Poland: A Novel Part 20

'I mean the real Poland ... the countryside ... what you see here, whether it's ruled by Austria or Russia, it goes on and on.'

'Will Lancut go on and on?' Feliks asked, and now she grasped his two hands, saying sternly: 'You ask dangerous questions, young man, and if you persist, you will end in an Austrian prison or a Russian mine. With France in flames and America inviting others to mimic her revolution, the rulers of these parts are not going to be lenient with radical young men whose radical fathers had to be gunned down in the streets of Warsaw to prevent revolt.'

At the height of the musical festivities, when more than sixty guests crowded the castle bedrooms, two hors.e.m.e.n galloped in from the east with the exciting news that Kleofas Granicki was riding west with his camels at the whirlwind conclusion of his investigations in the Ukraine; in addition to this information, they handed Lubomirska a written message, which she crumpled with joy, shouting: 'Yes! Yes!' And for the rest of that day there was vast excitement at the palace, with the hundred and fifty servants dashing about inside and the forty-seven gardeners raking the lawns outside and gathering huge garlands of summer flowers. Three teams of rural musicians were sent for-bagpipes, fiddle, drum-and the many cooks were put to baking.

Lubomirska would not reveal what had been in Granicki's note, but on the morning of the next day, when the wild man arrived at the head of six cameleers firing their rifles, Feliks and the others watched with amazement and delight as a team of eight gaily decorated camels drew a huge, improvised wagon through the palace gates, bearing inside a young couple who were obviously to be married at Lancut.

It was the lovely Katarzyna Granicka and the handsome, witty young Ryszard Lubomirski, who had been denuded at Radzyn Castle. They formed an imposing pair, she seventeen, he twenty-three, inheritors of power and wealth, and Feliks was not the least bit envious. Years and years ago, it seemed, he had loved Katarzyna for one reverberating spring when flowers filled the steppe, but now he was so infinitely older and wiser that she seemed like an unformed little girl whom he wished well.

To Roman he said, as the couple pa.s.sed in their flower-packed wagon: 'I thought you would marry her,' to which young Lubonski replied: 'Two years from now I would.'

As was fitting in such surroundings, the wedding was a sumptuous affair, but it was also the occasion for an unusual performance to surprise and amuse the guests. The groom was a relative not of Lubomirska herself, for she was not of his family, but of her dead husband's, and thus it was proper for him to borrow Lancut palace as the site for his festivities. At the big dinner on the evening prior to the wedding, when Katarzyna was not allowed to be present, young Lubomirski appeared in old-style Polish dress. 'I wear this in honor of my father-in-law, Kleofas, and out of respect for his ideals.' He bowed low toward where the old warrior was sitting, then to the astonishment of all, he began to undress, right where he stood, and when he was down to the briefest possible underclothes he whistled for his servant, who brought in a stack of French-style dress, and ceremoniously he donned one item after another until he stood forth a handsome young fellow who would have been at home in either Paris or London.

Gravely he lifted from the floor the old dress, placing each piece on the extended arms of his servant, and when the pile was complete he turned to Kleofas and said: 'From tomorrow on I must obey your daughter's wishes.' And he again bowed low.

It was in the noisy conversation which followed this daring act that Feliks Bukowski first heard the name of Tadeusz Kosciuszko; Kleofas Granicki was bellowing: 'I heard from St. Petersburg that our young hero Kosciuszko is making an a.s.s of himself in Paris.'

'Not surprising,' Lubomirska said. 'He was totally corrupted in America.'

'What's he up to?' an Austrian baron asked.

Kleofas had imperfect reports: 'He's fighting, of course ... he's always fighting for some cause or other. He supports the revolution and may even be a general in it.'

'That poor fool,' Lubomirska said with real sorrow. 'He comes from a good family, you know. Was desolated by the First Part.i.tion in 1772. Went to America ... fell in with men like Tom Jefferson, whom I never liked-'

The Austrian baron, an officer in the Habsburg cavalry, interrupted: 'We had strong reports of him as General Washington's right-hand man-engineering, fortifications, things like that.'

'Can the American experiment last long?' Granicki asked.

'No,' the Austrian said, and in this manner Kosciuszko was dismissed.

At the end of the sixth week of the Lubonski visit, Princess Lubomirska started her servants on the task of packing for her departure; she would move on to her great castle at Wisnicz, which she had not visited during the past three years and where one hundred and sixty servants and thirty-eight gardeners awaited her arrival. The last concerts were given-sixteen separate arias from Mozart operas, backed by the entire chorus-and a last tour of the ninety major European paintings was made, with Lubomirska herself explaining to the two young men why this artist was first cla.s.s and that one not. The endless flower vases were wrapped in cloth and stored, and the machines that delivered water to the nine spouting fountains were halted.

There were tears as different groups of the sixty guests departed, and special ones when the Lubonskis went: 'My dearest Count, give the Mniszechs my love. Roman and Feliks, find yourselves good wives. Goodbye, goodbye, and may we remember this glorious summer when the music played.' She walked with them to where they mounted their horses and pulled each man down for a farewell kiss, for she suspected that she might not return to Lancut for several years, her problems at the rebuilding of her other castles and palaces requiring her attention.

The Lubonski company rode diligently in a southwesterly direction for several days, making far less progress than before, since now they were entering the low foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, but as the first cold winds of autumn struck at them from the south, they came to the ancient town of Dukla guarding the pa.s.ses into Hungary.

The young men were almost disappointed in what they found, for the ancestral seat of the mighty Mniszech clan was a shabby affair, neither bold and big like the Granicki castle nor sumptuous like Lancut. It was a frontier fortress occupied by defenders of the frontier, and as such it had importance, for as Count Lubonski warned his charges when they rode up to the gloomy affair: 'Without the Mniszechs down here wrestling with Hungary and Russia, there'd have been no Poland.' And he reminded them that Cyprjan Lubonski, the first to wear the t.i.tle Count, had been vastly aided by his youthful marriage to Zofia Mniszech, who had more or less established the style of the Lubonskis and had mothered the unforgettable Barbara who perished in the fall of Krzyztopor: 'The Mniszechs are a notable family, and if their young Elzbieta is as lovely as they say, we will have made a good journey.'

Alas, Elzbieta was not in residence; she had traveled with her father, Ignacy, to a remote castle on the Hungarian frontier, where the Lubonskis were invited to follow after due rest at Dukla. Obviously the young men, excited by reports of Elzbieta's beauty and liveliness, were disappointed, but the enforced layover in Dukla turned out to be one of the high points of their journey, for they fell into the hands of an extraordinary Mniszech woman, Urszula, widow of a great warrior, who told stories of her family with all the ardor and joy that Sophocles and Aeschylus had shown when telling of the House of Atreus. She was in her sixties that autumn, and for five enchanted weeks she narrated wild and glowing accounts of what the Mniszechs had done when they wandered into Poland out of the Czech lands, of how they had battled bears with their hands, and fought against the Russians, and then with the Russians against the Tatars, but always, to the delight of the young men, she returned to stories featuring the young women of the clan, whom she referred to in the feminine form of their name, Mniszchowna, and she p.r.o.nounced this with such mystery, clothing the women in romances so alluring, that Roman and Feliks had to conclude: A Mniszchowna must be irresistible.

'In 1589, Jerzy Mniszech and his wife, Jadwiga, who was born a Tarlowna, gave birth to a beautiful child they christened Maryna, and she grew to become the fairest young woman of these mountains. Her fame was widespread and men drew portraits of her. One fell into the hands of the youth who was to be the Czar of Russia, Dmitri by name, although there were some who called him False Dmitri because his claim to the throne was contested by Boris G.o.dunov.

'This Dmitri, always seeking the throne, came here to Dukla, lured by the portrait he had seen of Maryna, and in this little town Maryna's uncles and brothers and men of the Tarlows schemed to make him czar, and believe it or not, they succeeded, and he became Czar of All the Russias, and in grand ceremonies at Krakow, attended by kings and princes from Europe, he married our Maryna, and she became czarina, at the age of fifteen.

'Short happiness. There was an evil Russian called Prince Shuiski who wanted to be czar, so after less than two years he a.s.sa.s.sinated Dmitri, and our poor Maryna was left a defenseless widow in Moscow. But a beautiful woman is never truly defenseless if she uses her head, which our Maryna did. She found another young prince, also named Dmitri, who also claimed to be czar, the first Dmitri having been little less than a fraud.

'So our Maryna married this second Dmitri, and for the second time she reigned as czarina, but this one, too, was a.s.sa.s.sinated, so that Prince Shuiski regained the throne, but if I remember right, he was also a.s.sa.s.sinated. Ugly things happen in Russia.'

'What happened to Maryna?' Feliks asked, and Urszula's eyes glowed with delight at what she must report next: 'Alone, widowed, heartbroken with grief, Maryna met a Cossack hetman and ran away with him into the steppes of Russia, where together they planned a big rebellion, but it never amounted to much. As I recall, they were captured by the real czar's army, a Romanoff I think, and Maryna and her Cossack were taken back to Moscow and beheaded publicly. But she was a true Mniszech and spat at them from her scaffold.'

That night Count Lubonski told his charges: 'Much of what she said was true, you know. Maryna was czarina twice, and I think she did run away with the Cossack, but I doubt she was beheaded.'

'What else was false?' Feliks asked.

'Her beauty. I've seen portraits of her, from that time, and she had two rather big warts. Also, she was quite small. When the czar's soldiers tried to arrest her the first time, she huddled down and hid herself under the skirts of her nurse.'

'You spoiled the story,' Roman protested, and his father said: 'I believed it when my mother, who had Mniszech blood, told it to me. You choose what part you want to accept, because in essence it's true.'

Urszula never mentioned a Mniszech woman without a.s.suring her listeners that the subject of her tale was extraordinarily beautiful, so that Roman and Feliks came to accept this as an essential characteristic of the family.

'I was living, you know, when Ludwika, the daughter of Josef Mniszech and a different Tarlowna, married Josef Potocki, and you must keep these names straight, for another Potocki, not a very nice one, comes along later. Ludwika was the most beautiful girl in these parts and painters drew portraits of her which show her to be quite heavenly, a word I use with careful meaning.

'The young couple went to live at the big castle north of Przemysl, I always forget the name, and one day when Ludwika was in the bell tower, though why she was there I could never understand, a horseman came dashing into the courtyard, which is as big as all of Dukla, crying: "The young master is killed. He fell from his horse and is killed!" With a scream of despair Ludwika threw herself from the bell tower and died.

'Now, at midnight when there's a full moon, she stalks the towers of Krasiczyn, I remember the name now, dressed in flowing robes and mourning the death of her beloved. The ugly part of this beautiful story is that Josef Potocki wasn't dead at all. He rode back home as good as you or me, buried his wife, and promptly married an Ossolinska, I believe it was, and she and he lived in the castle very happily, I'm told.'

Count Lubonski said with some pride: 'I believe our castle at Gorka is the only one in Poland that doesn't have a female ghost in a filmy gown walking the battlements at midnight. Lubonski women are too clever to waste their time that way. If you ask me, they probably stay close to heaven, listening to good music and drinking mead.'

'But was her story true?' Roman asked.

'They were real people. We pa.s.sed by their castle on our way to Lwow.'

'I should like to believe it was true,' Roman said, and his father replied: 'I'm quite pleased with you on this trip, Roman. Young men ought to believe-in the Crucifixion, in the goodness of ancient Athens, in Charlemagne's ability. Such fixed bases help you to sort things out.'

'That's the second time you've used that phrase,' Roman said, and his father replied: 'I've spent my life trying to sort things out.'

'Have you succeeded?'

'No. I've lived in an age of disaster. And I came here to Dukla to talk about it with Ignacy Mniszech. I'm terribly disappointed about his absence, and I think we should move west to catch him at Niedzica.'

'I'd like to stay here. These tales captivate me.' And Feliks said that he, too, was enjoying himself, so they lingered, hoping each day that Elzbieta would return, and it was fortunate that they did, for this enabled them to hear from Urszula a harrowing tale of events that had occurred in the last generation of Mniszechs: 'Jerzy August, who was the brother of that Ludwika who threw herself from the bell tower at the castle, he took his second wife, a rich and powerful German girl named Maria Amalia Bruhl, of the great Bruhl family that came into Poland with our Saxon kings, ama.s.sing huge fortunes from the careless Poles.

'Well, Maria Amalia was like a bolt of lightning. I knew her well and was terrified by her. German this and German that, but beautiful and able. She had a daughter Jozefa of my age, and I adored her. Intelligent, she could read before any of us. Traveled to Italy and could sing like a bird. I was in this room when her parents announced that she was to marry the most dashing man in the countryside, Szczesny Potocki, and there was great feasting, I can tell you, for this was a match made in heaven. Mniszech money and Potocki lands.

'But before the wedding could take place, this b.a.s.t.a.r.d man Szczesny falls in love with a rather attractive daughter of a minor gentry, Gertruda Komorowska, miles and miles inferior to our Jozefina. He married her, insulting all of Dukla, and he got her pregnant, very big pregnant I was told.

This was not the kind of insult that we Mniszechs would tolerate, and especially when Maria Amalia Bruhl with German stubbornness was involved. So one night when pregnant Gertruda was returning home in a sleigh, a gang of Cossacks hired by Maria Amalia dashed out, stopped the horses, dragged the pregnant wife onto the snow, strangled her, cut off her head, and pitched her body into the San River. That taught her to steal a husband intended for the Mniszechs.'

Roman, obsessed by the history of this violent family, asked what followed, and the old woman rocked back and forth, savoring the gory details of an affair in which she had partic.i.p.ated: 'Mniszech men, indebted to the Cossacks, gave their leader, Berezow, one of their villages in the Ukraine and two thousand extra serfs. His son became Count Berezowski and married one of the Potocki girls. But the interesting part is that the same Mniszech men forced the disgraceful Szczesny Potocki to marry our Jozefina, as originally intended, and Maria Amalia told him at the wedding that if he ever mistreated her, she herself would strangle him.

'Well, the Komorowskis were pretty distressed by this whole affair, as you might imagine ... their beautiful daughter strangled by a bunch of Cossacks and she with child. They brought suit in the Krakow courts for revenge, but the Mniszechs were too powerful. Our side bought off the judges, my husband delivering the money, and the Komorowskis were told in effect to go to h.e.l.l.

'The Komorowskis were not powerless, and although they were not of senior category, they were gentry, so one night three of their young men, I knew them all, crept into the home of Szczesny Potocki and killed our Jozefina. Killed her dead.

'Maria Amalia Bruhl thought for a while that maybe Potocki himself had killed her, and she warned him: "If you ever remarry, you dog, I will personally strangle your wife." I think this scared him, for he never remarried. Instead he took up with a beautiful Greek dancer named Zofya and they are very happy, I'm told.'

Roman was entranced by this story, but Feliks expressed some doubts, which infuriated Urszula, who took him by the hand and led him, with Roman following, to a roughly built but imposing stone church, Santa Maria Magdalena, which dominated Dukla's central square. In its largest chapel she sat Feliks down on a bench from which he could study a professionally carved sarcophagus which stood against a wall. On its base of black marble reposed the gleaming white rec.u.mbent statue of Countess Maria Amalia Mniszchowa, dead at the age of thirty-six, the mother of four children. Across her placid face drifted a benign Christian smile.

There lies one of the most powerful women I was ever to know,' Urszula said. 'Harsh at times but very capable.'

'Is Elzbieta like her?' Roman asked, and Urszula replied: 'All Mniszech women are like her.'

The journey from Dukla well west to Niedzica was an experience totally different from any the young men had previously experienced, for the rugged pathway traversed turbulent mountain streams, gorges and small mountains which at times seemed impa.s.sable. Feliks, noting with growing interest the altered terrain, told Roman one evening as the sun sank behind hills: 'Old Urszula's yarns were a good preparation for land like this,' to which Roman snapped: 'They weren't yarns. They happened.' And it was he who now rode ahead to catch the first glimpse of each new and exciting vista.

Roman was in this preferred position when they entered a picturesque gorge, which apparently was going to run deep into the mountains, and he signaled for Feliks to join him, so that together the two young men led the way into terrain which offered constant surprises: now a sheer wall, now a tumbling rapids in the river whose bank they were following. A local guide employed by the count to lead them through the forbidding land told the young men: 'Any merchant traveling from Budapest to Krakow must pa.s.s along this route, so bandits have always infested our area. They're still here today, even though the Austrian government tries to control them. If we didn't have soldiers with us, whssssst! Out of those hills they'd come and cut our throats.'

Hoping that bandits would attack, so that gunfire would explode about them, the explorers hurried ahead, and as they rounded a bend in the tumbling river Roman cried: There they are!' and in the distance, perched on two ma.s.sive hills, one to the north of the river, the other to the south, rose the twin castles of Niedzica, forming a unique and stunning sight. Had these castles stood in some accessible spot, they would have been famous throughout Europe; hidden away in this remote gorge, they were legends spoken of with respect by all who had actually enjoyed their hospitality.

The Lubonski party rode for half a day with the castles in view, and when they were so close that Roman thought a human voice would alert the inhabitants, the guide discharged a volley, at which men appeared on the ramparts of the southern castle to fire back, and a lively set of echoes reverberated through the gorge, and after a while people began to emerge from the castle, a great train of them, men and women alike, and as they proceeded down a steep footpath to the river's edge, both of the young men thought: Elzbieta Mniszech is among them, and they began to strain their eyes for a sight of her.

Since the pathway up the gorge had followed the north bank of the river, the travelers would have to use a ferry to reach the Niedzica castle on the south, and as they rode up to a rude departure area, four shallow skiffs poled by mountaineers in heavy felt jackets started across the river to fetch them. As soon as the count and his two young charges stepped gingerly into the first skiff, there was much gunfire and shouting from the castle side, and as the skiffs were brought to sh.o.r.e, Roman and Feliks stared at their waiting hosts, who now crowded the landing area.

That's Ignacy Mniszech,' Lubonski told them, pointing to a huge man with long mustaches and head completely shaved, dressed in the old style, 'and that smaller man in green-and-gold jacket is Horvath Janos, the Hungarian who owns the castle. And remember that they give their last names first, so don't call him Pan Horvath.' There were four other large men with heads shaved almost clean, and a larger number dressed in the distinctive fashion of Hungary. Halfway up the stairs leading to the castle waited sixteen soldiers in green uniforms, and far beyond them, some hundred feet higher, began the castle walls.

And then the young suitors saw standing in the shadow of Ignacy his daughter Elzbieta, twenty years old, dressed in a Hungarian peasant costume adorned with heavy braid and wearing big clumsy fur boots. Like most of the Mniszechs, she had dark hair and fair complexion, and as soon as the young men identified her, they both saw her as the next in line of heroic and romantic Mniszech women, but that was perplexing because this one looked as if she was gentle and soft-spoken. When she became aware that the visitors were staring at her, she withdrew behind her father.

A confused bustle developed as the Hungarian gentlemen reached down to help the visitors disembark over the frail, narrow boards that were thrown out from sh.o.r.e to the edges of the skiffs, and when one of Lubonski's men slipped into the water, not deeply, there were cheers. Ignacy himself reached out to grab for Roman, and after he pulled the young man safely ash.o.r.e he gave him a huge bear hug and a kiss on the forehead: 'Welcome to Niedzica, young man, and this is my daughter Elzbieta.'

Not shyly, for she was a mature woman, but with a lovely reserve, Elzbieta extended her two hands and grasped Roman's, and later when she did the same with Feliks that young man realized as if in a blinding flash that he was at last in love. Katarzyna Granicka had been attractive in the general way that all young women are, and Nadzha the Ukrainian without a name had been deeply moving, and the great Lubomirska had been a kind of stimulation, but Elzbieta Mniszech was the culmination of a long journey, and he knew that as long as he lived he would love no other. In his instantaneous infatuation, and perhaps not so instantaneous, for it had been kindled by the preparatory legends of old Urszula, he quite forgot that the more important Roman Lubonski was also looking for a wife and that Roman had been as deeply affected as he.

The next days were enchanted, for this Niedzica castle contained seven round towers, each topped with battlements from which one could look down upon the gorge or across to the northern castle, standing upon its own rocky prominence, and occasionally one could see a caravan of horses slowly following the river on its way to Krakow, and once as Roman and Feliks watched, Elzbieta came to stand with them at the top of the highest tower. 'Right there'-she pointed-'is where the robbers strike if the merchants are caught in the gorge at night.'

'Have you ever seen it happen?' Feliks asked.

'No, it comes in the dark, the attack. But it did happen one night while we were sleeping. Two Austrian Jews left dead.'

Like her great-aunt Urszula, she was a storyteller, and her account of things that had happened in these twin castles kept the young men bewitched, for she spoke in a soft voice, allowing it to rise in excitement as she approached important climaxes: 'My uncle said that these twin castles, remote though they are, summarize Polish history. When the Tatars swept the land in 1241, the frightened Duke of Krakow fled here for hiding. And have you ever heard of Jadwiga, the glorious Hungarian princess who married Jagiello? When she entered Poland to become our queen ... here's where she slept on her first night in our country.

'Our last Swedish king, Jan Kazimir, came hiding here during the Deluge, and my uncle thinks it was here that the grand Jerzy Lubomirski hid the royal treasury when the Swedes conquered everything. One of the False Dmitris hid here, too, before he became czar, and the famous robber-peasant Kostka led his revolution from these castles.

'When I first saw the castles I thought: My G.o.d, this is the end of the world. But it was often the center. And now here we are, at the end or the center, who knows?'

When snow fell, the area became a silent wonderland, with deer moving down from the hills and ice immobilizing the skiffs. Then everyone stayed in the great halls, with fires crackling and stories echoing. Ignacy Mniszech dominated whatever was under way, a huge opinionated man, his head glistening in the firelight, his mustaches threatening anyone who disagreed with him: 'By G.o.d, it would be better for us all if Russia took over what's left, and the part Austria has, too. Catherine knows how to rule.'

Feliks noted that at such moments, without ever raising his own voice, Count Lubonski resisted Ignacy's arguments: 'I think we'll find, in the long run, that Austria is going to govern its part of Poland much better than either of the others.'

When Ignacy stormed, his voice growing louder and louder, Lubonski patiently reb.u.t.ted his arguments, and when he was alone with the young men he reminded them: 'The Mniszechs have always been in the pay of Russia. He has to say what he does.'

Ignacy looked at his best one snowy day when someone suggested a bear hunt in the nearby hills. 'Aren't bears asleep now?' Feliks asked, at which Mniszech bellowed: 'They are, and it'll be our job to wake them up.'

When the hunt was organized-enough gentry and soldiers to storm a castle-Elzbieta announced that she would join it, and at first her father said angrily that she should stay home with the cooks and be d.a.m.ned, but when she persisted, he awakened to the fact that she was eager to be with the young men, to observe how they behaved, and he gave her a huge hug, crying: 'If you get your pretty face clawed, that's your fault.' Feliks said quickly: 'We'll protect her, Pan Ignacy,' and the leader of the hunt roared: 'You better!'

Feliks could still not understand how there could be a bear hunt when there were no bears, but when they were far into the woods and up the side of a mountain, Ignacy called for the brands, and when they were well lighted and throwing smoke, he climbed into several dangerous spots from which he thrust the brands into caves that might contain hibernating bears, and after three disappointments, which left his hands and one side of his face scratched, he found a cave which he judged to be especially promising. Calling for more brands, he stuffed their smoking ends into the entrance, and after a while he shouted: 'By G.o.d, a bear!'

And from the cave, sleepy and distraught, emerged a large brown bear who took one look at Mniszech and retreated in terror, but his cave-refuge was now so filled with smoke that he could not enter it, so in desperation he shied away from Mniszech and started lumbering through the spa.r.s.e and leafless woods. With wild shouts, armed men loosed their dogs and started in pursuit, with Roman and Feliks making a way for Elzbieta, who reveled in the chase.

For about a mile the bear kept ahead of his pursuers, but he was emaciated from his long sleep without food, and in the end he tired so pitifully that the dogs had an easy time with him, sinking their sharp teeth into his flanks, and with four of the dogs tormenting him in this way and making any further progress impossible, the weak creature turned to face his encircling enemies. With wide swipes of first one forepaw and then the other, he punished some of the dogs, sending them away with agonized yelps and bleeding faces, but always the men moved closer, and in the end Ignacy lunged forward with a long pike, transfixing the bear with a mortal thrust. Feliks felt sick at his stomach and showed it.

He did not perform well, either, on the night soldiers trapped two bandits as they attacked peddlers moving from Hungary into Poland, for when the heavily garbed robbers were dragged into the castle, their pockets still crammed with the goods they had stolen, soldiers were encouraged to beat them, and Feliks protested: 'They killed no one.'

'They probably killed those two Jews last month,' Mniszech stormed, and the beatings continued, to Feliks' disgust.

He was ill-prepared for what happened at dawn. Bugles sounded and everyone in the castle a.s.sembled in the large square subtended by the towers, where a rude platform had been erected, hastily rather than st.u.r.dily. It wobbled when one of the soldiers with an axe mounted, and when the first of the robbers was shoved onto it the props almost fell. 'Hold them up!' Mniszech cried, and three soldiers were a.s.signed to each pole to keep it steady.

They failed, and when the man with the axe tried to chop off the head of the first robber, the neck moved and he bungled the job horribly. The second robber, aware that he was going to be treated the same way, stared in horror as the axe came down the third ineffectual time, and fainted.

Feliks almost did the same, but he steeled himself to look as the inert body of the second robber was lifted onto the rickety platform, where the man with the axe prepared to decapitate him. 'Do it right,' Mniszech bellowed, 'or you're next.' Since it was entirely possible that this threat might be carried out, the executioner's hands trembled visibly, but with two powerful and ill-directed blows he managed to sever the head. Feliks could watch no longer, a fact which Elzbieta noted with approval, for she, too, had turned away.

In the week after Christmas, Feliks showed to excellent advantage, for all in the castle journeyed to a small town nearby, where snow in the narrow streets had been packed flat by the feet of many peasants and where teams of swift horses had been harnessed to sleighs of an extraordinary nature. They were so narrow that only one person, always an unmarried girl, could find a place to sit. The runners were waxed and razor-sharp, extending in back as a kind of platform from which the driver, always an unmarried young man, would direct the horses with long reins and an even longer whip of extreme flexibility made in France.

The ride through the narrow streets was not a race, because two sleighs could not run side by side, but it was nevertheless a test of compet.i.tive skill, because each driver whipped his horses to their top speed, with the girl hanging on desperately and forbidden to scream, regardless of what happened. Often the tiny sleighs, little more than a foot wide, upset, throwing the girl into a s...o...b..nk, and sometimes horses in the following sleighs had to leap over her; this was a discredit to her driver, who must keep his sleigh upright no matter what.

Roman Lubonski flatly refused to engage in this perilous sport, for once he had seen a girl disfigured, and his father did not press him to change his mind, for such rides were a Cossack invention and a fallback to more primitive society, but Feliks, seeing a chance to have Elzbieta as his partner, jumped forward to volunteer, and he was given a sleigh with the painted name Firebird, and on its narrow seat he placed Elzbieta, a.s.suring her they would win this compet.i.tion.

Heart galloping like his horses, Feliks whipped his team into the narrow streets, kept them roaring around the corners, waved to the watchers, and headed for the critical pa.s.sage in which two sudden turns were required. 'Hold on!' he warned Elzbieta, and with a skill that astonished the mountain people, who were unaware of his love for horses, he negotiated the dangerous twists and brought his narrow sled and its precious cargo safely home.

The crowd applauded and Roman ran up to shake Feliks' hand, but he was prevented from doing so by Elzbieta, who reached up at this moment to give her driver a triumphal kiss. 'We did it!' she kissed him, but then she saw Roman, and grasping his hand, she said: 'Roman, I'd have fallen off if he hadn't warned, just at the bad part, "Hold on!" ' Together the three walked back to where Mniszech and the count waited to applaud them.

Mniszech and the count waited to applaud them.

Two days after New Year's, men whom Feliks had not seen before and whom Roman did not know either, arrived at Niedzica from two different directions. From Vienna came Count von Starhemberg, descendant of that brave Austrian who had helped defend Vienna against the Turks; the twin castles and all the territory around them were now Austrian property, and Feliks supposed that he had come to inspect it. He was a young man with a sense of command, and Feliks guessed that he was intended for some superior post in the Habsburg government.

The other man was more perplexing: Baron Ottokar von Eschl of Prussia, in his sixties, reserved and proper, and impatient with the normal social niceties. When Elzbieta was presented to him he barely acknowledged her, and he ignored completely her two suitors, for obviously he wished to get down to business after his long and tiring journey to this remote spot. But what that business was, Feliks could not guess.

At the large dinner that launched the unusual meeting, with snow swirling about the parapets and the fires crackling, Von Eschl attracted the young men's attention by speaking almost disrespectfully to Count Lubonski: 'Why can't you Poles discipline this fool Kosciuszko? If he continues, he's going to make serious trouble.'

'We hold him in no regard, Baron,' Lubonski said with obvious conviction.

'But if he keeps talking over your heads ... exciting the peasants-'

Mniszech broke in: 'If the peasants make one move, we'll crush them the way Catherine crushed hers.' And no more was said.

During the following days, while Mniszech and Lubonski met long hours with the two visitors, Feliks Bukowski was left alone to ponder the various shreds of information he had gathered on this disturbing trip, because if his four love affairs had been disorienting, his experience with the problems of Poland had been catastrophic. He was, he always remembered, the son of a man who had given his life to preserve Polish freedom, and Feliks knew precisely what his father's definition of freedom had been: 'Feliks, the time has come when we must move like France and England and America. The freedom of fifteen great families to dictate in all fields isn't good enough any longer. Men should own land. They should work for themselves, not for some castle, and they should pay taxes to the government, not to some d.a.m.ned fool like Przamowski.'

Feliks would never forget Przamowski, of the petty gentry in a nearby village. By every device known in Poland he extracted labor and money from his serfs, charging them duties, which the Bukowskis never did. Przamowski had his own grinding mill, which his peasants must use for an exorbitant fee, and his own brewery, which his serfs had to patronize. One hot summer a peasant in one of Przamowski's cottages refused to buy his ration of beer because neither he nor his wife liked it, so Przamowski came screaming to the cottage: 'You owe me for three gallons!' And when the peasant said: 'But we don't drink beer,' Przamowski in a rage poured the beer on the ground at the man's doorstep. 'Now, G.o.dd.a.m.n you, you have your beer and I want my zlotys,' and the man had to pay.

Feliks could not shake out of his mind his memories of Lancut palace, the endless rooms used a few weeks every other year, the battalions of servants, the gardeners picking at individual pieces of gra.s.s, the eighteen other palaces and the teams of architects perfecting them for visitors who never came. He could see that row of sixty faces about the long table, the faces of men and women who had used Poland to their private advantage, and he began to wonder what the phrase Golden Freedom really meant.

At first he had been disposed to accept Granicki's judgment that Poland had known greatness only because the magnates ruled it well, but he knew that those days were gone, flames flickering in the wind, and that now new solutions were required. Because he held Count Lubonski in such high regard, he had once been prepared to believe that all magnates were like him, but now that he was seeing others at close quarters, he began to suspect that they had always been a robust, thieving, self-centered lot who had given Poland not good government but one of the poorest in Europe. They were eager to defend their country against powerless robbers who lurked in river gorges, but extremely loath to protect it against real robbers like Prussia and Russia, who were invited to conduct their depredations openly.

He had no clear concept at this time of who Tadeusz Kosciuszko might be, but the several things he had heard about the man excited him: he was a patriot who opposed the part.i.tions; he had acquired fresh new ideas in France and America; and he seemed to support the kind of freedom for which Tytus had died. 'I think I would like Kosciuszko,' he told Roman, and the young man replied: 'Better not tell Father so.'

But the day after Feliks formulated these tentative evaluations the men at table spent more than an hour extolling the Golden Freedom, and they made such a good case that Feliks was confused. Count Lubonski reminded his listeners: 'When France was burning the Albigensian heretics, no fire was ever lit in Poland. When England crucified Jews, they lived free in Poland. When religious wars swept over Germany, one horrible decimation after another, Poland remained a bastion of freedom. My father, may G.o.d grant him respite, did authorize the beheadings at Torun, but even he was ashamed and they were never repeated. Freedom did mean freedom for all.'

'It was a remarkable contribution to European government,' Baron von Eschl agreed. 'A nation without a large standing army. A parliament in which the freedom of the intellectual few was protected against the rule of the mob. The constant cultivation of the best families, who ruled with supreme wisdom. Small wonder Russia and Austria and Prussia have always rallied to protect that freedom.'

'When I studied Polish history at the time Austria gained these territories,' Von Starhemberg said, 'I concluded that Poland offered the finest democracy since ancient Athens. The people ruled, not the king. You allowed no dictatorship, no savage rule. In its day your Golden Freedom lit a beacon for the world, and that's why Vienna has always been first to protect it.'