this is an episodic story covering some of the episodes mentioned in passing as having happened which you all wanted me to cover in full. I only have half a book because I didn't want to jump a decade without something in between. so this braided novel is going to get posted in two halves. I've got nearly 2 weeks worth though.
Chapter 1 The
Saxon Spy; spring 1748 part I
“You want me to do what?” exploded Mikołaj.
“It’s not difficult for one of your talents,” said Stanisław Poniatowski.
“Maybe but why the hell should I leave my young wife and my infant daughter to go and rescue a Saxon spy from Friedrich of Prussia? I don’t give a rat’s tit for Saxony.”
“Lord Mikołaj, our king is a Saxon.”
“And I don’t approve of that, either. I support the trifling little shithead because he’s my king, but don’t expect me to do any special favours for him. Why can’t he get a Saxon to ride to the rescue of his spy? If it was a Pole, it would be another matter.”
Poniatowski sighed.
“Because the spy is distantly related to me,” he said.
“Is that a euphemism for a bastard?”
“I ... yes. I was ... friendly ... with a Saxon woman during my years in Sweden which ... helped ... in my reconciliation with August the Second and my return to the Commonwealth. My daughter was born shortly before my marriage.”
“I wager the Czartoryscy don’t know about this,” said Mikołaj.
“No, they don’t, and I want it kept that way. I haven’t seen Teresa very often but she feels some ties to the Rzeczpospolita as well as to Saxony and agreed to spy.”
“She’d be seven-and-twenty,” said Mikołaj. “ Much older than young Staś. She’s old enough to know what she was getting into. Even if there was anything to spy on, which I doubt. We all know that Friedrich will turn his eyes to Saxony one day, it’s only a question of when, and then? It’s going to be a fait accompli. August has no business trifling about with Saxony once he accepted the job of King of Poland, elector or no. Any more than the King of England has any business to trifle about with Hanover. If you go on a hunt, and put up two deer, you go for the hart with the greatest number of horns, not try to take both. That way loses both.”
“Yes, very likely, but I’m asking you as a personal favour.”
“Oh, now that’s a different matter. If I’m rescuing your daughter from her lunacy for you, that’s one thing. Heaving out a Saxon spy is something else entirely.”
“You’ll go, then?”
“For my sins,” sighed Mikołaj. “I don’t have to like it though. Now is there any other information you might be forgetting to give me? And while I’m here, how’s young Staś? I hope I didn’t give him nightmares killing a traitor in front of him.”
“Oh, he is much impressed with you, and working on his sabre drill.”
“He’ll probably need it one day,” said Mikołaj, gloomily.
“So, am I coming?” asked Gosia, when Mikołaj told her about it.
“Did you want to?”
“I don’t like being left out. Milena is weaned.”
“So she is. And you haven’t conceived again, for you just had your courses. I should feel unhappy if you had.”
“It isn’t for want of trying,” said Gosia, peeking at him from under her lashes. “And if you are away without me, we aren’t practising.”
“I don’t like that she is held by this Freiherr Heinrich Von Strang; he has a nasty reputation,” said Mikołaj. “Indeed, it’s why Poniatowski was so exercised by it, he might have trusted to Frydek treating her with moderate courtesy otherwise.”
“You are a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
“Yes, my honeyed intoxicant, or I shouldn’t have been abducted by a naughty girl who sabotaged her own coach.”
Gosia giggled.
“I’d do a better job nowadays,” she said.
“That’s associating with wicked types like me,” agreed Mikołaj. “I think we’ll make a visit to the Prussian lands and make a bit of an outing whilst we are there.”
“Makes sense,” said Gosia. “So, we go legitimately, milling about with passes for extra people again, and come back with the spy dressed as a hajduk?”
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” said Mikołaj. “I thought we’d scout the place out and then decide how to extract this Teresa. As the baron holding her is known for his cruelty, I won’t object to the concept of just killing him to get in.”
“Quiet and quick is better.”
“Every time, but I like a contingency plan and vague back up plans as well to my plans B, C and D,” said Mikołaj. “And the challenging of the fellow to a duel is a fall-back plan for if all else fails. I don’t know what sort of challenge we shall meet. If he has her in a dungeon, I may need to use you being female, lovely, helpless and winsome at him to get in, brain the little cockroach, and let the rest of us in. It’s one reason I’m happy to take you; you’re capable.”
“Jędrek is coming, of course?”
“Naturally. And I thought Jurko and Adam as Walenty is currently in wedded bliss and won’t bring his Oleńka, and I’ll be damned if I put up with him bellyaching about missing her all the time we’re gone. If he can’t train her to be a towarzysz, he should shut up, but he won’t.”
“We could train Oleńka to be a towarzysz?”
“Alas, I doubt she’d take to it. But Jurko and Adam are solid types to have.”
“And enough sundry people to mill about.”
“And, as you say, enough sundry people to mill about.”
***
Graf Von und Zu Dornquast and party sailed through the border crossing without any trouble at all, and set a good pace for the Dornquast lands. Mikołaj nodded approval to see things in better heart than they had been the year before. Spring planting was well under way, and the peasants went about their work cheerfully. Mikołaj stopped to have a word with one or two of the peasants, who remembered him, and were happy to pass the time of day and praise the stewardship of their lord’s man, Norbert Korwiński. They rode up to the re-fortified Teutonic castle which was the centre of the lands Mikołaj had been awarded as Gosia’s inheritance, and were soon admitted.
“You aren’t just here to inspect things, are you my ... Mikołaj?” asked Norbert Korwiński when they had been plied with wine and cakes, remembering that Mikołaj detested formality.
“Of course we are, Norbert; and if I don’t tell you any different, you aren’t in an uncomfortable position,” said Mikołaj.
Norbert rolled his eyes.
“I don’t want to know,” he said. “Oh, you won’t have any trouble from the little cur who stole our stream, he whined about it so I marked him up ein-zwei-drei chest, thighs, belly to teach him who was the master around here. And as he was so fond of ducks, I might have quacked while I was doing it.”
“Norbert, my sweet, I adore you!” said Mikołaj, happily.
“You go and break another bedstead doing that with your lady,” said Norbert.
“We did not break a bedstead ... did we?”
“Well, somebody did,” said Norbert. “And it wasn’t your little Russian friend and his lady, and it was in the master chamber.”
“Oops?” said Mikołaj.
“Substandard bedding,” said Gosia with a straight face. “We’d better go and test whether Norbert has replaced it with better.”
“So we had,” said Mikołaj.
***
A man, his wife, and their personal servant travelled to Strangsdorf, the village below Schloss Von Strang, The castle was on a crag.
“Who left that inconvenient lump of geography lying around?” said Mikołaj. “It doesn’t make it easier.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy,” said Gosia. “If it was easy, Poniatowski could march up here himself and heave her out himself.”
“It’s easy enough to climb,” said Mikołaj. “At least, for anyone trained on the hill.”
“If she’s high and not in a dungeon,” said Jędrek, helpfully.
“Job’s comforter,” said Mikołaj. “Well, the woman should know Polish, if I sing in Polish.”
“Depends what songs she has learned and whether she’d recognise it to listen to the words,” said Gosia.
“Pick on Mikołaj day,” said Mikołaj, sadly.
“Pick on crazy amounts of optimism day,” said Gosia. “Tell Poniatowski that he can offer a ransom for her, because it’s impossible.”
“I suppose I could just march up to the castle and ask for her,” said Mikołaj.
“It has the charm of simplicity,” said Jędrek. “Also of idiocy, but we knew that. Try the singing, my lord; you never know, it might even work.”
“Why not ride up to the front door, singing, and see if anyone answers, and then knock on the door and ask for Baron von Sturm, and ask about the colt you were buying and then apologise for getting the wrong place?” said Gosia.
“Hetman of my heart!” said Mikołaj. “My honeyed intoxicant! My sweetling!”
“Yes, but just shut up and do it,” grumbled Jędrek.
Mikołaj urged his horse onto the path towards the castle, hand on hip, singing,
“Hej, tam gdzieś z nad czarnej wody
Wsiada na koń kozak młody.
Czule żegna się z dziewczyną,
Jeszcze czulej z Ukrainą.
Hej, hej, hej sokoły
Omijajcie góry, lasy, doły.
Dzwoń, dzwoń, dzwoń dzwoneczku,
Mój stepowy skowroneczku.”
“It has the charm of being distinctive,” said Jędrek.
They clattered through a gatehouse whose occupants saluted a man of plainly noble mien who had no army to menace the castle.
A window to one side opened, and a female voice sang,
“Hej, hej, hej sokoły
Omijajcie góry, lasy, doły.
Dzwoń, dzwoń, dzwoń dzwoneczku,
Mój stepowy
Dzwoń, dzwoń, dzwoń” the second half of the refrain.
Mikołaj did not bat an eyelid but sang on with his own words,
“Look for a warrior in the night-time
Who will bring to you a life-line
Which will bring you to your father
Or to elsewhere if you’d rather.” He went straight into the chorus, and then finished the song with its usual words, by which time they were at the door, which was being opened.
Mikołaj, swung off his horse and tossed the reins to Jędrek. Gosia elected to stay mounted.
Mikołaj tripped lightly up steps and into the great hall of a castle which was almost a parody of itself.
“What the devil do you mean by making all that row, sirrah?” snarled a big, red-faced fellow with aggressively curled moustaches.
“Mean? It means I’m happy, precious,” said Mikołaj. “Don’t you sing when you’re happy? It’s good for the soul, you know, and I was looking forward to meeting you, and the colt, but you’re not going about making me feel very welcome yet.”
“Welcome? Why should I make you feel welcome, damn you? Who the hell are you and what do you mean about a colt?”
“Welcome, it’s a word meaning wanted, anticipated, in need of hospitality,” said Mikołaj, plaintively. “And as I was ready to buy your bay colt, I think all this belligerence of yours is mighty unfriendly, Von Sturm! At least, I collect you are Von Sturm of Drangsdorf, my precious?”
“I am Von Strang of Strangsdorf!” howled the red-faced man.
“Oh! You mean you don’t have a bay colt for sale?” asked Mikołaj.
“No I don’t!”
“Well, where do I find Drangsdorf and Baron Von Sturm?” asked Mikołaj. “I came all this way and I would like to get the colt.”
“I neither know nor care! You are not welcome!”
“Apparently not,” said Mikołaj. “Are you always this tetchy, precious, or is it the time of your monthly flux which makes you so womanly and loud?”
“You will meet me for that!”
“Oh, all right,” said Mikołaj. “Here and now?”
“I can’t duel you; I have no idea who you are. You are some stupid Pole.”
“Sirrah! I am Mikołaj Krasiński, Graf of Raven’s Knoll and Graf von und zu Dornquast, a tabletop-sized holding but growing.”
“Maybe one day I will get the pleasure, but you have no second with you, and I’ll not have it said that I murdered a Pole for fun, even though it undoubtedly would be. Now get out.”
“I’m sure we’ll meet later,” said Mikołaj.
He patted the purple baron on the cheek and was out of the door before the infuriated Von Strang could react.
“Oh, I do love turning people purple,” said Mikołaj, happily. He mounted with a rapid vault and set his hand on his hip to ride out.
He was singing the Rowan Tree Song, which made Jędrek roll up his eyes as it boded ill for someone.
They left the village.
“And now?” said Jędrek.
“And now we collect the haiduks to stand by on guard duty, I climb up and get her out.”
“Just like that?” said Jędrek.
“Why not?” said Mikołaj. “We agreed that I’m about the only one who can climb it, but with a rope ladder, I’m sure she’ll manage to get down. And then we ride away.”
“Frydek won’t be happy if he finds out,” said Jędrek.
“Well, we’d better hope he doesn’t find out, hadn’t we?” said Mikołaj. “Gosia, my sweet, my jewel, I want you dressed as a page so he can’t take away your title.”
“It’s insane,” giggled Gosia.
“Yes, but with Von Strang it will work. He is very limited,” said Mikołaj. “Just the sort of stereotype which gives Prussians a bad name. All moustaches akimbo and a nose I longed to pull. He nearly let me duel him, but he chickened out. Queen of Poland! I should have pulled his nose, then I could have killed him, and walked out with the woman without opposition.”
“Or maybe a lot of opposition,” grunted Jędrek. “I doubt he was alone there without a small army.”
“You’re probably right,” said Mikołaj. He brightened. “Still, if I steal his prisoner he’ll have something worth fighting for next time I see him.”
“Dropped on his head as a child and never grew up,” said Jędrek, mournfully.
“Obviously, Jędrek meant Von Strang,” said Mikołaj, cheerfully.
“I’d feel happier with this spying business if we had our little Russian along,” said Jędrek.
“Am I hurt?” said Mikołaj. “Can it be that you don’t trust me to pull this off?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll pull it off,” said Jędrek. “How much mayhem you’ll leave in your wake, is another matter.”
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