Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/430

406 began to take from under the sticks coals for the kettle, then he lighted the lantern and waited.

"Listen to me now, thou dog," said Siegfried. "Once thou didst babble out what Comtur Danveld commanded thee to do, and the comtur had thy tongue cut out. But since thou art able to show the chaplain on thy fingers whatever pleasest thee, I declare that if thou show with a single movement what thou doest at my order I will command to hang thee."

Diedrich bowed again in silence, but his face was distorted ominously by a terrible recollection, because the tongue had been torn from him for a reason entirely different from that given by Siegfried.

"Move ahead now, and lead to Yurand's dungeon."

The executioner seized the bale of the kettle with his gigantic hand; he raised the lantern, and they left the room. Outside the door they passed the sleeping boy, and descending the steps went, not to the main door, but to the rear of the steps, behind which was a narrow corridor which extended along the whole width of the building, and ended at a heavy gate hidden in a niche of the wall. Diedrich pushed in the gate, and they found themselves beneath the open sky in a small courtyard, which was surrounded on four sides by stone storehouses, in which grain was kept for use in the castle during sieges. Under one of these storehouses on the right were subterranean dungeons for prisoners. There was no guard there, for should a prisoner be even able to break out of the dungeon he would find himself in the court out of which the only issue was through that gate.

"Wait," said Siegfried.

And resting his hand against the wall he halted, for he felt that something of no good import was happening to him, and that breath was failing him, as if his breast had been confined in armor that was too narrow. In simple fact, that through which he had passed was beyond his failing strength. He felt also that his forehead under the cowl was covered with sweat-drops, and he halted to regain the breath that was failing him.

After a gloomy day the night had grown unusually bright. The moon was shining in the sky, and the whole yard was filled with clear light, in which the snow appeared green. Siegfried drew the fresh and somewhat frosty air into his lungs greedily. But he recalled at the same time that on such a clear night precisely Rotgier went to Tsehanov, whence he was now brought back a corpse.