A hundred hands shot out to seize her in their greedy clutches, ravenous with hatred; she was whirled away like a bush torn up by the roots, and dragged out into the enclosure.
“Bind her, else she may give us the slip and escape!” the Voytova commanded.
By the roadside stood a cart prepared for her, filled to the very top with hogs’-dung, to which cart a couple of black cows had been yoked. Into the dung they tossed her, bound fast and unresisting; and then, in the midst of a deafening uproar—laughter, foul invectives, imprecations—each a stab of murderous intent—the procession set out.
It halted at the church, and Kozlova bawled:
“Let her be stripped here, and whipped in the porch!”
“Aye,” screamed another; “creatures of her kidney were always flogged outside the church.”
“Let her be whipped until the blood spurts out!”
But Ambrose had bolted the lich-gate, and stood close to the wicket, the priest’s gun in hand; and when they stopped, he bellowed at them:
“The first that breaks in here—as I hope for mercy, I’ll shoot him! … I’ll kill him like a dog!” And he looked so grim, so formidable, with his gun ready to fire, that they forbore, and turned aside to the poplar road.
They hurried on, for the storm might burst at any moment. The sky had grown still more gloomy; the tall poplars tossed to and fro in the gale; clouds of blinding dust flew up beneath their feet, and far-off thunder rumbled.
They cried: “Faster, Pete, faster!” They looked skywards ill at ease, less noisy now, and walking by the roadside, for the middle was deep sand; and only now and then did one or another of her bitterest enemies draw near the cart and shriek:
“You swine! You wanton! To the soldiers!—Go, you plague-spotted harlot!”
Pete, Boryna’s servant, was driving the cart, for no one else would do so. He walked beside and flogged the cows, and spoke a few words of pity to her, when he could speak them unnoticed.
“ ’Tis not far … your wrong shall be avenged: suffer now in patience!”
Thus did Yagna, bound, on a bed of dung, the blood oozing from her beaten limbs, disgraced for all her life, unutterably degraded, and supreme in wretchedness, lie neither hearing nor feeling anything around her; but the tears streamed down her bruised cheeks. At times, too, her bosom rose as if to utter a cry—but the cry never came. It stopped within her, petrified.
“Faster, Pete, faster!” they exclaimed, hurrying him along, and impatience partly calming their madness, they now came on at a quick trot, nearing the mounds which were the landmarks of Lipka.
Here they pulled out one side of the cart, made of loose boards, and shot her out, along with the dung, like loathsome offal. A loud thud was heard; she fell on her back, and remained motionless.
The Voytova came forward, and spurned at her with her foot, hissing: “Return to us again, and we’ll hunt you away with dogs!” and, lifting up a clod as hard as a stone, and striking her cruelly, she added: “This for the wrong you have done my children!”
Another struck her a second blow: “This for the shame you have brought on Lipka!”
“May you perish forever and evermore!”
“May you never lie in hallowed earth!”
“But die of hunger and of thirst!”
With these invectives, there rained upon her clods and stones and handfuls of earth; while she lay motionless, looking up into the trees that waved over her.
Then it grew dark, and a dense rain began to fall.
Pete delayed over “something to arrange about the cart,” so the people did not wait for him, but returned in bands, much depressed and subdued. About halfway back, they met Dominikova, covered with blood and with torn clothes, sobbing and groping her way with a stick. On finding out whom she was passing, she shrieked in a fearful voice:
“Murrain and plague and fire and flood—let them not pass you over!”
At the words, they hung their heads, and fled panic-stricken.
It was a great storm. The sky had grown liver-coloured, the dust flew in bellying clouds; the poplars, with sobbing soughing sounds, were bowed and shaken to their roots; the winds howled, wrestling with the corn, and rushed roaring away to the quivering and murmuring forests. Twisted masses of hail-cloud, slate and copper-hued, hung low in bulging piles and airy hummocks here and there, cloven by streaming thunderbolts of wonderful brightness; though indeed the hail fell only in scanty showers, beating down a few leaves and boughs.
This, with few intervals, lasted all day long and till evening set in, followed by a black, cool, refreshing night.
And the next day it was splendid weather again; a sky without a stain, and the land sparkling all over with dew.
Everything in Lipka was now on its former footing. As soon as the sun was well above the skyline, they all, as by common consent, sallied forth together to reap; the field pathways and roads were alive with rolling carts.
And as the Mass-bell tinkled from the church, each man stood up in the fields to listen to the sounds: those nearest could even catch the faint notes of the organ. Some knelt down to say their morning prayer, even aloud; some uttered a pious ejaculation, in which he found spirit and strength to work; everyone at least crossed himself … and then fell to work with the utmost energy.
Thus did it go on all day: a Divine Service of hard and ceaseless and most fruitful work. Scarcely anyone remained at home. All the doors of all the huts stood wide open; even the children went afield, the aged and the invalids; and even the dogs, breaking loose from the ropes that bound them, darted off to the harvest-making.
No one was indolent, no one stood eyeing his neighbours’ crops; they all, bowed over the furrows, and with untiring diligence, worked hard in the sweat of their brows.
Dominikova’s fields alone remained unreaped—forgotten, as it were.
