She was dressed in a flowing white satin and tulle gown, like a divine bride. Were these materials that she and her mother had chosen at the Cloth Hall? The crown was a dome-shaped wreathing of ears of grain. Flowers and ribbons had been added so that she looked very much the bride.
Aleksy’s stomach tightened with insecurity. Was it too much to hope she would be his bride? Was he not a fool, the biggest fool on earth?
She was turning now to the south and moving toward the dais where the king and queen sat.
The king stood. Aleksy’s vantage point allowed for him to view the visages of the monarchs, but not Krystyna’s. Her back was to him. Krystyna performed a deep curtsey, stood, removed the crown from her red-gold plaited hair and presented it to the king, who whispered something, turned, and handed off the crown to a concelebrant of the Mass, who then walked over and placed it on the altar, calling out for St. Laurence’s blessing on the harvest.
The king now took a blue velvet purse, one that had some weight to it, and handed it to Krystyna, completing the custom that the maid be rewarded for her giving up of the crown. Playing her part now, the queen placed a white veil upon Krystyna’s head.
Krystyna curtsied again, turned about, radiant as a rose, and began the slow retracing of her steps, steps accompanied by the approving buzz and mesmerized stares of the congregation. Her beauty and demeanor charmed them. For the briefest of moments now, her head came up, brow lifted, eyes seeming to scan the crowd. Was she looking for him?
It was only after she had disappeared from Aleksy’s sightline—like the final burst of a comet—that the Mass continued. The dispensing of Holy Communion went on interminably in the oppressive summer heat. Several more worshippers fainted. Self-doubt shadowed Aleksy, like a phantom.
He felt a sense of dizziness, too, though it was not from the heat. Krystyna had been the darling of the congregation, favorably noticed even by the royal couple. She had been set to marry a handsome man of the upper echelon of the szlachta and who might one day attain magnate status. Did he truly presume that she would give all this up for him? Would she? The question stabbed at his heart. I must be a fool, he thought, to think she would forego everything coming her way for the life I am able to provide. He sensed himself going red in the face. His legs threatened to give way beneath him. The Nardolski family had everything to offer. What do I have to give her?
My love for her, he thought. And this Fabian Nardolski? It was not so much the changeable versus the unchangeable as it was the tangible versus the intangible. How likely was it that she would choose him, a poor Tatar, the intangible? He had goaded her into saying yes—no, she hadn’t even done that. She had merely nodded. And might a random motion of the human head be mistaken as a nod?
What of his plan? This was the moment that would provide her the opportunity to escape the cathedral and make her way to the rectory. Would she do that, or would she wait for the congratulations of her family—and her intended’s family?
His hopes were peeling away like threads from a torn garment.
“I am waiting for Father Franciszek,” Aleksy told the nun who came to the rectory door. At the closing of Mass, he had been paralyzed, so lost in his dark thoughts that he realized too late that the cathedral was emptying out and so he was among the last group to leave. In the crush of the crowd there had been no sign of Krystyna or her family.
The old nun nodded as if she had been expecting him—a good sign. “This way,” she said. She showed him in to the priest’s office, told him to take a seat, and noiselessly withdrew, closing the door behind her.
The room was utterly still. He took several paces into the cavernous chamber with its bookshelves that smelled as if they were newly polished with beeswax. The opaque lancet windows let in little light, prompting his eyes to adjust. No sign of Krystyna. His heart dropped within his chest. The chair behind the large desk was empty. No sign of Father Franciszek. No one seemed to be in the room. What did this portend? His heart pace accelerated. He was about to turn back to the door and question the nun when he heard his own name.
Then the voice came again from a shadowy corner of the room: “Aleksy.” A man’s voice. But not Father Franciszek’s. A voice that was somehow familiar.
Aleksy turned in the direction of the voice. A man was rising from a high-backed, hand-carved Bishop’s chair. The rotund figure took several steps toward him. It was no ecclesiast.
Aleksy’s mind became as blurred as his sight.
“Krystyna’s not here,” the man said.
And now he recognized both voice and man. It was Count Konrad Halicki. Krystyna’s father.
The room seemed to fall away, sense and senses with it. How was this possible? Disappointment flooded through every pore of his being—even as he girded himself for Lord Halicki’s anger, retribution.
What happened to him now mattered little. He had lost Krystyna. Forever.
Had the scheme been discovered—or had Krystyna revealed it to her family? Had she deliberately scuttled the plan?
“Father Franciszek was taken away on some business or other, Aleksy.”
“What?… Why are you here?”
“I thought you needed an explanation.”
They stood some ten paces apart, neither willing to move closer.
“That Krystyna didn’t come is explanation enough.”
“You know, Aleksy, I do admire you.” Lord Halicki’s words seemed free of sarcasm. Good God, were his character and meanings as quixotic as his daughter’s?
“Why?” Where Aleksy expected searing, violent anger from Krystyna’s father there seemed what?—Compassion? How could that be?
“You saw what you wanted and you did your best to attain it. I can understand that.”
“I love Krysia!” The diminutive rolled off his tongue on its own. “And she—”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that—or that she may for the moment return your feelings. But it is not to be. She’s been promised to another.”
“Someone more acceptable?”
“Fabian is a good man. He will be a good husband.”
“And if she is unwilling?”
“Ah, this is the way things are done among the… it’s the way things are done. It’s Krystyna’s fate.”
“Unchangeable?”
Lord Halicki nodded. “You might say so.”
“I don’t believe it. I believe fates can be—”
“Ah fates! Your fate, Aleksy. Yes, I should like to talk to you about your fate. It is time.”
What was he talking about and why—in Father Franciszek’s study—did he take on the persona of a true parson, one who spoke as if he cared?
“Come, let’s sit over here, Aleksy,” he said, motioning toward two upholstered chairs that sat face to face under a lancet window. “Do you mind if I call you Alek?”
Aleksy, his mind a cobweb of confusion, absently shook his head and followed him to a chair.
“This must be a terrible disappointment to you—Alek.”
Aleksy just stared.
“I know that your wish was be become a soldier. You told me so back in Halicz.”
“A hussar.”
“Indeed. It may be possible.”
“I’m a mere retainer. Marek’s retainer.”
“Ah, yes. But I can make a recommendation to King Sobieski. I’ve done it before.”
“Not for your own sons.” He had overheard Roman complaining that his father had not used his influence with the Old Guard of the Kwarciani.
Lord Halicki’s eyes widened in surprise. “Uh, no. You’re right there, my boy.”
“Then why would you do so for me? To the king? Why? To keep me at bay.”
“No, within a week Krystyna will be married. I won’t have any worries about keeping you at bay after t
hat.”
“Then why would you go to the king over a poor orphaned Tatar?”
A shadow passed over Lord Halicki’s face, and after a pause, he said, “My conscience dictates that I do.”
“Your conscience?”
“Yes. Aleksy,” the count said, drawing in a long breath. “I’ve done you a wrong—a great wrong.” He paused. “You know that your parents died during the border wars, yes?”
Aleksy nodded.
“And that your birth father died expressing the wish that his good friend, a Pole, take you into his care? That it was a solemn promise between two friends of different backgrounds but like minds? A binding oath? A sacrosanct promise?”
“Yes, my father has told me these things.”
“It was the promise of a blood brother. There are such things between Poles and Tatars out there, east of the River Dniester and west of the Don, in the desolate Wild Fields.” He paused now, his eyes holding Aleksy’s. “Have you not longed for more details—about your parents?”
“Yes, but my father, or rather Borys—”
“I can give you those details. Your father’s name was Abbas. He was a good man. In the old days we fought on opposite sides, but we found peace. We found friendship. He lived as a herdsman and served his tribe well as chieftain. Do you know what Abbas means?”
“Lion.”
“Ah, Szymon taught you well. Yes, and a lion he was, Abbas your father, both wild and tame. He worried for you. And—yes, Szymon told me how he was teaching you some Tataric.”
“And my mother?”
“Fazilet.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“It means ‘beautiful temperament, spiritual one’. You got your daring from Abbas and your looks and goodness from Fazilet.”
“They both died?”
The count nodded. “They did.”
“And the blood-brother—that was Borys, yes?” If such was the case Aleksy could only wonder why his stepfather had kept these things secret.
But Aleksy saw now that Lord Halicki was shaking his head, his eyes averted. “No, Aleksy.”
“No?”
Lord Halicki’s gaze locked onto Aleksy’s, his eyes glistening in the dim light from the lancet window. “I was that friend—that blood-brother.”
“You?” Aleksy sat numb, aware of the silence in the room but for the ticking of the mantel clock—or was it his own heart?
“I swore to Abbas—your father—that I would see to your care. I intended for you to be as a son to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did Zenobia—my wife. She wouldn’t have any of it. You see, her first husband—Roman’s father—was killed in the border wars.”
“By Tatars?”
“Yes.”
“So she couldn’t stomach having me anywhere near?”
Lord Halicki gave a little shrug. “No, it’s not something she’s rational about.” He let out a sigh, long and deep, as if he longed for years of guilt to go with it. “And so I asked Borys to fulfill that promise for me, to be my proxy. I knew in my heart it was wrong. I knew I had promised. And I failed to keep the promise of a blood brother.”
“So the proxy secured a proxy.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way… But I knew one day I would tell you.”
“To relieve your conscience?”
“Yes—but also out of fairness to you and to your real father. Borys and his wife have raised you well, no? You’ve been happy—that is, until now—why, had it been up to me, Krystyna would be a sister to you.”
This strange thought struck Aleksy like a thunderclap. His back stiffened. “But she’s not my sister!”
“I know. She’s been a… friend.”
“More!”
“Perhaps, Alek, but she can be nothing to you now. Nothing.” Lord Halicki stood, preparing to leave, his expression grim and unflinching. “I wish I had done things differently.”
Aleksy sat, his eyes on a crucifix on the wall. The changeable and the unchangeable, he thought.
“I’ll send my recommendation to the king.”
“No need. I don’t want it.”
“I’ll write it just the same and see that you get it before the troops move out. That way, it’ll be your decision, Alek, whether you become a hussar. Yours alone.”
“I don’t want it!” Aleksy shouted. He shot out of his chair. “I’m a retainer and shall remain so!”
“Just the same, I’ll write it,” Lord Halicki said, undeterred. “Don’t let pride stand in the way of your dream.”
Aleksy stood rooted to the floor, seething, resolved not to accept the very thing he had wanted—the only thing—until Krystyna entered his life.
Lord Halicki stopped at the door, turned about. “Fate is seldom fair, Alek,” he said. “You got caught up in currents too strong, currents that could drown you.—Oh, should you accept my recommendation and should the king follow through, as I’m certain he would, you would be eligible for officer status. The fact that you can read and write—very commendable, I might say—makes you eligible.”
The sound of the closing of the door behind the count came as though filtered through a cave. After a while, echoing footsteps could be heard moving toward the door, Father Franciszek’s. The trembling priest’s first and oft-repeated words of apology came back only later—interspersed with details of how two young hussars had deliberately taken him from his duties that morning, detaining him on some ruse until that moment. Aleksy understood what the priest did not. He could well imagine who the two hussars were. He stood, silent and stunned. There would be time later to take in what he had learned about his true parents, but for the moment, all that he could deal with was the realization that Lord Halicki knew he could write. Somehow, his note to Krystyna had been found. Had the person following Izdi on his mission been the one to find it under her door before Krystyna could read it?
Or worse, had Krystyna herself surrendered it?
Twenty
“It’s tough luck, Alek,” Idzi said, his legs pumping hard to keep up with his friend.
Aleksy was moving quickly through the forest, intent on hunting, intent on forgetting. “Tough luck?” he called. “Is that all you’ve got to say? Tough luck is when an arrow is loosed on course and manages to go astray.”
“I slipped your note under her door. I did!”
“Maybe it was her father’s door. You were to give it to her personally!”
“I told you that someone was following me. Hate me for it, I did what I could, damn it!”
Aleksy pivoted to see Idzi as he tried to step over the huge fallen oak he himself had just cleared with a bit of a jump. A protruding branch of the tree snagged the dwarf’s leg and he fell. Aleksy made no move to help him up. Had he done so, Idzi would feel additional embarrassment, he knew—and yet, as he watched the little man right himself and clumsily clamber up over the tree, he knew he was giving way to a moment of meanness. His voice was sharp now: “Did you leave a bit of the letter showing outside her door?”
Idzi caught up to Aleksy, breathing hard. “I—I don’t think so. That is, a bit might have been showing.”
“There’s only one other possibility.”
Idzi looked up, his face reflecting the gravity of the other possibility. “That she revealed your plans to her family?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t think she would do that.”
Aleksy stared down at Idzi for the longest moment, then, without a word, turned and headed into the heart of the forest. He didn’t think she would do that, either.
Later, after a single arrow from Aleksy’s yew bow took down a stag, they tied the legs to two birch branches and rested before heading back to camp.
Idzi dared to speak. “What are you going to do about the letter—Count Halicki’s letter, I mean?”
“What—oh, nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Exactly that. I told him I didn’t want it. It was an impulse of his to make himself feel better, that’s all. He’s probably forgotten it by now.”
“And if he hasn’t?”
Aleksy bent over to pick up the two poles holding the front end of the carcass. “Are you going to help, or do I have to drag it back to camp myself?”
Idzi bent to pick up the back end and as they set off, he said, “But he’s offered you your wish to become a hussar! How can you—”
“As a replacement for the role he had promised my father he would play in my life. As a replacement for his daughter! No, I won’t accept his offer. I won’t ease his conscience!” Aleksy spat to the side of the path they were forging. “I’ll play the role of the retainer.” He cringed as he said this but he meant it. What made it more humiliating was that both Roman and Marek knew about the failed elopement. He could discern that they did by their deportment, especially by Roman’s smugness. And yet they said nothing, did nothing. Why hadn’t they overtly vented their hatred? Lord Halicki must have interceded. At last, he summoned his courage and asked, “And the marriage—what are the details?”
“It’s set for noon on the holy day of Our Lady, the day you leave with the king’s forces. It’s to take place in one of the chapels in Wawel Cathedral.”
“The king has ten as our departure time. Are Roman and Marek to miss her wedding?”
“They’re to stay behind a day or so to witness the ceremony.”
“And to celebrate, no doubt.” Aleksy paused, attempting to exorcise his bitterness. “Oh, it won’t be too hard for them to catch up. Queen Marysieńka is going, too, with all of her court and many wagons. We’ll move like turtles. My God, you would think the Turks were still at the safe distance of their homeland instead of tightening a noose around Vienna at this very moment.”
The Boy Who Wanted Wings Page 19