Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/272

248 "You might send even a letter to Bogdanets. Sanderus will write it all clearly. They would know about you, at least, and perhaps have a mass said."

"Leave me at present, for I am weak. If I die, thou wilt return to Zyh's house, and tell how it was; they will give money then for a mass there. And people will bury me here, or in Tsehanov."

"In Tsehanov, or in Prasnysh, for only Kurpie are buried in the forest, where wolves howl over them. I have heard from the servants, also, that the prince will go with the court in two days to Tsehanov, and thence to Warsaw."

"They will not desert me here," said Zbyshko.

In fact he had divined rightly, for the princess had gone that very day to the prince with the request to let her stay in the forest house with Danusia, the damsels, and the priest, who was opposed to the early removal of Zbyshko to Prasnysh. De Lorche was considerably better in two days, and was on his feet. But learning that the "ladies" would remain, he remained also to accompany them on their return, and in case of a "Saracen" attack, to defend them from evil accident. Whence these "Saracens" were to come was a question which the gallant knight of Lorraine had not given himself. In the distant west, it is true, Lithuanians were called thus; from them, however, no danger could threaten the daughter of Keistut; she was the full sister of Vitold, and the cousin of Yagello, the "mighty king at Cracow."

But in spite of what he had heard in Mazovia of the christening of Lithuania, and the union of two crowns on the head of one sovereign, De Lorche had lived too long among Knights of the Cross not to believe that every evil might be expected from Lithuanians at all times. The Knights of the Cross had told him this, and he had not entirely lost faith in the Order.

Meanwhile an event happened which fell as a shadow between the Knights of the Cross and Prince Yanush. On the day before the departure of the court, brothers Gottfried and Rotgier arrived; they had been in Tsehanov before; and with them came a certain De Fourcy as the herald of news unfavorable for Knights of the Cross. Behold, it had happened that foreign guests visiting with the starosta of Lubov, namely, he, De Fourcy, De Bregov, and Meinegger, all from families of previous merit in the Order, when they had heard of Yurand of Spyhov, not only were they not frightened, but they decided to entice the renowned warrior to the field and