The Boy Who Wanted Wings Read online

  “But I’m not the ogler—am I, Alek?” Damian pronounced Aleksy’s diminutive in an exaggerated and accusatory tone that served to heighten the drama—and Aleksy’s embarrassment. Huskier in build and two years older, he enjoyed a bit of fun at his brother’s expense.

  His parents’ eyes moving to him now like search lanterns, Aleksy became tongue-tied. His ears burned. He wished he could give Luba a tug and make for the door with her. He looked down into his bowl. “Hold your tongue, Damian,” he murmured.

  “You were taken by her?” his mother asked.

  Aleksy looked up, attempting to decipher the smile on his mother’s face. Did she understand? Or was she amused? Might she be implying that he was even more of an unlikely admirer? The thought hardened like a stone inside him.

  “It was his wish,” Damian interjected, “to be taken by her.” His laugh allowed for a bit of stew to fly out of his mouth.

  “Enough!” Jadwiga snapped.

  “Swa!” Somehow their father could make a growling sound out of a shushing word.

  Damian hushed.

  Borys’ attention turned on Aleksy, eyes as sharp as his words. “You didn’t say anything to the girl, Aleksy?”

  Aleksy could only stare at his father. The mood at the table had turned, quick as lightning.

  “Nothing forward? Nothing improper? Tell us, Aleksy!”

  “I did not.”

  “I had better not hear otherwise. She is the lord’s daughter, his only daughter, and if he were to hear that one of his tenants’ sons had dared—”

  Jadwiga interrupted, attempting to steer the conversation. “There, there, Borys. He said he did nothing improper, didn’t you, Aleksy?” Directed at him, her amber-flecked blue eyes radiated warmth.

  “We both removed our hats.”

  “You see, Borys. Tenant farmers but gentleman-like in the presence of the lord’s daughter.”

  “Had she fallen,” Aleksy blurted, “I would have caught her.”

  Damian laughed. “You aren’t so fleet of foot, Aleksy, and we weren’t standing that close to the road.”

  Before Aleksy could contradict Damian, their father’s fist came down upon the oak table, causing a clatter of pewter plates and rattle of utensils. “You would do no such thing, Aleksy! Do you hear? If such an event occurs again, you are to keep your hat on and your eyes on the task at hand. Both of you! Is that understood?”

  Damian spoke: “Father, it was just that—”

  Aleksy saw his father’s powerful arm move up and then come down in a wide arc, his huge hand clouting Damian across the face, nearly forcing him from his chair.

  “You are to learn, Damian,” his father said through clenched teeth, “and you too, Aleksy, that there are rules to live by!”

  The meal was finished in icy silence. The plate of saffron wafers went untouched.

  “You won’t tell?” Aleksy asked again.

  “I said so, didn’t I?” Damian called back as he struck out for home and the mid-morning meal.

  Aleksy had to trust that his brother would get the story right: that he was staying in the fields to take a nap instead of returning home for breakfast and that he had with him some cheese and leftover bread to tide him over until supper, the only other meal of the day. The bread and cheese part of the tale was true. The rest was fiction. He smiled to himself, thinking that Damian would not gamble taking another clout in his brother’s stead.

  Gathering up his bow and linen quiver filled with lovingly fashioned arrows made of ash, Aleksy mounted Kastor, the family horse, and directed him toward the road to Mount Halicz, his thoughts not on what he was about to see, but on what he had seen the day before—the girl in yellow. She was a sight to behold. Her blond, braided hair coruscated in the sun like a halo. He had gone to sleep thinking of her, had awakened thinking of her. It was foolish, he knew. Why, they hadn’t even spoken. He knew nothing of her except that she was exceedingly beautiful, like the personification of a springtime daffodil. And she had looked at him, too—well, at them, him and his brother. Maybe it was Damian who drew her attention. Wasn’t that more likely? His heart faltered. Why should she be interested in me?

  Kastor meandered on, sure of footing but slow as sap from a tree in winter, for he was but a plow horse that had aided in many a spring planting. His gray hide was freckled with brown, like age spots. Aleksy’s father had often commented that if the world were a fair place, Kastor would have been put to pasture by now. When they came at last to the foot of Mount Halicz, Aleksy’s thoughts were still on the girl. He looked down at his hands, his arms. How dark they were, severely so in contrast to the porcelain white of her face and hands, dark, too, in contrast to the whiteness of Damian’s skin, especially in winter, when the browning from the summer sun had faded. While his own skin darkened somewhat in the summer, any fading in the cold months was almost imperceptible. He thought of her eyes. What color were they? He had not been close enough to determine. They were light, no doubt, blue like Damian’s—or green or gray. They were not nearly black like his; nor were they almond-shaped, like his.

  The differences stung like a serpent’s bite. Of course, he had always known—or so it seemed—that his parents were not his parents, that his brother was not his brother. And there had been myriad times when the differences mattered, as they did now. Still, the poison had never seemed as toxic.

  Borys—Aleksy called him Borys rather than Father—had told him years ago that they had adopted him and that his parents were of a Tatar tribe of nomadic herdsmen south of Halicz, on the Budzhak steppe that stretched to the Black Sea on either side of the River Dniester. Borys had been an infantryman under Lord Halicki in a military company assigned to protect the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the incursion of Cossacks and Tatars on the southern and eastern steppes. While supplying no real details, Borys had told him that both of his parents had been killed, adding that his father had been a leader of some distinction, a detail that Aleksy clung to like the air that he breathed. One day he would insist on more facts.

  When he was seven years of age, his mother had suggested to Borys that he be allowed to visit a nearby village of Tatars loyal to the Commonwealth so that he might study and learn their language and ways. The local parish priest protested, however, fearing Aleksy would take up the Muslim faith and Borys sided with him.

  Despite sometimes being labeled “the Tatar” by his peers, as well as by some adults who snarled at him, Aleksy had been content to stay within the cocoon of Polishness he had come to know. Even though as the years went by and he became less fearful of venturing away from the family that had taken him in, he was afraid that doing so would hurt them. And so he had embraced Christianity and the Polish way of living.

  But then there were times like these when he felt removed from every thing and everyone around him. Oh, he knew that the boundaries of class set a rich lord’s daughter upon a pedestal and well out of a tenant’s son’s reach, but he realized now that the fortune of his birth—his coloring, visage, and Eastern ancestry—made the chasm between him and the girl in the coach impossibly wide and deep. It escaped his logic, and yet somehow he deemed it a fault of his own.

  He was caught between cultures. Still, he thought, his acceptance of things Polish could be providential—should he ever have the opportunity, slim as chances were—of meeting the girl who had so entranced him.

  About halfway up the mountain, he came to a clearing that jutted out over a bare field. He dismounted. His eyes fastened on the activity below. This is what he had come for, and so he put the lord’s daughter from his mind. Brooding on what cannot be, he determined, would come to nothing.

  The company of hussars on the field far below seemed larger today, at least fifty, Aleksy guessed. They were being mustered into formation now, their lances glinting in the sun, black and gold pennants—
each with a white eagle—flying. There would be none of the usual games, it seemed, no jousting, no running at a ring whereby the lancers would attempt to wield their lances so precisely as to catch a small circlet that hung from a portable wooden framework. Today they were forming up for sober and orderly maneuvers. He wondered at their formality.

  Aleksy took note of the multitude of colors below and the little mystery resolved itself. Whereas on other occasions the men, some very young and generally of modest noble birth and means, wore outer garments of a blue, often inexpensive material, today they had been joined by wealthier nobles who could afford wardrobes rich in their assortment of color and fabric. These men—in their silks and brocades and in their wolf and leopard skins or striped capes—gathered to the side of the formation to watch and deliver commentary. Aleksy caught his breath when he suddenly realized that some of these must be the Old Guard of the Kwarciani. They were the most elite of hussars permanently stationed at borderlands east and south of Halicz—in what was called the Wild Fields—to counter raids by Cossacks and Tatars unfriendly to the Commonwealth. Their reviews would be taken, no doubt, with great solemnity and likely nervousness by the young lancers. Every soldier would make the greatest effort to impress the legendary men. According to Szymon, Lord Halicki’s stable master, in recent years the numbers of the Kwarciani had been reduced by massacres, and talk had it that they were eager to replenish their manpower. No doubt a few of the local novices below would be chosen to join the heroic elect.

  Some place at his core went cold with jealousy. If only he were allowed to train as a hussar. He could be as good as any of them. Better. No one he knew was more skillful at a bow than he. He could show those hussars a thing or two about the makings of an archer—even though he had come to realize fewer and fewer of the lancers bothered to carry a bow and quiver. The majority now disparaged the art of archery in favor of pistols, relying on a pair of them, in addition to the traditional sabre and lance.

  Naturally enough, there was no disdain for the lance, the very lifeblood and signature weapon of the hussar army. Aleksy smiled to himself when he thought of his own handcrafted lance.

  His thoughts conjured an elation that was only momentary, for he thought now how he had had to hide away his secret project under a pile of hay in the barn—and unless he should happen to be practicing with it one day in the forest when a wayward boar might meander his way, he would never be able to use it. His spirits plummeted. And the thought of mounting a plow horse like Kastor with it instead of riding atop one of the Polish-Arabians strutting below made him burn with—what? Indignation? Embarrassment? Humiliation—yes, he decided, humiliation was the most accurate.

  Inexplicably, the thought of the girl in yellow once again seized him, lifting him. Would he bargain one dream for the other? Life as a hussar in exchange for life with her? His breaths became shallow. He thought he just might risk anything to succumb to her charms. Almost at once his own bitter laugh stifled all thoughts as he grappled with the fact that he had no opportunity to become a hussar and no opportunity to even address such a young lady.

  “Silence!”

  The order travelled up the mountain like a clarion call. Below, the young lancers were being ordered to muster and were readying themselves for a practice drill.

  At the far end of the field two columns of the sleek Turks—Polish-Arabian horses—began moving down the narrowly marked twin tracks, the formation so tight as to make it seem the riders’ stirrups must be touching. The butts of lances held steady in their toks, boots that were strapped to the right side of the saddles. The hussars lowered the lances parallel to the horses’ heads, the pointed ends aimed at the imagined navels of the enemy. Two by two, the hussars put spur to their Turks and the beasts fairly flew down the track at full gallop—as if shot out of twin cannons. Aleksy had witnessed the usual maneuvers a dozen times and they had never failed to excite him, but today the sight was many more times thrilling because, attached to the steel backplate of each hussar was the apparatus that held dual wings rising vertically, each with dozens of eagles’ feathers whipping against the wind like palm branches. Szymon had told him about these soldiers’ wings, but this was his first sighting of them. “They’re meant to scare the life out of the enemy and the enemy’s horses, my boy,” he had told Aleksy. “And they do a fine job of it!” Until today—at this very formal exercise—Aleksy could only imagine the splendor of the sight. The sun was warm on his arms, but nonetheless his skin turned to gooseflesh as he watched the hussars cover some four hundred paces and come to the end of the field, each line forming an arch as they turned outward—their horses’ hooves expertly kept from stepping out—then flying back to the point of departure. From above, the outline of colorful uniforms and wings formed a most perfect and beautiful figure—appearing as one magnificent, moving pair of wings. The vision took his breath away.

  Szymon, a riveting storyteller despite his gravelly voice, had enflamed Aleksy with tales of the hussars and the King of Poland, detailing the military exploits of Jan Sobieski that led to his being named Grand Hetman of the Crown, the equivalent of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. Szymon had been a pacholik, or retainer, for Lord Halicki during the most recent wars with the Ottomans a decade before and had witnessed Sobieski’s initiative to increase hussar units, a move that accounted for a string of victories that led to his being elected King Jan III Sobieski. In a speech to the Sejm, Szymon recalled, the king designated his hussars “the hardwood of the army.”

  Still in a trance inspired by what he had just witnessed, Aleksy goaded a nervous Kastor down the uneven mountain path. Not far from the foot of the mountain, the horse stopped suddenly and a slight shiver alerted Aleksy to possible danger and brought him up short. A movement in the brush caught his ear. The beat of his heart accelerated as reaction trumped thought. He drew reins, his eyes raking the thicket. It was then that he spied the cause. His hand seamlessly reached back for an arrow, nocked it to the bow cord and loosed the shot. The goose feather-fledged shaft flew true. He let out a little whoop as he jumped down and went to take up his prize. The arrow had pierced the plump rabbit at the neck, allowing for the body to fully serve the family’s table. His mother would light up at the sight, for meat was a rarity at table. They usually had to trade or sell his fowl or game in order to afford various staples such as pots, utensils, sugar, mustard, black pepper, nutmeg, and salt ; often, too, larger game—deer, elk, or wild boar—became part of their tithes owed to Lord Halicki.

  Aleksy withdrew the arrow, wrapped a strip of cloth about the wound, and tied the animal to his saddle. He remounted Kastor, thankful for the little body tremor that had alerted him to the presence of the rabbit. Before continuing down the mountain, he carefully unstrung the bow and placed it in the soft linen bow case he had fashioned. To preserve the strength and tension of the weapon, he never left it strung for more than three or four hours at a time.

  He was not long on the road home when he heard horses’ hooves behind coming toward him at full gallop. Turning, he sighted two riders. He directed Kastor off to the right, allowing room for them to pass.

  In but moments one rider was there at his left while the other pulled up on his right, brushing up against Kastor and forcing him more to the road’s center. Both had slowed to his pace. The two were young hussars that had just come from their maneuvers. The horses were breathtakingly beautiful stallions, to be outdone only by the magnificent wings of eagles’ feathers fastened to the backplates of the soldiers. Even before they spoke, Aleksy was seized with a presentiment of danger. He was certain he knew the identity of these young soldiers. He did not pull up Kastor, allowing the horse to plod slowly on. He loved old Kastor and yet he burned with embarrassment to find himself hemmed in by the pair of elegant high-stepping Turks.

  “Well, what have we here, lord brother?” asked the hussar on his left. Then, to Aleksy: “Who are you, boy?” />
  Aleksy turned to him. The soldier was no more than a year or two older than he, taller in the saddle too, and handsome. The blond curls, dusted by the afternoon’s activities on the track reached the low collar of his red żupan. Beneath this long, sashed garment, white linen trousers were tucked into yellow leather boots. He had seen this one recently—but not in uniform.

  “I said—”

  “I was on the mountain watching.”

  “Watching? Watching us?”

  “Yes, milord.”

  “Spying, were you?”

  “No, milord.”

  “And what were your impressions?” This question—friendlier—came from the soldier on the right. Even though the term “lord brother” was commonly used among military comrades, Aleksy realized these two were indeed brothers. The family resemblance to the first speaker was evident, but he was younger, less confident, and not as striking in looks. His long, straight hair was more of a brown, rather than blond and, like the other, he wore neither helmet nor cap. He wore a blue żupan with leg wear and boots similar to his brother’s.

  Aleksy halted Kastor and the soldiers on either side followed suit. “I did miss the jousting and running at the ring, but—”

  “But what?” the older one demanded, his gaze seeming to alight on Aleksy’s bow, which protruded from the bow case.

  “The wings made up for the missing games. Are the devices heavy on your back?”

  “So this watching is a pastime of yours, is it?”

  “Yes, milord.” Aleksy hated using the epithet for this peacock but hoped the courtesy might take the edge off his belligerent attitude.