It looked as though all the brigands who dared to assault the prison entrance perished. But it was not so. Mikoláš and two of his brothers survived their terrible wounds.
They were cast into the tower. They passed the time in pain and anguish, their suppurating wounds a noxious fermentation. Their blood was poisoned, their breath was poisoned. The wretched men lay in rags on a squalid bed, in the rags of defeat and humiliation. Overhead a cross spider dropped down, its legs mincing, its legs grasping, its vile web being spun. O insinuator of despair, O vile weaver!
Turn your face to the wall, which is black like a fresco of doom. Kindle your lust for adventure, climb higher! That wall full of mold and the scratchings of mad desperation, it is a landscape! See Roháček, see the nearby oak grove, see a rider swinging his sword overhead. Ignite the joy, ignite the strength that once cleaved to your limbs.
Ah, strength, all it took was this defeat for it to melt away, but the spirit is unvanquished, and joy is the strength of the spirit.
A frantic cavalcade of demons flies off from your dark cell. You have done what you have done, and you have acted as do those to whom the sword has not been entrusted in vain. I hear a tapping, and a like sound answers. It is the language of prisons, the voices of brothers. God has granted that you hear Kozlík and that you listen to him with a smile.
At that time word was making its way around the villages that all the brigands had been rounded up and slaughtered. It reached Prioress Beatrice on the fifth day, and when she heard the news, she went to Marketa and told her everything.
"The lover who has inflamed you with such love lies wounded at death's door. He was once a conqueror, if only he could now take heaven by storm! Yet I hear that he is rebellious and scoffs at the guards. Marketa, what he needs now is not the pledges of love or kisses but to be reminded of the judgment that awaits him."
"Prioress, prioress!" cried Marketa, and her mouth and face lost the color of a living body. "Prioress! I have not the strength to speak except of the message brimming inside me. The foliage of love has engulfed my soul. I do not believe the stories being told, I do not believe in this odious defeat! No! Absolutely not! My husband’s name reflects only strength. He will regain his dominion over the world. I see him. He is well! He is well!"
"You impious woman!" said the prioress, "your perfidy is worse than death! You have made me witness to your fall, so now I shall make you witness to my power."
Saying this, she left and ordered the sisters to take Marketa to a small cell with no window. She was imprisoned, mimicking the fate of her beloved.
The prioress strolled in the garden. It was a balmy evening. The first specks of dusk fell like peace. Spring had arrived. Surely this is a shaky reason to indulge the unrepentant concubine of murderers. The harlot! Is that weeping or sobbing I hear? No, in truth, nothing, it's quiet. Quiet and peace.
Good people, if you do everything in your giddy power you will have done very little. Nothing, in fact, for it is a wretched body that you command. You dictate orders, but God rules. He leads the soul down difficult paths and bids it perform acts that are absolutely indescribable and horrifying. You presume to have understood the world, O pride, don’t you hear the hissing of the snake nearby?
The prioress prayed for God to grant her humility and wisdom. And then it happened that a thought, either divine inspiration or of impure origin, compelled her to go and open Marketa’s prison. She found the despondent girl on her knees. The prioress took her by the hand and said:
"Where do people’s thoughts come from? Neither you nor I understand this. They penetrate like arrows into our mind, but who looses them, who is the bowman? My dear friend, I dare not assume severity without humility. If it were God’s wish, He would deflect the thought that obsesses you, and it would fall into the head of a ram or a dog. I have no right to ask why He has not; I have no right to prevent actions that God has set in motion. What are you waiting for? Rise and go where your heart draws you. I sense that the time has come for your misfortune and for Mikoláš’s misfortune to come to fruition. Perhaps God is calling you, that He might cover you with a robe of repentance, perhaps He has determined that both of you shall call to Him with a single voice."
Saying this, she opened the door.
Marketa thanked her, and all that she said was so touching the prioress could not restrain her tears.
They wept like two sisters.
Then the poor girl began her journey, and she walked through the glittering night all the way to the town gate. When she arrived, it was just beginning to dawn. She had to wait for the gatekeeper to come out and ask her what she had come to sell or what she wanted. She was attired like a village woman, she was weeping, her loveliness was vitiated, and her belly was heavy with child. How could the gatekeeper let such a poor girl as this in without questioning her?
The carts were now gathering, and peasants from near and far were telling each other of their labors and of their safe journey, for the king had swept the highways so clean that a little girl could carry a milk pot of ducats from one town to another.
Finally the gate opened. See the traces of the fighting, see the spurted blood, its color now changed. Marketa stood as if under a spell, afraid to listen to all the stories being told. Ah, then they recognized her, those wicked neighbors recognized her, and they hauled her to the captain’s house. Those accursed men, their accursed zeal! She was shortly standing amidst scribes and magistrates, and she said:
"What have I done to you? I have broken no earthly laws."
"What do you mean," they replied, “did you not oppose your father? Did you not remain with the brigands, did you not espouse their cause?"
They seized Marketa and left her under lock and key for five days, giving her bread to eat and water to drink.
But on the fifth day the king’s envoy reached Boleslav and announced what was to be done.
The envoy’s horse was white, its caparison was purple, and everything that is typically of iron in a knight’s trappings gleamed with gold. Before the horseman rode others holding lances with pennons. The king’s envoy was unarmed and wore no helmet. He did not dismount, and as he spoke, the captain himself held the white horse’s bridle. Then the trumpeters struck up a glorious fanfare, and when they fell silent, the royal page stood up in his stirrups and declared:
"The king rewards faithfulness and chastens wrongdoing. He bids you peace and tranquility! Let no one, whether nobleman, cleric, or peasant, let no one reach for his weapon in matters of disagreement and dispute! Let no one presume to covet the goods of merchants or another’s harvest! Leave safe the peasant who pays his tithe and the merchant who bears his coin away from market! Leave them in safety! The king decrees the freedom of the roads and death to them who waylay travelers. Henceforth you shall walk within the turnpikes of the king’s wrath, and gold even if flaunted in the forests shall be secure. The king is angered that you have forced him to repeat what has already been said. Angered, he therefore decrees that the noblemen who have been taken captive by the soldiers shall be hung on the main square, yet the head of the eldest shall fall by the axe."
Then the dapper envoy recited the brigands’ names, and when a new fanfare had finished, he continued:
"The punishment imposed upon the women is this: that they be led to the chopping block and to the gallows, and they shall be made to witness every death. Then so be it that all their property shall be taken from them, and that they be given a place to live with their children as yeomen. Roháček should not be rebuilt, its moat shall remain without water, and all its structures demolished. It shall be turned back into meadows and copses, and no one shall live there. Then saith the king that of the brigand’s daughters, the one whose name is Alexandra shall be put to death as a murderer, and let the foreign lord, owing to the wrongs that have been done him, choose the manner of her death and a time that suits him. That matter shall be postponed. The woman with child should not be punished until after her childbed. Let Count Kristian of Saxony make any further judgment."
Having spoken, the charming envoy turned his white horse around and rode out of the town. He took neither food nor rest, nor was his horse given any fodder. He rested outside the walls, beneath his tents and in solitude as a sign of the king’s indignation. Farewell, brass mouth, you falconer of anger, if only you were the one who had to perform what you have pronounced. Then, brother, I bet your tender little hand would shake! Of the condemned only Kozlík and Mikoláš were able to hear the king’s envoy. The old man’s hands were bound, and he was led out of the prison into God’s sunlight. Kozlík was an old man. His eyes were weakened and blinked in the glare. The darkness had nested in his pelt, nested in his hair and in the tufts of beard, an abominable darkness that he shook off. He shuddered like an untamed beast, like a lion cub whose mane had been grabbed. He shuddered and shook off the darkness and the infirmity of age, disease, feebleness, and fearfulness. His posture betrayed his pride. His face bore the traces of contempt. He was pale. The awful scar! The mouth arched like the wing of a dove! The mouth, the only stamp of beauty on this tiger’s visage.
When he got to his place, he bowed to the king’s representative and listened, attentive to every word. He heard that he would die. What a loathsome death! What a spectacle for these burghers with chills running up and down their spines, now hissing with clenched jaws, now straining to hold back their piss and tears!
If only you would stifle your cries, if only you would restrain your sighs! A lot of good your pride will do you now! Kozlík folded his arms on his chest and pressed his left hand to his elbow and his right hand to his heart. He uttered not a word, he did not shout, and nothing could be heard save the rattling of his loose manacles. Then the bugle sounded, and the throng trembled and pointed its fingers at the face of the condemned man and at his hands riven with wounds. The ladies tightened their mantles over their bosoms and stepped backward. Now the crowd surged in close, now it drew apart, and a din and clamor ensued. Hold on! Just a moment, just one moment. The door of the prison opened and out came three varlets, bearing Mikoláš on a horseman’s cloak. Oh, horror all too manifest! Oh, pageant all too visible! Where will you turn, where will you find room? A row of frenzied spectators propel you to this body, and you resist, digging in your feet. You feel the tailor’s head and the barber’s elbow on your shoulder. The procession approached closer and closer, then stopped in front of Kozlík.
"My lord," said Mikoláš, "we attacked the prison, but God’s grace was not with us." then Kozlík fell to his knees and stooped down to his son and replied:
"What do you mean? God has allowed us to die together. You and I. But your mother and your sisters will live."
Kozlík’s chains lay on his son’s chest, and his hands were against the ground, both right and left, to prop him up.
"You are my dearest son," said Kozlík after a moment of silence. The guards stood over this display, a command staying their legs, a command of commands, next to which the king’s word always counted for less than the word of a flunkey. Rage against the brigands rattled in many of the onlookers’ throats, yet no one moved. Only Captain Pivo took off his cloak and covered Mikoláš. Having done so, he rose and told the soldiers:
"Bring Marketa Lazarová from the prison. The king has pardoned her."
God Himself inspired the captain to this, the answer to the question Mikoláš was whispering. He did not finish asking it as at the captain's words he was overcome by wonderment and joy at the workings of divine justice. See the prison door again open wide, see another entourage. Behold Marketa. The prison warden took her by the hand and said:
"You are free, go where you wish. The king has either forgotten or given his tacit pardon." But Marketa Lazarová did not leave. She cared little about her own fate or who was listening to her. She looked around and said in a clear voice:
"Take me back. I will not leave before my husband. I want to wait, and if you refuse to let me in, I will wait at this threshold, as a beggarwoman waits." A cloud of silence carried off these words. Were they beautiful? No, not really. Are you not touched by them?
No, no, we are touched by Marketa and by Marketa’s love.
Frightened doves and pigeons of multicolored breasts flew up over the square, circled and alighted on rooftops. It was a beautiful day, such a beautiful day, and a blessed hour in the fields, the moment when you hear an invisible instrument playing in a neighbor’s room, a luminous moment, a glorious noontide. Then the clinking of a bell. Arise, a mischievous sparrow has hopped onto your windowsill. If only it were a dove! Look up! See Boleslav, see the town of our tale. In this place, marked by a rock, Marketa Lazarová has found her beloved. Ah, the times change, but the place endures. Here the people heard her sobs and her passionate oaths. On this very square she wed her Mikoláš, the raving, sniveling crowd their witness.
It remains for me to tell of Count Kristian, of Alexandra, of Kozlík’s wife, and of their small children.
Count Kristian? He wept and blamed God and uttered outrageous blasphemies. Yet his strength of heart was indeed great. His grief reached to the bottom of his consciousness. You go about your tedious work and a thin column of unadulterated blood again rises in your arteries. Now you must report to the bishop, louse though he is, now you have to make the trip home and then back to Bohemia. In truth, when Kristian came across Alexandra her maternity was already undeniable. Now he was to pass judgment on her! Ah, but he didn’t, he pardoned his son’s murderess, the mother of his child. Alas, the king’s word is law. He was riding with Reiner to see the king again. He heard the drums and the trumpets again, and he heard the silence that spread over the royal routes, yet he did not see the king’s face. He then returned home in tears.
Meanwhile Marketa Lazarová arrived at Obořiště, and having entered the rebuilt house, she said to her father:
“Father, God has made you my friend and my protector, and He has given you the scourge to chasten me when I am in error. You have looked after me, and I have shown contempt for your house and the house of God. I am so sinful! Say one word to me so that I, too, may regain my speech. A son stirs within my womb. How shall I speak with him if you do not relieve me of my silence? Impose a punishment and penance on me, and make me true, that I might live and not die with my husband. Make me true, for death contends for my soul and it rasps: ‘the grave, the grave, the grave!’ ”
Lazar, whose beard was white as smoke, made the sign of the cross and replied:
"You have not ceased to be my daughter. You were absent from my house for only a short while, and tomorrow you will be a widow." Then he took her by the hand and tried to lead her into the room where the entire clan had gathered. But Marketa fell to her knees and said:
"My husband has commanded me to live with his sisters. My husband has ordered me to take my leave of you! My husband!"
Oh, what a heart-rending farewell, what a heart-rending refusal of her father’s will! Then Lazar’s sons came in, and with silent emotion they looked upon the contrite girl, upon this handmaiden of love.
Dear gentlemen, all who heard this passionate mistress had once believed they were imbued with reason. Love dazzled them, and this dazzlement was truly nothing more than a mere mote of the living light, although a mote sufficient to confound their certainty and collapse their intransigence. It threw them to their knees. Not one of them failed to kneel. They were overcome; God had altered their hearts and given them to feel that their reason was just chaff.
How could these bunglers act any differently? Only yesterday they were tittering about how they were getting away with their wheeling and dealing right under the king’s nose, and now they were to judge someone? Well, may it be reckoned to their credit that they changed their tune.
Old Lazar brought out the pony and cart he used to ride to church, and he escorted Marketa to the town gate.
The next day had been set for the execution. Lady Kateřina, Kristian’s wife Alexandra, Václav, and the rest of Kozlík’s children were gathered in the captain’s house. They slept in the servants’ quarters.
Kateřina wanted to spend the night before the prison but had been refused. The old crones, harpies, scoffers, and rabble who had crawled out from every nook and cranny were coming up to her to berate her ear with their yelling and screaming. Thus had she been treated the entire journey from Turnov. She walked as if in a cathedral of disgrace built of flames and incandescing like flames. The poor lady, she was not bloodied and her sorrow was hardly visible. She did not intimidate, she did not faze these guttersnipes of sharp tongue and derision.
You curious onlookers, come closer, come closer! Snatch the girls round the waist and prance to their solemn steps. Empty your brains into this pandemonium of justice. It is but one of the punishments without which there can be no peace.
The jeering fell like a shower of hailstones on the heads of the pilgrims. The mob grew when they arrived in the town. The sound of squealing and guffawing. One good fellow in a red cape turned somersaults before the procession, and another whistled wildly, and still another, holding on to the tips of his shoes and making a face, said to Alexandra:
"My sweet virgin, my virgin, my heart longs for you!"
The brigand women had to be stoical as a statue and strong as a lion not to take notice of the insults. They spoke not a word and walked on. And their silence surrounded them like a tent. The din ultimately reached the captain, who, wearing the insignia of his office, went out to see what all the fuss was about. He threatened the crowd and shouted as if ordering a retreat. "Stand back! Stand back!" They moved away very reluctantly, and while dispersing they kept up their noisemaking in the lanes, just asking for the pillory. Then the brigand women were escorted to the captain’s house and a guard placed at their door.
Around midnight Lazar and his daughter were before the town. They were let in. What a reunion! Who can describe a joy so fraught with shame, trust, acceptance, grief, pride, and sorrow? Words cannot fully convey their import, and the one who speaks uses more than words.
"You’ve come, Marketa! Though we have lost so much, look how we’ve gained a daughter. My child, do not keep saying woe! and woe! Do not lament. All that is happening must be accepted. It is God’s will. His heart is both loving and inscrutable. Love is mixed into all deeds. What does it matter that now we weep? What does the king’s anger matter? There is a judge more regal, and He shall judge the knight as a knight and the peasant as a peasant. My husband taught his sons the honor that his time required of him. Alas, the times are changing! My husband was found to be a rebel, yet no one knew the measure of his heart." Having said this, Kateřina fell silent, picking at the threads of her brocade. "No more tears, not one tear more," she finally said. "And faithfulness, faithfulness to olden times!"
The night shuffled along and trailed away striking a bell that rattled out one hour after another, its cracked voice like the sound of the chains trailing the jailer as he descends lower and lower. It is daybreak, scatter, you ravens, scatter, you rabble of crooked wings, scatter, you scavengers with tails off-kilter, with beak red, breath foul, and eye crazed! Ah, it's only a turtledove that sits on the tower and calls and calls.
What a day! See the horn of the moon, see the shafts of daybreak. Everything happens without a peep. The vigilant guard cross the square and head to the tower. Following the guard is a procession of women and children – Lady Kateřina and the others. I see Marketa Lazarová, then Alexandra, and finally Václav. The boy is unwashed, and he sobs into his hand. Now they have gone in. The sentinels have quickened their pace, are their hearts not rapt? Why are they counting? What thoughts are they suppressing? Ah, upon my honor, the wait is terrible. From the gate along the rampart wall to the corner there are fifteen stones, but I count only thirteen in the opposite direction. Look, a shambling dog and a beggarwoman nearly able to stand upright today. The square is filling up. The crowd packs in and stands like a forest. A crowd of good souls, a crowd of age-old friends, they owe the brigands a curse for their nighttime raids. One person puffs out his chest, another drums on his belt and belly, another fidgets nervously, and a chill runs from his feet up through his thighs. Veins bulge on the foreheads of old men, their clothes warm and their napes cold. Those rolled back eyes, that look of stupefaction! Listen now to the drum. Listen to the five-beat tattoo and the five blows on the prison door. Lancers are lined up along the wall. Their fractured shadow climbs upward, reaching the lintels. Lancers and then again the drummer, announcing death. A veil has been thrown over the drumhead, its sound dark, its voice like the shadow of sound. Now the sun blazes and all this misery is ablaze with splendor, every little thing takes on a crimson glow and for a brief moment scintillates. The heat is rising. The executioner wipes the sweat from his face, and an armor-clad fatso squirms like a schoolboy. Now out come Kozlík and Lady Kateřina with their chaplain. Having touched the robes of the Lord who ever smiles, Kozlík walks like a winemaker whose lease has run out. He surveys the crowd, and seeing desolation and despair on the faces, he takes pity and says: "In a short while I will be relieved of the burden of time. I am truly old."
He has nothing more to say, and seeing the palpitating eyes of his wife, he smiles a little to cheer her up. Mikoláš walks behind him. He is in a weakened state and unsteady on his legs. The woman walking by his side, the woman who supports him, is Marketa. Pallid his lacerated face, a memory of strength evoked by his shoulders, a memory of strength evoked by his right arm, the right arm placed on his wife’s shoulder to hold her more closely. He is enthralled by death, which, however you may judge, means peace. He sees no one save for those who are walking the same path, he does not hear the noise of the mob, and he is not afraid. His soul is near his heart, and the stardust that has stuck to its wings now falls into his blood and runs into every vein. Such is the humility without which bravery is as savage as rage.
Just humility? Is that it? Doesn’t he repent? Does he even regret his sins?
No. He was too much the brigand and had always been prideful.
Behind Mikoláš walked two pairs of brothers, one leaning against the other, terrible their wounds. And the women lamented loudly over them, staring them square in the face, and the men audibly gasped at the sight of what the sword had wrought. What had become of all the chatterboxes, crones, and malevolent tongues?
There were none. It was a fleeting effervescence, a mask of weakness, joy from a bloodless game. But this was a grand spectacle.
Kozlík said his farewells. His head fell into the basket, bloody the neck. Mikoláš stood beneath the gallows and breathed his last. Four brothers followed. The executioner affixed the noose, their necks broke.
Those who witnessed this death, all of them, stood there breathless. It was later recorded that the brigands’ wives stood like statues with their robes in flames. Only Marketa Lazarová collapsed, and her weeping howled like a nightmarish wind.
Marketa Lazarová! Yet the name was no longer hers. This good lady brought into the world a son who was given the name of Václav. Alexandra was also confined at the same time. After giving birth she took her own life, and Marketa nursed both infants. They grew up to be two rugged men, but, alas, in their souls love contended with cruelty and certainty with doubt. O blood of Kristian and Marketa!