Polonaise (24 page)

It had been all the more surprising when he had suddenly
asked, the day before they left, if he might write to her. She thought that she would have said no, but he had chosen to do it in the Princess's presence, and Isobel had answered for her. ‘News from the front. Yes, do, Monsieur Genet. Keep us in touch.' It would have been making too much of it to do anything then but acquiesce, and she had let it go in silence, and, afterwards, been a little glad that the matter had been taken out of her hands. She would decide whether to answer him when she had had his first letter, but she thought she would not.

Rendomierz was
en fête
to receive them. Monsieur Poiret had written a ‘Welcome Home' cantata for the Princess and trained a group of servants to sing it to her. She listened with the good manners she always displayed in public, thanked him graciously, then announced that she was worn out from the journey and would go early to bed. ‘You must be tired, too,' she turned to Jenny. ‘Goodnight. Sleep well.'

It felt like a slap in the face. Jenny always went to her room with her to discuss the events of the day and their plans for tomorrow. Now, suddenly, without reason given, she was excluded, useless again. She had never felt so alone. She was ashamed to be glad when Olga came to tell her that Casimir was overexcited from the journey and no one could get him to settle for the night. ‘He needs a beating – or a father, that child,' said Olga.

Jenny could not help but agree. Since the disconcerting day when Casimir had flown out at Murat, his mother had tended to keep him at arms' length. More and more, he was being brought up in his own rooms by his own group of servants, and Jenny, trying to make up to him for this, had not found it easy, since the Princess was apt to look on attention to him as neglect of herself. But tonight, the Princess had withdrawn, and Jenny was free to sit with Casimir till he fell asleep, telling him the fairy tales he loved: of the Sleeping Beauty and her Prince; of the dragon that lived under the hill in Cracow; or the one she had learned from Olga of Ivan the Tsarevich, who plucked a feather from the firebird's tail and so gained his heart's desire.

‘What's that?' Casimir was sounding sleepy at last.

‘The thing you want most.'

‘I want to be a Prince, and kill a dragon!'

‘Well, you never know.' Jenny eased him down on to his pillow.

The Princess stayed shut up in her rooms, seeing no one but her maid for nearly a week, and life seemed suspended at Rendomierz. On the sixth day, Olga appeared in Jenny's room on one of her usual well-worn pretexts.

‘Well, thank God that's over.' She was replacing used towels with clean ones.

‘What's over?'

‘The Princess's little problem. She didn't tell you? I did wonder. Sent for the wise woman from the village, the night we got here. Surprising it took so long really; old Teresa can usually bring them away in a day. Must have been a tough little thing. Pity really. Casimir could do with a brother.' She moved towards the door, dirty towels over her arm. ‘The question is, do we tell the Brotherhood? They won't be pleased. I suppose that's why the Princess kept it from you. Stupid woman; she should know the whole palace is bound to hear.'

‘But –' Jenny could not believe her ears. ‘Sent for the wise woman, you say? But, how, Olga? No one's been allowed in to see her.'

‘You've been here as long as I have, and don't even know that?' Olga became almost friendly on learning how much better she was informed. ‘Marta told me. There's a tunnel, built by the Princess's father, leads from one of the guest-cottages to a stair that comes out in that big closet of the Princess's. Very useful.'

‘You mean –' But Jenny did not want it spelled out any more. Princess Isobel had found she was carrying Murat's child. Had she at first hoped for a miracle? Murat as King of Poland, and the child acclaimed? And then, what fate for Casimir? Lucky for him that Murat had never said goodbye before he left, never written, made it crystal clear that the affair had been just an affair. ‘So,' she said now. ‘The Brotherhood? If the whole palace knows, I think we'd best tell them, Olga. You've not heard from them since we came here?' The Princess had announced her departure so suddenly that there had been time only to inform the Brotherhood, not consult them. Jenny understood the Princess's reason now.

‘No. They'll be angry – angrier still now.' Olga looked frightened and Jenny knew how she felt.

The Princess sent for her next day; nothing was said; the episode was over. But Jenny knew that, for herself, nothing would ever be quite the same. And she grew increasingly anxious as days passed with no word from the Brotherhood.

Early in March a messenger struggled through a blizzard to Rendomierz with the news that the wolves were out and a child missing from the village. He brought the first letters from Warsaw, one from Anna Potocka for the Princess and one from Paul Genet, whose servant he was. Jenny found it oddly disappointing. It seemed hardly worth writing if he was going to say so little.

‘Good God! She's out of her mind!' The Princess looked up from her own letter.

‘Madame Potocka? Not the baby –'

‘No, no. No trouble there, except that it's a girl. It's that fool, Marie Walewska. Imagine! She's gone off to headquarters, bold as brass, to be with Napoleon! Might as well put an announcement in the
Warsaw Gazette
!'

‘It must mean public disgrace. Oh, poor Marie!'

‘You'd certainly think so. Mind you, it's a deep secret, Anna says, just like those visits of hers to the palace, when he was in Warsaw. Her brother Benedict came for her. A closed coach … every luxury … they were actually leaving the day Anna wrote. Well, she's very brave, or quite mad. Her husband is bound to cast her off now, and she'll never see that son of hers again.'

‘She must be enormously in love.' Jenny could not help feeling a pang of envy. ‘Just imagine throwing everything away for a man who could never marry her. The world well lost for love indeed.'

‘Or crazy. What does your Monsieur Genet say?'

‘Very little. He just wrote to say he was leaving for head-quarters at Osterode.'

‘Doubtless travelling with the Walewska and her brother,' said the Princess.

‘He doesn't say so.'

‘Discreet of him. Yes, Leon, what is it?' Her tone held a
mixture of surprise and affront as her chamberlain irrupted into the room, without leave asked or given.

‘Highness, the Prince! He's not with you?'

‘Why should he be?'

‘He's disappeared, Highness. We can't find him anywhere. He was playing hide and seek with Lech, his servant. All over the palace. Lech's in despair. Not his fault, Highness. He'd been confined indoors so long, the little Prince. They were just playing … The Prince hid. We can't find him. He's nowhere.'

‘Nonsense,' said the Princess. ‘He can't have got out of the palace.' They all looked at the windows, lashed by snow. Did they all, like Jenny, think of the little village boy; the wolves?

‘Of course he can't. There are men at all the doors. But, where is he, Highness?'

‘Where were they playing?'

‘Everywhere. No harm, surely? They'd been in the dining-hall, then, Lech says, he ran upstairs, to your apartments, Highness. When Lech went to look for him, he wasn't there. Not anywhere.'

‘We'll search again.' The Princess was very white. She must, like Jenny, be thinking of the secret passage that emerged into the closet in her dressing-room. ‘Call out all the servants!'

This time, the search was organised, careful, thorough and totally unproductive. Jenny, returning hopelessly for the third time to the main hall from which they all started out, was accosted in French by a man she had never seen before, and realised that he must be Genet's messenger.

‘Mademoiselle Peverel?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's true, the little Prince is missing?'

‘Yes.'

‘I am so sorry. He is quite small, yes?'

‘Four years old.' She would be crying in a moment.

‘The poor little one. But, mademoiselle, this palace is well guarded. He cannot have got out of it by accident. Do not be thinking of a little boy running into the forest, eaten by wolves. It cannot be like that at all. This is not a village child, mademoiselle.'

‘No. You're right. We should be thinking, not just rushing about.'

‘I think so, mademoiselle. And, may I stay? I think my master would wish it. You may be needing a messenger. For Warsaw? For Petersburg? Who knows?'

‘You would go?'

‘If you would trust me. My master told me that I was your servant, if you needed me.'

‘But your errand to Cracow?'

‘Oh, that!' He snapped his fingers.

‘It's an odd kind of victory that calls for such heavy reinforcements,' said Jan as he and Glynde returned from watching the Imperial Guard march through Petersburg on the way to reinforce the Russian army after the battle of Eylau. ‘They've been marching past for three days!'

‘Yes, I'm afraid it must mean great losses.' Glynde was opening a letter. ‘From Granville at last! He thinks the Ministry of All the Talents is done for and the Tories bound to be back in office soon. Then we will see some action.'

‘And Granville back as Ambassador? I must leave you, Glynde. I promised I'd look in on the Richards.'

Left alone, Glynde reread his letter carefully, then looked up, surprised, as a frightened servant announced a messenger from Arakcheyev, the Tsar's formidable right-hand man.

‘You're to come to the palace,' said the man. ‘At once.'

‘So late?'

‘At once.'

‘One moment.' If only Jan were at home. He bent to scribble a quick note to him: ‘I've been summoned to the palace. By Arakcheyev. If I do not return, let the Ambassador know.'

‘Come,' said the man.

Glynde rang for his valet. ‘I've been summoned to the palace. Give this to Mr. Warrington when he returns.' Had he been afraid the messenger might destroy the note?

‘Yes, sir. The palace, you said?'

‘Yes. Arakcheyev.' He thought the man changed colour. But there was no more time. He followed the messenger out to the closed sledge that awaited them.

He was ashamed to be afraid as he prowled the little receiving room that looked out over the ice-bound Neva. At last the door opened and the Tsar himself appeared, still in the uniform in which he had reviewed his Preobrazhensky Guard. ‘Forgive me for keeping you so long! No, no!' He
forestalled Glynde's bow. ‘No ceremony! This is an informal meeting between old friends and travelling companions. It is hardly the weather for chance encounters on the quay, and you are not much of a courtier, Mr. Rendel. So – the mountain has sent for Mahomet. Tell me, what news have you from Lord Leveson Gower? I miss his honest advice. Can we really hope, do you think, for a change of government in England, and his return?'

‘It's possible. I think he might well wish to come …'

‘Unfinished business? Well, let's hope he does, for whatever reason. In the meantime, are you in a mood to travel, Mr. Rendel?'

‘To travel, sire?'

‘Yes. I leave, after the anniversary celebrations next week, for Memel, to confer with my friends the King and Queen of Prussia. Can I prevail on you and your American friend to come with me? I mean to travel fast, I warn you. Too fast for the court, which will follow at leisure, if we reach agreement and I decide to stay.'

He's slipping the leash, Glynde thought. ‘I should be more than honoured to accompany Your Majesty,' he said. ‘But I cannot answer for my friend Warrington, whose affairs may detain him here in Petersburg, though I doubt it.'

‘So do I.' Human for once, the Tsar was immensely likeable.

‘It's too good to be true,' said Jan. ‘He's leaving them all behind and taking us? What it is to be an absolute monarch.'

‘You'll leave your affairs, and come?'

‘I should just about think I will!'

Since the service that celebrated Alexander's accession and six years of rule inevitably also commemorated his father's murder, it was not an occasion for unqualified rejoicing, but in the circumstances, the two young men thought it best to attend. They met Prince Ovinski outside the church. Glynde thought for a moment that he was going to avoid them, then he changed his mind, pushed his way through the crowd and greeted them civilly enough.

‘I hope you have good news of the Princess and your son?' asked Glynde.

‘She is back at Rendomierz. She found the air of Warsaw stifling, she says. I begin to hope that if, as I rather expect,
the Imperial Court moves west, come spring, it may be possible to arrange a family reunion. I long to see my son, who is everything that is promising, according to his mother.' Was there the faintest hint of irony in his tone? Impossible to tell. ‘And you, gentlemen, will you follow the court, if it moves? I think we can expect a great confrontation this summer. An occasion not to be missed.'

‘I wonder just what he meant,' said Jan afterwards. ‘I must say, I admired the way you dodged the question, Glynde. You're wasted outside the diplomatic service.'

The Tsar was as good as his word. His small cortège covered the three hundred and twenty miles to Riga in a mere forty-eight hours. Two days later, they were in Memel, where Frederick William of Prussia and his Queen Louise were reduced to holding court, since Napoleon's armies had captured Berlin and were threatening Königsberg.

They did not stay long at Memel. Sight of Queen Louise, her health destroyed and her beauty tarnished by misfortune, seemed to clear the Tsar's mind, at least for the time being, of its habitual vacillation. Prussia and Russia signed a new convention at Bartenstein, and all the talk was of battle, of victory.