Chapter 23
Helena attended sabre drill in the morning, slipping through an archway into the second courtyard which was surrounded by stables and barracks. Róża had her own room in the palace, but off Helena's room, and came with her. They met Jurko, Michał, and Jan on the way.
"Are you fit to do sabre drill?" asked Helena of Jurko.
"I was going to do a little to strengthen my arm. Only a very little," he said.
Helena nodded.
"And you'll do what you'd permit one of your men wounded in the same way to do," she said.
He gave her a shifty glance.
"Of course," he said, too quickly.
"I have my eye on him," laughed Jan.
"Thank you, Pan Jan," said Helena.
After drilling, while the children were chasing each other in some complex game before bathing, Jurko firmly pushed Helena into the stables, up against a stone pillar, and kissed her. She kissed him back.
"I was afraid I had lost you when you fainted," she said.
"Takes more than that to kill me," said Jurko.
"Well, as we are here, and as a naughty Cossack hand tried to loot a bit of Helena, Parysz the page is more open with what parts are allowed for her ataman to touch," said Helena, demurely.
He kissed her again, running his hands down to cup her buttocks and sliding round to run up her thighs. Helena moaned into his mouth. He ran his hands up to the top of her trousers, and slid a hand down inside them, the other continuing up her body.
"Oh, my, you are wet for me before I even do anything much," he murmured.
"I am sorry? I do not know..." said Helena.
"Don't be sorry, it's good," said Jurko, kissing her more, and failing to let his hand go as low as Helena wanted it to. She squirmed and rubbed against him, and when he stepped away from her gave a little mew of discontent.
"Now you know how I feel most of the time," he said, his eyes laughing. "Come and bathe; we have a good steam room here. Let's get the sweet smell of your arousal washed away before Gryzelda smells it and has a cat."
Helena giggled and ran with him, hand in hand, to join the Cossacks.
She blushed less this time.
Besides, they were preoccupied in vying with each other in telling tall tales of their exploits to Michał.
It was fun.
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"We've an invitation to a ball tonight," said Jeremi, at breakfast. "And the king has scrawled a note on it, 'bring your family, Potocki will be there with something to say.' So we will all – the adults – go."
"I don't have to, do I?" said Michał.
"No; I said, the adults," said Jeremi. "You and Róża will be doing lessons all morning from tomorrow. You won't be a good officer if you can't write a clear report, or calculate the best place for artillery."
Michał had opened his mouth to protest, but shut it again.
"Please, my lord, will I be learning to write reports and calculate where artillery should go too?" asked Róża. Jeremi was about to deny her, but he shrugged.
"Why not?" he said.
Competing with a girl would spur Michał on.
"I'm going shopping," said Jurko. "I want a pair of red boots."
"Oh, I have a cordwainer calling for that purpose, lad," said Jeremi. "I fancied you might like some red boots. And you can decide which of your kontusze to wear. I do not bow to western fashion."
"Sarmatian garb is never out of fashion," agreed Jurko. "And western garb seems half undressed, and moreover having a waist so high looks most uncomfortable. I'd feel like a lady's handkerchief with all that lace, and I wager the wigs are veritable menageries for fleas and lice."
"I've seen a mouse in one old fool's wig," said Jeremi. "And you and I go our own way with our hair. I used to wear something between a czupryna and an oseledets when I was your age, a strip cut but grown longer like the scalp lock of a Cossack. I wonder if I should go back to that to champion Cossacks?"
"Go your own way and choose your own freedom; 'Cossack' does mean 'free man' and that shows that you do not copy either Polish or Cossack cut, nor ape the ways of the west, but choose to be free in your own style," said Jurko. "A refusal to be dictated to by anyone will do you no harm."
"I want to take Helena shopping; she will need more clothes," said Gryzelda.
"I have heaps of clothes," said Helena.
"But you cannot be seen at court in the same gown twice!" said Gryzelda. "And you only have one ballgown, which you must wear tonight!"
"I'll bespeak a mantua-maker to call, too," said Jeremi.
Helena suppressed a sigh.
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The mantua-maker was grander than the one in Kijów, and Helena felt as though she was being patronised and sneered at as a country girl. The woman spoke with a French accent and lapsed into that tongue from time to time. The French she used was the sort of French any young girl might have picked up, rather than to express complex concepts. Helena regarded her narrowly.
"You are not French," said Helena.
The modiste flushed fierily. Her arrogance collapsed in on itself.
"I did not know Mademoiselle was so widely travelled and knowledgeable," she said. "Many ladies like to think that a Frenchwoman is clothing them, so I taught myself the language. You are correct, I am not Marguerite Bellaire, but Małgorzata Dmuchowiczówna. Please do not tell other ladies."
"I won't," said Helena. "But please permit me to know what I want, and if it is not the height of fashion, then tell your clients that I do not follow style, I set it."
"Yes, my lady," said Małgorzata, a little dubiously.
Things went, in Helena's opinion, better after that.
"Dear me, we must send out for a wig for you in the modern fashion," said Gryzelda.
"I am a young girl, unwed, I shall be wearing my plaits in their cap," said Helena.
"But it is not the way it is done, nowadays!"
"It is the way I do it any day," said Helena. "I will not wear a wig. If you take away my plaits and make me wear one, I will take it off and dance with my oseledets hair."
Gryzelda stared in horror.
She also believed Helena quite capable of doing so.
"I do not want you to be a quiz!" she wailed.
"I do not intend to be a quiz," said Helena. "My hair does not curl naturally, so I will not mock the Good Lord by curling it unnaturally. If He intended women to look like those Spanish game-dogs, surely our hair would grow naturally to do so."
Malwina laughed.
"You just called all the ladies at court 'bitches'," she said.
"If the wig fits..." said Helena.
"Why, I will plait mine, too, and be like you," said Malwina. "What do you mean, oseledets hair?"
Helena shrugged.
"I had to escape from my aunt, who ill-used me to get her hands on my property. So I became a boy and went off with the Cossacks."
"How prodigiously exciting," said Malwina. Helena thought she meant it, now. Their relationship had changed a good deal, and Malwina had mellowed since she had been with Wasyl.
"Is Wasyl coming now he has been given a land grant? Is he well enough?" asked Helena.
"Not to dance, but he has an invitation," said Malwina, flushing.
"I will wear mine in plaits and not curl it, too," said Elżbieta.
"I do not understand the fuss," said Basieńka.
"I will also wear mine plaited," said Maryśka. "It is our national way of doing things, and we are not foreigners, and they should not think they can rule the way we dress and look. I have not found a man who wishes to marry me for conforming, so I will see if any man likes me for not conforming."
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The ballroom was glittering, with uncountable candles in bright crystal chandeliers, filled with ladies and gentlemen in garments which looked entirely alien to Helena.
The shift she wore under her ballgown was embroidered with fine Ukrainian Mereszka needle lace, and rose to her throat. A strip of lace with added gold threads ran from neckline to the hem of her gown, tacked to it when she was dressed by the loyal Jancia. It entirely altered the two-piece gown with its tassetted bodice. Her gown, too, was made of white on white silk damask, in a pattern from the east of leaves and flowers, with touches of gold thread. Her shift copied the pattern in weaving was more complex than the self-colour silks which were in fashion, but somehow Helena walked into the ballroom and her white and gold gown and long plaits, and complexion free of any make-up save a dusting of pearl powder, and managed to present the appearance of a living icon walking into a brothel. Everyone turned to look at her.
Helena, on Jurko's arm, blushed lightly. It only added to her beauty.
The arriving szlachta were approached by a large man in a red kontusz. Helena's first impression of him was that everything about him was square. He had square shoulders topping a big square body. His head appeared square, and his red, square face was finished by a square beard. His eyes lingered on Helena in a way which made her move towards Jurko and cling to his arm.
"He looks like a bear," whispered Helena.
"His nickname is 'Bearpaws,'" said Jeremi. Out loud, he added, "Potocki. Am I to suppose that you are aware what one of your officers did?"
"The king has apprised me of this terrible wrong to your family, Wiśniowiecki. I am deeply regret that this has happened. I also regret that you did not leave me the option to discipline my men myself."
"I wanted the two worst offenders dead," said Jeremi. His voice was wintery. "And make no mistake, if my older son, Jurij, had died of his wound, I would have had the leader impaled. You regret. But you are responsible and I expect more than your spurious regrets; I want an abject apology that you have sufficiently misled your troops to entertain for one moment the thought that Cossack outriders are fair game for winged hussars, and that the women they escort – these szlachcianki here – are fit subjects for their violations? Would they have violated my eight-year-old adoptive granddaughter as well? They were happy to want to kill my six-year-old son, and to threaten him that he would be cut up slowly. He still has nightmares."
There was a murmur of sympathy from anyone around who was a parent.
Potocki looked mutinous for a moment. It was a long moment.
"I am sorry. I apologise unreservedly for my underlings," he said, at last.
"I see," said Jeremi.
"I don't think that we ladies can accept that excuse of an apology," said Helena. "It sounds like that of a naughty little boy who has to apologise for his naughtiness as part of his punishment. Papa Jeremi, is it your wish that for politics' sake we let it go?"
Potocki gave her a startled look, which morphed into a calculating one. He suppressed it. His eyes dwelt rather too long on Helena's lovely face and figure.
"I think the king will be pleased if you accept the ungracious apology," said Jeremi. "It is sufficient, I suppose, to avert a duel. But it is poor payment for having once had his career saved by being advised against using the caracol,1 on broken ground, for being too drunk to notice the heavy boulders and smaller, but dangerous stones on the plain, perhaps for not being sure which of three surfaces he could see was the real one."
"You bastard!" hissed Potocki. "You were not to speak of that!"
"You absolved me of that promise when you tried to have my family killed," said Jeremi.
"You cannot believe it was deliberate!"
"When your apology is so half-arsed? What else am I to think?"
"I... It was not deliberate. I am truly apologetic that it happened," said Potocki.
"Then the matter is over," said Jeremi.
Potocki bowed, and hurried away.
"I don't like him, Papa," said Jurko.
"I don't like him either, son," said Jeremi. "One day there will be a showdown between us. I think it may be over matters in the Ukraine; but we shall see."
"He made me feel dirty," said Helena.
"If he lays a hand on you, he dies," said Jurko.
"You are so comforting, Jurko," said Helena.
"He is not likely to try, fortunately," said Jeremi. "Come, let us move into the ballroom, and meet people. I did bring you here to see and be seen, Helena."
"Good, and when I have seen and been seen, can Jurko and I put the banns up?" said Helena.
Jeremi laughed.
"Soon," he said.
1 This is a 17th century tactic in which cavalry armed with firearms ride in several columns, approaching and firing on the enemy with pistols, and whirling away to reload, to soften up a line of, say, pikemen, before the heavy cavalry close with a lance charge. It only works when there is the sort of going that enables the horses to gallop up, wheel, and be away, with an unimpeded footing. I have no idea if Potocki tried this in the Pawluk uprising when Jeremi was written out of the reports, but he certainly, in real history, used tactics inappropriate to the terrain, including using cart fortresses at Khorsun, which almost made me screech 'WHAT?' out loud when I read about it.