“This romance is over before it began, Blumer.”
“Nonsense! Your mare is merely playing hard to get.”
Tanski laughed. We disentangled our horses and rejoined the line as the regiment trotted down the street. We had been in Warsaw now these four years in Poniatowski’s cadets, studying drill and tactics – when our punishing schedule of drinking, gambling and wenching allowed it. All four of those long years, the Sejm (which was what we called our Parliament) had been in session. Four long years of angry debates about the Constitution.
The whole nation was in a fever for this Constitution. Crowds marched through Warsaw on a daily basis, with black banners, demanding this or that, whipped up into a patriotic fervour. In the taverns and coffee houses they spoke of the rights of man, religious toleration, kindness to Jews, the education of peasants and women, and other nonsense.
Along with my fellow cadets I had spent days and months on the back of my horse, arse aching, on guard duty, policing these crowds of whingeing peasants. Our constipated Sejm had sat all this time, like a hen trying to lay a goose egg. Who should have a vote? What privileges should the townsfolk have? How much tax should the workers’ guilds pay? How much land should the peasants be given? All questions of great import, no doubt, but they bored me to tears. I cared not a grosz for the small print, but I wanted the Constitution. With no money or connections, I needed a war to make my name.
“When the Empress gets wind of this,” I said to my horse, “there’ll be war all right.”
What a pretty picture we made that fine day, like a neat rank of toy soldiers marching across a child’s nursery floor. Our standard fluttered joyfully in the breeze behind the King, the crowned white eagle on a red field below a white sky. Above us, three black crows wheeled lazily over the city. An ill omen. Poland’s enemies – Russia, Prussia, and Austria – all have black eagles on their coats of arms. Three black eagles circling the white.
Remember the herald who announced the Bullock’s arrival? Who called out that long list of the places of which His Majesty was King – Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Mazowia, Samogita, Kiev, Wolyn, Podolia, Podlasie, Livonia, Smolensk, Sever and Czernihov? Well, all those lands and provinces were gone. Lost, or as good as lost. The herald may as well have proclaimed that the Bullock ruled the Moon with Pan Twardowski as his Prime Minister.
Lithuania was still with us, more or less, but hanging by a thread. Prussia, once our vassal state of Teutonic mercenaries, created by us to fight our enemies, had become a monster, and run amok, like the evil golem in the story told by the Jews. Of Podolia, my homeland, you know already.
As for the rest – Ruthenia, Samogita, Kiev, Wolyn, Livonia, Smolensk, Sever and Czernihov – they had long since been taken by the icy hand of Mother Russia, in the grisly and murderous business that the Tsarina called ‘gathering in the lands’. We still had Mazowia, the great cities of Warsaw, Krakow, and Vilnius, and a few others. But for how long? The Bullock held them only by the grace and favour of the Empress of the North.
We rode past the churches, the coffee houses, the taverns, and the theatre house, and the green and red and white and brown stone houses of the old town. A great swirl of excitement rose up around us like a storm on the steppes.
“Strike up a tune,” came Pepi’s order. “Play something merry – play ‘the mazurka’!”
Our drummers and trumpeters struck up the mazurka, and the song rang out – the Song of the Legions. This mazurka had no words and no author. It sprang from the heavens like a friendly spirit in that golden spring of the Third of May. A fife player in a regiment of loyal Cossacks and a Jew harpist by the roadside joined in.
It spread like forest fire and soon the air was alive with it. By now the street was thronged with citizens and peasants, staggering from the alehouses and churches. All of the citizens had realised, by some magic, exactly what was afoot. They began to gather together. Slowly at first, then faster. As we advanced the trickle of people became a deluge. Faces pressed to every window. Men, women, children, young and old, gentile and Jew. Men waved their hats and women their scarves. They cheered, sang, and rejoiced. Every inch of pavement was thronged with people. We pushed slowly through the press.
We slowed our horses to a walk. Rose petals and cherry blossoms seemed to fill the air. Girls pressed flowers and laurels upon us. Bells rang. Doves fluttered to the heavens. By now the street was so full that people were clambering onto the green roofs of the red and white houses, waving flags and banners. No Roman Emperor ever had so splendid a triumph as the Bullock received from our Warsaw folk – but in this excess of delirious joy, we all quite forgot that the barbarian hordes of our enemies had not yet actually been conquered.
As we were swept along in this sea of joy, there was even a priest, to bless our voyage! A bishop, no less, intoning prayers, making the sign of the cross and spraying the Bullock, Pepi, and the rest of us cavalrymen with holy water as we rode by.
“One of these damned priests is on our side, anyway!” Tanski sneered. “Mostly they hate the Constitution. At Mass last week, my priest called it a pact with the Devil.”
“I have heard the same slanders,” I agreed, “my priest says there are Jacobins hiding under every bed in Warsaw, ready to set up guillotines on every street corner, close the churches, sell our women to the Jews, and so on. Lies and nonsense!”
Tanski considered himself an authority on the dark rumours that were swirling through the taverns and coffee houses, and was greatly given to talk of plots and conspiracies.
“I’ll tell you where this treachery comes from – from Felix Potocki. He’s a Freemason, of course,” Tanski tapped his nose. “Upon my soul, Felix put the priests up to this knavery.”
Moments later we rode by the friendly bishop, who had been administering unctions and blessings to the Bullock by the dozen, kissing his hand and drenching him in holy water. We gaped at each other in amazement.
“Hell’s teeth!” we both exclaimed, “that’s the same priest!” Right under our noses, this crafty priest was fawning over the Bullock as if he were God’s anointed, and not the Devil’s disciple, as he had been saying only yesterday.
Abruptly, the column stopped, for it was but a short road to the Wawel Castle. This red brick fortress, as picturesque as a storybook castle, was brimful inside with politicians – the karmazym, the crimson ones. This was what we called the rich nobles and magnates, on account of their expensive crimson clothing, especially their boots. These politicians sat there all day long, squatting on their fat backsides, farting out great clouds of hot air.
We rode into the square to find that it was ringed with soldiers. There, at the head of his troops, surrounded by engineers and cannon, was the great man himself, General Kosciuszko – known to all as the Commander – as great a son of liberty as ever lived.
Pepi and the Commander saluted each other.
“Would you be so kind as to lend us one of your engineers, my dear General?” Pepi drawled. “One never knows – the Sejm could be packed with gunpowder!”
The Commander grinned. “Private Sierawski!” he bellowed, and from the ranks of engineers, there was summoned a gangling boy of barely sixteen. He had a mop of unruly hair beneath his czapka, and long, finely tapered violinist’s fingers on his clumsy hands.
“He’s a crafty little sod,” the Commander said, “he’ll serve you well.”
By this means we made the acquaintance of Jan Sierawski, from Krakow, as he never tired of telling us, engineer extraordinaire, by his own account. Sierawski took his place beside us. Puffed up as he was, he would be well matched with the preening bullfrogs of the Sejm who sat inside the Wawel Castle.
At the castle gate, the King doffed his three-cornered cap to the crowd, to a storm of applause. By now some persons amongst the mob had become greatly agitated. So much so that our men were obliged to link arms and drive them back, for fear that they might storm the Sejm. Thus, by a strange irony, we protected our adversaries from ou
r friends.
Then the King stepped down from his horse and a groom took the reins. Stanislaus-August had a kind, nervous, intelligent face. A gold-handled sword hung at his hip. He wore a white powdered wig and a glorious orange robe emblazoned with eagles against the spring cold. Over his left shoulder hung a blue silk sash. At his neck was a golden clasp picked out in precious stones, bearing his coat of arms, a red bullock. For all our misgivings about him, the King cut a fine figure before the castle.
Crowds were still gathering, swelling the procession that had followed us from the Poniatowski Palace to bursting. A river of people, like a second Vistula running through the streets. The Constitution meant freedom. Freedom from foreign enemies, and from the tyranny of the nobility at home. We had to have this Constitution, one way or another, come what may, whatever the politicians said.
This King of ours was an intellectual, who lived in a world of books and fine ideals. He had fine words to sway the doubters in the Sejm into voting for his Constitution. His nephew Pepi was more practical. He had surrounded the Sejm with soldiers. For good measure, he was bringing a few of us along with him inside the senate house – including Tanski, Sierawski and myself – as his hand-picked jockeys. Under Pepi’s orders we drew our swords and stormed into the castle.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CRIMSON ONES
Let me explain the reason for our parlous situation. Our nation’s ruling dynasty, the glorious Jagiellons, died out three hundred years ago. This left us without a royal family, so a King was elected by the nobles of the Sejm. He acted as a kind of glorified steward on their behalf. By these same ancient (and downright insane) laws, any one noble senator could veto any proposal made by the King. One senator with a grudge, or who had been bribed, could paralyse the nation. The King could get nothing done. If the nobles didn’t want to pay tax, well, damn it, they wouldn’t pay tax – VETO! If that meant we had no army to repel the Russians, or no roads, or no schools in the villages, then so be it. Nie Pozwalam! I will not allow it! VETO!
This was what the nobles called their ‘golden freedom’. The freedom of men such as Felix Potocki to do whatever the hell they pleased, and damn the rest of us, over whom they ran roughshod with the sword and the knout. We had another word for it – anarchia.
“The Constitution will put an end to this madness of the Veto,” Pepi said, “unless somebody VETOES it first, that is. A fine conundrum!” he frowned.
“We will veto the veto, General!” we replied, making the throat-cutting gesture.
With that, we passed through the Marble Room, with its twenty-two portraits of Polish Kings, painted by French masters. Stanislaus-August paused for a moment, and nodded at the sombre crowned heads in a mark of silent respect. His predecessors stared back. His portrait was the last of the line. The King gazed sadly at the gilded, marble-floored room.
“My famous Thursday Dinners were held in this very room, nephew,” the King recollected. “The finest minds were there – artists, poets, intellectuals, scientists. We cooked up the Constitution over those feasts. It was a glad time, before the long shadows drew in.” The King sighed sadly. After this morbid moment, we pressed on, stepping carefully to avoid tearing the furniture with our spurs, our scabbards scraping on the marble floor.
In the great hall the great lords had gathered, the karmazym, the crimson ones. The Sejm resembled a Turkish bazaar rather than a place of government. One could buy anything from a tasty snack to a position in the government with equal ease. Hawkers plied their trade selling beer, pastries, and candied fruits, stepping between the high benches and tables strewn with papers where the senators and their lackeys argued and bickered endlessly.
On one side stood the firebrands, the radicals – the men they called Jacobins. The Church said they were heretics and fanatics, who preached that even peasants and women should have rights – or even votes. Naturally I considered myself a liberal and enlightened sort of a fellow, but I was no Jacobin. That was taking things too far. Votes for peasants and women, by God! Whatever next?
There was Cyprian Godebski, playwright and poet, a staunch supporter of the Constitution, eating a pie wrapped in a copy of the Warsaw Gazette. As well as being a poet and a politician, he was a lieutenant in the grenadiers.
Beside him was Senator Jozef Wybicki, the white-haired lawyer. He was besieged by whingeing clients waving petitions (and complaining about their bills) even on that grand day. With a shock, I recognised him – he was the old man who had hidden in my mother’s barn!
The King went around and around the hall, begging wavering Senators for their vote. There were a number of bishops in the senate. Almost all of these bishops were dead set against the Constitution – and the King conversed with each in turn, in vain, begging them not to use the veto.
“The arse speaks to the bishop, but the bishop just speaks to himself,”[1] I observed. Pepi, meanwhile, accosted a buxom young girl who was selling apple cake, vodka and beer.
“Make room for the young lady, there!” Pepi cried at a group of senators who were sitting at a bench, poring over a copy of the Constitution. They were busily crabbing and scribbling with their quills. These were our enemies. Traitors in the pay of Russia. Pepi swept their papers aside, then lifted the serving girl up with one arm and deposited her, blushing, upon the bench. The papers fell to the marble floor in a chaotic swirl.
“How clumsy of me! A thousand apologies!” he exclaimed in mock horror. “Comrades!” Pepi snapped his fingers at us, grinning, “clear up this mess, at once!”
We gathered up the fallen papers in a great balled-up mass, to howls of protest from the Senators, who scrabbled after them. In the mêlée, the papers were torn to shreds.
I ran into one of those fellows, who was on his knees, grabbing after his carefully worded objections that were now no more than ribbons. I knew him for Hetman Adam Severyn Rzewuski. He was a Podolian warlord, a henchman of Felix Potocki, a lackey of the Russians. I seized him by his crimson cloak and raised him roughly to his feet. His lordship was a great bear of a man, strong as a wrestler, but his body had run to fat, and a ponderous belly hung below his barrel chest. Hatred and contempt were writ on every inch of his hard, coin-counting face, from the tip of his bristling beard, to the top of his shiny head, which was as bald as an egg.
“A thousand pardons! Your papers, My Lord,” I said, shoving the torn bundle at him.
“Damn your eyes!” he cursed, snatching them, “you stinking Jacobin dog!”
“If you are not content with my apology, Your Lordship,” I bowed, “you may ask me for satisfaction at any time,” I replied, and casually tossed my glove onto the bench before him, a blatant challenge to a duel. He placed his hand on his sword hilt. Then he glanced at my comrades and, seeing himself outmatched, withdrew.
“I don’t duel with peasants!” he sneered, by way of excuse.
“I am a gentleman, Sir,” I said coldly, “and you are a scoundrel, a traitor and a coward.”
Rzewuski’s face turned red as a beetroot. He lunged at me, but his flunkeys seized him by the tail of his kontusz and held him fast.
“Unhand me, you damned serfs!” Rzewuski grumbled, thrashing about with his arms and floundering like a landed fish. He made a great show of anger, but I had the measure of my man – many’s the time I’ve seen braggarts in the taverns dragged off by their friends thus, glad to avoid a fight. I watched with pleasure as Rzewuski’s men led him away, with him pretending to protest all the while.
“Blumer!” Pepi called after me, “dear fellow, would you be so kind as to cut this cake?” It was a plump and delicious apple cake, with a pungent smell of cinnamon, almost as luscious as the girl who had brought it to us, who now, sadly, was nowhere to be seen. We cut the cake up with our daggers. Then the King returned, disheartened.
“Am I to do this alone? Won’t you help me persuade the senators, Pepi?” He spluttered.
“On the contrary, Uncle,” Pepi retorted, “my men are being extremely
persuasive, as you see. Their very presence encourages these politicians to be reasonable.”
Pepi gestured at us. We agreed, most vigorously, with cake on our lips, and swords in our hands. All around us, politicians shrank back, terror-struck. Nobody was talking about the veto any more. Nobody was saying very much at all, in fact.
“Perhaps you are right after all, nephew,” the King conceded, grinning. “These are the men for such work as this!” With that he swept away, cape billowing, followed by a flock of servants and hangers-on to put clear air between us and his royal personage.
I am a big man, but Pepi was a hand taller, and he loomed over me like a tower of genial menace. “Blumer, my boy,” he drawled, “I’d be obliged if you would keep an eye on My Lord Brother Baldy there, for he appears to be in a bad humour this fine day. I think you upset him.”
Thus, under my watch, Rzewuski slipped out of the chamber. He went with one of the bishops. Perhaps he was only going to pass water, but, as I was bid, I followed him, with Sierawski and Tanski hard on my heels.
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