CHAPTER V

IN THE STREET OF THE PIGEONS

St. Ann’s Street was as black as pitch when they emerged from the habitation of the scholar-priest. He insisted on accompanying them and carried his little candle lantern for aid, which, though it threw a faint light upon the ground a step or two ahead, yet had not much more light than the stars which shone down from a moonless sky. Pan Andrew with his wife on his right arm followed Jan Kanty, and Joseph brought up the rear. They had taken but a few steps along the narrow footwalk by the side of the road, when something damp and clammy was forced into the boy’s right hand; he gave a little startled jump, but reassured himself at the next minute that it was nothing but the nose of a stray dog that had sought his hand as a token of friendly greeting.

“And as I live,” thought Joseph as he reached down and felt a great shaggy head, “it’s like the wolf dog that leaped at Elzbietka this very day. Yes—it’s about the same size—and here: the collar is exactly the same that I had my fingers through. I know its feel by those little knobs that almost tear the flesh. Father! Father!” he called.

Pan Andrew turned about quickly. “What is it?”

“A dog,” answered the boy, “a friendly dog.”

“Bring him along with us,” said the father with a laugh, “we can’t have too many friends just now.” And at that they continued on their way.

Now of all the creatures that God has put in the world a dog is the most curious, and sometimes, one might think, the most discerning. For when this same animal had broken loose in the morning, his first impulse, which he had followed, had been that of flight. His second impulse was to look for a friend, since no dog can live without a friend. The Tartar boy had already departed. The dog had seen too much of him as it was. Also by virtue of a rare instinct which dogs, and sometimes horses, possess, the wolf dog had realized fully that the boy who had leaped at his collar was not an enemy. Perhaps it was the boy’s touch, perhaps it was some quality in the tone of his voice, but the animal knew that Joseph was used to dogs and knew as well that he was just in his treatment of them. Therefore he had searched all day throughout the city streets, and when he came upon this little group of people in the dark street his sense of smell told him that here was a dog lover, and marvel of marvels, it was the same dog lover that had sprung upon him earlier in the day!

They turned at length from St. Ann’s Street into a side lane that is known to-day as Jagiellonska, and followed it for a short distance until they reached the Street of the Pigeons. Here they turned to the left and walked for a few steps until suddenly just before them rose a babel of subdued voices. Father Jan Kanty stood stock-still. The others also came to a halt and remained motionless except for the dog, which strained at Joseph’s hold upon his collar.

“Stay,” said the scholar, “I will go forward to see what may be in the air.” And holding his lantern at the height of his head, he plunged into a crowd of black-robed figures that had formed a circle in the very middle of the street.

“Students,” he cried aloud, as he swung his lantern first to this face and then to that, “students. And what devilment make you here now?”

The crowd broke before him at a touch. Either he was much feared by them or greatly respected—that Pan Andrew could see—perhaps both.

“A duel,” he exclaimed as he reached the center of the crowd, where a space lighted by a lantern upon the ground had previously been obscured by the bodies of the lookers-on, “and what means it?”

Two young men, both students, with their black university robes lying beside them on the ground, stood facing each other with unfastened underjackets. Slender Italian dueling swords or foils, held firmly in the clasped fingers of their bared right arms, had clashed the instant before Jan Kanty entered the arena.

“A duel,” he repeated. “Do you not know that dueling has been forbidden I know not how many times within these streets bounding the university? Do you not know that it is punishable by fine or imprisonment even, if the duelers are students?”

His hands groped fearlessly for the weapons. “This is no play duel,” he cried, as he gathered them in.

Indeed it was not! The young men were fighting with naked rapiers! In most of the students’ duels the points of the weapons were capped with buttons to make them less dangerous, or if the engagements were to be with broadswords, the opponents wore breastplates and heavy gauntlets and helmets. But here stood two young men without a single precaution against injury, and it was quite evident that one of them would have been badly wounded, had not the scholar brought the fight to an end.

“What means this?” he repeated. “Who may you be?”

Holding the lantern close up to the face of the nearer, he cried out suddenly in astonishment, “Johann Tring! As much would I have thought of seeing you here as I would have of seeing our own Lord Cardinal. You whom I thought more a slave to a crucible than to a sword. And your name?” he thundered at the other.

“Conrad Mlynarki of Mazovia,” answered the student, thrusting his weapon back into his girdle and letting his eyes drop for shame.

“A Mazovian! Well, it rejoices me that you are ashamed, and there was perhaps reason for your anger, since I hear that Mazovians are insulted without much thought these days. Go to your room! I will hear your story to-morrow. And you”—he turned to the remnants of the original crowd, those few who remained, maliciously hoping to see punishment meted out to the offenders—“betake yourselves to your bursars with all possible speed, for if I see one of you here when I return, I will notify the authorities in the morning.”

“As to you, Johann Tring,” he addressed the other student when he stood alone with him in the middle of the street, “are you not ashamed at such a public brawl?”

“I am not,” said the student quickly and without flinching at the look which Jan Kanty gave him.

At this moment Pan Andrew and the others came up to them. In the light of the lantern Joseph glanced at the face of the student, Johann Tring, and received almost a shock—a feeling at least of violent repulsion. It was not that the face was distorted, indeed it was not, the eyes were bright and piercing, and the hair was black—the carriage of the body was erect, and the whiteness of the skin where the collar was rolled back stood in remarkable contrast to the hair and the blackness that lay about him. But the nose was thin and mean, the mouth was small and smug, and out of the eyes came a look that signified an utterly selfish spirit behind them. For one so young this expression was strange, and even more than strange; it was unnatural, and this unnaturalness was more apparent, even, to a boy of Joseph’s age than it might have been to an older and maturer man who was used to much selfishness and meanness in the world.

“Now what caused this quarrel?” Joseph heard the scholar ask the question rather sharply.

“It is too long to tell at once——”

“Yes, but briefly.”

“He insulted me.”

“What did he say?”

“More things than one, but chiefly chided me about my studies. Asked me if I had learned yet how to make gold out of iron or brass or leather and said that he would collect old shoes all over the city if I would transmute them into precious metal.”

“And this upon no provocation?”

The young man hesitated, yet there was something compelling about Jan Kanty that caused men to speak the truth to him. “I did ask him if the frogs in the North country spoke Mazovian,” he answered in a rather sour voice.

“Yes, and I thought it was something like this,” spoke Jan Kanty quickly. “Why must one always aggravate these Mazovians to their swords? I warn you here and now that, swordsman though you may be, the Mazovians are much more nimble with blades than with tongue.”

“But he said further,” went on Tring in self-justification, and being unable to express himself clearly in Polish continued in German, much to Joseph’s distress, for he could not understand a word.

“Have more caution, Tring,” said the scholar at length. “Since you are not enrolled as a regular student of the university you must be even more careful in your conduct than if you were. . . . Since it is you who have first drawn your weapon, it must be you who make peace. Go to-morrow at dawn and kiss your opponent upon the cheek and sue him for pardon.”

This advice sat hard upon Tring’s temper, but he was so much influenced by the scholar that he finally bowed his head in consent.

“And further than this I might say, Johann Tring, that such occurrences bring you no credit. I know not much of your studies these days, though I think sometimes that you keep company more with necromancers and astrologers of little merit than with such worthy men as Pan Kreutz and his equals. These are dark days when men look with suspicion upon all who engage in investigation whether it be honest or dishonorable, godly or selfish. Are you still at Kreutz’s?”

“I am.”

“Then come with us since we are bound for his dwelling. This Pan and his wife are taking the rooms below Kreutz’s.”

The young man tried to peer into the darkness beyond the lantern light to see who the new tenants might be, but none of the Charnetskis were visible.

They walked ahead a few steps until they came to the door where Joseph had been in the afternoon. Jan Kanty reached up and pulled the wire which hung down from above the door, and in a few minutes an old bent woman with a lantern scrutinized their faces from the open doorway and admitted them.

“All will be well now,” said Joseph’s father. “We need not trouble you further.”

“It has been otherwise than trouble,” protested the scholar. “You will be well and comfortable, I am sure, for all the arrangements have been made. To-morrow I shall send you the man who will tell you of your new duties. And now good night to you, Pan Andrew—Kovalski”—he hesitated a bit over the assumed name—“and may peace be with you.”

“And with you.” They all repeated it.

The kindly figure of the gentle, loving, saintly old man passed out into the darkness again. The woman slammed the door and bolted it heavily when the Charnetskis—now the Kovalskis—Johann Tring, and the dog were inside.

“At last,” said Pan Andrew, “we are at home.”

They passed through the passage with its pointed arches and emerged into the court, the woman leading the way with her lantern. Here Tring bade them good night and went to his room on the right-hand side of the court. Joseph felt at parting from him something of the same dislike that he had experienced when the lantern light had fallen upon his face in the street; the face was one that might easily come to haunt a man in his dreams, and yet it was in daylight but an ordinary face, like that of a thousand other students, who possessed neither the gift of beauty nor the curse of ugliness—yet in that yellow gleam of the lantern there had been upon the features some indefinable threat of malignity.

The woman led them to the stairway on the left. As they ascended these same stairs that Joseph had climbed earlier in the day, the whole staircase seemed even more shaky and rickety than it had appeared in the light of day. The woman moved ahead of them freely, but Pan Andrew and his wife and Joseph clung to the railing as if for protection in case the boards should fall away beneath their feet.

At the first landing the door stood open. Out from this door came the welcome beam of a candle, lighted by the hands of Elzbietka Kreutz. The father with this candle in his hand at once inspected the little quarters. There were but two rooms, one of them fortunately large and of good shape, so that while one end of it must serve as a bedroom for Pan Andrew and his wife, there was ample room at the other end for the general living quarters of the family. The smaller room at the back Joseph would sleep in. The woman who had opened the door had been busy all the evening preparing the place for occupancy, expending some of the money which Pan Andrew had given her, for bare necessities, a rug, wooden eating utensils, chairs, and beds.

He had left his name as Andrew Kovalski with the woman, the name which had been agreed upon with Jan Kanty, a name in itself one of the most common, since it signified a smith—and the alchemist and his niece having been advised of the kinship with the Tenczynskis, willingly pledged silence concerning the true name.

“Well, wife,” said Pan Andrew when they were alone and the door fastened, “this is better than we dared hope.” Thereupon he laid down upon the table in the large room the precious round parcel which had not left his hands at any time since they had set out from Jan Kanty’s cell. “Best of all we are safe here; the door is heavy, the front of the building is of stone, and from the rear no one could climb over the wall without danger to himself. It is, indeed, the wall of a monastery to which none but monks have access. Above us is the alchemist, Kreutz, and below on the ground floor are the old woman and her son, both of whom take care of the building and watch the gate at night.

“Across the way live a few students, one of them this Johann Tring who accompanied us. Those seeking us would never think of looking for us here; the change in name is also a protection. Here we may stay in comfort until such time as we may communicate with the King.”

He intended to say more, but was interrupted by a curious sound that came from outside as if a heavy body were dragging itself along. The mother uttered a little cry of fear; Pan Andrew reached for the handle of his short sword, but Joseph broke into a laugh.

“It is my dog rubbing against the door,” he said. “He is tired and hungry, and no doubt wants a little water. There is a well in the court below from which I will draw it, and he can sleep then in the shelter of the wall. To-morrow I must procure a chain or rope to fasten him with, for he is nearly wild and might cause trouble if he ran about.” With this Joseph searched in a basket for a bit of meat and a piece of bread, and finding them, descended to the court below. It was dark there but his mother held the lantern above him so that he could see to draw water and settle the dog in a corner of the wall.

When they returned his father was preparing for bed. The valuable package had been disposed of somewhere; with curious eyes Joseph scanned every inch of the large room and came to the conclusion that the only hiding place in the quarters was that afforded by the bed, either in the shadowy place beneath it, or somewhere in the bedding or folded clothes beneath the headrests.

He ceased to wonder very long about it, however, for his eyelids were heavy, despite his sleep of the afternoon. The whole world drifted off into oblivion, it seemed, the minute that he laid his head on the stuffed bag that served for a pillow.

The next day all were astir early. The mother was at work polishing the woodwork, and the father was driving nails to strengthen the cheap chairs, or covering cracks in the wall, and later inspecting the old staircase outside the building to see if he might mend it. The daylight inspection brought with it some satisfaction, for while it confirmed his belief that the staircase was shaky, yet it revealed that the underpinnings were firmer than might be supposed. The staircase might last for some years if it did not have rough usage, and certainly there was no immediate danger as Pan Andrew had feared the night before.

Joseph took an early opportunity, after he had eaten the breakfast brought by the old woman who lived below, to run forth into the Street of the Pigeons with the dog, whom he named at once Wolf. In the daytime the street wore little of the sinister aspect that it carried at night; the little oval windows that had seemed then like wicked eyes peering down, now were more like the eyes of merry gnomes or pixies. The buildings which in the twilight, or even in the night time when lights fell upon them, seemed grotesque or terrible, in the light of day seemed only curiously twisted out of shape and hung out and bent inward in every conceivable fashion. All the lower windows bore heavy iron bars; doors carried great metal hinges that spread like trees over the surface of the hard wood, and chains dangled and rattled when the house occupants went in or out. From some windows hung clothes—women’s clothing, long hose worn by men, jackets, and here and there, a student’s black gown. The novelty of the street attracted the boy, and for a long time he wandered through it curiously.

At the upper end, where it met a cross street that ran toward the Rynek, the Street of the Pigeons curved quite sharply. Joseph finally ran with the dog clear to this cross street, which bore the name Bracka, and then, retracing his steps, bore back to the house which had now become his home. Mounting the steps rather breathlessly, he threw open the door to the outer room and was about to shout a merry greeting as was his usual custom, but checked himself at sight of a stranger who stood talking with his father. The newcomer, who had a pleasant face, was dressed in leathers somewhat like those of the night watch when the outer chain armor is removed. On the table in front of the men lay a long brass trumpet, made cunningly and polished until it resembled gold.

By the side of the trumpet lay two parchment scripts, one of them evidently a copy of a long piece of writing, the other—as Joseph could see—a set of musical notes worked carefully in red and black.

“This,” said the stranger, pointing first to the script containing the writing, “is a copy of the oath that you have already sworn. This other is the music of the Heynal, the hymn which you must play from the church tower every hour of the night. The trumpeter whom you relieve to-night will give you the key to the tower room, and what information you may need. It is a noble piece of work, this sounding of the Heynal, and I am much pleased that Father Jan has been able to find so good a Pole as you to carry out the night duties. With this he kissed Pan Andrew upon the right cheek and departed.”

Joseph stared in frank amazement. The Heynal! The church tower. And his father!

“I will tell you everything,” said the father as they sat down to the noonday meal. “This oath which I have sworn is the customary oath taken by the watchman-trumpeter of the tower of the Church of Our Lady Mary. You may read it at your leisure. The music is the hymn with the broken note of which I have promised to tell you the story soon. It is played each hour from the windows in the octagon room at the top of the higher tower.”

“And you are to be the trumpeter?” asked Joseph.

“I am, thanks to the good Jan Kanty,” the father answered. “The trumpeter and the watchman as well, for it is from this tower that fires throughout the city are sighted and the alarm given with the big bell. For the present it must be for our own safety that we are known as the Kovalski family, a name which Father Jan has given us. As plain Andrew Kovalski I shall be a mere city dweller of Krakow. I shall be trumpeter, succeeding the man—God rest his soul!—who died but a week ago, since which time there has been a substitute who can play but badly.”

“But the man said each hour of the night,” exclaimed the boy. “Will you be there all night?”

“Yes,” answered Pan Andrew. “It is for my own safety to be abroad in the city only after nightfall. None will recognize me then—and as for you, my son, the good father has arranged that you shall attend the Collegium Minus here, to complete your studies which I and your tutors have already begun with you. But there must be caution employed even by you, for there are people who seek nothing better than to find us and despoil us of our treasure. You may take your exercises with the other boys very soon, however, and go abroad with discretion, for in the clothes which I shall buy you there will be no danger, I think, that you may be recognized. A close mouth is necessary nevertheless. Tell no one of our adventures and be content for the time with the plain name Joseph Kovalski.”

Thus at the direction of the good Jan Kanty, Pan Andrew became Pan Kovalski—Joseph was to be sent to school—and the watchtower of the Church of Our Lady Mary was to see a new trumpeter.

At the moment that the father had ceased speaking, there came running into the room from the staircase the girl Elzbietka Kreutz, who made straight for Joseph’s mother and was caught into her arms. “We shall be happy here,” the woman exclaimed, “that I know, and here is one that needs a mother’s love.” The girl turned to smile at Pan Andrew whose face grew gentle at the sight of her eyes, and he picked up her slim, dainty hand and kissed it—it was indeed a picture, that fragile white hand lying in his huge brown palm.

“Uncle has told me,” she said, “that you are to play the trumpet at the church. Often at night, when I lie awake lonely and have strange fears, I listen for the music from the steeple. And now when I know that it is Joseph’s father that is playing I shall go to sleep again and fear nothing.”

“It is as if I had two children,” said Pan Andrew, slipping one arm about the child and the other about his son. “It truly seems as if God has once more smiled upon us.”