Ogniem i mieczem. English

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  Pan Yan, who had galloped in advance of the regiments to the castle toinquire for the princess and Zagloba, did not find them. They hadneither been seen nor heard of, though there was news of the attack onRozlogi and the destruction of the troops at Vassilyevka. The knightlocked himself up in his quarters at the arsenal, together with hisdisappointed hopes. Sorrow, fear, and affliction rushed upon himagain; but he defended himself from them as a wounded soldier on thebattle-field defends himself from crows and ravens flocking around todrink his warm blood and tear his flesh. He strengthened himself withthe thought that Zagloba, being fertile in stratagems, might make hisway to Chernigoff and hide on receiving news of the defeat of thehetmans. He remembered then that old man whom he met on the way toRozlogi, and who, together with his boy, as he said himself, had beenstripped of his clothes by some devil, and had sat three days in thereeds of the Kagamlik, fearing to come out into the world. The thoughtoccurred to Skshetuski at once that it must be Zagloba who had strippedthem in order to get a disguise for himself and Helena. "It cannot beotherwise," repeated he; and he found great consolation in thisthought, since such disguise made flight much more easy. He hoped thatGod, who watches over innocence, would not abandon Helena; and wishingthe more to obtain this favor for her, he determined to purify himselffrom his sins. He left the arsenal therefore; and on searching for thepriest Mukhovetski, and finding him engaged in consoling some women, hebegged to have his confession heard.

  The priest led him to a chapel, entered the confessional at once, andbegan to hear him. When he had finished, the priest instructed,edified, and consoled him, strengthened his faith, and then rebukedhim, saying: "A Christian is not permitted to doubt the power of God,or an individual to grieve more over his own misfortune than that ofhis country; but you have more tears for your personal interests--thatis, for your friends--than for the nation, and grieve moreover yourlove than over the catastrophe that has come upon all." Then hedescribed the defeats, the fall, the disgrace of the country, in suchlofty and touching speech that he roused at once great patriotism inthe heart of the knight, to whom his own misfortunes seemed sobelittled that he was almost unable to see them. The priest reprovedhim for the animosity and hatred against the Cossacks which he hadobserved in him.

  "The Cossacks you will crush," said he, "as enemies of the faith andthe country, as allies of the Pagan; but you will forgive them forhaving injured you, and pardon them from your heart, without thought ofvengeance. And when you manifest this, I know that God will comfortyou, restore your love to you, and send you peace."

  Then the priest made the sign of the cross over Pan Yan, blessed him,and went out, having enjoined as penance to lie in the form of a crosstill morning before the crucified Christ.

  The chapel was empty and dark; only two candles were burning before thealtar, casting rosy and golden gleams on the face of Christ, cut fromalabaster and full of sweetness and suffering. Hours passed away, andthe lieutenant lay there motionless as if dead; but he felt withincreasing certainty that bitterness, despair, hatred, pain, grief,suffering, were unwinding themselves from his heart,--crawling out ofhis breast, creeping away like serpents, and hiding somewhere in thedarkness. He felt that he was breathing more freely, that a kind of newhealth and new strength were entering into him, that his mind wasbecoming clearer and a species of happiness was embracing him; in aword, he found before that altar and before that Christ all, whateverit might be, that a man of those ages could find,--a man of unshakenfaith, without a trace or a shadow of doubt.

  Next morning the lieutenant was as if reborn. Work, movement, andbustle began, for this was the day of leaving Lubni. Officers fromearly morning had to review the regiments to see that horses and menwere in proper order, then lead them to the field, and put them inmarching array. The prince heard holy Mass in the Church of St.Michael, after which he returned to the castle and received deputationsfrom the Greek clergy and from the townspeople of Lubni and Khorol.Then he mounted the throne, in the hall painted by Helm, surrounded byhis foremost knights; and here Grubi, the mayor of Lubni, gave hisfarewell in Russian in the name of all the places belonging to theprince's Trans-Dnieper domains. He begged him first of all not todepart, not to leave them as sheep without a shepherd; hearing which,other deputies, clasping their hands, repeated, "Do not go away! do notgo away!" And when the prince answered that he must go, they fell atthe feet of their good lord in regret,--or pretended regret, for it wassaid that many of them, notwithstanding all the kindness of the prince,were very friendly to the Cossacks and Hmelnitski. But the more wealthyof them were afraid of the disturbance which they feared would ariseimmediately on the departure of the prince and his forces.Vishnyevetski answered that he had tried to be a father, not a lord, tothem, and implored them to remain loyal to the king and theCommonwealth,--the mother of all, under whose wings they had sufferedno injustice, had lived in peace, had grown in wealth, feeling no yokesuch as strangers would not fail to lay upon them. He took farewell ofthe Greek clergy with similar words; after that came the hour ofparting. Then was heard throughout the whole castle the weeping andlamentation of servants; the young ladies and ladies in waitingfainted, and they were barely able to restore Anusia Borzobogata to hersenses. The princess herself was the only woman who entered a carriagewith dry eyes and uplifted head, for the proud lady was ashamed to showthe world that she suffered. Crowds of people stood near the castle;all the bells in Lubni were tolling; the Russian priests blessed withtheir crosses the departing company; the line of carriages andequipages could scarcely squeeze through the gates of the castle.

  Finally the prince mounted his horse. The regimental flags were loweredbefore him; cannon were fired from the walls. The sounds of weeping,the bustle and shouting of crowds were mingled with the sounds of bellsand guns, with the blare of trumpets and the rattle of drums. Theprocession moved on.

  In advance went the Tartar regiments, under Roztvorovski and Vershul;then the artillery of Pan Vurtsel, the infantry of Makhnitski; nextcame the princess with her ladies, then the whole court, and wagonswith valuables; after them the Wallachian regiment of Pan Bykhovets;finally, the body of the army, the picked regiments of heavy artillery,the armored regiments, and hussars; the rear was brought up by thedragoons and the Cossacks.

  After the army came an endless train of wagons, many-colored as aserpent, and carrying the families of all those nobles who after thedeparture of the prince would not remain east of the Dnieper.

  The trumpets sounded throughout the regiments; but the hearts of allwere straitened. Each one looking at those walls thought to himself:"Dear houses, shall I see you again in life?" It is easy to depart, butdifficult to return; and each left as it were a part of his soul inthose places, and a pleasant memory. Therefore all turned their eyesfor the last time on the castle, on the town, on the towers of thePolish churches, on the domes of the Russian, and on the roofs of thehouses. Each one knew what he was leaving behind, but did not know whatwas waiting there in that blue distance toward which the tabor wasmoving.

  Sadness therefore was in the soul of each person. The town called tothe departing ones with the voices of bells, as if beseeching andimploring them not to leave it exposed to uncertainty, to the evilfortune of the future; it called out as if by those sad sounds itwished to say farewell and remain in their memory.

  Though the procession moved away, heads were turned toward the town,and in every face could be read the question: "Is this the last time?"

  It was the last time. Of all the army and throng of thousands who inthat hour were going forth with Prince Vishnyevetski, neither hehimself nor any one of them was ever to look again upon that town orthat country.

  The trumpets sounded. The tabor moved on slowly, but steadily; andafter a time Lubni began to be veiled in a blue haze, the houses androofs were blended into one mass brightly distinct. Then the princeurged his horse ahead, and having ridden to a lofty mound stoodmotionless and gazed long. That town gle
aming there in the sun, and allthat country visible from the mound was the work of his ancestors andhimself. For the Vishnyevetskis had changed that gloomy wilderness ofthe past into a settled country, opened it to the life of people, andit may be said, created the Trans-Dnieper. And the greater part of thatwork the prince had himself accomplished. He built those Polishchurches whose towers stood there blue over the town; he increased theplace, and joined it with roads to the Ukraine; he felled forests,drained swamps, built castles, founded villages and settlements,brought in settlers, put down robbers, defended from Tartar raids,maintained the peace necessary to husbandman and merchant, andintroduced the rule of law and justice. Through him that country hadlived, grown, and flourished,--he was the heart and soul of it; and nowhe had to leave all.

  And it was not that colossal fortune, great as an entire Germanprincipality, which the prince regretted, but he had become attached tothe work of his hands. He knew that when he was absent everything wasabsent; that the labor of years would be destroyed at once; that toilwould go for nothing, ferocity would be unchained, flames would embracevillages and towns, the Tartar would water his horse in those rivers,woods would grow out of ruins; that if God granted him to returneverything would have to be begun anew, and perhaps his strength wouldfail, time be wanting, and confidence such as he had enjoyed at firstwould not be given him. Here passed the years which were for him praisebefore men, merit before God; and now the praise and the merit are toroll away in smoke.

  Two tears flowed slowly down his face. These were his last tears, afterwhich remained in his eyes only lightning.

  The prince's horse stretched out his neck and neighed, and thisneighing was answered immediately by other steeds under the banners.These sounds roused the prince from his revery and filled himwith hope. And so there remains to him yet six thousand faithfulcomrades,--six thousand sabres with which the world is open to him, andto which the prostrate Commonwealth is looking as the only salvation.The idyl beyond the Dnieper is at an end; but where cannon arethundering, where villages and towns are in flames, where by night thewail of captives, the groans of men, women, and children are mingledwith the neighing of Tartar horses and Cossack tumult, there is an openfield, and there he may win the glory of a savior and father of hiscountry. Who will reach for the crown, who rescue the fatherland,disgraced, trodden under the feet of peasants, conquered, dying, if nothe, the prince,--if not those forces which shine there below him intheir armor and gleam in the sun?

  The tabor passed by the foot of the mound; and at the sight of theprince standing with his baton in his hand on the eminence under thecross, all the soldiers gave forth one shout: "Long live the prince!long live our leader and hetman Yeremi Vishnyevetski!"

  A hundred banners were lowered to his feet. The hussars sounded theirhorns, and the drums were beaten to accompany the shouts. Then theprince drew forth his sabre, and raising it with his eyes to heaven,said,--

  "I, Yeremi Vishnyevetski, voevoda of Rus, prince in Lubni andVishnyovets, swear to thee, O God, One in a Holy Trinity, and to thee,Most Holy Mother, that, raising this sabre against ruffianism by whichour land is disgraced, I will not lay it down while strength and liferemain to me, until I wash out that disgrace and bend every enemy tothe feet of the Commonwealth, give peace to the Ukraine, and drownservile insurrection in blood. And as I make this oath with a sincereheart, so God give me aid. Amen!"

  He stood yet awhile longer looking at the heavens, then rode downslowly from the height to the regiments. The army marched that eveningto Basani, a village belonging to Pani Krynitska, who received theprince on her knees at the gate; for the peasants had laid siege to herhouse and she was keeping them off with the assistance of the morefaithful of her servants, when the sudden arrival of the army saved herand her nineteen children, of whom fourteen were girls. When the princehad given orders to seize the aggressors, he sent a Cossack company toKanyeff under command of Captain Ponyatovski, who brought that samenight five Zaporojians of the Vasyutin kuren. These had all taken partin the battle of Korsun, and when burned with fire gave a detailedaccount of the battle. They stated that Hmelnitski was still in Korsun,but that Tugai Bey had gone with captives, booty, and both hetmans toChigirin, whence he intended to return to the Crimea. They heard alsothat Hmelnitski had begged him earnestly not to leave the Zaporojianarmy, but to march against the prince. The murza, however, would notagree to this, saying that after the destruction of the armies andthe hetmans, the Cossacks could go on alone; he would not wait longer,for his captives would die. They put Hmelnitski's forces at twohundred thousand, but of rather poor quality; of good men only fiftythousand,--that is, Zaporojians and Cossacks subject to lords, or townCossacks who had joined the rebellion.

  On receiving these tidings the prince grew strong in spirit, for hehoped that he too would increase considerably in strength by theaccession of nobles on the west of the Dnieper, stragglers from thearmy of the Crown, and detachments belonging to Polish lords. Thereforehe set out early next morning.

  Beyond Pereyaslav the army entered immense gloomy forests extendingalong the course of the Trubej to Kozelets, and farther on toChernigoff itself. It was toward the end of May, and terribly hot. Inthe woods, instead of being cool, it was so sultry that men and horseslacked air for breathing. Cattle, driven after the army, fell at everystep, or when they caught the smell of water, rushed to it as if wild,overturning wagons and causing dismay. Horses too began to fall,especially those of the heavy cavalry. The nights were unendurable fromthe infinite number of insects and the overpowering odor of pitch,which the trees dropped in unusual abundance by reason of the heat.

  They dragged on in this way for four days; at length on the fifth daythe heat became unnatural. When night came the horses began to snortand the cattle to bellow plaintively, as if foreseeing some dangerwhich men could not yet surmise.

  "They smell blood!" was said in the tabor among the crowds of fugitivefamilies of nobles.

  "The Cossacks are pursuing us! there will be a battle!"

  At these words the women raised a lament, the rumor reached theservants, panic and disturbance set in; the people tried to drive aheadof one another, or to leave the track and go at random through thewoods, where they got entangled among the trees.

  But men sent by the prince soon restored order. Scouts were ordered outon every side, so as to be sure whether danger was threatening or not.

  Skshetuski, who had gone as a volunteer with the Wallachians, returnedfirst toward morning and went straightway to the prince.

  "What is the trouble?" asked Yeremi.

  "Your Highness, the woods are on fire."

  "Set on fire?"

  "Yes; I seized a number of men who confessed that Hmelnitski had sentvolunteers to follow you and to set fire, if the wind should befavorable."

  "He wanted to roast us alive without giving battle. Bring the peoplehere!"

  In a moment three herdsmen were brought,--wild, stupid, terrified,--whoimmediately confessed that they were in fact commanded to set fire tothe woods. They confessed also that forces were despatched after theprince, but that they were going to Chernigoff by another road, nearerthe Dnieper.

  Meanwhile other scouts returned. All brought the same report: "Thewoods are on fire."

  But the prince did not allow himself to be disturbed in the least bythis. "It is a villanous method," said he; "but nothing will come ofit. The fire will not go beyond the rivers entering the Trubej."

  In fact, into the Trubej, along which the army marched to the north,there fell so many small rivers forming here and there broad morasses,impassable for fire, that it would have been necessary to ignite thewoods beyond each one of them separately. The scouts soon discoveredthat this was being done. Every day incendiaries were brought in; withthese they ornamented the pine-trees along the road.

  The fires extended vigorously along the rivers to the east and west,not to the north. In the night-time the heavens were red as far as theeye could see. The women sang sacred hymns from dusk to
the dawning ofthe day. Terrified wild beasts from the flaming forests took refuge onthe road and followed the army, running in among the cattle of theherds. The wind blew in the smoke, which covered the whole horizon. Thearmy and the wagons pushed forward as if through a dense fog, which theeye could not penetrate. The lungs had no air; the smoke bit the eyes,and the wind kept driving it on more and more each moment. The light ofthe sun could not pierce the clouds, and there was more to be seen inthe night-time than in the day, for flames gave light. The woods seemedto have no end.

  In the midst of such burning forests and such smoke did Prince Yeremilead his army. Meanwhile news came that the enemy was marching on theother side of the Trubej. The extent of his power was unknown, butVershul's Tartars affirmed that he was still far away.

  One night Pan Sukhodolski came to the army from Bodenki, on the otherside of the Desna. He was an old attendant of the prince, who someyears before had settled in a village. He was fleeing before thepeasants, but brought news as yet unknown in the army.

  Great consternation was caused when, asked by the prince for news, heanswered: "Bad, your Highness! You know already of the defeat of thehetmans and the death of the king?"

  The prince, who was sitting on a small camp-stool in front of the tent,sprang to his feet. "How?--is the king dead?"

  "Our merciful lord gave up the spirit in Merech a week before thecatastrophe at Korsun."

  "God in his mercy did not permit him to live to such times!" said theprince; then seizing himself by the head, he continued: "Awful timeshave come upon the Commonwealth! Convocations and elections,--aninterregnum, dissensions, and foreign intrigues,--now, when the wholepeople should become a single sword in a single hand. God surely hasturned away his face from us, and in his anger intends to punish us forour sins. Only King Vladislav himself could extinguish theseconflagrations; for there was a wonderful affection for him among theCossacks, and besides, he was a military man."

  At this time a number of officers--among them Zatsvilikhovski,Skshetuski, Baranovski, Vurtsel, Makhnitski, and Polyanovski--approachedthe prince, who said: "Gentlemen, the king is dead!"

  Their heads were uncovered as if by command. Their faces grew serious.Such unexpected news deprived all of speech. Only after a while came anexpression of universal sorrow.

  "May God grant him eternal rest!" said the prince.

  "And eternal light shine upon him!"

  Soon after the priest Mukhovetski intoned "Dies Irae;" and amidst thoseforests and that smoke an unspeakable sorrow seized their hearts andsouls. It seemed to all as if some expected rescue had failed; as ifthey were standing alone in the world, in presence of some terribleenemy, and they had no one against him except their prince. So then alleyes turned to him, and a new bond was formed between Vishnyevetski andhis men.

  That evening the prince spoke to Zatsvilikhovski in a voice that washeard by all,--

  "We need a warrior king, so that if God grants us to give our votes atan election, we will give them for Prince Karl, who has more of themilitary genius than Kazimir."

  "Vivat Carolus rex!" shouted the officers.

  "Vivat!" repeated the hussars, and after them the whole army.

  The prince voevoda had no thought, indeed, that those shouts raisedeast of the Dnieper, in the gloomy forests of Chernigoff, would reachWarsaw, and wrest from his grasp the baton of Grand Hetman of theCrown.