CHAPTER VIII

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.