The trumpeter of Krakow : $b A tale of the fifteenth centuryKelly, Eric P. (Eric Philbrook)
History
The trumpeter of Krakow : $b A tale of the fifteenth century
Kelly, Eric P. (Eric Philbrook)
Middle Ages -- Juvenile fiction; Poland -- History -- Casimir IV, 1447-1492 -- Juvenile fiction
“It was lucky to hit upon a night when they were together,” thought
Peter. “We can bind the old one and make the young one show us the way
to the prize.”
Joseph had just spread a manuscript before him on the table in the tower
room and had moved a taper close to it to begin reading, when he heard a
sudden noise just outside the door. Turning about sharply, he was just
in time to see the door thrown violently open, and then three men rushed
toward him before he could even assume a defensive attitude; he was
absolutely powerless. One man held his arms as closely gripped as in a
vise, while the two others leaped upon Pan Andrew as he rose, dazed with
astonishment, from the little bed.
A fourth man stood in the doorway. His hands were at his hips and he
laughed merrily. “Ho—ho—my merry singing birds,” he said. “We meet
again high up above the noisy world where none can come to disturb us.”
Then his brows darkened and he asked, “Do you know why I am here?”
Joseph shuddered. This man was the same that had met his father on the
first day that he had seen Krakow—this was the man that had incited the
crowd in the Rynek to stone his people—this was the voice that he had
heard while he lay bound hand and foot in the small room of his
lodgings. But at the same time he wondered what had brought the man back
to the city. He had already obtained the prize, Joseph thought, after
the risk and danger of the first trial. Was it, perhaps, that he wished
to avenge himself upon his father for the incident of the cart?
Joseph made a motion as if to cross himself at thought of this, for here
they were high up in the air above the city, and nothing would be easier
than to hurl a man from the summit into the graveyard below and none
would know of it until morning came and they found the lifeless victim.
Pan Andrew, however, looked at the intruder steadily. “No,” he said,
very deliberately, “I do not know why you are here. But I do know you
now, Peter of the Button Face, sometimes called Bogdan—it is strange
that I did not recognize you that morning when you threatened me.”
Peter took notice in no way of Pan Andrew’s latter statement. He heard
only the negative answer. Apparently he had not expected it.
“You do not? You lie! . . . Do you think that I do not know everything?”
He pushed his way in and held the candle close to the prisoner’s face.
“I say to you that I have come all this way to get what I want; I have
the means for doing it, too, and I have men in this company that would
rather see a dog like you dead than alive. Now come—if you value your
skin. Where have you hidden the Great Tarnov Crystal?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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