Chapter 16
"Have you any idea how many serfs we've collected, Jurko?" asked Jeremi, as he settled into the dacha, taking in the great tent city of runaway serfs.
"Seven thousand, four hundred and forty three," said Jurko. "I've got every one of them logged by name. About three thousand remain here as volunteer troops. I set Michaś and Juryk to train them; it'll help them to learn how to be officers. Have the muskets arrived?"
"They're on the way," said Jeremi. "I cannot like the idea of peasants fighting. It isn't right. Though if they are volunteers..."
"Like the Cossacks under Chmielnicki when nobody was listening to them, they are fighting for their freedom. It's wicked, Papa, their priests tell them that the tsar and the nobles are sacred and it is right to trust them and accept their lot in life. I've got one man whose prepubescent daughter was raped by a nobleman, and she died of it. The priest told him that it was not his place to wonder about why the Good Lord wanted his daughter. He killed the priest, and I can't say that I blame him. His ambition is to kill boyars and Russian priests. His rage is terrible."
"Dear God!" Jeremi crossed himself. "What are you doing about him?"
"Training him as a sharp-shooter," said Jurko. "But in return I have told him to posit the question to any priest he comes across before killing him, because surely most would not return so callous an answer."
"Let us hope you are correct, or we may be accused of attacking Orthodoxy."
"He spoke to my Orthodox chaplain, who's a sensible fellow, who told him that saving other men's daughters was a better aim than revenge, but that if he must take lives, he should save five for every one he took deliberately rather than as a soldier, for God would surely reckon with so wicked a man as his lord. Cossack priests aren't idiots, nor sycophantic fools."
"How many chaplains do you have? I thought you had a Catholic one."
"I've got four, Orthodox, Catholic, Calvinist, and a Rabbi," said Jurko. "I've an ecumenical sort of work force collected from a number of places, and I like them to be happy. I don't have many Muslims, but I expect I can borrow an Imam if I need one. After all, I have nothing against Muslims, only the Ottomans. Is that a letter from Gryzelda? Any more nonsense from the French? She routed the first horse and foot."
"Oh, yes, another attempt," said Jeremi. "This one involved plum powidła. If you ignore the personal bit at the beginning... I'll fold it back on itself... you can read it."
Jurko took the missive, chuckling.
oOoOo
The irritating Frenchman was back again in two days, with his treaty.
Gryzelda accepted it, and read it through. Essentially it gave French envoys and implied troops might be given free right of way through Polish territories to 'help with peace keeping,' and almost as a throwaway had a clause whereby Poland agreed to help financially with boosting Sweden's finances after having forced Sweden to go to war some seven years previously. It was wrapped in flowery language but Gryzelda was no stranger to flowery language. The clause about not allying with any members of the Holy Roman Empire was very much an anticipated given. Gryzelda put the document on the table, with ink and a quill by it. De Lumbres gloated. She must be barely literate, she had scarcely glanced at it.
He had no idea how fast Gryzelda could skim through a document.
"Now, what can I do for you today, Marquise?" asked Gryzelda.
"Oh, very little, apart from that little formality of a document. Though I believe I may then move towards Moskwa, to negotiate a peace between King Jeremi and Tsar Aleksej."
"You'll take your life into your hands if you do," said Gryzelda. "Jeremi is most upset over the way the Moskale treat serfs. He probably wants to take Aleksej apart with his bare hands. The fellow who invaded was a nasty little man and had the full sanction of his tsar, so the aggressor is clearly the Moskale. Even as the aggressor in the Swedish war was the Usurper, who attacked his rightful queen and then attacked Poland. You got that wrong in your treaty, by the way," she added, kindly. "I expect you misunderstood something, but it is entirely incorrect to suggest that Poland bears any responsibility for anything beyond upholding a monarch in exile. Now I am sure that if someone threatened the throne of France, you would expect any European monarch to give aid to little Ludvik the nineteenth?"
"Fourteenth," said De Lumbres.
"Whichever; you call all your kings 'Ludvik' which makes it hard to remember which is which," said Gryzelda. "But I do have a gift for him, if you would care to send it, I got one for my youngest son, and I felt certain that dear little Ludvik would like one as well. Ruryk thought it so amusing." She thrust a box into De Lumbres' hands, and he opened it without thinking, crying out as the jack-in-the-box sprang out towards his face.
"Madam, this is a toy for small children," he said.
"Yes, and I thought how nice for that dear little king to have something appropriate to his age; he must be almost five now, surely?"
"He is sixteen years old," said De Lumbres.
"Really? How time flies," said Gryzelda. "I must write it down so I can remember, he is Ludvik the sixteenth and he is fourteen."
"He is Louis the fourteenth, and he is sixteen," said De Lumbres.
"Of course, you have no need to raise your voice," said Gryzelda.
De Lumbres was wondering if she did it deliberately but plenty of women were that vague and one could scarcely challenge a queen and call her a liar.
And then in tripped Raina and Beata, under supervision of Marysieńka.
"We brought you some refreshments, Pan Ambassador," said Marysieńka. "To make up for interrupting you last time. It's plum conserve, powidła, and I helped make it," she added. "We have such wonderful things to eat in Poland, we thought you might like some to make up for coming from France."
"My dear child, are you not Marie Casimire Louise de la Grange d'Arquien? You are French."
"Oh, I was French, but my parents didn't want me, so I have forgotten it," said Marysieńka. "I am Maria Kazimiera Ludwika Wiśniowiecka now, because I have adopted Uncle Jeremi and Aunt Gryzelda. I have brought you wine, and Raina has the bread and powidła."
Raina had practised very hard to seem to trip over her own feet so that the sticky jam on rolls went all over the ambassador and his treaty. Gryzelda had darted forward to catch her daughter, who promptly burst into tears.
"Oh, my sweetheart, the plate was a little bit too big and too full," said Gryzelda. "Here, let us retrieve what we can; look, most of the powidła is on this silly old treaty which is incorrect anyway, we can wipe it back onto the rolls and... oh, were you leaving already, Ambassador? We can retrieve some edible rolls from this little accident."
"I need to revise the treaty," said De Lumbres.
oOoOo
"Gryzelda is a wonderful asset, Papa," said Jurko. "What good little Cossacks our children are, with creative obedience."
"And a sanctioned way to misbehave, too," said Jeremi. "I'd have been horrified, before you and Helena taught me how to love, if Michał had behaved thus. I'm glad I grew up to be more childish."
"Child-like, Papa. There's a difference. And taking life with a degree of insouciance is good for the soul. Speaking of which, and not wanting to worry, but where's the artillery?"
"Held up somewhere, I suppose," said Jeremi.
"Now I deliberately put passing places on the road, because of it being a single trackway," said Jurko, with a frown. "Shall I borrow a horse and go see what's keeping them? I need to know if worthwhile deploying my large workforce on canal digging or if we sit pat and wait to attack."
"Sit pat. We can make prisoners dig, and that keeps them neutralised," said Jeremi. "But by all means go see what has happened to the artillery."
Jurko smiled a beatific smile.
"The thoughts of the Durak and his cherub and the tsar all digging fills me with joy," he said.
oOoOo
Helena elected to go with Jurko, and they discovered a scene of some mayhem. Someone had taken a gun limber too close to the edge of the road, and it had fouled one of the side logs, and turned over. The rest of the column had come to a standstill.
"For the love of the Mother of God!" said Jurko. "There's room to get through and you silly buggers are preventing the re-provisioning by holding up the carts; why haven't you moved forward?"
"Well, your highness, we're supposed to be a unit, and we didn't like to move on until we got this gun out and remounted," said one.
Jurko rolled his eyes.
"Roll the column, and I'll get it out and bring along," he said.
"A-frames?" said Helena.
"A-frames," said Jurko.
The engine was quickly constructed, and Jurko held up the waggons behind the guns to lift first the limber, and then the barrel onto the road, where they might be hitched up, and proceed as the end of the column of guns, not the leader.
The couple started the waggons off again, and found that Janusz Radziwiłł had caught up.
"What would we do without you, Jurij?" he said.
"Manage, somehow," shrugged Jurko. "It's not good for people to expect me to think for them, but too many people seem to be inbred sheep."
"I won't say you're wrong," said Radziwiłł. "Princess! You are beautiful in a dishevelled sort of way, but what is Jurij doing, dragging his lovely wife to war?"
"No dragging about it," said Helena. "Where Jurko goes, I go, if at all possible."
"Don't you want to be safe in Warszawa, able to wear pretty gowns, dancing the night away, and forgetting about war?" persisted Radziwiłł. "I hear Jurij sleeps on the ground and expects his officers to do so too."
"He expects Papa Jeremi to do so as well, and if it's good enough for the King of the Sarmatian Rzeczpospolita, it's good enough for me," said Helena. "I'm not effete, thank goodness, and Gryzelda is quite equal to handling the importunities of Mazarin and his baby king, so she doesn't need me, and I would worry myself sick if I wasn't with Jurko. We've been going to war together since I was fifteen," she added.
"And you saved my life when that Janissary attacked me in the back," said Jurko, warmly. "Janusz, my wife is a Cossack. My father is a Cossack. I am a Cossack. It's as much a state of mind as a state of birth. There is something in the air of the Ukrainian Steppe which makes us be born stubborn, self-willed, jealous of our freedom, and plain thundering hindering awkward to anyone who tries to make us conform to their idea of how to behave."
Radziwiłł laughed.
"Well, our Cossack king came through, and has been one of the best we've ever had," he said. "I've brought you three thousand men; I've left the rest of my army guarding my own flanks."
"Wise," said Jurko. "We hope to defeat them before they realise we struck back, but I'd better chivy those dratted artillery. I've got half a mind to drill them all when this little scrap is over, so they do nothing but take guns up and down hills, through difficult terrain, just to teach them that it can be done."
"Aye, that's the trick with military matters, once it's known something can be done, it's no longer impossible."
"And something Gustaw Adolf did, like using combined types of troops," said Jurko.
"Indeed," said Radziwiłł. "Are you riding with me?"
"No, I'll ride down and check there are no more problems and then overtake the column to get back to report to Papa."
oOoOo
"The guns are on their way, Papa," said Jurko. "I do wish people would think for themselves sometimes."
"They'll learn," said Jeremi. "I had word, Czarniecki is camped to the south of Moskwa; and Chmielnicki has executed his hothead for committing atrocities. Essentially he has been busy taking over the Don Cossacks, to make sure they behave themselves."
"Too used to associating with the Moskale," said Jurko. "Poor Bohdan, this Stenka Razin is about the age of Bohdan's son Timofey, so he probably took it hard. But he did say he was more brigand than partisan. I hope the brothers don't make trouble."
"Well, it's under Bohdan's jurisdiction, and unless he calls for help, he's more than capable of dealing with problems as they arise," said Jeremi. "Isn't it nice to be able to trust all our hetmani to get their respective jobs done, and just be ready to go on a word. I sent a copy of your code book back to both Czarniecki and Bohdan so they can set up signal stations if they feel so inclined."
"It's one way of getting it to spread; I'm sorry, I should have given one to Radziwiłł."
"He's pigheaded enough not to use it until he sees it in action; I was going to give him one when he made a fuss and demanded it," said Jeremi.
"You have the wisdom of the serpent, Papa," said Jurko.
"I don't have to like him, any more than I have to like Lubomirski, to be able to work with them," said Jeremi. "And Sapieha in the north I trust, too. It is harder having to work with relations of a sort whom one faintly despises."
"We're talking Sobiepan's harem, here, are we?" said Jurko.
"Frankly, yes," said Jeremi. "The bastard has always laughed at me, saying that I live like a monk."
"Your austere lifestyle is noted and the peasants love you for it," said Jurko. "I dislike him intensely; he reminds me of some of my mother's lovers, the big, hearty ones who thought a skinny, introspective little boy was fair game. So you mustn't permit my feelings to colour your judgement, as I visit my own experiences on him. But, I tell you, if he doesn't get rid of his harem, I will happily take it apart by force."
"If it comes to that, I am glad you are prepared to do so," said Jeremi. "Gryzelda understands."
"We can't have one of our leading noblemen acting like a ruddy boyar," said Jurko. "It makes our stated aims to promote freedom into a laughing stock."
"And this he neither understands, nor cares about," said Jeremi.
"He will," said Jurko. "Well, the road is extended to the edge of the forest; we have patrols on it in case of unforeseen activity; the artillery is two days behind me, and I wager we can pull it over the last bit by hand faster than those slugs are managing. So, in three days time we go to war?"
"It seems a good time to me," said Jeremi. "Make it so."
