"Hound of hell!" I screamed, tortured beyond endurance, and struggling at my bonds.
Ortez slapped me in the face with his gauntlet, then laying his hand upon my shoulder said with assumed gentleness:
"Calm yourself, my dear brother; think of your unbandaged wounds; they may bleed afresh."
Philip was conscious as the men bore him to the edge of the well, but powerless to resist four stout fellows who cast him headlong amongst the dead and dying to mingle his groans and blood with theirs. Oh, that God should permit to men such deeds, and grant that men should witness them! When the last body had been disposed of, Ortez led the way to the banquet hall, inviting all his rabble to join the feast. The banquet hall, used as it was to scenes of turbulence, never perhaps had looked upon such a throng as that. I occupied the head of my own table, strapped helpless in my seat. On either side were vacant chairs. Ortez sat at the foot. Between, the soldiery ranged themselves as they pleased. One of the troopers coming in late would have taken his place beside me, but his Captain stopped him:
"Not there, Gardier; we have other and fairer guests for whom those seats are kept."
Almost as he spoke the chairs on either side of me were slipped away, and after awhile as silently returned to their places.
Sacrament of passion! In one of them was bound the mutilated corpse of my queenly wife, her fingers hacked off and her ears torn out for the gems which had decked them. Upon my left sat little Celia. But for one lurid stripe of crimson across her girlish breast she might well have been asleep, so lightly death had touched her. Behind them I saw a tall, gaunt woman, wearing a man's helm and carrying a pike. She directed the men. This was a woman's hellish work.
Ortez rose with studied politeness:
"Your wife and child, d'Artin; our charming family reunion would be incomplete without them." And the woman laughed aloud.
My brain burned; something seemed to strain and give way. I lost all sense of pain, all capacity to suffer. How long this lasted I know not. When the revelry was at its height, when the wine had dulled every human instinct of these rough "Soldiers of the Church," Ortez raised his voice above the tumult; he knew his men were in the humor for a diversion he was about to propose.