Pretty Michal Part 31

CHAPTER XXIX.

Concerning a terribly great contest, from which it will be seen that where his spouse's honor was concerned, Valentine put no bounds to his fury.

But all this was not enough for Valentine. Henceforward he went about like a raging lion, and whenever he talked with anyone in the street, his gestures were those of a man who is about to pull up his shirt sleeves for a fight.

At last he fell in with Simplex.

"I must trounce someone to-day, or else I shall certainly get the fever or the jaundice. Friend Simplex, if ever you were my good comrade, if the health of your friend is at all dear to you, find me someone on whom I can vent my wrath."

"Most willingly, my dear good comrade, I'll find you someone."

"Anyone will do. I don't care who it is, a sword-eater, a stone-breaker, a giant! I'll fight him. A woman has insulted me, but I cannot take revenge upon a woman. Procure me, from somewhere or other, a man whom I can trample underfoot. Bring me a Turkish pasha, or a robber chieftain, or a dog-headed Tartar, that I may devour him."

"I need not look so far as that. I'll find you an antagonist much nearer home. If you want such a one, know that you have no greater enemy than young Ignatius Furmender, or Zwirina. You have been insulted by his mother; the son must now pay for the mother's rudeness."

"You've hit it," cried Valentine, giving Simplex a mighty blow on the back from sheer friendship. "Not in vain do they call you knowing. He never once occurred to me. To think that I should be looking everywhere for a foe, when he is under my nose all the time.

It is just like the man who went in search of the horse on which he was actually riding. Here! take my glove and this gulden, and notify to the sheriff that I challenge Ignatius Zwirina to break a lance with me."

Simplex accepted the commission, went straight to the sheriff, and informed him that Valentine Kalondai desired to challenge Ignatius Zwirina to fight him with lances, according to ancient law and custom. The sheriff made a note thereof, and took the deposited gulden, at the same time calling Simplex's attention to the fact that as the city found the lances, each of the combatants would have to pay a Hungarian gulden extra for every lance that broke in his hand. Thereupon he handed him a written permission, duly sealed with the seal of the city of Ka.s.sa, for Valentine Kalondai to challenge Ignatius Zwirina to fight him with lances, according to ancient law and custom, as prescribed by the statutes of the city of Ka.s.sa.

Thus provided with the official authorization, Simplex, accompanied by the town trumpeter, next proceeded to the house of the Zwirina family, and finding the door closed, bade the trumpeter blow a flourish three times, and then proclaimed the challenge before the crowd, which had in the meantime a.s.sembled in the streets:

"Ignatius Zwirina! With the permission and consent of the sheriff of Ka.s.sa, I hereby challenge you in the name of the good and valiant Valentine Kalondai, to break with him, according to ancient law and custom, one, two, or three lances, as the case may be. Take this glove, and on the first day of carnival appear on the ropewalk behind the townhall, duly armed and mounted, to answer the challenge in your own person, if you would be regarded as a stout-hearted fellow and not as an errand-boy of your lady-mother."

Then the trumpeter sounded three more flourishes, and Simplex nailed Valentine's glove to the Zwirinas' door.

There the glove remained till Twelfthnight. n.o.body took it down. For according to the statute all such duels had to be fought out between Twelfthnight and Shrovetide, whereby all and sundry were given to understand that the town council regarded such combats as mere carnival frolics. This wise ordinance a.s.sumed that the hot-blooded youth of the parish had their fling during Shrovetide. If anyone felt as if he did not know what to do with himself, it was open to him to fight to his heart's content during the prescribed season and have done with it, for, Shrovetide over, it was strictly forbidden to break the peace, or in any way disturb or hara.s.s one's neighbors.

It was also generally found that after all such combats the young fellows, even when they had belabored each other most soundly, became the best friends in the world, and it was considered the most shameful cowardice to bewail the b.u.mps and bruises dealt out on such occasions, be they what they might.

It was also considered equally disgraceful when the person so challenged did not appear on the field of battle at the appointed day and hour. Now this was the case with Ignatius Zwirina, who had no very fervent desire to make the acquaintance of Valentine Kalondai's cudgel.

Epiphany arrived, and the whole youth of the parish, as well as the officials appointed to watch the proceedings and keep order, waited in vain from dawn till eve for the appearance of the challenged. The challenger rode idle and alone up and down the ropewalk.

When evening came, and it was no longer to be expected that the defaulter would either appear in person or send people to excuse his absence, Valentine was authorized to take his lance in his hand, having at the end of it a lantern made of a bladder with a lighted candle inside it, and a pair of ragged old drawers hanging over it, and then to ride through the town and proclaim at the corner of every street:

"n.o.ble gentlemen, burgesses, and honest inhabitants of this town!

which of you has seen, which of you knows that cowardly knave Ignatius Zwirina? Who can tell me into which hole he has crawled? Is he in the oven, under the bed, or beneath his mother's skirts?

Whoever finds him, tell him not to be afraid but show himself, for I won't eat him. Here I have a pair of ragged hose. Let him come out and patch them for me, and I'll pay him for the job."

This was the formula of degradation which was the meed of those who failed to appear on such occasions.

Moreover, the whole youth of the town used to take up the heckling with such spirit that further existence in the town of Ka.s.sa became an absolute impossibility for the person so distinguished. Ignatius Zwirina, however, was already deputy syndic of his native place. He therefore could not afford to fly, and his good friends persuaded him so long that at last he resolved to answer Valentine's challenge, and break a pair of lances with him on the following day.

Then, of course, the public mockery ceased.

On the following day a still greater crowd of spectators appeared on the ropewalk, fifty drabants had also been sent by the corporation to keep order, and Count Hommonai had come on horseback to see the fight.

At the appointed hour both hors.e.m.e.n appeared, accompanied by their friends. Valentine wore a breastplate, a helmet, and greaves, but Ignatius was clad in mail from top to toe, both in front and behind; he was plainly of opinion that the back is also vulnerable.

They took the places a.s.signed to them on the opposite sides of the lists, and the umpire then produced two long wooden lances without iron points, and two stout oaken cudgels exactly alike. The challenged had the first choice of weapons, and what he left were handed to the challenger.

They rode bareback, guiding their horses by their knees, to which their reins were fastened, for in their right hands they held their lances and in their left their cudgels.

The moment the trumpet sounded, both hors.e.m.e.n couched their lances and rushed upon each other with a fearful crash.

Ignatius Zwirina was a big lout of a fellow. Placed on the scales he would certainly have weighed much more than Valentine. He aimed viciously at Valentine with his lance; but Valentine struck the shaft of it so sharply with his cudgel that it broke off in the middle, and at the same time with his own lance he struck his antagonist full in the breast, so that Ignatius flew backward into the air off his steed and fell flat on the ground.

Valentine immediately sprang from his horse and punched and pommeled the back and shoulders of the prostrate champion, as prescribed by the rules of the contest, till his cudgel broke; but all this belaboring did very little damage to the defeated combatant, for, besides the coat of mail he wore behind, his mother had well stuffed his clothes with horsehair. Yet, for all that, he did get one or two knocks which he did not forget in a hurry, and that was no more than his due, for he had often vexed Valentine with his evil tongue.

And there the matter would have ended had not old Furmender thought fit to reopen it all again.

For when, after the contest was over, the defeated youth was carried home in a basket, according to ancient practice, the old man took it so to heart that he immediately buckled on his saber, took down the statutes, ran with them to the captain, and called his attention to the paragraph which strictly forbade persons serving in the army to challenge young civilians. He therefore demanded that Valentine should be punished for his challenge as being a gross breach of the law.

But the good captain diligently searched through his diary and showed the conscientious complainant that Valentine Kalondai on such and such a day, viz., on the Wednesday before the last Sunday in Advent of the past year, had been relieved of his military duties, and therefore no longer fell within the category incriminated by the statute. All that could be done therefore, suggested the captain, was for old Mr. Furmender to well rub the blue and red bruises of his Na.s.sy with b.u.t.ter, which he would find a sovereign specific.

And that not a shadow of a doubt as to Valentine's true position might remain, the count that very day publicly advertised Valentine Kalondai's appointment as castellan. Now, no doubt this post is essentially a civic office, but inasmuch as the castellan is practically the commandant's lieutenant, it had for a long time always been given to a soldier, especially since the days when one of the civic magistrates had been discovered in collusion with the castellan to betray the town into the enemy's hands. In memory of this event, the Hamor gate, through which the enemy had been admitted, was walled up in perpetuity.

Thus Kalondai's enemies were completely put to shame, and Dame Sarah experienced the joy of seeing her son's wife, the damsel from Bartfa, sitting in the first place of the front pew of the cathedral; which pew Dame Furmender Zwirina had refused to occupy any longer, having given notice to the dean that she would henceforth take sittings in the suburb church instead.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

Which teaches that outward beauty, be it never so precious a property, is often most dangerous to its possessor.

From this time forth, Valentine, by virtue of his new office, daily visited the commandant's house, where he was always a welcome guest.

In the townhall also, he was held in high honor.

The land, just then, was in very difficult circ.u.mstances. A town like Ka.s.sa, shut in between three distinct masters and anxious to please all three, without giving such a preference to any one of them as might offend the other two, had a very hard time of it. By virtue of the pacification putting an end to the late religious wars, Ka.s.sa fell within the jurisdiction of George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, whose Suzerain was the Turkish Sultan. But the pashas of Eger and Grosswardein often took it into their heads to make predatory raids on their own account as far as Ka.s.sa and Tokay, and then the good people of Ka.s.sa could not wait, as it is the fashion nowadays, till the English had held indignation meetings to protest against the Turkish atrocities; but they forthwith mounted their steeds, seized their weapons, and smote the troops of their own Prince's Suzerain; and this they often did, moreover, in concert with their adversaries the Hungarians of that portion of the kingdom of Hungary which belonged to the Kaiser. In those days, therefore, it required no small discrimination to judge accurately which of the many strangers pa.s.sing to and fro were to be reckoned with as friends, and which as foes; which could be put off with promises, and which had really to be sent away with presents; which might merely be threatened with stripes, and which ought really to get them.

Now at this very time, there came from that part of the land which both Hungary and Transylvania claimed as their own, a person of great distinction, Belisarius Zurdoki by name. One of his ancestors had returned to Hungary from Wallachia with great treasures, and this his descendant had also the reputation of being a very rich man.

Zurdoki made a great display at Ka.s.sa. He said he had come to visit Count Hommonai, with whom he was distantly connected on his mother's side. He brought quite a court with him, equerries, pages, a secretary, a chaplain, a huntsman, a master of the hounds, a jester, gypsy musicians, a falconer, heydukes, couriers, domestics, lackeys, coachmen--in fact, there was no counting the mult.i.tude he brought in his train. He took up so much s.p.a.ce in Count Hommonai's castle that there was no room left for its lawful owners.

And all the time he resided at Ka.s.sa, he did nothing but give splendid entertainments. There was absolutely no end to them.

Belisarius Zurdoki was already over sixty, but though his age was venerable, he had no very extraordinary reputation for morality. He had had so many wives, morganatic and otherwise, to say nothing of those from whom he had been separated, that he himself no longer recollected their proper sequence. He had little respect for the s.e.x, and held that there was not a woman in the world who could not be bought with gifts, only some were more highly priced than others.

He himself, however, had not been in the way when beauty was being served out. He had a broad, satyr face, with a red nose sinking right down upon his mustache; his head, after the prevailing Turkish fashion, was clean shaved, with the exception of a single gray lock over his brows which bobbed up and down whenever he wagged his head.

His mustache hung down limp on both sides in the Turkish style, and his stomach was not unlike a large beer barrel.

And yet he tried to make the world believe that he was such an amiable man that the woman was yet to be born who could resist him, be she never so young, beautiful, and accomplished.