Iza could sit no longer and left the reception room where her mother, Jan, and Anna sat in near silence, the tension thick as August heat. It was as if they were set upon staying there the night through, mourning a loved one laid out in a casket, as custom dictated. And although she had no doubt many had died this night, there was no body in their town house over which to toast, pray, and sing hymns. She quickly and quietly took the stairs, hurrying once again to her room. Going to the double casement windows, she unlatched them, pulled them open, and threw back the shutters.
The street was empty of souls, Polish or Russian. She could hear the rumble of a crowd calling out their affirmations one moment, their disavowals the next, as one might hear the cheers and jeers coming from an amphitheater. She gauged the gathering to be a few streets away. She looked up now and saw the flickering glow of fire, a newly lighted fire meant as a beacon to beckon people. Turning, she grabbed up her cloak and left her room.
Iza had nearly made it to the front door when she heard her mother behind her. “Izabel, where are you off to? I demand to know.”
Iza turned around slowly. Her mother was the only one to ever call her Izabel. “I can’t stand merely sitting about. We can’t just wait for the morning Journal to find out what’s happened. What’s happening as we sit, stupid and idle, afraid to talk, afraid to know!”
“Izabel!”
“There’s a great gathering, Mother. Not a battle but a gathering. A huge fire was set to draw everyone to it.”
“Like moths to a flame, no doubt. It’s dangerous to be out and about tonight. I won’t let you go.”
“I’m of a certain age now, Mother, as you’ve reminded me from time to time.”
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“What is it?” The question came from Anna, who had trailed Zofia into the front hall. “Have you learned something, Iza?”
“Only that there’s a great multitude converging, Cousin Anna, and I want to see for myself.”
“Where?”
“A few streets away. On Długa, I think.”
Anna blinked at the news, the concern for her sons glistening in the green eyes. “Wait a moment, will you, and I’ll fetch my cloak. I’ll meet you on the portico.”
“Anna!” Zofia exclaimed. “Must you always conspire with my daughter against me? Have you both gone daft?”
“Oh, come now, Zofia, what’s become of that woman who sent me off across the bridge to escape the Russian lancers?” Anna had paused and focused on her cousin, but as she turned and moved away, she tossed off a deceivingly casual comment. “And you, Zofia, I might add, seated high in the saddle of a Russian lancer’s horse.”
“What?” Iza blurted, giving no hint to her mother that she had heard the full story from Anna. “What’s this?”
Anna had disappeared, leaving behind a cousin going red in the face. “Nonsense,” Zofia said, her voice faltering, “nonsense is what it is.”
Having no reason to probe further, Iza smiled and moved out the front door and on to the portico. The sky was aglow with the fire and every so often a cheer went up. What did it portend?
Iza did not have to wait long. When she heard the door open and movements of feet behind her, she turned to see a cloaked Anna along with Jan in his greatcoat. That Jan was coming was a surprise because—although in mind he had grown steadier by the day—he was still a bit unsteady physically. Iza’s attention to Jan, however, was eclipsed by another figure who now appeared in the doorway that commanded attention and no little astonishment.
“I’m not to be left behind like some scullery maid,” Zofia said, advancing in her shimmering black silk cape as if she were going to a ball at the Royal Castle, as in the old days.
The four moved away from the town house and started for Długa Street.
Michał and Jerzy were proceeding away from the grounds of Belweder Palace where they had met, each with his own disappointing news regarding Józef. Their destination was a contained conflagration that seemed to light the core of the city.
They heard the heavy hoof beats of a horse behind them and for caution’s sake drew to the side. When they sighted the Polish uniform of a cadet, they were quick to hail him in good Polish so as to let him drop his guard and halt.
“What’s happening?” Michał asked.
“We’ve just about taken the city!” the cadet exulted.
A thrill ran through Michał. Was it possible?
“Just about?” Jerzy asked. “Be more specific, lad.”
“The latest news you can hear yourselves down there on Długa Street,” the cadet said, nodding toward the glow in the sky. “But what I do know is this: My company has routed the Russian barracks of Sapieha to great success. Other battalions have taken the Stanisław Barracks and Aleksander Barracks. The Russians foolish enough to give fight fell as our soldiers and even some of our citizens descended on them, all crying out, “Hurrah, hurrah!”
Here was a cadet caught up in the bloodlust of his first battle, Michał thought. He had so much to learn, should he survive the next, and the next.
“Polish generals,” the cadet went on, “who did not come over and who stood by the Grand Duke were the most foolish of all—and they paid the price.”
“What of the Grand Duke?” Michał asked. Only later would he learn that, along with Trembicki and Potocki, who were killed nearly on the doorstep of the Gronska town house, Generals Hauke, Siemiontkowski, and Blummer had all been dispatched as instruments of Russia. “What of Konstantin?”
The cadet shrugged. “Not sure. There were just a few assigned to take him. At first cadets came riding from the palace saying they had slain the duke, but then others claimed he had not been found and that it was the rogue bastard General Gendre who had been killed.”
The cadet’s epithet for Gendre served to underscore the fact that the cadets indeed knew who it was they were bloodying their many blades on.
“How was he to be taken, as you say?” Jerzy questioned.
“Into custody, sir. Without harm. That was the order. But I’ve not heard anything.” The cadet adjusted his dented czapka on his head. “Now I need to make haste. I daresay every citizen in Warsaw has come out of their homes to hear the news and to celebrate. I can offer the more curious of you a ride if you wish, but I can spare no more time, if you please, sirs.”
Neither Michał nor Jerzy considered the offer. They would find their way together on foot.
The cadet made ready to give spur when Michał called, “Wait! Can you tell me if you know my brother? He’s a cadet, too—Józef Stelnicki.”
The boy paused but a moment before shaking his head. “No, sir. I’ve heard the name, but that’s all. Sorry.” Another pause and then he gave spur to his horse.
Michał and Jerzy set off in long strides toward the city center, neither speaking for a while. Michał was thinking of that young cadet, that boy so fired with zeal. In him he saw himself so many years ago when he was one of the Young Guard accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte to Russia. All the cadets had worshipped the little corporal for his acumen in battle and had blindly followed him east across the steppes, confident that his implicit promise to regain for Poland its independence was legal tender, and quick to cry out at every opportunity, “Vive l’Empereur!”
There were battles along the march to Moscow, though bloody and not without significant losses, that served to nourish the young Poles set on excitement, glory, and heroism. It seemed to Michał now, in retrospect, that the issue of independence had been more important to the Polish Old Guard than to the cadets. For the young, the glory superseded everything.
It was after Moscow had been taken that Napoleon revealed himself as incompetent when it came to strategic planning. Oh, he was a great opportunist, especially on the battlefield, where he was the shrewdest of tacticians, but after taking Moscow, with winter coming on and several massive Russian armies loosened and roaming like lionesses eager to protect the pride, what was he to do? He had faltered at strategy and hesitated too many weeks before choosing to abandon Moscow, a choice he refused to call a retreat.
It was then that the Young Guard truly learned what war was. It was more than fighting impossible odds—Russians, Cossacks, lawless peasants—it was sleeplessly nursing wounds, holding back hunger, battling cholera and a half dozen other illnesses that could put you into the earth in a day’s time, all the while struggling with an impervious winter there on the frozen, wind-battered steppes of Eastern Europe. War was all of that and it was losing the cadet who rode and fought next to you. It was losing your comrade. And in Michał’s case, it was losing his brother Tadek. Where was the glory in that?
And now, in what he saw in tonight’s events, in the cadet’s demeanor, it was all happening again. Would his father, who had fought to retain Poland’s independence more than thirty-five years earlier, harbor—despite renewed hopes—similar misgivings?
Michał knew Jerzy had fought in the infantry years before and considered asking him about it, then thought better of doing so. Not now, he figured, but another time when his thoughts were more settled, when he had had time to consider the wisdom of this insurrection.
He broke the silence with a question on a different matter altogether. “Jerzy, you loved Zofia once, did you not?”
Jerzy turned toward Michał, breaking stride a bit, his facial expression barely discernable in the dimness. Michał couldn’t decipher a frown from a smile. When Jerzy didn’t answer, he said, “I’m sorry, of course it’s none of my business.”
Jerzy spoke now as if he hadn’t heard Michał’s apology.
“Zofia was a woman like none I had ever encountered. The River Vistula washed her up near Kosumce, my village on the right bank. Grandfather and I had come down to the marshy bank to witness a terrible sight—lifeless bodies among charred and broken bridge planks and beams floating by. It was All Souls Day, a fitting day you might say, the day the Russians attempted to invade Warsaw by way of the Praga Bridge. Zofia somehow survived a fall from the bridge, and as the Vistula’s current took her for those twenty miles, she held on for dear life to the corpse of a Russian soldier. It was a miracle. Grandfather and I took her home where he and Mother attended her for weeks—until she was well.”
“I see.”
“Everyone in our village is light-skinned and blond. She was like a goddess with her olive skin, dark hair, and dark Tatar eyes. And she had such life, Michał. She glittered with life. I carved figures from linden wood and she took a liking to them. Called me an artist. That made me feel so proud. Like I mattered. To have a beautiful noblewoman compliment me so.”
“She was older?”
Jerzy waved his hand dismissively. “A bit.”
“You were smitten.”
“She had me teach her how to carve.”
“You were both smitten.”
I would have given anything for her to stay, but it wasn’t in the cards. She had been used to a life so contrary to mine. I was—am—a peasant. I had nothing to offer her.”
“And you never saw her again—until the other day.”
“Oh, but I did, years ago. When I was a young soldier I searched her out here in Warsaw.” Jerzy paused, as if savoring the memory. “Zosia—”
“Zosia? She lets no one use that diminutive.”
Another dismissive wave. “She allowed me. On that occasion she also allowed me—how shall I put it?—a soldier’s sendoff.”
Michał gave a conspiratorial little laugh.
“But it was bittersweet because she made me promise not to attempt to see her again.”
“You stayed true to that?”
“I did—but . . .”
“But?”
“When we met the other day, alone, she told me that some years later she had come to the village to see me. To tell me she hadn’t forgotten.” Jerzy’s voice weakened now. “She had been in a closed carriage and as it approached my cottage, she heard my cousin call to her daughter, Zosia. She assumed I had married and that little Zosia was mine.”
“Another Zosia?”
“Yes. Ah, the little pranks life plays on us, Michał. Fortune’s wheel is ever turning. Zofia had the carriage turn around and go back to Warsaw.”
“Sweet Maryia and Józef.”
Jerzy abruptly stopped and turned to Michał. “I can remember the day. My cousin and her child were visiting, and when I came around to the front, they were mesmerized by a nobleman’s coach that had stopped. It was raining. A nobleman’s coach did not come to our village often, I can tell you. I thought perhaps it was stuck in the road, but as I ran toward it in the increasing rain, it lurched forward and began to move quickly away. I stopped and through the rain I—I saw a face at the window. It was blurred by the raindrops, and it was there but a moment before the shade came down. I didn’t guess . . . if only . . .”
“You didn’t know it was—”
“No, curse the devil! How could I? Fortune is a giver and taker.” Jerzy started to walk again.
They went a full street in silence. Michał felt very awkward now for himself and this new friend. “You never married—after?”
“No.”
“You loved her very much.”
They were close enough to Długa Street now so that a cheer punctuating someone’s speech nearly drowned out Jerzy’s barely voiced reply. Michał was nearly certain that he said, “I do, still.”