Having renamed the original by this name 'Dance of Nestlings' following on shortly after that left off and covering the spring and summer of 1779, parallel in period to the adventures of Towarzysz Ursyn Kudla and friends.
I know Kudla needs dark l; I type my blurbs direct online. If I had a number pad I could use the ascii code.
Chapter 1
“Papa,” said Mestek, “I am old enough to take on some of your duties to help you. I can ride out to check on some of the spring planting, and see if the peasants need anything after the winter and write a report on the states of their cottages.”
“You reckon you can manage that much writing, hetman?” asked Władysław.
Mestek sighed.
“It is, indeed, an on-er-ous duty,” he savoured the word, “but it is why we are szlachta, to undertake the on-er-ous duties in life.”
“Quite right,” agreed Władysław. “Suppose you take Brzozowe Dolany and I do the rest; and you can see if Olek will give you refreshments.”
“Oh, my lord brother Olek is always good for milk and honey cakes,” said Mestek, brightening. He was very fond of the elderly szlachcic who had adopted three of Mestek’s half-siblings when Władysław and Joanna had adopted him. Indeed, Olek was married to the oldest of Mestek’s half-siblings. On paper, it was a ludicrous match, but Gryfina adored her aged, but indefatigable and joyous, husband. Mestek was well ahead of his age-group at school, and indeed of his class, being a small sponge for knowledge, so having time out to learn how to rule the lands which would one day be his was not going to cause any problems, and moreover, Władysław enjoyed being with his adoptive son. Even when the together was apart, splitting a task between them. Władysław did not want the little boy to stray too close to Stare Dolany, where the child had been born, and where his vicious grandparents and callous mother had met their deaths not so long ago, as their hut burned them and the cruel Ryszard Świnka, who had kidnapped two little girls. Aniela Rutska had had the presence of mind to pretend to be related to Władysław, to have value as a hostage, and Świnka had assumed the pale blonde Paulina Piekarska was related to Władysław’s wife, Joanna, herself as silver-gilt blonde as any of her family. Paulina was Paulina no longer, having been badly burned whilst helping Aniela to escape, and was now Jurijana Sokołowska, adopted by the Falcons, and named for Władysław’s proud ancestor, Jurij, who had also redeemed himself in fire after repenting and atoning for his early treachery. Jurijana and Aniela were inseparable, and were also close friends with two of the other girls in their age group. Jurijana’s former friend, Judyta, did not even recognise Jurijana after her long convalescence as having once been Paulina. More shameful was that neither of her brothers did so. However, the burned-out hut remained, since nobody cared to do more than rob out timbers for burning, and rumours of the ghost of Gostón and his family, bound by their own malevolence, abounded. Mestek had loathed his relatives as much as they had hated him for being the illegitimate spawn of the former lord, but it was still something Władysław wanted to spare him. Distracted by the thoughts of the generosity of Olek, Mestek would not ask why he was not being sent to the region with the fewest peasants and the least work. Gostón had been the furthest flung of the peasants, and if Mestek went that way, he would not need to go near Gostón’s home, but habit would take him there, Władysław suspected.
“Papa?” Mestek interrupted his reverie.
“Yes, Hetman?” said Władysław.
“I went and looked at the burned out cottage already,” said Mestek. “If that was why you were sending me off to our lord-brother Olek’s lands. I sort of needed to see, and I talked about it with Jurijana, and she sort of needed to see, too, so we went together so we could cry without others seeing it.”
“I see,” said Władysław. “Are you angry with me that I did not risk undoing the door and having the flames whoosh out?”
“Oh, no, Papa; they chose to be wicked, and they would have left my lord-lady-sister if it had been the other way about. But... well, you know. Or you wouldn’t have not wanted me to go look.”
“The question is, how did you and Jurijana feel about it?”
“We went and prayed, and then it was better,” said Mestek. “And I prayed that Gostón would be good one day, but if you ask me, it’ll take until Armageddon.”
“Well, I am sure that the Good Lord will not give up hope,” said Władysław. Mestek always made him feel better about things, being so straightforward and sensible for a child who could also be deep at times.
Mestek rode off, feeling happier for having told his father that he had been to see the burned out cottage. It had not been forbidden, exactly, but he had a feeling it might have been if he had asked first. And Papa seemed not to be angry about it at all, and understood. Which was good. Fathers, reflected Mestek, at least, the real fathers, not the seed-merchants like the man who sired him, were special sorts of people.
He was still pondering this when he fell in with Jan Bąk, the son of the village sołtys. A wary friendship of sorts had grown between the boys since Mestek had saved Jan’s sister’s life by plunging into the icy pond for her, and had helped save Jan too from the consequences of disobedience.
“Hey,” said Jan.
“Hey,” said Mestek.
Technically Jan should call Mestek ‘my lord’, and in public he did, but Mestek was more comfortable not making an issue of it.
“What are you up to? Truanting?” asked Jan.
“I’m helping Papa by checking our tenants near Lord Olek, to see if they need anything and if the spring planting is under way,” said Mestek. He got off his pony. “Want to come along? If you’re sołtys one day, knowing everyone would be handy for you.”
“I guess so,” said Jan, who had not really considered it.
“Didn’t they offer you a chance to be a scholar?” asked Mestek.
“I turned it down,” said Jan. “I work pretty hard on Pa’s plot of land, but I don’t think I could work as hard as them boys my age in school! I can read, write, and figure, you know,” he added, hastily.
“You ought to learn Latin so you understand szlachta,” said Mestek. “Having advance warning of what grown-ups are talking about is jolly handy.”
“I guess so,” said Jan. “Whose land is up here?”
“Widow Nowak, who is more or less a pensioner of Lord Olek,” said Mestek. “She grows herbs and is a herbwife. Mama buys from her. It doesn’t cover all her needs, but Lord Olek lets her keep the land for a peppercorn rent, which means a sum so small it would only buy one peppercorn. I asked. He likes that the herbs she grows are good and well-tended, and she and her husband were hard workers when he was alive and young. You give back what you are given,” he added. “I like the widow, she used to tend some of my wounds when I lived with Gostón.”
“They say his ghost walks, but I don’t believe it. Wilk went and put a stone in the mouth of what was left before he and his brother took all the remains to the church, and he did the same for everyone there.”
“They’ll say anything,” said Mestek. “The place needs to be torn down and another cottage built, and the lands tended better. It’s not as dry as Olek’s lands, and you can raise a decent crop there, and right now it’s going wasted. The problem with Stare Dolany is that it’s pretty much a Zaścianek, a village of mud-grubbing szlachta, except there aren’t enough szlachta there to grub the mud efficiently, after the Piekarscy...” he shuddered, having more idea of what the older doctor had done than a child his age had any right knowing. “And Morski and his brother were traitors, and the children gone to live with my lord-brother-Godfather. And the cottages of the men he took lying empty, too, and the lands unused. What we really need are some runaway serfs who will be glad of somewhere to settle with no questions asked; there’s a generation spent for my unlamented sire getting the women killed in childbed and the men killed fighting his battles.”
“Your Pa really expects you to think about things, don’t he?”
“Yes, but I think fairly deeply anyway. I’m going to inherit the land one day, and I need to do my best for all my people. I’ll be grateful for a good sołtys to that end too,” he added.
“Sometimes you seem older than me.”
“It’s one of the heavy duties of being a szlachcic now,” said Mestek, deciding that Jan would not thank him for a beautiful word like ‘onerous.’ “You have to learn to grow up quickly.”
“Hmm, I think your Pa has more idea of duty than privilege, which ain’t like all szlachta,” said Jan. “I’m sorry I thought you were going to show off and be a stuck up little arse.”
“Papa says privilege comes with duty, and one without the other is wrong,” said Mestek. “We get paid to worry harder, he says, and think of things which need doing. I guess I understand why you’d expect me to be an arse. The szlachta most in the village were the Piekarscy.”
Jan sniggered.
“And you have to be at school with them,” he said.
“Idzik isn’t so bad,” said Mestek. “And he is going to be a doctor and be a proper one. Emil... oh, well, there’s nothing really wrong with Emil now he’s away from his father. I don’t like him, but that’s not really his fault. Excuse me,” he added, turning off the road to a cottage. He knocked, and a peasant woman answered.
“My lord!” she said, dropping a bob of a curtsey.
“You haven’t reported that your chimney is awry,” said Mestek.
“Oh, my lord, my husband is waiting for my brother to visit, to fix it,” said the woman.
“Well, it’s time for the spring gales, and that’s not good,” said Mestek.
“I’ll see my brother comes over tomorrow.”
“Good; see you do. Papa will recompense him for his time, and your husband for saving a builder, if they know how to do it. If they don’t and make a mess of it, he will wax ‘scrutiatingly irritable,” he added.
“My brother’s a mason,” said the woman, hastily.
“Oh, that is good,” said Mestek.
Jan was waiting for him.
“Proper little lord, you,” he said.
“The peasants don’t like someone being con-cil-iatory,” said Mestek. “I don’t have to lordling at you. You’re betwixt and between, and Papa wouldn’t have turned a hair at you being a scholar, and he won’t if Maryla wants to. Like any children Wilk and Ryksa have will be reared with us, because Ryksa has one daughter who is a szlachcianka, and Wilk is too clever not to hope his children will be. It’s against all the rules, but some rules are silly.”
Jan digested this.
“Szlachta come in good and bad too,” he said.
“Yes, and we all fart and piss as well,” said Mestek. “We’re just trained to have longer words for breaking wind and urinating.”
Jan laughed.
oOoOo
Joanna was in the village, officiating at the birth of Wilk’s first child, by his wife Ryksa, who had borne Gryfina, the oldest of Mieszko Zabiełło’s bastards, when Ryksa was barely more than a child herself. Her parents had not been kind to her or to Gryfina, and her understanding with Wilk had been broken off. It was a late marriage and pregnancy, but Ryksa was literate, and helped Wilk out as Władysław’s agent in the village, and they lived well enough on the good pay this brought, without being indolent. Joanna had no real worries about Ryksa coming safely through the birth.
“Oh, my lady, you don’t have to....” said Ryksa.
“Yes, I do,” said Joanna. “I’m a healer, and I want to make sure all our people are healthy. Now let me check your dilation, which is embarrassing and uncomfortable to do, so let’s pretend we’re just chatting about things in general. And by the way, you’re further on than I was anticipating with Wilk’s somewhat casual message, so this shouldn’t take too long. Now, tell me if he’s a good husband, because I suspect he’s as doting as my Władek is.”
“I love Wilk, and he’s good to me,” said Ryksa. “And... oooooh!”
“That’s it, you’re doing fine,” said Joanna. “Soon have a little wolf-cub ready to howl at the moon until silenced by the milkbar.”
Half an hour later saw the delivery of a little boy, with a full head of hair, and a good yell.
“What are you calling him?” asked Joanna, tying off the umbilicus.
“Well, lady, we thought he should be ‘Wladysław’ for best, after our good patron, but he’ll be called ‘Wilczek’ I expect, as you say, a little Wolfling.”
“And both very appropriate,” said Joanna.
oOoOo
Mestek met Joanna on their respective ways back to The Mews. Mestek sported a black eye and a degree of mud about his person, and Jan had a thick lip and was limping. Joanna raised an eyebrow.
“Were you lads fighting about anything in particular?” she asked, mildly.
“Oh, we weren’t fighting each other,” said Mestek. “Only Stanek and Majka-Magdza Kapustka live rather a way out of town, and she comes from the town, you know, where Starosta Wronowski lives. And her sister was visiting with a brood of self-important little snot-nosed offspring, and they egged on the Kapustki children, who really are cabbage-heads, and they wanted to roll me in a ditch for looking beautiful. Which is sort of understandable, but I was working, and besides, when big boys of twelve or thirteen set on someone who isn’t yet nine, it’s not very fair, and I didn’t want to use my sabre on children.”
“No, indeed,” said Joanna. “So you fought back, and Jan helped? Well done, Jan.”
“Mestek’s a damn good fighter, my lady,” said Jan, who had been on the receiving end often enough, and took no offence in Joanna assuming that he had been fighting Mestek. Though he did flush in shame that as a bigger boy, he had been guilty of trying to bully his now friend.
“You can always come up to the dwór to learn more techniques, even if you don’t want to be a scholar, Jan,” said Joanna. “I’m happy to know you were there and sorry you took lumps on Mestek’s behalf. Anything that needs treating?”
“Oh, no, my lady,” said Jan. “But Me ... Lord Mestek was going to come back to explain to Pa, so I don’t get thrashed.”
“Oh, of course, very important to stand by your supporters, Mestek,” said Joanna. “I trust the incursion of town snots look worse than you do?”
“Of course, Mama! There were only six of them, and only two of them were much bigger than me, so we had them outnumbered,” said Mestek.
“Of course,” said Joanna.
“Lord Mestek cut sticks from the hedge with his sabre and twirled them like a windmill!” said Jan, who had been impressed.
“Quite right; when the weight and size of your opponent is against you, there is no shame in using weapons,” said Joanna. “Your Aunt Mariola did likewise once, but things got nasty and she had to draw her swords. Mariola is almost as good as I am.”
“I will be as good as Papa was, one day,” said Mestek. “I say! Did Ryksa hatch?”
“There is now a little Wolfling,” said Joanna.
“Excellent!” said Mestek. “He’s almost a second-hand brother.”
