Song of the Legions (4 page)

Let me explain the reason for our parlous situation. Our nation’s ruling dynasty, the glorious Jagiellons, died out three hundred years ago. This left us without a royal family, so a King was elected by the nobles of the Sejm. He acted as a kind of glorified steward on their behalf. By these same ancient (and downright insane) laws,
any one noble senator could veto any proposal made by the King.
One senator with a grudge, or who had been bribed, could paralyse the nation. The King could get nothing done. If the nobles didn’t want to pay tax, well, damn it, they wouldn’t pay tax – VETO! If that meant we had no army to repel the Russians, or no roads, or no schools in the villages, then so be it.
Nie Pozwalam! I will not allow it! VETO!

This was what the nobles called their ‘golden freedom’. The freedom of men such as Felix Potocki to do whatever the hell they pleased, and damn the rest of us, over whom they ran roughshod with the sword and the knout. We had another word for it –
anarchia
.

“The Constitution will put an end to this madness of the Veto,” Pepi said, “unless somebody VETOES it first, that is. A fine conundrum!” he frowned.

“We will veto the veto, General!” we replied, making the throat-cutting gesture.

With that, we passed through the Marble Room, with its twenty-two portraits of Polish Kings, painted by French masters. Stanislaus-August paused for a moment, and nodded at the sombre crowned heads in a mark of silent respect. His predecessors stared back. His portrait was the last of the line. The King gazed sadly at the gilded, marble-floored room.

“My famous Thursday Dinners were held in this very room, nephew,” the King recollected. “The finest minds were there – artists, poets, intellectuals, scientists. We cooked up the Constitution over those feasts. It was a glad time, before the long shadows drew in.” The King sighed sadly. After this morbid moment, we pressed on, stepping carefully to avoid tearing the furniture with our spurs, our scabbards scraping on the marble floor.

In the great hall the great lords had gathered, the karmazym, the crimson ones. The Sejm resembled a Turkish bazaar rather than a place of government. One could buy anything from a tasty snack to a position in the government with equal ease. Hawkers plied their trade selling beer, pastries, and candied fruits, stepping between the high benches and tables strewn with papers where the senators and their lackeys argued and bickered endlessly.

On one side stood the firebrands, the radicals – the men they called
Jacobins
. The Church said they were heretics and fanatics, who preached that even peasants and women should have rights – or even votes. Naturally I considered myself a liberal and enlightened sort of a fellow, but I was no Jacobin. That was taking things too far. Votes for peasants and women, by God! Whatever next?

There was Cyprian Godebski, playwright and poet, a staunch supporter of the Constitution, eating a pie wrapped in a copy of the
Warsaw Gazette
. As well as being a poet and a politician, he was a lieutenant in the grenadiers.

Beside him was Senator Jozef Wybicki, the white-haired lawyer. He was besieged by whingeing clients waving petitions (and complaining about their bills) even on that grand day. With a shock, I recognised him – he was the old man who had hidden in my mother’s barn!

The King went around and around the hall, begging wavering Senators for their vote. There were a number of bishops in the senate. Almost all of these bishops were dead set against the Constitution – and the King conversed with each in turn, in vain, begging them not to use the veto.

“The arse speaks to the bishop, but the bishop just speaks to himself,”
^[1]
I observed. Pepi, meanwhile, accosted a buxom young girl who was selling apple cake, vodka and beer.

“Make room for the young lady, there!” Pepi cried at a group of senators who were sitting at a bench, poring over a copy of the Constitution. They were busily crabbing and scribbling with their quills. These were our enemies. Traitors in the pay of Russia. Pepi swept their papers aside, then lifted the serving girl up with one arm and deposited her, blushing, upon the bench. The papers fell to the marble floor in a chaotic swirl.

“How clumsy of me! A thousand apologies!” he exclaimed in mock horror. “Comrades!” Pepi snapped his fingers at us, grinning, “clear up this mess, at once!”

We gathered up the fallen papers in a great balled-up mass, to howls of protest from the Senators, who scrabbled after them. In the mêlée, the papers were torn to shreds.

I ran into one of those fellows, who was on his knees, grabbing after his carefully worded objections that were now no more than ribbons. I knew him for Hetman Adam Severyn Rzewuski. He was a Podolian warlord, a henchman of Felix Potocki, a lackey of the Russians. I seized him by his crimson cloak and raised him roughly to his feet. His lordship was a great bear of a man, strong as a wrestler, but his body had run to fat, and a ponderous belly hung below his barrel chest. Hatred and contempt were writ on every inch of his hard, coin-counting face, from the tip of his bristling beard, to the top of his shiny head, which was as bald as an egg.

“A thousand pardons! Your papers, My Lord,” I said, shoving the torn bundle at him.

“Damn your eyes!” he cursed, snatching them, “you stinking Jacobin dog!”

“If you are not content with my apology, Your Lordship,” I bowed, “you may ask me for satisfaction at any time,” I replied, and casually tossed my glove onto the bench before him, a blatant challenge to a duel. He placed his hand on his sword hilt. Then he glanced at my comrades and, seeing himself outmatched, withdrew.

“I don’t duel with peasants!” he sneered, by way of excuse.

“I am a gentleman, Sir,” I said coldly, “and you are a scoundrel, a traitor and a coward.”

Rzewuski’s face turned red as a beetroot. He lunged at me, but his flunkeys seized him by the tail of his kontusz and held him fast.

“Unhand me, you damned serfs!” Rzewuski grumbled, thrashing about with his arms and floundering like a landed fish. He made a great show of anger, but I had the measure of my man – many’s the time I’ve seen braggarts in the taverns dragged off by their friends thus, glad to avoid a fight. I watched with pleasure as Rzewuski’s men led him away, with him pretending to protest all the while.

“Blumer!” Pepi called after me, “dear fellow, would you be so kind as to cut this cake?” It was a plump and delicious apple cake, with a pungent smell of cinnamon, almost as luscious as the girl who had brought it to us, who now, sadly, was nowhere to be seen. We cut the cake up with our daggers. Then the King returned, disheartened.

“Am I to do this alone? Won’t you help me persuade the senators, Pepi?” He spluttered.

“On the contrary, Uncle,” Pepi retorted, “my men are being
extremely
persuasive, as you see. Their very presence encourages these politicians to be reasonable.”

Pepi gestured at us. We agreed, most vigorously, with cake on our lips, and swords in our hands. All around us, politicians shrank back, terror-struck. Nobody was talking about the veto any more. Nobody was saying very much at all, in fact.

“Perhaps you are right after all, nephew,” the King conceded, grinning. “These are the men for such work as this!” With that he swept away, cape billowing, followed by a flock of servants and hangers-on to put clear air between us and his royal personage.

I am a big man, but Pepi was a hand taller, and he loomed over me like a tower of genial menace. “Blumer, my boy,” he drawled, “I’d be obliged if you would keep an eye on My Lord Brother Baldy there, for he appears to be in a bad humour this fine day. I think you upset him.”

Thus, under my watch, Rzewuski slipped out of the chamber. He went with one of the bishops. Perhaps he was only going to pass water, but, as I was bid, I followed him, with Sierawski and Tanski hard on my heels.

Rzewuski and the bishop were talking in the Marble Room. They were sharing a fortifying glass of vodka beneath the far window. I peered cautiously around the door. There was a round table pushed to one side, and a stack of gilt chairs gathering dust. The old kings in the pictures glared down, as if deeply displeased with the two conspirators who skulked amongst the velvet-covered furniture.

“Lord Potocki will be furious when he hears of this treachery!” Rzewuski said, gnashing his teeth. “He will ride here at the head of an army, to protect our ancient rights!”

“This reckless King will ruin our country,” the Bishop agreed. “Our salvation can only come from Russia!”

Well, this bishop was a real turncoat. Only moments before he had been congratulating the King, dousing him with Holy Water, and kissing his psalter.

At this point we three burst in, falling over our own feet. We stared at them insolently. The Bishop put down his bottle of vodka and snatched up his mitre. Rzewuski glared back with contempt.

“You think to frighten us, you young ponces?” he snarled. “Bishop Massalski and I shall veto this damned Constitution, if no one else has the balls to. My duty is as clear as my conscience. I am going to the voting chamber, and damned if any of you little shits will stop me.”

I blocked their path.

Rzewuski placed one hand on his sabre hilt.

“Stand aside, peasant!” he roared, “I was killing Turks for Holy Russia when you were soiling your nappy and sucking your mother’s teats.”

“My Lord,” I said angrily, “I would thank you not to mention my mother again.”

My wrath burned like a powder fuse. All present saw it, save for Rzewuski.

“F— you, boy,” Rzewuski spat in my face, “and f— your whore of a mother, too,” he added, for good measure. Then he hiked up his sword belt over his paunch and strode towards the door.

I met him halfway and, without ceremony, struck him across his bald head with the butt of my gun. It was a gentle enough tap, though it knocked a few teeth from his jaw. The unfortunate senator collapsed to the floor with a crash. There he lay, groaning and crying murder and treason, blood pouring from his gaping mouth.

My comrades stood open-mouthed and winced at the sight of this great crimson one laid low. Even they were shocked by my violence, and the alacrity with which I delivered it. Tanski whistled, impressed. I trained my gun next on the Bishop. “Your Grace, please administer the last rites to this fellow and to your Holy Self, while you’re at it. If you take one step towards this door, I shall blow out your brains!”

The Bishop crossed himself, turned as pale as a plaster saint and prayed for deliverance. As the saying goes, the arse talks to the Bishop, but the Bishop just talks to himself!

Thus the Constitution was passed without a veto. There were a few ‘abstentions’ though. Joy was unbounded, and all fears banished. The King proceeded to Saint John’s Church, across the square from the Wawel, to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady. There, the populace received him rapturously and acclaimed him to the rooftops. Our Holy Lord Brother, Bishop Massalski, was there again, with his ewer of holy water, anointing the crowd and the King, his loyalties swinging around like a weathervane in a storm.

Suddenly we heard that blessed mazurka again, and young Sierawski was beating a drum, three or four simple notes, beating time to the steps of the dance. We danced in a circle around the column of old King Sigismund, up on his pillar, sword and cross in hand. From the slow elegant steps of the dance, the men gliding sidewards, and the women elegantly stamping their heels and clicking their fingers.