“It looks like they cut out his tongue.”
“They cut out your tongue?” the girl asked.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” the old man repeated several times, nodding his head.
Then he pointed to his eyes, next extended his right arm without a hand, and with his left made a motion like cutting.
Now they both understood him.
“Who did this to you?” asked Jagienka.
The old man made the sign of the cross in the air several times.
“Teutonic Knights!” shouted Macko.
The old man lowered his head to his chest as a sign of confirmation.
A moment of silence followed. Macko and Jagienka looked at each other with unease. Before them was clear evidence of the lack of mercy and lack of moderation in punishment that characterized the monastic knights.
“Harsh rule,” Macko said at last. “And they punished him severely. God knows if justly. We’ll never know for sure. If only we knew where to take him, because he must be from these parts. He understands our speech, since the common folk here are the same as in Masovia.”
“Do you understand what we say?” asked Jagienka.
The old man nodded.
“And are you from here?”
“No,” the old man answered with gestures.
“So perhaps from Masovia?”
“Yes.”
“From under Prince Janusz?”
“Yes.”
“And what were you doing among the Teutonic Knights?”
The old man could not answer, but his face took on an expression of such immense pain that Jagienka’s compassionate heart stirred with even greater sympathy. Even Macko, who was not easily moved, said, “No doubt the scoundrels wronged him, perhaps without his fault.”
Jagienka pressed a few small coins into the beggar’s hand.
“Listen,” she said. “We won’t abandon you. You’ll come with us to Masovia, and in every village we’ll ask if it’s yours. Maybe we’ll manage to understand each other. Just get up now, for we aren’t saints.”
But he did not get up. Instead, he bent down and embraced her legs, as if entrusting himself to her protection and giving thanks. Yet a certain surprise, even disappointment, flickered across his face. Perhaps, judging by her voice, he thought he was before a girl, but his hand encountered the cowhide boots that knights and squires wore on journeys.
She said, “So it shall be. Our wagons will come soon, and you can rest and eat. But you won’t go to Masovia right away, because first we must go to Szczytno.”
At that word, the old man sprang to his feet. Horror and astonishment showed on his face. He spread his arms as if to block the way, and from his mouth came wild, terrified sounds.
“What’s the matter with you!” cried frightened Jagienka.
But Czech, who had already ridden up with Sieciechówna and had been staring intently at the old man for some time, suddenly turned to Macko with a changed face and said in a strange voice, “By God’s wounds! Allow me, sir, to speak to him, for you have no idea who he might be!”
Then, without asking permission, he jumped to the old man, placed his hands on his shoulders, and began to ask, “Are you coming from Szczytno?”
The old man, as if struck by the sound of his voice, calmed down and nodded.
“And weren’t you looking for a child there?”
A hollow groan was the only answer to that question.
Then Hlawa paled a little. He stared for a moment longer with his lynx-like eyes at the old man’s features, then said slowly and distinctly, “Then you are Jurand of Spychów!”
“Jurand!” shouted Macko.
But Jurand staggered at that moment and fainted.
The torments he had suffered, lack of food, and the hardships of the journey had brought him down. It was already the tenth day since he had been walking thus, groping, wandering, and searching the road with his stick, hungry, exhausted, and uncertain where he was going. Unable to ask directions, by day he guided himself only by the warmth of the sun; at night he spent in ditches by the roadside. When he happened to pass through a village or settlement, or met people coming toward him, he begged with his hand and voice, but rarely did a compassionate hand help him, for he was commonly taken for a criminal who had been punished by the law and justice. For two days he had been feeding on tree bark and leaves and had already despaired of ever reaching Masovia — when suddenly compassionate friendly hearts and familiar voices surrounded him, one of which reminded him of his daughter’s sweet voice. And when at last his name was mentioned, the measure of emotions overflowed. His heart tightened in his chest, thoughts swirled like a whirlwind in his head, and he would have fallen face-first into the dust of the road if not for the strong arms of Hlawa.
Macko jumped off his horse. Then both took him, carried him toward the wagon train, and laid him on a cart padded with hay. There Jagienka and Sieciechówna revived him, fed him, and gave him wine to drink. Jagienka, seeing that he could not hold the cup, herself gave him the drink. Immediately afterward, an irresistible stone-deep sleep seized him, from which he would not wake until the third day.
They held a quick and urgent council.
“I’ll say it briefly,” said Jagienka. “Now we should not go to Szczytno, but to Spychow, to leave him in a safe place among his own, with all care.”
“Look how you’re ordering things!” answered Macko. “We need to send him to Spychow, but we don’t all have to go. One cart can go with him.”
“I’m not ordering. I only think that we can learn a lot from him about Zbyszko and Danushka.”
“And how will you talk to him when he has no tongue?”
“Who but him showed you that he doesn’t? You see, even without talking we learned everything we needed. What more when we get used to his showing with head and hands? For instance, if you ask him whether Zbyszko returned from Malbork to Szczytno, he will either nod or shake his head. And the same about other things.”
“That’s true!” exclaimed Hlawa.
“I don’t argue that it’s true either,” said Macko. “I had that thought myself, only with me caution comes first, and then the mouth.”
Having said that, he ordered the wagon train to turn toward the Masovian border. During the journey, Jagienka repeatedly rode up to the cart on which Jurand lay, afraid that he might die in his sleep.
“I didn’t recognize him,” said Macko. “But no wonder. He was a man like a bull. The Masurians said that he alone among them could have fought Zawisza himself — and now he’s truly a skeleton.”
“There were rumors,” said Hlawa, “that they tormented him with tortures, but some didn’t want to believe that Christians would treat a knighted knight, who also has Saint George as patron, in such a way.”
“God granted that Zbyszko avenged him at least in part. But look at the difference between us and them. It’s true, three of the four scoundrels are already dead — but they died in battle, and no one cut out their tongues in captivity or gouged out their eyes.”
“God will punish them,” said Jagienka.
But Macko turned to Hlawa. “And how did you recognize him?”
“At first I didn’t recognize him either, although I saw him later than you did, sir. But something was stirring in my head, and the more I looked at him, the more it stirred. Well! He had no beard, no white hair. He was a wealthy and mighty lord. How could I recognize him in such a beggar? But when the young lady said we were going to Szczytno, and he began to howl, my eyes opened at once.”
Macko became thoughtful. “From Spychow, we should take him to the prince, who surely cannot let such harm done to a prominent man go unpunished.”
“They will deny it, sir. They kidnapped his child by treachery and denied it. About the lord of Spychów they will say that he lost his tongue, hand, and eyes in battle.”
“Rightly,” he said. “Why, they even kidnapped the prince himself in his time. He cannot wage war with them, for he is not strong enough, unless our king helps him. People talk and talk about a great war, and yet there isn’t even a small one.”
“There is one with Prince Witold.”
“Thank God that at least he holds them in contempt... Hey! Prince Witold, that’s a prince for you! And they won’t outwit him either, for he alone is more cunning than all of them together. Sometimes they press him so hard that ruin hangs over him like a sword over his head, but he slips away like a snake and immediately bites them... Beware of him when he beats you, but be even more wary when he caresses you.”
“Is he like that with everyone?”
“Not with everyone, only with the Teutonic Knights. With others, a good and generous prince!”
Here Macko fell into thought, as if trying to recall Witold better.
“He is a completely different man from the local princes,” he said at last. “Zbyszko should have gone to him, because both under him and through him one can accomplish the most against the Teutonic Knights.”
After a moment he added, “Who knows if we both won’t find ourselves there yet, for there one can have the most just vengeance.”
Then they talked again about Jurand, his unhappy fate, and the unspeakable wrongs he had suffered from the Teutonic Knights, who first, without any reason, murdered his beloved wife, and then, repaying vengeance with vengeance, kidnapped his child and tortured him himself with such cruel torments that even the Tatars could not have devised better. Macko and Hlawa ground their teeth at the thought that even in releasing him there was new calculated cruelty. The old knight also promised himself in his soul that he would try to find out exactly how it all happened, and then repay it with interest.
Thus, with such talk and thoughts, they made their way to Spychow. After a clear day came a quiet, starry night, so they did not stop anywhere to sleep, only fed the horses abundantly three times, crossed the border still in the dark, and toward morning, led by a hired guide, they stood on Spychow land.
Old Tolima evidently held everything there with an iron hand, for as soon as they entered the forest, two armed men rode out ahead, who, however, seeing that it was not an army but a small retinue, not only let them pass without question but led them through the impassable wetlands and marshes.
In the small keep, Tolima and Father Kaleb received the guests. The news that the lord had been brought back by pious people spread like lightning among the garrison. But when they saw what condition he had come out of the hands of the Teutonic Knights — such a storm of threats and fury broke out that if any Teutonic Knight were still in the Spychow dungeons, no human power could have saved him from a terrible death.
The mounted servants wanted to immediately mount their horses, gallop to the border, catch whatever Germans they could, and throw their heads at the lord’s feet, but Macko curbed their desire, knowing that the Germans sat in towns and small castles and that the peasant population was of the same blood, only living under foreign oppression. But neither the uproar, nor the shouts, nor the creaking of well winches could wake Jurand, who was taken from the cart on a bearskin to his room and placed on a bed. Father Kaleb stayed with him, a friend from young years and a milk brother, loving him like a brother, who began a prayer of supplication that the Savior of the world would restore to the unfortunate Jurand both eyes, tongue, and hand.
The travelers, tired from the journey, also went to rest after eating their morning meal. Macko woke up well past noon and ordered a servant to summon Tolima.
And knowing earlier from Hlawa that Jurand, before leaving, had commanded everyone to obey Zbyszko, and that he had bequeathed him the Spychow estate through the priest’s mouth, he said to the old man in the voice of a superior, “I am the uncle of your young lord, and until he returns, I will command here.”
Tolima bowed his gray head, somewhat like a wolf’s head, and cupping his ear with his hand, asked, “So you are, sir, the noble knight from Bogdaniec?”
“Yes,” replied Macko. “How do you know of me?”
“Because the young lord, Zbyszko, expected you here and asked about you.”
Hearing this, Macko jumped to his feet and, forgetting his dignity, shouted, “Zbyszko in Spychow?”
“He was here, sir. He left two days ago.”
“By the dear God! Where did he come from and where did he go?”
“He came from Malbork, and on the way he was in Szczytno. But where he went to, he did not say.”
“He didn’t say?”
“Perhaps he told Father Kaleb.”
“Hey, mighty God! So we missed each other!” said Macko, slapping his thighs with his hands.
Tolima cupped his other ear as well. “What did you say, sir?”
“Where is Father Kaleb?”
“With the elder lord, at his bedside.”
“Call him! Or no... I’ll go to him myself.”
“I’ll call him!” said the old man.
And he left. But before he brought the priest, Jagienka entered.