Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/484

 "Thou knowest that I want what thou dost, but in his first grief he will be ready even to use harsh words against thee."

"Let him use harsh words," answered she, with a sad smile. "But he will not, for he will not know me."

"He will know thee."

"He will not know me. You did not know me. Tell him it is not I, but Yasko, and Yasko is like me to the very lips. Tell him that Yasko has grown, and it will not come to his head that it is I, and not Yasko."

The old knight said something now about knees bending inward, but as boys' knees also bend in sometimes, that could not be a hindrance, especially as Yasko's face was almost the same, and his hair, since the last cutting, had grown long again, and he wore it in a net like other noble youths, and knights also. For these reasons Matsko yielded, and now they fell to discussing the journey. They were to start on the morrow. Matsko decided to enter the lands of the Order, go to Brodnitsa, find an informant there, and if the Grand Master, in spite of the suppositions of Lichtenstein, was in Malborg yet, to go to Malborg; in the opposite case to cross the boundary of the Order in the direction of Spyhov, inquiring on the road for the young Polish knight and his retinue.

The old knight thought that he might learn something more easily of Zbyshko in Spyhov, or at the Warsaw court of Prince Yanush, than in any other place.

In fact they set out on the following morning. Spring had begun completely, hence there were overflows of water, and those of the Skrva and the Drventsa stopped the road, so that only on the tenth day after leaving Plotsk did they cross the boundary and find themselves in Brodnitsa. The town was clean and well-ordered, but immediately on entering one might recognize rigorous German rule, for immense walled gallows had been built outside the town at the side of the Gorchenitsa road and decorated with bodies of hanged people, of whom one was a woman. On the watch-tower and on the castle waved a flag which had a red hand on a white field. But the travellers did not find the comtur himself in the place, for he had gone with a part of the garrison, and at the head of the neighboring nobility, to Malborg. This information was given to Matsko by an