omake #4

 

Omake 4

 

Jurko and Helena rode in triumph through Kijów after the defeat of the Ottomans.

And Jurko gazed down into eyes he knew. Eyes belonging to a beggar woman who dropped her eyes and started to move away.

With a short exclamation, Jurko was off his horse, moving towards her, easily catching up. He took her work-roughened hands in his and drew her into his embrace.

“Widow Griszczukowa! I thought you were living with your son, Timosz!” he cried. “Had I known it was otherwise, I should have come looking for you long since!”

“Oh, Jurij! Your highness, I mean! I was with Timosz until he remarried, and his second wife would not have me in her house,” the old woman whispered.

“Bitch!” said Jurko. “Well, then! You treated me more as a son than my own mother ever did, you fed me whenever she put me out of doors hungry, you let me rest in your cottage and told me folk tales while I chopped wood for you to pay my way, and so if Timosz is stupid enough to lose the most precious thing he has, I am not, and you shall grace my house as grandmother to our children. You will love Helena; she has common sense.”

Ignoring her feeble protests, Jurko tenderly led the old woman to his horse and lifted her on to it, springing up behind her.

“Helena, this is the Widow Gosia Griszczukowa, who gave me a place to go, and food, many times when my mother drove me out hungry, before I was old enough to hunt and forage properly for myself. She taught me folk tales, and my letters, though she struggled to feed her own children, and they have repaid her hard work by abandoning her.”

“Why, Mama Gosia, the children will be delighted,” said Helena, leaning over to kiss the wrinkled cheek of the old woman. “I have never had a mama, for Gryzelda is too young to be anything but a sister to me.”

 

Gosia Griszczukowa would never have dreamed of seeking out the adult who had grown from the sullen, thoughtful, dreamer of a little boy she had taken under her wing when his feckless mother left him to his own devices, but she had longed to catch a glimpse of him now he was famous, wealthy and with position, to feel some vicarious satisfaction in him growing into a good man despite his mother. She knew she would give thanks on her knees for long hours that she had felt compassion for the awkward, unhappy child, that he returned the love she had learned for him, and that he would include her in his successful life.

 

I was thinking of actually inserting this in the book.