The Boy Who Wanted Wings

by James Conroyd Martin

  Krystyna smiled ironically to herself. The governess sometimes had peculiar notions of what stories were appropriate for the fantasies of the young. And no, she was no queen and there was no country to be spared by any such similar action. And yet—

  A coded knock came at the door.

  Krystyna opened the door and Idzi slipped in. “I’m ready,” she said. “Did Ruta show you where the kołacz is?”

  “She did. She said it was heavy. I asked how heavy bread could be, and then I lifted it. By God, she was right—it’s damn heavy. Oh! Pardon me, milady.”

  “There’s a reason for its weight. Is it too heavy?”

  “No!” Idzi closed his hands into fists and lifted his arms. “I am stronger than people give me credit. I placed it near the kitchen door that leads out to the drive.”

  “Good—let’s go.”

  Idzi laughed as they left her suite, his distinctive voice then going into falsetto song: “Without a kołacz, there is no wedding, no wedding, no wedding.”

  “Shush!” Krystyna hissed. She could not, however, stifle one of her own little laughs.

  Twenty-two

  After setting up camp on the fourth day of tediously slow travel, Aleksy went into the forest to hunt. While there was enough on hand to eat—meat that had been salted and stored in some of the thousands of wagons that trailed behind—he felt the need to go off by himself and concentrate on finding game, losing for the moment the dark and unhappy thoughts that haunted him. It would take more than a dozen grueling days on dusty roads for Aleksy to begin to come to terms with the terrible, grinding grief he felt. How difficult it was to adjust to the unchangeable.

  He moved deep into the forest so as to distance himself from others who were also searching for game. After an hour, he slowed and moved along quietly. Suddenly he heard a rustling some distance in the brush ahead. He halted immediately and silently positioned his bow and drew an arrow, nocking it at once. He waited. He thought he heard a twig snap somewhere to his left, but before he could turn in that direction a stag appeared in his immediate sightline, a little beyond a copse of bushes.

  He let fly his arrow at once, just as the deer came alert and prepared to dash away, too late. The stag dropped.

  Aleksy ran to the spot, pushing aside the bushes that shielded the body. The deer lay dead, but Aleksy’s eyes widened at what he saw.

  The stag lay with two arrows protruding.

  The little mystery was soon answered when another voice startled Aleksy, a voice unfamiliar to him. “Well, my friend, how shall we divide the spoils?” The lightly inflected words came from his left.

  A young man of perhaps twenty was pushing his way through the greenery. He was not a soldier, as evidenced by his cap and soiled brown żupan. He whistled when he viewed the deer. “It didn’t know what hit him.” He turned to Aleksy. “Bravo!” He directed a gaze of amazement at Aleksy.

  “And to you.” Aleksy wondered what brought a young civilian Pole to a forest occupied by soldiers.

  “You embarrass me—or rather I embarrass myself. My pathetic arrow is in its hind end. And yours—my God!—is buried in its heart. No wonder it went down like a fallen tree.”

  He was right. Aleksy had already realized as much, but now he noted that the arrow in the hind had some small symbol on it. He squatted down and inspected it. Just below its feathering, a tiny white eagle had been meticulously painted. He stood, his curiosity aroused.

  “My name’s Piotr,” the man said, offering his hand.

  His hand was soft. He was new to hunting. “I’m Aleksy, Piotr—do you hunt for—”

  “The king,” Piotr said, smiling.

  Aleksy’s mouth slackened. “Sobieski?”

  “Of course, but I’m afraid I make a better spy.”

  “A spy?”

  “Of sorts. I managed to escape Vienna so I could get news of the city’s plight to the allies, such as the king.”

  “Chrystus! You escaped the besieged city?”

  “I did.”

  “Tell me something, Piotr. How close is the city to falling to the Turks? Are we going to make it in time?”

  “It’s true they’re knocking at the gates at this moment. I’ve told the king that it’s going to be a close call.”

  “I hope he took you at your word.… Tell me, how did a spy like you get collared into hunting?”

  “I’m no more a spy than I am a hunter, truth to tell. But after my mission was complete, I asked one of his generals what service I could be and he handed me this bow and quiver here and told me to hunt. I think he just wanted me gone so they could talk strategy.” He looked down in awe at the dead deer. “Won’t he be surprised? We’ll divide it up, of course, but—”

  “You’ve never cut into one.”

  Abashed, Piotr shook his head.

  “Ah, there’s no dividing the deer, anyway. You have the king and queen to provide for.”

  Piotr shrugged. “Perhaps not for long.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—between you and me—to speed up the campaign the queen is to be sent back to Kraków once we arrive at Tarnowskie, where we’re to stop overnight tomorrow. That’s the talk. The king has had an ambassador from Charles’ headquarters.”

  “Are you able to speak of the meeting?”

  A sly smile appeared under his sparse moustache. “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  “A quid pro quo. Hunt with me tomorrow! You give me some tips with the bow and I’ll give you some royal tips.”

  “Done! The first lesson we’ll call the safety lesson. When I heard you step on a twig a few minutes ago, I might have turned in your direction to let my arrow go.”

  “I think I learned that yesterday. I saw some bushes move and took my shot. What comes out of the bushes but a little man and he was quite irate, I can tell you. Swore at me up and down, the dwarf did. Damn good thing I was a lousy shot, he said. And he was right!”

  The two laughed. For a moment Aleksy thought of Idzi, imagining that he was most likely well on his way back to Halicz with Lady Halicka, or Old Leatherface, as he called her. “Now, let me help you get this choice venison to the royal campsite.”

  “And there, if you take the lead, we will do some division of it. After all, Aleksy, if it weren’t for you, this unlucky fellow would be running about with the indignity of my arrow sticking in his ass.”

  “Dog’s blood!” Roman was grousing, “Why must we move so damn slowly?”

  “For one reason,” Marek, the voice of reason, responded, “the queen and her entire household is traveling with us. We can’t go any faster than does her carriage and various wagons.”

  “I know that. Just tell me why!”

  “Why she’s with us? Because for Jan Sobieski the sun doesn’t move in the sky but by her wish—or whim.”

  “Chrystus’s thorns! Save me that kind of adoration!”

  Marek laughed. “I doubt you’ll ever be so troubled. As for the king, I expect he’ll have to set her to the side when he thinks it time.”

  “When, pray tell? He left Warsaw late. He left Kraków late. It’s as if he doesn’t want to get to Vienna before the whole thing is finished.—And without us, it will finish up badly.”

  “I think he’s still waiting for all of his troops to coalesce. We have forces joining us every day. He’s got his pride and he wants to join Europe’s other leaders with the greatest possible forces at his back.”

  “Some say,” Roman added, “that the pride truly resides in the queen and that she wants him to arrive at Vienna in a position whereby he can take charge of all the allies, even those of Charles of Lorraine.”

  It was the fifth day out from Kraków and Aleksy sat with Ludwik at the evening campsite, listening to Roman complain
and Marek explain. Aleksy was sorely tempted to say what he knew about the queen’s impending departure but kept his silence. Neither retainer was invited to partake in the brothers’ conversations. The brothers Halicki, in fact, did not speak to Aleksy at all, other than to bark orders.

  Mysteriously, despite the slowness of the cavalcade, the brothers had not caught up to it for two days. “Must have been some wedding celebration,” Ludwik had muttered before going silent at the sight of Aleksy’s stricken expression. Oddly enough, too, Roman had not appeared triumphant or smug about his sister’s wedding. Aleksy had fully expected some sort of righteous vindication and gloating. But—nothing.

  What did it matter? Krystyna was gone, like a shooting star, radiant until it plummets from the night sky. Now here, now gone.

  For the moment he kept his mind centered on the situation at hand. Roman’s complaints were true as rain, Aleksy thought. They had lumbered out of Kraków, southwest through the Vistula Valley in an unwieldly manner—this menagerie of horses, mules, carriages, wagons, cannon, royals, szlachta, soldiers, retainers, and servants —and more slowly, he ventured, than those fleeing Egypt in the great exodus. And behind them wound an untold number of supply wagons, mules and all manner of camp followers.

  “And this General Caraffa from Charles of Lorraine’s camp, what do you make of that?” Roman asked of his brother.

  “Don’t know,” Marek said with a shrug.

  “He’s here to deliver a plea to the king.” The words were out of Aleksy’s mouth before he could give them a second thought.

  “Oh?” Roman asked. “You know something, Tatar? Marek, the boy thinks he knows something.”

  “Out with it,” Marek said.

  Aleksy told them now what he had learned from Piotr. “The plea is for the king to accompany his vanguard and push ahead of the slow-moving train without delay. The situation is dire. Vienna’s garrison is weakening. The commandant has been taken ill. And the Turks’ mining is bringing them ever closer to access.”

  Marek whistled.

  Roman was on his feet at once. “Where would you get that kind of information?” He walked over to where Aleksy sat cross-legged and kicked at the sole of his boot. “Do we have a spy in our midst—or are you just talking through your peasant cap? You’re lying, aren’t you?”

  Aleksy sprang to his feet and refused to cower. “It’s true.”

  With the thickening of tension, Marek and Ludwik stood now. Roman shoved Aleksy, forcing him backward a foot.

  Aleksy’s nerve only increased. “The queen will be left behind at Tarnowskie.”

  “What?” Roman demanded. He pushed again.

  “She and her attendants will return to Kraków.”

  “A font of knowledge, you are, Tatar! What is it with you? Do you have some seeing power?”

  Ludwik spoke up. “It’s just what we heard, Lord Halicki.”

  Roman pivoted to Ludwik. “Just gossip?”

  “Could be.” Ludwik said, seeming to seek a middle ground.

  “Time will tell,” Aleksy said, not without confidence.

  Roman spun back to Aleksy. “Time will tell the end of you, Tatar!” His arm went up and back for a powerful swing, Aleksy’s face its destination.

  Marek had been on guard and with both hands caught his brother’s arm at the crook of the elbow. “No,” he cautioned when Roman turned his angry eyes to him. “Like Ludwik says, it’s just what they heard around camp.”

  Roman pulled away from his brother, glared at Aleksy, and went into his tent.

  Marek turned to Aleksy. “It’s best if you keep things to yourself, Aleksy Gazdecki.”

  Twenty-three

  The cavalcade had shambled into Tarnowskie on 21 August, at mid-day.

  Dusk was settling in now as Aleksy and Piotr returned from hunting. They climbed down from their steppe ponies and walked toward Market Square, talking as they went.

  “How’d I do, Aleksy?”

  “You did fine, Piotr. Once you develop calluses on those arrow fingers, you’ll do better.—You know, something’s got to change. Six days of travel, and what, not much more than seventy miles?” He realized he was beginning to sound like Roman, but their tardiness in getting to Vienna was fact. The camp was tense with anticipation.

  On the outing with Piotr, Aleksy had learned a great deal about the initial days of Vienna’s plight. “Emperor Leopold seemed very relaxed at the start of July,” Piotr said, “hunting he was, like he was carefree. But when word came of the Turks’ crossing Hungary’s plains, his mother left her villa and sought refuge behind Vienna’s fortifications. I think that’s when it dawned on the emperor what the risk was. That’s when things got serious because the Imperial Army is not very large and much of it was elsewhere with Duke Charles of Lorraine. The Imperial family packed up, along with some sixty thousand citizens, and hightailed it west.”

  “Who the hell was left to defend the city?”

  “Count Starhemberg was made commandant and given supreme command. I have to hand it to him: he put the remaining folks to work repairing the city’s defenses. Good thing, too, because by mid-July, the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa and his thousands of troops came upon Vienna, by God. One hundred forty thousand by most accounts, with one-third of them trained fighters. He sent out detachments that encircled the fortress. Scared the wits out of the witless—I can vouch for that. They had numberless horses and wagons with baggage. And camels! My God, Aleksy, have you ever seen a camel?”

  “I have not.” Aleksy felt very provincial. He would not tell Piotr that he had only just seen his first large city, Kraków.

  “Marvelously mysterious beasts, they are! Humps on their backs big as you please. Well, once Vienna is pretty much surrounded, up comes a Turkish officer to our counterscarp—oh, we’d not been idle. We numbered maybe fifteen thousand. Commandant Starhemberg saw to the defenses as best he could. So this officer delivers a document for the commandant that calls out for the citizens of Vienna to accept Islam and live in peace under the Sultan‘s protection—or surrender the city and continue as Christians under the Sultan.”

  Aleksy let loose a whistle. “That last seems unlikely.”

  “Indeed. The offer was for citizens to leave peaceably with their belongings.”

  “And if one chose neither?”

  “To stay? To resist? Death or slavery. Oh, the two were wrapped up in fine words, but that’s what they amounted to.”

  “And the commandant?”

  “He turned away the Turk and proceeded to wall up the gates. From the way the Turks settled in at some little distance, making a kind of tent city for themselves, it seemed they were in for the duration and that the Hofburg was their target.”

  “The Hofburg?”

  “Leopold’s palace. It’s got hundreds of windows, a high roof, and timbered structures, plus rumors of great treasures within, so I suspect that’s what tempted Mustafa. He assumed it must be the weakest point. That’s when they started tunneling. The many tunnel entrances that we could see from St. Stephen’s tower told us they had dug a warren beneath the stony ground, like rabbits. Their siegeworks were clearly aiming for the two particular bastions nearest the Hofburg. When they got far enough along, they started mining.”

  By now the two had arrived with the goods of Piotr’s archery lesson—pheasant and rabbit—at an area in the Market Square abutting the inn where the king and queen were housed. “Ah, here’s where tomorrow the king bids farewell to his Marysieńka,” Piotr said. “Her carriage and all her retinue are slowing us, truth to tell. Now, you take most everything but this plump rabbit. It won’t be needed here. The king and his folk will not be relying on my poor expertise this night, for they will be doing some high dining inside. At least as high class as one can get at a Tarnowskie inn. And besides, you were the successful hunter to
day, no surprise there. I’m responsible for only the rabbit, and if he weren’t so fat and slower than most, I wouldn’t have done that much.”

  “You think he’ll do it, then? Send the queen back to Kraków?”

  “I’ve heard him say so myself. Tomorrow, there’s to be a review of troops. If you ask me, it’s for General Caraffa’s benefit, should he be sending word on ahead to Charles of Lorraine about our force and its readiness. The king will want a good report preceding him.”

  “What’s this, then?” Aleksy asked, nodding to a circular stone pillar no more than four feet high. Flowers were placed all about it.

  “I heard the mayor tell the king that it’s a recent monument to plague victims. The plague ravaged this area just six or seven years ago before going on to Vienna.”

  “Probably traveled faster than we are,” Aleksy said.

  “They say a third of the townspeople are buried underneath it in a mass grave. It had to be done quickly. Oh!—What is the saying? ‘Nothing is ever done well in a hurry, except running from the plague or from quarrels—’”

  “‘And catching fleas!’” Aleksy said, finishing the old proverb. He laughed heartily with Piotr, but each nonetheless made a quick sign of the cross to ward off the evil eye that was often thought to bring the plague.

  Aleksy started gathering up the lion’s share of the day’s game. It would be enough to satisfy Marek and Roman.

  “Oh, look,” Piotr said, “there’s someone who defied the evil eye!”

  “Who?”

  “There—across the square at the well, drawing water. It’s that dwarf I told you about. Had he been a foot taller, I think my arrow would have pierced him through one temple and out the other.”

  “Skewered the little one, hey?” Aleksy’s eyes narrowed as he stared across the square. While the Tarnowskie Market Square wasn’t nearly as massive as Kraków’s, it was still some distance from the one end with the column to the other with the well. Several of the townsfolk stood in line, but he was focusing on the dwarf Piotr was talking about. One glance told him he looked much like Idzi—the same height exactly, large hatless head, and body stance. Was it possible? Or was it that dwarfs tended to look alike?