CHAPTER I
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T SELL HIS PUMPKIN
It was in late July of the year 1461 that the sun rose one morning red and fiery as if ushering in midsummer’s hottest day. His rays fell upon the old city of Krakow and the roads leading up to it, along which rolled and rocked a very caravan of peasants’ wagons. They were drawn mostly by single horses hitched into place by the side of a rough pole that served for shaft; for wheels there were stout pieces of board nailed tightly together and cut round about, baked with fire at the rim to harden them; for body they had but rude cross boards as a floor, with sides and ends of plaited willow reeds, so that the wagons had the appearance of large baskets traveling on wheels. As they moved along a road often rough from holes and stones, out through fields sometimes, and even across streams, the wagons pitched about like little boats on a wind-swept sea.
In many cases the drivers were walking alongside the carts, flicking their long whips now and then above the horses’ backs to give the animals a little encouragement, while upon the seats sat the patient figures of women and children.
In the wagons was all manner of merchandise—vegetables, flowers, ducks, hens and geese, pigs, butter and milk. Here a driver was conveying a load of skins, here one had nothing but black earth for enriching city gardens. Another, driving a load of poultry, wore around his neck, like beads, garland after garland of dried mushrooms strung upon strings. At the back of the picture rose the foothills of the Carpathians, misty and golden in the early sun, and at a distance the Vistula River curved like a silver bracelet about the Wawel Hill. All about was the early-morning smell of wet grass and fresh earth and growing things.
Market day had begun. All night some of these wagons had been traveling along the highways that spread out from the great highway that was the Krakow, Tarnov, Lvov, Kiev route. Some had been on the march for two days and two nights, so distant were the borders of the province. Here were men and women in town dress from the larger centers, here were barefooted peasants in long coats and round hats, here were peasant women in rough garments but with head scarfs and shawls of dazzling colors, here were the inhabitants of a Jewish village, twelve men in black robes and black hats, with the characteristic orthodox curls hanging down in front of their ears.
Here were boys belonging to the retinue of a local szlachcic or country gentleman, their leather costumes showing up to advantage beside the rather dingy dress of the male portion of the peasantry. Here and there were women with little babies, here and there were old people trudging by the sides of their wagons up to market, as they had done for thirty or forty years past.
But every man in that caravan carried some sort of weapon, either a short knife at the belt, or quarterstaff in the hand, or huge-headed ax at the bottom of the wagon. For thieves were abroad in great number at times of market, and it was even said that there were country gentlemen of ruined fortune who were not above recouping themselves now and then at the expense of some such caravan. Usually, however, it was on the return trip that the thieves were numerous, for then each villager and peasant had gold or silver as the result of the day’s bargaining.
Although practically all these wagons carried cargoes of goods, there was one which seemed strangely empty for market day. It had two horses instead of the usual one, its shaft pole was stouter than those of the other wagons, its occupants were better dressed than the peasants and seemed somehow not like actual workers of the soil. In it rode the driver, a man of perhaps forty-five years, a woman—his wife—some ten years younger, and a boy who sat at the open end of the wagon, dangling his legs above the dirt and mud of the highway.
“Now, wife,” said the man, snapping a long whip at the off horse—his wife was sitting beside him on a rude seat at the front of the wagon—“that high tower you see is a watch tower on the Wawel Hill of Krakow. Should we go as flies the stork we should reach there by the eighth hour. See, in the distance are the two towers of the Church of Our Lady. It is a welcome sight to my eyes after these three weeks on a rocking cart.”
The woman threw back a gray hood from her face and looked ahead with longing eyes. “It is Krakow, then,” she said, “the city of my mother. Often has she told me of its glory, and yet I never had hoped to see it. God knows I wish I might see it differently and with less pain in my heart. But God gives, and man receives, and we are here at last.”