A Covenant of Poppies

Prologue

ZEMUN, SERBIA...  Four C’s surrounding a cross were scrawled in a sea of red like a child’s finger painting. Beneath, a man's outstretched figure lay under a coroner’s white shroud. Outside the study in the living room, the late-day sun shone through crimson curtains as two weary young people tried to answer a police examiner's questions.

"Yes, his body was like that," the twelve-year-old said as he sat beside his sister in the sofa. "No one came in after we ... after I found Tata's body." His face fell as if trying not to cry. "My sister and I don't know who he saw before those two men came yesterday."

A second examiner penned the details in his notebook. It was two years since the Grand Marshall of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, had died, and they were in the hamlet of Zemun, located across the river from the capital of Belgrade. The house belonged to one Jakub Silva, a high minister in Tito's cabinet before his rumored descent into alcoholism. Possibly murder and not a suicide, he wrote.

The girl, who was two years younger than her brother, described the government men she saw exiting the house. "I saw them leave before my brother found the b…body," she stammered. "There were two of them. Black coats like … like my father wore. The first one, gray hair pushed back, stringy, I could see the shine of his head."

The boy tightened his arm around his sister, as if determined to accept the role of instant patriarch while leaving his youthful sensitivity to fend for itself. The difference in their looks was striking. The boy's white gold hair contrasted with the girl’s coppery brown, as did her tawny skin to his pale white. The girl’s feet seemed too long for her body, while the boy, what was left of it, was rapidly growing into the form of a man. The most engaging thing about the duo, however, was their eyes. His a deep blue and hers a pale gray, in the waning light their gazes betrayed unfathomable pain in their crystalline depths.

"Did you check on your father after they left?" The examiner spoke to the girl more gruffly than he intended. "Government men in our home is nothing unusual," the boy explained. He’d come home from his after-school activities and entered the study as usual, to find his father's bloodied form upon the study carpet. The boy’s harrowed gaze rose to a painting hanging upon the far wall, a faded watercolor of greenish hills leading to a shrine comprised of innumerable tiny stones. In a voice that seemed to arise from inside that primordial structure, he said, "There, on the wall over my father’s body, was the symbol he left for me."

At this, the girl let loose a cry, causing the boy to murmur, "You know I promised Tata!" The girl’s weeping grew louder until the boy hung his head in despair.

The first examiner returned to the crime scene and joined the other in staring at the wall. Above and to the left of the corpse were the four C's scrawled in blood. "Samo, Sloga, Srbina, Spasava," he recited. The second man translated, "Only unity will save the Serb."  Yet they both knew, suicide or not, that the writing had not been done by the dead man.

Just two years previously, things had been vastly different for Jelena and Niko Dusan.

The image of a grand medieval fortress filled imaginations as children sprawled across the living room rug. The Ode-Teller's skin was washed-out gray, while what rasps of his voice that could be heard over his one-stringed gusle added to the melodrama of a story that had been told a thousand times. Yet, these things went unnoticed by the adoring audience, which nearly forty strong, included Jelena and Niko Dusan and their closest friends, parents, cousins, and neighbors.

The Ode-Teller proceeded to the next episode, and ten-year-old Niko jumped to his feet. Adorned in a white sheet and a spirit-gummed beard, Niko waved a wooden sword and exclaimed, "We now approach the eve of my battle against the Ottomans. If you don’t know me, I am Prince Lazar!" The audience cheered. "Have courage, my countrymen, and remember we fight for glory, we fight for freedom, we fight for Serbia!"