Histories

Chapter II

“No, Father, I have not spoken to him,” the young woman confessed, kneeling beside the lattice of the confessional. “I did not know how to begin such a conversation. His mother has been dead for many months now.”

“My daughter,” came the priest’s voice from the shadowed interior, “you had not the courage to speak with your husband about his own mother, yet you have courage enough to harbour such dreadful suspicions?”

“The very moment I found it—at first, as soon as I had read it—I hid it away where none might discover it. Yet afterwards it gave me no peace. That woman practised magic. Can such a thing be right? The Church forbids it!” Marianna burst out, twisting the edge of her kerchief between trembling fingers.

“But what do you know of magic? You say your mother-in-law sought only to lift a curse. She wished harm to no one…”

“Even so, she made use of magic,” the young wife persisted.

“My daughter, what indeed do you know of such matters?” the priest interrupted gently. “You tell me your mother-in-law sought to break a curse without wishing evil upon any soul. You never knew her. You do not know what fears burdened her heart. Perhaps she implored the holy angels for aid; perhaps all her efforts were but the helpless attempts of a desperate woman. How can you judge? You have not even spoken with Łukasz.”

Father Moczulski had ministered in Pomiechowo for many years. He had known Orszula well, and he knew far more of the Kiliś family than most of the parish ever suspected.

“How am I to speak with my husband,” the girl whispered, “when he does not even know that I possess the manuscript? He has no notion that such a book exists… perhaps not even that this curse has followed his family through the generations.”

“Do you hear your own words?” replied the priest. “You are a good woman. Am I to teach you how a wife should speak with her husband? Go now.”

“And am I simply to pretend that nothing has happened?”

“Maryśka!”

The priest’s voice rang through the church with such force that the women kneeling nearest the confessional turned their heads in curiosity. Marianna realised that not only his raised voice, but also the extraordinary length of her confession, had begun to arouse unhealthy interest among the congregation.

“Very well, Father, I shall speak with Łukasz,” she answered at last. She did not say so because she believed the priest was right. She wished only to escape that place as quickly as she could.

When Father Moczulski tapped gently upon the wooden partition, the Holy Mass was already drawing to its close. Hurrying towards the altar, Marianna was still in time to receive Holy Communion. She did not see the curious—and in some cases openly derisive—glances cast in her direction by the village women, who, judging from the unusually long confession, had already persuaded themselves that she must have burdened her conscience with some grievous offence.

None appeared more satisfied than Mrs. Kuczeńska. For years she had nourished an undisguised dislike of Marianna, and the triumph written plainly upon her face seemed almost to proclaim: “There now! She was always so pious—so much holier than the rest of us. And what has become of her now?”

The journey from Pomiechowo back to Kosewo required little more than half an hour, yet the Kiliś family could not afford to linger. The horses that had brought them to church were already awaited by the farm servants, who likewise hoped to attend Mass.

Several of Łukasz’s relatives had been present in the church that day, yet for many months the two branches of the family had scarcely maintained any close intercourse. One of the chief causes of the estrangement had been the division of the ancestral estate. When Łukasz married at barely twenty years of age, he received only a modest financial settlement from the family property that remained in nearby Czarnowo.

His father, Michał, had died in September of 1829, scarcely a year after his youngest son’s birth, having lived only thirty-nine years. Not even two years had passed since the death of Łukasz’s mother, yet already Jan, the eldest of the children, had come to regard himself as master of all that remained. Little enough was left for the younger siblings.

For Łukasz those months had proved especially bitter. Having grown up without a father, he had placed all the warmth of his affections upon his mother and his elder siblings. They had been his teachers and examples. Now he felt cast aside and deeply wronged. The whole order of life in which he had believed seemed to crumble before his eyes. And then there had been that unhappy incident at the wedding…

The July sunshine lay warmly upon the countryside as the carriage rolled towards Kosewo. Along the way, Łukasz and Marianna spoke with her parents of ordinary household concerns, yet before long the conversation turned to matters that would demand attention on the sixth day of August.

Every year, on that day, Marianna joined the great pilgrimage on foot to Jasna Góra. Neither illness nor hardship had ever prevented her from making the journey; not even the birth of her little daughter had persuaded her to remain at home. It was therefore only natural that the duties awaiting each member of the household should now be carefully arranged.

Marianna’s parents, the Matyasiaks, had settled in this district years before and had prospered. A considerable portion of their property had already passed into the hands of the young couple, and when joined with the settlement Łukasz had received, it enabled them to live in a comfort seldom enjoyed by their neighbours.

From the day of Marianna’s marriage, their home had commonly been spoken of as the manor. Standing opposite a little lake at Kosewo, it was remembered for generations afterwards as one of the finest houses in the neighbourhood. Built of massive timber logs, roofed with wooden shingles, and containing six spacious chambers above well-stocked cellars, it bore every mark of solid prosperity.

Besides the young Kiliś family and the necessary servants, the household included Mr. and Mrs. Matyasiak together with their two younger daughters, Frania and little Agnieszka. About the yard wandered one-year-old Cecylia, as yet the only child of Łukasz and Marianna, though before many months had passed another little soul was expected.

To outward appearance, fortune had smiled generously upon Łukasz. Yet beneath that tranquil surface there lingered a quiet sorrow which poisoned many of his happiest moments.

In Czarnowo he had been the son of a gentlewoman, reared beneath the roof of the ancestral manor, where reverence for the past had been cherished almost as a sacred duty. Everyday life differed little from that of any other farmer in the district. Each day was filled with toil in the fields and about the homestead. Nobility exempted no man from honest work, yet it bestowed a consciousness of belonging to an ancient order.

He remembered nothing of his father, yet whenever, as a mischievous boy, he had earned a rebuke, his mother would point towards the sabre hanging upon the wall and say with quiet dignity: “Such conduct does not become a gentleman.”

No one any longer spoke of the long journey his forefathers had made from the northern lands. Yet one tradition endured: that the cradle of the family lay in Lithuania, whence, as the elders would always say, “we came long ago.” Every tale handed down within the household served but a single purpose—to preserve the family’s identity and its distinct inheritance.

The Kiliś family lived among their neighbours, yet never wholly as one with them. There lingered within them an indefinable sense of separateness.

Now, through his own marriage, it seemed to Łukasz that all this had come to an end. It was a bitter irony. Of all his mother’s children, he had been the one most deeply attached to the traditions of the family. The estrangement from his own kin that had followed his marriage only deepened his longing for that half-legendary past.

Marianna wasted no time. Faithful to the promise she had given Father Moczulski, she resolved to begin the difficult conversation immediately after the Sunday dinner.

Having carefully arranged every word in her mind, she sought to entice Łukasz into a quiet walk through the orchard. To her disappointment, she quickly discovered that she had been outmanoeuvred by her own daughter and younger sister. Łukasz had already taken the two little girls and wandered off with them for their customary Sunday stroll.

Marianna set off at once in search of her husband. The search proved short. Beyond the last of the farm buildings stretched a long orchard. Beneath the shade of one of the trees sat Łukasz upon an old woollen blanket, while little Cecylia and Agnieszka played in the grass before him. Nearby, Frania, Marianna’s younger sister, was enjoying the first sweet apples of the season.

The moment Łukasz caught sight of his wife hurrying towards them, he rose with outstretched arms. Beside his tall, slender figure Marianna looked almost a child herself. She did not disappoint him.

“Come home with me. I must speak to you.”

Łukasz looked at her in surprise. Then a knowing smile stole across his face. Gathering both little girls into his arms, he turned with them towards the house.

“Where are you all going already?” Frania called after them.

Receiving no answer, she called after her sister: “You’ve stolen him away again!”

Marianna merely waved her hand without turning her head. Presently she encountered Anka, the young maid.

“Ah, there you are. Take the children to Mother, if you please, and ask her to keep them with her for an hour.”

A few moments later, relieved of every household obligation, husband and wife entered by the side door leading to their own apartments.

Marianna drew her husband towards an old rocking chair and, with a gentle push, settled him into it. Then, lowering herself upon the straw mat at his feet in the warm glow of the little oil lamp, she looked up at him.

“Łukasz, do you know that nearly two hundred years ago another Marianna sat beside her husband in much the same fashion—and that she, too, belonged to your family?”

“Perhaps she did,” he answered with an amused smile. “Was Marianna such an uncommon name?”

“Indeed it was your great-great-great-grandmother,” she replied softly, meeting his clear blue eyes.

“I have never heard a word of it,” he said; then, suddenly stirred by curiosity, he leaned forward. “And how do you know such a thing?”

“I know far more than you imagine,” Marianna answered teasingly. “You have often told me that your family came from Lithuania. But do you know when they came—or why?”

“No one ever spoke of it,” Łukasz replied with a slight shrug. “Perhaps they did not know themselves.”

“Oh, some of them knew well enough,” she whispered.

“Come now, little enchantress, what secret are you hiding from me?”

“Patience, my dear husband,” she answered, seating herself upon a low stool. The room was fragrant with drying mint, while shafts of the July sun stole through the shutters. “Do you remember how, not long after our wedding, we amused ourselves in the attic of your manor at Czarnowo?”

Marianna continued without waiting for an answer. “I went back there later, all alone. Beneath a layer of straw I found an old manuscript written by several different hands. It contained the whole history of your family.”

“Why did you never show it to me? Where is it now…?”

Marianna raised her hand, gently silencing him. She told him of the flight of the Kiliś siblings from lands that had once belonged to the Polish Commonwealth, of their hopes for a new beginning, and of another journey organised by Stanisław Kiliś that had brought the family to Mazovia.

“That is why your grandfather Walenty was born at Goławice.”

She spoke of an ancient disgrace—of a girl from the Lithuanian forests whose heart was cruelly broken. “They say she uttered words against your family, words that have brought ruin ever since…”

“A curse?” Łukasz sprang from the rocking chair with an uneasy laugh. “Maniusia, Anka has been filling your head with fairy tales!”

Yet even as he spoke, a shadow crossed his face.

Marianna realised she could no longer soften the truth. When at last she spoke plainly, she expected anger or disbelief. None came. Łukasz remained silent. He did not deny a single word.

“You knew…” Marianna whispered at last.

“No, Maniusia,” he answered softly. “I did not know the whole story, though many things had long made me suspect that something was amiss. But tell me… why did you keep this from me for so long?”

Marianna explained the warning in the manuscript that only one person in each generation might know of the curse, and how his mother had tried to lift it through magic before hiding the book.

Before she could continue, a moving shadow passed across the window. They had to interrupt the conversation.

Later that evening, when Łukasz was finally alone, he took the manuscript and began to read. He could not read far.

The burden of what he discovered settled upon his heart with a weight he had never known before.

The months that followed brought little peace to the Kiliś family. Łukasz resolved to seek work outside the farm and found employment at Pomiechówek. The greatest sorrow came before dawn on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of November, 1851. Little Cecylia, scarcely a year and a half old, was found not breathing. The shock hastened the birth of their next child, a son named Jan.

The years that followed were marked by the joy of new births and the sorrow of burying most of those children. Only the third Marcjanna, born in September of 1862, was granted a long life.

The closing months of 1862 brought tidings of a national rising. Łukasz joined a circle of conspirators in the neighbouring parish of Łomna. His part in the January Uprising proved symbolic. The first engagement near Pułtusk ended in disaster. After several anxious days he returned to Kosewo, explaining that he had been visiting distant relatives.

A year later another son, Józef, was born. He died at the age of four. On the eighth of January, 1867, Stanisław was born. After Staś there were still three more children. Michał, the youngest, lived to see his fifteenth birthday. Jakub and Józefa both died in early childhood.