The officer’s face was perilously close to Anna’s. “Do you feel better?” His breath was sour.
Anna quickly stood. “Let me see what is taking the maid so long. Please wait here, Aleksy.”
Anna hurried from the room, praying he wouldn’t follow. She nodded to the two guards in the hall, realizing that she could not enter Zofia’s room without their seeing her. She moved instead toward the swinging door that led to the kitchen.
Anna nearly collided with Lutisha, who was just about to leave the kitchen with a tray that held four crystal wineglasses. She saw that Lutisha’s gray eyes were little mirrors to her feelings. “I know that you disapprove of my entertaining guards, Lutisha, but believe me when I say it’s necessary.—Here, I’ll take the wine. I have a more serious task for you.”
“But, Madame—”
“Listen to me,” Anna hissed, “and do exactly as I say! All of our lives may depend upon it. Do you understand?”
Lutisha stared in bewilderment. Anna knew that this was a side of her the servant had never seen.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Good! Now—somewhere in Countess Zofia’s room is a red book of writings. If it is not in plain sight, you must search it out. Find it and secrete it in your skirts. Then return to me and do not leave my side for a moment until those men are gone. Is that clear?”
Lutisha nodded. The gravity in Anna’s voice had not escaped her. Her eyes narrowed now with determination.
Anna took wine to the two young guards, then went in to resume her charade with the smug officer. She prayed for Lutisha to hurry.
Anna did not sit but stood near the ceramic stove. She and the officer had only time for a sip before a nervous Lutisha came in and took up her post near her.
Anna exulted. She could now steer the little game toward its conclusion. “Why, look at the hour!” she exclaimed, glancing at the freestanding clock. “I had not realized the time. My husband will soon be home.”
“Your . . . husband?” The officer’s smugness vanished.
Anna smiled. “Why, yes.”
“You’re teasing.”
“But why should I tease you, Aleksy?” Anna was taking a perverse enjoyment in her role.
“Well, I . . . I thought the Countess Gronska to be unmarried.”
“Oh! The Countess Gronska is unmarried.”
The officer stared.
Anna suppressed a laugh at his expression. “I am Anna Maria Grawlinska, Countess of Sochaczew, and one day Baroness of Opole.” Anna smiled. “Countess Zofia Gronska is my cousin.”
“Your cousin?”
“Why, yes. Oh! You took me to be Zofia? How amusing. We are nothing alike!”
The officer did his best to conceal his surprise and anger, but the moustache had wilted nonetheless.
Anna laughed. “Oh, it is good to laugh. They say that a woman with child should sing and make merry so that her child will be lively and jovial.”
The officer stared, slowly registering her meaning. Setting down his glass and squaring his shoulders then, he assumed an officious air. “Will you please have your maid direct us to Countess Gronska’s room without further delay?”
Anna was glad for the formality. “Of course, Officer.” You would use me, she thought, but I have turned the tables.
Lutisha was not long in returning. When Anna’s eyes questioned the servant, she gave a slight smile and patted her skirt.
“Good,” Anna whispered to Lutisha. “Now, stay right here. You may sit down.”
“Oh, the Countess Stella would never allow— ”
“Lutisha, I am giving you permission. Now, sit.”
Anna ventured out into the hallway and moved toward her cousin’s room. She put her ear to the closed door. The frustrated murmurs of the men and the sounds they made in opening drawers and cabinets, and even in shifting about furniture, confirmed Anna’s suspicion that they were searching the room.
She wondered if some enemy of Zofia had warned the king of her writings, sighing in relief that the memoirs were hidden. Still, she would not breathe easily until the guards were gone from the house.
Anna listened for a few more minutes, and when she sensed that their mission was nearly complete, she scurried back to the reception room where Lutisha sat.
The servant pulled her large form out of the chair and stood in attendance.
Anna was seated and composed when the officer came into the room. The other two waited for him in the hall, ready to depart. It is almost over, she thought. Soon they would be gone, leaving the household safe from their prying eyes.
“We have installed the favors from the king for the Countess Gronska,” the officer announced.
“How very nice!”
His eyes narrowed at Anna’s false enthusiasm. “Tell me, does your cousin have another room where she writes letters or verse?”
Anna could scarcely believe it. They were looking for her writings. “No, I don’t believe Zofia uses plume at all. She is much too busy for such things.”
“I’m certain that she is.” His smile was wicked.
Anna held her anger in check. “Is there anything else, Officer?”
“No, we will be taking our leave.”
Anna was relieved that they wouldn’t be searching the entire house. But when she turned in her chair to tell Lutisha to see the guards to the door, she spied the red diary protruding from the woman’s full skirts. God help us! The book must have been pushed from the recess of her pocket while she was sitting. Now it was poised ready to fall to the floor with the slightest move of the corpulent servant.
Anna prayed that her face did not register her sense of horror. The officer was bowing before her.
Anna smiled, but where there had been confidence, there was only foreboding that they were doomed. She could imagine the officer’s face breaking into a grin at the discovery of the diary.
And yet, he was turning to leave. She held her breath. There was still hope.
Lutisha gathered her skirts and made ready to escort him to the door.
Anna’s heart quickened as she watched the diary come to protrude even farther. “Lutisha!” Anna was on her feet.
Startled by the sharpness of Anna’s tone, Lutisha halted and turned to her—as did the officer, who watched curiously.
Anna attempted spontaneity. “I will see the good officer to the door, Lutisha.” Her eyes burned into the confused servant. “You will please wait for me here.”
“That will not be necessary, Countess.” The officer’s voice was cold. “You needn’t exert yourself.”
“Oh, it is no exertion,” Anna persisted. “Not when it comes to the royal guards!”
The officer stared at Anna in a strange, appraising manner.
Either he suspects something, Anna thought, or he thinks me thoroughly crazy. She took his arm and led him from the room. “I do hope I shall see you again one day, Aleksy.”
If he didn’t think her crazy, Anna realized, Lutisha, who stared open-mouthed, did.
When Anna bade the guards a final goodbye at the door, there was still a glint of suspicion on the officer’s face. She closed the door and leaned against it in a posture of relief, hoping never to see him again.
She walked back into the reception room to see Lutisha’s broad frame stooping to pick up the red diary from the floor.
22
THE QUEEN’S HEAD WAS BUSIER than usual for a late Tuesday afternoon. Jan sat alone at his usual table near the window. He was not looking outside. Neither were his eyes focused on the activity in the bar. It had taken two drinks for his nerves to settle.
He was to meet with King Stanisław.
For weeks he had been working closely with his father’s friend, Hugo Kołłataj, who had embraced him like his own son. By now Jan was fully initiated into the Patriot movement. The Constitution of the previous year had laid the groundwork for the real reforms that were only now being proposed and put into effect. Much remained to be done.
&nbs
p; Kołłataj had taken upon himself the task of convincing King Stanisław that labor rents be converted to money rents for the peasants. Jan was to go with him and meet the king for the first time. Convincing the monarch of the need for such a basic and far-reaching change was a formidable task, but Jan had total confidence in his new friend. Jan had watched him turn stones—the unconcerned and frivolous—sympathetic to the cause. Kołłataj knew how to present, question, contest, rebut, and convince anyone, even the king himself.
This morning Jan had been summoned to Kołłataj’s apartment. Jan arrived to find him in bed. He was weak and deadly pale.
It was influenza, he told Jan. He would survive it. “As you know,” Kołłataj said, “we are set to meet Stanisław tomorrow.”
“Shall I get it delayed, sir? . . . Another week?”
“No.” Kołłataj was firm. “Reform has been delayed long enough.”
“What are we to do, sir?”
“You, Jan, are to see the king.”
“I?” Jan’s heart dropped like a weight. He was incredulous. “Alone?”
The man nodded.
“Sir, is he likely to listen to me?”
“Why not? You’re wise past your twenty-five years. You’re a quick study. You’re a man of conviction. I trust you’ll make a good case.”
“But . . . to the king himself?”
“Yes, to the king himself. He’s just a man and not a particularly strong one at that. You’ve worked more closely with me than anyone else has. You know the proposal, you know the projected numbers, you know the advantages. Just talk straight, Jan.”
“Such a search is a standard procedure of the King’s Guard,” Zofia assured Anna. “The king is a man uncertain of the loyalty of his subjects. I suppose it is the way of most monarchs. If the guards had any real reason for the search, believe me, they would not have confined it to my bedchamber.”
The two cousins stood in Zofia’s room. Zofia had arrived a scant half hour after the guards had left. Anna had had Lutisha hand Zofia the diary so that her cousin would not think that Anna had even opened the red cloisonné cover.
After Lutisha left, Anna explained that she had the maid search the room on the chance that there might be some writings which Zofia would not want the guards to come upon.
“How very clever of you, cousin!” She waved the diary. “This is nothing more than a journal of silly writing and doodling. I got the idea when I saw you keeping a diary, darling. But, just the same, I would die to have it read at court!”
Zofia dropped the diary onto her vanity and clasped Anna’s hands into her own, her black eyes for once serious. “I am very grateful to you, Anna. You are a lifesaver. I shall not forget it.”
Anna attempted a smile. While she was at once proud of her little charade, at the same time she felt a stabbing guilt for having made a habit of violating her cousin’s privacy.
“Look here!” Zofia said, drawing Anna toward the wardrobe. “I have a little compartment in this.” When she touched a hidden spring behind the front leg, a drawer slid open. In it she placed the diary. “I’ll keep it in here from now on.”
Anna’s sense of guilt was sharpened even more by the faith that Zofia was placing in her. She wished that her cousin had not shown her the hiding place. She was not to be delivered from future temptation.
“Why so grim, Anna? The danger is past, thanks to you.” Zofia hugged her cousin. “Come, let’s see what little gifts the guards have left.”
Anna smiled, trying to dispel her mood and silently vowing never again to read from the diary.
Together the cousins explored the room and found the hidden favors. In every drawer, jar, and vase in the room, they found rings, earrings, and brooches. There were even pearl pins placed in one of Zofia’s pompadour wigs.
And on the vanity table, under her jewelry case, they found an envelope with the king’s insignia. “Why I do believe,” Zofia announced, “it’s an invitation to the Royal Castle.”
Jan Stelnicki nervously studied the face of King Stanisław II Augustus. He had made his presentation and waited now on tenterhooks for a reaction.
Under the powdered wig was a simple face. Small, colorless eyes peered out under hooded lids. The nose was narrow, the chin nearly pointed. The handsomeness that must have been there when Catherine had taken him as lover was gone. Jan figured that he must have been twenty-five at the time, his own current age. He must be nearly sixty now.
What had Catherine seen in Stanisław, Jan wondered, that made her send an army to the Polish magnates demanding that they elect him king? He seemed so utterly unprepossessing.
Jan had taken more than an hour of the king’s time. With as much skill and savoir faire as he could muster, he presented his case for replacing labor rents with money rents for the peasants. He had been trembling with apprehension beforehand, but once he met the king and launched into his argument, some unforeseen power flowed into his veins and pulsed with energy, fueling him with words and confidence.
When the king began to question, the discussion led in a logical digression to the need for a national bank and a paper currency. On these issues Jan felt less secure, but—blessedly—the king did not probe too deeply. King Stanisław retreated then into a quiet meditation and the minutes slowed.
Simple man or not, the king took good time in coming to decisions, Jan thought. The silence was daunting.
Jan could endure the quiet no longer, surprising himself by speaking first. “What it comes down to, Sire,” he said, “is the rights of all of our citizens to be paid with a national currency and to trade on a much wider scale in the manner that they please.”
“My dear young Stelnicki,” the king said, “what it comes down to is this: We have passed a constitution as good as that of the United States and better than any in Europe.”
Jan nodded.
The king wagged his forefinger. “But since the Bastille fell, the kind of reform we have undertaken has frightened the jewels out of the crowns of monarchs in Prussia and Austria and Russia. To have Poland in their midst speaking out for the people makes them fear for their autocracies. These countries are not likely to stand idly by.”
Jan wondered where this was leading. Was he going to refuse?
“However,” the king sighed, “reform is the path we chose last year and there is no retreat. This issue of money rents is just one little bridge in the path. Time brings man ever forward, Jan. Remember that. There may be a step backwards after two forward, but the pace of progress is inexorably forward.”
Jan’s excitement was building. “Then I may tell Kołłataj— ?”
“You may tell him to get well. It is a royal order. Oh, and tell him to move ahead on this thing.”
Jan wanted to shout with joy. The pace of his heart quickened, but he fought to hold his enthusiasm in check, struggling against even a hint of a smile. He did not want the king to think him such a novice. “I will, Sire.” Within, however, Jan swelled with a sense of accomplishment. How proud his father would have been!
“You hail from Halicz, do you not, Jan?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, only yesterday I met another young man from Halicz, a Russian mercenary, damn him. He accompanied the Russian Fyodor Kuprin who brought some bold threats from Catherine. Although my Russian is merely adequate, Kuprin’s Polish is pitiful, so this young man served as interpreter.”
“What was his name?”
“His name? Of course, his name. . . . Gronski, I believe.”
“Walter Gronski?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
23
ANNA COULD NOT HELP BUT be excited. She was going to the Royal Castle for the first time.
Clarice and Babette spent the entire morning preparing her and Zofia for the royal supper and concert. Zofia had wanted to buy Anna a gown for the occasion, but Anna refused, wishing only to borrow one. She had no desire to be indebted in such a way to her cousin. She would also need a wig, Zofia insisted, arguing t
hat she would appear absolutely naked without an impossibly high mound of powdered white hair. Anna relented.
Louis and little Babette caught the excitement in the air. They were underfoot the entire day, bubbling with enthusiasm. “May we go see the king, too?” Babette asked. The French maids and Zofia found the request quite hilarious and laughed at the children. Louis looked especially hurt. Although he had not given voice to the request, Anna could tell that he dearly wanted to go, but a grownup pride already taking root in him kept him from begging. Later, while the maids busied themselves in Zofia’s room, Anna took the two aside and tried to explain that the event was not for children. Let them learn later about the realities of class distinction, she thought, telling them, instead, of the momentous day she and her father had come into the city and driven past the majestic castle. And she found herself promising that one day she would take them in the carriage to get a closer view of the king’s residence just across the River Vistula.
Zofia entered Anna’s room fully dressed. She wore a high-waisted gown of pekin, trimmed with gauze flounces, ribbons, and silk flowers. Her dazzling array of jewelry included a sapphire pendant and matching eardrops.
Zofia gaped at Anna’s choice of dress. “You can’t wear that one, cousin!”
“Really? You don’t wish to lend it out?”
“No, it’s not that at all. Darling, we’re going to the Royal Castle, not to the fish market. It’s utterly too simple, too plain, too colorless!”
“The beauty of the dress is in its simplicity, Zofia. Oh, I do wish to wear it!” There was some color in the cream-colored gown, Anna insisted, pointing out the faintest pastel flowers that had been brushed into the gauzy material.
This time Zofia relented.
The gown had required only a few alterations—an adjustment to the puffed sleeves and the release of three tucks at the waist to allow for Anna’s expanding waistline. Her own white kid leather slippers set it off. She tied her mother’s white and blue cameo about her neck, wondering what her mother would have thought of her going to the Royal Castle.
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