They finally arrived with the girl’s body at the Spychow forests, on whose border Jurand’s armed henchmen kept watch day and night. One of them rushed with the news to old Tolima and Father Kaleb. The others led the procession first along a winding, sunken track, then onto a wide forest road, all the way to the place where the woods ended and the vast, damp mudflats began—quagmires teeming with marsh birds. Beyond them, on a dry rise, lay the Spychow stronghold.
They knew at once that word of their mourning had reached Spychow, because no sooner had they emerged from the forest shade onto the bright clearing than the sound of a bell from the stronghold’s chapel reached their ears. Soon afterward they saw a large crowd of people coming toward them from afar—men and women both. When that throng drew within two or three bowshots, it was possible to make out individuals. At the front walked Jurand himself, supported by Tolima, groping ahead with his staff. He was easy to recognize by his enormous stature, the red hollows where his eyes had been, and his white hair falling to his shoulders. Beside him came Father Kaleb in a white surplice, carrying a cross. Behind them they bore a banner with Jurand’s device, flanked by armed Spychow warriors, followed by married women in naleczkas and maidens with flowing hair. At the rear of the crowd a cart was drawn, intended for the body.
When Zbyszko saw Jurand, he ordered the litter set down—the litter he himself had been carrying at the head until that moment—then moved toward him and cried out in a voice as terrible as only immense pain and despair can produce:
“I searched for her until I found her, and I rescued her, but she chose God over Spychow!”
Grief broke him completely. He fell onto Jurand’s chest, threw his arms around his neck, and began to moan:
“O Jesus, O Jesus, O Jesus!”
At that sight the hearts of the armed Spychow retainers were stirred. They began beating their spears against their shields, not knowing how else to express their sorrow and their thirst for vengeance. The women raised a lament, wailing one after another, lifting their aprons to their eyes or covering their heads entirely with them, crying out at the top of their voices: “Alas, fate, fate! For you a wedding, for us weeping—alas, fate! Death mowed you down, the skeleton took you—oh, oh!” Others, tilting their heads back and closing their eyes, cried: “Was it so bad for you here, little flower, with us—so bad? Your father remains in great grief, and you already walk through God’s chambers—oh, oh!” Still others reproached the dead girl for not taking pity on her father’s and her husband’s orphaned state and tears. And this lament and grief were half-song, for those people knew no other way to express their pain.
But Jurand, freeing himself from Zbyszko’s arms, stretched his staff forward as a sign that he wanted to go to Danusia. Then Tolima and Zbyszko took him by the arms and led him to the bier. He knelt beside the body, passed his hand over it from forehead to the girl’s crossed hands, and bowed his head several times, as if to say: it is she, his Danusia, no other—and he recognized his child. Then he embraced her with one arm and raised the other, which lacked a hand, upward. Those present understood that mute complaint to God, more eloquent than any words of grief. Zbyszko, whose face after his momentary outburst had again grown completely rigid, knelt on the other side in silence, like a stone statue. All around grew so quiet that the chirping of grasshoppers and the buzzing of every passing fly could be heard.
Finally Father Kaleb sprinkled Danusia, Zbyszko, and Jurand with holy water and began the Requiem aeternam. After finishing the hymn, he prayed aloud for a long time. And it seemed to the people that they heard a prophetic voice when he begged that this innocent child’s suffering might be the drop that overflows the vessel of iniquity, and that the day of judgment, punishment, wrath, and ruin might come.
Then they moved on to Spychow. But they did not lay Danusia on the cart; they carried her at the front of the procession on the garlanded bier. The bell kept tolling, as if calling and inviting them onward. They walked singing across the wide clearing under a huge golden evening glow, as if the dead girl were truly leading them to eternal radiance and brightness. It was already evening and the herds were returning from the fields when they arrived.
The chapel where the body was laid shone with torches and blazing candles. At Father Kaleb’s command, seven maidens recited the litany over the body in turns until dawn. Until dawn Zbyszko did not leave Danusia’s side, and at matins he himself placed her in the coffin, which skilled craftsmen had hewn overnight from an oak trunk, setting into the lid above the head a pane of golden amber.
Jurand was not present, for strange things were happening to him. As soon as he returned home he lost the use of his legs, and when he was laid on his bed he lost all movement and awareness of where he was or what was happening. In vain Father Kaleb spoke to him, in vain asked what was wrong: he neither heard nor understood. He only lay on his back, raising the lids of his empty eyes upward and smiling with a face both radiant and happy; sometimes his lips moved as if he were talking to someone. Father Kaleb and Tolima understood that he was speaking with his saved daughter and smiling at her. They also understood that he was dying and already seeing his own eternal bliss with the eyes of his soul. But in that they were mistaken, for he lay there insensible, deaf to everything, smiling in that way for whole weeks, and when Zbyszko finally left with the ransom for Macko, he left Jurand still alive.