THE BULL, THE CALF, AND THE KILLER
Wat Lochinvar rode out of the city of Amersfort with anger humming
fierce in his heart, the Black Horseman riding pickaback behind him.
He paid little attention to the three cutthroat-looking knaves who had
been provided as his escort, till the outer port of the city gates
had closed behind him and the chill airs of the outlands, unwarmed by
friendly civic supper-fires, met him shrilly in the teeth.
He had been played with, tricked, betrayed, so he told himself. Never
more would he think of her--the light trifler with men's hearts. She
might gang her own wilful gait for him; but there was one thing he was
well assured of--never more would Wat Gordon trust any woman born of
woman, never speak a word of love to one of the fickle breed again. On
this he was resolved like steel. For him, henceforth, only the stern
elation of combat, the clatter of harness, the joy of the headlong
charge--point to point, eye to eye, he would meet his man, when neither
would be afraid of aught, save of yielding or craving a favor. From
that day forth his sword should be his love, his regiment his married
wife, his cause and king his family; while his faithful charger,
nuzzling against his breast, would bestow on him the only passionate
caresses he would ever know, until on some stricken field it was his
fate to fill a soldier's grave.
Almost could Walter Gordon have wept in his saddle to think of his
wrongs, and death seemed a sweet thing to him beside the fickle favors
of any woman. He bethought him of his cousin Will with something of a
pitying smile.
"Poor fool!" he said to himself; "he is married. He thinks himself
happy. How much better had it been to live for glory!"
But even as he battered himself into a conviction of his own rooted
indifference to the things of love, he began to wonder how long his
present adventure would detain him. Could he be back in time on
the morrow to hear the first trip of a light foot on the stairs in
Zaandpoort Street, as _she_ came from her sleeping-room, fresh as
though God had made her all anew that morning?
For this is a quality of the wisdom of man, that thinking upon a maid
ofttimes makes it vain--especially if the man be very brave or very
wise, and the maid exceeding fair. Gradually, however, the changing
clatter of the dozen hoofs behind Lochinvar forced itself upon his
hearing, and he remembered that he was not alone.
He turned to his followers, and, curbing his horse a little, waited for
them to come up. They ranged themselves two on one side of him and one
on the other. Lochinvar eyed them with surprising disfavor.
"You are surely the last scourings of the camp," he said, brusquely,
for it was too little his habit to beat about the bush; "what may you
have been doing with yourselves? You could not all three have been made
so unhallowedly ugly as that. After all, God is a good God, and kind to
the evil and to the good."
The fellow on Lochinvar's left was a great red-faced man with an
immense scar, where (as it appeared) one side of his face had been cut
away wellnigh to the cheek-bone--a wound which had healed unevenly in
ridges and weals, and now remained of a deep plum-color.
"What is your name?" said Lochinvar to this man.
"I am called Haxo the Bull," he answered, "and I am of the retinue of
my Lord of Barra."
"And how came you by your English?" asked Lochinvar.
"My mother always declared that my father was of that nation," answered
the man, readily enough.
"To conclude," continued Wat, who was impatient of further conference
with such rank knaves, "what might be your distinguished rank in the
service of my Lord of Barra?"
"I am his camp butcher," said the man, laying his hand on a long, keen
knife which swung at his belt on the opposite side from his sword.
"And these other two gentlemen, your honorable companions?" queried
Wat, indicating them over his shoulder with contemptuous thumb.
The hulking fellow of the scar made a gesture with his shoulders, which
said as plain as might be, "They are of age; ask themselves."
But the nearer of the two did not wait to be asked. He was a hairless,
flaccid-faced rogue of a pasty gray complexion, and even uglier than
the plum-colored Bull, with a certain intact and virgin hideousness of
his own.
"I, for my part, am called Haxo's Calf, and I am not ashamed of the
name!" he said.
And, thinking this an excellent jest, he showed a row of teeth like
those of a hungry dog when he snatches a bone from a comrade not his
equal in the fray.
"And, I doubt not, a fit calf of such a sire," quoth Lochinvar, looking
from one to the other.
"He is my apprentice, not my son--praise to the Virgin and all the
saints!" said Haxo, looking at the Calf quite as scornfully as Wat
himself.
Lochinvar now transferred his attention to the third. He wore a small
round cap on the top of his head, and his narrow and meagre forehead
ran back shining and polished to the nape of his neck. His lack-lustre
eyes were set curiously at different angles in his head. He had thin
lips, which parted nervously over black, gaping teeth, and his nose was
broken as if with a blow of a hammer.
"And is this gentleman also of Monsieur Haxo's gallant company, and in
the suite of his Excellency my Lord of Barra?"
Haxo nodded his head with some appreciation of Wat's penetration.
"He is, indeed," he said; "he is my chief slaughterman, and a prince at
his business."
"He is called 'The Killer,'" interjected the Calf, smacking his lips
with unction. "It is a good name for him."
Wat Gordon urged his horse onward with great and undisguised disgust.
To be sent on a dangerous mission with three such arrant rascals told
him the value that his employers set upon his life. And if he had
chanced at that moment to turn him about in his saddle, the evil smile
of triumph which passed simultaneously over the faces of his companions
might have told him still more.
The small cavalcade of four went clattering on through the dusky
coolness of night, across many small wooden bridges and over
multitudinous canals. It passed through villages, in which the
inhabitants were already snoring behind their green blinds the
unanimous antiphonal bass of the rustic just--though, as yet, it was
little past nine of the clock on the great kirk tower of Amersfort,
and in the city streets and in the camp every one was at the height of
merriment and enjoyment.
Wafts of balmy country scents blew across the by-ways along which they
went; and through the limpid gray coolness where the young leaves of
the sparse hedgerow trees brushed his face, Wat could see that he was
passing countless squares of parti-colored bloom. Miles of hyacinth,
crocus, and narcissus gardens stretched away on either hand beyond the
low, carefully cut Dutch hedges. Haxo the Bull rode first, showing them
the way to the inn of Brederode, silently, save that every now and then
he would cry a word over his shoulder, either to one of his ill-favored
retinue or to an unseen watcher at some lonely cross-road.
Wat followed sullenly and fiercely, without caring much about the
direction in which he was being taken. His mind, however, was
preternaturally busy, going carefully over all the points of his
interview with Kate, and very soon from the heights of justified
indignation he fell to accusing himself of rude stupidity.
"I fear she will never look kindly on me again," he said, aloud. "This
time I have certainly offended her forever."
And the thought troubled him more than all the traitorous Barras and
ill-conditioned Bull Haxos in the world.
A breath of perfume blew fresh across the way from a field of dark
purple bloom, and with an overpowering rush there came back to him the
sweet scent of Kate's hair as for a moment he had bent over her by the
window. He let the reins fall on his horse's neck, and almost cried
aloud in agony at the thought of losing so great a treasure.
"And shall I never see her more," he said, "never watch the responsive
blood spring redly to her cheek, never see the anger flash proudly in
her eye, never (were it but for once) touch the sweet tangle of her
hair?"
Wat's love-lorn melancholy might have driven him to further and yet
wilder utterance had he not been conscious of a slight metallic click
behind him, which certainly did not come from the hoofs of the horses.
He turned sharply at the sound and caught Haxo's Calf with a pistol
in his right hand, and the Killer with his long butcher's knife bare
and uplifted. Haxo himself was riding unconcernedly on in front. Wat
quickened the pace of his horse, and rode alongside the Bull.
"Sir Butcher," he said, calmly, "do your men behind there wish to have
their weapons ready in case of meeting the enemy, or do they perchance
desire to flesh them in my back? It may seem a trifling matter to
trouble you with, and of no great consequence, nevertheless I should
somewhat like to ascertain their intentions."
Haxo glanced behind him. The Calf and the Killer were closing in upon
Wat.
"Varlets," cried Haxo, in a terrible voice, "put your weapons in your
belts, ride wide apart and far behind, or I will send you both quick to
hell!"
The men fell asunder at the words, and for a mile or two only the
sound of the horses' feet pounding the hard paven road came to Wat's
ears. But he did not again return to that entrancing dream of Kate,
her beauty, and her hard-heartedness which had so nearly led to his
destruction. Yet, nevertheless, whatever he said or did, he remained
through all that followed conscious of his love for her, and for the
remainder of the night the desire of getting back to Amersfort in order
to see her sharpened every faculty and kept every sense on the alert.
More than once during the night Haxo endeavored to enter into
conversation, but Wat, indignant at the cowardly attempt on his life
(for so he was bound to consider it), waved him peremptorily aside.
"Do your duty without further words," he said; "lead on directly to the
inn of Brederode."
It was long past the gloaming, and already wearing nigh to the
watershed of the night, before the perfectly flat country of marsh and
polder through which they had been riding gave place to a district
in which the undulations of the surface were distinctly felt beneath
the horses' feet. Here, also, the hard-baked, dusty roads gave place
to softer and more loosely knit tracks of sand, on which the iron-shod
hoofs made no sound. They were, in fact, fast approaching that broad
belt of dunes which shuts off the rich, flower-covered nurseries
of Haarlem from the barren, heathy wastes along the borders of the
Northern Sea.
On their right they passed the dark walls of the castle of Brederode,
and pursued their way to the very edge of the lofty dunes, which at
this point are every year encroaching upon the cultivated fields.
Presently they came to a long, low, white building surrounded by dark
hedges, which in the coolness of the night sent out a pleasant odor of
young beech leaves. The court-yard was silent, the windows black. Not a
ray of light was visible anywhere.
Walter Gordon rode directly up to the door. He felt with his hand
that it stood open to the wall, and that a dark passage yawned before
him. Instinctively he drew back a little way to decide what he should
do. With an unknown house before him and a cut-throat crew behind, he
judged that he would be wiser to proceed with extreme caution.
"Keep wide from me at your peril," he cried, threateningly, to his
rascal company. The three horses backed simultaneously, and Haxo, his
Calf and his Killer, waited in an irregular semicircle, while Wat took
out of his pocket a tinder-box and from his holster a candle. There was
not a breath of air, and when Lochinvar lighted the taper the flame
mounted steadily upwards, so that he had no need even to shelter it
with his hand while the flame went down and then as slowly came again,
as all candles do when they are first lighted.
Wat glanced up at the sign of the Black Bull's Head, which was set in
rude caricature over the door of the inn. His mind wandered grimly to
the significance of that emblem in his own country, and to the many
good men and true who had dined with the Black Bull's head on the
table--and thereafter dined no more in this world. And to think that
he, Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, had brought the Bull with him, together
with the Bull-calf and the Killer, to keep him company to the Black
Bull of Brederode! He took the conceit as an omen, and gritted his
teeth to remember what an arrant gull he had been.
"I shall never see my love more," he said under his breath; "well,
never mind, Wat Gordon, lad--if die you must, there are some now alive
who will be in a similar plight ere you turn up your toes. And at all
events I am glad that I kissed her."
He dismounted and drew his sword.
"Stand still where you are," he cried to Haxo. "Advance an inch at your
peril till I give the word."
He looped his horse's rein to the iron hook at the cheek of the inn
door. Then he gripped his sword tighter, and said a prayer which ended
somewhat unorthodoxly:
"I wish I had that glove which I threw into the canal. For, after
all, she gave it to me. Also, her lips pout most adorably when she is
angered."
And this seemed strange enough information to give the Deity. But
without doubt its sincerity carried it further heavenward than many an
empty Credo. For the God who made love does not, like Jove, laugh at
lovers' vows.