They lived in Moczydoly, while Old Maćko was building a castle for them in Bogdaniec. He built it laboriously, for he wanted the foundations to be of stone with lime mortar and the watchtower of brick, which was hard to come by in the area. In the first year he dug the ditches, which came fairly easily, because the hill on which the castle was to stand had once been entrenched—perhaps back in pagan times—so it was only necessary to clear those ravines of the trees and thorn thickets that had overgrown them, and then to strengthen and deepen them properly. While deepening, they also struck an abundant spring, which soon filled the moat so much that Macko had to devise an outlet for the excess water. Then on the rampart he erected a palisade and began to gather building material for the walls of the little castle: oak logs so thick that three peasants could not encircle one, and larch logs that do not rot under clay daub or under a covering of turf. He started raising those walls only after a year, despite the constant help of peasants from Zgorzelice and Moczydoly, but he set to work all the more zealously because before that Jagienka had given birth to twins. Heaven opened before the old knight then, for he now had someone to work for, to strive for, and he knew that the House of Grady would not die out, and that the Blunt Horseshoe would yet many a time be stained with enemy blood.
The twins were named Macko and Jaśko. “Boys,” the old man said, “fine as can be, such that in the whole kingdom there are none like them, and it’s not yet evening.” And he loved them at once with a great love, and he had eyes for no one but Jagienka. Whoever praised her to his face could get anything from him. Yet people truly envied Zbyszko for her, and praised her not only for advantage, for indeed she shone in the area like the most beautiful flower in a meadow. She brought her husband a great dowry, but more than a dowry: great love and beauty that dazzled human eyes, and courtliness, and such prowess that many a knight could boast of it. It was nothing for her, a few days after childbirth, to get up to manage the household, and then to go hunting with her husband, or to ride from Moczydoly to Bogdaniec in the morning and return to Jaśko and Macko before noon. So her husband loved her like the apple of his eye, Old Maćko loved her, the household loved her, for she had a kind heart for them, and in Krześnia, when she entered church on Sunday, a murmur of admiration and adoration greeted her. Her former suitor, the fearsome Cztan z Rogowa, now married to a peasant’s daughter, who after Mass drank in the tavern with Old Wilk of Brzozowa, used to say, having drunk to him: “We bickered over her many a time with your son and wanted to take her, but it was just like reaching for the moon in the sky.”
Others openly declared that such a woman could only be found at the royal court in Krakow. For besides her wealth, beauty, and courtliness, they also greatly revered her vigor and strength. And there was a common saying: “That’s a real woman: she can prop up a bear with a spear in the forest, and she doesn’t need to crack nuts with her teeth—she just lays them on a bench and sits down suddenly, and they all crush as if you’d pressed them with a millstone.” So they praised her in the parish church of Krześnia, in the neighboring villages, and even in the provincial capital of Sieradz. Yet, while envying Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, they were not overly surprised that he got her, for he too was illuminated by such military glory as no one in the area had.
Young yeomen and nobles told each other whole stories about the Germans he had thrashed in battles under Witold’s command and in single combat on level ground. They said that no one had ever bested him, that in Malbork he had knocked twelve of them from their horses, among them the Grand Master’s brother Ulrich, and finally that he could even contend with the knights of Krakow, and that the invincible Zawisza Czarny himself was a good friend to him.
Some did not wish to believe such extraordinary tales, but even those, when the talk turned to whom the region would choose if Polish knights had to compete with foreigners, said: “Zbyszko, of course—and only then the hairy Cztan z Rogowa and other local strongmen, who were far behind the young heir of Bogdaniec in knightly training.”
Great wealth, along with fame, earned him human respect. For that he got Moczydoly and the great abbot’s estate through Jagienka was not his doing, but he already owned Spychów with the enormous treasures amassed by Jurand, and besides, people whispered that the spoils alone—armor, horses, garments, jewels—taken by the knights of Bogdaniec would suffice for three or four good villages.
So they saw in this a special grace of God over the House of Grady, bearing the Blunt Horseshoe coat of arms, which until recently had been so fallen that besides empty Bogdaniec it had nothing, and now was rising above all others in the region. “After the fire, only a hunchbacked little house remained in Bogdaniec,” said old people, “and the estate itself, for lack of working hands, they had to pawn to a relative, and now they are building a castle.” And the wonder was great, but it was accompanied by a general, instinctive feeling that the whole nation was also going with unstoppable momentum toward some immense achievement, and that by God’s will such was to be the order of things, so there was no evil envy in that wonder. On the contrary, the region boasted and was proud of these knights of Bogdaniec. They were like an evident proof of what a strong arm combined with a brave heart and a knightly thirst for adventure could bring a nobleman to. Many a man, seeing them, felt that his home hearth was too narrow, his native borders too cramped, and that just beyond the wall, in enemy power, lay great wealth and vast lands that could be won with immense benefit for himself and the Kingdom. And that excess of strength that the houses felt was bursting the whole community, so that it was like a boiling liquid that must boil over from the vessel. The wise lords of Krakow and the peace-loving king could hold back those forces for a time and postpone the war with the eternal enemy for many years, but no human power could suppress them completely, nor stop that momentum with which the common soul moves toward greatness.