The two brethren had nought wherewith to pay the ferry-toll but the blaspheming Tatar prayer. Simon the warrior said he would rather let himself be cut in pieces by the Tatars than blaspheme the true God and the Blessed Virgin, but Michael, having more sang-froid, assured him that he would say it for them both, and made out that his brother was dumb. He, therefore, repeated the horrible blasphemy twice, once for himself and once for his elder brother, while Simon, with clenched fists, repeated silently to himself an Our Father and a Hail Mary! Thus they got ferried over to the opposite shore; and when Simon the warrior reproached his brother for yielding to compulsion and repeating the blasphemous verses, Michael reassured his elder brother by telling him that after every verse he had said to himself: "Not true, not true." Yet for all that it was a grievous sin.
And warrior Simon marked the name of the Manichæan on the hilt of his sword.
But now the refugees plunged into the jaws of a fresh danger. The great battle of the Sajo[22] had just been lost. The Tatar flood filled the whole space between the Danube and the Theiss. When they emerged on the border of a forest, the two brothers saw nothing all around them, right up to the horizon, but the smoke of burning villages. They returned, therefore, into the forest, and began to fare northwards, hearing on every side of them the sound of the Tatar horns replying to each other; seeking a refuge for the night in the trunks of hollow trees, and finding no other sustenance than wild honey and beach-mast with which to satisfy the cravings of hunger.
[22] On the Muhi puszta, near the river Sajo, the Tatars defeated King Bela and the Magyars in 1241.
On the fourth day they reached a respectable house in the midst of the forest, which was defended neither by trench nor bastion, and yet was not burnt down.
The young warriors marvelled thereat; they did not know that in this house dwelt a Moor, and the Moors were all on the side of the Tatars. They brought them tidings, conducted them to the towns, and were their spies and receivers. What the Tatars stole they bought of them cheaply, and peddled it in Moravia, and even further still. This was the house of one of these hucksters. A great red ox's head was painted on the door, that the Tatars might recognize that the dweller therein was one of their men.
The Moor received them with great amiability when they crossed his threshold, assured them that they might stay with him, and immediately set about making ready a meal for them, which was a great consolation to the honest, starving wanderers. While they were complaining to their honest host of the hardships they had undergone, a noble lady came panting up to the house, from whose ragged robes and unstitched sandals one could see that she had fled afar for refuge, and asked whether her beloved husband and her little boy had come thither. There were five of them hiding in the forest, she said; her husband, with their little boy, a faithful retainer, a nurse, and a little baby. All at once they had heard the barking of dogs, and her husband had said that the other three should remain behind in a cave, while he himself, with the little boy, went on in front to look about, and see whether there were any human dwelling near at hand. They had waited for him a long time, till at last the wife, terrified at the long absence of her husband, had come forth herself to seek him. Were they perchance here?
"It is possible they may have come hither, my child," said the Moor, with a shrug; "many seek refuge here nowadays. What were they like?"
The woman described her husband's appearance and his garments, and then the little boy. On the little boy's finger, she said, was a black horsehair ring, with a little white cross. None could take it off, even if they killed him for it; he could be recognized by that.
The Moor replied that he had not cast eyes on them, and the poor woman, wailing and ringing her hands, went further on to seek for her husband and her little boy.