The Knights of the Cross

After a mild and foggy night, a windy and gloomy day came. At times the sky was bright, at others it was covered with broken clouds which were driven before the wind like flocks of sheep. Macko ordered the train to move by daybreak. The pitch-burner, who was hired as guide to Buda, affirmed that the horses could pass everywhere, but as to the wagons, provisions and baggage, it would be necessary in some places to take them apart and carry them piecemeal, and that could not be done without tedious work. But people accustomed to hard labor preferred hardship to lounging in the deserted inn. Therefore they moved on willingly. Even the timid Wit was not scared by the words and presence of the pitch-burner.

They left the inn and entered at once between high-trunked forest trees, free from undergrowth. They led their horses, and could pass along without taking the wagons to pieces. Occasionally a storm arose, and at times it increased to such extraordinary force that it struck the branches of the bending pines as with gigantic wings, bending, twisting and shaking and breaking them as it were with the fans of a windmill. The forest bent under the unchained elements. Even in the intervals between the gusts it did not cease to howl and thunder, as if angry with their rest at the inn, and the forced march they had undertaken. Now and then the clouds entirely obscured the daylight. Drenching rain mingled with hail came down in torrents, and it became as dark as nightfall. Wit was short of breath, and shouted that "evil was bent to do harm and is doing it." But nobody paid attention to it, even the timid Anulka did not take his words to heart because the Bohemian was so near that her stirrup touched his, and he looked ahead with such a brave air that he seemed to want to challenge the very devil.

Behind the tall pine trees where the undergrowth began, the thickets were impassable. There they were obliged to take the wagons in sections; they did it dexterously and quickly. The strong servants transported the wheels, axle-tree, front of the wagon, packages and stores, upon their shoulders. The bad road continued about three furlongs. However they arrived at Buda about nightfall; there the pitch-burner received them as his guests, and they were assured by him that along the Devil's Hollow, correctly speaking, they could reach the town. These people, inhabitants of the pathless forest seldom saw bread or flour, yet they were not starving. Because all kinds of smoked meat, especially eels, which abounded in all swamps and mud holes, they had in plenty. They treated them liberally, in exchange, holding out greedy hands for the biscuits. There were among them women and children, all blackened from the smoke. There was also a peasant, more than one hundred years old, who remembered the massacre of Lenczyca, which happened in 1331, and the complete destruction of the town by the "Knights of the Cross." Although Macko, the Bohemian, and the two girls, had already heard the narrative from the prior of Sieradz, nevertheless they listened with much interest to the tale of the old man who was sitting at the fireside scraping in the cinders. It seemed as if he discovered among them the events of his earlier days. At Lenczyca, as well as at Sieradz, they spared not even the churches and clergy, and the knives of the conquerors were covered with the blood of old men, women and children. Always the Knights of the Cross, the everlasting Knights of the Cross! The thoughts of Macko and Jagienka were constantly directed toward Zbyszko, who was living in the very jaws of the wolves, in the midst of a hardened clan who knew neither pity nor the laws of hospitality. Sieciechowa was faint at heart, because she feared that their hunt after the abbot might lead them among those terrible Knights of the Cross.