Zofia sat motionless—but for her darting eyes—at the window of the covered carriage. She had spent the better part of the morning driving along the rough road that ran parallel to the eastern bank of the River Vistula. Her driver had obediently responded each time she called for him to slow or stop in order to take a better look at a little peasant hamlet or particular hut or cottage. In the three hours of tedious travel, she had seen nothing familiar. The overcast sky opened now and began to spit down little showers of rain.
“Stop!” Zofia called, her body going tense, her eyes narrowing.
The carriage ground to a halt. There, a hundred paces away, sat the dwelling she had been searching for. What set it apart from a thousand other peasant huts? The single poplar that stood to the side like a sentry? She wasn’t quite sure, but she could not be more certain that this was the cottage in which she convalesced after having been snatched from the Vistula.
Time lengthened as she stared, thinking back nineteen years to those months she had spent there. Images of the old man and his daughter came to her with surprising vividness. And the face of Jerzy, too, but that had always stayed sharp in her mind. Somehow he had always been with her. Was it because Izabel resembled him so? Yes, there was that. Their daughter had become a link to that past. But there was an invisible link, too, one of strong and convoluted emotions.
Zofia saw that some children had taken notice of the stalled carriage. Here the carriage of a noble was not an everyday sight. They whispered among themselves, their eyes wide with wonder. They moved a few paces closer.
What had drawn her to this place after so many years? Jerzy had. Zofia recalled how young and innocent he was. It had been so easy to seduce him. He had given her his heart without a thought. And she had taken it, wishing for the moment she were a peasant girl that could make a life with him—but knowing that was impossible.
So many men had passed through her life. Why was it she had not forgotten this one? This Jerzy? He had no title, no money, no power. She remembered how he had come to see her, years later in Warsaw, after he had joined the infantry, and they spent a torrid afternoon together. He had become a handsome man, but he was still the innocent boy underneath. Their difference in age meant nothing by then. But other differences remained.
She smiled to herself, thinking how he was the only person she had ever allowed to call her by the diminutive Zosia. The afternoon had been only that, an afternoon, and she saw him off to war, avoiding the slightest suggestion that they would ever meet again, giving him no encouragement. But—ever since Anna had told her she thought she had tended him in the hospital, Zofia could not shake her head clear of him. She had to know if he was that soldier laid up in the hospital. If he had returned home to pick up his life. If…
The children were calling out to her driver now, asking him what he was about and who was inside the carriage. “Scat!” he shouted at them. “Move off, urchins!”
At that moment the door to the cottage opened and a woman appeared. It was not the woman Zofia remembered, Jerzy’s mother. This one was younger, about thirty, pretty, and even in colorless sack-like broadcloth, Zofia could see she was shapely. She looked at the carriage with some interest. At once Zofia moved her face away from the window.
No doubt cupping her hands to her mouth, the woman called out: “Zosia!”
The strangest thrill ran through Zofia like a little bolt of lightning. How was it this woman could be calling her by her diminutive? She grew dizzy at the notion.
“Zosia!” the woman called again, more demanding this time.
And then a tiny voice squeaked out an answer: “Coming, Mama!”
Zofia looked out again to see the little mystery unraveled. A little girl had detached herself from her friends and ran toward the woman. The woman’s daughter’s name was Zosia.
The exchange between the driver and the children had gone silent during this little episode, but it now resumed. Zofia could see the mother questioning her daughter, the woman’s eyes moving to the carriage now and again. The drizzle turned to a light rain.
Zofia couldn’t think what to do. Should she order the driver to move on? Dare she get out of the carriage and approach the woman?
A man emerged from the other side of the house now and started to approach the mother and child. Zofia’s heart caught.
The little girl called out something to the man and went running into his arms. He lifted her high into the air as if she weighed no more than a sheaf of wheat. The wide-brimmed hat he had been wearing in the fields fell off his head.
Jerzy.
Zofia had known it was he the moment she had seen his long and confident stride. The woman said something to him now, and the girl pointed to the vehicle. Jerzy shaded his eyes against the rain and looked to the carriage.
Zofia fell back against the seat, her heart racing. When she dared look again, she saw that in one motion he was setting down the child and retrieving his hat. The rain was steadily increasing now, and a clap of thunder sent the children back to their homes.
Jerzy said something to the woman, evidently telling her to take the child inside. As the woman took charge of the little girl, Jerzy looked again at the strange sight of the carriage—and then he started moving toward it, his face glistening in the rain.
Some nameless emotion erupted within Zofia. She shifted to the other side of the carriage, lifted the shade, and called to the driver. “Move on! Do you hear me? Move on now!”
The horses were immediately set in motion and the carriage began to bounce along the pitted road. Zofia did not look back and prayed he did not suspect the identity of the occupant of the coach. But she could imagine his beautiful face there in the road, blue eyes staring after the mysterious vehicle—much like the rain-spattered face of an icon in one of the roadside shrines.
After a little while, Zofia gave orders for the carriage to swing around and make the return trip to Warsaw. When they once again passed the little hut, Zofia dared to lift the shade to look. Nothing stirred. Pools were forming all about. The heavy rain had driven animal and man alike to shelter. Set against the thunder and lightning, the dwelling appeared a pitiful thing, but the smoke from its chimney somehow tempered the effect. No doubt, inside the three—Jerzy, his wife and daughter—sat about the little hearth. In a little while they would have a modest meal.
Jerzy has found his life, Zofia thought. Dog’s blood! There was nothing for her here.
Zofia lay awake that night for many hours, her mind turning like a mill’s water wheel in a storm-swept stream. The trip to the country had been silly and impulsive. She wondered why she had done it, but she had no regrets. Regrets were foreign to her.
She was forty now. What was it Napoléon had said about being forty? It was something cryptic, she knew. And then she remembered. He had said, “Forty is forty, after all.” Where had the years gone? They had gone as quickly as the bubbles in French champagne. She felt no older than she had at sixteen back in Halicz—but she knew differently. She was not immune to age.
Her dream of marrying a magnate had not materialized. The Radziwiłłs, Czartoryskis, Poniatowskis and a half dozen others had given her notice—but no nuptials. Even her plan for Izabel had been scuttled. She let the thoughts pass. She could live another forty years. How was she to live them? Would she live them alone?
There were few constants in her life. There were Izabel and Anna. Izabel would soon find her own path. And Anna had her family—and a new baby on the way.
There was Paweł. Dear Paweł. How had he put up with her as long as he had? Zofia laughed to herself. How had he become so smitten with her? The man was a saint.
Perhaps it was his years away soldiering, always soldiering, that kept her endeared to him—and he to her. Absence had made his heart grow fonder.
He would come back. She never doubted that he would. Napoléon would lose his grand dream one day soon in a grand catastrophe. Paweł would then come back, and they would settle into a life together. She was surprised by the pleasure the thought conjured up.
Paweł would come back. She would make him happy. He had long ago stopped asking her to marry him. She tried to imagine his face when she would ask him.
She would live as Charlotte suggested—without regrets, without fears. She imagined herself finding happiness.