Polonaise (15 page)

‘Yes. But he won't come. Not for their asking. So – not at all. I don't know him well, my husband, but I know him well enough for that. Besides, there is Princess Irene – and his other ladies.'

‘And the Tsar,' said Jenny. ‘Who values his advice, it seems.'

‘His and Czartoryski's. Do you think I should take Casimir to St. Petersburg, Jenny?'

‘I just don't know.' Jenny had noticed that the little Prince was never without a male attendant when he was out in the palace grounds.

‘It's difficult, isn't it? On all kinds of counts. First and foremost,' she blushed, painfully, ‘my husband has not suggested that I go. He has – other occupations. And then, as to Casimir. You know what my hopes are for him. I think he should grow up pure Pole, not half Russian like Czartoryski.'

‘Well, yes, but one visit? Mary Richards writes in glowing terms of the Tsar. Suppose he were to see Casirmir –' They were both convinced that to see their little Prince was to love him. ‘Might not that affect his thinking about Poland's future?'

‘I suppose it might. He'd make Casimir King, as the Empress Catherine did Stanislas Augustus? But Poland needs her own leader, not someone thrust upon her by even the most benevolent of foreigners. I don't think I'll go to Russia,' she decided. ‘And I most certainly will not invite the Prince to come here. But tell the Brotherhood that I will bear in mind what they say.'

‘I can't do that,' Jenny protested. ‘I'm not supposed to have told you.'

‘Of course. Stupid of me. I sometimes think I am hopelessly stupid, Jenny. Well, tell them you have done your best to persuade me! More than that you can hardly do. And – I know! – Ask them what their views are of my taking Casimir to Petersburg.'

‘Clever,' said Jenny.

She put the question in carefully general terms in her next report to the Brotherhood and received an answer with disconcerting speed, confirming the Princess's instinct that their presence loomed very near indeed. ‘They say he should stay here. Whatever that means.' Olga, acting as mouthpiece for the Brotherhood, did not necessarily understand the verbal
messages she carried, and, as she could not read, was equally unaware of what Jenny said in the written reports she transmitted to them. It had been tacitly agreed between them that the less either of them knew about the other's activities, the better for both. But Jenny sometimes worried about Olga, who had grown proud in the comfort of Rendomierz and made no attempt to hide how much she disliked waiting on a foreigner. It was just as well that she was also deadly afraid of the Brotherhood.

The hot summer of 1804 drew into autumn, with the Prince still at Petersburg, the Princess at Rendomierz. Jenny had a rare letter from her oldest sister, describing invasion panic on the south coast of England and telling her how lucky she was to be living safe and in luxury in the centre of Europe where Bonaparte's long arm could not reach. ‘Emperor Napoleon indeed!' Araminta concluded. ‘That's what he wants to be called, but never by us!' Her husband was vicar of a seaside parish in Sussex, and she gave a vivid description of the preparations for swift evacuation if the enemy should land. ‘Only our gallant navy and Lord Nelson stand between us and the monster. That little business of Lady Hamilton is quite forgot, and Nelson is all the cry now.' She went on to complain about the high cost of living. Taxes were up again, to pay for the war, tithes were hard to collect, and their sister Bella's husband had decided he could no longer afford to have Mrs. Peverel stay with them for the six months in the year that had been agreed upon when her husband died. ‘So the burden falls entirely upon us, Jenny. What a mercy that you, at least, are settled in the lap of luxury. And so far from danger, too. With no one to care for but yourself. I cannot begin to tell you how I envy you. Remember us in your prayers.'

‘It's signed at last.' Granville Leveson Gower had dropped in as he so often did to the little house on the English Quay between dining at home and starting on his evening round of diplomatic engagements.

‘The Anglo-Russian Treaty of Consort?' Glynde poured wine for them all. ‘Then let us drink to it. We British provide the money, I take it, and Russia the troops?'

‘That's it. If the Austrians and Prussians come in too, we shall see some action.'

‘Will they?'

‘I wish I was sure of that. Oh well,' he rose. ‘I must be about my duties. Thank God, with this treaty signed at last, I can begin to hope for my recall.'

‘You wish to leave us?'

‘As soon as I decently can. It's all very well for you two free men; I am strangling in protocol. Feel for me! I am off now to make my round of bows and scrapes.'

‘Ending up, as usual, tête à tête with the Princess Galitzin?'

‘The only place in Petersburg, except here, of course, where I have found the kind of talk I am used to.'

‘She's a great beauty, they say.'

‘And a good friend.'

‘I do wonder what Lady Bessborough thinks about it all,' said Glynde, when Granville had left them.

‘I shall never begin to understand you Europeans.' Jan had been a silent listener. ‘Behave like this in the United States and you'd be run out of town on a rail. But here, so far as I can see, Prince Ovinski spends his time with Princess Landowska, while his wife lives at home with the little boy; the Emperor is devoted to Princess Narishkin while Adam Czartoryski –'

‘Is the Empress's devoted friend,' Glynde broke in. ‘Which goes far to explain why Adam has never made the kind of dynastic marriage one would have expected. There's been talk
of a very rich Princess of Courland, but she's little more than a child, they say, and he's not interested.'

‘Nothing but unhappy dynastic marriages,' said Jan, ‘and scandalous liaisons as a result. I do feel we manage things better at home.'

‘Your father has never urged you to marry a rich neighbour's daughter?'

‘Oh, well, fathers!' Glynde could only agree with him. He would soon have been two years in Petersburg and his only word from his own father had been a message, sent by Granville Leveson Gower, urging him to stay.

As the days became longer and the weather more clement, with green showing here and there at last, everyone moved out of Petersburg to
dachas
in the surrounding countryside. The Tsar was mostly at his summer palace of Tsarske-Selo, though he came frequently to Petersburg to oversee the great mobilisation of the Russian army, which was going on apace now that Austria had joined Russia and England in their alliance against Napoleon. Taking after his father in this, Alexander was passionately interested in military matters, particularly in uniforms, and showed signs of meaning to lead his army himself.

‘I do hope wiser counsel prevails.' Granville had invited Glynde and Jan to the country house he had taken on the banks of the Neva some way out of town, but they were all being eaten so horribly by mosquitoes that it seemed doubtful if they would repeat the visit. Besides, Granville's dear friend, Princess Galitzin, had taken a house so close to his that the ensuing outburst of gossip had been too much, even for her. ‘Mind you,' Granville went on now, ‘I do rather selfishly hope that the Tsar decides to go with the army when they move west. It will be a tremendous chance of seeing something more of Russia, and Poland, too, most likely.'

‘You would go too?' asked Glynde.

‘The whole court would. A most appalling nuisance for the army. But one can understand the Tsar's wanting to go. He does tend to imitate Napoleon, and the French government officials go with him on all his campaigns – inevitably, since he's about as absolute a monarch as even the Tsar himself. But he's also absolutely in control. Most unlike Alexander,
who is as hamstrung by protocol as the rest of us. I can imagine him expecting his armies to wait for his permission, or the requisite number of bows given and acknowledged, before they can join battle.' He slapped irritably at a mosquito. ‘I do sometimes wish that Peter the Great had not chosen to build his capital city in this wilderness!' And then, as if to explain his unusual ill-temper, ‘I've been ordered to stay on here, much against my will.'

‘Good news for us,' said Jan.

‘Thank you. Which brings me to the real reason why I asked you to risk marsh fever with me here. I'm hoping to persuade you two gentlemen to come with me if I do go west with the Russian army. I am sure you would find it enormously interesting.'

‘Why, yes,' said Glynde doubtfully. ‘But you know we have no official position. We have not even been presented.'

‘Ridiculous,' said Granville. ‘Just like Sir John. That's to be taken care of. The Tsar himself was asked to have you presented. He says he can't go on for ever gossiping with you on the quay.'

‘Very civil and agreeable he's been,' said Glynde. ‘It's amazing how freely he walks about the city.'

‘And a great headache for his ministers. There's no end to the tales one hears – in strictest confidence, of course – of the trouble they have making good after one of his quixotic gestures. He loves to grant people's wishes; promise them what they want. Someone else has to make it possible. Or explain to them that it's not. And now, he wants you two gentlemen to be made officially known to him.'

‘All that kissing of hands and standing in line,' said Jan, surprising them. ‘I'm sorry, Granville, but not I. You go, Glynde, if you've a mind to, but it's not my line at all.'

And from this stand he would not budge. ‘No. I'm a free-born American. I like the Tsar; I enjoy talking to him when we meet on the quay. He asks very interesting questions. But treat him as if he were God walking on earth I cannot and I will not.' Urged once again by Glynde, he rounded on him. ‘Look, friend, why do you think we Americans fought and beat you twenty-five years ago? It was for just this kind of freedom, and I'm not going back on it now.'

It might not be reasonable, but it was final, and, in the end, the impasse was broken by the intervention of the Tsar himself.

‘We're to meet him and Czartoryski “by accident” in the summer gardens,' Granville told Glynde. ‘Do you think you can manage that?'

‘Oh, I should think so,' Glynde laughed. ‘I begin to think you want our company quite badly on this western journey.'

‘Frankly, I do. And for two reasons, closely connected. I like Adam Czartoryski immensely; he's a man it's a pleasure to work with, but he is also the servant of an autocrat of the most unpredictable kind. I've tried to learn Polish; it's no use; I need you as an interpreter, Jan. I need to know what the Poles really think, not have their views filtered through a Russian's incomprehensible mind. Even in all innocence, Adam could so easily mistranslate them.'

‘Yes, I can see that. Though mind you, all the Polish aristocrats speak French, and a great many of them English as well.'

‘But what about the serfs? They are the cannon fodder, after all. And the middle class, what there is of it. It is always the lower classes war hits hardest.'

‘You speak as if war were certain.'

‘Oh, I think it is. It's just a question of where and when it starts. It may be just as well that Jan has made an informal presentation to the Tsar the only way. There might not be time for anything else.'

‘You leave so soon?'

‘As soon as possible. The Tsar wishes to sound out feeling in what used to be Poland, both Austrian and Russian. And maybe even Prussian too. He's planning to go and stay with Adam's family at Pulawy, in the Austrian zone, and, entirely between ourselves, I rather think he means to make one of his “surprise” visits to Rendomierz while he is there. He's certainly brushing up his Polish. You can see why I need you and Jan. You will come, the two of you?'

‘Oh, I think so.' Did he long, or dread to visit Rendomierz again? He was not sure, but he knew, given the chance, that he must go. He must see both Isobel and the child. His child?

Jan, too, agreed at once. George Richards would look after his business interests, he said, while he joined this irresistible
expedition. ‘It will be good to see Rendomierz again.' Besides, now that they had had their formally accidental introduction to the Tsar, they were being plagued with invitations. ‘It's as if we had been invisible before! I don't know about you, but I'll be glad to get away. Are we going to this solemn “Te Deum” in the cathedral?'

‘I think we should. The Tsar will expect it. And whatever one's beliefs, it should be an interesting spectacle.'

‘All that incense! And nowhere to sit down.'

The Tsar left Petersburg the day after the service to join one of the two Russian armies already deployed in the west of the country. Led by the old General Kutusov who had been so surprisingly successful in Turkey, it was to join the Austrians against Napoleon in the south, while the other one, further north, was poised to invade Prussia if its King refused to cooperate.

‘The trouble there is,' Granville had dropped in to see his friends on the night of the ‘Te Deum', ‘that the Tsar has one of his friendly passions for Queen Louise of Prussia. She's a great charmer, and Alexander has been her faithful servant since they first met; will do anything to avoid injuring her. Poor Adam's on tenterhooks! Every hope for the rebirth of Poland lies in the Russians invading the Polish lands the Prussians hold. He is sure that would mean a mass uprising of Polish serfs, who hate their Prussian masters much more bitterly than the other occupied Poles do their Austrian and Russian ones. A successful nationalist rising there might be a real beginning for a new Kingdom of Poland.'

‘It's a strange position, Czartoryski's,' said Glynde. ‘Foreign Minister to the Tsar, and yet hoping for Poland's freedom from Russia.'

‘It certainly is. Risky, too. When he urged, at dinner the other night, that Alexander take Warsaw and Poznan from Prussia and reconstitute the Kingdom of Poland, Prince Peter Dolgoruky turned on him: “You speak like a Polish Prince, and I speak like a Russian Prince.” The Tsar said nothing, but Adam turned white as a sheet. I think his position hangs on a hair. Anything could happen. It's absolutely maddening that I cannot come with you tomorrow, but I must wait for the courier from England. I'll catch you up in a day or so, I
am sure; he is overdue already. But if anything should detain me, I count on you for every detail of what happens when the Tsar visits Pulawy.'