VII.
But she dried her tears and, taking the squire, went with him to Jurand to tell him the news. She found him in the great hall with the tame she-wolf at his feet, seated with Father Kaleb, Sieciechówna, and old Tolima. The local clerk, who was also a minstrel, was singing for them to his lute a song about some old battle of Jurand's against the "vicious Krzyżaks," and they, chins in hand, listened in thought and sorrow. The hall was bright with moonlight. After the nearly sweltering day had come a quiet, immensely warm evening. The windows were open, and in the moonlight you could see cockchafers circling the room, swarming in the linden trees growing in the courtyard. On the hearth, however, a few embers still glowed, beside which a page was mulling mead mixed with reviving wine and fragrant herbs.
The minstrel, or rather the clerk and servant of Father Kaleb, was just beginning a new song: "Of the Happy Meeting": "Rides Jurand, rides, his dun horse beneath him..." when Jagienka entered and said:
"May Jesus Christ be praised!"
"For ever and ever!" answered Father Kaleb.
Jurand sat on an armchair with his elbows on the armrests, but hearing her voice he immediately turned toward her and began to greet her with his snow-white head.
"Zbyszko's squire has come from Szczytno," the girl said, "and brought news from the priest. Macko will not return here, for he has set out for Prince Witold."
"How? Not return?" asked Father Kaleb.
So she began to tell everything she had learned from Czech: about Siegfried, how he had avenged Rotger's death; about Danusia, how the old Komtur had wanted to take her to Rotger so that he might drink her innocent blood; and about how the hangman had unexpectedly defended her. She did not hide the fact that Macko now hoped that he and Zbyszko would find Danusia, rescue her, and bring her back to Spychow—which was why he himself had gone straight to Zbyszko, ordering them to stay here.
Her voice faltered at the end, as if with sorrow or regret, and when she finished, a moment of silence fell in the hall. Only in the linden trees in the courtyard the nightingales began to trill, their song seeming to pour through the open windows and fill the whole room like thick, large drops of rain. Everyone's eyes turned to Jurand, who sat with closed eyes and head tilted back, giving no sign of life.
"Do you hear?" Father Kaleb asked him at last.
He tilted his head back even further, raised his left arm, and pointed with his finger to heaven.
The moonlight fell directly on his face, on his white hair, on his gouged-out eyes, and there was such martyrdom in that face, and at the same time such immense surrender to God's will, that it seemed to everyone they saw only a soul freed from its bodily bonds, which, having parted once and for all from earthly life, neither waited nor looked for anything more in it.
So silence fell again, and again only the waves of nightingale song were heard, flooding the courtyard and the room.
But Jagienka was suddenly seized by immense pity and a kind of childlike love for the unfortunate old man. Following her first impulse, she rushed to him, seized his hand, and began to kiss it while wetting it with tears.
"And I am an orphan!" she cried from the depths of her overflowing heart. "I am no page at all, but Jagienka of Zgorzelice. Macko took me to protect me from evil people, but now I will stay with you until God returns Danusia to you."
Jurand showed no surprise, as if he had known all along that she was a girl, but he drew her close and pressed her to his chest. She, still kissing his hand, continued in a broken, sobbing voice:
"I will stay with you, and Danushka will return... Then afterward I will go to Zgorzelice. God watches over orphans... The Germans killed my father too, but your beloved lives and will return. Grant this, Merciful God, grant it, Most Holy Mother, compassionate one..."
And Father Kaleb suddenly knelt and said in a solemn voice:
"Kyrie eleison!"
"Christe eleison!" answered Czech and Tolima at once.
They all knelt, for they understood it was the litany recited not only at the hour of death but also for the deliverance from mortal danger of dear and close ones. Jagienka knelt, Jurand slid from the bench to his knees, and together they began to say:
"Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!... God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us!... God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us!..."
Human voices and suppliant cries: "Have mercy on us..." mingled with the trilling of the nightingales.
But suddenly the tame she-wolf rose from the bearskin lying beside Jurand's bench, went to the open window, climbed onto the frame, and, lifting her triangular snout toward the moon, began to howl softly and mournfully.
END OF PART SIX.