I saw a look of satisfied vindictiveness pass over the brutal features of
Duke Otho. He changed his position and whispered to his colleagues.
It was Master Gerard von Sturm who rose to put the questions to the witness. And as he did so, I heard the steady sough of talk among the people rise mutteringly in a low growl of anger and contempt. The Duke's lictors struck right and left among the crowd, as men bent forward with fierce hate in their voices, lowing like oxen, as if to clear their lungs of a weight of contempt.
It was not thus in the old days, when there was no people's arbiter in all the Wolfmark so famous or so popular as Master Gerard of the Weiss Thor.
"What is the reason of that turmoil?" said I to my neighbor.
"This is the man who was her first accuser. Why, he dares not go outside his house without a guard of the Duke's riders," said the man, picking at his finger-nail with his teeth, as if it were a bone and he did not think much of its savoriness.
"You have already confessed," said the advocate to old Hanne, when they had propped up the poor wreck of skin and bone, "and you do now confess that this maid and yourself have ofttimes had converse with the Enemy of Souls?"
A spasm passed across the face of the witness, and a low sound proceeded from her mouth, which might have been an affirmative answer, but which sounded to me much more like a moan of pain.
"And you confess that she consulted you concerning the best means of killing the Duke Casimir—by means of a draught to be administered to him when he should, as was his custom, visit his Hereditary Justicer?"
"There was indeed a draught spoken of between us, noble sir," stammered the old woman, "but it was not for the Duke Casimir, nor yet for—for any evil purpose."
I saw the Friar Laurence incline his head a little forward and whisper in
Hanne's ear from his place behind her.