A tribute to Henryk Sienkiewicz. This book picks up where ‘With Fire and the Sword’ (Ogniem I Mieczem) ends, with the intention of giving Jurij Bohun a happy ever after.
Prince Jeremi had been shaving a stake to impale Jurko, but instead had given the Cossack to Jurko’s rival, Jan Skrzetuski. However, Jan could not bear to see a wild steppe creature like Jurko caged. He freed Jurko, who rode off into the sunset.
This story introduces Mira,
escaping being forced into an abusive relationship by her father. She sees Jurko’s rebellious spirit as an
example, and she seeks him out, looking for freedom. Jurko is unwillingly drawn
to her. Meanwhile, Jeremi is not happy with Jan’s mercy. His plans for Jurko, if he ever gets his
hands on the Cossack again, are not pretty.
When Jurko is captured, Mira must take bold and immediate action, if she
hopes to save him. Jurko finds himself subject to a number of revelations which
draw him back to the Commonwealth and unexpected friendships.
This is the 1650s in a bloody civil war. I'm less gory than Sienkiewicz but be aware
Chapter 1
Jurij Bohun had understood every word Jan Skrzetuski did not say. The szlachcic’s eyes said ‘I don’t hate you. I hate how you have hurt Helena. I am letting you go on the condition that you never lay eyes or hands on her again.’
One long, last look at Helena; he must imprint her on his memory. She looked ... pity ... on him. And turned a loving gaze on her husband.
He looked away; he must get used to a life without the sight of her in his eyes. He must return to the Sich; but maybe first to a place where the ghost of Helena growing up still ran, carefree and coltish, before she hated him so much; where the scent of her still lingered, perhaps, elusively on the air.
He mounted up and let Wiatr cavort. Then he cracked his whip by his boot, the sound a message to the horse to run.
Eyes watched the handsome Cossack. He stood as tall as Jan Skrzetuski, who was head and shoulders over the average man, but where the lieutenant was fair, the Cossack was dark. He did not wear his hair in the oseledets or scalp-lock of a Cossack, or even the czupryna, half-shaven style of a Polish nobleman; his hair was loose, collar-length and dark, wild and untamed as a steppe-pony’s mane. His eyes ... the watcher had been close enough to see that they were not blue, or green or grey, but some ever-changing combination of all of them, like the water of the mighty Dniepr in a storm. Grey predominated now, slatey, sombre, hurt, angry, bright even beneath the heavy hoods of his lids in his swarthy, regular face. The watcher suspected it would be possible to drown in such eyes. His lips were generous, mobile and expressive beneath the curtains of his long, neat moustache. The shadow of many hours since a shave sat around his jawline, but in no way marred the overall beauty.
“Who was that beautiful young man your betrothed husband just let go?” asked the young szlachcianka of Helena. The girl had soft reddish hair and green eyes which looked as if they had recently come suspiciously close to tears. Helena looked curiously at her.
“His name is Jurij Bohun. I ... grew up beside him. He wanted to marry me but I met Jan. Bohun is intemperate and cruel. He has kidnapped me more than once.”
The girl’s eyes grew round.
“Then ...He is not as beautiful as he looks? he has raped you? Used that horse whip on you?”
“No, of course not! His birth is unknown but he has lived as a szlachcic...” Helena was shocked at the very thought. . “He ... once he said that if he had been a peasant, he would have put a whip across my shoulders and taken me, but that he is a knight. He thought I despised him and thought him a peasant. And it was not that.”
The other girl laughed bitterly. To have seized a woman he desired and not to use her did not sound intemperate or cruel to her.
“Does that count?” she asked. “His birth or status, I mean. Men of all ranks can be cruel.”
Helena gasped.
“Have you ...?”
“Not yet; my father failed to choose a side, though, and seeks to appease Prince Jeremi by giving me to him ... or anyone he wishes to pass me to.”
“Prince Jeremi is a good and honourable commander.”
The girl shuddered. . The thought of Jeremi’s cold, appraising eyes on her, made her certain that if he used her, she would end up broken, like a wild pony conditioned to obedience by the whip.
“Only to those who are his loyal tools. I fear him.”
“I could talk to him ...”
The girl shook her head vehemently. How could the princess fail to find Jeremi threatening? And yet seemed to fear the almost broken Bohun? The redhead had been formulating an idea, and made her decision. Stormy eyes and sweetly-bowed lips won over eyes like ice and lips like a rat trap.
“The man Bohun ... he looked on you as if you were all his soul. Would he do you a favour?”
“He ... yes, probably.”
“I don’t understand how it came about that he should be in the position to look on you as his,” said the girl.
“Oh! It is easy enough. I grew up with my aunt and five cousins at Rozłogi, which is my inheritance, and they were friendly with Bohun. He is a nameless Cossack, but my cousins did not mind. They joined him on raids against the Turks and Tatars, with his men, as he was acting-colonel of a regiment of Polish Cossacks. He became enamoured of me, and made a deal with my aunt that if he should marry me, she would continue to live in Rozłogi. But Jan ... Pan Skrzetuski ... persuaded her to let me marry him because he does not care if we have Rozłogi or not as he has his own lands.”
“It all sounds very underhanded on the part of your aunt to agree to either, if you ask me,” said the girl.
“That’s as maybe; but I chose Jan. Not Bohun.”
“Would you write me an introduction to Bohun? To ask him to protect me? He looks like a survivor.”
“My dear child! To willingly seek out one like Jurko Bohun? He is ungentle and unkind, and his temper ...”
“And yet you find yourself intact and alive. A man who wears his anger outside is not sly. You admit he has not taken you when he might have done.”
“I hate him.”
“But you do not wish him ill; that speaks something for him.”
“I .... How will you get to him? He might take you under his protection to spite Jeremi ...”
“I’ll arrange that. Please? Write me a letter ... make it ambiguous whether I am boy or girl ...”
“I must be mad,” sighed Helena. “But you look as trapped as I felt with Jurko ... what is your name?”
“Mirosława. But if you write it then if anyone captures me and reads it they will know I am a girl.”
“If I ask him to care for Mirosław ... and say that you will tell him all ...”
Mira, as Mirosława was more familiarly known, nodded.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t suppose we will meet again but I will always think kindly of you.”
“Will not your father stop you?”
“No, he has gone with Jeremi, trying to get his nose far enough up his arse to get a taste of the wine which goes down the prince’s gullet,” said Mira.
Helena was shocked by the child’s crudity, but tittered anyway, because the image was amusing.
Mira spent some time making arrangements. She had always hoped to escape, and had made certain to have money with which to do so. She used a knife to cut off her plaits, and burned them, to conceal her intent. Her father’s razor helped the messiness of the hair over the ears, and the czupryna cut was drastic enough nobody would suspect a girl of using it. She was thankful for her father’s absence. It made it easier to prepare herself, and to remove any excess money or jewellery she might find. It was no hardship to raid the castle laundry and remove from the dried and ironed clothes such items as would be a foundation for any costume. A commoner’s cap and an apron as well as the clothing of some short szlachcic were purloined, and she might risk rummaging through the clothing of the dead to find that the slight szlachcic had also had hussar boots small enough for her. She gave a prayer for the soul of one who must surely have been no more than a boy, riding out for the first time with his father, and thanks to him for his unwitting aid. In shirt, drawers, trousers and boots, she might don other garb over the top to make herself into a boy in a variety of roles. With a gown over, and her head covered, she might weep into a handkerchief in the infirmary, looking for a supposed sweetheart amongst the wounded, and purloining certain supplies.
A little boy in an apron took mead to the jailors of the men captured with Jurko Bohun. The youth had no illusions what their fate would be when Jeremi returned; Jeremi liked impaling Cossacks. Word was he had been shaving a stake for Bohun, and decided instead in a moment of whimsy to hand the Cossack ataman over to his rival in love. He had not reckoned with Jan Skrzetuski being a better man than many.
As the jailors fell asleep the boy exchanged his serving apron for a kontusz and fur hat and unlocked the cell where the two men waited.
“Hurry up, we haven’t got all night,” said the child.
“What is this and who are you?” demanded one of them from the darkness of the cell.
“You can call me Mirek; I’m Jurko Bohun’s ward,” said Mira. “And I call you...?”
“Taras.”
“Oleh.”
“Good, let’s get going, the horses are saddled. Such clothes as they took from you and all that was in your packs are with your horses.”
Oleh scowled.
“Why should we take your orders?”
“I’m so sorry, your grace, my most gracious lord, what arrangements had you made for your escape that your orders outweigh mine?”
“The child has you there, Oleh,” rumbled Taras, a massive older man with a single scalp lock. “And he’s unquestionably a szlachcic; a Kurcewicz perhaps. Bohun was associated with them.”
Mira smiled. It would do.
“Are we going to get moving or are we going to wait for Jeremi to impale us all?” she said.
“We come, little lord,” said Taras. She barely reached his rib cage so it was fair comment. Oleh was shorter, with a shaved head and very long moustaches. Mira led them quickly to the stables where the ostlers were also asleep.
“You’ve been busy,” said Taras.
“I went to work the moment Pan Jan decided he liked Pan Bohun enough to let him go. He’s not like Jeremi, even if he seems to admire the bastard,” said Mira.
“How come you are running about free?” asked Oleh, suspiciously.
“Hostage,” said Mira. “And nobody asked me to give my parole so I’m not breaking any oaths to anyone because I haven’t made any. They think I’m sweet and harmless. I think I have all your gear.”
“Not a bad job little hostage,” said Taras. “And will you be a hostage in Bohun’s hands?”
“Now that makes my head ache,” said Mira. “I ... don’t think I’d be important enough to hand back other than denying a pawn to Jeremi.”
“Are you harmless?” asked Oleh.
“Unfortunately, essentially, yes,” said Mira. “Other than being able to sneak around unnoticed dressed as a scullion and able to get my hands on most of the poppy juice in the castle and enough mead to put out half an army. I have been denied sabre lessons or anything useful. I can ride fairly well and I’ve taught myself a few riding tricks. I’m clever and I can plan. Otherwise I might as well be a little girl with an embroidery needle.”
“Bohun will train you. If he likes you, he’ll hurt you until you improve,” said Taras.
Mira blinked, assimilated, and nodded. Too much gentleness did nobody any favours
“Understood,” she said. She had a sabre; she had taken it from the armoury. It was very plain, and she liked it better than her father’s more ornate blade. The plain blade with plain black iron hilt felt right in her hand.
If she could learn to use it without cutting her own leg off it would be something.
“Two days’ ride, boy, if you can manage to be in the saddle for eight hours a day,” said Taras. “And then we get somewhere we might find Bohun.”
“I’ll manage it,” said Mira. “I will endure.”
They rode, fast to get away, then settling to a trot.
“You want to rise and fall with the horse, boy,” said Taras. “Or else you might never sire children.”
“I see; thanks,” said Mira, who had not learned such refinements of riding in a side saddle.
She endured.
“The lad doesn’t do so badly,” said Taras, critically to his friend.
“Other than being a trifle nice about going off in private about calls of nature,” said Oleh.
“Probably feels embarrassed if things aren’t growing as fast as he feels they ought to,” said Taras. “We’ve all been that age; and he doesn’t know us.”
“At least he brought a shovel so we can cover our traces,” said Oleh. “I still think there’s something odd about him.”
“I’m just expecting Bohun to sort it out,” said Taras.
They rode into a pine forest, open woodland, dotted with streams running down towards the mighty Dniepr. The floor of the forest was largely sandy, and their hoofbeats were muffled on a mix of soft sand and pine needles. The scent of the pine drifted up, sharp and sweet, clean and pleasant. Mira inhaled it with pleasure.
“Not far now,” said Taras, thinking the boy had sighed in tiredness.
Mira smiled at him. She was tired, though she was trying not to show it; in fact the scent of the pine was sufficiently invigorating to make her feel better.
“Thank you,” she said. “I like this forest.”
Taras grinned back. The boy was all in, he thought, with huge purple circles under his eyes; he was doing well, and had the fortitude not to show his exhaustion too obviously. The big Cossack thought that Bohun would appreciate a whelp with as much courage as he had himself.
They came to an abandoned dwór, partly burned, the gate off its hinges. Mira, exhausted by the gruelling ride did not care so long as they were stopping. It was no grand manor house, but then, that was the way houses in the east were built, wooden constructions, raised off the ground, with a veranda, one story, and at first glance no larger than a wealthy peasant’s house. It may have had more to it behind, but eastern szlachta were inclined to show their wealth within, not without, with costly hangings. Being ransacked and partly burned, it probably had little inside, but it was a refuge of sorts.
“It’s worth looking here,” said Taras. “You ever lived here?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Mira. “Someone made a bit of a mess of it.”
“Someone ... ho ho ho, I like you, Panicz, you don’t believe in exaggeration,” said Taras. “I don’t know if there is anyone here ...”
“Someone is here ... there is steam of a horse’s breath at the stable door,” said Mira. “The light is almost gone but there is smoke which obscures the first stars.”
“It almost has to be Bohun, then,” said Taras. “I wondered if you knew the place, if you were related to his foster-family ...”
“You’re fishing for information, Taras,” said Mira. “I’m no relation but I’m wishing myself on Jurij Bohun anyway because when they were handing out impudence, I managed to get a second dose.”
Taras laughed.
“Oh, you are suited to be Bohun’s ward,” he said.
The door of the dwór opened as they clattered into the cobbled yard. He stood, silhouetted on the threshold, sabre in hand, one foot forward and one back, right hand side advanced and weight on the back foot ready to come forward fighting for his life.
“Who is there?” Defiance and challenge coloured the tone. Mira almost gasped. The voice was as beautiful as the face and figure of the Cossack. It was rich, deep and dark, and she wondered if he ever sang.
“Pan Bohun, it’s us,” said Taras. “Oleh and Taras. And ... a boy.”
“A boy? Come in quickly.”
Bohun had not sheathed his sabre when they came in, and quickly closed and bolted the door. He regarded Mira narrowly. Mira swept off her hat, held it to her left shoulder and swept it across her body as she bent right over at the waist in the Polish bow.
Bohun was just as beautiful close up; perhaps more so with the dangerous green sparks in his eyes, all loose limbed, wary and perfectly balanced like a bird of prey hovering.
“Mirek ... Sokoł.... at your disposal, my lord,” she said. “I have a letter to give you.”
Bohun raised his eyebrows and sheathed his sabre.
“Well, I didn’t think that Taras had brought you as his lunch,” he said.
“I wouldn’t presume to be more than a mouthful for him,” said Mira.
“The boy drugged the guards and got us out,” said Oleh. “Said he’s your ward.”
“I don’t recall having a ward,” said Bohun.
“You didn’t; I wished myself on you,” said Mira.
He gave her a penetrating look under hooded lids.
“Why?”
“You look like a survivor.”
“Give me the letter.”
Mira gave him the letter. He read it through and seized her by the throat.
“What is Helena playing at?” he hissed. His eyes bored into hers.
“Answers easier with air to give them,” wheezed Mira, meeting his eyes, scorning to reach up to ineffectually grab his hand as instinct wanted her to do. He was trying to frighten her, and was unaware that having her neck broken by him was less scary than being the plaything of someone like Jeremi, whose reputation was unsavoury and whose eyes were cold wells of cruelty.
“You said ... you little whelp!” Bohun gave a harsh laugh. “You don’t scare easily, do you child? Not like the lovely Helena who is afraid of me.”
“Without good reason as far as I can see, but I don’t know enough to judge,” said Mira.
“The only woman I’ve had cause to kill was her aunt who was an oathbreaker,” said Bohun, harshly. “Welcome to Helena’s home, the only real home I’ve ever had. Homely and windproof, isn’t it?” he gestured up to the blackened beams of the roof, holes rapidly stuffed with rags.
“It’s structurally sound; it would rebuild,” said Mira. “I asked Lady Helena to write the letter for me. I expressed my fears as a ... hostage ... and she agreed. She trusts Jeremi, which in my opinion is a mistake, but that’s not my problem. I asked. She agreed. It was a kindness to a stranger.”
“So, I have no real reason at all to keep you?”
“I can make myself useful. Be your page.”
“Why would I need a page?”
“I’m good at overhearing things. You can use me to run unobtrusive errands. I can cook.”
“How good are you with that?” Bohun indicated her sabre.
“I’m useless; I was never permitted to learn. Taras says if you like me you will introduce me to a world of pain until I’m half capable.”
“I didn’t put it quite like that,” said Taras.
Bohun grinned a rather feral grin.
“The whelp is right though. I respect you more for honesty than for trying to pretend knowledge you do not have. Helena said you would explain more.”
“Yes, but for your ears only.”
“Go and see to the horses,” said Bohun to his men. They went out. He regarded her. “And?” he said.
“My father would not join either side. His lands are now under Jeremi. I’m ... appeasement. My name is Mirosława. Lady Helena said you would probably take me under your protection to spite Jeremi.”
“What a high opinion she has of me,” Bohun half sneered, a slight tic to his face.
“I asked her if you had violated her when you had her in your power. She seemed surprised that anyone would think you might. That told me more about you than her words of despite.”
“You’re an interesting brat, you know; you read what people don’t say.”
“Yes, and you’re busy not saying that you are intrigued enough and amused enough to make me your page. And will teach me the sabre.”
“He wasn’t joking about the world of pain.”
“But I get a skill from it.”
“You do. You can cook, you said?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I took some ducks on the way. If you can turn them into more palatable stew than I can, I’ll be pleased.”
“Any supplies here?”
“The peasants who burned the place winnowed through most of it. You can have a look in the cellars to see if they missed anything.”
