Dancing with Kings. Eva Stachniak

so did it really matter if this German Graf had been one of these liaisons amoureuses? He could see why Ignacy was so keen on her unprecedented influence in St Petersburg. (‘After all, the Tsar, Thomas, is her close friend and, I take it, quite ready to listen.’) Why was it ‘unprecedented’, Thomas could not tell, but it had to have something to do with the late Count Potocki’s position at the Russian court. Or with the perennial Polish hopes, doomed fights for the lost independence. Yes, the Poles had been dealt a rotten hand. No other country had been eaten alive in the middle of the Enlightened Europe and told it was for her own good. But wasn’t it all part of what old Europe had always been? A whore siding with the strong and the mighty. Preening herself for the favours of the rich?

      ‘Only one does not die from being talked about, Ignacy,’ he said.

      Graf von Haefen’s palace was a two-storey sandcoloured edifice in the Renaissance style. On the entrance gate of wrought iron two plump-looking angels were clinging to their posts. The footman, still panting from a rushed run upstairs and back, the gold trim of his crimson livery slightly dull at the edges, led them into a small vestibule whose tapestry of nymphs, monkeys, and flowers was reflected back in giant gilded mirrors. A few moments later, a thin, young woman appeared, black hair coiled around her head. The diamond on her neck, Thomas thought, could have paid for a good pair of horses. She extended her hand to be kissed. Ignacy took it first, in both hands. Then Thomas bowed over it, awkwardly, merely brushing it with his lips.

      ‘Mademoiselle la Comtesse! How is your dear Maman? Has she slept well? Has the pain lessened?’

      ‘You’ve arrived at last, Doctor,’ Mademoiselle la Comtesse said, ignoring Ignacy’s questions. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hands trembled slightly, but her voice was calm and composed. ‘Maman has been waiting all morning.’

      The countess’s daughter was wearing a simple morning dress, and, Thomas noted with some bemusement, her right cuff was stained brown. Youth made her attractive in a coltish sort of way, but she could do with some fresh air and less coffee. There was a gauntness to her face he did not quite like.

      ‘Doctor Lafleur I spoke to Graf von Haefen about,’ Ignacy said, pointing at Thomas who bowed slightly, ‘straight from Paris. Heartily recommended by Baron Larrey.’

      Larrey’s name made no visible impression on young Countess Potocka who led them upstairs and into a grand salon that had been turned into the sick room. The enormous empire bed, by the wall, was covered by a golden throw. A day bed and an armchair had been placed beside it. An Oriental screen hid the paraphernalia of illness, the medicine bottles, the chamber pot. The air was thick with the smells of almond milk, camomile, and mint. The underlying whiff of ammonia made Thomas clear his throat.

      The countess was fully dressed, reclining on the bed, her eyes closed, black eyelashes evenly set in her white lids. She was breathing slowly, as if asleep. One look was enough to make Thomas see that the illness had melted the skin on her bones. She was deathly pale.

      She doesn’t need a doctor, he thought, she needs a miracle.

      His eyes lingered over two women standing by their mistress. One was obviously a maid, of rosy plumpness, flaxen braids wound around her head like a crown. The other, in her pale yellow dress, a cameo brooch pinned to a lace collar around her neck, he decided, was the nurse. Mademoiselle Rosalia Romanowicz. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to Ignacy’s words. He vaguely recalled the praises of her nursing and her devotion to her mistress. A daughter of a Polish hero and a Jewess from Uman. Or was that someone else entirely? He noted the thick auburn hair, pulled back and held tight by a barrette, in the shape of folded hands.

      ‘Good morning, Doctor Bolecki,’ the countess said, turning to Ignacy. The back of her head rested on the day bed. ‘I’ve been waiting for you all this time.’

      This was a reproach.

      ‘I came as soon as I could, Madame,’ Ignacy replied in what Thomas thought was too much of an eager schoolboy’s tone.

      Thomas made a step toward the bed, but stopped, unsure if the examination should begin that abruptly. The countess’s eyes were clearly her most striking feature. Large, black and luminous eyes that lit up her face. Fixed on him, now, probing. Suddenly he became aware of how baggy his trousers had become and wished he had ordered a new pair.

      ‘Doctor Lafleur, great surgeon, Madame la Comtesse,’ Ignacy continued what to Thomas sounded like a mountebank’s pitch for snake oil and the elixir of youth. ‘The only one, Your Highness, I would trust with my own life.’ He mentioned the years spent at la Charité, lectures at Val de Grâce, and once again flaunted Baron Larrey’s personal recommendation.

      ‘Please, my dear Doctor,’ the countess said, lifting her hand to her lips, and Ignacy stopped. Her eyes did not leave Thomas for a second, taking in the aquiline nose, his reddened hands, and baggy trousers shiny at the knees.

      To steady himself, Thomas thought of his father who had been beaten by his mistress for being inadvertently in her way. He recalled wounds masters had inflicted on other servants: burns on the hands and legs, cuts, lashes. In Russia, he reminded himself, serfs were called ‘slaves’ for a good reason. Once, in Vilna, he had been asked to treat a man whose back had been broken by the lashes his master commanded. When the man died a few hours later, his master promptly ordered another serf to marry the widow.

      ‘What are you thinking of, Doctor Lafleur?’ the countess asked in a low, raspy voice that held a note of irony as if she had guessed his thoughts and already found fault with his reasoning.

      ‘You should not exert yourself, Madame la Comtesse,’ Thomas replied and he approached the bed. He tried not to look at her eyes but to observe. The shade of her skin, the spots on the pillowcase were all hints as to what her body was harbouring inside.

      ‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said, tilting her head slightly. ‘From now on, your words will be my commands.’

      The smile she gave him lit up her face making him think of a child offered a rare treat, a reward long lost, despaired over, but never forgotten. In the morning light that swept over her, Thomas thought he had seen the secret of her attraction, the way she must have appeared to all those men Ignacy spoke about. Men who had loved her over other women. Yes, he had seen through her pale, luminous skin no longer fresh and supple; through her parched lips folding as if ready to grant him secrets revealed to no one else. You will be my saviour, her eyes said. There will be no one else, but you and me. You have all my attention, all my loyalty. Nothing and nobody else matters.

      ‘I’ve dismissed Doctor Horn, my Russian doctor. He was not helping me at all.’

      ‘Are you in much pain?’ Thomas asked, piqued by the casual reference to a hapless man who had, undoubtedly, tried his best.

      The countess stopped smiling. Her beautiful eyes were dry.

      ‘They say that my womb is rotting, Doctor, and it hurts. Is that what you want me to describe to you?’

      ‘But Madame la Comtesse,’ Ignacy protested. ‘Courage! You are in the best of hands.’

      ‘Let Doctor Lafleur decide,’ the countess said.

      The nurse stepped forward, placing her hand on the patient’s arm with a gesture of appropriation. A firm, steady gesture meant as a warning.

      ‘Madame slept well last night,’ she said. Her voice was pleasant, her French just slightly foreign. Foreign, Thomas would reflect later only because, in spite of its flawlessness, he could attach it to no specific region or city. ‘But today she complained of pain in her back. On both sides.’

      A bit over twenty, the thought flashed through his mind, still considering the possibility (however slight) of an operation. Good solid constitution. There was no frailty about her, no threat of fainting spells. She would not be a nuisance.

      ‘Rosalia, my dear,’ the countess said. ‘Send everyone away. Let the doctor examine me.’

      ‘Everyone,’