Polonaise

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘Genet?’ He could not believe it.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been Talleyrand’s liaison with the Brotherhood since Erfurt. We’ve worked together, you and I, all this time.’

  ‘You and I and Miriam. How is she? Where is she?’

  ‘Asleep. I made her take laudanum. Nothing she and you could have said to each other tonight would have done any good. If it is any comfort to you, the sergeant who allowed the attack on Vinsk has been shot. You must understand that I meant to get there first, I hope you can forgive me.’

  ‘Can she?’

  ‘Yes. She’s … she’s a great lady, Mr. Warrington. She should have been a Princess.’

  ‘The boy, Michael, thinks she’s a saint. Will she marry me, do you think, Genet?’

  ‘That’s what you want? I’m glad. I can’t say more than that I hope so. Anything I can do … But, forgive me, my time is short. I have to be back in camp by morning. I need to know what you mean to do. So that I can give the Brotherhood their instructions. This is their Vilno headquarters. You’ll not try to see anything, learn anything?’

  ‘I most certainly will not. What I want to do, Genet, is simple. I want to marry Miriam and take her home to America. There, nobody need know anything of this, except that she is a heroine. We’ve been lovers – I’m sure you know this – for years. If there is a child, it will be mine. And I shall love it, because it will be hers. Anyway, it may be mine. So … it is only to persuade her.’

  ‘I hope you can. We’ll be sorry to lose you.’

  ‘I’d be sorry to go if I did not think our cause lost already. What’s happened to the French army, Genet? How could what happened this morning have happened? What hope for Poland?’

  ‘None, I think. That’s why I’m not even trying to persuade you to stay. When he crossed the Nieman, Napoleon told his troops they were entering hostile territory, entering Russia. That explains what happened at Vinsk. So much for the hopes of Polish Lithuania. I think, now, that I’m glad my master Talleyrand is not in charge at Warsaw. I’m afraid it’s going to be one long heartbreak, with gallant Polish blood still shed in vain.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m in the army now. This is my last appearance as a member of the Brotherhood. Tomorrow I march with my regiment on Vilno, on … Who knows? Petersburg? Moscow? To the end of the world? It feels a little like that. But first I will tell the Brotherhood to see you and Miriam safe on your way to Warsaw and so to Paris and your United States.’

  ‘By Warsaw?’

  ‘Of course. To all intents and purposes you are in France now. Will you do one thing for me?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘When you get to Warsaw, send to Rendomierz, warn the Princess not to stay there. There are rumours of an army in the south of Russia; Rendomierz is dangerously near that border.’

  ’Miriam has sent a warning already, through the Brotherhood. She is afraid it did not get through.’

  ‘All too likely. But if, as I hope, you find them already in Warsaw, sav something to Miss Peverel for me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell her I shall love her always.’

  Their eyes met for a long moment. ‘You think things are as bad as that?’

  ‘I hope you persuade Miriam to go to America.’

  ‘You mean it?’ She held herself tight, and straight, and still, her eyes huge in the white face with its scarlet slash across the pockmarked side.

  ‘You know I do. I can’t do without you, Miriam. I was a boy when we met; you made me a man; don’t fail me now. We’ll go home to America; Genet is arranging it for us. After today we will never speak of what happened yesterday again.’

  ‘If there’s a child?’

  ‘It could be mine. I’m glad Father Stefan came with you. He says he’ll marry us today.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘We must leave tomorrow. Miriam, let me decide this for you? For us. Please?’

  ‘If you wish,’ she said listlessly. ‘I don’t matter. Nothing matters any more.’

  Chapter 33

  Glynde and the Princess reached the end of the yew walk breathless and soaked to the skin. She was incandescent with rage, aware of white muslin clinging too revealingly, carefully trained curls plastered against her skull. Jenny and von Stenck had seen what happened, awaited them there in anxious silence.

  After the first explosion of rage, the Princess told Jenny to get rid of the guests while von Stenck hunted the culprit, ‘Who gets a beating, if it’s my son himself.’ Her voice had changed with her appearance, its beautiful low notes strident with fury.

  Acutely aware himself of the fool he looked, Glynde could only sympathise with her, while he thanked God, and the prankster, for his own reprieve. But he was horribly sure it would turn out to have been Casimir. ‘Not a beating, Highness,’ he pleaded. ‘As your fellow sufferer let me speak up for the guilty party. If, as I fear, it is one of my bad boys, let me beg for some sophisticated punishment, something to make him feel foolish, not angry.’

  ‘After he made idiots of us! On any other subject, Mr. Rendel, I will listen to you.’ Her tone drew one of Jenny’s quick, perceptive glances. ‘But on this I must be the judge. Now, goodnight. We’ll talk in the morning.’ The words held a promise that appalled him.

  Water was running down his neck to which the cravat clung sodden. ‘Yes – in the morning.’ She would be calmer then. ‘Remember, you and Wysocki must leave for Warsaw tomorrow.’

  ‘Not until I have seen justice done. And talked to you.’

  She meant it as a promise; he felt it a threat. No hope of sleep that night. He paced his room to and fro, to and fro, desperately trying to think how to extricate himself from this predicament without disaster. Could the Princess really mean marriage? No other interpretation fitted the facts as they had presented themselves since she last came home to Rendomierz. To marry her would mean luxury, wealth, and total submission to his wife. Fresh from the fatal embrace in the yew alley, she had still dismissed his plea for the joker without even pausing to consider it. That would be how they would go on.

  If he had loved her, would he have risked it? Probably. The mad young man who had paced his room like this ten years ago would certainly have done so. That desperate, long lost young man had revived, for a fatal moment, last night. But the kiss had done for him. Had the Princess really not felt the deadness of his response? Or did she not care? Could she want a husband so badly?

  He longed for Jenny, for Jenny’s cool, wise counsel, but in this predicament, how could he ask her for it? On the other hand, he and she must put their heads together, as responsible for the little boys, to try and save the culprit – Casimir, he was sure – from the ultimate affront of a public beating. Casimir must have seen, and resented, his mother’s changed attitude to his tutor. Who could blame him for what he had done? But how turn the Princess from her determination of vengeance?

  Towards dawn, having found no answers to any of his desperate questions, he threw himself on his bed, fell suddenly asleep and awoke to a sense of disaster. Strong light penetrated the room; it must be very late. He pulled the bell-rope angrily.

  ‘Why was I not called?’

  ‘The Princess gave orders you were not to be disturbed, lord.’

  A roll of drums outside. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘The Prince is taking his beating.’ The man looked frightened. ‘In public; in the courtyard. Everyone there to see.’

  It was all over by the time Glynde had pulled on his clothes and hurried to the school-house. The little boys were there, very quiet, pretending to read Virgil under the anxious eye of their classics tutor.

  ‘The Prince?’ Glynde asked him.

  ‘Upstairs. Miss Peverel is with him. He hasn’t spoken a word. The Princess wants you at the palace at once.’

  ‘Thank you.’ But he turned to the stairway, not the door. Casimir must come first.

  He was lying flat on his face on the bed, his naked back showing a savage criss-cro
ss of stripes. Jenny, sitting close beside him, had contrived to get hold of one outflung hand, which lay listless in hers.

  ‘Thank God!’ Her eyes met Glynde’s in a wordless appeal. ‘It’s Mr. Rendel, Casimir, come to hear that you took your punishment like a man. As he did,’ she told Glynde. ‘Not a whisper; not a whimper.’

  ‘Who did this?’ Glynde had not thought he could be angrier.

  ‘The Princess had trouble finding anyone,’ Jenny was glad of the chance to say this. ‘But there’s always someone with a grievance.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Casimir spoke for the first time.

  ‘A serf? Under orders?’ Glynde made his tone merely reasonable. ‘You should save your fire for people worthy of it. I hope you look on me as your equal, Casimir, and are ready to fight me when you are old enough. I am sorry your mother took action without consulting me. You must see that this is a matter between men, between you and me. It was me you meant to make look a fool, and you most certainly succeeded. You owe me the satisfaction of a gentleman, but I’d be twice a fool if I demanded it now. So, look to your weapon training. When you are of age, wherever you are, wherever I am, you owe me the meeting, and I count on you not to fail me.’

  ‘When I’m sixteen!’ Casimir sat up suddenly, his face showing, despite himself, how it hurt him. ‘You promise?’

  ‘It’s you who must promise. I am the challenger, remember, and I say it will be with pistols.’

  ‘But you’ll be married to –’ he hesitated, could not name her, ‘– to the Princess. A man cannot fight his stepfather.’

  ‘I? Married to your mother? What crazy servant’s talk is this? I thought better of you, Casimir. Your mother is a Princess, quite out of my star. I’m your tutor, had you forgotten?’

  ‘But … But Karol said …’

  ‘Karol says the Russians eat babies, which you know very well you found untrue when we went to Vinsk.’

  ‘They did kill his family.’

  ‘Just because that is true, you don’t have to believe every lying tale he makes up. Casimir,’ somehow without a word said, he had changed places with Jenny by the bed, ‘fate has made you a Prince and a leader of men. It is a great responsibility, and if you are to lead them, you must understand them. Think about Karol a little; think if he does not go out of his way to make trouble for you. He was sitting in your place in the classroom just now. Do you think, if you were not here, the boys would choose him for their leader?’

  ‘Not if I have anything to say about it!’ He was off the bed now, reaching for a clean shirt. Then, with it in his hand, he paused for a moment, looking at Glynde. ‘Sir,’ it came hard, ‘I begin to think I owe you an apology.’

  ‘Spoken like a Prince! May I, then, with some relief withdraw my challenge? You’re a better shot than me already, and you know it.’ He laughed. ‘I’m only sorry you weren’t there to see what a drowned rat I looked when I emerged from that joke alley of yours.’

  ‘And my mother, too.’ Venom in this.

  ‘You’ll apologise to her, I hope, now you understand …’

  ‘She had me whipped in public’ He shrugged into his shirt, wincing as he did so, and left them to hurry downstairs.

  Alone, they exchanged a long look, then, ‘God bless you,’ said Jenny, ‘that’s half the battle.’

  ‘And God help me in the other half.’ He had been feeling his way so far. ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘You’ll have to tell her what you have just told him.’ She did not pretend not to understand, and he was grateful. ‘She won’t like it.’

  ‘You’ve seen?’

  ‘Everyone’s seen. Hence poor Casimir’s trouble. Thank God she’s leaving for Warsaw today.’

  ‘And I must tell her first. She sent for me, come to that.’

  ‘And you’re keeping her waiting? That’s not going to help.’

  ‘Well.’ He thought about it. ‘In a way. I’ve burned my boats, after all, with what I said to Casimir. No harm in showing I’m not her poodle. But how to do it without making it such an affront that I’ll have to go?’

  ‘That she’ll dismiss you,’ said Jenny, drily.

  ‘I don’t care for myself,’ he protested, ‘but there’s Casimir. What’s happened to him today could mark him for life.’

  ‘Will mark him for life. Yes, I’d be sorry to see you go, for his sake.’

  ’I don’t intend to go, but how –’ They thought about it for a moment. ‘There’s one thing. If you’d do it; if it’s not asking too much. For Casimir’s sake; for mine, if you like; I really do not want to find myself a landless, useless man again …’ He paused.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you –’ He bolted at it. ‘Would you agree to having been secretly engaged to me?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To having been engaged – oh, for some time. In secret.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not thinking straight, Mr. Rendel. That way, we would both be dismissed. At once. And Casimir can’t do without us. You’ll have to do better than that.’ She looked at him with faintly scornful sympathy. ‘I suggest a hopeless passion for someone in England. And I also suggest you go to her without more delay.’

  ‘Yes. Forgive me.’

  ‘You have my deepest sympathy.’

  ‘You remind me of my aunt.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Her mocking tone echoed in his ears as he hurried downstairs and across the pleasure garden to the palace.

  ‘At last.’ The Princess was awaiting him in the Chinese salon and he was not sure whether he was glad or sorry to see that she was already angry. ‘You have taken long enough.’

  ‘I had to see Casimir. He is my pupil, Highness. I am sorry you did not consult me before having him publicly beaten. He has forgiven me, but I doubt he’ll forgive you.’

  ‘A child forgive his mother? Nonsense! I hope I have not been mistaken in you, Mr. Rendel. That the honour I propose doing you has not gone to your head already. We must understand each other better than this.’

  ‘We must indeed. I hardly dared believe, last night, what you seemed to be saying, but if it is true, if you really thought of honouring me so far beyond my deserts, Highness, I have to tell you, humbly, and from a deeply grateful heart, that it is not an honour I can accept.’

  ‘Tell me what? Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘No. Trying to be sane for both of us. It would not do, Princess. Such a marriage would make laughing stocks of us both. What Casimir did last night would be just the beginning. You know better than I what the Polish aristocracy are like; and the Russian come to that. With me for his stepfather, Casimir could say goodbye to his chance of the Polish crown.’

  ‘Casimir, Casimir! Still harping on him! I am offering you my heart, Mr. Rendel, and you talk of nothing but my son!’

  ‘My son, too, remember.’ He had never thought to find himself saying this to her.

  ‘Yours! What in the world gave you that idea?’ The anger that had brewed while she waited for him suddenly engulfed her. ‘Any fool can see he is Jan Warrington’s.’ And then hushed, hand over mouth, the gesture of a child that knows it has erred beyond forgiveness.

  ‘Jan Warrington?’ They stood silent, facing each other, taking in the full implications of what she had said. Then, ‘God, what a fool!’ He was thinking of the nights, all those years ago, when she had not sent for him, pleading one excuse or another. She had been hedging her bets, and sleeping with Jan too. And she was right, of course. He had looked in vain for any likeness to himself in Casimir, only blind confidence had prevented him from seeing Jan in him. Everything was different. Everything was changed. And what he felt, amazingly, was a great sense of liberation. He smiled at the Princess. ‘So much for that,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t marry you, Mr. Rendel, if you were the last man on earth.’ She had never looked so plain, her white face patched with red on the cheekbones. ‘Be so good as to pull the bell for me. It is more than time Wysocki and I set out for Warsaw. You�
�ll continue as Casimir’s tutor, of course. Make him see the error of his ways.’

  ‘I’ll be happy to.’ He was breathing great breaths of liberty. ‘You’ll see him before you go? Make it up with him?’

  ‘I’ll let it be seen that there is no truth in the rumours that made him indulge in his deplorable jest.’

  ‘And send Karol home? I’m sure he made the trouble. Take him with you to Warsaw, Princess, hand him back to his relations.’

  ‘No. I’ve had enough of your advice. Enough of your company. It’s more than time I left for Warsaw.’ She turned and led the way back to the main hall.

  Wysocki was awaiting her anxiously among the usual crowd of attendants. ‘The carriages await your Highness,’ he hurried forward to greet her. ‘If we are to reach Warsaw in time …’

  ‘Always thoughtful, Pan Wysocki.’ She held out her hand for his surprised kiss, turned back to Glynde, every inch the great lady. ‘As for you, Mr. Rendel, I count on you to make up for your past neglect by seeing to it that that ill-conditioned son of mine comes to some understanding of his own bad behaviour. Which I blame on you. I shall hope for better news of my school when I return from Warsaw, or we will have to think again of the position, however lowly, that you occupy in it.’ She looked past him to where Herr von Stenck was standing beside Jenny. ‘Master at Arms! You will be in charge here while Pan Wysocki and I are absent.’ She swept her little court with her piercing gaze, making sure that her point had gone home. Then, ‘Pan Wysocki, we must go. We have important duties to perform in Warsaw, you and I.’

  ‘Tell me all the news.’ The Princess had hurried to visit Anna Potocka.

  ‘Not much. Mind you, there’s some wild talk going round in the Sejm. I hope your man knows his place.’

  ‘So do I.’ Isobel had not meant to say this. ‘But my tutor, Mr. Rendel seems to have been talking a lot of wild, British democracy to him. He actually imagined he was going along to listen and base his decisions on what he heard. I trust I have disabused him of such notions.’

  ‘He’s not the only one. My father-in-law says there’s been some fiery talk of a national uprising.’