The Cossack 1

 for anyone who missed the comment on this novella at the end of Elopement of Convenience, this is medium hot. Trying to avoid cliches in that genre. 

Sorry, I should have added the blurb as well.  Grace Greville finds herself in Poland with her father, aunt and a couple of servants late in 1646, far enough from England for her Royalist father to avoid his enemies.

Chapter 1

 

“What is it, Grace? Settle down do!” Lady Frideswide said, with a touch of a snap to her voice.

“You feel unsettled too, Aunt Frid,” said Grace. “Or it wouldn’t irritate you as much.”

“Of course I feel unsettled,” said Lady Frideswide. “Swept up as your chaperone to leave the country with your father, fleeing that nasty little man, and carrying dispatches for the king to Poland of all places. I ask you, who has even heard of Poland?”

“Papa,” said Grace. “And us now.”

“Don’t be impertinent,” snapped her aunt.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, it was not meant as such,” said Grace, used to being snapped at for answering questions she only realised afterwards were meant to be rhetorical. “Unfortunately, Papa had not heard enough about Poland to realise that they are nervous about their own borders, and are unlikely to send so much as a regiment of their winged hussars to aid the king against the roundheads.”

She had marvelled at the magnificent-looking ‘angels of death’ with the wings they wore on their backs, and wondered of what practical use such appurtenances might be.

“No, well, we know that now, but at least Prince Jeremy has given us succour for having known your Papa’s kinsman,” said Frideswide. She pronounced his name in the English way with hard J, and Grace knew that the saturnine Polish prince despised her for it. Grace was relieved that the szlachta, the nobles, communicated between themselves in Latin, but she had been working hard to learn Polish as well, if they were to be exiled there, and was becoming moderately fluent, for making herself use it daily. It had been a long journey across Poland to the eastern marches where Jeremi Wiśniowiecki held sway, but they had settled in Kijów, or Kiev as Frideswide insisted on calling it. Here they had been introduced to the social scene, and Grace had felt most uncomfortable. Many Polish noblewomen adopted clothing akin at least to what she was used to, but only some of the men. Many of them wore their fantastic and exotic national costume, boots with metal heels, long buttoned tunics, often in brocade, with long skirts to the tops of the boots, called a żupan. They wore wider coats over the top, with sleeves slit from armpit to cuff, lined with more exotic fabrics or with fur, and left to dangle, and wide skirts slit for riding. These, she learned, were called the kontusz.  However, some kontusze did not have open sleeves, or had short sleeves, which appeared to vary by district, a distinction Grace was as yet uncertain about. Women wore a kontusik, a jacket which might be hip length or longer, without the ornate frogging to the fastening of the male garment, and also lined in fur.  Grace’s father had been persuaded to purchase her one of these garments, warm in the bitter cold of incipient winter here. She also wore a lace cap of the type the local girls wore as it was considered immodest not to do so in the provinces.

“I wish we might live quietly, and not go to dances,” said Grace.

“Why, you ungrateful girl! Most girls love dancing and parties!” cried Frideswide.

“Do they?  I find it all wearing, and indeed ... threatening,” said Grace.

“What foolish start is this! It is very kind of Prince Jeremy to give us so much entertainment!” said Frideswide.

“I feel like a mouse sent to play under the gaze and claws of a cat,” said Grace. “The prince reminds me of Cromwell.”

“You entertain foolish fancies, my child! He could not have been kinder!”

Grace worked on not shuddering. The prince had cold, calculating eyes, and he had been particular to introduce the English girl, with her very English looks, to men of power, as if she was his property to give or dispose. Poles had a wide mix of colouring, but Grace had that combination of looks sometimes found in the melting pot of ancestors which is English. She had the complexion called roseleaf, a magnolia skin with delicately blushed cheeks, big violet-blue eyes and hair best described as silver-gilt. It fell into natural ringlets, which meant she did not have to wear curl-rags for the popular look favoured by Royalist women. Her nose was small and straight, her mouth like a rosebud, and her eyebrows slightly winged after a delicate arch, and dark enough, despite her light hair, to show without the eyebrow darkening paste her aunt carried. Nor did Grace feel a need to resort to whitening her skin or darkening her lips or cheeks, being naturally endowed, though she did assiduously use wash-balls to wash her skin night and morning, and sleep with almond oil rubbed into her face.

“I sometimes wish I was ugly,” she said. “I do not like the way some men look at me; there was a Russian at the last ball, a Prince Ivan something, and I felt dirty.”

“Nonsense, my child, you are fanciful! If you mean Prince Ivan Mihailovitch Kosygin, a most charming man.”

“I did not find him charming in the least, however, madam,” said Grace. “I thought him a man to beware of, and his eyes were cold and cruel, yet burned with some inner fire.”

“What nonsense you talk, sometimes, child,” said Lady Frideswide. “Sometimes I wonder if you are even old enough to be permitted such treats as dances, but if you were a boy, you would have been old enough to ride into battle with your father as a cornet.”

“I’d rather do that than dance,” muttered Grace, mutinously. She went to look out of the window.

Below were a troop of what she knew were Registered Cossacks, wild men from the Eastern marches of the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita.  They wore fur caps, topped with fabric like any Pole, dark blue kontusze, which did not have split sleeves, red trousers which were wide, and flared out over their soft, calf-length boots which turned up slightly at the toe. The captain had fancy frogging on his coat, with tassels at each end of the braid frogs, and he sat on his magnificent chestnut horse head and shoulders above his fellows.  Like all the Cossacks, he sported a long moustache, without a beard, so very different to the western fashion of short, trimmed moustaches and pointed beards; he had gold earrings like a gypsy, and the skin of his sharp-planed, hawk-like face was as swart as any gypsy too, darker even than the famously swarthy looks of the king’s son!

The Cossack captain turned, as if aware of her gaze, and sat staring,  as though frozen, his mouth opening slightly over what looked to be perfect white teeth. Then he shut his mouth quickly, pulled off his hat, sweeping it across his body to bow low from the waist. It revealed that he wore his head shaven, save for a long scalp-lock from the centre of his head.

Grace knew she was staring rudely with as much fixed attention as he had done. She inclined her head back to him. His eyes held hers, dark, rich and liquid as the new chocolate drink she had once had.

“To whom are you bowing?” asked Lady Frideswide, sharply.

“To an officer,” said Grace, meekly.

“Well, I doubt your father would encourage you to look for an alliance with just any officer,” said Frideswide, tartly.

“It’s a long way from replying politely to a bow to considering an alliance,” said Grace, tartness in her voice too.

“Enough of that, miss! Now come away and get on with your embroidery,” said Frideswide.

Grace hid her sigh, and glanced once more at the Cossack, still watching her. His men were laughing. He nodded as she withdrew from the window.

 

oOoOo

 

“Ataman, are you insane?” asked Osyp Sirko, Captain Jermak Orel’s second in command. “Making eyes at a szlachcianka, and she the one we’re to be escorting at that?”

“I have never seen a woman who moved me more,” said Jermak, whose body took no notice of common sense, and reacted to the girl as though he were a boy in his teens. “I am going to steal a kiss with her, to cure me of this,” he added. “She will be quite ordinary once kissed.”

“No good will come of it,” warned Osyp.

“No, probably not,” said Jermak. “I am as hard as iron for her though.”

“It’ll be naught but rust if they impale you for even looking at her,” said Osyp.

“I might even almost not care,” said Jermak. “No, you are right, she will turn out to be frigid as they say all westerners are, and certainly not worth getting caught over. But I am going to kiss her, those little lips are delectable, and she is such a little waxen lalka a doll, hardly real.”

“She’s real all right, and so are Jarema’s plans for her,” said Osyp, using the Ukrainian version of Jeremi’s name.

“Szkoda lalki,” sighed Jermak. Pity the doll.

“Ataman,” said Osyp. “The men are laughing that you fancy her.”

“Let them,” said Jermak. “It’s good natured teasing. I take no offence.”

 

oOoOo

Grace wrestled with her hated embroidery. She stabbed viciously into her crewel work and reflected that it made a good pun in English as it felt a cruel thing to inflict on an active girl. 

“Oh, Grace, don’t stab at it as if it were a joint to be carved,” said Frideswide.  “Who was the officer you inclined your head to?  Did he dance with you?”

“No, aunt, he was not one I danced with,” said Grace. “I inclined my head out of politeness because he bowed to me. I had never seen him before, and I doubt I will ever see him again. Strangers passing courtesies. It is of no import.”

“I find that hard to believe when you treat your sewing so roughly,” said Frideswide.

“Aunt, I treat my sewing roughly because I hate it, because I hate being at the mercy of Prince Jeremi, because I hate being exhibited at balls as though I were a slave on the Ottoman slave blocks, or a prize heifer at market. It makes me nervous, for I have no dowry since we had to escape, and I am worried that Papa will take the first offer for me in marriage from someone who does not care about a dowry, just to get me off his hands and without reference to what I want.”

“Your father has your best interests at heart, and will, if he brokers an arrangement be sure that you will have a suitable husband,” said Frideswide.

“And what if I hate my ‘suitable’ husband?” whispered Grace.

“Oh, my child, you will not hate a husband; to be sure, the matters of the marriage bed are to be borne with patience and endured, but during the daytime, a man may be perfectly amiable, regardless of how humiliating his acts in bed may be.”

“You are not encouraging me to wish to be married at all,” said Grace.

“It is best to fix your mind on something else, and it will soon be over, and then he will be happy and may be beguiled into more interesting discussion,” said Fridewide.  “Of course, some of the women at court are said to actually enjoy it, but they are really little better than harlots, some of them.”

“Why do harlots enjoy it?” asked Grace.

“How you do take me up on things!” said Frideswide. “A woman’s duty is to love her husband, and to be dutiful in the bedroom to give him heirs.  A woman who does such things purely for pleasure is a harlot because she does it without expectation of conception, though God knows, the king and his son have enough bastards so expectation doesn’t always carry the day, nor the use of such herbs as bring down the courses and other ... good heavens, child, you have me babbling nonsense!

“Well, how am I to know if I don’t ask?” said Grace.

“It is for your husband to introduce you to such things,” said Frideswide.

There was the sound of the door opening.  Charles Greville came into the sitting room assigned to the ladies.

“Ah, my dearest daughter,” said Greville.

“I’m your only daughter, Papa,” said Grace. “To be your dearest would be to imply at least two others, one dear, one dearer and one dearest. Aunt Frideswide would take me to task for speaking loosely like that.”

The back of Greville’s neck went red. He was as blond as his daughter, but had pale brows and lighter eyes, and affected a dark wig of curls, shaving his natural hair, thinking dark hair more distinguished.

“That’s enough cheek from you!” he said.

“But Aunt Frideswide says ...”

It might be noted that Grace was being deliberately literal at her father because she knew it annoyed him, and because she considered it unfair that she would be told off for hyperbole but he would not.

“What you are permitted to do, and what I do are two different things,” growled Greville. “Now then, girl! You should behave in accordance with the status of a lucky young woman who is betrothed to be married to a real prince.”

Grace had a bad feeling.

“Papa, I am not betrothed,” she said.

“Oh, but you are, my dear, I have made a deal which will enable me to live well in this benighted land. You are a lucky girl, indeed; I have secured the hand of Prince Ivan ... whatever his name is ... for you!”

The world swayed and went black, and for the first time in her life, with a horrified scream, Grace fainted.