CHAPTER IIWITCH MARTHA
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NOW as Jerome quitted the hut, he saw neither man nor maid, but only two huge, black ravens, which flew to his shoulders, as to a familiar perch; whereat the one on the right, cocking his glossy wicked head, croaked out a doggerel couplet:—
“Good Christian, look out!The Devil’s about!”
“Good Christian, look out!The Devil’s about!”
“Good Christian, look out!
The Devil’s about!”
To which his mate made instant answer with still saucier quirk of head and bill:—
“Ho, he! Never fear!I’m Satan! I’m here!”
“Ho, he! Never fear!I’m Satan! I’m here!”
“Ho, he! Never fear!
I’m Satan! I’m here!”
Jerome crossed his breast, but he did not thrust these blasphemers off. Nevertheless a shrill voice from behind a great black fir commanded sharply:—
“Zodok, Zebek,—sons of Beherit and grandsons of Lucifer,—back, both of you, and fear the sign of the cross.”
Whereupon with a whir, sudden as that which had brought them, the inky pair were gone toward the summons. Jerome had fixed his beetling eyebrows upon the black fir tree.
“Martha, you child of Perdition.”
“Here, and very much at your service,Sanctissime,” came back the feminine voice, half mocking, half respectful.
“Saint me no saints, or if my curse avails with God or angel, you receive it. What brings you again, witch and necromancer, abhorred by all save the Father Devil?”
“Benedicte, thanks to you for such sweetness. Well, I have a work for you more pleasing to God than scourges and fasting.”
“Work from you? Can any good thing come out of you, O spawn of Beelzebub?”
“‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ ay, so the Jews said, and mayhap quite rightly.” Here all the glade reëchoed with a long shrieking laugh, whilst Zodok and Zebek croaked gleefully.
But Jerome’s great head had sunk upon his breast.
“Mea culpa, mea culpa; who am I to cast the first stone against this woman?”
“Well,” demanded the shrill voice, “may I come forth?”
“Come forth.”
And with a rustle there came from her shelter a woman—but what a woman! For her head would have risen only to Jerome’s breast, but her girth nigh equalled her height, or surpassed it. She had a weazened pock-marked little face, a very small mouth, still smaller black eyes, an exceedingly shrewd, upturned nose, and when she spoke her teeth shone white and sharp as Harun’s. Black was her kirtle, black the kerchief which trailed over grey locks and over shoulders, black her shoes when they peeped from under her dress, but Jerome (had the hermit an eye for such vanities) would have said that those feet were very small, and the hands small, too, and white,—hands which many a princely dame in Goslar or Hildesheim would have done well to envy. The ravens sat on either shoulder, winking theirsinful eyes and waiting new chance for croaking.
Jerome’s attitude was sufficiently unconciliatory. He made not the least sign of greeting her.
“Have I not bidden you to come no more?” was all that he demanded.
The small nose turned itself up in derision.
“You have.”
“And have I not eschewed all the world, abandoned myself these many years to solitude and austerities, such as my weak flesh can bear,” and the hermit sighed modestly, “and yet you approach to tempt me? A man would be sufficient emissary from Satan, and you—a woman—”
Again the greenwood rang with laughter.
“O Lord Jesus Christ! run, tell Thy Father He made a sad mistake, when He made us womankind. Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale is wiser! He knows we are only fiends let loose from hell.”
“Silence, sorceress! declare your errand, and briefly.”
The witch looked at him out of her little eyes with a sly quirk, very like that of Zebek.
“Ulrich of the Wartburg—” began she.
“A sinful man even amongst sinners,” assented the hermit.
“Has been on a raid.”
“He has done the like before; God assoil him—which I very much doubt.”
“And he has taken a prisoner.”
“Our Lady soften those beasts’ hearts that they demand a reasonable ransom. Ulrich commonly slaughters.”
Martha looked on the hermit more keenly than ever. “Hark you, Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale; the prisoner is no man to put to ransom, or to meet his doom with brave brow. Ulrich has taken a little maid.”
“Jesu!”—Jerome crossed himself.
“And she is nobly born,—a wisp of a girl, a lamb amongst worse than wolves.”
The hermit stared hard.
“How know you this? Ulrich has been a king of fiends, and all his men apt vassals for their master, yet he has always stopped short of whithering off women. He has sought purses, not prisoners of that kind.”
Witch Martha took a step nearer. “How do I know it? Well—to a sheep-eyed Eisenachlad I might say I bestrode my crook, and Zodok and Zebek grew forty fold larger, and flapped me up to the Wartburg on their backs. But since I speak to a saint, a man who has never known blood, nor sin, nor passion,”—Jerome winced at the irony but did not rebuke her,—“I will say this. First, I was in the thicket by the road below the Madelstein, and saw our noble baron riding home with his prey; second, because Anna a poor wench at the castle has just come to me for a philter to charm back a laggard lover. And so I got the whole story.”
“But the maid?”
“Is noble, I tell you, yet scarce a child of twelve. They slew all her company. For after Ulrich had bidden to ‘stand and unsack,’ he grew frightened, for he found he had stopped too great folk to let them go their ways, too great to put to ransom. So it was out swords, and trust that graves in the forest will tell no tales. Only the maid he spared.”
“For what end?” demanded the hermit.
“For what use are women put in such dens as the Wartburg? Perhaps Priest Clementcried out for her. But praised be St. Nicholas,—she is over young for him!”
“I must pray,” quoth Jerome very deliberately.
“While the angels weep, and God our Father wonders why he has spared you so long from burning.”
“Why that reproach from you, woman?”
“He! ho! Our Saint has still his pride, because if you were aritterwith twelve-scorelanzknechtsit would be a crying sin to be so nigh the Wartburg, and never wing a shaft for rescue; while you, the Saint of the Dragon’s Dale, who have the power of sevenritters, mock God by saying, ‘I must pray,’ and leave Ulrich to work out his evil will.”
Jerome stared still harder.
“I am a man of peace and vowed to the works thereof.”
“And to Ulrich of the Wartburg is not the little finger of a saint thicker than the loins of amarkgraf?”
“Saint? Have I not commanded—?”
Witch Martha threw up her little hands, while her fat body swayed with laughter.
“Oh, think yourself Satan’s twin brother ifyou will! But you know all Thuringia calls you the ‘Saint of the Dragon’s Dale,’—and just because you will keep yourself aloof and see but three men in a twelvemonth your fame grows. Ay, this very night there will be five hundred souls from Gotha to Meiningen who will add, ‘Sancte Hieronyme Eisenachæ ora pro nobis’ after they have petitioned St. James and Our Lady.”
“These things must not be;” the hermit’s forehead was almost turning white.
“These thingsare! and Ulrich and all his crew, if they love saints little, fear them much. Therefore go to him boldly and demand from him the maid.”
“And if he refuse?” pressed Jerome.
“He will not refuse, yet if he slay you, are there no glories for the martyr?”
The hermit took a step toward her.
“I will go.”
That was all he said. As he approached she moved back noiselessly, as by some occult power; her round little body seemed to glide,—not walk. In an instant she vanished, with only Zebek’s hoarse call to die away in the depths of the forest.
“Ho, he! Never fear!I’m Satan! I’m here!”
“Ho, he! Never fear!I’m Satan! I’m here!”
“Ho, he! Never fear!
I’m Satan! I’m here!”
Jerome went into the hut, and drew from beneath the bed a long, heavy staff with a formidable brass head,—the wood exceedingly hard, and carved with quaint letterings of the East. Swung in trained hands such a weapon was no mean match for a halberd or broadsword; yet Jerome sighed as he lifted it.
“I go on a good work; nevertheless, it nigh seems looking back with the hand long set upon the plough; God pity me, yet—” here he swung the great staff about his head till he heard the air a-singing, and the sound seemed sweet as music; then he crossed himself, as extra talisman against such carnal joy, and went down into the Dragon’s Dale.
The evening had been settling fast. All the clouds above the western hills were painted rose and gold, the gold fading, the rose deepening. Above the eastern Drachenstein rode three pale stars—nigh blotted by a broad white moon. The wind had sunk to awhisper, to which the woods were answering. The stream purled slumbrously as Jerome emerged from the Dragon’s Dale; from the clearing he sent one glance westward and north to the Wartburg, where Ulrich’s blood-red banner still trailed to a redder sky, then with swift, strong strides he plunged into the heart of the forest. Blind was the path, and ever darkening; it wound over stock, stone, through glade and hollow. Now he heard the delicate hoofs of the red deer as they scampered in dread of some poacher; now the moonlight made a silver foot-cloth down broad avenues of cedars whereof the planter was God alone. Still the hermit bore on, fearless, tireless, no forest beast more certain of his way, until the blind path circled upward, the trees again were opening, and upon the sheer height against the gloaming reared the grim Wartburg, defiant, scarce approachable, but shooting from loophole and window red shafts of light, whilst on the soft night air drifted the scream of coarse song and coarser revel.
“I go to fiends, not men;” so spoke Jerome, and halted a moment to pray,then boldly moved forward. In an instant he entered the light of a camp-fire; a half-dozen low-browed men with steel caps and clattering halberds leaped from their dicing on the grass, barred his path with oaths, and demanded:—
“Your business?”
“And yours, friend? Who are you to ask?”
“To ask, quotha? Has not Ulrich set us here to watch the road, while the rest have wassail and women in the castle? Selfish swine! But now who are you?”
“A sinful man.”
“We’re all noble fat sinners here; but that’s no password.”
“I come on a holy errand.”
“Hoch! I’m just the scoundrel to halt an angel, or even to test the thickness of his head!”
Down crashed the halberd, but the staff flew up to meet it. Thelanzknechtscarce knew how, but his weapon twirled out of his hands and whisked over into a thicket. Miracle or magic,—this strange being’s power was dangerous. The six recoiledtoward the fire, then as the flame glittered across the hermit’s face with one accord that evil crew sank on knees,—cheeks white, teeth a-chattering.
“The Saint! The Saint of the Dragon’s Dale. Woe!Miserere!We are damned!”
But Jerome, without a word, went up the long way to the Wartburg.