The squire’s ears perked up, like a hunting dog’s to a rustle in the leaves. “How so?” Krawcyk leaned toward them, playing with the bread in front of him.
“Do you not want your bread, Squire?” Rotund and not shy, the other monk eyed Krawcyk’s doughy possession hungrily.
“It’s yours, good Brother—to keep you warm on your journey. You were saying? A miracle?”
“Indeed,” the empty-handed monk said while his brother fairly inhaled his quarry. “It must have been the hand of God to bring little Zuzanna together with her brothers.”
“Zuzanna?”
“Yes, Squire. Zuzanna gave water to Andrezski while the man lay dying with the plague at the convent. As it happens,” he went on with enthusiasm, “she is also sister to Irina Kwasniewska!”
The “squire” was hardly able to control his breath and, in turn, his voice. “Why is that so important?” He knew the answer, but it appeared there was more to know.
“Because the woman, Irina, presented herself to the Dominican Sisters as Lady Kwasniewska from Gniezno. How that could be true no one knows, but there is little doubt, she and the little girl—and the brothers in St. Michael—are all of one family.”
Krawcyk’s head spun with savory possibilities. “Most interesting,” he murmured. For the next part of an hour while the monks rested and thoroughly warmed themselves, he hardly noticed what was happening in the small room daring to call itself an inn.
Over the weeks, he’d thought through his plan over and over. Once satisfied that he could pass for a nobleman’s squire—and when the weather had cleared for travel—he would leave Wozna forever to hunt down his first prey: Duke Sokorski. Then a journey to Paris for the prize: the bitch herself, Irina Kwasniewska! She was the impostor, the lover of Jews, who had taken what should have been his.
The monk’s revelation changed everything. When he heard the merchant Andrezski had somehow connected himself with two brothers of the same name—and the girl, Zuzanna!—he thought it was too good to be true. He tried not to smile. Big Franciszek had always told him his smile—his smirk—was a dead giveaway.
“By the way, Squire,” began the monk too thin for his habit. “Squire Krawcyk?” he repeated when the man across the table seemed lost in thought.
“Yes?”
“You look very familiar to me. Were you by chance a squire in service to Duke Sokorski?”
Krawcyk’s heart thrummed with excitement and fear. “Whom did you say, good Brother?”
“Duke Sokorski. Your voice. So familiar to me.”
“Surely you’re mistaken, Brother. I am from the east, near Gniezno.”
The monks merely smiled.
Krawcyk made a note to be very careful with these men, but immediately was drawn back into labyrinth of his mind where a feast of possibilities lay before him. He realized the snowstorm and the inn at Wozna had been his own miracle, one he could not proclaim to the men of God or anyone else. He had been given the gift of time to hide, to rest, to consider—and to change. He couldn’t explain it to himself, but knowing now of the little girl’s existence made his new plan irresistible.
The bishop’s death had given him pleasure, but when it came to settling scores, it was not enough. He noticed the monks eyeing him curiously, and so he raised his cup of ale and toasted Merchant Andrezski’s success. Now he had a plan, and as soon as the monks were on their way to St. Stephen’s, he would head in the opposite direction.
Chapter XVI
1410
As the days marched into summer at Chateau Fournier, longer hours of light meant Velka keeping up with her mistress’s standard of cleanliness in all their surroundings. There were no exceptions. Floors, windows, furniture, bedding, and kitchen in particular, where the mice always seemed to find a home.
Irina’s challenge was to keep up with her daily routine, yet she had less and less energy to expend on it. Today, Irina lay abed on the main floor, gathering in the chateau’s morning sounds, when there was a hard rap at the main door, the head of a metal cane, she thought. Velka’s leather shoes clacked across the foyer floor. Then, with the latch undone, the beech door creaked as it opened. Two rooms away, she felt the air move.
“Monsieur le Docteur Bernard,” said Velka in a language she never desired to master, “you must speak to her. Madame is ill. She fights it.”
Irina smiled as she listened to her servant’s loud whisper. She could imagine, too, Velka fighting a physical reaction to the doctor’s bodily aromatics. In seconds, she would rush ahead to make certain all the windows were thrown open.
The mistress of Chateau Fournier knew she was pale, her vigor at a low ebb. As the doctor entered her private chambers, she motioned him to come closer, much as she detested his lack of hygiene.
At one glance, the portly, aging doctor said, “Have I not told you, Madame, that too much personal scrubbing would be dangerous for you?”
“Monsieur, you should live in such danger.”
The healer shrugged off her sarcasm, said something about the body’s defensive layers, and asked after her well-being, then waited.
Irina’s breathing came slowly, heavily. “You asked, Monsieur, and I will tell you, not that it matters. For the last few months, my stomach has given me some discomfort, but it is not important.”
“You must tell me more than that, Madame,” he said with impatience.
“When I eat,” she sighed, “even a little, I feel very full. It stays with me. And yet I have no appetite. My whole life, Monsieur, I have not had this problem. Now it is here—every day.”
He nodded, then shrugged his shoulders. After a few more perfunctory questions, he mumbled something to the effect that he had nothing to tell her at the moment. “But I will return,” he said cheerily. He gave her no potion to ease her discomfort.
The interview, though short, exhausted her, but upon his departure, the air cleared. With help from Velka, she moved to the chair by the window and gazed across the meadow. At least, she thought, the smelly old man had not asked her to make a life or death decision. She had already made too many of those in her forty-seven years.
She laid her head back, and her eyelids became heavy. She knew she would soon return to an earlier time of both pain and joy. The more she thought about Chevalle, the more she thought about the Dampierre affair and, too, what she later learned happened to Zuzzie. Ah, Zuzzie!
* * *
1379
The partnership between the Brezchwas and Antoine Chevalle had barely begun when all of France erupted, just as Madrosh had once predicted. The forced but troubled peace ordering their daily lives evaporated when riots began in Paris and did not end for months. Charles’s taxes to support his wars against the English had greatly alienated the laboring classes, who, as always, bore the brunt of imperial ambitions. The people were starving and had no more livres to give.
Even so, the king and his nobility suffered little, as Irina and Jan discovered most clearly on one of their visits to court. Neither of them enjoyed their encounters there, especially since marital fidelity, amongst other virtues, seemed to have no place in the royal environs. It was not unusual for each of them—a fresh and attractive young people—to be solicited, even pressured, to surrender their fidelity to one another. Because Irina’s natural beauty shone through what little adornment she allowed herself, even at court, her appearance and demeanor seemed to attract men—and women—with little restraint upon convention.
Now that Irina was no longer pregnant, but married, she would be considered a safe conquest by those courtiers who preyed on women like her, wife to a minor noble. Should a pregnancy occur, she was warned by others, the cuckold would take quiet responsibility. She—and Jan—wanted no part of such arrangements.
It wasn’t long before one of their court encounters nearly brought about their undoing.
…
&
nbsp; For Tomasz, the road he’d taken from Wozna was easy for a man on horseback, and south of Poznan, downhill to the cluster of small houses nested along the river’s edge. There was a rude inn there where he nighted and made sure he knew the way to St. Michael.
His hope went a bit awry when the innkeeper explained that a person whose skills he sought did not exist in his village. The small, unusually fat and balding man took some time to admit he knew of a woman fitting his need, but she lived a few miles downriver. There, he would find a seamstress to his liking, the man had said after Tomasz purchased bread and sausage to go with his ale.
Upon meeting the woman, he took in her diminutive height and wondered if a race of dwarfs lived in the area.
“What troubles you, good Squire?”
“It’s just that so many around here are so small, Panie.”
“So be it, then,” she said, her thin lips tight. “What can I do for you?”
“Ah! As you can see, I’ve worn these clothes to their end, I fear, and soon, I will be required to make a more suitable appearance before my duke.” The woman took it all in with nary a reaction. “And so I shall require you to fashion me a good set of clothing along with a feathered toque, if you please.”
“That will not be a problem, good sir, but not for a ‘small’ price,” she cackled at her own little joke.
He chuckled, but weakly. “But can you do it in the next two days?”
“But sir, that would prove difficult, I’m afraid.”
“Just as difficult if I were to pay you double—in good silver?”
She stood, as if in triumph. “Let us make the measurements now, then, and I will work through the night. Extra candles must be included in the price.”
“As you say. I shall return in two days’ time, then.”
He found himself spending a second night in the nameless river village. Well-rested after two sleeps, he rose long before the cock crowed, and downed bread and cheese purloined from the larder. Dressed warmly with a lambskin cape over his back, he secured his horse, crossed the plank bridge over the Warta, and climbed out of the river valley toward St. Michael. All in all, it had been a successful though tedious stop in his journey.
At St. Michael, Tomasz Wodowicz surveyed the snow-covered terrain, taking in its stark contrasts, even in the colorless landscape. The day proved clear and windless, and remained so through noontime when he neared the place where the local priest told him the Kwasniewskis farmed. He was surprised to find whole stands of beech stumps but then remembered someone telling him how important their ashes were to glassmaking.
Reining his horse to a halt, he leaned forward in his saddle to hear the whip and pull of the large two-man saws and the shouts of men at work on the trees. Though some distance away, the sound carried across the flat, barren fields, as Tomasz whispered to the cold air, “If they’re in the woods, the girl will be in the farmhouse, nie?”
Taking refuge in an apple orchard, he watched and listened intently, as his ruminations centered on acts against him requiring revenge. For those transgressors, like the bishop, the Kwasniewska woman or any member of her family, and Duke Sokorski, retribution was his dream and obsession. Nothing else mattered.
The bishop, he laughed to himself, had not only done himself in, but had provided a silver stake for him to proceed unhindered in his other quests.
“What shall be, shall be,” he murmured. Looking toward the farmhouse, he could see the chimney smoke still drift into the sunlight, and that meant someone was there, perhaps preparing food. And the girl?
It was time.
He took a slow, circuitous route to place himself behind the farmhouse, out of sight of the men working several hundred yards away. It was a mean place, yet he marveled that the bitch, Kwasniewska, had come from such a mud-colored shed not unlike the manger mindless priests told tales about at Christmas.
Near his horse was a copse of bushes, bare of leaves, surrounding the outdoor waste pit where everyone relieved themselves. Behind it and about thirty feet away was another pit, long and rectangular, in which beech logs burned golden hot. He waited.
Within a few moments, he heard the door to the farmhouse, a planked affair on leather hinges, slam open, then closed.
“I’ll be right back, Pan.”
“Don’t go near the firepit, little Zuzzie!”
The voice was sweet and gentle, but to whom did it belong? Tomasz keened his hearing, but no other sound came. Around the corner appeared Zuzanna Kwasniewska, wearing nothing but thin leather booties and a woolen shift. Her auburn hair lay still on her shoulders as she walked toward the waste pit.
Tomasz could feel the tingle. The vengeance he’d carried for so many months was about to be satisfied, and he could feel it as fully as he felt the winter air in his chest.
“Why, hello, little one,” Wodowicz said, in the warmest voice he could muster.
“Who are you, sir, and what do you want here?” she asked, her tiny voice hinting fear.
In a blink, Tomasz grabbed her and said, “I want you, Zuzanna! Just you. Let’s get you warm,” carrying her toward the pit aglow with a glimpse of hell.
Zuzzie shouted, “Pan Wodowicz! Hoch tutai—come here!”
Confused, Wodowicz said, “I am here, little one, just for you.” He took several more steps to the edge of the pit and with both hands raised the little girl above his head.
Something jerked his shoulders from behind. He lost his balance and began to fall backward, the girl flying out of his arms and into those of another. Relieved of her weight, he regained his balance and turned to face his attacker.
Holding Zuzzie next to him, the old man said, “Who, who?” then stopped. “It’s you! You, Tomasz! You have come to harm this little one?”
“So, Ojciec, doing for this little nothing what you never did for me?!” He lunged, grabbing his father by the throat. “You miserable bastard! You have gotten in my way.”
Zuzzie fell to the ground and ran while the two men grappled. They stayed upright, turning and turning, neither man having the advantage. They were at the very edge of the pit and finally, youth won out. Without hesitation, Tomasz managed to grab the elder Wodowicz by his waist sash and collar, and flung him upon the pyre below. He saw the old man’s mouth open to scream as he landed on the glowing hot logs, but no sound came as he was quickly engulfed. Within seconds, he was a black lump, barely distinguishable from the logs becoming ashes there.
Tomasz stood open-mouthed. That he had just murdered his father mattered not at all. What mattered were the sounds of running, angry men.
…
One frigid February day, as Jan and Irina cuddled with little Stashu, Velka brought in a piece of folded vellum stock sealed in red wax and a silver ribbon. Because of the time of year, the invitation’s arrival surprised them. At that point, with all the dust and wet plaster at Giverny, and a little boy they would be loath to leave with a wet nurse, they preferred a glowing fireplace by a toasty bed to travel of any kind.
Nevertheless, winter’s boredom and social etiquette overcame their love of home and hearth. They bundled up and bade their coachmen to brave the snowy roads to Paris, where they were to be hosted by Monsieur le Duc et Madame Dampierre, a man whose rank at court might prove important given the frustrating launch of their business with Chevalle. On the ride to the city, they agreed to determine—with circumspection—what level of interest there might be amongst those present for fine wood furnishings.
During the mid-afternoon soiree, the well-gowned and furred ladies, powdered wigs and all, clustered around each of the four fireplaces, one on each wall of the ballroom, and gossiped amiably, the focus of their chatter being who in the room was a cuckold and who was not.
The Brezchwas disdained the sexual fantasies that seemed to take over nearly every social gathering, but protocol required they not parade the ballroom togeth
er, and so each found the cluster of sophisticates where they felt most comfortable.
Unnoticed, Irina soon wandered away, and found herself admiring a beautifully crafted, highly varnished and gilded breakfront sitting under a room-sized mirror composed of many smaller squares of silvered glass. Jan, she noticed, was otherwise engaged with gentlemen at the other end of the room, and she hoped he hadn’t forgotten the purpose of their visit.
As she surveyed the piece’s many details, the mirror reflected the image of an older man approaching. He stood close to her and, without introduction, expressed his own admiration for the workmanship of the piece. She could feel his breath.
“We’ve not been formally introduced, Monsieur, yet I agree with you.” She held out her hand.
“The piece is only beautiful next to you, Madame. I am Maurice Dampierre at your beck and call,” he said, bowing to kiss her hand.
Irina laughed in embarrassment. “So it is your piece I’ve been admiring. Your words are too kind, Monsieur le Duc, and I am Comtesse Irina Brezchwa,” she said, holding her hand to be kissed.
“I have seen you at court, Madame, and have been wanting to make your acquaintance. May I ask, what appeals to you about—my piece?” He bowed to bestow a lingering kiss upon her extended hand.
“My husband and I have just begun an arrangement with a fine craftsman in Giverny whose work, we believe, has been overlooked by people of means,” she said, giving her listener a coquettish look.
“I myself never wish to overlook an opportunity,” Dampierre responded, a sly smile sliding across his face.
Irina returned his gaze. So intent was she in pursuing an important entrée into French court life—unlike the relatively inconsequential place she and Jan occupied—she failed to absorb the meaning of Dampierre’s suggestive comments, his casual touches.
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