CHAPTER VI

THE TOWER OF THE TRUMPETER

One of the great sights of Central Europe, even in those far-away days, which men came from all parts of the world to see, was the Church of Our Lady Mary in Krakow. Now though this church rose majestically over the medieval city, its towers visible from afar, and its red-brick walls as substantial and as solid as the very rock base of the Wawel Hill itself, it was not from the outside such an imposing sight as was its more aristocratic sister, the Wawel Cathedral. It lacked flying buttresses and distinct Gothic ornamentation such as huge gargoyles and flowers and saints carved in stone, though its graceful form indicated a solid and magnificent strength. It was not a church such as one might gaze upon in sunny France where the mild breezes and sweet sunshine permit delicate carvings and pinnacles upon the outside walls, but it was built like a solid fortress to withstand the mighty storms that sometimes sweep over Poland from the wild steppes or from the Baltic Sea. It was the interior of this church, however, that drew men to it, for within, it was a very miracle of beauty, a crystal hidden in a shapely stone.

It was to this church, then, that Pan Andrew and Joseph wended their way after darkness fell on their first day in the new dwelling. Pan Andrew carried the trumpet under his right arm. Near the base of the higher tower a watchman spied them as they approached, and unlocked a small, heavy door that led to the tower stairs. They went up a narrow staircase, winding about in the darkness, until it reached a platform where the interior of the tower loomed suddenly above them. Just at the right, as they began their ascent in the main body of the tower, was a door that led to a little chapel in which, as Joseph learned afterward, prisoners condemned to death spent their last hours on earth.

A man carrying a lantern shouted to them from above; they waited then until he had descended—he was the day watchman whom Pan Andrew relieved. He paused to kiss Pan Andrew upon the cheek in welcome, and to speak a few words in explanation of his duties above. Then he placed in his hand the lantern and a key to the room which the trumpeter was to occupy in the high tower. He wished them luck on their first night and then descended by the side staircase to the ground where the watchman let him out. Joseph and his father in the meantime began to climb the steps of the scaffolding that led up into the tower. This scaffolding was held in place by cross beams, and at its edge ran the steps, so built that as a man ascended he passed constantly from one of the four sides of the tower to another side. The staircase was steep and narrow, but very solid, so solid that the stairs did not creak as they ascended.

They climbed and climbed, past five levels of windows, glassed in with small white globes of solid crystal. Up and up went father and son until they reached the level where there was a room for the watchman. This octagonal room was divided into two sections, one being the room where the trumpeter might keep warm between watches, the other being the open space around it from which the turret windows looked out over the city. Here hung extra trumpets, here were the ropes which connected with the great bell hanging in the lower tower, and here were the red flags and the lanterns which were hung out when a fire was perceived from the tower.

For it was the duty of the trumpeter to watch constantly for fires. He was to watch also for troops approaching the city, for tumults or disturbances of any kind, but he was especially the guardian against fires. Conflagrations had done the city much harm in the past; many of the older buildings were of wood, although fronted with stone, and roofs were often of thatch or soft wood that easily caught fire from sparks. When a fire was discovered, the trumpeter or watchman, for he was both, hung a red flag from the window which faced the direction in which the blaze lay. At night he would hang out a lantern with a red-glass front instead of the flag.

It was his duty also to sound the alarm bell if any danger whatever came to threaten the lives of citizens. In the very month previous to the coming of Pan Andrew and his family to Krakow, the watchman had rung loud and long upon the bell to alarm the watch and the city when the riot against the Tenczynski family took place. In the coming year the bell was to be tolled at the execution, in the town square just below the tower, of the four men charged with causing the riot. The tower was indeed the very center of Krakow activity.

Pan Andrew fitted his key to the lock of the door leading into the inner room and threw back the bolt. Entering after his father, Joseph found himself in a small, comfortable room, containing a table, a bed, a small stove, and a lighted lantern hanging on the wall. About the table were three chairs, wedged rather tightly because of the lack of space, and upon the table was a huge hourglass, one of the largest that Joseph had even seen. The sand pouring through it in a fine stream had filled the lower section almost to a level graded on the glass with a Latin “X” to designate the tenth hour. The glass was in reality a twelve-hour glass, and lines and Latin numerals had been marked upon it just after the maker had blown it into shape, when the material was still soft. This was the trumpeter’s official clock. There was on the south side of the nave roof, where the sun touched at all hours of the day, a large sundial which was read each noon, and on the north wall of the tower was a clock with one hand. This hand, which indicated the hours, was in truth a hand—a piece of metal shaped like a doubled fist—with fingers curled and the index pointing out to the hours.

When the sand had reached the level of the glass at which the “X” was cut, Pan Andrew hastened out to the open section of the tower and released a coil of rope that hung on a pillar in the center of the space. This rope ran down through a hole in the flooring until it reached the level of the lower tower, when it swung about over a piece of round wood that served as a pulley and leaped from there to the lower tower through an aperture that was originally designed as a narrow window through which to shoot arrows in time of defense. In the lower tower the rope was connected with one end of an iron hammer that was suspended above the great bell. When the rope was pulled the hammer descended, but it sprang quickly back to its original position when the rope was loosed, a spring of twisted metal and leather serving to draw it back. Pan Andrew pulled once—the hammer descended—boom—the stroke of the bell sounded over the whole city. He pulled again and again until the full quota of ten strokes was made.

Next he went to the side of the tower nearest the entrance to the little room, and swung back a small glass window. Through this space he thrust the trumpet and began to play. It was on the west side, the side toward the Cloth Hall, with the university in the distance. Then he moved to another window but one and began to play toward the south. Likewise he played toward the east, and finally toward the north, according to the instructions which he had received. Lights were twinkling now all over the city below him, the air was soft and smelled of the freshly cut grass which the peasants gather into piles. In the direction of the university a group of men were chanting a hymn. A clashing of iron hoofs on the stones of Grodzka Street betokened the presence of some armed men, perhaps the servitors of some nobles’ houses at the castle, or perhaps members of the royal guard. Men of the night watch could be heard banging at doors of shops with the butts of their spears to be sure that no careless apprentice or servant had left the door ajar. Down below in the graveyard the white stones were just perceptible, dim and gray in the dusk, and over the way the lamplighter was enkindling the huge wicks of the lamps that hung under the Cloth Hall roof. The stars were coming out, one after another, in the sky where a touch of blue still lingered—across this world rang the notes of the hymn which Pan Andrew had just played exquisitely, the Heynal or Hymn to the Holy Mother.

“It is wondrous sweet,” said Joseph.

“It is so, my son,” replied the father. Thereupon he told the boy of the morning, years before, when the square below them had been full of hostile Tartars; of the lad who had kept his oath, even with the last breath of life itself; and of the honor paid him from that day to this by the tower trumpeters who end the Heynal at the broken note.

And Joseph, listening, with eyes shining and heart throbbing, realized more at that moment than ever before how dear to him was his native land and all the customs that had been bequeathed by brave men and women who had made it great forever among all nations; it seemed as if tears were forcing themselves to his eyes as he thought of the sacrifice of that young life so many years before, but a thrill of pride drove back the tears when he thought of the nobility of the deed, as he stood silently gazing out of the little tower window.

They reëntered the inner room.

“I have brought you here to-night,” Pan Andrew explained when he had closed the door and hung the trumpet on the wall, “in order to instruct you in the duties of the trumpeter of this church. For there might come a time when I should be ill, or perhaps even wounded—who knows, since I have so many enemies? I have taken the oath that I will play this trumpet each hour, and that it is no vain oath you have learned from the story which I have just told you. The trumpet must be played, happen what will. Therefore”—he drew out a piece of parchment and sketched on it with a bit of charcoal a series of lines—“you are to learn by heart the notes which I sketch here.”

“Here are the notes of the Heynal,” he continued after he had worked silently some minutes upon his composition, “the tune goes like this.” He hummed the melody and indicated on the parchment how each symbol represented a note.

“This,” he said, “it is necessary to learn. Work upon it during the coming week, and at this time next week be able to write it out. Do not let it interfere with your work at the collegium but glance at it in spare time. Also, if you can, sing to yourself beneath your breath the melody of the Heynal. When you have learned the melody, I will teach you to play it upon the trumpet. It is not a hard task, although perfection comes only after much effort. I will teach you single tongue and double tongue, and triple tongue which is the queen of the trumpeter’s music, just as grammar is king of the scholastic kingdom.”

Joseph slipped the parchment inside his coat.

“And now,” directed the father, “go down the stairs quickly and run with dispatch to our house. As you descend leave the lantern against the wall on the lowest tower level; be sure that you extinguish it. The mother is waiting and may be already lonely.”

“Nay, I left her with Elzbietka.”

“Bless the child. But, just the same, go with all speed, for city streets are dangerous at night. Keep close to the watchmen where possible and if asked why you are out so late, reply that your father is trumpeter in the tower and that you are returning home with a message from him.”

Joseph descended; he left the extinguished lantern at the place where the steps begin to mount the scaffolding, and felt his way down the stone steps to the tower door. There he rapped, until the watchman let him out. Once in the street he was off like the wind until he found himself in the Street of the Pigeons.

Much to his surprise the entrance door was opened, not by the old woman who saw to the care of the building, but by her son who up to this time had kept himself well out of sight. As the light from the lantern fell upon his face, Joseph drew back in alarm; when his father had mentioned the fact that the old woman was living with her son, Joseph had imagined that the son was a youth, or perhaps a boy—he did not expect to see a man who had the face of one of middle age. Yet the term “man” was less applicable to the son than was the word “creature,” for he was lank and thin and bowed over uncannily; long wisps of hair fell about his eyes; his fingers were bony and clawlike; his cheeks were sunken, and his eyes peered out of hollow caverns as if they feared the light. As he moved ahead of Joseph, with the lantern in his hand, he clung to the wall as does a cat, shunning open spaces and skulking as if always needing a rear defense.

At the foot of the stairs he stopped.

Joseph was about to pass him and begin the ascent when the creature raised one of his hands and passed it over the boy’s shoulder. Joseph heard the long nails scraping on his coat—in a horrible second it seemed as if he could feel them on his skin. The perspiration broke out on his forehead.

“What do you want?”

“A little—little coin,” whispered the man.

Joseph handed him a piece of copper gladly.

“Good boy—good boy,” the other mumbled, “bless thee, bless thee. And when you have much that jingles remember Stas. Stas I am, and here I sleep.” He pointed at the door standing open on the lower floor, but Joseph’s eyes did not follow him. His attention was taken suddenly from Stas by a burst of flame that leaped like a live thing from the tiny window of the loft of the alchemist on the fourth floor. It was just a little flare—a small flame that issued through the opened shutter which the alchemist usually kept closed—it died down in a second or even less, but for that instant it lighted up the whole court and the surrounding buildings.

“Hey,” said the man, pointing upward—“there they have magic that takes a soul away from a body. . . . See”—there was another flash brighter than the first and longer continued—“there be devils that come to earth with the fire of hell upon them. . . . Their servant is the alchemist, Kreutz, and they have one among us here on earth that is more like them than like us. . . . You know whom I mean?” He swung the lantern close to Joseph’s face, the boy recoiling fearfully. “The student Tring! He it is that would deal with the devil and give him his soul. Have I not heard him at night as he lay awake in his room on the farther side of the court, mumbling and calling and singing? He it is who is the curse of this house. . . . Well, I must sleep. A good night to you.” And he went in through the open door.