The Mazovia Legacy

by Michael E. Rose

  “Where did it get you?”

  “In my hip I think. Near there. A little above maybe. It’s sore all around there.”

  He rolled her over and looked. She cried out in pain as she moved. There was a sticky stain in the padded cloth of her coat on the left side just at the waist. Delaney was grateful that if she had to be hit it would be somewhere like that. But he knew there would be bad pain if it were a bone wound, and blood lost.

  “Poor dear Natalia,” he said softly.

  He tried to pull up her coat to have a better look but she cried out again. Perhaps best not to try to pull down her jeans in the cold to examine the wound, he thought. It looked like she had been hit somewhere in the hip or the pelvis, or in the fleshy place below the lowest rib. The bleeding had increased as he moved her.

  He felt a wave of panic and regret, like he had when things got dangerous for her in Europe. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Come. Let’s get you up,” he said.

  Delaney tried to get her to a standing position. She cried out again and again as she moved. Once she was up she tried to hobble along with him holding her, but then she fell to her knees, sweating and moaning.

  “I think I might faint, Francis,” she said. She had gone very pale. “It hurts badly. I think I might have to be sick.”

  Delaney tried to stay calm. He tried to heave her onto his shoulders but his feet sank farther into the snow with the weight. He stopped when she cried out again.

  “Please, Francis. It hurts too much,” she said. “I feel like I’m going to faint.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks from the pain and the fear. Delaney knew he could not walk far in the snow with her on his shoulders in any case.

  He put her back onto the deeper snow at the side of the path where she had first fallen. There was a lot more blood coming through her coat now. With a bullet wound, it was obviously best to leave her lying comfortably on this snowy bed. Natalia seemed content with this as well. Snow gathered on her eyelashes and exaggerated the movement of her eyelids as she blinked at him.

  “I’ve never been shot before,” she said quietly. “It’s starting to feel very stiff and strange down there now.”

  “He may have broken a bone,” Delaney said, trying not to let her hear any alarm in his voice. He knew he had to get help right away. The thought of having to leave here alone, even for a few minutes, made his heart sink. But he could not simply sit here with her either. There was too much blood coming and she was likely to go into shock at any time.

  Delaney did not tell her the immediate danger was that the other man could come along the path to follow the sound of firing and try to find his partner. He suspected the man would eventually decide to trace his partner’s steps along the pathway from the village. So another encounter was possible on that path if Delaney walked toward the village for help. If the second man had not stayed behind at the church.

  Delaney quickly reloaded the shotgun.

  “I feel quite faint now, Francis,” Natalia said quietly. “I’m dizzy.”

  She was very pale now, looking a little bit as she had after her ordeal in the apartment in Rome. Delaney pulled off his parka and put it over her.Two layers of down; she would not freeze. He arranged her scarf under her head as a pillow. His mind raced for solutions, safe solutions, but he could think of nothing except going for help. Best, he said to himself again and again, if he quickly brought help here rather than try to carry her or drag her, if that were possible at all, and have her lose even more blood.

  He elevated her left leg slightly with broken branches and this seemed to make her more comfortable. The wound was still bleeding through the coat, but he was confident that if he got someone in to see to it soon she would be all right.

  “I’m going to get the police,” he said. “You can’t come with me like that. You’ve got to lie still so you don’t lose too much blood.”

  “You’re going to go?” she said.

  “I don’t want to go, Natalia,” he said softly. “But there’s no other way.”

  Delaney sounded much more confident than he actually felt, but he thought that this was the wisest course.

  “You’re going to get the police in this now?” she said.

  “There’s no other way.”

  “Will there be any in a town like that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll get someone. I won’t be long at all. You’ll be all right. I promise.”

  “Don’t let them take the chalice,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  He pushed with his foot at the leather case where it had fallen in the deep snow, and he submerged it farther.

  “It’ll be fine there,” he said. He knelt beside her.

  “Look, Natalia,” he said, “I’ve got to hurry up now and get someone in here with a snowmobile. It’s not far. Will you be all right?”

  “Yes, Francis. Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be cold like that?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Where’s the other man, do you think?” she asked.

  “I think he waited back at the church, in case we went back that way,” Delaney said.

  That sounded much more convincing than it should. It was impossible to say just where the other man might be. Back at the church? Waiting on the village side of the woods with the car? Delaney felt quite strongly that if the man were to come he would come from the village side, because he would be unlikely to now set out across the open lake alone and risk being fired upon. If he had stayed at the church at all.

  Delaney did not allow himself to dwell on the possibility that he could be wrong on any of this. Now, more than any other time, he needed to make a choice, to take action. Someone else needed him to do that. There was no longer the luxury of journalistic observation. There had not been that luxury for him for a long time in this thing, he thought.

  “I’ve got to get someone in here,” Delaney said again. “We’ve got no choice. You’re bleeding badly.”

  “All right, Francis,” Natalia said. “Try not to be very long.”

  “I won’t be long,” he said. “The village didn’t seem all that far from the church. I can be there and back in fifteen minutes or so, I’d say. Maybe twenty.

  That’s not long.”

  His heart ached terribly in his chest.

  “I’m leaving you the small gun,” he said. “If someone comes, you’ll have to shoot him. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Natalia said.

  “Have you ever fired a pistol before?”

  “No,” she said.

  Delaney placed the Browning on some pine branches near her right hand. He put her hand on it so she would know it was there.

  “No one will come,” Delaney said. “I’m sure the other guy is waiting back at the church with the priest.They wouldn’t have wanted to leave the priest alone.”

  He kissed Natalia’s wet cheek quickly and got up. He suspected she would sleep.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Try not to move.”

  “I’ll be OK,” she said. “It’s very restful here.” They looked silently at each other for a moment — she, lying on her snow bed, and he, standing beside her with a shotgun.

  “I’ve got to go,” Delaney said.

  “I know,” she said. “You go.”

  “I love you, Natalia,” he said suddenly. The words sounded wonderful in the silent woods. He felt no fear about what the words meant, no unease at the implications, no dread of entanglement.

  “I love you too, Francis,” Natalia said. That sounded wonderful in the silent woods as well.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Delaney said.

  There was no more time to lose. Delaney
began trying to control his breathing and his racing heart, to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  He went back out onto the path and stopped beside the body of the man he had killed. The wounds from the heavy-gauge shotgun were horrific. There was a great deal of blood. Delaney reached inside the dead man’s overcoat for a clue as to who he might have been.

  A quick look inside the wallet that he found showed him various things Italian, not Polish: passport, driver’s licence, credit cards. He put the wallet into his own pocket, to examine carefully later.Then he threw the dead man’s very large and very modern pistol far off into the woods. He took a last look at Natalia lying quietly, bundled up in coats, and he left her, walking fast.

  *

  Natalia had worked for many years with dreams, her own and the dreams of others, and she did not fear them. Jungians welcomed dreams, trusted them, and acted on their hints and allusions. So, because this afternoon had been very much like a dream, Natalia was not afraid. She was simply dreaming, and she expected the meaning of the dream to become clear as she pondered it. She had that faith. She turned the afternoon’s dreamings around and around in her mind as she lay warm and comfortable on soft cushions of snow. She wondered: What is archetypal about all of this?

  The black leafless branches above her spread intricate patterns against the dull grey sky and she studied them for secret signs.

  She saw how it all had started but not yet how it was to end. She was all of the figures in all of the dreams and she saw things from all perspectives at once. She was her Uncle Stanislaw flying sorties over Germany with his comrade Zbigniew. She spirited secret things away from Europe and into Quebec. She felt Stanislaw’s sorrow when the wife he loved so much had had to die. She felt that intensely. She was Zbigniew making small lunches alone in his apartment off rue de Belleville. She saw the pathos in that. She saw herself running through Europe with Francis, dear Francis. She saw them running together in Paris, Rome, and Como. She was skating with Francis, and then with Emma Jung, on Beaver Lake in Montreal. Mrs. Jung was very pleased the Grail had been found. Their skate blades left portentous inscriptions on the ice. Natalia saw the wonder in that.

  Then all of their pursuers were running after them, singly and in a group all at the same time — running and running after her and Delaney everywhere they tried to hide.Their pursuers meant them only harm, the purest harm. The Shadow archetype, clearly. But part of life too, she thought as she lay in the snow. Something to be feared only if not accepted as part of life too. Natalia had that faith.

  Of course she had dreamed all this before, or most of it. She had just not seen with such clarity how the many parts could begin to fit together. She felt no fear, no sadness.

  But then there was sudden intense pain in her side. It intruded sharply on her dreamings. Her head felt light and the branches of the trees over her seemed now to sway too fast. Her feet began to feel cold. She wished in her dream that Francis would come back, wished that he had not gone at all. She imagined him hurrying through the silent woods. Hurrying because he loved her. She could imagine the intense concentration on his face as he walked. She could hear the crunch of his footsteps on the snow.

  The footsteps stopped suddenly. They were now close by. But Natalia knew when she turned her head to see that it would not be Francis beside her. The snow felt cold when it touched her left cheek after she turned. She lay with her face on this freezing pillow to see how the waking dream would end. The shadow man in the dark overcoat who stood there was a stranger. He had come from the direction of the lake and the church. Not from where Francis had gone. So Francis, she knew, was safe. The man came closer. He was all of their pursuers at once and she had suspected all of them would eventually come.

  There was intense fear now. And sadness. All the fearful images of all the past days and weeks began to well up in her mind in one last overwhelming sequence. She put her gloved hands over her eyes and forehead to block these nightmare images out, to force them back to the place where they were from. This was too much. Even for a psychologist. She wanted to rest now. She interlaced her fingers on the top of her head and pressed down hard to stop the mass of images from tumbling out.

  *

  Delaney knew immediately when he heard the faroff gunshot that Natalia was dead. The blood ran suddenly ice cold in his veins. He was almost at the village when he heard it: one shot, a handgun, far away. He had met no one along the way, and this, he now knew, was a very bad sign, the worst of signs. He hesitated only a moment before starting to run back the way he had come. He hoped, he dared to dream, that he was wrong, but he knew as he ran clumsily along the snowy path that it was over.

  He started to cry as he ran. The emotions were intense, raw, exposed. He cried and he shouted Natalia’s name and hurled curses as he ran. When he got there he was overheated, panting, with hot rivulets of sweat streaming under his shirt and sweater. Snowflakes had started to fall again gently. The body of the man he had killed was now lightly covered with snow. The blood on the snow around the body was frozen into a granular light red patch.

  Delaney did not stop there. He ran to where Natalia lay, much as she lay when he had so rashly left her there only a short while ago.

  The snow all around her was trampled now with footprints. She lay on her back as he had left her, with her head tilted to the left. Her hands were interlocked over her head, as if to protect it from the shot she had known was coming. But the bullet had smashed through her hands, and now her hair and dead fingers were a sticky mass of blood. Delaney fell to his knees; nausea and numbness gripped him. His shotgun fell useless on the snow.

  It was a good and private place for mourning. The woods were intensely silent. The falling snow made no sound. He knelt with her for a long time while tears burned slow freezing lines down his cheeks. When the tears eventually stopped, the numbness began to increase. He felt a great circle of emptiness spreading out from the centre of his guts. He was no stranger to numbness, had known it well throughout his life. He had ceased being numb for a time; he had forgotten or escaped it these past weeks with Natalia, but he hoped it would now come back. It would be welcome.

  Eventually, he got to his feet. He had no taste anymore for clues or searches, but he felt compelled to look around in the snow nonetheless. At least as a witness to what had been done. He did not look at Natalia or at her wound. One look was all he would need for a lifetime.

  There was nothing around her that told him exactly how it had been. Her gun, his gun, lay a short distance away. He left it there. The leather chalice case was gone. He did not want it anyway. The Mazovia Squadron pennant lay all but buried in the snow, one edge fluttering in the chill air. He did not retrieve it. He saw footprints leading in every direction: his own, hers, her killer’s. He did not wish to run and chase. He felt no immediate desire for vengeance. There was no longer any reason for action or haste or violence. Perhaps that would come again later. Perhaps not.

  He cried again for a long while, standing on the darkening path. When he turned to look again, Natalia was covered with a thin clean layer of snow. That was a good thing. He could not see her face anymore or her hideously wounded head. The guns were covered too. The snow in an overlong Quebec winter covers a multitude of sins.

  The whine of engines ended this first period of mourning. It came from the direction of the village. The sound grew louder, closer, but he waited without fear. Soon an olive-green-and-yellow Sûreté de Québec snowmobile bounced into sight, and then another. Two uniformed SQ officers in big coats sat astride them. They wore goggles and black fur hats. When the first policeman saw Delaney and the body of a man lying across the path he raised his hand and motioned for his partner to stop behind him. Both of them drew pistols and crouched behind their machines.

  “OK, là, les mains sur la tête!” one of the policemen shouted.

  Delaney doubted very much they would shoot if he refused to put his hands on his
head. He simply stood and stared. Slowly the policemen stood up, both of their guns still pointed at this staring, unarmed, coatless man as they tried to make sense of what they had found.

  They brought the broken amateur spy back to the church parking lot, carrying on along the path to the frozen lake and then across it. Delaney was on the back of the lead snowmobile, watched over by the policeman who followed on the one behind. The police had touched nothing they found lying in the snow. But they had muttered often to each other in French as they began to realize exactly what they had discovered. They had spoken tersely into walkie-talkies, but asked few questions as they searched Delaney for weapons, handcuffed him, and helped him climb onto one of their machines for the ride back.

  There were many cars in the parking lot now: SQ cruisers, unmarked cars, his own Mercedes. There was no sign of the large white Ford. The man nominally in charge seemed to be one uniformed, ruddy-faced, and apparently very unhappy member of the Sûreté de Québec. He wore an oversized green nylon parka and giant rubber boots with thick bluefelt liners showing at the tops. A small droplet of crystal-clear mucus sat poised to fall from the end of his nose as he listened to the report from the two officers who had brought Delaney in.

  The man actually in charge, Delaney soon discovered, was someone else. This one wore a very urban wool topcoat of midnight blue and only small rubber protectors pulled over his brown wing-tip shoes. He had removed his fine brown leather gloves and placed them in a coat pocket. This man listened gravely as the police sergeant briefed him, in turn, on what had apparently been discovered in the woods. He then closely examined the contents of the two wallets that had been taken from Delaney.

  The city man rubbed his hand over his closecropped, salt-and-pepper hair. He considered Delaney for a long time from afar, and he stared at him intently before he and the senior police officer came over.

  “Je pense qu’avec celui ci, c’est préférable si on pose les questions en anglais,” he said to the policeman in perfect Ottawa civil servant’s French. “Je pense qu’avec celui ci, c’est préférable, si vous êtes d’accord.”