a state of unassailable health, her rugged hands that of hard work in the fields since childhood, and her coarse, restitched garments that of modest means at home. Her only jewel was an ivory cross she wore around her neck. Why was this foreign young woman riding a horse alone across the most remote Polish mountains? Might she not be a spy disguised as a peasant?
“Who are you?” asked Klotalski in his best voice of judge of the peace of his province. “What are you looking for in these parts? Where do you come from? Know that you are about to be put to death.”
Indeed, the two soldiers who held her fast were now training their pistols at her head with their free hands. She wasn’t flinching, however. But she couldn’t hear the Master of Peasant Discipline whisper into the baron’s ear: “Right. She must be shot without speeches. You know our strict orders, my lord.”
Sigismund did hear. “You hurt that girl, scoundrel, and you’ll weep the rest of your life.”
“Keep your tempers, all of you,” said Klotalski, and he repeated his questions.
“It’s easy,” said the young woman. “My name is Agafya Matveyevna Kulkova, and I come from my dad’s big farm near Pochinok. My mare, she’s called Bialik, at your service, and don’t nobody be daring at hurting her.”
“What is this Pochinok of yours?” Klotalski inquired.
“She’s a town in our holy Russia, may God bless her,” proudly replied the girl.
“How is it you speak such good Polish?”
“Because I had a Polish grandmother what teached me before dying at seven years old.”
“And whither were you riding when we caught you? Speak the truth.”
“That’s easy too. I was on my way to Cracow.”
“To do what, peasant-girl?”
“Yes, peasant-girl, my lord, but with my honor which was besmirched and which I’m to Cracow traveling to avenge.”
Sigismund became agitated. “You’re a victim! Like me! Look!” And he made loud the dismal music of his chain.
“I seed it, and I’m all goose-pimpled to see what I see. It ain’t natural. Where am I anyway?”
The Master of Peasant Discipline was growing impatient, but Klotalski’s curiosity prevailed. “You’re in your grave, girl, if you lie to us. Speak. Tell us your story.”
“Damnation,” shouted Sigismund, striking the table, “how can the girl tell her story with two pistols aimed at her an inch away from her head?”
“All right, all right,” said Klotalski, who had already understood that the girl was no spy. “Let her go, men, and let her breathe.”
The moment she was freed, Agafya made a little curtsy, thanked Klotalski and Sigismund, kissed her cross (proof that she was not a bad girl), rubbed her sore arms, and went to stroke Bialik’s muzzle before returning to her interrogator. At that moment, Layla appeared with a bowl full of milk. Agafya drank it thirstily and hugged the Turk. “You’re a kind one, you are!” This sent to Sigismund’s heart another wave of sympathy for the intruder.
While this was happening, Agafya, no fool she, reflected that talking about her grievance and grief might make helpful friends of these people.
“We’re listening,” said Klotalski.
“Somebody besmirched my honor, sir. Sure I’m not the first girl that ever done the wrong thing, but like my papa said, I had to saddle Bialik and go find justice in Cracow.”
“From your farm all the way to Cracow! Not bad! So then, a handsome visiting Pole betrayed you?”
“No, sir, one of our own, a true Muscovite, one that’s visiting Cracow; and I can tell you he ain’t awaiting for me!”
She enjoyed all these men hanging from her lips, as they say, including the soldiers. Only the Master of Peasant Discipline looked grim, for he saw that the most absolute royal command, namely to kill any intruder on the spot, was being more largely ignored by the minute.
“I gather,” said Klotalski, “that one of the tsarevich Astolof’s followers is the guilty party.”
Agafya burst out laughing. “Followers, ha, ha, ha! The one that’s doing the following is me what’s standing here!”
Nobody understood.
“Perhaps,” ventured Sigismund, “the lass doesn’t know what a follower is.”
“Yes I do,” retorted Agafya. “I’m not a cretin. I can read. We own three cows and five pigs and almost no debts. I know a follower when I see one, and mine is none of them and it’s up to you to help me in order to comsempate me for the fright you’ve done me and Bialik.”
“You’re not a little crazy, woman?” This time it was the Master of Peasant Discipline who spoke.
“Yes I am, sir whip. Crazy. Crazy about Prince Astolof! Yes, it’s him, it’s him! That knocks you down, don’t it?”
Indeed. Like a cannonball. A circle of open mouths. Agafya exulted, and she repeated, “Yes, it’s him, it ain’t no follower, it’s him!”
Sigismund was the first to recover, so to speak, from this coup de théâtre. “I believe you!” he cried. “Compel the tsarevich to marry you! And after that, come back and unshackle me!”
The Master of Peasant Discipline had another whisper for the baron’s ear: “A bullet through her head, because the girl is going to provoke a scandal in Cracow.”
“True,” grumbled Klotalski, but the idea of a scandal in Cracow had a quite contrary effect on him, an effect that would have dumbfounded the Master had he guessed what was going round in his chief’s head.
In the meantime, the loquacious Agafya chortled. “Yes, let him marry me, but I’ll see to it that he gives me at least a rich boyar to patch up my honor. Oh, when I think of it! My blood boils. Not a flower he gives me. Not a pair of earrings. After three months. Four months. ‘How dare you, trollop!’ is what he flings at me next time I catched him riding his horse across the fields. ‘You’ve been dreaming, my lass! Your lover he put powders and stuff in your wine, and you thought you’d slept with a prince.’ Well! It’s him that will think he’s dreaming when he catches sight of me in Cracow!”
Her words delighted Sigismund. “Go, my beauty, and jump at him while he’s courting the heiress.”
Klotalski said nothing, because the crafty lord of Zakopane was dreaming too.
“Silence!” he said at last. “Listen, Agafya Matveyevna Kulkova, “there seems to be a bit of truth in the story you’ve told us. Enough, at any rate, for me to take you along with me to Cracow, where it so happens that I need to go. And if you behave, I might even present you to the king.”
Agafya could not thank the baron enough, and Sigismund, rather surprised, congratulated him. “For once a semblance of justice,” he said.
The Master of Peasant Discipline thought that his chief had gone mad. More so when Klotalski returned the prisoner’s knife to her.
“Is that a purse hanging from your belt?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord.
“Full of golden ducats?”
Agafya burst out laughing. “I wish! But never mind. I’ve got kopecks enough in it to keep from starving to death. Besides, where I’m coming from, we’re used to not eating much.”
This didn’t keep Klotalski from slipping the girl a fine gold coin. “With this you can rent lodgings and buy diapers for the tsarevich’s little heir, if the need happens to arise.”
Agafya had a sense of humor. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I like to joke too,” and the coin went diving into