Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Meanwhile the others grew tired of the long waiting, therefore the servant of the Order arose and said:

  “It will be soon daylight, therefore permit us, sir, to retire, because we need a rest.”

  “And refreshment after the long journey,” added the pontnik. Then they both bowed to Jurand and went out.

  But he continued to sit motionless, as if seized by sleep or death.

  Presently, however, the door opened and Zbyszko appeared, followed by the priest Kaleb.

  “Who are the messengers? What do they want?” inquired the young knight, approaching Jurand.

  Jurand quivered, but at first answered nothing; he only began to blink like a man awakened from a sound sleep.

  “Sir, are you not ill?” said the priest Kaleb, who, knowing Jurand better, noticed that something curious was taking place within him.

  “No!” replied Jurand.

  “And Danusia?” further inquired Zbyszko; “where is she and what did they say to you?”

  “What did they bring?”

  “The ransom,” slowly replied Jurand.

  “The ransom for von Bergow?”

  “For von Bergow….”

  “How so, for von Bergow? what is the matter with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  But in his voice there was something so strange and listless that a sudden fear seized those two, especially because Jurand spoke of the ransom and not the exchange of von Bergow for Danusia.

  “Gracious God!” exclaimed Zbyszko: “where is Danusia?”

  “She is not with the Teutons, — no!” replied Jurand, in a sleepy tone; and suddenly he fell from the bench upon the floor as if dead.

  CHAPTER VI.

  The following day at noon the messengers saw Jurand, and soon afterward they rode away taking with them von Bergow, two esquires and a number of other prisoners. Jurand then summoned Father Kaleb and dictated a letter to the prince, stating that Danusia had not been carried off by the Knights of the Order, but that he had succeeded in discovering her refuge, and hoped to recover her in a few days. He repeated the same to Zbyszko, who had been wild with astonishment, dread and perplexity since the night before.

  The old knight refused to answer any of his questions, telling him instead to wait patiently and not to undertake anything for the liberation of Danusia, because it was unnecessary.

  Toward evening he shut himself in again with Father Kaleb, whom he had ordered to write down his last will; then he confessed himself, and after receiving the sacrament, he summoned Zbyszko, and the old taciturn Tolima, who used to accompany him in all his expeditions and fights, and in times of peace administered the affairs of Spychow.

  “Here,” he said, turning to the old warrior and raising his voice, as if he was speaking to a man who could not hear well, “is the husband of my daughter whom he married at the prince’s court, for which he had my entire consent. Therefore, after my death, he will be the master and owner of the castle, the soil, forests, waters, people and all the craft in Spychow….”

  Hearing this, Tolima was greatly surprised and began to turn his square head to Jurand and to Zbyszko alternately, he said nothing, however, because he scarcely ever did say anything, he only bowed to Zbyszko and lightly embraced his knees. And Jurand continued:

  “This is my will, written by Father Kaleb, and below is my seal in wax; you must testify that you have heard this from me, and that I ordered that the young knight should be obeyed here even as I am. Furthermore, what is in the treasury in booty and money, you will show him, and you will serve him faithfully in peace as well as in war till death. Did you hear?”

  Tolima raised his hands to his ears and nodded his head, then, at a sign from Jurand, he bowed and went out; the knight again turned to Zbyszko and said impressively:

  “There is enough in the treasury to satisfy the greatest greed and to ransom not one but a hundred captives. Remember!”

  But Zbyszko inquired:

  “And why are you giving me Spychow already?”

  “I give you more than Spychow, in the child.”

  “And we know not the hour of death,” said Father Kaleb.

  “Yes, unknown,” repeated Jurand, sadly, “a short time ago, the snow covered me up, and, although God saved me, I have no more my old strength….”

  “Gracious God!” exclaimed Zbyszko, “something his changed within you since yesterday, and you prefer to speak of death than of Danusia. Gracious God!”

  “Danusia will return, she will,” replied Jurand; “she is under God’s protection. But if she returns … listen … take her to Bogdaniec and leave Spychow with Tolima…. He is a faithful man, and this is a wild neighborhood…. There they cannot capture her with a rope … there she is safer….”

  “Hej!” cried Zbyszko, “and you talk already as if from the other world. What is that?”

  “Because I went half-way to the other world, and now I seem to be ill. And I also care for my child … because I have only her. And, you too, although I know that you love her….”

  Here he interrupted, and drawing a short weapon from its sheath, called the misericordia, he held the handle toward Zbyszko.

  “Swear to me now upon this little cross that you will never harm her and that you will love her constantly….”

  And tears suddenly started in Zbyszko’s eyes; in a moment he fell upon his knees and, putting a finger on the hilt, exclaimed:

  “Upon the Holy Passion, I will never harm, and will love her constantly!”

  “Amen,” said Father Kaleb.

  Jurand again put the “dagger of mercy” back into the sheath and extended his arms:

  “Then you are my child too!…”

  They separated then, because it was late, and they had had no good rest for several days. However, Zbyszko got up the following morning at daybreak, because the previous day he had been frightened, lest Jurand were really falling ill, and he wished to learn how the older knight had spent the night. Before the door to Jurand’s room he met Tolima, who had just left it.

  “How is the lord? well?” he inquired.

  The other again bowed, and then, putting his hand to his ear, said:

  “What orders, your grace?”

  “I am asking how the lord is?” repeated Zbyszko, louder.

  “The lord has departed.”

  “Where to?”

  “I do not know…. In arms!”

  CHAPTER VII.

  The dawn was just beginning to whiten the trees, bushes and boulders scattered in the fields, when the hired guide, walking beside Jurand’s horse, stopped and said:

  “Permit me to rest, knight, for I am out of breath. It is thawing and foggy, but it is not far now.”

  “You will conduct me to the road, and then return,” replied Jurand.

  “The road will be to the right behind the forest, and you will soon see the castle from the hill.”

  Then the peasant commenced to strike his hands against his armpits, because he was chilled with the morning dampness; he then sat on a stone, because this exercise made him still more breathless.

  “Do you know whether the count is in the castle?” inquired Jurand.

  “Where else could he be, since he is ill?”

  “What ails him?”

  “People say that the Polish knights gave him a beating,” replied the old peasant. And there was a feeling of satisfaction in his voice. He was a Teuton subject, but his Mazovian heart rejoiced over the superiority of the Polish knights.

  He presently added:

  “Hej! our lords are strong, but they have a hard task with them.”

  But immediately after saying this, he looked sharply at the knight, as if to convince himself that nothing bad would happen to him for the words which he had heedlessly let slip and said:

  “You, lord, speak our language; you are no German?”

  “No,” replied Jurand; “but lead on.”

  The peasant arose, and again began to walk beside the horse. On the way, he
now and then put his hand into a leathern pouch, pulled out a handful of unground corn, and put it into his mouth, and when he had thus satisfied his first hunger, he began to explain why he ate raw grains, although Jurand was too much occupied with his own misfortune and his own thoughts, to heed him.

  “God be blessed for that,” he said. “A hard life under our German lords! They lay such taxes upon grist, that a poor man must eat the grain with the chaff, like an ox. And when they find a hand-mill in a cottage, they execute the peasant, take whatever he has, bah! they do not pardon even women and children…. They fear neither God nor the priests. They even put the priest in chains for blaming them for it. Oh, it is hard under the Germans! If a man does grind some grains between two stones, then he keeps that handful of flour for the holy Sunday, and must eat like birds on Friday. But God be blessed for even that, because two or three months before the harvest there will not be even that much. It is not permitted to catch fish … nor kill animals … It is not as it is in Mazowsze.”

  The Teutonic peasant complained, speaking partly to himself, and partly to Jurand, and meanwhile they passed through a waste country, covered with limestone boulders, heaped with snow, and entered a forest, which looked grey in the morning light, and from which came a sharp, damp coolness. It became broad daylight; otherwise it would have been difficult for Jurand to travel along the forest road, which ran somewhat up hill, and was so narrow that his gigantic battle-horse could, in some places, hardly pass between the trunks. But the forest soon ended, and in a few “Paters,” they reached the summit of a white hill, across the middle of which ran a beaten road.

  “This is the road, lord,” said the peasant; “you will find the way alone, now.”

  “I shall,” replied Jurand. “Return home, man.” And putting his hand into a leather bag, fastened in front of the saddle, he took from it a silver coin and handed it to the guide. The peasant, accustomed more to blows than to gifts from the local Teutonic knights, could scarcely believe his eyes, and catching the money, dropped his head to Jurand’s stirrup and embraced it.

  “O Jesus, Mary!” he exclaimed: “God reward your honor!”

  “God be with you!”

  “God’s grace be with you! Szczytno is before you.”

  Then he once more bent down to the stirrup and disappeared. Jurand remained on the hill alone and looked in the direction indicated by the peasant, at a grey, moist veil of fog, which concealed the world before him. Behind this fog was hidden that ominous castle, to which he was driven by superior force and misery. It is already near, then, and what must happen, must happen…. As that thought came into Jurand’s heart, in addition to his fear and anxiety about Danusia, and his readiness to redeem her from a foe’s hands even with his own blood, he experienced a new, exceedingly bitter, and hitherto unknown feeling of humiliation. And now Jurand, at the mere mention of whose name the neighboring counts trembled, was riding to their command with a bowed head. He who had defeated and trampled under foot so many of them, now felt himself defeated and trampled upon. It is true, they had not overcome him in the field with courage and knightly strength, nevertheless he felt himself subdued. And it was to him something so unusual, that it seemed as if the entire order of the world were subverted. He was going to submit himself to the Teutons, he, who would rather meet single-handed the entire Teuton force, if it were not for Danusia’s sake. Had it not happened already, that a single knight, having to choose between disgrace and death had attacked whole armies? But he felt that he might meet disgrace, and, at that thought, his heart groaned with agony as a wolf howls when it feels the dart within it.

  But he was a man with not only a body, but also a soul, of iron. He knew how to subdue others, he knew also how to subdue himself.

  “I will not move,” he said to himself, “until I have overcome this anger with which I should rather lose than deliver my child.”

  And he wrestled with his hard heart, his inveterate hatred and his desire to fight. Whoever had seen him on that hill, in armor, on a gigantic horse, would have said that he was some giant, wrought out of iron, and would not have recognized that that motionless knight at that moment was waging the hottest of all the battles of his life. But he fought with himself until he had entirely overcome and felt that his will would not fail him. Meanwhile the mist thinned, although it did not disappear entirely, but finally something darker loomed through it.

  Jurand guessed that these were the walls of the castle of Szczytno. At the sight of it he still did not move from the place, but began to pray so fervidly and ardently as a man prays, when nothing is left for him in the world but God’s mercy. And when his horse did finally move, he felt that some sort of confidence was beginning to enter his heart. He was now prepared to suffer everything that could befall him. There came back to his memory Saint George, a descendant of the greatest race in Cappadocia, who suffered various shameful tortures, and nevertheless not only did not lose any honor, but is placed on the right hand of God and appointed patron of all knighthood. Jurand had sometimes heard tales of his exploits from the abbots, who came from distant countries, and now he strengthened his heart with these recollections.

  Slowly even, hope began to awaken in him. The Teutons were indeed famous for their desire of revenge, therefore he did not doubt that they would take vengeance on him for all the defeats which he had inflicted upon them, for the disgrace which had fallen upon them after each encounter, and for the dread in which they had lived for so many years.

  But that very consideration increased his courage. He thought that they had captured Danusia only in order to get him; therefore of what use would she be to them, after they had gotten him? Yes! They would undoubtedly seize him, and, not daring to keep him near Mazowsze, they would send him to some distant castle, where perhaps he would have to groan until his life’s end under ground, but they would liberate Danusia. Even if it should prove that they had got him insidiously and by oppression, neither the grand master nor the assembly would blame them very much for that, because Jurand was actually very hard on the Teutons, and shed more of their blood than did any other knight in the world. But that same grand master would perhaps punish them for the imprisonment of the innocent girl, who was moreover a foster-daughter of the prince, whose favor he was seeking on account of the threatening war with the Polish king.

  And his hope constantly increased. At times it seemed to him almost certain that Danusia would return to Spychow, under Zbyszko’s powerful protection…. “He is a strong man,” he thought; “he will not permit anybody to injure her.” And he began to recall with affection all he knew of Zbyszko: “He defeated the Germans at Wilno, fought single-handed against the Fryzjans whom he challenged with his uncle and quartered, he also beat Lichtenstein, saved the child from the wild bull, and he challenged those four, whom he will surely not pardon.” Here Jurand raised his eyes toward heaven and said: “I gave her to you, O Lord, and you to Zbyszko!”

  And he gained still more confidence, judging that if God had given her to the youth, then He would certainly not allow the Germans to mock him but snatch her out of their hands, even if the entire Teuton power should oppose it. But then he commenced to think again about Zbyszko: “Bah! he is not only a mighty man but also as true as gold. He will guard her, love her, and Jesus! be good to her; but it seems to me, that, by his side she will neither miss the princely court nor paternal love….” At that thought his eyelids became suddenly moist, and a great yearning filled us heart. He would like to see his child once more at least in his life, and at some future time die in Spychow near those two, and not in the dark Teuton cells. “But God’s will be done!” Szczytno was already visible. The walls became more distinct in the mist, the hour of sacrifice was approaching; he therefore began to comfort himself, and said to himself: “Surely, it is God’s will! but the end of life is near. A few years more or less, the result will be the same. Hej! I would like to see both children yet, but, justly speaking, I have lived long enough. Whatever I had
to experience, I did; whomever to revenge, I revenged. And what now? Rather to God, than to the world; and since it is necessary to suffer, then it is necessary. Danusia with Zbyszko, even when most prosperous, will not forget. Surely, they will sometimes recollect and ask: where is he? is he alive yet, or already in God’s court of justice? They will inquire and perhaps find out. The Teutons are very revengeful, but also very greedy for ransom. Zbyszko would not grudge ransoming the bones at least. And they will surely order more than one mass. The hearts of both are honest and loving, for which may God and the Most Holy Mother bless them!”

  The road became not only broader but also more frequented. Wagons laden with lumber and straw were on the way to the town. Herders were driving cattle. Frozen fish were carried on sledges from the lakes. In one place four archers led a peasant on a chain to court for some offence, for he had his hands tied behind him, and on his feet were fetters which, dragging in the snow, hardly enabled him to move. From his panting nostrils and mouth escaped breath in the shape of wreaths of vapor, while they sang as they urged him on. Or seeing Jurand, they began to look at him inquisitively, apparently marvelling at the huge proportions of the rider and horse; but, at the sight of the golden spurs and knightly belt, they lowered then crossbows as a sign of welcome and respect. The town was still more populous and noisy, but everybody hastily got out of the armed man’s way, while he, traversing the main street, turned toward the castle which, wrapped in clouds, seemed to sleep yet.

  Not everything around slept, at least not the crows and ravens, whole flights of which were stirring on the elevation, which constituted the entrance to the castle, flapping their wings and crowing. On coming nearer, Jurand understood the cause of their gathering. Beside the road leading to the gate of the castle, stood wide gallows, on which were hanging the bodies of four Mazovian peasants. There was not the least breath of wind, therefore the corpses, which seemed to be looking at their own feet, did not sway at all, except when the black buds perched upon their shoulders and heads, jostling one another, striking the ropes and pecking the bowed heads. Some of the hanged men must have been there for a long time, because their skulls were entirely naked, and their legs very much lengthened. At Jurand’s approach, the flock arose with a great noise, but they soon turned in the air and began to settle on the crossbeam of the gallows. Jurand passed them, crossing himself, approached the moat, and, stopping at the place where the drawbridge was raised before the gate, sounded the horn.