CHAPTER XLVII.
Azya, the son of Tugai Bey, after a long halt on the plain ofKuchunkaury, was really marching with his men at the head of all theTurkish forces toward the boundary of the Commonwealth.
After the grievous blow which his plans and his person had receivedfrom the valiant hand of Basia, a fortunate star seemed to shine on himanew. First of all, he had recovered. His beauty, it is true, wasdestroyed forever: one eye had trickled out altogether, his nose wasmashed, and his face, once like the face of a falcon, had becomemonstrous and terrible. But just that terror with which it filledpeople gave him still more consideration among the wild Tartars of theDobrudja. His arrival made a great noise in the whole camp; his deedsgrew in the narratives of men, and became gigantic. It was said that hehad brought all the Lithuanian Tartars and Cheremis into the service ofthe Sultan; that he had outwitted the Poles, as no one had everoutwitted them; that he had burned whole towns along the Dniester, hadcut off their garrisons, and had taken great booty. Those who were tomarch now for the first time to Lehistan; those who, coming fromdistant corners of the East, had not tried Polish arms hitherto; thosewhose hearts were alarmed at the thought that they would soon stand eyeto eye with the terrible cavalry of the unbeliever,--saw in the youngAzya a warrior who had conquered them, and made a fortunate beginningof war. The sight of the "hero" filled their hearts straightway withcomfort; besides, as Azya was son of the terrible Tugai Bey, whose namehad thundered through the Orient, all eyes were turned on him the more.
"The Poles reared him," said they; "but he is the son of a lion; he bitthem and returned to the Padishah's service."
The vizir himself wished to see him; and the "rising sun of war," theyoung kaimakan, Kara Mustafa, enamoured of military glory and wildwarriors, fell in love with him. Both inquired diligently of himconcerning the Commonwealth, the hetman, the armies, and Kamenyets;they rejoiced at his answers, seeing from them that war would be easy;that to the Sultan it must bring victory, to the Poles defeat, and tothem the title of Ghazi (conqueror). Hence Azya had frequentopportunities later to fall on his face to the vizir, to sit at thethreshold of the kaimakan's tent, and received from both numerous giftsin camels, horses, and weapons.
The grand vizir gave him a kaftan of silver brocade, the possession ofwhich raised him in the eyes of all Lithuanian Tartars and Cheremis.Krychinski, Adurovich, Moravski, Groholski, Tarasovski,Aleksandrovich,--in a word, all those captains who had once dwelt inthe Commonwealth and served it, but now returned to the Sultan,--placedthemselves without a question under the command of Tugai Bey's son,honoring in him both the prince by descent and the warrior who hadreceived a kaftan. He became, therefore, a notable murza; and more thantwo thousand warriors, incomparably better than the usual Tartars,obeyed his nod. The approaching war, in which it was easier for theyoung murza to distinguish himself than for any one else, might carryhim high; he might find in it dignities, renown, power.
But still Azya bore poison in his soul. To begin with, it pricked hispride that the Tartars, in comparison with the Turks themselves,especially the janissaries and spahis, had little more significancethan dogs compared with hunters. He had significance himself, but theTartars in general were considered worthless cavalry. The Turk usedthem, at times he feared them, but in the camp he despised them, Azya,noticing this, kept his men apart from the general Tartar mass, as ifthey formed a separate, a better kind of army; but with this he broughton himself straightway the indignation of the Dobrudja and Belgrodmurzas, and was not able to convince various Turkish officers that theLithuanian Tartars were really better in any way than chambuls of thehorde. On the other hand, reared in a Christian country, among noblesand knights, he could not inure himself to the manners of the East. Inthe Commonwealth he was only an ordinary officer and of the last arm ofthe service; but still, when meeting superiors or even the hetman, hewas not obliged to humble himself as here, where he was a murza and theleader of all the companies of Lithuanian Tartars. Here he had to fallon his face before the vizir; he had to touch the ground with hisforehead in the friendly tent of the kaimakan; he had to prostratehimself before the pashas, before the ulema, before the chief aga ofthe janissaries. Azya was not accustomed to this. He remembered that hewas the son of a hero; he had a wild soul full of pride, aiming high,as eagles aim; hence he suffered sorely.
But the recollection of Basia burned him with fire most of all. Hecared not that one weak hand had hurled from his horse him who atBratslav, at Kalnik, and a hundred other places had challenged tocombat and stretched in death the most terrible skirmishers of theZaporojia; he cared not for the shame, the disgrace! But he loved thatwoman beyond measure and thought; he wanted her in his tent, to look ather, to beat her, to kiss her. If it were in his choice to be Padishahand rule half the world, or to take her in his arms, feel with hisheart the warmth of her blood, the breath of her face, her lips withhis lips, he would prefer her to Tsargrad, to the Bosphorus, to thetitle of Khalif. He wanted her because he loved her; he wanted herbecause he hated her. The more she was foreign to him, the more hewanted her; the more she was pure, faithful, untainted, the more hewanted her. More than once when he remembered in his tent that he hadkissed those eyes one time in his life, in the ravine after the battlewith Azba Bey, and that at Rashkoff he had felt her breast on his, themadness of desire carried him away. He knew not what had become of her,whether she had perished on the road or not. At times he found solacein the thought that she had died. At times he thought, "It had beenbetter not to carry her away, not to burn Rashkoff, not to come to theservice of the Sultan, but to stay in Hreptyoff, and even look at her."
But the unfortunate Zosia Boski was in his tent. Her life passed in lowservice, in shame and continual terror, for in Azya's heart there wasnot a drop of pity for her. He simply tormented her because she was notBasia. She had, however, the sweetness and charm of a field flower; shehad youth and beauty: therefore he sated himself with that beauty; buthe kicked her for any cause, or flogged her white body with rods. In aworse hell she could not be, for she lived without hope. Her life hadbegun to bloom in Rashkoff, to bloom like spring with the flower oflove for Pan Adam. She loved him with her whole soul; she loved thatknightly, noble, and honest nature with all her faculties; and now shewas the plaything and the captive of that one-eyed monster. She had tocrawl at his feet and tremble like a beaten dog, look into his face,look at his hands to see if they were not about to seize a club or awhip; she had to hold back her breath and her tears.
She knew well that there was not and could not be mercy for her; forthough a miracle were to wrest her from those terrible hands, she wasno longer that former Zosia, white as the first snows, and able torepay love with a clean heart. All that had passed beyond recovery. Butsince the dreadful disgrace in which she was living was not due to theleast fault of hers,--on the contrary, she had been hitherto a maidenstainless as a lamb, innocent as a dove, trusting as a child, simple,loving,--she did not understand why this fearful injustice was wroughton her, an injustice which could not be recompensed; why suchinexorable anger of God was weighing upon her; and this mental discordincreased her pain, her despair. And so days, weeks, and months passed.Azya came to the plain of Kuchunkaury in winter, and the march to theboundary of the Commonwealth began only in June. All this time passedfor Zosia in shame, in torment, in toil. For Azya, in spite of herbeauty and sweetness, and though he kept her in his tent, not only didnot love her, but rather he hated her because she was not Basia. Helooked on her as a common captive; therefore she had to work like acaptive. She watered his horses and camels from the river; she carriedwater for his ablutions, wood for the fire; she spread the skins forhis bed; she cooked his food. In other divisions of the Turkish armieswomen did not go out of the tents through fear of the janissaries, orthrough custom; but the camp of the Lithuanian Tartars stood apart, andthe custom of hiding women was not common among them, for having livedformerly in the Commonwealth, they had grown used to somethingdifferent. The cap
tives of common soldiers, in so far as soldiers hadcaptives, did not even cover their faces with veils. It is true thatwomen were not free to go beyond the boundaries of the square, forbeyond those boundaries they would have been carried off surely; but onthe square itself they could go everywhere safely, and occupythemselves with camp housekeeping.
Notwithstanding the heavy toil, there was for Zosia even a certainsolace in going for wood, or to the river to water the horses andcamels; for she feared to cry in the tent, and on the road she couldgive vent to her tears with impunity. Once, while going with arms fullof wood, she met her mother, whom Azya had given to Halim. They fellinto each other's arms, and it was necessary to pull them apart; andthough Azya flogged Zosia afterward, not sparing even blows of rods onher head, still the meeting was dear to her. Another time, whilewashing handkerchiefs and foot-cloths for Azya at the ford, Zosia sawEva at a distance going with pails of water. Eva was groaning under theweight of the pails; her form had changed greatly and grown heavier,but her features, though shaded with a veil, reminded Zosia of Adam,and such pain seized her heart that consciousness left her for themoment. Still, they did not speak to each other from fear.
That fear stifled and mastered gradually all Zosia's feelings, till atlast it stood alone in place of her desires, hopes, and memory. Not tobe beaten had become for her an object. Basia in her place would havekilled Azya with his own knife on the first day, without thinking ofwhat might come afterwards; but the timid Zosia, half a child yet, hadnot Basia's daring. And it came at last to this, that she considered itfondness if the terrible Azya, under the influence of momentary desire,put his deformed face near her lips. Sitting in the tent, she did nottake her eyes from him, wishing to learn whether he was angry or not,following his movements, striving to divine his wishes.
When she foresaw evil, and when from under his mustaches, as in thecase of Tugai Bey, the teeth began to glitter, she crept to his feetalmost senseless from terror, pressed her pale lips to them, embracingconvulsively his knees and crying like an afflicted child,--
"Do not beat me, Azya! forgive me; do not beat!"
He forgave her almost never; he gloated over her, not only because shewas not Basia, but because she had been the betrothed of Novoveski.Azya had a fearless soul; yet so awful were the accounts between himand Pan Adam that at thought of that giant, with vengeance hardened inhis heart, a certain disquiet seized the young Tartar. There was to bewar; they might meet, and it was likely that they would meet. Azya wasnot able to avoid thinking of this; and because these thoughts came tohim at sight of Zosia, he took vengeance on her, as if he wished todrive away his own alarm with blows of rods.
At last the time came when the Sultan gave command to march. Azya's menwere to move in the vanguard, and after them the whole legion ofDobrudja and Belgrod Tartars. That was arranged between the Sultan, thevizir, and the kaimakan. But in the beginning all went to the Balkanstogether. The march was comfortable, for by reason of the heat whichwas setting in, they marched only in the night, six hours from oneresting-place to the other. Tar-barrels were burning along their road,and the massala djirali lighted the way for the Sultan with coloredlights. The swarms of people flowed on like a river, through boundlessplains; filled the depressions of valleys like locusts, covered themountains. After the armed men went the tabors, in them the harems;after the tabors herds without number.
But in the swamps at the foot of the Balkans the gilded and purplechariot of the kasseka was mired so that twelve buffaloes were unableto draw it from the mud. "That is an evil omen, lord, for thee and forthe whole army," said the chief mufti to the Sultan. "An evil omen,"repeated the half-mad dervishes in the camp. The Sultan was alarmed,and decided to send all women out of the camp with the marvellouskasseka.
The command was announced to the armies. Those of the soldiers who hadno place to which they might send captives, and from love did not wishto sell them to strangers, preferred to kill them. Merchants of thecaravanserai bought others by the thousand, to sell them afterward inthe markets of Stambul and all the places of nearer Asia. A great fair,as it were, lasted for three days. Azya offered Zosia for sale withouthesitation; an old Stambul merchant, a rich person, bought her for hisson.
He was a kindly man, for at Zosia's entreaties and tears he bought hermother from Halim; it is true that he got her for a trifle. The nextday both wandered on toward Stambul, in a line with other women. InStambul Zosia's lot was improved, without ceasing to be shameful. Hernew owner loved her, and after a few months he raised her to thedignity of wife. Her mother did not part from her.
Many people, among them many women, even after a long time ofcaptivity, returned to their country. There was also some person, whoby all means, through Armenians, Greek merchants, and servants ofenvoys from the Commonwealth, sought Zosia too, but without result.Then these searches were interrupted on a sudden; and Zosia never sawher native land, nor the faces of those who were dear to her. She livedtill her death in a harem.