The Knights of the Cross | Page 8

go."
Princess Danuta glanced at Zbyszko's beautiful figure; but further
conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a monk from the
monastery, who having greeted the princess, began to humbly reproach
her, because she had not sent a courier with the news that she was
coming, and because she had not stopped at the monastery, but in an
ordinary inn which was not worthy of her majesty. There are plenty of
houses and buildings in the monastery where even an ordinary man will
find hospitality, and royalty is still more welcome, especially the wife
of that prince from whose ancestors and relatives, the abbey had
experienced so many benefits.
But the princess answered mirthfully:
"We came here only to stretch our limbs; in the morning we must be in
Krakow. We sleep during the day and we travel during the night,
because it is cooler. As the roosters were crowing, I did not wish to
awaken the pious monks, especially with such a company which thinks
more about singing and dancing than about repose."
But when the monk still insisted, she added:
"No. We will stay here. We will spend the time well in singing lay

songs, but we will come to the church for matins in order to begin the
day with God."
"There will be a mass for the welfare of the gracious prince and the
gracious princess," said the monk.
"The prince, my husband, will not come for four or five days."
"The Lord God will be able to grant happiness even from afar, and in
the meanwhile let us poor monks at least bring some wine from the
monastery."
"We will gladly repay," said the princess.
When the monk went out, she called:
"Hej, Danusia! Danusia! Mount the bench and make our hearts merry
with the same song you sang in Zator."
Having heard this, the courtiers put a bench in the centre of the room.
The rybalts sat on the ends, and between them stood that young girl
who had carried behind the princess the lute ornamented with brass
nails. On her head she had a small garland, her hair falling on her
shoulders, and she wore a blue dress and red shoes with long points. On
the bench she looked like a child, but at the same time, a beautiful child,
like some figure from a church. It was evident that she was not singing
for the first time before the princess, because she was not embarrassed.
"Sing, Danusia, sing!" the young court girls shouted.
She seized the lute, raised her head like a bird which begins to sing, and
having closed her eyes, she began with a silvery voice:
"If I only could get The wings like a birdie, I would fly quickly To my
dearest Jasiek!"
The rybalts accompanied her, one on the _gensliks_, the other on a big
lute; the princess, who loved the lay songs better than anything else in
the world, began to move her head back and forth, and the young girl
sang further with a thin, sweet childish voice, like a bird singing in the
forest:
"I would then be seated On the high enclosure: Look, my dear Jasiulku,
Look on me, poor orphan."
And then the rybalts played. The young Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, who
being accustomed from childhood to war and its dreadful sights, had
never in his life heard anything like it; he touched a Mazur[17] standing
beside him and asked:
"Who is she?"

"She is a girl from the princess' court. We do not lack rybalts who
cheer up the court, but she is the sweetest little rybalt of them all, and
to the songs of no one else will the princess listen so gladly."
"I don't wonder. I thought she was an angel from heaven and I can't
look at her enough. What do they call her?"
"Have you not heard? Danusia. Her father is Jurand of Spychow, a
_comes_[18] mighty and gallant."
"Hej! Such a girl human eyes never saw before!"
"Everybody loves her for her singing and her beauty."
"And who is her knight?"
"She is only a child yet!"
Further conversation was stopped by Danusia's singing. Zbyszko
looked at her fair hair, her uplifted head, her half-closed eyes, and at
her whole figure lighted by the glare of the wax candles and by the
glare of the moonbeams entering through the windows; and he
wondered more and more. It seemed to him now, that he had seen her
before; but he could not remember whether it was in a dream, or
somewhere in Krakow on the pane of a church window.
And again he touched the courtier and asked in a low voice:
"Then she is from your court?"
"Her mother came from Litwa with the princess, Anna Danuta, who
married her