WITCH MARTHA
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!”
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!”
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 their sinful 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 Eisenach lad 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 Clement cried 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 a _ritter_
with twelve-score _lanzknechts_ it 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 seven _ritters_, 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 a _markgraf_?”
“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 if you 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 things _are_! 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!”
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 a whisper, 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. The
_lanzknecht_ scarce 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 recoiled toward 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]