The Sheriff Of Caschau--A Fragment Of An Old Chronicle

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Title:     The Sheriff Of Caschau--A Fragment Of An Old Chronicle
Author: Maurus Jokai [More Titles by Jokai]

THE SHERIFF OF CASCHAU--A FRAGMENT OF AN OLD CHRONICLE[11]

[Footnote 11: The idea of this story was subsequently expanded into the novel "Pretty Michal."]

It happened the same year that, in the place of old Tobias Kesmarki, the hundred electors of the city of Caschau, to wit, forty-five Hungarians, forty Germans, and fifteen Wends, after due deliberation and by common consent, elected as Sheriff his Honour Michael Dóronczius, as being a man of understanding and blameless life, and respected by all men.

The hundred burgesses, having so done, went forth in solemn procession, headed by their Honours the Fürmenders[12] and the Conrector, to the burial-ground outside the gates, where the whole ground was thickly strewn with straw, it being Water Cross Day,[13] when it is sore cold, and the feet of men grow numb in the very council chamber.

[Footnote 12: Guardians of the orphans and poor.]

[Footnote 13: The Feast of the Epiphany.]

But it was the custom that the newly elected Sheriff should always be dug into his office in the churchyard, where humanity is least of all disturbed by official cares, nay, where, rather, the bulging tombs all around bid him remember that righteousness and good deeds alone abide upon the earth, while all else turns to dust.

Wherefore, with no accompaniment of music, the Sheriff elect and the retiring Sheriff, accompanied by the town councillors, proceed to the churchyard to perform this ceremony, standing within the gate of the churchyard, there to await the masters of the City Guilds coming with their salutations.

All of them came in procession to meet the Sheriff elect, with the badges of their respective Guilds. One by one they salute the new Sheriff, but none of them give him gifts; they do but show them to him, and then take them back again, to signify that he hath first to deserve these same gifts before he receive them.

First of all the millers approach him and exhibit to him a fine white loaf of well-winnowed wheat, and say--

"We will nourish thee with fine white loaves after this sort, if thou wilt be a faithful Sheriff unto us."

Then the vintners, who in those days were a rich and goodly Guild, address him in like manner, and exhibit to him a cask of red wine.

In like manner the weavers, the furriers, and the cobblers all allured the new Sheriff with the hope of receiving of their masterpieces, to wit, beautiful white pieces of cloth, rich cambric, shaggy furs, and bravely embroidered shoes, if so be he remain faithful to their city to the end of his term.

Last of all come the carpenters, who exhibit to the new Sheriff a brand-new waggon, to which horses are harnessed, filled with smoothly planed boards.

And when the master of the Guild of Carpenters stands before the Sheriff, he thus addresses him--

"Behold, now, we have piled up this brave heap of hornbeams that we may burn thee therewith if thou do betray us."

It was usual to say this on the occasion of the election of a Sheriff in the city of Caschau, and nobody was offended thereby. For in those sad times we were often forced to defend our cities with fire and steel against foes of three different nations, whilst as a fourth enemy we reckoned the numerous freebooters, who had turned Turks after once being Christians, and prowled in the environs of the city at night, to snap up any women and children who might fall in their way and sell them to the Turks. And our fifth enemy were the malefactors lurking in the town itself; and our sixth enemy was the terrible pestilence which so often visited our gates; while our seventh and most ancient adversary was the infernal Evil One himself, from whom Heaven in its mercy defend us. Thus in those days the Sheriff had to defend the city against seven divers sorts of enemies, and see to it that they were all kept well outside the gates, wherefore he had to sustain many sieges, guard the walls day and night, cudgel in fist, persecute evildoers, or threaten them with the terrible hárum palzarum,[14] fumigate or steep in lye all goods brought into the city by foreign chapmen, avert religious strife, frustrate the wiles of Satan, always endeavouring to judge righteous judgments, neither for the sake of lucre nor because of any interior impulse pronouncing any sentence which might call to Heaven for vengeance or make Hell applaud.

[Footnote 14: Gradually compressing the skull between three sharp stakes till it burst.]

None feared lest his Honour Master Dóronczius should not prove just such a Sheriff as the town desired, for he was a man with no visible flaw, and known to be a righteous, God-fearing man, of whom nobody could say an ill word.

Wherefore, after performing the usual time-honoured ceremony in the churchyard, with great rejoicing and in solemn procession they brought back his Honour into the council chamber of the town hall, where, having set him down in a large velvet easy-chair, four aldermen, seizing the four legs of the said easy-chair, raised it aloft, to the triumphant musical accompaniment of the town trumpeters and the militia drums, while the people present shouted a threefold hurrah. Whereupon the whole town council went in solemn procession to the churches, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and everywhere sang a Te Deum with great enthusiasm, and after listening to a sermon in Hungarian and a sermon in German, returned to the Sheriff's house to sit down to a great banquet, during which the united choirs, conducted by the precentor, sang all manner of delightful melodies, and towards evening platters of pitch were ignited on the angles of the bastions, and the howitzers also were fired off.

And the city of Caschau felt fully justified on the day of the election of its Sheriff in drinking so many barrels of wine and ditto beer with great rejoicing, because his Honour, Master Dóronczius, was quite capable of so ordering every manner of business and difficulty that nobody had the least cause for anxiety.

Nevertheless, it so happened, late in the evening of the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul (next evening), that a couple of watchmen, Wurmdrucker and Kebluska by name, to whom had been assigned the patrolling of the streets, while strolling round the large building known as the Turkish lock-up house, perceived a figure enwrapped in a black cloak come hastily out of a house, which figure, on perceiving them, suddenly crouched down under the gate as if with the intent of hiding from them.

Now, as they had had strict orders to arrest and lock up for the night in the nearest ward-house every living soul, good or bad, who should be found in the streets without a lamp after the hour for closing the gates, which was proclaimed by a blast of horns from the top of the great tower--every such soul, if a gentleman, to be fined a thaler next morning, or if a poor man, then half a thaler, or if he had nothing, then to be well trounced--the two watchmen determined to seize and stop the night wanderer thus confronting them. Wurmdrucker having a lamp made of some paper-like, compressible membrane, thereupon held it in front of him that he might see the face of the unknown person, while Kebluska stretched his halberd out against him, and cried with a loud voice, "Who's there?" in Hungarian, German, and Slavonic, that he might be able to answer in one at least of the three languages of the town.

But the person so addressed replied in no language at all, but, having a long stick in his hand, knocked the paper lamp out of Wurmdrucker's hand, so that it collapsed altogether, and would have run off then and there had not Kebluska so thrust at him with his halberd that the point thereof went right through his cloak, pinning to the door of the house the would-be fugitive, whom the two watchmen then seized, and tying his hands behind his back, urged him on before them to the ward-house hard by the Turkish prison, and there locked him up in the dark room, where they were wont to keep the ashes.

The imprisoned vagabond would not tell his name, and the watchmen, not having a lamp, could not see his face, but all along he begged and prayed them to let him go free; he would give them ever so much money for his freedom, he said.

At this the watchmen were even more afraid. They fancied they had got hold of some evil spy, and not for any amount of treasure would they have let him out of their hands till morning, hoping to get a still greater reward when they handed him over to the Sheriff. When he promised them a hundred ducats they felt sure that the Sheriff would reward them with two hundred, so in the morning they let out the prisoner in order to take him to the Sheriff, and lo! the prisoner was--the Sheriff himself.

So much for their two hundred ducats. The two watchmen were speechless with terror, they did not know what to say in their sudden amazement. Master Dóronczius said nothing to them, but hastened home, and the same day, under some plausible pretext or other, perchance on a trumped-up charge of brawling or blaspheming, seized and thrust both of them into the prison called after Pontius Pilate, where so long as Master Dóronczius remained Sheriff they might be quite certain they would remain.

Nobody, therefore, at that time knew anything of their secret, for they might just as well have been buried alive as imprisoned in the dungeon of Pontius Pilate.

In those days there lived in the city of Caschau a rich master-butcher, whom they called Stephen Sándor, who had two houses, one in the high town and the other next door to the apothecary's, which had no common thatch, but instead of a roof a cupola made of pointed tiles, like an Egyptian pyramid. In those days the whole of the principal square was built of such houses, with pointed cupolas, the quadrangular stones with which they were built being welded together with lead and iron clasps.

This rich butcher had an only son, Joseph by name, who had also been brought up to be a master-butcher, and had just given proof of his mastery, and manfully too, for he had felled his bullock at the first stroke, and thus escaped the fine of a ducat per extra stroke imposed on bunglers.

Joseph was indeed a stout, well-set-up fellow, yielding to none of his fellows in mettle; at pike-tilting he always kept in his saddle, and never failed to carry off the Shrove Tuesday goose in triumph. Withal he was an honest, diligent youth, and a regular church-goer; and when it came to psalm singing, he out-bawled the whole congregation. Moreover, every man loved and respected him, and never could it be said that he gave half an ounce less in the pound than he ought to have done.

On the day when this Joseph achieved his master-stroke, his father said to him: "Be off, my son; it is high time. Look about the town a bit, and search for a befitting consort. Look not for property or wealth, but rather for a good heart and a pure spirit. These two things every man should bring home; God will give the rest."

Then Joseph confessed to his father that he had already chosen for himself a worthy and beautiful maiden, an orphan from Eperies, Catharine by name, whose father and mother were dead, and who had put up at the house of an elder sister in the town. He would shorten the days of her orphanhood, he said.

Old Stephen Sándor also knew personally the girl, as well as her guardian elder sister; both of them were good and gentle souls; Catharine, in particular, was such a mild and modest creature that one had but to look at her to feel towards her an impulse of human tenderness.

Her only fault was her great pallor. But this trouble every foreign girl was exposed to who came to dwell at Caschau from the surrounding country or from other places, for there was something in the atmosphere of the town or its drinking water from which the fair faces of foreigners derived this pallid hue, which went by the name of the "Caschau complexion." And there was no escape from it save by quitting Caschau and going to other places, or else by taking to themselves a husband.

So the "Caschau complexion" was no great defect in Catharine's face, after all, so soon as Joseph's father had agreed that his son should take her to wife. After the marriage festivities it would vanish of its own accord, and the new wife would grow as rosy as the other pretty girls of Caschau.

So Joseph immediately sent his witnesses to the house of Catharine's elder sister, and not long afterwards rings of espousal were exchanged between them, and the wedding-day was fixed for the market-day before the festival of St. Vincent.

The wedding-day arrived, and the marriage took place with full ceremonials. The bride was fetched from her sister's house, and conveyed to the House of God in a carriage drawn by four horses, with plumes and coloured kerchiefs on the horses' heads, and thence to the house of the bridegroom through all the chief streets of the town, to the accompaniment of merry music; and every young man who saw the bride sitting in the beribboned carriage smiled and said to himself, "What a Caschau complexion she has got."

On that day Catharine was paler than usual. In the church itself her sadness, her anguish, were observed generally. Once, when her bridegroom took her hand, she burst into tears, and shrank timidly away from him. Her pallor, her timidity, her weeping, were, all of them, not unbecoming to a bride, so nobody was much struck thereby at the time.

After the dancing came the ceremonial of conducting the bride and the bridegroom to the marriage bed, when the bridesman seized Catharine's hand, while two sword-girt youths went before them, two bridesmaids following after with the bridegroom, and the musicians began to play a gentle, dreamy melody, to the music of which the two torch-bearing youths and the two bridesmaids danced round the bridegroom and the bride, as if thereby the better to enlace them together, till they came to the bedroom, and there also they danced round them once more, each man taking his and each girl her fellow's hands, and then all together they scampered out of the door, which they banged to behind them, leaving the young couple alone; but the music droned on outside ever more softly, ever more gently, at last scarce audibly, as if it would imitate the whispering of the happy pair inside.

But no sooner were the bride and the bridegroom alone in the bridal chamber than Catharine quickly plucked the bridal wreath from her head, tore it desperately to pieces, and then, opening the window looking on to the courtyard, leaped out of it.

The astonished bridegroom, in the first moment of his surprise, did not know what to do, but looking out after the girl, and perceiving that she was making straight for the well at the top of her speed, he quickly rushed after her, and caught the wench at the very moment when she was about to plunge down the well and kill herself outright.

Joseph pressed the lass tightly in his strong arms so that she could do herself no harm, and asked her anxiously what was the matter, and why she wanted to run away from him. At first the girl only sobbed, and begged him to let her die; but inasmuch as the bridegroom would by no means consent thereto, the girl confessed something to him which made the hairs of his head rise to heaven with horror; indeed, by the time the girl had told him everything, the bridegroom also had fainted, and lay there at her feet.

And within there, in the house of dancing, they were playing the dreamy melody which imitates the lisping of happy lovers, and stately maids and stalwart lads were dancing together and singing:--

"Dance, dance, the stately dance,
Wave, wave the rosy chain,
To knit together bride and groom."

The marriage came to nought. Catharine, half dead, was carried back to her sister's house, the bridal guests scattered in dismay. Nevertheless, Joseph said not a word of what Catharine had told him to any one, but mounted his horse, took a cudgel in one hand and a lance with a streamer to it in the other, and trotted off to the Sheriff's house. There, without leaving the saddle, he rattled at the gate with the point of the lance, and cried aloud in the hearing of all the people--

"Hearken, Michael Dóronczius! Here am I, Joseph Sándor, sitting on horseback, with lance and cudgel in my hands. Mount thy horse also, if thou be a man; take thy lance and thy cudgel and come out with me in the open, there to fight together; thou knowest wherefore, but tell it to none. Let God judge betwixt us."

It was an unheard-of audacity for a simple burgess to challenge the town Sheriff himself to a tilting duel with cudgels and lances. The people listened in amazement, but still more amazed were they when Master Dóronczius not only did not prosecute the audacious youth, but told the watchmen to let him go in peace, as he must certainly be out of his wits.

But Joseph Sándor, when Dóronczius would not come out of his house to fight with him in God's name, took a bladder lantern, hung it on the point of his lance, hung beside it a ragged sheep-skin jacket and a pair of hose, and throwing the lance over his shoulder, galloped through the town, exclaiming at every street corner--

"Hearken ye! old and young. Which of you hath seen this Michael Dóronczius, whom I am seeking with a lantern? Tell me, who hath seen him? What hath become of him?"

And in every crowd there is never any lack of merry roysterers ready to give mocking answers to such scornful questions.

"I have seen him. He is hiding just now in a mouse-hole, only his spur is visible."

"I have seen him. He is dressed up in his wife's clothes; he is selling bacon in the market-place among the huckster wenches."

"Never mind, Joe," cried another, "he is sitting behind the stove. He would freeze up if he came out."

"Nay, he would like to come," cried the fourth, "only his mother won't let him. She wants him to skein her thread for her."

"He'll come immediately," said a fifth, "only he's looking for his lance; the fowls are sitting on it, and he durst not drive them away for fear the cock might peck him."

"Let him alone," cried a sixth, "he's lying sick; a gnat bit him yesterday."

And thus the heckling went from street to street, being the usual mode, after the custom of those times, of shaming a backward combatant into action. And, indeed, it was surprising that Michael Dóronczius did not come forward to fight with the youth who jeered at him so, nor even sent to arrest him, inasmuch as he was quite able to do both, being both a strong muscular man and, at the same time, chief magistrate of the city. But, instead of doing either the one or the other, he said that they were to let young Sándor depart in peace wherever he liked to go.

Nevertheless, later on, when the first intoxication of rage had evaporated from the head of Joseph, he bethought him that, after so much heckling on his part, it was not perhaps very advisable for him to remain in the near neighbourhood of so powerful an enemy, and accordingly one night he privily escaped from the town, and not even his father knew whither he had gone.

* * * * *

Meanwhile time went on, and Catharine grew paler and paler, and no medicine had power to help her. And suddenly the whole miserable mystery was revealed.

On the night before Ascension Day, just after the blowing of the two-o'clock horn, a watchman perceived a woman's shape, wrapped in a long cloak, hastening stealthily along the walls in the direction of the city trench. The watchman followed in the traces of this figure, and saw how this servant-wench--for such he judged her to be--on reaching the trenches, placed on the ground something wrapped up in a bundle, and then produced a spade and began to dig.

When she had scooped out a good deep hole, she knelt down beside the wrapped-up object, and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep bitterly. Then she suddenly left off weeping, and looked timidly round to see if any one was near.

Then the night watchman went up to her and seized her hand, and bawled loudly in her ear, "What art thou doing there?"

The girl immediately fell back and fainted without answering him, but the object lying open there before him plainly told him what was being done. It was a little new-born baby, a pretty little chubby-faced child; but dead and stiff.

There was no wound upon it, but only a little pin-prick just over the region of the heart, nor was there any blood on its little white shift, save only a single drop, but that had been enough to make the innocent creature die.

At the cry of the night watchman, many people came running up, and they were horrified to recognize in the murderess and mother of the child, Catharine, the former bride of Joseph Sándor, who must certainly have run away from her bridegroom's house on the night of the marriage because she would not practise a vile deception on that worthy man.

They immediately tied the girl's hands behind her, and fastening the baby to her neck, put her in the lock-up, and there the inquiry began early the next morning.

The girl denied nothing. She had killed her child and would have buried it to conceal her shame. She made no excuses, she did not even weep or beg for mercy. The one thing they could not get out of her was: who was the child's father? On this point she remained doggedly silent, and was ready to suffer threefold torture rather than speak.

The Sheriff, Michael Dóronczius, was the presiding judge who pronounced sentence upon the criminal. For her great sin against God, he said, she was to endure the punishment prescribed for such offences in the statute-book of the town, without any mitigation.

Within living memory no such crime had been committed in our town, so that not even the people themselves knew what form the execution would take, therefore an enormous multitude assembled on the appointed day at the place of execution to see what manner of death she who had murdered her child was to die.

I also was there, and I shall never forget the spectacle, but I would not go to such a sight again if they were to promise me the best part of the town of Caschau for it.

Beneath the scaffold a long trench had been dug about four feet in depth, and beside it stood the executioner's two apprentices.

In this trench Catharine was laid backwards, so that her head alone emerged above it; it was just as if she were lying comfortably in bed.

Then they bound her hands and feet tightly to stout pegs at the bottom of the trench, and the executioner placed the point of a large stake just above Catharine's heart, and held it there while the executioner's assistants filled the whole trench with earth, so that at last only the girl's head was visible above it.

And when nothing more was to be seen but her head, with its pale face, the chaplain approached her, and, kneeling down beside her, urged her for the sake of the salvation of her soul and for the remission of her sins to confess herself truly to him and tell him everything which might relieve her heart of its heavy burden--for had she not two feet in the grave already.

The head visible above the earth looked sorrowfully around it in every direction twice or thrice, as if it were waiting for some one, as if it believed that at that consummate moment some one would appear to save it, and when, after all, it saw no deliverer approaching, two heavy tears dropped from its eyes and, trickling down its pale face, fell upon the earth which now reached to its very chin. Then she, who was thus buried before she was dead, whispered that she would confess everything, and not in secret, but so that the whole world should hear it.

And she began by saying that the father of the child whose young life she had so mercilessly extinguished was none other than Michael Dóronczius, the Sheriff.

It was he who had deceived the heart of the innocent girl by his devilish artifices, so that when she heard and saw him she forgot everything else. 'Twas he who, protected by the Prince of Darkness, came to Catharine's house at night, who corrupted her with devilish potions, and utterly turned her head. Once, too, he had been caught there by the watchmen, Wurmdrucker and Kebluska, whom Dóronczius, in order that they might not say anything against him, had thrown into the Pontius Pilate dungeon, where they were still languishing. For this cause Catharine had escaped by night from her bridegroom, Joseph Sándor, and after that had oftentimes implored Michael Dóronczius not to drive her to despair, but as he had made her unhappy, at least to take her to wife, especially as up to that time she had always loved him greatly. But Dóronczius always made excuses; and when it was no longer possible to conceal her shame, he had counselled Catharine, with devilish insinuations, to kill and bury her child as soon as it was born. And when they had caught the girl in the deed her destroyer had assured her that, if only she would not betray him, he would save her at the very last moment. And now the very last moment had come, but Dóronczius was hugging himself at home with the thought that the only witness of his evil deed was about to be put to silence for ever. So now, therefore, his offence was revealed, and let God judge him and let God judge her also, poor sinful girl that she was.

Every one heard these words with horror, and there was not one who did not weep for the poor downtrodden girl and curse the man who had ruined her.

And then the clergyman gave her spiritual consolation, and, having commended her poor oppressed soul to the infinite mercy of God, he covered her head with a handkerchief so that she might not see the things which were to happen next.

For the headsman now drew forth the stake, which indicated the exact place of the buried girl's heart through the intervening earth, and taking a long, red-hot iron peg from a brazier of burning coals, let it down through the place where the wooden stake had been. Then one of the executioner's assistants seized a sledge-hammer with both hands and drove the red-hot iron peg home, while the other quickly covered the girl's head with a heap of earth. But even through the earth could be heard a heart-rending scream, and the whole earthy tomb heaved up twice or thrice in a manner horrible to behold, till the other apprentices of the executioner had cast a great mound of earth over it and stamped it well down with their feet, after which the grave remained quiet, not a sound now came from it, and the earth ceased to move.

Thereupon the crowd, loudly cursing, set off for the house of Michael Dóronczius, whom they would no doubt have torn to pieces on the spot had not the Fürmenders taken him under their protection.

Meanwhile it became the duty of the Syndics to bring an action against him for fraud, sorcery, and murder. At first Dóronczius obstinately denied everything, but when Wurmdrucker and Kebluska, who were released from their dungeon, testified against him, and said they had seized him on the night when he had quitted Catharine's house, he began to perceive that things were going badly with him, and, by way of saving his own skin, devised an evil plan and sent a secret message to the Walloon captain encamped at Eperies, that if he would come to Caschau by night hard by the gate of the Green Springs, he might perchance find it open and so obtain possession of the whole town.

But the Almighty put to nought this vile device, inasmuch as Joseph Sándor, who had quitted the town because of the Sheriff, and entered the army of Prince John Sigismund, and there worked his way up to the rank of captain, having heard through spies of the intentions of the Walloon captain, galloped at breakneck pace all the way from Tokai to Caschau with five hundred heydukes, and arrived just as the Walloons were pressing through the gate into the town.

A fierce and desperate fight thereupon ensued between the Walloons and the Hungarians. The former had brought a cannon with them, and entrenching themselves close to the Green Springs behind waggons, fired mercilessly at the town, and into the ranks of the Hungarian warriors, one ball even penetrating the principal entrance of the cathedral. Nevertheless, Joseph Sándor, still further encouraging his warriors, broke at last the ranks of the enemy, and, capturing their cannon besides, flung them out of the town with great profusion of blood. Indeed, if it had not been so dark, and the terrified inhabitants had had time, after the treachery of the Sheriff, to set things in order and succour Joseph, certainly not one of the Walloons would have escaped.

As for Michael Dóronczius, he was seized while attempting stealthily to fly, and the whole treason was brought home to him.

And it was exactly a year that day since they had elected him as Sheriff and installed him in office in the churchyard. Wherefore the carpenters, with the waggon drawn by six horses and laden with a heap of fine hornbeams, again drew up in front of the churchyard, and there they made a pile of the wood and burnt Michael Dóronczius upon it, as they told him they would beforehand.

But, by way of a memorial of the sad treachery, they walled up the gate of the Green Springs, and drew a couple of trenches in front of it, with deep moats guarding them, so that none might get in that way again.

After this event Joseph Sándor settled again in the city of Caschau, and lived there for a long time till he became an old man, but he never married.

This also they said, at a later day, that one night Catharine's body was dug up from its grave beneath the gibbet and buried in a more godly place, which none wots of save he who buried it there.

Whether it were true or not, nobody could say for certain, for that which is under the earth is the secret of the dark earth known only to the Almighty, and may His gracious protection rest over our poor town and over our hundred-fold more unfortunate country!

[The end]
Maurus Jokai's short story: Sheriff Of Caschau--A Fragment Of An Old Chronicle

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