Ring in the True 1

 this covers the bit passed over in a couple of paragraphs in Potop and more or less picks up a few months on from where we left them, late summer 1656 through to end of summer 1657. I've been tinkering and revising as I go so it may be rough.

Chapter 1

 

“In a season of dust in the trail of the hoofs

And the smell like baked bread as the dried grasses move

So pull on your kontusik and mount up with me

Ride out on the steppe where we’re free

 

Let us ride out together now over the steppe

And all of our duties let us freely forget

Where the song of cicadas sings us to sleep

As we lie beneath velvet nights deep

 

There’s the pipes and the teorbans with songs of yore

And tales the old men tell of exploits of war

And the drumming of hoofs and the beat of my heart

As percussion to play its sweet part

 

Let me be your lover now, burning and bright

I yearn for your love through the darkness of night

You came to bring succour, so trusty and true

You always came to my rescue”

 

Jurij sang the new song he had written for Mira.

“My love, you are so talented,” said Mira. “Thank you; I hear all that you are in every line, my romantic Cossack stallion.”

“I love you,” said Jurij. “And we can’t really abandon duty with that idiot Chmielnicki making an alliance with the Prince of Transylvania and seeking to ally with Sweden. Does he think Alexei of Russia is anything but irritated with the Swedes?  Bohdan is between a rock and a hard place like I said he would be.”

“Ah, but he’s thinking that Tsar Alexei will forgive all if he pulls off that act for which all sins are forgiven.”

“What’s that?”

“Winning,” said Mira. “Sing to me again; your daughter is peevish and I want her to finish eating without chewing pieces out of me and go to sleep.”

“We’ll be at war before she finishes teething,” said Jurij. “I have no doubt we’ll be facing Chmielnicki and Transylvanian Hungarians.”

“Hungarians are supposed to be our brothers.”

“Apparently György Rákóczi ... ruddy Hungarian names, Jerzi Rakócy to us ... has ambitions outside of brotherhood. He shares Karol Gustaw Waza’s religion again, so I suppose one should not be surprised. Why Chmielnicki wants to join with him beats me. At least Catholicism and Orthodoxy have many points of similarity.”

“Jurij, my love, Chmielnicki has given up all pretence of anything save ambition, I fear,” said Mira. “He boasted of a deal which would keep the Rzeczpospolita out of his lands, and I think that has turned his mind away from what should be his primary goal – keeping his Cossacks safe and out from under harsher thumbs than our little father’s.”

“He’s a fool. And because he’s going to cause us trouble, he’s not even a fool I feel sorry for any longer.”

“Well, we can set up a network of spies to return at best speed to report any incursions; and have our mountain men set up ambuscades of rocks in nets, and excavated chambers ready to add gunpowder to disrupt them; and we do what we do best, harry and take supplies.”

“Do you hate the waiting as much as I do?”

“Yes, which is why I’m suggesting preparations,” said Mira.

“Well, crossing the Carpathians near Krosno is the only feasible place,” said Jurij. “So ...” He was well away, planning.

The preparations to do war on an invader would keep her mercurial husband from the brooding he was still too prone to fall into. He also took a quite boyish delight in devising surprises for the enemy, which also stimulated him in other ways, a side effect Mira found very pleasing.

 

***

Meanwhile the two would-be assassins of Jurko, Petrulewicz and Nowak, were settling in. Nowak, having freely admitted that he had been unjustified in believing Jurko responsible for the murders of those captured at the battle of Batoh, was fairly readily accepted. He took the unpleasant duties he was given willingly, and soon found himself invited to dice for jobs with everyone else. Petrulewicz made no trouble, but was inclined to truculence. He listened, however, and learned.

 

***

 

Autumn turned inexorably into winter, and Jurij kept patrols out to watch for envoys and signs of  activity from Chmielnicki. By the time all the leaves had gone, they had collected three envoys,  which was to say two Cossacks and a Hungarian.  Jurij had no illusions that their capture was likely to prevent the eventual alliance between the Hungarian Prince of Transylvania and King Karol Gustaw Waza of Sweden, as the letters hinted, but delaying tactics gave his king more time to chase out Swedes. He forwarded the treaties to Jan Kazimierz, and kept the envoys in comfortable imprisonment.

This was slightly less comfortable than that of his hostage, Eric Björn, a Swedish baron, who had turned himself over for the threatened dishonourable treatment by his superiors of Mira, whom he had captured. Mira had duly escaped, but they had kept Eric, and he had more or less settled in with the other disparate people of Jurij’s Misfits. Eric had a page now; the daughter by her first marriage of Jadwiga, married to Taras, Jurij’s right-hand man.

Eric had as yet no idea that his page was a girl of sixteen, and thought her to be a boy of around twelve. Emerancja appreciated the freedoms of being a boy, but she was not likely to find herself in battle, which suited her well enough at first. Unlike Basia, Jurij’s ward, who as Basek was page to Scypion Brzeziński, who also had no idea his page was a girl. Nominally her brother, Roch, was also his page, but at eleven went daily for lessons from the priest.  Basia learned what mathematics she felt she needed, which was for engineering, gunnery, and killing Swedes.

Eric appreciated the freedoms he had, and had deliberately not asked if he might rejoin his king, being ashamed of the actions of his own countrymen.

 

Iwan and Ilko the two Cossacks kept trying to escape; Zoltan Tóth was content to be a prisoner of war in a comfortable dwór, fed well,  and permitted limited freedom for the giving of his parole.

Eric, however, had another problem when he was approached by Per, the drummer boy he had brought with him when he handed himself over as a voluntary hostage.

“My lord,” said Per, nervously, “I ... I owe you a lot ...”

“No, son,” said Eric. “I owed you care, because your father was my batman, and when he died, I promised him I would see you taken care of.”

“I ... I want to be Polish and fight with Lord Jurij,” said Per. “I’ve always had the run of the camp like any other drummer, and ... and I sort of like someone a lot.”

He blushed furiously as only a boy who had just discovered girls can blush.

“You realise that Lady Mira is not going to permit any of her maids to get ... premature, don’t you?” said Eric.

The boy dug a toe into the ground.

“Well ... I haven’t done anything but look at her, and ... and our hands met when I helped her with the washing,” he confessed.

“It can be heady,” agreed Eric, solemnly. “If you want to be a Pole, I’ve no objection if Lord Jurij has none, and I doubt he cares where you come from so long as you are loyal to him.”

“No, I don’t think he does,” said Per. “We have people from all over, and he’s trying to steal the Hungarian envoy.”

“I don’t put anything past Jurij Sokołowski,” said Eric. “No, I don’t mind if you feel at home here; which is what it’s mostly about, isn’t it?”

Per flushed.

“Yes, my lord,” he said. “Nobody makes any judgements about me, and I only get cuffed for a real offence not because someone is in a bad mood, Lord Jurij doesn’t let them.”

“Yes, it’s interesting, in some ways they appear to an outsider to be an undisciplined rabble, because of their apparent disregard for rank and social level, but he has them under iron control,” said Eric.

Per was also friendly with the boys Roch and Staszek. Staszek, who had impressed Jurij by facing out his whole column alone, was still a little shy about calling his ataman ‘Uncle Jurij’, but he was getting there. Hryhor was the son of the house, but Jurij was uncle to Basia and Roch as well. And had accepted it too from Emerancja.  As one of the young lads who were a part of the regiment of ‘Jurij’s Misfits’, but indulged somewhat by the troops for their youth, Per knew more about what was happening than many of the men, by the expedient of constructive eavesdropping and sharing information. Hryhor Sokołowski could also be persuaded to chatter artlessly about what Papa and Mama had discussed if indulged and included in games and sport. Jurij was inclined to be amused and called the boys his intelligence service.

 

Christmas came and went; and Jurij had not given up the idea of suborning the Hungarian envoy.

“I find it extraordinary that the Prince of Transylvania should ally with the Fisheaters,” Jurij said to Zoltan Tóth. “Poles and Hungarians are brothers; I have Hungarians in my regiment, along with Poles, Silesians, Prussians, Cossacks, Lithuanians, Scots, an Austrian, and a couple of Tatars who got left behind by their fellows and settled down with my lads.”

“You have more alien warriors than any of those you name, you have women,” said Tóth.

“Well, I admit that women can be strange beings,” laughed Jurij. “But I wanted to remind you of the rhyme,

Polak, Węgier — dwa bratanki,

I do szabli, i do szklanki,

Oba zuchy, oba żwawi,

Miech im Pan Bóg błogosławi.

 

Pole and Hungarian brothers twain

Good for sabre or drinking grape and grain

Both valour and liveliness their endeavour

God’s blessings upon them be forever.”

 

“We have a similar rhyme,” said Tóth. “I don’t know why. I compromise my feelings by accepting my captivity but I won’t go against my prince. Stop trying to make me do so, you rogue.”

“I have to try.”

“Granted; you tried. Now break out the mead and play a game of chess with your prisoner.”

Jurij laughed.

He would feel equivocal towards the man if he had turned coat. As he would regarding Eric, who was a prisoner at large, but not one of Jurij’s officers.

A fact which did not entirely please Emerancja as she was learning more.

She approached Eric.

“My lord,” she said, “I want to be a part of the fighting force and ride into war with my friend Basek. And that means I need to be page to a fighting officer. I have enjoyed learning from you, and it is nothing personal.”

Eric smiled, ruefully.

“My drummer and my page both deserting me,” said he.

Emerancja flushed.

“I am not exactly deserting you,” she said. “But you have trained me, and taught me Swedish, and now I want to put my knowledge to use. And wipe out the stain on my line of my father’s treason.”

“I teased you, my lad. Don’t worry. Do you want me to talk to Jurij?”

“No, I will speak to him,” said Emerancja.

 

“Uncle Jurij,” said Emerancja, “Or actually, as it’s sort of official, ataman, may I speak to you?”

“Strictly speaking, you are speaking to me,” said Jurij. “But let me not intimidate you with the niceties of grammar; there was a teacher in the school I attended who did that, and I hated him worse than the ones who merely cuffed one. He had a nasty way about him and a way of lecturing between strokes of the cane, leaving one in awful anticipation.”

“My father used to do something similar,” said Emerancja. “More to Mama than me, if she displeased him, he would tell her he would punish her later.  Punishments were always after the evening meal.”

“My poor child,” said Jurij. “What was it that you wanted?”

“Oh, I am happy now I am free and permitted to be a boy,” said Emerancja. “But I want to be a part of the war,  and wipe out the stain of my father’s treason, and I can’t be that if I’m page to a non-combatant.  My lord has released me from his service to ask you. He did understand.”

“I see,” said Jurij. “And did you have any particular lord in mind?”

“Oleh,” said Emerancja, with a gasp.

“Are you sure?” asked Jurij. “He moans about being treated as a szlachcic. Having a page ...”

“He may not be as big as my step-papa, but he’s very safe,” said Emerancja.

“As safe as a sack full of vipers, my child, like many of us. He knows you are a girl but he won’t make any allowances for it; fewer, in fact, because he knows you’re older than you appear as a boy.” He hesitated. “And if, as I suspect from the way you said his name, you find him ... interesting ... as a man, you must be very sure because he won’t play the daft-like city games of chivalry you may be used to. He’s a Cossack, and Cossacks are straightforward people. And as such he isn’t ... safe... at all.”

“He’s someone who could protect me.”

“He’s a good bit older than you; he’s around my age.”

“So he knows more about how to keep me safe.”

“Very well. We’ll go talk to him about it.”

Oleh was almost twice her age, but in war one seized happiness, and if it came to them, Jurij was not about to deny either a chance at it. And certainly he was not about to deny her the chance to retrieve her family honour.

 

 

“A page, my ataman, my little father? Have you run mad?  Do I look like some soft Lach who needs waiting on?” spluttered Oleh.

“Careful, Oleh, I took a page, once,” said Jurij, narrowing his eyes.

“Well, that was to keep our little lady safe ...”

“And I want you to keep Taras’ stepdaughter safe,” said Jurij. “You’re his nephew; it’s your job. She wants to go to war, not serve a lord who is a hostage.”

“I’m not a ruddy szlachcic! I haven’t had all my brains trickle out of my arse into the feathers up my backside ... oh shit,” he added, remembering suddenly that Jurij and Mira had ridden with wings once.

Jurij was laughing.

“I want to wipe out the stain of dishonour my father’s treachery laid on me, and I can’t think of a better way of irritating him than becoming a Cossack!” said Emerancja.

Oleh looked at her, hard, intently.

“For that, I’ll do it,” he said. “You will work hard enough to go to bed crying.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Emerancja.