Anna bit her tongue and turned. Before she could complete the revolution, she heard the legs of his chair grate against the floor as he stood, moving quickly around the desk. It was his strong hand on her arm that brought her to a stop in front of him. His face was very near hers. She stared into the milky blue eyes, her heart accelerating. Her first thought was that she had not brought the pistol, and she cursed herself for it.
“I can arrange for you to keep Tadeusz a little longer. Maybe a year.”
“What?” Anna grew dizzy trying to understand his words.
“I said that I could hold the Brotherhood at a distance until he’s five.”
“If?”
His mouth was on hers now.
Her head reeled. Based on previous meetings, she did not expect him to act on his attraction to her. Pulling her head back, she opened her mouth to scream.
Doliński’s right hand covered her mouth while his left arm moved around her waist, pulling her to him. “You will not call out, Anna. And if you do, it will not matter. I made certain no one is in the building today.”
Slowly, he removed his hand, and when she didn’t call out, he attempted to kiss her again.
“No! Take your filthy hands off me!” Anna struggled to break free, but the man’s grip was tight. His appetite had been whetted too long for him to let go of his prey.
Anna’s arms were bound by his. She started to kick out, and despite the thick fabric of her dress found her mark several times. Instinctively she called out for help.
Doliński laughed. “No one can hear you.”
“You will regret this!”
“Who will see to that? Your husband? Your absent husband?”
“Yes!”
His grip tightened and his eyes lost the passion for a moment, reflecting anger instead. “Listen to me, Anna, and listen with your heart and ears. To reveal anything to Stelnicki about the Brotherhood will bring death to your entire family.” He was breathing hard. “About this, too!” he said, pulling her closer so that she felt his arousal.
“But the Brotherhood— ”
“What of the Brotherhood?”
“If they find out—about this.”
“They won’t.”
“But if they do.”
He stopped. He was thinking, taking in her counter-threat. It seemed that the civil penalty for rape—the axe, assuming it could be proved—did not worry him, but the Brotherhood’s reaction did give pause. The many clocks around the room ticked away the seconds. She could feel the desire going out of him.
Doliński’s wolfish eyes looked at her with despising now, rather than with attraction. Suddenly he released her.
Anna moved to collect her cloak, amazed at herself, amazed that mere words had somehow stopped him. Was she free to leave? She pulled on her cloak and turned to face him.
His attitude had changed. “It’s best that you forget this incident, Lady Stelnicki. You will do so?” He seemed almost apologetic. Anna was certain she had found a leverage with the starosta that would keep her safe, for a time.
“They will come for Tadeusz before his fifth birthday,” Doliński said now. “You will have no choice but to let him go. Do not do anything foolish. Should a democratic monarchy be realized, one with Tadeusz as king, you and your family will only benefit.”
Anna took in Doliński’s words but avoided looking at him. Was it his way of asking forgiveness? Without speaking she pivoted away from him and walked out the door.
Climbing up into the sleigh that would take her home, she recalled someone saying once that Poles were known for dramatic exits. Amidst the feelings of repulsion that boiled up in her came a bitter little laugh for the exit she had just effected.
16
March 1801
Paweł had gone off to play cards with some of the other officers, so Jan retired early, luxuriating in the quiet. The letter had gone out earlier in the day. What would Anna think when she read that he would be coming home? Would she read it to the children? He was to leave in three days.
Jan was asleep when the door opened and a wintry gust blew in. The door stayed open a full minute it seemed. Lifting his head, he shouted, “Close the damn door!”
The door banged shut and the air became still. “Are you drunk, Paweł?” Jan looked toward the figure at the door. The room was shrouded in shadows, the only light fluttering from the stove, but he knew immediately it was not Paweł. Swift as quicksilver, he jumped to his feet. “Who is it?” he demanded, reaching for his saber. “Who the hell are you?” Jan had his saber unsheathed and was ready to advance.
But the intruder had moved near the stove. “Jan?”
Light flickered on the man’s face, and Jan dropped his saber. “Oh, my God—a thousand pardons, sir!” Jan’s visitant had never been here before. Their exchanges had been limited to the field.
The man removed his hat. “May I light the lantern, Jan? I have something to talk to you about.”
Jan’s head was spinning. “Yes, of course, General Dąbrowski.”
“Your father’s coming home!” Anna announced at the evening meal.
Michał’s eyes came alive. “Papa’s coming home?” The nine-year-old got off his chair and came around to Anna. He put his head on her bosom. “Your prayers have been answered, Mama.”
“Indeed they have!” she said, kissing him on his curly brown head. She sent him back to his seat. “And you, Tadek? Ah—of course you were too small when he left. Well, what do you think?”
“Papa?”
“Yes, Papa’s coming home!”
Tadeusz gave a little shrug and a tentative smile.
“And, Barbara, you weren’t even born yet!” Three-year-old Barbara Anna sat at attention in a chair, the seat of which had been raised so she could reach the table. She was pulling at a strand of her blond hair. She had Anna’s green eyes, and as if even she sensed something important was happening, they were wide with wonder now.
“Will he be wearing his uniform?” Tadeusz asked.
“I don’t know, Tadek.”
“Will he be going to war again?”
“No, Tadek, I don’t think so. Thank God.”
“Don’t you like war, Mama?”
“No, Tadek, I don’t”
Later, with the children in bed, Anna sat alone in the reception room, deep in thought. Three years Jan had been away. Three years of doing and managing for herself and her family. Three years of living as if she were not married. But Jan was coming home now, and the peaceful family life they had known for such a brief time after their marriage would resume. When she went to bed, her mind was so full of thoughts, so full of Jan that she could not sleep.
For long days Anna could think of nothing else but the return of her husband.
The time came at last. Jan arrived at the manor home on a Saturday in late March, drawing up reins on his small black stallion. Everyone rushed out onto the pillared portico to greet him. He wore the blue and crimson uniform of his Polish legion. Jan Michał ran to him, little Tadek trailing behind. He hugged them both, then moved toward the steps where Anna stood, Barbara at her side clutching the folds of her mother’s dress.
“Don’t be afraid, Basia,” Jan said, reaching down and scooping up his daughter. “You are a real beauty, you are!” He hugged her tightly for a few moments, then set her down. His eyes came up to fix on Anna’s now. He removed the czapka from his head.
Anna’s breath went out of her. Here was the man she had fallen in love with so long ago. Older now—thirty-five—but no less handsome with his long, blond hair, fine features, and dimpled chin. Anna noticed that his moustache was flecked with gray and that the cobalt blue eyes brimmed with moistness.
“Anna,” he said, taking her into his arms.
Anna lay awake while Jan slept beside her. She felt like a married woman once again, and her heart was full. He lay there, his naked side touching her, the scent of him upon her. They had explored each other as if it had been the night of their first bedding down. Bu
t no vodka was needed this time to lift them to a dizzying height. Despite separation, their love, their desire, had not waned, but grown.
Yet the sight of his body had shocked her, the scars on his shoulder, his back, his arms. She found that he limped slightly, too. He had held the boys spellbound earlier with his tales of spies and sorties and engagement. Even in his understated way, it all sounded so full of heroism and glory and excitement. Only she was privy to the damage done to his body. Only she could appreciate now the fact that he still lived—and had come home.
War was not glorious—it was hideous.
In time, Anna slept. She didn’t hear Jan rise, sometime before dawn.
Anna’s heart went out to Michał, who sat at the table, eating little of the afternoon meal. He was despondent. Jan had gone out early that morning, taking little Tadeusz but leaving Michał behind.
Halfway through the meal Tadeusz burst into the dining room from the kitchen. “We hunted! We hunted!” he shouted in his little voice.
Anna smiled. “Did you catch anything?”
Tadeusz held up two fingers. “Two wabbits—two! And a deer! A big one!”
Anna saw big tears coming into Michał’s eyes.
Jan came into the room now. “It was a big deer, wasn’t it, Tadek?” He came around and kissed Anna on the cheek.
Jan sat and began to prepare plates for himself and Tadeusz.
“Michał would have enjoyed the adventure, Jan. He’s been brooding all morning.”
Jan looked to Michał. “I tried to wake you this morning, Michał. I did. But you didn’t stir.”
The boy’s face went white as porcelain. “You didn’t,” he said.
“I did, but I thought maybe you were up too late and needed your sleep.”
Jan Michał stood, tears ready to spill. “I would have gone!” he shouted. “I would have.” He ran from the room.
Anna didn’t know what to say. She wished Jan would go after him and attempt to console him, but he seemed busy preparing Tadeusz’ food.
“Jan Michał is a very sensitive child, Jan,” she said.
“Evidently.” Jan pulled at a piece of sweet rye.
“He is a heavy sleeper, Jan. Sometimes I have to push him out of bed. Maybe tomorrow you can take him.”
“Can’t. I’ve got business in Sochaczew.”
“Well, one day soon.”
“Can’t.”
“Why?”
Jan stopped chewing and looked at Anna. “I have to go back.”
The moment hung fire while Anna attempted to sort through his words. “Back?—Not to Italy?”
Jan nodded.
Anna was shocked into silence. It was clear to her that he had not meant to tell her here at the dining table, but that did nothing to assuage the sudden pain and terrible hurt that came over her like a fever. Just as her son had done, she made her way out of the room, lest her tears start to spill.
“’I’m sorry, Anna,” Jan said in the privacy of their bedchamber. The words were shopworn and weak, he knew. “I really am! I had every intention of coming home for good.”
“And you should! Why are you defending French interests in Lombardy? Tell me!”
“Because Dąbrowski asked me to. Personally.”
“It seems to me you saved his life more than once. He owes you, Jan! Not the other way around.”
“Anna, he’s been assured by the First Consul that in time France will go against our enemies and if we help, we’ll have our nation back.”
“When, Jan? When is this to unfold? How many more years of our lives are to be spent apart?”
“Not long, Anna. I’d like to have my estate back—and I want yours to be secure.”
“Secure?” Anna turned around to face him. “Is it not secure now?”
“Well—yes, of course, but we are still behind the Prussian cordon.”
She looked at him for a long moment, her green eyes narrowing. How had he managed to let slip the comment?—Did she suspect something?
“I thought you had doubts about this Bonaparte fellow.”
“I do, but as long as there’s even a chance of evicting our enemies here—I have to take it.”
“No matter what?”
Jan gave a hesitant nod. “No matter what.”
A while later, he tried to make love to her, but—for the first time—it ended with neither of them satisfied. He lay awake a long time, certain that she, too, remained sleepless. He thought of telling her what his business was in Sochaczew. How he had to set up the continuance of the monthly bribe to the scoundrel Doliński. Without that bribe each month Jan and Anna’s family would join the ranks of the myriad landless Polish nobility. Doliński was making his fortune on the backs of his own countrymen.
But Jan would not tell Anna. He would not have her live with that kind of insecurity. One day, he prayed, the Prussians would be driven out and Doliński exposed as a traitor. He longed for that day.
Two days after Jan’s departure for Italy, a carriage arrived. The note the driver handed to Anna was from the starosta. The time had come.
Anna had one hour to pack a trunk for Tadeusz and send him off to Doliński, who was to send him on to a military boarding school in Warsaw. To disobey the Brotherhood would mean death for her entire family, he had said. Her own limited knowledge of the secret organization told her not to doubt the threat for a moment.
“But why is he to go?” Jan Michał demanded. “Why Tadek? I am the older. I should be going!”
“It’s something I can’t speak of, Michał. It’s to be Tadek.”
“Let me go, too. He’s so young. He’ll need me to watch out for him!”
Anna shook her head. “I need you here, Michał. I do.”
“You mean they only want him!”
Anna could not deny it. Her heart was torn in two. She knew Michał remembered well the night the physician tended only to Tadeusz. And there was the slight he received only a few days before when Jan took Tadeusz hunting. How hard had Jan tried to wake him? And now this. How could she explain it to a child? How to make it right?
The trunk was lashed to the top of the coach. Jacob lifted Tadeusz up into the interior bench. The boy was dressed in his best. His eyes—cobalt blue like Jan’s—were wide but tearless.
“Ready?” the driver asked.
Anna kissed the inside tips of her fingers and reached up, placing them on her son’s hand. She drew back from the carriage now.
“Be a good little man, now, Tadek,” Jacob said. He shut the door, and the carriage began to negotiate the curve in front of the house, then make for the curve of the poplar-lined drive and the main road.
My husband and now my son! Anna retreated into the house. She found Jan Michał in the reception room. “It’s you and me and Basia now, Michał,” she said.
He looked up at her, his dark eyes intense with rage—and for a moment they were his father’s eyes. The eyes of her cousin Walter. Her attacker. She tried to read his expression. “Michał, I know you’re hurt. And you’re angry.”
“I want to be a soldier, too!”
Anna drew in a deep breath. “I need you here, Michał. I need you to be my soldier.” She saw the tears welling up in his eyes. Rather than let her see them fall, he ran off to some other part of the house. Anna recalled how in her own life she had always done everything she could to keep from crying in public.
The boy was Walter’s. There was no denying that. But he was hers, too.
17
June 1801
Anna was shown into the office of the Headmaster at the cadet’s academy of the Szkola Rycerska, the military training school founded by King Stanisław. The man rose from his desk. He was obese and officious in manner. “Ah, Lady Stelnicka, you’ve been to see your son. Did you have a nice visit? Was everything to your expectations?’
“I notice that Tadeusz is the youngest boy here.”
“Is he? I suppose that he is. But let me assure you he is adapting well.”
> “He cried to see me go.”
“And that is as it should be, don’t you think?”
“Captain Spinek, I have a request.”
“Do you? If it’s possible for me to grant it, rest assured, I will.”
“Tadek has an older brother, Jan Michał. We call him Michał.—I would like very much for you to take Michał into the academy.”
His fleshy face indifferent, the man expelled a long sigh. “We are full, Lady Stelnicka. Filled to the rafters, as they say. It is an honor for one child out of a family to be chosen. A second one is very rare, indeed.”
“Except for those with connections. Boys from magnate families?”
The captain shrugged. “Occasionally such is the case.”
“It is Jan Michał’s dream to come here.”
“If we were to fulfill everyone’s dream, Lady Stelnicka, we’d have an army of all officers and no infantry.”
“I speak for one, Captain. I would feel better about having my youngest here if Michał is here to look after him.”
“I understand, my lady. But there’s really nothing I can do.”
“And if I were to withdraw Tadeusz?”
The man’s face darkened. “That is something I would not recommend.”
Anna took in a deep breath, readying herself to play her highest card. While there was no one trait about the man that gave him away as being a member of the Brotherhood, she had become convinced that he was indeed a Freemason. “You know, Captain, I am well aware of the purpose that has brought my son here.”
The man paled instantly. It was as Anna expected. In his effort to make her beholden to him, Doliński had told her too much. Anna spared him from answering. “Any mother would investigate when her five-year-old son is conscripted, Captain.”
“I see,” Spinek said.
Anna wondered if by speaking out she had put Doliński into shark-infested waters. She hoped so. “I am not here to create a scene or place anyone in a bad light. After all, if dust were to be stirred up, who knows where it would settle?”
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