Fire in the Steppe (58 page)

"The Poles reared him," said they; "but he is the son of a lion; he bit them and returned to the Padishah's service."

The vizir himself wished to see him; and the "rising sun of war," the young kaimakan, Kara Mustafa, enamoured of military glory and wild warriors, fell in love with him. Both inquired diligently of him concerning the Commonwealth, the hetman, the armies, and Kamenyets; they rejoiced at his answers, seeing from them that war would be easy; that to the Sultan it must bring victory, to the Poles defeat, and to them the title of Ghazi (conqueror). Hence Azya had frequent opportunities later to fall on his face to the vizir, to sit at the threshold of the kaimakan's tent, and received from both numerous gifts in camels, horses, and weapons.

The grand vizir gave him a kaftan of silver brocade, the possession of which raised him in the eyes of all Lithuanian Tartars and Cheremis. Krychinski, Adurovich, Moravski, Groholski, Tarasovski, Aleksandrovich,—in a word, all those captains who had once dwelt in the Commonwealth and served it, but now returned to the Sultan,—placed themselves without a question under the command of Tugai Bey's son, honoring in him both the prince by descent and the warrior who had received a kaftan. He became, therefore, a notable murza; and more than two thousand warriors, incomparably better than the usual Tartars, obeyed his nod. The approaching war, in which it was easier for the young murza to distinguish himself than for any one else, might carry him high; he might find in it dignities, renown, power.

But still Azya bore poison in his soul. To begin with, it pricked his pride that the Tartars, in comparison with the Turks themselves, especially the janissaries and spahis, had little more significance than dogs compared with hunters. He had significance himself, but the Tartars in general were considered worthless cavalry. The Turk used them, at times he feared them, but in the camp he despised them, Azya, noticing this, kept his men apart from the general Tartar mass, as if they formed a separate, a better kind of army; but with this he brought on himself straightway the indignation of the Dobrudja and Belgrod murzas, and was not able to convince various Turkish officers that the Lithuanian Tartars were really better in any way than chambuls of the horde. On the other hand, reared in a Christian country, among nobles and knights, he could not inure himself to the manners of the East. In the Commonwealth he was only an ordinary officer and of the last arm of the service; but still, when meeting superiors or even the hetman, he was not obliged to humble himself as here, where he was a murza and the leader of all the companies of Lithuanian Tartars. Here he had to fall on his face before the vizir; he had to touch the ground with his forehead in the friendly tent of the kaimakan; he had to prostrate himself before the pashas, before the ulema, before the chief aga of the janissaries. Azya was not accustomed to this. He remembered that he was the son of a hero; he had a wild soul full of pride, aiming high, as eagles aim; hence he suffered sorely.

But the recollection of Basia burned him with fire most of all. He cared not that one weak hand had hurled from his horse him who at Bratslav, at Kalnik, and a hundred other places had challenged to combat and stretched in death the most terrible skirmishers of the Zaporojia; he cared not for the shame, the disgrace! But he loved that woman beyond measure and thought; he wanted her in his tent, to look at her, to beat her, to kiss her. If it were in his choice to be Padishah and rule half the world, or to take her in his arms, feel with his heart the warmth of her blood, the breath of her face, her lips with his lips, he would prefer her to Tsargrad, to the Bosphorus, to the title of Khalif. He wanted her because he loved her; he wanted her because he hated her. The more she was foreign to him, the more he wanted her; the more she was pure, faithful, untainted, the more he wanted her. More than once when he remembered in his tent that he had kissed those eyes one time in his life, in the ravine after the battle with Azba Bey, and that at Rashkoff he had felt her breast on his, the madness of desire carried him away. He knew not what had become of her, whether she had perished on the road or not. At times he found solace in the thought that she had died. At times he thought, "It had been better not to carry her away, not to burn Rashkoff, not to come to the service of the Sultan, but to stay in Hreptyoff, and even look at her."

But the unfortunate Zosia Boski was in his tent. Her life passed in low service, in shame and continual terror, for in Azya's heart there was not a drop of pity for her. He simply tormented her because she was not Basia. She had, however, the sweetness and charm of a field flower; she had youth and beauty: therefore he sated himself with that beauty; but he kicked her for any cause, or flogged her white body with rods. In a worse hell she could not be, for she lived without hope. Her life had begun to bloom in Rashkoff, to bloom like spring with the flower of love for Pan Adam. She loved him with her whole soul; she loved that knightly, noble, and honest nature with all her faculties; and now she was the plaything and the captive of that one-eyed monster. She had to crawl at his feet and tremble like a beaten dog, look into his face, look at his hands to see if they were not about to seize a club or a whip; she had to hold back her breath and her tears.

She knew well that there was not and could not be mercy for her; for though a miracle were to wrest her from those terrible hands, she was no longer that former Zosia, white as the first snows, and able to repay love with a clean heart. All that had passed beyond recovery. But since the dreadful disgrace in which she was living was not due to the least fault of hers,—on the contrary, she had been hitherto a maiden stainless as a lamb, innocent as a dove, trusting as a child, simple, loving,—she did not understand why this fearful injustice was wrought on her, an injustice which could not be recompensed; why such inexorable anger of God was weighing upon her; and this mental discord increased her pain, her despair. And so days, weeks, and months passed. Azya came to the plain of Kuchunkaury in winter, and the march to the boundary of the Commonwealth began only in June. All this time passed for Zosia in shame, in torment, in toil. For Azya, in spite of her beauty and sweetness, and though he kept her in his tent, not only did not love her, but rather he hated her because she was not Basia. He looked on her as a common captive; therefore she had to work like a captive. She watered his horses and camels from the river; she carried water for his ablutions, wood for the fire; she spread the skins for his bed; she cooked his food. In other divisions of the Turkish armies women did not go out of the tents through fear of the janissaries, or through custom; but the camp of the Lithuanian Tartars stood apart, and the custom of hiding women was not common among them, for having lived formerly in the Commonwealth, they had grown used to something different. The captives of common soldiers, in so far as soldiers had captives, did not even cover their faces with veils. It is true that women were not free to go beyond the boundaries of the square, for beyond those boundaries they would have been carried off surely; but on the square itself they could go everywhere safely, and occupy themselves with camp housekeeping.

Notwithstanding the heavy toil, there was for Zosia even a certain solace in going for wood, or to the river to water the horses and camels; for she feared to cry in the tent, and on the road she could give vent to her tears with impunity. Once, while going with arms full of wood, she met her mother, whom Azya had given to Halim. They fell into each other's arms, and it was necessary to pull them apart; and though Azya flogged Zosia afterward, not sparing even blows of rods on her head, still the meeting was dear to her. Another time, while washing handkerchiefs and foot-cloths for Azya at the ford, Zosia saw Eva at a distance going with pails of water. Eva was groaning under the weight of the pails; her form had changed greatly and grown heavier, but her features, though shaded with a veil, reminded Zosia of Adam, and such pain seized her heart that consciousness left her for the moment. Still, they did not speak to each other from fear.

That fear stifled and mastered gradually all Zosia's feelings, till at last it stood alone in place of her desires, hopes, and memory. Not to be beaten had become for her an object. Basia in her place would have killed Azya with his own knife on the first day, without thinking of what might come afterwards; but the timid Zosia, half a child yet, had not Basia's daring. And it came at last to this, that she considered it fondness if the terrible Azya, under the influence of momentary desire, put his deformed face near her lips. Sitting in the tent, she did not take her eyes from him, wishing to learn whether he was angry or not, following his movements, striving to divine his wishes.

When she foresaw evil, and when from under his mustaches, as in the case of Tugai Bey, the teeth began to glitter, she crept to his feet almost senseless from terror, pressed her pale lips to them, embracing convulsively his knees and crying like an afflicted child,—

"Do not beat me, Azya! forgive me; do not beat!"

He forgave her almost never; he gloated over her, not only because she was not Basia, but because she had been the betrothed of Novoveski. Azya had a fearless soul; yet so awful were the accounts between him and Pan Adam that at thought of that giant, with vengeance hardened in his heart, a certain disquiet seized the young Tartar. There was to be war; they might meet, and it was likely that they would meet. Azya was not able to avoid thinking of this; and because these thoughts came to him at sight of Zosia, he took vengeance on her, as if he wished to drive away his own alarm with blows of rods.

At last the time came when the Sultan gave command to march. Azya's men were to move in the vanguard, and after them the whole legion of Dobrudja and Belgrod Tartars. That was arranged between the Sultan, the vizir, and the kaimakan. But in the beginning all went to the Balkans together. The march was comfortable, for by reason of the heat which was setting in, they marched only in the night, six hours from one resting-place to the other. Tar-barrels were burning along their road, and the massala djirali lighted the way for the Sultan with colored lights. The swarms of people flowed on like a river, through boundless plains; filled the depressions of valleys like locusts, covered the mountains. After the armed men went the tabors, in them the harems; after the tabors herds without number.

But in the swamps at the foot of the Balkans the gilded and purple chariot of the kasseka was mired so that twelve buffaloes were unable to draw it from the mud. "That is an evil omen, lord, for thee and for the whole army," said the chief mufti to the Sultan. "An evil omen," repeated the half-mad dervishes in the camp. The Sultan was alarmed, and decided to send all women out of the camp with the marvellous kasseka.

The command was announced to the armies. Those of the soldiers who had no place to which they might send captives, and from love did not wish to sell them to strangers, preferred to kill them. Merchants of the caravanserai bought others by the thousand, to sell them afterward in the markets of Stambul and all the places of nearer Asia. A great fair, as it were, lasted for three days. Azya offered Zosia for sale without hesitation; an old Stambul merchant, a rich person, bought her for his son.

He was a kindly man, for at Zosia's entreaties and tears he bought her mother from Halim; it is true that he got her for a trifle. The next day both wandered on toward Stambul, in a line with other women. In Stambul Zosia's lot was improved, without ceasing to be shameful. Her new owner loved her, and after a few months he raised her to the dignity of wife. Her mother did not part from her.

Many people, among them many women, even after a long time of captivity, returned to their country. There was also some person, who by all means, through Armenians, Greek merchants, and servants of envoys from the Commonwealth, sought Zosia too, but without result. Then these searches were interrupted on a sudden; and Zosia never saw her native land, nor the faces of those who were dear to her. She lived till her death in a harem.

Even before the Turks marched from Adrianople, a great movement had begun in all the stanitsas on the Dniester. To Hreptyoff, the stanitsa nearest to Kamenyets, couriers of the hetman were hastening continually, bringing various orders; these the little knight executed himself, or if they did not relate to him, he forwarded them through trusty people. In consequence of these orders the garrison of Hreptyoff was reduced notably. Pan Motovidlo went with his Cossacks to Uman to aid Hanenko, who, with a handful of Cossacks faithful to the Commonwealth, struggled as best he could with Doroshenko and the Crimean horde which had joined him. Pan Mushalski, the incomparable bowman, Pan Snitko of the escutcheon Hidden Moon, Pan Nyenashinyets, and Pan Hromyka, led a squadron and Linkhauz's dragoons to Batog of unhappy memory, where was stationed Pan Lujetski, who, aided by Hanenko, was to watch Doroshenko's movements; Pan Bogush received an order to remain in Mohiloff till he could see chambuls with the naked eye. The instructions of the hetman were seeking eagerly the famous Pan Rushchyts, whom Volodyovski alone surpassed as a partisan; but Pan Rushchyts had gone to the steppes at the head of a few tens of men, and vanished as if in water. They heard of him only later, when wonderful tidings were spread, that around Doroshenko's tabor and the companies of the horde an evil spirit, as it were, was hovering, which carried away daily single warriors and smaller companies. It was suspected that this must be Pan Rushchyts, for no other except the little knight could attack in that manner. In fact, it was Pan Rushchyts.

As decided before. Pan Michael had to go to Kamenyets; the hetman needed him there, for he knew him to be a soldier whose coming would comfort the hearts, while it roused the courage, of the inhabitants and the garrison. The hetman was convinced that Kamenyets would not hold out; with him the question was simply that it should hold out as long as possible,—that is, till the Commonwealth could assemble some forces for defence. In this conviction he sent to evident death, as it were, his favorite soldier, the most renowned cavalier of the Commonwealth.