Mad acts of folly are randomly sown. Let us give this tale a setting in the Mladá Boleslav region of Bohemia, during a time of trouble, the king struggling to maintain the security of his highways, facing severe difficulties with the literally criminal conduct of the nobles, and worse still, they all but laugh aloud as they spill blood. Contemplating the refined and graceful manners of our Czech nation has made you truly oversensitive, and when you spill water over the table while drinking, it is to the cook’s chagrin – but the fellows of whom I am about to tell were refractory and devilish. They were a rabble I can no better compare than to wild stallions. Little they cared for the things you cherish. Comb and soap, what of it? Not even the Lord’s commandments would they heed.
It is said there was no end of such knaves, yet this tale is of but a single family whose name recalls Saint Wenceslas, though surely undeservedly so. Crafty nobles they were! The eldest in this bloodthirsty time was baptized with a lovely name, yet he renounced it, and until his abominable death he called himself Kozlík, the Goat.
He took this name no doubt because his christening had failed to inspire in him the better sort of thoughts, though his manner of dress had a part in it as well. The fellow wrapped himself all in animal hides, and since he was bald, a goatskin shrouded his pate. He had good reason to be so mindful of his skull, for it had been cracked open and then had mended slapdash.
It is more than certain that any military gent of today would perish of such a wound before a corpsman could lift a spoonful of tea to his lips Not Kozlík! He slapped some loam on his head and rode home, his horse’s flank blood-red from his barbarous spur. Judge him less severely for being so brave and not squawking. Well then, Kozlík, stigmatized thus, had eight sons and nine daughters. Alas, he did not consider such blessings a consequence of God’s grace, and when his youngest son was born in his seventy-first year, he boasted to his peers. At the baptism his wife, Lady Kateřina, had just reached the age of fifty-four.
Such fecundity! Although the knife was always wet with blood in those days, these butchers enjoyed such a wellspring of life that one might very well imagine angels of the Annunciation standing at the head of conjugal beds, little chubbies in tight clothes, faces crimson, veins protrudent on their foreheads.
In such Herculean times blood quickly revitalizes itself. Some of Kozlík’s eldest sons were also endowed with progeny. Five dear daughters had already married, the other four maidens yet. The old man barely knew them, less than servant girls were they to him.
What good is barren beauty? Only when an infant mewls betwixt their thighs, when their breasts are engorged, when they achieve something commensurate with their health, will it behoove Kozlík to speak to them as daughters. Until such transpires, he will call one after another ugly as she is pulled to his bushy ear.
I should now mention the sons and give their names. So many of them! The first-born was called Jan, after whom came Mikoláš, Jiří, and Adam, who were followed by the daughters Marketa, Anna, Salomena, and then more sons: Smil, Burjan, and Petr, and then daughters: Katuška, Alena, Eliška, Štěpánka, Isa, and Drahomíra, who was decapitated in the ninth year of her life.* The last of the seventeen children, a son, was christened with the name of Václav.
At the time of this tale the earth was bountiful and meadows ever green. Hardly a reaper’s head peeped above the high grass. Yet nothing could persuade a cutthroat to turn to sweeter fields. Those two or three cows, their udders empty from the chase, were better suited for the caravan than pastures. Countless times were their muzzles full of buds and thistledown when Kozlík’s savage henchmen seized them and rowdily dragged them headlong to the cart. And once more their horns are tied!
Poor beasts, now they’ll have to go trotting like ponies behind a deranged axle!
Why always on the move and in flight? Kozlík and his sons are brigands one and all. I fear this designation is likewise apt for the womenfolk of the clan. A band of robbers is what they are. They have no appetite for work. Groves lie derelict among lush fields, and the family’s delightful citadel, Roháček, is laid waste and burns to the ground every ten years. They then shelter in the forests. If one of the women, heavy with child, goes into labor right by the fire, what of it? Nothing! She’ll get chicken soup and noodles from a robber’s kettle! Then they’ll drag off a priest they’ve seized by the cathedral entrance or in his very bed. We’ll see if he raises any objections. May he ply his craft well, for these brigands are particular about their religion. What if the infant were to perish before being baptized? In the winter of the year of our tale, December frosts struck as vehemently as the Christianity of the day. Frost burned the horn of the horses’ hooves like a white-hot shoe and ice beaded the cows’ teats. In times like these it is well to be near a fire, but better still to sleep in a house or even on a bundle of sticks in a cowshed. Unfortunately, the king’s fury had been roused against the brigands, and he saw fit to dispatch a regiment to the Saxon highways to behead or hang them. Kozlík wanted to mount his defense at Roháček, yet the fish-filled moat had suddenly frozen over, the ice becoming so thick that horsemen could nearly ride right up to the citadel’s windows. In the open field Kozlík’s band could hold their own against a cohort of fifty, yet how many would be coming?
“Mikoláš,” said the old man, not relaxing his lupine stride, “take two horses and what we have of the Turkish cloth, and a gift of your choosing for the ladies. Go to Lazar’s!”
And his darling son, his naturally russet face bronzed by the cold, not one to idle, was now on his way to the stable.
“Saddle my stallion,” he called to the groom, who was carrying a basin. Celerity was the rule whenever one of these lords set his mind to something. The servant threw down the cauldron. The copper still reverberating, he was already in the stable. The confounded horse reared and stamped, and the mares turned their heads while the foals squealed and fidgeted in a huddle.
Meanwhile Mikoláš, with his great hands, his great, hairy hands, his claws, was digging through the hoard of plunder, ransacking it, unable to find what he was seeking. Finally he lifted up a bolt of magnificent cloth. It was crumpled, for the Armenian merchant who had been transporting it from Persia to the Netherlands would not let go of it and had clasped it with folded arms to his birdlike chest. A splash of blood on the weave. Very well, my lamb was certainly not troubled by this. Not this magnificent custodian of treasure, this depredator of treasure more like it, nothing perturbed him. And yet! Two gusts of wind rattling the door had him looking around and slamming shut the chest’s lid. Look, a diadem broken nearly in two. Thus the gift was decided on, marked by a violent blow, like everything else in these turbulent times.
Mikoláš girded himself and pulled on his iron helmet, closing its beak over his beak, a nose hooked, bent, and proud. Be off and run riot in that little headpiece of yours! May your brain freeze!
The horses readied, the brigand paced around the stallion as his good master, his kindly papa, bellowed out the message he was to bear to their neighbor’s lair. It was no more than ten words. The advantage of a joint defense with a rabble he has cursed and reviled a hundred times over should be evident to the prudent lord. What choice did Lazar have, for his people were stalking the highways, drying their shirts on the willows, and stealing horses at twilight in complete disregard for the fine chivalrous manners that require purpose and intention be clearly stated before commencing with the lopping off of heads.
Shaking down fellows they have disarmed! How distasteful. Nonetheless, it would seem more than merely expedient to turn a blind eye to such vulgarians. Together they would comprise twenty-three Lazars and the thirty-nine brigands. They could ride roughshod over the sleepy footmen who clattered along the highways with their scandalmongering drummers, fat-lipped buglers, gluttonous sutlers, and whore with skirts hiked above the knees. Oh, if only the coming host were a motley of adventurers! But what if the captain has guard at the rear, guard at the front, and guard at his flanks! What if his forces be both mounted and on foot, holding their formations and ranks, bristling with weapons, advancing in a spearhead!
Such scoundrels would acquit themselves well, and each would do battle as fiercely as six men!
Yet imagine the day is bright and the wind blows away the snow clouds. It carries them off, buffets them, shreds and scatters them until the skies again sparkle. Pond surfaces crack, and on the pools of water ice crackles adrift. A frozen clatter in the underbrush from the breaking of twigs. The snow, loose as salt, is churned by the horses’ hooves and clings to the tufts of their coat, stiffening it into prickles of ice. Frost plaits their manes. Frost, frost, frost! Frost or summer heat, the brigand thinks of nothing save how to spill blood. He is like a drummer whose drum bursts spontaneously into sound; though the head was not struck, he hears his instrument all the same.
Brigands! Are not all their enterprises bloody?
Mikoláš again rides into the fray, and the stallions he spurs are but a shadow of his ferocity. In the middle of the journey the noble rider allowed the horses a rest, and the good fellow covered the remaining distance at a steady pace, having no cause to hurry.
The Lazars’ stronghold was called Obořiště. Fie, what a frightened little nest! As soon as they spotted Mikoláš, Lazar and his varlets began running about as if their key had fallen into the pond. Old Lazar, his beard like smoke, stepped out before the gate. He who visits was obliged to speak first.
Mikoláš preferred to extend a salutation than to say anything. The air of decampment did not escape the brigand’s notice. After a short silence, Lazar inquired whether Mikoláš had not run into his messenger on the way. “I sent a boy to Kozlík,” he said, “to request his help. Roháček is a secure place!”
“We will help you,” said the rebel, somewhat amused, “we will help you if you would care to position yourselves outside Boleslav. Roháček, my good knight, is frozen through and through. We will set up a position at the bend in the road, right by the forest. Hurry, Lazar, there is no time to lose, the king’s troops are drawing near. If the soldiers get hold of you, a waylayer of travelers, you won’t be getting off scot-free.”
“The king,” replied Lazar, “the king is just, but those who stand in the way of his soldiers shall be strung up by the side of the road.”
The bandit dismounted his steed, and immediately a fracas ensued, blood its progeny. The slightest threat, the slightest mention of the gallows drove the blood to Mikoláš’s head, and, swinging his arms to give emphasis to his words, he said:
“The king stands for his captains, all of them three days’ journey from here. The king cannot hear you, Lazar, but I can. Fool, better you withhold your honor and your homage and your love from a king outside your walls than from us who are here inside. Brace yourself, scoundrel!” With this the courteous envoy yanked a riding crop from a nearby page and proceeded to lash Lazar on the face, across the shoulders, and on his sides.
You think the good people of Obořiště ought to have admonished their guest in the name of our Lord and harangued him into respecting his elders?
Instead they pounced on him from all sides. They stabbed him and covered his face with scratches, and their sticks left his back striped with welts. He ended up on the ground, and they bent down to him to shout insults and awful curses into his ears. They would surely have thrashed him senseless, but one of the stab wounds had opened a vein, and he was bleeding out like a bull.
The pool of blood beneath his head grew larger, taking the shape of a shadow cast by his helmet. It was a grand spectacle for such petty thieves who knew nothing save how to purloin a cross and then a ducat or two a little girl had removed from around her neck. A grand spectacle indeed, and the men stood there mouths agape. Breathless, they took small steps backing away, hearts in their throats, the tender hearts of thieves who are not cutthroats.
“Lord God,” uttered the whipped Lazar, "I would be none the richer if I destroyed him. Let him get up and be on his way, let him die like a dog by God’s own doing. Truly you have committed a grave error with such a violent assault. It would be more to our good had he died on the way or in his bed, and had he time to regret his deeds. Ah, you rogues, you rogues, don’t you know that Kozlík has more sons than sheep? We could have supplicated a just king. We could have submitted to a peaceful trade along the highways until the troops had gone. But what now? Prepare to be hounded. We will flee on the horses and drive them until their legs become short as goats’. Once in the forest, we’ll dismount and beat it on foot."
On my honor, Lazar’s words were certainly well-timed.
Meanwhile, with the Lord’s help Mikoláš had lifted his head. His handsome nose was swollen, his lips were swollen, blood flowed from an eye, his beard was rent. He put his hands to the ground and hoisted himself halfway up. Alas, he was too weak, and his body again splayed as if on a cross.
Oh, you vile chickenshits of Lazar! Surely you don’t think anything can occur without a dispensation from God? Surely you don’t think that Mikoláš was blessed with such remarkable bones and such a prodigious quantity of blood just by chance, just a caprice of Providence to be so generous to him? There is a purpose behind everything that happens, and we who observe a thing at its end might just be able to comprehend a snatch of God’s great wisdom.
Mikoláš was not dying, God forbid. He freed his head from the clutches of stupor, stood up, dusted himself off, and the snow of unconsciousness and the snow of weakness were dusted from his cloak.
If there had been present but a single worthy maiden or chivalrous fellow aware of the obligations of propriety and of Christian mercy, surely bandages would have been applied to the wounds and water offered. But devil take it, would that have set right with him? Would he have accepted such effete conduct? I ask you, was it in his nature to accept it?
I would gladly relate all he said, but no speaking likely occurred. He mulishly kept his silence. Pulling a knife from his belt, he turned this way and that and departed.
The horses tethered outside the gate were freezing. Those stupid, stupid fools, those innocent babes of Lazar, the bolt of eastern cloth, a cloth of enormous value, was still tied to the stallion’s saddle! At Obořiště a bit of diversion counted for more than fine customs.
To their own detriment, for Mikoláš no longer recalled that he had come bearing gifts. He was scowling like a crucifixion. By the grace of God he managed to mount his horse, and he steadied himself in the saddle.
It is not difficult to guess what came after this incident. The wrath of Kozlík, the lamentations of the womenfolk, and the growls of the henchmen. They conducted themselves like demons, the men and women both.
Mikoláš lay with his nose flattened against pillows while the others walked by him, back and forth, not one word passing between them. I read shame and contempt in their restraint.
To be thrashed like a stablehand! Why had Mikoláš not properly defended himself? His good brothers and nine sisters would have found succor, and their hearts would have rejoiced, if he had killed at least one man in the brawl.
If he had met his death, they would have keened, gloried in mourning. They would have wrung their hands. Obořiště would have been burnt to the ground and the Lazars beheaded. Now, in their confusion, they put everything off till the next day.
When day broke, Kozlík rode off to Obořiště with twenty horsemen, leaving the wounded Mikoláš and the others behind at Roháček.
A poor beginning bodes ill for what follows. Kozlík’s horse reared, could not be mollified, and refused to take to the road. In truth, splitting up was not advisable, for the royal regiment was already near. How foolhardy, the brigands, with soldiers breathing down their neck, rode off in pursuit only to leave their lair virtually at the mercies of the enemy. It was not a plan born of careful consideration.
Kozlík’s pack resembled a herd of livestock that had run off. They rode hard, the frost making them crazed, the frost and their tactical error, or rather the consciousness of that error. Someone trying to cross a river in a boat full of holes could not have acted more recklessly.
Kozlík was silent. Jan did not speak, and the henchmen were morose. When they arrived, the old man dispatched scouts. They returned with news that was clear as day: Obořiště was deserted. The birds had flown the coop.
Disgusted by the reality of what he had foreseen, Jan turned and headed back. The minions set fire to the fortress. They moved listlessly, but flames are exhilarating. Nothing to be done for it, to hear the crackle and hiss of a fire in such bitter cold is sheer delight.
All that is mortal and made by hand perishes, and it is best to have your demesne and your estate in Heaven. He who is mindful of that will have rare cause to weep. Least of all if the house that is burning belongs to someone else and the fire has been set by you.
The brigands celebrated and whooped it up, running around the conflagration, and thus were they likely to act always, for as long as they remained animated by life. Their horses reared, exposing their abdomens to the hot breeze. Sparks fell upon their manes, and Kozlík’s cape was singed. Steeped in their amusement, the brigands remained at Obořiště until noon, then rode off at a gallop to find food. They eventually came up with a small pig, but they did not eat it! Kozlík was already whistling on his pipe for his band to gather, and he gave the order to prepare for departure. He cut the rope himself by which the men were dragging the squealing porker, and he rode a few steps behind it until it dashed off like a young hare. The bandit’s thoughts were occupied with matters other than cookery and turnspits. He was thinking of the soldiers who could see the fire’s glow on the horizon. Kozlík knew the king’s captain well and had detailed knowledge of his cunning.
He was the son of some peasant farmer, yet his fist, his military acumen, and his other particular virtues were as high-born as those of any lord. He once led the life of an honest merchant and a servant of God in Kutná Hora, becoming creditor to one of the magnates, and in one fell swoop he was in the military, in one fell swoop he had been elevated to captain. Renowned for his fearlessness, he answered to the king alone.
My good sir, if a bloodhound such as this sinks its teeth into your calf, say goodbye to your stockings! He will deprive you of everything you have managed to accumulate, and still it's not enough for him, so great is his belief that the rich ride around every day with a cargo of gold!
Naturally, it is your life that hangs in the balance, and this fellow is just as disposed to chop off your head as string you up, it all depends on how well he slept the night before.
Kozlík despised this soldier to the depths of his being and would have welcomed a chance to throttle him. He got very close to him once but failed to find an opening. God’s will was not with him, and he barely escaped at that. The captain, Pivo by name, did not recognize him then in the darkness, though he could certainly have guessed it was Kozlík if he’d had time to think about it. Who else would have shouted to him: En garde, you grubby little shopkeeper! Who else but this crazy old coot?
Woe to those who have special accounts for our judges to reckon! Yet Kozlík still believed in God, who had shown him much mercy and who once more had deigned to elevate his band of men so that they were deft and resolute and guided by all good inspiration in their exploits. He knew that we could not live in this world without great burdens, without alms and friars, without judges and gallows, without a king and revenue collectors, without the cares that compel us to run the risk of defeat and death.
His mind occupied thus, Kozlík abjured the ham hock and brazenly turned onto the main road. His object was to accost a pilgrim traveling from the south. Let it be anyone at all, so long as he gives a fair answer as to the location of Pivo and his troops.
Yet the highway had been swept clean, and though Kozlík’s men looked as they might, not even a mendicant friar or nun was to be seen.
In cold such as this, when ice even gathers on the stove, who, I ask, would undertake a journey?
It was nearly three in the afternoon, the frost etching roses into the bandits’ cheeks and their noses garnished with red. They were losing patience when, as if on command, a horseman came into view. He was leaning into the horse’s neck. As far as it was possible to tell, he was unarmed, his horse divested of bridle. The young man was apparently in full flight. When he caught sight of the brigands, he did not appear frightened, and he signaled to them, possibly to come to his aid.
Jan took off and caught the horse by the nostrils, stopping it and turning its head. Who is this traveler? He began to speak.
He talked and talked, though not in our language! It was the German tongue.
This greatly amused the brigands. They bared their fangs and jeered, lifting the corners of their whiskers. Who could ever understand him? Yet the German’s horse was a thoroughbred, might the rider be worth something, too?
At that moment it pleased God to invest the cutthroats with a measure of mercy. They took the wretch home, turning back, while Jan remained on the highway with a henchman.
About three hours later, a sentinel of Kozlík’s saw more galloping riders, and from their number he grabbed the one whose horse was the most fatigued and lagging behind. He was from a party pursuing the German lord. Was this fellow from the frontier, how much did he know? In any event, he spoke both languages, and it was difficult to make out which of the two was his mother tongue. Jan dislocated the man’s wrist and disarmed him.
Alas, the stranger could say nothing of the king’s forces. The German men-at-arms had ridden along the imperial highway for only the last two miles, having come upon it after a chase through the fields. Not receiving their answer, the bandits took the esquire a few feet into the forest, bound his legs, and threw him to the ground. Jan had no choice but to wait for a better answer.
The highways are certainly for the soldiers’ use, yet peasant farmers also ply them. Look, one of them is returning to his plot of land. He went to market to sell his wool, and now he’s hastening home beset by worry over his coin, there is no safety for him. Poor fellow, his purse lies on his exposed body.
Ah, my dear Holinečka, bid farewell to your paltry chattel! A noble will bash in your head and your ducats be damned!
No, it wasn't to be. Has the peasant prayed to Saint Martin, who intercedes in matters of assault, or maybe to God Himself, who seeing this soul entreating Him on behalf of his money was pleased to allow him to go his way in peace and without protection?
We can be sure he answered the questions put to him, and that the details he provided coincided more or less with the truth. When he had finished speaking, Jan nodded to the men to release the reins, and pulling the horse along by its traces, they shouted into its ear: Run! Run!
Jan returned that same evening to Roháček. Meanwhile the peasant’s cart rattled on home, full of happiness and fuzzy with wool.
It is said a lamb brings good luck, and we are rather fond of this saying.
Kozlík had a cache for his treasure in a hard-to-reach spot in a bog in the middle of an oak grove. It would keep safe in times of trouble, when harassed by the king or by his neighbors. Today he had again culled his haul, and all that could not be loaded onto the horse was deposited in the forest treasury. He lingered at this familiar place and waited for darkness to fall, so he did not get back until shortly after Jan. He entered covered in mud, and his terrible face was twice as terrible as before.
The young German lord who had acquitted himself so well on his horse was now white as a shroud. He stood by the hearth, and Kozlík’s sons and their sisters and the other ladies all turned their attention to him. Jiří shone a light on his face and made him turn this way and that. Trouble looked to be in the offing, but God knew it was only so the work of the angels could be realized. The Lord at times invests people, no matter how savage, with feelings of such sublime simplicity and nobility they are like unto His majesty. He breathes into human hearts a love said to be the crowning glory of life itself. A flying ember singed the young German’s eyelashes, and yet he saw what God revealed to him. The fair Alexandra.