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The Isolde rocks back and forth over the waves, lulling the passengers deeper and deeper into oblivion. A sea breeze that flows in from the cracked porthole window softly ruffles Tadeusz’s dark hair, his face pressed into the pillow, lost in sleep. Hazy impressions of memories drift across his mind, and he dreams of a girl he loves.
He remembers her soft curls and light brown eyes that warm his heart, but it’s her laugh that he loves the most, when he tells her a stupid joke because he knows how much she loves them. He can’t remember what it was. She knows he’s a smart man, but he jokes anyways, because it feels good to let the pretension go with her. He’s her tutor, and she’s supposed to be learning how to play piano.
She has freckles, and he can’t focus on the melody because the afternoon sunlight is filtering in through the window, dappling her beautiful face in a golden light. Ludwika tries for the keys, and she plays well enough [without his instruction?]. She’s a talented young woman.
They’re running through the willow grove and it’s raining. She pulls him under the awning of the groundskeeper’s shed, and he’s soaking wet because there was no chance he wouldn’t have given her his coat. Huddled together under the shelter, she dries his face with her gown sleeve that’s worth more than his entire year’s pay. She thinks nothing of it, smiling gently as he places a kiss on her cheek. He thinks of everything that can’t happen, because gentle doves are not meant for common sparrows, and her father will never give them what they want.
They’re running again, but this time, it’s out of the lord’s house and into the night. His friend has drawn a carriage up to the manor, and the plan is for the three of them to make off into the darkness, so they can marry each other in a little chapel far away. He doesn’t get that far. Plodding footsteps draw up quickly behind him, and rough arms wrap themselves around his neck as he’s pulled away from Ludwika’s outstretched arms.
They are kicking him. One of them holds him down, driving their foot into his sides for good measure. Tadeusz tosses in his sleep now, sweat beading from his forehead into the threadbare pillow. He hears her screams as she’s restrained, and then driven away. Even when she is gone, they beat him still. Faded, patchy bruises still run like latticework down the length of his torso, but it’s her screams and the humiliation and the injustice of it all that he remembers because there’s nothing he could have done better even though he wishes he could.
Weeks later he is in Paris, still nursing old bruises and his heart. Ludwika is in a convent, but soon she will be wed to a man that he can’t bear to hear the name of. But he hears about what’s happening in the Thirteen Colonies, and maybe across the Atlantic is where sparrows can finally fly with doves, where words like “magnate” and “gentry” have no meaning.
It’s the love of republican virtue that starts to fill the hole left in his heart. There’s a man he needs to find, a Benjamin Franklin, with an unfamiliar English name that clicks across his tongue. Philadelphia is easier to say, because he knows Greek and Latin. They say that Franklin can help him, and that the Continental Army is in dire need of talented military men like him for their fight against the British. He is worth something, something greater than the land he was born on and the crest his family wears. Suddenly he’s on a ship to the colonies, cramped into tight quarters along with every other hopeful who dreams of being a part of something bigger.
The ship rolls along the waves, the dark expanse of the Caribbean Sea stretching out endlessly. Tadeusz Kościuszko slumbers deeply, lost in a part of his mind that he cannot yet let go of.