When the news had come that Gdańsk had fallen and that the French and Polish prisoners held within the city had been freed, Anna told herself that Jan would be among them. Then the letter from Paweł arrived, stating that no trace had been found of Jan. Paweł did say that some prisoners had been removed from the city by ship but couched it in such a way that Anna was unable to detect hope on his part. Anna doubted, too, that good records were kept of prisoners who died in captivity.
The letter had come on the day she visited the boys. She had sat erect and smiling, fending off Jan Michał’s and Tadeusz’ questions about Jan. “He’s fine,” she assured them. “Your father’s too busy with the business of war to write now. You’ll hear from him soon.” And then she watched—horrified—as they demonstrated for her with quill and paper how the taking of Gdańsk had played out. It seemed that the siege had already become a strategy lesson in classes at the academy.
She nodded and smiled through the presentation, but all the while she was coming to the realization that her boys were not naïve—and that in accepting her assurance of Jan’s safety, they were humoring her.
On the ride back to Piwna Street she had to call for the driver to stop. She alighted from the coach and became ill at the side of the road.
Night had fully fallen when Zofia put her head in the doorway. “You’re coming to the Potockis’ tonight, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Good! I’ll give you half an hour,” Zofia said, disappearing.
Anna felt relieved that her attending the gathering precluded any questions from Zofia about her frame of mind. Barbara’s questions had been enough.
And Anna did truly wish to go. Peace had been made at Tilsit, not long after the Friedland victory, and she was anxious to hear about it. Anusia’s father had been there for the negotiations, so she relished the thought of hearing a first-person report.
Anna and Zofia arrived on time. The Potocki household was brightly lit and resounding with chatter and conversation. Anna could not remember an assembly this ebullient in years.
“What could he do?” Lord Stanisław Potocki asked his hushed audience. He was speaking of Aleksandr. The question brought everyone up, quiet and expectant. “After Friedland he had to negotiate. And you can be certain Napoléon was anxious for it because Austria may have been considering breaking their neutrality and going over to the Russians.”
Anusia’s father-in-law went on to set the scene. On 25 June the two emperors met on a hastily but well-appointed raft in the middle of the River Niemen. Days of discussions and nights of suppers went by as they hammered out the details of the draft. Queen Louise of Prussia did not arrive until 5 July. She played both the suppliant and the coquette, but Napoléon found it hard to forgive her previous tenaciously militant stance against him. She, more so than her husband, Frederick William, had cost the French much. Now, as she saw Prussia shrink back to its boundaries of 1772 at the hands of these two mutually admiring emperors, she wept in humiliation.
Among Lord Potocki’s listeners a cheer went up. “Just desserts,” someone said.
“The French are to keep a presence in Gdańsk,” Lord Potocki went on to say, “but it will remain a free city. I can tell you Napoléon is delighted. The French and Russian control of the Baltic keeps Britain—the little emperor’s greatest nemesis—at bay. Britain has been, of course, dependent on the Baltic for much of its navy’s supplies and this will hurt them mightily.”
While these were indeed important outcomes, Potocki’s listeners were growing impatient while they waited for news closer to home. An old aunt of Anusia’s took her ear horn from her ear and at a lull in conversation, her irritated voice crackled out: “What about Poland, my lord? What about Poland?”
A crest of laughter undulated through the room, followed by a chorus agreeing perfectly with the sentiment. Some had heard rumors of the results of Tilsit, but everyone waited on tenterhooks to hear the true story from one who had been there. Count Potocki smiled, raising his hand to quiet his audience. He had been called to the conference to convene with Napoléon on certain French-inspired amendments to the Commonwealth’s Third of May Constitution. “The Constitution is to stand again!” he cried jubilantly.
Anna sensed a ripple of electricity rear up and flow through the entire group. Her own spine stiffened at the news and her arms turned to goose flesh. How her father and Jan’s father—both strong proponents of the Constitution—would celebrate the news! And then she thought of Jan. Jan! Time and again, at Kościuszko’s side, he had risked his life for the Constitution. Had he lived to hear the news?
“And Poland?” The cryptic question came from former deputy to the Great Seym, Walenty Sobolewski.
The count compressed his lips and his shoulders sagged a bit. “We have been granted a good portion of our lands lost to Prussia as long ago as the Partition of 1772. But not all—not nearly all.”
“And Lithuania?” a Radziwill cousin asked.
“The emperor refused to discuss independence for Lithuania.”
The room itself seemed to tense as Poles tried to configure the map in their heads. The news settled in as if in a series of little shocks.
No Commonwealth. A smaller Poland. Slighter expectations.
Anna knew everyone in the room was coming to terms with its immediate personal impact. Zofia’s face, one dark eyebrow arching upward, for once could be read like a newly-inked page. Her vacant property in Praga was safe, but her very valuable estate in Halicz was not to be recovered. Anna felt relief that Sochaczew would be part of the restored Poland, as would Warsaw, of course. But the Stelnicki holdings in Kraków and Uście Zeilone would not.
“Is that even enough to call it Poland?” someone asked.
Lord Potocki’s face clouded. “It’s not to be called Poland, Tomek.”
“What?” The gasps went round the room unsuppressed.
“It’s true,” he said. “The word Poland seemed to have been deliberately avoided by both Napoléon and Aleksandr.”
Lord Sobolewski stiffened in his chair. “Both of whom,” he interjected, “you’ve entertained in this room, Stanisław!”
“I know. I know, Walenty.—What we’re to have is a duchy.”
“A duchy?” The word rode the room like a wave.
“It’s to be the Duchy of Warsaw,” Potocki continued.
“With whom as duke?” The question came from Zofia. People turned to gawk at her, but she gazed fixedly at the count.
“Frederick Augustus of Saxony.”
With this new little shock came silence. The duke-to-be was to be a non-Pole. “We must consider this a start,” Potocki said, attempting to put the best face on it. “Our Prussian captors are gone. A number of patriots are to accompany me to Dresden as deputies for the new duchy. On the nineteenth of this month the emperor is to dictate the finished Constitution and make appointments.”
“I daresay,” the Radziwill relation muttered, “that dictate is the correct word.”
“Why Dresden?” someone asked. “Why not Warsaw?”
“The emperor is anxious to get back to Paris, and Dresden is on the way.”
“And after spilling our blood, we’re given short shrift, Lord Potocki,” Lord Mdzewski said, with no little bitterness.
Anna empathized with her friend’s father. Lord Potocki had no doubt expected this little mutiny. He had known that his guests’ expectations ran high. “Come, come,” Potocki said, forcing a smile. “We will do the toasts. It is a beginning!”
Zofia leaned over to Anna. “What will you wager that Poland’s darling human dowry, Maria Walewska, will be given short shrift, as well?”
Impulsively, Anna fixed her gaze on her cousin and asked, “Given the chance, would you still trade places with Maria?”
“Anna!” Zofia laughed, drawing her head back. “How you can cut to the quick!” Her eyes narrowing, she said, “In a heartbeat, cousin. In a heartbeat.”
August 1807
In s
weltering heat, Anna returned from the hospital where she had started to volunteer to find Zofia meeting her at the front door. Her face was uncharacteristically serious. “What is it, Zofia?”
“Come into the dining room, dearest.”
“There’s news of Jan!” Anna’s heart nearly stopped.
Zofia silently took her by the arm and led her into the dining room. Paweł and Emma Szraber were seated at the table. Emma had come for a two-day visit, and both she and Paweł wore the same serious expression as Zofia. Paweł rose and came to kiss her.
Anna immediately thought the worst. “He’s dead! He’s dead, isn’t he?” The room went silent for a long moment. All eyes were on her and she became very faint.
Paweł grasped her upper arms. “No, Anna,” he was saying. “Jan is alive.”
“Alive?”
“Yes,” Zofia said.
“Where?”
“In your bedchamber,” Zofia said.
“What? Oh, you’ve been pulling long faces to frighten me!” Anna’s spirit soared as she disengaged herself from Paweł and turned to go to the stairs. Zofia’s hands immediately grasped her upper arm, forcibly detaining her. Anna’s head snapped around. No one’s expression had lightened. “We need to prepare you, Ania,” Zofia said.
Emma nodded. “Before you see him.”
“He’s been wounded!” Anna blurted. “Has he—”
Paweł seemed to read her thoughts. “Oh, he’s all of one piece, Anna, and has no wound he hasn’t already suffered and survived.”
“It’s just that he’s been ill while in captivity,” Zofia said. “The Cossacks bled him. But that seemed to worsen his health. I’ve never believed in it myself.”
“So he’s thin?” Anna asked.
Paweł nodded. “And weak. Very, very weak.”
Zofia nodded. “He no sooner dismounted his horse than he collapsed.”
“My God!” Anna scarcely realized the words as her own. She attempted to withdraw from Zofia’s grasp. “Let me go to him!”
Emma stood and came around the table. “Anna, you must be strong. You must try to appear as normal as possible.” Emma’s tears were coming fast now. “You see, you must be stronger than I.”
Anna felt as if an ice-cold hand had reached into her chest in order to squeeze the life out of her.
“You’re the one who can give him what he needs, Anna,” Zofia said. “And that’s hope.”
Hope. Is Jan’s life at risk?
“I see,” Anna said, feeling in that instant some unknown power releasing within her veins, like some quick-acting drug. She remained quiet for a long minute. In this time she put away her panic, took the facts she had been given, digested them, and stored them away. She gathered up her courage now, just as Jan and Paweł and thousands of brave Poles must have done before every battle, practicing on these three the smile that she would give her husband.
They stood back, sensing her new composure.
And then she made for the stairs.
Standing before her little suite, she collected herself anew. No one had followed her up the stairs. She entered now, passing through the anteroom and moving to the open bedchamber door. Lutisha had heard her coming and left the bedside, approaching Anna, giving her customary little curtsey, her face like thunder. Carrying a razor and basin, she passed out of the room without bringing her eyes up to Anna’s.
Anna stood, drawing in a deep breath, allowing her eyes to acclimate to the darkness of the room. At first she thought the person lying on the bed was not Jan but some stranger.
She took short, slow steps. The visage she saw now blended into the whiteness of the pillow. His face, like his form, seemed to have shrunken. His hair—and especially his moustache—seemed more gray than blonde. Anna came to the side of the bed.
He heard her at last, and his head rolled on the pillow, as if with a great effort. The eyelids lifted and the cobalt blue orbs fixed on Anna. They at least had not faded! He smiled and Anna prayed her smile was as genuine as his.
“Lutisha gave me a shave just in time,” Jan said. “You’re a . . . sight for sore eyes . . . Ania.”
“As are you, my darling,” she said, reaching for his hand. The thinness of his arms had startled her and now the weakness of the pressure his hand exerted horrified her.
“Don’t . . . don’t pretend,” he rasped. “I’m a sore sight . . . I know.”
Anna affected a little laugh. If he could think to try a sad little joke, she would not cry. She would not.
His slender fingers twitched in her hand. “Your eyes . . . Anna. . . . I thought never . . . to see them again.”
“It seems that when peace was signed,” Paweł was telling Zofia and Emma, “the prisoners were freed and given a half-pension each. Jan was near collapse, lying like a corpse on the edge of Riga’s Market Square, when a Cossack approached him. He recognized Jan from the siege. This man slung him onto his pack horse and they left the city. He was a Ukrainian Cossack and the Ukraine was where he was headed. They were days on the road, the Cossack always looking out for Jan. By the time they came upon the Warsaw Road, Jan thought himself revived enough by the air and sunshine and food to strike off on his own. The Cossack gifted Jan with the horse.”
“The Cossack did?” Zofia asked, her almond eyes wide in amazement.
Paweł nodded. “He did. When Jan asked for the name of the man’s village so that he might send him fair recompense, the Cossack smiled and smacked Jan’s horse on its way.”
“Praise God!” Emma cried. “Even in war there are miracles.”
“Indeed,” Paweł said, “the Cossacks are thought an undisciplined lot, eager to unleash terror and violence, but they can be as fine as our Polish Lancers in war—and as we see now, sometimes in peace.”
An hour later Lutisha entered the bedchamber with a glass of warm milk and a small plate of mashed duck livers. Anna’s stomach instantly recoiled, but she remembered that after she had been beaten and raped all those years ago, Lutisha had force fed her the same meal. And she had taken strength, defied death, and survived.
Placing her faith in the longtime servant, Anna went downstairs to find Zofia, Paweł, and Emma in the reception room. She came to the center of the room, remained standing, and spoke in a mechanical sort of way, feeling as if she were delivering the prologue to some Shakespearean play.
“Jan will recover,” she said, believing it. Willing it. “We will return to our life at Sochaczew. The boys will come home to live with us. There will be no more soldiering in this family.” Anna’s eyes moved around the room, as if fixing her gaze on each of her loved ones made truth truer. “We are done with war.”
Part Four
Part Four
Sweet to the Inexperienced
Is War.
—-Polish Proverb
28
March 1812
Paweł sat alone at a little table in a Paris inn. This was the legion’s last few days in the capital and a true respite after the years in Spain and the previous month’s winter trek over the Pyrenees. He sipped at his drink. He thought of the horse, two pack-mules, and a Polish lancer—an acquaintance of his—that had been swept over the side in an avalanche. An inglorious end to an inglorious campaign.
Paweł was taking stock of his own life. It occurred to him that Jesus Christ died at thirty-three, his life’s goal attained, his destiny on earth played out. A strange thought, he realized. He thought also of something Napoléon had been heard saying lately: “Forty is forty, after all.”
The emperor was nearing forty-three now, one year younger than Paweł himself. And yet both pressed on as if youth were not fading fast with every campaign, every battle, every night and year away from home. Twelve hours on a post-horse and Paweł could scarcely walk. Not like in the old days. Was there such a thing as the star Napoléon claimed to be following? Am I, he wondered, following my destiny? To what end?
A group of rowdy Polish soldiers at the bar broke out into spontaneous song:<
br />
March, march Dąbrowski,
From Italian soil on to Poland,
Under your leadership
We shall regain our freedom
The large woman tending to the drinks sauntered over. “Another schnappes for you, sir?” When Paweł assented, she poured it out and nodded at the revelers. “How is it they spend everything they have? Poles—not tightfisted like our Frenchmen.”
Paweł laughed. “This is most likely the last they’ll see of Paris, Madame. They wish it to be memorable. Your Frenchmen will always have Paris.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, showing her few teeth in an enigmatic grin, “those that aren’t laid out all across Europe. They have no hope of seeing Paris again, monsieur.”
“Touché!” Paweł said, raising the glass.
The woman moved away, oddly pleased with herself.
Paweł was as happy as most of the Polish soldiers going back to Poland—and as war-weary. From the first, subjugation of the Iberian peninsula had been a losing proposition for a host of reasons, not the least of which was France’s nemesis, England. It would have taken the whole of the Grande Armée to gain success, but now the bulk of the French forces were needed elsewhere. While Aleksandr’s treaty with Napoléon forbade trade with England, Russia found it difficult to survive without it. Violations were well known and, as a result, war in the East loomed large. Yes, Paweł and his fellow Polish soldiers would see their country again, but Poland would be nothing more than a stop-over as the French forces moved toward the great Eastern steppes—toward Russia and war with Aleksandr.
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