Against a Crimson Sky

by James Conroyd Martin

  Anna smiled. “And just how are they doing, Captain Spinek?”

  A faint shadow fell across the headmaster’s fate. “Generally, quite well, as we discussed a few weeks ago.”

  “Generally?”

  “Well, they both have tempers, and a few days ago they fell into an argument that came to blows. They had to be pulled apart.”

  Anna stiffened in her chair. “Over what?”

  “They wouldn’t say. Even under threat of punishment, they maintained it was a private matter.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  “That kind of thing does happen here from time to time. Boys have little jealousies, just as do girls.”

  “Are you treating Tadeusz differently? As if he is the hope of Poland?”

  “Absolutely not! He hasn’t a clue as to our possible purpose.—But are they treated equally at home?”

  “Of course! And you know how few and short in duration their home stays are.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry. Jan Michał is the protective one, and Tadeusz may think much of himself—not an altogether bad trait for a leader—but he nonetheless seeks the approval of his elder brother.”

  “What of their studies?”

  “Tadeusz is the scholar, as you well know. We’re quite pleased there. He takes to languages like a beaver to water.”

  “And Jan Michał?”

  “Michał lives in his body rather than his head. He’s a better fencer than those three or four years older. Strong and agile, he’ll take risks but only after an instinctual analysis. As for the books, they take second place to his physical activities. In his studies, he manages to get by.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  Later, Anna awaited her two sons in a small reception room off the main entrance of the academy. It came to her now that in the discussion of jealousy she had immediately assumed it was Jan Michał who was jealous. Was he the jealous one? Did he harbor old resentments dating back to their few years at Sochaczew? To those few occasions where he may have thought—rightfully or not—that Jan was favoring his natural son, Tadek? Or had she herself somehow given him reason to think his brother better loved?

  The boys entered the chamber like the soldiers they were becoming: tall and erect in their perfectly pressed blue uniforms. But their eyes were most unsoldierly: wide with wonder at the prospect of a weekday visitor.

  “Mother!” Tadeusz said, pushing past his brother and heading toward Anna.

  Anna stood and bent forward for the kiss. She hugged the boy, simultaneously motioning Jan Michał forward. There was a hesitancy in his walk now. That he was the elder by three years was becoming more and more evident. “It’s not visiting day,” he said.

  “They made an exception. Just come and give me a kiss!” As her right arm encircled Michał, she was startled by the realization that she did not have to bend for his kiss. He was already her height—and a full head taller than Tadeusz.

  The boys allowed her to hold them for several seconds. “You are both so big!” she said, finally releasing them. They fell into conversation then, topics coming and going randomly and with spirit among the three. But once talk of Napoléon Bonaparte came up, both boys went wide-eyed. “You met him?” Tadek asked.

  “I’ve danced with him, and I’ve played cards with him.” Anna enjoyed watching their stunned reactions.

  “You haven’t!” Michał said. His voice was different, deeper. He would be fifteen on the third of May. He was becoming a man.

  “But I have!” With her thumb and forefinger, Anna gave a twist to Michał’s nose. “Do you doubt your mother?”

  “What was he like, Mother?” Tadek asked. “He’s to restore Poland, my professors say.”

  “Do they?”

  Michał was nodding. “In my strategies class, we are studying his new methods. He’s invincible!”

  “I guess he is—or at least he’s told me so. He’s not so very tall. I had to look down at him.”

  Both boys denounced her statement—in wonder and good nature. But Anna held firm in the assertion. They talked for some time about the French emperor and future prospects for Poland. Anna could scarcely believe she was speaking with two children, so knowledgeable were her sons on current politics. They were patriots in training, it seemed, and thoroughly indoctrinated with admiration of the emperor.

  “I’m late for my Swedish class,” Tadeusz said, suddenly noticing the clock on the mantel. He kissed Anna. “We’re coming home in a fortnight, yes?” His voice, light and musical, was still a boy’s.

  “Yes,” Anna answered, demanding a quick kiss before he fled the room.

  She turned to Jan Michał. “And you? No Swedish?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not so good at language. Russian, French, and Prussian are all I can handle. More than I can manage, to tell the truth. But they’re the important ones.”

  “No Lithuanian?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s an important one, too, if the Commonwealth is to rise again. What is your favorite class?”

  “Fencing and Military Strategy. I have an hour before Fencing.”

  “I see. You must try harder at your other studies—Michał , the captain tells me you fight with Tadek.”

  Michał’s shoulders’ sagged forward and his glance went toward the floor. “Sometimes. It’s not serious.”

  “You’re bigger and much stronger, I think.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you fight about?”

  “Nothing. Little things.”

  “Little things?”

  A long moment passed. Anna waited.

  “It’s just that—that Tadek thinks he’s the center of the world sometimes.”

  “And you feel you have to put him in his place?”

  Jan Michał shrugged.

  “What did you fight about the other day when you had to be pried apart?”

  “Nothing—he called me a name.”

  “What name?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter, Michał. What name?”

  The boy’s lips thinned, tautened, as if he was struggling to hold back the word.

  Anna took his upper arms in hand, firmly but without force. “Jan Michał, tell me.”

  Jan Michał’s face screwed up into a twisted and ugly expression as a storm seemed to rise up from deep within his body. “Bastard!” he raged. “Bastard!”

  Anna’s hold tightened for a moment, but he pulled away. The tears were coming now as he looked up to face her. “Am I, Mother?—Am I a bastard?”

  Time stood suspended as Anna took in the words and their meaning. The room and its furnishings blurred. Finally, she spoke: “What made Tadeusz say such a thing?”

  “We overheard two teachers late at night—in the hallway. One of them used the word.”

  “About you?”

  Jan Michał nodded.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “Does Tadek?”

  “No—I don’t think so.”

  Anna lifted her hand to push away Michał’s tears, but he pulled back, his brown eyes—Walter’s eyes—staring her down. “Am I?” he demanded.

  Anna had known the moment would come one day but could not have expected it today. Not like this. She had long thought about how she would tell him about the circumstances of his birth—but all the rehearsals seemed to fall away. A long moment passed.

  Anna drew in a deep breath and began, not knowing the turns the telling would take. “Michał, you know that Jan is not your father. You’ve always known that.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that I was married to Antoni Grawlinski when you were born. You are not a bastard, do you hear? Until Jan adopted you, you had his surname.”

  “Then he is my father?”

  Anna’s felt a tightening in her stomach. Her heart beat fast. She was already at the moment of decision. She could say that Grawlinski was his father and t
he subject would pass. The boy would be appeased. For now. But what about some day in the future when the truth would come out, as it had a way of doing. What then? He would start asking questions about Antoni. What was he like? Did Michał look like him? Act like him? And the thought of gilding Antoni’s memory sickened her. If she did not reveal his true father, could she live with herself, having lied to her son? Anna drew in a long breath. What would the truth, convoluted as it was, do to this young man—her firstborn? “Come and sit down with me, Michał. Here on the couch.”

  The boy obeyed. Anna sat at an angle to her son, and as she started to speak, her gaze was fixed on the far wall. She made no attempt to touch her son. “Jan Michał, you were inside me when I married Antoni Grawlinski.” Michał’s body tensed. “Let me tell the story while I have a mind to,” Anna said before he could speak. “Your father was Walter Groński. I know you call Zofia ‘Aunt’ Zofia, but she is my cousin—and Walter was her adopted brother.”

  “He knew?”

  “Antoni?” Anna nodded. “He knew. What he wanted was my estate and my money.”

  Jan Michał took this in, giving his mother an adult-like expression. After a while, he asked, “Why didn’t you want to marry my father?”

  There were lurid twists in the story that she still hoped to avoid—but not this one. It had to be told. She turned to her son. “With your father—when you were conceived—I was not willing.” The moment drew out. She could see his eyes lose focus. “Do you understand?”

  “He—forced you?” Jan Michał’s words were deceivingly soft for the meaning they carried. He stared some moments. “Then you didn’t want me!” he choked out. “I was a mistake and a burden to you! You didn’t want me!”

  Anna reached for his hands but he pivoted away from her. “Listen to me, Jan Michał. You ask adult questions, and I’m telling you the truth as I would to an adult. You need to know I wanted you from the moment I knew you were inside me. I did! Aunt Zofia can tell you as much! You’re my firstborn and don’t think for a moment I could love Tadek or Basia more than you. Never! I love my children equally, do you hear?” Anna caught one of his hands and pulled it to her. “Look at me, Michał!”

  Jan Michał looked at his mother as if with disgust.

  “You’re my child and you’re soon to be a man. One I know I will be so proud of! Oh, Michał, how I love you.”

  “You don’t. How could you?”

  “I do!” Anna put a hand to his wet cheek. “I wouldn’t change a thing, Jan Michał. Believe that.”

  “What happened to him—my father?”

  “He was a Russian soldier, a mercenary.—He died on the day Praga fell.”

  “He fought against us?”

  “Yes,” Anna whispered.

  He took a full minute for this to settle. “Do I look like him?”

  Anna had to nod. “You do—more so as you get older. The brown eyes and hair, the darker complexion. They say he had some Tatar blood.”

  “Me, a Tatar?”

  Anna immediately regretted the revelation. He would not have been taught good things about the Tatar tribes. “Maybe that’s where you get your liking for military strategy,” Anna said with a laugh, trying to make the best of the situation, but her son did not find it funny. “Oh, many Poles in the south have Tatar blood, Michał. Aunt Zofia does. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I don’t want Tatar blood!”

  “Our births are not things we can choose.” They talked a while longer, and Anna dared to hope Jan Michał was beginning to come to terms with his lineage.

  When she stood to leave, she hugged her son. “You’re the elder and the stronger, Michał. I want you to look after Tadek. He’s your brother.”

  He stood silently staring ahead.

  “Michał!”

  “I will.”

  It was grudgingly said, Anna thought. “No more fights?” she pressed.

  “No.”

  “Good.” Anna kissed him on either cheek. “Go now, or you’ll be late to your class.”

  In the carriage, Anna wrestled with her guilt over the parts of the story she had omitted. Of the several facets she had skipped, one eclipsed the others: How could she tell her son that it was she who had killed Walter, his father?

  As it was, he had not returned her hug. It would take some time for his thoughts and emotions to disentangle and settle. If ever they would.

  By the time the carriage was nearing Paweł’s town house on Piwna Street, however, her mind was taken up with the whole of her family. Another year was opening with Jan in the service, but—more than that—her two sons were fast becoming men whose lives also seemed destined for the military. She had only Basia with her.

  Sweet Jesus! This was not the life she had envisioned.

  23

  February 1807

  Clouds hung heavy in the late-morning sky when Charlotte, a light bundle in her grasp, alighted her carriage on Piwna Street. Zofia watched her from her bedchamber window. In a few minutes, a maid knocked and announced the Princess Sic’s arrival.

  Charlotte was still standing when Zofia entered the reception room. “What a surprise, Char,” she said, approaching her friend and kissing her on either cheek. “I thought I wasn’t to see you until tonight.”

  “I—well, I thought it best to speak to you in confidence first.”

  “Why? I’m very busy at the moment getting ready. Napoléon has returned to Warsaw after seeing to his troops. I intend to look my best. Luckily Paweł has returned to duty.”

  “Where’s Izabel? I haven’t seen her in a week.”

  “She’s at convent school. The nuns are trying to undo the spoiling of her you’ve done. Really, that cameo you gave her was too much. I pray she doesn’t lose it.”

  “Well, someone needs to pay the girl some attention.”

  “And what does that mean? Why, she’s beginning to think of you like a grandmère.”

  “Oh, does she?” Charlotte’s shoulders lifted in pride.

  “Leave Izabel to me. Now we’ve gone off subject. What brings you around in the afternoon, dearest?” Zofia took closer notice of the item in Charlotte’s hand. “Ah, something for me?—A gift?”

  “No, Zofia,” Charlotte said, giving over the parcel. “It’s not a gift.”

  Zofia tore at the wrapping. “My shawl!” she cried, he dark eyes questioning. She unfolded the shawl and set it aside without inspection. “You retrieved it from that twit—what was her name?”

  “Lady Maria Walewska.”

  “Yes, that one. I knew it was mine. There is no other shawl like it.—Tell me, has she gone back to . . . to— ”

  “Bronie.”

  Zofia pulled a face. “The hinterlands!—it’s where she belongs.”

  “Well, Bronie is in the provinces, but it’s hardly the hinterlands. Anyway, you have it back now.”

  “Damn it, Charlotte!” Zofia cried, retrieving the shawl and dashing it to the floor.

  “Ah, it wasn’t about the shawl then, was it?”

  “Of course not! Not the shawl itself. But I would like to know how my shawl was transported from the King’s Bedchamber at the Royal Castle to cover that girl’s bony shoulders at Talleyrand’s! You haven’t solved that little mystery, have you?”

  Charlotte nodded. “I have. Come, let’s sit down.”

  “Will this take long? I still have a lot to do before tonight.”

  “It depends how many questions you ask. Shall we sit?” They seated themselves in high-backed chairs, facing each other. “Well,” Charlotte began, “it seems the Lady Walewska stood among a group of well-wishers at Bronie when the emperor was making his way back to the city on New Year’s Eve. In fact, Napoléon gave her one of the bouquets that had been tossed into his carriage. Even though she could speak French quite well, he thought her a peasant girl.”

  Zofia shrugged. “She looked the part, no doubt. Everything but a rainbow skirt!”

  “She’s not a peasant. Anyway, he was s
truck by her innocence and looks, so that when he arrived in Warsaw he issued orders she be found.”

  “I’m not going to enjoy this story, Charlotte, am I?”

  “Turns out she’s eighteen and was married at sixteen.”

  “Ah! She’s married!”

  “To a count who’s seventy-seven.”

  “Good lord! I do like what I hear!”

  “And she’s given him a son.”

  “Better and better! Not so virginal, after all.”

  “But the emperor’s intrigue with her didn’t lessen. He let a number of our men know he wanted her to attend Talleyrand’s ball. In fact, he said he wouldn’t go unless they procured her for him. An entire delegation of the patriotic party descended on the Walewice, the Walewski manor house, and actually managed to win the husband over before Maria relented.”

  “Polish fishmongers, the lot of them!—Relented?”

  “It took some convincing. Her patriotism ultimately weakened her stance.”

  “Oh, please! You mean to say she went to the ball out of some patriotic fervor? Please!”

  “Yes. You see, her father died fighting for Kościuszko when Suvorov and his Russians came down on Praga.”

  Zofia gave out a stage sigh. “Charlotte, I was there—I nearly died myself.”

  “Well, Maria abhors the Russians and longs for the day when France will help re-establish Poland.”

  Zofia waved her arm dismissively. “Little Maria and the rest of the city! Returning to the subject of my shawl, let me guess: Napoléon needed a unique gift on the spur of the moment, so he took to Talleyrand’s my shawl to present to the silly girl.”

  “I expect that was the scenario.”

  “And since then? Has she returned to her husband?”

  “She has. But that has not slowed the would-be Emperor of Europe. He has showered her with impassioned letters and jewels.”

  “And the old goat of a husband?”

  Charlotte gave a little shrug. “It’s an old story. An affair with a monarch advances the family. He’s positively preening at the attention. Not a goat but proud as a peacock.”