A hot breeze stirred the wheat as Anna ran, the sun beating down. By the time she came to a thicket at the side of the road, she was wet with perspiration. The bodice of her dark dress clung to her.
She set down the hand-carved box. Exhausted, she let herself fall into a little gully of soft, tall grasses. Small trees shaded her.
She lay there panting. No one had come after her. No human sound could be heard, only the muffled roar and crackle of the fire that was destroying the Stelnicki estate, buildings, and crops. The men and horses seemed to be gone.
Anna resisted fatigue. She could not rest too long, for the dried fields could very well carry the fire right to her. After she caught her breath, she stood up and climbed atop a tree stump. From this vantage point, she could see that the house had been fully engulfed. Flames shot out of the window of the room in which she had spent the past fifteen months. Tongues of fire were licking at the fields, too, tongues that moved hungrily toward her. The drought had rendered everything fuel for the flames.
Anna jumped down. She set about removing her full underskirts so that she could move less encumbered.
Picking up the box, she started toward the Gronski estate, not knowing what she would find. If it were locked, she had no key. What if it, too, were destroyed?
At first, she attempted to walk through the gully, but the way was so tangled with weeds and briar that she fell twice. She climbed the incline to the road then and hurried along at a quick pace, casting a look back now and then, afraid that she might catch sight of a Russian regiment bearing down on her. She couldn’t see the fire any longer, just the funnels of smoke that poisoned the sky, some black, some white.
Anna came to the little bridge spanning a tiny tributary of the River Dniestr, a shallow stream that separated the Gronski and Stelnicki estates. She let herself down the ravine to the beckoning water.
Removing her shoes, she left them with the box at a spot shaded by a willow and waded into the narrow ribbons of water. The muddy bottom was soft, the water cooling. Bending over, she cupped her hands and splashed water on her face, then drank greedily.
Taking all the stays from her hair, she let it fall to her shoulders, bent, and drew up water to run through it.
She sat on a large rock, allowing her feet to dangle into the stream. And for a brief time she was transported back to childhood. Happy if just for moments by the most elementary components of life: the sun, a tree, a rock, water. These were the things that were real, that endured, that gave life. For just a few moments, the reality of what was befalling Poland and its people did not exist.
How is it, she wondered, that men can kill as they do?
Anna drank again before she left that spot.
It seemed an hour before she reached the buildings of the Gronski estate. The doors of the barns and stable stood open, empty. The manor house seemed untouched, the back of it closed and shuttered.
As Anna moved around to the front, an open wagon with a single horse came into view. In it were furniture, statuary, and other items of value from the household.
Then came the screaming.
On the other side of the wagon, two women were striking and kicking one another. As Anna moved closer, she saw that one was a servant girl, the other—older, broader, brightly dressed—a peasant of the coarsest character. The girl was unable to provide a contest and fell, only to be mercilessly kicked in the back, stomach, and groin.
“Stop!” Anna called out. “Stop!” Her voice seemed not to carry.
Even before Anna could pick up her skirts to run toward them, another servant woman came running from the house. Unnoticed by the others, she raced to the wagon and quickly pulled from it a golden candelabra. Lifting it high into the air, she brought it down on the larger woman, striking her in the back of her head.
The woman dropped like a stone, and by the time Anna came upon them, lay still, a dark pool forming at her head.
“What is the meaning of this?” Anna demanded.
“Countess Berezowska!”
Anna looked to the blond and buxom woman whose hazel eyes reflected a delighted amazement. The woman who still held the candelabra was Marta.
“What are you doing here?” Anna asked. “What in God’s name is happening here?”
“That’s my Marcelina that this one was trying to kill.”
At that moment a man’s raised voice could be heard calling from within the house.
Marta’s face clouded instantly. She looked down at the colorfully-clad dead woman.
“Who’s in the house, Marta?”
“It’s her husband. They’re looters, parasites. Oh, Madame, what are we to do?”
“We must hide her, Marta. Come, quickly!”
Anna placed her box near the wagon. Marta spoke as each of them took an arm and dragged the woman’s body thirty paces where some shrubbery concealed her from the house. “I don’t understand their Russian, Countess, but I know that the woman became furious when her man took notice of my Marcelina. She fought with him in the house and then came out here to kill my daughter. Oh, Countess, I did what any mother would do!”
Anna said nothing as they rushed back to Marcelina. She had not even recognized the bloodied girl who lay unconscious.
Suddenly, the man emerged from the house.
Anna stood tall, her eyes narrowing in assessment even as her heart quickened while he walked toward the wagon with steps that faltered now and again. He had been drinking. His grizzled hair and beard were long and unkempt. He was perhaps forty-five. The expensively tailored clothes were tightly stretched on his thick form. Anna recognized the waistcoat with the gold buttons as belonging to her Uncle Leo.
“I am the Countess Anna Maria Berezowska,” she said in Russian when he stood towering before her, close enough for his sour breath to reach her. “In the absence of my cousin, Countess Zofia Gronska, this estate is in my custody.”
He stared blankly through his fog of liquor. “And I am the Czar of Russia,” he mocked in a low Russian dialect. He bowed. “The Czarina, my wife, is about somewhere. Has the good Countess seen her?” His smile revealed gaps between rotting teeth.
“I have not,” Anna said, even as she spied the dark pool that had been left behind. “I must ask you to leave these grounds immediately,” she said, taking a few steps toward the wagon, as if to examine its contents. She hoped that her dress, though not very full without her underskirts, would hide the bloodstained ground. “You may take what you have here and go.”
“May I?” He stepped up to Anna and struck her across the face with such force that she nearly fell. His ring slashed her cheek. “Oh, Countess, there is much more to go in the wagon. See how much room I still have?” He noticed Marcelina now. “What is the matter with the young chicken?”
“She’s ill,” Anna said, wiping at a small trickle of blood that ran down her cheek.
“Pity. Now you will do her work. I’ll save space for her in the wagon.”
Realizing that he meant to take Marcelina with him, Anna became indignant. “I am the Countess Anna Berezowska—”
The man struck her again, propelling her to the ground.
“You may not look like a countess in your ragged dress, but you have the gall of the aristocracy, I grant you that. Countess or no, you will do as I bid you!”
Marta helped Anna to stand.
“Nina!” the man called. “Nina!” His eyes surveyed the landscape.
Anna made certain her dress once again covered the stain. “Perhaps she’s in the house.”
He grunted. “Inside, then!” At that moment, he noticed the box on the ground. “Well, what’s this?”
“It’s mine!” Anna said.
He held Anna at arm’s length while he opened it and held up the crystal dove to the light. “This will fetch a pretty price,” he said.
The box fell from his grasp now, and Anna scrambled to retrieve it.
“What else is in it?”
“Nothing.” Anna had no sooner gotten the word out of her mouth than the alexandrite ring flew free of its velvet.
“Nothing?” The man picked it up. “A pretty little nothing it is, too.” With some difficulty, he put it on his little finger and admired it. Then taking the box from Anna, he replaced the dove and positioned the box in the wagon underneath the seat.
He prodded Anna and Marta toward the front door. When Marta tried to stoop to see to Marcelina, he kicked her. “Come, you’ve work to do.”
While Marta did not understand the words, the meaning was clear, and she had to pick herself up, leaving her daughter.
On the way inside, Anna surreptitiously slid the velvet-wrapped emerald stickpin into the bodice of her dress.
Anna took in the first floor. It had already been sacked of anything of value. As they walked, Marta whispered to Anna. “If he says he will spare our lives, don’t believe it. He’ll leave no witnesses behind. He desires Marcelina, but when he’s done with her, he’ll kill her, too. You must flee, Countess Anna. I’ll detain him somehow, and you must flee.”
The man turned about, glowering, as if he understood Polish.
Anna didn’t dare answer her.
They followed him upstairs and through several rooms that had already been stripped of most of their furnishings. He touched those things that he wanted them to cart down to the wagon. Anna nodded each time.
Anna and Marta were told to disassemble the mahogany bed in the guest room Anna had used when she came to Hawthorn House. While they did so, Anna watched the man carry past the room armloads of books from the Gronskis’ tiny upstairs library. A few seconds later there came a great clatter as he dropped her uncle’s most treasured possessions over the railing to the marbled hallway below. To think he treated the cherished Gronski books with such disdain caused Anna’s temples to pulse with anger. These were symbols of the family’s place in Poland and as valuable as the ancestral weapons that hung on the walls of manor homes all across the nation. Anna was glad that the Countess Gronska had at least removed the family weapons when they went to live at the Praga townhome two years earlier. It was a bit puzzling, Anna thought, how these two components—weapons and books—which so defined the nobility were such unlikely bedfellows.
“You must try to escape,” Marta pressed. “I can detain him.”
Anna and Marta carried the feathered mattress to the top of the stairs, but before they could descend, the man appeared with more books that he threw over the railing. He seized hold of the mattress from them now and hurled it over, too, so that it fell atop the small hill of books.
“There!” he said, laughing stupidly at his antics—until he noticed the women staring at him. “Go back to work!”
“Is he the only one around?” Anna asked, once they were back in the bedroom.
“There were others yesterday, but they left, taking much. Only he and his woman remained.”
“What in heaven’s name are you and Marcelina doing here?”
“Somehow, Countess Zofia knew that the house would be lost. We were sent to salvage those things that we could carry back to Warsaw. The two men she had hired to assist us were killed by the others. But it was that one,” she hissed, nodding toward the hallway, “who killed harmless Stanisław.”
“Old Stanisław! Your father-in-law… my God!”
“You must run for it, Countess! I can’t leave Marcelina. He’ll not have her while I’m alive. And it’s only a matter of time before he discovers his wife’s body.”
Anna and Marta carried the bedposts downstairs and out to the wagon. They both could have run, had it not been for Marcelina, who still lay motionless.
“Get a move on with your work!” the man growled as Anna and Marta came back into the house. He was lounging on the mattress where it had fallen upon the pile of books. In one hand he had a book that was opened to an engraving. In the other, he held a liquor decanter from which he had been drinking. It was this hand he used to gesture above. “And don’t forget the eagle,” he cautioned.
As Anna and Marta walked up the stairs, he called to his woman. “Nina! Ni-na. Ni-na.” He went on calling her name, each time in a different pitch, as if enchanted by the various sounds the name of the dead woman could produce.
At the stairhead, Anna examined the three-foot stone eagle that rested on the newel post. He was thief enough to cart away the symbol of Poland.
The two women quickly found that the statue was too heavy for them to lift. Anna wondered if he had been joking about taking it. If he had any idea how heavy it was. Anna peered over the railing. She could see him there, mumbling to himself as he turned the pages in search of more engravings.
It was then that it came to her.
Using only her eyes, she motioned for Marta to help slide the eagle along the upper railing. When Marta saw Anna’s intent, her eyes waxed like two moons, but she wasted no time in following directions.
They pulled at the eagle. Slowly it moved, a thumb’s width at a time. It slipped from the newel post to the railing with a little jolt that made it teeter there for a moment before it was steadied. Then Anna and Marta moved it along the railing while struggling to maintain its delicate balance. Their foreheads beaded with sweat and their fingers on the stone tore and bled with the strain.
At last, Anna saw that it was in position. She looked down to see the Russian ripping an engraving from a gold-edged book.
“Now!” she sharply whispered.
The two released the eagle.
With amazing speed and force the stone bird plummeted to the first floor in search of its prey.
The mattress muffled the bone-crushing sound of the impact.
The man had managed the shortest possible outcry. Had he seen it coming?
Marta galloped down the staircase. “Who is to say that women are helpless?” she sang out in hysterics as she went to kick the lifeless form. “Who says?”
“Yes,” Anna said, following her down, “women can kill, too. Let him be, Marta. You can’t do anything more to a dead man.”
“But I would like to,” Marta said. “To kill poor Stanisław! This one’s death was too quick.”
The looter lay face up, his open eyes bulging, blood streaming from his mouth. His neck and chest had been crushed like a bunch of red berries.
Anna walked over to him and stooped to pull the ring off his finger. It took some doing.
She hoped that he had had a moment to make his peace with his God. As for the stone eagle that weighted him to the mattress like paper to a desk, it was unscathed.
Anna and Marta hurried out to Marcelina and managed to revive her. Removing a few bulky items from the wagon, they laid her in it, assuring her that the looters were gone.
They made several trips back to the house to rescue the Gronski books. By the time this task was finished, the Gronski fields and outbuildings were afire.
“Let’s go,” Anna said, making ready to board the wagon.
“Wait, Countess.” Marta turned and ran into the house.
Anna waited impatiently for what seemed a long time. “Marta, hurry, or we’ll all be roasted like pigs on a spit!” Smoke and ash were flying through the hot winds.
At last the servant appeared at the door, rolling the stone eagle before her.
“What in God’s name are you doing, Marta?” Anna screamed, running to her.
“The rear of the house is afire!”
“And we will be, too, if we don’t get the wagon moving.”
“We must take the eagle.” Marta stopped at the top of the short staircase. She looked Anna in the eye. “It is the symbol of Poland and this great house. We cannot leave it to destruction.”
“Leave it be, Marta! Do you want to forfeit our lives for a bit of stone?”
“We can’t, Madame. Bad fortune will follow us all the days of our lives if we do not take it.”
“I think she’s already been doing that, Marta.”
There came the sound of glass exploding as the rear rooms of the house yielded to the fire. Anna looked at the servant, who was not about to give up her task.
“All right, I’ll help. Let’s lift it together from the porch.” Once the eagle was on the ground, they rolled it out to the wagon. It took every effort then to get it lifted and aboard.
Breathless, the two climbed up onto the bench. Anna took the reins and slapped the old horse. The wagon began to rattle slowly forward down the long drive, toward the river.
“Of course,” Marta said, “we’ll have to scrub the blood off the eagle before Countess Gronska sees it.”
“I doubt that it will come off, Marta.”
Before they reached the road, Anna halted the wagon and turned around. The fire was eating up the rooms of the house that had so impressed her… was it only two years ago?
The Gronski house served for the moment as a great lamp to offset imminent twilight. The entire estate was going up in flames as though it were tinder which had been dried for a hundred summers. The thief takes only something; the flame takes all.
A way of life was dying. Paradoxically, along with the pain of loss and death, the fire held a strange and beautiful power, too. It was both magnificent and terrible to watch.
Anna slapped the horse again, and the heavily-laden wagon made for the road that ran along the River Dniestr.
Within the hour, a faint orange glow behind them was all that lighted the moonless night. Anna could not actually see the road in front of them, but the horse’s instinct seemed a good compass. They moved slowly. Except for the mournful croaking of frogs near the river, the night was as still as death.
Sensing that the two peasants were afraid of the night’s spirits, Anna initiated conversation. Marta told her that Jan Michał was a robust and cheerful child who kept the Gronski household busy and entertained. Anna found it hard to imagine him now; she had not seen him in well over a year.
“Have you heard anything of your husband, Marta?”
“No, Madame Walek stood with General Kościuszko. We hope for the best. Of course, he cannot write.”
“Have there… have there been any letters from Count Stelnicki?” In other times, in other circumstances, she would not have dared such a question of a servant.
“Not that I know of, Countess Anna.”
“No word whatsoever?”
“No, Countess.”
Marta and Marcelina soon fell into a fatigued sleep. In the pitch of night, Anna dared not hurry the horse.