Another—Blue devil-fire sputtered on the crags and sulphur—
Another—Two men were struck by the hags.
Another— The wine, too, Father,
They've poured it all out on the mountain rocks.
Another—Old Hulga did it.
Several— And the dwarf.
The Crowd— The dwarf, too.
Oswald— (With a nod toward the church.)
One of the men who rode in town for help
Is with the clerk. (The Priest starts toward the church.)
Jardin—(Stepping forward.) Can Jardin say a word?
One night at Acre when the camps were sick,
And smells of corpses tainted every breath,
Jardin was pacing watch. Through the darkness,
Pierced by the burial torches of the Turks,
A smoke-thin shadow passed across the plain
Between the armies, blotting one by one
The drifting death-fires of old Saladin.
Nearer it came, and Jardin heard a moan,
And walking toward it found a Turkish lad
Half eaten by hunger, in a fever trance
Low-moaning piteously: "Dates, mother, dates."
Did Jardin say, Because the Turk's a boy
I'll spare him? Did Jardin give him dates? No.
He'd made a vow never to spare no foe
Of Mary's Son, so, like a starving hound,
This Christian blade, drinking his little blood,
Licked up the crumbs that Famine's jaws had left.
Did Jardin right?
Father Benedict—Our Paternoster says:
"Thy kingdom come." How could the kingdom come
If heathens were allowed to—
Jardin— If the young Turk,
Instead of wobbling in a fever trance
As weak as smoke a breath could blow away,
Jardin had found astride a Christian corpse
Holding his red dirk up against the moon
For Allah's eyes and laughing at the blood,
Had Jardin spared him then—?