“Sure, it’s no witchcraft if Swedes and Turks smell different from Christians!” spoke up an old woman who stood near them.
“You’re drivelling, Mette Mustard,” interrupted the dyer. “Don’t you know that Swedes are Christian folks?”
“Call ’em Christian, if you like, Gert Dyer, but Finns and heathens and troll-men have never been Christians by my prayer-book, and it’s true as gold what happened in the time of King Christian, God rest his soul! when the Swedes were in Jutland. There was a whole regiment of ’em marching one night at new moon, and at the stroke o’ midnight they ran one from the other and howled like a pack of werewolves or some such devilry, and they scoured like mad round in the woods and fens and brought ill luck to men and beasts.”
“But they go to church on Sunday and have both pastor and clerk just like us.”
“Ay, let a fool believe that! They go to church, the filthy gang, like the witches fly to vespers, when the Devil has St. John’s mass on Hekkenfell. No, they’re bewitched, an’ nothing bites on ’em, be it powder or bullets. Half of ’em can cast the evil eye, too, else why d’ye think the smallpox is always so bad wherever those hell-hounds’ve set their cursed feet? Answer me that, Gert Dyer, answer me that, if ye can.”
The dyer was just about to reply, when Erik Lauritzen, who for some time had been looking about uneasily, spoke to him: “Hush, hush, Gert Pyper! Who’s the man talking like a sermon yonder with the people standing thick around him?”
They hurried to join the crowd, while Gert Dyer explained that it must be a certain Jesper Kiim, who had preached in the Church of the Holy Ghost, but whose doctrine, so Gert had been told by learned men, was hardly pure enough to promise much for his eternal welfare or clerical preferment.
The speaker was a small man of about thirty with something of the mastiff about him. He had long, smooth black hair, a thick little nose on a broad face, lively brown eyes, and red lips. He was standing on a doorstep, gesticulating forcefully and speaking with quick energy though in a somewhat thick and lisping voice.
“The twenty-sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew,” he said, “from the fifty-first to the fifty-fourth verse, reads as follows: ‘And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?’
“Ay, my beloved friends, thus it must be. The poor walls and feeble garrison of this city are at this moment encompassed by a strong host of armed warriors, and their king and commander has ordered them, by fire and sword, by attack and siege, to subdue this city and make us all his servants.