Legends of the Realm of Janos: Tales of the Crown

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He stares far, far down the road as though to depart this village and land for other fields. A live warning, you would have thought him, planted at the crossroad on a shallow hill. Dear little brother, why stand in the blazing sun? Look, others are snoring under the hay. The kuvasz, too, is lolling there, his tongue dangling out, not for all the world would he go a-mousing. Or have you never seen a whirlwind like this? It kicks up the dust for a fight, licks the road at breakneck speed, a smoke-stack belching on the run.

But no, he does not care how it sifts the road from end to end - through a tower of dust erected by the wind, proud weapons glitter, proud troops ascend A cloud of sighs rises from his heart like those hazy troops. And bending forward, he stares and stares as though heart and soul were fixed in his eyes. How beat and bitter am I to see you. Where are you bound? To gather flowers for a wreath of glory? Are you riding against Tatars, Turks? To bid them good night forever? Ah, if I too, I too were only riding. Neat Hungarian cavaliers, shining knights!

His head churned, and his heart was wrung with sadness because he too was the son of a knight. Here they come, the mounted men of the Palatine Laczfi, and at the head of his proud troops Endre Laczfi himself. He sits with martial bearing on his fallow horse, braids of gold on his robe. In his train dashing young men ride in fancy saddles on stamping stallions. The word cut to Toldi's heart, which jumped so hard you could hear it. And then he lightly twirls the pole, grabbing one end like a little stick. With a single hand he raises it up long and straight, pointing out the road that trails toward Buda.

Arm hardening into iron, and himself, he extends the rough-hewn timber straight as a rod. When they behold Toldi with the long pole, the Palatine and all his troops look on astounded. Or who will point like that the sorry faggot this boy is using to show the road? They mutter and bluster, but who dares to match a peasant boy! Who would ever enter the list with a thunderstorm, the wild and windy gloom? And who would joust with the fiery wrath of God, the flashing and sizzling shaft of God?

Pick a fight with Toldi if you long for God's dear kingdom. And what a fate awaits whoever falls into his hands, wailing himself back into his dead mother's arms. They pass by in long closed lines. The whole army is talking about Toldi. Everyone has a good, kind word for him; everyone turns him a smiling face.

One says - "Friend, why don't you join up for the battle? Young men like you have a high price there, believe you me. The army passes, echoes die - one enveloped in dust the other lofted on the wind. Toldi shambles homeward, deep in melancholy. The range trembles under his heavy footsteps into the far distance. His walk is a sullen bull's, his eyes the brown midnight. In his mad rage he blows like a wounded boar, the rail almost crumpling in his iron hands. But things are happening at home in Nagyfalu - perhaps the house is burning, the chimney is smoking so hard.

A bucket waves welcome on the brooding sweep. Piglets squeal and mewl; calves and lambs bleat. A dreadful judgment reigns over the small livestock. The womenfolk, even the ailing, bustle about. The kitchen is busier than a little market. A servant pours water into a six-gallon bucket.

When it boils and runs over, she quickly dips a fowl in, plucks it, and grabs off the socks. To keep the little lamb from sweating, someone strips off his fleecy hide. And someone else bastes a spare rabbit, making it drip with lard. Another is swinging a piglet above the flame, shaving it down to the skin. They bring wine in flagons and goatskins, and bread in a beechen vessel What does the hullabaloo mean in a widow's house where merry-making is long out of style. Or has fate brought her to a second wedding? Has she tired of her lonely widow's bed and given the fading flower of her life to another?

This is neither a funeral feast nor the dawn of a second wedding. He greeted his mother coldly, although she poured out her soul for him "Well, where's that other one? No one would imagine he meant his brother. But though unwanted and unbidden, the boy enters unawares, his heart still like a fiery cauldron, scaling with shame and anger. And still - what a miracle! A something masters the loathing of his soul, a something I cannot express. Seeing him, he suddenly opens, impulsively, his arms. The mother's eyes are brimmed with tears as with quavering lips she steps before her stone-hearted son, stroking his arms and stroking his head.

Dip him in milk and butter, don't deny him a thing, and he'll grow up a big dumb dolt. It is harvest time in the fields, but that's not to his master's taste. Like a hound, he smells a fat dinner and higgledy-piggledy he leaves the hands. Now you can show him in the window - every day he puts on meat and fat to delight his mother Not a letter of truth exists in your charge.

I know too well what lurks behind your bush. May God love you as much as you do me! I am unfit for a peasant, unfit for a knight, and among the hired hands I am least of all. You are jealous because someone shares your bowl, and you would drown me, if you could, with a spoonful of water. The road is open a hundred miles this way and a hundred that, I am ready to go this very day. But whatever is mine, I'll take from here.

Now give me, brother, all that is mine - my rightful share of this estate - my money, my steeds, my weapons. Beyond that, God bless every man. His eyes like steel are sparkling fire, and he prepares a blow with the bones of his fist. And this blow would put him in a cool hole, where he would never again eat God's bread, and like a broken bone between two slats of wood he would never repair unto judgment day.

The enormous youth now dropped his arms, sadly lowered his head and eyes. As though awakening with a chill, he went reeling from his father's house. He gave himself up to sorrow and silent anger, and sat in the farthest corner of the yard. Putting his head into his hands he wept, but not a soul was there to hear at all. There was no grief in the ancestral house where they wore themselves out eating and drinking.

Young blood, old wine danced in their veins as the wooden spears whirled in their hands. They were bantering and laughing in finest fettle like wild colts. From under the eaves he watches with pleasure the games they play. Does he cower, or has he croaked? Let's see if he can fly. We've got to beat the fence around him! As when a hare is let among dogs, the wild boys leaped at the words.

It is easy to grasp, not only with the mind but with hand and fist, that the crude sport is meant to get his goat, and sometimes they almost graze his head. Toldi put up with it though not in peace, and the great soul wrestled with his rage. He mastered himself at last and suffered with disdain the flunkies who were mocking him. These people would have been mere straw to his wrath which was like Samson's, of whom it is written that with a jaw- bone he slew a thousand heathens.

Toldi stood it, stood it as long as he could. He took his revenge by pretending not to notice, and did not even wiggle an ear at the clatter. The heavy stone flies. Who knows where it is going to land? Your head is under the headsman's sword. Water cannot wash off a murderer's name! You will go wild, wandering far from the paternal house like a stag that is driven from the herd - a stag who gores his rival and is cast out himself by the others. The stone cleaved the air and delivered stark death to a noble warrior. His body was squashed as in an oil-press, dark sap trickling from the mangled flesh.

The dusty earth greedily licked it up, and a deathly veil covered his eyes. The blow that snuffed out his life was painful to all, but not to him who perished of a sudden. But it pleased him that his brother played into his hands with a murder. The cloak of law and justice will now cover his design and its crooked course. To undo his brother in the name of a judge, he gave strict orders to seize him forthwith. As the wounded hart flees into a shady forest with his fiery pain, for a stream with cooling waters and balm to tear on his wound - Oh, but the bed is dry and he cannot discover the healing balm; his body is torn by every branch, his body is ripped by every thorn, and he is more faint now than he was before -.

Sorrow sat on his neck and dug spurs into his ribs. His heart bounded in his breast like a horse locked in a burning stable. He hid by a stream, he hid in the reeds, and found no place to lay his head. He looked for solitude but found no cure for the sickness of his soul. Like the wolf fleeing a shepherd, he flung himself into a large, dried-up bog.

But every reed whispered - you are the loneliest in all the world. His bed was of dry reeds, his pillow a clump. His tanya was roofed by God's blue sky until night took it under her wing and drew a tent of darkness above. Sweet sleep chanced by like a mantled moth but dared not settle on his eyes for long, or until the bloom of rosy dawn. But in the dappled dawn when the mosquitoes dozed off and the clatter died, it stole down unfolding two wings over his eyes.

And then it kissed his lips with a nectar of sleep gathered from poppy for the night, a sleep so enchanting saliva rolled from the corner of Toldi's mouth. But pangs of hunger envied this too, rousing him soon from his morning sleep, goading and lashing as he wandered the fields of grass up and down. He hunted for the nests of field birds - wild duck, lapwing, mew, and coot - broke into their homes and robbed them clean, putting his hunger to sleep with their speckled eggs.

Thirst and hunger stilled with wild bird eggs, he was buffeted on the waves of his future. Where should he go? What should he do? His feverish soul has nowhere to turn. It would be easy to go, easy to hide, but his mother would always stay in his mind. Ah, if she failed to hear from him, her heart would break. Three days he tormented himself like this, on the third day he heard a rustle - a wolf he thought, but did not raise his arms for he knew only a brother could do you harm.

It was Bence though, the old faithful servant, sent by his mother. Bence fell on him crying and after a while spoke these words -. For three days I searched and combed this ocean of reeds never thinking to see you again. How are you, my dear boy? Didn't the beasts eat you up in these wilds?

Here is my sack, take it and eat, here it is! With that the faithful servant put his fist to his eyes, then wiped it on his coarse shirt. He knelt to the ground, put down his pouch, and one by one unpacked all that was inside. He spread a table, a make-do one of the empty pouch and cover. He set down the bread, the flask, and the roast, and graced it with two apples at last.

Then he drew out a shining knife and offered it to the young master. Toldi sliced up the loaf of bread and ate it with the hearty meat. How Bence, the old faithful servant, enjoyed the sight - better than eating himself! His mouth moved as if chewing, and now and then a tear trembled on a lash of his eye. It squeaked and spurted blood on the back of the old servant's hand. Bence toasted his master with the red wine, first pouring a swig and wetting his whistle. As he handed the flask to the young man with his right, he wiped off his mouth on the front of his shirt.

The wine fired the old man's spirit. How his heart expanded! How his tongue loosened! Stop, I ask you, stop this painful talk. In the past, whilst shelling corn by the fireplace, I would gladly listen until judgment day. How often you retold the stories of my father's knightly deeds, how many an evening until midnight. And then how long it was before I would fall asleep!

I could not even close my eyes until dawn. Another pen is writing. My fortune has turned for the worse. I have become a murderer, become a fugitive. Ah, who knows when I will clear my name again. But I believe God will not forsake an orphan, he the provident father. My own blood may cleanse me of the crime my dear brother writ on my brow. Nor was I born a hired hand, sickleman, or hauler of hay for anyone's son. Now I only wait for twilight to come, the light to leave the fields; then I will put the land for a wallet on my back, and not even the wind will bring you a report of me.

Andre SanThomas

Bence grew sad at these words, sorry his young master planned to hide. He kept silent a long while, and then he burst into tears, making crosses with his finger- nails on his boots. Then whatever happened will be forgotten, and you shall be the little king in all the province. Would you really abandon us, good servants all, who loved you like our own child? In seven markets of the land you won't find the likes of them. In the mill, who will lift the sacks in pairs? Who will wear a millstone on his arm for the miller boys to wonder at? Do not go, dear boy, do not go away and leave all Nagyfalu in misery.

Ah, don't desert the ancient Toldi house, do not push your dear mother into her grave. But as Bence brought up his mother at the end, it was like rolling a stone on his heart. For long he did not reply, he only stared into the murmuring reeds, and he stared and stared until at last a large, warm tear sat on the lash of his eye. And as though he were wiping the sweat from his face, he brushed the unbidden guest with his palm. The tear slid slowly down his little finger to the ground, as he turned to Bence with these words - "Tell my mother, good Bence, her son's star is now eclipsed.

She will not hear of him for long, his name they will bury as though he were dead. But he will not be dead, only like someone deep in hiding who is risen after certain time and people hear of his marvellous works. She will hear of me still, and when she does even babes will be stunned. My mother's soul will leap, but she must not let her heart burst for joy.

Then the faithful servant put the empty flask into the pouch. He carefully wiped the shining knife and folded up the canvas napkin.

Inside The Realm of Janos TV Series Fantasy (A Short-Story)

He threw the pouch over his shoulder, said goodby and started on his way. He wanted to leave, he wanted to stop. He often looked back and was swallowed at last among the trackless reeds. The sun sank beyond the marshy reeds and left a large red cloak on the sky. But the night took strength, soon pulled it in, and wrapped the sky and earth in a cloth of black. And it studded the sky with coffin nails, a billion shining stars. At last, it rounded up the lovely moon and placed it at the head like a silver wreath. But tugged as though by a thong, he could not tear free from the thought of his mother.

Again he looked back, and again. But why, with not a creature there to see? Still he looked, and after a little while turned homeward to take his last farewell. As he was returning, wending his way, the bottom of the bog sank at a certain place and he stumbled in a wolves' lair where two whelps started whining like little devils.

Too bad he did so, it was only to his harm. The reeds at his back suddenly rustle; the mother wolf leaps with a terrible howl, and the two wrestle. She rears up again and again on her hind feet and claws at Toldi's face - a clapper of teeth in a palate of blood, a gleam in the moonlight like sparks.

But Toldi handles himself smartly and deals blow after blow with his fists. Blood gushes, from her mouth and nose, the large glazed eyes are terribly swollen. Her tongue bulges out, bloodied with her snapping teeth. The foul saliva froths like a mad dog's, never has one seen a madder beast.

Toldi, at last, begins to tire of it. He does not spare his legs and sends her flying with a long kick like a bull whirling horns. The beast arches over the bog. Hagging reeds and dropping with a thud, she groans. But look, as though the devil burrowed into her, she rolls over and jumps to her feet.

She yowls in sore rage and attacks again with her razor teeth. And this might go, but here's the rest of it. The mate comes howling and attacking from behind. You can't handle this! With a thousand lives, you would still be killed. When things go bad, he's got the grit. He'll make it, don't worry. They won't eat him up. As she clawed and mauled him, he grabbed her throat with his two hands.

Her claws gave, and the strength faded from the ham of her knee. Her eyes popped, full of bloody tears. Her green tongue hung out like a long colter. Her life did not escape, it was penned inside - and her maw was fixed in a wide open gape. Toldi grabbed her up, swung, and struck the male as he leaped. He regained his feet in a rage.

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Toldi knocked him down again, and he snapped at his mate from where he lay. After this narrow call, Toldi rested a while on a clump. The whelps were dead, trampled beneath his feet. Their mother and her mate lay farther away. The round moon shone on them brightly and looked coldly down into the bog with its face distended like a golden skillet.

His thoughts were on another wolf, an ill-natured brother who wanted to devour him. Why be his hangman and not his brother? Why sharpen his fangs for his own good brother? The beast of the field protects his lair, attacks only when provoked. Or if his hunger drives him to kill, once appeased he harms no one.

Though he devastates the herds, his own kind he spares. But his own brother, his own brother, who can say why he wants to kill? Can he quench his thirst only with blood or by driving his good brother from their property? What if the bloodthirsty brother got his comeuppance like the wolves? Or is the breath of life more fixed in man? Hold on, Toldi, hold on, your intent is on murder. Do not fling a bloody prey to your revenge. Know the blood of a murdered brother clamors up to the heaven of heavens for vengeance. Know if you were to slay your brother, it would be your own eternal life you destroyed.

God is in heaven and sees the truth. Leave him the work of justice. Now as if with a sudden thought, he rose and strode to the beasts. He flung them over his shoulders and started on a dangerous journey into the night. Furiously he plunged through the wilderness of reeds and tunnelled a winding track as he went. The two wolves dangled at his heels, he never glanced back all the way to his mother's house. He threw, on arriving, his wolves on the wet grass.

He tiptoes, as if stealing, to the outward door of his mother's room. He listens quietly but hears only the ticking of a worm in the lintel. He is poised to knock, but catches himself - undaring he hesitates, hand on latch. Why in the world so afraid? He would take dragons on any other time. But now he is worried a rustle may startle his mother. If he scares her, she might fear open the door or window; she may scream, and they would have no chance to talk together. He lifts the wolves to his shoulder and walks around to the other side. Every living being, inside and out, was at rest, the dogs too asleep in the shed.

And beneath the eaves, the sleeping guards are stretched in rows. The whole world is asleep. Laying the wolves on the doorsill, he gathers up the lances leaning against the wall and pins the guards on the ground to hold them fastened when they awake.

He enters the room. One squeeze of the hand, and though he had a hundred souls, he would fall silent and snore no more. Only that I came this will let you know. With that he took the two wolves in his arms and laid them by the old bedstead, saying - Hushaby, hushaby, lullaby, your brother is sleeping close by. And he himself entered the adjoining room where his mother sat in her mourning gown. She had laid her hands on the table and lowered her head. Sleep lurked there in vain, for it could not break through her sorrow.

At last it enticed her with a trick, borrowing the guise of an ague. It squirmed down the nape of her neck, ran down to her heels and up again. It made her stiff, it made her reel. This is what it took to put her asleep. Even so, it lasted only a bit, as a quiet knock aroused her from sleep. I bring no harm on the house.

I walk at night like a ghost, but they would kill me, you know, if I came by day. At these words, the widow no longer feared, and she embraced him closely. I never thought I would, I despaired, almost died. But my God, don't let me speak so loudly - your brother's next door. There too she would clasp him, her heart uneasy, lips locked in a long mute kiss. But he was terribly aroused, too, and could speak only after a good long while.

He tried to compose himself, but what was the use! It seemed someone were piercing his nostrils with a pin, or grating horseradish - this is how it wrung his nose. He wept on the face of his beloved parent, and like two brooks plunging from the mountains together, their tears commingled. He composed himself, and straightening up he mastered somehow his lamentable mood.

And he spoke to his mother these words - "Leave kissing me now. Every hour is measured as though by contract. I come to bid you now farewell. I fear that in the end I might be a killer I'll not even say it. But this much I'll say, do not worry, lay your fears aside. I do not leave you to stay forever. The creator, I believe, will spare me till I return.

I have heard of my father's brave deeds. Should I alone be a disgrace to my line? I shall go up to Buda as a champion warrior. There I will show something to the king, something that cannot shame my brother, only split his spleen with envy. Why weep for one who hasn't died when the departed themselves do not remain dead?

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With this he knew he did something amiss. The dogs were enraged at what else but the wolves in the yard. Soon the servants will wake, and he made the rest of it short - "I have no more time. May God bless you. May God bless you in this world, and bless you in the next, I desire it from my heart. Who or whom, she only knew in her thoughts. She knew who searches every heart would know every one of her desires. And when the child separated from her breast! The tongue of man cannot describe her anguish.

Her soul, it was not ungrappled but ripped out at the house. The dogs, meanwhile, whined and howled, and with an ugly barking came to the door. The guards struggled to their feet somehow. No one else could! After him, the devil take it! Like a nest of angered hornets, this is how to picture the house. They ran against one another on the big verandah, they dashed here and there on horseback and foot.

Where are they fleeing? Left and right they rush like mad. Does the widow hear the clamor of the chase, the blast of horns, the yelling, the yelping? She hears a shout - head him off! No, she does not know at all. When there is no one in the whole world to befriend you, do not lose heart for the Lord will appear at your side. See how he stood by Toldi as he shrouded the moon in a heavy cloud and there was such darkness nothing was visible. He had his scattered dogs recalled with a blast of the horn, and all his men gathered behind.

Wet to the marrow, they straggled home at last when it was almost morning. When dawn lifted the fog, he found himself on a bleak desert. Who was his companion on this desolate puszta? Three times it passed. He hastened, hastened onward though weary. But not really his mother, only her living image. Her bitter weeping would melt stones.

He was moved to compassion, and approaching he asked for whom and why she wept. And the widow for indeed she was replied, bitterly weeping -. Today I buried my two sons, who were killed on the Danube island by a foreign warrior. May God never save him from the fires of Hell. She knelt on the black mound moaning over the two crosses. This went on a long time. At last they did, or so it seemed as she sobbed less strongly, moaning only a bit.

Tales of the Crown 17 Nov A Realm of Janos Novel 27 Apr A Realm of Janos Novel 15 Mar A Realm of Janos Novel 1 Jan Driven 31 Dec Provide feedback about this page. Unlimited One-Day Delivery and more. There's a problem loading this menu at the moment. In , the English printer Wynkyn de Worde published a long metrical romance called ' Capystranus' , a graphic account of the defeat of the Turks. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For his younger brother, see John Hunyadi, Ban of Severin. History of Transylvania, Volume I: From the Beginnings to Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times.

Exhibitions Commemorating Matthias's Accession to the Throne". Society of the Hungarian Quarterly. Hungary in American History Textbooks". Retrieved 26 May A History of Hungary in Biographical Sketches page: In the war, Janos Hunyadi — , subsequently a Hungarian national hero, emerged to lead Hungary's political life. History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, Volume 1. Hunyadi had suddenly risen as the great Hungarian national hero as a result of his victories over the Turks in The encyclopedia of military history from B.

One of the most powerful personalities in Hungarian history, Hunyadi established a national unity and order which transcended privileges and special interests and succeeded in raising Hungary to the status of a great power. The making of the Romanian national unitary state.

Books by Andre SanThomas (Author of Ielle)

Transylvania in the history of Romania: Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores aliquot insignes. The Catholic University of America press. Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time. Bain, Robert Nisbet In Sugar, Peter F. A History of Hungary. History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness.

A History of Romania. The Center for Romanian Studies. The Will to Survive: Munro; Chadwick, Nora K. The Growth of Literature, Volume 2. Matthias Corvinus in Hungarian. The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, — Honour, Castle and County: The Late Medieval Balkans: The University of Michigan Press. Theme and Image in Middle English Romance.

A Concise History of Hungary. The History of Transylvania, Vol.

Ethnographica et folkloristica Carpathica. The Balkans since with a new Introduction by Traian Stoianovich. Hungary in Greatness and Decline:

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