Revenant Eve (36 page)

Jaska was listening, so I tried to dredge up details from my college reading. “But the first attack will not be northward. Within a year or two Bonaparte will betray the Treaty of Lunéville, and strike to the east, into the Austrian empire.”

Aurélie repeated my words.

Jaska rapped his knuckles lightly on the desk. Then he looked up sharply. “If you still wish to ride to Vienna, then I will accompany you. Come. I’m going to leave you in the kitchen, if you don’t object. You may eat a good breakfast while I arrange things.”

Not two hours later, a pair of plainly dressed young men rode sedately down the eastern road, the tall blond riding like a hussar, the smaller one with the curly black hair under his hat rocking unsteadily on his horse, fingers death-gripping the reins.

“We’ll stay at a walk,” Jaska had said when he had helped her mount. “You’ll learn as we go.”

She kept her teeth gritted as they crossed a bridge newly cleared of ancient buildings. Presently she said, “Are we not supposed to go on the east road?”

“With your leave, we shall first head south,” he said. “To a farm in Berville, near Fontainebleau.”

T
HE SUN WAS SINKING
beyond leaden skies when they rode into the farmyard, weary on the backs of drooping horses. A gangling boy ran out, followed by a subaltern in shabby Polish uniform. Seeing those plain dark coats, the subaltern almost turned away, then exclaimed, “I know these horses.” He peered up. “Is that you, Colonel Dsaret? Why are you out of uniform?”

“I am on a civilian mission,” Jaska replied. “Is the General here? We did not miss him, I trust?”

“No, no, he is here. Come inside!”

The farmhouse was old and rambling, with a thatched roof, none of the deep-set windows quite square. But inside the rustic parlor a fire roared and three children played some sort of game, watched from the table by a thin middle-aged man whose scarred face and gnarled hands betrayed long years of soldiering.

He looked up. Long, loose gray hair streaked with brown fell back from his face as he smiled. He was handsome in that distinctively eastern European way, with the Slavic cheekbones and the dashing smile. The years didn’t vanish—he was too scarred for that—but the charisma radiated from his sudden and heartfelt smile as he exclaimed, “It is young Dsaret! Why, this is good time. Or would be, if my expected guests were here.”

“I hoped we might arrive first,” Jaska said.

“So you knew, then? Ah! Come, who is this?”

“A young musician by the name of René Baptiste. We are riding for Vienna. I had word that Mordechai was expected back and hoped to meet him here.”

“Lady Vera-Diana Kwilecka was expected yesterday. We all are anxious for news from the fatherland.” Kosciusko turned his head. “Madame Zeltner! Is there room for two more at table?”

“Of course there is, General.” A middle-aged woman spoke from the kitchen doorway, with the whole-face smile of love. “The children may eat in here. It’s warmer for them. I really think it is going to snow again, and here we were, talking about the kitchen garden…” She vanished with a flash of skirts.

“Sit down, sit down. What is the latest in Paris?”

“The news from Saint-Domingue worsens with each dispatch,” Jaska began.

“That I have heard.” General Kosciusko raised a hand, his brow contracting. “Five thousand of us, he sent, not to spread freedom, but to take away the freedom of the black peoples enslaved on those islands. You know those were the secret orders? We received coded confirmation that I do
not
believe Fouché never saw. It was hidden in the list of dead, among the Polish names.”

Jaska shot a questioning glance at Aurélie, which surprised me, though she seemed too tired to notice. “Perhaps we can discuss those things later.”

“Very well! I would rather think of better things. Did you know my friend Jefferson is now president in the American republic? I could say that word forever,
republic, republic
. Washington stepped down, just as we knew he would.
He
would not make himself a king,” Kosciusko said with meaning, then sighed. “I trust the next generation will raise more like Washington and Jefferson. Neither of them had sons. Like me! I told Jefferson in my last letter, it is not enough to found a military school—though he has, at West Point. And he used my model. Education for all, that is the key to unlock the future we want. Including the slaves, once
they are freed. I am going to give him all my American money for just that purpose.” He tapped the table with a gnarled finger. “Ah, here is supper! And none too soon. Citizen René Baptiste, you look as if you might fall asleep in your soup. And such good soup, too, ha ha! You both look tired. You shall have the guest room at the top of the stairs.”

When the meal was over, Madame Zeltner bundled her children off to bed, and the general sent Aurélie and Jaska up to the room they were expected to share as two young men.

They got inside and stood there staring at the straw-stuffed bed, which took up most of the space in the tiny room. There was a corner fireplace made of age-blackened stone, a pile of wood, clothes pegs on the wall, and a three-legged stool. Jaska was doing his best impression of a stone statue.

Aurélie said, “Why is it that we could sleep all together in barns and byres without a thought, but now I feel very awkward?”

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Jaska offered, his manner easing fractionally. “It’s no worse than bivouac on the march. Warmer, in fact.”

“You may have the bed,” she stated. “Your past two days were far more wretched than mine. I don’t mind the floor. Sometimes in Jamaica, I slept on the floor, for the tile was cooler in summer.”

“But there are two of you, the ghost and yourself.”

“Ah, she feels nothing. Isn’t that so, Duppy Kim?” And when I said, “Not a thing,” she threw her hands wide. “Hear?”

“I didn’t hear anything, but I’ll accept it as truth. We’ll break straws, how’s that?” he asked, smiling.

For answer she hung her hat on a peg, kicked off her thin costume shoes, and pulled one of the thick woolen blankets off the bed. She wrapped it around herself, and lay down before the fireplace, curled in a cocoon. Her eyes reflected the firelight. They misted over, and I wondered if she was thinking about poor Josephine and the life she’d left behind. Or maybe she was thinking about the fact that the easy friendship of last year was gone, and this new Jaska didn’t trust her, and she didn’t know why.

Jaska hung his jacket neatly on the peg next to hers, his hat over it,
then pulled off his boots and set them below. He reached into the pocket of the jacket, pulled out an elegant pistol much like her own, and slid it under the pillow. Then he lay down fully clothed, and the last thing I saw before Aurélie blurred into sleep was him staring upward at the ceiling.

In the morning, everyone’s breath was visible, and I judged that the ground had frozen hard sometime during the night.

Aurélie woke first, but the slight sounds of her stirring brought Jaska alert, hand to his pistol. Then he relaxed when he saw Aurélie standing there with her coat in her arms. The fire had gone out during the night. In the bleak blue light they pulled on coats and shoes, then walked quietly downstairs to discover General Kosciusko struggling with pieces of wood at the fire. Jaska sprang to help.

In the Zeltner household, everyone worked. After breakfast, the General spent the greater part of the morning tutoring the children, his educational method (as he explained later) to follow the interests of his pupils so that he might explain things they wished to learn. He requested ‘René,’ as a musician, to take the day’s music lesson afterward, and so she was there to hear what he taught.

It was inevitable that his own worldview would influence his teaching. He was a staunch Physiocrat—one of those who followed the ideal that working land was the true source of wealth—and Thomas Jefferson was mentioned frequently, the General sometimes interrupting himself to go hunt up this or that letter to read from.

I think Aurélie was more amazed at how little those kids seemed to care that their tutor was one of the most famous generals of the day. Their interests bounced around in typical kid fashion, and names like General Washington and Prince Adam Czartoryski, Empress Catherine and the Prince of Wales, brought no reaction, even when mentioned in the context of direct quotation from face to face conversations.

Nor did the general seem to expect any interest in himself. If they showed interest in a subject, he hailed their questions with praise.

Eventually, the kids were relinquished to Aurélie’s charge, to perform their fingering exercises on the fine spinet—a surprise in that old farmhouse—donated by one of the general’s admirers. The general didn’t stay to supervise. Aurélie had never taught before and assumed a bit of Miss Oliver’s manner, but tempered with the general’s fondness for approbation. She sounded more natural as the hour progressed.

At length the kids were either free to run around out in the cold air or to help in the kitchen, and Aurélie was called to join Jaska and the general at the table that served as the common gathering place.

The general smiled at Aurélie and said gently, “You play very well. From where do you come?”

“Jamaica, Saint-Domingue, then England,” she said. “Then France.”

The general waited, as the fire snapped, and from the kitchen came the low voices of Madame and her cook and the clink of dishes being stacked.
This is a set-up
, I thought.
He’s questioning her. Jaska asked him to.

But when Aurélie offered no more information, the general gave her his friendly smile and said, “Here we sit, and dinner is not yet ready. You have heard my method of education. Have you questions for me?”

It was the same method of gathering information that Talleyrand had used.

“Yes. Did Monsieur Mord come to visit you, then?”

“He did.”

“But then he left?”

“Ah, I sent him away.”

“Why?” Aurélie asked. “Surely you could not suspect him of being a spy, as they did in Paris.”

“No, no.” The general took up a carving knife and a piece of wood, from which he was carving a toy horse. “The very opposite. No one has a truer heart, unless it is my friend, Colonel Dsaret here, or, oh…so many very good friends. And Mordechai is among them. Do you know his history?”

“I know nothing about him,” Aurélie said.

The general turned to Jaska. “You permit?”

Jaska nodded. “You are better at explaining than I.”

Kosciusko sliced a thin curl of wood as he said, “My dear young Dsaret here was sent to Poland to learn military ways from me, and so he did, but he also learned much more, it is fair to say. Is it not?”

“Much more,” Jaska said.

“I appointed Jaska my liaison to Colonel Joselewicz, who raised the first Jewish brigade in history. At his side, acting as aide, was our republican friend, a Frenchman, come to Poland with the Declaration of the Rights of Man in hand. Do you know Hippolyte Vauban? He was born ‘de Vauban’ but he laid aside the ‘de’ at the Champs de Mars in seventeen ninety.”

The general paused, and when Aurélie shook her head, he went on. “You must realize that not everyone favored the idea of a Jewish brigade, not just from without the Jewish community but also from within. So it is with new ideas. Like the republic! Mordechai was one of the first to join the dragoons, though his grandfather was against it. A good man, Rabbi Elizier ben Isaac, a holy man. His reasons for caution were understandable, for he grew up hearing his own grandfather’s stories of the terrible pogroms of the last century. And Mordechai’s own father, Aaron ben Elizier, another good and honorable man, though he, too, disagreed.”

Jaska’s head was bowed, his empty hands dangling between his knees, but the set of his shoulders revealed tension.

The General paused to shake curls of wood from the toy, then worked his thumb over the rough muzzle. “Mord’s father felt that no good could come of Mord joining the regiment. He said that a Jew who takes up arms is begging for a Christian to take the sword away, and punish his entire family for his temerity.”