Chargen IV. June 1565-August 1572. Paris, Kingdom of France.
- Location
- United States
♫
Sir Marszowski had bested you again. With a dry "ha!" he plunged his cork-tipped rapier into your gut, just below the ribs."Guard's so low you may well be laying on the floor," he quipped. "You lean back too much, it's good to be scared of the blade but it's not a wench with bad breath. And that'd have been a disembowelment. Positively dead, lad."
You shook your head and smiled wryly in defeat. "You're too fast."
"Ah ha!" he replied, scratching his red-brown mustache before sweeping an errant lock of the same color off his forehead. "Am I too fast or are you too slow," he teased, "now, what is it I always say?"
"Come on…"
Sir Marszowski cocked his eyebrow. You grumbled in acquiescence.
You began the recitation. Marszowski even played his lute over it once. "A proper knight dances a galliard five times a day, everyday…"
"Because?"
"...because fighting is like dancing…"
"And why's that?"
"...one needs fast feet to dodge and close…"
"It's a couplet, you know."
"...as one needs them to drop her hose."
"Very good. As usual, need to dance more. Also, you haven't been balancing on the bucket like you said you would." Damn him, how did he know? "Your front foot's still shaky. You know you can't get anything past me, Your Serene Highness," said Marszowski as he walked towards his things, discarded by the room's entrance. He held his waterskin up to his ear, listening to the slosh. "Want some?"
You cracked a grin; sweet mischief! "Gorzała?"
"What?" said the knight, shock on his face. "By God, you're thirteen, you ought to still be drinking your beer triple-watered!" But then that smile you knew so well. The dress-chasing, verse-writing, duel-winning smile of Andrzej Marszowski, fellow troublemaker. He tapped his index finger on his lips. "And don't be silly. It's about two-thirds pear kompot." He tossed you the liquor-skin. "Figured a treat, since you leave tomorrow. Toughen you up so you don't blubber when you say goodbye to Tatjana, eh," he teased.
"I will not!" you huffed back, taking a face-puckering, cough-inducing swig of the stuff in defiance. Marszowski chuckled at your reaction.
"But at the same time, don't throw up in her lap, you little drunk." He sighed, and something softer crossed his handsome face. He strode over and clapped a hand on your shoulder. "You'll do well, lad. Wish we had more time for rondel and stiletto, that's what's really needed in Paree. But I know you're smart, Farensbach told me so; you'll go far. Don't need any Hebrew to read that on your scroll. As for my smarts? Well, I filled my head up with fencing books and love poems. Hope you got a bit of both." He sighed again, squeezing your shoulder, and swallowed. You suddenly felt the need to stand very still as your trainer averted his eyes, smiling (uncharacteristically) sheepishly. Christ alive – are those tears welling up? "You know, I'm not lost on all the rumors. About my wife and I. The barrenness. But I look at you and I see my boy. So do this old fellow proud?"
"Of course, Sir Marszowski," you said, fighting off some cracks yourself.
"Good lad. And mind the drinking. Damn fun but rots your teeth and makes you sloppy – fighting, flirting, thinking. Comprendre, Seigneur Rad-zee-veel?"
"Je comprends, Papa Chevalier."
"Call me that from now on!"
In contrast, Tatjana arrived at your chamber door a few hours before bedtime later that day, clasping a beat-up book to her chest. She addressed you in that peculiar commoners' Ruski that you yourself had learned well – a great headache to Master Farensbach and the Ruthenian tutor, who described it as, quote, "massively improper."
"I mean not impose on thee, dear master," she said, "for it's thy last night. But thou knowest all the stories I told thee?"
What an odd question. "Aye..?"
"Well," she said, scratching at the back of her head, before thrusting the book forward, "this be God's Book. 'Tis in Latin and at last I found the courage to borrow it from Lord Szygrod. I was… Well, thou knowest I have no letters…"
"Thou wouldst want me to read to thee?"
"Prithee, glory to God," she said, "Realized, did I, that I've never heard thee read. I have verses for thee, too. If thou wilt read for old Tatjana." The awkward tinge begot by her request faded from her voice, as she shut your chamber door behind her and smiled warmly. "But I first must ask: art thou afraid?"
"Just a bit." You felt this to perhaps be a lie. You weren't sure. Leaving for school never felt quite real until Sir Szygrod presented the trunks filled with clothes and sundries, so you could pick and choose what to bring. You had thrown up in your chamberpot this morning – sorry sight – but you weren't sure if it was last night's fish or this morning's nerves. You were not one of the cowardly ones, they said. You never hesitated to spar or shoot boar or ride a horse at breakneck speed. But that was all here, at Dubinki. Paris was unimaginably far.
"Then thou ought read from the twenty-third and one hundred twenty-first psalms, and the sixteenth proverb. Before thou wert born, they sent me away. Have I told thee of this?"
You shook your head. No.
"Thou art a silly boy, did thou think'st I lived here always? Nay. Sent off I was, during famine, and ne'er have I gone back to my village 'cept for every other feast day. Thou know'st that."
Headshake again. Yes.
You flipped through the psalms, recited the Latin, and haltingly translated for Tatjana. She sat on your bed grinning, hands folded in her lap as you paced and read.
…I lift up mine eyes to the mountains; from where will I gain help? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of Heaven and Earth. He will not permit thy foot to stumble, he who guards thee shall never sleep…
…The heart of man purposeth the way, but the LORD directs his steps…
…He restoreth my soul, and leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake…
"Thou art fast!" said Tatjana, proud. "Or, well, I suppose I wouldn't quite know. Thou seemest fast to me. Lord Prince, I know all these by heart. I was ten, and mine village priest taught them unto me to settle the nerves. How scared I was… But thou art the son of a prince, and a prince thyself."
"What dost thou mean by that?"
"That the Lord told thee: 'thou art not a chambermaid.' Thou wilt go out, and find thyself with power and wealth and all the trappings that come with it. Much sin in that life. As for me, it is easy to pray, to follow His commandments, but thou must lead and fight and surround thyself with wicked men and wicked things. Thou must take heed. The Lord hast called thee by thy very birth."
"Thou sound'st like a Calvinist!"
At your quip, she chuckled and shook her head. "Well, I'd tell thee to remember thy saints if it weren't an upset to thy father -- that be not so Calvinist. All I tell thee is that thou must keep thy works up, and to mind thy Book. Thou art too old for bedtime stories, the time cometh for God's advice, not thine old nurse's yarns."
"Prithee I hear of Vasilisa and the Baba Yaga one last time?"
Tatjana sighed a deflating, bittersweet sigh, not unlike that of Marszowski some hours earlier. "Naturally, little Prince."
Your father was not at Dubinki to see you off. No great surprise. The following morning, you departed in a wagon train bound west; the Sund was deemed too risky in those days. Through carriage windows and castle balconies you toured the Empire, and it was in those few weeks' travel that you began to see the world for, what you felt, it truly was. There had always been war with Muscovy not far to Dubinki's north, but columns of fleeing peasants were the worst you had seen.
War had ended in the Empire ten years ago, they said, but still you saw bloated bodies in ditches and charred farmsteads. The bandits, they said. Armed guard was doubled with mercenaries more than once. Most unnerving of all were the forests, where dirty-looking men kept their distance in the treeline, leaning on halberds, zweihanders, and arquebuses. A shot of a wheellock pistol into the air was enough to make them melt back into the beeches and spruces.
It was during transit to Paris, too, that you learned of the issues with your confession. The Peace of Augsburg allowed for Lutherans, but Calvinists such as yourself remained outlawed and unprotected. Being a Lithuanian and Imperial prince, of course, shielded you from the worst, but more than once were you shut out from tavern and manorhouse alike.
After almost a month of constant trundling, you finally arrived in Paris. The city seemed to sprawl in all directions, stretching far beyond its old walls, the blue sky of summer overhead cut into ribbons with chimney smokestacks, Notre-Dame springing up over the thatched and tiled roofs of the city.
To your horror, though, you were not to stay at the Louvre, not just yet. Rather the boy-King Charles, with the entirety of court in tow, had embarked upon a Grand Tour of the realm and you were shuttled off again, bound for Armagnac. Nerves and fatigue were beginning to do a number on your young constitution, though you did all you could to mind thy Book, as Tatjana would've wanted. It didn't help that the French, especially the southerners, talked nothing like Farensbach did in his lessons – nevertheless, you settled into the routine of life as an on-the-road page with relative ease. Taking orders was difficult at first – offensive to your princely sensibilities, perhaps – but running about from errand to errand was not. His Most Christian Majesty, as it turned out, was but a year older than you, with a propensity for shaking his restless leg atop the throne with a hand on his chin, wholly disinterested. Disinterested in the pages, too, for that matter; never in your life had someone talked down to you, let alone a boy your own age, til you waited on the King. His mother, the Florentine, was similarly chilly. Though, in her defense, she seemed quite busy, always with some privy councilman or another speaking to her in a hushed voice.
They said things were slow at the touring court following the expulsion of the hotblooded ultra-Catholic Duke of Guise a few months before your arrival, who had left for Hungary to fight the Turk in a huff. His friends still at court, meanwhile, made no secret of their distaste for your confession, making sure to say "heretic," "sinner," and the like just a bit louder whenever you were in earshot.
Prince Alexandre, on the other hand, was quite friendly, a free-spirited and energetic young man just a few months younger than you, much heartier and more gregarious than His Most Christian Majesty. With a love for fencing, riding, and thinking the two of you became fast brothers in precociousness, bonding over lively religious debate and carefree horse races. Unlike the Guise camp or the Huguenot firebrands you met in the south, Alexandre offered a (perhaps) much-welcome reasoned outlook amidst the chaos that was life beyond the Union's tolerance; never did he let his Catholicism sway his heart, his concerns lied chiefly in France's health and the proper execution of the law, in that order. Regardless of your own ambivalence towards Calvinism, you could respect that. The fellow princeling wasn't perfect, though: like his brother and mother he had a haughty, aloof streak, and you weren't quite sure how much you approved of his materialism and ceaseless preening.
Ultimately you…
[] Counted him as a good friend.
The sodomite accusations swirling about Henri don't bother you either; the Guise camp will say what they will against Protestant and Politique alike. Looking past his flaws of vanity and self-absorption, you see an intelligent, insightful, and basically moral person. And counting the heir presumptive of France as a friend? Anyone with a political bone in their body wouldn't ask twice!
[] Maintained a fond familiarity.
Decent fellow. Couldn't hang about him all the time, though. On one hand: forgets to ask questions about others, complains about silk somehow not being soft enough, constantly chasing women (and maybe even men?) and sensation more generally. On the other: level-headed and charismatic, with as much a mind for justice as he has for fashion.
[] Kept your distance.
Mirror mirror mirror, pearls pearls pearls, spend spend spend and eat eat eat and drink drink drink – and he never stops complaining! Him! He who has everything, wants for nothing, the favorite of his mother. And the last thing you need is an entanglement in the spiderweb that is the Louvre. Or to be called a buggerer, frankly.
Like in Germany, the realities of life beyond the Union – turned Commonwealth when you were 17 – were stark and glaring. Without a decade's worth of cleanup or a lasting settlement like in the Empire, the Occitanian countryside was visibly damaged and in disarray. There were still the bandits and murdered travellers in ditches, but in those days you grew used to tent villages full of displaced serfs, begging lepers and amputees, wandering foundlings, even entire tribes of orphan children striking out on their own. The young King was simultaneously flippant and perturbed by the whole thing; your mind, though, was on Tatjana and the common folk more generally. How lucky we are.
Is this the will of God?
It all had you thinking. By the time of the court's return to the Louvre in May 1566, you felt that you had seen much of the world, good and bad, as your fifteenth birthday came about. You began to accustom yourself with the Parisian labyrinth, jostling and being jostled on your way to classes, dodging the streetfights between the gangs of opposing merchant cliques, stepping over slumped drunks, acculturing yourself to the smell of shit, sweat, and rotting vegetables. In the mornings, "Vase de nuit!" became a cue to look up quickly and dodge even quicker. It was squalor, worse than anything you had seen in Krakow, Wilno, or Lublin on trips with your father. Ah, but the music! The festivals! The tavern debauchery and Louvre balls! The teeming masses of people from all over, rich and poor, smiling and weeping faces in the crowds, white teeth next to rotting ones.
It was not like the Commonwealth, not one bit. Marszowski and Tatjana both were Catholics, Ferensbach a Lutheran convert, employed without a second look by your Calvinist father. In Paris, though, you saw many a poor Hugues getting the tar beaten out of him for one reason or another. News from the South, meanwhile, which always threw the Papist Parisians into a frenzy, told of abused and robbed monks and monasteries. Hands rested always on pommels and hilts in the name of the exact same Trinity. As the years went by, you found yourself constantly debating matters of theology with fellow Calvinists and Catholics both moderate and zealot (when the latter would be willing to talk to you and not just spit).
You were swayed eventually…
[] To revert to Catholicism as a matter of faith.
It just makes more sense. Like any good szlachcic, it felt odd to bow before what is, in effect, a crown-wearing priest, but the Petrine doctrine makes things clear to you. Father will be quite upset.
[] To revert to Catholicism as a matter of practicality.
It's not as if these things matter much back home. And it's good to avoid a beating on some Parisian sidestreet because the locals didn't see you at Mass. Overall, you couldn't give a hoot on the dense matters of faith and theology. God is God, his Son his Son. This is simply easier. Father will be upset but will likely understand.
[] To maintain your confession, albeit convinced of your own apathy.
It is mindboggling that we worship the same God and kill each other for it. The black-clad pastor is as big a windbag as the whore-loving parish priest. Better for the House's cohesion if you remain a Calvinist on paper, but you find all this interdenominational murder to be, well, off-putting, to say the least? You're certainly convinced that your homeland's edicts of tolerance are a great triumph for life and living.
[] To double down on your Calvinism.
You have seen what the Papists will do for their priest-king. What they say they will continue to do. The Guises would put a million brother-Frenchmen to the sword simply for their love of God, and hatred of the mitre-wearing Roman. They kill for him, not Him. You find yourself praying to God more, marveling at the lack of a temporal middleman. You and Him.
Your classes at the Collège were held in churchyards or crowded lecture halls and taught by forward-thinking Frenchmen and Italians. "We're not Jesuits!" became a common refrain in debates of theology and natural science – a certain pride was assigned to the school's humanism, its refusal to compromise with churchmen unlike the Sorbonne.
Your favorite classes always had to do with…
[] Language, philosophy, and literature.
Hebrew, Ancient Greek, and why not Italian, too? Latin, Polish, and both peasants' and nobles' Ruthenian all came easily enough. The Bible, Dante, Greek classics and newly-printed tracts and treatises. When it comes to pondering the spoken or written word, you cannot get enough.
[] Mathematics and natural philosophy.
God's mysteries are profound and unknowable, that much is certain. What is also certain, though, is the tide of growing empiricism, the idea that numbers and well-recorded observations do not lie. And that sounds good to you. Alchemy and astrology may be bunkum at the end of the day, yes, but they may yet prove just as enlightening as astronomy and mathematics. Either way, you couldn't get enough.
[] Military studies.
Though not strictly a "discipline" taught by the Collège, your history classes touched greatly upon the victories and tactics of greats as old as Alexander and as recent as the Spaniards' Great Captain. A copy of "De Re Militari" could always be found in your satchel. Your father is a leader of men and you'd like to be, too.
[] You preferred the parties, actually.
These Frenchmen know how to have a good time! Early to rise for the lectures, aye, but if one simply drinks their way through the hangover it's no issue. A perfect city, the intersection of beer and wine, oui-oui, taverns on every street and lenient watchmen! You won't be failing any courses or completely losing yourself to hedonism, but you'd be lying if you said a majority of the knowledge stuck with you. Your social skills, though, will be honed to a razor's edge, and the occasional drunken brawl or even knifefight will toughen you up good and well.
In September 1567, you got a taste of the blood dripping off the French knife's edge. You were a few months into your sixteenth year, and all the Louvre was united in anxiety over the heavy utilization of the Spanish Road by the Duke of Alba's tercios, marching north to Flanders and Holland. Crackdowns on Huguenots and internal politicking a bit above your pay grade had led to their leaders, the Prince Condé and Admiral de Coligny, angrily leaving court for their own estates with other Calvinists in protest. In the meantime, the Louvre moved to the suburban palace at Monceaux-en-Brie.
You were shaken awake there in the wee hours, right around when you would've woken up from first sleep, and were told to dress, arm yourself, and proceed to the great hall at once. There, it was revealed by the Guise Cardinal de Lorraine, the King and Queen Mother at his side, that Protestant troops were marching on the palace with unknown – but surely malicious – intentions. Hot debate broke out among the men of the court, who clutched their halberds, swords, and pistols with nervous hands. The palatial Switzers were on their way to help, but were a few hours' march away. The politiques argued for an entrenchment in the nearby town of Meaux, where the walls could be used to repulse any assaults while establishing a line of communication with the Huguenots. "We know not yet of their precise intentions – whether to capture or kill or simply to scare – we must not rush into rash action and start war anew," said the Duc de Montmorency.
"Start war anew? And what do you reckon this to be, Lord Duke?" On the other hand, the Cardinal de Lorraine, alongside the Franco-Italians Strozzi and Gonzaga, argued for a night march to Paris, come what may. The treacherous and vicious nature of the Protestants was apparent to all, they said; only through the reappearance of His Most Christian Majesty in the capital could the strength of the crown be shown, and risk to the lives of the King and Queen Mother minimized.
Did you speak up?
[] Of course not.
A Polonian (Lithuanian, but you never did correct them) (ex-?)Calvinist of sixteen piping up in a debate among some of France's most powerful men? By God, you'd never. It isn't your country, King, or court anyways.
[] Yes, for the politiques.
Ballsy. Better to defend than attack, you think, and get a handle on what may be even happening in the first place. All we've heard of is Huguenot soldiers on nearby roads. Nighttime makes the fog of war pitch black, and Meaux is said to be defensible enough. The Catholics will view you with great suspicion. For you, personally, this implies the bravery (or bravado) to speak up, but tempered with diplomacy and moderation.
[] Yes, for the Cardinal and the Italians.
Also ballsy. Elan! Inaction can easily be a killer, one cannot sit and watch as their opponent closes in for a thrust of the rapier. Regardless of what your confession may be at this point, this will ingratiate you to the ultra-Catholic camp to some degree, and make clear your appreciation for decisive – if not risky – moves.
Regardless, the Cardinal won out a few hours later, and with the arrival of the Swiss the court began to disembark from the chateau. Setting out when it was still dark out, the entire day, into the afternoon and evening, was characterized by the unmistakable smell of gunpowder and fear. Though you yourself never joined the battle line, that bristling hedgehog's back of halberds and plumed morions stood no more than fifty yards away at one point or another. Again and again came the clanking, screaming, hoof-thundering and dust-kicking mass of mercenary German rajteria, their pistols booming in front of them, their gleaming swords raised high. The crack-buzz of pistol shot zipped by you, and on that day you learned, too, of the sound a musket ball makes when passing through a human throat. And the pained spluttering that followed; a seigneur's son, just five feet to your front. A few years younger. You ultimately ruined one of your best outfits with blood all down the back, carrying a groaning, praying Switzer over your shoulders.
It was strange. No fear, just focus, taking things from one moment to the next on the cobbled road to Paris, dodging the pistoleers and looking over your shoulder for Hugues' footmen. When you returned to your chamber in the Louvre that evening, awake for nearly 24 hours and reeking of onions and caked in dirt and dried blood, you at last let yourself cry.
War came again soon after, with the news of the Michelade. Even if you had reverted away from Calvinism by then, the sheer association alone kept you off the street for a few days. Huguenot houses were torched in some neighborhoods. Months and years went on. Catholic and Protestant alike ranted polemical about the other. A battle was fought at Saint-Denis in November that same year, then a brief peace before the resumption of hostilities the following year in 1569.
Did you volunteer to fight?
[] Yes, for the Crown, as a plate-wearing lancer gendarme.
In the tradition of the knights of old. Your studies will suffer greatly, if not even end incomplete, but the battlefield teaches a thing or two of its own. Not in a leadership position, though, and if you're still a Calvinist things may be difficult at camp.
[] Not quite, but you were an on-and-off aide to Philippe de Pierre Strozzi.
Though you wouldn't be immersed in military life like you would be as a cavalryman, the Italian Strozzi, himself barely thirty, took a shine to you and let you tag along with him into the less-sensitive warplanning sessions. From him, you'd learn a little something on the feeding and command of an army, while never seeing battle yourself or straying too far from the capital.
[] No. Need to study (or party).
Again, not your country, not your King, not your court. Keep your head down, learn what you must, and head home.
Despite the growing chaos beyond Paris' walls – lest you depart for the gendarmes – you did your best to keep your studies up, even as the citizens of the city seemed drunker, meaner, and more paranoid than ever. The country truly felt like it was about to come apart at the seams. You could swear that each month brought a new ranting madman out into the street, or a new gang of sadists to terrorize the pie-sellers and prostitutes. Things were feeling grim, very grim. But still you pressed on, soldiering through, until a certain evening came about in August 1572 that truly brought the war home.
[PLAN STYLE VOTING PROBABLY WISEST HERE FOLKS.]
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