[Cover Illustration]
The Trumpeter
of Krakow
A TALE OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY
BY ERIC P. KELLY
Illustrations made
by Angela Pruszynska in Krakow
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
_1957_
Copyright, 1928,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Twenty Seventh Printing, 1957
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
T O
E D W A R D L O W E L L K E L L Y
L O U V I L L E H O W A R D M E R R I L L
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Broken Note......................... 3
CHAPTER
I The Man Who Wouldn’t Sell His Pumpkin... 9
II Krakow.................................. 18
III The Alchemist........................... 36
IV The Good Jan Kanty...................... 51
V In the Street of the Pigeons............ 63
VI The Tower of the Trumpeter.............. 76
VII In the Alchemist’s Loft................. 85
VIII Peter of the Button Face................ 96
IX Button-Face Peter Attacks............... 113
X The Evil One Takes a Hand............... 123
XI The Attack on the Church................ 133
XII Elzbietka Misses the Broken Note........ 147
XIII The Great Tarnov Crystal................ 161
XIV A Great Fire Rages...................... 179
XV King Kazimir Jagiello................... 192
XVI The Last of the Great Tarnov Crystal.... 209
Epilogue. The Broken Note......................... 214
ILLUSTRATIONS
_The Trumpeter of Krakow_ Frontispiece
(This Illustration was Missing from Book when
scanned)
Page
_Guild Towers in the Old City Wall_ 19
_The Church of Our Lady Mary and the 27
Cloth Hall_
_Joseph Caught at the Dog’s Collar_ Facing 30
_The Court of the University of Krakow_ 53
_St. Katherine’s Church_ 99
_The Romanesque Towers of St. Andrew’s 103
Church_
_The Florian Gate_ 135
_The Tower of the Town Hall_ 165
_The Royal Palace of the Kings_ 189
_He Hurled the Crystal Into the Air_ Facing 193
_The Court of the Royal Palace_ 205
Ancient Oath of the Krakow Trumpeters
“I swear on my honor as a Pole, as a servant of the King of the Polish
people, that I will faithfully and unto the death, if there be need,
sound upon the trumpet the Heynal in honor of Our Lady each hour in the
tower of the church which bears Her Name.”
THE TRUMPETER OF KRAKOW
THE BROKEN NOTE
It was in the spring of the year 1241 that rumors began to travel along
the highroad from Kiev in the land of Rus that the Tartars of the East
were again upon the march. Men trembled when they heard that news and
mothers held their children close to their breasts, for the name
“Tartar” was one that froze folks’ blood in their veins. As the weeks
went on, the rumors grew thicker and there began to come through to
Poland, our land of the fields, the news that the country lands of the
Ukraine were ablaze. Then it was heard that Kiev had fallen, then Lvov,
the city of the Lion, and now there was naught between the savage band
of warriors and the fair city of Krakow, save a few peaceful villages
and fertile fields.
The Tartars came through the world like a horde of wild beasts. They
left not one thing alive nor one green blade of wheat standing. They
were short, dark men of shaggy beards and long hair twisted into little
braids, and they rode on small horses which they covered with trophies
that they had gained in war. Brave they were as lions, courageous they
were as great dogs, but they had hearts of stone and knew not mercy, nor
pity, nor tenderness, nor God. On their horses they carried round
shields of leather and iron, and long spears often trailed from their
saddles. About their shoulders and thighs they wore skins of animals.
Some decorated their ears with golden rings—here and there one wore a
gold ring in the nose. When they traveled, the dust rose high into the
sky from beneath the hoofs of their little horses, and the thunder of
the hoofbeats could be heard many miles away. They were so numerous that
it took days for the whole horde to pass any one given point, and for
miles behind the army itself rumbled carts bearing slaves, provisions,
and booty—usually gold.
Before them went always a long, desperate procession of country people
driven from their humble homes by the news of the coming terror; they
had already said farewell to the cottages where they lived, the parting
from which was almost as bitter as death. So it has always been in time
of war that the innocent suffer most—these poor, helpless peasants with
their carts and horses and geese and sheep trudging along through the
dust to escape, if God so willed, the terrible fate which would befall
them were they left behind. There were old people in that procession too
feeble to be stirring even about a house, mothers nursing children,
women weak with sickness, and men broken-hearted at the loss of all that
a lifetime of labor had brought. Children dragged themselves wearily
along beside them, often bearing their pets in their arms.
To this company Krakow opened her gates, and prepared for defense. Many
of the nobility and rich citizens had, in the meantime, fled to the west
or taken refuge in monasteries far to the north. The brothers of the
monastery at Zvierzyniec, a short distance outside the city, took in all
the refugees that the building could accommodate, and then prepared to
stand siege. But the great, weary, terror-mad mob that had fled ahead of
the band of Tartars was content enough to make the city itself its
destination. And once within its walls all turned their faces toward the
south. For there, in the south of the city, towering on its rocky hill
high over the Vistula River, was the great, irregular, turreted mass
that was the Wawel—the fortress and castle of the kings of Poland from
the time of Krakus, the legend king, and the home of the dukes and
nobles who formed the king’s court.
It had been decided to make no attempt to defend the city outside the
castle gates, since that would entail a great loss of life; and so for
several days the city dwellers who remained and these refugees from all
the country about poured into the fortification and were housed inside
its walls. The old castle gates which were then on Castle Highway
opposite the Church of St. Andrew were at last shut and barricaded, and
the walls were manned with citizen soldiery prepared to give their lives
for the protection of the city and their families.
The Tartars fell upon the city in the night and, after burning the
outlying villages, pillaged the districts that lay about the churches of
St. Florian, St. John, and the Holy Cross. The whole night long was one
of hideous sounds—the crackling and fury of flames, the snarling and
yelling of the enemy when they found that the prey had fled, their roars
of triumph when they came upon gold and treasure. As morning dawned the
watchers from the Wawel looked out over the town and saw but three
churches not already in flames. These were the Church of Our Lady Mary
near the great market, the Church of St. Andrew with its stalwart towers
at the Castle Gate, and the Church of St. Adalbert in the market place.
Already a colony of Jews in the Black Village had perished, also those
refugees and town dwellers who had not rushed inside the walls of
defense. There remained but one man—or rather a youth—still alive in
the midst of all that destruction.
He was the trumpeter of the Church of Our Lady Mary, and he had taken
solemn oath to sound the trumpet each hour of the day and night from a
little balcony high up on the front of the church. As the first golden
rays of the sun changed the Vistula from a dark line to a plash of
dancing gold, he mounted this balcony to sound the Heynal—the hymn to
Our Lady which every trumpeter in the church had in the past sworn to
play each hour of the day and night—“until death.” He felt with a
strange joy the glow of the sun as it fell upon him that morning, for
the night had been very dark both with its own shadow and with the
gloomy blackness of men’s ruthlessness.
About his feet, down in the town highway, stood groups of short, fierce
men gazing up at him curiously. Here and there the roof of a house was
shooting upward in flames and belching forth clouds of black smoke.
Hundreds of dwellings lay charred and ruined by the conflagration. He
was alone in the midst of a terrible enemy—he might have fled on the
previous day and gained the castle with the refugees and the town
dwellers, but he had been true to his oath and remained at his post
until he should be driven away. Now it was too late to retreat.
He was a very young man, perhaps nineteen or twenty, and wore a dark
cloth suit that was caught at the knees with buckles, like the
knickerbockers of a later generation; dark, thick hose extended from the
knees to the tops of his soft, pointed sandals, and a short coat falling
just below the waist was held together in front by a belt. The head
covering was of leather and something like a cowl; it fell clear to his
shoulders and ran up over the head in such a way that only his face and
a bit of hair were visible.
“My mother and sister are safe,” he thought. “May God be praised for
that! They are gone these ten days and must be now with the cousins in
Moravia.”
It came to him then what a sweet thing life is. The sun over the Vistula
was now reflected in the windows of the Cathedral of the Wawel where the
priests were already saying mass. At the tops of all the gates he could
see guards in full armor upon which the sunlight flashed. A banner with
a white eagle hung in the air above the gate at the great draw.
“Poland lives,” he thought.
And then it came to him, young as he was, that he was part of the
glorious company of Polish men that was fighting for all Christendom
against brutal and savage invaders. He had not seen much of death before
that minute—he had heard of it only as something vague. And now, he
himself was perhaps going out to meet it, because of his oath, because
of his love for the Church, because of his love for Poland.
“I shall keep my word,” he mused. “If I die it shall be for that. My
word is as good as my life.”
Had a painter caught his expression then, he would have caught only the
expression of a very great peace—an expression that signified somehow
that God was very close. There was no moment of weakness, no faltering,
no suffering even—for he did not think of what might come after his
duty was performed. The sand in the hourglass already marked the hour
for the trumpet to sound.
“Now, for Poland and Our Lady I will sound the Heynal,” he said, and
raised the trumpet to his lips.
Softly he blew at first—then, thrilled with a sense of triumph, he felt
in his heart a joy that was almost ecstatic. He seemed to see in a
vision that though he might now die alone and for naught save what
perhaps some scoffing ones might call a foolish honor, still that
bravery was to descend as a heritage to the people to whom he belonged,
and was to become a part of their spirit, their courage, their power of
everlasting—all this that moment brought.
A Tartar below crouched to his bow and drew back the arrow as far as he
could draw. The string whirred. The dark shaft flew like a swift bird
straight for the mark. It pierced the breast of the young trumpeter when
he was near the end of his song—it quivered there a moment and the song
ceased. But still holding to the trumpet the youth fell back against the
supporting wall and blew one last glorious note; it began strongly,
trembled, and then ceased—broken like the young life that gave it
birth, and at that moment those below applied the torch to the wooden
church and it, too, rose in flames to Heaven, with the soul of the youth
among them.
CHAPTER I
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T SELL HIS PUMPKIN
It was in late July of the year 1461 that the sun rose one morning red
and fiery as if ushering in midsummer’s hottest day. His rays fell upon
the old city of Krakow and the roads leading up to it, along which
rolled and rocked a very caravan of peasants’ wagons. They were drawn
mostly by single horses hitched into place by the side of a rough pole
that served for shaft; for wheels there were stout pieces of board
nailed tightly together and cut round about, baked with fire at the rim
to harden them; for body they had but rude cross boards as a floor, with
sides and ends of plaited willow reeds, so that the wagons had the
appearance of large baskets traveling on wheels. As they moved along a
road often rough from holes and stones, out through fields sometimes,
and even across streams, the wagons pitched about like little boats on a
wind-swept sea.
In many cases the drivers were walking alongside the carts, flicking
their long whips now and then above the horses’ backs to give the
animals a little encouragement, while upon the seats sat the patient
figures of women and children.
In the wagons was all manner of merchandise—vegetables, flowers, ducks,
hens and geese, pigs, butter and milk. Here a driver was conveying a
load of skins, here one had nothing but black earth for enriching city
gardens. Another, driving a load of poultry, wore around his neck, like
beads, garland after garland of dried mushrooms strung upon strings. At
the back of the picture rose the foothills of the Carpathians, misty and
golden in the early sun, and at a distance the Vistula River curved like
a silver bracelet about the Wawel Hill. All about was the early-morning
smell of wet grass and fresh earth and growing things.
Market day had begun. All night some of these wagons had been traveling
along the highways that spread out from the great highway that was the
Krakow, Tarnov, Lvov, Kiev route. Some had been on the march for two
days and two nights, so distant were the borders of the province. Here
were men and women in town dress from the larger centers, here were
barefooted peasants in long coats and round hats, here were peasant
women in rough garments but with head scarfs and shawls of dazzling
colors, here were the inhabitants of a Jewish village, twelve men in
black robes and black hats, with the characteristic orthodox curls
hanging down in front of their ears.
Here were boys belonging to the retinue of a local _szlachcic_ or
country gentleman, their leather costumes showing up to advantage beside
the rather dingy dress of the male portion of the peasantry. Here and
there were women with little babies, here and there were old people
trudging by the sides of their wagons up to market, as they had done for
thirty or forty years past.
But every man in that caravan carried some sort of weapon, either a
short knife at the belt, or quarterstaff in the hand, or huge-headed ax
at the bottom of the wagon. For thieves were abroad in great number at
times of market, and it was even said that there were country gentlemen
of ruined fortune who were not above recouping themselves now and then
at the expense of some such caravan. Usually, however, it was on the
return trip that the thieves were numerous, for then each villager and
peasant had gold or silver as the result of the day’s bargaining.
Although practically all these wagons carried cargoes of goods, there
was one which seemed strangely empty for market day. It had two horses
instead of the usual one, its shaft pole was stouter than those of the
other wagons, its occupants were better dressed than the peasants and
seemed somehow not like actual workers of the soil. In it rode the
driver, a man of perhaps forty-five years, a woman—his wife—some ten
years younger, and a boy who sat at the open end of the wagon, dangling
his legs above the dirt and mud of the highway.
“Now, wife,” said the man, snapping a long whip at the off horse—his
wife was sitting beside him on a rude seat at the front of the
wagon—“that high tower you see is a watch tower on the Wawel Hill of
Krakow. Should we go as flies the stork we should reach there by the
eighth hour. See, in the distance are the two towers of the Church of
Our Lady. It is a welcome sight to my eyes after these three weeks on a
rocking cart.”
The woman threw back a gray hood from her face and looked ahead with
longing eyes. “It is Krakow, then,” she said, “the city of my mother.
Often has she told me of its glory, and yet I never had hoped to see it.
God knows I wish I might see it differently and with less pain in my
heart. But God gives, and man receives, and we are here at last.”
“Yes,” said the man.
For a long time they traveled along in silence. The man was musing on
his early experiences in Krakow, the woman on her lost home in the
Ukraine, and the boy letting his imagination run riot in speculation as
to the sights that he should see in the great city.
Their thoughts were brought suddenly from their own affairs to a
commotion among the carts behind them. Drivers were reining in their
horses and swinging them to the left of the road, narrow as it was, in
order to let some one pass. The man whose thoughts had been thus
interrupted turned around, trying to discern who it might be who was
pushing forward through the long line of carts, and in a moment he saw
that it was a rider on a small horse.
“Way, way,” the rider was shouting. “Do you peasants think that the
whole road belongs to you? . . . Stay on your farm, where you belong,”
he shouted angrily at a peasant driver whose horse reared suddenly from
the edge of the road to the middle. “Give me room to pass. You have no
business on the highroad with an animal that jumps about like that.”
“I had gone in the ditch else,” replied the peasant without surliness.
The rider glanced sharply at the contents of the man’s wagon and being
assured that it contained nothing but fresh straw to be sold to
brick-makers, dashed ahead until he was even with the cart which held
the man and woman and boy.
The last named had been watching his advance curiously. Now this boy,
Joseph Charnetski, was in his fifteenth year. He was not by any means
handsome, though he could not be called ugly. His hair and his eyes were
dark and his face was somewhat round and very pleasant. He wore rather
rich, though travel-soiled, nether garments, not leather like those of
the retainers, nor of coarse sacking like the peasants’ clothes, but of
a good quality of homespun, and a thick, buttoned coat of the same
material, which fell skirtlike nearly to the knees. On his feet were
brown leather boots, whose tops were soft and loose, and so high that
they reached almost to the bottom of the coat. On his head he wore a
round hat like a turban.
The instant the rider perceived the boy, “_Chlopak_, _chlopak_ (boy,
boy),” he exclaimed in a rather croaky voice, “tell your old man to hold
his horses. You come and hold mine.”
The boy obeyed, but as he leaped from the wagon and grasped at the
horse’s bit thong, he came to the conclusion that the stranger was no
friend. In those days when the world was just emerging from a period of
darkness and cruelty, it was a necessity that each man should be
constantly upon his guard against other men. Robbers abounded—jealous
friends often descended to mean tricks; men of noble birth and breeding
thought nothing of defrauding poor peasants, and among the poor peasants
themselves were those who would commit crimes for the sake of gold.
Therefore when Joseph grasped at the horse’s bit rein he had already
come to the conclusion, perhaps from something in the stranger’s looks
or speech or manner, that he was one to be treated with caution. He was
attired in a retainer’s suit of thick cloth. The jacket was short but
concealed a coat of very light chain armor beneath. He wore for breeches
not knickerbockers but a single leather garment that combined doublet
and hose in one. The cap was round, with a hanging jewel, probably
glass, dangling behind against his neck.
It was the face, however, that betrayed the soul beneath. It was a dark,
oval, wicked face—the eyes were greenish and narrow and the eyebrow
line above them ran straight across the bridge of the nose, giving the
effect of a monkey rather than a man. One cheek was marked with a
buttonlike scar, the scar of the button plague that is so common in the
lands east of the Volga, or even the Dnieper, and marks the bearer as a
Tartar or a Cossack or a Mongol. The ears were low-set and ugly. The
mouth looked like the slit that boys make in the pumpkins they carry on
the eve of Allhallows. Above the mouth was a cropped mustache which hung
down at the ends and straggled into a scanty beard. The man carried at
his waist a short curved sword and from the inside of his jacket could
be seen protruding the jeweled handle of an Oriental dagger.
No sooner had the boy caught at his rein than the man was off his horse
and with a leap had gained the wagon. Joseph’s father reached quickly
under the wagon seat for a short cross-hilted sword.
“Not one step nearer,” he shouted as the man came toward him with hand
outstretched as if to take his hand. “Who you may be I know not, but I
stand as a Christian till I find out what your errand is.”
The stranger stopped, smiled at the ready sword still in its scabbard,
though with a sudden respect in his smile, then pulled off his hat and
made a bow. “I take it that you are Andrew Charnetski,” he said.
“You take too much,” answered the driver. “To strangers I am Pan[1]
Andrew Charnetski.”
[1] Pan is a formal Polish term signifying Sir or Mr.
The stranger bowed again. “I spoke as to an equal,” he said. “I am
Stefan Ostrovski of Chelm. But now I am come from Kiev where I have been
on state business. It is known that one Muscovite has some important
business with our Lithuanian provinces and I, though I may not say by
whom, was sent to learn——” He broke off suddenly as if wishing to give
the impression that his business was such that he might not speak of it
in public fashion. “But on my way home men told me that a band of
Tartars had come north from the Krim pillaging much of the country
about. Among the houses which they had burned and the fields which they
had destroyed were the house and fields of one Andrew Charnetski—nay, I
ask pardon—of Pan Andrew Charnetski, who was reported to have escaped
with his wife and son in the direction of Krakow, where they were said
to have friends. This being true, and since I was traveling in the same
direction, I sought a description of Pan Andrew and his family, and this
morning when I saw a true Ukrainian cart, drawn by two horses and not by
one, and bearing a man and woman and boy such as had been described to
me, I took the assurance to present myself and make my greetings to
you.”
Pan Charnetski scrutinized the face, the clothing, and the figure of the
stranger closely. “The half is not yet told,” he said.
“Nay,” answered the other, “but the rest is perhaps a tale for you and
me behind some heavy door when we reach the city of Krakow just ahead. I
have heard——” He spoke significantly, then with his hands he described
a circle in the air.
Charnetski watched him with his eyelids drawn half shut so that he could
focus his attention upon the man and see naught of the world outside.
His heart was not so cold and steady, however, as one might think from
looking at his calm, composed features. In truth at the stranger’s
gesture his heart was beating a tattoo against his ribs. He knew that
almost every word the man had uttered was false; he knew that his name
was not Ostrovski even though there had been members of that family in
Chelm—not one feature of the man’s countenance was Polish. And there
was that in the tone of the last words that had suggested a threat.
Charnetski realized also that here was no chance meeting. It was
fourteen days and more since they had left the border. This man, he
reasoned, had followed them all that distance, or had perhaps been sent
by some person of higher rank to intercept them before they gained
entrance to the city.
“You have heard naught that concerns me,” he answered shortly. “And now
since the carts are leaving me behind, will you kindly return to your
horse? I have nothing to say that will be of importance to you, nor do
you interest me in any way.”
Charnetski spoke truly, for the carts ahead were already some distance
away and the drivers behind were shouting at him angrily for blocking
the traffic.
“On the contrary,” answered the stranger, “you have that which interests
me greatly. And I will not leave you until we are safe behind some door
in the city. Here, boy,” he shouted at Joseph, “lead my horse along
behind the wagon, for I intend to ride the rest of the way.”
Pan Charnetski’s cheeks blazed. “Now, by the lightning, you make
yourself too free here,” he articulated. “State what business you have
quickly and be done.”
The man glanced around the cart and he saw on the wooden floor just in
front of the driver’s seat a huge yellow pumpkin. “Ha,” he said, “a
pumpkin, and at this time of the year. I suppose they raise pumpkins in
the winter on the steppe. What shall be the price of that pumpkin?”
“It is not for sale,” answered Charnetski.
“No?”
“I said no.”
“What if I offer its weight in gold?”
“All’s one.”
“You will not sell?”
“I tell you, _no_.”
“Then”—the stranger drew his sword quickly—“then you will fight for
it!” And he stepped forward toward the driver.
Charnetski hesitated no longer. In the flash of an eye he had vaulted
across the seat, dodged a blow of the saber, and caught the stranger’s
right wrist in a grip of steel. The sword dropped with a clang.
Charnetski did not let the man go, however. He threw his left hand into
the small of the stranger’s leg and with clutch upon arm and leg hoisted
him high and tossed him out of the cart. He fell in the mud, sputtering
with rage and calling curses of every description upon Charnetski’s
head. And at this minute Joseph, with admirable foresight, swung the
man’s horse about and struck him smartly upon the right flank. The horse
reared and capered, then dashed off down the road in the direction from
which the wagons had come; at the same instant the boy leaped upon the
cart and shouted to his father who climbed back to the seat and swung
the long lash over the horses’ heads. They were off in a second, leaving
the stranger in the middle of the highway, turning now to the right and
now to the left as if uncertain whether to pursue his horse or his
enemy. And Charnetski, swinging about, picked up the sword from the
bottom of the cart and hurled it into the road.
Some time later they reached the Kazimierz, the Jewish city founded by
King Kazimir more than one hundred years earlier. Passing through this,
they came to the bridge across the Vistula which would admit them to the
city of Krakow itself. Finding, however, that this bridge was undergoing
repairs, they were forced to take the next bridge to the north; thence
they proceeded to the fortified gate called Mikolayska, where they were
challenged by the gatekeeper.