Ninochka's revenge 1

 ok, I ran out of steam on this one but I thought I'd post it as far as it went.  It's a sequel to The Cossack centred around one of the girls they rescued from the Tatars, who was so convinced her boyfriend would come for her and is certain his family and village ataman stopped him. 

She's got a lot to learn. 

Ninochka’s revenge

 

Chapter 1

 

“Kamila, I want revenge,” said Ninochka, to the younger girl whom she had thought of as her sister-in-law before disaster struck.

“I don’t think the Ataman will like it,” said Kamila. “I don’t think I do.”

“Perhaps not, but I ... it isn’t fair,” said Ninochka, tossing her cloud of dark hair.

“Oh, Ninochka, please do not hurt Bohdan; he is not good at disobeying, and nor are Ma and Pa.  It will be the orders of Ilya Shevchenko[1], who is so newly head of the family. He ... he would not go against custom.”

“Then he must learn that those abandoned through custom...” she spat out the word, “...will go against him. I ... I could understand that Bohdan and his parents might be afraid I was ... used ... when the Tatars kidnapped us, but that they do not welcome you back is insupportable.  Especially as Lady Hracja wrote and explained that she and the Ataman had rescued us all in time.”

“I ... I still think it is wrong, Ninochka,” said Kamila. “I grieved for my family as if they were dead, as Aleksandra grieved for her family who were killed by bandits. And we are now the Orzelówny, adopted by Lord Jermak and Lady Hracja, and ... and I am happier than I ever was before.”

Ninochka sighed.

“I am also happy, and I am pleased to learn to be a warrior as well; and I will study until I am good enough, and then I will go to the Sich, attach myself to Shevchenko, and when I have the opportunity I will humiliate him with swordplay and declare who I am and why I have done so. And I will spurn your parents.”

Kamila sighed.

Ninochka could be stubborn at times.

 

 

“You’re very single minded in your training, Ninochka,” remarked Jermak.

“Yes, my lord. I’ve revenge to contemplate,” said Ninochka.

“If you think I’m going to let you go off and raid Tatars, you can think again; even Jurko Bohun isn’t that crazy.  Well, probably not,” said Jermak, referring to his distant kinsman who was a legend through the Ukraine and Poland.

“I want revenge on my betrothed’s family,” said Ninochka.

“Little girl, is that right or fair? You are a warrior and it is plain that your Bohdan was ... not,” said Jermak.

“Oh, not on him, though I shall spurn him and his parents,” said Ninochka. “It will be the family head, Ilya Shevchenko.”

“I know something of him,” said Jermak. “He’s reckoned a man of honour, and a warrior of steel. If you fight him, you will lose.”

“If I humiliate him for fighting a girl, I win even if he kills me.”

“Now, that is foolishness,” snapped Jermak. “I can’t stop you going; but by the Mother of God, I will try to dissuade you. Or at the very least, tell you to be circumspect and go and see what the situation is, not do anything rash.”

“I will leave in the autumn, and learn all I might in the meantime,” said Ninochka, her usually warm brown eyes somehow holding a touch of frost.

Jermak sighed.

He could not hold her, save by making her a prisoner. And that was against his principles.

 

oOoOo

 

By autumn, Poland was at war with the Cossacks under Chmielnicki; and if Jermak hoped that this would deter Ninochka, he was mistaken.

With a heavy heart, and many tears from his wife, Grace, he outfitted the girl as a young Cossack man and sent her on her way with a commander’s kiss on the forehead.

A brave figure she made, having picked one of the best of the horses owned by the brigands, before the excess were sold.  A jaunty young Cossack, riding off to war, her beautiful hair shaved but for a scalp lock, hidden under her fur cap.

 

“It’ll be a miracle if she survives,” said Grace, as the girl rode out of earshot.

“Miracles do happen,” said Jermak. “We will pray for her.  The best we can hope for is that she has a fright or two, loses her nerve, and comes home.”

“I do not think revenge solves things,” sighed Grace.

“No; but there was no telling her that,” said Jermak.

 

oOoOo

 

 

Ninochka felt very alone, but reminded herself that she had her vengeance to keep her company. The Tatar incursions into the Ukraine and even deep into Poland were frequent, violent, and considered inevitable.  It was horrible, thought Ninochka, that it was something so routine that those stolen away were written off as dead to their families as they were assumed to be ‘spoiled’ from the moment of their kidnap. Nobody generally rescued those taken, and her own experiences, though horrible, and costing the life of her little brother, had been relatively benign.  Jermak did not hold any prejudice against those taken by Tatars, and had welcomed those spurned by their Cossack kindred, and praised the Polish village which had been raided for accepting their lost children back.

 There were several days of riding ahead of her, racing the onset of rasputitsa, the season of mud, crossing eastern Poland, and then on into the wild fields to find Shevchenko. She would have to negotiate crossing lines of hostility, and then hope to find him, and then be accepted into his service ... even the preliminaries were enough to make her quail.

She would not give up and go home, admitting defeat from her own treacherous cowardice. She would find him, and get close enough to him to learn all about him, and then ... well, if she got close enough to him, she would know the best way to defeat him, whether it was better to kill him or just humiliate him; or maybe take him prisoner and give him to Prince Jeremi.

 

The brooding youth who moved like a cat was given a wide berth in the inns where Ninochka stayed. Whether she was a loyal Pole going to join up, or a Cossack seeking to regain the Sich, nobody cared much, and old women crossed themselves as she passed, and old men spat, and were glad when she moved on at her restless pace.

Kijów was essentially closed; she must cross the mighty Dniepr by another route. It was a good time of year, before the rains came in earnest, to cross upstream of the rapids, and this she did, her sturdy steed swimming the wide river. Nobody challenged her; anyone who might have done so was so caught up in the rebellion of Chmielnicki, she could travel without meeting a soul, unless she came close to the bloody slaughter of the uprising.

She rode across the steppe on a fine, bright autumnal day, the grass seed smelling of baking bread beneath the still hot rays of the sun, and came at last to her erstwhile village. The raid had been swift and vicious, seizing children from outlying houses, whilst the adults were meeting to discuss something. She could not even bring to mind what it was, but the two burned out shells of houses were a reminder. One had been her own house; the other had been that of the parents of Lidija, Bozena and Nazar, now adopted by Jermak’s second in command and his English wife. Bohdan’s parents’ house had been repaired; there were some signs of burning, but they had robbed out the other two houses to make their own hut secure for the rest of the winter.

She could not resist going into what was left of what had once been her home.

There was nothing of any real value there, of course. Her grandmother had been killed outright, the moment the Tatars broke in, seizing her and her little brother, and Ninochka went over to where once the hearth had been, falling to her knees in the thick layer of charcoal to pray for her grandmother’s soul, and ask for her blessing. Putting her hand down to rise as she finished her prayers, she felt something cold and hard under her hand.

She dug, quickly; it was her grandmother’s crucifix! They would have taken what they could of the body to bury, but presumably it was so badly burned, the crucifix had fallen off.  She picked it up, and sobbed, as she cradled it to her. She could almost hear her grandmother’s voice, telling the story she had heard many times.

“Your grandpapa, Trofim, for whom your brother is named, was not well off, but he wanted to catch my attention to court me. He did not know I had noticed him, but I never spoke of it of course; a girl has to make a man show his interest before she will admit that she is interested too. Well, he had picked up a trophy from the Kosiński uprising; the nasal from a hussar helmet. It was delicately chased with gold set into the steel.  He knew no smithing, but he set out to learn enough, and from that nasal, he cut a cross, and offered it to me, on one knee. Oh! He was a dashing young man.”

Ninochka crossed herself, and kissed the beautiful cross, miraculously clear of rust, despite being buried for many months. She was unaware she had crossed herself in the Polish manner, having grown used to it, and put her grandmother’s cross on under her shirt. Somehow her pledge to seek vengeance was bound up with her prayers for her grandmother now, in a rather muddled fashion; and given the opportunity to ride against the Tatars, she would gladly have done so at this point. But Ilya Shevchenko was an attainable goal.

 

Ninochka exited the ruins of her family’s cottage, blissfully unaware of whether she might be observed, and rode on into the village.

 

oOoOo

 

Ilya Shevchenko was a young man, who had made his name fighting Tatars and Turks, and he had returned to his home village as village ataman and to see to the lands and tenants when his father died. It also made him head of an extended family.  It also enabled him to defer his decision to join the uprising of Chmielnicki.

Shevchenko had every belief in the rightness of Chmielnicki’s cause. However, he strongly suspected that going to war over the grievances of Cossacks would only end badly. He would follow Chmielnicki, of course, when it came down to it, but with a heavy heart.

In the meantime, his village was depleted by a Tatar raid at the end of the last winter, a raid effected whilst most of the adults of the village were celebrating his arrival to take the reins of duty. He was sore about that, and felt it was almost his fault that five youngsters from the edge of the village had been seized so easily, and several older people killed. He sighed.  Lands lay fallow with fewer people to till them, and the village still smarted under the loss. He returned to the village centre after having ridden out, and was confronted by a slender youth on a good horse, the boy’s upper lip shy of any growth as yet.

“My lord Ilya Shevchenko?” said the youth.

A ghost of a smile touched the landowner’s face.

“That’s a very Polish way of putting things,” he said.

“I have spent time in Poland,” said the youth.  “My father owed a debt of honour to yours, and he told me I should seek you out to repay it by being your page.”

“Page? I am not effete. I need no page,” said Shevchenko.

The boy, Ninochka, frowned.

“I could be useful,” she said. “I am literate.”

“Well that adds to your usefulness,” said Shevchenko. “Are you any good with figures?”

“I ... I can keep accounts,” said Ninochka. “I can calculate charges for cannon, too.”

“Well educated,” said Shevchenko. “Very well; my father left his papers in something of a muddle and I am still trying to sort them out. You can move into my household and aid me in that. And I’ll train you in the Cossack way in return, suit you?”

“Yes, my lord, eminently,” said Ninochka.

“I wish you will not call me that,” said Shevchenko.

“I can hardly call you ‘my lady,’” retorted Ninochka, tartly.

Shevchenko laughed.

“You can call me ‘Ataman’ if you like,” he said. 

“Yes, Ataman,” said Ninochka.

“And what is your name?” asked Shevchenko. “I can scarcely call you ‘boy’ all the time.”

“Antin,” said Ninochka, who had been christened ‘Antonina’ for her father.  “Antin Orel.” The Ataman had, after all, offered his name as well as his home to the refugees.

 

“Good,” said Shevchenko. “You have a good horse.”

“Yes, ataman,” said Ninochka.                                                                           

“Well, let us go to my home, and stable him, and you can become acquainted with the place.”

 

 

Shevchenko’s home was surrounded by a stockade like a dwór, and built in an L-shape, one leg being the stables, and the other the house. It was a house of log construction, but Ninochka knew that outward appearances could be deceiving.

It was not westernised within, as was the dwór Jermak occupied, but there was planking over the inside walls to ceil it from draughts, as well as the gaps between the logs looking from the outside to have been well plugged. No plaster adorned the ceilings, which were honest beams; she had seen a few windows in the roof.  Shevchenko showed her around; a kitchen with a pump, and a trapdoor to a cellar, a reception room for village business, a room with more books in than Ninochka had seen in her life, which had an air of being lived in, and the other side of the vestibule, two bedrooms. The kitchen was at the back of the house with small, high windows for light, but not easy to access by anyone climbing the stockade at the back. It was behind the vestibule which was also a reception room.

“My servants sleep upstairs and find it more comfortable to do so,” said Shevchenko. “I will not invade their territory to show it to you. You are not a servant; so you will use the guest bedroom, and if I have guests, you will have to move in with me.”

“Yes, ataman,” said Ninochka, hoping they would never have guests.

Well, she had arrived, and she was going to be close to him. Perhaps uncomfortably close.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Ylja Szewczenko? I’m using the transliteration into English from cyrillics.