Neath the Hoof of the Tartar; Or, The Scourge of God

by báró Miklós Jósika

Master Peter was not wealthy as his brother Stephen was, but for all that he was sufficiently well off. Stephen, the younger brother, had had a large fortune with his wife; Peter, a much smaller one with his. The family mansion, or castle,[6] belonged equally to both; and, being both widowers, and much devoted to one another, they had agreed to share it, and had done so most amicably for several years.

[6] Any country house was a castle, or château, as the French would say.

Without being covetous, Stephen had a warm appreciation of this world's goods; and of all the forty male members of the Szirmay family living at this time, he was certainly the most wealthy. He was devoted to his children, and gave them the best education possible at the time of which we are speaking, the first half of the thirteenth century. His son, Akos, now one of the King's pages, had learnt to read and write; he had, too, a certain knowledge of Latin, and sometimes in conversation he would use a Latin word or two, with Hungarian terminations. In fact, he knew somewhat more than most of his class, and, needless to say, he was a good horseman and a good marksman, and well-skilled in the use of arms and in all manly exercises.

Stephen's daughter and niece, Jolánta and Dora, were as good scholars as his son; and all three owed their secular as well as religious knowledge to Father Roger, in later years the famous author of the "Carmen Miserabile," and already known as one of the most cultivated men of the day. He was making his home with the Szirmays, and acting as chaplain, merely for the time being; and Stephen was glad to secure his services for the children, who loved the gentle Father, as all did who came in contact with him.

Learning was held in such high honour in Hungary in these days, that many a man coveted, and had accorded to him, the title of "Magister"—Master—(borne by the King's Notary and Chancellor) if he had but a little more scholarship than his neighbours, though that often of the slenderest description, and sometimes but few degrees removed from ignorance itself. A man such as Roger was not likely therefore to be overlooked by a King such as Béla; and his advancement was certain to come in time, notwithstanding the fact that he was an Italian.

It was when Dora was about eighteen that her father had resolved to go and live on his own property, in one of the northernmost counties of Hungary.

Now Peter had never been a good landlord; from his youth up his pursuits and interests had not been such as to make him take pleasure in agriculture. Accounts and calculations were not at all in his way either, and accordingly, no one was more imposed upon and plundered by his stewards than himself. He was generous in everything, open-handed, a true gentleman, delighted to help or oblige anyone, and much more thoughtlessly profuse than many who were far richer than himself.

The dwelling-house on that one of his estates to which he had decided to go, was, it is hardly needful to say, very much out of repair, almost a ruin in fact. It had never been handsome, being, in truth, but a great shapeless barn, or store-house, which consisted merely of a ground floor nearly as broad as it was long. The original building had been of stone, built in the shape of a tent, and, of course, open to the roof; for ceilings, except in churches, were long looked upon as luxuries.

The first inhabitants had slept and cooked, lived and died, all in this one great hall, or barn; and their successors, as they found more space needed, had made many additions, each with its own separate roof of split fir-poles, straw, or reeds. By degrees the original building had been surrounded by a whole colony of such roofs, with broad wooden troughs between them to carry off the rain water. Most of these additions had open roofs, and were as much like barns as the first; but some were covered in with great shapeless beams; and in a few there were even fireplaces, built up of logs thickly coated with plaster.

Various alterations and improvements had been made before Master Peter's arrival, the most important of which was that the openings in the walls which had hitherto done duty as windows, had been filled in with bladder-skin, and provided with wooden lattices. The floors were not boarded, but the earth had been carefully levelled, and was concealed by coarse reed-mats, while the walls had been plastered and whitened.