Steve growled out an oath. 'Who are these people,' he said savagely, 'that they should say my lady nay? When the Countess stoops to ask a life--Himmel!--is she not to have it?'
'Not here,' I said, shaking my head.
'And why not?'
'Because we are not at Heritzburg now,' I answered sadly.
'But--are we nobody here?' he growled in a rage. 'Are we going to sit still and let them kill my lady's own cousin?'
I shrugged my shoulders. 'We have done all we can,' I said.
'But there is some one can say nay to these curs!' he cried. And he spat contemptuously into the street. He had a countryman's scorn of townsfolk. 'Why don't we take the law into our own hands, Master Martin?'
'It is likely,' I said. 'One against ten thousand! And for the matter of that, if the people are angry, it is not without cause. Did you see the man under the archway?'
Steve nodded. 'Dead,' he muttered.
'Starved,' I said. 'He was a cripple. First the cripples. Then the sound men. Life is cheap here.'