“Why, this is my home.”
“What?”
“You’ve met the patriarch here, Witek?”
“Yes, though I didn’t know his name.”
“He is my father.”
“Your father?—But surely you are not—” Anna could not find the words.
“Like the others? A peasant, you mean? Ah, but I am.” He smiled boyishly. “You are mystified by my clothes and speech?”
Anna nodded.
“I must explain. My mother died giving birth to me and my brother. Oh, I have a twin: Stefan. Witek was devastated by my mother’s death, and I think intimidated by the prospect of raising two infants. As it happened, Baron Galki, the landlord of this old ruined castle and all the land you can see from its tower, struck up an agreement with Witek. He and the baroness were childless. Stefan and I were given over to them and, in return, the clan is allowed to make their home here and live in freedom.”
Anna had never heard anything quite like it. But the young man seemed beyond deception. “So you don’t live here, then?”
“No, I live at the Galki family manor several miles south.”
“You came to visit Witek?”
“He sent for us, so that we might discuss what to do with you once you are on your feet.”
“I see. Stefan is here, too?”
“He’ll arrive tonight.”
Anna let out a nearly silent sigh. Here was hope on the horizon. “How far are we from Opole?” she asked, attempting a casualness she didn’t feel.
“Opole is the nearest city. It’s under a day’s journey west.”
Anna was relieved. She wished it a hundred days’ away, but one was enough distance between her and Antoni. . . . For now, she hoped.
“Is there a city or town nearby?” she asked.
“Just south of here is Częstochowa.”
Anna felt her jaw go slack. “Oh, Antek, have you seen it? The Black Madonna?”
“Of course. Many times.”
“They say the painting has miraculous powers.”
“So they say. . . . Tell me, Countess Berezowska, are you in need of a miracle?”
“What?” Anna smiled. “Perhaps, I am.”
“Don’t worry. Stefan and I will devise a way for you to return to Warsaw. Is that the miracle you need?”
If only that would be miracle enough, Anna thought. “Perhaps,” she said. “It is funny, Antek. You’ve seen the Black Madonna and wish to go to Warsaw. I’ve seen Warsaw and would like to see the Black Madonna.”
They laughed together like old friends. The name Antek, Anna suddenly realized, was the diminutive for Antoni. How strange that it only just now came to her. She had never called her own husband Antek. She doubted that she ever would.
After Antek left, Anna thought about the Black Madonna. More than any fairy tale, more than any of her favorite myths, it had always fascinated her. Originally a Byzantine icon, it found its way to the cloister of the Pauline Fathers in the fourteenth century. During the next century, it was painted over after it was damaged by the Hussites, thus accounting for the darkness of the picture and the two sword cuts on the Lady’s right cheek. In 1655 the site of the cloister provided the turning point in the war against Sweden. Since then Poles looked to the Black Madonna as Queen of the Polish Crown and patron saint of Poland. For the moment Anna forgot about her many difficulties and longed only to see the Dark Lady.
Later, the hall became a hive of activity. Some women prepared sausages. Others cleaned fowl that had been newly caught. Three or four older women sat sewing and talking in the warmth of the hearth. While Lucyna and another woman prepared the noon meal, Owl Eyes stood—at some distance—hunched over a table, cutting leather.
Only one person was watching Anna: an old woman sitting alone working on a piece of leathercraft. Anna had noticed her before. Unlike these other women, she hadn’t shown Anna the slightest deference or courtesy. The many lines of her weathered face seemed to meet in a scowl at her thin lips. Whenever she chose to speak to the others, it was with a quick and slicing tongue.
Anna returned her gaze. Even a smile did not break the ice. In time, the woman looked away. But every so often, Anna could sense the saucer eyes beneath sparse and wiry hair spying in her direction. She was like an old cat, Anna thought, half-frightened and half ready to pounce.
Lunch and supper were substantial meals, and Anna ate what she could. Her health was slowly mending.
In the evening, Stefan arrived.
Anna sat at her place by the hearth. She stared in amazement as Antek introduced him. He was the mirrored reflection of his brother: the same brown, wavy hair, sculpted features, muscular physique.
“One of you must grow a beard immediately,” Anna said. “Otherwise, I shall not be able to tell you apart.”
The twins laughed.
Stefan kissed Anna’s hand. “You don’t see any difference between us?” he asked.
“Let me see,” Anna said, her eyes moving from one to the other. “Of course! Antek, you have a little mole on your cheek. Stefan, where is yours?”
“I was cheated, if you must know,” Stefan said. He draped his arm around Antek. “You see, the girls adore that little mole, don’t they, brother?”
Antek colored in embarrassment.
Anna silently concurred that the mole did give Antek the advantage, but she sensed immediately that Stefan possessed a gregariousness and forward sensuality that probably more than evened the score. Both brothers were striking. They had gotten their height, strength, and masculinity from Witek, she supposed, but it must have been their deceased mother who had willed them her good looks.
“I was sorry to hear of your accident,” Stefan said.
Antek shot a sidelong glance at his brother, a reproach that only Anna noticed.
“A tragic thing,” he continued. “I understand two children died at the site. They were not yours, were they?”
“No, but they were in my care. They were innocent victims.”
“It is all very sad, but it is in the past now,” Antek said, attempting to sideline his brother’s conversation. “The countess is expecting her first child and must only look forward.”
“Of course,” Stefan said. “Forgive me. I trust you are feeling better.”
“I improve a little each day,” Anna said, “though you wouldn’t know it to look at me.”
“Nonsense,” Stefan said. “You are very beautiful. Wouldn’t you say, Antek?”
“Indeed.”
“Thank you.” It was an awkward moment. Anna had not meant to fish for compliments. “Now if you both don’t sit down, I shall get a stiff neck looking up at you.”
The brothers drew up stools. While they did so, Anna noticed for the first time that they were not alone in the hall. A movement in the shadows near the far door drew her eyes to a shrouded figure there. An inner sense told Anna it was the old woman who had seemed to take an instant dislike to her.
Anna ignored the chill her presence inspired and addressed the twins in a serious tone. “What is to be done about the bodies at the carriage site?”
“That has already been seen to,” Antek said. “They have been given burial. You are not to worry.”
“It is at least one worry I can put aside,” Anna said. “Please thank those men responsible.”
“I understand you want to return to Warsaw,” Stefan said.
“Yes, as soon as possible.”
“Is that where your husband is?” Stefan asked.
Husband. Anna felt her face flush hot. “No, he will not be found in the city.”
“Is there someone there who would send a carriage?” Antek asked.
“No.”
“We would take you ourselves, Countess,” Antek said, “but our father will not allow it. He’s afraid the city life would be too appealing to two country boys.”
“Men!” Stefan countered. “We are eighteen.”
“I would gladly pay for the carriage and driver
’s service, of course.” Anna was trying to hold back despair. The longer she stayed here, the greater the chance of Antoni’s finding her.
Antek could see her concern. “There is the monastery at Częstochowa, Countess. They have carriages and the abbot does go to Warsaw on occasion.”
Anna’s heart lifted.
“Father Florian, a priest from the monastery, will be here on Sunday next,” Stefan said. “He comes every other Sunday to attend to the clan. He holds Mass in the old chapel.”
“We’ll approach Father Florian with your situation,” Antek explained. “I’m certain he’ll help you get back to Warsaw.”
Thank God, Anna thought.
The old woman came out of the shadows now. Shouting what seemed gibberish to Anna, she seemed to be upbraiding Antek and Stefan. She fired off a question, spit out a retort to their answers, then demanded something else.
The twins answered her respectfully in the low dialect, nervously casting glances at Anna. They were embarrassed.
At last the old woman’s babbling exploded into a barrage of curses leveled at the brothers.
Antek grew angry now. He spoke sharply to the old woman.
She shrank back slightly at his words, the cat’s eyes assessing the situation.
She turned on Anna, pointing an accusing finger and letting fly another spate of unintelligible syllables. Then she wheeled about and fled the room.
Anna stared after her.
“I apologize for Nelka, my lady,” Antek said, turning to Anna. He seemed upset and humiliated.
“Who is she?” Anna asked.
“She is Witek’s mother,” he said, his eyes lowered, “our grandmother.”
“It would seem she doesn’t like me,” Anna said.
“Don’t worry about her, Countess,” Stefan said. “She doesn’t like anyone not of the clan.”
“My brother understates the case,” Antek said. “The fact is, Nelka has difficulty getting along with a good many people in the clan.”
“But what is it that she harbors against me?”
“It is only that you are an outsider,” Stefan said.
Anna was doubtful. “Isn’t it that I am a noblewoman?”
The twins looked shamefaced.
“Yes,” Antek said. “Her one experience at the hands of a noblewoman . . . well, it’s useless to go into. It led to tragic consequences.”
“And,” Stefan added, “she has never gotten over Witek’s giving us over to Baron Galki.”
“I see. But I am sure I detected some specific animosity toward me.”
The brothers hesitated to speak.
Anna’s questioning eyes persisted.
Antek finally spoke up. “She was listening to our conversation. When Nelka learned that your husband would not be coming to take you home, and that he was not to be found in Warsaw . . . well, she has quite an imagination.”
“And what does she imagine?” Anna asked.
“She suspects,” Stefan said awkwardly, “that you are not wed at all and that you are running away because of your fatherless baby.”
“Oh.” Anna was stunned. “You can be certain that my husband does exist.” It was strange, she thought, to attest to a marriage she wished did not exist.
Still, Anna could not help but think there was more. “When your grandmother pointed at me, what was she saying then?”
The twins were silent. Stefan’s face was a mask, but Antek wore his heart in his hazel eyes.
“Countess,” Antek said, “I beg you to overlook Nelka’s eccentricities. The clan still holds to many old and groundless superstitions. What she said can only hurt you. It is better to—”
“I want to know,” Anna insisted.
Antek grimaced in defeat. He sighed. “She said that your child was sired by the devil and . . .”
“Go on.”
“ . . . that such a one as you should be treated as witches once were by the ancients—driven out with lighted candles and a hearth poker.”
35
ZOFIA WAS BORED TO DISTRACTION. She paced from room to room, waiting for Count Henryk Literski. What was keeping him?
She walked to the window of the reception room and pulled back the lace curtains. Dusk was settling its violet shadows on the Vistula. Still no sign of Henryk. She swung around in irritation. The house was so quiet, so damnably quiet.
She missed Anna. The realization surprised her. Without Anna and the French children, the house was a crypt. There had been no word from her, either. Zofia smiled, thinking of her poor cousin saddled with those foreign brats. One of my more clever maneuvers, she thought.
Anna’s going to St. Petersburg was for the best. She would be reconciled to her husband in the end, of course. She had no choice. That was the way of it, Zofia decided, women who were too slow to choose for themselves would always have their choices made by others.
Zofia heard a door close nearby. She was certain it was her mother, floating about the house like a quiet specter. Oh, she had seemed to return to normal, to her daughter’s surprise, but she spoke only to the servants. She could not resign herself to the life Zofia had forged. Now, the dowager countess was no doubt secluding herself in her sewing room as she characteristically did these days after supper. She seldom sewed, however. Her current interests were exclusively political. Zofia would hear her musing to herself or anyone who would listen. What might Catherine do? What would Austria and Prussia try next? How was Poland to protect herself? Would Stanisław stand firm with the Constitution? Zofia wanted to scream when she found her mother knee deep in Monitors and preoccupied with one political move or another. And it was not only her mother: Warsaw was awash in nothing but political talk and rumors. She hated it.
Baron Michał Kolbi had spoken politics, too, one day when he came calling, asking for Anna. He asked question after question about her welfare and seemed quite concerned that they had had no word. But why should he be so concerned? Zofia could make nothing of it. Did Anna have a power over men? Zofia had not forgiven Kolbi for failing to respond to her flirtation at Anna’s little party, and so she answered his questions in the most perfunctory manner, wishing to herself that she actually had some information about Anna to suppress from the pompous ass.
For every little failure like Kolbi, however, Zofia could produce a ledger of successes. She could juggle flirtations with three men in one night, intimating to each that she was ripe for the picking. Sometimes she was. Inevitably, she chose to pursue the most challenging of the lot. If he were married, fine. If he were married and had a mistress, even better. There was even one who had a wife, a mistress, and a male lover. Oh, the delight in upsetting that little menagerie! She had learned that with the right precautions against conception she did not have to deny herself to anyone she found attractive. But she was finding fewer and fewer attractive in recent weeks. The sexual aspect of the liaisons seemed to actually bore her now; no one man held her interest for long.
There was but one chase, one challenge, that had not abated: Jan Stelnicki. Why couldn’t she get him out of her mind? No other man had ever so dominated her thoughts. She smiled to herself. Perhaps it was merely that he had been denied to her.
Jan lived in the city now. And with Anna gone, she thought, there must be a way to entice him. Jan became for her the Golden Fleece.
Her answer to this self-imposed quest had come in the form of Count Henryk Literski. Zofia found the young man repulsive: ugly, classless, hopelessly simple. But he was smitten with her, worshipped her. What could she do but take advantage of him?
Henryk, a landless noble with neither occupation nor interest, lived on the profits of a modest trust. He became a willing spy for Zofia, daily observing the comings and goings of Count Jan Stelnicki. He recorded everything in a little yellow journal and reported regularly to her. If he had an inkling that it was some inner passion for Jan that drove Zofia to such measures, he didn’t show it. Zofia occasionally hinted at some vague political motive. He asked few questio
ns. When she appeared satisfied with some bit of information, his thin, pockmarked face beamed. This was enough for him, this and the vague, unspoken promise that one day he might expect more than a light brushing of her lips against his pitted cheek.
From Henryk, Zofia learned that Jan’s world was relatively small. Any excitement in it was political excitement, an oxymoron in her view. All of his friends were connected to the government and king in some way. Many of them seemed old enough to be contemporaries of his father. They were all male; he did not seek out the companionship of women. When not giving speeches at political functions, he was writing them at the small townhome he had rented. There, he was served by a middle-aged woman named Wanda.
Often, he went down to the riverfront and sat brooding in a tavern called Queen’s Head, one Henryk called a hellhole. From there, Zofia surmised, he could see the white Gronski townhome across the river.
She turned back to the window now, again drawing back the curtains. Her gaze searched the modest shop fronts across the Vistula. She could imagine him there in the weeks before her cousin’s departure staring across the river, hoping for a glimpse of Anna.
Zofia felt her face flushing hot with jealousy. How had Anna won that kind of allegiance from a man such as Jan? How had she lost it? Where had she gone wrong?
How was she to read his current Spartan behavior? Was he adjusting to life without Anna? To life without hope of Anna? Was he facing up to reality?
Here at least was a chance, she thought. Her heart quickened at the challenge. She fantasized herself seducing him, even marrying him. Thoughts of missing Anna were suddenly dispelled by the old anger at her for foiling the plans for Jan. She thought of a dozen ways to tell Anna that Jan was now her conquest. She would triumph in the end.
Zofia had written to him, a letter that skirted an apology and hinted at her interest. He failed to rise to the bait, however. Henryk found its burned remains in an ashtray at the tavern.
Zofia was not surprised. She assumed it was his pride that kept him from responding. She was not to be discouraged. His reticence merely piqued what was becoming for her an obsession.
Push Not the River Page 27