Iza wiped at her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being silly and stupid.”
“You are not, Iza. You have a tender heart. That’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Thank you, Aunt Anna,” she said, sniffling. “I should be going.”
“When you get home, will you remind Basia that she’s promised to help at the hospital tomorrow?”
“I will. Oh, may I help as well?”
“It’s nothing of great interest. Procuring bedding and making bandages—that sort of thing.”
“I should like to help.”
“Then be ready at six sharp.”
Anna took a deep breath before entering the French princess’ room. She had not seen the princess for at least a year, and although Zofia had told her that Charlotte hadn’t long to live, her appearance still shocked Anna. Once quite round and robust, she was now drawn and emaciated.
“Hello, Anna!” Genuine delight shone on her face, as she pushed herself up a bit against the pillows piled behind her.
Anna masked her shock, quickly advancing and kissing Charlotte on either cheek.
“You just missed Iza!”
“No, I did see her downstairs.”
“Oh?—I hope she was all right. You know, she’s taking all this very hard.—Sit down, dear.”
“I’m so sorry you’re not well, Charlotte,” Anna said, sitting in the bedside chair.
“Thank you, dear. Have you heard anything of your sons?”
“Nothing recently.”
Charlotte reached over and took Anna’s hand. “It must be a great worry.”
“I try to keep busy. Now, how are you?”
“A little better now that I won’t let the doctor bleed me anymore. I’ve got water on my heart—now what good is bleeding going to do? They need to drain the water, not my blood, for pity’s sake.”
Anna stayed and chatted for a space of time, but when she saw that Charlotte was tiring, she stood and prepared to leave.
Charlotte spoke now, as if to detain her. “Iza’s becoming quite the young woman, isn’t she? She’s going to give her mother a run for her money.”
Anna laughed. “Surely Zofia doesn’t see her as competition.”
“Perhaps not,” Charlotte conceded. “Anna, please sit for just a few more minutes.”
“Yes, surely.” Anna obeyed.
“Iza calls me her granmère.” Charlotte sighed, and seemed to think for a long while. “Have you ever heard Zofia call Iza anything other than Izabel?”
“No,” Anna had to admit.
“There’s something in that, you know. Oh, I’ve tried to lavish the girl with affection, as if I could make it up to her. And so now I worry.”
“Zofia does love her, Charlotte. Deep down—I’m sure she does.”
“In her way, perhaps.”
“Don’t worry about Iza. I’ll be staying in the capital more as—God help us—the hospitals start to fill up with our wounded. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Good! Oh, please do, Anna. You know, Zofia has plans for Iza. Marriage plans.”
Anna drew in a deep breath. “Marriage plans?”
Charlotte nodded. “To a magnate.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Charlotte. Zofia herself rebelled at the prospect of her own arranged marriage to Antoni Grawlinski. I don’t think— ”
“Oh, parents are often quick to forget what it was to be a child. A child who has had a birch rod used on him will, years later, use it on his child.”
Anna sat in silence a long minute. At last she asked, “What magnate?”
“Adam Czartoryski.”
“Charlotte, you can’t be serious.”
“Why? Because she herself has romanced him—to no avail? Not only him, but that Prince Podolski and a dozen other magnates over the years! Zofia’s not thinking about Iza’s welfare, Anna. She’s intent on marrying into a magnate family, if only by proxy. For herself, time is running out. Between the two of us, I think it already has. The emperor himself said something to the effect that forty is forty, after all, didn’t he?”
“Has Zofia launched this—this campaign?”
“Yes, to what extent, I don’t know. I do know that the prince is now at the age where he cannot avoid marriage—and that Iza is proving to be a nice little morsel for a middle-aged man.”
“That doesn’t mean she couldn’t love him.”
“No, it doesn’t. But when you fell in love with Stelnicki, you were, what, eighteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“Very well, seventeen. Could you imagine yourself then falling in love with someone your father’s age?”
Anna was forced to admit that she could not. It was a paralyzing thought.
“You see,” Charlotte said. “You must use your influence with your cousin, Anna. Do what you can to see to Iza’s happiness—and I will do what I can.”
“I will,” Anna said, kissing Charlotte. Suddenly, she felt tears brimming in her eyes and took her leave before they could spill. “Goodbye, Charlotte. You’ve been a good friend to Zofia—a good friend.”
As Anna walked toward Piwna Street, an odd mixture of sadness and new respect for Charlotte gave way to the subject of an arranged marriage for Iza.
Charlotte’s last words came back to her. And I will do what I can. Only now did Anna wonder what the dying woman could have meant.
Flanked by Maria Walewska and Anusia Potocka, Anna sat at the far right of Abbé Pradt’s long table. Anusia leaned forward, directing a quiet question to Maria. “How is it you’re not sitting at the archbishop’s right hand?”
Maria shrugged. Holding her fan to her face, she said, “I told Abbé Pradt that I should like to sit with my two friends—and to my surprise he deferred. I think I have a good fairy who has reduced his fire of desire to a simmer.”
“Really?” Anusia asked. “The man gives me a chill.”
Servants poured into the room with the first of many courses. The supper commenced. Anna stole now and then a glance at the King of Westphalia who sat at the archbishop’s left. King Jerome’s entrance had been ostentatious. As a marshal of Napoléon, he had been free to design his own uniform, and had created an imaginatively flashy one of red and green. Its peacockery matched the wearer’s rule. As the twenty-eight-year-old brother of Napoléon, he had been gifted with a kingdom comprised of Hesse-Kassel, Brunswick, Prussia’s former western provinces, parts of Hanover, and other tiny fragments. He had a reputation for the extravagance and hubris that touched all of Napoléon’s siblings. While he was capable of great bravery, he thought himself a young genius and demonstrated great foolishness.
Catherine of Würtemburg, his wife through a marriage engineered by Napoléon, was not present, so that his notorious roving eye luxuriated in the presence of a multitude of unchaperoned Polish ladies. His marriage, it seemed, had not dulled his appetite for pretty women—women he was often heard referring to as “sweet peaches” or “supple strawberries.”
“How long has he been here?” Anna asked her friends. “A week? He seems in no hurry to go east and catch up to the Grande Armée.”
“A week of operas, suppers, and parties, I might add,” Maria said.
“Well, it ends tomorrow,” Anusia announced. “I had it straight from my father-in-law that today a courier brought a message from the emperor demanding he bring up his reserve corps at once. An angry message! He leaves at dawn.”
Unspoken conjecture among Anna’s friends and among many in the room had it that should Napoléon resurrect the Polish nation, the throne would likely go to Jerome. The player-king. It was a thought that tempered the ambrosial celebration.
“Lady Stelnicka, is it not?”
Taken by surprise, Anna turned to face the lord of the hour himself. Her introduction to the king before supper had been formal and full of ceremony, but now she could see he was trying to inject warmth into his manner. “Yes,” she said, affecting a smile.
He smiled, too, as his eyes moved ov
er her shoulders and breasts. “You have two sons in service, I understand?”
“Yes, in the Young Guard, Your Highness.”
“I trust they have fared well.”
“I hope so. Fortunately, a family friend in the Old Guard has taken them under his wing. And Jan Michał—my older son—looks out for his little brother.”
“How old is Tadeusz?”
Anna blinked back her surprise. How had he known his name? “Seventeen,” she heard herself say as a strange numbness set in.
“A delightful age!” the king declared. “At that age one feels as if he is discovering the world for the first time. And soldiering brings you to so many new places.”
King Jerome went on to speak of the coming war effort with Russia and the great destiny of the Bonaparte family. Anna pretended to listen and nodded occasionally in response, but her mind was in a ferment. He had known Tadek’s name! How? Who had told him? Perhaps it was innocent, merely a casual mention by the same person who had told him she had sons in the service?
But some sense told her that it was not innocent, that he had asked with some purpose in mind. Despite his leering glances that continued as he spoke, she ruled out his attention to her as a physical attraction. He was a decade younger than she—and there were many beautiful young women in the room.
“How has young Tadeusz adapted to Poniatowski’s Corps?” he asked now.
His coming back to the subject of her younger son confirmed what she already felt at her core: that the King of Westphalia held some special interest for Tadeusz.
“He’s become quite the soldier. He hopes to become a lancer one day.” Anna spoke with no enthusiasm, as if she were listening to someone else deliver a stage line. She felt the room tilt, begin to spin about her. Fear ran through her like an icy wind off the steppes.
“I don’t know what my brother would do without the Polish Lancers, Lady Stelnicka. They have been invaluable to him—but I’m certain you know that.”
Anna nodded mechanically and the king was wishing her well, bowing stiffly at the waist. Anna noticed then on his belt the raised images of the compass and the square, the same images King Stanislaw had worn—symbols of the Masonic Brotherhood.
As he moved off, the red and green uniform colors blurring among the other costumes, thoughts flew at Anna like bullets. Was King Jerome attached to the Prussian Masons? To the same arm of the Brotherhood that had paid Doliński to kidnap Tadeusz and to deliver him to almost certain execution? Did he think that Tadeusz was somehow a threat to his own chances of claiming the Polish throne? Did he hope Tadeusz would not survive the war in the east? Would Tadeusz be in danger if he did survive?
Was Tadeusz in danger now?
17 August 1812
At dusk, Paweł stood on a hill above Smolensk, a city at the eastern border of the old Poland. It was situated on the left bank of the River Dnieper and so an important crossing point as the French moved into Russia. A large Russian force had repaired behind the strong city walls. Smaller units occupied the outer buildings that clustered nearby. After two days of a frontal assault and gritty house-to-house engagements, the French moved in, taking to the suburbs. Three major fires, most likely set by the enemy, still burned ferociously, however, feeding on wooden buildings and old towers.
Paweł turned to see Napoléon riding forward at a trot to survey the situation. He was accompanied by just two officers, and they moved perilously close to the old town, its fifteen-feet-thick walls still patrolled by Russians. But Paweł had learned by now that the emperor often took such unnecessary risks.
The Russians had suffered and would not hold out much longer, Paweł thought, but it had been at the cost of ten thousand French casualties. His own company of Young Guards had lost two youths. Later Paweł would take up the sad task of writing home to their families.
On the march prior to this point, the company had seen action half a dozen times without losses, but the Grande Armée as a whole was losing 5,000 men a day to disease and desertion. Nonetheless, the lofty enthusiasm for the emperor on the part of young Poles had neither waned nor wavered.
By morning it was clear that the Russians had vacated Smolensk, and the French forces entered the city. The Young Guards were not the only ones to be sickened by the sight and acrid stink of dead bodies, soldiers and citizens alike, many piled like a fishmonger’s wares. Paweł and others of the Old Guard had to hold themselves back from vomiting. As for Napoléon, famous for his delicate olfactory sensitivity, he seemed quite unaffected. It was put about that he commandeered the saying of one of the Roman emperors: “The corpse of an enemy always smells good.”
Into the afternoon Tadeusz approached Paweł, requesting that he accompany him to a little stone residence that had been shattered by artillery. Inside Jan Michał was standing over the prone form of a Russian soldier.
“He’s still alive,” Jan Michał said.
Paweł thought the statement more of a question. Moving closer, he saw that the soldier amidst the rubble on the dirt floor was no more than a boy, younger even than Tadek. Not even a bit of fuzz on his chin. “Is he conscious?” Paweł asked.
“Now and then,” Jan Michał said.
“What is your name?” Paweł asked in Russian.
The eyes—pain-filled but fearless—opened. “Chapaev,” he said.
“What are we to do with him?” Tadeusz asked in a pleading sort of way.
Paweł took in the expressions of the Stelnicki brothers now. Jan Michał and Tadeusz had come through several battles and a half dozen skirmishes, each time acquitting themselves with the zeal and bravery of the young. But now he saw dark wonder and fear in their eyes—for when they looked into the eyes of the dying Russian youth, it was as if they were looking into a mirror.
“We’re going to take him to our surgeons, Tadek. This is war, too. We will be judged not just by how well we fight—but by how well we treat the fallen enemy.”
The boys looked from Paweł to the boy. They remained mute.
Paweł knelt at the boy’s side. “We’re going to move you now,” he said. “We’re taking you to the doctor.”
“It is too late,” the boy spat. “Too late for me.” He looked up at his captors, some unseen strength taking hold. “What devil your tsar must be to try to conquer Holy Mother Russia! What devils you all must be! You cannot win on holy soil. You will be driven out with tails between your legs, like wounded wolves.”
“Michał,” Paweł ordered, “take him from under his arms. Tadek, grab his feet. Let’s get moving!”
As he followed them out, Paweł admired the fire that still burned within the mortally wounded young Russian. But it came with a warning: if the millions of Russian peasants across the steppes and into the cities harbored the same zeal, what a great mistake the emperor was making. Russia would not fall that easily.
The brothers came to Paweł in the evening, their faces drawn. The boy had died on the table.
“What were you doing in that hovel?” Paweł asked now. “Plundering, yes?”
The boys looked down, shame-faced.
“Leave that to others, do you hear? You need worry only about carrying yourself into Russia and out again. I’ve seen what happens to those who try to carry out the riches of a country. Time and again they don’t make it with their lives. Do you understand? Polish warriors fight for independence. Not paper rubles or silver goblets. Make your mother and father proud, do you hear? Look at me!”
The boys—still silent and rooted like sticks to the ground—fixed their eyes on Paweł. “On the other hand,” Paweł said, “should you run across fur hats, gloves, or coats that will protect us from frost-bite on this God-forsaken steppe, you are not to forget Paweł, old friend of the family, yes?”
This little speech coaxed at last smiles from the two, and Paweł pulled them together in a bear hug.
It was Polish infantry who, with the help of two artillery pieces, had gained entry into Smolensk—but when the Bulletin de la Grande
Armée was sent back to Paris via Warsaw, Napoléon gave credit to French soldiers. The lie incensed Paweł, and in his letters to the two dead soldiers’ families—traveling by the same courier—he made certain to underscore the truth.
The forces remained in Smolensk a full week. Paweł suspected that Napoléon was allowing time for Aleksandr to consider suing for terms. Because they had yet to bring the Russians to a decisive battle, Paweł doubted Aleksandr would weaken—and therefore the week was time lost. On the other hand, the conservative move might be no move. Nearly all Napoléon’s marshals thought that they should winter in Smolensk, for the hardships of the Russian winter were not far away.
Again, perhaps afraid to remain away from Paris for too long—where plots against him sprang up like weeds—Napoléon followed his own star and chose to move on. On 25 August the Grande Armée left Smolensk, its sights set on Moscow.
32
September 1812
“Have you ever been in love, Zofia?”
“What?” The bedchamber was dark and Zofia had thought Charlotte asleep. The raspy, labored voice had surprised her, as had the question itself.
“In love?” Charlotte said. “Truly in love?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think so.—Have you?”
“Oh, yes! A great love—before I met you. Before I left France.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked. Besides, a lady should have some secrets. And then there was the pain; always it remained too close to the surface.”
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