The constable cleared his throat. He was a stolid, elderly man with many daughters and sons, and he opposed to the world a wooden, depthless face. “Probably you know,” he said, “what we’ve come for?”
“No,” said Joan: “what have you come for?”
The constable put out the staff that he carried and touched her on the shoulder. “In the King’s name! You’re to come with me for being a witch and working great harm to the King’s good subjects—for laming and casting spells—for worshipping Satan at his sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak—for plotting mischief with an infidel, blasphemer, and sorcerer—”
Joan stood motionless, her grey eyes clear, the blood not driven from her heart. She had seen the harm brewing, she had had her torture in watching the deep storm gather; now that it was rolling over her she grew suddenly steady. Though she knew it not she had always had strength and courage, but now she touched and drew from some great reservoir indeed. A wholesome anger helped her to it, an inner total rebellion and scorn, an amazed recognition of universal, incredible mistake and folly! Truly if men based life so crumblingly, on such a lie as this!... Sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak.... Plotting with— Something swept over her face, her frame seemed to grow taller in the flower-starred dusk by Heron’s cottage.
The tinker was next to the constable. Now he spoke with an elfish grin and his foot trampling down the cowslip by the door. “Mistress Young Witch never thought, did she, that when Tom Tinker came up behind her, standing before the prison yonder, he saw well enough that she was making witch signs to one within?—Now the witch to the warlock—lemans must lodge under the same roof!”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GAOL
Aderhold looked forth from a narrow grating, so high-placed that he must stand a-tiptoe like a child to see at all. Summer without,—summer, summer, and the winds of heaven! Within the gaol was summer close and stagnant. It was difficult for light and air to make their way into the space where he was kept. What could come came, but much was prevented by the walls and the intention with which they had been built. In that day, in a prison such as this, a noisy medley of people without freedom might be found in the dark and damp central passage and larger rooms or in the high-walled and dismal bit of court. All manner of crime and no-crime, soil, mistake, and innocence huddled there together, poisoning and being poisoned. Time and space received of their poison, carried it without these walls with at least as much ease as air and light came in, and distributed it with a blind face and an impartial hand.