1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  “You know this big fellow, of course.” Pleasantly, the very large man standing just behind him nodded at the people at the table. That was Jan Billek, one of the central figures of the Unity of Brethren, the theologically radical church led by Bishop Comenius which, in another universe, would be driven into exile and eventually become the Moravian church in America.

  Red’s hand indicated the two men standing to his left. One of them was blonde and large, if not as large as Billek. The other was of average height and more dark-complected. “And these are Krzysztof Opalinski and Jakub Zaborowsky. My kind of guys, even if they’re both Polish szlachta. Finally—”

  He clasped the shoulder of the last man, a burly fellow wearing a rather exotic-looking costume, and pulled him forward. “And this here’s Dmytro Fedorovych.”

  Sybolt grinned cheerfully. “He’s a Cossack, of all things. Well, sorta. They’re not exactly Cossacks yet, you know. He tracked me down while I was in Lublin with Jan here, doing nothing we need to discuss at the moment. He heard I was connected to the Prince of the Jews in Prague, and insisted I take him there and make the introductions. That’s you, Morris, if you didn’t know.”

  Morris was practically ogling Fedorovych. The fact was, for all his belligerent talk on the subject, the Jewish jeweler had been born and raised in America. Melissa didn’t think he’d ever actually met a Cossack in his life.

  “Oh, my,” said Judith. She indicated the many empty chairs surrounding the huge table in the dining room. “Please, gentlemen, have a seat.”

  Morris kept staring at Fedorovych. Wondering, apparently, if the savage Cossack even knew what a chair was in the first place. Melissa almost laughed.

  As it happened, despite the rather outlandish outfit—she thought it was probably derived from Tatar or Mongol apparel—Fedorovych took his seat quite gracefully.

  “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Melissa asked them.

  “What do you think?” said Red. “Word’s out that Wallenstein appointed Morris to grab half of eastern Europe for him—”

  “Already?” demanded Morris. “Dammit, who blabbed?”

  “Could have been Wallenstein himself,” said Red. “It’s a tossup whether he’s shrewder than he is vainglorious. Relax, willya? When I said ‘the word was out,’ I only meant in selected circles. Mostly Jewish circles. The most likely culprit for the leak is you, actually. Or rather, the servants who overheard you talking about it. They’d have passed the word into the Prague ghetto and from there…”

  He smiled. “In case you hadn’t figured it out already, what with you being the Prince of the Jews, all the Jewish settlements in the towns of eastern Europe are connected to each other. The point being, the word’s out, and these gents want to dicker with you.”

  He turned toward the handsome young Pole named Krzysztof Opalinski. “You can start the dickering with these two. The reason they know about it is because I’d already gotten to know them while engaged in that business we don’t need to discuss, and I told them myself.”

  “We don’t care about Wallenstein’s aims on the Ruthenian lands,” said Opalinski. He gestured to his partner. “Jakub even less than I do, being as he is from the area himself.”

  Jakub Zaborowsky had a twisted smile on his face. “My family is szlachta like Krzysztof’s. But his family is prominent and well-off and we are dirt-poor, as Red would put it.” The term “dirt-poor” came in English, easily blended into the German they were all speaking. “I think we’d do better off back in Poland, if the situation was changed. The only ones who do well in Lesser Poland are the magnates, even if most of the szlachta there try to console themselves with the sure knowledge that they are of noble blood while they spend their days dealing with hogs and moneylenders like any peasant does.”

  Opalinski spoke again. “So we will not contest that issue with you. Indeed, you will have our blessing, even to a degree our active support. Strip away their Ruthenian estates, and half the magnates who have Poland and Lithuania under their yoke will lose most of their wealth and influence.”

  For the first time, he came into focus in Melissa’s mind. The easy and effortless way he said “under their yoke” was the tip-off. In Melissa’s experience—which had been quite extensive in her youth—the only people who could whip out phrases like that as naturally as most people talked of the weather were dyed-in-the-wool radicals.

  “And who, exactly, is ‘you’?” she asked.

  The blond young Pole sat erect, looking stiffly proud. “We are members of the newly formed Spartacus League of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.”

  His partner Jakub, who seemed either less full of himself or simply blessed with a good sense of humor, smiled ironically. “We took the name from Rosa Luxemburg’s revolutionary organization. She was a Pole, you know, and a Jewess. Even if the history books mostly talk about her in Germany.”

  James Nichols rubbed his face. “I swear, no virus or bacillus which ever lived is as contagious a vector as those fricking books in Grantville.”

  Melissa smiled back at Zaborowsky. “Out of idle curiosity, which unlikely tomes did you find in Grantville that said anything about Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacus League? I wouldn’t have thought the public library—much less the high school’s!—would have carried any such books.”

  Both Poles looked at Red. For his part—very unusual, this was—the UMWA man looked almost embarrassed.

  “Well…”

  After a moment, Melissa’s jaw sagged. “You swiped them! From my library.”

  “Oh, jeez, Melissa, I don’t think loaded terms like ‘swiped’ are called for here. What the hell, you were locked up in the Tower of London for a whole year. Not as if you’d miss them any, until I got them copied and put them back.”

  Melissa glared at him. Then, glared at Nichols.

  “Ease up, dear,” he said mildly. “I didn’t give him permission to come into our house and take the books. First I even knew about it.”

  The gaze he gave Red was every bit as mild as his tone of voice. “Odd, though. I never imagined you had second-story burglar skills.”

  “Me? Oh, hell no.” Red was back to his normal cheery self, the momentary embarrassment having vanished like the dew. “But I know some guys who do.”

  To Melissa, he said: “And since you asked, the three books in question were a biography of Luxemburg, a collection of her writings, and a history of the German Social Democratic party.” He coughed into his fist. “Among others, of course. I gotta tell you, for someone like me, you got far and away the most useful library in Grantville. Anywhere in this here world.”

  “You could have asked!”

  “You were locked up in the Tower, like I said,” he replied reasonably. He gave James a glance. “And since I figured he was likely to get stubborn about it, you not being around to say yes or no for yourself, and since he wasn’t hardly ever in the house anyway what with spending every waking hour at the hospital, I figured it was just simpler all the way around to borrow them for a while until I could get copies made.”

  Melissa didn’t know whether to swear at him or laugh. In the end, she did both. “You lousy fucking commie!” she exclaimed, gurgling a little.

  He shrugged. “I prefer the term ‘revolutionary socialist,’ myself, although I certainly won’t squawk at ‘Bolshie.’ But fair’s fair. From now on, Melissa, you can borrow anything of mine without so much as a by-your-leave. What’s mine is yours, as they say.”

  “You don’t own anything, Red,” said James, in that same mild tone of voice. “Except the clothes on your back, which wouldn’t fit Melissa anyway.”

  “Well, of course not. What kind of agitator goes around hauling lots of trunks and suitcases with him? I got exactly what fits into a reasonable-sized valise. Still. The principle’s the same.”

  Melissa had never found it possible to stay mad at Red Sybolt for more than a few seconds. First, because he was such an incorrigible sprite. Second, because she
was something of a kindred spirit. She’d admit it was a little silly for her to be denouncing Sybolt as a commie, seeing as how she could remember the label being applied to her often enough.

  “And what’s Mr. Fedorovych’s angle in all this?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s complicated,” said Red. “And we’ll have to have Jakub do the translating for us. Dmytro’s German is lousy and my Ruthenian—which is actually about a jillion dialects—is even worse.”

  Everyone looked at the Poles. Zaborowsky began speaking to Fedorovych. After a while, the Cossack started speaking.

  The first sentences translated were:

  “He says he thinks—so do many people he’s spoken to among the Zaporozhian Host—that they’d do better if they shifted their allegiance to Wallenstein. They’re fed up with the Lithuanian and Polish boyars, and they don’t trust the Russians at all. But first, he says, Mr. Roth has to agree to do something about the Jews.”

  “I knew it,” hissed Morris. He scowled at the Cossack. “I suppose he expects me—God knows how I’d do it even if I were so inclined—to make all the Jews living in eastern Europe just somehow vanish. Stuff somewhere around a quarter of a million kikes into my kike pocket, I guess.”

  Zaborowsky translated. Frowning—he seemed more puzzled than anything else, from what Melissa could tell—Fedorovych shook his head and spoke. The translation came back:

  “He doesn’t understand why you think to move the Jews. It’s impossible anyway, because there are far too many of them. Besides, they do lots of useful things. But he says they have to stay in their towns, or, if they move into the countryside, they have to do it like any other farmer. No more working for the boyars.”

  Morris stared at him. Then, glared at Melissa. “This is your fault.”

  “Huh?”

  His wife looked exasperated. “Morris, that’s absolutely childish!”

  He slumped back in his chair. “Yeah, I know it is. It’s still her fault. I can remember her causing trouble since practically the first day she showed up in Grantville, way back almost forty years ago.”

  Melissa sniffed. “That is why I came here, after all. At your insistence.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Morris wiped his face. “I feel like I got somehow dropped into the set of Lord of the Rings right at the point when Tolkien conjured up an alliance with dwarves and elves.” Gloomily: “And what’s worse, some idiot cast me as Gandalf.”

  Krzysztof Opalinski was obviously puzzled by Morris’ reference to himself as Gandalf. But, to Melissa’s surprise, his companion Jakub Zaborowsky grinned.

  “Not exactly, Herr Roth—at least, not from our viewpoint. You are more in the way of our Elrond. Perhaps Galadriel.”

  Morris gaped at him. Jakub made a modest wagging gesture with his hand. “I like to read. Although I must say that while I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, the premises are preposterous. In that story, everybody loves the king except the forces of evil—and there are no rapacious great noblemen to be found anywhere. A fantasy, indeed.”

  Morris was still gaping at him.

  “Close your mouth, dear,” murmured Judith. She gave Zaborowsky a smile. “I’ll admit the image of my husband as an elf is delightful, but…I don’t really understand what you mean by it.”

  Jakub shrugged. “It is not complicated, really. Gandalf was the leader of the active struggle against Sauron. In Poland and Lithuania, at least—and certainly in the lands controlled by the Cossacks—Herr Roth cannot possibly play that role. The Poles are a fractious people, and the Lithuanians even more so. If Wallenstein makes the mistake of trying to encroach upon their territory, they will unite against him. And they will have Hetman Koniecpolski leading their armies. He is not a general any sane person takes lightly.”

  Morris had closed his mouth, by now. “Well. No, he isn’t.”

  “As for the Cossacks,” Zaborowsky continued, giving his companion Fedorovych a little nod that seemed half-amused and half-respectful, “I am afraid you cannot take Dmytro here as a valid sample of the lot. He has no animus against Jews at all, so far as I can tell. Not so, for the average Cossack. Even Jewish traders are at some risk in Cossack territory.”

  Naturally, that set Morris back to glaring. At the wall, however, since he couldn’t very well glare at the only Cossack actually present.

  Seeing the nod in his direction, Fedorovych asked for a translation. Once he got it, he grunted. Then, jabbered something that had to be translated back.

  “What he says,” explained Zaborowsky, “is that I am exaggerating some. Most Cossacks have no contact with the Jews in the towns and their villages. All they see are the Jewish rent collectors and estate managers who exploit the Ruthenian peasants. So they take those as representative of the lot, when in fact they are a small portion. Dmytro’s been in the towns, and he knows that most Jews are just as poor as most peasants.”

  Having finished, he shrugged again. “What he says is true enough. But Dmytro is such a good Christian under the Cossack bandit exterior—you understand, I am being very generous with the term ‘Christian’—that I think he underestimates the force of sheer bigotry. Especially when it is reinforced weekly, sometimes daily, by priests of the Greek faith.”

  Melissa couldn’t help but make a face. “The Greek faith” referred to Orthodox Christianity, which, in this day and age, was lagging centuries behind both the Catholics and the Protestants. Where the Roman church and any one of the major Protestant denominations could boast many accomplished and sophisticated theologians, the Orthodox church could count none. The highest Orthodox prelates were usually under the thumb of either Istanbul or Moscow.

  So, it was a church that relied almost entirely on ritual and custom. Good enough, perhaps, for the illiterate or semiliterate peasants of eastern Europe, and the Cossacks. But it had lost the allegiance of the native ruling classes of the vast Ruthenian lands. For all practical purposes, they had been Polonized. Ethnically still Ruthenian, they spoke Polish and practiced Catholicism or, in some cases, Protestantism. Very few of them even dwelt any longer on their Ruthenian estates. They left those to be managed by overseers—often Jewish—while they moved to Warsaw and lived in city mansions. The last of the great Ruthenian magnates still of Orthodox faith, Prince Władysław Zasławski—one of the richest lords in the entire Commonwealth—had converted to Catholicism in the summer of 1632.

  The end result was a “Commonwealth of Both Nations” that was actually a commonwealth of three nations—but the third nation, the Ruthenians, had no voice or say in the affairs of state.

  Nor did the Poles and Lithuanians bother to be polite about the matter. Just two years earlier, a Cossack delegation had shown up at the electoral convention which chose Władysław IV as the successor to the Polish–Lithuanian throne, following the death of his father Zygmunt III. They claimed the right to participate in the convention, pointing to their frequent and valiant role in Poland’s battles with the Turks and Tatars as their credentials.

  The response had been blunt, and as rude as you could ask for. It was explained to the Ruthenian roughnecks that, yes, they were indeed part of the Commonwealth’s body—just as nails are part of the human body, and need to be trimmed from time to time. And they were not welcome in the convention.

  Leaving aside the arrogance and bigotry involved, it was hard for Melissa to imagine anything more stupid on the part of Poland and Lithuania’s rulers. Bad enough, that they treated their Ruthenian serfs like animals. But to do so when those serfs had living among them a large and ferocious warrior caste like the Cossacks…

  They were practically begging for a social explosion, and, sure enough, it was on the horizon. In the universe she’d come from, the situation had finally erupted in the great Cossack Revolt of 1648, led by the Cossack ataman Bohdan Chmielnicki. The revolt had shaken the Commonwealth to its foundations, leaving it wide open to the foreign invasions that would devastate Poland and go down in its history as “The Deluge.” And, in the end, P
oland would lose the Ukraine to Moscow. And with that loss, the power equation between the two great Slavic nations would shift drastically in favor of the Russians.

  Morris was muttering something. She thought it was “I knew it.”

  “Stop muttering, husband,” said Judith. “Say it out loud, if you have to say it.”

  “I knew it,” he pronounced.

  Krzysztof Opalinski frowned. “Knew what?”

  Zaborowsky, whom Melissa had already pegged as the brighter of the two Polish radicals, gave him a sideways glance. “He means ‘I knew the Cossacks would be useless. Probably enemies.’”

  Fedorovych demanded a translation. Jakub gave it to him, and from the brevity Melissa was sure he pulled no punches. But instead of matching Morris’ glare with one of his own, the Cossack just grinned.

  He jabbered something. Jakub translated.

  “He says he didn’t mean to suggest anything would be easy. With Cossacks, nothing is easy. He says you should watch them quarreling over the loot. Worse than Jews in a haggling fury.”

  Morris looked to the ceiling. “Oh, swell.”

  * * *

  Later that night, after they retired to their chamber—chambers, rather—James Nichols gave their surroundings another admiring whistle. Then, eyed the bed a bit dubiously, and the canopy over it more dubiously still.

  “You realize that if that comes down and buries us, we’ll smother to death. Damn thing must weigh a quarter of a ton.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” said Melissa. But her own gaze at the canopy was probably on the dubious side, also. The thing wasn’t really a “canopy” such as you might find over a bed in a fancy hotel. It bore a closer resemblance to the unicorn tapestries she’d once seen at The Cloisters museum in New York. It certainly didn’t weigh a quarter of a ton. That was just ridiculous. Still, it wouldn’t be a lot of fun to wriggle out from under if it did come down.

  Not that that was likely to happen, of course. The four-corner posters holding it up didn’t bear much resemblance to anything you’d see in a fancy hotel either. They looked more like floor beams, except they were ornately carved.