Turks whip round-about,
And Poles slash criss-cross!
Jan’s sword—nicknamed Jagwida after Poland’s Jagiellonian queen, for it was her saintly sacrifice that made for the union of Lithuania and Poland in one Commonwealth—hung now on the wall in the reception room, and Jan had to own up to a sadness that he carried it no longer.
Oh, there was excitement in war, he could not deny that. For most soldiers who had seen action, there was—in the moment—an incomparable thrill to it. Even in the killing—or was it especially in the killing? How many lives had he ended? He didn’t know. He had seen death in the most nightmarish forms. Only the devil could have engineered so many excruciating ways to bring an end to life. Soldiers on both sides fell like so many papier-mâché dolls—to the lance, saber, carbine, and cannon. Allies and enemies, peasants and nobles, all bled equally. Battle was the ultimate gamble. A riptide of energy and emotion flowed through him on the field, a tide that excited his senses, and it was this experience that brought him low after the battles, brought him low now. How could he feel such blood lust? Yet he knew instinctively that it was blood lust that allowed him to survive. The thought chilled him.
Jan found himself in a pine forest now, its floor white as milk, the incredibly tall trees rising to the heavens. The lower forty or fifty feet of the trees were devoid of branches, sturdy as columns, so that he felt he was in a pristine and soundless cathedral. The forest is God’s church, his father had told him. The memory soothed him. He tried to conjure up his father’s face and voice, recalling with pride how he had helped give birth to the Third of May Constitution.
Jan dismounted and, leading his horse, slowly laid down his own path. Before joining Kościuszko, he had been content to live a good and full life, a noble on his family estate near Halicz. Now he had put off his uniform, taken marriage vows, and resigned himself to live the placid life of the szlachta on the Berezowski estate, his wife’s estate. It seemed that life was asking him to forget that his own estate had been confiscated by Austrian forces, forget his father’s dying wish that he fight for democracy, forget that brave men died at his side fighting for a Poland that people said no longer existed. A roiling tide of convoluted and unsettling emotions filled his heart.
In all of this, there was Anna. He had loved her from that first day so long ago. They had waited an eternity, it seemed, but they were together now. Their wedding night had not been a disappointment. Her hunger had equaled his and he loved her for her passion. No man could have asked for more.
The marriage would be a good one—and yet Jan felt himself still some distance from any sense of peace or complacency. With the marriage ceremony he had become a father, as well as a husband. Would he be a good father to Jan Michał, a child not his own? The boy was delightful and worshipped by Anna. And yet, to think that this was her cousin Walter’s child somehow unsettled him. He could never allow Anna or Jan Michał to know this. He prayed he could bridge the distance he felt and do right by the boy.
Jan suddenly realized he had gone far into the forest, one unfamiliar to him. He turned around and began to retrace his steps.
An hour later, coming to where field and forest met, he mounted his horse again and gave good spur, hoping that the sharp blast of winter wind against his face would help to clear his mind. In no time the great thatched roof of the barn loomed ahead. As he neared it, Walek saw him and waved. The door was open, and Walek stood prepared to take the horse. Jan knew that the loyal servant had served in Kościuszko’s peasant army, taking up a simple but sharp and effective scythe against the allied forces.
Walek had come back, fitting once again into family and service, doing the tasks he had always done, albeit on a different estate. Jan wondered what Walek’s thoughts about it were. Did he have dark thoughts, too? He would ask him one day, he decided. For now, Jan worried whether he himself would adapt once again to the traditional life of the szlachta.—Or had he been a soldier too long?
Walek took hold of the horse and Jan dismounted.
“Walek, those big old sheep dogs they keep in the South, near Zakopane, do you know anyone in these parts who keeps them?”
“No, milord.”
“Ah, well, ask around in town, will you? See what you can find out. I’ll pay a good price for one. It’s for little Jan Michał.”
Realizing that the morning was nearly gone, Jan ran toward the house, hurried through the kitchen—aware of surprised faces in his wake—and raced up the servants’ staircase. He found Anna dressed and ready to leave the bedchamber. She gave him a disparaging smile. Was there a trace of real hurt in it?
“Fine husband you are,” she said, “running off on our first morning!”
Jan bowed in exaggerated fashion. “I beg your pardon, Lady Stelnicka,” he said. Her married name did not go without the effect in her expression that he desired. Any hurt she might have felt dissipated at once. “Or is it to be Lady Berezowska-Grawlińska-Stelnicka?”
Anna laughed. “Stelnicka. Only Stelnicka!”
Jan took her into his arms. Anna spoke before he could kiss her. “Speaking of names, I have a solution for having two Jans in one house.”
“And what is that, Lady Stelnicka?”
“I will start calling my son by his second name, Michał.”
Jan smiled. “Our son,” he said. “So the problem is solved!” He kissed her now, felt her yielding. Then, drawing back, he said, “I have another apology.”
“What?—Are we to begin married life with apologies?”
His mouth went to her ear. “I am sorry for one thing only,” he whispered, “and that is that you went to the fruitless task of dressing.—I told Lutisha we would not be down before the afternoon meal. Why, the old girl’s face turned as red as her apron!”
“You’ve heard?” King Stanisław asked. Paweł’s second visit to the king came on Monday, 5 January 1795, just two days after Austria signed a treaty joining Russia and Prussia in the dismemberment of Poland. They met in the Monarchs’ Portrait Room, a small chamber off the Throne Room, and all precautions were taken for secrecy.
“That Austria is to share in the spoils with Russia and Prussia?—yes, Your Majesty.”
The king sighed. “They say that ‘Where one owl comes out, two others soon follow’.” He chuckled but his face was pinched in bitterness. “Here, it’s the other way around.”
“Poland is no mouse, sire.”
“Ah, but we are in their talons, just the same.”
The irony that they conferred in a chamber with portraits of all the European monarchs looking down on them was not lost on Paweł. “Have they worked out boundaries?”
“No. They’ll take good time in that, you can be certain.—As for me, my final day has been set, Paweł. No excuse to stay has worked.”
“When, Sire?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” Paweł murmured, his heart going out to the king, who seemed at once sad and resigned to his leaving. Perhaps he was relieved to be fully free of the yoke of leadership.
Paweł had come today, wondering what the king had wanted to speak to him about. What in matters of the state could he possibly do? Especially now, with this news.
“Don’t fret about me,” the king told Paweł. “Don’t pity me, either. I’ve had my time. I might have done better with it, God knows, but regrets will do no good now.—Ah, I’ve been a ship’s captain on a tempest-tossed sea.” The king then told Paweł that while he held no hopes that he would ever be restored to the throne, he did believe that Poland itself could be restored under a new, elected king. His reason for inviting Paweł back was to conscript him into a movement that would have as its goal the reestablishment of a Polish state with a democratic system working in conjunction with a monarch.
Paweł had waited patiently for a name to come up. Who was to be the rallying point for such a movement? While the king had not married, he had a number of children by several women . . . and there were oth
er possible candidates, too—the king’s nephew, Prince Józef Poniatowski, among them.
Paweł knew that the king had always worn a belt that bore symbols of the Masonic Brotherhood—the square and compass—but he thought it little more than a decoration, an ornament like any other given a king. Now, as King Stanisław spoke of a group capable of establishing a new order, a new line of succession, his forefinger lightly tapped the insignia. Paweł realized that the king, afraid of spies’ ears, was silently relaying information to him. The Masonic Brotherhood was the group the king was entrusting to restore the monarchy.
It suddenly rang clear: King Stanisław was himself a member of the Brotherhood. Who could have imagined? But to think that the secret organization, powerful as the Brotherhood was, could somehow put back together what three powers had dissolved . . . Paweł thought perhaps the king had gone a little daft in the head.
“You’re wondering how you might be of help,” the king said.
Paweł nodded. Daft but Argus-eyed just the same.
“They,” he whispered, “will find their uses for you. You came to me on your own to see what you might do, remember?”
“Yes.”
The king pulled from his robes a folded sheet of paper. “Here is the name of a person you are to contact, so that work can begin.—Odd, isn’t it, that his surname is so close to yours?”
Paweł nodded, recognizing the name. He had gotten much more than he bargained for. While he was not committing himself to anything—especially anything hare-brained—he would not leave without asking about the succession. “Your Highness, just who – ”
“Might follow me? Do you know, I would not wish this on one of my children. The throne carries a weight beyond your imagination. They,” he said, “will know whom to nominate. I suspect it will be someone with a clean slate, someone with no connections to the great political families of the day. Someone not related to the Czartoryskis, the Radziwiłłs, the Lubormirskis—or the Poniatowskis, my own clan.”
“I see,” Paweł said. In fact, he didn’t see at all.
“My time has dwindled away, Paweł,” the king said as Paweł was taking his leave. He placed a slender hand on Paweł’s arm. “And I don’t want to be known as the last king of Poland.” He attempted a smile. “Help me, will you?” he whispered. “As for the future, trust in the Brotherhood.”
Two days later, at nine o’clock in the morning, Paweł Potecki left his city mansion and fell into the flow of the crowd moving toward the Castle Square. The final date—7 January 1795—for the removal of King Stanisław from his beloved Warsaw and Poland had come. The streets were lined with Russian soldiers meant to preserve order. Paweł marveled at the sheer number of citizens, noble and peasant, come out into the bitter cold—with unmasked grief and sadness on their faces—to bid goodbye to their king.
Staying in the city had meant foregoing the wedding of his friends Jan and Anna. Paweł had sent a wedding gift and his deep regrets for missing the ceremony. What a lucky man, that Jan! When Paweł had joined Kościuszko’s forces, he made it a point to search him out and to tell him of the great concern Anna held for him. He had wished only that Anna’s cousin Zofia held such concern for himself.
Paweł and Jan had become fast friends on the battlefield and off, but events within the capital were unfolding too quickly to get away, even for a day or two.
Paweł was making his way now to the arched opening that led into the Great Courtyard. People stood shoulder to shoulder. This was as far as he would get. He was glad for his height as he watched the door that held everyone’s eyes transfixed.
Within a quarter of an hour, the king came into the courtyard. His breeches and cloak were brown, the cloak lined in crimson velvet that matched his cap. Crimson!—even at such a time, how proudly he wore Poland’s color.
The servants of the Royal Castle were lined up to bid him farewell, some of their faces streaming tears as he passed by and allowed them to kiss his ring. Now and again he gave a consolatory pat on their bowed heads.
This done, Stanisław’s eyes fastened on someone across the courtyard. Paweł stretched his neck and for the first time saw that it was General Suvorov himself. Paweł’s blood grew hot. A flame of anger licked at the back of his throat. Here was the red devil that had overseen the Praga massacre. Twelve thousand innocent civilians—women and children—had died. Here was the man responsible for Zofia’s death.
Suvorov was presenting before King Stanisław the Russian Guard of Honor. Paweł cursed to himself. Suvorov knew the military, knew maneuvers, knew novel ways of killing, but he did not know honor. The man was the lowest of shapeshifters.
The king, holding his head up with quiet dignity, turned then and reviewed his own Royal Guards for the last time. He managed a small smile of gratitude.
Here was honor, Paweł thought.
Without final words, the king climbed up into his carriage. One adjutant general, General Gorzeński, had been allowed to accompany him, along with the king’s valet and doctor. Other members of his entourage, as well as wagons filled with favorite belongings, would follow later in the week. The carriage immediately began to move toward the gate, mounted Russians at the front and back. The king waved sadly to the swarms of people as he passed. The carriage came very near to where Paweł stood, and he was certain the king caught sight of him, for there was a flash of recognition in the eyes of faded blue, the lifting of the veiled lids, and the slightest nod.
Paweł would remember that moment all of his days. It was as if in that split second some transference of power or responsibility had been made. He was immediately reminded of his standing over his father’s deathbed. Count Potecki had been rendered speechless by a devastating stroke, and just before he died, his eyes went to his fifteen-year-old son, wordlessly imploring him to take good care of the wife he was leaving behind. No words were necessary.
Here, too, something of an ethereal nature occurred, something of great import, linking Paweł to the king and the fate of Poland. His hand unconsciously moved to the pocket holding the little sheet of paper the king had given him. He had yet to act on it.
What might be done? What? Was there a way to save Poland, save the throne? Or was he bearing witness to the leave-taking of the last king of Poland?
Suddenly his thoughts were dislodged by the spontaneous cry of the people. “The People with the King!” they called. “The King with the People!” It was the old anthem used in fighting off the allied powers. Well, they had lost, Paweł thought, but their spirits had yet to be defeated.
“The People with the King! The King with the People!” The chanting went on as the little retinue wended its way down, moving like a church processional toward the city gates and river. Suddenly, the carriage was stopped by the masses, whereupon people attempted to unharness the horses and retain their king. Stanisław was leaning out from his window attempting—his motions inplied—to discourage such actions.
Paweł’s hand went to his mouth in a motion of pity and despair, for the Russians were already upon the insurgents—pistol shots ringing out—and in moments the carriage was moving down the incline toward the river at a healthy trot, a scattering of bodies in its wake, the people’s chant silenced.
The area was clearing a bit as Paweł came out into the Castle Square. He stared up at Zygmunt’s Column. At its top the bronze figure of the long-dead king held a cross in one hand, a sword in the other, like a warrior saint. Beneath it now, moving toward the river was another king—one of flesh and blood—this one being forced from his throne and homeland. Stanisław was neither warrior nor saint, but he was undeserving of this fate.
Paweł made his way through the throngs of angry, grieving citizens to the city walls fronting the River Vistula. He watched as the king’s carriage was ferried to the Praga side—it would be spring before work on rebuilding the bridge could begin. The carriage stopped and remained on the embankment of the ruined Praga. Paweł could see the king—the crimson cap unmistakable�
�alighting from his coach and coming to sit on a little folding stool provided by his valet. He sat facing the panorama of Warsaw—it was a sight Paweł had often marveled at from a window of Zofia’s now destroyed town house.
The king was holding something up to his face. Paweł stared in wonder, then realized what it was. King Stanisław was surveying his beloved city for the last time through a field-telescope.
Time passed and the pantomime of the Russian general now in charge of the king’s journey to Grodno, Lithuania, indicated his great frustration and anger. The king remained impervious to his urgings. He would have his last look.
It began to snow. The citizens in the square and at the walls shivered in the cold and began to return home. Paweł left, too, after an hour, taking one last look at the lonely, sad man in the red cap. He could take no more—and he had been charged with things to do. What things, he had no idea.
Later, Paweł would learn that the king had sat there peering through the field-telescope at his capital for a full two hours.
King Stanisław II Augustus leaned forward on the little wooden stool, his shoulders sagging, his lips so thinned as to be invisible. He studied the Royal Castle that sat perched on the escarpment on the opposite side of the River Vistula.
Thirty years before, he had come to the throne through the machinations of his one-time lover, Catherine of Russia. His rule had initiated a new period in Polish history. As his eyes moved over his beloved capital—a city of 30,000 that had burgeoned to 150,000 in the span of his reign—regrets he had held all morning for the sake of his subjects pummeled him now, like the stinging pellets of snow and ice that blew up at him from the river. Oh, he had overseen significant change for the good, a period of enlightenment in the law, education, and the arts. His dream to re-create the Polish world had had its successes, most notably the Third of May Constitution, the first written democratic document of its kind in Europe. Its aegis allowed for Poland to keep her elected monarch and at the same time respect the rights of the individual. The reforms were admired all over the world. But the peasants’ rebellion in France had sent shockwaves to Austria, Prussia, and Russia where they shook and rattled the very thrones of the monarchs. Any seeds of democracy were to be stamped out like weeds. Ultimately the three powers brought about the final partition of Poland, all three partitions incurred under the king’s watch.
Against a Crimson Sky Page 8