The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly

Author:Eric P. Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

I X • B U T T O N -F A C E P E T E R A T T A C K S

old weather came in late November—or Listopad, the month of Falling Leaves, as Polish folk call it—and found the poor people in the villages already fortified in their log huts with the thatched roofs. Sand had been heaped high about the walls of the houses, all crevices that led to the outer world were stopped up with mud or tree branch or stone, wood and charcoal were piled under table and bench, and from the ceiling hung dried vegetables and mushrooms and sausage. The geese and pigs still ran about outside the house but would be taken in with the first frost, to share the “black” or large compartment of the hut with the family. In the second or “white” compartment of the hut the whole family slept when the weather was not too frigid, but when the snow was up to the roof level, and the cold was so great that one could hear trees cracking in the night, all slept in the “black” room which had not even a chimney to vent the smoke that poured out steadily from an open fireplace.

In the city houses, wealthy men were beginning to build high tile stoves of Italian pattern, but for the most part, people depended for heat and comfort upon the open fireplace. When the first frost came boys ran hither and thither with flaming coals for starting the first fires; up in the tower of the Church of Our Lady Mary the watchmen kept eyes constantly wide open in order to detect as quickly as possible the patches of flame which sometimes broke out from the roofs of overheated dwellings, and many a troublesome night was spent by the water master and his men quenching such fires.

A light snow was falling on the last Wednesday of the month, when Pan Andrew started for his nightly duties at the church. The world had been going well with him, he reflected, as he made his way through the dark and well-nigh deserted streets: his son was making marked progress in the collegium, his wife was happy and contented, he himself was earning enough to support them both comfortably, and he hoped that before long he would have a chance to present his offering to the king. For it had not been possible thus far to gain an audience; either the king had been away on business in Torun with soldiers and diplomats, or he was in Vilna, the home of the Jagiello dynasty, which now ruled Poland, or in Lvov, where the Ruthenian subjects lived.

In the short snatches of time when he had been in Krakow neither Pan Andrew nor Jan Kanty had been able to reach him, because so many had been waiting ahead of them—the ambassadors from the Czechs who came to offer him the crown of Bohemia, the delegation from Rome, the scholars

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