“Confused, boys?”
The three turned to see Roman approaching.
“You best get to work on it,” Roman said. “It won’t polish itself. The king wants our armor to blind the Turks and Tatars as we descend. Hope you weren’t all planning on getting any sleep.”
“Who’s it for?” Aleksy ventured. “Yours and Marek’s are in perfect condition.”
“You flatter your own expertise, you do,” Roman said. “But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are two of everything—helmets, mail shirts, ribbed breastplates, combat sabres and war hammers.” He flashed a strange grin. “Not of the best quality, I admit.”
“Who… who are they for?” Ludwik asked.
Aleksy had already made the deduction. “They’re for us,” he muttered in amazement.
“Indeed!” Roman snapped. “Your own trousers and boots will have to suffice.”
The three stared at the inventory. “Then we’re not to follow with the infantry as aides or medics?” Aleksy asked.
“No, Aleksy, you will have your chance to play soldier, as was your wish.”
“My… my lance?”
“You’ll have it. Oh, and you needn’t thank me for this. It was my father’s idea. He insisted although I can’t say I disapprove of the idea of placing you front and center against the infidel.” Roman gave out with a guffaw.
“What about me?” Idzi blurted.
Roman looked at him in faux astonishment. “Yes, Idzi, what about you?”
It was a question meant to humiliate and terminate the inquiry, but Idzi pressed further. “I want to fight!”
Aleksy cringed at the hurt Roman was inflicting with nothing but the weapons of words.
“We have nothing your size, Idzi,” Roman intoned as if he were speaking to a dolt. “You’re to stay with the wagons. If your friends here fall, you can go pick up the pieces.”
Even in the dark, Aleksy could see Idzi’s face had gone scarlet.
Idzi drew breath. “Well, where are their wings?”
“Wings?” Roman was as surprised as Aleksy at the dwarf’s nerve. “Wings? Do you think hussars are made from the likes of them, little man? Plucked from the peasantry? Do you?”
“But you’ve given them armor and weapons.”
“My father has!” Marek announced appearing on the scene laden with brushes, rags, vinegar, and sand. “Aleksy and Ludwik here will ride with the lighthorsemen, behind the husaria. They will have their chance to prove themselves.”
Roman scoffed. “Maybe they can deliver the finishing touches to unhorsed and wounded Turks.”
A lull ensued.
Then, as if suddenly remembering something, Marek spoke. “Lord Brother Romek,” he said, employing the affectionate epithet in a staged tone, “the same rider who brought the king news of his wife’s arrival at Kraków brought Father a letter, too.”
“Indeed? Good news, also?” Roman asked.
“Good news indeed, Romek. Within a day—or perhaps it’s already done—our sister Krystyna is to marry Fabian Nardolski.”
“That is wonderful news, Lord Brother Mareczek!” Roman’s eyes went to Aleksy. “Perhaps we’ll be uncles before our tour of duty is done. Of course, Aleksy here is very happy for her. Aren’t you, Aleksy?”
Roman’s lilting use of Marek’s diminutive removed all doubt. They were acting out a scene to provoke him. Aleksy would not rise to the bait. And yet—could the content of their exchange be true?
Another lull.
“I know his thoughts, Marek. He’s thinking a marriage to Fabian is impossible because Fabian is somewhere along the chain of mountains here, attached to General Lubomirski’s forces.”
Aleksy stiffened. This was exactly his thought.
Roman snickered and continued. “No, what Aleksy doesn’t understand is that among the nobility there are time-tested ways of doing things. You see, Aleksy, when a noble cannot appear for his wedding for whatever reason, a proxy is sent in his place. And the wedding goes forward.” His exaggerated smile went wide and he snapped his fingers. “Just like that!”
Aleksy swallowed hard. He looked to Marek.
“He’s right, Aleksy. Our sister is to be married by proxy to Lord Nardolski.”
In Marek’s straightforward confirmation, Aleksy thought he sensed a fleeting trace of empathy, just a trace for a heart that was breaking.
“Of course,” Roman said, sans empathy, “our friend here could always pray that Fabian gets skewered by a Turk so he might have a chance at the widow. But I doubt that he would do that. What think you, Marek? You’re too good for that, aren’t you, Aleksy?”
Again, Aleksy ignored Roman. He knelt instead, picked up a brush and began polishing a ribbed breastplate.
“Marek,” Roman said, moving away, “you’re handy with a razor. See to it that this one and Ludwik have the sides of their heads shaved so that they might at least resemble warriors.”
Once he was out of earshot, Idzi spoke: “I’ll do it, Lord Marek.”
Marek turned to him, tilted his head in thought, and shrugged. “Have at it, little man.”
Long before dawn, Krystyna was awakened by a rough shaking. A woman stood to the side of her bed. “What… what is it?”
“It’s time to rise, Krystyna.”
The throaty voice belonged to Madame Heloise. Krystyna shuddered.
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Heaven, indeed. Your mother has arrived.”
Krystyna’s heart plummeted. Oh, there was love for her and a bond with her, this woman who had sent a husband and two sons off to war, but Krystyna certainly did not want to be given over to her, like a piece of baggage. The queen had said her mother would collect her, as if she were a nonentity.
Krystyna drew herself to the side of the bed and sat. She looked up at Madame Heloise through the dimness. “I suppose I am to pack what few things I have?”
“No.”
The woman’s attitude unnerved her. “Are you here then to make certain I take nothing that the queen has given me? You needn’t bother.”
“I have no such orders other than to get you into that gown.”
Krystyna looked to a nearby chair. Draped upon it was a dress she recognized, its ivory whiteness glowing in the dark chamber, the beaded pearls of the bodice glittering. Her heart raced. “Where did it come from? It—it’s—”
“Your wedding gown.” Madame Heloise produced a broad smile, displaying her teeth, small and widely spaced. “Your mother sent the veil, too, very sheer, it is. But perhaps it is inappropriate, yes?”
Krystyna knew that the veil symbolized the virginity of the bride ever since the days of the Crusades, but she ignored the insult, bolting out of bed and drawing away from Madame Heloise and the dress. “I won’t wear it. I won’t.” She felt as if her world were closing in. She had told herself that a proxy marriage would never materialize, that her mother would never force it upon her, and that the Nardolski family would not wish to welcome her into their clan after she had jilted Fabian.
And yet this woman who seemed to enjoy being the harbinger of bad news had picked up the dress and was moving toward her, her face dark and serious as an owl’s.
“I won’t!” Krystyna cried, holding her ground, “I won’t put that on!” She pivoted now in an attempt to approach the wardrobe for her day dress.
“You will!” Madame Heloise dropped the dress onto the bed, moved right up to her and took hold of her wrists.
To think the equivalent of a servant—her connection to the queen notwithstanding—would lay hands on her shocked Krystyna and she recoiled for just a moment. “How dare you!” she cried now, attempting to pull free.
The Mistress of the Robes’ resolve was not shaken. “Come in, come in!” sh
e called out.
The door flew back and three of the queen’s ladies hurried in, as if they were minor stage characters whose moment had come.
All of her flailing and fighting went for naught so that in less than half of an hour, Krystyna was fitted out in dress and veil like a fish for a king’s platter and ushered into the royal chapel, Madame Heloise and the three ladies-in-waiting hovering about her like Swiss guards. Krystyna looked toward the sanctuary. Waiting there in the aisle was her mother, along with Lady Irena Nardolska. A cluster of others she guessed to be of the Nardolski clan stood stationed nearby at kneeling benches. One was a pimply-faced, rotund boy of no more than ten. She held back a gasp. Was this to be her proxy? Her heart revolted at the thought, at the image of standing side-by-side with him.
Krystyna pushed back the veil from her face. Lady Halicka was moving down the aisle, toward her. “Look happy, Krysia,” she whispered, taking both of her hands in hers. “For the Nadolskis, look happy.”
“I’m not happy, Mother. I won’t do this.”
“You will,” her mother said, the facsimile of a smile vanishing, her grip tightening and pulling her closer. “You will do this for the family. That—that boy you were obsessed with is gone. You have no reason not to marry Fabian.”
“By proxy? I won’t.” Krystyna withdrew her hands. “And Aleksy is fighting for the Commonwealth, just like Father and Marek and Roman.”
“He won’t come back,” her mother hissed.
“You don’t know that! Perhaps Fabian won’t come back—” Krystyna went silent. She had seen her mother’s eyes covertly glance at Madame Heloise in a most peculiar way.
“You haven’t told her?” her mother whispered to Madame Heloise.
Ice formed about Krystyna’s heart. “What? What hasn’t she told me?”
Lady Halicka turned back to her daughter. “The boy—”
“Aleksy!”
“Yes, Aleksy.” Her mother reached out and drew Krystyna’s hand into hers. “Krystyna, the boy will not be coming back. Like many of the soldiers we’ve heard about, he died of the dysentery. It’s not uncommon at all.”
The chapel—altar, pews, lancet windows, statues, people—moved vertiginously about her. She could not speak. She had not heard correctly. Someone would shake her from her dreams, for that was what this was—a dream, a nightmare.
People about her were chattering, but to her it was gibberish. Finally, her heart slowed, the vertigo ceased. She turned to Madame Heloise for corroboration.
Madame Heloise nodded sadly. “It’s true, mademoiselle. It’s true.”
Was she playacting? “How could you know? How could—?”
“The news came to the queen with His Majesty’s letter yesterday. It seems your brother wanted you to know.”
“The queen—where is she?” Krystyna asked, her voice faltering. “Why isn’t she here?”
“She has shut herself up in her private chapel, I’m afraid,” Madame Heloise replied coolly. “We have every reason to believe the battle at Vienna is going on now—at this moment—and she wishes to fast and pray.”
“I want to see her!”
Lady Heloise’s voice hardened. “You can’t.”
Some slight noise and movement emanated from the area near the altar, claiming everyone’s attention and eliciting hushed tones from the small congregation awaiting the ceremony. The priest was entering from the sacristy.
Lady Halicka took hold of her daughter’s upper arm and looked into her eyes. “There is no choice for you, Krystyna. No choice.” Suddenly her mother was walking her up the aisle. “You cannot escape your fate.”
Krystyna wanted to lash out with curse words at the shopworn proverb. Instead, she heard herself ask, “Is it to be that fat and pimpled child?” Her will was weakening.
“I think it is, yes, dear. Remember he is just a proxy for handsome Fabian.”
They came to the little crush of Nardolski relatives. Now came the introductions, the feigned joy her mother and Lady Nardolska tried to exude. Had Fabian taken to her so much that he had engineered these nuptials from afar?
Krystyna was introduced to Count Maksymilian Balicki, Lady Nardolska’s widowed father, an ancient soldier in his dress uniform of another time. With a flourish of his helmet in his hand, he bowed, deep and long. Rising, he said, “Irena has been singing your praises, my lady.”
Krystyna curtsied, wiped away what some dim attendees might have taken for tears of joy, and said, “Tell me, Lord Balicki, would you honor me by being Fabian’s proxy?”
Krystyna smiled demurely, quietly enjoying the gasps that came from those who heard her, little satisfaction indeed for a life signed away.
The old man straightened, his face brightening.
Twenty-nine
Aleksy lightly fingered the shaved sides of his head. While he was not a hussar, he had become a warrior and a certain thrill streamed through him.
The many campsites along the ridge that night settled into an eerie silence, as if inhabited by ghosts. Everyone—magnate, szlachta, soldier, retainer, servant and camp-follower—seemed to know instinctively that the morrow would determine whether Vienna and Europe to the west would remain Christian. In contrast, the reverberating explosions of the Ottoman cannons above ground and mines below continued. The stakes were enormous. The morrow would bring the battle of the century.
Aleksy slept little. The scene from the previous night played in his head. The battle had not yet been joined and he had killed two men. Roman had sent Aleksy and Ludwik back to their camp with orders to direct Marek to the Turkish outpost. An hour later, Roman and Marek came back to the ridge having stripped the bodies of anything of value, and when Marek, out of Roman’s sightline, offered Aleksy an orb of blue glass with a black center that one of the dead had worn on a gold chain as a talisman against the evil eye, he declined. He had killed the enemy for God and for country—not for booty. His hand went to his breast bone, where he wore the gold cross Lord Halicki had given him. That was enough for him. Through the night he wrestled with his mixed feelings. He had wondered what it would be like to kill someone and now he knew. He had done it as quickly, smoothly, and effortlessly as he had done myriad times when hunting rabbit, deer, or wild pig. He wondered whether the two men he killed had wives, children. And yet—paradoxically—he felt exhilarated. This was not the field of glory men talked about; it was the capture of an outpost and attacking men by surprise. And yet, facing up to the truth, he realized the act of killing still provided a sense of power and euphoria. It had been done with ease. Is this what they call bloodlust, he wondered. It was puzzling. Tomorrow he would go into battle leaning forward with the seventeen-foot lance he had fashioned. Perhaps it was good to already know what it was to take a life. Perhaps it would be his salvation in the battle line when there would be no time for thinking. Instinct is all.
Never far from these thoughts was his anxiety regarding Krystyna. Had she been married by proxy to Fabian? Did her brothers speak the truth? They were certainly playacting to heighten the effect on him. But was the essence of their little scene true? He scolded himself now. Wasn’t it good enough that she was safe, that the queen’s retinue had returned to Kraków unharmed, that the queen herself had taken charge of her? Shouldn’t he breathe more easily, knowing she was safe?
In any case, if he was to survive the next day or two in battle, what chance would there be for them to share a life? What chance? Their circumstances remained unchangeable. She was lost to him.
The camp began to stir more than an hour before the sunrise at half past six. Aleksy spoke little as he and Ludwik helped Roman and Marek into armor before aiding each other with their less than perfect gear. Aleksy wondered if Ludwik was nervous, fearful. What about Roman and Marek? This was their first conflict, too. That they spoke little seemed indication enough that they
were apprehensive.
When they were all suited up, Marek walked directly up to Aleksy and handed him a sprig of hay. When Aleksy’s eyes questioned him, he said, “It’s what the Lipka hussars wear in their helmets so as not to be taken for enemy Tatars. You know, the dark Lithuanian Tatars that fight for the Commonwealth.”
“I’ve heard,” Roman added, “that the Lithuanian forces with the Lipka Tatars have yet to arrive.” He spat upon the ground. “Wouldn’t you know it? It looks like it’s to be Poland, Austria, and a collection of Saxon princes against all of the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars. No Lipkas this day. Let’s go.”
Aleksy placed the sprig in his pocket.
“At least we know they want you alive at the start,” Ludwik whispered.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Idzi chimed.
The five climbed to a higher point on the mountain, just below the summit, where an altar had been set up for Mass near the ruins of a monastery. The Army Chaplain, Father Marco d’Aviano, officiated and the king himself acted as altar server. How many of the seventy thousand allied forces spread out from peak to peak could actually see or hear the ceremony, Aleksy could not imagine. He himself had no clear view and could barely hear the priest even though the men were silent as the oak trees. Holy Communion was dispensed first to the sovereigns, princes, and generals, but there was neither time nor blessed bread enough for the thousands girding themselves for a fight to the death.
The ceremony seemed to go on interminably. “What’s happening?” Aleksy whispered.
Marek, who stood on a good-sized boulder and had something of a view, heard him. “The king’s son Jakub is being knighted. It’s his first battle.”
“Like us,” Idzi said. “How old is he?”
“Sixteen,” Marek replied, jumping down.
Aleksy was thankful Marek didn’t mock Idzi for his like us comment.
The Boy Who Wanted Wings Page 27