Polonaise

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘Did I not tell you? No, I do believe I quite forgot to. Do you remember that lightning visit your friend Genet paid us in August?’

  ‘Why, yes?’ Jenny remembered it well.

  ‘He wrote that I must tell no one,’ the Princess said now. ‘Talleyrand, I mean. You didn’t think I could keep a secret so well, did you, Jenny? And one that concerns you, in a way, such a friend of yours as he has always been.’

  ‘Who? I do not understand you, Highness.’

  ‘Who but Mr. Rendel? It was Talleyrand’s idea; a brilliant one as his all are. He’s a good friend to me, and to Casimir. He had heard – he who hears everything – that all was not entirely well with my school. It was his suggestion, do you remember, in the first place?’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’ Where could this be leading?

  ‘He said he had heard about the problems. Had thought about it. Decided what was needed was a strong hand at the top of the school; an undivided command. He made a recommendation that surprised me at first, until I had time to think it over. Then, of course, I could see the sense of it. Who better than an Englishman to oversee the education of a future constitutional monarch?’

  ‘An Englishman? Who?’ But she was afraid she knew.

  ‘Who but Mr. Rendel? Such a good friend to us all. Talleyrand took a great liking to him when they met at Tilsit, Genet told me, has followed his career since he was back in England. He’s had a hard time of it, poor man. His friend Canning did nothing for him; and now Canning’s out of office himself after some crazy duel. He’s had nothing to do, poor Mr. Rendel, but dangle at the apron strings of some spinster aunt or other.’

  ‘Glynde Rendel?’ Jenny took it in slowly. ‘You must be out of your mind, Isobel. I can sooner imagine Napoleon turning priest than Mr. Rendel turning schoolmaster. He’ll never come. Besides, how could he?’

  ‘Monsieur Talleyrand very kindly promised to see to all that.’ The Princess still looked guiltily mischievous. ‘Will you have a small bet with me that Mr. Rendel comes?’

  ‘No,’ said Jenny uncompromisingly. ‘Not unless you tell me in just what terms you invited him.’

  ‘The briefest possible, of course. A letter that was to pass through so many hands. Oh well, if by any chance he has been so foolish as to misunderstand it, we will just have to do our best to make it up to him.’

  Jan Warrington had called on Mr. Harris, the American Consul at St. Petersburg, to be presented to the first American Ambassador, Mr. Adams. Hurrying home along the quay, he held his mittened hands across his face to keep off the biting February wind. Enough snow had fallen to make the going fairly safe, and he was finding his way almost without the use of his eyes, when, as he reached his own house, a figure loomed towards him out of the gathering dusk. A footpad? A beggar? The secret police?

  ‘Jan! It’s me, Glynde. Don’t say anything. You know my voice? Take me in with you.’

  ‘You here? You’re mad! Stark staring mad.’ But he rang a peal at his own door, stood aside to usher the muffled figure in ahead of him. ‘Come up to my room. We’ll look after ourselves.’ He dismissed the hovering servant.

  Removing his own fur hat and wadded coat, he was relieved to see Glynde revealing an immense, obliterating growth of beard. He also recognised his friend’s haggard exhaustion. ‘You’re worn out. Food first, or sleep?’

  ‘Something to drink? You’re not going to turn me in?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. I owe you this, for Cracow.’ He opened the bedroom door to shout down instructions for a hot toddy, soup. At once. Turning back to Glynde, he saw him clumsily trying to take off his heavy duffel coat. ‘God! Your hands. What have you been doing, Glynde?’

  ‘Working my passage. Not precisely what I expected, but it has been an interesting experience. I’m filthy, Jan, disgusting. I should have a bath first.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ But Jan was beginning to smell him. ‘Something hot inside you first of all. When did you last eat?’

  ‘If you can call it eating. No questions, Jan, till my mind’s clear? For old time’s sake. For hers, if you like.’

  ‘The Princess? You’re on your way there?’

  ‘Where else? You’ll help me?’

  ‘It depends why you are going. But I’ll most certainly not betray you. You can count on that.’

  ‘I knew I could. What are you going to tell your servants? Can you trust them?’

  ‘Of course not. Have you any papers?’

  ‘None. We were wrecked in the Gulf. Those damned pirates of islanders … They took everything I had. Would have killed me, I suppose, only they were short of manpower. Put me to work instead. A galley slave? I jumped ship in the end; damned lucky to be alive …’ His words were beginning to slur, his head drooping forwards towards the empty soup bowl.

  ‘You’re an American,’ said Jan loudly. ‘An American to whom all this happened. Remember that, Glynde, if you remember nothing else.’

  ‘An American. Of course. Thank you, Jan.’ The savagely chapped lips, smiling in the tawny forest of beard, gave the first real hint of the old, charming Glynde Rendel. Then, before Jan could leap up to catch him, he fell forward with a great clatter of broken crockery.

  He slept for twenty-four hours, during which Jan did a great deal of thinking. Summoned to his bedside at the first hint of his waking, he smiled down at him. ‘I am glad to see you better, Cousin Clancy. We’ve been anxious about you.’ His hand, lightly on Glynde’s was a’warning.

  ‘Cousin!’ Glynde smiled sleepily. ‘I thank God for you, Cousin Jan.’

  When he next waked, he proclaimed himself better, demanded a bath, but refused to be shaved. ‘I think I like myself as a caveman. The spit of Granpa, wouldn’t you say, Cousin Jan?’

  ‘So who am I? If you’ve got that far? And I do thank you from my heart for getting there so quick.’ Glynde was sitting across the fire from Jan in his study, his beard neatly trimmed, his hands bandaged.

  ‘A Polish American adventurer.’ He laughed. ‘You look every inch the part. I’d never have thought you had it in you. I’ve told Harris you’re my cousin. He’s our Consul,’ he explained. ‘He’ll tell Adams, the new Ambassador. They’ll want to see you, of course, when you’re strong enough. Lucky you’ve never met either of them.’

  ‘A Pole.’ Glynde was enjoying this. ‘But, my voice, Jan, my accent. Where am I from in your United States?’

  ‘Difficult, isn’t it? I decided you were a second cousin of my mother’s; your family emigrated at about the same time as hers did. I’d have made it New England, only Adams is from there, you’d never fool him, so it has to be the south. The wild hinterland of Georgia. By the time they check up on you, we’ll have you safe away to Vilno. I can manage that; you’ll be on your own from there. If you’re sure you must put your head into the lion’s mouth. You do know that Rendomierz is in French hands now? Part of Napoleon’s new Duchy of Warsaw?’

  ‘I didn’t when I left England. Too late to fret about it now. Have you news of the Princess, Jan?’ Eagerly.

  ‘Not much, since the Richards finally went home last year, but one does hear, of course. She was at Vienna last summer, intriguing for the Poles. Close friends with Poniatowski, they say.’

  ‘And you, Jan? Do you still have hopes for Poland?’

  ‘Czartoryski is back at the Tsar’s side. That has to be good news for Poland. But we know nothing here of what really goes on in the Duchy of Warsaw. Frankly, that’s one reason why I’ll gladly help you get there. You’ll promise to write and tell me how things are?’

  ‘If you can find me a safe channel.’

  ‘Oh, I can do that. There are great advantages about being in my way of business. Merchants have to be in touch with the world. You won’t mind going to Vilno disguised as one?’

  ‘Delighted! And glad to see you such a success, Jan.’

  ‘No thanks to you British! But we won’t start that old argument about your policy on trade, though it will be a
miracle if it doesn’t come to war between our countries, sooner or later. If you should find means of writing home to England, you can tell them I said so. For what that’s worth!’

  ‘A good deal, I should think.’ He did not choose to reply to Jan’s hinted question about his means of communication with England. Jan had changed, he thought, in the years since he had last seen him.

  ‘Time I kept my appointment with Mr. Adams.’ Jan stood up. ‘And told him the dramatic tale of my cousin who came to study business and got wrecked on the way. Let’s just go through it again. It’s all solid, I take it,’ he said, when they had gone through the lists of dates and names of ships. ‘I must congratulate whoever arranged it for you. They did a good job.’

  ‘Yes.’ Again he ignored the hinted question.

  Jan returned from visiting Mr. Adams full of the news he had heard there. ‘Would you believe it?’ He broke into speech as his man was helping him out of his coat. ‘Napoleon’s to marry! That assassination attempt has taught him he’s mortal!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A slap in the face for the Tsar! There was talk after Erfurt of a proposal for the Grand Duchess Catherine. Well, she’s safely married, but there was still the Grand Duchess Anne.’

  ‘It’s not her?’

  ‘No. He is to marry the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria as soon as the arrangements can be completed.’

  ‘Good God! After Austerlitz; after Wagram! What will the Tsar do, do you think?’

  ‘Arm,’ said Jan. ‘But he’s doing that already. It’s a consignment of guns you’ll be accompanying to Vilno. But you’ll be taking good news to the Princess, if she’s not heard it already.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The news of the Austrian marriage. Much better for Poland than a Russian alliance would have been. I happen to know that the French Ambassador, Caulaincourt, had agreed, on Napoleon’s behalf, that in return for the Russian match he would undertake that the Kingdom of Poland would never be restored, the word Poland erased from history. Tell the Princess that if she repines over the Austrian marriage.’

  ‘But that’s not good news for Poland either.’ Glynde was thinking how much Jan seemed to know.

  ‘What is!’

  Chapter 25

  The Princess insisted on going to Warsaw for the carnival season of 1810, but Jenny stayed behind. They had found the little boys badly out of hand when they got back from Vienna, the tutors quarrelling among themselves and the children taking advantage of it. Only their gymnastic and military studies seemed to be pursued to any advantage. Herr von Stenck, the Master at Arms, was a strict disciplinarian when he was not keeping the boys spellbound with tales of his own exploits fighting the Russians under Kosciusko in the nineties.

  Casimir, still the ringleader, had been delighted to see Jenny, and by persuading him, she managed to get some sort of attendance at lessons, despite the obvious scorn of other little boys whose own fathers could neither read nor write. A firm, male hand was certainly needed. She did not know whether to fear or to hope that Glynde would really come, but could not help hoping.

  The Princess returned at last full of news. ‘The Emperor’s to be married.’ In her own room, she was letting Jenny help her out of her furs.

  ‘Napoleon? Not –’

  ‘Not to Marie Walewska, be sure. No, it’s the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise. The poor Walewska’s nose is quite out of joint; she came creeping back to the Duchy and – would you believe it – is about to bear what they call her husband’s child, at his house. I do wonder just what bribes persuaded old Walewski to that!’

  ‘Oh, poor Marie!’ Jenny remembered that autumn’s golden hopes.

  ‘Poor Josephine, come to that. I don’t suppose she much likes being divorced. But now Marie’s proved him potent, Napoleon’s mad for an heir; a dynasty. Well, he needs it. Just imagine what would happen if he were killed in one of his desperate victories. That brother of his, Joseph, couldn’t even manage Spain, still less all Europe. The empire would fall apart in no time without him. Which might not be a bad thing for us Poles,’ she went on thoughtfully. ‘But my cousin, Josef, is still convinced Napoleon is only biding his time to do us justice.’

  ‘He thinks Napoleon will keep better faith with Poland than he has with Marie Walewska?’ asked Jenny bitterly.

  ‘The Emperor needs his Poles.’ She changed the subject. ‘What’s this I hear about Casimir being beaten for neglecting his studies?’

  ‘He said he wouldn’t learn Russian, Princess. That it was the language of tyrants.’ The Tsar’s language? ‘It was a very small beating. I’m afraid he’s boasting about it. It’s hard to know what to do for the best with those boys.’

  ‘Time Glynde Rendel got here.’

  ‘You’ve heard something?’ If only her heart would be quiet.

  ‘Not a word. But he’ll come. And the sooner the better. Anna Potocka is going to Paris for the great wedding. She asked me to go too. There is money owed to her husband’s family for occupation expenses. They have asked her to go and see if she can get it for them. Innocents! She didn’t take much persuading. Her adored Flahaut will be there, won’t he? Dear me,’ thoughtfully, ‘do you remember what exciting times those were in Warsaw, when the French were first there? Everyone will be in Paris for the wedding! I’ve half a mind to go with Anna, if Mr. Rendel would only get here and take charge of our problem boys for us.’

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking I would go too?’

  ‘You’d rather stay behind and help Glynde Rendel look after the boys? If he would just get here!’

  ‘Pani Jenny?’ Marylka was waiting for Jenny in the little house she had made very much her own, with books on the shelves Lech had built and brilliantly coloured rugs, woven by the village women, on the floor.

  ‘Yes? You’re out late, Marylka. What is it?’

  ‘I wish I knew! The village is full of rumours. But nothing from them.’ She and Jenny never mentioned the Brotherhood by name if they could help it. ‘Has the Princess heard anything?’

  ‘If she has, she’s not told me. But what are the rumours?’

  ‘Something about Vinsk, pani. About Miriam, the woman who manages it for the Princess. There is talk that she is coming here. And – she has enemies – that they will attack her on the way.’

  ‘But nothing from Them? That’s very strange, surely.’

  ‘That’s why I came to you. In case it is Them. Because there’s something else, the reason why she’s coming without leave. There have been two strangers at Vinsk. Come from Petersburg, perhaps? She’s bringing them here, they say. But the word in the village is that they’ll never arrive.’

  Jenny’s blood ran cold. Glynde? Could it be? By way of Petersburg? Head in both lions’ mouths? But, possible. Jan Warrington was still there, after all. She hurried over to the palace to tell the Princess. ‘But why would the Brotherhood want to stop them?’ she concluded. ‘Not that I have ever really understood their motives.’

  ‘I think they change,’ said the Princess. ‘Josef Poniatowski said something to me in Warsaw. About a German society, the Tugendbund. Very secret. Very deadly. And no friends to Poland. I did wonder if he was trying to warn me of something.’

  ‘That they’ve taken over? It would be easy, wouldn’t it, with all that secrecy?’

  ‘Fool of a woman to start off without consulting me,’ said Princess Isobel. ‘Send for Wysocki, Jenny. Have him waked, if necessary. We must send out a party to meet them.’

  When he married the Princess, Prince Ovinski had ordered the building of staging houses at comfortable intervals on the journey between his estates at Vinsk and hers at Rendomierz, and Miriam’s pretext for her winter journey had been to make sure that the ones under her authority were fit for use. She gave out that she was going only as far as the border between Russian Lithuania and French Galicia.

  ‘But I wonder how many people believe her,’ said Jan to Glynde the night before they started.

  ‘Or beli
eve that you are going along for the pleasure of her company.’ Glynde had been surprised and delighted when Jan announced his firm intention of accompanying him to Vinsk, explaining that it was what he would do for a real cousin. It turned out to be a journey he had made many times before, and Glynde had watched with interest as Miriam greeted him as an old and valued friend. Or something more? Miriam must have been a beautiful woman, he thought, before the smallpox ravaged one side of her face; was still a handsome one, with a surprising air of command. The Vinsk estates had prospered under her management and Jan had helped and advised her through the problems of turning her trade away from bankrupt Prussia towards central Russia. The waggons that brought consignments of arms westwards towards the frontier were loaded with priceless cargoes of furs for the return journey, and Jan acted as her agent for their sale in Petersburg.

  ‘If all Russian estates were managed as well as Vinsk, the country would be a very different place,’ he told Glynde as they settled for the night on the third day of their journey south.

  ‘I wonder if the Princess knows how lucky she is,’ said Glynde, and then, quietly: ‘Has it struck you that we are being followed?’

  ‘Followed? Good God, no! What makes you think so?’

  ‘Hard to say. Instinct, if you like. Bird noises, and the lack of them. Just by one man, I’d say, or I’d have given the alarm sooner. But I think we should take it in turns to watch tonight. I rather wish our hostess had chosen to bring a larger escort.’

  ‘I doubt there are that many she can trust so absolutely,’ said Jan. ‘This secret way she knows, avoiding the border posts, is not something to be confided to any Tom, Dick or Harry.’

  ‘Or David or Benjamin, come to that. Interesting about the powerful Jewish network that seems to exist right across the frontiers.’

  ‘Remember how the frontiers change. And be grateful for the network. The border between Russia and French-held Poland’s hard to cross these days, with both sides arming and neither side admitting to it. Much better to take Miriam’s way through the woods.’