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the others, and had appointed one girl, the granddaughter of two of the women, to collect food and to take it
to them. Some measure of peace had resulted from this arrangement.
Sir Lestko's story told what I have said above, and each of my workers confirmed it.
We met again after supper, and Sir Bodan and I made our closing statements. He said that the prisoners
were only doing their duty as they saw it, and they should be released with all their property returned.
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I think I showed that the women burned were innocent of any wrong doing, and that the girl's only faults
were obeying her lord and simple Christian charity.
I said that the accused had no proof that they were working at the behest of the church, and even if they did
once have such proof, they had no right to take any such action without the permission of the local
authorities. The Bishop of Wroclaw was never consulted, nor was Duke Henryk. Only Count Lambert had
the right of high justice here, and to kill, other than in self-defense, without his permission was murder.
I demanded that they all be hanged. I then suggested that the jury members discuss the matter among
themselves, and tell us their decision in the morning. Count Lambert, bored to tears, heartily agreed.
That evening, he said, "Damn but this goes slow! Did you have to bring forth every peasant to tell the story
that the one before him had told?"
"Yes, my lord, I did. What if one had said that all the others were liars? What if the truth was something
different from what we had been told? The lives of twenty-three men are at stake, as well as who knows
how many so-called 'witches,' if they are allowed to leave unmolested."
"It would have been simpler to kill them all out of hand."
"True, my lord. But would it have been more just?"
In the morning, Count Lambert's instructions to the jury were, "Are any of you fool enough to think these
bastards had the right to usurp my justice?"
Sir Stefan started to say something, but Count Lambert glared at him and he shut up.
The foreman stood and said, "No, my lord. Hang them."
Not quite proper procedure, but an improvement over the usual way of doing things. At least the accused
were allowed to have their say in court.
One of the peasants in the town had been a hangman in Wroclaw, so he was given the job.
The prisoners were permitted to say confession to their own priests while ropes were slung over he
branches of a huge old oak tree. Most of the condemned swore at us, and the priest who spoke Polish swore
that he'd see me in hell.
"Damn foreigners," the hangman muttered. "You hang them with a new rope and still they complain!"
The sight of the Castilians being hung wasn't pretty. They weren't dropped, so as to break their necks, but
were hauled up so as to strangle. Criminals were hung naked, their clothes going to the hangman as his fee
*
It was an ugly sight. Most of the murderers urinated and defecated, and over half had an ejaculation, which
I thought curious. Some actually died with a smile on their lips. Perhaps hanging really is a merciful way to
kill somebody.
It was brutal, yet it was necessary. People cannot be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Anyway,
burning eight women wasn't pretty either.
We left them hanging as we rode out about our duties. I suppose that somebody buried them.
I expected to get a lot of flak from the Church over the thing, but there wasn't a word. And in later years,
when the insanity of witchhunts was all the rage in western Europe, there were none in Poland.
The buck stopped here.
Chapter Nine
Anna found the mine site without difficulty, and we went to work. We had temporary shelters up in a few
days, and then the carpenters started felling trees, the masons collecting stones, the miners digging for ore.
The mules were sent back to Three Walls to get lime for mortar, the sawmill was set up, and word was sent
to the surrounding towns and villages that we were hiring workers temporarily for the summer. If they did
well, they might be sworn in permanently.
There was no lack of applicants, since word had spread quickly about how well my people lived. The
winter before, I'd made up some blocks and puzzles of the sort that modem psychologists use, and tried to
get some idea of the men's intelligence. I tried to hire the bright ones, because there was no hiring all the
applicants. Thousands came and there was only room in the budget for three gross on a permanent basis
and a thousand more temporarily. I hated to send so many of them away, but what could I do? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]