Boryna sets fire to the hayrick

Maciej Boryna sets fire to the hayrick where Antek and Jagna are hiding, turning a secret meeting into a life-threatening confrontation. The scene moves from furtive footsteps and listening in the winter dark to a sudden blaze, a failed attempt to trap the pair, and an alarm that draws the village into the crisis. Fire makes Boryna’s private jealousy visible: what begins as an ambush becomes a danger to the people and buildings around it.

Causes and Setting

Antek and Jagna seek the hayrick because it is quieter there. They approach cautiously, keep glancing around, and pause to listen before slipping through an opening near the ground. Their secrecy gives the meeting its immediate tension: they are hidden together, but the darkness does not guarantee safety.

The surrounding night seems almost unnaturally still. Clouds have gathered into a dense cover, the pale light has faded, and the wind has disappeared. In the silence, even snow-laden trees trembling and water moving beneath the millwheels can be heard. The scene slows to register this quiet before danger appears; the crunch of snow and the stealthy approach of a shadow interrupt the stillness. The hayrick is not merely a hiding place now, but a narrow refuge whose opening can be discovered and blocked.

The Fire Is Set

The shadow circles the hayrick, approaches its opening, and listens for a long time. It then goes to the stile and disappears beneath the trees. The pause matters: the attacker does not strike immediately, but checks the place and withdraws before returning with an enormous sheaf of straw. The motion is quick, yet the watchfulness around it sustains the threat.

The returning figure uses the straw to stop the hayrick’s opening, then lights a match. Fire runs along the straw and spreads across one side of the rick in a blood-red sheet. The blaze sharply changes the scene’s terms: the opening that offered concealment becomes an obstruction, while smoke and flame press inward on the people inside. The fire is not an accidental outbreak. The sequence shows a deliberate effort to seal the way out and catch Antek and Jagna within the burning hay.

Maciej Boryna waits nearby, bent over and pale, holding a pitchfork. His position makes the fire only one part of the trap: he is prepared to confront whoever escapes it. The weapon turns the burning rick into the setting for a direct physical attack, and the waiting figure’s posture contrasts with the sudden, expansive movement of the flames.

Escape and Confrontation

Inside, Antek and Jagna understand at once what is happening. Crimson flames begin forcing their way in, acrid smoke fills the enclosed space, and they leap up shouting and strike at the walls without finding a way out. Their immediate problem is physical and urgent: they can scarcely breathe, and the exit has been stopped with straw.

Antek finds a corner of the rick’s covering and pulls at it with all his strength until it comes down. He tumbles out. Before he can get to his feet, Boryna charges with the pitchfork, trying to pin him down, but misses. Antek rises and strikes Boryna in the chest with his fists before fleeing. The attempt to turn the fire into a controlled ambush fails at the moment of contact: Boryna’s weapon does not stop Antek, and the son escapes the danger by force.

Boryna then rushes to the hayrick, but Jagna has already slipped away into the night. Neither person is caught. The difference in their escape is concrete: Antek breaks through the covering and meets Boryna face to face, while Jagna disappears without confronting him. Boryna’s intended capture yields instead a failed attack, the loss of both targets, and a burning rick.

From Private Ambush to Village Emergency

Beside himself with rage, Boryna cries out that there is a fire and runs around the hayrick with his pitchfork. Against the blood-red blaze, he appears fiendish; the fire has engulfed the whole rick and rises in a noisy pillar of flame and smoke. His cries bring the danger into public view even as his weapon recalls the private confrontation that preceded them.

People begin running toward the fire, and shouts spread through the village. Someone rings the alarm. Fear reaches every heart as the glow intensifies and sparks rain toward nearby buildings and across the village. The attempted entrapment therefore has consequences beyond the escape of Antek and Jagna: the fire threatens surrounding structures and pulls the community into an emergency.

The scene’s decisive reversal is from concealed desire to exposed violence. The lovers enter the hayrick seeking quiet; the fire makes their hiding place visible, nearly suffocates them, and drives them separately into the night. Boryna’s pitchfork and the blazing straw join domestic conflict to immediate physical peril, while the alarm and spreading sparks carry that conflict outward. What he means as a trap does not secure either person; it becomes a village-wide danger.