Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/559

 Rh of that Pagan strong drink, and I will tell everything; what I have seen and what I have not seen!"

"If thou tell one lie I will drive a wedge between thy teeth!" replied Hlava.

But he brought a skin of mare's-milk a second time. Sanderus seized it, fastened his lips to it greedily, like a child to the breast of its mother, and began to sob, opening and closing his eyes in succession, till he had drained off two quarts, or perhaps more, then he shook himself, put the skin on his knee, and said, as if yielding to necessity,—

"This is foulness!" Then he turned to Zbyshko: "Now inquire, my deliverer!"

"Was my wife in that detachment in which thou wert?" On Sanderus' face appeared a certain astonishment. He had heard, it is true, that Danusia was Zbyshko's wife, but that the marriage was secret, and that she had been carried off immediately; so he thought of her always as the daughter of Yurand. Still, he answered in a hurry,—

"Yes, Voevoda! she was, but Siegfried de Löwe and Arnold von Baden broke through the enemy."

"Didst thou see her?" asked the young man, with throbbing heart.

"I did not see her face, lord, but between two horses I saw a basket cradle, entirely closed; they were carrying some one in the cradle, and that same lizard was looking after it, that same serving-woman of the Order who came from Danveld to the hunting-lodge. And I heard sad singing also, and it came from the cradle."

Zbyshko grew pale from emotion; he sat on a tree trunk, and for a time did not know what more to ask. Matsko and Hlava were also moved immensely, for they heard great and important news. Hlava thought, perhaps, at the same time of his own beloved lady, who had remained in Spyhov, and for whom this news would be the sentence of misfortune.

Silence followed.

At last the cunning Matsko, who did not know Sanderus and had barely heard of the man previously, looked at him with suspicion and asked,—

"What sort of person art thou, and what wert thou doing among the Knights of the Order?"

"What sort of man am I, great, mighty knight," answered the vagrant, "let these present answer,—this valiant prince (he indicated Zbyshko), and this brave count here from Bohemia, who know me this long time."