Polonaise

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘And yet you suggest I take him there?’

  ‘Yes. To learn they are just people, like the rest of us. If not to Vinsk, then to Petersburg, Princess, to the Ovinski Palace there. Safe in the heart of Russia.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind! You know how Napoleon moves! We’d find ourselves engulfed in the tide of the triumphant French army. Having proved ourselves traitors to their cause: the cause of Polish freedom. Have you gone a little off your head, dear Mr. Rendel? Or are you beginning to think of ways of getting home to England?’

  ‘Why in the world should I do that? Thanks to your goodness, Highness, I am a man of means here. There I’d be a pauper. Besides, here I have an occupation I enjoy; there I’d be an idle young man about town all over again. Highness!’ He crossed the little room to where she stood, half turned away to look out of the window at drizzling rain. ‘You aren’t trying to suggest that you wish to dispense with my services?’

  ‘Good God no! Never that!’ She turned to him, suddenly an eager girl, both hands outstretched. ‘How could you possibly imagine such a thing!’

  ‘I’m relieved! And you will forgive me for taking the liberty of an old,’ he paused, ‘friend, and giving you bad advice out of a full heart?’

  ‘Of course. Specially now you admit it is bad advice. But I’d forgive you anything, Mr. Rendel, you must know that. As the old friend that you are. Anything.’ He had not meant to take her hands, found himself holding them as she smiled up at him.

  ‘I thank you from my heart.’ Bending to kiss the smooth little hands that lay so snug in his, he had a sudden vision of Jenny’s strong brown fingers. ‘Then forgive me now, Highness, if I take my leave. I promised Casimir I’d see their new uniforms tonight.’

  ‘Deserting me for my son?’ Playfully.

  ‘For my duties.’ He smiled, bowed and left her.

  * * *

  ‘You’ll go to the ball at Zakret?’ Miriam asked Jan, who was still dividing his time between Vilno and Vinsk.

  ‘I must. If only I could take you with me! There will be no one to touch you there.’

  ‘Not even the little Countess Tysenhaus the Tsar has taken such a fancy to? You’re a shameless flatterer, Jan.’

  ‘I love you.’ Kissing her fingers. ‘The Tsar can have his little girls. When are you going to marry me, Miriam?’

  ‘If you still want me to; the day we sail for America. You know that such a marriage would be a disaster for you here. I have to take your word for it that it would not be there.’

  ‘Will not be there.’ But in his heart he knew she was right. As an unattached young American, he had the entrée everywhere in Russia. Married to Miriam, Jewish housekeeper to a Polish aristocrat, he would be an outcast. ‘I wish we could marry today and start home tomorrow!’

  ‘But we can’t.’ She did not make it a question.

  ‘If there was only any news! Nothing from across the border since Narbonne left for Dresden. To see the Tsar riding about the countryside and dancing with the Polish ladies, you’d think this really was just a normal visit. And now this ball! And nothing from the Brotherhood?’

  ‘I’m beginning to be afraid the last messenger I sent failed to get through.’

  ‘The Princess won’t have had your warning? Have you sent again?’

  ‘Not yet. I hate to risk a man’s life unnecessarily. There are so few, now, that one can trust. I have kept hoping to hear.’

  ‘Send again, Miriam. Today. The one thing I do know is that there is a Russian army operating in the south. I’d never forgive myself–’

  ‘You care so much about the Princess?’ She was looking at him thoughtfully.

  ‘Idiot!’ He bent to kiss her. ‘It’s the child. It’s Casimir … And Jenny Peverel. I’d not like her to come to harm. Nor my old friend, Glynde Rendel.’

  ‘I thought you disliked him.’

  ‘For a while. Ridiculous. I’m ashamed of it now. Do you know how much you have changed me, love?’

  ‘For the better, I hope? Jan! If you’re going to this ball, it’s time you left.’

  ‘And I must go, my darling. Promise me that if you’re worried about anything, you’ll send to the Russian camp.’

  ‘I promise.’ But she knew they would take no notice. ‘Come back soon, Jan.’

  ‘You know I will.’

  His officers were giving the ball for the Tsar at Zakret, the country house he had just bought from General Bennigsen, in order, as he charmingly said, to be truly a citizen of the Vilno district. There had been a moment of complete catastrophe when the temporary dance-room, built for the occasion, collapsed because of faulty construction, killing one workman. But, ‘Only one serf,’ had been the general, relieved conclusion. And no need to cancel. The weather was hot, they would spread carpets on the lawn and begin the ball out of doors. After all, in June, there were only a few hours of darkness, and a full moon.

  Arriving late, Jan was glad to find Adam Czartoryski in the crowd of people watching the Tsar open the ball by treading a polonaise with his Generals’ wives on the carpeted lawn. The air was heavy with the scent of orange trees in tubs, light cloud masked the full heat of the setting sun. ‘Your master wins all hearts,’ he told Adam in the English they always used.

  ‘And so he should.’ Adam smiled as the Tsar returned Madame Barclay de Tolly to her husband and led out the young Countess Tysenhaus. ‘I hope he breaks none. That child is only sixteen. Her father favours the French, I understand. Well,’ Jan was aware of his wry smile, ‘so does mine! These times try us all. I want to speak to you.’ He took Jan’s arm and led him clear of the crowd to a terrace, from which they could see the last glow of the setting sun on the ornamental cascades of the Vileka River. ‘We had a report on you the other day,’ he said when they were out of earshot.

  ‘A report on me?’ Jan managed a tone of innocent surprise.

  ‘Yes. A dangerous Polish spy!’ Could Adam’s tone really be faintly mocking? ‘And the associate of others. Is she so very beautiful, your Jewish lady?’

  ‘I love her.’

  ‘Then should you have involved her in your affairs?’

  ‘But –’ He stopped. How much did Adam know?

  ‘We’ve a long file on you.’ Adam might have read his thoughts. ‘Dating from Tilsit, when we began to think a little about you. Such an odd episode there. Don’t say anything. It’s not one we wish to know about. But I have been instructed to advise you that you might find the climate of your United States of America more healthy for a while. Particularly now, when the chance of war between your country and England seems to increase daily.’

  ‘You’re telling me to leave?’

  ‘I’m giving you a word of friendly advice, for your own good. I’d lose no time, if I were you. Get out, Jan, and if you really love your Jewish lady, take her with you. But look, they are serving supper.’ Serfs were placing little tables laden with food around the carpeted dance-floor, and people were already gathering round them. The huge moon had risen to outshine the illuminations. Holding out his glass to be refilled, Jan saw a servant speak quickly into Adam’s ear.

  ‘I must leave you for a moment. Stay here. I may need you.’ Adam stepped back into the crowd and disappeared.

  Food and drink were having their effect. Voices rose, laughs were louder, music playing somewhere nearby was lost among the joyful babble. Jan stood alone, draining his glass, brooding over Adam’s terrifying revelations, feeling more alone than ever in his life. He had been watched since Tilsit. Idiot. Fool. Who would he have implicated? Who would he not? That missing messenger. Miriam. Glynde. Jenny Peverel. A servant was about to refill his glass. ‘No!’ He threw it to the ground. Miriam. No time to lose. Marry today and leave tomorrow. He turned, looking about for the quickest way out of this perfumed garden and found Adam Czartoryski once more at his elbow.

  ‘The French are across the Niemen.’ Adam’s voice, speaking English, was a thread of sound against the background of music and laughter.

&
nbsp; ‘Across?’

  ‘The Niemen. It’s started. Hell is open. And Vinsk is in their line of march. It’s to be secret still. The Tsar will dance this evening out. But …’

  ‘Thank you, Adam.’

  Riding through the moon-drenched night, Jan did the same desperate calculation over and over again. A day’s hard ride to Vinsk. Haifa day from Vinsk to the frontier. And the French were across it already. He should never have left Miriam exposed there. But he had thought the French still far off in Prussian Poland. Had the Tsar known they were just across the Niemen? And, knowing, agreed to dance the night away, safe to the east of Vilno? Thinking back, as he guided his horse along the well-known tracks, he was sure that Adam had known how near the French were. It explained the note of urgency in his advice.

  And the Tsar wanted the French move kept secret still. Would let his Polish Russian subjects stay ignorantly in their homes to be engulfed by the French advance. He was glad that his shortest way to Vinsk avoided Vilno so he did not have to decide whether to lose precious time giving the alarm there. But when he stopped at noon to bait his tired horse at the hovel of an inn he always used between Vilno and Vinsk he asked the obsequious landlord eagerly for news.

  ‘News? None, lord. They took my son, my Benjamin, for the army! Now I’ve no one to send to Vilno. How can I go myself and leave the womenfolk alone here?’ As they talked, in the mud-floored main room of the inn, Jan had been aware of women’s voices in the loft above; now a dark-eyed girl in her early teens leaned down to ask something in Yiddish, and he remembered being aware on previous visits of a whole troop of little girls in attendance on the brother who had been taken away.

  ‘You’d best get your family out of here,’ he told the man, paying for the horse’s miserable fodder. ‘The French are across the Niemen.’

  ‘The French! May the Lord of hosts protect us. And you, too, lord! You’re going to Vinsk?’

  ‘I must!’

  ‘Then go carefully, and God be your guide. Poles and Jews alike will be nothing but corn between the millstones from now on.’ And he turned away, to shout in desperate Yiddish to his wife and daughters.

  Riding on, Jan was not sure whether to be glad or sorry that he was so easily taken for a Polish nobleman. It had seemed safer, over the years, to dress like a Russian when travelling and he could even speak Russian well enough now, but here in Polish Russia his appearance and fluent Polish made him accepted everywhere as native. Urging his horse on, he thought about what the landlord had said. Jews and Poles, ground alike between the millstones. Had he been mad to assume the Russian army would protect Miriam and Vinsk? And had she known it, and let him go?

  The sun was setting in splendour ahead of him and he had to slow his pace partly to favour his exhausted horse, partly to pick his way along the rutted road with eyes dazzled by almost horizontal rays. Not far now. Another hour if the moon rose unclouded, but he must not risk a fall that might lame his horse. He spoke to it, gently, urgently, trying to convey his own sense of crisis. They were old friends after all.

  The last crimson segment of the sun vanished below the dark fringe of forest ahead and he had to slow his pace still further in the suddenly diminished light, grateful that he was within the Vinsk estate now, where Miriam saw to it that the roads were well maintained. The moon was up behind him. Why had the afterglow not vanished from the west?

  Fire. A wooden palace, burning. Miriam. His horse was making heavy weather of the climb that led up to the watershed of the Vin. At the top there was a cleared place where he and Miriam sometimes rode in the evening, for a breath of air and a wider view of the sunset. Miriam was a woman of great good sense. Whatever had happened, she would have done the wisest thing. He must believe that, hold on to it, while he thought about the French, the Russians, the grinding millstones of war.

  There. He was at the top, looking down on an inferno. The palace, all its outbuildings, blazed fiercely in the gathering dusk. Impossible to make out from this distance whether anyone was fighting the flames, and no time to waste looking. His anxiety must have communicated itself to his horse which plunged willingly into the dark of the forest on the downhill slope.

  Presently he could hear the crackle of flames, the crash of falling timber. But no screams, no shouts, no hint of human life. He was praying, under his breath, as he emerged from the forest at last into a great, empty, flickering desolation.

  Leon Wysocki was appalled when the Princess told him he must represent Rendomierz at the Sejm, and begged Glynde Rendel to intercede with her for him. ‘She will take your advice, lord.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Glynde’s tone was sharp. There had been something in the man’s tone he did not like, confirming as it did the speculative glances of which he was increasingly aware. He even caught Jenny’s considering eye on him from time to time, and minded this most of all. But what in the world could he do or say? Ten years ago, he had paced his room, night after night, longing for the summons that did not come, aflame with love for the Princess. Love? Passion. And that had worn away, somewhere in the years between. Mary Richards had helped, meeting his hunger with her own, and there had been other women, here and there, some remembered with pleasure, some forgotten on purpose. And now, here was the Princess, visibly older, though as handsome as ever, paying public court to him. No other way to describe it. But what did she want? What did she intend? And how could he stop her without insulting her beyond forgiveness? He had long since given up trying to convince himself that there was no truth in the talk of her affairs with Murat and Davout. But they were men of power. What in the world could she want with him? And how could he convince her that it was not available for her, whatever it was? He would be glad when she left for Warsaw.

  Wysocki had, of course, agreed to represent Rendomierz at the Sejm. The Princess’s servants did not refuse her orders. And as a reward, she had arranged a fête for him on the day before they left for Warsaw. ‘In the garden, of course,’ she told Glynde. ‘That way there can be no loss of dignity in our all sitting down together. We’ll make what you English would call a picnic of it. How well I remember picnics in the park at Petworth House. Such an easy, delightful, English occasion. When this war is over, and Poland free, I think I will go and stay with my friends there. Maybe send Casimir to an English school? You would approve of that, I am sure, my wise counsellor.’

  ‘An admirable idea. I am sure Casimir would profit by the rough and tumble of English schooling.’

  ‘And you will be there to show us how to go on. What happiness to throw off the burden of my position for a while, and just be an English lady. Yes, Jenny?’ Impatiently.

  ‘It’s about the invitations, Princess. You never did decide who should be asked.’

  ‘Everybody! This is to be Liberty Hall. I’ve not entertained in state since the Tsar came, and your quick wits saved us all from disaster, Mr. Rendel.’

  ‘Miss Peverel’s rather. Casimir wants to sing Dom-browski’s March to the crowd, Highness. All of them in their new uniforms. Do you think it would be wise?’

  ‘I think it would be admirable. Make sure that the uniforms fit, Jenny. I have been telling Mr. Rendel that I plan to take Casimir to England when the war is over. You’d like that, would you not?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Jenny blushed brilliantly with pleasure. ‘To see my sisters! My nephews and nieces! Oh –’ She had almost said Isobel; restrained herself: ‘Highness, do you really mean it?’

  ‘If I did not, I would not have said it. But Mr. Rendel is looking glum. What is the matter, wise counsellor?’

  ‘First this war has to be won, Highness.’

  ‘Croaking again! Just because you British used to be allies of the Russians, you seem to think that the young Tsar will carry all before him. I tell you, he’s a straw to every wind that blows. And to every lady that smiles. Did Jenny ever tell you about the time he came here on his way back from defeat at Austerlitz?’

  ‘No.’ He could not but be interested.


  ‘Such a performance.’ Tolerantly. ‘Come to the door, like any traveller, asking for shelter, in a shabby old greatcoat, and hat pulled down over his eyes. Do you remember, Jenny? Of course I spotted him at once; pretended not to. He likes to play out those charades of his. All he wanted was a cup of tea, he said, and quiet. We played his game to a nicety, did we not, Jenny?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Why was she blushing? ‘I remember he stayed the night in the end.’

  ‘And has been goodness itself to me since. When the Prince died there was nothing for it but a state funeral in Petersburg. To show how he honoured his old friend, and his old friend’s wife. But he’s a squire for every dame, that man. Changes with the wind, and his ladies. Napoleon made mincemeat of him before; he’ll do it again. And this time, I hope Monsieur Talleyrand will be at the peace table to see that justice is done to us Poles.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ said Glynde. ‘Tell me, Highness, is everyone in Warsaw as sure of victory as you?’

  ‘Naturally! It would be an insult to the Emperor to think otherwise.’

  She meant the fete for Wysocki to give her a chance for a new approach to Glynde Rendel, who was being so obtuse about her delicate advances. She understood it, of course. He knew himself so infinitely beneath her; had trained himself, over the long years, to keep his passion in control. But with wine flowing, her moment would come to let him guess at his happiness.

  It was disappointing that many of her neighbours had already gone to Warsaw for the opening of the Sejm, but there were enough guests to applaud the boys’ singing of Dombrowski’s March and walk through the pleasure gardens as the sun set and the moon rose. On Glynde’s advice, she had countermanded the wine that was to have flowed from the fountains.

  ‘You see how I value your wise counsel.’ She had found him beside one of the innocuous fountains after the boys had sung their song and the rest of the formal entertainment was over.

  ‘I try to think what is best for you, Highness. I am sure at this time of crisis you had better be seen spending your money on necessary stores than on ostentation.’