The Mazovia Legacy (32 page)

“Father Lessard told me you would be coming,”

Father Carpentier said as he closed the church doors behind them. His was a much smaller church than the one in Saint-Sauveur. And it had little of the carved decoration and dramatic lighting of Father Lessard's. But it was nonetheless a substantial stone structure with a high vaulted ceiling and the requisite images of saints lining the side walls.

“And you know why we are here, Father?” Delaney asked.

“As much as Father Lessard thought he should tell me,” the priest said.

“Will you help us?” Natalia asked.

“I will not hinder you,
madame,
” he said. “That is as much as I can do.”

“Thank-you,” said Natalia.

“You know there has been something hidden in this church for many years?” Delaney said. “Something we now have to get?”

Delaney realized as he spoke that probably this young priest was not even born until after Premier Duplessis had prevailed on priests and nuns to hide Polish treasures around the province.

“I was startled to learn of this today for the first time,
monsieur.
”

“Are you angry about this?” Natalia asked. A psychologist's question. Father Carpentier looked at her sharply.

“I am not happy about it,
madame,
” he said.

“Well, after today it will be over and we won't interfere with your church again,” she said. “That would be best,
madame
. If it is possible.”

They stood uncomfortably together in the underheated church for a moment. Delaney was unsure how much to tell this young man, how much needed to be told before they would be allowed to begin rummaging around in his church. But Father Carpentier was eager enough to end this thing that he decided for them.

“Father Lessard tells me that what you need to find is in the cellar,
monsieur,
” the young priest said. “He said you must look carefully at the nave end of the cellar, in the large armoire that is there. He said you would be able to find what you're looking for there.”

“In an armoire?” Delaney said.

He felt that this was a very weak hiding place for something as valuable as what they expected to find. Or perhaps a hiding place for something very small.

“That is what he said.”

“All right,” Delaney said. “Maybe it would be best if we looked for these things without you.”

Father Carpentier had clearly not intended involving himself any further than his priestly allegiances required.

“That is what I would prefer, too,
monsieur,
”he said.

“We may be some time,” Delaney said.

“I have work that must be done in here,
monsieur
. And in the
presbytère
also, if you take a very long time.”

“Fine,” Delaney said.

Father Carpentier led them to a door just to the right of the front entrance. He opened it and turned on a light switch. A set of aging wooden stairs disappeared into the musty gloom.

“
Voilà,
” Carpentier said. “Down that way. Walk directly to the back.”

The priest said nothing else and hurried away. Delaney looked at Natalia. He had expected much more resistance, more suspicion, than this. “He's frightened,” she said.

“He has reason to be,” Delaney said. “Let's hurry up.”

They went carefully down the worn steps. They found they needed no flashlight. A row of light bulbs had been set in the rafters of the old stone cellar and the weak yellow glow was enough for them to see. An occasional high small window also let in some pale winter light. Dust swam in shafts wherever light penetrated. Bits and pieces of furniture and some old pews lay around near the stairs. There were some trunks and crates further in, but for the most part the cellar was empty. It ran the length of the church and from where they stood the back wall where they were headed was in deep shadow. They walked that way.

At the back, past a smaller enclosed furnace room that smelled sharply of heating oil, was a stout wooden door secured with a piece of timber fitted into two iron brackets. Delaney was certain this would lead up some stairs to the back of the church or to the outside. And there was a giant old armoire against the back wall just as Father Carpentier had said there would be. It stood almost eight feet tall and very wide, clearly designed for such spaces and not for the small farmhouses in the region. It appeared to be made of hard Quebec maple. There was carved lattice in the door panels.

Natalia opened one of the doors. There were some folded pieces of aging vestments on a shelf inside; dusty, neglected, ruined. A small rack held some equally dusty bottles of wine, for Communions that had never been celebrated. In a battered cardboard box were some bits and pieces of ecclesiastical paraphernalia, apparently out of fashion: brass candlesticks, red glass lanterns, and bits of candle end. A very large stack of mouldy prayer books took up another section. But there was little else.

They rummaged through these items, both suspecting that they would not find what they sought sitting on open shelves. Delaney shone the flashlight on the wooden panels at the back. There, behind the wine rack, he found the first clear indication that they were in the right place. Someone, years before, had scrawled in what had probably been bright yellow chalk or grease pencil the word “Mazovia.” An arrow pointed to the left. It was very faded now.

“It's here,” Delaney said.

“Oh please,” Natalia said. “Show me.” He moved aside and shone his light in for her to see.

“Mazovia,” she said. “It's here.”

“Somewhere here,” Delaney said.

“My uncle must have written that himself, all those years ago,” she said. “I would say so,” Delaney said.

He looked closely in the corner of the armoire indicated by the arrow and then all around the inside again. There was nothing of interest.

“The priest said it was inside,” Natalia said.

“There's nothing interesting in it. Those vestments are worthless.”

“But that's what the priest said. In the armoire.” Delaney went around to the left side. He looked at the outside, and peered behind it with the light. The armoire was pushed close up against the wall. He tried to pull it away, but it was too heavy. They stood pondering the problem.

“The arrow indicates left,” Natalia said.

“Nothing there.”

“Perhaps we have to move it left, push it over to the left,” she said.

“Let's see if it moves sideways then.” They both went to the right side of the armoire and Delaney gave it a push. Even with all of his weight it would not budge. Natalia came beside him and they pushed together. With the weight of both of their bodies the massive piece moved slightly, making a loud squealing sound as the old wood scraped the uneven stone floor after decades in the same place.

“Yes,” said Natalia.

They put their bodies into the work and the armoire slid by inches to the left, groaning ancient wooden groans as it did. Then Natalia let out a cry. Set in the wall behind the piece was a small iron door, about half a person's height. “Yes,” she said quietly.

They worked harder and finally got the armoire clear of this small door's frame. Someone had scrawled “Mazovia” on this as well. They did not bother to speak now. Delaney pulled the tubular iron latch out of its slot and pushed at the low door with his foot. It moved inward with a loud series of creaks.

“Francis,” Natalia said. “Francis.” Delaney crouched in this secret opening and peered inside with the flashlight.

“It looks like an old coal room,” he said. “It looks like there's some bits of coal left in there, a small pile toward the back.”

“We have to go in,” Natalia said.

“Yes,” Delaney said. He took off his parka and put it on an old crate.The Browning made a thud as it hit the wooden planks.

“You wait out here for a bit. I'll call out to you if I find something.”

“I want to come in too,” she said. “I'm coming in too.”

She pulled off her bulky down overcoat and they stood together, quickly chilled in the damp air. “We'll have to be fast,” Delaney said.

They both squeezed through the low opening. On the other side was a filthy room clearly used in years gone by to store coal. They could both stand up, but Delaney had to lower his head when he passed under rafters. A narrow iron handcart with cracked wooden handles lay on its side near the door. A small iron ladder rose up on one wall toward what would probably have been in the past a narrow opening for coal deliveries. That opening had been securely and permanently boarded up with thick planks. A small pile of coal still lay underneath the ladder.

But to the left, away from the coal, sat what looked to be a wooden pallet covered with a greasy tarpaulin. They approached it, both knowing that this, at last, had to be what they had been seeking. Natalia reached onto the tarpaulin and pulled off what appeared to be an old pennant. It was tattered and stained, but intact. It showed a checkerboard pattern with four large red-and-white squares. Rectangles in the same colours surrounded these along the edges.

“It's the Mazovia Squadron's insignia,” Natalia said. “Zbigniew showed me something like this in his photos in Paris. They used to paint it on the side of their planes. My uncle would have had to be the one to leave this here. The only one possible.”

“Yes,” Delaney said.

The weight of the story, and of the years and the lives involved in this story, made them both subdued, respectful. They stood for a moment and then pulled off the cover together.

Even after it has sat unattended for decades, even in dusty places like the one they were now in, even in the narrow beam of a flashlight, gold glows like nothing else in the world. The bars of Polish gold had been neatly arranged in a small stack on the pallet: forty-eight in all. None of the bars gave the slightest sign of having been hidden away for thirty-six years. They were all as shiny and breathtaking that afternoon as they would have been when Stanislaw Janovski had carefully stacked them there in 1959. Natalia and Delaney rubbed their hands over the bars' buttery surfaces, as everyone who sees gold in large quantities instinctively does.

“Unbelievable,” Delaney said at last. “Unbelievable.”

“I can't believe this,” Natalia said. “All this gold, for all these years. Down here.”

“It was a good hiding place after all,” Delaney said.

“Yes,” she said.

“This is worth a fortune,” Delaney said. “Do you realize what something like this is worth?”

“To my uncle and his people it was worth more than money,” Natalia said.

“But it was to be used eventually,” he said. “Surely they would have been planning to use it after the war for something. Or they would never have shipped it to Canada at all.”

“They never had the chance. When the Communists took over they no longer had a country to bring it home to.”

“But to fight the Communists then,” Delaney said.

“They never had the chance. Remember what Zbigniew said. There were factions, disagreements, after the war. How would Stanislaw have known how best to use it? Or who would be the best to use it?”

“But to just leave it here for all those years.”

“He was waiting for the right moment,” Natalia said. “He was a very patient man.”

“He never got his moment.”

“He chose the wrong moment, Francis,” she said.

They stood silent in the dust and gloom. The bars of gold glowed dimly.

“Now he has his moment,” Natalia said eventually.

“Possibly,” Delaney said. “You're going to have to decide what to do with this now.”

“I know that,” she said. “I'll do what my uncle would have wanted done.”

“That's going to be a difficult thing to decide.”

“I know that,” she said.

“And it's going to be difficult to get these out of here,” Delaney said. “We can't just toss them in my car. They're too heavy, for one thing. We're going to have to come back with a truck.”

He walked around to the far side of the pallet and saw a small case pushed up alongside a row of the gold bars.

“There's something else here,” he said.

“Really?”

Natalia hurried over to where he was. They both sat on the edge of the pallet as she examined it. It was a leather-covered rectangular case about the size and shape of an automobile battery, with a handle on the lid and two latches. “Open it,” he said.

There was no lock. The latches were corroded and stiff but they opened. Inside, something was wrapped in purple velvet. Natalia unwrapped it. Inside the bundle was more gold: a magnificent chalice with embossed religious scenes and with pearls set around the edge. “Unbelievable,” Delaney said.