Korybut: an as yet unnamed tale.

 this started of as a 3-5k word omake and ended up as a novel. I was going to start it tomorrow now I wrapped it, but I thought, hey, it's Sunday... 

In which Janina and Onufry discover a treacherous plot which turns out to have a little bit of French in it, and in which foreign policy involves looting  a treaty bride and a little bit of assassination.

Chapter 1 spring 1658

 

Janina Zagłoba sat herself down on her husband’s knee.        

“Onufry, my dear lord, I overheard Prince Jurij talking to you about a man he mistrusts,” she said.

“I don’t suppose he’d mind if you dropped the ‘Prince’, my dear,” said Zagłoba. “We’ve been married ten years, and you call Helena by name.”

“He makes me a little nervous; he’s so very... well, very,” said Janina.

Zagłoba laughed.

“An intense young man, certainly, who puts his whole self into all that he does,” he agreed. “As to the man he distrusts, yes, a Dawid Zabiełło, who is ambitious and seems sly. He looks around with a calculating look.”

“Well, doesn’t he frequent an inn called ‘Jerusalem’?” asked Janina. “I heard that mentioned.”

“He does; but if anyone went in there for us as customers, I doubt he’d talk freely in front of any stranger, even if it was someone he didn’t know by sight.”

“But I expect he talks in front of bar wenches,” said Janina.

“Of course; they don’t know Latin, which is the province of the noble class.”

“Onufry, I know Latin. You taught me yourself so nobody should look down on me when you married me. And I have not forgotten how to be a bar wench, as I was in my father’s tavern before,” said Janina. “I am sure I could get a job there, especially if one of the other servers received a sudden legacy. Pr... Jurij could arrange that, surely? And I would present a sob story of needing somewhere to go, being a young widow, who is with child. I look younger than most peasant women my age, or I’d take Basia to add verisimilitude to the story. She’s quick, and clever. Janek can’t act to save his life, bless him.”

Basia was Zagłoba’s love-child, and Janina’s step-daughter, and at ten years old more interested in swordplay than embroidery, something which did not trouble Janina. She would be capable of playing a part! Janek was Janina’s oldest son, not quite a year younger than his half-sister. Naturally, Nufcio, at six, and Halcia at three were too young.

Zagłoba surveyed his wife, critically. She was almost thirty, but she was right, she looked like a young matron of the class in which she lived, a szlachcianka. A peasant woman of thirty was careworn already. Janina could pass as a young widow of two- or three-and-twenty quite easily. Janina took care of herself, joined in the sabre-drill with her husband, and had rapidly regained her figure after every birth.

Finding objectivity difficult, Zagłoba kissed his beloved wife. This led to a distraction, and it was a long time later that he lay with his arms around her, spooning against her back, considering her suggestion.

“It’s bold,” he said. “Your suggestion. I think Basia is too cheeky to carry off being a peasant girl, though. She would lose her temper and tell off a szlachcic for spilling wine, or being drunk, and then she’s likely to be beheaded. It isn’t legal, but it happens. Especially amongst those like young Zabiełło whose consideration for his golden rights exceeds his less than golden abilities. But nobody can ask you to take such a risk....” his arms tightened.

“I’m volunteering, Onufry. Because if we can find out enough to usurp his plans before they get going, we could save lives, if he truly is looking to start some kind of coup. It’s my duty to the Rzeczpospolita to use such skills as I have, and to use what I learned before you came into my life, and made me the happiest woman alive.”

Onufry Zagłoba still wondered why this wonderful, beautiful woman loved him, and had done so when he had been eating and drinking himself to death out of loneliness. He was almost thirty years older than she was, although now he was as fit and had as taut muscles as any Cossack, and looked, if truth were told, younger than he had done when first he married Janina. He nuzzled her neck, and she giggled as his moustache, a thing of magnificence, tickled her.

“Janina, you are more noble than many a szlachcianka to suggest it,” he said. “I adore you.”

“Would my lord like to prove how much he adores me, again?” asked Janina, turning towards him.

He kissed her hungrily.

“Oh, my lovely wife,” he said. “I still marvel that you married me, and that you love me, and desire me. Not that I’m complaining.”

“You talk too much,” said Janina, kissing him.

 

oOoOo

 

“Mama, can I help you spy?” asked Basia, standing on one leg, and poking at her boot top with the raised toe.

“Honeycake, if a szlachcic calls me ‘wench’ and handles me familiarly, will you be able to refrain from calling him all the rude names Jaromka Wiśniowiecki teaches you, and slapping his face?” said Janina.

Basia nibbled her plait.

“He’d deserve it,” she said.

“For sure, and what do you think he’d do to a peasant girl who acted like that?”

Basia scowled.

“I get it,” she said. “My temper is too hot. I’m going to go and beat Jaromka at chess and then fight him, so I don’t cry.”

“Good girl,” said Janina.

“Why do you have to do it, Mama?” asked Janek. “Won’t it be dangerous?”

“Someone has to do it, son,” said Janina. “And I know how. You know that Mama was a serving girl before meeting Papa; I’ve never hidden it, and Grandpapa now has his little retirement cottage.”

Janek sighed.

“I suppose you have to do your duty,” he said. “I wish you didn’t have to.”

“I wish there were not ambitious and wicked men to make me have to take this duty,” said Janina. “But there are, and so I do what I can, and what I must.”

 

Zagłoba looked Janina over.        

Barefoot, and in a kirtle kilted up to mid calf, her neckline low and displaying her shapely bosom,  which was pushed up by the bodice she wore, her hair bundled into a shawl, she looked every inch a bar wench.

“I may have to strip you to the skin to check all is correct,” he said.

Janina’s breath came fast.

“If you delay me too much I may lose my nerve,” she said. “And the innkeeper must not smell sex on me, so no, no quickie across your lap either.”

“It’s going to be very hard,” said Zagłoba, plaintively.

“Then come in when Zabiełło is elsewhere and flirt with me,” said Janina. “I can report while you are mussing me....”

He growled.

“So I can,” he said. “Go, wench, before I throw you over my shoulder and have my wicked way with you.”

 

He took himself to the palace as Janina made her way to the inn, and soon managed to speak to Jurij Korybut Wiśniowiecki Bohun, the king’s oldest son.

“We have a spy on Zabiełło,” said Zagłoba, without beating about the bush.

“We do?” said Jurko.

“We do; Janina has gone for a job in the inn he frequents, I bribed one of the other servers by having him inherit a lease to an inn, on my lands, and a decent legacy. Janina is posing as a young widow, looking for a job as a bar wench.” He paused, eyes shut, stroking his moustache in contemplation of her low-cut gown and the lacing pushing up her pert bosom. “And what a disguise,” he added.

“Well, I salute your sense of duty,” said Jurko, laughing. “I’m not sure I’d give up Helena in such an imposture; I hate losing any of Jurij’s shagging time, and my perfect and irresistible Cossack body needs frequent exercise.”

“I am unspeakably brave,” sighed Zagłoba.

Neither mentioned how brave Janina was. If her imposture was discovered, she would suffer greatly. And neither wished to think too much about that.

There would be discreet guards about the inn, but they must needs be distant and discreet, and unsuspected. Essentially, she was on her own.

 

 

oOoOo

 

“Someone mentioned you had a vacancy for a serving girl,” said Janina to the innkeeper in the Jerusalem Inn.

He was middle aged; about the age Zagłoba had been when she had first known him. As her husband had been then, he was running to fat, and had the reddish nose of a man who sampled his own wine. Here the resemblance stopped.  Where Onufry Zagłoba’s eyes had crinkled in myriad wrinkles of laughter and good nature, the lines forming on the innkeeper’s face were those of bad temper. Janina could imagine him being a violent drunk, where her Onufry had merely sung more and more off key, telling more and more lurid jokes, until he passed out. She had shaved Onufry’s privy hair when he broke a promise and got drunk when she had asked him not to; and he had worked hard to change for her. This man would likely beat any woman who did that.

He grunted, leering at her breasts.

“I was looking for a serving man, but I suppose you’ll do,” he said. “Three grosze a week, your keep, and somewhere to sleep.”

“That’s robbery,” said Janina.

“Take it or leave it; it’s what’s on offer,” said the innkeeper. “I’m Kuba Dąbek, and you can either have a blanket on the hearth, or you can share my bed.”

“I’ll take the blanket on the hearth, thank you,” said Janina, with dignity. “My poor Jan! I miss him too much to think of moving on.” She sniffed hard, and managed to summon a couple of tears by thinking that she might well have been a widow by now, had her Onufry continued eating and drinking too much. Strictly, his name was Jan Onufry, which is why she chose ‘Jan’ as a name for her dead fictitious husband.

“Well, when you get tired of sleeping in the cinders, my room is over the bar,” said Dąbek, leering again. “A waste for a young woman like you to be celibate.”

“If I look for companionship again, it won’t be to become someone’s free skivvy,” said Janina, with spirit.

“Hoity-toity, ain’t you? You could do a lot worse, you know.”

“And I could do a lot better. I want a job, and even the pittance you are paying is better than nothing.”

“You don’t have to take it.”

Janina sighed.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “And you know it or you would not have made the offer. A young widow, pregnant with a posthumous child, is in no position to turn down anything, and I saw you look for how pregnant I am, to see how long you could exploit me.”

“You’re free with fancy words like ‘exploit.’

“My Jan’s inn was on the highway, and the toffs like to use fancy words to drive home how we don’t know all the words in our own language, never mind their Latin,” said Janina. “You pick some up. But when I was visiting my sister, who’s in service, some bastard managed to burn the inn down, and my Jan in it.”

“Fire’s always a risk,” muttered Dąbek, crossing himself. “Another reason for you to sleep by the fire, to keep an eye on any drunkards messing about.”

“Not without another grosz per week to do so,” said Janina. “Otherwise, I’ll save myself, and not bother about you.”

“You virago! Very well,” he said, grudgingly.

 

Janina sighed in relief. She had her feet, so to speak, under the table. She had spoken blithely about spying on Zabiełło, but one should not divide  the bearskin until the bear is dead, and this was the first step. Now she must reacquaint herself with serving in the bar, and doubtless helping to cook meals as well, which she was out of practice doing, though she cooked when they were on campaign. Things had been fairly peaceful since the defeat of the Moskale and the Ottomans a couple of years back, but they still went on trainings with Prince Jurij’s ‘shovelmasters’ who were adding to the road and canal network across the Rzeczpospolita. Her sabre drill and Cossack dancing, however, made her strong and supple, and she could ply a shovel with any other shovelmaster, knew how to fell a tree, and drive a pile. She had been interested from when she had first seen the Korybut Bridge being built. Jurko firmly called it the Mermaid Bridge, but though the fishermen used his whimsical name, most inhabitants of Warszawa preferred to honour the banner of their king and prince. King Remi, the people’s king, was popular.

Ironically, Jurij owned this inn, on Ulica Korybuta, Korybut street, known unofficially as ‘Koniecpolski’s End’ as trying to sabotage Jurij’s building of it had ultimately led to the downfall of the eponymous Koniecpolski, and death at Jurij’s hands just over the river. Janina shuddered at the gamble King Jeremi had taken, his first act as king to strip to his bare chest in front of the rebels, demanding to know who dared take the first shot at their newly elected, lawful king.  All the Wiśniowiecy were insane! But she loved them all dearly.

She went into the kitchen.

“What meals do you offer?” she asked.

“Soup and pierogi, pork cutlets, śledź, and cold meats and cheese with bread,” said Dąbek. “Nothing fancy.”

“Herring forszmak would make a nice change and is easy, as you have herring for śledź,” said Janina. “Mincing the herring with sour cream and cooking it with cheese and onion on top would be a quick, easy meal. And we might consider the meat version, too, with the new potatoes the king has introduced.”

“If you want to mess about and do it, I’ve no objection,” he shrugged.

A pretty girl who could cook was more of a draw than that miserable fellow who had run out on him for some legacy.