well, my computer repair shop should be back in harness on Monday, so I will be asking them to source me a new keyboard - and when it comes I will be offline for a few days, this is advance warning.
Chapter 22
Marcelina swallowed hard as they entered the village where she was born.
“First stop, the priest for a blessing in your mother church,” said Kajetan. “Once he has seen your marriage lines, nobody can deny that you are married, and your father only makes himself a laughing stock if he declares that you are a whore, as seems to be his favourite accusation levelled at a daughter not married to a man of his choosing.”
“You are so clever, Kaj,” said Marcelina.
The priest stared when he answered the door.
“Can it be Marcelina Hulewiczówna?” he asked.
“Not any more; it’s Lady Marcelina Wolska,” said Kajetan. “My wife wanted a blessing in her mother church. Our marriage lines,” he handed them to the priest.
“For sure! Right away?” asked the priest.
“I’m happy for any of the villagers who wish to attend and witness, and to feast them after,” said Kajetan.
“I should like for my sister, Eugenia, and her husband to be present, if it is possible,” said Marcelina.
“I’ll send the boy,” said the priest. “It will take me about half an hour to prepare.”
“Then I’ll stroll down to the inn to arrange a feast to be laid on,” said Kajetan.
It was not long before Eugenia, softly rounded from pregnancy, fell in the door of the priest’s house, her husband in attendance.
Eugenia flew to hug Marcelina.
“Oh, Marcyśka! How I worried about you!” she said.
“I did write,” said Marcelina.
“Yes, but such a boyish sort of note, that you were safe and well, dressed as a boy, and hiding out from Papa!” said Eugenia. “Papa was in a fearful rage; someone had beaten him thoroughly, and my Sylwuś got it out of him that Konrad had beaten him; which when you consider how badly he used to beat Konrad to ‘toughen him up’ is only fair.”
Sylwuś Sokołnicki smiled lovingly on his wife.
“An excellent example of how not to be a father,” he said.
“And Sylwuś never will be anything but a good father,” said Eugenia, looking adoringly at her husband.
“Well, I’m glad your marriage worked out well,” said Marcelina. “I have been page to my lord, in my boys’ clothes, and then he married me. It’s very nice being married.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Eugenia. “I certainly recommend it. So, you’re having the marriage blessed?”
“Yes, because I want to, but also I am hoping to get the chance to beat up Papa, and in public,” said Marcelina. “I owe him many scores, and I intend to pay them off. Kaj has been teaching me pugilism to that end.”
“My goodness! But you are married, he surely can’t consider insulting you?”
“He called Stefania a whore, remember, when she was widowed? And he did so in front of her newly affianced husband too. And as Klemens is Starosta of Większy-Bydlin he was not amused. And then Konrad beat him up as the starosta could scarcely do so; didn’t he tell you?”
“Yes, he did, but ... well, we shall see,” said Eugenia. “Shall we go over to the church? I see a large and moderately decorative Ulan, whom I assume is your husband.”
“Yes, that describes Kaj,” said Marcelina. “He’s not very fashionable, but I like him that way.”
“Well, apart from being the size of two, he’s much like Sylwuś, so we have similar tastes,” said Eugenia.
Sokołnicki, who had been worrying to hear the young Ulan captain described as ‘decorative’ by his wife, pulled himself up straighter at that.
“His father is bigger,” giggled Marcelina. “But I convinced him I was big enough to care for his delicate little boy.”
“You get on well with his people; I am glad,” said Eugenia. “I get on well with my sister-in-law, now, though it took us a little while to shake down. She’s happy that I don’t despise her choice of lover.”
“I don’t think love has anything to do with outsiders, really,” said Marcelina. “Is it her butler? I heard a rumour.”
“It is, but please don’t speak about it.”
“Huh, do what my Kaj does with peasants he thinks need a hand up, and discover he has a szlachcic father on the wrong side of the blanket, serves her as a szlachetka, and then he can marry her,” said Marcelina.
“Simple, but quite brilliant,” said Sokołnicki. “Now I come to think of it, I had a cousin whom we called uncle, who was both precocious and ... busy. And it’s a far enough relationship to be acceptable. Many thanks!”
“Oh, I’ve been associating with Ravens, and their middle names are all ‘casuisty,’” said Marcelina.
Marcelina found it comforting to have a ceremony of blessing in the church she had attended for most of her life, after such a hurried wedding.
“I don’t regret getting married in a hurry, but I do feel more thoroughly married now,” said Marcelina to Kajetan.
“I am glad, and it is all in the parish register too,” said Kajetan. “And if I am not mistaken, here comes your father.”
“Some busy-body saw fit to inform him, no doubt,” said Marcelina, with distaste. “Step back, love, and talk to our brother-in-law; I have to do this for myself.”
Stefan Hulewicz advanced purposefully. Marcelina recalled Mariola’s description of him, and had to suppress a grin. It had shocked her at the time, but she had become used to the forthright Raven woman since then.
“You whore! How dare you flaunt yourself in the fine feathers won from a life of sin?” howled Hulewicz.
“My husband’s lands are sufficient to clothe his wife decently without him having to resort to a life of sin, you know,” said Marcelina, mildly.
“Husband, you say? I see Ulans, and I know you’ve been whoring yourself to soldiers,” said her father.
Kajetan frowned. He had to step in there.
“Now that’s libel,” he said, crisply. “And if you don’t apologise, you will find that a Captain of Ulans will see you sued for impugning the good name of his wife. I won’t lay hands on an old man, so much smaller than me, however intemperate his tongue, lying shamelessly when everyone here knows that the priest has seen our marriage lines, but I will sue you.”
“You might fool the priest, but I know my daughters, that all of them are just waiting to sin, with their lustful looks, their flirtatious ways! Konrad has taken the rest to pimp but this daughter I shall take away from sin!” he went to grab Marcelina by the wrist.
She eluded him easily, and slapped him.
“You are disgusting,” she said, coldly. “Go home, and stop visiting your own sins on your innocent daughters. And Konrad will sue you too, for impugning the honour of a starosta and his sisters and other wards.”
“You are all sinful and filled with lust! I will teach you modesty and humility!” howled Hulewicz. “You will leave your life of sin, and come home to keep house for me where your place is!”
He took off his belt, and advanced on Marcelina.
“Oh!” said Marcelina. “I understand now; you are a man who is only sexually satisfied by causing pain, and you lusted after all of us, and reached your gratification in beating us, rather than recognising the sin was all yours. You should spend the night in the church on your face praying for deliverance from your unnatural lusts and for forgiveness.”
He howled something incoherent and leaped at her.
Marcelina was no longer where he leaped.
“You have brought this on yourself, you know,” she said, “you have sinned, and you must live with the consequences. I am disappointed in you, and I am afraid I have to do this for the good of your own soul. I am saddened to have to do it.”
She quoted her father’s speech before punishment word for word.
Then she hit him in the solar plexus. He doubled, coughing. He rose, raising the belt, turning it to be buckle towards her. Marcelina swallowed. She had a few buckle-shaped scars. Kajetan ground his teeth.
“You can do it,” he said, quietly enough; but Marcelina heard him. She smiled grimly and began the dancing movements she had learned to take from sabre drill to boxing. And she began to scientifically hit her father.
The priest sidled over to Kajetan.
“This is not seemly...” he said.
“Nor are the buckle-shaped scars on my wife’s little body,” said Kajetan, grimly. “Be fair, father, I’m half his age, four times as fit and twice his size; I can hardly beat him up, can I? Tempting as it is. Look at how Eugenia is cheering her sister on. You have no idea what that man has done to his daughters, and I wager Marcyśka has the right of it, that he beat them to displace his own incestuous lust. I could tell you tales of what that man has done which would give you sleepless nights, which my little love still has nightmares about, and which have left deeper scars on her soul even than those on her body. I am not going to stop her unless she comes close to killing him; she doesn’t need that on her conscience.”
The priest glanced over at Eugenia, who was almost jumping up and down in enthusiasm, shouting encouragement.
A man who invited that much hatred from two very different daughters had to have something wrong with him. He had known it was not a happy household, but plainly not how unhappy.
“They should have come to me,” he murmured.
“And what would you have done? Remonstrated with him for harshness? Do you know what he would have been likely to do? He’d have beaten them and starved them for a week for trying their wicked wiles on with the priest. And yes, the prepubescent ones too. He once beat Marcelina for flirting with a hussar. She was six, and the man had stopped to beg a glass of water.”
The priest crossed himself.
“Dear God!” he said.
“He will have a few things to say to this lost soul one day, I imagine,” said Kajetan, grimly.
Marcelina, now she was in her stride, was having a wonderful time. All the frustration, and fear, pain and humiliation for sins she did not even comprehend could be paid back, and she danced around her father whilst he swung the belt at her, jabbing with short, hard blows. Some of the belt strokes landed, but she scarcely registered them, dodging the one which came dangerously close to her eye, and taking it to her ear instead. Blood flowed copiously from the ear, and the crowd watching gasped. Marcelina hardly noticed.
“Note that such things are not out of the ordinary to my wife, from her father,” said Kajetan.
“Maim him, Our Marcyśka!” screamed Eugenia. “Make him beg like he made us beg! Teach him a lesson!” Tears ran down her face. “Give him what he gave us, hurt him, frighten him, humiliate him!”
Sylwuś put his arms around his wife, shocked. He had known that her childhood had been hard, but he had no idea just how much she hated her father, or how vicious he really was. Eugenia had fewer scars than Marcelina, for being more able to conform, but the few she had disturbed her husband even more now. He held her close, promising himself to encourage her to talk about it, and to try to show her that he loved her to distraction.
Marcelina was half aware of the crowd, and of her sister’s encouragement, but she was mostly in a world of her own. It was gradually dawning on Stefan Hulewicz that his belt end did not deter her, and that her work-hardened hands were causing him pain.
“Stop it! Stop right now, and come home, and pray for forgiveness, and I will not punish you too harshly,” he said. “I am sorrowful that you ...”
Marcelina hit him in the mouth, and he spat blood and teeth.
“You filthy, vicious, incestuous old bastard, you don’t get it,” said Marcelina, coldly. “I never had a home, only a place of torture where I grew up. My home is with my husband. I don’t care if you can’t cook properly, or keep clean – your clothes are a disgrace! – or see to the animals properly, though I spare some sympathy for them. No decent woman will ever come to keep house for you because you are an abuser of women. No husband will let his wife come anywhere near you because to you all women over the age of about three years old are flirting! You are loathsome and disgusting, and you will die in the squalor of your own making. You are not my father, I never had a father!”
Stefan Hulewicz gave up any pretence of doing anything but try to protect himself from the hard, punishing blows from his vengeful daughter. He held his arms over his head, and fell to his knees.
“Please...” he said.
“You laughed when we said that, and said that we had to accept the appropriate amount of punishment,” said Marcelina. She wrenched the belt from his hand, and plied it on his bowed back. Unlike him, she did not use the buckle. Then she threw it to one side. “Phaugh! You disgusting creature,” she said. “I cannot be bothered to correct you anymore; go away and try to understand why we all hate you so much.”
She turned on her heel, looking for Kajetan; and ran to his welcoming arms. Then she sobbed.
“Cry, my little girl, and cleanse yourself of the memory of that shithead,” Kajetan rumbled. Eugenia was crying into her husband’s chest with as much vigour.
“Show’s over,” said Jeremi, crisply. “Give my captain and his wife room if you please, and learn a lesson in how not to be a father from this. The blessing feast is waiting, so move along and enjoy it.”
Nobody went to the aid of Stefan Hulewicz, who was universally unpopular. They left him bleeding from his split lip and groaning from his bruises, lying in the middle of the road, because there was a feast provided by the captain.
The young couple were going to be much toasted, for the beating of Hulewicz as much as for their nuptials!
