Idzi spoke up. “I thought the Kahlenberg was one of the highest peaks, not a ridge.”
“Well, it is that,” Piotr said, “but the entire ridge of the Vienna Woods—the Wienerwald—is referred to as the Kahlenberg.”
Ludwik gave a high whistle, his visage revealing vexation rather than approbation, for talk had gotten around by now of the difficulty of negotiating the Kahlenberg route. “Damn, we’re in for it now. Beautiful country the Vienna Woods, all streams, hills and low mountains, pretty as you please, but dragging wagons and cannons up there in the heat of summer is going to be hell. The king has managed to gain for us the worst of the bargain.”
Aleksy had put Lord Halicki and the Nardolski father and son out of his thoughts. Neither was he thinking of the climb up, arduous as it might be; he was thinking of how magnificent the descending formation of the winged hussars would look to the people of Vienna, those long encased in the citadel who were praying for a last minute miracle. He was also thinking of how terrifying the Polish formation would look to Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa and his troops, who, it was said, feared the hussars more than any other force. The Ottomans had yet to win a battle when pitted against Sobieski and his hussars. It was also put about by spies that he did not believe Sobieski would come to Vienna’s aid so that the sight of the king’s feathered hussars flying down in formation, stirrup to stirrup, would be doubly terrifying.
Aleksy felt a stab of jealousy at the heart when he thought of Roman and Marek—in their leopard skins draped over polished armor and chain mail—tearing down from the ridge, their feathers singing in the breeze, the sound and sight inciting terror in the Ottomans and spooking their horses. And how the Viennese would rejoice to see their freedom at hand. All Europe would sing the praises of the Polish hussars. Oh, he would have his part to play. He and other retainers would come afterward, in the wake of the hussars, on steppe ponies or horseless, striving to both help their wounded lords and perhaps wield some blows, as well. But the glory of being a hussar—that was for others, like the Halicki brothers.
“Do you know,” Piotr said, looking pointedly at Aleksy, “that one of the king’s most serious concerns was that of the Tatars that fight for the Ottomans?”
“War must be in the Tatar blood,” Idzi said, winking at Aleksy.
Ludwik spoke up now. “Well, he’s got his own elite Lithuanian Tatars—the Lipka—to counterbalance those from the Wild Fields.”
“I should like to see them,” Idzi said, “but they have yet to arrive.”
It was an unsettling feeling for Aleksy to think that Tatars like himself would be fighting on each side, perhaps brother against brother. On whose side would his father—blood brother to Lord Halicki—have stood?
“Of course,” Piotr said, “Duke Charles and Prince Waldeck wanted to know how the king beat the Ottomans in the past even though his forces were always greatly outnumbered.”
“And?” Aleksy pressed.
“He said speed and the fact that he would never allow the enemy to collect in one place.”
Divide and conquer.
“And…” Aleksy said, feigning an offhand question, “has the king had word about the queen’s progress toward Kraków?”
“No,” Piotr replied, “too soon for that, my friend.”
“Of course,” Aleksy mumbled, a bit embarrassed. Piotr’s tone revealed that he saw right through to his real concern: Krystyna.
Piotr stayed longer than Aleksy would have wished. He longed to put his head down and lose himself in sleep.
It was after midnight that they heard loud voices in Roman and Marek’s adjoining tent. Aleksy and his three friends fell silent and listened. He could discern four voices: Roman’s, Marek’s, Lord Halicki’s and one other.
A single questioning expression directed at Idzi brought the answer. Idzi mouthed the name: Fabian Nardolski.
Aleksy’s heart caught at once, but there was no time to assess his feelings, for the tent flap was thrown back and Roman reached in, grasped hold of Aleksy’s cotton shirt and dragged him out into the rain. “Someone to meet you, my would-be soldier.—Fabian, meet your competition!”
Aleksy stared at the tall figure, his handsomeness evident despite the rain-soaked uniform and wet ringlets of hair. Water ran from the end of his fine nose like from a spout. Like Roman, he was drunk.
“Krystyna fell for this—this Tatar?” Fabian asked dumbly. “You cost me my marriage, Tatar? Speak up!”
Aleksy didn’t know how to respond. He was unafraid and even surprised himself with a feeling of compassion for this man, who—like him—had lost Krystyna.
Roman moved behind Aleksy and took captive his arms at the elbows. “The lieutenant is addressing you, Aleksy. Treat your betters with respect—answer him!”
Idzi threw back the flap and started to come out of the lean-to. Roman kicked him now, propelling him back into the tent.
Aleksy fought an urge to pull free from Roman. “I did not ask Krystyna to follow me. It was her choice.”
“Choice, Tatar? Choice?” Lord Fabian Nardolski sputtered. “She had no choice. The marriage had been arranged.”
Aleksy felt Roman’s hold on him tighten like steel. He knew from Fabian’s momentarily averted eyes that some signal was passed from Roman to him. Fabian stepped forward and brought his fist up like a hammer into Aleksy’s face. All went black for some moments and as he sank back, Roman released his grip and he slipped into the mud.
He sensed a stir around him as his friends exited the tent to come to his aid. And then came the voice of authority. “What’s going on here?” Lord Halicki thundered. “Roman, I can’t even go off for a piss and you’re at Aleksy’s throat!”
“Not I, Father. I’ve kept my promise.”
Aleksy looked up to see Lord Halicki’s gaze move from his son to Fabian. Was he making some allowance for the spurned lover? Then he looked again to Aleksy, who was being helped to his feet by Piotr and Ludwik. “Help him into your tent, men. By God, you’ll all catch a death of cold in this downpour—and then where will we be for the coming battle?”
As Aleksy was brought to his pallet, he heard Lord Halicki chastising Roman before calling out, “You should have given the letter to the king, Aleksy, do you hear? Too bad you didn’t.”
Letter? Aleksy thought. He remembered at once the count’s promise of a letter to the king, but he had been given no letter and wanted to tell Lord Halicki as much, but the pain of his jaw precluded his raising his voice above a whisper.
He lay back on his pallet. No covering was needed in the dense and sultry air. Piotr left now to return to the king’s campsite, and Ludwik and Idzi settled themselves in their respective places.
As usual, Roman had meant his mischief, but Aleksy—empathizing with Fabian and his aborted marriage plans—could almost forgive the forsaken groom.
Sleep came eventually despite the pain, a pain assuaged by the realization that with Lord Fabian Nardolski involved in the saving of Vienna, no marriage to Krystyna could occur. That knowledge was worth a broken face.
Twenty-seven
Krystyna Halicka paced back and forth, forth and back, across the intricate arabesque of a luxurious carpet created in Constantinople and the irony was not lost on her. Hundreds of miles away, Polish and other European allies were converging at Vienna in order to halt the Ottoman Turks’ takeover of an entire continent. So many that she loved were caught up in the effort to hold Christian Europe. Her father, her brothers Roman and Marek—and Aleksy. God protect Aleksy from the Turks, she prayed—and from her brothers.
Two guards armed with halberds stood posted outside of her castle chamber door. Ostensibly, they were there to protect her, but she knew better. They were there to see that she did not attempt to flee. On the return from Tarnowskie to Kraków, the queen had been fussy about where the royal par
ty spent the night so that often they took circuitous routes to wealthier homes and better inns, making the long journey interminable and that much more exhausting. Sometimes—if the queen developed a rapport with her hosts—they stayed an extra day. But they were in Kraków at last, the city that had been the Commonwealth’s capital before Warsaw laid claim to the title, and Krystyna found herself all but a captive in Wawel Castle.
Upon their arrival in the city, the queen sent word to the Nardolski household, only to learn that Krystyna’s mother had returned to Halicz. Despite Krystyna’s tearful plea to refrain, the queen wrote to the countess at once, instructing her to come and collect her wayward daughter. And so Krystyna waited for the sword of Zenobia to fall. It would be some days before her mother’s arrival, but in the great scheme of things, that was of little importance. What mattered, truly mattered, was whether King Jan Sobieski would triumph at Vienna—and whether Roman and Marek and Aleksy would survive. Even if her mother and father went against her, even if she was forced to marry another, she could not enjoy a breath of life if Aleksy were to die at Vienna.
A knock came at the door. Before she could call out, the door opened and—impossible as it was—for a moment she thought her mother had arrived, for that was very much her signature entrance.
Dressed in a drab blue gown, Madame Heloise stepped in. Krystyna smothered a little laugh because it occurred to her now that this woman with her humorless demeanor could provide a fairly accurate proxy for her mother.
“Her Majesty Queen Maria Casimire,” the Mistress of the Robes announced, haughtily stressing the queen’s French name, “wishes to know if you have settled in—?”
“I have, Madame.”
“Is there anything you wish?”
Krystyna affected sincerity. “How very sweet of you to ask.”
In return, Madame Heloise rendered the facsimile of a smile. “It is the queen who asks.”
Krystyna returned an expression in kind. Of course she knew that. At least the woman took no credit for any sweetness. “I’m wondering if the queen has had word from her husband.”
“His Majesty, the King, you mean?”
Krystyna suppressed a sigh and took the correction in stride. She just wanted the answer. “Yes, His Majesty, King Jan Sobieski.”
“She has.”
“And?”
Madame Heloise pursed her lips as if unsure whether she should relay such information.
“Madame Heloise, he and my father fight for the future of the Commonwealth, and my brothers and—my brothers are with him.” Later, she wondered why she stumbled, why she hadn’t said Aleksy’s name. After all, the woman knew about the scandal of her running away to follow a young peasant Tatar. She was no doubt the talk of the castle. Krystyna locked eyes with the Frenchwoman. “Please tell me if there is news.”
The woman shifted from one black leather pump to the other. “They were very close to Vienna when he wrote. They may be engaging in battle as I speak.”
Krystyna lost her equanimity for the moment and a hand went to her mouth. She turned away and looked out the lancet window, her eyes focusing absently on the high walls of the barbican. The defensive wall and tower made her think of the encounters with Aleksy at the castle ruins at Halicz. Several moments slipped by. She spoke then without turning about. “Thank you, Madame Heloise, for looking in on me.”
“Lady Krystyna,” the woman said.
“Yes?”
The woman gave a little stage cough. “Her Majesty Queen Maria Casimire has invited you to sup with her.”
“What?” Krystyna pivoted to face the fish-eyed woman, quickly wiping at a tear. Throughout the entire journey, she, the unexpected passenger, had taken her meals by herself at the inns and noble houses as if she were a pariah, a leper. Now she was being asked to share a meal in the dining hall of Wawel Castle? How was it possible?
Madame Heloise read her silent wonder. The woman shrugged and said with a voice destitute of expression, “Her Majesty took a liking to you.” She turned now and went to the door, adding at the last, “I can’t think why.”
Aleksy worried. Days passed without word coming back of the queen’s retinue. Surely Krystyna must have arrived in Kraków by now—and yet no news had come.
The immediate military plan was for the three armies to go their separate ways and converge at Tulln on the other side of the River Danube. For the Poles, the route first ran through marshes and lowlands to the south bank of the Danube. There, with the participation of the three forces, pontoon bridges were built—with the loss of three valuable days—but Sobieski’s fear that Ottoman Tatars would waylay them during this process did not materialize. They were now close enough for the Poles to hear the bombardment of Vienna. Aleksy brooded that they might not arrive in time. He was not alone.
By 10 September, Aleksy’s hunting forays were days long past. They had to rely solely on what supplies were provided by the army stores carried in the scores of wagons that lagged behind, often breaking down in the uneven, ever-rising terrain. Before dawn Sobieski’s army started through the Wienerwald, the Vienna Woods. These rolling, richly forested highlands would take them up to the Kahlenberg ridge.
Aleksy and Ludwik took the climb on foot, carefully leading their steppe ponies while nearby Idzi—who occasionally played relief driver for Bogdan and Jacek—drove one of the Halicki wagons, the one that held the Halicki armor and camp equipment. They moved along the path newly made by the king and the vanguard, Roman and Marek among them. Occasionally they halted in order to urge a horse forward or to help men of the infantry push forward one of the cannons.
“Piotr told me that the Kahlenberg is sometimes called Bald Mountain,” Ludwik said, an hour into the climb.
“Hey,” Idzi called out, “how is it that we can we be so close to Vienna and yet we see nothing?”
“Don’t worry, my friend,” Ludwik shouted, “I’m told we are but a few miles away. Were it not for the denseness of the trees, we could see the city.”
“But the cannon fire,” Idzi persisted, “it sounds as if it’s many miles away.”
Here Aleksy’s yeomanly skills came in handy. “The forest with its many trees, mostly still in leaf, mind you, mask the noise. Ludwik’s right. The city is closer than it sounds.”
Idzi grunted. “How does the proverb go? ‘Hunger will lead a man out of the forest’.”
“In our case,” Piotr said, serious as a monk, “it’s a hunger to hold on to Poland and to Europe.”
“That it is,” Aleksy agreed. “That it is.”
“They also say,” Idzi said, inflecting a pointedness that escaped Piotr, “that ‘the forest can’t be without its jackals’.”
“Indeed! You are full of sayings today,” Aleksy said, making light of another warning of Roman’s intentions, but nonetheless wondering whether Roman would one day play the jackal.
“Perhaps, Alek, you don’t get the drift,” Idzi said.
“And they say,” Aleksy retorted, “‘Don’t go near a dwarf because God Himself hit him on the head with a hammer’.”
“What’s this?” Piotr asked. “What drift, little man?”
Idzi’s complexion now went beet red. Aleksy realized that his original proverb and Piotr’s solicitous epithet “little man” doubly stung his friend. “Never mind, Piotr,” Aleksy said. “Just know that as far as intelligence goes, Idzi is as tall as either of us.”
Idzi mumbled something and quickened the pace of the wagon so that Aleksy could not tell from his visage whether his quick repair had any effect.
Not a day went by that Idzi did not warn Aleksy of danger from the Halicki brothers, Roman in particular. Of course, Roman was a jackal, but he was a jackal being watched by a royal lion, King Sobieski, who had taken notice of Aleksy—and hadn’t he been named “Lion of Poland” by t
he Turks he and his hussars had defeated in numerous battles? Would Roman dare take his revenge? Aleksy thought not. He would be too afraid of the king’s reaction. Any revenge vented on Aleksy would likely end Roman’s ascent in the husaria.
Unless… unless Roman were able to mastermind an accident no one would question. A fall? A drowning? A hunting accident? He thought again. No, they had gotten too close to Vienna now for Roman to attempt something. The focus was on what was to come, not on avenging a sister’s honor. Not with the battle but hours away. The battle! At the thought, Aleksy’s hair on the nape of his neck stood on end. He could imagine such chaos and confusion that Roman, atop Flash and with a sabre sharp as a razor, could cut him down in an instant and have no one the wiser. Or a pistol shot would be even quicker and less likely to be noticed.
The imagery was not easily put to rest. Aleksy fought off a chill that ran though him. Idzi was right. He would have to watch his back even as he battled Turks. What was it Szymon had called Roman?—Slyboots.
Krystyna sat, waiting, waiting, as if for the executioner rather than for an escort to the royal dining hall. The clock on a pedestal near the ceramic stove ticked loudly. She sat on an uncomfortably prim white stool, pushing the fingernail of her index finger along the map-like lines of minerals in the predominantly white marble that formed the top of the boudoir table. Below, one of her borrowed silver slippers tapped nervously at the parquet. Not so many months ago she would have been mesmerized by the interior of Wawel Castle. Oh, Roman and Marek bragged about their visit to the Royal Castle in Warsaw, but they had never stepped foot in Kraków’s Wawel Castle, much less been welcomed into a room of their own. Wouldn’t they be surprised? How would she describe the color of the walls and the gold-trimmed bed hangings that framed the moderately-sized bed in the alcove? A purplish blue, she thought, and so very rich in the candlelight emanating from the crystal chandelier above her and the wall sconces on either side of the gold-gilded mirror. The resplendently royal color, juxtaposed with the paneled door and wainscoting of white enamel deemed the chamber fit for a princess—and yet Krystyna was numb to her surroundings. It might as well have been the meanest, rat-infested cell at convent school.
The Boy Who Wanted Wings Page 24