XXVII
They ran long through the pine-forest with such speed that the trees by the roadside seemed to flee backward in panic; inns, huts of forest guards, pitch-clearings, flashed by, and at times wagons singly or a few together, going to Pilvishki. From time to time Boguslav bent forward in the saddle as if to struggle; but his arms were only wrenched the more painfully in the iron hands of the soldiers, while Pan Andrei held the pistol-barrel between the princess shoulders again, and they rushed on till the white foam was falling in flakes from the horses.
At last they were forced to slacken the speed, for breath failed both men and beasts, and Pilvishki was so far behind that all possibility of pursuit had ceased. They rode on then a certain time at a walk and in silence, surrounded by a cloud of steam, which was issuing from the horses.
For a long time the prince said nothing; he was evidently trying to calm himself and cool his blood. When he had done this he asked—
“Whither are you taking me?”
“Your highness will know that at the end of the road,” answered Kmita.
Boguslav was silent, but after a while said, “Cavalier, command these trash to let me go, for they are pulling out my arms. If you command them to do so, they will only hang; if not, they will go to the stake.”
“They are nobles, not trash,” answered Kmita; “and as to the punishment which your highness threatens, it is not known whom death will strike first.”
“Know ye on whom ye have raised hands?” asked the prince, turning to the soldiers.
“We know,” answered they.
“By a million horned devils!” cried Boguslav, with an outburst. “Will you command these people to let me go, or not?”
“Your highness, I will order them to bind your arms behind your back; then you will be quieter.”
“Impossible! You will put my arms quite out of joint.”
“I would give orders to let another off on his word that he would not try to escape, but you know how to break your word,” said Kmita.
“I will give another word,” answered the prince—“that not only will I escape at the first opportunity, but I will have you torn apart with horses, when you fall into my hands.”
“What God wants to give, he gives!” said Kmita. “But I prefer a sincere threat to a lying promise. Let go his hands, only hold his horse by the bridle; but, your highness, look here! I have but to touch the trigger to put a bullet into your body, and I shall not miss, for I never miss. Sit quietly; do not try to escape.”
“I do not care, Cavalier, for you or your pistol.”
When he had said this, the prince stretched his aching arms, to straighten them and shake off the numbness. The soldiers caught the horse’s bridle on both sides, and led him on.
After a while Boguslav said, “You dare not look me in the eyes, Pan Kmita; you hide in the rear.”
“Indeed!” answered Kmita; and urging forward his horse, he pushed Zavratynski away, and seizing the reins of the prince’s horse, he looked Boguslav straight in the face. “And how is my horse? Have I added even one virtue?”
“A good horse!” answered the prince. “If you wish, I will buy him.”
“This horse deserves a better fate than to carry a traitor till his death.”
“You are a fool, Pan Kmita.”
“Yes, for I believed the Radzivills.”
Again came a moment of silence, which was broken by the prince.
“Tell me, Pan Kmita, are you sure that you are in your right mind, that your reason has not left you? Have you asked yourself what you have done, madman? Has it not come to your head that as things are now it would have been better for you if your mother had not given you birth, and that no one, not only in Poland, but in all Europe, would have ventured on such a daredevil deed?”
“Then it is clear that there is no great courage in that Europe, for I have carried off your highness, hold you, and will not let you go.”
“It can only be an affair with a madman,” said the prince, as if to himself.
“My gracious prince,” answered Pan Andrei, “you are in my hands; be reconciled to that, and waste not words in vain. Pursuit will not come up, for your men think to this moment that you have come off with me voluntarily. When my men took you by the arms no one saw it, for the dust covered us; and even if there were no dust, neither the equerries nor the guards could have seen, it was so far. They will wait for you two hours; the third hour they will be impatient, the fourth and fifth uneasy, and the sixth will send out men in search; but we meanwhile shall be beyond Maryapole.”
“What of that?”
“This, that they will not pursue; and even if they should start immediately in pursuit, your horses are just from the road, while ours are fresh. Even if by some miracle they should come up, that would not save you, for, as truly as you see me here, I should open your head—which I shall do if nothing else is possible. This is the position! Radzivill has a court, an army, cannon, dragoons; Kmita has six men, and Kmita holds Radzivill by the neck.”
“What further?” asked the prince.
“Nothing further! We will go where it pleases me. Thank God, your highness, that you are alive; for were it not that I gave orders to throw many gallons of water on my head today, you would be in the other world already, that is, in hell, for two reasons—as a traitor and as a Calvinist.”
“And would you have dared to do that?”
“Without praising myself I say that your highness would not easily find an undertaking on which I would not venture; you have the best proof of that in yourself.”
The prince looked carefully at the young man and said, “Cavalier, the devil has written on your face that you are ready for anything, and that is the reason why I have a proof in myself. I tell you, indeed, that you have been able to astonish me with your boldness, and that is no easy thing.”
“That’s all one to me. Give thanks to God, your highness, that you are alive yet, and quits.”
“No, Cavalier. First of all, do you thank God; for if one hair had fallen from my head, then know that the Radzivills would find you even under the earth. If you think that because there is disunion between us and those of Nyesvyej and Olyta, and that they will not pursue you, you are mistaken. Radzivill blood must be avenged, an awful example must be given, otherwise there would be no life for us in this Commonwealth. You cannot hide abroad, either: the Emperor of Germany will give you up, for I am a prince of the German Empire; the Elector of Brandenburg is my uncle; the Prince of Orange is his brother-in-law; the King and Queen of France and their ministers are my friends. Where will you hide? The Turks and Tartars will sell you, though we had to give them half our fortune. You will not find on earth a corner, nor such deserts, nor such people—”
“It is a wonder to me,” replied Kmita, “that your highness takes such thought in advance for my safety. A great person a Radzivill! Still I have only to touch a trigger.”
“I do not deny that. More than once it has happened in the world that a great man died at the hands of a common one. A camp-follower killed Pompey; French kings perished at the hands of low people. Without going farther, the same thing happened to my great father. But I ask you what will come next?”
“What is that to me? I have never taken much thought of what will be tomorrow. If it comes to close quarters with all the Radzivills, God knows who will be warmed up best. The sword has been long hanging over my head, but the moment I close my eyes I sleep as sweetly as a suslik. And if one Radzivill is not enough for me, I will carry off a second, and a third.”
“As God is dear to me, Cavalier, you please me much; for I repeat that you alone in Europe could dare a deed like this. The beast does not care, nor mind what will come tomorrow. I love daring people, and there are fewer and fewer of them in the world. Just think! he has carried off a Radzivill and holds him as his own. Where were you reared in this fashion, Cavalier? Whence do you come?”
“I am banneret of Orsha.”
“Pan Banneret of Orsha, I grieve that the Radzivills are losing a man like you, for with such men much might be done. If it were not a question of myself—h’m! I would spare nothing to win you.”
“Too late!” said Kmita.
“That is to be understood,” answered the prince. “Much too late! But I tell you beforehand that I will order you only to be shot, for you are worthy to die a soldier’s death. What an incarnate devil to carry me off from the midst of my men!”
Kmita made no answer; the prince meditated awhile, then cried—
“If you free me at once, I will not take vengeance. Only give me your word that you will tell no one of this, and command your men to be silent.”
“Impossible!” replied Kmita.
“Do you want a ransom?”
“I do not.”
“What the devil, then, did you carry me off for? I cannot understand it.”
“It would take a long time to tell. I will tell your highness later.”
“But what have we to do on the road unless to talk? Acknowledge, Cavalier, one thing: you carried me off in a moment of anger and desperation, and now you don’t know well what to do with me.”
“That is my affair!” answered Kmita; “and if I do not know what to do, it will soon be seen.”
Impatience was depicted on Prince Boguslav’s face.
“You are not over-communicative, Pan Banneret of Orsha; but answer me one question at least sincerely: Did you come to me, to Podlyasye, with a plan already formed of attacking my person, or did it enter your head in the last moment?”
“To that I can answer your highness sincerely, for my lips are burning to tell you why I left your cause; and while I am alive, while there is breath in my body, I shall not return to it. The prince voevoda of Vilna deceived me, and in advance brought me to swear on the crucifix that I would not leave him till death.”
“And you are keeping the oath well. There is nothing to be said on that point.”
“True!” cried Kmita, violently. “If I have lost my soul, if I must be damned, it is through the Radzivills. But I give myself to the mercy of God, and I would rather lose my soul, I would rather burn eternally, than to sin longer with knowledge and willingly—than to serve longer, knowing that I serve sin and treason. May God have mercy on me! I prefer to burn, I prefer a hundred times to burn; I should burn surely, if I remained with you. I have nothing to lose; but at least I shall say at the judgment of God: ‘I knew not what I was swearing, and had I discovered that I had sworn treason to the country, destruction to the Polish name, I should have broken the oath right there.’ Now let the Lord God be my judge.”
“To the question, to the question!” said Boguslav, calmly.
But Pan Andrei breathed heavily, and rode on some time in silence, with frowning brow and eyes fixed on the earth, like a man bowed down by misfortune.
“To the question!” repeated the prince.
Kmita roused himself as if from a dream, shook his head, and said—
“I believed the prince hetman as I would not have believed my own father. I remember that banquet at which he announced his union with the Swedes. What I suffered then, what I passed through, God will account to me. Others, honorable men, threw their batons at his feet and remained with their country; but I stood like a stump with the baton, with shame, with submission, with infamy, in torture, for I was called traitor to my eyes. And who called me traitor? Oi, better not say, lest I forget myself, go mad, and put a bullet right here in the head of your highness. You are the men, you the traitors, the Judases, who brought me to that.”
Here Kmita gazed with a terrible expression on the prince, and hatred came out on his face from the bottom of his soul, like a dragon which had crawled out of a cave to the light of day; but Boguslav looked at the young man with a calm, fearless eye. At last he said—
“But that interests me, Pan Kmita; speak on.”
Kmita dropped the bridle of the prince’s horse, and removed his cap as if wishing to cool his burning head.
“That same night,” continued he, “I went to the hetman, for he gave command to call me. I thought to myself, ‘I will renounce his service, break my oath, suffocate him, choke him with these hands, blow up Kyedani with powder, and then let happen what may.’ He knew too that was ready for anything, knew what I was; I saw well that he was fingering a box in which there were pistols. ‘That is nothing,’ thought I to myself; ‘either he will miss me or he will kill me.’ But he began to reason, to speak, to show such a prospect to me, simpleton, and put himself forward as such a savior, that your highness knows what happened.”
“He convinced the young man,” said Boguslav.
“So that I fell at his feet,” cried Kmita, “and saw in him the father, the one savior, of the country; so that I gave myself to him soul and body as to a devil. For him, for his honesty I was ready to hurl myself headlong from the tower of Kyedani.”
“I thought such would be the end,” said Boguslav.
“What I lost in his cause I will not say, but I rendered him important services. I held in obedience my squadron, which is in Kyedani now—God grant to his ruin! Others, who mutinied, I cut up badly. I stained my hands in brothers’ blood, believing that a stern necessity for the country. Often my soul was pained at giving command to shoot honest soldiers; often the nature of a noble rebelled against him, when one time and another he promised something and did not keep his word. But I thought: ‘I am simple, he is wise!—it must be done so.’ But today, when I learned for the first time from those letters of the poisons, the marrow stiffened in my bones. How? Is this the kind of war? You wish to poison soldiers? And that is to be in hetman fashion? That is to be the Radzivill method, and am I to carry such letters?”
“You know nothing of politics, Cavalier,” interrupted Boguslav.
“May the thunders crush it! Let the criminal Italians practise it, not a noble whom God has adorned with more honorable blood than others, but at the same time obliged him to war with a sabre and not with a drug-shop.”
“These letters, then, so astonished you that you determined to leave the Radzivills?”
“It was not the letters—I might have thrown them to the hangman, or tossed them into the fire, for they refer not to my duties; it was not the letters. I might have refused the mission without leaving the cause. Do I know what I might have done? I might have joined the dragoons, or collected a party again, and harried Hovanski as before. But straightway a suspicion came to me: ‘But do they not wish to poison the country as well as those soldiers?’ God granted me not to break out, though my head was burning like a grenade, to remember myself, to have the power to think: ‘Draw him by the tongue, and discover the whole truth; betray not what you have at heart, give yourself out as worse than the Radzivills themselves, and draw him by the tongue.’ ”
“Whom—me?”
“Yes! God aided me, so that I, simple man, deceived a politician—so that your highness, holding me the last of ruffians, hid nothing of your own ruffianism, confessed everything, told everything, as if it had been written on the hand. The hair stood on my head, but I listened and listened to the end. O traitors! arch hell-dwellers! O parricides! How is it, that a thunderbolt has not stricken you down before now? How is it that the earth has not swallowed you? So you are treating with Hmelnitski, with the Swedes, with the elector, with Rakotsy, and with the devil himself to the destruction of this Commonwealth? Now you want to cut a mantle out of it for yourself, to sell it to divide it, to tear your own mother like wolves? Such is your gratitude for all the benefits heaped on you—for the offices, the honors, the dignities, the wealth, the authority, the estates which foreign kings envy you? And you were ready without regard to those tears, torments, oppression. Where is your conscience, where your faith, where your honesty? What monster brought you into the world?”
“Cavalier,” interrupted Boguslav, coldly, “you have me in your hand, you can kill me; but I beg one thing, do not bore me.”
Both were silent.
However, it appeared plainly, from the words of Kmita, that the soldier had been able to draw out the naked truth from the diplomat, and that the prince was guilty of great incautiousness, of a great error in betraying his most secret plans and those of the hetman. This pricked his vanity; therefore, not caring to hide his ill-humor, he said—
“Do not ascribe it to your own wit merely, Pan Kmita, that you got the truth from me. I spoke openly, for I thought the prince voevoda knew people better, and had sent a man worthy of confidence.”
“The prince voevoda sent a man worthy of confidence,” answered Kmita, “but you have lost him. Henceforth only scoundrels will serve you.”
“If the way in which you seized me was not scoundrelly, then may the sword grow to my hand in the first battle.”
“It was a stratagem! I learned it in a hard school. You wish, your highness, to know Kmita. Here he is! I shall not go with empty hands to our gracious lord.”
“And you think that a hair of my head will fall from the hand of Yan Kazimir?”
“That is a question for the judges, not for me.”
Suddenly Kmita reined in his horse: “But the letter of the prince voevoda—have you that letter on your person?”
“If I had, I would not give it. The letter remained in Pilvishki.”
“Search him!” cried Kmita.
The soldiers seized the prince again by the arms. Soroka began to search his pockets. After a while he found the letter.
“Here is one document against you and your works,” said Pan Andrei, taking the letter. “The King of Poland will know from it what you have in view; the Swedish King will know too, that although now you are serving him, the prince voevoda reserves to himself freedom to withdraw if the Swedish foot stumbles. All your treasons will come out, all your machinations. But I have, besides, other letters—to the King of Sweden, to Wittemberg, to Radzeyovski. You are great and powerful; still I am not sure that it will not be too narrow for you in this Commonwealth, when both kings will prepare a recompense worthy of your treasons.”
Prince Boguslav’s eyes gleamed with ill-omened light, but after a while he mastered his anger and said—
“Well, Cavalier! For life or death between us! We have met! You may cause us trouble and much evil, but I say this: No man has dared hitherto to do in this country what you have done. Woe be to you and to yours!”
“I have a sabre to defend myself, and I have something to redeem my own with,” answered Kmita.
“You have me as a hostage,” said the prince.
And in spite of all his anger he breathed calmly; he understood one thing at this moment, that in no case was his life threatened—that his person was too much needed by Kmita.
Then they went again at a trot, and after an hour’s ride they saw two horsemen, each of whom led a pair of packhorses. They were Kmita’s men sent in advance from Pilvishki.
“What is the matter?” asked Kmita.
“The horses are terribly tired, for we have not rested yet.”
“We shall rest right away!”
“There is a cabin at the turn, maybe ’tis a public house.”
“Let the sergeant push on to prepare oats. Public house or not, we must halt.”
“According to order, Commander.”
Soroka gave reins to the horses, and they followed him slowly. Kmita rode at one side of the prince, Lubyenyets at the other. Boguslav had become completely calm and quiet; he did not draw Pan Andrei into further conversation. He seemed to be exhausted by the journey, or by the position in which he found himself, and dropping his head somewhat on his breast, closed his eyes. Still from time to time he cast a side look now at Kmita, now at Lubyenyets, who held the reins of the horse, as if studying to discover who would be the easier to overturn so as to wrest himself free.
They approached the building situated on the roadside at a bulge of the forest. It was not a public house, but a forge and a wheelwright-shop, in which those going by the road stopped to shoe their horses and mend their wagons. Between the forge and the road there was a small open area, sparsely covered with trampled grass; fragments of wagons and broken wheels lay thrown here and there on that place, but there were no travellers. Soroka’s horses stood tied to a post. Soroka himself was talking before the forge to the blacksmith, a Tartar, and two of his assistants.
“We shall not have an overabundant repast,” said the prince; “there is nothing to be had here.”
“We have food and spirits with us,” answered Kmita.
“That is well! We shall need strength.”
They halted. Kmita thrust his pistol behind his belt, sprang from the saddle, and giving his horse to Soroka, seized again the reins of the prince’s horse, which however Lubyenyets had not let go from his hand on the other side.
“Your highness will dismount!” said Kmita.
“Why is that? I will eat and drink in the saddle,” said the prince, bending down.
“I beg you to come to the ground!” said Kmita, threateningly.
“But into the ground with you!” cried the prince, with a terrible voice; and drawing with the quickness of lightning the pistol from Kmita’s belt, he thundered into his very face.
“Jesus, Mary!” cried Kmita.
At this moment the horse under the prince struck with spurs reared so that he stood almost erect; the prince turned like a snake in the saddle toward Lubyenyets, and with all the strength of his powerful arm struck him with the pistol between the eyes.
Lubyenyets roared terribly and fell from the horse.
Before the others could understand what had happened, before they had drawn breath, before the cry of fright had died on their lips, Boguslav scattered them as a storm would have done, rushed from the square to the road, and shot on like a whirlwind toward Pilvishki.
“Seize him! Hold him! Kill him!” cried wild voices.
Three soldiers who were sitting yet on the horses rushed after him; but Soroka seized a musket standing at the wall, and aimed at the fleeing man, or rather at his horse.
The horse stretched out like a deer, and moved forward like an arrow urged from the string. The shot thundered. Soroka rushed through the smoke for a better view of what he had done; he shaded his eyes with his hand, gazed awhile, and cried at last—
“Missed!”
At this moment Boguslav disappeared beyond the bend, and after him vanished the pursuers.
Then Soroka turned to the blacksmith and his assistants, who were looking up to that moment with dumb astonishment at what had happened, and cried—
“Water!”
The blacksmith ran to draw water, and Soroka knelt near Pan Andrei, who was lying motionless. Kmita’s face was covered with powder from the discharge, and with drops of blood; his eyes were closed, his left brow and left temple were blackened. The sergeant began first to feel lightly with his fingers the head of his colonel.
“His head is sound.”
But Kmita gave no signs of life, and blood came abundantly from his face. The blacksmith’s assistants brought a bucket of water and a cloth. Soroka, with equal deliberation and care, began to wipe Kmita’s face.
Finally the wound appeared from under the blood and blackness. The ball had opened Kmita’s left cheek deeply, and had carried away the end of his ear. Soroka examined to see if his cheekbone were broken.
After a while he convinced himself that it was not, and drew a long breath. Kmita, under the influence of cold water and pain, began to give signs of life. His face quivered, his breast heaved with breath.
“He is alive!—nothing! he will be unharmed,” cried Soroka, joyfully; and a tear rolled down the murderous face of the sergeant.
Meanwhile at the turn of the road appeared Biloüs, one of the three soldiers who had followed the prince.
“Well, what?” called Soroka.
The soldier shook his head. “Nothing!”
“Will the others return soon?”
“The others will not return.”
With trembling hands the sergeant laid Kmita’s head on the threshold of the forge, and sprang to his feet. “How is that?”
“Sergeant, that prince is a wizard! Zavratynski caught up first, for he had the best horse, and because the prince let him catch up. Before our eyes Boguslav snatched the sabre from his hand and thrust him through. We had barely to cry out. Vitkovski was next, and sprang to help; and him this Radzivill cut down before my eyes, as if a thunderbolt had struck him. He did not give a sound. I did not wait my turn. Sergeant, the prince is ready to come back here.”
“There is nothing in this place for us,” said Soroka. “To horse!”
That moment they began to make a stretcher between the horses for Kmita. Two of the soldiers, at the command of Soroka, stood with muskets on the road, fearing the return of the terrible man.
But Prince Boguslav, convinced that Kmita was not alive, rode quietly to Pilvishki. About dark he was met by a whole detachment of horsemen sent out by Patterson, whom the absence of the prince had disturbed for some time. The officer, on seeing the prince, galloped to him—
“Your highness, we did not know—”
“That is nothing!” interrupted Prince Boguslav. “I was riding this horse in the company of that cavalier, of whom I bought him.”
And after a while he added: “I paid him well.”