Azya, the son of Tugai Bey, after a long halt on the plain of
Kuchunkaury, was really marching with his men at the head of all
the Turkish forces toward the boundary of the Commonwealth.
After the grievous blow which his plans and his person had received
from the valiant hand of Basia, a fortunate star seemed to shine
on him anew. First of all, he had recovered. His beauty, it is
true, was destroyed forever: one eye had trickled out altogether,
his nose was mashed, and his face, once like the face of a falcon,
had become monstrous and terrible. But just that terror with which
it filled people gave him still more consideration among the wild
Tartars of the Dobrudja. His arrival made a great noise in the
whole camp; his deeds grew in the narratives of men, and became
gigantic. It was said that he had brought all the Lithuanian
Tartars and Cheremis into the service of the Sultan; that he had
outwitted the Poles, as no one had ever outwitted them; that he had
burned whole towns along the Dniester, had cut off their garrisons,
and had taken great booty. Those who were to march now for the
first time to Lehistan; those who, coming from distant corners of
the East, had not tried Polish arms hitherto; those whose hearts
were alarmed at the thought that they would soon stand eye to eye
with the terrible cavalry of the unbeliever,--saw in the young Azya
a warrior who had conquered them, and made a fortunate beginning of
war. The sight of the “hero” filled their hearts straightway with
comfort; besides, as Azya was son of the terrible Tugai Bey, whose
name had thundered through the Orient, all eyes were turned on him
the more.
“The Poles reared him,” said they; “but he is the son of a lion; he
bit them and returned to the Padishah’s service.”
The vizir himself wished to see him; and the “rising sun of war,”
the young kaimakan, Kara Mustafa, enamoured of military glory and
wild warriors, fell in love with him. Both inquired diligently
of him concerning the Commonwealth, the hetman, the armies, and
Kamenyets; they rejoiced at his answers, seeing from them that war
would be easy; that to the Sultan it must bring victory, to the
Poles defeat, and to them the title of Ghazi (conqueror). Hence
Azya had frequent opportunities later to fall on his face to the
vizir, to sit at the threshold of the kaimakan’s tent, and received
from both numerous gifts in camels, horses, and weapons.
The grand vizir gave him a kaftan of silver brocade, the possession
of which raised him in the eyes of all Lithuanian Tartars and
Cheremis. Krychinski, Adurovich, Moravski, Groholski, Tarasovski,
Aleksandrovich,--in a word, all those captains who had once
dwelt in the Commonwealth and served it, but now returned to the
Sultan,--placed themselves without a question under the command of
Tugai Bey’s son, honoring in him both the prince by descent and
the warrior who had received a kaftan. He became, therefore, a
notable murza; and more than two thousand warriors, incomparably
better than the usual Tartars, obeyed his nod. The approaching war,
in which it was easier for the young murza to distinguish himself
than for any one else, might carry him high; he might find in it
dignities, renown, power.
But still Azya bore poison in his soul. To begin with, it
pricked his pride that the Tartars, in comparison with the Turks
themselves, especially the janissaries and spahis, had little more
significance than dogs compared with hunters. He had significance
himself, but the Tartars in general were considered worthless
cavalry. The Turk used them, at times he feared them, but in the
camp he despised them, Azya, noticing this, kept his men apart from
the general Tartar mass, as if they formed a separate, a better
kind of army; but with this he brought on himself straightway the
indignation of the Dobrudja and Belgrod murzas, and was not able
to convince various Turkish officers that the Lithuanian Tartars
were really better in any way than chambuls of the horde. On
the other hand, reared in a Christian country, among nobles and
knights, he could not inure himself to the manners of the East. In
the Commonwealth he was only an ordinary officer and of the last
arm of the service; but still, when meeting superiors or even the
hetman, he was not obliged to humble himself as here, where he was
a murza and the leader of all the companies of Lithuanian Tartars.
Here he had to fall on his face before the vizir; he had to touch
the ground with his forehead in the friendly tent of the kaimakan;
he had to prostrate himself before the pashas, before the ulema,
before the chief aga of the janissaries. Azya was not accustomed to
this. He remembered that he was the son of a hero; he had a wild
soul full of pride, aiming high, as eagles aim; hence he suffered
sorely.
But the recollection of Basia burned him with fire most of all. He
cared not that one weak hand had hurled from his horse him who at
Bratslav, at Kalnik, and a hundred other places had challenged to
combat and stretched in death the most terrible skirmishers of the
Zaporojia; he cared not for the shame, the disgrace! But he loved
that woman beyond measure and thought; he wanted her in his tent,
to look at her, to beat her, to kiss her. If it were in his choice
to be Padishah and rule half the world, or to take her in his arms,
feel with his heart the warmth of her blood, the breath of her
face, her lips with his lips, he would prefer her to Tsargrad, to
the Bosphorus, to the title of Khalif. He wanted her because he
loved her; he wanted her because he hated her. The more she was
foreign to him, the more he wanted her; the more she was pure,
faithful, untainted, the more he wanted her. More than once when he
remembered in his tent that he had kissed those eyes one time in
his life, in the ravine after the battle with Azba Bey, and that
at Rashkoff he had felt her breast on his, the madness of desire
carried him away. He knew not what had become of her, whether she
had perished on the road or not. At times he found solace in the
thought that she had died. At times he thought, “It had been better
not to carry her away, not to burn Rashkoff, not to come to the
service of the Sultan, but to stay in Hreptyoff, and even look at
her.”
But the unfortunate Zosia Boski was in his tent. Her life passed
in low service, in shame and continual terror, for in Azya’s heart
there was not a drop of pity for her. He simply tormented her
because she was not Basia. She had, however, the sweetness and
charm of a field flower; she had youth and beauty: therefore he
sated himself with that beauty; but he kicked her for any cause,
or flogged her white body with rods. In a worse hell she could
not be, for she lived without hope. Her life had begun to bloom
in Rashkoff, to bloom like spring with the flower of love for Pan
Adam. She loved him with her whole soul; she loved that knightly,
noble, and honest nature with all her faculties; and now she was
the plaything and the captive of that one-eyed monster. She had
to crawl at his feet and tremble like a beaten dog, look into his
face, look at his hands to see if they were not about to seize a
club or a whip; she had to hold back her breath and her tears.
She knew well that there was not and could not be mercy for her;
for though a miracle were to wrest her from those terrible hands,
she was no longer that former Zosia, white as the first snows, and
able to repay love with a clean heart. All that had passed beyond
recovery. But since the dreadful disgrace in which she was living
was not due to the least fault of hers,--on the contrary, she had
been hitherto a maiden stainless as a lamb, innocent as a dove,
trusting as a child, simple, loving,--she did not understand why
this fearful injustice was wrought on her, an injustice which could
not be recompensed; why such inexorable anger of God was weighing
upon her; and this mental discord increased her pain, her despair.
And so days, weeks, and months passed. Azya came to the plain
of Kuchunkaury in winter, and the march to the boundary of the
Commonwealth began only in June. All this time passed for Zosia in
shame, in torment, in toil. For Azya, in spite of her beauty and
sweetness, and though he kept her in his tent, not only did not
love her, but rather he hated her because she was not Basia. He
looked on her as a common captive; therefore she had to work like
a captive. She watered his horses and camels from the river; she
carried water for his ablutions, wood for the fire; she spread the
skins for his bed; she cooked his food. In other divisions of the
Turkish armies women did not go out of the tents through fear of
the janissaries, or through custom; but the camp of the Lithuanian
Tartars stood apart, and the custom of hiding women was not common
among them, for having lived formerly in the Commonwealth, they had
grown used to something different. The captives of common soldiers,
in so far as soldiers had captives, did not even cover their faces
with veils. It is true that women were not free to go beyond the
boundaries of the square, for beyond those boundaries they would
have been carried off surely; but on the square itself they could
go everywhere safely, and occupy themselves with camp housekeeping.
Notwithstanding the heavy toil, there was for Zosia even a certain
solace in going for wood, or to the river to water the horses and
camels; for she feared to cry in the tent, and on the road she
could give vent to her tears with impunity. Once, while going
with arms full of wood, she met her mother, whom Azya had given
to Halim. They fell into each other’s arms, and it was necessary
to pull them apart; and though Azya flogged Zosia afterward, not
sparing even blows of rods on her head, still the meeting was dear
to her. Another time, while washing handkerchiefs and foot-cloths
for Azya at the ford, Zosia saw Eva at a distance going with pails
of water. Eva was groaning under the weight of the pails; her form
had changed greatly and grown heavier, but her features, though
shaded with a veil, reminded Zosia of Adam, and such pain seized
her heart that consciousness left her for the moment. Still, they
did not speak to each other from fear.
That fear stifled and mastered gradually all Zosia’s feelings, till
at last it stood alone in place of her desires, hopes, and memory.
Not to be beaten had become for her an object. Basia in her place
would have killed Azya with his own knife on the first day, without
thinking of what might come afterwards; but the timid Zosia, half
a child yet, had not Basia’s daring. And it came at last to this,
that she considered it fondness if the terrible Azya, under the
influence of momentary desire, put his deformed face near her lips.
Sitting in the tent, she did not take her eyes from him, wishing
to learn whether he was angry or not, following his movements,
striving to divine his wishes.
When she foresaw evil, and when from under his mustaches, as in
the case of Tugai Bey, the teeth began to glitter, she crept to
his feet almost senseless from terror, pressed her pale lips to
them, embracing convulsively his knees and crying like an afflicted
child,--
“Do not beat me, Azya! forgive me; do not beat!”
He forgave her almost never; he gloated over her, not only
because she was not Basia, but because she had been the betrothed
of Novoveski. Azya had a fearless soul; yet so awful were the
accounts between him and Pan Adam that at thought of that giant,
with vengeance hardened in his heart, a certain disquiet seized
the young Tartar. There was to be war; they might meet, and it was
likely that they would meet. Azya was not able to avoid thinking of
this; and because these thoughts came to him at sight of Zosia, he
took vengeance on her, as if he wished to drive away his own alarm
with blows of rods.
At last the time came when the Sultan gave command to march. Azya’s
men were to move in the vanguard, and after them the whole legion
of Dobrudja and Belgrod Tartars. That was arranged between the
Sultan, the vizir, and the kaimakan. But in the beginning all went
to the Balkans together. The march was comfortable, for by reason
of the heat which was setting in, they marched only in the night,
six hours from one resting-place to the other. Tar-barrels were
burning along their road, and the massala djirali lighted the way
for the Sultan with colored lights. The swarms of people flowed on
like a river, through boundless plains; filled the depressions of
valleys like locusts, covered the mountains. After the armed men
went the tabors, in them the harems; after the tabors herds without
number.
But in the swamps at the foot of the Balkans the gilded and purple
chariot of the kasseka was mired so that twelve buffaloes were
unable to draw it from the mud. “That is an evil omen, lord, for
thee and for the whole army,” said the chief mufti to the Sultan.
“An evil omen,” repeated the half-mad dervishes in the camp. The
Sultan was alarmed, and decided to send all women out of the camp
with the marvellous kasseka.
The command was announced to the armies. Those of the soldiers
who had no place to which they might send captives, and from love
did not wish to sell them to strangers, preferred to kill them.
Merchants of the caravanserai bought others by the thousand, to
sell them afterward in the markets of Stambul and all the places of
nearer Asia. A great fair, as it were, lasted for three days. Azya
offered Zosia for sale without hesitation; an old Stambul merchant,
a rich person, bought her for his son.
He was a kindly man, for at Zosia’s entreaties and tears he bought
her mother from Halim; it is true that he got her for a trifle.
The next day both wandered on toward Stambul, in a line with other
women. In Stambul Zosia’s lot was improved, without ceasing to be
shameful. Her new owner loved her, and after a few months he raised
her to the dignity of wife. Her mother did not part from her.
Many people, among them many women, even after a long time of
captivity, returned to their country. There was also some person,
who by all means, through Armenians, Greek merchants, and servants
of envoys from the Commonwealth, sought Zosia too, but without
result. Then these searches were interrupted on a sudden; and Zosia
never saw her native land, nor the faces of those who were dear to
her. She lived till her death in a harem.