PETER OF THE BUTTON FACE
Summer burned itself into fall. The Vistula which had been growing ever
lower and lower with the heat was now but a narrow ribbon of water and
the banks along it were parched and dried and yellow. Leaves were
changing from green to brown and the birds were making ready to leave
for southern lands as soon as the first suggestion of cold should
appear. Across the meadows now the horses and wagons were marching daily
and the dry hay was filling barn and shelter in all the country about.
The fruits of the autumn were already appearing in the market, the
apples of the first bearing, the golden squashes, and the late cabbage.
And over the city and country hung a sky of deep, exquisite blue, for in
all the world there is no sky so blue as is the Krakow sky, and no sun
is so golden as is the sun of early autumn.
When the Month of the Heather had passed by and the Month of Hemp
Beating was at hand, Joseph had learned all the notes of the Heynal and
could play the little hymn upon his father’s trumpet. Once even he had
played it in the tower; on that night his father had played it toward
the west, south, and east, and then had allowed the boy to play it at
the north window. The girl, Elzbietka, a little quicker of ear than
Joseph, had long since mastered the air and quickly memorized Joseph’s
notes, so that she could not only hum the music, but reproduce it in
writing upon a wall or piece of parchment.
One evening when Elzbietka was visiting Joseph’s mother—and she came
more and more frequently now since the alchemist had begun to carry on
new experiments with Tring—Joseph exclaimed suddenly:
“Before long I shall play all four Heynals.”
She let her chin rest upon one hand as she did often when she thought
and when she spoke seriously. “I shall listen,” she said. “It comforts
me more than ever now when I hear the hymn played in the night
time—since there is seldom any one in our rooms when I awake. Joseph,”
she spoke in a very low tone, “do you know I think that my uncle is
possessed?”
He gave a great start. “Possessed—and by whom?”
“I don’t know. But he isn’t himself. It isn’t that he is out of his
wits—no, not that at all. He is just as intelligent and just as kind as
he ever was, but he has become so interested in something that he is
doing in the loft that he thinks but little of me or of his friends in
the world. There is that student, Johann Tring——”
“Yes, I know,” he answered quickly.
“He and my uncle are together in the loft every night. Sometimes they
stay there until it is light. They say queer things, and sometimes my
uncle cries out as if he were in pain. You heard them the night that I
told you to go up the staircase. It is always like that.”
“I told father what I heard that night,” said Joseph, “and he only said
that it was none of our affair, that your uncle is a man who has been
very kind to us, and who knows what he is about. Also he forbade me ever
to spy upon your uncle again. Father said that your uncle is a great
scholar and that he is now probably working upon something that will win
him fame.”
“Ay—perhaps,” she meditated—“but I loved him better as he was.”
From that time on Elzbietka became more and more a part of Pan Andrew’s
family. In the afternoons she used to bring her sewing downstairs into
the front room and sit there for hours working and chatting or humming
little tunes under her breath. When Joseph returned from his studies in
the afternoon the two were accustomed to walk out into the city and see
its changing wonders, its new caravans, its pageants, its companies of
knights and soldiers, its processions of guilds. Often they walked out
through the gates into the country where there was rich black earth, and
behind them or alongside or ahead ran the great Tartar dog. The walks
took them to the old Jewish city of the Kazimierz, across the fortified
bridge on the west arm of the Vistula, to the old church on the Skalka,
where the holy Stanislas was murdered at his altar, to the high mound
above the city where it was said that old King Krakus was buried; to
these and to many other places had they wandered while the sun was
bright and the air not too cool.
Once they went to visit the towers of the Church of Our Lady Mary in the
late afternoon. The watchman let them in at the little gate at the base
of the tower and they climbed up to the room where the day trumpeter was
on duty. He was the man that Pan Andrew relieved at night, and he
thought it a great honor to have a visit from such a little lady as
Elzbietka, and he told her many of the legends which have come down from
old days when the church tower was being built.
Joseph picked up his father’s trumpet from the table. “When I first play
all the four Heynals you must listen and see if you hear a single note
played wrong.”
[Illustration: _Entrance to St. Katherine’s Church in the Kazimierz. In
the Background Are the Towers of the Church on the Skalka._]
“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.
[Illustration: _The Romanesque Towers of St. Andrew’s Church on Castle
Street._]
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.