VI.
They traveled the dry road toward Chełmża and on to Grudziądz, where they stopped for a night and a day, because the Grand Master had a case to judge there about fishing rights between the Krzyżacy castle’s castellan and the local gentry whose lands bordered the Vistula. From there they sailed downriver on Krzyżacy barges as far as Malbork. Zyndram of Maszkowice, Powała of Taczew, and Zbyszko remained at the Master’s side the entire time. He was curious to see what impression the Krzyżacy power would make when viewed up close, especially on Zyndram. The Master cared about this because Zyndram of Maszkowice was not only a bold and fearsome knight in single combat but also an exceptionally skilled warrior. In the whole kingdom, no one understood as he did the leading of great armies, the arraying of troops for battle, the building and destroying of castles, the throwing of bridges across wide rivers, or “armament”—that is, the weaponry of various nations and all manner of warfare. The Master, seeing that much depended on this man’s opinion in the royal council, thought that if he could frighten him with the size of the Order’s wealth and armies, the war would be postponed for a long time yet.
But above all, the mere sight of Malbork could strike terror into any Pole’s heart, because no other fortress in the entire world could even come close to comparing with it—counting the High Castle, the Middle Castle, and the Przedzamcze. Already from a distance, sailing along the Nogat, the knights saw the mighty towers outlined against the sky. The day was clear and transparent, so they could see them perfectly. After a time, when the barges drew nearer, the church spires on the High Castle and the enormous walls—piled one atop the other—gleamed even more brightly. Part of them were brick-colored, but most were covered with that famous gray-white plaster that only Krzyżacy masons knew how to prepare.
Their immensity surpassed everything the Polish knights had ever seen in their lives. It looked as though buildings grew out of buildings, forming a kind of mountain in what was naturally a lowland, with the Old Castle as its peak and the Middle Castle and sprawling Przedzamcze as its slopes. From that enormous nest of armed monks radiated such extraordinary might and power that even the Master’s long, usually gloomy face brightened a little at the sight.
“Ex luto Marienburg—from mud, Marienburg,” he said, turning to Zyndram. “But human strength will never shatter this.”
Zyndram did not answer. In silence he took in with his eyes all the towers and the vastness of the walls, reinforced by monstrous buttresses.
After a moment of silence, Konrad von Jungingen added, “You, sir, who know fortresses, what do you say of this one?”
“The fortress seems to me impregnable,” replied the Polish knight, as if in thought. “But…”
“But what? What fault can you find in it?”
“But any fortress can change masters.”
At this the Master frowned. “In what sense do you say that?”
“In the sense that God’s judgments and decrees are hidden from human eyes.”
And again he looked thoughtfully at the walls, while Zbyszko, to whom Powała had properly explained the answer, gazed at him with wonder and gratitude. At that moment he was also struck by the resemblance between Zyndram and the Samogitian leader Skirwoillo. Both had the same enormous heads, as if sunk between broad shoulders; both had equally powerful chests and the same bowlegs.
Meanwhile, the Master, not wanting the last word to remain with the Polish knight, began again. “They say,” he said, “that our Marienburg is six times larger than the Wawel.”
“There isn’t as much room on that rock as there is here on the plain,” replied the lord of Maszkowice, “but our hearts on the Wawel are larger.”
Konrad raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t understand.”
“Because what is the heart in any castle if not the church? And our cathedral would hold three like that one over there.”
Saying this, he pointed to the castle church, which was indeed small, with a huge mosaic figure of the Blessed Virgin gleaming on gold in its presbytery.
The Master was again displeased with the turn of the conversation. “Your answers are quick, but strange, sir,” he said.
At that same moment they arrived. The excellent Krzyżacy police had obviously informed the town and castle of the Grand Master’s arrival, for at the crossing, besides a few brothers, town trumpeters were already waiting, who usually played for the Grand Master during the ferry crossing. On the other side, horses stood ready. Mounting them, the retinue passed through the city and, through the Shoemakers’ Gate by Sparrow Tower, entered the Przedzamcze. At the gate the Master was greeted by the Grand Komtur, Wilhelm von Helfenstein—though he now only bore the title, for Kuno Lichtenstein, who had been sent to England at the time, had actually performed his duties for several months—and then the Grand Hospitaller, Konrad Lichtenstein, a relative of Kuno; the Grand Wardrobe Keeper Rumpenheim; the Grand Treasurer Burghard von Webecke; and finally the Little Komtur, who was overseer of the workshops and castle administration. Besides these dignitaries, there stood a dozen or so consecrated brothers who managed matters concerning the church in Prussia and grievously oppressed other monasteries and the secular clergy, even forcing them to work on roads and break ice—along with them a crowd of lay brothers, that is, knights not obliged to canonical hours. Their tall, strong builds—the Krzyżacy did not accept weaklings—broad shoulders, twisted beards, and fierce looks made them resemble predatory German knight-bandits more than monks. From their eyes looked out courage, haughtiness, and immeasurable pride. They disliked Konrad for his fear of war with Jagiello’s power; many times at chapters they openly reproached him for timidity, drew caricatures of him on walls, and incited jesters to mock him to his face. Yet at his sight they now bowed their heads with apparent humility, especially since the Master was entering in the company of foreign knights, and they rushed in a crowd to hold his horse by the bridle and stirrup.
The Master, dismounting, immediately turned to Helfenstein and asked, “Are there any news from Werner von Tettingen?”
Werner von Tettingen, as Grand Marshal—that is, leader of the great Krzyżacy forces—was at that moment on an expedition against the Samogitians and Witold.
“There is no important news,” replied Helfenstein, “but there is damage. The savages have burned settlements near Ragneta and towns around other castles.”
“I trust in God that one great battle will break their malice and obduracy,” replied the Master.
Saying this, he raised his eyes upward, and his lips moved for a moment in a prayer that he recited for the success of the Order’s armies.
Then he pointed to the Polish knights and said, “These are envoys of the Polish king: the knight of Maszkowice, the knight of Taczew, and the knight of Bogdaniec, who have come with us for the exchange of prisoners. Let the castle komtur assign them guest chambers and receive and entertain them as is fitting.”
At these words the brother knights began to look with curiosity at the envoys, especially at Powała of Taczew, whose name, as a famous wrestler, was known to some. And those who had not heard of his deeds at the Burgundian, Bohemian, and Krakow courts were impressed by his enormous stature and his battle charger, so extraordinarily large that it reminded veterans who had visited the Holy Land and Egypt in their youth of camels and elephants.
Several also recognized Zbyszko, who had once fought in the lists at Malbork, and they greeted him quite cordially, remembering that the powerful and highly regarded Master Ulrich von Jungingen had shown him sincere friendship and favor.
The one who drew the least attention and admiration was the man who in the near future would become the most terrible conqueror of the Order—Zyndram of Maszkowice. For when he dismounted, his unusual stockiness and high shoulders made him appear almost hunchbacked. His excessively long arms and bowlegs evoked smiles on the faces of the younger brothers. One of them, a known prankster, even approached him, intending to make a cutting remark, but after looking into the eyes of the lord of Maszkowice, he somehow lost his inclination and walked away in silence.
Meanwhile the castle komtur took the guests and led them with him. They first entered a small courtyard where, besides a school, an old storage building, and a saddler’s workshop, there stood the chapel of Saint Nicholas. Then via the Nicholas Bridge they entered the main Przedzamcze. The komtur led them for some time among the mighty walls, here and there defended by larger and smaller towers. Zyndram of Maszkowice scrutinized everything attentively; the guide, even without being asked, willingly pointed out various buildings, as if he especially cared that the guests see everything as closely as possible.
“That huge building you see before you, on the left hand,” he said, “is our stables. We are poor monks, and yet people say that elsewhere knights do not live as well as our horses do here.”
“People do not accuse you of poverty,” replied Powała, “but there must be something more than just stables here, because the building is terribly tall, and surely you don’t lead horses up stairs.”
“Above the stable, which is below and holds four hundred horses,” replied the castle komtur, “there are granaries, and in them grain enough for ten years. This place will never come under siege, but if it did, they would never starve us out.”
Saying this, he turned right and again over a bridge between Saint Lawrence Tower and the Armored Tower led them into another courtyard, an enormous one lying in the very center of the Podzamcze.
“Consider, your graces,” said the German, “that all this which you see to the north, although by God’s grace impregnable, is only the ‘Vorburg’ and cannot compare in fortification either with the Middle Castle, to which I am leading you, or even more so with the High Castle.”
Indeed, a separate moat and a separate drawbridge divided the Middle Castle from the courtyard, and only at the castle gate, which lay considerably higher, did the knights, turning at the komtur’s suggestion, once again take in with their eyes that entire enormous square called the Podzamcze.
Building rose next to building, so that it seemed to Zyndram he saw an entire city before him. There were inexhaustible stocks of wood stacked in piles as large as houses, stores of stone cannonballs standing like pyramids, cemeteries, hospitals, magazines. Slightly to the side, by a pond in the middle, reddened the mighty walls of the “temple,” that is, the great storehouse with a dining hall for mercenaries and servants. Under the northern rampart were other stables for knights’ horses and for the Master’s chosen mounts. Along the Młynówka rose barracks for squires and mercenary troops, and on the opposite side of the square, quarters for various overseers and Order officials—again stores, granaries, bakeries, wardrobes, foundries, an immense arsenal called the Karwan, prisons, an old gunsmithy—each building so unyielding and defensible that one could defend oneself in each as in a separate fortress, and all of it surrounded by a wall and a cluster of menacing towers, beyond the wall a moat, beyond the moat a wreath of enormous palisades, beyond which, to the west, the Nogat rolled its yellow waves, to the north and east the expanse of a huge pond glittered, and to the south stood the even more strongly fortified castles: the Middle and the High.
A terrible nest, from which radiated inexorable power, and in which were concentrated the two greatest forces then known in the world: spiritual force and the force of the sword. Whoever resisted the first was crushed by the second. Whoever raised an arm against them would hear a cry arise in all Christian lands that he was raising it against the Cross.
And at once knights flocked from all sides to help. The nest always teemed with craftsmen and armed men, and it buzzed ceaselessly like a beehive. In front of the buildings, in the passages at the gates, in the workshops—everywhere there was activity like at a fair. Echoes carried the sounds of hammers and chisels chipping stone cannonballs, the hum of mills and treadmills, the neighing of horses, the clang of armor and weapons, the sound of trumpets and pipes, shouts and commands.
In those courtyards you heard all the languages of the world and could meet soldiers from all nations: unerring English longbowmen who could pierce a pigeon tied to a mast at a hundred paces, and whose arrows pierced armor as easily as cloth; terrible Swiss infantry fighting with two-handed swords; bold but immoderate in food and drink Danes; French knights, as prone to laughter as to quarrels; the taciturn and proud Spanish nobility; splendid Italian knights, the most skilled swordsmen, dressed in silks and velvets and, for war, in impenetrable armor forged in Venice, Milan, and Florence; Burgundian knights; Frisians; and Germans from all German lands. Among them, as hosts and superiors, moved the “white cloaks.”
The “Tower Full of Gold”—more precisely, a separate chamber built on the High Castle next to the Master’s quarters, indeed filled from top to bottom with coins and bars of precious metal—allowed the Order both to entertain “guests” worthily and to hire mercenary soldiers, who were sent from here on expeditions and to all castles at the disposal of the vogts, elders, and komturs. Thus to the force of the sword and the force of the spirit was joined here immeasurable wealth, along with an iron order, which, although already relaxed by excessive confidence and intoxication with their own power, still held through force of long habit.
Monarchs came here not only to fight the pagans or borrow money, but also to learn the art of government; knights came to learn the art of war. For in the whole world no one knew how to rule and wage war like the Order. When once it had come to these parts, aside from a small area and a few castles donated by a heedless Polish duke, not a span of land belonged to it; now it ruled a region larger than many kingdoms, full of fertile lands, powerful cities, and impregnable castles. It ruled and watched like a spider ruling its spread web, all of whose threads it held beneath itself.
From here, from this High Castle, from the Master and the white cloaks, orders were sent by courier boys in all directions: to vassal nobility, to town councils, to burgomasters, to vogts, under-vogts, and captains of mercenary troops. And what thought and will produced and decided here, hundreds and thousands of iron hands immediately executed. Here flowed money from the whole country; here, grain; here, all kinds of provisions; here, tribute from the secular clergy groaning under the cruel yoke and from other monasteries, which the Order viewed with a hostile eye. Finally, from here, rapacious arms reached out toward all neighboring lands and peoples.
Numerous Prussian peoples speaking a Lithuanian tongue had already been wiped from the face of the earth. Until recently, Litwa had felt the iron Krzyżacy foot pressing so terribly on its chest that every breath drew blood from the heart. Poland, although victorious in the terrible battle at Płowce, had nevertheless lost under Łokietek’s time its holdings on the left bank of the Vistula, together with Gdańsk, Gniew, and Świecie. The knightly Order of Livonia reached for Ruthenian lands, and both orders advanced like a first giant wave of the German sea, which ever more widely flooded Slavic lands.
Suddenly the sun of Krzyżacy-German prosperity clouded over. Litwa accepted baptism from Polish hands, and the Krakow throne, together with the hand of the beautiful princess, was taken by Jagiello. The Order did not thereby lose any land or any castle, but it felt that force had met force, and it lost the reason for its existence in Prussia. After the baptism of Litwa, they would have to return to Palestine and guard pilgrims heading to the holy city.
But to return meant renouncing wealth, power, might, dominion, cities, lands, and entire kingdoms. So the Order began to writhe in terror and fury, like a monstrous dragon with an iron shard stuck in its side. Master Konrad feared staking everything on one throw of the dice and trembled at the thought of war with the great king, the lord of Polish, Litwa, and vast Prussian lands that Algirdas had torn from the Tatars’ throats. But the majority of Krzyżacy knights pushed for war, feeling that they must fight to the death while their strength was still intact, while the Order’s prestige had not faded, while the whole world hastened to its aid, and while papal thunders had not yet fallen on that nest for which the matter of life and death was now—not the spread of Christianity, but precisely the preservation of paganism.
Meanwhile, among nations and at courts, Jagiello and Litwa were accused of a false and feigned baptism, presenting it as impossible that what the Order’s sword could not accomplish in centuries could happen in a year. Kings and knights were stirred up against Poland and its ruler as patrons and defenders of paganism—and these voices, which only in Rome were not believed, spread in a wide wave across the world and drew princes, counts, and knights from the South and West toward Malbork. The Order gained confidence and felt its strength. Marienburg with its menacing castles and Przedzamcze dazzled people with its power more than ever—its wealth dazzled, its apparent order dazzled—and the whole Order seemed more powerful and more immortal for centuries than before.
And none of the princes, none of those knightly guests—no one except the Master, not even among the Krzyżacy—understood that since the baptism of Litwa, something had happened like the waves of the Nogat, which protected the terrible fortress on one side, beginning to undermine its walls silently and inexorably. No one understood that in that enormous body strength still remained, but the soul had flown from it. Whoever arrived fresh and looked at that Marienburg raised “ex luto,” at those walls, towers, black crosses on gates, on buildings, and on garments, would first of all think that the gates of hell would not overcome this northern capital of the cross.
With thoughts similar to these, not only Powała of Taczew and Zbyszko, who had been here before, but also the much sharper Zyndram of Maszkowice looked at it. And he, at that moment gazing at that armed swarming of soldiers enclosed within a frame of towers and enormous walls, his face darkened, and the proud words with which the Krzyżacy had once threatened King Casimir came involuntarily to his memory:
“Greater is our power, and if you do not yield, we will pursue you with our swords all the way to Krakow.”
But meanwhile the castle komtur led the knights further, into the Middle Castle, in whose eastern part lay the guest chambers.