The Boy Who Wanted Wings

by James Conroyd Martin

  “Did you get his name?” Aleksy asked.

  “The dwarf’s? No, I nearly killed him. I was all apologies, but we weren’t about to become bosom friends.”

  “But he’s Polish?”

  “Of course.”

  Aleksy dropped his cache, turned, and started to walk toward the well, ignoring some question or other that Piotr was flinging after him.

  As the dwarf, on tiptoes, drew water and splashed it into his bucket, his back was to Aleksy. About halfway to the well, Aleksy almost gave up in what he thought was likely a foolish conjecture. He would merely embarrass himself. Idzi couldn’t be here in Tarnowskie. He must be in Halicz by now. But then he heard him speaking to a man waiting behind him. All dwarfs surely didn’t have the same voice and speak in the same cadence. This voice was Idzi’s.

  At that moment the little man was turning about, preparing to leave the square with his water.

  “Idzi!” Aleksy called.

  The dwarf turned toward the approaching Aleksy. A shadow passed over his face. “A—Aleksy,” he said.

  Aleksy blinked in disbelief. “What are you doing here?—My God, you’ve run away!”

  “No… no, Aleksy. I’ve been with you all the while.”

  “What? Travelling with us? What the devil—” Aleksy stopped short, for he saw that Idzi had given a person nearby a furtive look. It was a cloaked and hooded figure, not quite as tall as most men. A woman, Aleksy guessed.

  He cast Idzi a suspiciously amused glance. “What—are you cavorting with the king’s camp followers now? Truly? Why, my friend, how I looked up to you!”

  His little joke—an old one—didn’t elicit favor from Idzi. “Aleksy, I… that is, I—”

  “I can’t remember your being at a loss for words before. What is it?”

  Through his peripheral vision, Aleksy now noticed that the hooded companion was slinking away. “Wait!” he called, turning toward her. “You there, wait a moment!”

  The figure was moving faster and Aleksy had to run to catch up. He managed to catch hold of the cloaked arm there in the middle of the street that accessed the square. Both Idzi and Piotr were behind him, saying things he could not comprehend.

  The figure pivoted toward him. It was a woman, her face in the shadow of the hood that she held forward, over her brow.

  Aleksy’s heart stopped. It couldn’t be, he told himself. It can’t be!

  “Aleksy,” she said, pushing back the hood with both hands, freeing up her long blond braids.

  He stood there motionless, all breath drawn from his body as if he were drowning. “Krystyna,” he heard himself say—and then he could not speak.

  “She’s the one that’s run away,” Idzi was saying. “And God help a poor dwarf for aiding her! My gallows won’t take but half the usual allotment of wood. I told her it was insane for a noblewoman to go about like a common camp follower. An honest one, I admit, but nonetheless—”

  Aleksy hadn’t taken his eyes off of her. “You disguised yourself as a camp follower?”

  “Well, you needn’t take that tone with me, Aleksy,” Krystyna said. “And it’s no disguise at all. Did you think the worst? There are many virtuous camp followers, I can tell you—wives and children, victual sellers, men and women who cook and launder and nurse. They are not all of spoiled reputations.”

  “I’m aware of that, Lady Krystyna.”

  “Oh, you needn’t start that either—like you don’t know me.”

  “You ran away from your husband… and then caught up to us?”

  “From Fabian? Yes!” Her face was reddening. “Only… only… oh, you tell him, Idzi!”

  “She didn’t marry Lord Nardolski, Aleksy. Conspired with me to get away is what she did instead. God help me, I’ll have no home to go to after this. You might as well give me a lance—a short one, mind you—and point me in the direction of Vienna because—”

  Both Aleksy and Krystyna turned to the talkative dwarf and said in unison: “Hush up, Idzi!”

  He obeyed, but not without muttering about the crowd they were attracting.

  Aleksy turned back to Krystyna. “You left him at the altar?”

  “I left a note.”

  “A note? Holy Chrystus! Why, your brothers never let on that the wedding didn’t go forward. No wonder there was no boasting.”

  “They didn’t let on? For your benefit, no doubt. Bastards, aren’t they?”

  “Is this the truth?” Aleksy felt as if he were dreaming.

  “Idzi can corroborate my story,” Krystyna said. “Idzi?”

  “The wedding was cancelled, Aleksy,” his little friend said, “for want of a bride. We were off buying our way into a group of camp followers.”

  “But… why, Krystyna?”

  “I couldn’t stay in Kraków, now could I? And—”

  “And?”

  “I thought you could read, Alek, and yet you need everything spelled out.” She took a deep breath. “Because the man I love is here.”

  “Here?”

  “Before me, you ox.”

  “Prettiest speech I’ve heard today,” Idzi offered. “Who might she be speaking of?” Nodding at Piotr, he said, “Keep in mind her amour is not this fellow here who nearly killed me the other day with a wayward arrow, and as for me—why, I’m not even on eye level with the lady.—Why, it must be you, Aleksy.”

  It seemed unreal. He had needed it spelled out. That she would do something so careless and risky for him made his head spin. He took her into a clumsy kiss-less embrace, then held her at arm’s length. “You’ve been with us for all these many miles and days. Why didn’t you show yourself? Oh, Krysia, when were you—” His questioning was cut short by a movement of her eyes, darkly green in the dusk. She had shifted her line of vision to something behind him, something that made her pale almost immediately.

  “Oh, Sweet Jezus,” she murmured, “this is why, Alek, this is why I dared not come to you.”

  Aleksy pivoted to see Roman Halicki bearing down on them, fire in his eyes, a stern-faced Marek trailing.

  Twenty-four

  “It’s her,” Roman bellowed. “It’s Krystyna! And she’s with the Tatar cur! A cholera on them!” In a split second Roman’s hands were on Aleksy’s żupan, pulling him toward him, wrenching him away from Krystyna. “You’ll pay for this,” he shouted as he started to deliver hammer blows to Aleksy’s face.

  Aleksy, taken so off guard, tried merely to fend off the blows. “He’s done nothing!” Krystyna yelled at her brother. “It’s my doing, Roman! Leave him alone.”

  A blow to the chest sent Aleksy to the ground. Idzi had joined in on the shouting, too, but he was easily pushed to the side by Marek. A small, curious crowd began to gather so that only later did Aleksy realize Piotr must have disappeared about this time.

  Marek roughly pulled Aleksy to his feet. He and his brother were not finished with him. As Roman moved forward, Krystyna, screaming through tears, tried to intervene, stepping in front of her brother. He tossed her stumbling to the side.

  Anger flared up in Aleksy now. He shoved Marek aside and threw himself on Roman. They fell to the ground, rolling and wrestling in the dirt, locked in what seemed an even match—until Roman came up atop Aleksy’s chest. Just as he was about to deliver a blow to the face, Aleksy shifted his head and Roman’s hand struck the stony earth. As Roman cried out in pain, Aleksy threw him off and their positions were at once reversed. He had no time to deliver a blow because Marek threw his whole body at Aleksy, sending them both careening. Aleksy jumped up and stood his ground as the Halicki brothers moved toward him. He would not back down.

  Both Krystyna and Idzi made moves to come between Aleksy and the brothers, but they were thrust aside. The two did, however, work in tandem to keep Marek from interfering with the
Roman and Aleksy contest that went on at some length.

  “Stop!” The commanding voice came from the rear of the shallow crowd that had gathered. “Stop this at once!”

  Aleksy turned around, toward the speaker, but had difficulty seeing. He wiped at a stream of blood that hindered the sight of his right eye.

  The crowd parted as if they were cued actors upon a stage. A large, daunting figure in a scarlet kontusz stood over the three frozen forms. “What goes on here?” King Jan Sobieski demanded. “Our first rest in a real town is to be interrupted by ruffians! I think not! You will stop this, the lot of you, and you will explain yourselves.”

  The Halicki brothers stared in abashment, and Aleksy opened his mouth to answer—an answer as yet unformed—but it was Krystyna who spoke first. “I can explain,” she said, curtseying demurely as if at court.

  The large man, his face empurpled in the evening’s dying light, turned to her. “You? Who are you? Are these men fighting over you?”

  “Not in the way you might imagine, Your Majesty.”

  “You speak strangely well considering your attire.” The king let out a sigh. “Very well, I’ll listen. The rest of you,” he addressed himself to the onlookers, waving his arms as if shooing away birds, “go about your business! Move along!” His stage magic seemed to work again.

  Roman started to speak but one dark look from the king silenced him at once. Krystyna told her tale: how she was being bullied into a marriage she didn’t want with a man she didn’t love; how she and Idzi had become camp followers; how it wasn’t more than a half an hour ago that her brothers had discovered her presence; how they mistakenly thought that Aleksy, their retainer, had engineered her masquerade.

  “So you say that this one,” the king asked, nodding at Aleksy, “didn’t know you were here, either?”

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “But he is the reason for your attaching yourself to a war party instead of a wedding party, is he not?”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “God’s teeth, girl! Is this the boy you love—or not?”

  Before Krystyna could answer the question, a figure appeared at the king’s side now. “Husband, the tables are set and we await your arrival in the hall before the supper can commence.”

  Aleksy had seen Queen Maria Casimire from a distance at the cathedral but not up close like this. Framed by long, luxuriant curls of raven black, her face, even a bit distorted now by her pique, shone with a luminescent beauty.

  “I apologize, Marysieńka,” the king said, the diminutive wrapped in warmth. “There’s been a little scuffle over this girl and that boy there.”

  Aleksy drew in breath and held it. That the king referred to him as a boy and Krystyna as a girl was insulting, but he could do nothing about it.

  As the king apprised his wife of the scenario in shorter time than Krystyna had taken—and not without a twinkle of amusement in his eyes—the queen’s eyes became riveted on Krystyna.

  “Husband,” she said, once he had finished, “don’t you recognize this girl?”

  The king’s forehead furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “This is the girl who brought up the Offertory gift in the cathedral at Kraków! I’ve never seen a girl with greener eyes.”

  “Is it, indeed? You know I’m not as good at faces as are you.” He addressed himself to Krystyna now. “It was you who brought up the crown of grains, then?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “She’s of a good family,” the queen said. “She’s not to be among common camp followers, by heaven. She needs to be sent back at once.”

  “To Kraków?” Krystyna implored. “Oh, please—”

  Roman took a step forward. “If I may speak, Your Majesty—”

  “Yes, very well,” the king said. “What is it?”

  “Your Majesty, If you would allow it, I would leave for as short a time as possible in order to return my sister to our parents. We’re traveling not so fast that I couldn’t find my way back before—”

  “Another one to hector me about our speed! God’s death, when will it end?”

  “I only meant—”

  “Yes, yes, I know what you meant. You’re right—she should go home.”

  The queen now drew her husband to bend low so she could whisper in his ear. Aleksy studied Krystyna, whose face had gone white with despair, a despair that clung to him, as well. Was Roman to return her to angry parents? Might she still be forced to marry Fabian Nardolski? Had her brave gambit come to nothing? What was there in his power that he could do?

  The king nodded in agreement to something his wife was saying. He stood erect now, making known his thoughts as if they comprised an official announcement from the royal dais. “There will be no need for you to leave us,” he said to Roman. “You and your brother are hussars, yes? Well, we will need every lance, every man, every damn pair of eagles’ wings.” The heavy-set king’s chest rose as he drew in a long breath, then said, “It’s to be announced at supper—the supper I might add that you people are keeping us from—that Queen Marysieńka will be returning to Kraków tomorrow. She and her household will go well protected. In her goodness, she has asked that the young Lady Halicka accompany her and her attendant ladies, whereupon she will be returned to her family.”

  Roman’s mouth fell agape.

  Aleksy’s inside knowledge about the queen’s imminent leave-taking had proved accurate, but his thoughts were too tangled to lord it over Roman. He looked to Krystyna. She seemed no more relieved than if Roman had been given permission to escort her. And rightly so, he realized. She would likely be under guard until given over to her mother.

  And they were to be separated yet again.

  “Your Majesty, If I may be permitted to speak—” Krystyna ventured.

  “You may not!” the king countered. “You’re to accompany my wife to her rooms, and her ladies will see that you are properly dressed and attended for tomorrow’s departure. Your life as a camp-follower, my sweet, has ended.”

  Krystyna’s eyes went beseechingly to Aleksy. “Alek, I—”

  “Now,” the queen said, taking hold of Krystyna’s arm and hustling her off.

  “And, Your Majesty,” Idzi piped, “am I not to attend Lady Krystyna?”

  “I think not,” the king said. “What to do with you, then? Is this Aleksy here not your friend?”

  “He is, Your Majesty, and his greatest wish—well, one of them—is to be a hussar himself and not a retainer.”

  Holy Chrystus! Aleksy’s mouth fell open at the little man’s nerve. What had prompted him to such boldness?

  The king’s gaze fell on Aleksy. “Is this true?”

  “It—it is,” Aleksy mumbled, forgetting the proper form of address.

  “You would like to be a lancer?”

  “Your Majesty,” Idzi persisted, “he’s made his own lance and it’s a beauty. He’s also the best archer in camp.”

  “Fewer and fewer of those, to be certain,” the king said.

  “Your Majesty,” Piotr interjected, “I can vouch for his expertise with a bow. He’s been giving me lessons. That venison you so enjoyed the other day came only at his great skill as an archer. Took the beast right through the heart.”

  “Indeed?” The king took a hard look at Aleksy. “As you must have done that waif of a girl you were fighting over, yes?”

  “Milord?”

  “Don’t stand there with your mouth open! You might wish to join my Tatar company, then? You are a Tatar, yes?”

  Aleksy stiffened. “I am a Tatar loyal to Poland, Your Majesty.” He could scarcely think. Krystyna had just been wrenched from him and yet, was his other dearest wish about to be granted him—out of the blue and the mouth of a dwarf? Had he not believed in Chrystus, he would
swear that the old gods were having their fun with him.

  “It can be done,” the king said.

  Aleksy knew that a few words from the king and anything was as good as done. But words of interference from Roman came as no surprise to Aleksy.

  Roman spoke without permission. “Your Majesty,” he blurted, “although my family is of the szlachta, we are not so wealthy that our father was able to provide the requisite three retainers each for my brother Marek here, and for me. Neither did he afford us two. Marek and I have but one retainer apiece. And if you take Aleksy we will be at a sore disadvantage.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  Aleksy felt his stomach drop in disappointment. He could think of nothing to counter the argument. What could he say—that the Halicki brothers hated him? That they might murder him in his sleep? What? He said nothing.

  What did it matter? Superseding everything was the reality that he had just lost Krystyna yet again. Idzi started to speak, but a subtle hand signal from the king hushed him at once.

  “Well,” the king said, “your point is well taken. I will allow you your retainer here—and the little man into the bargain.”

  For the briefest of moments he had almost broken free of Roman Halicki, but the king’s words rang in his ears like the clanging of a prison door.

  Before leaving Aleksy and Idzi in the custody of Roman and Marek, the king bound the two brothers to an agreement that no harm whatsoever would come to their retainer and his little friend.

  Still, Aleksy thought how in the chaos of war, it would be so easy for them to deliberately place him in danger—or to kill him themselves and claim it was the enemy. Safety while in the hands of Roman? Perhaps. But the thought did not buoy any hope in Aleksy. He had lost his one brief chance at becoming a hussar. And he had lost Krystyna.