By the time we consumed the week’s provisions that Caleb had brought, our guide judged us far enough from Jelgava for him to risk buying provisions from strangers. He also used his money to pay for us to stay in cabins. The peasants were wary of his musket but accepted vague explanations that we were peddlers returning from a trade mission to Riga. They prudently bit our French coins before accepting them.
After two weeks with no sign of pursuit we purchased a farmer’s mule and wood sledge, the four of us barely squeezing onto the small sleigh. We paid for the vehicle with all but one pair of our skis, Caleb keeping his pair for hunting or emergencies. When even these proved awkward, he left them propped in the crook of a tree “for whoever can use them.”
It would only be much later that I realized the ski tips came together to form an arrow, in the direction we were taking.
With the sledge we made better time, traveling south along the eastern bank of the Nieman before finally crossing the river into Podlesia. Then the spring thaw truly hit and the sleigh grounded like a ship on a lowering tide. The world became a pinto pattern of white and brown, the mud as wet as a mouth. Brush swelled so red that it looked as if blood beat within every twig. We traded the sledge for more food and trudged by foot, Harry riding the mule. I joined him at times, taking a break from muck that added a pound to each of our ankles. Then I’d slide down and slog with the men to give the beast a rest.
As the world continued to warm, the soil dried and hardened. We crossed the Narew and then came to the Bug River, and there sold the mule and took a proper stagecoach into what had once been Poland. The vehicle still bogged down a dozen times, requiring the passengers to help push, but we felt we were flying.
“We’ve escaped our enemies,” Caleb announced.
“And are nearing friends,” Ethan promised.
Poland is mostly flat, each log village an island in a lake of fields. The crops in turn are surrounded by forest. Suddenly every field was being plowed, and every tree was gauzy green. Spring had come in a moment.
Wealth was the neighbor to poverty in this landscape. The grand estates were archipelagos of self-contained prosperity, each with barns, orchards, grain silos, cattle, bakeries, breweries, pigsties, and chicken coops. The peasant towns next door had rude cabins along a single muddy street, a wooden church or synagogue anchoring each hamlet.
“I learned in Jelgava that most of Europe’s Jews live in Poland,” Caleb informed us as we rode along. “King Casimir granted the Golden Freedoms in return for Jews taking the most despised work, which was banking and tax collection. They make up a tenth of the population, and pay double taxes for their faith.”
“Some freedom,” I said. “Golden fetters, it sounds like to me.”
“Aristocrats and burghers are another tenth. The Christian peasants who make up the remainder are a mix from a hundred invasions: Avars, Bulgars, Huns. You’ll still find Tartars from the Mongol empire. Poland is a crossroads of the world, like Constantinople.”
Ethan nodded. “Yet it has identity and soul, Czartoryski said. Roots. Being.”
“Yes. Stubborn as Scots, proud as Gascons, persistent as the Irish, and as independent as the Swiss. Each conquest and partition simply makes Poles long all the more for their own country. Which is why Napoleon sent me here. Sent you here, Ethan. We’re part of his plan.”
“Not me, brother. I’ve escaped the Corsican’s clutches and am working for Czartoryski now. Or rather, with Czartoryski. I’m my own man.”
“And who is Czartoryski working for? Tsar Alexander, yes, but he also has feelers to Napoleon, to Kosciusko in Paris, to Jefferson, to Talleyrand, and to the Pope in Rome. We’re ants on their maps.”
“I want to get off their maps entirely,” I told the men. “Deliver the swords, accept whatever fee Czartoryski’s mother deigns to grant, and leave the continent. To Egypt. America. The South Sea isles.”
“And give up our title?” Ethan quipped, but the question was not really a light one.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “It would come with a catch like those Golden Freedoms.”
“We have to satisfy Napoleon to get off his map,” Caleb said. “Once we do that, we don’t have to go far. Spain, perhaps. Good wine. Better women.”
“Neither of which entice this female, brother-in-law. And doesn’t Bonaparte have his fingers into Spain, as well?”
“We’ll follow opportunity, then. Circumstance. Serendipity, Astiza. Wherever the wind blows, or your fortune-telling takes us.”
“Does serendipity explain the remarkable coincidence that brought two long-lost brothers together?”
“That wasn’t coincidence at all. I was smuggling from Sweden to Britain and caught by a French frigate. After two months in prison I was brought to a minister named Dacre who said the emperor, who notices everything, had taken note of my last name. The French determined that I was related to a rather more infamous brother who’d disappeared in Bohemia and resurfaced in St. Petersburg. A mischief-maker but useful, they said of Ethan Gage, with a lovely wife and a precocious child. I was offered my freedom in exchange for arranging to meet this gypsy family in Jelgava and offering them help. To do so, I posed as Caleb Ruston and hired on with the exiled Louis.”
“Quite a gamble,” Ethan said. “Jelgava is four hundred miles from St. Petersburg. How could you or Napoleon know we’d fetch up there?”
“Because you’d be sent by Adam Czartoryski, who bets on France to reconstitute Poland. Bonaparte knows all about the swords. So Napoleon allied with the Russian foreign minister to enlist wayward treasure hunter Ethan Gage to retrieve patriotic relics and take them to Czartoryski’s ancestral home. With my help, of course, for the mere price of half of any reward you receive.”
“That suggests he knew my theft would be discovered.”
“Ask your foreign minister friend about that.”
“And why would the infamous Ethan Gage need his long-lost brother’s help?” I asked Caleb. “Adam told us we’d get Louis’s help at Jelgava.”
“Czartoryski misled you.”
“Lied, you mean,” I said, glancing at Ethan.
“Perhaps I should say that Czartoryski actually led you,” Caleb corrected. “He always planned that you would go to Pulawy, knew Jelgava was halfway to that goal, and knew that Louis trusts no one, and has no interest in Poland or any cause but his own. So Czartoryski sent you to meet me.”
“Couldn’t he have said so? Couldn’t you, when we met on the palace lawn?”
“Of course not. First, my men would recognize me as a fraud and traitor, a Bonapartist in the home of the royalist heir. Second, Ethan wouldn’t necessarily trust my help, given past estrangement. Third, I wasn’t certain that Ethan was truly Ethan, not after nearly a quarter century. You could have been a trap. When Lothar Von Bonin alerted Louis that refugee Americans might have valuable relics, it was I who suggested your imprisonment, giving me the opportunity to make sure your husband was really Ethan Gage. Now, if I help deliver your contraband to Pulawy and report to Paris on the weaknesses of Louis, I confirm my freedom and win reward. Instead of French prison, I make my fortune!”
“You’re as ludicrously optimistic as I am,” Ethan said.
“Both of us have half-luck, brother. Combined, we might become fully lucky. Fortune will finally shine on the Gage brothers!” He grinned, as raffish and handsome as my husband.
Caleb’s rationale didn’t fully convince me. Czartoryski’s scheme had worked, but just barely. There was another move in this chess game, a hidden strategy, and it might put us in peril. Why had Caleb vanished from Ethan’s life? What did he really want now?
So I waited until Ethan and I were alone, Caleb playing with Horus, and broached the past that my husband was so reluctant to talk about.
“First we find your brother in the unlikeliest of places and then he performs like our protector,” I sa
id. “A man who announces he’s also Napoleon’s spy, secretly allied with your mentor Czartoryski. A minister who neglected to mention Caleb at all.”
“Convenient on all counts,” Ethan agreed.
“You share my misgivings, husband?”
“Only that we’re guided, lovely wife, by a privateer who demands half our reward. Which means he’s as mercenary as I am.”
“Neither of you is really a mercenary. Opportunists, perhaps.”
“Yes. Independent contractors.”
“After a palace that recedes like a rainbow.”
“I’m sorry, Astiza. I thought us so close to triumph in St. Petersburg and here we are on the road again, risking all, with a brother who indeed seems suspiciously convenient. It’s Caleb all right, but I hope this ends at Pulawy.”
“He’s gotten us this far. He’s good with Harry.”
“Yes, the favorite uncle.” We could see that Caleb had picked out stones for a little game of marbles with our son. “I’ll admit he’s more competent than I remember, but then he was just nineteen when he ran away to join a privateer during the American Revolution. We all grow up, even me, and Caleb is a man’s man. Perhaps blood truly is thicker than water.”
“Perhaps?”
He sighed. “A brother whom I thought would never tolerate me again, let alone rescue.”
“Never?”
“Caleb and I have a history, Astiza. My fault, not his.”
“You didn’t get along?”
“We got along very well, until we didn’t. That made the falling out more painful. Then he disappeared before I could apologize and he could forgive. And now he’s back but not talking about it. Which is why I feel as uneasy as you do.”
“Gracious, Ethan, what did you do?”
“Broke his heart. You’ll note he has no wife, and no home.”
“His life is tumultuous.”
“My doing.”
Clearly there was more going on here than treasure hunting. “I think you’d better confide in me, husband. What’s our new fellowship really about?”
My husband looked at Caleb chasing Horus with a hearty laugh, pretending to be a bull. “Many years ago Caleb fell in love with a beautiful Philadelphia girl a few years younger than him, and thus very close to my own age. Everyone noticed her joyous personality. Every lad was smitten. And when our father came back wounded from the Battle of Princeton and announced it was time to put his affairs in order, he decreed that Caleb would inherit the business, thus giving the eldest son the means to ask for Lizzie Gaswick’s hand. Papa’s condition was that Caleb not join the revolutionary army, lest he be killed. The implication to me was that I and my younger brother, Erasmus, were more acceptable cannon fodder.”
“Ethan, no. Your father was simply being prudent.”
“Of course he was. I took offense where none was intended. The truth is that my brother was for the most part smarter, stronger, more agile, and better liked than I was. My father’s sensible plan made me insensibly jealous. I was no stranger to trouble, or women. I’d been sent to a college called Harvard but studied gambling and drinking more than the classics. So I inexplicably took it into my adolescent head to seduce Caleb’s fiancé. Lizzie turned out to be easily tempted, and easily made pregnant. Her family was infuriated. Mine was embarrassed. Gaswick fury could hurt the family business. So money was paid and I was hurriedly shipped to Paris to be an intern to the aging Benjamin Franklin, whom my father knew from Philadelphia business circles. Lizzie brought the baby to term with distant relatives. And my anguished brother defied my father and went to sea as a privateer. We heard nothing of his fate. As a result, my father lost two sons, me to Europe and Caleb to the sea.”
I knew Ethan was by nature an exile and outsider, but this gave me new insight as to why. He carried more guilt than I’d known. “So you have another child?” He’d never confided this.
“I suppose. An adult by now.”
“You don’t know?”
“I was in Paris, trying to forget the entire catastrophe. I reasoned years later that plunging back into Lizzie’s life would be no favor. Nor was I ready to be a good father. I’m not proud of any of this.”
“You don’t know if it was a boy or a girl?”
“No. I never inquired, and no one ever wrote. You’re my family now.”
“You didn’t write Caleb?”
“I didn’t know where he was. I finally assumed him dead. I suspected that I’d hurt him more deeply than I’d initially imagined. He’s tender beneath the bluster. I had thought love an infatuation that passed like the weather, and that satisfying lust was as necessary as breathing. I thought my sin was small. The girl was willing, and my brother would still inherit her and the business. Such cynicism! But Caleb truly loved her. And fled in humiliation. Now he’s saved us without uttering a single bitter word. So yes, I wonder.”
“Perhaps he’s long since forgiven you. Perhaps this is your opportunity to do penance with partnership.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps he has in mind a second price.”
“What would he demand?”
His intense look surprised me. “What prize indeed? Be careful, Astiza.”
So now our fellowship seemed dangerous.
At the same time, I wondered if old guilt was exaggerating Ethan’s fear. Caleb was careful not to be flirtatious. He showed no sign of animosity toward my husband or son. Ethan might have balked at the Jelgava rendezvous if told of Caleb’s presence there, so Czartoryski’s secrecy seemed understandable to me. Caleb’s motives seemed plausible.
But it didn’t help that the men wouldn’t talk it out, which I’m convinced is the cause of half the troubles in the world. They joked, jostled, and competed. Caleb challenged my husband to a shooting match with his musket, which might have been an opportunity to do accidental mischief. But he was genuinely congratulatory when Ethan won.
“I thought your reputation was inflated, brother. It’s not.”
Ethan had been the first to shatter a jug. “I need a rifle to hit from a real distance. But your musket shoots fairer than most.”
“Fairer for you than for me.”
“Aye. We should have bet.”
“The gun is a pretty piece I stole from the household of fat King Louis, who will howl when he finds it missing. So now let me get even with swords. I’ve fenced with the cutlass.” He indicated the wrapped Grunwald weapons, demonstrating that neither Gage boy had an ounce of sense.
“Fools!” I intervened. “If you don’t kill each other by accident or design, you’ll break the weapons that are the entire point of our journey. Or draw attention to them if anyone comes upon your mock duel. Why are men such idiots? Who knows what examples you are putting into Horus’s head?”
They pretended chagrin. “At least concede I’d have won,” Caleb said to Ethan.
“You’re the better man,” Ethan replied. “We both know that.”
Which was a step toward an apology, I thought, and Caleb gave a mock bow, adding a wink for me. “The better swordsman, and you the better shot with a remarkable wife. I envy you, brother.”
Which was just the kind of compliment that could cause trouble. “I’m flattered, Caleb, but your envy is misplaced,” I said. “Ethan is cursed by my female caution and sense. You’re a bachelor, able to come and go as you please. I’m sure it’s Ethan who envies you.”
“Do you, brother?”
“A wise husband knows when to affirm and when to keep silent,” my husband replied. “I’ll concede only that I’ll win at shooting, Caleb at fencing, and you at prudence, Astiza. And someday I hope to win a treasure worthy of my bride!” He solemnly addressed his brother. “The way to husbandly happiness, Caleb, is a happy wife.”
“Yours is the voice of experience?”
“Experience hard won.”
I s
norted at both of them. “In that case,” I announced, “you fetch the firewood, Caleb the water, and I’ll be happy enough. As for treasure, I believe Franklin said that the great part of mankind’s misery comes from falsely estimating the value of things. Being poor is no shame, he said, but being ashamed of it is.”
“She’s Athena, goddess of wisdom!” Caleb cried. “But being rich is no shame either, I suspect. Or at least I’d enjoy finding out.”
And on we traveled, but my restless mind couldn’t let the situation rest. As we rolled and jounced in our coach, I again aired the past. “Did you ever go from privateer to pirate, Caleb? Not that I’d condemn you for it.”
“Explain to me the difference beyond a piece of paper supplied by a warring government,” he replied. “But the answer is no, since I don’t care for the hangman’s noose. I smuggled, I helped ships fend off pirates, and I served as a mercenary sailor in foreign navies. But most of the time I delivered fat, dull cargoes on fat, dull boats, to fat merchants in dull ports.”
“You learned the cutlass?”
“I learned to use whatever comes to hand. It’s a brutal world.”
“Yet you don’t seem gloomy.”
“A waste of time. As is hate, envy, resentment, and revenge.”
I looked at Ethan, since this seemed as good a closure as we could hope for. “You sound like a good Christian.”
“I sound like a man from any good religion, and I’ve encountered a score of them. I learned the value of forgiveness the hard way, just as I sailed around the world to make sure it is truly round.” He winked at Harry. “I’m not necessarily a good man, nephew. But I’m a practical one.”
“Did you see any monsters?” my boy asked.
The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Page 12