But if what the boy said was true, and it was not improbable, then the more important booty might be that tent, and to transport it and its contents home would require wagons, so he told Janko: ‘Find me three carts. Get them to the tent immediately.’
‘How?’
‘That’s your task. But first, lead me to the tent.’
Tying the horses one to the other, Lukasz and the Frenchman and Janko led them to where Piotr waited with his two soldiers, and when the friar heard approaching footsteps he rushed to the flap, threw it back just far enough for him to exit, and shouted: ‘King Jan Sobieski,’ but when he saw it was his brother-in-law Lukasz, he cried: ‘God has smiled upon us!’
Janko took the two soldiers and scouted the demolished camp area for wagons and the horses to draw them, but at first they found nothing. Then, turning a corner, they came upon a storage area that contained at least two thousand carts, and carefully selecting ones which looked as if they might survive a journey of several hundred miles, they commandeered a set of horses and drove back to the tent.
Lukasz was staggered by the sumptuousness of the tent, especially by the incredibly valuable fabric from which it was constructed—drab on the outside, flashing with precious metals and jewels on the inside, but he was also impressed by the luxury with which the owner had gone to battle: ‘What time did he have for fighting, Piotr, tell me that? A golden basin for washing his hands. A big tub of what looks like marble for bathing himself. Fifty cloths for drying. This basket of figs and dates and dried plums. The bags of Austrian money. And those little swords decorated with rubies. My God, Piotr, one of those swords …’
‘The trick will be to get them home,’ the friar warned, and many times that day he had to make his sign of the cross, most reverently, and cry: ‘King Jan Sobieski.’
Janko faced his own problem: he wanted to make sure that the slain girl was buried. The camp contained so many corpses that one more scarcely mattered, but when he saw how the townspeople of Vienna, free at last to move about, were vandalizing the bodies, he crept into the tent, carefully picked up the slave girl and carried her to a grassy bank, where with a stick and his two hands he dug a shallow grave. He collected some rocks, which he piled over it, and although he could find no wood with which to form a cross, he used his digging stick to draw a rude one in the dust, for he had convinced himself that she must have been a Christian. He then crossed himself and returned to the treasure-filled tent, where he suddenly burst into tears and remained unconsoled while Lukasz and Piotr plotted how they might get their three wagons home.
That day, the thirteenth, when Sobieski had expected to be in the midst of battle, he rode in triumph through the battered streets of Vienna, a flopping, misshapen man dressed in royal purple and wearing a large Russian-style fur shako that seemed on the point of falling off his pumpkinlike head. He was not accompanied by either the Duke of Lorraine or Prince Waldeck, for they were fearful that if they appeared on the streets before King Leopold had time to get back, they might be severely disciplined, and indeed the reception Sobieski received as the savior of Vienna did infuriate the emperor, who was already designing a grandiose monument which would proclaim him to have been the salvation of the city.
When Leopold finally arrived he expressed no gratitude to the Polish troops who had come so far to rescue his city, nor would he review the winged hussars whose whistling flight had started the rout of the Turkish armies. He rebuffed Sobieski, paid no tribute to General Lubomirski, whose fortitude during the bleak days had been heroic, and refused permission for the erection of any statue, ever, to Sobieski. He authorized two for himself, and perhaps he was sagacious in what he did, however ridiculous it might have seemed, for if the dead Count Lubonski had always envied Austria, siding with her in every contest between the nations, it could only have been because the Habsburgs gave the country excellent leadership. When the long welfare of Austria was considered, it was much more important that the Habsburg Leopold be remembered as the victor of Vienna rather than the intruder Sobieski, who would not be able to found a dynasty even in Poland.
Now the hard work began. Lukasz Bukowski, as he would be known after his exploits in this battle, had to transport three heavily loaded wagons and twenty-four Arabian horses—six stallions and eighteen mares—two hundred and eighty miles to his village. He would be threatened at every step of the way by voracious Poles who would seek to grab their share of the loot, and by the streams which had to be forded, and by the mountain passes to be negotiated. The returning army, which had not lost an excessive number of men thanks to the brilliant manner in which Sobieski had used it, contained about twenty-two thousand men, and each one was now a potential enemy of Lukasz Bukowski.
To help him in his difficult task he had his undependable brother-in-law, the peasant serf Janko, the French engineer and the two soldiers Brat Piotr had conscripted. They had arms, but so did everyone else.
The little expeditionary force left Austria in good style and completed half of Moravia with the loss of only one horse; two men from Lublin made off with it one midnight.
They were approaching the mountain pass at Cieszyn, which would take them into Poland, when disaster struck … twice. One evening just after sunset a small group of cavalrymen returning to the walled city of Zamosc dashed in among the Arabians and made off with five of the best, taking time to ensure that they had one stallion and four mares. Lukasz trembled with rage when he learned of it, and he wanted his five assistants to storm after the thieves and recover the horses, but Piotr simply stared at him and asked: ‘Brother, have you gone mad?’
That was all. Piotr would not allow anyone even to track the stolen horses, let alone try to recover them, for he knew the raiders were armed and bound by no law.
Piotr was undergoing curious changes as this foray into Austria ended. He had seen great battle; he had ridden as a hussar, although a rather dubious one; he had helped defeat an enemy of Jesus Christ; and he was half a year older. He realized the futility of much that mankind did, and he sometimes speculated on what honor meant when a man as stalwart as Count Lubonski could end the way he did, alone and pierced by sabers, and he grieved over the insulting way King Jan Sobieski had been treated by the city he saved. Then, too, although he had behaved in a more constrained manner than young Janko, he had been deeply shaken by the beheading of the Circassian slave, and as he rode north he reflected often on the strangeness that must have characterized her life. Where had she been born? Who captured her for what slave market? The man who bought her had obviously loved her deeply, for he had killed her—or tried to—rather than have her fall into the hands of others. No fabric in that tent had been more precious or more beautifully made than the simple gown she wore. Piotr knew nothing of women, but he supposed that had he lived an ordinary life, like his brother-in-law Lukasz, he might have loved a woman like that dead girl, and he thought kindly of young Janko for having buried her properly.
He was reflecting on these matters when the Frenchman raised a cry, and all the Lukasz party ran to where the trouble was. Too late! An army contingent on its way back to Warsaw, a rough lot, had boldly swept in and stolen an entire wagon, and were now so far in the distance that overtaking them was impossible. One-third of the treasure was gone, but when Lukasz, blinded by tears, surveyed what remained, he said several times: ‘Thank God, they didn’t get the tent!’ And Piotr began to realize that his brother-in-law valued the ornate tent more highly than any of its contents. The eighteen remaining Arabians first, then the tent, then the jeweled scimitars.
When they reached Krakow the two soldiers and the Frenchman supposed that Brat Piotr was going to turn his cargo over to King Jan Sobieski, whose property he had proclaimed it so often to be, but it became quickly clear that Lukasz Bukowski intended marching right past the king’s palace and on to his home village of Bukowo, and the men began to complain.
Lukasz faced this dangerous situation head-on, for he knew he required their help now more
than ever, for as the army dispersed, the various contingents became in effect freebooters capable of almost anything. So he and Piotr assembled the three men: ‘We shall be taking the king’s treasure to our village, where the dead count’s family must get his share. Then the king gets his. Europe is in turmoil and so is Poland. You men know nothing of what is happening at your homes. Stay with us in Bukowo and we will give you a little piece of land and a cottage and local girls from whom to choose a wife. You can have a good life with us, and the new Count Lubonski will be just as fine a man as the old. You saw what he could do.’
So these clever conspirators delivered the two wagons and the eighteen Arabians to Bukowo, where they formed the basis of the Bukowski wealth and prestige, for Lukasz was no longer a poor nobleman with only five horses. Now he had eighteen Arabians and the nine regulars that had hauled the wagons and the riders north, and he was at last a man to reckon with.
But as they approached Bukowo and saw looming on the horizon the towers of Castle Gorka, both Lukasz and Piotr were overcome with remorse over the fact that they had deserted their knight in battle and been the agency of his death. So as soon as the wagons were safely delivered to Lukasz’s mansion, and the treasure safely stored in his rooms, he and Piotr selected one beautifully decorated small dagger—one six-hundredth of the total—and ceremoniously delivered it to Countess Halka Lubonska, with a heartbreaking account of how they had stood with her husband in the fatal moments when eighteen Turkish Janissaries had ambushed them, and of how the three had fought almost clear of their assailants when Lubonski’s horse had stumbled, killing him instantly.
‘We did manage to hold off his attackers,’ Lukasz said with tears in his eyes, ‘until we could recover his body, which we buried with honors on the battlefield. Piotr himself said the prayers.’ As a token of the affection in which they held the old count, they wanted Halka to have a memento of the fight: ‘Your husband captured it from a Turkish general just before he was slain.’
But when the two heroes returned to Bukowo village Lukasz faced an accounting which stunned him, for Piotr forced his way, uninvited, into the room where the treasure was being kept, and when Lukasz demanded sternly: ‘What are you doing here?’ the friar said: ‘I have come for God’s share.’
‘What?’
‘Brother Lukasz, you have stolen this treasure from King Jan.
You have stolen it from the soldiers who helped us bring it here.
And you have stolen it from the widow of Count Lubonski. But you cannot steal it from God, who has protected us in this venture.’
Trembling, Lukasz asked: ‘What do you intend?’
‘We are going to divide this treasure, half for God, half for you.’
‘And what are you going to do with God’s share?’
‘Give it as a votive to Czestochowa.’
Lukasz broke into relieved laughter. ‘You must be insane. The monks there don’t need this.’
‘You are right,’ Piotr agreed. ‘They don’t need it, but the safety of their monastery does. Remember how it stood off the Swedes and saved Poland? It needs strengthening against the next siege.’ He saw that his avaricious brother-in-law was not impressed, so he said quietly, but with unmistakable conviction: ‘If you do not give God His share, He will strike you dead. And if He doesn’t, I will.’
Lukasz looked at his stupid brother-in-law, this scarecrow of a man, and saw that he meant what he was saying. ‘You would … ‘I will kill you, Lukasz, and publish to the world how you behaved in the battle.’
So the two men sat in the room and divided the spoils, this to God, this to Lukasz, and from time to time the latter would protest his share and lift a piece from God’s pile into his: ‘God doesn’t need anything that rich,’ and Piotr allowed this, for as he said: ‘God never objects to a little stealing.’
The treasure was delivered to Czestochowa by the two brothers, and the priests in charge of the shrine were astounded by what Brat Piotr had achieved, for like Lukasz, they had underestimated both his intelligence and his piety.
In the centuries to come, architects’ diagrams of the great monastery in which the Black Madonna rested would show a set of formidable bastions protecting the compass points of the fortress, and each carried the name of the man who in reverence had paid for it: Lubomirski, Potocki, Czartoryski and, one of the most reverent, Bukowski.
So in the grand distribution of spoils from the legendary victory of the Poles over the Turks at Vienna, each participant received something. Poland received a spiritual boon of dubious and temporary value—respect among nations for her valor in defending Christianity—and two practical gifts of long-lasting value. Coffee had not been known in the country before, but when Sobieski’s soldiers brought samples home it quickly became the national drink; and potatoes were welcomed not only as a tasty alternative to kasha but also as the staple food of the peasant. The Virgin of Czestochowa, who fought on the bosom of King Jan Sobieski, received a new defense system. Count Lubonski won a hero’s death and a small bejeweled scimitar for his widow. Lukasz Bukowski came home with a name, eighteen Arabian horses and a room full of treasure. Brat Piotr was promoted to a position of some distinction in his order. The Frenchman and the two soldiers received wives, cottages and small plots of land in the village. And the peasant Janko, as always, received nothing, for it had been his duty to go where his owner directed and do as he was told. He did, of course, remember for the rest of his life the Circassian slave girl whom he had buried.
VI
The Golden Freedom
Legend is replete with instances of how Mars, the god of war, influences the history of nations, and never more instructively than in the case of Poland. Incessant war with Tatars, Teutons and Turks—it sometimes seemed as if Poland were the special province of Mars.
But Venus, the goddess of love, can also play a major role in the destiny of nations, and once more Poland is a good example. It was Jadwiga, the heavenly Hungarian, whose love for Jagiello, the barbarous Lithuanian, inspired him to develop the courage and the skill to win the Battle of Grunwald. The last two kings of the original Polish line, Zygmunt I, who ascended the throne in 1506, and his son Zygmunt II—who in 1529, at age nine, was elected king to rule jointly with his father—experienced unfortunate first marriages and magnificent second ones. The father had the great good luck in 1518 to import Bona Sforza of the famous Italian family; she brought with her flowers, music, painting, good table manners and a fierce intuition where the defense of royal prerogative was concerned. The son made an important dynastic marriage with the daughter of the Habsburg emperor, only to find that his child bride was a hopeless epileptic; when she died prematurely he fell under the spell of two powerful Radziwill brothers who, fortunately, had a sister Barbara of great beauty, and they maneuvered her so that in 1547, Zigmunt could not escape falling in love. Thus he found himself a charming, passionate, knowing assistant who helped him stand off the pressures of the other magnates, but not of the Radziwills.
King Jan Sobieski owed an enormous debt to his French divorcée, the conniving Marie-Louise, known to her admirers as Marysienka, who took him when he was merely another magnate and converted him into a magisterial king with a personal fortune of eighty million. But in no instance was the power of Venus greater than in 1757, when in two towns not far from Bukowo two of the ablest families Poland was to produce combined for the moment in daring enterprises which changed the destiny of the country.
At Pulawy, a lovely little town some distance to the north on the right bank of the Vistula, the tenacious Czartoryskis, who had never attained the political power to which their intelligence entitled them, were developing through study, travel, thoughtful analysis and exceptional instinct a vision of a greater Poland. It was to be led by a strong king who would found a dynasty in which elections dominated by alien powers would no longer be permitted. It would have a properly elected Seym exercising the same functions as the English Parliament; people living in towns would at
last be entitled to vote and own land, and serfs owned by rich people would be set free.
The Czartoryski brothers had a sister Konstancja, who married a man of insignificant background, a Poniatowski, with whom she produced six handsome, clever and enterprising sons. One of them, Michal, would be placed in the priesthood, where with his uncles’ goading he would become primate of all Poland. His younger brother, Stanislaw August, was earmarked for an even more exalted position, King of Poland, and groomed with meticulous care for the throne. The uncles felt that as king he could sponsor their reforms and coax Poland into the family of respectable nations. In brutally frank discussions with their young protégé they said: ‘If you do become king, your first job will be to produce sons who will inherit the crown after you, and their sons after them, so that never again shall we elect foreigners, who do us only damage.’ Since he was an ambitious young fellow, he listened.
The Czartoryskis were not powerful enough to achieve this exalted goal by themselves, but they had the support of an equally remarkable family, also late to acquire conspicuous power, the Zamoyskis, who had built with their own funds the walled city of Zamosc, so important in Polish history. From decade to decade power seemed to flow toward the Czartoryskis and Zamoyskis, and always the two great clans kept in tandem, striving mutually for a better, saner Poland. They were supported by many—the powerful Potockis and sometimes the intelligent branch of the Radziwills—but the leadership came from them.
They were opposed by many, too—the Lubomirskis, the Lubonskis and invariably the neanderthal Mniszechs of Dukla—but as the 1750s waned, it began to look as if the Czartoryskis with their splendid tier of Poniatowski nephews were destined to triumph, and Poland’s chances for a modern state never looked brighter.
Poland: A Novel Page 27
