The Knights of the Cross/Volume 1/Chapter 29

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

CHAPTER XXIX.

When Yurand found himself in the courtyard of the castle he knew not whither to go, for the servitor, who had conducted him through the gateway, left him and went toward the stables. At the wall stood men at arms, it is true, some singly, some in small groups, but their faces were so insolent and their glances so jeering that the knight could divine easily that they would not show him the way, and that were they to answer his question they would do so contemptuously or with rudeness. Some laughed and pointed their fingers at him, others began to throw snow, as on the day previous. But he, noting a door larger than others, over which Christ on the Cross was carved in stone, made toward it, thinking that if the comtur and officers were in another part of the castle, or in other chambers, some one would in every case have to turn him from the mistaken way.

And that was what happened. At the moment when Yurand was approaching the door the two halves of it opened suddenly, and a youth stood before him tonsured like a cleric, but wearing the dress of a layman.

"Are you Pan Yurand of Spyhov? " inquired he.

"I am."

"The pious comtur has commanded me to conduct you. Follow me."

And he led on through a great arched entrance-chamber toward a stairway. At the steps, however, he halted, and casting his eyes on Yurand inquired,—

"Have you weapons on your person? They have ordered me to search you."

Yurand raised both arms so that the guide might see his whole body clearly, and answered,—

"Yesterday I surrendered all."

Thereupon the guide lowered his voice and said almost in a whisper,—

"Guard against breaking into anger, for you are under power, and power which is superior."

"But I am under the will of God too," answered Yurand.

Then he looked at his guide more attentively, and finding in his face something in the nature of compassion and pity, he said,—

"Honesty is looking out of thy eyes, boy. Wilt thou answer me truly touching that which I ask?"

"Hurry, lord," answered the guide.

"Will they give me my child? "

The youth raised his brows in astonishment.

"Is that your child who is here?"

"My daughter."

"That damsel in the tower at the gate?"

"Yes. They promised to send her home if I would give myself up to them."

The guide made a motion in sign that he knew not, but his face expressed doubt and fear.

Yurand added another question, however,

"Is it true that Schaumberg and Markward are guarding her?"

"Those brothers are not at this castle. But take your daughter away before Danveld, the starosta, recovers."

Yurand trembled on hearing this, but there was no time to make further inquiry, for they had come to a hall on the story where Yurand was to stand before the starosta of Schytno. The youth opened the door and withdrew to the stairway.

The knight of Spyhov entered, and found himself in a large chamber which was very dark, for the glass panes, fitted into leaden sash, admitted light scantily, and moreover the day was wintry and cloudy. In a great chimney at the farther end of the room a fire was burning, it is true, but the wood, being imperfectly seasoned, gave out little flame. Only after a time, when Yurand's eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, did he see in the distance a table with knights sitting near it, and beyond their shoulders a whole company of armed attendants, also men at arms, among whom was the castle jester, who held a tame bear by a chain.

Yurand had fought with Danveld on a time, later he had seen him twice at the court of Prince Yanush in the character of envoy, but since those times some years had passed; still, in spite of the darkness he recognised him at once, by his corpulence, by his face, and finally by this, that he was sitting at a table, in the centre of the room, in an easy-chair, with his arm bound in splints and resting on the side of the chair. At his right sat old Siegfried de Löwe of Insburg, an implacable enemy of Poles in general, and Yurand of Spyhov in particular; at his left were the younger brothers Gottfried, and Rotgier. Danveld had invited them purposely to behold his triumph over the terrible enemy, and also to enjoy the fruits of that treachery which they had thought out together, and in the execution of which the other three had assisted him. So they sat comfortably arrayed in garments of dark material, with small swords at their sides—joyful, self-confident, looking at Yurand with pride and with that boundless contempt which they felt at all times for the weaker and the conquered.

Silence continued long, for they wished to sate themselves with looking at the man before whom they had simply been terrified, and who stood now with drooping head before them, arrayed in the hempen bag of a penitent, with a rope around his neck from which depended his scabbard.

They wished also, as was evident, the greatest number of people to witness the humiliation of Yurand. for through side doors leading to other chambers every one who wished had the entry, and the hall was almost half filled with armed spectators. All gazed with measureless curiosity on the captive; they spoke loudly and made remarks which referred to him. But while looking at them he only gained consolation, for he thought in hie soul: "If Danveld had not wished to keep his promise he would not have summoned such a number of witnesses."

Danveld raised his hand and conversation ceased; thereupon he gave a sign to one of the shield-bearers, who approached Yurand and, seizing the rope which encircled his neck, drew him a number of steps toward the table. Danveld looked then in triumph on the spectators and said,

"See how the power of the Order overcomes pride and malice!"

"God grant that it be thus at all times!" answered those present.

Now came a moment of silence, after which Danveld turned to the prisoner,—

"Like a mad dog thou hast bitten the Order, and God has brought thee to stand like a dog before us, with a rope around thy neck, waiting for pardon and favor."

"Compare me not to a dog, comtur," answered Yurand, "for thou art belittling the honor of those who have met me, and fallen by my hand."

At these words a murmur rose among the armed Germans; it is not known whether the daring of the answer roused their anger, or the truth of it struck them. The comtur was not rejoiced at such a turn of speech, so he added,—

"See, he spits into our eyes again by his pride and haughtiness."

But Yurand raised his hands like a man calling heaven to witness, and said, nodding his head,—

"God sees that my haughtiness has remained outside the gates of this castle. God sees, and will judge whether by insulting my knightly dignity you have not insulted yourselves. The honor of knighthood is one in all places. Every belted man is bound in duty to respect it."

Danveld frowned, but that moment the castle-jester rattled the chain on which he held the young bear, and called,—

"A sermon! a sermon! A preacher has come from Mazovia! Listen! A sermon!"

Then he turned to Danveld.

"Lord," said he, "Count Rosenheim, whenever the sexton roused him to a sermon too early by bell-ringing, commanded the man to eat the bell-rope from one knot to another; this preacher has a rope around his neck, command him to eat it before he reaches the end of his sermon."

After these words he looked with some fear at the comtur, for he was not sure whether Danveld would laugh, or give the order to flog him for untimely speech. But the Knights of the Cross, smooth, pliant, and even submissive when they did not feel themselves in power, knew no measure in presence of the conquered; hence Danveld not only nodded at the jester in sign that he permitted the indignity, but burst forth in rudeness so unheard of that astonishment was depicted on the faces of some of the younger armor-bearers.

"Complain not that thou art disgraced," said he; "even were I to make thee an under dog-keeper, a dog-keeper of the Knights of the Cross is superior to a knight of thy people!"

"Bring a comb," cried the buffoon, now emboldened, "and comb the bear; he will comb out thy shaggy locks with his paw!"

Laughter broke forth here and there, while a certain voice called from behind the brotherhood,—

"In summer thou wilt cut reeds on the lake!"

"And catch crawfish with thy carrion!" cried another.

"But begin now to scare away crows from the gallows!" added a third. "Thou wilt have no lack of work here."

Thus did they jeer at Yurand, who on a time was their terror. Joyousness seized the assembly gradually. Some, coming from behind the table, approached the prisoner to examine him from nearby, and to say: "Then this is the wild boar of Spyhov whose tusks are knocked out by our comtur; of course he has foam on his snout; he would gladly bite some one, but he cannot!" Danveld and other brothers of the Order, who wished at first to give a certain solemn semblance of judgment to the hearing, on seeing that the affair had taken a new turn, rose also from the benches and mingled with those who were approaching Yurand.

Old Siegfried of Insburg was not rejoiced at this, but the comtur said to him: "Smooth your wrinkles; our amusement will be all the greater." And they also fell to examining Yurand. That was a rare opportunity, for up to that day those of the knighthood, or men at arms who had seen him in such proximity, closed their eyes forever after. Hence some said: "His shoulders are immense, even if he has a skin coat under the bag; one might wrap pea straw around his body and exhibit him in market-places;" others called for beer, so that the day might be still more joyous.

In fact a moment later the sound of tankards was heard, and the dark hall was filled with the odor of foam falling from under covers. The comtur grew merry and said: "Thus precisely is it proper, he need not think that an insult to him is important." So they approached Yurand again, and said, punching him under the chin with their tankards: "Thou wouldst be glad to moisten thy Mazovian snout!" And some, pouring beer on their palms, plashed it into his eye; but he stood among them, howled at, insulted, till at last he moved toward old Siegfried, and feeling evidently that he could not restrain himself long, cried in a voice loud enough to drown the noise which prevailed in the hall,—

"By the passion of the Saviour, and your own soul's salvation, give my child to me as you promised!"

And he wished to seize the right hand of the old comtur, but Siegfried started back suddenly and said,—

"Away, slave! What art thou doing?"

"I have liberated Bergov, and come hither alone, because in return for this you promised to give back my child to me; she is here."

"Who promised?" inquired Danveld.

"Thou, comtur, in faith and in conscience."

"Thou wilt not find witnesses, but no witness is needed in a question of word and honor."

"On thy honor! on the honor of the Order!" cried Yurand.

"In that case thy daughter will be given thee!" answered Danveld.

Then he turned to those present and continued,—

"All that has happened him in this place is innocent play, not reaching the measure of his crimes and offences. But since we promised to return his daughter, should he come here and humiliate himself before us, know that the word of a Knight of the Cross must be like the word of God, sacred, and that girl whom we rescued from bandits we will present now with freedom, and after exemplary penance for his sins against the Order, Yurand may go home also."

This speech astonished some, for, knowing Danveld and his former feelings of offence against Yurand, they did not expect the like honesty. So old Siegfried and also Rotgier, with Brother Gottfried, looked at the man, raising their brows in amazement, and wrinkling their foreheads; he, however, feigned not to see their inquiring glances, and said,—

"I will send thy daughter away under escort, but thou wilt stay here till our escort returns safely, and till thou hast paid the ransom."

Yurand himself was somewhat astonished, for he had lost hope that even the sacrifice of his own life could serve Danusia; hence he looked at Danveld almost with gratitude, and answered,—

"God reward thee, comtur!"

"Recognize in me a Knight of Christ!" replied Danveld.

"All mercy comes from Him," answered Yurand. "But as it is long since I have seen my child, let me look at her, and give her my blessing."

"Yes, but in presence of us all, so that there should be witnesses of our good faith and favor."

Then he commanded an attendant youth to bring in Danusia, and moved himself up to Siegfried, Rotgier, and Gottfried, who, surrounding him, began to speak with animation and quickly.

"I oppose not, though thou hadst a different intention," said old Siegfried.

"How," asked the passionate Rotgier, who was noted for cruelty and bravery, "thou wilt free, not only the girl, but this hell hound to bite again?"

"He will not bite as before!" exclaimed Gottfried.

"Oh, he will pay the ransom," answered Danveld, carelessly.

"Though he were to give us all he has he would strip twice as much in one year from our people!"

"As to the girl I make no opposition," repeated Siegfried, "but the lambs of the Order will cry more than once because of that wolf."

"But our word?" inquired Danveld, with a laugh.

"Thou hast spoken differently on that point."

Danveld shrugged his shoulders.

"Have ye had too little amusement?" asked he. "Do ye want more?" Yurand was surrounded now by others, who, conscious of the glory which had come to all the brotherhood because of Danveld's act of honor, fell to boasting before the prisoner,—

"Well, bone-breaker! " said the captain of the archers to Yurand, "thy pagan brothers would not act thus with our Christian Knighthood!"

"Thou didst drink our blood."

"We give thee bread in return for a stone."

Yurand paid no heed to the pride or contempt in their words; his heart was full and his eyelids moist. He was thinking that in a moment he should see Danusia, and see her through their favor, hence he looked on the speakers almost with compunction, and finally he answered,—

"True, true! I have been stern against you—but not false."

Meanwhile at the other end of the hall a voice shouted: "They are leading in the girl!" and immediately there was silence. The men at arms stood apart on both sides. Though no man had seen Yurand's daughter, and the greater number, because of the mystery with which Danveld surrounded his acts, did not even know of her presence in the castle; those who did know hurried to whisper to others of her marvellous beauty. Every eye therefore turned with exceeding curiosity to the doorway through which she was to enter.

Now came the youth; after him the serving woman of the Order, who was known to all, she who had gone to the hunting-lodge; behind her entered a girl dressed in white, with hair let down at full length and then fastened above the forehead with a ribbon.

All at once an immense burst of thunder-like laughter was heard through the hall. Yurand, who at the first moment was ready to spring toward his daughter, drew back on a sudden and stood as pale as linen, gazing with astonishment at the pointed head, blue lips, and expressionless eyes of an idiot whom they were giving him as Danusia.

"That is not my daughter!" said he, with a voice of alarm.

"Not thy daughter? " cried Danveld. "By Saint Liborius of Paderborn! Then either we did not rescue thy daughter from the bandits, or some wizard has transformed her, for there is no other in Schytno."

Old Siegfried, Rotgier, and Gottfried exchanged swift glances filled with supreme admiration for the keenness of Danveld, but no man of them had time to speak, for Yurand cried in a terrible voice,—

"She is here! my daughter is in Schytno, I heard her sing! I heard the voice of Danusia."

Thereupon Danveld turned to the assembly and said, coolly and with emphasis,—

"I take all here present to witness, but especially thee, Siegfried of Insburg, and you pious brothers Rotgier and Gottfried, that, in accord with my word and pledged promise, I yield up this maiden whom bandits, vanquished by us, declared to be the daughter of Yurand of Spyhov. If she is not his daughter there is no fault of ours in this, but the will of God, who has given Yurand into our hands."

Siegfried and the two younger brothers inclined their heads in sign that they heard and would testify when needed. Then they exchanged swift glances a second time, for Danveld's work was more than they had been able to hope for: to seize Yurand, and not yield up his daughter, and still to keep promise apparently,—who else could have done that!

But Yurand cast himself on his knees and adjured Danveld by all the relics in Malborg, by the dust and the heads of his ancestors, to give him his daughter, and not to act as a trickster and a traitor who breaks oaths and promises. There was such sincerity and desperation in his voice that some began to divine the deceit; to others it occurred that a wizard might have changed the girl really.

"God is looking at thy treason!" cried Yurand. "By the wounds of the Saviour! by the hour of thy death, give my child to me!"

And rising from his knees he advanced, bent down double, toward Danveld, as if wishing to embrace his knees; his eye was gleaming with something like genuine madness, and his voice was breaking with pain, fear, desperation, and menace. Danveld, reproached in the presence of all with treachery and trickery, began to snort; at last anger broke forth on his face like a flame, so, wishing to trample the ill-fated prisoner to the lowest, he pushed up to him, and bending to his ear hissed through set teeth,—

"If I give her to thee, it will be with my bastard!"

That instant Yurand roared like a wild bull; he seized Danveld with both hands and raised him above his head. In the hall was heard one piercing cry: "Spare!!" then the body of the comtur struck the stone floor with such terrible impetus that the brains of his broken skull were spattered on Siegfried and Rotgier who were standing right there.

Yurand sprang to the side wall on which were weapons, and, seizing a great double-handed sword, rushed like a storm at the Germans, who were petrified with terror.

Those men were accustomed to battles, blood, and slaughter, still their hearts sank to that degree that even when their stupor had passed they began to withdraw and flee as sheep from a wolf which kills with one snap of his teeth. The hall was filled with screams of terror, with trampling of feet, with the crash of overturned vessels, with cries of attendants, with despairing calls for weapons, shields, swords, and crossbows, and with the howls of the bear which broke away from the jester and climbed to a lofty window. At last weapons gleamed, and the points of some tens of them were directed at Yurand, but he heeded nothing; half insane he sprang toward them himself, and a wild, unheard-of battle began,—a battle more like a slaughter than a conflict with weapons. The youthful and passionate Brother Gottfried was the first to bar the way to Yurand; but Yurand with the lightning swiftness of his sword edge hurled off his head, and with it an arm and shoulder; after him fell the captain of the archers and the steward of the castle, Von Bracht, and an Englishman who, though he did not understand well what the question was, took pity on Yurand and his suffering and drew his sword only after the slaying of Danveld. Others, beholding the terrible strength and rage of the man, gathered into a crowd to resist in company; but that method brought still more deplorable defeat, for Yurand, with his hair on end, with wild eye, bespattered with gore and breathing blood, enraged, out of his mind, broke, tore, and slashed that dense crowd with dreadful blows of his broadsword, hurling men to the floor with his reeking blade, as a tempest hurls limbs and trees to the earth. And again came a moment of ghastly terror, in which it seemed that the awful Mazovian would cut down and slay every one, and that they, like a pack of howling dogs, could not finish the maddened wild boar unless men with muskets assisted them; and in such degree were those armed Germans inferior in strength and rage to Yurand that a battle with him was simply death and destruction.

"Scatter! Surround him! Strike from behind!" cried old Siegfried.

So they scattered through the hall like a flock of starlings in a field when a crooked-beaked falcon swoops down from the sky on them; but those men could not surround him, for in his rage of battle, instead of seeking a place from which to defend himself, he hunted them around the walls, and the man whom he reached died as by a lightning stroke. Humiliation, despair, deceived hope turned into the single desire for blood seemed to intensify his savage strength tenfold. That sword, for which the strongest warriors of the Order needed both hands, he wielded like a feather with one. He was not seeking freedom or victory, he was not seeking to save his life; he was seeking vengeance; and like a conflagration, or like a river which has swept away obstructions and is destroying blindly everything that stands before its current, he, the awful, the blinded destroyer, rends, smashes, tramples, murders, extinguishes.

They could not strike him from behind, for they could not overtake him; besides, common warriors feared to approach the man, even from behind, knowing that if he turned no human power could save them. Others were seized by perfect terror at the thought that no unaided mortal could have made such slaughter, and that they had to do with one to whom superhuman power gives assistance. But Siegfried and Rotgier rushed to a gallery which projected above the great windows of the hall, and called on others to follow and save themselves. They did so in haste, so that men crowded one another on the narrow staircase, wishing to be there at the earliest, and thence strike the giant with whom every hand-to-hand struggle had proved impossible. Finally the last man slammed the door leading to the gallery, and Yurand was alone on the ground floor. Shouts of delight and triumph were heard in the gallery; heavy oaken tables, benches, iron sockets of torches began to fly now at Yurand. One of the missiles struck him above the brow and covered his face with blood. That moment the door of the main entrance was burst open, and in rushed a crowd of soldiers, summoned through the upper windows; they were armed with darts, halberds, axes, crossbows, pointed stakes, hooks, ropes, or whatever weapon each one had seized in a hurry.

But with his left hand the raging Yurand wiped the blood from his face so that it might not darken his eyesight, collected himself, and rushed at the multitude. Again were heard in the hall groans, the clank of iron, the gritting of teeth, and the terrified voices of men in the midst of slaughter.