Zbyszko couldn’t catch up to his squire. The man rode day and night, stopping only as long as the horses absolutely needed to keep from foundering. Fed on nothing but grass, they were weak and couldn’t cover the same ground as in lands where oats were easier to come by. Hlawa showed no mercy to himself and paid no heed to Siegfried’s advanced age or failing strength. The old Krzyżak suffered terribly—especially since the sinewy Macko had already cracked his bones. But the worst torment came from the mosquitoes swarming through the damp wilderness. With his hands bound and his legs lashed to the horse’s belly, he couldn’t fight them off. The squire didn’t inflict any special tortures on him, but he felt no pity either. At halts, he would free Siegfried’s right hand only for meals. “Eat, you wolf’s snout, so I can deliver you alive to my lord at Spychow!” That was how he urged him to take food. At first Siegfried had thought of starving himself, but when he heard they’d pry his teeth open with a knife and pour food down his throat by force, he yielded—preferring not to invite further abuse of his monastic dignity and knightly honor.
But the Czech was determined to reach Spychow well before his young master, so as to spare his adored young lady any shame. Though only a simple but shrewd little nobleman, not without knightly sentiments, he understood perfectly that it would be humiliating for Jagienka to arrive at Spychow together with Danusia. “It can be told to the bishop in Plock,” he thought, “that old Sir Macko of Bogdaniec, by necessity of his guardianship, had to bring her along. And once word gets out that she’s under the bishop’s protection, and that besides Zgorzelice she’ll also inherit the abbot’s estate, even a voivode’s son wouldn’t be too good for her.” This thought sweetened the hardships of the journey, yet he still worried that the happy news he was carrying to Spychow would nonetheless be a verdict of misery for the young lady.
Often Anula Sieciechówna, rosy as an apple, appeared before his eyes. Then, wherever the trail allowed, he dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks, so urgent was his haste to reach Spychow.
They traveled by winding paths—or rather, trackless wilderness—cutting straight through the forest as the crow flies. The Czech knew only that if he kept a bit westward and always south, he would eventually reach Mazovia, and from there everything would be fine. By day he steered by the sun; when the march stretched into night, by the stars. The wilderness before them seemed to have no borders, no end. Days and nights flowed past in the gloom. More than once Hlawa wondered how the young knight would ever bring a living woman through this terrible wasteland—where there was no food to be had, where at night the horses had to be guarded from wolves and bears, where by day they had to step aside for herds of aurochs and bison, where terrible boars sharpened their curved tusks on pine roots, and where anyone who couldn’t bring down a spotted deer or a young boar with a crossbow or spear went hungry all day.
“How will it be,” Hlawa thought, “to travel with such a half-dead girl, barely holding on to life?”
Time after time they had to ride around vast bogs or deep ravines, at the bottom of which swollen spring rains roared in torrents. The forest was not lacking in lakes. At sunset they would see whole herds of elk or deer bathing in the rosy, placid waters. Sometimes they spotted smoke, a sign of human presence. Several times Hlawa approached such forest settlements, but wild folk would pour out to meet him—dressed in skins over bare bodies, armed with flails and bows, their eyes menacing beneath tangled, matted hair. The servants took them for werewolves, and only by exploiting the wild men’s first astonishment at the sight of knights could they ride away as fast as possible.
Twice, crossbow bolts whistled past the Czech, and the cry “Niemcy!” chased after him. He preferred to flee rather than explain who he was. Finally, after several more days, he began to guess that he might have already crossed the border, but there was no one to ask. Only from Polish-speaking hunters did he learn that he had at last reached Mazovian lands.
From then on, travel was easier, though all of eastern Mazovia still roared with a single forest. The solitude didn’t end, but where a settlement did appear, the inhabitants were less hostile—perhaps because they weren’t constantly fed on hatred, or perhaps because the Czech spoke to them in an understandable tongue. The only trouble was their immense curiosity. The people would crowd around the riders and bombard them with questions. When they learned that the prisoner was a Krzyżak, they would say:
“Give him to us, sir—we’ll take care of him!”
And they begged so insistently that the Czech often had to get angry or explain that the prisoner belonged to the prince. Then they would back off. Later, in more settled country, among the gentry and yeomen, things weren’t easy either. Hatred against the Krzyżacy seethed everywhere; the treacherous kidnapping of the prince during a time of peace—when the Krzyżacy seized him near Zlotoryja and held him as a captive—was still fresh in memory. Now they didn’t want to “take care of” Siegfried, but some hard-bitten nobleman would say, “Untie him, give him a sword here, and I’ll challenge him to a duel to the death over the boundary.” The Czech had to pound it into their heads that the unfortunate lord of Spychow held the first right to vengeance, and it wasn’t for them to rob him of it.
But in settled regions the journey was easy, for there were roads and the horses were fed on oats or barley. So the Czech rode fast, stopping nowhere, and arrived at Spychow ten days before Corpus Christi.
He came in the evening, just as he had when Macko sent him from Szczytno with news of his departure for Samogitia. The same as then, Jagienka ran down to him when she saw him from the window. He fell at her feet, unable for a moment to speak. But she lifted him up and quickly pulled him upstairs, not wanting to question him in front of the servants.
“What news?” she asked, trembling with impatience, barely able to catch her breath. “Are they alive? Are they well?”
“Alive! Well!”
“And she was found?”
“Yes. We rescued her.”
“Praised be Jesus Christ!”
Yet even as she spoke, her face seemed to harden, for all her hopes crumbled to dust in that instant.
Still, her strength did not fail her, nor did she lose her composure. After a moment she mastered herself completely and began to question him again:
“When will they arrive?”
“In a few days. The journey is hard—she is ill.”
“Ill?”
“Tortured. Her mind has been broken by suffering.”
“Merciful Jesus!”
A brief silence fell. Jagienka’s slightly pale lips moved as if in prayer.
“Did she recognize Zbyszko?” she asked again.
“Perhaps she did, but I don’t know. I left at once to bring you the news, my lady, before they arrive.”
“God reward you. Tell me: how did it happen?”
The Czech began to relate in few words how they had rescued Danusia, and captured the giant Arnold together with Siegfried. He also announced that he had brought Siegfried with him, for the young knight wanted to give him as a gift and leave him to Jurand’s vengeance.
“I must go to Jurand now,” said Jagienka when he finished.
She left. But Hlawa did not remain alone for long, for from the alcove Anula Sieciechówna ran out to him. Whether from sheer exhaustion and the tremendous hardships, or from longing for her and losing himself at the sight of her, he seized her around the waist, pressed her to his chest, and began to kiss her eyes, cheeks, lips—as if he had already told her everything a girl ought to hear before such an act.
Perhaps he had indeed told her in his heart during the journey, for he kissed and kissed without end, holding her so tightly that the breath was driven from her. She did not resist—first from astonishment, then from such faintness that she would have sunk to the floor had less sturdy arms held her. Fortunately it did not last long, for footsteps sounded on the stairs, and a moment later Father Kaleb burst into the room.
They sprang apart. Father Kaleb began to bombard Hlawa with questions, which the latter, still breathless, could barely answer. The priest thought it was from exertion. But when he heard confirmation that Danusia had been rescued and found, and her tormentor brought to Spychow, he fell to his knees to thank God. During that time the blood in Hlawa’s veins calmed somewhat, and when the priest rose, he could repeat more calmly how they had found and rescued Danusia.
“God did not free her,” said the priest after listening to everything, “to leave her mind and soul in darkness and under the power of unclean spirits! Jurand will lay his holy hands on her, and with a single prayer restore her reason and health.”
“Knight Jurand?” asked the Czech in astonishment. “Does he have such power? Has he become a saint already in life?”
“He is before God a saint even in life, and when he dies, men will have one more patron in heaven—a martyr.”
“You said, reverend father, that he will lay his hands on his daughter’s head. Has his right arm grown back? For I know you prayed to Our Lord for that.”
“I said ‘hands,’ as one commonly speaks,” replied the priest. “But with God’s grace, one will suffice.”
“Certainly!” answered Hlawa.
But there was a hint of disappointment in his voice, for he had thought he would see a visible miracle. Further conversation was interrupted by Jagienka’s return.
“I told him the news carefully,” she said, “so that sudden joy would not kill him. He at once fell prostrate and is praying.”
“He lies like that whole nights anyway, and tonight he will surely not rise until morning,” said Father Kaleb.
And so it happened. Several times they looked in on him, and each time they found him lying, not asleep, but in such fervent prayer that he reached complete oblivion. The watchman who from the tower surveyed the area and kept vigil over Spychow as was his custom, later reported that he had seen some unusual brightness in the “old lord’s” chamber that night.
Only the next day, considerably after matins, when Jagienka looked in on him again, did he indicate that he wanted to see Hlawa and the prisoner. They brought Siegfried up from the dungeon, his arms bound crosswise on his chest, and went together with Tolima to the old man.
At first the Czech could not see him well, for the horn windows let in little light, and the day was dark with clouds that had completely covered the sky, threatening a fierce storm.
But when his keen eyes grew accustomed to the twilight, he barely recognized him, so emaciated and wasted had he become. The giant of a man had turned into a giant skeleton. His face was so white that it hardly differed from the milky hue of his hair and beard. When he leaned back against the arm of his chair and closed his eyelids, he seemed to Hlawa simply a corpse.
Beside the chair stood a table, with a crucifix, a jug of water, and a loaf of black bread in which a misericord—that sinister knife knights used to dispatch the wounded—was stuck. For a long time Jurand had eaten nothing but bread and water. His clothing was a coarse hair shirt tied with a rope, worn directly on his bare skin. Thus lived the once mighty and fearsome knight of Spychow since his return from captivity at Szczytno.
Hearing the newcomers, he pushed away with his foot a tame she-wolf that was warming his bare feet, and leaned back. It was then that he seemed to the Czech like a dead man. A moment of waiting followed; they expected him to make some sign for someone to speak, but he sat motionless, white, calm, with his mouth slightly open, as if indeed sunk in the eternal slumber of death.
“Hlawa is here,” Jagienka finally said in a sweet voice. “Would you like to hear him?”
He nodded his head in consent, and so the Czech began his tale for the third time. He briefly mentioned the battles fought against the Niemcy near Gotteswerder, told of the fight with Arnold von Baden and the rescue of Danusia. But not wanting to add pain to the good news for the old martyr, or to awaken new anxiety in him, he concealed that Danusia’s mind had been shattered by long days of brutal misery.
However, having a heart full of hatred against the Krzyżacy, and wanting Siegfried to be punished as mercilessly as possible, he deliberately did not hide that they had found her frightened, wasted, ill, that it was clear she had been treated like a tortured prisoner, and that if she had remained any longer in those terrible hands, she would have withered and died like a flower trampled underfoot. This grim tale was accompanied by the no less gloomy rumble of the approaching storm. Bronze-colored cloud masses rolled ever more powerfully over Spychow.
Jurand listened to the story without a single twitch or movement, so that those present might have thought he was asleep. Yet he heard and understood everything, for when Hlawa began to speak of Danusia’s suffering, two large tears gathered in his empty eye sockets and flowed down his cheeks. Of all earthly feelings, only one remained to him: love for his child.
Then his bluish lips began to move in prayer. Outside, the first, distant thunderclaps resounded, and lightning flashes began intermittently to light up the windows. He prayed long, and again tears dripped onto his white beard. At last he stopped, and a long silence fell—a silence that, stretching on beyond measure, finally became oppressive for those present, for they did not know what to do with themselves.
At last old Tolima, Jurand’s right hand, his companion in all battles and chief guardian of Spychow, said:
“Before you stands, lord, that hellhound, that Krzyżak werewolf who tortured you and your child. Give a sign what I am to do with him and how I am to punish him.”
At these words, sudden rays of light passed over Jurand’s face, and he nodded that the prisoner be brought close to him.
In an instant two servants seized Siegfried by the shoulders and brought him before the old man. Jurand stretched out his hand, ran his palm over Siegfried’s face as if to remember or to impress those features upon his memory one last time, then lowered it to the Krzyżak’s chest, felt the arms crossed there, touched the ropes—and closing his eyes again, tilted his head.
Those present thought he was pondering. Whatever he was doing, it did not last long, for after a moment he stirred—and turned his hand toward the loaf of bread in which the ominous misericord was stuck.
Then Jagienka, the Czech, even old Tolima and all the servants held their breath. The punishment was a hundred times deserved, the vengeance just, yet at the thought that that half-dead old man would blindly cut the bound prisoner, their hearts shrank.
But he took the knife by the middle, extended his index finger to the point of the blade so as to know what he was touching, and began to cut the ropes on the Krzyżak’s arms.
Amazement seized them all, for they understood his intent—and could scarcely believe their eyes. But this was too much. Hlawa was the first to mutter, then Tolima, followed by the servants. Only Father Kaleb began to ask in a voice broken by uncontrollable weeping:
“Brother Jurand, what do you want? Do you want to grant the prisoner freedom?”
“Yes,” Jurand nodded.
“Do you want him to go without vengeance or punishment?”
“Yes!”
The murmur of anger and indignation grew louder, but Father Kaleb, not wanting such an extraordinary act of mercy to go to waste, turned to the murmurers and cried:
“Who dares gainsay a saint? On your knees!”
And kneeling himself, he began:
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come…”
He recited the Lord’s Prayer to the end. At the words “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” his eyes turned involuntarily to Jurand, whose face shone indeed with a supernatural light.
And that sight, combined with the words of the prayer, softened the hearts of all present. Old Tolima, whose soul had been hardened by constant battles, crossed himself with the holy sign, then embraced Jurand’s knee and said:
“Lord, if your will is to be done, the prisoner must be escorted to the border.”
“Yes!” Jurand nodded.
Ever more frequent lightning lit up the windows. The storm was drawing nearer and nearer.