Chapter 7
Helena rose early, as was her wont, dressed hurriedly in male attire, and went to the long gallery to do sabre drill. She took it seriously; not only might it save her life, she was also fit, full of energy and, most important to a girl of almost sixteen, her chest area was larger for doing exercise which required her to take deep and measured breaths, her legs and backside were toned and taut, and any puppy fat she had remaining on her, had melted off like snow in April. Her body was definitely that of a woman, not a little girl, as she had noticed in the impudently baroque mirror, when she brushed her hair in front of it in the sheer nightgown of shockingly fine gauze which Princess Gryzelda seemed to consider suitable. Helena had been stunned.
And if swordplay did that, she would be keeping up her practice. And practice with the arapnik, the Cossack whip. Massaging those nicely shaped muscles with the nagajka, the horse whip, probably helped too; Jurko had shown her how to do it, fully clad, for doing after a steam bath, and it did not hurt, but made her blood run after washing off the sweat from the steam with icy water.
Helena was not especially vain, but a young girl is always insecure about how she looks, and delighted when she knows she is pretty.
Helena was more than pretty, but she was too modest to think any further. She wanted to be pretty for Jurko, who was quite the most beautiful young man she had ever known. Even dishevelled and tipsy. She chuckled to herself. He drank with the Cossacks, but it was the only time she had ever seen him the worse for wear, and he appeared to be a genial drunkard when he did imbibe too much. Helena was not privy to Jurko's black rages as he had matured, and if Jurko had his way, she never would be.
She tripped gaily, therefore, to the long gallery, to go through the steps, then the steps with the cross-cutting moves, then to change hands and do it all with her left hand as well. Jurko said that you never knew when you might be injured in your primary arm, and in the meantime, being able to toss your sabre to your off hand rattled a lot of opponents.
It was something she did automatically now, swinging her sabre and up into the toss to catch. She still fumbled it a little, but she was learning.
A door onto the gallery opened, and there was a female shriek. Helena turned, but saw nothing to occasion such a cry. A lady stood there, staring.
"What is wrong?" asked Helena.
There was another little shriek, and the lady, definitely a szlachcianka, leaped back through the door from which she had entered.
She did not appear to be being coerced, so Helena put it down to simple-mindedness. She finished her drill, and went back to her room to wash, and put on the gown she had been loaned. She wondered who the young lady was and what she wanted; and decided it was unimportant.
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"Oh, princess, there was a man, a Cossack in the long gallery, with a sword!" Elżbieta Wilczkowska sobbed.
Gryzelda sat bolt upright.
"A man? A Cossack?" she said. Had Bohun tried to find where Helena slept to ... well he had been singing last night, in a most beautiful voice, and goodness knows, any impressionable girl serenaded by a voice made of pure honey might be willing to do almost anything, but with a sword? "How did you know he was a Cossack?" she asked. Bohun had been wearing an impeccable kontusz of deepest red and black damask with gold threads. And he wore his hair in a fashion which was neither Polish nor Cossack, but purely individualist; as Jeremi did.
"Why, because he has that hair thing they have!" said Elżbieta. "And a sword!"
"Oh." said Gryzelda. "Go and get me a cup of tea, my dear, and I will trust you with something which must remain a secret; but we share a banner, you and I, so I am sure you will be discreet."
"Oh yes, princess!" said Elżbieta, breathlessly. There was a small stove in the princess's boudoir for making tea, and to have a cup with her in the morning was a privilege.
"Well, Elżbieta, it is about an obligation of my husband's house to one of his loyal men, falsely accused of treason ..." began Gryzelda. "And his orphan daughter who has been hidden, dressed as a boy, by my husband's ... well, let us say, a loyal man whose mother was intimate with my husband before we were married. And she has been hiding from those who wish her harm amongst the Cossacks, and made to learn manly arts, and the poor child will need some nice friends to help her to learn to be a szlachcianka."
"Oh! How prodigiously romantic!" declared Elżbieta.
"Yes, my dear, I had a feeling you would think so," said Gryzelda, who was not above manipulating the ladies sent to her household for the cachet of serving her house. Gryzelda was a kindly mistress to them and they almost all married well, and to a man of their own choice. Gryzelda was a closet romantic, never having known romance herself. Jeremi was not a romantic man at the best of times. The princess, unable to have any more children, spent much of her time alone or with her ladies and enjoyed their love affairs vicariously.
If Jeremi had been like his son, and had serenaded her as passionately ... well, she was loyal to him, and fond of him, but he would have won a fanatical devotion as well.
Well, being martially inclined had not put off ... she must think of Bohun as her stepson ... who was at least a bird in hand. No good as the mate of a princess if a nameless Cossack, no, but as a member of clan Korybut, that was a different matter. He would need lands. Gryzelda had a hunch that Bohun would cherish Helena because she sought to emulate his warrior skill, not try to stop her as many would. Her husband also favoured the Jastrzębiec banner lad, who was also handsome and dashing. But very conventional.
Gryzelda was herself a very conventional szlachianka. But secretly she admired Helena's courage.
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Panna Czeczeła was a tiny woman so ancient that Helena wondered how she could have so much energy.
"Dear Gryzelda says you have been sadly neglected, my love, so I will teach you all you need to know. But we might have to borrow your handsome Cossack for dancing lessons, for my balance is not what it once was."
"Oh, Jurko has taught me to dance," said Helena.
"Indeed! Then show me what you have learned, my dear."
Helena leaped into the air, coming down into a squat to kick out one foot then the other. After a short while, her foot caught the hem of her skirt and she fell over.
"Oh, dear, it works better in trousers," she said.
"Oh my dear! Oh my dear! Not that sort of dancing!" Panna Czeczeła was dismayed. "Oh my dear, no, nothing so indecorous! You must learn the pavane, the galliard, the allmain, the bourée, and all the new dances from France, the sarabande, the gavotte, the passagaglia, and the others!"
"Oh dear," said Helena. "It seems a lot to learn! And Jurko will need to learn them too."
"Then you shall learn them together, my dove, and you will have a partner you know to perform at court in the Noble Fashion, where each pair dances in turn and are watched by all the rest."
"Oh no! It sounds horrible," said Helena. "Can't one just make it up as one goes along in time to the music?"
"Goodness, no! Then nobody would recognise your skill; why it would be like playing the harpsichord by ear! You ... er, do you read music?"
"Read music? I don't understand," said Helena.
"When shown a page of notation, to be able to play it on an instrument," said Panna Czeczeła.
"How can you have music on a page? Music comes out of instruments when you play them," said Helena, confused.
The elderly woman showed her a page of lines with squiggles on it.
"This is one of the dances you will learn," she said.
"Is that to show where the feet go? It looks prodigious difficult," said Helena.
"No, this is the music. How do you learn new tunes?"
"I listen to them and hum along until I know them, of course," said Helena.
"I can see we have further to go than I realised," said Panna Czeczeła. "Never mind! You're a clever girl, I can see, and we will manage. What instruments do you play?"
"I don't play any," said Helena. "Jurko is awfully good at the lute, however, so I don't need to play, he can play and sing at the same time."
"Well, perhaps you can learn the lute to play along with him, or the fiddle," said Panna Czeczeła.
"Why?" asked Helena.
"Why, a szlachcianka must be able to perform in public to show her accomplishments, it is de rigeur, to show the world you are a suitable bride!" said Panna Czeczeła.
"What has playing an instrument to do with being a suitable bride?" asked Helena. "I can cook and clean, I can sew plain sewing and some embroidery, I can make cheese and butter, bake bread and make soap, I know how to milk goats, and make mead and country wines, what more does a suitable bride need?"
"Oh, princess! To know how to do such things to order the servants is one thing, but surely you are not suggesting that you have done all those things for yourself?"
"Well, of course I have," said Helena. "Who else would have done them? We had a laundress so I had not to do that, and a maid of all work to scrub the floors, and my aunt had a maid who sewed for her as well, but I assure you, I am not used to all the servants, nor so much grandeur as there is here!"
"Prince Jeremi is reckoned very austere in his surroundings and his lifestyle," said Panna Czeczeła. "Why, I do not believe he serves above five or six courses at meals!"
"Yes, it is a huge amount; surely others do not serve more?" asked Helena.
"Oh dear," said Panna Czeczeła.
Helena was beginning to wonder if she was to spend her days listening to her governess saying little but 'Oh, my dear!' and 'Oh, dear,' in a disappointed sort of way.
"What about languages?" asked the elderly woman. "Latin of course?"
"Yes, though Jurko says my Latin is so much dog Latin that it barks," said Helena. "I speak Ruthenian as well."
"No French?"
"No, I don't plan to visit France," said Helena.
"It is a language of the educated; in the West they speak that as a language everyone knows, even as we and the Hungarians and Bohemians speak Latin. It is a known lingua franca."
"Oh, I suppose that makes sense," said Helena. "Why not Latin?"
"Well, the ones who are Protestant reject it," said Panna Czeczeła. "And the French feel that they should be the centre of the universe."
"Oh, that is arrogant," said Helena.
"Welcome to the world of the ambitious statesmen of France," said Panna Czeczeła dryly. "If you ask me, cardinals would be better concerning themselves with their souls, not affairs of state, but Richelieu and now Mazarin tried and try to be little Popes."
"The world is very wicked," said Helena, timidly.
"Yes, my love, and the world will judge you on the showing you make, not on how good or kind you may be. And so I am here to teach you how to live in the world you are born to, whether you approve of it or not, so you may then please yourself when you know what is expected, and therefore have the choice."
"Oh! Thank you," said Helena. "I am sorry I was crochety."
"My dove, if that is as crochety as you get, you have a lovely nature."
"At least I can read and write," said Helena.
"Indeed, and we will refine your felicity of style and handwriting," said Panna Czeczeła.
Helena left her morning classes feeling almost bruised by how much she was expected to learn.
She ran into Jurko, and ran to him. He enfolded her in his arms.
"My cuckoo, what is it?"
"There is so much I do not know," said Helena. "But at least Panna Czeczeła says we can learn to dance together, as she is not very spry anymore."
"Oh, most of the Western dances are little more than watered down peasant dances with more pointed toes," said Jurko. "It will not be hard. You are graceful, my cuckoo. I am dreading meeting my tutor, who is to teach me to read better, to write, to pen essays, and reports, and to discourse on politics and economics, as well as military theory. I know how to win a battle, what more do I need, I asked my father, and he laughed and said I needed to be able to tell snot-nosed, snot-brained lieutenants how to win their parts of the battle in simple words they could understand. So how could I protest?"
"Well that does sound more useful than unravelling squiggles to turn into music," said Helena.
"You've not seen sheet music? I can read it after a fashion," said Jurko.
"You are a man of many talents," said Helena.
"Well, I wouldn't mind learning more, so I can pick up anything and play it without having had to have heard it," said Jurko. "And I know, the blind musicians cannot see to read music, but God gives them better memories to make up for being blind."
"I suppose so," said Helena. "Oh, well, we shall endure, and it is better than being at Rozłogi."
"I wager," said Jurko.