wings of diplomacy 1

 I have posted this as a sample before but just to get started again, here it is complete.

Chapter 1

 

“I’ve changed my mind, tell him to go back!” said Irene trying to pull a comic face at her husband through her labour.

Wojciech held her hands, and Jan, as  imperturbable over delivering his foster-son’s first child as over delivering a foal, called calm instructions to the girl he loved as dearly as if she was his own daughter.

“It’s just a trifle late for that” Wojciech said dryly. “I’m afraid he already has the order to charge.”

“Stop bellyaching about it and push,” said Jan.

Wojciech George came into the world protesting over the hurry but quite capable of fastening onto a nipple with tenacity.  Although the Polish for George was Jerzy, Irene wanted her son to have a name which would do in England; and St. George, that quintessentially English saint, shared his day with St. Wojciech.  Somehow it seemed appropriate.

Wojciech gazed proudly down at his wife and son.

“He is beautiful!” he said.

“He’s red and wrinkled and looks like a pickled plum” said Irene, cheerfully kissing her pickled plum adoringly.  “Feliks, you shall be first to hold your brother” and she passed him over.

Feliks was adopted; he had been Wojciech’s first friend when Wojciech had set out to be the last winged hussar, and had attracted Wojciech’s notice by the fellow feeling of sharing hair the colour of a new horse chestnut. Orphaned, he had gone to find his winged hussar, and had been adopted, Wojciech talked by Irene into laying aside his scruples over blurring the distance between peasant and szlachta.

Their adopted daughter, Aleksandra,  was the child of a szlachcic ruined by debt occasioned by borrowing to care for his sick wife. He had turned to crime, and Wojciech had duelled him to give him an honourable death. Ala, the name she had chosen for herself rather than the more conventional ‘Ola’,  had not forgotten her Papa, but called Wojciech ‘Papa’ not ‘New Papa’ now, and was happy for Irene to be ‘Mama’. She would have to know more, one day; but one day was a long time away. Feliks was  her partisan supporter, and he would be of his adoptive brother.  Wojciech insisted that he have time off the school he attended with Irene’s brother Błażej and their friends so he could meet his little brother or sister, and know that he was still part of the family.

Feliks appreciated that.

“Oh, my innocent brother, so happy and peaceful,” he murmured. “Enjoy it while you can; you have to be a baron one day.”

“Poor little babe,” said Wojciech, “Let him slumber in blissful ignorance or I’ll foist it onto you.”

“Now there’s no need to get nasty, Papa,” grinned Feliks.

 

oOoOo

 

The little family was settling down to a feeding routine when a letter arrived from Warszawa.

 

To our most beloved agent and force of arms on the border, the last winged hussar, greetings.

Wojciech, I would like you to come to Warszawa as soon as you might, with your good lady and anyone else you feel you need, ready to undertake a journey on my behalf.

Stanisław August.

 

“Damn, damn, double damn and all the devils in hell and the imps in purgatory!” said Wojciech. He continued cursing for two straight minutes. Irenka stared, open mouthed.

“Papa never swears,” said Feliks, in awe.

“No, but apparently when he does so, he does it in spades,” said Irene.

“Letter from the king; I am sorry to sully your ears,” said Wojciech, tossing it to his wife. He knelt to beg forgiveness from God for swearing. Irene read it.

“He means England, I wager,” said Irene.

Wojciech considered.

“Do you think so, Irenka?” he asked.

“He specified me. I think that is suggestive.”

“Well! Yes, I suppose so.”

 

oOoOo

 

 

 

Wojciech entered the gold and white ballroom of the  palace with his usual softly heavy tread, and Irenka on his arm. Compared to many, they were conservatively clad, and Wojciech clung to Sarmatian garb rather than trick himself out in the current fashion.  Irene, used to western clothes, wore a panniered ballgown in a claret so deep that it appeared black in the folds, deep enough not to clash with either her hair or that of her husband’s effulgent locks. His kontusz was of similar shade, in brocade wrought with leaves in red, orange and gold, making him a creature of blood and fire. It was an effect they had discussed to help to further the legend of the Last Winged Hussar, the Blood Angel. His żupan was black, touched with gold, and he wore red hussar boots over black trousers, and a black kontusz sash, heavy with gold bullion. His ruby signet gleamed on his finger, and rubies matching it in shade adorned Irenka’s neck. She was unpowdered, and her strawberry-blonde hair was close in colour to the red-gold on Wojciech’s kontusz.

There was a gasp from a youth who had, until that moment, considered himself very fine in his new Western clothes. He was a handsome youth, and knew how to dress for his colouring, in a rich, dark blue jacket, heavy with gold lace across the chest and down the sides to where it cut away, over a velvet waistcoat in the same blue, voided in a pattern of fleurs-de-lis showing the gold silken ground of the cloth. His breeches were in a cream satin, suggesting gold, but not sufficiently  overdone to be vulgar. It was about the colour of his pale golden locks, which shone through his hair powder in places, caught into a queue at the base of his neck, the black solitaire exquisitely tied over his snowy cravat.

“Hellfire!” he exclaimed. “Płodziewicz!”

“And what do you have against my Godbrother, whelp?” asked the big man whose even paler blond hair was not powdered.

The boy’s father sank his face into his hands as the lad opened his mouth.

“He’s a big bully!” said the boy. “He made my father thrash me, but how was I to know he was a szlachcic? He was digging!”

“I dig sometimes too,” said Seweryn Krasiński, still more amused than angered. “A soldier has to know how to deal with bodily waste, you know. And a good landowner helps his peasants in times when all hands are needed on the land, like at harvest. Didn’t your father teach you that?”

“But ... but it’s what peasants are for!” squealed young Zdziarski, as Wojciech approached and plainly recognised the youth who had impeded his rescue of the carter who had brought his adoptive son Feliks to him, who had been buried in a landslide.

“Still has a voice like a magpie with a stick up his arse,” he said. “Don’t go picking on Lady Filka Krasińska any more than on my wife; those of us who are allied to the Raven banner don’t have meek wives.  Filka put three war rockets through the last person who irritated her.”

“Made the devil of a mess,” said Seweryn.

“I couldn’t tell by the time you’d walked through what was left,” said Wojciech.

“I wouldn’t have done if I’d known,” said Seweryn defensively. “What are you doing in Warszawa?”

“I don’t know; I got a letter asking me to attend the king so I came,” said Wojciech. “Well, I know in broad, he wants me to be diplomatic in England.”

“You?” said Seweryn. “You big lug, the words ‘Wojciech’ and ‘diplomatic’ are mutually exclusive.”

“It’s because of Irenka’s relatives,” said Wojciech. “At least, I assume so. Or he might have sent you.”

“Dear God, you can’t let Filka loose in England since she discovered war rocketry, it’s only a century since London last burned,” said Seweryn.

“Oy!” said Phyllis.

“If you and your brother got together ...” said Seweryn.

“Oh, fair point,” agreed Phyllis. “Wojan, dear Godbrother, I take it you know young Lord Zdziarski?”

“Unfortunately,” said Wojciech. “But he may have improved with keeping. I take exception to brats who tell their men to shoot my –at the time – pregnant wife as well as shooting me because I wouldn’t let him interrupt a rescue mission of some of my dependents.”

Phyllis peered at Cyprian Zdziarski.

“His head is still attached, and he shows no signs of having met Hellish Polish Quarte going the wrong way,” she said.

“I was busy,” shrugged Wojciech, “and pre-occupied. And then his father arrived and asked nicely for his life. I suggested thrashing him.  Did it do any good, and are you civilised enough for a szlachcic to speak to now, boy?” he asked Zdziarski.

“I ... I ... you will meet me for that!” squealed Zdziarski.

His father groaned.

The dark, saturnine man, with the scarred face, standing near him, grinned.

“Have you any other sons, Lord Zdziarski?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“Married?”

“Widowed.”

“If I was you, I’d look for a bride to breed an heir,” said Władysław Sokołowski. “Your whelp just irritated the third best swordsman in Poland.”

“And you’re the best ...”

“No, my wife’s the best. I stand between her and Wojciech since losing an arm. And Wojciech is a force of nature.”

“What the devil can I do?”

“Well as he’s in a good mood, he may just play with the boy and humiliate him. If I was you, I’d send him to school for a year to curb his manners.”

“Yes, I think I will.” He considered. “I might just send him to school in Lapland and hope he doesn’t irritate the reindeer.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” said Władysław. “Wojciech:the king wants you; he’s in the octagonal salon.”

 

 

“Well, my last Winged Hussar, how are things on the borders?” asked the king. “Did you have a quiet journey?”

“Quieter than they were, sire,” rumbled Wojciech. “Funnily enough the fear of being run down by winged hussars has a deterrent effect on brigands. It worked on the brief interruption to our journey, too, but there were only four of them, so I had them outnumbered without Irenka having to disturb herself. They flung themselves off their horses and surrendered.”

“I wonder why?” said Stanisław August with an innocent look. Wojciech laughed.

“I confess, I play up the melodrama, sire,” he said.

“And I always thought you straightforward and humourless when you were at court,” said the king. “I believe I did not know you at all.”

“Oh, I am straightforward on the whole,” said Wojciech. “But a look of bovine stupidity on the face of a large man is generally believed, and it means one does not get involved in tedious smalltalk.  I am also quite good at maintaining an immobile face. Sokołowski describes me as having a distressing turn of levity.”

“Well, I am glad; you are accounted by many as a dour fellow.”

“Including my young brother-in-law who still has not figured me out,” grinned Wojciech. “Poor Błazej! But he will learn. He’ll hear tales of Seweryn’s and my exploits with gunpowder while he’s at Raven’s Knoll.”

“I thought that was Mikołaj?”

“Oh, it’s a Raven Banner thing.  But you didn’t want to talk about my youthful peccadilloes or how we scared Władek half to death with a fusillade of firecrackers in the bushes.”

“To be honest, I’d probably enjoy very much the tales of your youthful peccadilloes, but it wasn’t why I asked you here,” said the king. “You have planned to visit Lady Irenka’s family in Britain, I believe?”

“Yes, we had considered it,” said Wojciech.

“Then perhaps you will consider doing so now?”

“At your command, sire. My mission?”

“To deliver certain letters to George III of England from me, and to bring back any reply. You’ll have full diplomatic status.  I’ve had a house leased for you in St. George’s square, which I thought appropriate as your name day is shared with that English saint.”

“Aye, sire, it’s why our firstborn is Wojciech George, not our own version of the name, Jerzy, or Jurij. So he has links to his English family, and has a name-day of both names together.”

“I hope the Lady Irena will enjoy meeting her relations and showing her son to them,” said the king. “The appeal to the English king is personal; I know him, of course, from my time in England. But I have a sense of fear with all the black eagles perched overlooking our lone white eagle.”

“Aye,” said Wojciech. “It is an ominous presence.  I will not leave first thing, I have a certain engagement to teach a puppy a lesson.”

“Oh?”

“The Zdziarski boy.”

“He is only a boy; he is well grown but he’s young. Go easy on him.”

“I was planning on giving him a lesson. Not on hurting him,” rumbled Wojciech, hurt.

“I should take your words at their meaning; thank you. And my apologies,” said the king.

Wojciech bowed.

 

oOoOo

 

 

 

Zdziarski fils was not a morning person. However, he turned up on time on the river bank at the time-honoured duelling ground. He was clad in plain dark morning clothes, and took off his jacket and waistcoat, handing them to a servant.  Wojciech shucked his kontusz and żupan, passing them to Irene.

“You bring your wife to a duel?” said Zdziarski.

“She’s my second,” said Wojciech.

Wojciech had already decided to do what Irenka had done to a loudmouth, and proceeded to use his sabre, twice the size of the boy’s weapon, with the delicate touch of an artist with a paintbrush. Cyprian Zdziarski fought with all he could manage, and was sobbing in frustration at his failure to even mark the damned red hussar. He sniffed hard on tears of anger and resentment and shook his head, and then noticed that red drops flew off when he did so. Holding his karabela at long guard he raised a hand to his face. He looked disbelievingly at his fingers; and then touched another part. He looked down and saw his shirt cut at chest and belly, and his smallclothes across the thigh. The cuts were perfectly straight.

“I apologise, my lord,” he said stiffly.

“Well, lad,  you’re not so stupid you can figure out when you are outclassed,” said Wojciech. “Try to learn to curb that temper of yours, and you’ll have a better chance to grow up, and to become a decent man. You’ve been spoilt, which isn’t entirely your fault, but it is up to you to do something about it.”

“I ... yes, my lord,” said Zdziarski.