"Saint Helena!" they cried; "Saint Helena, the angel of the Red Tower!"
"Aye," said Dessauer, in tones like thunder, "hear their voices! There are a thousand witnesses in this house untortured, unsuborned. I tell you, the guilt of innocent blood will lie on you, great Duke—on you counsellors of evil things, if you condemn this maid. Your throne, Duke Otho, shall totter and fall, and your life's sun shall set in a sea of blood!"
He sat down calm and fearless as the Duke raged to Michael Texel, as I think, desiring that the fearless pleader could be seized on the instant, and punished for his insolence. But as the folk shouted in the hall, and the thunder of cheering came in through the open windows from the great concourse without, Michael Texel calmed his master, urging upon him that the temper of the people was for the present too dangerous. And also, doubtless, that they could easily compass their ends by other means.
I saw Texel despatch a messenger to the lictors who stood on either side of Helene. The body-guard of the Duke stood closer about her as the Duke Otho himself stood up to read the sentence.
I saw that the form of it had been written out upon a paper. Doubtless, therefore, all had been prearranged, so that neither evidence nor eloquence could possibly have had any effect upon it.
"We, the Court of the Wolfmark, find the prisoner, Helene, called Gottfried, guilty of witchcraft, and especially of compassing and causing the death of our predecessor, the most noble Duke Casimir, and we do hereby adjudge that, on the morning of Sunday presently following, Helene Gottfried shall be executed upon the common scaffold by the axe of the executioner. Of our clemency is this sentence delivered, instead of the torture and the burning alive at the stake which it was within our power to command. This is done in consideration of the youth of the criminal, and as the first exercise of our ducal prerogative of high mercy."
With an angry roar the people closed in.
"Take her!" they cried; "rescue her out of their hands!"
And there was a fierce rush, in which the outer barriers were snapped like straw. But the lictors had pulled down the trap-door on the instant, and the people surged fiercely over the spot where a moment before Helene had stood. Before them were the levelled pikes and burning matches of the Duke's guard.
"Have at them!" was still the cry. "Kill the wolves! Tear them to pieces!"