Martha looked on the hermit more keenly than ever. “Hark you, Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale; the prisoner is no man to put to ransom, or to meet his doom with brave brow. Ulrich has taken a little maid.”
“Jesu!”—Jerome crossed himself.
“And she is nobly born,—a wisp of a girl, a lamb amongst worse than wolves.”
The hermit stared hard.
“How know you this? Ulrich has been a king of fiends, and all his men apt vassals for their master, yet he has always stopped short of whithering off women. He has sought purses, not prisoners of that kind.”
Witch Martha took a step nearer. “How do I know it? Well—to a sheep-eyed Eisenach lad I might say I bestrode my crook, and Zodok and Zebek grew forty fold larger, and flapped me up to the Wartburg on their backs. But since I speak to a saint, a man who has never known blood, nor sin, nor passion,”—Jerome winced at the irony but did not rebuke her,—“I will say this. First, I was in the thicket by the road below the Madelstein, and saw our noble baron riding home with his prey; second, because Anna a poor wench at the castle has just come to me for a philter to charm back a laggard lover. And so I got the whole story.”
“But the maid?”
“Is noble, I tell you, yet scarce a child of twelve. They slew all her company. For after Ulrich had bidden to ‘stand and unsack,’ he grew frightened, for he found he had stopped too great folk to let them go their ways, too great to put to ransom. So it was out swords, and trust that graves in the forest will tell no tales. Only the maid he spared.”
“For what end?” demanded the hermit.
“For what use are women put in such dens as the Wartburg? Perhaps Priest Clement cried out for her. But praised be St. Nicholas,—she is over young for him!”