Against a Crimson Sky

by James Conroyd Martin

  Lutisha sat across from Anna, her large, round face a stoic mask, her fingers moving over the beads of a well-worn rosary. Still, the gray eyes of the old and corpulent servant could not veil their sadness, blinking at long intervals like those of a falcon. How loyal she is, Anna thought, loyal and brave and strong! With the Russians descending on Warsaw, she had chosen to stay with Anna and Zofia in the city, rather than leave with her daughter’s family for the safety of the country.

  “You’ll see Marta and her family in time for supper, Lutisha.”

  The woman’s toothless smile lighted Anna’s heart. It struck Anna how alike was this peasant to Aunt Stella, the countess Lutisha had served all her life. One noble at birth, one peasant—and yet both born with Polish hearts and souls. Aunt Stella . . . Anna’s own heart caught. Countess Stella Grońska had been fortunate in that she had not lived to see the destruction of her Praga town house, the fall of Warsaw, and the impending dissolution of her beloved homeland. Anna turned her gaze again to the passing landscape. She could not help but wonder whether her own son would grow up to call this land Poland.

  The thought cut to the quick, and Anna tried to think of other things. It was good fortune that they had left a Russian-held Warsaw with so little fuss. How had Paweł made it possible for her to leave? In early November, after the Russians retook the capital, they threw about it a fine net of security, tightening it as if the city were the Golden Fleece. How had he produced the documents? Had he bribed someone? “Anna,” he had cautioned her earlier that morning as he helped her into the coach and provided her with the traveling papers, “this document refers to you only as Countess Berezowska-Grawlińska. No mention is made of your having been recently named princess. I suggest that remain a secret.”

  What was this concern over her title? She guessed that being a member of the szlachta, the minor nobility of which there were many, made her less suspect than being of the higher nobility—or even the magnate class. But there had been no time to question Paweł in the matter.

  King Stanisław August had meant the title as a reward for her patriotism, but because he ignored the warning she had dared to bring him about the untimely uprising against the Russians, it mattered little to her. And what gave an even hollower ring to the appellation of “princess” was that for decades now, titles came to Polish citizens only through foreign powers; Stanisław had bestowed her title under the auspices of Catherine of Russia. Catherine—Poland’s inveterate enemy! Her body tensed at the thought.

  Anna stared out at the blur of scenery. Thoughts and time fell away.

  At last, her eyes found focus and she realized the landscape was becoming more and more familiar. She was returning home to Sochaczew. She thought how much her life had changed since she had left her family manor house more than three years before. Both she and her country had changed. There was much to regret, things best forgotten.

  The carriage moved now through a forest, the daylight dimming as if dusk had fallen. With a start, Anna recognized an almost indiscernible path that led into a thick patch of evergreens. She took in a deep breath, then expelled it slowly. When she closed her eyes, the old memory washed over her, uninvited, like the cold, dark, and turbid waters of the pond she knew lay a few miles into the blackest heart of the forest. Her usual powers of repression failed.

  For the moment, she was alone again in the dense and eerie woods on the shore of that pond. Night had fallen, a moonless, starless, night. Everything about her was still and black, and she could not help but recall the superstition that the forest was home to the devil. With her sprained ankle, she had lain in the pungent fall leaves for hours, like a wounded bird, awaiting the rescue party while holding off the bone-chilling cold and fighting the ignition of real panic.

  She could not imagine what was keeping Zofia, who had gone for help. And then came the sense—alarm—of someone, something, lurking nearby. Something dangerous. Watching her. A long moment passed with only the drumming sound of her own beating heart.

  Suddenly a figure stumbled out of the shrubbery and moved toward her in a deliberate and menacing way. Despite the injury she began running—running—insensible to pain—fear propelling her on, her feet padding along the water-parched bank of the pond.

  A tree trunk provided only a momentary hiding place, and when the beast found her, she managed to push him into the pond. But he held fast, pulling her with him into the cold, murky depths. Struggling to free herself, she worked her way to shore—knowing he was close behind.

  Then came the clawlike hand upon her back—the stink of liquor on his breath—the earth rising up—and a white-hot explosion as her head hit the stony ground. His body on hers—crushing her—rending her—terror giving way to torn flesh and raw pain.

  Then, oblivion.

  Anna pushed the memory into the dark and empty place inside her where she held it prisoner. She did have to admit to herself that from that violent and terrible night in the forest had come Jan Michał, her beloved child. Who could explain that? He was at Sochaczew, where he had been taken for safety’s sake before the Russian onslaught.

  And Count Jan Stelnicki was there at Sochaczew, too, waiting for her. Anna felt hot tears beading in her eyes at the mere thought. Her fears seemed to vanish. In the letter she carried near to her heart Jan had pledged his love and proposed marriage. He would adopt Jan Michał. Anna wondered whether he would be allowed to keep his title, for he had fought with Kościuszko against the allied forces. Perhaps even she would be denied her royalty. But what did it matter? They would be together. She would have him at last. Happiness was within reach. She suppressed the thought that years before it had seemed within reach, too.

  Anna recalled, as she often did, that warm afternoon in September of ’91, before it had happened, that night in the forest. They had met in a meadow at midday. Jan, with his blond hair, cobalt blue eyes, and dimpled chin was the most handsome man she had ever seen. In but a few weeks she discovered that beneath his iconoclastic leanings, bold gaze, and glib forwardness, lay a sturdy foundation of patriotism, passion, gentleness. Her love for him took root and endured—increased—in the intervening months and years, years in which they saw almost nothing of each other. It frightened her now to think she might at last live her life with this man, find contentment with him. Did she deserve happiness? Was it truly a possibility? she wondered, for caution had set up a barrier about her heart.

  She called to mind now the saying that the most important things in life happen only once. Such was the meeting with Jan Stelnicki.

  And yet, somehow she had lived to see this day. A day of reunion. There was a God. There was! A mere six weeks earlier, she had miraculously survived the flight from the Russians across the burning Praga bridge—just before it collapsed into the River Vistula. Her cousin Zofia had not been so fortunate. Anna made the sign of the cross now. Her heart went out, guiltily, to her cousin, but she tried not to linger upon the loss, as she had all this while. . . . Today she would be reunited with her son and with Jan. It was not a time to dwell on the past and the dead . . . not today! The carriage trundled on.

  In no time they came into Sochaczew. The Market Square seemed oddly deserted. Soon they would pass the cemetery. So much death—and yet Anna felt her heart beat rapidly. “We’re not far now!—A few more miles out of town.” Her family home, Topolostan—Poplar Estate—was named for the twin columns of trees that lined the long, curving drive from the road to the house.

  She remembered that Lutisha had never been to Sochaczew. “Oh, don’t put your expectations too high, Lutisha. It’s not as large as Aunt Stella’s estate at Halicz, mind you, or as elegant as her Praga town house.”

  A flicker of hurt in Lutisha’s eyes halted Anna’s train of thought. She immediately regretted the mention of the two homes where Lutisha had spent the bulk of her years. Lutisha had taken lessons in the French ways of tending a home and had passed on the methods, as well as the etiquette, to her daughter and granddaughters. Barring ou
tright ownership, she could have been no prouder of those residences. The town house was destroyed, as was nearly all of Praga, and the Groński manor house—“the great house,” the servants called it—had been burned in the summer of ’93 soon after the Russians invaded in support of the Confederacy of Targowica, the gathering of Polish magnates that had so foolishly invited Catherine into Poland to depose the Third of May Constitution.

  While Anna was grasping for some comment that would assure Lutisha that her new home would be safe and welcoming, someone outside the coach shouted, and the vehicle ground to a an abrupt halt. Her excitement at being in Sochaczew was immediately snuffed by a dark presentiment.

  “What is it?” Anna called to the driver. She could hear his raised voice amidst several others. She called out again.

  “It’s the Russians, milady,” the driver called back, urgency in his tone. “The town’s been garrisoned. They want you to step out for interrogation.”

  Interrogation. Looking to Lutisha, whose eyes had waxed like twin moons, Anna attempted a smile that she hoped would calm the aging servant and belie the cold terror that had seized her own heart.

  Haunted by memories of the frigid river, the woman lay in the dark, unable to fasten her mind to any sustained thought. Despite a heavy counterpane and a fur covering over that, she shook continuously against the cold. Her eyes remained closed. When she shifted, even slightly, pain ran through her like a hundred piercing knives. Beneath her was the consolatory scent of fresh hay. She knew that she had come close to the surface of consciousness many times before this, hovering only briefly in the presence of strange, whispering voices. Somewhere, too, were the sounds of animals. Her mind did not attempt to distinguish what kind. Then she would again descend into a welcoming darkness that benumbed every sense.

  It was the silence, the terrible and empty silence, that now worked at her, keeping her from her descent. Her eyelids lifted slowly, grudgingly, like tiny, weighted curtains. What she saw, she saw with stark objectivity, for her mind was unable to think. Gray light was beginning to filter in through the square, four-paned window on the wall to the foot of her bed. The play of the morning rays passed through the wycinanki that served as curtains, the delicate papercuts casting a striking design of flowers on the beaten earth that formed the floor. Her eyes moved to the opposite wall where a little table held a shrine consisting of icons and candles. Framed religious pictures hung on the wall above it. To the right of the table was a doorway through which a bread stove glowed white in the dimness.

  To the right of the door hung a voluminous red skirt she vaguely recognized. On the floor rested once-elegant black boots. These, too, seemed familiar. Her eyes took in all of this, but it was not until she heard a door open and close that her mind formed real thought. Who is entering? She could hear footfalls. And for the first time, an alarm went off somewhere within her, breathing life into her dormant nerves. Where am I?

  These cramped and rustic surroundings were unknown to her—and less than pleasing, although she wasn’t sure why. She closed her eyes. She could hear bits of conversation between a man and a woman in the other room. They spoke in a low Polish dialect, their tones hushed. Who were these people?

  The whispering lessened as the sounds of preparation for a meal began. The little room she was in—more an alcove, really—took on warmth as the stove was fed. She pulled the cover up to her neck, lulled into drowsiness by the smells of chickory and baking bread. She slept.

  Some time later, she came suddenly awake. Some instinct told her she was being observed, and she immediately opened her eyes. An hour or two had passed. Daylight brightened the room. Two figures stood just a pace away, looking down at her.

  “I told you she moved, I did,” the peasant woman said.

  “You did,” said the weathered old man at her side. He smiled now. “It is good to see life within you, milady.” He had few teeth.

  The woman wished they had not disturbed her, longed to fade back into the comfortable straw of her bed. But it wasn’t her bed. Hers was made of—what? Something softer? Goose down? She struggled to remember. How had she gotten here? And even though she knew these people were in no way connected to her, she could not recall faces or names of people who were important to her. Like sudden storm waters, panic rose.

  She stared at the two. Fragments of memory began to eddy, flash, and stir. She remembered their faces poring over her, talking to her, forcing her to drink and eat. How long had she been here?

  The blond woman smiled at her as her large hand clenched the folds of her colorless sacklike dress, allowing her to drop into a clumsy curtsy. “Is milady hungry?”

  “No.” The word was scarcely a breath. When she lifted herself up onto her elbow, the pain cut through her, and she felt herself growing weak. She coughed, her chest contracting in pain.

  “You’re pale—you must rest, milady,” the man said, moving away. “You will eat later, when it’s ready. Rabbit, a good fat one, too!—I’ll leave you to my daughter for now.”

  His daughter nodded. “You’ll want to use the chamber pot, I expect.”

  The woman could not deny it. And she realized that the experience of having people there to see to her needs was a familiar one. These were peasants—and she was not one of them.

  She was helped then—at considerable pain—to sit up and slide off the bed onto the cold chamber pot.

  When the peasant woman came back to collect the crude and coverless container, she introduced herself as Danuta.

  “Thank you, Danuta,” the woman whispered, shivering. She sat on the side of the narrow bed, exhausted by her effort.

  “And you . . . what are we to call you, milady?”

  Strangely, it was only now that the woman’s own identity came to her. She stared blankly at Danuta as the horror of what she had been through came back to her in galvanizing waves—Praga being put to the torch—the Russians on horseback descending—sabers raised, falling, and flashing red in the sun—the cries of women and children unheeded on the smoke-filled, acrid air. She felt faint again.

  Danuta stood before her, grasping the pot as if it was a tureen, waiting.

  “How did I get here?”

  “You were in the river. My son fished you out, he did.”

  “Your son?”

  “Yes, milady, Jerzy.” She nodded toward the other room. “My father helped, too.”

  “I see.” She fought off the faintness. “How long?”

  Danuta shrugged. “Three weeks, maybe four.”

  Weeks! Was it possible?

  “Thank you,” she heard herself say. She had not always treated her own servants with respect, but these people had saved her from certain death, and she knew that her life was still dependent on them. She would have to behave accordingly, and she attempted a smile now. “I’m cold, Danuta.”

  “I’ll fix you a bowl of kasza. It’ll warm your bones, Lady . . .” Danuta persisted in her need of a name.

  “Grońska,” the woman said, coughing and falling back into the straw mattress. “Lady Zofia Grońska.”

  Count Jan Stelnicki smoothed over the plaster and stepped back to look at his work. The fissure in the wall was the last of several that had been in need of repair in the large reception room of Anna’s manor house. With the owner of the premises absent for three years, the estate had gone without the diligent care necessary to keep it up. He sighed, less than satisfied with the result of his labors. He was better at soldiering, it seemed, but he was glad to be doing something physical. It gave him less time to think, less time to worry. Paweł had sent the message about Anna’s arrival only the day before, prompting Jan’s concern about the dangers of such a trip in Russian-occupied territory. And he would deny it if someone were to ask him, but he was nervous about seeing Anna again.

  The woman he had loved from afar for so long was just hours away. Never mind that his own family estate at Uście Zeilone and town house at Kraków had been sequestered—booty to the allied powers. Ne
ver mind that it was at Anna’s estate that he waited. He would put aside tradition and pride. In very little time, he would see Anna.

  “Much improved, Lord Stelnicki,” Jacob Szraber said, coming in from the rear of the house by way of the music room. He approached the mended wall.

  “Think so?” If only there were more time before Anna arrived. So much still had to be done around the estate.

  “Indeed. I’ve finished with the roof.”

  “I told you to leave that for a younger man.”

  Jacob shrugged. “None younger around. Walek is just as old, unless you count his young son Tomasz.”

  “Then I would— ”

  “Oh, no,” Jacob interrupted, “that wouldn’t be proper. A few new evergreen shingles and it was done.”

  “Well, you made it leakproof, I trust?”

  “We’ll know come spring, I guess.” His laugh coaxed one from Jan. “And don’t worry, I took care not to disturb the storks’ nest. They’ll find it this spring just as they left it.”

  “You’ve been a tremendous help, Jacob, but . . . ” Jan’s words trailed off.

  “The estate’s not the same place the Countess Anna left, you mean.”

  Jan nodded. “Nor is anything else in Poland.”

  “Well, in such times as these it is enough that the countess is coming home to her son and to . . . ” Jacob paused, his eyes averted in embarrassment that he may have overstepped himself.

  Jan smiled, taking his meaning. To you, Jan, he had meant. Jan thought of Anna’s little boy. She was coming home to him, too. “Where is Jan Michał?” he asked.

  “He’s with the wife. Good for her to have someone to fuss over, after . . . .” Jacob’s voice caught with emotion and he was unable to continue.