meadow where she had met him. Aimlessly, she moved among the wildflowers and tall grasses, lost deep within herself.
He wasn’t there, of course. Not that she truly thought he would be. Yet, just as the compass needle points north, she was drawn to that spot.
She lost track of time. She hadn’t been listening to the birds, or she would have noticed when they suddenly ceased their chatter. A storm was on the rise.
A clap of thunder shook her from her trance. The sky already loomed black with rain clouds. As Anna picked up her dark skirts to flee the meadow, large drops—cold and stinging—awoke in her a sense of foolishness for her girlish hopes.
She ran now against the wet wind. The loss of my parents and my unsteady mind have done this, she thought. I am behaving like a fool, sneaking behind my aunt’s back, allowing a single meeting with a man to control me so. Tonight at supper I will ask Aunt Stella if I may return home.
Anna was soaked to her undershift when she noiselessly entered the house through a side door, breathless that she might be discovered.
A sharp voice startled her immediately: “And where have you been?”
It was Zofia.
Anna was struck dumb.
“You are quite a sight, Anna!”
“I . . . I was walking.” She sniffled. “I got caught in the storm.”
“Obviously. Mother was looking for you.”
“She didn’t go out to look, did she?” Anna tried to disguise the panic she felt welling up in her.
“No, she sent me—and I must say that I searched every inch of the grounds.”
“Oh.” Anna chose now to face her humiliation. “Well, I might as well tell you that I was—”
“I told her, dearest cousin,” Zofia interrupted, “that you were resting in your room, that you had a bit of a headache.” She stared past her fine straight nose with knowing, laughing eyes. “Now, do go get yourself dried off, for if your headache leads to a death of pneumonia I shall be hard pressed to explain it.”
Returning to her room, Anna collapsed onto her bed in a state of exhaustion. She felt as if her execution had been stayed, and in relief silently vowed to keep away from the meadow.
It was at supper, however, that the Countess Stella herself gave Anna’s thoughts a second shaking. “You are so quiet tonight, my dear,” her aunt said, peering solicitously at her over dessert. “Is it the headache?”
Anna felt her throat tighten. What was she to say? She was caught up in a lie and could only regret her disobedience.
“Anna’s tired, Mother,” Zofia said, coming to her rescue in a heartbeat. “And still so sad.” She lifted a spoonful of her plum dumpling to full lips which smiled secretly at Anna.
Anna stared for the moment at her cousin’s honeyed innocence, taking in the mischief that danced in the dark eyes, then she nervously turned her gaze to her own dessert, which sat untouched before her.
�
��You have taken the deaths so very hard, child,” the countess said. “It is a shame that death must so affect the young. Well, mourning will soon be over. But you need to begin, even now, to focus your thoughts on other things. You are young and you must get back to the business of being young. My sister was especially fond of some stoical saying about the past. Do you remember it, Anna Maria?”
“Yes, Aunt Stella.”
The musical voice of Anna’s mother played vividly in her memory. “She would say that what is past, one cannot change, so each backward glance is a bit of the present slipping away.”
“Yes,” the countess exclaimed. “That is it precisely!”
Anna could only think how in the last days of her mother’s life that saying was merely a saying. In the end, her mother had not been able to prevent herself from letting the past undo her.
For Anna, though, her mother’s advice dovetailed now with her father’s: “Sometimes you must put yourself in the way of destiny.”
5
THE WALK IN THE MEADOW became for Anna a daily event. For several days, it was a solitary experience.
When she had begun to think that she would never meet him there again, that his very existence was a trick of her imagination, he appeared. This time she had seen him in the distance, and as he hastened his horse in her direction, she found her heart involuntarily quickening.
“Good afternoon, Lady Anna,” he said, bringing his horse to a halt.
“Good afternoon, Lord Stelnicki,” she replied, unable to attempt a smile as forward as his.
“Jan—remember?”
“Yes.”
“Still deep in thought?”
“Not so very.”
“Good!” He swung down gracefully from his horse.
To counter the increase of some foreign excitement that ran beneath her surface, Anna attempted conversation. “I thought that your harvesting would still be underway.”
“Oh, it is.”
“And yet you can go riding?”
“My men are hardworking and trustworthy.” He tied his horse to a low-hanging branch.
“Is it your wheat?”
“Yes.”
“What other crops do you cultivate . . . Jan?”
He smiled. “Barley and oats.”
“The rotational grains.”
His eyes widened beneath the raised brows, so blond as to be almost invisible.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You surprise me.”
“That I should know about such things?” Anna laughed, tilting her head to the side. “Well, I expect you’d be quite astonished if I told you I had a knowledge of the planting, maintenance, and yield of numerous fruits and vegetables—as well as tobacco.”
“Indeed!” His interest was piqued. “Traditionally our peasants have been left to farm the fruits and vegetables—their mainstays are beetroot and potatoes—so my knowledge is limited. And as for tobacco, I’m at a complete loss! How have you come by this?”
“I’ve learned about the land from my father. I have my own little garden, too.” The memories called up were sudden and painful and Anna fought to keep the tears away. “In time I will return to see to the management of my estate.”
Jan’s soft tone bespoke his compassion. “It’s near Warsaw, isn’t it?”
“Just a morning’s ride to the west.”
“Anna, would you care to sit for a while in the shade of the oak? Even with your bonnet, you’re likely to burn in this sun.”
“I shouldn’t be staying away from the house for very long.”
“Not for long. But you could squander a few minutes on a rogue such as I.” The blue pools that were his eyes seemed to plead.
Anna laughed. “A few, then.” That he called himself a rogue, an appellation she had privately given him at their last meeting, gave depth to her laugh.
On the dry, overgrown grass, Jan spread out his coat and helped Anna to sit. She watched him as he moved effortlessly into a cross-legged position before her. Again, defying convention, he had worn no hat. His shirt was fine-woven cotton, loose-sleeved, with a ruff at the neck. His trousers were brown, a lighter shade than the coat. The calf-high, reddish-brown boots were of an excellent leather, supple and shining.
“What is your family name, Anna? You must have thought me insolent in the manner I addressed you last week, but you see, I didn’t know it. It’s not Gronski, is it?”
“No. My mother and Aunt Stella were sisters, though my mother was the younger by many years. My father’s name was Berezowski—Samuel Berezowski.”
Jan alluded to the meaning of her surname’s root—birch—telling her how beautiful the tree is, so tall and white, so graceful, strong, and healthy. It was, he said, a fitting name for her.
Anna blushed. “My father would say fitting because I was always deserving of a thrashing with a birch rod.”
Jan’s laughter was explosive. “He never did!”
“No,” she laughed. “Not that he didn’t want to thrash me on occasion.”
“Lady Anna Maria Berezowska—it is a fine name.”
“Thank you.” Anna smiled, leaned forward, and nodded her head, giving from her seat a mock curtsy.
Jan’s brow furrowed slightly now and Anna saw him serious for the first time. But she was unprepared for his next question.
“How is it that your parents died, Anna, one so close upon the other?”
Anna stared mutely for a moment, then averted her eyes.
“Forgive me,” he said, “it was stupid of me to have brought up the subject.”
Anna gave a slight wave. “There is no need to apologize.”
“Oh, but there is. I am a colossal idiot.”
“No, I’m silly, I suppose, but it’s as if there were some part of me that would block it out . . . as if their deaths had never happened.” Anna could not bring herself to face him. She continued: “Sometimes I find myself thinking that I am merely on holiday here at Halicz and that at the end of September I’ll return to Sochaczew, to my home and parents. Then my heart remembers and I wonder: Is this the sign of a girl’s stupidity . . . or a disordered mind?”
“It is neither. The attempt to put pain outside of the heart is only human, Anna.” He leaned very close to her then, lifted his forefinger to her chin and slowly turned her head so that her eyes could not escape his. His voice was as light as his touch, yet somehow firm and steadying. “But you must be careful not to delude yourself. To speak of their deaths is to accept. Only when there is this acceptance can the healing begin.”
Other than her father, Anna had never heard a man speak with such gentleness. Somewhere deep within her she felt a dam crumbling and giving way. A current of affection for this man, not merely attraction, rushed through her.
“Jan,” she said, calling on all of her reserve, “my father was murdered.”
He blinked in surprise. “Murdered?”
Anna nodded. “He had only just turned forty.” Tears started to bead in her eyes.
“There, Anna, you don’t have to talk about it.”
She managed to hold her tears in check. “I’m fine. You’re right. Perhaps I should talk about it.”
“You loved him very much.”
“One couldn’t help but love him. He was more at ease roaming the fields on his white stallion than in making idle conversation in the castles of the magnates. I think it was because he was so close to the land that he treated his peasants so well. He saw them as belonging more to the land than to himself. He often said it was merely fate and a little courage that prompted his great-great grandfather to ride with King Jan Sobieski against the Turks a hundred years ago. That was when the family was declared noble and granted our estate on the River Vistula.”
Anna paused, summoning the strength to continue. “Papa’s peasants loved him. . . . Except for Feliks Paduch, a drunk and ne’er-do-well who stole anything left unattended for two ticks of the clock.” She felt the taste of bitterness rising from her he
art’s center. “Had Papa evicted him years before as he so often threatened, he would still be alive.”
“Paduch killed him?”
Anna nodded. “He was caught, too, but managed to escape the fool magistrate before he was sentenced. He has sworn to see my father’s lineage end with me.”
Jan’s mouth dropped open slightly. “Is that why Count Gronski insisted you live with them for a year?”
“Partially, I suppose.”
“And your mother?”
“As much as she loved my father, he remained an enigma to her to the last.” Anna told him then of the circumstances preceding the deaths of her mother and infant brother.
“Oh, I am so sorry, Anna. My God, you’ve lost your entire family.”
“Yes.”
An awkward silence ensued. Neither wanted to protract the conversation. Anna watched as two birds flew from the branches overhead and circled out over the meadow.
It was Jan who broke the quiet. “More and more, men like this Feliks Paduch are taking such action, rising above their station. Such discontent can be traced, I suspect, to the peasants’ revolt in France.”
“Really?” Anna took the moment to surreptitiously push a tear from her eye. “You don’t think such a thing could happen here, do you?”
“I would hope not. Our peasants are much better off than the wretched poor in France. They have some just grievances, to be certain, but our new Constitution is a decided advancement for them, as well as for the middle classes.” The blond brows came together as one now in an expression of deep concern. “However, should Poland fall to anarchy, the blame must fall squarely on the nobility.”
“On the nobility?”
Jan nodded. “Yes, there are a good many nobles, including some of the magnates, who are opposed to relinquishing any rights to the peasants and middle classes, and they swear that they will see the Third of May Constitution rescinded.”
Anna’s widening eyes reflected her bewilderment. “But it was passed only this year.”
“Yes, and should we overthrow it, we would be asking for the same desserts that are even now being delivered up to the French nobility on the guillotine.”
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