Against a Crimson Sky

by James Conroyd Martin

  Restless, Anna stood and walked the length of the ward, coming across now a bed that death had made vacant the night before. A new face lay upon the pillow, eyes open. He was staring at her. Anna drew near. “Do you need something, soldier?” He shook his head. Anna studied the young man with blond hair. He seemed to be regarding her strangely. “What is your wound?” she asked.

  “A lance wound in my backside,” he said ironically.

  “I won’t insist on looking then,” she said, her tone light.

  Anna’s comment provoked a smile. Oddly, it was a smile of familiarity that made her think he knew her. She set her taper on the little bedside table, watching him closely all the while in the better light. His eyes were very blue. Did she know him? “Are you unable to sleep?” She looked up at the paper pasted on the wall. “Jerzy?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Tell me, Jerzy, do you know who I am?”

  He stared at her, his eyes narrowing and his handsome face serious, and for the moment she thought he did indeed recognize her and that he would clear up the matter in short order. The smile came back then, wider and capricious. “Queen Maria-Louise, the emperor’s latest flame?”

  “Very funny!” Anna went back to her little station and sat, searching her brain. She sensed that she knew this man and was quite certain he had recognized her, too. Half an hour passed and she put the matter to rest.

  At one in the morning she heard voices at the far end of the ward. Four men had entered and were looking about. When they sighted her at the table, its single taper a tiny beacon in the darkened room, they started to move toward her, their heavy boots reverberating throughout the ward. Anna could tell by their bearing that three of them—dressed in dirtied white caped greatcoats—were French military officers. The fourth was dressed in a fur-lined green velvet coat with fancy gold fasteners. Atop his head was a sable cap that shaded his face.

  One of the officers quickly introduced the others, French names Anna immediately forgot. The foppish fellow, she was told, was the speaker’s secretary. Formalities done with, the speaker said, “Lady Stelnicka, we were informed by a servant at the Walewska town house that Lady Maria Walewska could be found here.”

  Anna tried not to show her surprise. “She was here earlier tonight,” Anna said, “but you missed her by two hours.”

  “Then where is she?” The snappish question came from the one in velvet.

  Suddenly it dawned on Anna that this man was no secretary and that the other three deferred to him. Anna felt a tingling heat come into her face. Her eyes went immediately to the shaded gray eyes under the hat. And she knew his identity at once.

  Anna curtsied.

  “Well? Now you know!” Napoléon Bonparte said, realizing he had been unmasked. He removed his cap and gave a little bow. “We played at whist once upon a time, Lady Stelnicka, did we not?”

  “We did, Your Highness.—and we danced once, too.”

  “I was no doubt as bad a dancer as I was a loser at cards. I trust you don’t hold it against me. Now, my dear—where might I find Maria?”

  “I’m afraid she’s gone back to her country house.”

  “Damn!” Napoléon’s anger flared like a new torch. “At Bronie? Not to her town house? Perhaps we just missed her.”

  “No—she received word earlier this evening that her son had become ill.”

  “Aleksandr?” The emperor’s anger was transformed into genuine concern. “Is it serious?”

  “No, Your Highness, just a cold. Nothing more.”

  Her assurance seemed to satisfy. He should be concerned, Anna thought. Aleksy was his first-born son.

  The four spoke among themselves then in rapid French as if she was not present. Anna managed to glean that they were headed to Paris via Dresden, and Napoléon now wanted to take a side trip to Maria’s manor house. The other three argued vigorously against such a venture. Anna recognized one of them now as Gereral Caulaincourt, one of the emperor’s inner circle. It was he who stressed bluntly that they didn’t want to lose the time and that the appearance of calling on Maria at such a serious time for Poland would make no friends.

  “I have friends enough,” Napoléon thundered. “It’s an army that I lack!” But a sour wince on the emperor’s face made it clear that the majority had won out.

  Napoléon turned and kissed Anna’s hand. “Lady Stelnicka, please do give the Lady Walewska my best. Tell her I will write—soon!”

  Anna curtsied. “Yes, Your Highness.” The words came with little feeling.

  He gave a thin little smile. “Except for Maria, you will keep my appearance here in confidence?”

  Anna nodded. Good-byes were abbreviated and the four moved noisily to the far entrance. Anna stood there a long time, the emperor’s words ringing in her ears: “It’s an army I lack!”

  Only now did she allow her anger to stream up from her center, sending heat into her face. He had shown real emotion for his son. She wanted to scream after him now: Where are my sons—my sons that you have taken to war, my sons that you have now abandoned—where? Trudging the frigid Eastern steppes? Or worse?

  She stood stunned for some moments, until she heard two words being rhythmically recited by someone in the ward. “Jesus Christ!” one man was saying, over and over.

  Anna stirred herself, picked up her taper, and moved toward the voice. She was glad for the diversion. “That was Napoléon,” came the stunned voice.

  “Yes, Jerzy, it was.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Anna moved closer. Suddenly she remembered—a day long past came back to her, a serious face at the front door of Paweł’s town house. “Jerzy, you know Lady Zofia, do you not?”

  “Who?—No, I don’t,” he said, a bit too quickly. He seemed to forget Napoléon.

  “Lady Zofia Grońska, my cousin. You came to her house on Piwna Street a long time ago—asking for her.”

  “No, milady.—You’re mistaken.”

  “It was years ago, of course.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t recall?”

  “It must have been someone else.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “I see.” Anna turned and walked back to her table, convinced he was lying.

  The early morning Mass-goers were spilling out of Saint Martin’s into Piwna Street when Anna arrived back at the town house. After a little breakfast, she dashed off a note to Anusia Potocki, inviting herself to the Potocki home in Wilanów that evening. Anna knew she was always welcome there. If there was significant news in Warsaw, it was often spoken there first, often by the makers of the news. And with Napoléon’s appearance—incognito—in Warsaw, there had to be news.

  “I was delighted to get your note, Anna,” Anusia said, welcoming her into the house. “You should come by more often. Never wait for an invitation.”

  Anna smiled. “Thank you. That’s very kind.” She walked in, expecting groups of people, chatter, uplifted brows.

  Nothing. The house was quiet as a convent. No one stirred. “Any word from your husband in Wilno?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing recent,” Anusia replied. “Supper won’t be much—it’s just us.—My mother-in-law is in bed with a cold, and my father-in-law has gone out. What with so little news about the war effort—and none of it good—he’s been very depressed of late. He was called to the ambassador’s palace.”

  “So Pradt is still here in Warsaw? I’ve heard he’s had his bags packed for months, just waiting for the bad news.”

  “Oh, he’s ready to hightail it to France, but he’d never do anything without hearing from Napoléon! And you know as well as I there hasn’t been a bulletin coming through Warsaw in weeks.”

  Anna took in a gulp of air. How could she not tell her good friend what she knew? That the man himself was in town running about in a green velvet coat and fur hat like the ostentatious Osric in Hamlet.

  “How did the night go at the hosp
ital?” Anusia asked. “You do look tired, Anna.”

  “I suppose that I do. I tried to sleep this morning but couldn’t.”

  “Well, I’ll send you home early.”

  Anusia did try to send her home, two hours after supper, but Anna held out, certain that her friend’s father-in-law would come back with substantial news.

  Count Stanisław Potocki finally arrived at 10 p.m. That he seemed to be in good spirits amazed Anna. “Come sit down, the two of you,” Potocki said. “You will not guess in a million years who was at the ambassador’s.”

  “I think I could,” Anna said, forgetting herself.

  “Oh, you do?” Potocki said, taken aback. “Then tell me, Anna.”

  “Napoléon Bonaparte, Emperor of France,” Anna said, smiling smugly.

  The count’s mouth fell slack for a moment, but then he laughed. “You little witch! I know you are merely joking, Anna, but your joke couldn’t ring with more truth! It was indeed Napoléon!”

  Anusia gasped. “He’s here? The army’s come home?”

  Anna knew the answer to that, too, but she waited now on the count’s answer. What details would he provide?

  “There is not much of an army left.” Lord Potocki’s eyes lost their sparkle. “The emperor was very blunt about that. He claims a hundred twenty thousand, but we have other sources that put the figure lower. Much lower.”

  Anusia’s eyes widened in horror. “But he took half a million men into Russia!”

  “Indeed,” Potocki said. “And he’s returned to Warsaw with three officers. Those who have survived the trek from Moscow are making their way to Wilno.”

  This news also alarmed Anusia, whose husband held a post in that city. “But the last Aleksandr wrote,” she said, “the city was already in turmoil, dealing with those wounded on the way to Moscow. Not to mention the countless French deserters.”

  Potocki shrugged. “I pray things have improved.” He turned to Anna. “I also pray for your sons, Anna. How it must worry you. May they both be safe in Wilno.”

  “Thank you, Lord Potocki.”

  The count went on to detail Napoléon’s report to the Duchy Council. The report seemed unbiased. The emperor, he said, had detailed the setbacks, the losses, the deaths of hundreds of thousands and he had done so without romanticism, without masking the scope of the disaster. And the Russian campaign had been just that—a disaster. “‘From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step’ were his words. His exact words.”

  Anna held Lord Potocki’s eyes when he had finished. “He takes responsibility?”

  He shrugged. “He does own up to mistakes. He says his famous star deserted him, and in its absence the winter—General Winter, he calls it—brought him low.”

  “His star?” Anna gasped. “General Winter! You call that owning up?”

  Lord Potocki’s eyes widened.

  “And now?” Anna pressed.

  “Well, that’s the amazing thing, Anna. The man is not broken! Not the least, so it seems. He presented to the Council a very accurate contemporary picture of European politics and demonstrated clear vision of a plan. And in that plan there is to be an independent Poland. He went so far as to say he should have seen to it before now, and that that might have helped the cause. He’s off to Paris now to raise a new army.”

  “A new army,” Anna echoed dumbly.

  “Just how did the Council receive this?” Anusia asked.

  “Most of the members fell under his spell, I must say. He kept saying that he who hazards nothing gains nothing.”

  Anna inwardly seethed, thinking that the count himself was included among those whom the emperor had transfixed. She could only think now that Poles were either the most hopeful of all nations—or the most gullible.

  Later, after the count had retired, she voiced this last thought to Anusia. “Aha! The Emperor is as clever as a cat! Dangle independence in front of a Pole and see what happens—he’ll follow you over a cliff! Like geese in a row, one after the other.”

  “Were you and I there in the wizard’s presence, Anna,” Anusia said, “we would likely have been won over ourselves.”

  “Ah, there’s the difference, Anusia. We weren’t there,” Anna said. “Nor was any woman, you can be sure.”

  37

  Jan stood shaking the snow from himself in the front hall of Paweł’s town house on Piwna Sreet watching his daughter descend the stairs, taller and more beautiful than he remembered. It was early evening and outside the winter darkness had fallen like a curtain.

  “Father! You’ve come!” Any ladylike graces instilled by the nuns at convent school went the way of the wind as she rushed into his arms. “I’m so glad,” she confided in his ear. “Mother’s been distraught. She puts on a good face but I can tell. You should take her back to Sochaczew for a while.”

  Jan held his daughter at arm’s length, his face registering his question.

  “News hasn’t been good,” Barbara offered.

  Jan’s grip instinctively tightened. “What do you mean, Basia? Has your mother heard something—about the boys?” The moment seemed to hang fire for the longest time as he waited for his daughter to speak.

  “No, no, I didn’t mean that!” Barbara cried. “I just meant news in general—from the front, you know.”

  “Oh,” Jan said. For the moment, he had thought the worst. His equilibrium returned and he affected a smile. “I do know. News comes to Sochaczew, too.”

  “I know, but her hospital work—it gets too much for her, I think. And they say four of every five Polish soldiers perished, Father.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “Some eighty thousand young men.”

  It was a bitter thing to hear from one’s daughter. “Our boys will come home. We will not think otherwise, Basia.—Do you hear?’

  “Yes,” she said, sniffling a little.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “Lying down. She goes to the hospital at midnight.”

  “Oh.—And you? Is this a holiday from school?”

  “No, I asked to come home for a day—but it won’t be long to Christmas and Sylwester celebrations.—Not that anyone seems to care about such things these days.”

  “We’ll celebrate Christmas and New Year’s as always,” Jan said. “Come what may, you may be sure of that.” He kissed his daughter on the forehead. “Now, I’m going upstairs.”

  “Yes, Papa,” she said, seeming to understand that he meant to go alone.

  Having taken off his boots in the antechamber, Jan entered the bedchamber, carrying a taper that threw a halo of light in the darkened and silent room. Closing the door behind him, he paused, listening. Only a few embers glowed in the grate, occasionally spitting, but the chamber retained its warmth. A long minute passed before he could distinguish the soft and regular breaths of his wife. Like a high wave rushing at him, it suddenly came to him how he had missed her, how he loved her.

  He longed to wake her. And yet he knew that he shouldn’t, that she needed her sleep. She had taken too much upon herself, pushed herself too far. Only God knew what horrors she witnessed daily at the hospital. She should sleep.

  Still, he could not bring himself to leave the room. He moved noiselessly to the bed. He realized that she lay on the left side of the bed, her usual side, as if she expected her husband at any time. Did she leave his usual place in bed undisturbed as a way of having him there in spirit? At home in Sochaczew, he had done exactly the same thing, but it was only now that he realized he had done so.

  He drew down the covers. He stripped himself of his shirt and breeches and carefully slipped into the bed. The feathered mattress beneath was softer than the one at home, the enveloping quilt somehow more welcoming. He lay on his side, facing Anna, whose back was to him.

  She stirred only slightly, but in such a way that brought her backside closer to him. He felt the warmth of her body radiating against his and was immediately aroused.

  Half of an hour passed. It was more than his arousal for A
nna that kept him awake. It was the whole history of his knowing her. His meeting and secret courting of her. Their marriage, their children, and little pieces of happiness stolen from a tapestry of turmoil, war, and separation. Too much separation. Life had dealt her such terrible blows—the premature deaths of her parents; the rape and subsequent pregnancy; the arranged marriage to a man who sought only her money, her land, and her death. And yet she had always gone forward somehow. How had she managed? Any man would be thankful to have her strength.

  Jan silently cursed himself. When they had married, he hoped to protect her, to be always at her side. And yet he had left her—time and again—for the life of a soldier. For years at a time. Those years of waiting, the wondering whether he would ever return—this must have been harder than any march he had ever endured, any battle he had ever braved.

  Anna turned in bed now, rolling onto her back, her side flush against Jan. Her eyes opened at the sensation, stared at the ceiling for a moment as if untrusting, then turned to him full of fear. He imagined he could make out the green of her eyes as she pulled back and turned onto her side, propping her head up with one arm. “Jan!” she rasped, fear replaced by wonder.

  “I’m sorry, Anna,” he said. “I didn’t intend to startle you.”

  “How—how long have you been here?”

  “Half an hour or so.” He gave out with a little laugh. “I gave you a fright—I’m sorry.”

  She smiled. “I—I haven’t been so happily startled—ever!”

  “Indeed,” he said, pushing his arm under her and pulling her to him.

  Anna’s head came down on his chest. “Oh, Jan, I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  He caressed her hair, then leaned forward to kiss the top of her head.

  “I should have come home, Jan. I’m sorry.”