Текст книги "Here and Now"

Автор книги: Henry Lion Oldie

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Henry Lion Oldie
Here and Now

The Songs Of Peter Sliadek – Prologue

A road should be observed from a bird’s eye view. It’s very beautiful – a road from above. No dust, no potholes; a cheapjack went along, lost a ribbon. Take it, braid a girl’s hair. The roadside flows with July honey, February cream, November gruel, May’s motley wave. Callosities, weariness, a hedgehog in the breast remained below, on a road – a bird above the road wouldn’t understand it. To it, to a martin-hawk, to a skinny little bird or to a sharp-beaked bully, the road seems to be the most wonderful thing in the world. How different from this road is an everyday sky: the wings tremble, the enemies don’t rest, an arrow awaits, in the cloud it’s cold, above the cloud – no food... That’s why birds squint enviously at silly wayfarers: just look at them walking!..

People should be observed from afar. Out of a window, for instance; still better if the window is at the very top of a tower. It’s very absorbing: people from a distance. A knight doesn’t smell of garlic and booze, a princess doesn’t seem to be a bitch pregnant from a stableman, and those you come across never try to give you a smack in the teeth with their fist instead of sharing wine during a rest. Small men carry pick-a-back small stories – lying, contradictory and momentary, gathered together in a spinner’s yarn. Thread after thread, they weave the tapestry of one big and wonderful Story. Sit in the tower, look out of the window, admire it. What a pity that there are draughts in the tower, the roof leaks, mice rustle in the corners, and at night fears sit on the edge of the lonely bed. In such a case the knight’s stench will pass for valour, and the bitch-princess or any other wench from Lesser Brubulanz will pass for luck, if only she be warm and freckled. You drag yourself to the window in the morning, glance at the ones below and even choke from the cold in the pit of your stomach: just look at them walking...

Life should be observed from aside. From heavenly heights, that is. Then it looks like a fully accomplished and harmonic artifact, a creation of a winged genius, not like a total mess made by some simpleton. Looking from inside you’ll discern nothing in life clearly. Vanity, vexation of the spirit, crumbs in a crumpled sheet; some gather stones, other cast them away, while yet others sincerely love their neighbour with that stone – on the head. And above all – you cannot look at the conception. You cannot perceive it as a whole. You snatched a crust? Chew it, choke on it, and don’t open your mouth for the whole loaf. Not for you loaves are baked.

So why is it that don’t you manage, don’t succeed: a road – from above? People – from a window? Life – from aside? If it’s so much better? Cleaner? Lovelier? You go, raise dust, cough, wonder at yourself. Roll along stupid thoughts in your head. The thoughts rumble, rattle, jump like wagon wheels on potholes. You look from behind your hand: is it still far? Yes, it is.

It’s good that it is far.

What is far – looks much better from here.

Here and Now

The choice is always left to us.

The choice is always left behind us.

We move forward, we hurry, but have we enough courage to interrupt our moving, to stop, subduing our fear, and to turn our back to the danger or the luck which are always in front of us, while turning our face to our choice, which always, forever, inexorable and invisible, is left to us – and behind us?!

The last note in the diary of Byarn the Pensive, a mage from Holne

For a naked sword

Now –

Is the only word.

Nery Bobovay.

“With what?” the taverner’s face turned red.

“With songs,” repeated Peter Sliadek, stunned with his own impudence. “I’ll pay with songs.”

The taverner walked among the tables. Fat, stout, he was moving with a waddle, reminding a loaded wagon at the Kichora road. Arms like hams. If he slaps you on your ear with this...

“A bowl of sauerkraut,” drawled Jas Misiur pensively, looking around his tavern as if he had seen it for the first time. “Two bowls. Full over the brim. Five black sausages fried in honey. Pork liver with caraway seed. Three mugs of beer. The red one, odd-even...”

“Four. Four mugs.” Peter Sliadek always considered himself an honest man.

“Aha, four. And a bed. So, odd-even, with songs?!”

A morning was making its way through the narrow windows. A kitten was playing on the floor with pink sun feathers – hunting, murmuring. Then, having forgotten its play at once, began to wash itself, its shaggy tongue flitting. Peter envied the kitten. It is fed for purring...

“In the evening people will come,” he said, scarcely believing his own words. “I’ll sing. They’ll give me groshes. Many. And I’ll pay.”

“Why didn’t you gather some yesterday?”

“Yesterday there were no people.”

“And today there will be?”

“Today there will be.”

He badly wanted to get up. But he understood: a vagrant, skinny as a stick, would look ludicrous near Misiur, fat from ham-eating. A pole near a barn. A carp near a full grown cat-fish. He would decide I want to run away...

“If you’re about to hit me,” in Peter Sliadek’s voice there was heard dull, habitual despair, “then do it. You’ll feel better. Just not on the ear. To become deaf for me – worse than death. And don’t touch my music.”

He pushed slightly with his leg his “music” – an old, shabby lute wrapped into a motley rag – farther behind the table.

“Like I need your songs...” the taverner muttered. “Like I need your groshes...”

“Today is Saturday. People will come...”

“Like I need your ears...”

Peter felt sudden cramps in his belly. Yesterday it was a Friday evening. And – an empty tavern. Except for a frontier guard, a company officer according to the cords on his uniform, who had come from Rahovez with a lady. His wife, apparently. They were given the best room upstairs. Now the noble pair was sitting by the window, eating pancakes with honey and sour cream for breakfast. The lady was listening to the conversation, if one could call so Jas Misiur’s fair claims and Peter’s counterproposals. The lady was smiling, kindly, with sympathy. Maybe if he were to be beaten she would demand to stop it.

Or she would not.

Ladies, they have a weakness for shows.

Rather, he could count on the mercy of another guest – a tall man wrapped in a cloak. A staff with a knob, standing bored near the wall, showed its owner was a mage. Mages don’t like violence. So it’s said... Peter couldn’t recall who said so and why. Maybe he just badly wanted mages not to like violence. For them to intervene, to protect, to save. He knew this ill feature in him: to devise something and to believe in it at once as if it were gospel truth.

The taverner came closer. Peter shut his eyes, waiting. Just not on the ear. His left ear had been hard of hearing through the winter after the affair in Legnitz.

He couldn’t refrain from getting up. When you stand up it’s easier to bear it.

“Like I need your groshes...” repeated Jas Misiur. “A fool you are. A trouble-doer. A troubadour, odd-even... Sit down.”

Without opening his eyes Peter sat down on the bench again.

“My daughter says: leave the tavern. That is, odd-even, you sell it and move to us, to Rahovez. To nurse the grandchildren. In the evenings you’ll be walking along the quay – with a cane, like an honest citizen. Not you’ll be pouring wine, but someone else will be for you. That’s true: I have a money-box, some savings, my son-in-law is of a high rank, he’ll help... Enough for the rest of my life. But without my tavern I’m... Well, tell me, a goose of passage you are, who am I without my tavern?”

The kitten rubbed itself against Peter’s leg, and the vagrant nearly jumped up. He thought someone was already beating him. It’s the worst thing – at the legs with boots. With a wooden sole, too! After that the road is like hell.

“Sit, noodle. With his songs... What sort of songs?”

“There are merry ones. Bawdy ones, if you need. For ferrymen.” Under his eyelashes there reigned plausible darkness. There swarmed unrealisable hopes, promising to become realised. “Rafters like bawdiness. Dances: ovenzek, kozeryika... Then there are noble ones: about knights, about vows. I can sing a ballade about the battle of Osobloga. I’ve composed it myself...”

He wanted very much to make an impression on them. After all, today was the sixth anniversary of the battle.

“Composed, he did,” the taverner laughed, and there echoed a deep snicker from the side. The officer, apparently. “He posed, posed and composed. Magpies chirred for him, odd-even...”

Peter felt insulted. He opened his left eye: “That’s for somebody else – magpies. And I’ve seen everything. I was in the Home Guard, on the slope. I had a spear – a big one. With jags. They had given spears to all of us.”

“Don’t,” said the officer suddenly. “Jas, not about Osobloga. Leave the guy alone. I’ll pay for him.”

“He’ll pay,” the taverner’s bass crackled with a strange, a bit impudent smirk. “He’ll pay me, odd-even... Make me happy for the rest of my life. Walking along the Rahovez quay with a cane I’ll be: tap-tap, tap-tap...”

Peter Sliadek wondered silently at Jas Misiur’s courage. A plain taverner – yet he isn’t afraid to talk this way to a frontier guard... It looked as if he wouldn’t be beaten up. To ask for some porridge? Maybe he’ll show a bit of generousity... Cooked buckwheat, with lard...

However, instead of buckwheat Peter decided to get insulted for good and all.

“It’s a good ballade. Very good. I’ve done my best. When I sing it, everyone asks to repeat. And clap their hands. Here, this is about the Stooped Knight, how he was fighting over Siegfried of Maintz...”

Tapping with his heels and diligently thumping the rhythm on the table edge, Peter began in full voice:

 
“Having leaned against a trunk,
On en’my’s shade he trod,
Dying like a day,
To life returning like a night,
And the thinnest skin layer
There on his back burnt,
Between the spine and the tree
It was tearing apart.”
 

The officer’s laughter was an answer to him. The lady echoed sonorously, clapping her hands clothed in travel gloves. The taverner Jas was droning like a bell. Even the lanky mage deigned to smile with the corner of his mouth. The kitten, scared, leaped away to the stairs, bent its back and hissed.

“Hey, wife! Porridge for the singer! With goose cracklings! Why, you did amuse us, odd-even...”

“Have you really been at Osobloga?” asked the officer suddenly, getting up. In his bird-like, piercing eyes there was a question much more serious than it could seem at first glance. Only that Peter couldn’t understand why the officer gave such importance to this. “Don’t you be afraid, answer honestly. If you lie, I won’t punish you. Have you?!”

“I have...”

“With a spear on a slope?”

“With a spear.”

“Whose standard was there to the left of you?”

“The prince’s. Of Razimir of Opolie.”

“Why, you don’t lie... And what where the thoughts?”

“Whose? The prince’s?!”

“Yours.”

“When?”

“Then. On the slope.”

Peter felt irresistible need to answer the truth. This happened to him rarely and almost always ended with beating. “I felt pity. That I’m on the slope, and they are on the other shore. The Stooped Knight, and Jendrich Dry Storm, and everyone. Were I in their place... I couldn’t see well. But I was looking... I’ve been there, honestly. We were driven through the ford afterwards.”

“Killed?”

“Yes,” Peter Sliadek frowned gloomily. “My spear... In his belly, running; and he made “hah” and died. The rest I don’t remember.”

“Tell the boy, Jas,” nodded the officer, staring straight at the taverner. “I see your tongue’s dancing in your mouth. You want to, so tell him. We’ll wait upstairs. When Seingalt arrives, let somebody announce us.”

The stairs creaked under his feet.

The taverner was looking at the floor for a long time. Then he raised his eyes at the tall mage. The mage nodded subtly. Peter was nervous: he didn’t understand what was happening, and odd things always threatened to turn to bad ones. To snatch his lute and escape?

Were it not for the promised porridge that had appeared in front of him, Peter would have escaped.

But the porridge... with goose cracklings!..

“Eat, noodle. Look at him – trod on the enemy’s shade, odd-even... You saw yourself – the tavern’s empty. Today it will be empty, and tomorrow too. People know when father Misiur doesn’t want to see nobody. And then you turn up. I looked at you: skinny, ribs stick out, only the eyes burn. I think – all right, I’ll feed him. It’ll go on my account in heaven. Like this chicken you were,” the taverner nodded at the mage, and Peter wondered once more at Jas’ odd courage. And also at the strange comparison.

Nothing in common!

“Only that you disturbed me, lad. Troubled my soul. Well, listen. If there’s not enough porridge, I’ll tell to bring some more...”

* * *

The smoke over the Pshesek’s outskirts was well seen. The tavern stood on a hill, above the crossing of the Kichora and Wrozlav roads – a busy place, and the village where Jas Misiur used to buy provision could be seen distinctly. There, shots of flame. They are burning down Pshesek, sons of bitches. Thanks to the Blessed Virgin, they are doing it reluctantly, lazily. Were it not for a skirmish at Toad Hill, they would give up on it. But now... The taverner was looking from behind his hand, racking his brains in guesses: who had risked grappling with the fighters of the Maintz margrave? Somebody from Opolie’s frontier guard that had been beaten at the border? Not likely. The frontier lads took to their heels, they’ll run away till Osobloga. But now the Maintz men, angry like a devil on Christmas, will vent their fury on this village. It will be good if they do without slaughter – rape a dozen of women, beat up some husbands, rob some cellars...

“What’s on, Jas?”

“A holiday, wife. A holiday it is. Soon we’ll be dancing kozeryika.”

His wife began crying, sweeping her tears with the apron. Never mind, let her. Better now than later on. By midday they’ll get to the tavern, the villains. Then they need to be received, pleased, doused with beer. Maybe they won’t burn it down. But first – to take Lukerda to the hideout: they’ll spoil the girl, these devil’s spawns, and who’ll need her, spoiled? And, save God, carrying a bastard, too...

Honour can’t be cleaned by a dowry.

“Jas, they’re riding!”

The taverner peered, blinking. Riding they are. The horses worn out, barely moving. Five riders on three horses. Who the hell they are? Not alike Maintz men, those have well-fed horses, and riders too...

“Jas, ‘tis Jendrich!”

What a sand-blind. Only now did Jas Misiur recognize the man sitting sideways on a chestnut mare to be Jendrich, nicknamed Dry Storm, the chieftain of a gang renown throughout Opolie. So this is the one who attacked the Maintz men! Probably he’d thought to intercept a train but ran into something else. Handsome Jendrich, known for his proud seat, now looked like a wet chicken. Had it not been for the second rider who’d helped him, he would’ve fallen from his horse. With his moustache into the dust. And his face all bloody.

Here, they’re dismounting.

“Misiur, help!”

Hanging on his companions’ hands, Jendrich hobbled to the tavern. He was broad-shouldered, stout, and his blood brothers only grunted, overstrained under their leader’s weight. Every time Dry Storm would step on his right foot he would groan and swear like a devil. Had he broken it, or what? Or was it an arrow?

“Misiur! I need a hideout! We won’t escape...”

A hideout for him! The taverner imagined the hideout where there would be hiding Lukerda, his own blood, the apple of his eye, – and this robber. Face to face, odd-even. And then she’ll deliver a little chieftain... So what that Jas himself not once had hidden smuggled goods brought by Jendrich, so what that he had his part in the booty, helping to sell it off in Rahovez or in Wrozlav?! Lukerda, the silly girl, is mad about Dry Storm – sighs about him, calls him Robin Hood. Now there’ll be Robin for her, there’ll be Hood, too – in a quiet place...

“Not enough horses, Misiur! They’ll catch us! Hide me, I won’t forget it!”

It’s good he isn’t threatening at least. That is – or else we’ll burn your tavern down. Jas glanced again at smoking Pshesek, then turned his eyes to the chieftain. Young, handsome. The twirled moustaches stick out. He’s in funds. Got his nickname for the wild temper and for the dislike of unnecessary blood. The first is bad, while the second’s good. Yet all the same – this is not the husband his daughter needs.

Well, a man must pay his debts.

“I’ll hide you, Jendrich! Hey, drag your chieftain into the cellar!”

He turned to his wife: “Run for Lukerda. Let her go to the hideout, too.”

The wife twisted her finger at her temple significantly. O yes, women understand shameful affairs quickly.

“Go, go. Let Lukerda take with her this... dependant. He’s old, doesn’t care about no wenches. He’ll look after her. Tell him: you, Giacomo, are our only hope. Guard and protect. If, odd-even, they take us...”

It was true – Giacomo Seingalt was not interested in wenches. He was worn out, the old hook. Though it was seen he had had a good time in his youth. When Lukerda got crazy and started demanding teachers, to be noble-like – dance-mance-reverence – Jas thanked God that this old reveller was found. He knew dances, and languages, and was trained in the etiquette too. He was more than sixty, yet only last year he began stooping. A noble bearing he had. People said he’d been a famous cavalier before: shining on tournaments, fighting the Moors under the standard of Fernando Castilian himself. Fought the Ottomans at the sea. Lies, most likely. For people to lie – as for a dog to raise its tail. Yet that the cavalier was totally broke – that could be believed. He wandered and roamed, and in the past several years he had been a librarian at Jeremy Lovich’s. Jeremy favoured him a lot. Told his servants not to mock the old man, and wouldn’t let his guests make fun of him. He himself would often sit with him, talking. But when the baron died, Giacomo fell out with young Lovich completely.

And left.

Now for a piece of bread, for a roof over his head he teaches the girl all sorts of nonsense.

“Me! Hide me too!”

The devil take this boy! He’d quite forgotten... The taverner turned heavily, with his entire body, to yesterday’s boy. Came here, the imp, asked to stay for a night. Gave a piece of silver for a supper and a bed. Where’d he get it? Stole, probably. You can’t say if the lad is sixteen or twenty. A sparrow of a boy: skinny, dishevelled, only the eyes – like live coals.

“Clear out! Good riddance, odd-even!”

“Me! Me too! If you don’t – I’ll tell the Maintz men everything! Everything!”

Jendrich the chieftain squinted inquiringly first at the taverner, then at his daredevils: to shut the chap up? Dry Storm’s face, red with pain, twisted: no, he didn’t like blood for nothing. However, the boy hadn’t even understood he was within a hairbreadth of death. He lowered his head, swept stealthily a shameful tear. “Sorry... I’m a fool. I can’t – into their hands...” Suddenly he beamed: “I have! This! Here!!!” The dirty hand dived behind his shirt. A moment – and on his palm there sparkled a ray of light: a medallion. A golden one – here the taverner couldn’t be mistaken, be it by eye or by teeth.

“I’ll pay! It’s magical!”

“Gold?” inquired Jas Misiur, just in case.

The boy lowered his eyes. “I d-don’t know. I think so. It’s really magical. This is Byarn the Pensive’s, the mage from Holne.”

Jendrich whistled, squinting. If the boy isn’t lying... The name of Byarn, the mage from Holne, was worth a lot. Jas would hide the vagabond, for such a thing he would hide him in a privy and would sit himself atop for him not to be found.

“What sort of an amulet? For luck? For love?”

“No... It’s against cockroaches. If you put it behind a shutter, there’ll never be cockroaches in your house...”

The taverner hushed at the robbers that started laughing. An expensive thing. Maybe the chap is a chatterbox. Babbled here on and on – cockroaches, Byarn... A thief. All right, one more watcher in the hideout won’t harm. There’s another thing, odd-even: two fellows, an old dependant teacher – and Lukerda alone?!

“Hey, Skwozhina!”

At the threshold there appeared a serving woman – solid, stocky, more alike a man. Her closely set eyes looked shyly and unfriendly. A little girl, about five years old, cuddled up to the woman’s skirt.

“Be ready. You’re going to the hideout. I know you: someone pokes his hand under your skirt – you’ll hit him on the ear! Or blurt something out...”

Skwozhina spat through her teeth, but didn’t say a word.

Dusty darkness. Exciting odours of smoked food, beer, onions and dried fish. Out of the crack there flows a scarcely felt string of wine’s scent. It can be heard how Jas Misiur outside, wheezing, blocks the secret door with various lumber. Even if the Maintz men poke their noses into the cellar, they won’t like rummaging in such rubbish.

“It would be extremely useful to light a candle,” rasps the displeased voice of Giacomo Seingalt. Then the old man coughs for a long time before he continues. “I have been late to examine the interior of this... hmm... apartment, so that now I’m afraid to sit on something improper.”

“With your ass on a pitchfork,” specifies Skwozhina venomously, sneezing.

“Or would you prefer to stand waiting till the Maintz men move further along, towards Wrozlav?” finishes the old teacher calmly, ignoring the serving woman’s acidity. It’s clear that the old man has long ago got used to the woman’s bad temper, paying no heed to her grumbling.

“It’s better to stand. What if they see the light?” the question is asked by the young vagabond.

“Hell they’ll see. I’m sitting in this hole not for the first time. It’ll be better for us to see one another. Especially some of us. I have a flint and tinder. Somebody’s got a candle?”

“Take it please, Jendrich. Although I don’t see anything.”

“Hold it in your hand. Now you’ll see.”

“A-ha. Let him hold it in his hand. And with this hand jerk here and there. Then the candle will grow up to the sky! Blaze without fire, it will...”

“Shut up, you fool!”

“I utterly agree with you, Jendrich. Such ugly things... when there’s a young maiden here...”

“Mommy, I want a candel! It’s vely-vely da-ak! Let uncle Zakomtzik make light...”

“Uncle’ll make, he will... Hell he’ll make, your uncle, and devil too...”

There click the strokes of flint. Sparks. More sparks. There comes the smell of smoke. A fire begins to kindle slowly in Dry Storm’s hands – at first it is dark crimson, dim, then brighter and brighter. Or rather, later on one can see that it is in the hands. At first it seemed as if an ominous red eye appeared in the dark.

“Do you see now? Give me the candle.”

The stooped figure covers the glowing “eye”. Cracking of a wick, flashes rush about the walls.

Light! Alive, ochre coloured.

“I’m grateful. Lukerda, please sit down. It’ll be better here, on the barrel. One moment, I’ll just brush off the dust. There are no stools here, as you may understand. Not to mention chairs and armchairs.”

“What about carpets?” Jendrich makes a grimace. It’s still a question what irritates him more: the pain in his leg or the old man’s primness. “Here it stands in the corner, rolled up. A good carpet, from Shemachan. Bring it here, it’s just for me to lie down. What am I – to lie on the floor?..”

“Where has daddy got a Shemachan carpet from? And... all this?!”

Lukerda was looking around, surprised. Tight logs of carpets, packs of textile, skillfully wrought coffers and carved chests, barrels, bulging sacks. Here and there from the heaps and piles stick out hilts of swords, the shaft of a pole-axe, the polished stock of an arbalest, the crest of a helm...

While making himself comfortable, the chieftain grinned with fake gaiety: “Where from? There from! Doing valiant business – from faraway countries brought, from bad folks taken...”

“Young man, would you be so kind as to name things with their own names? You ought to be ashamed misleading the naïve maiden. Smuggling and robbery, that is how it’s called.”

“Giacomo, stop it! Shame on you! Jendrich, he... he’s a real hero! He attacked today the vanguard of the margrave Siegfried! Like Roland the Furious on the Moors!”

“Yes, of course,” Giacomo smiles bitterly with the edge of his lips, sitting down on the nearest chest. “Roncevaux Pass, the faithful Durendal... Troubadours are standing in line to praise him in their songs. So how do you do, sir hero, terror of the usurpers? The foe is beaten hollow and has fled with shame? Or maybe you and your worthiest knights of luck have just decided to rob somebody’s train? Only that the guard proved to be too tough for our Rolands? And now the margrave’s soldiers vent their anger on peaceful villagers – the heroes have gone, after all! The heroes are sitting in a hideout, saving their strength for new feats!”

Jendrich Dry Storm kept gloomily silent. The old dependant had put his finger on it. That was exactly how it had happened. They crossed the border easily, because after the free city of Holne had been occupied there was no border any more. Close to the evening they discovered the train. The wagons with provision and fodder lagged behind the main troops that had already reached the frontier of the Opolie principality, and seemed to be easy prey. However, they couldn’t make it without noise. The hefty fellows in the train fought off with halberds, furious with despair: jingle, clank, cries... Two of their gang were badly wounded, and brave Zbyshek remained in the field – they hadn’t even time to carry out his body. When it was all over and they only needed to get away the wagons with the goods, out of the forest there rushed out a cavalry squadron. There was five times more of the margrave’s riders than the chaps in the gang, so they couldn’t even think about the loot any more – they would’ve been lucky enough to get away themselves.

They were running away all night. At dawn, near Pshesek, the riders caught them. They were lucky that their pursuers had stretched out after the night. If they struck with all their forth – the robbers would be rotting in the hot sun. After the first skirmish, leaving one third of their gang as prey for ravens, the survivors scattered: into the ravines, to the river Veselka, to the Kichora road. Two were unlucky – they were caught and cut down. As for Jendrich himself, his horse was killed with an arrow. He hadn’t the time to jump off it, and the body of the fallen mare pressed his leg. Thanks to his friends – ran over to him, helped him out. And so now he, Jendrich Dry Storm, had to sit in a cellar with women! With that acrimonious old sponger! With that milksop boy who had probably wet his trousers from fear! This pup even threatened to sell out everyone... Who needs him, I ask you? Or maybe somebody does? All right, we are to sit here for a long time, we’ll shake the truth out of him. There’s time for that.

“What, you hawk – broke his leg in a haycock! Lost your tongue? When it comes to robbing and rolling with other people’s wives in the hay – you are a hero! And when it comes to answer for what you did – stuck your tongue in your behind? Jacom’s saying right...”

“Skwozhina! I’ll show you!..” Jendrich eyed the insolent woman from head to toe. This bitch doesn’t care a damn about who is in front of her: a street drunkard, a city merchant, an honest chieftain – be it the prince Razimir himself! If he’s not to her taste – she’ll fling mud on him without batting an eyelid. To get involved with the fool? It would cost dear. Still he couldn’t remain silent. “With you I haven’t roll in the hay, that’s for sure. Probably that’s why you’re angry. Who would have eyes for such muck? Except for our daring cavalier, maybe. Eh, Giacomo? Is it from you that Skwozhina developed a daughter?”

“I would kindly ask you, sir robber, to restrain from statements of such sort. At least in the presence of the young maiden here. Do you hear me?”

The eagle-like profile of Giacomo Seingalt was radiating cold that usually preceded a challenge to a duel. Lukerda, scared, moved away from her teacher – it was for the first time that she saw him like this. It seemed that the flame of the candle, reflected in the black, deeply sunken eyes of the old man, became in a sudden sharp, frightening.

Not a flame – but a blade, crawling out of its sheath like a snake.

“Of course, highway robbers have no notion of good manners, but I have hoped... In vain, as I see. This concerns you too, Skwozhina! If Jas finds out, he’ll thrash you with a stick. For you not to speak too freely.” The dependant’s face softened, the cold melted. “And on the whole, let’s stop quarreling. If I have insulted someone unwittingly, I make my apologies. It’s because of the nervousness.”

“All right, old man. It’s everyone’s fault. We’ve dished the dirt here – enough.”

The youth who had settled right on the floor nodded, jerking his cheek in a funny manner. As if he was waiting for a slap. But then again, what had he to be afraid of? He hadn’t hurt anyone, sat there quiet as a mouse. Five year old Karolinka, the daughter of glib Skwozhina, didn’t pay attention to the squabble at all: the girl got to the chest where there were kept multicoloured strings of beads, shining buttons and other baubles. Now the child was fingering these treasures, enchanted, forgetting everything. As for Skwozhina herself, she kept gloomily silent. She didn’t know how to apologize, but at least the fact that she had stopped swearing and talking bawdily was a good omen. No one could demand more.

Skwozhina’s father gave up his ghost when his daughter was scarcely sixteen. Just as Lukerda is now. Her own brother Stanek, a niggard and a rascal, soon drove his stupid and unsightly sister out of home, giving her nothing of their father’s inheritance. “You won’t get married all the same – what the hell do you need a dowry for?” As a farewell gift Skwozhina presented her brother with a billet that turned to be close at hand – presented strongly, from all her heart; and he returned the favour, too: Stanek’s fist was a real one, that of a man. After roaming for some time, the orphan girl settled down in Jas’ tavern – washing floors, bringing water. Bring-take, you fool! Her temper, quarrelsome and difficult to get on with since childhood, became a dozen times worse over the years. A girl of many values she was: a pockmarked face, the build of a horse, the temper of a bitch. Only health God had given her: in sharp frost she would run to the well dressed only in a shabby jacket, would carry bags weighing a hundred pounds, would chop firewood – God yield to anyone! People remembered how a cooper Zych when in his cups had pinched her at the haunch – after that he would hold at his back till winter and would walk lopsided.