The Deluge. Vol. 2

All at once something terrible took place. First of all was a flash of awful brightness; the whole world seemed turned into fire, and at the same time there was given forth such a sound as if the earth had fallen from under the castle. The walls tottered; the ceilings cracked with a terrible noise; all the windows tumbled in on the floor, and the panes were broken into hundreds of fragments. Through the empty openings of the windows that moment clouds of snow drifted in, and the whirlwind began to howl gloomily in the corners of the chamber.

All the people present fell to the floor on their faces, speechless from terror.

Kharlamp rose first, and looked directly on the corpse of the voevoda; the corpse was lying in calmness, but the gilded image had slipped a little in the hands.

Kharlamp recovered his breath. At first he felt certain that that was an army of Satans who had broken into the chamber for the body of the prince.

"The word has become flesh!" said he. "The Swedes must have blown up the tower and themselves."

But from without there came no sound. Evidently the troops of Sapyeha were standing in dumb wonder, or perhaps in fear that the whole castle was mined, and that there would be explosion after explosion.

"Put wood on the fire!" said Kharlamp to the pages.

Again the room was gleaming with a bright, quivering light. Round about a deathlike stillness continued; but the fire hissed, the whirlwind howled, and the snow rolled each moment more densely through the window openings.

At last confused voices were heard, then the clatter of spurs and the tramp of many feet; the door of the chamber was opened wide, and soldiers rushed in.

It was bright from the naked sabres, and more and more figures of knights in helmets, caps, and kolpaks crowded through the door. Many were bearing lanterns in their hands, and they held them to the light, advancing carefully, though it was light in the room from the fire as well.

At last there sprang forth from the crowd a little knight all in enamelled armor, and cried, —

"Where is the voevoda of Vilna?"

"Here!" said Kharlamp, pointing to the body lying on the sofa.

Volodyovski looked at him, and said, —

"He is not living!"

"He is not living, he is not living!" went from mouth to mouth.

"The traitor, the betrayer is not living!"

"So it is," said Kharlamp, gloomily. "But if you dishonor his body and bear it apart with sabres, you will do ill, for before his end he called on the Most Holy Lady, and he holds Her image in his hand."

These words made a deep impression. The shouts were hushed. Then the soldiers began to approach, to go around the sofa, and look at the dead man. Those who had lanterns turned the light of them on his eyes; and he lay there, gigantic, gloomy, on his face the majesty of a hetman and the cold dignity of death.

The soldiers came one after another, and among them the officers; therefore Stankyevich approached, the two Skshetuskis, Horotkyevich, Yakub Kmita, Oskyerko, and Pan Zagloba.

"It is true!" said Zagloba, in a low voice, as if he feared to rouse the prince. "He holds in his hands the Most Holy Lady, and the shining from Her falls on his face."

When he said this he removed his cap. That instant all the others bared their heads. A moment of silence filled with reverence followed, which was broken at last by Volodyovski.

"Ah!" said he, "he is before the judgment of God, and people have nothing to do with him." Here he turned to Kharlamp: "But you, unfortunate, why did you for his sake leave your country and king?"

"Give him this way!" called a number of voices at once.

Then Kharlamp rose, and taking off his sabre threw it with a clatter on the floor, and said, —

"Here I am, cut me to pieces! I did not leave him with you, when he was powerful as a king, and afterward it was not proper to leave him when he was in misery and no one stayed with him. I have not grown fat in his service; for three days I have had nothing in my mouth, and the legs are bending under me. But here I am, cut me to pieces! for I confess furthermore [here Kharlamp's voice trembled] that I loved him."

When he had said this he tottered and would have fallen; but Zagloba opened his arms to him, caught him, supported him, and cried, —

"By the living God! Give the man food and drink!"

That touched all to the heart; therefore they took Kharlamp by the arms and led him out of the chamber at once. Then the soldiers began to leave it one after another, making the sign of the cross with devotion.

On the road to their quarters Zagloba was meditating over something. He stopped, coughed, then pulled Volodyovski by the skirt. "Pan Michael," said he.

"Well, what?"

"My anger against Radzivill is passed; a dead man is a dead man! I forgive him from my heart for having made an attempt on my life."

"He is before the tribunal of heaven," said Volodyovski.

"That's it, that's it! H'm, if it would help him I would even give for a Mass, since it seems to me that he has an awfully small chance up there."

"God is merciful!"

"As to being merciful, he is merciful; still the Lord cannot look without abhorrence on heretics. And Radzivill was not only a heretic, but a traitor. There is where the trouble is!"

Here Zagloba shook his head and began to look upward.

"I am afraid," said he, after a while, "that some of those Swedes who blew themselves up will fall on my head; that they will not be received there in heaven is certain."

"They were good men," said Pan Michael, with recognition; "they preferred death to surrender, there are few such soldiers in the world."

All at once Volodyovski halted: "Panna Billevich was not in the castle," said he.

"But how do you know?"

"I asked those pages. Boguslav took her to Taurogi."

"El!" said Zagloba, "that was as if to confide a kid to a wolf. But it is not your affair; your predestined is that kernel!"

CHAPTER XVI

Lvoff from the moment of the king's arrival was turned into a real capital of the Commonwealth. Together with the king came the greater part of the bishops from the whole country and all those lay senators who had not served the enemy. The calls already issued summoned also to arms the nobles of Rus and of the remoter adjoining provinces, they came in numbers and armed with the greater ease because the Swedes had not been in those regions. Eyes were opened and hearts rose at sight of this general militia, for it reminded one in nothing of that of Great Poland, which at Uistsie offered such weak opposition to the enemy. On the contrary, in this case marched a warlike and terrible nobility, reared from childhood on horseback and in the field, amidst continual attacks of wild Tartars, accustomed to bloodshed and burning, better masters of the sabre than of Latin. These nobles were in fresh training yet from Hmelnitski's uprising, which lasted seven years without interval, so that there was not a man among them who was not as many times in fire as he had years of life. New swarms of these were arriving continually in Lvoff: some had marched from the Byeshchadi full of precipices, others from the Pruth, the Dniester, and the Seret; some lived on the steep banks of the Dniester, some on the wide-spreading Bug; some on the Sinyuha had not been destroyed from the face of the earth by peasant incursions; some had been left on the Tartar boundaries; – all these hurried at the call of the king to the city of the Lion,[3 - Lvoff.] some to march thence against an enemy as yet unknown. The nobles came in from Volynia and from more distant provinces, such hatred was kindled in all souls by the terrible tidings that the enemy had raised sacrilegious hands on the Patroness of the Commonwealth in Chenstohova.

And the Cossacks dared not raise obstacles, for the hearts were moved in the most hardened, and besides, they were forced by the Tartars to beat with the forehead to the king, and to renew for the hundredth time their oath of loyalty. A Tartar embassy, dangerous to the enemies of the king, was in Lvoff under the leadership of Suba Gazi Bey, offering, in the name of the Khan, a horde a hundred thousand strong to assist the Commonwealth; of these forty thousand from near Kamenyets could take the field at once.

Besides the Tartar embassy a legation had come from Transylvania to carry through negotiations begun with Rakotsy concerning succession to the throne. The ambassador of the emperor was present; so was the papal nuncio, who had come with the king. Every day deputations arrived from the armies of the kingdom and Lithuania, from provinces and lands, with declarations of loyalty, and a wish to defend to the death the invaded country.

The fortunes of the king increased; the Commonwealth, crushed altogether so recently, was rising before the eyes of all to the wonder of ages and nations. The souls of men were inflamed with thirst for war and retaliation, and at the same time they grew strong. And as in spring-time a warm generous rain melts the snow, so mighty hope melted doubt. Not only did they wish for victory, but they believed in it. New and favorable tidings came in continually; though often untrue, they passed from mouth to mouth. Time after time men told now of castles recovered, now of battles in which unknown regiments under leaders hitherto unknown had crushed the Swedes, now of terrible clouds of peasants sweeping along, like locusts, against the enemy. The name of Stefan Charnyetski was more and more frequent on every lip.

The details in these tidings were often untrue, but taken together they reflected as a mirror what was being done in the whole country.

But in Lvoff reigned as it were a continual holiday. When the king came the city greeted him solemnly, the clergy of the three rites, the councillors of the city, the merchants, the guilds. On the squares and streets, wherever an eye was cast, banners, white, sapphire, purple, and gilded, were waving. The Lvoff people raised proudly their golden lion on a blue field, recalling with self-praise the scarcely passed Cossack and Tartar attacks.