“I will listen.”
“If I play a wrong note I will give you my cap. If I play two, then I will give you Wolf.” He smiled then, as a boyish thought came to him. “If I ever play the Heynal through to the end, without stopping at the broken note, then you may run to Jan Kanty and tell him to summon the watch, for then something will have happened to me.”
“How do you mean?” She was as ever serious, though he was smiling.
“You know the story of this hymn, the Heynal?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“How, when the Tartars burned the city, the trumpeter stayed on duty and played the hours as he had sworn?”
“Yes. . . . A brave story.”
“Well”—Joseph liked to see the blue eyes widen—“one night the Tartars will attack the city, or perhaps the Knights of the Cross. I shall see them coming from afar, in the midst of fire and smoke, and I shall hear war cries and their horses hoofs. And I shall be all alone in the tower that night, for neither my father nor any person will be here. And when I realize that it is an enemy, I must have a signal, since I myself may not leave the tower—a signal to some one in the town who will give the alarm. So I will play the Heynal, but I will not stop on the broken note. That note does not end the measure, you know. I will play on, two or three notes further.”
“Excellent,” she cried, and her cheeks were red with the excitement of it. “If I hear you play the Heynal without stopping at the broken note, I will run straight to Jan Kanty.”
“Now, come look at the city,” he broke off conversation on the subject. He was a little ashamed, for he had not expected Elzbietka to take his remarks quite so seriously. She had not taken the trumpet signal as the jest he intended, but had rejoiced at it as do most young people when they have a secret with some important person. And to her Joseph was a person of very great importance, not only because of his prowess with the trumpet and his progress in the collegium, but because, indeed, he possessed somehow more than ordinary seriousness for a boy of his age.
They peered through a little window. Off to the right ran the Street of St. Florian with the gate and church beyond: new towers were being constructed that very year in the walls that ran about the city and two of them near the Florian Gate were visible from the tower of the Church of Our Lady Mary. To each city guild was assigned one of these towers, to be kept in repair and to be manned in case of attack on the city. The joiners’ and the tailors’ guilds had watchtowers near this gate. Between these watchtowers and the church were many palaces with large enclosures in the center, open to the sun, where guards and soldiers were working or waiting or disporting themselves, breaking each other’s heads with quarterstaves or fencing, or shooting with arrows at pigeons tied to the tops of high poles.
Directly below them the market was still busy although it was late afternoon, for the peasants were ready to sell at small profit what remained of their stock and go home; under the arches of the Cloth Hall the crowds were still passing from booth to booth examining the laces and embroidery and fine silks that had come in from the east and south; beyond the Cloth Hall rose the tower of the Town House, or Ratusz, and in front of it two luckless wretches struggled in the pillory while a crowd of urchins pelted them with mud and decayed vegetables. To the left rose the peak of the Church of the Franciscans—they passed to the south window and there saw the twin towers of the old Church of St. Andrew, and far beyond it the great rock citadel, the Wawel, with its palace and cathedral glorious in the afternoon sun.
There were blue shadows already lengthening across the market when they descended from the tower and crossed the market square. Against the palaces that lined the open space there were more shadows, and moving like shadows within these shadows, promenaded black-gowned students and masters. They were moving definitely in one direction, and when once caught up in the crowd, Joseph and Elzbietka followed, unresisting, for they knew that some excitement was afoot in the students’ quarter.
The black figures grew constantly more and more numerous, until at length the two stopped and pushed right and left in an endeavor to reach a position of vantage in front of the dormitory in St. Ann’s Street. The dormitory was set back from the street, and in front was an open court, grassed over, in the center of which was a stone statue of Kazimir the Great, the founder of the university. Here upon the pedestal of this statue, leaning back upon the throne which bore Kazimir, stood a man in the gown of a Master of Arts speaking to the assembled students in the Latin language.
“I heard of him to-day,” Joseph told Elzbietka. “He is a celebrated Italian scholar who comes here to read the writings of the master poets and to recite some verses of his own. He talks of poets who bear such names as Dante and Petrarch, and he says that the day will come when a new learning will rule the world. He says that men have been in darkness too long, that the barbarism which fell upon the world after the downfall of Rome will be done away with only when men write in their native tongues and think for themselves.”
“And can you really understand him when he speaks?”
“After a fashion. He speaks Latin as do all our masters and priests and scholars. My father had teachers for me when I was eight years old, and since then I have worked much with the Latin tongue. At first it pleased me not at all, for there were rules and tables and grammar, but when I began to understand that Latin would admit me into the proudest society of the world, then I began to like it better. In the months that I have been here my teaching has all been in Latin, and I hope, myself, to be able to speak it fluently sometime. I can understand much, though not all.”
“Why does not this Italian poet speak, then, in the university?”
“He might perhaps—but to a certain extent it would stir up strife, since there are those among the masters who do not like the New Learning, as it is called. Our old teachings are all of the great Aristotle, and yet we have never read anything of him in the Greek language—everything that we study is in Latin. We have many treatises upon learning which the masters have used for centuries, and most of them do not desire to change their ways.”
The Italian scholar at that moment began to read his own verses in the Latin tongue. He had scarcely finished, amid much acclaim, when a Polish scholar mounted the pedestal and began to read some of his verses written in the Polish language.
“Why do they not all do that?” asked Elzbietka. “One can understand them so much better. If I were a poet I should not think of writing in an old language that no one speaks except a few scholars. I would write of Poland and its flowers; I would write of the trumpeter in the tower and the blue sky that one sees behind the castle on Wawel Hill. Truly, I like this New Learning as you call it.”
Joseph smiled but knew not what to say.
“And,” she continued, “why is not this learning as good for women as it is for men? Why is it that all writings of poets and scholars and men of learning should be read only by men? I would read such writings, too.”
It was said with such gravity and such an air of wisdom that at first Joseph was inclined to smile, but as he looked into her face and saw the seriousness there, he desisted.
“Truly,” he said finally, “I know not why you should not read as do men, but I know of no woman who ever entered the university.”
As they turned through a short lane from St. Ann’s Street to the Street of the Pigeons they failed to notice a pair of men conversing quietly behind the buttress of a house on the farther side. Both were of short stature, and one was much bent as he spoke he raised his long, lean fingers close to his mouth:
“Sh-h. . . . That is the boy.”
The other started and turned quickly, but appeared puzzled. “When did you say he came?”
The bent-over man, who was no other than Stas, son or the woman who lived in the court, gave the date to a day.
“Then it must be he,” exclaimed the other. “On the day that I saw him he was dressed like a country youth and his clothes were dusty from travel. To-day he is arrayed in velvet like any prince and has besides the cap of a junior collegian. But his stature is the same. And you say that he lives above you?”
“Yes. Goes by the name of Kovalski.”
“H’m—it was Charnetski when I knew him. . . . Now, you, look at me—do you see this piece of gold? That’s true gold, red gold, an’ will buy many a dainty or many a drink. That is to be yours, for your very own.”
Stas almost shrieked for joy when the stranger put the piece of money in his hand.
“But look you—no talking about this anywhere else. This is my business, mine and yours, and I tell you that when we are finished there will be more gold pieces for you just like that. Now show me the place where they live.”
They followed along until Joseph and Elzbietka stood before the entrance to the court.
“That is the place,” said Stas.
“Well and good. Now keep a close watch and let me know anything that is new. I will be at the Inn of the Golden Elephant every afternoon at the third hour, but do not tell any one there that you are looking for me. Let your words be only for my ears. And remember, the lantern in the man’s face to-night. There will be much gold for you. You understand?”
The man did. His very shoulders seemed to chuckle at the thought of it. He let himself into the court and went at once to his room.
In the meantime the other walked briskly to the inn and sat down at a table. His thoughts were dancing in his head, for by an extraordinary piece of luck he had succeeded in locating the family of Pan Andrew. Luck indeed it was because never, if he had come upon him face to face in the street, would he have known Joseph at all. It was only because Stas had named him as the son of the man who went abroad only by night, that he could see any resemblance to that boy who had sent his horse flying away through the mud on that morning so many weeks before. For this man was that same one who called himself Stefan Ostrovski.
“They disappeared that day after the riot,” he thought to himself as he sat in the inn, “and were nowhere to be found. The earth might have opened and swallowed them whole. No other Charnetski in Krakow answered their description—I had well given them up for lost and with them a castle and coffers of gold in the Ukraine. For when Ivan, himself, promises, then there is profit to be had. I return to the Ukraine, but there is no word from them there. My men are even now riding from city to city in the vain hunt. Meanwhile I, answering some tiny voice of wisdom that speaks from somewhere into my ear, come back here.”
He struck the table with his fist. “Men call me Bogdan Grozny—Bogdan the Terrible,” he exclaimed, “but terror often has brains. This venture has begun in luck and must end well. And once I get what I seek from that white-faced Pole he shall rue the day of my humiliation at the Krakow Gate.” And with the thought of that adventure a look of hatred came into his eyes.
His attention was diverted for the moment by the sight of a beggar with a dirty bandage across his face working from table to table at the inn, begging for alms in a whining tone.
As the beggar came near, the man dropped a coin in the outstretched hand and whispered, “You come late to-day.”
“Pardon me, master, I thought I had a scent.”
The beggar seemed to expect a blow, and assumed a defensive attitude, when the man smiled.
“No matter, the work is done,” he whispered. “Mount your horse to-night and ride like the wind for Tarnov. There you will send out our brothers to bring in the men who are hunting. It may take three weeks—but hurry before the first fall of snow comes.”
The beggar took the orders, ambled out of the inn quietly just as he had come in, and proceeded in like fashion until he was well along the street which skirts the market on the west. Then suddenly stepping behind a house buttress he tore the bandage from his face and ran with all speed for the gate on the Mogilev Road in order to get through unchallenged before the night watch came on duty. He passed through, sauntered down the road until he came to a small peasant cottage with a stable in the rear; here he found the horse which he had ridden to Krakow, and with a single word to the owner of the house, who seemed to understand his movements fully, galloped off to the distant bridge where ran the Tarnov Road.
The man at the inn continued to ruminate. “That stoop-shouldered misbegotten thing that calls himself Stas came to us like an angel from heaven. Often had I noticed him in here talking and making free with all the beggars, and even at first look of him, I thought to myself that here was such a man as might serve a purpose for me sometime. So I have the landlord bring him a friendly glass, and talking as he drinks it, he drops a word about the new trumpeter who never goes forth in the daytime!
“That is the boy as sure as man can be sure, despite his new trappings of velvet; and then the fact that there are three of them, and the date of their arrival. To-night when the trumpeter leaves by the door, Stas will hold the lantern to his face, and I hiding near by will see—but there is scarce need of that, it is as well as proved. My men will be here in a week or two, and it will be but short work after that.”
His face was working pale in his excitement—it was all white save the button mark which stood out on it like a clot of blood.
“What would the honorable Pan Andrew have said that day,” he chuckled, “had he known that Bogdan Grozny was before him? For he, and every man in the Ukraine, knows Peter of the Button Face. That was a good name I gave him—Ostrovski! Ostrovski of the proud family at Chelm that once called me slave.”
Peter of the Button Face was indeed a name feared everywhere in the Ukraine. It had been bestowed upon this man whose real name was Bogdan, chiefly by the Poles, for among the Cossacks he was known as Grozny or Terrible. A savage outcast, born of a Tartar mother and Cossack father, he had been involved in every dark plot on the border in the last ten years. Houses he had burned by the score and men and women he had put to death cruelly. Under his command was a band of ruffians who would rise up suddenly in the Ukraine, overnight almost, and set out upon any adventure of fire and sword that he suggested.
He was not despised by great folk either—Polish or Muscovite—when there was unlawful work to be done; nobles often employed him for unscrupulous tasks that they dared not perform themselves; the Great Khan of the Tartars even had dispatched him on a mission among the Golden Horde; his name was a power on both sides of the boundary, for in Poland also he had confederates who served him.
And at the present time the great country of the Ukraine which had come to Poland through the marriage of Jagiello of Lithuania with Jadviga of Poland about one hundred years previous—this huge land was full of plots and counterplots in the struggle for mastery between Muscovy and Poland. Ivan of Moscow had already begun to turn envious eyes upon this territory which had been the heart of the old Byzantine Russia with Kiev as its capital, and was making plans to wrest it from Poland at the first opportunity. And in such fashion many a dweller such as Pan Andrew Charnetski found himself bereft of property and fields in a single night. For there were many such as Bogdan the Terrible, or as the Poles knew him, Peter of the Button Face, who were ready at a minute’s notice to engage in some such fearful task with rewards of plunder and captives for their work.
However, little realizing what savage forces had been let loose against them, the family of Pan Andrew sat down to a quiet supper.
Coldweather came in late November—or Listopad, the month of Falling Leaves, as Polish folk call it—and found the poor people in the villages already fortified in their log huts with the thatched roofs. Sand had been heaped high about the walls of the houses, all crevices that led to the outer world were stopped up with mud or tree branch or stone, wood and charcoal were piled under table and bench, and from the ceiling hung dried vegetables and mushrooms and sausage. The geese and pigs still ran about outside the house but would be taken in with the first frost to share the “black” or large compartment of the hut with the family. In the second or “white” compartment of the hut the whole family slept when the weather was not too frigid, but when the snow was up to the roof level, and the cold was so great that one could hear trees cracking in the night, all slept in the “black” room which had not even a chimney to vent the smoke that poured out steadily from an open fireplace.
In the city houses, wealthy men were beginning to build high tile stoves of Italian pattern, but for the most part people depended for heat and comfort upon the open fireplace. When the first frost came boys ran hither and thither with flaming coals for starting the first fires; up in the tower of the Church of our Lady Mary the watchmen kept eyes constantly wide open in order to detect as quickly as possible the patches of flame which sometimes broke out from the roofs of over-heated dwellings, and many a troublesome night was spent by the water master and his men quenching such fires.
A light snow was falling on the last Wednesday of the month, when Pan Andrew started for his nightly duties at the church. The world had been going well with him, he reflected, as he made his way through the dark and well-nigh deserted streets: his son was making marked progress in the collegium, his wife was happy and contented, he himself was earning enough to support them both comfortably, and he hoped that before long he would have a chance to present his offering to the King. For it had not been possible thus far to gain an audience; either the King had been away on business in Torun with soldiers and diplomats, or he was in Vilna, the home of the Jagiello dynasty which now ruled Poland, or in Lvov where the Ruthenian subjects lived.
In the short snatches of time when he had been in Krakow neither Pan Andrew nor Jan Kanty had been able to reach him, because so many had been waiting ahead of them—the ambassadors from the Czechs who came to offer him the crown of Bohemia, the delegation from Rome, the scholars from Italy, the deputation from the Teutonic Knights asking for a compact against the Hussites, and other men of title and power.
This delay was no great cause of concern to Pan Andrew, however, since an audience was eventually assured. Late in the summer Jan Kanty had sent a petition to the very throne itself, and the King had advised the gentle scholar by message that he would see him at the first opportunity. In the meanwhile the treasure seemed hidden in as safe quarters as Pan Andrew could ask for.
It was several hours after Pan Andrew had left his lodgings on the Street of the Pigeons that there came a violent ringing of the bell that summoned Stas. Stas unfastened the door and thrust his lantern directly into the face of the man who stood there, and for his pains was rewarded with a smart blow upon the chin which tumbled him into the soft snow which was now beginning to cover everything.
“Don’t do that again as you value your life,” the stranger muttered as he picked up the fallen lantern and straightened the limp Stas upon his feet. “You fool, don’t you know that some one might have seen my face? If some watchman took me, he would as well take you; it is for your safety that no man knows anything of this meeting. Is everything ready?”
“Yes,” responded Stas a bit ruefully.
“Then tell me, who is in the building?”
“Well—there is the lodger on the top floor and his niece, and there is the boy and his mother.”
“The students?”
“They have gone to a discussion at the Hungarian pension. Sometimes they do not return before daybreak.”
“Good I Then we can work without fear. A dozen men will suffice, four to enter the rooms of Pan Andrew, four to quiet the tenants if need be, and four to stand at the gate. If the guard should come, we can silence him.”
“Will you see the stairs?”
“Yes, they live——”
“Up one flight.” They ascended the stairs, Stas in the lead. It seemed to the stranger that the staircase swayed a little beneath their feet.
“We must take care here,” he muttered. “It seems as if a weight would bring this down.”
Just then a dog began to bark in the court below.
“What is that?” demanded the man, turning on Stas. “You did not tell me of a dog.”
“He is chained,” replied the other. “Will you give me the gold now?”
“Here.” The man thrust him a few coins. He took them greedily and felt them over in the darkness, for the stranger was holding under his coat the lantern that he had picked up from the ground.
“This is not all?” Stas’ voice rose to a whine.
“Swine!” For a moment the man lost control of himself. “Here is the rest, then,” and he swung his free hand to Stas’ throat, and sank his fingers in the flesh. Stas fought but could not release himself from those fingers that dug like iron points—at length the man freed him.
“No more of that,” he admonished. “The next time you will find yourself in paradise, or some other world. Listen, fool, once and for all—if all goes well here I will give you double of that which you already have. But if you betray me, or make one foolish blunder, then you will receive, not gold, but a punishment that is worse than anything you dream of.”
Stas beat a retreat down the stairs, the stranger behind him.
“Remember,” was the final admonishment, “we will be here just after the second hour has sounded. Let us in, and your part in this is finished.”
Now it so happened that Pan Kreutz, the alchemist, was working alone in the loft above his room that night. He had already finished one experiment, and was about to begin a more difficult one, when his attention was caught by the sudden barking of a dog in the court beneath.
“What can that be?” he thought. “There is no moon to cause barking, nor does the dog bark at any of the dwellers in the court.” He quickly threw a covering over the lantern that lighted the loft and opened the door so that he might look down.
His suspicions that all was not well in the court were confirmed in the next second when he heard a whispered conversation somewhere below, while the stairs creaked as if two persons were ascending. Then all at once came an exclamation of pain in a voice that he recognized as Stas’.
More whispering, and the footsteps descended.
The next instant the alchemist, leaning forward to listen, heard the stranger’s final instruction to Stas.
“There is, then, some mischief afoot,” he decided. “Doorkeepers do not let honest visitors into any house at two o’clock in the morning.”
He reëntered the attic room, and uncovered the lantern after making fast the door. For some time he puzzled about what he had heard. Who was the stranger, and what business did he have with Stas, the watchman? And what ought he to do about it? He was for a moment minded to notify the night watch.
“I am perhaps magnifying things,” he finally concluded “More than likely two o’clock on the morrow was meant. Besides, I myself could give any marauder here a very warm reception—” he glanced about the loft. The thought seemed to please him, for he chuckled for the space of a moment, and then turned seriously to his work.
For an hour or more his experiment, which was difficult and exacting, held all his attention. But when it was finally finished and the results carefully noted, the thought of Stas and his mysterious visitor returned to him. In the stillness of the late hour the affair seemed to show a graver face.
He jumped up suddenly and set the fires leaping in two braziers. He melted a gum in one of them and heated some liquid in the other. At length at the end of fifteen minutes he covered the fires and took out the substances. With a small brush he smeared the mixture of the two over his long student gown that hung against the wall. Then he took the mask which he used when making experiments with certain poisonous gases, and covered this with the same drug he had compounded in the braziers—the gum causing it to cling to the surface of the mask.
“I have but to sprinkle this with aqua phosphorata,” he said to himself, “and the heavens will not be more brilliant than I.”
He sat back in his chair to wait, and with closed eyes tried to reason it all out. “What can be the meaning of this?” he thought. “The stranger with Stas stopped on the landing of Pan Andrew’s lodging. What mystery can have attached itself to this family? Why should the name be changed? Who would seek revenge upon a man and a woman and a boy? Elzbietka has found a mother, and I good friends. They have no treasure with them, no money of any kind, for even on that first day Pan Andrew was obliged to sell his cart and horses for the means of living.”
He was becoming drowsy, for he had worked much of late, and had had but little sleep, and he was on the point of succumbing to his weariness when he heard the watchman at the Church of our Lady Mary strike twice upon the bell and then begin to play the Heynal. The fourth Heynal was scarcely finished when he heard a motion in the court below. It was Stas creeping along the wall in order to open the door. Throwing back his door noiselessly the alchemist lay flat on the floor and leaned out over the threshold. The door below creaked a little as it opened. Some one came in. The alchemist listened. “One—two—three—more! By the lightning, there must be a dozen of them, if footsteps tell no lies. I did wrong not to notify the watch. If I shout now, he may come, but there are enough to silence both him and me. No, I have made my beer and I must drink it.”
Next the stairs began to creak, and almost instantly the hoarse barking of a dog cut through the air.
“Silence that dog,” he heard some one whisper from the steps. Footsteps were heard again in the court as if someone had gone back to combat the animal. At this same moment the door leading into the court was slammed shut, and there was a rattle of the chain that fastened it on the inside.
“A precious jewel, that Stas,” thought the alchemist. “He shall pay for this to-morrow.”
A cry of pain rang out suddenly from below. It was the cry not of a dog, but of a man. “Ha,” thought Pan Kreutz, “Wolf finished that one.” There was a sound of a man running across the court. “I can’t get near him without injury,” he whispered loudly to the leader of the party. “He sank his teeth in my leg, and I am faint for pain.”
“Three of you attack him at once,” directed the leader.
There was scuffling again and suddenly the night was made hideous with the mad howling and barking of Wolf and the shrieking of men in pain; at this moment Joseph, with a light in his hand, appeared at the door on the second story:
“Wolf—Wolf,” he called.
He did not call again.
“Whew,” thought the alchemist, “they silenced the boy. A gag, probably.”
He was right. The leader of the attacking party had seized Joseph and thrown a cloth bag over his head.
“To the house,” he shouted to the men below. “Four of you stand guard at the door. Four of you wait at the stairs and let no one descend, and the rest come with me.”
As the light of the lantern which he had taken from the boy swung upon his face, the man watching above could see that it was marked with a great round scar like an immense button.
“Tartar or Cossack,” he exclaimed, “for the plague which leaves such scars is an Eastern plague; these men have come from a long distance.”
He was right. This was indeed the band of that ruffian whom the Poles called Peter of the Button Face and whose bad fame men knew in all the Ukraine and the lands to the east.
In the next second, almost, they were inside the house—Peter, and three men following. There came to the alchemist’s ears the scream of a woman, followed by a crash as if she had been thrown upon the floor. Then came the sound of the breaking of furniture, of the tearing up of matting, of the destruction of everything within the house as if a quick, violent search were being made. The door was open and the alchemist could hear clearly all the sounds below.
“Look in the bed,” the leader spoke.
Pan Andrew and his wife slept in a large bed in the front room. Swords were quickly at work ripping this to pieces. They cut open the pillows, they tore apart the blankets, and it was only after the bed was a complete ruin that the leader found what he had been seeking.
“There it is,” he shouted; “that large package, done up in cloth.”
With his sword he ripped away the layers of cloth that bound it—one by one they fell away upon the floor until the object he sought stood uncovered in his right hand. But just at that instant as he was about to dart for the door there came a shrill voice, shrieking, “My gold—my gold!”
Peter turned like a flash. “Blood of a dog——”
The lantern was held up. Its light disclosed the face of Stas maddened with the fear that he should not receive the price of his treachery.
“Gold! I’ll give you gold,” shouted Peter, infuriated. “Some one take him and throw him down to the dog. Then he can take what gold we choose to throw him.”
Two men seized him, but he fought madly and dashed into the room. There the third man headed him off and the two others fell upon him from behind; his slim body wriggled loose, however, and he fell across the table already overturned by the intruders in their search for Pan Andrew’s treasure, and clung there with ferociousness to the upturned legs. He kicked, he bit, he struck out blindly—but they tore him loose just as Peter set the prize on the floor to take the man in hand himself.
The lantern rested on the floor behind him, and as the struggling men swung toward him, Stas, shot with a brilliant idea, worked a leg loose and kicked the lantern over. As it fell the door swung open and the candle went out. Almost instantly, however, the ruffians closed their grip upon him and hustled him to the door.
Over the rail he would have gone without further ceremony had not there come the sudden screaming of a girl from the floor above.
“The plague upon them all,” exclaimed Peter, dropping Stas. “Here everything is as smooth as water in a lake, then all of a sudden babies and fools raise the dead with their cries. Come, we have enough—let us get out of this at once.”
He groped his way back to Pan Andrew’s bed, and was feeling in the dark for the precious thing that was the object of his raid, when there came a crash like that of thunder from above, and through the open door appeared a terrible red light that seemed to come from the sky and enveloped everything for the moment in a garment of red.
Peterrushed to the door and stood, staring.
Balls of red fire were shooting out into the air from the opened casement of the room in the loft, flooding the place with light as they burst with terrific explosions. In the light Peter could see his men standing horror-struck, four below him at the bottom of the stairs, and four on guard at the door. Those who had been clinging to Stas on the landing had recoiled in fright before the fiery balls, and the half-wit had seized the opportunity to slink stealthily away through their legs, and make for the lower steps.
For a moment Peter stood motionless. In bodily things he was braver than the brave, but in the face of such magic as this he was a coward; yet though he trembled, he realized that he must play a man’s part if he wished to keep the leadership of his band, and accordingly, spurring himself up to a pitch of bravado, he rushed up the stairs from the second floor to the third and stood there just as another bomb soared out into the air.
“Come back! Come back!” they were shouting from below.
“Come up! Come up!” he commanded. “What are you frightened of?”
“It is the Evil One, himself!”
Peter shook his curved Cossack sword in the darkness. “Come up—come up, I tell you, you cowardly dogs—come up or I’ll separate your coward heads from your useless bodies. Come up, I say—come up!”
And so much was he feared that the three men on the second floor landing crossed themselves in the manner of the Greek Church and went creeping up after him.
“We have the treasure,” pleaded the nearest man in a trembling voice, “let us escape from here. This is nothing human. This is the work of the Evil One. Devils are abroad and a man is not sure of his soul.”
“Devils,” roared Peter, “bones and fiddlesticks! Come up here, you, and be men. This is no devil. This is some joker who values his head but lightly. If we do not silence him he will alarm the whole city before we get back to the gate.”
“Up that,” he commanded a second later, shoving the first man against the staircase to the loft. “Up that, and tell us what you see.”
The man mounted, trembling violently, for he was sure that the powers of darkness themselves were working against them.
“The door is open here,” he whispered, “and no lights within.” A man below him on the stairway passed the word along to Peter.
“Then up, every mother’s son of you,” ordered the leader. “There is a man there. Put a knife in his throat and descend quickly.”
The rest pulled themselves up and entered the loft. After a few minutes of impatient waiting Peter climbed the steps himself and pushed himself across the dark threshold.
“What have you found?” he demanded impatiently.
“Nothing,” the answer came faintly from one corner of the loft.
“If there is any one here let him speak now,” Peter bellowed. His voice drowned the quiet opening of the door of a closet in the back of the room. “If we find any one it will go hard——”
Like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky the loft was suddenly illuminated with a glow of red fire as there leapt into existence out of the blackness of the night the very incarnation of the Evil One in his worst mood. Clad in fiery garments which smelled of fire and brimstone and which seemed to blaze and burn and give off a greenish smoke and flame, he moved slowly forward, waving in his right hand a scepter of flaming red which was crackling with heat as a green bough crackles when it burns, while from its end little balls of fire were dripping.
It was so sudden, so unexpected, this apparition in a pitch-black world of night, of a red, fiery, glowing devil, that Peter, stout-hearted as he was, let out a sudden shriek, and trembled like a leaf.
But if he trembled, the others went mad with fear. “Out! Out!” they shrieked, crowding to the stairway.
Upon their heels came the fantastic demon waving his scepter right and left and favoring first one and then another with smart blows, as they fought to be first at the stairway. Two reached it at one time and went scrambling down to be joined by the third a second later, who came tumbling down upon them just as they gained the third-floor landing.
Peter, however, stood his ground for a moment. Turning about at the head of the stairs he shouted, “Be you man or demon I will see what you have in you,” and rushed with his drawn sword upon the weird figure. That one simply stood aside as he rushed, and waved his hand in the direction of the man’s face.
“Ahew—ahew!” the brigand screamed with pain, for something choking and powdery was filling his eyes and throat. “Help—cowards—I am in the hands of a thousand devils. Help, I say!”
There was no sound outside save the noise of the men scrambling down the next stairway.
Peter stumbled blindly to the steps, and fairly slid down them, fearful lest the phantom should follow and give him another dose. But the phantom, though following, did not repeat his attack; he came slowly down the stairs after the retreating party, hurling little bombs of colored fire into the air, which as they exploded flooded the court with lights of rainbow hues.
Below, the din was deafening. The dog had worked his head loose from the bag which had been thrown over it, and was barking at the top of his lungs. Men were shouting and crying out in terror, forgetful of caution and the necessity for silence. Joseph who had been gagged and bound in the rear room of the family’s dwelling had gotten his feet loose from the ropes and was kicking with all his force against the wooden partition wall, Elzbietka was crying out for aid, and heads were beginning to emerge from open casements in all the adjoining buildings. Some one in the street outside was calling loudly for the watch, and Stas, having rescued himself from one predicament, was for no reason at all pulling at the rope of the bell that hung over the door, its clamor adding to the general uproar.
On the landing at the second floor the three retreating ruffians collided with the four men standing there and almost toppled them into the court. They had barely regained their balance when the lower supports of the stairs, which had been groaning already from the unaccustomed weight and traffic, suddenly collapsed and catapulted the whole company, amidst indescribable turmoil, into the court below. Peter, coming behind the three, managed to save himself by leaping nimbly to the threshold of Pan Andrew’s dwelling, but the flaming figure behind him remained momentarily on the stairs above the second floor where the supports and staircase held firm. Not for long did he remain there, however, for as Peter turned his back to disappear into the house the pursuer leaped from the lower step of the remaining stairway and landed squarely upon Peter, hurling him with a crash to the floor well inside the front room of Pan Andrew’s dwelling.
Below in the court there was a veritable pandemonium—the crashing apart of beam and beam where the staircase struck the ground, the shrieking of the frightened, the moaning of the injured—for two men had been pinned beneath the fallen staircase—the terror and distraction of the ruffians on guard below whose one idea now was to escape through the outer door before the arrival of the watch.
While all this was transpiring in the court the alchemist, who with his chemicals and powders had caused all the trouble, shook his heavy scepter, a club smeared with glowing resin, in the face of Peter who lay prostrate beneath him and demanded:
“Now—what do you seek here?”
But Peter had gotten some of his courage back, and besides the voice sounded more like that of a man than a devil. “I will not tell!”
“You will!”
“I will not.”
“You will be turned over to the watch.”
“I care not. They can learn nothing.”
“First let us have another look at you.”
He carefully drew a fire ball from a fold of his gown, keeping his weight upon the man under him and holding one hand at his throat. The ball he ignited by rubbing it against the floor and when it was burning he tossed it upon the stone hearth. There was a flash of light and the room was suddenly as bright as even day could make it.
But, after all, he did not look at Peter! For there was something else in the room that claimed his attention at once. It was the large round object that Peter had sought in Pan Andrew’s bed—there it lay upon the floor a short arm’s length away, gleaming like a thousand prisms of finest glass.
“Oho,” he exclaimed, “oho! So that’s it. Well, Pan Robber, it seems that your expedition was no ordinary one. No common house looting, this. . . . Lie still there, or I’ll sink these fingers into your windpipe,” for Peter had tried to wriggle to one side while the alchemist’s attention was taken with the new object.
“Who sent you here?” demanded the latter.
Peter was silent.
“But you must talk. Do you hear that—below?”
It was the night watch shouting, “Stand, in the name of the King.”
Peter whose courage was now revived, since he realized that it was a man and not a devil that he was dealing with, decided to try a little strategy.
“I will tell you all, if you will hide me here.”
“I give no promises. But tell me what you know.”
“Then see that.” He twisted one hand away from his captor as if to point toward the shining object on the floor which was now gleaming like a miniature sun in the last rays of the nearly burnt-out fire ball.
“I see it.” The alchemist glanced at it; the instant’s relaxation proved fatal, however, for with the moment the under man’s right hand came clear and tore the alchemist’s grip from his throat. In the struggle that followed, the alchemist was no match for the lithe and wiry Cossack. They rolled back and forth across the floor, tight in each other’s arms, they broke table legs, they brought down crockery from the shelves, they crashed into walls—and through all this the Cossack little by little overcame the advantage which the other had held in the beginning. First he twisted his legs in such fashion that he caught Pan Kreutz’s body as if in a vise, a trick that he had learned in the old days in the Ukraine, then he snapped his hands free from the other’s grip and wound his arms in under his shoulders. Tighter and tighter he drew arms and legs until the alchemist’s bones began to send out cracking noises; then with a quick movement he had reversed their positions and it was he who was on top and the alchemist underneath. “Smash!” He had bumped the man’s head against the floor with all his force, a blow sufficient to stun a giant, and in an instant had tossed him against the wall.
There the alchemist lay.
Like a panther moving to attack, Peter seized the object which he had come to procure, and leaped for the door.
He did not reach it unscathed. Pan Kreutz had also a last stratagem. It was fortunate for him that when the Cossack bumped his head against the floor, it was his mask that had borne the brunt of the blow—otherwise it is doubtful if he could ever have risen. But when the Cossack tossed him aside he lay there feigning unconsciousness, and as the other turned, he reached with a swiftness as quick as Peter’s into a pocket of his gown, where he had concealed a small package of explosive powder which might be ignited only by concussion. A wonder it was indeed that the powder had not exploded while they were wrestling on the floor.
This Pan Kreutz poised in his right hand as Peter made for the door. In another second the man would be gone—the alchemist caught his balance and hurled the package with all his strength.
It was a fair shot! It caught the Cossack with full force square on the back of the head and burst with a loud report.
Those below, now already turning their attention to the noise and the confusion on the second floor, heard the sharp explosion and saw the court flooded with light. In the midst of the glare there came a shriek that seemed to stir every corner of the courtyard, and almost immediately a man with hair flaming and garments streaked with fire sprang from the threshold of Pan Andrew’s lodging to the edge of the stairway that had not collapsed, and darted to the floor above. He stopped there only for one fleeting glance below. The court, blazing with torches and alive with tumult, was full of figures—students, watchmen, soldiers—so that escape that way was impossible. He leaped to the loft stairway and mounted it. Clutching at the roof which was not far above his head, he swung the low door back until it lay alongside the house and then climbed over it to the roofing. Along this he rushed like a meteor, his blazing hair streaming behind him in a trail of sparks—he leaped to an adjoining roof, and then to another, until he came to a place where the roofs sloped down to a wall, and there he was seen last.
A hue and cry was set up, but the man had escaped. Some said that he ran along the top of the wall and leaped into a monastery garden beyond—others that he only pretended to descend and had crept back among the housetops. At any rate he was not discovered.
When temporary stairs were finally put in place the watchmen released Joseph and his mother from the small room in their own quarters where they had lain bound, and brought Elzbietka down to them. Pan Kreutz, who had retired to his loft where he shed his torn gown and his mask, was bleeding and weak from his struggle and lost no time in getting into his bed. It was thought by all that the robbers had carried away nothing, but when Pan Andrew returned in the morning the house was searched thoroughly only to find that the treasure was missing. Spectators swore that Peter could not have carried anything with him when he made his perilous escape over the roofs, and a few said that they had noticed that his hands were empty.
However, hunt high or low as they did, the treasure was gone, and Pan Andrew, in spite of the views of the spectators, was fully convinced that the robber had stolen it.
Those of Peter’s band who had been injured in the fall of the stairs or had been unable to escape from the court were taken to jail and sentenced to various punishments. Several were put away into dungeons where they could do no more harm, two were banished “for a period of ninety-nine years,” and the rest were delivered to justice in other towns where they had committed previous crimes. But the most vigorous questioning could get no information from them, and it was concluded that they knew little of the designs of the leader upon Pan Andrew. As for Stas, his mother would have naught of him after this act of treachery. She lost little time in turning him out of her house and never would she receive him back again. It was heard some time later that he had become a waiter in the Inn of the Golden Elephant, but after the robbery of a guest there one night, he disappeared and was never heard of in Krakow again.
Pan Kreutz, although somewhat unnerved by his share in the encounter, met Pan Andrew in his lodging the next morning and described as fully as he could the man who had been leader in the events of the preceding night. He had scarcely finished when Pan Andrew sprang to his feet and struck the back of his chair with his fist.
“It is as I thought,” he exclaimed fiercely, “the man who has assailed me twice before. And now I know for a certainty that it is that half Mongol, half Cossack that calls himself Bogdan and is known as the Terrible throughout the Cossack lands. I have heard of his evil deeds many times, as has every dweller in the Ukraine. And it would be like him indeed to lead this villainy against me. He is a very devil, a man without pity, though I will say a man of the boldest breed that God ever benefited with the gift of breath. We, the Poles of the Ukraine, knew him as Peter of the Button Face, because of the scar which you have seen upon his right cheek, and by that scar I would doubtless have recognized him on the morning when he attacked me outside the Krakow Gate, had I not believed that he carried on his lawless deeds always nearer the border.”
Thus saying he went sorrowfully to his work of repairing the damage done by the Cossack band.
Downin the Ukraine that winter when men went about from habitation to habitation on the little horses that had noses so pointed that they could poke them through the snow and eat the dry grass of the steppe beneath, it was known that a great change had come over a certain Bogdan, called the Terrible along the Dnieper and Volga, and Peter of the Button Face among the Polish colonists. It was not that he had lost so much hair that certain ones called him behind his back Bogdan of the Singed Locks, that made him sad and contemplative instead of boisterous and ready as he had once been—it was the effect of some failure that brought on despondency and kept him a recluse for several months. When he did return at length to men’s sight and began to appear in the taverns, his hair had grown to its accustomed length and a huge scar that fire had made was nearly healed over. It was hinted, too, that he had made a journey clear up to the land of the Muscovites and had had conference with Ivan, called the Great, but this he did not speak about, and men dared not question him.
Spring came with the month of March in the year 1462, with peace over all the Dnieper lands, save where here and there tribes were on the march, or the Tartars were threatening raids. With spring set out Bogdan the Terrible, and with him traveled as fine a crowd of cutthroats and cattle stealers as ever the Ukraine knew. They rode to Rovno, the town of the Level Plain, and then struck out for Chelm on the border just beyond the River Bug. They established headquarters in the Lublin Woods for a time, for the purpose of pillaging, and then hearing that soldiers had been sent after them, they vanished into the swamp lands to the north and were not heard of again in those parts.
It seems that Peter had opposed this pillaging from the first, because he had other work in hand, but they were tribesmen and wild, fond of robbery and theft and eager for gain.
At Tarnov, having them well in hand again, he organized them into a caravan of Armenian rug merchants and marched them—carts, horses and merchants—to Krakow, the great market of the eastern part of Europe. In Krakow they camped with their wares in the square on the east side of the Cloth Hall.
Now the saddest man in Krakow at this time was Pan Andrew Charnetski—sad because he had lost, through no fault of his own, a treasure which he had intended to present to the King of Poland, and evidently a treasure of great worth since certain men seemed to envy him its possession. Jan Kanty sought to comfort him, and his wife and son and Elzbietka did much to divert his thoughts from the seriousness of the loss, but on the long nights when he was alone in the tower, moods of depression would often engulf him.
Joseph, knowing this, took to visiting him in the night vigils when it was possible, before holy days and vacations when there was no collegium on the following morning; often he would come with his father at the tenth hour of the night and remain until morning. Sometimes he would take the duties of the watchman while his father slept and sound the Heynals at each hour and inspect the city regularly from each of the tower windows in order to sound the alarm whenever a red tongue of flame leaped into the sky. Joseph had progressed each day in playing the trumpet and could now sound the Heynal as well as his father.