besiegers. The Essaool Tovkach brought it; two more essaools, the
secretary, and the other officials of the regiment, also came with
it; the whole of this reinforcement numbered more than four thousand
Cossacks. Many of them were volunteers who had come of their own accord
without being summoned, as soon as they had heard of the impending
business. The essaools had been intrusted by the wife of Tarass to
bring her blessing to her sons, and to forward to each of them a
cypress image brought from one of the monasteries of Kieff. The two
brothers hung the holy images round their necks, and involuntarily
gave way to their fancy at this remembrance of their old mother. What
omen did this blessing bring them? Was it a blessing for vanquishing
the foe, and a pledge of their gay return to their native country with
booty and glory, which should be the subject of eternal songs for the
players of the bandoora? or was it.... But unknown is the future! and
it stands before man like the autumn fog which rises over marshes:
birds are flying in it upwards and downwards, flapping their wings and
seeing not one another--the dove without seeing the hawk, the hawk
without seeing the dove--and every one without knowing how near he may
be to death.
Ostap had long since resumed his occupations, and was going to his
kooren; but Andrew, without being able to account for it, felt a
heaviness at his heart. The Cossacks had already finished their
supper; evening had long closed in, and a beautiful July night had
encircled the earth in its embrace. Still, Andrew did not return to his
kooren--did not go to sleep--but stood gazing at the picture before
him. Numberless stars glimmered with a bright translucent twinkling
over the skies. The field was covered with carts, placed without order,
from which hung tar-pots all dripping with tar; the carts were loaded
with all the booty and provisions taken from the enemy. Near the carts,
beneath the carts, and at a great distance from the carts, might be
seen Zaporoghians sleeping on the grass in different picturesque
attitudes; one had laid his head on a corn sack, another on his cap, a
third had simply chosen the ribs of his comrade for his pillow. Almost
every one wore, suspended to his belt, a sabre, a matchlock and a short
pipe with brass plates, wires for cleaning it, and a steel for kindling
fire. The massive bullocks were reclining with their feet under their
bodies; and the great white spots which they formed looked at a
distance like so many grey stones thrown about the acclivities of the
field. From every spot in the grass the noisy snoring of the sleeping
army had begun to rise, and it was answered from the field by the
sonorous neighing of the horses, indignant at having their feet tied.
A magnificent and terrific sight was now added to the beauty of the
summer night. It was the blaze of the conflagration of the neighbouring
country. At one place the flames went slowly and majestically along the
sky; at another, meeting with something combustible in their progress,
they whirled suddenly round, hissed and flew up to the very stars,
and their fiery tongues disappeared in the most distant clouds. Here
a burnt cloister, blackened by the fire, stood like a hard-featured
Carthusian monk, showing its stern gloomy outlines at every blaze;
next to it a garden was burning. It seemed as if one might hear how
the trees hissed wrapt in smoke; and as the fire happened to catch
some new place its phosphoric violet light shone suddenly on the ripe
bunches of plums, or threw a brilliant golden hue on the yellow pears;
and in the midst of all this was to be seen, dangling from the wall
of the building or from the bough of a tree, the corpse of some poor
Jew or monk, doomed, like the building itself, to become the prey of
the flames. Over the conflagration, hovering far away, were to be seen
birds looking like so many dark diminutive crosses on a fiery field.
The city seemed to be slumbering; its spires, its roofs, its palisades
and its walls were sometimes illuminated by the reflection of the
distant conflagration.
Andrew walked round the Cossacks' encampment. The bonfires at which
the sentries were sitting were going out, and the sentries had fallen
asleep; having, it would seem, too much indulged their Cossack
appetites. Andrew marvelled at such carelessness, and thought it lucky
that no strong forces of the enemy were at hand, and that there was
nothing to fear. At last, he went to one of the carts, climbed into
it and lay down on his back, bending his arms backwards and putting
them under his head. He could not yet sleep, and remained a long time
looking at the sky. It appeared all open to him; the air was pure and
transparent; the compact mass of stars forming the milky way seemed
to be all overflowing with light. At times, Andrew felt a sort of
oblivion, and slumber, like a light fog, hid for a minute the sky from
his sight; but the next moment it cleared away, and again he saw the
heavens.
At this time, it seemed to him that a strange human face had passed
before him. Thinking that it was nothing but an illusion of sleep,
which would disappear, he opened his eyes wider, and saw that really
an emaciated dried-up face bent over him and looked straight into his
eyes. Long and coal-black locks of hair, uncombed and dishevelled,
stole from beneath a veil thrown over the head. The strange brightness
of the eyes, and the deathlike swarthiness of the strongly marked
features, would almost have led to the supposition that it was a
phantom. Andrew convulsively seized a matchlock and exclaimed, "Who
art thou? If thou be an evil spirit--disappear; if thou be a human
creature, thy joke is out of place. I'll kill thee at once!"
The figure answered only by putting its finger to its lips, and seemed
to be imploring silence. Andrew let go his hold, and began to look
attentively at it. The long hair, the neck, and brown half-naked bosom
showed it to be a woman, but she was not a native of the country; her
face was sunburnt, and bespoke suffering; her wide cheekbones stuck out
over her shrunken cheeks; her narrow eyes were cut obliquely, with the
outer corner raised. The more Andrew looked at her features, the more
he found in them something which he knew. At last he could not refrain
from asking, "Tell me, who art thou? It seems to me that I know thee,
or have seen thee somewhere."
"Two years ago, in Kieff."
"Two years ago--in Kieff!" repeated Andrew, endeavouring to bring to
mind all that his memory had retained of his collegian's life. He
took once more an attentive survey of her, and suddenly exclaimed
aloud, "Thou art the Tartar! the servant of that lady! of the voevoda's
daughter!"
"Hush!" said the Tartar, imploringly, folding her hands, shuddering in
all her frame, and at the same time turning her head to see that no one
had been awakened by the shriek of Andrew.
"Tell me--tell me--why--wherefore art thou here?" said Andrew in a
whisper almost choked, and interrupted at every moment by his internal
agitation; "where is the lady? is she alive?"
"She is now in the town."
"In the town?" exclaimed he, again almost shrieking aloud, and he felt
that all his blood rushed at once to his heart. "Why is she in the
town?"
"Because the lord, her father, is there; it is now more than a year
that he has been voevoda[26] in Doobno."
"Well--is she married? Speak! how strange thou art! Say--what is she
now?"
"She has not eaten for two days."
"How is that?"
"For a long time not one of the citizens has had a piece of bread; it
is long since they were all eating earth."
Andrew remained speechless.
"The lady saw thee among the Zaporoghians from the town wall. She said
to me, 'Go, tell the knight that if he recollects me he will come to
me; and if not, that he will give thee a morsel of bread for my old
mother, for I cannot see my mother die before my eyes. Let me rather
die first and she afterwards. Entreat him--embrace his knees and his
feet. He, too, may have an old mother, for her sake he must give a bit
of bread.'"
Many and different were the feelings that awakened and stirred in the
young Cossack's breast.
"But how art thou here? How didst thou come?"
"By a subterranean passage."
"Is there any subterranean passage, then?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Thou wilt not betray me, knight?"
"No; I swear by the holy cross!"
"Behind the ravine, after crossing the rivulet, where there are some
reeds growing."
"And it leads straight into the city?"
"Straight into the cloister of the city."
"Let us go! let us go directly!"
"But, in the name of Christ and of his holy mother, a loaf of bread?"
"Thou shalt have it. Stay here by this cart, or rather lie down in it;
nobody will see thee--all are sleeping. I'll be back directly."
And he went to the waggons where the provisions of his kooren were
kept. His heart beat high. All the past which had been hidden, stifled
by his present Cossack life and by the hardships of warfare, rose
once more to the surface, drowning in return all the present. Again
he saw emerging before him, as if from the depths of some ocean
cavern, the form of the glorious lady; again his memory brought back
the recollection of her fine arms, of her eyes, of her smiling lips,
of her thick dark chestnut hair (whose locks hung curling over her
bosom), and of all those elastic limbs which so well harmonised with
her maidenly figure. No; these recollections were never extinguished
in his breast; they had, only for a time, given place to other mighty
impressions. But often--often had they disturbed the young Cossack's
slumber, and often did he long lie sleepless on his bed without knowing
how to explain the cause of his sleeplessness.
He went on, and his heart beat higher and higher, and his young knees
shook at the mere thought of seeing her again. When he reached the
waggons he had entirely forgotten why he had come, and, raising his
hand to his brow, remained some time trying to recollect what he had
to do. At last he shuddered, and felt terror-stricken: the thought
flashed across his mind that she might be dying from hunger. He rushed
to one of the waggons, and took some great rye loaves under his arm;
but then he thought that this food, which suits the unspoiled taste
of the strong Zaporoghians, would be too coarse and unsuited to her
tender person. He remembered that, the day before, the Koschevoï had
scolded the cooks for taking the whole of the buckwheat flour to make
_salamata_[27], when the quantity would have been quite sufficient
for more than three days. Certain of finding enough salamata left
in the coppers, Andrew took the travelling kettle of his father and
went with it to the cook of his kooren, who was sleeping beside two
enormous cauldrons, under which the ashes were not yet extinguished.
Looking into the cauldrons, he was astonished to find both of them
empty. It ought to have required more than human exertions to eat up
all their contents; the more so as their kooren was not so numerous
as the others. He peeped into the kettles of the other koorens--there
was nowhere anything left. Involuntarily he recollected the saying
that Zaporoghians are like children:--Is there but little food? they
will eat it; is there much? they will still leave nothing. What was to
be done? There was yet somewhere, he thought, in the waggons of his
father's regiment a sack of white bread, which the Cossacks had found
while pillaging the cloister kitchen. Andrew went straight to his
father's waggon: the sack was not there! Ostap had taken it to rest
his head upon, and, stretched on the ground, he made the whole field
resound with his snoring. Andrew with one hand seized the sack and
pulled it away with a jerk, so that Ostap's head fell on the ground,
and he himself started up in his sleep, and sitting with his eyes shut,
shouted, "Hold! hold! the devil of a Pole! catch his horse! catch it!"
"Be silent! or thou art a dead man," cried the terrified Andrew,
raising the sack on his head. But Ostap did not proceed with his
speech, for he was already asleep, and snored with such violence that
his breath waved the grass on which he was tying.
Andrew looked warily round, to ascertain if the ravings of Ostap had
awakened any of the Cossacks. In fact, a crown-tufted head was seen
rising in the nearest kooren; but, after looking around, it soon
dropped on the ground. After waiting some two or three minutes, Andrew
departed with his sack; the Tartar woman was crouching in the waggon,
hardly daring to breathe.
"Arise! let us begone! every one sleeps; do not be afraid! Canst thou
take but one of these loaves, if I cannot carry them all?" Saying this,
he lifted the sacks upon his back, drew another sack with millet from
a cart on his way, took even in his hands those loaves which he had
wished the Tartar to carry, and bending a little went boldly through
the ranks of the sleeping Zaporoghians.
"Andrew!" said old Boolba, as Andrew was passing near him.
Andrew's heart sank within him; he stopped trembling, and slowly
uttered, "What?"
"There is a lass with thee! I'll give thee a famous thrashing
to-morrow! The lasses will bring thee to no good!" and thus saying he
reclined his head upon his elbow, and began to scrutinize the veiled
form of the Tartar.
Andrew stood riveted to the spot, without daring to lift his eyes upon
his father; but at last he raised them and looked at old Boolba: he saw
him already sleeping, with his head resting on the palm of his hand.
He made the sign of the cross. Fear quitted his heart still faster than
it had overpowered it; and as he turned round to look at the Tartar, he
saw her standing behind him like a dark granite statue all muffled in
her veil, and the glare of the distant conflagration, brightening into
a sudden flash, lighted only her eyes, dull as those of a corpse. He
pulled her sleeve and both proceeded together, looking back at every
step. Descending a declivity, they came at last to a ravine, at the
bottom of winch there rolled heavily along a rivulet overgrown with
sedge, whose banks were all uneven. The field on which the Zaporoghian
encampment stood was now entirely hidden from them. At least, as Andrew
looked back, he saw an eminence, as high as a man's head, which rose
behind him; on it were waving some blades of grass, over which the
moon rose in the sky in the shape of a curved sickle of bright red
gold. A light wind, which blew from the steppe, foreboded the approach
of dawn; but nowhere was to be heard the distant crowing of the cock,
for neither in the town nor in the surrounding country had a cock for
a long time been left. They passed the rivulet on a log thrown across
it; beyond it rose the opposite shore, which seemed to be higher than
that which they had left, and had a steep ascent. The wall was here
lower: yet the spot seemed a sure stronghold, for behind it rose the
cloister wall. The steep hill was covered with long grass, and in the
narrow ravine between it and the rivulet grew reeds nearly as tall as a
man; on the summit of the hill might be seen the remains of a palisade,
which formerly enclosed a kitchen garden; before it grew the large
leaves of the butter burr, from behind which stuck out the goosefoot,
wild prickly plants, and the sunflower, which reared its top above
them. Here the Tartar took off her shoes and went barefoot, carefully
lifting her dress, for the place was marshy and covered with water.
Making their way through the reeds, they stopped before a heap of
brushwood, which formed a fascine; they removed it and found a sort of
arch made of earth, whose opening was not wider than the opening of a
fireplace. The Tartar, bending her head, went in first; then followed
Andrew, stooping as much as he could, to be able to carry his sacks.
They were soon quite in the dark.
VI.
Andrew could hardly move with his sacks in the dark and narrow
subterranean passage, through which he closely followed the Tartar.
"_We_ shall soon see our way," said the guide; "we are near the place
where I left my lamp." A ray of light soon stole over the dark earthen
wall. They reached a small square, which seemed to have been a chapel;
at least a narrow table, like an altar, stood against the wall, and
over it hung a Latin image of the Madonna, the painting of which had
faded away and could hardly be traced. A email silver lamp, which hung
before it, threw over it an uncertain light. The Tartar bent down and
took up from the floor a brass candlestick, on a high thin foot, with
snuffers, a nail for trimming the wick, and an extinguisher hung round
it on chains. Taking up the candlestick, she lighted the candle at
the lamp. The light grew brighter and they proceeded, lighted at one
time by a blaze of the candle, at others enshrouded in a coal-black
shadow, like the figures to be seen in the paintings of Girardo della
Nette. The robust, fine features of Andrew, beaming with health and
youth, offered a strong contrast to the emaciated pallid face of his
companion. The passage had grown wider, so that Andrew could now hold
himself erect. He looked with curiosity at the earthen walls. As in
those of Kieff,[28] there were excavations, and coffins stood in them
from distance to distance; at some places, even human bones were to
be met with, grown soft by the dampness of the air and mouldered into
powder. Here, too, seemed to have lived holy men, who had sought a
refuge from the tempests of the world, from pain and temptation. At
times the dampness was very perceptible, and sometimes they even had
their feet in water. Andrew was often obliged to stop to give rest to
his companion, whose lassitude immediately returned. A little morsel of
bread which she had swallowed only caused pain to her stomach, which
had become unaccustomed to food, and she often remained motionless for
some minutes. At last they saw before them a small iron door. "Thanks
be to Heaven! we are there!" said the Tartar in a fainting voice; she
tried to raise her hand to knock and had not the strength to do it.
Andrew, in her stead, gave a heavy blow on the door; it resounded with
a rumbling noise, which indicated that there was a wide empty space
behind the door, the sound changing its tones as if met by high arches.
At length the door was opened; they were admitted by a monk, who stood
on a narrow staircase with the key and a light in his hand. Andrew
involuntarily stopped at the sight of a Latin monk, whose garb aroused
the most bitter feelings of hatred and contempt in the Cossacks, who
behaved towards them with still greater cruelty than towards the Jews.
The monk also drew back a step at seeing a Zaporoghian Cossack. But
a word indistinctly muttered by the Tartar quieted his fear. He shut
the door after them, lighted them up the staircase, and they found
themselves under the dark vaulted roof of the cloister church.
At one of the altars, decked with tapers in high candlesticks, knelt
a priest in the attitude of prayer; on either side of him, also
kneeling, were two young choristers, clad in violet mantles, with white
lace capes, holding censers in their hands. The priest was imploring
a miracle from Heaven: he prayed that God would preserve the city,
strengthen the failing courage, send down patience and resignation to
the hearts of the timid and pusillanimous, to support them under the
misery He had sent. Some women, like so many phantoms, were on their
knees, reclining and even drooping their heads on the backs of the
stools and of the dark wooden benches before them. Some men, leaning
against the columns which sustained the side arches, mournfully knelt
also. A window with coloured glass, which was over the altar, was now
lighted by the pink hue of morning, and from it fell, down upon the
floor, blue, yellow, and variegated circles of light, which suddenly
brightened the darkness of the church. The whole of the altar in its
distant niche, seem drowned in light; the smoke of the incense hung in
the air like a cloud beaming with all the hues of the rainbow. Andrew
was fain to look from the dark corner where he was standing, on this
remarkable phenomenon produced by light. At this moment the sublime
pealing of the organ suddenly filled the whole of the church; it grew
deeper and deeper, increased by degrees into the heavy rollings of
thunder, and then, all at once, turning into a heavenly melody, sent
up, higher and higher beneath the vaulted roof, its warbling notes,
which recalled the delicate voices of maidens; then once more it
changed into the deep bellow of thunder, and then it was silent; but
the rollings of the thunder long after tremulously vibrated along the
aisles, and Andrew with open mouth stood marvelling at the sublime
music.
And now he felt somebody pull the skirt of his coat. "It is time,"
said the Tartar. They went across the church without any one paying
attention to them, and came out on the square which was in front of it.
The dawn had long ago spread its rosy tint over the sky; everything
showed that the sun was about to rise. There was nobody in the square;
in the middle of it remained some tables, which showed that, not longer
than perhaps a week before, there had here been a market of victuals.
As pavements were not used in those times, the ground was nothing but
dried mud. The square was surrounded by small stone and clay houses,
one story high, with walls, in which might be seen from top to bottom,
the wooden piles and pillars, across which projected the wooden beams:
houses such as used to be built then, may till now be seen in some
towns of Lithuania and Poland. Almost all of them were covered by
disproportionately high roofs, pierced all over with numbers of dormer
windows. On one side, almost next to the church, rising above the other
buildings, was an edifice quite distinct from the others, which seemed
to be the town-hall of the city, or some other public establishment. It
was two stories high, and above it rose a two-arched belvidere, where
stood a sentry; a large sun-dial was fixed in the roof. The square
seemed dead; but Andrew thought he heard a faint moaning. Looking on
the other side, he saw a group of two or three men, who were lying
quite motionless on the ground. He looked more attentively, to see
if they were asleep or dead, and at the same time his foot stumbled
against something which lay in his way. It was the corpse of a woman,
who seemed to have been a Jewess. Her figure bespoke her to have been
still young, though the macerated disfigured outlines of her face did
not show it. Her head was covered with a red silk handkerchief; a
double row of pearls or beads adorned the coverings of her ears;[29]
two or three curling locks fell from under them on her shrivelled neck,
on which the tightly drawn veins showed like sinews. Beside her lay a
child, whose hand convulsively grasped her lank breast and twisted it
with his fingers, in vain anger at finding there no milk. The child
had ceased weeping and crying, and the slow heaving of its chest alone
showed that it was not yet dead or, at least, that its last breath
was yet to be drawn. Andrew and his companion turned into a street,
and were suddenly stopped by a frantic man, who, seeing the precious
burthen of Andrew, flew at him like a tiger and grasped him in his
arms, shrieking aloud for bread; but his strength was not equal to his
frenzy. Andrew shook off his grasp, and he fell on the ground. Moved
by compassion, he threw him a loaf; the other darted like a mad dog
upon it, gnawed and bit it, and, at the same moment and on the very
spot, died in horrible convulsions from long disuse of taking food.
Almost at every step they were shocked by the sight of hideous victims
of hunger. It seemed that many could not endure their sufferings in
their houses, and had run out into the streets, as if in hope to find
something strengthening in the open air. At the doorway of a house sat
an old woman, and one could not tell whether she were dead, asleep, or
swooning; at least, she neither heard nor saw anything, but, with her
head bent down over her chest, sat motionless on the same spot. From
the roof of another house there was hanging from a rope a stretched and
dried corpse. The miserable man had not been able to endure to the last
the sufferings of hunger, and had chosen rather to quicken his end by
voluntary suicide.
At seeing such horrifying evidences of the famine, Andrew could not
refrain from asking the Tartar, "Had they, indeed, found nothing to
lengthen their lives? When man comes to the last extremity, when
nothing more remains, well, then he must feed upon what, till then, had
appeared disgusting to him; he may even feed upon animals forbidden by
the law--everything is then to be used for food."
"All is eaten up," answered the Tartar; "thou wilt not find a horse,
a dog--no, not even a mouse left in the town. We never kept any
provisions in town; everything was brought from the country."
"How, then, dying such fearful deaths, can they think of defending the
town?"
"May be the voevoda would have surrendered it; but yesterday the
colonel who garrisons Boodjiang sent a hawk into the town with a
note saying not to surrender, as he is coming with his regiment to
relieve it, and is only waiting for another colonel that they may come
together. Now, we are expecting them every minute--but here we have
reached the house."