Polonaise (8 page)

‘But you can't possibly imagine that the Prince Ovinski … forgive me, Princess, but even married to you … And so committed as he is to the Emperor Alexander.'

‘No, no.' She had tossed off her vodka, like a man, in one draught. ‘But his son, Mr. Rendel. Our son. Sobieski and Jagiello; the heir of our two great houses. And – brought up to it by me. Might he not prove the leader behind whom the Poles would cast off faction and unite, once and for all, to throw out the invaders?'

‘But –' How could he say it? The whole conversation was fantastic, unreal. ‘But, Princess … an old man, you said it yourself…'

‘Yes.' She stood up, one hand tense on the arm of her chair, looking half away, as if she could not face him with what she was going to say. ‘I'm not a fool. I thought of that too, Mr. Rendel. You met two of my men in Sandomierz?'

‘Yes?' He was most absolutely in the dark.

‘I have had my emissaries out as far away as Cracow and Warsaw, talking to travellers, weighing them up for me. With no idea, of course, what my purpose was.' She turned now and faced him, head up. ‘From their reports, I have had to decide if they had found someone fit to father my child. The future King of Poland.'

‘Dear God!' He had risen when she did, now moved almost blindly over to the decanter to refill their glasses. ‘You cannot possibly be serious.'

‘Would I have sent for you like this, secretly, if I was not?' Her hand trembled as she took her glass from him. ‘I do not take after my father, Mr. Rendel. The tunnel has not been used since he died. Monsieur Poiret is the nearest I have come to a male friend. While he lived, my brother was enough. I
dread my marriage, Mr. Rendel. Have dreaded this still more. But, for Poland, it must be done. Now, perhaps, by the lucky chance of your coming, it need not be quite so bad.' She was blushing now, uncontrollably, and so he thought, amazed, was he. ‘It's a great deal to ask,' she said now, as he stood silent, dumbstruck, gazing at her.

‘Highness, it's impossible!' But he was ashamed to feel a change in the way he looked at her, at this Princess suddenly become mere woman. ‘You can't mean it?'

‘You say that here, at this time of night, my reputation gone already if you choose? Oh – I know you won't. I trust you absolutely, Mr. Rendel, or you'd not be here. As to its being impossible, you, a diplomat, must know better than that.' Her request made, she seemed more at ease, her tone almost teasing. ‘You know perfectly well that this kind of reality lies behind much of politics. A woman sacrificed, for dynastic reasons, one way or another. It's no more than that.' And then, colouring more than ever. ‘Forgive me, when I said sacrifice, I didn't mean …' She stopped, speechless.

‘Don't marry him!' Explosively. ‘There must be some other way.'

‘Don't think I haven't searched for one. I had hoped that perhaps Adam Czartoryski… but he's even more tarred with the Russian brush than Ovinski, and besides, there's talk of an engagement with the Princess of Courland.'

Not to mention his affair with the Empress of Russia. But he did not say this aloud, just sat there, gazing at her, struck speechless by a confused mixture of respect, sympathy and rising desire.

‘Of course, if you can't face it … It's a great deal to ask.' She had misinterpreted his silence, and no wonder.

‘Highness, you're not a fool. You must know … I'm just a man.' Just a schoolboy, he felt, embarking on that first flurry of petticoats. He stood, reached for the decanter, poured for them both, raised his glass: ‘To the King of Poland.'

‘Thank you!' She drank it, looked up at him, a question.

‘Marta is safe?'

‘Entirely. She's my half sister, you must have seen?'

‘Oh, God.' He took her glass, put it, with his, on the table, stood for a moment looking down at her. ‘You have not exactly
had it easy,' he said, his hand reaching out, almost without his volition, to touch the place where pearl-coloured shoulder emerged from white dress.

‘Oh, easy! For someone like me, what is easy?' She looked up at him. ‘Is this how it begins?'

‘This is how it begins, Highness.' He was entirely mad. He bent, gathered her into his arms, amazed at the light strength of her, and carried her through the dressing-room to her bedroom beyond. And, much later, rational for a moment despite the fused ecstasy he had never felt before, knew that she had spoken the truth. It was the first time for her. He thought he wished it had been for him too.

‘I shall never be able to thank you enough.' George Richards wrung Jenny's hand once more. ‘Remember, if you ever need help; if you don't find life with the Princess to your liking; there will always be a warm welcome and a home for you with us in Petersburg.'

‘Yes, do change your mind and come with us.' Did Mary's tone lack conviction? ‘I don't know how I will go on without you.'

‘You'll do very well now,' said Jenny bracingly. ‘George will look after you.' And recognised another mistake. She should have called him Mr. Richards.

‘I don't much like letting you go alone,' he said. They had originally planned either to take her down to Rendomierz or wait with her in Warsaw until she could hear from the Princess. ‘But we have lost so much time already.' He looked at his wife with a hint of reproach. It had taken a great deal of tactful persuasion from Jenny, and in the end, a strong word or two from him to get Mary up from the comfortable goose-feather bed after her near miscarriage at Lüneburg.

‘And the sooner Mary is settled in her own house the better. You have the child to think about now, remember.' She was sure that Mary's jealous tantrums were the worst possible thing for the unborn child.

‘All thanks to you! It seems a poor return to let you go jauntering off on your own, but the girl seems reliable enough.' He had been relieved to find a young Polish woman, who wanted to visit her brother in Sandomierz but lacked funds for the journey and would gladly keep Jenny company.

‘Yes.' Jenny managed to keep the doubt out of her voice. She could not like the girl, Olga, but George had said, once too often, ‘Jenny doesn't fuss.' It was high time they parted.

They did so early next morning, George and Mary leaving by the bridge of boats that led to the Praga Suburb and the
long road to Moscow and Petersburg, while Jenny and Olga started south, past the old royal park and the Lazienki Palace. The carriage George Richards had hired for them smelled a little, but was comfortable enough and he had loaded them with money and provisions for the journey, and made sure they had the papers necessary for passing from the Prussian zone of Poland, in which Warsaw stood, to the Austrian region to the south. ‘The Austrians have divided their territory into a series of circles,' he had told Jenny. ‘Each with its own captain, who will pass you on to the next one. They'll give you authorisations for horses, too, when you need them. I'm sure it will all go smoothly enough.'

She had done her best to reassure him, aware of how guilty he felt; now breathed a sigh of relief at finding herself safely through the first hurdle, the frontier between Prussian- and Austrian-held Poland, with nothing worse than an overtly leering glance for Olga from the soldier in charge.

‘This is something like,' said Olga in her guttural German as she leaned forward in the seat facing Jenny for a last view of the town. ‘This is the life! Fancy me, a fine lady, riding through the countryside in my carriage. And did you see the look that man gave me!'

Jenny could not share her enthusiasm. ‘I wish you would teach me some Polish phrases,' she said.

‘You'll never learn! It's quite different from any other language. Besides, you'll never need it, an aristo like you.'

‘An aristocrat? Me?' She could hardly help laughing, and yet there was something in the girl's tone she did not much like. ‘What in the world gave you that idea? I've not got a penny of my own in the world; never had; never shall. I was travelling as companion to Mrs. Richards, and really don't know what position I am to fill at the Princess Sobieska's.' This was too good a chance to be missed. ‘That's why I don't like your trying to wait on me,' she went on. ‘I'm not used to it, and I'm sure you're better born than I am.' George had told her that Olga's father was one of Poland's penniless minor noblemen.

‘Oh, I'm noble enough.' With a toss of the head. ‘But nobility boils no broth, here in Poland. Why should it? The French revolutionaries had the right of it. Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity! When we get our freedom, you'll see what a splendid new state we will build. No more Kings to spend the nation's wealth on books and palaces. An elected President, who will live like the rest of us and do the nation's will. Once we've got rid of the vultures who batten on the land, we'll have the money to do great things. They're the ones who keep us down; they care nothing for Poland, only for their own wealth and ease. Look at this Princess you're going to toad-eat. Marrying a dirty Russian-lover! A landlord who never comes near his estates. I warn you, Englishwoman, enjoy your life of luxury at Rendomierz while you can. When the day of reckoning comes, you may wish you had stayed in England.'

‘You can't be serious.' Jenny felt a sudden stir of alarm, not so much at what her companion was saying, but that she should feel safe to say it.

Olga smiled. ‘Who would believe you, Englishwoman, if you were to report that I had talked such nonsense to you? I would simply claim that you were a hysterical foreigner – had misunderstood my German. Anyway, you should be on our side if you are really the poor dependent that you say. We could do with an informant at Rendomierz, someone to be our eyes and ears there.'

‘We? There really is a group of you?' Now Jenny felt real fear.

‘Tell me you'll help us, and I'll answer that.'

‘You must see I'd need to know more before I could make any such promise. I'm a stranger here in Poland, I know so little about your country.'

‘I'm glad that at least you call it “Poland” and “our country”. You English are supposed to be friends of liberty, though I never could see it myself. Your crazy old King sounds worse than Stanislas Augustus. That's one good thing the Russians did for us, taking him away, letting him die in exile.'

‘They imprisoned Kosciusko too.'

‘You know that! But he's free now!' She paused, looked hard at Jenny, then changed the subject.

After that, conversation was desultory, uninteresting, like the flat landscape through which they endlessly drove. From time to time, Olga would rouse herself to comment on a particularly ruinous village, or a place where the dark fringe
of forest closed threateningly in towards the road. ‘Why should we till the soil, when the foreigner takes the fruits of it?' she asked once. ‘Free the land; free the people, and then you will see something!'

George Richards had suggested they spend their first night at a little town on the Vistula, where there was said to be a very good inn. But their progress was slower than he had reckoned. This road was even worse than the one by which they had reached Warsaw, and their twelve-year-old postboy had no idea of pressing his four small horses as they lumbered along through heavy sand. Dusk was beginning to emphasise the threatening darkness of the forest, very near to the road here, when Josef, their guard, brought his horse up to the carriage window, and looked in to say something in Polish, making Jenny wish more than ever that George Richards had managed to find a man who spoke a language she understood.

‘What is it?' she asked.

‘He says we'll never get to the inn before dark. The horses are flagging already; he thinks they must have been overworked yesterday. Of course, being women, we got the worst. Luckily for us, he has a cousin, a nobleman, whose house is a mile or so east of the road. We will be most honoured guests there, and it will be interesting for you to see how a Polish nobleman lives.'

‘It's very kind of him.' Doubtfully. ‘But are you sure …'

Apparently sensing her doubt, the guard leaned in again to speak urgently to Olga.

‘I thought so,' she said. ‘He says that boy's not fit to be driving his grandmother's old goat, let alone a team of horses. If we go on in the dark he's bound to overturn us. A wheel off, or a broken splinter-bar would be the least of it. Madness. I'm not prepared to risk it. I've told him we'll be glad to spend the night with his cousin.'

Nothing for it but to agree with as good a grace as possible, but Jenny's heart sank as the carriage turned ponderously off the main road on to what looked little more than a forest track. Her point gained, Olga now laid herself out to be pleasant. ‘You'll see the true Poland now,' she said. ‘The old hospitable land where any guest is welcome.'

‘How far is it from the road?'

‘Oh, nothing, Josef says. A Polish mile or two.' But Jenny had already learned about Polish miles and sat in increasing, if silent, anxiety as darkness and forest closed around them.

At last she saw lights ahead; Josef paused to speak to someone holding a torch and then led the way into a wide forest clearing. The long, low house had lights in all its windows and Jenny was surprised and relieved to see several carriages outside and a couple of boys walking pairs of horses to and fro. ‘Josefs cousin must be entertaining,' she said. ‘I hope he won't mind …'

‘He will be delighted to welcome us,' said Olga with an overemphasis that was doubtless due to her faulty German.

Another boy had run up to open the carriage door and Olga alighted first, spoke to him quickly in Polish and turned to help Jenny down. The boy was talking now, pointing not to the main doorway of the building but to a path that led down the side, past the range of lighted windows.

‘This way,' said Olga. ‘The boy will bring our baggage. The women's quarters are down here, he says.'