King Stakh's Wild Hunt

On hearing steps again in the night, I went out and saw the housekeeper with a candle in her hand. I followed her as she went into the room with the closet, but this time I decided not to retreat. The room was again empty, the closet also, but I tried all the boards of the back wall (the closet stood in a niche), then I tried to raise them and became convinced that they were removable. The old woman was probably deaf, otherwise she would have heard me. With great difficulty I managed to push myself through the cracks I had made, and I saw a vaulted passage that led sharply downstairs. The steps worn by time were slippery and the passage so narrow that my shoulders rubbed against the walls. I went down the steps and saw a small room also vaulted. There were two closets there, and along the walls of the room stood trunks bound with iron. Everything was open and everywhere paper and leaves of parchment were lying thrown about. A table stood in the middle, beside it a stool roughly knocked together, and sitting on it the housekeeper was examinig a sheet quite yellowed with time. The greedy expression on her face was shocking.

When I entered she screamed with fright, made an attempt to hide the sheet. I managed to grab her hand.

“Miss housekeeper, give that to me. And be kind enough to tell me why you come here every night to this secret archive, what you are doing here, why you frighten people with your footsteps.”

“Ugh! My God! How fast you are!” she exclaimed, collecting herself quickly. “He's got to know everything…”

And, evidently, because she was on the first floor and did not consider it necessary to stand on ceremony with me, she began to speak with that expressive intonation of the common folk. “And teal and poppy you don't want? Just see what he needs! And he has hidden the paper. May your children grab your bread from you in your old age as you have grabbed this paper from me. Perhaps I have more right to be here than you. But he, just look, sits there, asking, asking. Damn him!”

This had become boring, and I said: “What is it you want? Prison? Why are you here? Or perhaps it's from here you send signals to the Wild Hunt?”

The housekeeper was offended. Wrinkles gathered on her face.

“Sinful, sir!” she quietly muttered. “I'm an honest woman, I've come here to get what's mine. There it is, in your hand. It belongs to me.” I looked at the piece of paper. It was an extract from a resolution passed by a smallholder claims committee:

“And although the above-mentioned Zakreŭski declares to this very day that he and not Haraburda is heir to the Janoŭskis, this case which has lasted over a period of 20 years, is now closed, as not having been proven, and Mr. Isidore Zarkevsky is deprived of his rights to aristocratic rank for the lack of proof.”

“So what?” I asked.

“This is what, my dear fellow,” the housekeeper came back bitingly, “I am Zakreŭskaja, that's what. And it was my father who went to court with the great and the powerful. I didn't know about it, but my thanks to some good people. They told me what to do. The district judge took ten little red ones, but he gave me good advice. Give me that paper.”

“It won't help you,” I said. “It isn't really a document. Here the court refuses your father his request, even his right to the gentry is not established. I know about this examination of the petty gentry very well. If your father had had papers to prove his right for substitution after the Janoŭskis — that would be another matter. But he did not hand in any papers — and that means that he did not have them.”

The housekeeper's face reflected a piteous attempt to understand these complicated things.

Then, not believing me, she asked:

“But perhaps the Janoŭskis bribed them? These people who raise trifling objections, just you give them some money! I know. They took the papers away from my father and hid them here.”

“And can you sue them 20 years running?” I asked. “Twenty more years?”

“My dear fellow, by that time I'll have gone to wash God's portals for him.”

“Well, so you see. And you have no papers. You have searched everything here, haven't you?”

“Everything, young man, everything. But it's a shame to lose what's mine.”

“But they are all only vague rumours.”

“But the money — those red ones and the blue ones — mine.”

“And it is very bad to rummage nights among papers not belonging to you.”

“My dear fellow, the money is mine,” she drawled dully.

“The court will not grant you it, even if there were any papers to prove it. This entailed estate has belonged to the Janoŭskis over a period of 300 years or even longer.”

“But it's mine, my dear fellow,” almost in tears, and the greed on her face was loathsome to see. “I would have stuffed them, the dear ones, here, right here in my stockings. I would have eaten money, slept on money.”

“There aren't any papers,” losing all patience. “There is a lawful heir.”