“Hold her!”
Too late. Skwozhina was already outside, having shut the secret door and now blocking it with rubbish anew. Giacomo clang his ear to the weak partition. Everyone kept silent. Lukerda was praying soundlessly, moving her lips in a childish manner...
...Voices.
The people waited, holding their breath. Jendrich, baring his teeth like a wolf, took his knife so it would be handy to throw.
“There’s somebody here! Taverner, give a torch!”
“Carefully, good gentlemen, don’t make a fire! Or we’ll burn down!..”
“A broad! By Saint Sebastian’s torturing, a broad! Hey you, come here!”
“Well this is my servant, sir knight! A fool, fool as she is... Hid in the cellar out of fear. Come out, come out, you muck, good gentlemen won’t hurt you. And decant beer, the dark “Chabrick” from the last barrel! Look at her, she took it into her head shirking work!..”
“Give me light, Ronmark. Nobody else there?”
“Empty...”
“Who would be here? Except for rats...”
“All right. Hey woman, climb up. And you too, taverner...”
Footsteps. Receding. From afar, muted – the clang of a lock.
“Blessed Virgin, thank you...”
“Mommy! Want to Mommy!..”
“Come here, Karolinka. Don’t cry. Here, take a toy.”
“Why, this woman has saved us. Were it not for her, they would start rummaging, searching...”
“Siegfried! Have you heard – the margrave himself is here! Were that we could know what happens there now...”
The people were looking at the board as if hoping that the window will be flung wide open any moment.
But the game remained soundless.
Tied to the saddle, a mutilated corpse was dragged over the ground after the rider.
Skwozhina was looking silently how the body of her elder brother Stanek was jumping over the potholes. Soil stuck to his beard, his right shoulder was slashed, his eyes, surprisingly clear on the bloodstained face, were looking mindlessly into the sky. This was the man she hated more than anyone else. She would pray at night for violent death to come for Stanek who had driven his own sister out of home.
There, God had heard.
“Congratulations on your dowry, wench!” whispered inside somebody’s voice resembling very much the bass of the taverner Jas. “That’s what you’ve been waiting for... These folk will ride away, what the hell do they need us for, and for you, odd-even, there’ll be the house, if they haven’t burnt it down, and the field near Zamlynska Gurka, and the cattle, and some clothes! Lubka, she lived with Stanek unmarried, which means she’s not his wife... Throw her a dry bone and let her be happy, the bitch!”
The voice was right.
“What carrion are you dragging along, Gernot?” one of the margrave’s bodyguards stepped forward.
“Rushed on me with an axe, this scoundrel!” cried out the rider merrily, stopping. “Derek had laid his wench on the coffer, so he grabbed an axe, this scumbag...”
“A knight!” the bodyguard burst into laughter, his teeth shining. “Dragon fighter!” And he kicked the dead body with his foot.
Skwozhina was looking indifferently how they were scoffing at the deceased. At night she would dream: I’ll spit in his eyes! I’ll dance on his grave! Here, she has a chance, thanks to good God...
She has a chance.
She went to the tethering post and took a pitchfork forgotten there. Held it in her arms, hefting.
And, stepping forward heavily, stabbed the rider in his side with all her strength.
“B-bitch!”
The rider, stunned with the sudden impudence of the woman, nevertheless contrived to turn his horse and to beat off with his long broadsword. The heavy blade struck at the pole of the pitchfork, cutting it down and aside; the bodyguard groaned when the sharp jags ploughed up his leg. “You beast! You!..”
“...stop it.”
The margrave Siegfried, having walked out of the tavern, was looking attentively at the ugliness that was going on. The glance of the Maintz lord was affable and kind. Especially warm it would become when touching Skwozhina. Loving, one might say. The woman felt how her body under the caress of Siegfried’s still eyes turned into a March snowdrift – loose, spongy. A black crust under which there’s rot and water. But she didn’t lose hold of the pitchfork. Thus she was standing over the body of her hated brother – silent, holding the ludicrous pitchfork at the ready.
The wounded bodyguard, afraid to groan, was limping aside.
A stream of blood was staining his tracks.
“When a dog bites, its master should be punished,” said the margrave in a didactic tone. It seemed that except for him and Skwozhina there were no people remaining on the Earth. “You’ve mistaken, avenger. Here’s the pitchfork. Here I am, the master. Punish!”
“Stop it! Stop it, you foolish broad! My lord, she’s crazy! She’s...”
Not listening to the taverner’s screams, biting her lip and becoming alike the bull Hles when it would see something red, Skwozhina stroke. The clear eyes of her dead brother Stanek, the scoundrel of scoundrels, were looking at her back. The hot eyes of the margrave Siegfried, a man whose soldiers had done Skwozhina the long desired favour, were looking in her face. She was tearing away between these two glances. God bless you, kind lord! Stanek, wish you were dead! Well, dead you are ... what am I doing? Why am I doing this?!
...I’m doing.
She had time to lift the pitchfork for the third time, when the blade of a dolchmesser – a flat dagger with one-sided, knife-like sharpening – flashed under her chin.
“An assaulter cannot be a man or a woman,” said Siegfried von Maintz in a didactic tone, cleaning his blade over the skirt of the murdered woman. On the rough linen, dyed with onion peels and celandine, blood stains looked ordinary. “An assaulter cannot be your equal or not. He can be only an enemy – or dead. This is the main thing. Everything else is hypocrisy. Get ready, in an hour we set out for Osobloga.”
And added, narrowing his eyes: “Don’t burn down the tavern. I was pleased here.”
Later on, when the dust settled after the Maintz men went away, the taverner Jas let everybody out of the hideout. Little Karolinka didn’t cry. She sat near her mother’s body, rocking in her hand a piece from the “Triple Nornscoll”, singing “Hoy, clover of five leaves”. Having finished singing, she put the image near the deceased.
An unused, senseless pawn.
A carved soldier.
“What happened here?” asked Martzin Oblaz in a quivering voice.
It took some time until he got an answer.
The kitten that felt warm on the vagrant’s knees turned in its sleep in a funny way. Seized its muzzle with its paws, started purring louder. Peter stroked it absentmindedly. The touch of the soft fur was nice and somewhat unreal.
“I didn’t know,” said Peter. “I’ve...”
“You’ve,” muttered the taverner without anger. “You’ve, we’ve, torn a sleeve... That is, odd-even, you didn’t need to know about it. There’s nothing to know there. You’re alike – he and you, so I started pealing like an old bell...”
With the corner of his eye Peter Sliadek noticed the scanty smile of the mage in the corner who had been sitting still throughout the taverner’s story – and suddenly he understood with piercing clearness whom he was like with and who that stern staff-bearer was.
The door opened wide. A serving girl, about twelve years old, ran into tavern: sturdily– built, sunburnt. On her plain face strangely shone dark eyes, like two cherries. “Uncle Jas! Uncle Jas! The coach with mister Seingalt rode on. He’s ordered to tell he’ll wait near the graveyard, as usual! Let the rest go! He’s already so old, our Jacom, he’s sick from travel...”