Poland: A Novel Read online

  Now eleven of the little men came through on a determined trot and they did not stop, but six or seven others who filtered through actually dismounted, and Jan saw that they had captured a Polish woodsman who sometimes worked with his father. They threw him to the ground and shouted strange words at him, as if asking questions, and when the woodsman could not reply, they pierced him many times with their daggers, remounted and rode on.

  It was then that Jan, staring at the inert body and hearing echoes of the unfamiliar words, realized that these intruders must be the dreaded strangers from the steppes: Mongols! They’ve come to destroy us all!

  He wanted to run westward to his village, but before he could move, large groups of the horsemen passed through the glade, each man reacting in his special way; one dismounted and walked directly toward where Jan was hiding, but at the edge of the glade he stopped to inspect the strange trees whose like he had not seen before. Then he urinated and returned to his horse. But no rider bothered with the dead man in the middle of the glade, for they were accustomed to the death of strangers.

  By nightfall more than a thousand warriors had passed close to Jan, and when the stars came out he knew that it was his duty to go quickly and alert his village, but it seemed that all around him the Mongols were camping, and he could move only with extreme caution lest they hear him. Avoiding the trails he customarily followed, he took a long detour, checking with the stars whenever they twinkled through the treetops, and as the night deepened he heard, no matter where he crept, the sound of clinking, warning him that on this night the devil was truly in the forest.

  The little settlement which the Tatars were proposing to destroy and which the boy Jan was trying to save was dominated by three Polish families. In Castle Gorka, a shabby stone affair guarding the Vistula, lived a red-haired knight of medium means whose name, Krzysztof, would in western nations have been Christopher, and with the same exalted meaning: Christo-phoros, the Christ-bearer, a man of good will dedicated to the service of Our Savior. The ancestors of the present Krzysztof had been placed in this particular castle by the duke himself to serve as frontier guards protecting the eastern advances to the ducal city of Krakow, and through the decades the various knights had served well. Illiterate, and married to the daughters of illiterates, they had occupied their meager castle with only the barest amenities: no forks to eat with, one plate for all things cooked, glass in only a few windows, thin draperies supposed to kill the dampness of the walls, only a few smoking oil lamps to brighten the long nights, heavy old-style armor and not the light new chain, swords of only moderate length and strength, and worst of all, four horses only and not the minimum of thirty which marked an important knight.

  But Krzysztof and his ancestors did have three attributes that clothed them in virtue: they loved Jesus and sought to bring his realm into being in Poland; they were brave; and they were loyal to the duke whose preference had lifted their family from the ordinary dregs into knighthood. When Christianity first edged its way tenuously into Poland before the years were counted in thousands, Krzysztof’s family had been one of the first to comprehend what the flowing vision of a new world meant, and in subsequent years they had volunteered to fight on behalf of bishops, they had helped build churches and monasteries, and they had supported all the good works of the church. They were Christian in the great good sense of this word and were prepared to live, or fight, or die for their faith.

  Their castle, a rough affair built in the year 1060, bespoke no power, for the owners did not control vast lands; they owned some five thousand acres, mostly wooded, and seven rather small villages, but that was all. The fields and the villages had been given to the family in reward for services to the duke, and it was assumed that if the present Krzysztof of Gorka behaved with any distinction, these domains could be enlarged.

  The castle stood on a piece of high land that had always borne the name Gorka, and by tradition it was referred to as Castle Gorka, which meant that the owner was known widely as Krzysztof of Gorka, and in the heat of battle, simply as Gorka or Red Head. In the entire settlement, including knights, gentry and peasants, no one carried a last name and no one felt the need of any.

  The smaller castle to the north was much older than the one in which the knight lived; records show that it had been in existence as early as A.D. 914, a stubby, tough little affair intended to provide a hiding place for defenders of the river in which they could resist alien sieges until help came from Krakow, and it had served this purpose well. True, it had been burned and nearly destroyed some six or seven times, but it had been a deterrent, so that even if its occupants did perish, they died knowing that they had held up the invaders for precious weeks or even months until defensive forces could gather on the far side of the river. It was a small castle with a giant reputation.

  It was now occupied by a family that stood in the same relationship to Krzysztof in the big castle as he did to the duke in Krakow. Zygmunt was a liege of the knight’s, by no means a servant but, rather, a man of historic lineage who happened to own almost nothing: he had no land, no villages, no peasants, and worst of all, he had only one horse. He was obliged to report for military duty whenever the knight summoned him, but he was recognized throughout the region as a full-fledged member of the gentry, a man of some distinction whose ancestors had boasted of the same restricted honor.

  What he lacked in goods he compensated for with a quality which he exemplified: he was proud, proud of his family, proud of his courage in battle, proud of his piety, proud of his willingness to defend Jesus Christ. A rather stupid man, he walked through the world as if he were a porcupine ready to throw his barbed quills at anyone who even smiled askance; indeed, he was known mockingly to his associates as Jezyk, the hedgehog, the porcupine. Having little but his sense of honor, he wore it like a suit of armor.

  The village to which his castle was attached had been known for as long as men could remember as Bukowo, the place of the beech trees, so his official title was Zygmunt of Bukowo, and with his one poor horse he did function as a kind of knight, but a most impoverished one, landless and with little prospect of advancement.

  In the village itself, which he and his castle were supposed to protect, three hundred and forty peasants lived in little hovels with earthen floors, no windows, no chimneys and no furniture other than a platform for a bed, a table and a couple of three-legged stools. A few mean pots, some rude equipment to work the fields and never an extra piece of clothing—such was the wealth of the family. Months could pass or sometimes even years without the cooking of a piece of real meat that a man could chew. Over the long grind of life they ate turnips and cracked wheat and thin soup and huge amounts of cabbage in varied forms.

  The peasants worked for three masters: Zygmunt in the little castle, Krzysztof in the big castle, and the duke in Krakow, and in some years they would spend three hundred and twenty days working for these masters, forty-two days working for themselves, and three days in idleness at the festive season. They rarely saw money; they tended to die before they reached forty-four; and the only solace they had was poaching a rabbit now and then from the knight’s forest and attending comforting services in their little church when some itinerant priest happened by. They spun thread and wove cloth; they threshed grain; they minded numerous geese belonging to the knight; they sang a lot; they fell into bed at sundown and rose an hour before sunup; and they died without ever having moved ten miles from where they were born, unless some marauding enemy captured them as slaves and later set them loose, in which case they invariably returned to Bukowo, for it was known as the finest village along the river, the one with two castles.

  Among the villagers there was one stubborn family that had survived every vicissitude, century after century. Its eldest sons were always known as Jan, and because they worked as foresters, sometimes as Jan of the Forest. They were a taciturn lot, clever in the lore of the woods, obedient to the rule of their masters, but occasionally they produced a lad of fiery
temperament, gifted in playing pranks and daring in his challenges to authority, and these Jans were always given the affectionate nickname Janko. There had been seven or eight Jankos in village memory and some had been redoubtable. When Ruthenian marauders had penetrated almost to the Vistula, one Janko led a band of village men who drove them back with heavy losses, and from a dead body this Janko had stolen an odd-shaped medal bearing a non-Christian symbol, which the priest wanted to destroy because it was pagan, but which the various Jankos kept hidden beneath one of the walls of their cottage. On the occasions when it was produced, the villagers were convinced that it honored a heathen goddess.

  In this generation there was no Janko, nor anything distinctive about the miserably poor family that occupied the cottage. There was Jan the Woodsman; Danuta, his wife, toothless although only twenty-nine; the boy Jan, who loved the forest and was now running through it to spread an alarm; and the girl Moniczka, a lively, pretty lass. Among the four they had only two extra pieces of clothing: a man’s jacket, which either of the two Jans could wear to festivals, and a woman’s dress, which could be let out or tucked up depending upon whether Danuta or her daughter was to wear it.

  It was now an hour before dawn, and when Danuta awakened to make the morning broth she discovered that her son was not sleeping in his accustomed place on the floor and she nudged Moniczka with her foot. The girl jumped up instantly, supposing that she was being summoned to work, but her mother merely asked: ‘Where’s Jan?’

  ‘I thought he was here,’ the girl said.

  ‘Well, he isn’t.’ Then, with instinctive fear of the unknown, Danuta asked: ‘Was he here at all?’

  Before the girl could answer, there came from the edge of the forest her brother’s agonized voice uttering the terrible cry that would awaken the whole village: ‘Mongols!’

  Fifty years had passed since the last intrusion of this dreadful horde, but legends of what it meant were so much a part of daily life that a few fortunate people reacted almost instantaneously and thus saved themselves. Others, terrified by what might happen in the next moments, hesitated or became confused, forgetting promises they had made themselves as to how they would act ‘when the Mongols came,’ and these would perish.

  Mother Danuta grabbed her shawl with one hand, her daughter with the other, and without even waiting for her son to reach the cottage or for a chance to say goodbye to her husband, who had responsibilities of his own, she dashed for a secret path that led into the heart of the forest and by accident chose the very one that her son was using to leave it. ‘Save yourself!’ she shouted as they passed.

  Her husband, reacting to inherited fears, bolted like a frightened deer to the little castle, shouting as he approached ‘Mongols! Mongols!’ and when his panic-filled voice penetrated to the dark halls, Zygmunt knew instantly what he must do. Springing from bed, grabbing what little armor he possessed, he shouted at his wife ‘Save yourself!’ and sped to where his priceless horse was tethered. Leaping to its back, he galloped to the river’s edge and goaded the beast to plunge in. As soon as the water was deep enough he slipped out of his saddle, grabbed the horse’s tail, and swam with it to the far side, where, as planned, he would meet up with other lesser knights.

  Jan, satisfied that he had done all he could to warn the little castle, now dashed along small footpaths to the bigger one, shouting as he drew near ‘Mongols! Mongols!’ whereupon Krzysztof, who was always awake before dawn, appeared at the castle gate urging Jan to hurry inside. As soon as the peasant ran gasping in, the heavy door was clanged shut, to reopen periodically as a group of terrified peasants and two lesser knights from the castle environs clamored for refuge.

  Now red-headed Krzysztof demonstrated why his neighbors considered him a man of character. Pacifying everyone and demanding silence, he coldly calculated his position: ‘Only three fighting knights. Where’s Zygmunt?’

  ‘He escaped across the river,’ Jan reported.

  ‘With his horse?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Excellent. We have fifty-five peasants here. Far too many, but what can we do?’

  He studied each face as if judging the owner’s capacity for heroism, then continued: ‘We have little water. Damned little food. So we can’t survive a long siege.’ No one groaned, but he did see some jaws drop in fear and he knew that what he said now would be critical. ‘We have one chance, and it’s a good one. We don’t know if they’re Mongols … with machines to knock down castles. Suppose they’re really Tatars on an expedition … horses only. They’ll come raging here, hoping to overwhelm us, but if we kill off the first half dozen, they’ll wheel their horses about and gallop off.’ When some faces brightened, he cried: To us they must be Tatars. And we must drive them back.’

  With swift precision he placed his best archers at slits in the wall, directing them not to release their arrows until the Tatars were almost at the gates, and then to shoot three arrows as rapidly as possible: ‘Don’t even aim the last two. Just fire.’

  ‘And if the Mongols keep coming?’ a farmer asked.

  ‘They are not Mongols!’ Krzysztof shouted. ‘Surely God, seeing our desperate plight, will send us Tatars.’

  He did his best work on the battlements, where he led most of the male peasants to man the huge piles of boulders he had collected there, year after year. These were to be thrown down with as much force as possible onto the heads of the Tatars: ‘I trust in God that these great stones will turn them back.’

  A woman lookout shouted from her topmost position in the tower: ‘The village is burning.’ And after only a few minutes she called: ‘The other castle is burning.’ And then the fearful report: ‘Here they come!’

  Krzysztof stared at the opening in the forest through which they would appear, and those about him could see that he was praying, and then he saw the first little horsemen with their flowing mustaches and conical fur hats and he knew that he and his defenders had a fighting chance. Falling to his knees before the first arrow sped out from his castle or the first boulder was hurled, he cried for all around him to hear: ‘Thank you, blessed Lord Jesus, for sending us Tatars without machines,’ and he began the defense of his fortress.

  When Vuldai led his Tatars out from the Forest of Szczek he perceived in one glance that the miserable village of Bukowo was not going to provide much booty, so with a brief flash of his right hand he cried: ‘Destroy it.’

  Like an explosion of lava from a volcano, the horsemen swept over the settlement, setting fire to every cottage, slaying every human being they encountered, even killing cattle too old to be herded easily to that night’s campsite, wherever it was going to be. Of those Bukowo peasants trapped inside the village, all were slain, even though not one of them had taken arms against the Tatars or tried in any way to oppose them.

  When Vuldai found the little castle practically undefended, his men simply broke their way in, slaughtered everyone they caught inside, including the wife and children Zygmunt had abandoned when he swam his horse across the Vistula. Disappointed at the poverty of the goods they uncovered inside the castle, the Tatars took revenge by setting it afire, watching with glee as all things consumable fed the roaring blaze, even the corpses. When the fire subsided, the vigorous little men tore down what walls were left, then urinated on the embers.

  The invaders now rode to attack Castle Gorka, but here they encountered a much different situation, for when the first line of horsemen galloped up to the walls they were met by a withering hailstorm of arrows, which killed four men and wounded six others. As these latter lay on the ground, wrestling with arrows that had pierced them, great boulders descended from the battlements, crushing three of the men horribly. And when other riders dashed in to rescue survivors, they, too, were met by arrows and crashing boulders.

  When Vuldai approached the castle walls, in the third line of attack, he again perceived the situation quickly, and with another wave of his right hand, cried: ‘Leave it. We cross the river.’ And he wh
eeled his own horse tightly, headed for the steep banks of the Vistula, and scrambled his mount down the shaley slope and into the dark water.

  By nightfall his six thousand, somewhat diminished, had reached the western shore, and scouts were already scurrying northward to make contact with the larger army to determine where the two branches should meet to concert their attack on Golden Krakow.

  When Krzysztof of Gorka surveyed the pitiful condition of his domain he could have been forgiven had he allowed himself to be submerged in despair, for only his castle remained. His other six villages had been destroyed as completely as Bukowo; his peasants had been slain; the homes of his lesser knights had been devastated and their women killed; and there seemed to be no reasonable strategy by which the terrible scourge of Tatars could be either punished or turned back. Inevitably, Golden Krakow must fall to their torches, but Krzysztof was unwilling to concede this inevitability, and in the perilous days ahead he became the soul and animating spirit of Poland.

  He was forty-eight years old, almost an ancient in that time of early death, with no substantial resources of his own except his conviction that knights defended their dukes regardless of circumstances: ‘We will march to Krakow and save that city from the wild horsemen.’

  When he studied his position coldly he found little to reassure him: ‘Nine horses only in my entire territory. Fourteen men who know how to use arms. No food surplus. No help arriving from any quarter. Good! We know we must depend upon ourselves.’ Running his fingers through his red hair, he laughed, spat on the ground, and renewed his pledge: ‘We march to Krakow, for the duke will need us.’

  From the forest he conscripted every man who had escaped slaughter, and found among them the boy Jan whose running shouts had enabled Castle Gorka to prepare its defenses: ‘You march with me to tend the horses.’ And when he learned that this lad was the son of that adult Jan who had joined in the boulder-hurling, he cried: ‘Jan and Jan, that’s a good omen. For in the Bible there are many Jans, and they are all men of good report.’