Irina

by Philip Warren

  To the Church of the Heart of Jesus, on the other hand, Jerzy Andrezski was as good as his word. He returned 90 percent of his earnings to Sister Luke. For the next weeks, Jerzy made a good deal of money on scarce goods. The detritus—the unsalable goods—he gave away to the poorest in the city. Too, he used his keen eye to select a number of good properties for purchase knowing there would be a demand for them sooner or later. In a short time, he became one of Poznan’s respected men of business—one of few remaining.

  …

  As Bishop Antony Tirasewicz made his way back through the woods and fields, he found it remarkable how few people he encountered. In the little village of Wozna, he was stunned by the utter quiet as he dismounted and walked, slowly, from house to house. He touched nothing, but peeked in the doors and windows, open to the air. Not a whisper of breath.

  Wozna had always been a good stop to water horses and have a bowl of soup at the largest structure, an inn of sorts where the couple and their children served travelers at all hours of the day, and sometimes the night.

  This day, he saw only an old man and a child. “Pan,” he addressed the man quietly and respectfully, as if in the presence of the dead, “where is everyone? Surely…”

  The old man stretched his arm in the direction of a blackened pile some one hundred feet away. Through his missing teeth, in broken Polish, he mouthed a few words. “There. Three weeks ago. They are all there. And their things. We,” he said, his other arm around a boy no more than ten years on the earth, “we are left. No food for us. No food for you.”

  Astounded by the human devastation, the bishop reached deep into his cold heart and blessed the two wretches in front of him. He turned and said to his companions, “Give them some food!”

  After a few moments, he climbed back on his horse, his chilly composure having quickly returned. “To Poznan we go!”

  Upon his arrival in the city, he realized Wozna had just been a taste of the bitter meal to come. Whole streets and alleys were abandoned. People had simply vanished. He suspected that many of those alive had left and returned as he himself had done.

  Spent fires were everywhere, sodden black masses blotching the landscape. The air carried a roasted ugliness he could not wave away. At his own residence, a palace next to the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, the doors remained tightly shut.

  He had left instructions that his house not be used in caring for the diseased, but that God’s house could be used for that purpose. All seemed quiet now. The flowers drooped from lack of care and water, and what grass there was had grown knee high with the weeds. No servant came out to greet them. It seemed strange, but perhaps they were out provisioning the palace.

  He had the door broken in, and as the disgusting odor rushed out, the bishop and his party found them, dead for weeks, mouldering in the dusty, foul air. The looks on the man and his wife were a mix of surprise and horror, as if the plague would not have dared cross the bishop’s threshold.

  Bishop Tirasewicz could not stay there now, he saw. Turning to the others, he gave his orders: “I will go to the convent of the Dominicans. You will remain here to purify this house so that it will be of use to me again.”

  At the convent, he encountered another shock in the person of Sister Luke, who introduced herself as the new Mother Superior, pending his approval. As they took each other’s measure, she spoke of Sister Mary Elisabeth’s death and the convent’s current circumstances. Half of the nuns there had also perished, she reported.

  Despite his shock, the bishop remained true to himself. “I am truly sorry about the loss of Sister Elisabeth,” he said, “and you may consider yourself ratified as the new Mother Superior by the See of Poznan, my dear Sister Luke. I will send the official proclamation forthwith.” Then, he cleared his throat. “However, Sister Luke, you must not count on your bishop for financial support. See to your own needs the best way you can.”

  Sister Luke bowed in submission, as he expected, but, he noted, she offered no plan for the Dominican Sisters to support themselves.

  …

  Still perplexed, Sir Bela had the prisoner brought to him. Tomasz quivered. The Hungarian lord watched his captive for a long, silent moment, much as the cat eyes an unsuspecting mouse.

  “What do you have to say to me, Tomasz, my fellow subject?”

  “Sire?” Tomasz asked, bewildered, yet attempting to fathom the Hungarian’s meaning. “Fellow subject?” He stopped. “Did you not take me prisoner?”

  “Indeed, you are my prisoner. What do you have to say to me, Tomasz, about your master, Duke Zygmunt?”

  Once again, Tomasz responded with the same question. “Sire?”

  “Tomasz, Tomasz, we are brothers, you and I,” Sir Bela said, smiling, his voice cordial, belying the circumstances of their conversation. “We serve our masters. One is like another, wouldn’t you agree? Your king just speaks a different language than you. Come now. What does Duke Zygmunt think about this?”

  “Truthfully, Sire, he would never discuss such a thing with me.”

  “Indeed, not, Tomasz,” Sir Bela jousted. “He may not have spoken to you, but surely, the duke’s men have an idea what their lord thinks of his king—and they talk around his castle where you can hear them.” Deliberately repeating the man’s name, he said, “Yes, Tomasz?”

  Shaking, Tomasz lowered his eyes briefly, the reflex contradicting what he was about to say. “Of course, Sire, my master is loyal to the king.”

  “Tomasz, I believe you have some reason why you do not want to see your master. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps I do not care. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Sire. The Duke is a Pole, not a Hungarian.”

  “Simple. Truthful.”

  “You need not make an introduction, after all, Tomasz. You will be there at the right moment to say farewell.”

  Uncomprehending, Tomasz was led away.

  …

  With the sun’s radiance his first companion upon leaving the great hall after the mid-day meal, Madrosh found Irina awaiting his return up on the parapets. As always, Yip sat at her feet watching, ever listening. “I trust you ate well, My Lady? I’m so sorry not to have been with you, but there is something I want to ask you. By now, you have formed an impression of the margrave. What might that be?”

  “In answer to your first question, yes. As to your second, we’ve met and spoken twice—you were there the first time. I do not understand his tongue, and so our contacts are necessarily brief. That is the way I prefer them to be,” she said, eyeing him carefully. “I will do what I need to do so that Velka, Rosta, the Sisters, and I—and my child—have safe passage to Paris, not back to Poznan.”

  “Do you intend never to return?”

  “We shall see, Madrosh. We shall see.” She paused, smiling back at him. “Now, back to good and evil?” The early afternoon sun brightened their otherwise drab surroundings of gray stone and aged timbers, giving new attention to the lustrous greens of the treed hills around the castle’s landsides.

  Madrosh nodded. “First, allow me to reinforce one of your strongest qualities, My Lady.”

  Surprised by his words, Irina merely raised her eyebrow.

  “It is a simple one, and for most, not so easy to master.” He paused. “You say little at court, my dear, and that one trait makes you both interesting and unassailable. May I respectfully suggest you continue that habit,” he said without a question in his voice.

  Irina nodded, adding the smallest smile of thanks.

  Warming to the topic on Irina’s mind, Madrosh cleared his throat. “I want to mention some of Aristotle’s thinking about the soul. He is said to have believed that when a baby is conceived, it has a vegetative soul, that is, the essence of a senseless entity. When the baby grows a bit, it receives an animal soul, and finally, when it achieves its humanity, a rational soul.”

  Irina’s g
ave him a look of impatience.

  Madrosh held up a finger to forestall her complaint. “Just a moment, my dear. Do you see where that thought might take us?”

  She said nothing.

  “I mention this to explain why in our time some men of the church, even Augustine, have not objected greatly to the deliberate loss of an unborn baby.” He said this and lowered his eyes.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Madrosh?” Her voice was a harsh whisper.

  “At the present time, the church may condemn relations outside of marriage, but not a deliberate miscarriage, as long as it happens before the baby becomes ensouled.”

  “Are you suggesting that I find a way to miscarry, Madrosh?” Irina felt color rising in her cheeks. “Is this your way of telling me it would be better, more convenient for me?” she demanded, anger claiming each new syllable. Do you not yet understand what I am about? Would I have gone to this extreme,” she said, extending her arms to show where they were, how far they had come, “to rid myself of a child I did not want?”

  “I am so sorry, My Lady,” the old counselor hastened to say. “Truly, I admire you for not having done what many have done.”

  “Madrosh, understand me now! This baby means everything to me, and I will carry it as long as God wants it so. This child also carries Berek’s spirit, and that I will never forget.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Madrosh said, realizing he had touched a most tender spot in Irina’s emotional well-being.

  The spring air became heavy with their silence. Irina swallowed hard. Finally, in an attempt to put the exchange aside, she asked, “Are you saying that how each person’s soul is made up determines whether a person is good or evil?”

  “That could be one answer, yes, Irina.”

  “Might you be saying, then, that a creature like Tomasz may have very little of a rational soul?”

  “That may be what the Greeks would say. As Christians, we have a different view of the soul. That’s where Augustine and Aquinas joined the reasoning.”

  Irina sat, absorbing the sun’s caress for another moment or two. Without thinking about it, she stood and took the two steps to the crenellated wall, where the incredible view from so high up on the castle wall presented itself. Suddenly, she caught her breath, her hand over her heart, as if it had stopped.

  “What is it, dear Lady?” Madrosh rushed to her side, the breeze rustling his beard.

  Irina was trembling. She pointed. Yip climbed upon the bench, put his paws on the wall, and began a low growl. “Look down into the square. Do you see who it is?” She breathed heavily, deeply. “How can this be?! How can it be that evil’s altar boy is here to pay us a visit?”

  …

  Just after making a substantial payment to Sister Luke’s good nuns, Jerzy Andrezski sought a place to rest his heavy frame. Later, he said it had been just a coincidence that the place of rest happened to be in the Church of the Heart of Jesus. For a good part of his life, he had worked hard to deny that God could possibly exist. Now, he worked hard resisting the pull of God’s presence around him.

  He sat in the coolness of the stone building, always drafty, no matter what time of day or night. Rubbing the bristles of his unshaven face, he looked up into the unlit gloom of the church’s cavernous interior, and noticed something about the small lancet windows high above his head. They provided thin slices of light in the high side walls, but also let in the wind and the rain. The openings were small, as required by the architect, supposedly, since larger openings would have weakened the walls and let in more weather. They were in contrast to the one large glass window above the church’s main doors. Something about the arrangement drew Jerzy’s attention.

  Seemingly alongside his thoughts of church architecture was a strong feeling of gratitude for his very existence. Yet he refused to admit he was praying. Then he laughed at his own foolishness. As he argued with himself about the God he’d long denied, something about the openings in the walls nagged at him. He tried to swat away the idle thought, but before he realized it, he was walking quickly, out of the church, through the square, almost trotting across the city to the cathedral.

  At the great cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, he pushed open the stout wooden doors and strode down the nave’s center.

  “Here now!” called Father Shimanski, who had been kneeling at a side altar. “Show some respect to the house of God. Close those doors!”

  Ignoring the order, Andrezski approached the priest. “Father, forgive my manners. I wanted to see something here, and the open doors will give us more light. Could you help me?”

  Curious about the clean, pleasant giant of a man before him, the priest changed his tone. “Aren’t you Andrezski, the merchant?” Without waiting for an answer, he asked, “How can I help you, my son?”

  “Tell me about your windows.”

  “Our windows? Well, yes, they are made from what is called stained glass. We’ve had them for about twenty or thirty years, I’d say, and very expensive they are. The glass came from Italy with great effort. It was very hard to transport the pieces across the Alps, there being no good, safe land route most of the time.”

  “The glass was brought here in pieces, then?”

  “Yes, a craftsman came along with two assistants. They spent many months heating and molding great quantities of lead strips to hold all the pieces together. The pictures in them are, of course, religious, and help the people understand Christ and the figures in the gospel. See, over there, the great windows showing Saints Peter and Paul as earthly shepherds of the flock?”

  “Yes, Father, but can you tell me about the clear glass, how it’s made.”

  “The clear glass?” the priest asked in surprise. “Yes, well, the Italian craftsman and his helpers actually made the clear glass here in the city. There were also two apprentices they trained who, along with their own assistants, watched and learned a bit of glassmaking from the Italians.

  “Prosze, Father. Go on.”

  “I do not know much, Pan Andrezski, but it has always been manufactured along the Mediterranean, and mostly in Murano, an island near Venice, where the secrets of glass are jealously guarded. And so the price of its beauty and novelty has remained high.”

  “And that’s why there are few glass windows around here?”

  “Yes, my son, that and the fact that earlier outbreaks of plague took so many who knew its secrets.”

  “I don’t understand, Father. Why didn’t the Poznan apprentices trained by the Italians keep making glass here?”

  “I am certain they would have, but,” Father Shimanski said, lowering his eyes, “they are dead and buried in the plague’s great lime pits—they died when the Great Mortality first visited a generation ago. Now, Pan, tell me why you want to know about the windows?”

  “What other glass is to be found in the city?”

  “Oh, there are a few pieces in the castle, and one beautiful window in the Church of the Heart of Jesus. It was Duke Zygmunt’s father who arranged for this gift to the church just before he died, and as his own reward, he had the Italians make him a few small pieces to show to visitors who came to the castle. It is wonderful, nie? To be able to look through something clear and not feel the wind and snow in your face?”

  “And what happened to the Italians?”

  “Those who did not die of plague, could not stand our frigid winters and returned to Italy, taking with them all their knowledge. No one else in Poznan had the money to bring back the glassmakers, and no one left alive here knew enough to make the glass.”

  “The families of the dead men, their sons. Where are they to be found?”

  “Let me think now,” the priest paused. “Of course. One of the sons has survived. His name is Pawel Tokasz. Everyone knows him.”

  Large man though he was, Jerzy Andrezski loped out of the church, shouting a loud “Djenku
je!” over his shoulder, while Father Shimanski remained thoroughly mystified.

  …

  At the other end of the city, Sister Luke’s convent prepared itself for a refectory dinner with Bishop Tirasewicz, which she hoped would mark the close of his week-long visit while his palace was swept free of death. They had spent little time together and had little conversation—all to their mutual satisfaction, she surmised.

  The bishop seemed to have enjoyed the well-tended gardens and courtyards but was noticeably ill at ease in the quiet solitude usually found within the convent walls. For his entire stay, Mother Superior’s goal had been to let the bishop feel free to come—and go—as he pleased. When he announced his stay had come to an end, there was noticeable joy amongst the convent nuns as they made certain the church and convent were spotless, the linens white and crisp. From the kitchen delicious aromas alerted them to the feast about to be served—a feast of farewell.

  At the dinner itself, the bishop seemed to be contemplating a topic for discussion. After many pleasantries about the work of the good sisters and careful commentary about the absent Father Rudzenski, he set about it. “Sister Luke, I was curious about the woman and her servant girl your Mother Superior sent along with me. What do you know about them?”

  Caught by surprise, Sister Luke prepared her words carefully, not knowing why he would ask such a question. “Why, Your Grace, so much has happened since they left I had all but forgotten about them. I know little, to be sure. Mother Superior found them in church praying. She talked to them for some time, took a liking to them, and when she discovered Lady Irina was with child, she decided to do what she could to spare them from the Great Mortality.”

  “Do you know why she was called Lady Irina? What was her surname again?”

  “Lady Irina Kwasnieska. She came from elsewhere, possibly Gniezno, I think. In truth, Bishop, that is all I remember.”