The trumpeter of Krakow

by Eric P. Kelly

“That must be the King, father. See the shining armor and the jewels upon his saddle. And the sword must be of gold, for it shines like fire. And look,” he pointed eagerly, “see the Polish eagle worked in silver upon the saddlecloth. There beyond it is the white knight of Lithuania. Is he not indeed the King?”

“No, son, no. That is but one of the guard that waits on the nobles at the royal castle.”

All about them rose in the bright sunlight palaces, churches, towers, battlement walls, and Gothic buildings, as yet for the most part unadorned by the rich sculpture that was to come in a few years under the influence of the Italian Renaissance. In the distance rose against the turquoise-blue sky the cathedral on the Wawel Hill, its Romanesque tower showing high above the city. Close at hand were the two towers of the Church of Our Lady Mary, not as they appear to-day since the hand of the master architect and of the renowned sculptor, Wit Stwosz, altered them, but rising unbelfried and uncrowned above the cemetery, where white gravestones clustered at the base of the church.

In the very middle of the market, surrounded by smaller wooden buildings, was the great Cloth Hall, used for the sale and exchange of cloth goods, already swarming with merchants who had been traveling all night, and for many nights perhaps, in order to close bargains early on market day before the money of purchasers had been, spent elsewhere.

Camped in the square outside the Cloth Hall were a number of Tartars who had come from the distant East to sell fine swords and cloths and jewels plundered from Muscovites, or Bulgarians, or Greeks, or other travelers in the steppes. Facing the east as the rising sun had crept over Wawel Hill, they had chanted their morning prayer of praise to the great Allah. Their singing could have been heard mingling with the clashing of the great bell on the Church of Our Lady Mary and the chanted service of the Armenian merchants who had come in from Trebizond and the lands beyond the Black Sea with carpets and spices and fine rugs.

Here for the moment in this great international capital of East and West was worshiped every god that man knows; it might even be said that God himself was worshiped under many names and in many languages and dialects. Here were Turks, Cossacks, Ruthenians, Germans, Flemings, Czechs, and Slovaks, with their wares to sell, and Hungarians with their wines from the mellow plains of Transylvania.

As for money, there might be found zloty and guilder and groschen, silver in bars and precious stones, also plenty of token “in kind”; that is to say, certain varieties of merchandise such as amber, dates bound in packages, or even vegetables in containers, each of which had a recognized value over all the trade routes of the Hanseatic League. For the League merchants were represented here as well—prosperous Germans or Dutchmen in long robes with fur collars—and they did business in every language known to man.

While the boy drank in these unusual sights on all sides, there suddenly floated down from above the sweet notes of a trumpet. Looking directly upward he could see the golden bell of a trumpet protruding from one of the tower windows of the Church of Our Lady Mary, and as he looked the full dignity of the church burst upon him, its quiet strength which appealed to the eye being strangely mingled in his senses with the trumpet song which fell upon his ears.

There were two towers rising high above the traffic of the street; rising unequally, he now noticed, for the nearer tower seemed a bit squat beside the farther one. It was from the higher tower that the trumpeter was playing.