“Think you I am a child to fear the taste of steel? I say to you again,” and Jerome’s voice was almost proud, “I could teach even to demons like yourselves rare niceties in the arts of death and torture,--the hell-deeds of the Turks, of the Sicilians--”
“Silence,” raged Ulrich; “here, set him upon the battlement. Now, my Lord Graf, hearken, as the hermit Jerome declares to you that we have not your daughter.”
But Jerome only lifted his fettered hands, and called a terrible curse down on the Baron and his men.
“Smite! Smite and spare not! For the Lord has delivered these foes of His servants unto you. Root out His enemies. Let theirs be the fate of Dathan and Abiram, of Jezebel and Judas. Trust not their oaths, noble Graf, when they say they know nothing of your child. God knoweth the truth, but by their lies they would seek to deceive even Him and His Holy One!”
Thus cried Ulrich, but even Michael would not raise his sword.
“At least, let us not murder this saint _now_!” he resisted, and Ulrich blessed the darkness for hiding his own blenching skin.
They haled Jerome back to his dungeon, and again through the dark came a summons. “Hear then, men of the Wartburg. All, who by dawn shall come out to me, shall have their lives, saving always Ulrich of Eisenach, and Michael the Breaker, whose heads are forfeit to the Kaiser, and that unfrocked priest Clement, who is reserved for the merciful and paternal chastening of the most holy Inquisitor at Mainz.”
But here Priest Clement began to groan terribly, fearing the rack and faggots even more than the subsequent strappadoes by Satan.
“And you, Hans Broadfoot, and you, Joachim the Smith, except you surrender yourselves ere midnight, your brothers, whom I hold prisoners, have their feet wedged into split logs, and those logs most duly enkindled. Therefore, learn wisdom swiftly.”
Whereupon two men-at-arms, who had been loudest and bravest for a fierce defence, became of a sudden thoughtful.
“And finally,” wound up the Graf, “I do counsel that you kindle no torch nor fire upon the battlement; for I have placed Jack, Hodge, and Giles with twelve more picked English bowmen under your walls. Their eyes are like cats’, and their cloth-yard shafts are the swiftest messengers to the Devil.”