Polonaise

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘I wonder if Napoleon would let you,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Croaking again! I tell you, I’m sick of it!’

  ‘Then perhaps, Highness, it would be best if I were to make arrangements to go back to England.’ The words were out almost before Jenny knew what she was doing. ‘With so many people leaving, I am sure I could find someone to go with.’

  ‘What?’ This had surprised the Princess. ‘You want to leave us? Casimir would miss you.’ She was thinking about it.

  ‘I think perhaps it is time I went, Highness. I shall be more sorry than I can say to leave Casimir, but the fact remains that I am British; all the rumours suggest that we will be ordered out any day now. Do you want an acknowledged enemy in your household?’

  ‘Oh, enemy! It won’t be like that. We’re not going to war, or anything so absurd. It’s just that your nation of tradesmen are making life impossible for us.’

  ‘You’re sure it is not Napoleon who is doing that? His Berlin Decrees came first, after all.’

  ‘Oh, politics! I’m sick to death of them. Ring for my maid, Jenny, I must go and start making arrangements for my official farewells. You know how long it can take.’

  ‘But about me,’ Jenny paused, hand on the bell-pull. ‘If I am to go, Highness, I must start thinking about arrangements, too.’ It was not going to be easy, either. She had lived luxuriously with the Princess, but the only pay she had ever received had been the ruby necklace Prince Ovinski had given her, so long ago. She would have to arrange to sell it, and hope that it would fetch enough to pay the expenses of her journey. And return home penniless … It was not a happy prospect.

  ‘Oh, do as you think best,’ said the Princess impatiently. ‘If you are homesick, pray don’t let me keep you. Casimir will miss you, of course.’ She did not choose to say that she would.

  ‘But not for long.’ Jenny rang the bell.

  The serf who answered it brought the news that Mr. Rendel had called and was waiting in one of the small salons.

  ‘Tell him I’m out,’ said the Princess. And then, ‘No, you see him for me, Jenny. Perhaps he will help you with your arrangements. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Give him my best wishes for a safe journey home, and bid him goodbye for me. Tell him there is no need for him to call again.’ She turned to the maid. ‘My furs, Gabriela. I’m going out.’

  Dismissed, Jenny made her gloomy way to the seldom-used parlour, where Glynde Rendel had been left to wait. The Princess must have already given orders that he was to be treated as a less than welcome guest.

  He was standing, looking out at the bleak garden, where snow was falling idly. ‘Highness!’ He turned eagerly at the sound of the door, then: ‘Miss Peverel,’ on a falling note.

  ‘Mr. Rendel. I am so sorry, the Princess has had to go out. She asked me to make her excuses, and wish you well for your journey home.’

  ‘Home? She thinks I am leaving?’

  ‘Perhaps she thinks you would be wise to do so.’

  ‘Kind of her to think about me. It’s true; my friend Leveson Gower was approached by someone, just the other day, offering to buy his horses, assuming he was leaving.’

  ‘As if they knew something he didn’t?’

  ‘Exactly. The town is so full of rumours it’s impossible to be sure of anything. But the Princess –’ his tone softened when he spoke of her. ‘She must have access to the most reliable information. Such exalted company as she keeps.’ He coloured. ‘Forgive me, I do not wish to sound like another Petersburg gossip, but it was impossible not to recognise the guest who was leaving as I arrived. No wonder I have been left to cool my heels!’ He smiled at her, that heart-twisting smile. ‘Do you remember the first time they met? And what a disaster it would have been, but for your quick wits? And hers! I’m so glad she has such a good friend in him,’ he went on, careful, Jenny noticed, not to name the august name. ‘It’s a heavy burden of responsibility she carries since the Prince’s death. The little Prince – the hope of Poland – and all his estates. Will she stay here in Petersburg much longer, do you think?’

  ‘No.’ Here was her chance to get her unwelcome message across. ‘I think she plans to leave quite soon.’

  ‘His advice?’

  ‘I think, Mr. Rendel, you must see that that is entirely her affair,’ she said gently.

  ‘Forgive me! I care so much … If only I could be of use to her … serve her in some way.’ His colour was high again, and she actually felt herself sorry for him. ‘We were such friends, such good friends, back at Rendomierz …’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘But everything was different there, Mr. Rendel. You must see that. There, she was the châtelaine, the mistress of the house. Here, she’s a great lady.’

  ‘You feel it, too?’ Suddenly she had his attention.

  ‘Yes. In fact, Mr. Rendel, I had it in mind to ask you …’ She paused, looking for the right words. ‘If you should know of an English family, going back, who might need a travelling companion, a governess, anything?’

  ‘You?’ Now she had his concentrated attention. ‘But you’d never leave her! Not you. Her right hand. Her support. Surely, her friend? You’d never fail her so!’

  ‘Fail?’ She could have shaken him. ‘It’s not quite like that, Mr. Rendel. We British are sadly out of favour here. I think the Princess is beginning to wonder whether she could afford to keep me.’

  ‘Afford? But she’s rich beyond measure, beyond comprehension …’

  Jenny laughed, surprising them both. ‘Not that kind of expense, Mr. Rendel.’ She looked down at her silk dress, her cashmere shawl. ‘The Princess has been kindness itself to me, generous, as to all her dependants.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘We must look well, or shame her. But,’ she looked up and met his eyes, ‘she treats me like the rest of her serfs. I’ve never had a penny in salary from her, all the time I’ve been with her. I have to tell you this.’ She had seen how it shocked him. ‘Because I need to ask you, Mr. Rendel, if you could bring yourself to help me in selling my only earnings, a ruby necklace the Prince gave me, years ago, at Rendomierz. That has to pay my passage home.’

  ‘But why do you want to go? To leave her?’ In his deep concern for the Princess, he was hardly taking in her own predicament.

  ‘Because she thinks it’s time I went. Just now, the British connection is an ill-omened one. We have to face it, Mr. Rendel, she is better without us, you and me.’

  ‘Oh.’ She watched him, infinitely sorry for him, as he took it in. ‘You mean, she wants me to go, too?’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’ve been stupid, haven’t I? Time I went. And of course I’ll help you to a safe way home to England, if that is really what you want; what she wants! But the boy, Prince Casimir, who will care for him as you have done?’

  ‘That does worry me, he’s such a promising child! But even his mother doesn’t seem to see what harm it does him to be let run wild as he is.’ She could not tell him or anyone of her greatest anxiety: the strong, unreasonable dislike Casimir had taken to the Tsar. Or was it unreasonable?

  ‘She has so much on her mind.’ Glynde took Jenny’s hand, and felt it quiver in his. ‘Don’t go! Don’t leave her. I’m sure, in her heart, she knows how badly she and the boy need you. If I do have to go, I’d be so much happier to know you are still with them. Please?’

  ‘It’s not my decision. If she wants me to go, I go.’

  ‘And if she does, I’ll help you. She’s really out? If I could only see her; try to persuade her.’

  ‘She’s really out.’ Withdrawing her hand. ‘But, Mr. Rendel, she doesn’t want to see you. I’m sorry.’

  She found Marylka waiting in her room. ‘There’s a message, Pani Jenny. Lech brought it. Someone spoke to him as he left the cathedral this morning. They say it is time the Princess went home. And took you with her. You weren’t thinking of leaving us, pani? They told Lech to remind you and the mistress that their arm is long. If you try to go to England, you’ll be stopped as
a spy. Were you really thinking of leaving us?’

  ‘It had come up … The Princess …’

  ‘Is thinking Russian thoughts,’ said Marylka surprisingly. ‘They’re right, pani. It is time we went home.’

  The Princess came back from her afternoon round of visits in a thoughtful mood. She surprised Jenny by sending for her at once.

  ‘They all say I am wise to go.’ She had dismissed her maid. ‘I hadn’t quite realised how little the Empress and the Empress Mother like the French. And they say feeling in Moscow is fierce against this alliance; that the Tsar will never be able to hold to it; even if he goes on wanting to. That this is a time when wise people stay at home and keep quiet. Sir Robert Wilson was at the Empress Mother’s palace; treated like a dear friend; he’s just back with some new message for the Tsar. To England and back in seventeen days, or something amazing like that. An uppish young man, very full of himself, but the Empress Mother seems to like him just the same. I don’t know what to think, Jenny.’

  It was good to be called Jenny again. ‘Princess, I’ve had a message; from the Brotherhood. They say it’s time you went home. And –’ she felt herself colour ‘– They want you to take me with you.’

  ‘Taking a great deal on themselves!’ The Princess was predictably angry. ‘But of course that was a crazy idea of yours, about going back to England. I can’t think what put it into your head. You’re part of my family. Mine and Casimir’s. We can’t possibly do without you, so let that be the end of it, please.’

  ‘Very well.’ A brave woman, Jenny thought, would have said something about a salary, but, if so, she was not a brave woman.

  Two days later, the Foreign Minister, Count Rumyantsev, declared war on England. A hastily scrawled message from Glynde informed Jenny that he was leaving with Granville Leveson Gower. ‘I have spoken to George Richards,’ he wrote. ‘He promises to look after you, if you feel you must leave, but may I urge you once again to stay. I am so very sorry not to be able to see you, or the Princess again. Please assure her of my enduring devotion and earnest hope that we will meet again.’

  ‘So much for that,’ said the Princess. I’ll never see him again, thought Jenny. And Glynde, starting out on the long, dangerous journey home, found himself thinking what a gallant companion she would have made. And thanking God she had stayed with the Princess, and his son.

  Chapter 22

  England seemed a foreign land to Glynde after his five years abroad. All the talk that winter of 1807 was of Napoleon’s new wars against Spain and Portugal. British progress there was of much more interest to the public than anything that had been going on so much further away, in eastern Europe. People asked him polite questions about life in Russia, and then hardly listened to his answers. Nothing the Tsar could do was half so important in English eyes as the fact that the would-be King of France, Louis XVIII, had landed at Yarmouth under the name of the Count de Lille, and been received without much enthusiasm by the British government, itself involved in abortive peace negotiations with Napoleon.

  Glynde’s old friend Canning was still Foreign Minister, but he, too, was preoccupied with the seething pot of the Iberian Peninsula. And he had been infuriated by Glynde’s continued refusal to tell him the source of the vital information about the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit that had precipitated British action both in Denmark and in Portugal. It weighed on Glynde’s conscience that he had not done so. But to tell Canning that his informant was Talleyrand would have meant telling him of their relationship, and how could he do that? He had held to it that his source had been a lady he must not compromise, thought Canning justifiably angry, and been sad but not surprised when Canning made only vague promises about future employment for him.

  Feeling at odds with London society, he went to pay the essential courtesy visit at Ringmer Place, and was shocked at the change in Lord Ringmer’s appearance. He had become an old man, and Glynde supposed his son must stay with him out of filial anxiety, but they made an irascible pair, and it was a relief to receive an invitation from his mother’s surviving sister.

  Maud Savage had moved to Brighton long before the Prince Regent had made the little watering place popular. She had been the beauty of her family and the gossips had been surprised when she failed to marry. As a child, Glynde had been afraid of her sharp tongue, but when he came back wounded and in disgrace from Valmy, it was she who had taken him in and nursed him back to health. Her comfortable, unpretentious house in Ship Street, with its wide views of the sea, had been home to him from then on.

  ‘It’s good to be home.’ He had ridden over the downs from Ringmer. ‘You’ve not changed in the least, aunt.’ It was almost true. Always small, fine-boned, elegant, she was tiny now, the grey hair white, the blue eyes sharp as ever.

  ‘I won’t say the same of you.’ She looked him over thoughtfully. ‘You’ve grown up, I believe. Or are growing? Something that brother of yours will never do. How did you find them? He and your father?’

  ‘Not my father.’ Had he meant to tell her this?

  ‘Ah? You found out. That’s a weight off my mind. I’d been wondering whether it was not perhaps my duty to tell you. In fairness to him as much as anything else.’

  ‘It does explain a good deal. Why should he like me? I have to be grateful to him for letting me take his name.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘But my mother? Aunt Maud, I have to know. How was he to her?’

  ‘Do you need to ask? Irreproachably courteous and unbelievably cruel. I wanted her to come here to me; he would not allow it. If he was going to acknowledge you as his, there must be nothing to suggest otherwise. It killed her, I think, the way he treated her. She tried so hard to live, to endure it, for your sake, but she wasn’t strong like me. She was a gentle creature, your mother; she could not bear the quiet unkindness. They called it a wasting disease, but I think it was just misery. I wanted to have you when she died, but of course he would not allow that either. How do he and his son go on?’

  ‘Badly. They are too much alike to be able to live together. I cannot imagine why they do.’

  ‘Of necessity. Can you really not have heard of your brother’s marriage?’

  ‘He’s married!’

  ‘Disastrously. A run-away match with what he thought was a great fortune. A complete take-in, and to make things worse, the poor girl bore him an idiot child, then lost her own wits. The expense of keeping the two of them shut away, and some extravagances of his own constrain him to live at Ringmer…’

  ‘Dear God! I knew nothing of it. Poor Christopher …’

  ‘Well, yes, poor Christopher. Up to a point.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That the insanity is on his side, and that I suspect it was his treatment of his wife after the child was born that sent her off her head. I cannot tell you how glad I am that his name is all you can have inherited from Lord Ringmer, Glynde.’

  ‘But you’re sure? This is certain?’ He could not help thinking of how it might affect him. Suppose the Princess should hear that he came from tainted stock.

  ‘Certain enough for anyone who cared to investigate. You did not know that I was engaged to your father first? I broke it off after I saw him in one of his rages, asked a few questions. Like a proud fool, I went away, kept quiet about my reasons. I sometimes think he married your poor mother to spite me. But that’s enough of the sad past. Are you taking in what this means for your future? Like it or not, you are likely to find yourself Lord Ringmer in the end. He can hardly disown you now.’

  ‘No wonder they hate me.’ He was thinking of the Princess again, that sharp question of hers. If he went back to her, as Lord Ringmer? But, with a tale of madness in the family?

  ‘It’s not easy, is it, Glynde?’ Her tone made him wonder just how much she knew, or suspected. ‘Pull the bell for me, would you? I tend to drink a glass of something at this time of day, for my health’s sake, and I imagine you would not mind joining me.’ And
then, when he had poured wine for them both. ‘Now, tell me about this fairy-tale Princess of yours.’

  ‘Fairy-tale?’

  ‘That’s how you painted her in your letters. A creature of fantasy. A rose without a thorn. Poor Glynde.’ Her smile was almost more understanding than he could bear. ‘Do you love her so very much?’

  ‘How can I help it?’

  ‘Your bright, particular star? I’m glad you have come home. You’ve been mad a little, have you not? Beglamoured?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Reluctantly. It angered him to sense what a fool she thought him for his passion, but how could he tell her the truth of his relationship with the Princess, the grounds he had for his obstinate hope?

  ‘Here’s to romance!’ She drained her glass. ‘A little of it never hurt anyone. But I’ll tell you one thing, Glynde, before we start looking about for a good match for you. The person your letters made me want to meet was not your fairy Princess at all, but plain Miss Peverel from the other end of Sussex. I did meet her once, at Petworth House, a very long time ago. A quiet young thing, I remember, but she struck me as having a great deal of sense, and concealing it admirably.’

  Glynde laughed. ‘Miss Peverel to the life. She is a most inspiring listener. The Princess is lucky to have her for a companion, and as for the little Prince, Jenny Peverel has been the making of him. All Europe may be grateful to her one day.’

  In the end, the Princess went to Rendomierz. She paused long enough at Vinsk to celebrate Christmas and see Grucz remarried to one of his numerous poverty-stricken cousins, and Jenny, who had refused him three times on the journey, breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I need you with me,’ was all the Princess said about it. ‘Rendomierz is going to be a dead bore after Petersburg. I mean to spend most of the winters in Warsaw, of course.’