"You had been gagged and bound at the instigation of the princess."
"True. It is also true that but for the intervention of the same princess we should have been torn to pieces on the spot; and, incidentally, I may mention that that would have resulted in the absolute extinction of the house of Ravenspur. The men who a moment before had been grave, reserved priests were transformed instantly into raging fiends.
"Had they been possessed by devils they could not have flamed out more suddenly. They were mad to know that the secrets of all ages had passed into the hands of Christian dogs—dogs who had defiled their altars. And yet much the same kind of barbarous fanaticism has been displayed in civilized dominions. They were not any worse than the bigots who burned your English martyrs.
"We should have been torn to pieces on the spot, as I told you, but for the authority of the princess. So commonplace a death did not suit her ideas of the eternal fitness of things. Many and many a time afterwards, when racked by agony, I deeply deplored that supposed act of clemency. It would have been a far more merciful death.
"Well, we were spared for the moment and cast into a loathsome dungeon, where we were overrun with vermin, great rats which we had constantly to drive off, and spiders whose bite was very painful.
"How long we lay without food I don't know; anyway, it seemed days. Perhaps it was only so many hours. Try lying in the pitch dark fighting with nameless unseen terrors and see how many bitter years can be crammed into a minute. And yet we knew there was far worse to come. But for the fact that we were together and could cheer the black hours with the sound of each other's voices we should have gone mad. One moment we were cast down in the depths of gloom, the next we prayed for death; anon we laughed and sang sketches of gay songs. We were not insane, but were treading perilously near to the borderland.
"Then, after many years—or so it seemed to us—they fetched us again. We were not led into the banqueting hall, but to a long, low vault-like place on the floor of which were two shallow tanks or baths covered over with a frame of iron, and from the frame of iron ran long sliding rods for all the world like a bird cage, only the sliding wires of the cage ran far into the room.
"Around these cages were glowing charcoal fires, the greater part of the sliding bars or wires growing red and crocus blue from the heat. What did it mean?
"I wondered. Ah! I was very soon to know."
Tchigorsky drew a deep breath and a shudder passed over his powerful frame. The moisture on his forehead was not due to the heat alone.