Zofia demanded that the driver whip him, but he dared not do so.
The soldier had Anna all but lifted out of the carriage when Anna felt Zofia pulling her back.
“Take me, Ivan!” Zofia was crying out in Russian. “Take me!” Anna fell back into her seat, the man’s hold released. Her cousin knew this man! She turned to Zofia to find that she had stripped to her waist. The soldier had taken the bait and was now maneuvering his horse to her side of the carriage.
“Take this, Ania,” Zofia screamed above the din, thrusting an envelope into her hand. “Go to Paweł’s townhome on Piwna Street, near St. Martin’s Church! And don’t think me so terrible, darling!”
To Anna all of this was unfolding like a nightmare. Her cousin was standing on the carriage seat, her magnificent breasts swaying pendulously for all to see. Had she gone mad?
“Ivan,” Zofia cried, “you know that we are allied with Catherine. We must get the carriage to the bridge. You must help us!”
Anna saw his greedy eyes take in Zofia. In a moment he was barking orders to three other soldiers in red who moved in to create an escort. The carriage started to move. How many in their path were run over or slain by the Russians Anna could not guess. She closed her eyes to the horror and prayed the bridge would hold.
When she opened her eyes, it was to see Zofia being lifted up and onto the horse of the bulky Ivan. As her cousin settled herself astride his mount, the paws of the Russian bear moved roughly over her naked breasts. Her blood-red skirt fanned out against the horse’s white shoulders and belly.
“Zofia!” Anna screamed.
Only her cousin’s dark eyes answered her. They seemed to say, This is how it must be.
Soon, the wooden planks of the bridge could be heard beneath the carriage wheels. Anna looked to see Zofia and the Russians falling behind the carriage now. “Zofia!” she called again. Her voice was tiny, however, in the roar of the crowd. She realized that Zofia would not be crossing with her. She was remaining with the Russians on the Praga side.
Zofia shouted something Anna could not hear and waved her on.
Anna turned around in her seat, stunned, and certain she would never see her cousin again.
There were hundreds on the bridge so that movement was at a snail’s pace. Intermittently, the crowd behind the carriage leaned into it, pushing it forward because they, in turn, were being propelled forward by the myriad souls behind them.
Anna’s eyes fell upon the letter Zofia had given her. It was addressed to her. She turned it over to see red Stelnicki seal. It had been broken.
In the midst of all the horror and death, she opened and read the letter.
It was dated more than two weeks before.
My Dearest Anna,
Our engagement at Volhynia did not go well. The fears I wrote to you about were not unfounded. I am not far from Warsaw as I write this, but duty forbids me to see you, my love. There is much to be done before the Russian devils come down upon the capital.
Keep yourself safe, Anna. My hope is that you have left Warsaw, but if this finds you still there, at least find shelter within the capital itself. Praga will be most unsafe. It is there that the Russian terror will be unbridled and merciless. Seek the protection of the city walls as soon as possible, dearest. And know that I love you more than life itself. Should I survive what is to come—and, God willing, I will survive—I shall make you my bride and Jan Michał my son.
All my love,
Jan
God protect him, Anna prayed. God protect us all.
Zofia had been up to her old tricks of intercepting Anna’s letters from Jan. How long had she had this one? Why hadn’t she heeded his advice? They could have fled Praga long ago.
But there was no time for regrets or contempt for Zofia. Anna’s senses were filling with the single-minded conviction that she must survive. The knowledge of Jan’s declared love would make her death at that moment an easier one, but she was not about to accept such an end. Her father had often recited the proverb that “to believe with certainty, one must begin with doubting.” Her doubting days were over. She now knew in her heart that both she and Jan would survive and make a life together.
Anna looked behind her to see the Praga side slowly receding. She caught sight of Zofia’s red skirt, a splash of scarlet on a massive painting of unspeakable outrage.
“Help me! Oh, God, please help me!” The cry was coming from the hysterical mother of two bruised and bleeding boys. While she struggled to carry one and drag the other by the hand, the three were being crushed and mauled by the endless stream of maddened people trying to get past them.
“Here!” Anna shouted, as the carriage began to pass them. “Here, get in! Give me the little one!” Anna took the youngest from the mother’s arms. The woman then hoisted the older boy into the carriage, and Anna gave her her hand, helping her aboard.
The driver turned around, whip raised.
“They will ride!” Anna shouted. Her gaze met his single seeing eye.
He looked at her defiantly for a moment, then, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, turned back to the business of driving.
The grateful little family settled into the seat across from Anna.
Anna allowed two old peasant women into the carriage, also. One sat next to Anna and though she made room in her seat for the other, the woman declined, finding space on the floor. Anna wondered whether it was out of deference for the nobility—or that her place on the floor precluded her seeing the unfolding hell about them. In no time their wrinkled, toothless mouths were moving in silent prayer.
Suddenly, there was a great swell of screaming, and the carriage was pushed forward by the masses behind. Anna turned to see the Praga side of the bridge engulfed in a high wall of orange flames. A score of the crowd had caught fire, too, and they were hurling themselves off the bridge into the waters of the Vistula.
Anna’s eyes searched for the red of Zofia’s skirt. It was not to be found. Had the Russian brute brought her to safety?
The driver whipped the horses, and the carriage moved at a slightly faster rate. Those in front moved to the side or were run down. Those who tried to cling to the carriage suffered the sting of the lash.
Anna stood now and while the driver’s hand was in mid-motion, she pulled the whip from his grasp. “You’re not to kill these people!” she screamed. Without a thought, she threw the whip off to her right and into the river below.
The man’s eye widened in shock and anger. Indecision flashed across his face. He had not expected this of Anna.
He dropped the reins. “Well, then, milady,” he shouted above the din, “I gather the driving’s up to you.”
He turned now and jumped from the right side of the carriage into the crowd and was immediately lost from sight.
Anna sat frozen in terror. The carriage ceased any forward movement while the crowds around it continued in their slow surge forward, moving around and past the stalled vehicle.
Above the roar of the panicking mob came the cracking sound of splintering timbers. Anna knew that the fire and the awesome weight of the fleeing hundreds would quickly put the bridge into the river. They would never make it to the Warsaw side. All rational thought deserted her now, giving her over to a palsy of fear.
Anna’s hands instinctively went to her hair. The old childhood habit of thrusting her extended fingers through her hair in moments of distress had returned. Years before, her father’s understanding and gentle reminders had helped to break her of the habit.
Later, she would swear that at that moment she had heard her father’s voice in her ear, the words were so distinct, his tone—at once warm and firm—unobscured by the years: “Sometimes you must place yourself in the way of destiny.”
The two boys had become hysterical. Collecting herself, Anna stood now and tried to comfort them, assuring the mother they would make it to safety.
Turning, she lifted the peasant woman from the floor and seated her next to the other
in her own vacated place. With great difficulty, she climbed down the left side of the carriage, holding tight to it all the while so as not to be pulled free from it amidst all the jostling. Slowly, slowly, she made her way to the front and with a Herculean effort, pulled herself up into the driver’s seat.
Anna picked up the reins and, miraculously, the frightened and confused horses responded to her signal. The carriage began to move forward. Anna had no time to exult in her success.
Suddenly, the bridge rumbled, cracked, and swayed not more than a few dozen paces behind them. Anna could not help but turn around. The bridge was moving slightly side to side, wriggling like a lazy snake. It was at that moment that part of the structure nearest the Praga side collapsed, sending those closest to the break tumbling from the jagged timbers and into the turbid waters.
Anna turned back. Setting her sights on the city’s walls, she urged the horses forward.
The hysteria of the mob, too, seemed to push the carriage further toward the capital. A few jumped from the imperiled bridge, but most continued to push in one maddened forward heave. The structure swayed precariously, ready at any moment to give way beneath the strain.
The carriage was but a hair’s breadth from Warsaw when the bridge gave forth with a great dying groan of splitting timbers and trembled in the balance. The high-pitched cries of a thousand pierced the air.
There swelled then a final, violent wave of people pushing, rushing madly forward, and the carriage was carried with the tide, rolling off the bridge and onto Warsaw soil.
“We’re safe,” Anna called out joyfully to her passengers. “We’re safe!”
Polish soldiers and citizens were waiting to help Anna and the others alight the carriage.
“Here, take this,” Anna said to the mother before they took their leave. She pressed the alexandrite ring into the stunned woman’s hand. “This will help you start afresh.”
The woman started to refuse, but Anna quickly sent her and her children on their way. She gave the emerald stickpin to the old peasant women, who were equally reluctant at first and had to be coerced into accepting.
The crystal bird and her diary remained in the box.
An ear-splitting clamor cleaved the air then, and Anna turned to witness the length of the bridge, with its burden of nobility and peasants, collapse, crashing loudly into the Vistula. The crescendo of heart-tearing screams subsided as hundreds were carried away by the waters.
And yet, there came continued shouts and cries from the Praga side.
Anna stared, her mind unable to process the horror unfolding before her. Though the bridge was gone, Suvorov’s Russians on horseback descended in fiercely dense legions, continuing to herd Praga’s citizens onto what was left of it and into the cold water below. People tumbled off that broken bridge like so many drops of water from a waterfall.
No story or historical account Anna had ever read prepared her for such a sight.
It was then that Anna spied Zofia in the crowd near the broken bridge on the Praga side. The red skirt atop the white horse was unmistakable. Was she allowing herself to stay with the Russian while he steered good Polish men and women to their deaths? Was she so evil?
No, Anna realized now, Zofia and Ivan themselves had gotten caught up in the inexorable flow of the crowd. The white horse rose up in a great panic as the myriads were pushed toward destruction by the Russian legions descending toward the river.
“May the Madonna help us,” Anna prayed aloud, her heart leaping in her chest as she saw the horse, the Russian, and Zofia come to the shore side of the broken bridge and go tumbling in a blur of white and red, white and red, through the air and into the Vistula. Almost immediately they disappeared from view as the waters swallowed them.
“Zofia!” Anna screamed. “Zofia!” She called until her voice gave out. Her cries were lost amidst the pandemonium. Zofia had told her once that she would rather ride the whirlwind than lead a long life. Well, she had done that.
And Anna knew that she was alive at that moment because of Zofia.
From her days as a child, when her mother had threatened to deny her the crystal dove, Anna had not allowed herself to cry in public.
Now, as all of Poland seemed to dissolve before her eyes, the tears began to roll, slowly, steadily, down her cheeks, splashing onto the simple, brown muslin of her dress.
Epilogue
Life is like the moon—
now dark,
now full.
—POLISH PROVERB
25 November 1794
FEW BLANK PAGES REMAIN IN my diary now. This shall be my last entry.
On the day of the Praga massacre, I managed to take shelter at the townhome of Count Potecki, where Lutisha tearfully welcomed me.
Few Polish citizens left on the Praga side of the River Vistula were allowed to live. The burning of the bridge was fortuitous, however, for the Russians were held at bay, allowing the night to cool their red rage. In the morning, the English ambassador to Poland and the Papal Nuncio crossed the river and secured from Suvorov assurance that the capital would be taken peacefully.
And so it was that Warsaw capitulated without a whimper, and nothing remained of Poland to partition.
Citizens still cry openly in the streets, for loved ones lost and for Poland, effectively erased from the map of Europe. I have not ventured out, not out of fear or my old aversion to public crying, but because I will not allow my tears to join the people’s river of tears. I do not believe that my country can be waved away because someone wills it. Aunt Stella once said that should Poland be held by a foreign power for a hundred years, her people, her language, her customs, her faith would allow her to endure—and one day live again, like a flower long dormant.
Word has come that my son Jan Michał is safe at Sochaczew. Although my home there still stands, the Gronski Praga townhome has been destroyed. I have seen to the burial of the Countess Gronska and her son Walter. Aunt Stella had not wanted to live to see Warsaw fall; her prayer was answered.
No news has come of Zofia. I can only assume that the River Vistula has taken her.
Count Potecki has arrived home, bringing with him a note from Jan Stelnicki. My love has survived! He writes that he has been wounded, and tells me that I’m not to worry. I do worry. He and my son await my arrival at Sochaczew. His brief note is signed Pan Stelnicki. Citizen Stelnicki? I refuse to believe that his title and nobility can be taken summarily from him for his patriotism. Our nobility, like the Polish spirit of all our people, resides in our souls.
I dreamt of the mythical Jurata last night. I remember how I admired the goddess for daring to break with tradition by marrying a non-magical being—a man. Perhaps I have more in common with Jurata than my green eyes. I am to marry a man whose nobility has been taken from him. But I do not truly imagine myself another Jurata because my love for Jan is such that it will take no great courage for me to follow my heart.
My crystal dove sleeps once again in its scratched but sturdy box from the Tatras. It has survived so much. I take it now to Sochaczew, where I will live with and for life—with and for the man whom I love.
Anna Maria Berezowska
Historical Note
Sadly, after the debacle at Warsaw in 1794, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was torn into three pieces by Russia, Prussia, and Austria and effectively ceased to exist for 123 years, until 1918 when it once again emerged to become a sovereign state in 1918. The world discovered then that while the country had had no borders and no name for all those years, the folkways, language, customs, beliefs, and faith had endured from generation to generation in the hearts and minds of Poland’s people. A nation is no stronger than her people and Poland rose in November of that year like a phoenix.
Reading Group Guide Questions
The proverb “Push not the river: it will flow of its own accord” may be viewed as one of twin themes. The other is expressed by Anna’s father: “Sometimes you must put yourself in the way of destiny.” Ho
w is the interplay of these two ideas illustrated in the story? Does one predominate?
The fate of one’s country often influences the shaping of lives—and characters. To what extent does Poland’s fate shape Anna? Zofia?
How is the theme of a nation’s survival against all odds highlighted by the lives of the characters?
Jan tells Anna his God is in the grass, rain, flowers, trees, and sky—and yet he is willing to convert to Catholicism for her sake. How is this reflective of his character?
Her intentions, schemes, and harmful actions notwithstanding, to what extent does Zofia display positive traits?
Crises in one’s life create and strengthen character. Which events—loss of her parents, loss of Jan, an arranged marriage, Zofia’s schemes, Walter’s actions, foreign attack, other?—affect Anna most in this way?
How does the theme of women’s rights and roles come into play in this late eighteenth century European story?
In what ways do the principal female characters—Anna, Zofia, Aunt Stella—underscore the theme?
Readers often divide ranks when considering Anna and Zofia. To whom were you drawn the most? Why?
Against a Crimson Sky Book 2 of the Poland Trilogy
“Entertaining…fans of historical romance will find much to enjoy in this sprawling epic.”
—Publishers Weekly
“With Napoleon Bonaparte’s ill-fated campaign to conquer Russia as a backdrop, Against a Crimson Sky manages to turn the wily emperor’s exploitation of Polish patriotism into a classic read that lovers of Push Not the River will devour. James Conroyd Martin brings back the characters that made his first novel so compelling, deftly weaving their daily lives into the panorama of war and turmoil that consumed Poland in the early nineteenth century. He portrays a world of hardship and heart in marvelously rendered ‘little pieces of happiness stolen from a tapestry of turmoil, war, and separation’.”
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