Red Axe, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [top novels TXT] 📗

the fear of torture, from the palsied and reluctant lips of a frantic hag."
"Hear him! Great is the Stranger!" cried the folk in the hall. And the shouting of the guards commanding silence could scarce be heard for the roar of the populace. It was some time before the speech of Dessauer was again audible.
Ho was beginning to speak again, but Duke Otho, without rising, called out rudely and angrily:
"Speak to the reason of the judges and not to the passions of the mob!"
"I do indeed speak from the reason to the reason," said Dessauer, calmly; "for in this matter there is no true averment, even of witchcraft, but only of the administration of poison--which ought to be proven by the ordinary means of producing some portion of the drug, both in the possession of the criminal and from the body of the murdered man. This has not been done. There has been no evidence, save, as I have shown, such as may be easily compelled or suborned. If this maid be condemned, there is no one of you with a wife, a daughter, a sweetheart, who may not have her burned or beheaded on just as little evidence--if she have a single enemy in all the city seeking for the sake of malice or thwarted lust to compass her destruction.
"Moreover, it indeed matters little for the argument that this damsel is fair to the eye. Save in so far as she is more the object of desire, and that when the greed of the lustful eye is balked" (here he paused and looked fixedly between his knees), "disappointment oft in such a heart turns to deadly poison. And so that which was desired is the more bitterly hated, and revenge awakes to destroy.
"But if beauty matters little, character matters greatly. And what, by common consent, has been known in the city concerning this maid?
"I ask not you, Duke Otho, who have lived apart in your castle or in far lands, a stranger to the city like myself. But I ask the people among whom, during all these; past months of the plague, she has dwelt. Is she not known among them as Saint Helena?"
"Aye," cried the people, "Saint Helena, indeed--our savior when there was none to help! God save Saint Helena!"
Dessauer waved his hand for silence.
"Did she not go among you from house to house, carrying, not the poison-cup, but the healing draught? Was not her hand soft on the brow of the dying, comfortable about the neck of the bereaved? Day and night, whose fingers reverently wrapped up the poor dead bodies of your beloved? Who quieted your babes in her arms, fed thorn, nursed them, healed them, buried them--wore herself to a shadow for your sakes ?"
"Saint Helena!" they cried; "Saint Helena, the angel of the Red Tower!"
"Aye," said Dessauer, in tones like thunder, "hear their voices! There are a thousand witnesses in this house untortured, unsuborned. I tell you, the guilt of innocent blood will lie on you, great Duke--on you counsellors of evil things, if you condemn this maid. Your throne, Duke Otho, shall totter and fall, and your life's sun shall set in a sea of blood!"
He sat down calm and fearless as the Duke raged to Michael Texel, as I think, desiring that the fearless pleader could be seized on the instant, and punished for his insolence. But as the folk shouted in the hall, and the thunder of cheering came in through the open windows from the great concourse without, Michael Texel calmed his master, urging upon him that the temper of the people was for the present too dangerous. And also, doubtless, that they could easily compass their ends by other means.
I saw Texel despatch a messenger to the lictors who stood on either side of Helene. The body-guard of the Duke stood closer about her as the Duke Otho himself stood up to read the sentence.
I saw that the form of it had been written out upon a paper. Doubtless, therefore, all had been prearranged, so that neither evidence nor eloquence could possibly have had any effect upon it.
"We, the Court of the Wolfmark, find the prisoner, Helene, called Gottfried, guilty of witchcraft, and especially of compassing and causing the death of our predecessor, the most noble Duke Casimir, and we do hereby adjudge that, on the morning of Sunday presently following, Helene Gottfried shall be executed upon the common scaffold by the axe of the executioner. Of our clemency is this sentence delivered, instead of the torture and the burning alive at the stake which it was within our power to command. This is done in consideration of the youth of the criminal, and as the first exercise of our ducal prerogative of high mercy."
With an angry roar the people closed in.
"Take her!" they cried; "rescue her out of their hands!"
And there was a fierce rush, in which the outer barriers were snapped like straw. But the lictors had pulled down the trap-door on the instant, and the people surged fiercely over the spot where a moment before Helene had stood. Before them were the levelled pikes and burning matches of the Duke's guard.
"Have at them!" was still the cry. "Kill the wolves! Tear them to pieces!"
But the mob was undisciplined, and the steady advance of the soldiers soon cleared the hall. Nevertheless the streets without continued angry and throbbing with incipient rebellion. Duke Otho could scarce win scathless across the court-yard to his own apartments. Tiles from the nearest roofs were cast upon the heads of his escort. The streets were impassable with angry men shaking their fists at every courier and soldier of the Duke. Women hung sobbing out of the windows, and all the city of Thorn lamented with uncomforted tears because of the cruel condemnation of their Saint of the plague, Helena, the maiden of the Red Tower.


CHAPTER XLV
THE MESSAGE FROM THE WHITE GATE
I rushed out into the street, distract and insensate with grief and madness. I found the city seething with sullen unrest--not yet openly hostile to the powers that abode in the Castle of the Wolfsberg--too long cowed and down-trodden for that, but angry with the anger which one day would of a certainty break out and be pitiless.
The Black Horsemen of the Duke pricked a way with their lances here and there through the people, driving them into the narrow lanes, in jets and spurts of fleeing humanity, only once more to reunite as soon as the Hussars of Death had passed. Pikemen cried "Make way!" and the regular guard of the city paraded in strong companies.
A soldier wantonly thrust me in the back with his spear, and I sprang towards him fiercely, glad to strike home at something. But as quickly a man of the crowd pulled me back.
"Be wise!" he said; "not for your own sake alone, but for the sake of all these women and children. The Black Riders seek only an excuse to sweep the city from end to end with the besom of fire and blood."
Then came my master out of the Hall of Judgment, his head hanging dejectedly down. As soon as he was observed the people crowded about, shaking him by the hand, thanking him for that which he had done for their maid, their holy Saint Helena of the plague.
"We will not suffer her to be put to death, not even if they of the Wolfsberg raze our city to the ground!"
"Make way there!" cried the Black Horsemen--"way, in the name of Duke Otho!"
"Who is Duke Otho?" cried a voice. "We do not know Duke Otho."
"He is not crowned yet! Why should he take so much upon him?" shouted another.
"We are free burgesses of Thorn, and no man's bond-slaves!" said a third. Such were the shouts that hurtled through the streets and were bandied fiercely from man to man, betraying in tone more than in word the intensity of the hatred which existed between the ducal towers of the Wolfsberg and the city which lay beneath them.
In my boyish days I had laughed at the assemblies of the Swan--the White Wolves and Free Companies. But, perhaps, those who had thus played at revolt were wiser than I. For of a surety these associations were yielding their fruits now in a harvest of hate against the gloomy pile that had so long dominated the town, choked its liberties, and shut it off from the new, free, thriving world of the northern seaboard commonwealths to which of right it belonged.
So soon as Dessauer and I were alone in my master's room at Bishop Peter's I tried to stammer some sort of thanks, but I could do no more than hold out a hand to him. The old man clasped it.
"It was wholly useless from the first," he said; "they had their purpose fixed and their course laid out, so that there was no turning of them. All was a mockery, so clear that even the ignorant men of the streets were not deceived. Accusation, evidence, pleadings, condemnation, sentence--all were ready before the maid was taken; aye, and, I think, before Duke Casimir was dead.
"Also there is no court in the Wolfmark higher than the mockery we have seen to-day. The arms of the soldiers of Plassenburg are our only court of appeal."
"It is two days before they can come," I answered. "I fear me all will be over before then."
"Be not so sure," said Dessauer. "There is at present no Justicer in the Mark capable of carrying out the sentence, so long as your father lies on his bed of mortal weakness."
"Duke Otho will not let that stand in his way--or I am the more deceived," said I, with a heavy heart.
At this moment there came an interruption. I heard a loud argument outside in the court-yard.
"Tell me what you want with the servant of the most learned Doctor!" cried a voice.
"That is his business, and mine--not yours, rusty son of a stable-sweeper!" was the answer.
I went out immediately, and there, facing each other in a position of mutual defiance, I saw Peter of the Pigs and the decent legal domestic of Master Gerard von Sturm.
"Get out of my wind, old Muck-to-the-Eyes!" said the servitor, offensively; "you poison the good, wholesome air that is needed for men's breath."
"Go back to your murderer of the saints," responded Peter of the Pigs, valiantly. "Your master and you will swing in effigy to-night in every street in Thorn. Some day before long you will both swing in the body--if a hair of this angel's head be harmed."
"I must see this learned Doctor's servant!" persisted the man of law, avoiding the personal question.
"Here he is," said I; "and now what would you with him?"
"I am sent to invite you to come to the Weiss Thor immediately, on business which deeply concerns you."
"That is not enough for me," said I. "Who sends for me?"
"Let me come in out of the hearing of this moon-faced idiot," said he, pointing contumeliously to Peter of the Pigs, "and I will tell you. I am not bidden to proclaim my business in the market sties and city cattlepens!"
"You do well, Parchment Knave," cried Peter; "for it is such black business that if you proclaimed a syllable of it there you would be torn to pieces of honest folk. Thank God there are still some such in the world!"
"Aye, many," quoth the servitor, "and we all know they are to be found in the dwellings of priestlings!"
I walked with the man to the gate, for I did not care to take him to where Dessauer was sitting. I feared that