The blood angel rides again: 1 the Hussar's Bequest

this being a collections of short stories broken up as seems appropriate covering the time between Irenka and Wojciech being married and Phyllis and Seweryn and then afterwards . An eclectic selection . This first one is along the lines of what do you get if you cross Lord Peter Whimsey with Zorro, oh look, it's Wojciech having been irritated.

1 The Hussar’s Bequest

Father Kamil made his way up the steep path to the hanging valley above the village of Szuwary. He was a sturdy middle aged man who was broad of features with wide capable hands and broad, well-used feet. All priests came from the Szlachta but Kamil’s family were poor, and he had grown up doing farm work. Just because his family owned the land he worked did not mean he worked any less hard than a peasant tenant farmer, and many szlachta would refer to his family contemptuously as hreczkosiej, buckwheat-sowers. But it meant he had the right to become a priest, and he had studied on his own, night after night, to achieve his ambition to serve God. As the priest of a rural village he was quite content, though his youth had seen other missions, and further travel.

The stone and wood house of the Szlachta known as Wojciech Skrzydło and his new bride stood here, and the priest, blowing a little, made his way to the door to knock.  They certainly had a beautiful location for their home, on a small pasture, the valley sweeping up on all sides save the one that dropped away.  A waterfall trickled into it the valley from an ice-cold corrie, further up the mountainside.  The little river laughed through the valley, playing  with its stony  bed, and   gushed out, plunging down from the hanging valley into the  main valley below, where it joined the river and the reed beds which gave the village its name. Kamil appreciated the beauty of the spring day, and the birdsong. Insects fed on the nectar of the meadow flowers, birds fed on the insects, and the odd hawk stooped on smaller birds. Nature was arrayed according to God’s law, and it pleased the priest to feel so much in tune with his surroundings. Any man who lived here must surely see God everywhere about him, he thought.

The door was opened by the housekeeper.  The five szlatcha who lived here employed a man and his wife, and one guard, and a lady’s maid, supplemented with four girls and two lads from the village in the house and stables respectively.

“Father! Come in, come in,” said Beata Fiszerowa. “Which of my lords did you wish to see?”

“Lord Skrzydło ... well they almost all answer to that, don’t they? The last winged hussar,” said Kamil, “But advice from all would do no harm.”

“I’ll tell them,” said Beata.

“Father! You should have sent a boy with a message for us,” said Wojciech, followed by Irene, coming into the room where Beata had carefully ensconced the priest with tea and cakes. “ No need to drag yourself up here.”

“Oh, but I am glad I came, my son; it is a beautiful place, and my first thought was ‘I will lift mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh mine aid,’, and if that aid is more physical in the person of a winged hussar, why, I believe you are sent by God.”

Wojciech crossed himself.

“I try to do God’s will,” he said.

“We have been very grateful to you,” said Kamil.  “And I hope you will be able to help a friend of mine, a priest of a village about six miles away.”

“He has a bandit problem?”

“No, my lord, it’s a little bit more fundamental than that,” said Kamil. “The village was owned by a winged hussar, who recently died. His nephew has inherited the estate but there was a bequest to the church to use as seemed appropriate. The old lord told my colleague, Szymon, that he would be able to see to the education of the village children as he wished but ... no money was left.  And I suspect that the bequest was some kind of puzzle, to keep any moneys from the hands of Lord Ludomir.”

“What was the name of the hussar?” asked Wojciech.

“Pegaz Aleksander Sączski,” said Kamil. 

“Oh, I knew the old war-pegasus,” said Wojciech.  “A man of brilliance and a fondness for military deception. Believed in hiding things in plain sight. Once on exercise we were irritated by but did not feel we could deny a peasant taking his carts full of hay across the field where we were camped. Imagine how we were caught when the sheets covered in hay were thrown off to reveal cannon on the carts.”

“He used to play chess with Szymon too,” said Kamil.

“He used to play chess with my father  when they met up too, and cheated, with a broad smile on his face,”  said Wojciech. “It was understood that he would cheat, but catching him replacing pawns with more important pieces was the trick. I recall one game where he had five knights on the board at once. He used to say ‘If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.”

“I see,” said Kamil. “Does this mean you might have some idea what he has done?”

“What was the bequest?” asked Wojciech.

“His lance; the will said that as a defender of the Faith, he could think of nothing better to give to the church.”

“And  Lord Ludomir Sączski is no hussar?”

“He is a courtier,” said Kamil.

“Ah, I fancy I know what he has done, then,” said Wojciech.  “This new lord  has accepted the bequest?”

“Yes, he has been sneering at Szymon,” said Kamil. “He  is disappointed that his legacy is so small, he expected more, and he looks a very expensive young man. I suspect he lives above his means.”

“We’ll come along to make sure he doesn’t do anything illegal,” said Wojciech. “I don’t think we need to wing up for this, my love.”

“But it’s such fun,” said Irene. “Especially putting the fear of us into nasty people.”

“I don’t need wings to intimidate some second rate szlachetka,” said Wojciech.

“Enlighten me in the subtleties of your insult,” said Irene.

“A poor nobleman barely worth being of the szlachta,” said Wojciech. “And you have the puzzle solved, don’t you?”

“I think so,” said Irene. “I presume the will went something like ‘I bequeath my lance and all attachments to it to the church to be used for the parish, and all else to my nephew.’”

“That more or less covers it, my lady,” said Kamil. “And there was a proud banner with the rearing pegasus on it, which Szymon is proud to display in the church on the spear. He ... uh, he heated it, in case there was hidden writing on the banner.”

“Oh, that was a good idea,” said Wojciech. “I’d not put it past old Sączski to have used that ... if I hadn’t suspected something only a hussar would know. Or those who make the lances. Now I’m not going to tell you until we get there. Do you ride?”

“I can ride, yes,” said Kamil.

“Don’t worry; I’ll pick you a quiet mount, Father,” said Irene.

Father Kamil appreciated being helped onto a quiet chestnut mare, and admired the way the szlachcic and his szlachcianka leaped into the saddles without any apparent need to even use the stirrup to mount. The big roan the lady was riding began to prance.

“Oh stop that you old fool, we aren’t going into battle,” said Irene.

Kamil would have sworn that the horse turned and gave her an injured look. He was used to the young szlachcianka wearing male clothes much of the time, or often with a fitted, long female kontusik rather than a male kontusz. He had also seen her fight brigands, and knew she had taken down a wolf with a pitchfork. It always amazed him that the pretty, slender strawberry blonde was actually a fairly seasoned warrior who rode knee-to-knee into battle next to her big, auburn-haired husband. Dressed in green silk  which matched her eyes, the kontusik embellished with gold embroidery, she looked like a wood nymph, fragile next to the broad-shouldered warrior’s frame of her husband.

“I am still not sure who constitutes your household, my lady,”  he said. He never denied being nosy, but it was good to know one’s neighbours.

“Oh, we’re an extended family, Father,” said Irene. “Wojciech and Jaromar were raised together, and count each other brothers; and Jan, Jaromar’s father, was a second father to Wojciech when his own died. Their family are dependents of his. So, now, is Tomasz Zieliński who raised me, as my own father was much absent; we have formally adopted him. I used to call him Papa Captain, but he has suggested I call him Uncle Tomasz. He’s still more of a father to me than my own father, but I am trying to build more of a relationship with my father and his new wife, so I suppose it is more politic.”

“He was your mother’s lover, wasn’t he?” Kamil made a guess.

“How perspicacious of you.  I don’t disapprove, my father did abduct my mother after all, and she married him more or less under duress and only agreed so she would not have an illegitimate child. My father is a weak man but at least he has had more moral fibre than my late uncle who wanted to bed me to train me as a mistress to the king.”

“My goodness!” said Kamil, startled.

“Now perhaps you see why I fled with Wojciech in the guise of the boy, Walenty,” said Irene.

“Lord Seweryn explained some of it,” said Kamil.

“My husband’s Godbrother did not know all of it to explain,” said Irene. “It isn’t something one shouts from the rooftops, and I did not know Seweryn as well then. But Uncle Tomasz made sure my mother could communicate with the servants by teaching her Polish. She had learned some Russian and of course knew French. Uncle Tomasz speaks Russian and French, so they were able to communicate. I am improving my Latin, but in England girls are rarely taught it.”  She smiled thinly. “And with one personable man being kind to her, Mama clung to him for support, especially after my father had visited. I gained the impression, largely from hindsight, that either he was a clumsy lover or my mother was so tense that he hurt her inadvertently. She loathed him cordially! Certainly after I was born, there was another child who was stillborn, and after that whenever my father had been with her she cried most grievously. I do not think she knew I could hear, for she was careful to present a cheerful front to me.  I talked to her about it when I was twelve or thirteen, and she explained the facts of life to me, and was frank about the difference it made when a lover is considerate.  I love Uncle Tomasz; he could make her laugh when she was sad and missing the family she was torn from.”

“There is much more, usually, to any sin than the bald fact of sinning,” said Father Kamil.

“As to the rest of our household, Lynx helped me to escape and find Wojciech, Jadzia was a maid to the girl we helped after she had been waylaid by bandits, and she is pursuing Lynx with patient determination, and Jerzy and Beata are old family servants of the Skrzydło Banner Płodziewicz family. So we are a clan.”

“But ... doesn’t that make your husband Baron of Płodnadolina? The one who supposedly died in a fire?”

“Yes; but after rescuing Phyllis he regretfully had to come back to life,” said Irene. “Besides, the Barony went to the crown so it doesn’t count. He just wants to fight for justice and be left alone,” she added.

Father Kamil gave a ghost of a smile.

“This is, as it happens, a far-flung property owned previously by a family subordinate to the Płodziewicz family in the banner of Skrzydło. I suspect Lord Jaromar picked it because he knew Lord Wojciech would consider it proper to care for people left without a lord rather than leave it to be carved up with legal squabbles.”

“More than likely,” said Irene. “He has a well-developed sense of responsibility like that.”

They came presently into a  little village, as prosperous as Szuwary, but with an air of wariness and dismay. They rode up to the church, and left the horses there, following Father Kamil in after leaving their weapons, and making their respects to the altar. The little wooden church, plain and simple on the outside, was filled with the most beautiful carvings.

“Kamil!” a short, round priest bustled up. He had the sort of face which ought to fall into natural smiles, when not wreathed with the concern for his current problem.   “My lords! My lady! Thank you for coming. Would ... would you like to see the lance?”

“We’d love to see it,” said Wojciech.

The door opened and a sulky-looking szlachcic came in. One might assume this was the new lord, Ludomir. He wore the traditional clothes of the szlachta, a dark blue silk kontusz over lighter blue żupan, and with a sabre slung under his kontusz sash, but somehow it was with the air of dressing for the country rather than being as much a part of him as his skin. He seemed very aware of the open sleeves of the kontusz as they dangled,  seeming to be unused to the garment.  He wore a small moustache as if he was ashamed of it.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” he demanded petulantly.

“Well, one thing I did on coming into a church was to doff my hat; another was to genuflect, and a third to cross myself, “ said Wojciech. “I also left my sabre at the door like a civilised man.” He stared pointedly at the man’s sabre.

“Are you questioning my authority?”

“I’m questioning your manners, your morals, and your good sense,” said Wojciech.

“What do you mean? You can’t tell me what to do! You have no authority over me!” declared Lord Ludomir Sączski.

Wojciech viewed him with dislike.

“You may be of a religion other than that of Rome, but any man with pretensions to nobility doffs his hat at least in a place of worship, as well as to a man of God and to a lady,” he said. “As to my authority, if you don’t show a bit of respect, I will take you outside and drop you in the horse trough, and then I will duel you. By the time I’ve lopped a few limbs off, I’d say the question would have become academic, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d believe the last Winged Hussar if I were you,” said Kamil, mildly. “His father was a friend of your uncle, so I suggest, my lord, that you leave; unless you wished to pray, in which case your sword is out of place.”

“You are insolent, priest!”

“My Rotmistrz commands me to speak as is necessary without fear or favour; he died for you too, though by the love of the Queen of Poland, sometimes it escapes me why,” said Kamil, indicating the figure of Christ above the altar. “I’ll pray for your soul when the blood angel is through with you.”

“The blood angel? But they say that’s Płodnadolina?” Sączski paled.

Wojciech gave a feral sort of grin. Apparently the man had heard of him. He had, after all, had a certain reputation even before he had faked his own death to become the blood angel.

“At the service of your sabre anywhere and anytime,” said Wojciech, happily.

“I ... I have no interest in my uncle’s bequest to the church.”

“I’ll hold you to that if you try to overturn his will,” said Wojciech. “I don’t mind ending a line which has gone rotten and effete if I have to.”

Father Szymon was making slightly horrified noises.

“Grow up, Szymon; the blood angel fights on God’s army,” said Kamil.

“What makes me think you might once have been a Hussar chaplain?” murmured Wojciech.

Kamil smirked.

The unwanted interloper retreated.

“He hasn’t gone,” said Irene.

“Doesn’t matter; it’s none of his interest.  He said so in front of impeccable witnesses,” said Wojciech.

Father Szymon brought forward the banner forward.

Wojciech caught it below the spherical guard, and raised an eyebrow.

“It didn’t occur to you that it is rather heavy?” he asked.

“I don’t know; I’ve never handled a lance before,” said Szymon.

Kamil gasped.

“I never handled it,” he said. “I apologise if I have dragged you all this way for nothing.”

“Oh, not for nothing,” said Wojciech. “I got to see Sączski crawl on his belly and accept insults from me, it was an entertaining little trip.  Moreover I am on hand as a witness in case he tried to claim anything back.   Ah, look, it’s made to come apart under the guard.  One thing which you may not know about a Hussar lance, Father Szymon, is that they are hollow.  Otherwise they would be too heavy to use.  And if we tip this up ...”

A coruscating stream of bright gems flowed from the hollow lance. Father Szymon crossed himself.

There was a howl of outrage from the shadows near the back of the church.

“No!  My uncle never meant that!  He must have forgotten he had hidden them!” Sączski came running up the aisle.

“I doubt that,” said Wojciech, moving to intercept him. “A clever man, your uncle. And you said you had no interest in your uncle’s bequest. I will bear witness to that.”

“You won’t if you are dead!” Sączski drew his sabre. “And the church burned, and if the girl does as she’s told I’ll let her live as my mistress.” He was almost on Wojciech.

“My lord! Catch!” Irene picked up the business end of the lance and threw it, as she had practised doing for long hours over the winter. Wojciech held up his hand without needing to look away from Sączski, and caught it in time to get the spear tip up to parry the descending blade. Irene picked up a candlestick and went to stand beside her lord with his rather inadequate weapon.  Sączski ignored her, which was a mistake.

“Kamil! Call her away! She will be hurt!” gasped Father Szymon.

Kamil laughed.

“Not she! That’s Skrzydło Irenka Płodziewiczowa, the blood angel’s wife.”

Wojciech had reversed his spear in a rapid spin to catch his adversary in the gut with the heavy spherical hand guard and as the impious szlachta fumbled at his belt for a pistol, Irenka brought the heavy candlestick down on that shoulder, which broke audibly.  Wojciech continued whirling his short spear, parrying and attacking, forcing Sączski backwards.

“I pray there will be no bloodshed in this church!” cried Father Szymon, wringing his hands.

“I fancy that Lord Płodziewicz is going out of his way to make sure there is not,” said Kamil, dryly. “He has had at least three openings where he could have killed Sączski and chose not to do so, for respect for the mother church. He will get him outside and then kill him. Uuugh! I don’t know if that will make it easier or harder!” 

Sączski had cut three feet off the wooden shaft of the lance as Wojciech aimed a blow at him. Irenka was not interfering with her husband’s prey other than to be aware and discouraging him from cheating.  Wojciech held out a hand to her, and she placed the brass candlestick into it.  Wojciech laughed in delight, and started spinning his hands with a weapon in each in the style of one who has learned to fight with two sabres.

“He surely can’t manage the moulinet without a thumb ring ...” gasped Kamil. “He’s using the baroque ornamentation!”

“I haven’t a clue what you mean but ... oh that had to smart,” said Father Szymon, watching in horrified fascination as the candlestick smashed into Sączski’s gut while the spear point parried.

Foot by foot, Wojciech drove his quarry back, and Irene leaped to open the big door so that he could be forced out. And once out of the porch, the whirling pattern shifted slightly, and Wojciech parried with the candlestick and slammed the spear point home through the courtier’s throat.

Then Wojciech crossed himself and knelt to pray.

The priests and Irene joined him.

“I’ll write a report for the king,” said Wojciech.

“Why didn’t you grab up your sabre in the porch, you daft red maverick, you?” asked Irene

“Because Aleksander Sączski, who was a God-fearing man, used his lance to keep his wealth from his nephew; and it seemed his will, with the aid of the Queen of Poland guiding your hand, that the weapon he bequeathed to the church should continue to defend the church,” said Wojciech, simply.

Irene could not quarrel with that.

Wojciech handed the spear back.

“You should have the carpenter fit plugs to join back the bit lopped off and rejoin it to the butt,” he said. “The spear of the old Pegasus did its duty for the last time and deserves to be a treasure of the church as much as the wealth of the gems. Go and put them somewhere safe.”

He bowed, and then he and Irene were heading for their horses.

“I ... I can hardly take it in,” said Szymon. “Who is he, again?”

“That, my friend, is the last winged hussar,” said Kamil.

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