THE FIRST OF THE ENGLISH
A NOVEL
BY
ARCHIBALD CLAVERING GUNTER
AUTHOR OF ‘MR. BARNES OF NEW YORK’
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, Limited
Broadway, Ludgate Hill
MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK
1895
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
A STRANGE TRIP TO ANTWERP.
PAGE
Chapter I.—The Flood in the Schelde, 5
,, II.—The Lady of the Barge, 16
,, III.—The Six Drunkards of Brussels, 35
,, IV.—The Patriot Painter, 48
,, V.—“The Lion’s Jaws Gape for Me!” 59
,, VI.—The Drinking Bout at the Painted Inn, 70
,, VII.—Love—By a Coup de Main, 85
,, VIII.—“The Ungainable!—But I’ll Gain Her!” 101
BOOK II.
TWIXT LOVE AND WAR.
Chapter IX.—“No Provisions, no Water, but Plenty of
Powder!” 112
,, X.—The Secret of the Statue, 123
,, XI.—Major Guido Amati has a Spree, 131
,, XII.—“Get Your Daughter Out of Antwerp,” 143
,, XIII.—“Good Heavens! What an Introduction!” 155
,, XIV.—The Providence of God, 165
,, XV.—The Battle on Skates, 175
,, XVI.—The Berserker Oath, 185
,, XVII.—Advanced Womanhood in 1573, 194
BOOK III.
THE DUKE’S UNLUCKY PENNY.
Chapter XVIII.—“Is it a Dream?” 205
,, XIX.—The Daughter’s Dower, 220
,, XX.—“Papa’s Coming! I’ll—I’ll Do It,” 228
,, XXI.—“My Lord of Alva,” 235
,, XXII.—“Oho! The Fox at Last!” 249
,, XXIII.—“It is an Affair of State,” 258
THE FIRST OF THE ENGLISH.
BOOK I.
A STRANGE TRIP TO ANTWERP.
CHAPTER I.
THE FLOOD IN THE SCHELDE.
“First officer, where’s the boatswain?”
“Forward, sir, seeing the best bower cleared,” returns Harry Dalton,
the ranking lieutenant of the Dover Lass.
“Very well, pass the word for the boatswain. He has the best nose on
board this ship,” shouts Captain Guy Stanhope Chester.
“Aye, aye, sir!”
This being done, the young skipper, for he is hardly twenty-five,
shaking the spray and sea water out of his tarpaulin, gropes his way to
the binnacle, the lantern of which is shaded, partly to protect it from
the weather and partly to prevent its light giving indication of the
vessel’s whereabouts through the darkness of the night.
Taking the course of the vessel he glances at the two men lashed by the
tiller to prevent their being washed overboard by the waves that have
been chasing the ship ever since she left the white cliffs of England,
and remarks: “Better cast yourselves loose lads, we are in quieter
water now. There’s a bit of Flanders between us and the worst of the
gale.”
A moment after the boatswain makes his appearance, a weather-beaten old
tar of England; one of the new class of deep-water sailors that are
being made by Drake and Frobisher in voyages to the Spanish Main and
far Pacific. Plucking a grisly lock, this worthy, who would be all sea
dog did he not wear a battered, steel breast-plate, salutes his
captain, who says:
“How long since we passed Flushing, Martin Corker?”
“About four bells, your honor.”
“Two hours! I make it the same. Could you distinguish the place with
your eye, boatswain?” asks Guy, clutching the mizzen rattlings of the
Dover Lass, as she lurches before the northwest gale and rising tide.
“Not on this dark night, sir; but I made out the soundings by my lead,
the land with my eye, and the slaughter houses on the shore with my
nose.”
“So did I,” laughs Captain Chester. “You and I, Martin, have been up
the Schelde often enough to nose out the channel on as dark a night as
this, though the cursed Spaniards have torn up every buoy on the
river.”
Then the young skipper, leading the first officer aside, continues very
seriously and with knitted brows: “No chance of our meeting any of
Alva’s galleys out in this chop sea on such a night as this.”
“No,” growls Dalton, “these Spanish lubbers are fair weather sailors.”
“Besides, in such a gale,” adds the captain, “the Dover Lass would make
a fool of the bravest and biggest Spanish galleon that ever wallowed
through the ocean;” and he looks with the pride and love of a sailor at
the trim little ship, upon whose quarter-deck he stands, as she dashes
through the waves of the Schelde estuary, tossing the water that comes
over her bow gracefully into her lee scuppers, with the South Beveland
on her lee and Flanders on her weather quarter.
But the night is so inky and the spray so blinding, Guy Chester’s sharp
eyes can only discern half of his trim little vessel of about a hundred
and thirty-five feet long, and two hundred and fifty tons burden,
rigged in a fashion peculiar to the times of Queen Elizabeth of
England, with three masts, the main and the fore square-rigged, and the
mizzen felucca-like, with a long lateen yard, from which would be
expanded a fore and aft spanker, were not the vessel under storm
canvas.
Below this top-hamper the Dover Lass shows on her decks as pretty a set
of snarling teeth as any vessel of her size that sails from the shores
of merry England—six long demi-culverins throwing nine-pound balls, on
each broadside; four minions on her quarter-deck, three falcons as
murdering pieces on her forecastle, and half a dozen serpentines
mounted as swivels at convenient places on her bulwarks, which are
unusually low for a vessel of that day. In this matter of cabins and
bulwarks the Dover Lass is rather an anomaly, carrying no high poop nor
forecastle, and consequently able to beat to windward with much greater
facility than the ordinary ships of the sixteenth century.
Round the butts of her masts in racks are quantities of cutlasses,
boarding pikes and battle axes; the arquebuses and pistols being kept
by the armorer in the forecastle or in the captain’s cabin.
Her crew, some hundred and twenty-five of as jovial sea dogs as ever
cut a throat or scuttled a ship, are out of their hammocks to-night,
every man Jack of them; lying in as comfortable places as they can find
between the guns on the weather side of the deck and cracking
sailor-jokes with each other in a manner unusual to a government
cruiser.
Altogether the Dover Lass has the appearance of a man-of-war, though
not its absolute discipline; and is evidently one of those vessels
fitted out by private individuals to trade if they could, fight if they
must, and plunder the “Dons” everywhere and all the time; similar to
the ships that, under Drake and Frobisher and old John Hawkins, were a
greater terror to the Spaniards than any of the Queen’s vessels
themselves.
“This is rather different to a week ago,” mutters the first officer,
“when you, Captain Chester, were flaunting it with court beauties at
Shene and Windsor.”
“And you were making love to every pretty lass in Harwich,” laughs his
superior.
These remarks, though intended to be whispers, are really shouted, each
man with his mouth at the other’s ear, for the screeching of the wind
through the rigging and the smacks of the combing waves as they lash
the vessel would almost drown the voice of old Stentor himself.
A moment later the boatswain touches his grisled lock and calls out to
the captain: “Hadn’t I better get the second bower clear also?”
“Yes, we may need it with this sea,” assents the captain; while the
first officer caustically remarks: “By old Boreas Bill, this is a
rip-roarer of a night!”
“Aye, worse on shore than at sea,” answers Guy, bringing his tarpaulin
close around him with one hand and with the other trying to keep on his
head his sou’ wester, from under which a few Saxon curls blow out in
spite of his efforts. All the time the three are stamping savagely on
the deck, shaking off the water that comes flying over the rail, and
restoring circulations that have been impaired by the searching
northwester which has been beating upon them all this awful night.
And it is an awful night; one of those nights that impresses itself
upon the memory of suffering mankind by the widows it makes and the
orphans it leaves; a night in which the sea drowns the land; a night in
which the dykes go down before the dash of the ocean, which, tearing
huge sluices in them, rushes through to make the unprotected meadows
and growing orchards the beds of roaring torrents and deep salt seas
that drown awakened farmers and affrighted peasants with their flying
wives and children, in Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland, Friesland, and the
islands and polders of both the Hollands; a night that brought up
another wail from the Netherlanders, rich and poor, noble and
bourgeoisie, who had been undergoing the tortures and burnings and
flayings of Philip II. and Alva, his viceroy, for five long years; a
night when the long-continued northwest gale blowing in from the German
Ocean upon the unprotected dykes of Holland, supported by a tide of
wondrous strength and height, sweeps in upon the defenseless
Netherlands to remind them of that great flood shuddered at for
centuries—that of the first of November, All Saints’ night, of
1570—though this one is nearly two years afterwards, in the early
spring of 1572. Evidences of the misery of the land soon come out of
the darkness of the night. Lights move about hurriedly on the South
Beveland shore, and the cries of a hundred drowning peasants come
shrieking on the gale.
“By Saint George, there’s a dyke gone!” cries Chester to his
lieutenant, then he mutters: “God help the poor wretches, we can’t!” as
the ship speeds by, the gale now a little upon her starboard quarter.
A minute later he commands hurriedly: “Call two quartermasters and
heave the log.”
This being done, he suddenly mutters: “Ten knots—and the tide four
more! Two hours! We must be abeam of the Krom Vliet; the Drowned Lands
are on our lee bow,” then cries hurriedly to his lieutenant: “Go
forward and see both the anchors are ready. We must bring up under the
lee of South Beveland, in the slack water where the tide coming up the
East Schelde meets the current of the main channel. If we get into the
main river with this wind and tide our anchors will hardly hold us this
side the Fort of Lillo, and that means capture and death to every man,
Alva’s death—you know what that is!”
To this the lieutenant shortly mutters, “I know!” and goes hurriedly
forward, where he can be seen directing the men who have been summoned
by the boatswain’s call. Chester, standing beside the tiller, cons the
vessel himself, giving his orders to the two helmsmen.
Half a minute later Martin Corker, the boatswain, comes staggering aft
over the ship’s slippery deck and hoarsely whispers: “Boats ahead!”
“How do you know? you couldn’t see them to-night.”
“Lights!”
“Ah! the lights of Sandvliet.”
“No, boats! pistols firing—arquebuses! I saw the flashes of their guns
three points on the lee bow, in the slack water under the shore of
Beveland!”
“Then I can catch these boats,” whispers the captain.
With this the nature of the man comes suddenly out; his wonderful
rapidity of thought and action. He cries: “Order all hands to stand by
to wear ship. Send twenty men aft to handle the lateen sail! See the
two anchors stoppered at thirty fathoms! Tell the starboard division to
arm themselves with pikes, cutlasses and axes—only steel. I want no
noise about this business! Order three men to stand on the weather bow
with grappling hooks.”
A minute later he sees the flashes of firearms a cable’s length ahead
broad upon his larboard bow.
“Helm a starboard!” he cries to the men at the tiller. “That’s enough;
steer small, I tell you. Set the spanker!”
A minute after they are just passing the boats, and nicely calculating
for the drift, which is tremendous, he suddenly wears his ship, giving
his orders by speaking trumpet. “Hard a starboard—slack away the lee
braces. Haul taut the weather fore and main braces!” And as soon as the
vessel comes round bracing his fore yards very sharply and jibbing his
lateen sail, which, though nearly blown from its bolt ropes, drives the
vessel hurriedly into the slack water formed by the current of the East
Schelde meeting that rushing in by the main estuary.
The next minute he has ranged up alongside two boats, and his starboard
division, taking tow lines in their hands, have sprung into the boats,
boarding them and capturing them.
These are soon swinging alongside of his lee quarter, protected from
the sea and the wind, while he is dropping anchor in the slack water
formed by the South Beveland flats and marshes.
There has apparently been no contest in the boats, as his men have
taken their occupants too much by surprise.
A minute later the boatswain clambers back on board the Dover Lass and
reports: “We’ve got ’em both!”
“What are they?”
“One’s an enemy and one’s a friend.”
“Who’s the friend?”
“Dirk Duyvel and his band of Sea Beggars; and Dirk’s thunderin’ mad and
swears he is being badly treated.”
“Who’s the enemy?”
“A Spanish pleasure galley or State barge, judgin’ by the fol-de-rols
and awnings.”
“Who are on board her?”
“Rowers, who are begging for their lives, and two or three women, all
of ’em fainted but one. There was an Italian, Spaniard or something,
but Duyvel and his band when they captured the boat tied a rope round
him, threw him overboard and towed him, and I guess he’s drowned by
this time.”
“Very well, pull the Italian up and bring him on board. Also send Dirk
to me.”
A minute later a stalwart-looking Dutch sea-dog comes over the side,
stamping his heavy boots and uttering a curse with every stamp.
“Come here, Dirk, what are you growling about?” laughs the young
captain.
“What am I growling about? Donder en Bliksem! I’m growling about YOU!
What have you come between me and my prize for? Who are you, anyway?”
“You don’t recognize me, Dirk? Come this way.”
The captain throws open the door of his cabin and motions the Dutch
seaman in. There is a flickering candle or two and a swinging lamp
hanging from the skylight transom that give a subdued and melancholy
glow to the scene, though the darkness of the night has been so intense
that both the Dutchman and Englishman blink their eyes as they enter.
A second later Dirk cries: “Bij den hemel! I didn’t recognize the
voice. It’s Captain Chester, the First of the English!”
This nickname that he gives to Guy is one the Hollanders had bestowed
on him upon his first making his appearance among them as secret scout,
envoy and general agent of Queen Elizabeth; though England, being
nominally at peace with Spain, his sovereign has publicly disavowed the
acts of this man who has been risking his life for her interests day by
day, and night by night, off the coasts of the Hollands, watching the
unequal fight the Netherlanders are making against the power of Philip
of Spain, and the frightful cruelties, ravages, burnings, flayings,
killings and torturings of Alva, his viceroy. This soubriquet, De
Eersteling der Engelschen, the First of the English, has apparently
been given in the faint hope of his not being the last of the English;
that others will come over after him and help them fight for freedom of
thought, and that they will be, if not openly protected, at least
secretly supported, by the power of the daughter of Henry VIII., whom
Philip has sworn to crush, as well as them, in the interests of his
religion. For, utterly defeated at Jemmingen, and out-generaled and
dispersed at Friesland, their Staatholder and Prince now in exile in
Germany, the adherents of William the Silent have no hope, save in the
active intervention, or at least covert assistance, of England.
On recognizing the Saxon the face of Dirk Duyvel assumes a sleepy
smile, though he mutters savagely: “Captain Chester, your act is not
the act of a Beggar of the Sea.”
“Odds, herrings and turbots! You know I am one of you just the same,”
laughs the young man, exhibiting a medal which is strung about his
neck, from which hang two or three Beggars’ cups in metal, and on which
is inscribed: “En tout fidelles au Roy!” and an armed bust of Philip
II. of Spain.
“It’s a curious emblem for an English subject to wear,” continues Guy,
“but since I joined and became one of you, for the purposes of the one
who—who sent me here,” he hesitates a little over his words, “I have
acted to you as a brother Gueux, and abided by the principles of the
Beggars of the Sea—if they have any. Have they, Dirk?” he jeers.
“Answer me, you sea robber. Didn’t you steal your own brother’s vessel
last year?”
“Well, there’s two sides to that story, captain,” guffaws the Dutchman.
Then he goes on anxiously: “But you’re not going to steal my prize?”
“No, only to help you take care of it. And you need my aid to-night;
for in this wind, without me, you would never get back to your vessels.
Where are they?”
“About four miles down the East Schelde, round the point.”
“Then your boat would never make them. You would be blown into
Sandvliet or past the forts and into Alva’s grip, unless you landed on
a dyke and took the chance of being shot off-hand by his Spanish
mercenaries. You couldn’t anchor your boats here, they’d be swamped;
without the lee of my vessel you would be in the arms of the mermaids
in ten minutes, or in Alva’s hands in two hours. Which would be worst?”
“I think Alva would be worstest for me and for you! He hates the ‘First
of the English’ more as even he does us rebels,” grins the Dutchman. He
shivers though, at that name, dreaded by every Netherlander, and more
than all by those he had made outlaws, and forced for very livelihood
to become, under the name of Gueux (Beggars of the Sea), half way
pirates and robbers, though still apostles of freedom under William of
Orange.
“Now, what have you captured? Tell me all about it,” breaks in the
Englishman, who has bright, flashing steel blue eyes and dancing,
gallant, wavy chestnut hair, in strong contrast to the Hollander, who
has a quiet, sleepy, soft countenance, embellished with a contented
grin—one Dirk Duyvel never changed, whether saying his prayers, looting
a ship, or cutting a Spaniard’s throat.
“Well, we drifted down here,” he answers. “The gale wasn’t as high
then, or we wouldn’t have come. We saw a dyke burst down this side of
Sandvliet and went over to take charge of the farmers’ goods, so if
they came to life again we might return em. While doing this we saw a
barge put off from a pleasure house that was being washed out, and it
looked as if there might be plunder aboard. Well, we followed it. It
was trying to get into the river to go to Antwerp, but we shot the
sailors, and had just captured the boat and thrown an Italian overboard
and were looking for plunder, and finding none, except the women, three
of whom fainted when I talked to ’em and told what we were going to do
with ’em, when you came alongside; and before I knew it I was down with
two of your swash-bucklers on top of me with daggers at my throat,
making remarks about my life.”
This dissertation is here interrupted by the entry of the boatswain,
who touches his cap and deposits an inanimate and drowned form upon the
cabin locker, remarking sententiously: “The Italian’s come aboard,
captain.”
“Let’s see if we can get life into him.”
But after a short examination Chester makes the sign of the cross and
whispers: “He’s past revival. All the leeches, surgeons and
blood-letters on earth couldn’t make his heart beat again,” placing his
hand upon the man’s bosom.
Even as he says this he suddenly starts and exclaims: “There’s
something in the breast of his coat; something sewn in.”
“Duivelsch! Is it money he’s got in his jacket?” screams the Dutch
freebooter; then he continues sorrowfully: “And to think that we missed
it when we searched his pockets before we threw him overboard. Is it
money? If it is, it’s MY money.”
“It isn’t money, its papers,” remarks Chester, cutting away the
Italian’s doublet and pulling out a packet carefully wrapped in oiled
silk.
“Then if it’s only papers, you can have them,” observes the Netherland
Beggar of the Sea generously. The Englishman is examining the documents
that are disclosed to him.
A moment more of perusal and Guy appears surprised; then deeply
impressed, mutters to himself: “I wonder—can it be?—I can’t make out
the accursed Spanish cipher.”
Two minutes more of anxious inspection and a sudden flash comes in his
eyes.
He turns to Dirk Duyvel and says shortly: “How much do you want for
your capture? All of it! You have given me the papers, now what do you
want for the boat?”
“The boat’s a fine boat!”
“But it’s no use to you!”
“And then there’s the three women. I might get a ransom for them.”
“From whom?”
“From their fathers or brothers or lovers; they wouldn’t like to know
that they were carried off by the Beggars of the Sea, the champions of
freedom,” says Duyvel with a hideous chuckle, “and one of ’em is very
beautiful.”
“Humph! how could you see this dark night?”
“I couldn’t see, I heard. Her voice is as sweet as the softest stop in
the grand organ at Amsterdam, the one they call the ‘angel’s voice.’”
“What do you want for the whole lot?” asks the Englishman, trying to
appear indifferent, and attempting the tone of a man making a bargain
at a haberdasher’s.
“A thousand crowns.”
“Three hundred,” answers Chester, shortly.
“Five hundred crowns, anyway.”
“Three hundred in silver,” and the young captain opens a locker in his
cabin and produces a bag of carolus guilders. “Better take this in
hand,” he says, “than bargain on the shore, with the chance of being
captured and strung up. Three hundred for the whole lot, women, boat,
everything, and I take the goods off your hands!”
“What do you want to do with them?”
“That’s my business,” says the Englishman, looking once more over the
papers he has taken from the dead Spaniard or Italian, for the dress
and appearance of the dead man indicates that he is such. “And I’ll
tell you what I’ll do,” continues Guy, “if this matter turns out as it
may, I’ll make it two hundred more on my next return from England.”
“Well, the plunder is yours, only count the money down.”
This is soon done, Chester writing a receipt and quittance for the
same, which the Dutchman signs. A moment later Captain Guy remarking
carelessly: “Duyvel, you had better lie by us in your boat till
morning, or you will never outlive this storm,” steps on deck, and
taking his first officer aside, says shortly: “You will take command of
this vessel, Lieutenant Dalton, until my return.”
“You are going to leave the ship to-night?”
“Yes, some information that I have just received makes it necessary
that I go to Antwerp to-night.”
“To Antwerp! Into Alva’s clutches; INTO HIS VERY JAWS?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“In that Spanish barge lying beside us.”
“You’ll take some of your men?”
“No.”
“Your life won’t be worth a florin.”
“Oh yes it will. The cowardly rowers down there won’t give me any
trouble. You know I learnt the Spanish lingo in Hispaniola, and speak
it so well that I almost despise myself for it. I shall go as a Spanish
officer, under the name used by me in my former visits to Antwerp,
Capitan Guido Amati. I shall pose as the rescuer of that lady in the
boat alongside; that is, if things turn out as I expect. Have the
cutter off the nearest dyke down the river below Fort Lillo to meet me
by to-morrow noon.”
“You are taking your life in your hands. You’re doing more than this,
you are throwing it away,” objects the first officer very anxiously.
“I’d do both for my bonny Queen Bess, whose hand I kissed before
leaving England,” whispers the young man. “Now I will see my prisoner.”
Seizing a rope he swings himself over the low gunwale and a moment
after is standing among his men, who are still on guard in the Spanish
pleasure galley—one second later Guy Chester hears the softest,
sweetest, most coquettishly alluring voice he has ever heard since his
ears opened to the sounds of man—or woman.
CHAPTER II.
THE LADY OF THE BARGE.
No tones have ever thrilled Guy Chester so before, though in the almost
impenetrable gloom of the night its witchery has no assistance from
graceful figure, fascinating face, nor flashing eyes. It is the voice
alone that charms him. It says: “Señor, are you an officer? Have you
authority among these wild men?”
The speaking figure has risen at the commotion made by Chester’s
springing into the boat. Perhaps even in the darkness the lady notes
the salute from his men by which he is received. The tongue in which
the lady speaks is Spanish, pure, refined; the exquisite Spanish of the
Castilian.
“I have, señorita,” replies Guy, answering in the same language, though
his accent and diction are almost barbarous beside her liquid idiom.
The sound of the Spanish language seems to reassure the lady, who,
stepping from beneath the awning that adorns and protects the stern of
the boat, confronts Chester, and in tones that are part pleading and
part commanding, says: “Tell me who you are?”
“A captain in Romero’s regiment of Sicilians. Not born in Spain, as you
may note by my accent,” returns the young Englishman, adding, “My
birthplace was in Hispaniola.”
“Ah! an officer of Spain,” cries the lady joyously; “then your ship is
Spanish?”
“Certainly,” returns the Englishman, who, having made up his mind to
deceive, does it with full hand and wholesome measure.
“Then,” replies the lady, her voice now growing strangely confident and
commanding, “Señor Capitan, you will attend me at once to the city of
Antwerp, guarding me on the way.” A moment after she continues: “And I
hope you will have those wretched Hollander cut-throats, those insolent
Sea Beggars, punished as soon as possible. They have murdered the
captain and soldiers of my barge, they have drowned the poor secretary
of the Marquis de Cetona, Chiapin Vitelli.”
At the name of Vitelli, Chester gives a sudden start. “Certainly,
señorita,” he answers promptly. “Every ruffian of them shall be hanged
to the yard-arm as soon as your barge is out of sight.”
“But you must go with me; I have commanded!”
“Your words are my orders,” says Guy gallantly, trying to keep down a
smile, as he thinks that his fair captive assumes a strange authority.
“The captain of the vessel will attend to the punishment of the
marauders after we have left.”
“You will be ready to accompany me soon.” The tone coming to him in the
darkness is that of one accustomed to command, though marvelously sweet
and winning.
“In fifteen minutes,” answers Chester with soldierly promptness; then
he continues, a touch of gallantry in his voice: “May I not send you
some supper from the vessel? The night is very cold.”
“No, I am well wrapped up. My attendants can chafe my hands, and we
have some excellent Spanish wine and other refreshments in the locker
of the barge. Only be quick, or we shall not be in Antwerp before
morning.”
“As soon as possible I will return.” With these words Guy springs
lightly out of the boat and clambers over the gunwale of his own
vessel.
Then hurriedly drawing aside his first officer, who has been looking
over at this colloquy, he says: “It has all turned out as I wished.
Besides, I know a little more. This dead man in the cabin (whom you
will throw overboard as soon as possible) is the secretary of that
accursed Chiapin Vitelli!”
“The scoundrel who is aiding Alva in his plans against the life of our
sovereign!” interjects Dalton.
“Yes. This thing makes it doubly important that I go to Antwerp. I may
even stay there some days. Keep the boat off and on near the dyke below
Fort Lillo, as I have commanded.”
“You are taking desperate chances,” mutters his subordinate,
dissentingly.
“But they are chances I must take. In case anything happens to me, in
case I—I do not come back, tell my Queen it was for her sake. Return
with the vessel, Dalton, to England and utter to our Sovereign these
words: ‘Be more on your guard of Spanish poison or Spanish dagger than
ever. It is the last warning you will hear from your devoted liegeman,
Guy Stanhope Chester.’”
With this the young captain steps into his cabin, and within ten
minutes, as he re-opens the door, the dim light displays him as a
different man.
No longer the weather-beaten sailor in tarpaulin and sou’wester, but as
gay and debonnaire a young gallant as ever flaunted with the court
ladies of Hampton, or ruffled it in the tennis courts of Windsor or
Westminster.
A light blue velvet cap surmounted by two long white plumes fastened by
a diamond clasp is on his youthful head; round his neck a long Spanish
collar of the lace of Venice; his velvet doublet slashed with silver
and satin; his hose and trunks of the finest silk of France; his high
Spanish boots of the softest bronze morocco leather. In this gallant
garb, with his blue, flashing eyes, and laughing lips and curly hair,
Guy Stanhope Chester makes as brave a figure as even Dudley, Earl of
Leicester, himself, when he charmed the Queen of England and her maids
of honor.
Perhaps even more so, for his face is honest and his smile sincere,
though there is a determined expression in his face as he steps out of
his cabin and examines carefully the priming of the two long pistols he
has in his belt, and thrusts his hand in his bosom to be sure that the
long, keen poniard is in its place, and claps his hand on sword hilt to
assure himself that his trusty long Toledo cut-and-thrust rapier is
right to his hand. For the chances of this visit to the great city of
the Netherlands, which Alva holds in his grasp, mean to him the chances
of not merely success nor failure, but the chances of life and death.
With the caution of common sense, Guy has given himself the appearance
of Catholic and Spanish cavalier; he has discarded the medal of the
Gueux and wears instead, quite ostentatiously, a rosary of golden beads
and ornamented cross.
In making this change he has displaced from his bosom a miniature set
in diamonds, a portrait of a girl of wondrous Castilian beauty, upon
which he has cast eyes of longing and muttered these curious words: “My
only prize from all of Alva’s treasures I captured for my queen—if I
could gain the original.”
Altogether the gallant array of Guy Chester makes a sensation on his
quarter-deck, even affecting the imperturbable sea robber, Dirk Duyvel,
who sits just outside the cabin calmly counting his three hundred
florins. This worthy remarks: “Hel en duivel! but she must be a pretty
wench!” And his first lieutenant, aye, even the second, venture to
crack a joke or two upon his appearance, Dalton remarking: “By the Four
Evangelists! This foray means love as well as blood!”
And the second mate, who is hardly more than a chunky round-faced boy,
gives a wild guffaw as he whispers into his skipper’s ear: “Take me
with you, please, Captain Chester, for your cruise on shore. There are
other ladies in the boat besides the one for whom you are arrayed!”
“My poor boy, the run on shore would be the death of you,” remarks the
captain, then he suddenly strides back into the cabin, muttering to
himself: “By the Seven Champions of Christendom, that voice has nearly
made me lose my common sense. I was going without any money; that would
have been very dangerous.”
With these words he empties into his pocket from one of the lockers of
his cabin a small bag of Spanish gold, and thrusts into the other a
loose assortment of Spanish florins, Dutch crowns and Netherland
stivers. As he turns away, catching view of himself in a small mirror
of Venetian glass that is set in the cabin side between the two stern
port holes, Guy Chester suddenly ejaculates: “And I was forgetting my
boat cloak also. That would have been comfortable in this nor’wester.”
As he speaks he throws over his finery a long ample cloak of English
wool, and the next second he is over the side of the ship into the
Spanish barge, which, being cleared rapidly of his men, is now cast off
from the ship.
At this he, going to the stern, takes the tiller in his hand and cries
out in commanding Spanish: “Give way, ye dogs of rowers! The man who
straightens his back or misses his stroke until we are at Antwerp dies
by my hand.” For he fears that the slightest fault of cadence in the
stroke may put the boat broadside to the wind and current, which would
be fatal in this chop sea, rapid tide and strong gale.
“You seem to be a seaman as well as a soldier,” remarks the young
Spanish lady, by whose side he is now seated.
“Yes, I have done a little of everything in the way of fighting, both
by land and sea,” returns Guy, drawing somewhat closer to the alluring
voice.
“I shall always look upon you,” murmurs the lady, “as my preserver of
this night.”
Then she astounds and almost horrifies him, for she says patronizingly:
“This has been a lucky night for you. Señor Capitan; for this I will
have you made a Colonel!”
This assertion is made by the sweet voice beside him as confidently as
if it came from the Queen of Spain herself. Its very assurance sends a
cold thrill down the Englishman’s back. “Who the deuce can she be?” he
wonders. “I am putting my head into Alva’s very hand in escorting her
to Antwerp.”
But to turn back is now impossible. The boat is already in the main
current; both wind and tide are now sweeping them to Antwerp on the
flood, that bears beside them the bodies of drowned men and cattle,
giving evidence of the devastation the ocean is working upon the
Netherlands.
“And whom am I to thank for this wondrous promotion?” Guy ventures
insinuatingly, for he is now desperately curious to know the name of
the lady sitting beside him.
“You may call me Doña Hermoine,” answers the fair one in a tone that
indicates that she is sufficiently well known to be recognizable
without any further description or attachment. A moment after she
speaks to one of her attendants, who is kneeling beside her, chafing
her hands, for the night is very cold, saying quietly: “That will do,
Alida, try to warm yourself.”
“Yes, Excelentisima,” answers the girl.
This high-sounding title only adds to a curiosity that Chester can
gratify no further. He is compelled to devote every faculty of his
mind, every muscle of his body, to keeping the boat dead before the
wind and current as it flies up the Schelde. A single false movement of
the rudder might cause it to broach, and that would be destruction on
this wild night.
He can scarce find time to direct the attendants of the lady to place
tarpaulins at her back and to protect her as much as possible from the
spray that is following them; every other energy is employed in keeping
the frail boat safe in her race with the wild waters round them. He has
no trouble with the oarsmen; they row as if they knew their lives
depended on their toil.
So they fly on.
A dark lowering mass upon his right hand indicates the grim Fort of
Lillo. This passed Guy knows he is in the very hands of Alva, in the
Spanish lines. But they dash ahead, passing ships that have broken from
their moorings, and are drifting with the tide; others that have taken
refuge in the various estuaries and coves of the Schelde. No boats are
out this wild night; the storm has driven everything to shelter. No
Spanish galleys patrol the river; but the lights upon the dykes show
that the husbandmen are awake, trying to save their live stock and
themselves.
A little later the lady, who all this time has been compelled to devote
herself to keeping warm by many stampings of tiny feet and clappings of
delicate hands, in which she has been assisted by her attendants,
suddenly says: “Can you not take a little refreshment, Señor Capitan?
Even a glass of wine? Your exertions for my safety have been untiring.”
“For God’s sake don’t take my attention from the boat!” mutters Guy
between set teeth. “We’re running a bend of the river. The wind will be
on our quarter. It is our lives that I’m fighting for.”
Then he settles himself again to the struggle, for the current and wind
are not now exactly together, and it makes his task at the tiller even
more difficult.
But after making this bend, which is just before they reach the water
front of Antwerp, the wind, broken by the land, becomes less fierce,
and the rising tide, which has almost reached its height, grows less
violent and rapid.
“Thank God, we’re over the worst of it,” Guy says with a sigh of
relief. “Now I’ll thank you for a glass of wine, fair lady; the night
is fearfully cold;” this last comes from between chattering teeth.
“Oho!” almost laughs the fair one at his side. “Silk, satin and velvet
are not as conducive to comfort, Señor Capitan, as your storm clothes
and tarpaulins when you first boarded my barge. It is necessary to
suffer in order to be beautiful. Your fine raiment is, I presume, for
some fair lady of Antwerp, Capitan mio.”
“Yes, for a very fair one,” mutters Guy, whose boat cloak has blown
from his shoulders, and whose lace cuffs have brushed the lady’s wrist,
as he holds the silver goblet to his mouth and permits the very finest
old Spanish wine that has ever trinkled down his throat to revive his
circulation and reanimate his chilled form.
The elixir seems to bring his spirits back again, and he laughs.
“Another goblet, please, which I will drink to the fair lady’s health!”
And this being given him, Guy says, with sailor audacity and youthful
ardor, “To you!” looking with all his eyes at the fair one ministering
to him, hoping that their flash will even pierce the darkness. For he
has touched the hand that has tendered the goblet, and it is wondrously
soft and dainty, and the whole bearing and demeanor of his fair
companion is that of bright, vivacious, joyous youth; the youth that
age may envy but never simulate; the youth the gods give but once; the
youth that even inky darkness cannot hide.
Besides, thrown by a quick lurch of the boat, she has been close
against his bosom—once; but in that fleeting touch he has discerned the
figure of a Venus and the agile graces of a Hebe.
“Who in the name of all the saints can she be?” he wonders.
At his audacious toast the lady draws herself away quite hurriedly,
with a subdued ejaculation, partly of surprise, partly of hauteur. A
moment after she laughs the laugh of youth, enchanting, bewitching; and
remarks: “Such toasts will draw upon you the wrath of my duenna.”
“Your duenna! She is not here!”
“Oh, yes. She has been present during our whole journey. My awful
duenna lies on the seat immediately in front of you. The smell of
powder always makes the Countess de Pariza faint. She always becomes
insensible when her ward is in greatest danger. At the first fire by
the Beggars of the Sea she fainted comfortably away, and has been
insensible ever since. When we arrive at Antwerp she will probably have
her sharp eyes open.”
“Then before they do open tell me about yourself,” whispers Guy
gallantly, for he can now devote a little of his time to the lady, into
whose face he would look with admiring eyes did the darkness permit.
“First tell me about yourself,” she answers a little hurriedly, a tone
of interest in her voice that pleases the young gentleman. “The more I
know about you the better I can aid you to become a colonel. What is
your name?”
“Call me Captain Guido,” murmurs Chester in his tenderest voice.
“No other name?”
“I cannot give you my other name. I am absent from my regiment without
leave.”
“Then it will be very difficult to promote you,” laughs the lady. Next
she says: “But since you will not trust me with your name, tell me
something about your former life.”
This Guy does, inventing a story of birth in Hispaniola, various
combats by land and sea for the glory of the flag of Spain in Italy and
the Netherlands, giving the lady beside him an idea that he is devoted
to the Spanish cause, body and soul, a grand hater of all enemies of
Mother Church, and weaving about himself a web of romance and a tissue
of falsehoods that some day may rise up to strike him down; for his
fair companion thinks him a true soldier of Philip of Spain and his
viceroy, Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva and Huesca.
“Ah!” she murmurs, “a gallant soldier. I must make you a colonel!”
“And the full name of my benefactress?”
Perchance she would answer this; but at this moment the lights of
Antwerp come into view. The whole city’s front is illuminated by moving
lanterns, vessels are being transported to safe anchorages; the immense
shipping of the port is on the alert this night to save themselves from
the flood. The merchants of this, the richest city in all Europe, are
busy on the quays trying to preserve the merchandise of the Indies and
the produce of Northern Europe from damage and wreck from the rising
tide that is sweeping over the half-submerged quays and docks of this
great emporium of sixteenth century commerce.
“Where will you land?” says Guy hurriedly.
Her answer is such that it almost makes the strong man beside her
tremble. She says nonchalantly: “I think you had better take me to the
Citadel.”
“The Cit—a—del,” stammers Guy.
“Yes, Sancho d’Avila, its governor, will be proud to make me welcome
to-night.”
“You can pass the sentries? You know the passwords of the night?”
mutters Chester, feeling himself growing cold at the thought of
entering Alva’s very garrison.
“Certainly. They sent me the words of to-night.”
“Give them to me, please, so that I may pass you through the guard.”
“That of to-night,” she says, “is Jemmingen.”
“And the countersign?”
“Santa Maria de la Cruz. You may need it, being an officer without
leave,” she whispers; then adds with a slight laugh, “I have, perhaps,
saved you from arrest. That is a little earnest of my gratitude.”
They are now speeding past the main town. The English quay is already
behind them, and they are opposite the great middle dock, the huge
warehouses of which are all alight, while gangs of men with waving
torches are on the adjacent wharves and ships, trying to moor the
vessels safe from the rushing flood and to salvage their cargoes, many
of which are already half unloaded. A few Spanish war galleys are in
motion, their slaves toiling at their immense oars towing to places of
more secure anchorage some of the sailing galleons, now helpless in
this heavy gale.
Above all this turmoil and commotion the shouts of sailors, the curses
of captains, the screams of the galley slaves under the lash, the
flashing lights of the town and harbor, for all Antwerp is up this
night, come the silvery chimes of the grand cathedral, whose tower
sounds the quarter of the hour before midnight.
As they pass they are hailed by a patrol boat, but giving the word of
the night, Chester steers his barge upon its course unimpeded and
unstayed.
So they fly past the city proper, skirting a further line of wooden
wharves and quays, behind which can be seen the city walls and
gates—not as strongly built, nor as elaborately fortified as those
protecting the land side of the town, but still garrisoned and guarded,
and their Spanish sentries on the alert, for this night of storm and
flood has roused not only the burghers of Antwerp to save their wares
and chattels, but the Spanish garrison of the place, to see that no
outbreak occurs during this commotion produced by wind and tide.
A few moments after, beyond the Esplanade, or parade ground, that
separates the citadel from the town, can be seen the flickering lights
of the two river bastions of the vast fortification built by Alva, not
to protect, but to dominate and crush this great commercial city which
is now within his hands.
Gazing up the flood, Chester’s quick seaman’s eye discovers the danger
of approaching the massive walls that line the moat. With the tide
running as it does, and the wind blowing as it blows, their boat will
be smashed like an eggshell against the stonework. He speaks hurriedly:
“Is there not some other watergate? If I try to make the landing on
this side it is death. Speak quick, for God’s sake—answer me!”
“Yes! A small sally-port beyond the second bastion.” The liquid voice
beside him is nervous and agitated. The waves of the Schelde are
foaming against the masonry of the Spaniard.
“That’s it!” cries Chester, and steering the boat with rare precision
into the deep moat that surrounds the citadel, which the flood now
makes a rushing torrent, they fly past the great somber Bastion of the
Duke, and a moment later that named after Alva himself. Here, sheltered
to a great extent from the wind behind the massive walls of this
stronghold of Spanish power, the boat makes landing at a small
sally-port situated on a little artificial island in the middle of the
moat, and connected by a light, movable bridge with the main citadel
between the huge bastions of Alva and Paciotto, the latter named after
the great engineer who planned and built this great frowning pentagon
with its five massive redoubts, considered the strongest fortress of
its day.
As the boat makes its landing the sentry stationed there challenges,
and receives as answer from the Englishman the word of the night. At
this the drawbridge is let down and lights from flaming torches flash
upon them, causing Chester to discover what darkness has heretofore
concealed from him, that the boat he has been piloting all this night
is evidently a State galley, whose fittings and awnings are decorated
in exquisite art and ornamented with Spanish stamped leather bearing
the arms of the Viceroy himself. But he has no time to speculate upon
this.
“My duenna,” says the lady hurriedly. “We must rouse her for the sake
of etiquette, Señor Capitan, we must rouse the Countess de Pariza!”
This is easily done, for the court dame has apparently been reviving
for some little time, and a couple of goblets of the same Spanish wine
that had cheered the young sailor bring almost immediate speech to the
chaperone. She ejaculates, looking round with wild eyes: “Holy Virgin!
I am alive. Santa Maria! The citadel of Antwerp. I am saved!”
Then this sentinel of etiquette and punctilio rises and puts a pair of
haughty patrician eyes upon the Englishman, and exclaims hurriedly:
“Who is this man?”
“The gentleman who has preserved us from the Beggars of the Sea,”
answers the young lady of the barge.
On this Chester, not wishing further discussion as to his identity,
suddenly offers his arm to the fair one, who is still cloaked and
hooded, and who, as the lights have flashed upon her, has drawn over
her face a Spanish veil. A moment later Guy feels a little thrill as
his offer is accepted, and a tiny hand is slipped within his arm.
Another second and he has assisted her from the boat and is passing
with her across the drawbridge, followed by the two attendants
supporting the duenna, who is apparently not yet very strong upon her
feet, and is in a state of semi-hysterics.
Just as they get to the last of the drawbridge Guy hears a sudden wild
shriek behind him, and desperate as is his situation, before the very
citadel of Alva, the open gate of which is waiting to engulf him, he
cannot refrain from an hilarious chuckle as he discovers that the
Spanish duenna has slipped upon the wet drawbridge and is now being
pulled half drowned from the waters of the moat. As her attendants
somewhat unskillfully assist her, the countess, falling into a wild
rage, throws etiquette to the winds and, with chattering teeth, and
mouth full of water, stammers that the two attendant hussies shall pay
for their awkwardness.
But Chester’s laugh dies away as the sentries at the gate bar their
passage by crossed pikes, and their ensign says hoarsely: “The
countersign, señor!”
“Santa Maria de la Cruz” whispers Guy.
The pikes drop as the officer waves his sword, and they step past him
through the heavy Gothic archway. At this moment a light flashing from
a flambeau stuck into a niche in the heavy masonry falls upon the lady,
outlining her figure more strongly. Catching sight of this the Spanish
officer doffs his steel cap, and bowing to the very ground, says: “Had
I known it was you, Excelentisima, my challenge would not have been so
peremptory!”
“You but did your duty, señor,” says the unknown. A second later she
has left Guy’s arm and having taken the young officer aside, who stands
before her with uncovered bended head, is whispering something to him
in Spanish very rapidly.
A portion of the ensign’s answer comes to Guy’s ear: “No,
Excelentisima, he has not arrived from Brussels.”
“Then papa will not be anxious for me this night,” says the lady
quickly. Retaking Chester’s arm she says to the young officer: “You
will attend us to the quarters of the Countess of Mansfeld.”
A moment later, preceded by the Spanish ensign, they pass through the
gateway to the main parade ground of the Citadel, and passing between
piles of cannon balls and all the vast implements of attack and defense
of the great fortress, move towards what are apparently the officers’
quarters. From the windows of one of these, evidently much larger and
more commodious and elegant than the rest, come the lights of festival
and the music of the dance. Situated immediately in the rear of the
bastion of Paciotto, the distance to this is quite short, and Guy has
little chance of conversation with his companion, being compelled to
speed by the storm, which is still cold and biting, and causes the lady
to hug her wraps very tightly about her.
They enter at a little side door of the house, a man servant in
gorgeous livery receiving them and immediately bowing to the earth.
“The countess expected me?” remarks Guy’s charge hurriedly.
“Yes, Excelentisima, the fête of this evening is in your honor. You
have been detained? It is now near midnight,” answers the servitor,
again bowing.
Any reply the lady might make to this is stopped by the entry of her
dripping duenna, who says querulously: “What are you standing here for,
Doña Hermoine? You are keeping the Countess de Mansfeld waiting
upstairs and me dripping with water and chilled to the bone down here.”
Then she cries: “Up, hussies, and help me change my raiment!” This last
is emphasized by a fearful chatter of her teeth and a ferocious wave of
her hand to the attendants, who scurry past the young Englishman and
his immediate charge.
Under the lights of the hall Guy notes that the maid servants are young
girls of lithe figures, pale olive complexions, and Moorish features,
perhaps slaves, as was common in Spain in those days. A moment after
these proceed up a little stairway with the Countess de Pariza, all
punctilio having apparently been entirely washed out of this dragon of
etiquette by the salt water of the Schelde, for she leaves Guy standing
with her charge without further remark.
Then he turns his eyes on his companion, hoping her face will now be
visible, but the heavy lace veil still guards her countenance, and her
wraps are still drawn tightly about her, giving outline to an
apparently exquisite figure beneath. While noting this the young
Englishman also observes that the lady’s mantle is of the very finest
royal sable, and fastened by jeweled ornaments of exceeding value.
“Had Dirk Duyvel known this,” cogitates Guy, smiling, “it would have
taken more than three hundred Carolus guilders to have bought that
cloak alone!”
But introspection is cut short; the sweet voice, even more beautiful
now, mixed with the cadence of the music of lutes and stringed
instruments from the adjoining part of the mansion, says: “My duenna
has apparently forgotten hospitality, but I have not.” Then she
commands the servitor: “Show Captain Guido at once to a refreshment
room. Not the one of the fête, as he is evidently not arrayed for
festivity.”
She laughs a little, and Chester can see a roguish flash in eyes too
brilliant to be entirely shaded by the lace, as she glances at his long
cloak that is draped around him, and murmurs: “Accept my hospitality; I
have a missive to give you.”
Then with light graceful movement she sweeps up the stairs and is gone,
Guy thinking complacently: “She does not guess my brave array; I have a
surprise in store for this lady.”
“This way, Señor Capitan,” murmurs the soft-voiced flunkey, and the
Englishman is shown into a private reception room, the regal luxury of
which astounds him, for its tapestried walls and inlaid Flemish
furniture excel those of his own Queen at Hampton Court and
Westminster. Here in a few minutes is placed before him as dainty a
repast as ever hungry sailor did justice to. The table is covered with
snowy linen, massive silver and fairy Venetian glass, and the viands
are oysters from the Schelde, cold partridge, a delicate salad of fresh
lettuce with just a suspicion of garlic, and a bottle of the royal wine
of Xeres itself.
“Egad, this costume à la Leicester will make my lady open her bright
eyes,” thinks Guy, as he throws off his long boat cloak and displays
himself in the gallant attire that he has assumed before leaving the
ship. Though his handsome morocco boots have suffered somewhat from the
sea water, the rest of his costume has been pretty well protected.
Altogether Master Guy Stanhope Chester is very well pleased with
himself, as he sits down and makes short work of the repast in front of
him, pouring down the wine of Xeres into his benumbed frame from a huge
silver drinking beaker, and finding himself silently and deftly waited
upon by the man servant. Thinking to discover more of the lady he has
rescued, Chester suggests to the lackey, “A fine fête your mistress
gives this night!”
“Yes!” answers the servitor, proud of the grandeur of his house. “We
have for the entertainment of our guests, rederykers from Ghent who
will give us declamation and farce, two gipsy girls imported from
Andalusia, our own court fool to make us merry, also the daughter of
the ex-burgomaster, who will dance for us in her father’s
highest-priced silks. I shall contrive to get into the hall to see her
prance; the Flemish wench has very pretty ankles, and the airs of a
countess,” guffaws the fellow.
But he says naught of the lady of the barge, and, the meal being
finished, the table is cleared by several flunkies in gorgeous
liveries, the resources of the house being apparently princely.
“Odds doubloons!” soliloquizes the young man, watching the last of the
lackeys disappear. “The Countess de Mansfeld’s hospitality is very
taking!”
Then a sudden coldness flies through his veins, in spite of the
generous wine, as he remembers that he is eating the salt of the
Spaniard in the Citadel of Antwerp.
But now suddenly the cold jumps from his body; he springs up with a
start, his eyes gazing for one moment in rapture and admiration, and
the next in a kind of dazed surprise, his hand seeking his breast
feeling something beneath his satin doublet as if to be sure that it is
really there.
For a girlish form of wondrous beauty and grace, with the fair skin and
deep, lustrous, languid, but vivacious eyes, peculiar to the purest
blood and highest loveliness of Castile, arrayed in evening dress, of
velvet court train and shimmering silk and lace stomacher, that shows
ivory shoulders and arms, stands before him, and the soft voice that
has charmed him all this night in a mixture of coquetry and shyness
says: “I thought you might like to see the face of her whom to-night
you saved from the Dutch pirates!” Then she laughs lightly and murmurs:
“If they had only known who I was I suppose the Flemish outlaws would
have cut my throat,” giving a little gesture across the white ivory
column that supports her lovely head, “before even you could have
recaptured me.”
“Who under heaven can she be?” gasps Guy to himself, clutching again at
his bosom. “She is the lady of the miniature, but who—WHO?”
But surprise and admiration are not all on his side.
As he rises the lady standing before him sees a gallant, well-knit
figure of six feet in height, stalwart shoulders, strong arms, active,
lithe body; above all this a face of manly determination, bronzed by
weather, giving almost the appearance of a brunette to a fair Saxon
cheek, though this is contradicted by light chestnut hair, blue, but
determined eyes, and a fair drooping mustache, which conceals a mouth
remarkable for its firmness. Altogether a manly man—one fitted to make
a woman’s heart beat a thousand to the minute; one fitted to love like
a troubadour and fight like a paladin for what he wanted in this world,
and standing a very good chance to get it; one who, at all events, for
this evening, makes the blood of the lady who faces him rush very
warmly through her veins, and brings even a greater brightness to her
eyes, though these were bright enough before.
Not that she has never seen handsome men, for most of the Spanish
chivalry of her age have bowed before her. But this new type, this
Anglo-Saxon manliness, this wealth of brawn, these great big honest
English eyes, this boy’s forehead and man’s face, make her heart beat a
little differently than ever dark-eyed Spanish grandee or soft
mustachioed Italian cavalier or knight of France or stolid Netherland
noble had made it beat before.
The same motive seems to actuate them both—involuntarily their hands
clasp.
But astonishment is too great in Chester—he forgets the Spanish
salutation, and the lady, laughing lightly, draws her hand away,
murmuring: “No kiss? You—you slight me!”
“Slight you! Is that a slight?” And in a second the lady utters a faint
cry of astonishment, perhaps even of terror, for Guy Chester,
forgetting the Spanish form of salutation, has given her a good,
whole-souled honest English kiss, such as the son of the squire was
wont to bestow on the fair lips of maids as they stood under the
mistletoe bough at Christmas tide.
“Madre de Dios!” cries the girl, blushing with almost a ruby light, “I
meant my hand. Holy Virgin! what a mistake. If the Countess had seen
it”—then, in spite of herself, she laughs, though she droops and turns
away her head.
Of this Guy takes advantage—for her beauty is of a kind to make men
crazy. In an instant he has taken the soft, exquisite, patrician
fingers in his, and has rectified the mistake of Anglo-Saxon fervor and
impetuosity.
But just the same, this kiss on the lips has done his business, and
also that of the lady, though at present she doesn’t know it. She says
hurriedly: “I have told the Countess de Mansfeld of your service to me.
She would have begged your attendance at the fête, but I had presumed
you were not in the costume of ceremony. I see my mistake. You are
gallantly arrayed. Will you not join in our festival?”
“I beg you not,” answers Guy more hurriedly, for he knows in the
glittering throng he will have no such chance of a tête-à-tête as he
has now.
“Ah, you fear your being absent without leave from Romero’s Sicilians.
They are quartered at Middelburg, I believe. That accounts for your
coming by ship. But,” the lady goes on earnestly, “I have thought about
that. If you are questioned in Antwerp, say that you have come as their
Eletto from the officers to demand when their back pay and arrears
shall be made good. For since the Queen of England stole from us eight
hundred thousand crowns, you know no soldier in Brabant, Flanders nor
Friesland has had pay. Make such a statement as that, and it will
probably save you from any further questioning on the subject of
written leave of absence from Romero.”
“Egad!” thinks Guy, “I wonder what she would say if she knew I had had
a great hand in stealing that eight hundred thousand crowns.” But he
goes on very earnestly, for the lady has apparently forgotten her
embarrassment and her eyes are looking straight into his: “Many thanks
for your kind suggestion, Doña Hermoine. I will remember it if
questioned by provost marshal. But,” here his eyes make hers droop
before his, “I am more pleased than you can imagine at your
suggestion—not that it may save me from arrest, but that it shows me
that while away from me you had mind of me.”
“In that case permit me to show you that I thought of you more than you
even now imagine,” answers the girl, blushing at the admiration with
which the young gentleman is regarding her. “I also wrote a
missive—this. After you have rejoined your command, at the first
convenient opportunity present this at headquarters, and I think it
will insure you a colonelcy.” With this she hands him a note, at which
he starts astounded, for it is addressed to “Don Fernando Alvarez de
Toledo, Duke of Alva, Viceroy of Spain.”
“Who the devil can she be?” thinks Guy, but he has no time to waste on
queries; surprises come fast upon him. The girl says hurriedly: “The
Countess de Mansfeld and her guests await me. This fête is in my
honor;” then adds in a faltering tone that gives Guy one great gasp of
hope: “To remain longer would invite comment,” touching a silver
hand-bell on the table.
And he, hearing this knell of parting joy, knowing that it may mean
death to him to see her more, and dominated by that wild passion which
comes but once in a man’s life-time, and makes him know that she, of
all the beings of this earth, is the one for whom, if necessary, he
would die, mutters agitatedly: “Then there is but time to thank you
with my whole heart for your kindness to an unknown one; to tell you—”
but his eyes are speaking faster than his lips, and with an affrighted
“Madre Mia!” she draws fluttering back, as he, made desperate by
approaching footsteps, whispers three words: “I love you!”
To which she gasps: “No! no! you don’t know who I am!”
And he, dropping on one knee, whispers: “Were you the Queen of Spain
I’d tell you that I loved you!” and presses on her jeweled hand the
kiss of truth and devotion eternal.
But the servitor is entering, and she speaks, haughty and commanding,
as if she were the Queen of Spain: “Order an ensign to escort Captain
Guido with all due honor from the Citadel.”
A quick rush of silk and flutter of laces and she is at the door of the
room, but turns as if regretful of her going.
And he, gazing at her, his heart in his eyes, sees a picture that he
never forgets; for the girl stands in graceful attitude of fairest
youth, arrayed in laces, silks and glittering gems, with bare white
neck and snowy maiden bosom; one little Andalusian foot in fairy web of
Brussels and tiny slipper of velvet advanced from under her short
petticoat of lace and silk, and one white hand draping the tapestry of
the door above her, the other motioning farewell.
He makes hurried steps towards her and whispers: “Is it eternal?”
“Eternal? How solemn!” she tries to laugh, “Remember me by this!” and,
taking from her white finger a ring set with one bright flaming ruby,
drops it into his astonished hand, and flits from view.
And as he turns away he gives one great, deep-drawn breath of hope. For
in her eyes has come something that has answered to his words: “Were
you the Queen of Spain I love you!”
CHAPTER III.
THE SIX DRUNKARDS OF BRUSSELS.
A moment after, as Chester presses the ring upon his little finger, a
young Spaniard, almost a boy, with dark fiery eyes and ornamented by an
incipient mustache that he attempts to curl fiercely, in full uniform
with breastplate and plumed steel cap, enters the apartment and says
briskly: “I am the officer deputed to escort you from the Citadel,
señor. Permit me to present myself as Ensign José de Busaco, of
Mondragon’s Arquebusiers.”
“And in return,” answers Guy, throwing on his boat cloak and preparing
to follow the young man, “I beg to announce myself as the Capitan Guido
Amati, of Romero’s Musketeers.”
“Of the Middelburg garrison, I presume,” remarks the ensign, as they
leave the house together. “I suppose you have run up for a little
roistering at Antwerp. Middelburg is a desperately sleepy place; I was
quartered there three years ago. Brabant is slow also now since we
smashed Louis of Nassau up at Jemmingen. I cut ten German throats
there,” adds the boy very fiercely and very proudly.
“Diablo! You are a fighter,” mutters Guy.
“Pooh! these German burghers and townspeople were nothing against us
Spanish veterans,” replies Ensign de Busaco. “We killed eight thousand,
you remember, and lost only eight men. That was Alva’s generalship. He
has put up a big monument to himself over there,” and the boy points
across the great enceinte of the citadel through which they are passing
on their way to the main gate leading to the city.
Following his gesture in the gloom Chester can see the pedestal of that
great statue made of the cannon taken at Jemmingen, which the
pacificator and ravager of the Netherlands is erecting to his own honor
and glory, greatly to the disgust of Philip of Spain, who does not care
to have his generals too famous.
“Jake Yongling has made a great figure of the Viceroy. It is sixteen
feet high, and with the pedestal nearly thirty. Here’s the last one of
the arms,” continues the boyish warrior, giving a careless kick to the
representation in iron of his general, lying on the ground. Then he
whispers mysteriously: “They say this statue has a secret. What does
the Duke with his tenth penny tax, eh; where does he put the money?”
But, passing this, they are soon at the great military causeway that
leads to the drawbridge across the moat that gives egress to the
Esplanade of the city. Above the massive archway of its heavy gate,
chiseled in stone, is a shield with a royal castle with three towers,
on each a raven, and each guarded by a wolf—the arms of Alva; beneath,
the collar of the Golden Fleece, from which hangs, as if in mockery of
this country conquered by blood and fire, a representation of the Lamb
of God. This decoration is easily revealed to Guy as he passes by
flaming flambeaux, some of which are held in the hands of the guard and
others stuck in the niches in the wall.
The military etiquette of the place compels Chester’s attendant to
report to the officer of the day.
To do this they enter a guard-room, well lighted by a dozen burning
candles, and while the young ensign is making his report and receiving
order for the lowering of the drawbridge, Chester carelessly looking
over a number of military placards on the dingy wall, sees one that,
sound as are his nerves, causes him a quiver, for it reads as follows:
LARGESS!
THREE THOUSAND CAROLUS GUILDERS!
Whereas, a certain Englishman named Guy Stanhope Chester, and
better known among the inhabitants of these Netherlands as De
Eersteling der Engelschen (The First of the English), who has been
disowned and disavowed by his Queen, Elizabeth of England, on March
twenty-first of the year 1571, resisted arrest by our own armed
Spanish galley, Santa Cruz, and has since been acting against the
weal of these provinces of Spain, killing and murdering the
soldiers and sailors of Philip Rex, this will be warranted for any
governor of our towns or garrisons to make payment of the above sum
to any one delivering the body or head of said named Guy Stanhope
Chester, whom we hereby proclaim as pirate and outlaw, by order of
(Signed) ALVA, Viceroy.
(Countersigned) Juan de Vargas, President of the Council.
This is posted up among various military orders pertaining to the
Citadel, and one or two other proclamations of outlawry or taxes. After
the first emotion Guy reads it calmly, and is relieved that the
description attached to the proclamation is faulty in several
particulars.
“All right, Captain Guido! I’ve got the order!” says the young ensign,
clapping him on the shoulder. Then he continues: “Ah! you’re reading
about the First of the English,” and as they turn away together he runs
on vivaciously: “Three thousand Carolus guilders! That would be an
addition to my pay. Wouldn’t I like to get my hands on him! Three
thousand guilders! We’d have a banquet, wouldn’t we, Señor Capitan,
bought by the pirate’s head!”
Here the young Spaniard is cut short in his speech by the necessity of
giving the countersign and passing himself and his companion through
the gates, as the drawbridge is lowered. This is easily accomplished,
as a strong detachment of the garrison are under arms, and a portion of
the troops have just moved out to reinforce the Spanish guard in the
town and to give as much assistance as possible in protecting the
property of the government that is endangered upon the wharves and
quays of Antwerp by the flood, which is apparently still rising; the
town being still lighted up and the church bells still ringing out
their alarms.
“Here I must leave you,” says De Busaco, after they have passed the
drawbridge and the last line of sentries; “What inn will you lodge at?
the Red Lion? That has the best wine, I think.”
“No,” answers Guy shortly, for he has considered this point; “I shall
rest at the Painted House. It is more quiet.”
“Is it?” laughs the young man. “You don’t know what’s going to happen
there to-morrow. Par Dios! half the burghers of the city will be there
to see it, and half the officers of the garrison. You have not heard
the news? The great painter, the Raphael of the Netherlands, Frans
Floris, has accepted the wager of the ‘Six Drunkards of Brussels’ that
he will drink them all under the table at one sitting. Sapristi! from
stories about him, I believe he’ll do it. I shall come in to see it; I
pray I may meet you there!”
“Very well, come in and drink a flagon with me!” says Chester, thinking
that being seen with this Spanish officer will be additional passport
to him in this city of his enemies, with a price set on his head. At
this young De Busaco, for the two have chatted together quite jovially
as they have passed along, and have grown to be rather en comrade,
remarks: “You see your way across the Esplanade; the street of the
Beguins is straight ahead of you!” and with a friendly salute marches
back to the Citadel.
For one second the Englishman turns after him, a question that has been
on his mind every instant since he left her, is now full upon his lips.
The next moment he pauses, thinking, “No—to ask from the officer in
whose charge she placed me the name and station of my—my love—” he
rolls the sound in his mind as if it were a very sweet morsel—“would be
too dangerous. I at least should know the lady I have escorted to
Antwerp.”
So he strides across the Esplanade, which is kept free of trees and all
other impediment to the fire of the guns of the Spanish Citadel, that
dominates this Flemish town. Cogitating upon this being of his dream,
Chester mutters: “That painter can tell me, he knows,” and quickens his
pace.
A moment after the Englishman finds himself at the entrance of the
great street of the Beguins, which leads into the heart of the city.
Here, clapping his hands several times, he calls out: “Link boy! Light!
Link boy!” which in the course of a little time brings to him a
wandering urchin of the street carrying a flaming pine torch.
“Which way, your nobleness?” asks the Arab, for Guy’s manner and
bearing are patrician.
“To Wool street! The house of Jacques Touraine.”
“Oh! The blood-letter and barber,” answers the boy. “I know his painted
pole.”
So skipping along ahead of the young Englishman’s rapid strides, they
proceed down the street of the Beguins, lighted occasionally by lamps
hanging from the gable ends of the houses of the burghers, and pass by
the imposing Church of our Dear Lady of Antwerp, now known as the
Cathedral Notre Dame, from which the chimes come every quarter of an
hour, silvery and sweet upon the midnight air. Then they dive into the
labyrinth of narrow streets filled with the mediæval filth that still
clings to them even to this day, making toward the northern end of the
town.
A few minutes of struggling through close alleys and they stop at a
long pole painted in alternate stripes of red, blue and white, that
distinguishes the house of Monsieur Jacques Touraine, the little French
leecher, surgeon, blood-letter and barber.
Late as it is there is no need to knock and rouse him, for this
gentleman is in front of his door, talking excitedly in his Gallic way
to several of his neighbors. He has a little child of some seven years
of age by the hand, and is saying nervously: “Mon Dieu! if the tide
reaches here!”
“Drommelsch!” answers one of his companions, “The devil himself
couldn’t make the flood run up this hill! The mark of the deluge of
1300 is fifty feet below us.” Then he gives a hideous laugh and jeers:
“How you French hate water.”
Breaking in upon this colloquy, Guy beckons the barber to one side and
says to him: “Is the painter who lodges with you, Antony Oliver, in
to-night?”
The answer he gets is discouraging: “No, he is in Brussels.”
“Ah!” assents Guy, the corners of his mouth drooping at these words,
for it is this Oliver he has braved so much to see, and he dares not
remain long in Antwerp. Then he asks anxiously: “Do you know when he
will return?”
“To-morrow. He will come with his master, the Duke of Alva, to-morrow.
He is herald and under-secretary to the Viceroy.”
“Yes!” cries the little boy, “I’m so glad of it, because when Monsieur
Oliver comes we have so much pigeon pie. I like pigeon pie—don’t you?”
“Desperately,” laughs Guy, relieved at the knowledge of the painter’s
quick return.
“Then I hope you won’t ask Monsieur Oliver for my share of pigeon pie,”
babbles the child. “Perhaps, though, we won’t get any—a man carried so
many pigeons away to-day.”
“Well, here’s a stiver to buy pigeon pie for yourself, my little man,”
laughs Chester, giving the child a coin. Then he says to the father:
“You are sure about your information?”
“Oh, I think so. You can make absolutely sure by asking his great
friends, the Bodé Volckers. They will certainly know. He is a nice man,
this Oliver, and a great painter—at least, he thinks himself a great
painter. He has my son Achille as his student—my youngest is the little
Maredie, the one who likes pigeon pie,” babbles the Frenchman, who has
apparently been relieved from fear of the flood and pleased by Guy’s
douceur to his child. Then he queries suddenly: “Haven’t I seen you
before? You came to visit Monsieur Antony six months ago.”
“Yes,” answers the Englishman shortly, and to prevent further
interrogation queries: “Can you tell me where the Bodé Volckers’ live?”
“Oh, every one knows that; he is our ex-Burgomaster, the merchant
prince, Niklaas Bodé Volcker, who lives on the Place de Meir.”
“Ah, the Place de Meir, thank you, señor,” answers Guy. He turns away,
and calling the link boy again, says: “Bodé Volcker’s!”
“That means two stivers more,” cries the urchin; “anyone that would
visit a burgomaster’s could afford two stivers.”
“Four, if you take me there quickly.”
“Four? Pots dit en dat! you must be a count,” cries the delighted
child, and, skipping vivaciously before his patron, he soon guides him
back past the cathedral to the magnificent residence where old Bodé
Volcker, merchant prince of that day, whose argosies sailed to the
Indies, the Baltic and the Mediterranean, lived in great state and pomp
and wealth, but for all that was still only a merchant, trader and
burgher; and to the haughty nobles of that day nothing more than the
dust of the earth—unless they wanted to borrow his money. But as has
always been the case, great financial success has prompted social
ambition. Niklaas Bodé Volcker’s family is even now knocking at noble
and aristocratic doors.
Evidences of this comes to Guy almost as he reaches the portals of the
merchant.
The house is pretentious, being built of cut stone around a large
courtyard, the archway to this permitting a carriage to drive in, and
acting as the entrance to the mansion itself, which is lighted up, one
portion more brilliantly than the other. This is apparently the
counting and sample room of Niklaas Bodé Volcker himself. From out its
open doors several clerks and half a dozen porters are passing, and big
vans of goods are arriving loaded with what are apparently cloths,
silks and satins from the flooded water-front. Everyone seems to be on
the alert.
“I must see Heer Bodé Volcker for a moment,” says Guy to a bustling
apprentice.
“Must see Heer Bodé Volcker to-night?” gasps the man; “the night in
which his warehouses are all flooded?”
“I must see him. Do you hear me, fellow? Quick!” mutters Chester, who,
being of gentle blood, is accustomed to command merchants, burghers,
tradesmen and the like.
“That’s impossible, unless you go to the docks,” returns the
apprentice. “Heer Bodé Volcker is seeing to the removal of his
perishable merchandise at his big warehouse below the English quay.”
Baffled in this direction, our adventurer turns his steps from the
counting room and going to the principal entrance of the house finds a
voluble servant girl in conversation with a man who is apparently the
family coachman, the horses and equipage being drawn up in front of the
house. They are evidently discussing the inundation of the city, for
the girl is interspersing her periods with a good many excited “Och
Armes!” and “Groote genades!”
As there are lights in the front windows of the house Guy immediately
addresses the girl, saying: “Is it possible for me to see any of the
members of Niklaas Bodé Volcker’s family?”
“I’m not sure,” is the answer. “If Mijn Heer would step in I’ll ask.”
She emphasizes this with a respectful courtesy, as Guy’s ready hand
puts a few stivers into hers. His manner is commanding, his appearance
aristocratic, his hand is generous, and the girl is anxious to do his
bidding.
Turning toward the right she shows the way into a large vaulted room
hung with Spanish stamped leather, the furniture and appointments of
which have all the indications of wealth, even luxury, as it has
tapestries upon its floor, and many of the articles of its furnishing
have been imported from Italy, Spain, and even Turkey itself, some of
the rugs being from the looms of Ispahan and Bokara. The apartment is
illuminated by a handsome swinging candelabra full of lighted wax
candles. From this room a carved oaken stairway leads apparently to the
upper apartments of the house.
“Wiarda Schwartz!” cries the girl; “Wiarda!” clapping her hands.
Receiving no answer to this she says: “I’ll be back in a minute,” and
running lightly upstairs returns in a few minutes followed by a bright,
vivacious, dark-eyed lady’s maid, whose attire indicates she is the
favorite of her mistress, and whose short muslin skirts and white, high
Friesian peasant’s cap denotes the soubrette.
In answer to the girl’s rather off-hand courtesy, Chester remarks: “I
am the Captain Guido Amati, of Romero’s foot. Can I see Vrouw Bodé
Volcker for a moment?”
“Not unless you go to the other world,” answers the girl pertly. “Vrouw
Bodé Volcker has been dead four years.”
“That is going further than walking to the warehouses for her widower,”
smiles Guy. Then he asks: “Can I see the mistress of the house?”
“Oh, you mean Freule Wilhelmina Bodé Volcker,” says the girl. Next adds
majestically: “Freule Wilhelmina Bodé Volcker is at present at the fête
of the Countess de Mansfeld.”
Remembering the Countess Mansfeld’s lackey’s slurring remarks about the
daughter of an ex-burgomaster dancing in his highest priced silks for
the entertainment of the company, it is difficult for Chester to fight
down a chuckle. However, being very anxious for information, he
suggests: “Then, perhaps, you can answer my question. Do you know when
Antony Oliver, the herald of the Duke of Alva, is returning to
Brussels?”
And this ruins Captain Guido Amati in the estimation of Wiarda
Schwartz, maid in waiting to the ex-burgomaster’s daughter. She says
with pert arrogance: “Well, I never! That good-for-nothing, beggarly
painter? I know nothing about him. I had supposed Mijn Heer Captain was
acquainted with the nobility!”
As Guy passes out of the house without information, he sees
Mademoiselle Schwartz’s pert nose very much up in the air and
Mademoiselle Schwartz’s red stockinged ankle and shapely foot patting
the floor in jeering gesture.
“There is nothing but to be quiet and sleep until morning. I might as
well get some of that,” cogitates the Englishman. “God only knows what
to-morrow will bring to me.”
So getting hold of the link boy again, who has evidently loitered about
in hopes that Guy’s visit at the Bodé Volckers’ will be short, Chester
gives him his orders, and is conducted to the inn known as “The Painted
House,” celebrated for its wine and beer, and situated on the
Shoemarket opposite the Place de Meir. It is but a few steps from the
residence of the merchant, and can be easily distinguished, Guy notes
as he approaches, by its high, painted gables, which give it its name.
Lights are showing from its lower rooms, the pentice or wooden awning
in front of it is ornamented by evergreens and shrubs and illuminated
by swinging lamps; chairs and tables are under these, on which lounge
several of the better-to-do burghers of the town, a couple of Spanish
officers, and half a dozen travelers. Late as it is the sound of
revelry comes from the main inner room.
He is welcomed at the door by mine host, the obsequious Herman Van
Oncle, who is making a fortune out of his famous supper parties and
weddings, for this is the house of festivity par excellence of the
town. Den Rooden Leeuw (“Red Lion”) may be more aristocratic, but for
wine bibbing, beer drinking and gorgeous wedding festivities that last
three days at a time, “The Painted House” of Antwerp easily holds the
vantage.
“Welcome to the Painted House!” cries the voluble innkeeper. “Welcome
señor—colonel?”
“No, captain,” says Guy.
“Welcome to anyone who is in the employ of the State, civil or
military.”
“I would like a room and bed.”
“Impossible!”
“Impossible?”
“Yes; my house has been crowded all day.”
“You must give me a cot.”
“Well, a cot over the stable. My house has been full—you have heard the
news! The great drinking bout takes place to-morrow between our
celebrated artist, Frans Floris and the Six Drunkards of Brussels.
People have come from the neighboring places to see it. A delegation is
here from Brussels itself. It is rumored that the Duke in person will
arrive to-morrow. Perhaps he will honor me—perhaps he will come to see
the greatest drinking bout that has ever taken place in Flanders,
Brabant or Holland! I shall have twenty barrels of Rhine wine on tap.”
“Twenty barrels for six drunkards?” laughs Chester.
“Oh no; all the town will be here, all the town will get drunk also!”
“I wish the town would be more quiet,” says Guy, who thinks he will
have little chance of sleep, judging by the convivial sounds that come
to them from within.
“Hush!” whispers the innkeeper nervously, as they enter. “Don’t disturb
them. They are,” and his eyes expand in admiration, “they are the Six
Drunkards of Brussels taking supper!”
“Apparently the Six Drunkards of Brussels,” remarks Guy, who is
unimpressed by the sounding title, “are not holding themselves back
much for to-morrow. They are doing pretty well now.”
“Yes, that is the beauty of it,” says mine host, waving his Flemish
hands in admiration. “That is the reason they are called drunkards;
nothing will ever make them drunk. They have finished six gallons of
wine and are just commencing. They have a lovely pigeon pie in front of
them; I made it myself from birds furnished by Señor Vasco de Guerra
himself. He is the leader of the Six Drunkards, though the betting is
still two to one on our Netherland painter, the greatest artist of his
day, the Raphael of the low countries, our honor, our glory, our debtor
(for he owes me four thousand Carolus guilders), but still the pride of
Antwerp! Will you not have bite and sup, señor Capitan, before retiring
to the attic over the stable?”
“Yes, a quart of Rhine wine will be enough for me,” says Guy. “Or,
rather,” he suggests, “as you are celebrated for your beer, I will take
some of that,” the Englishman upholding his national beverage.
“The finest in all Flanders. And then we have some malt from London.”
“That’s it!” cries Guy, forgetting his Spanish character, “English malt
for me!” then checks himself and mutters: “I’ve been drinking Rhine
wine all day.”
His host departing, he lounges about while his meal is being prepared,
tracing figures with his toe on the white sand of the floor, and
reading among other placards on the walls of this, the wine room of the
inn, one announcing the grand drinking bout between Frans de Vriendt,
nicknamed Floris, and the six most celebrated topers of Brussels. This
is placarded side by side with Alva’s generous offer of three thousand
carolus guilders for the Englishman’s head.
A moment later he finds himself placed at a table near the one occupied
by the six champions of Brussels. Carelessly he gets interested in
them, for they are six of the most remarkable looking people his eyes
have ever rested upon.
During their conversation he catches their names.
Vasco de Guerra, apparently the leader of the party; Tomasito, called
by his companions the one-eyed, an ensign of De Billy’s Waloons, who
lost an optic at Aremburg’s defeat, and Pablo Mendez are Spanish
officers, and apparently, from their conversation, consider themselves
nobles of rank and distinction. The other champions are more modest in
their self-assertion, except as regards the amount of liquid that they
can consume. Two are addressed as Alphonse de la Noel and Conrad de
Ryk, both Netherlanders, one of Brabant and the other of Holland; the
last member of the party is a sneaking little Italian, designated as
Guisseppi Pisa, a dealer in perfumes and women’s powders from the
capital.
Having nothing better to do as he drinks his beer, Guy Chester listens
to their conversation in a languid, dreamy way, as the exertions of the
night have made him very tired.
“Par Dios!” remarks Vasco de Guerra, who is tall and has big, opaque,
fishy eyes, and a long drooping mustache which has in it that single
lock of grey which is generally considered proof of extreme
dissipation, “I see our adversary Floris has painted a caricature of
us.”
“Diablo! Is it insulting?” cries Tomasito, the one-eyed, a little
Spaniard of diabolical disposition, famous as well for his cruelty on
the battle-field as for his dissipation in the banquet hall.
“No,” says Mendez, laughing, “only he has painted us all under the
table.”
“Sapristi!” chuckles the Italian Pisa. “He may paint us under the
table, but he can’t drink us under the table.” Then he calls: “Pot-boy!
another stoup of strong Rhine wine. I must get in training for
to-morrow’s bout. Marietta is coming from Brussels to do honor to my
drinking powers.” This is emphasized by a hideous wink and a leer at
his companions, who cry: “Brava! the health of Marietta, the prettiest
light of love in Brussels!” and pour down great flagons of wine in
compliment to wicked little Guisseppi, whose powders and laces have
captured the leader of the demi-monde of the capital.
While this is being brought Mendez exclaims: “Caramba! there are no
more pigeons in this pie,” withdrawing a knife with which he has been
exploring the open pasty before him, and licking his fingers
regretfully in the absence of a napkin. “You only gave us six pigeons,
Captain Vasco.”
“That was all I shot with my cross-bow,” answers De Guerra.
“You shot pigeons with your cross-bow?” jeers Conrad de Ryk.
“Certainly!—to-day—here!”
“Bah! your hand trembles, Vasco, as if you were paying over the five
hundred guilders we have wagered against the painter!” sneers De la
Noel.
“Notwithstanding, I shot them,” returns Vasco, a strange light coming
into his fishy eyes; “and I not only killed the six pigeons, but I
shall kill—another! We’ll have a banquet when I get my reward for his
head!” He grinds his teeth at these words.
“His head?” cries one.
“The reward of three thousand caroli for the Englishman’s caput?”
shouts another, pointing to the placard, and making Guy’s hand
involuntarily seek his sword.
“Bah!” chuckles Vasco. “Do you think I am going on the briny deep to
get seasick and have that English pirate cut my throat? No, there are
rewards nearer home, when I kill my seventh pigeon we’ll have more
pigeon pie and a carouse with a little of the money.”
This rather equivocal promise is greeted with cheers and a clattering
of beakers and flagons. The Six Drunkards of Brussels seem to like
pigeon-pie as well as the little son of the surgeon and blood-letter,
Jacques Touraine.
But Guy’s attention is called from the scene of conviviality. The host,
bowing before him, says humbly: “Señor capitan, your bed is ready, the
sheets are clean, nobody has slept in them for three days!”
Following Van Oncle, who carries a wax candle, Chester is escorted to a
loft over the stable, which is at least airy and well ventilated, as it
has several open windows which nobody has taken the trouble to close.
A moment after he finds himself practically alone—the only occupant of
the neighboring cots being in a drunken sleep, the others have not yet
come in. Securing his valuables (and most carefully of all that which
he deems the most valuable—the miniature of the lady whose name he does
not know, but whom he now knows he loves heart and soul), Captain Guy
Chester looks carefully to his arms, then goes to bed. Then taking a
last dreamy look at the fair, delicate face and glorious eyes and red
lips that he has kissed once, but swears to kiss again, he goes to
sleep calmly and peacefully in the city of his enemies, under the flag
of Spain and Alva, while in the room below, the streets about him, and
on the walls of every guard-house in Brabant and Flanders, are placards
offering three thousand carolus guilders for the head of the “First of
the English.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE PATRIOT PAINTER.
The sun is well up in the heavens when Guy opens his eyes. In contrast
to the night before, the gale has died away and the sun is shining
brightly as if to mock the farmers and peasants of the surrounding
fields and polders, whose cattle are still drowning or starving, for
the flood gives no signs of receding. A little of this Chester can see
as he makes hasty toilet; looking from his window he gets a glimpse of
the river, which is still at its height, and upon whose bosom still
float the carcasses of drowned sheep, cattle, hogs, and even human
beings.
But the city seems now to pay little heed to this. The gale has gone
down, ships are preparing to sail out of the Schelde for the Indies and
the Mediterranean; the merchants have removed their wares to places of
safety; mediæval commerce stops no more its battle of trade and
bargain, for the disasters of humanity—than that of to-day.
The hum of traffic comes floating up to Guy from the neighboring
Shoemarket and Egg streets. All the guilds of Antwerp are at work this
day, and seemingly happy, save that of the Butchers, which has lost
many fat beeves that have been pastured on the great meadows running
out to the big Kowenstyn dyke.
As it is late in the morning most of those who have occupied the
surrounding cots during the night have departed on their way.
Consequently Guy, having, after the manner of sailors, slept ready to
go on deck, slips on doublet and cloak uninterrupted save by the snores
of a toper who is still in drunken slumber.
Then going down to the wash-room of the house, upon the lower floor,
the Englishman makes hasty ablution, succeeding by the bribe of a
stiver in obtaining an unused towel for the purpose.
This being done, and feeling very bright, vivacious and cheery,
notwithstanding he catches glimpses of the placard in the wine room
offering a reward for his head, Chester passes out and makes his way
rapidly through the dirty alleys of the lower portion of the town to
Wool street. Remembering his unsuccessful inquiries at the Bodé Volcker
mansion, the Englishman has concluded that he will see if he can obtain
further information from the French blood-letter and barber about the
arrival of his lodger. For speed is vital to the business that has
brought Guy into the clutches of his enemies, and every moment that he
stays in the town of Antwerp adds to his danger of recognition and
arrest; too many Flemish traders from Zeeland and the islands of
Holland journey to this great commercial city, some of these know the
“First of the English” quite well by sight, and a few of them, for
three thousand carolus guilders would sell anything upon earth,
including themselves.
Arriving at the barber’s pole of Jacques Touraine, Chester receives a
pleasant surprise. The voluble little Frenchman darts out to meet him,
crying: “He is anxious for you; I told him you had asked for him!”
“He—who?” gasps Guy.
“Why, my lodger, the painter, Antony Oliver. He came in from Brussels
this morning. He is as eager to see you as you are to see him.”
But the last of this speech is lost upon the Englishman, who has darted
up two flights of stairs to the top of the house, where, under the
tiled gables, amid the swallows’ nests, is the lodging room and atelier
of Antonius Oliver (familiarly called Antony), geographical map maker,
herald and pursevant, and at times assistant secretary to Alva, Viceroy
of the Netherlands. This gentleman’s salary is not great; his position,
while partially confidential, is not very exalted; though it often
brings him into direct contact with the great Duke himself. For Oliver
has striven, with all his might and main to gain the confidence of his
master.
He is a native of Mons, near the French border of the Netherlands, and
is partly of Flemish and partly of Gallic extraction. At present he is
apparently washing the dust of travel from his face, as he makes his
appearance minus his cloak and doublet, towel in hand, and answers the
Englishman’s smart knock on his door.
“Ah!” he cries, his face full of sunny smile, “I am delighted to see
you, my friend, my Guido!”
“And so am I, Antony, my boy,” answers Chester, with hearty
outstretched hand. For a few weeks of supreme mutual danger have made
these two men as good comrades as years of ordinary friendship.
“So glad to see you,” goes on the Fleming, “and yet sorry.” He
whispers: “You know of the reward for you?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” answers Guy, shortly.
“Ah! at your inn?”
“No, in the guard-room of the Citadel.”
“Mon Dieu! You have been arrested and examined,” the painter gasps,
anxiously.
“No, I went as cavalier to a great court lady!” laughs the English
sailor. “For it I am to be promoted to a colonelship in Romero’s
musketeers!”
“Impossible! Tell me your story!”
“I will,” says Guy, “it contains the business that brought me to
Antwerp.”
“Yes,” answers the other, meditatively, “your business must be of the
greatest importance to make you again take this risk.”
“It is for the same old reason—my Queen!” whispers Guy; “Is there no
one about?”
“No; Achille, my apprentice, I have sent out on a long errand, as I
expected your coming and wanted to have private converse.”
“What long errand?”
“I sent him out to buy wine, bread, provisions, cheese, beef, on
credit. Achille is an active boy, if I had given him the money he would
have been back in half an hour.” Then carefully barring the door and
drawing a heavy curtain over it, Oliver says: “Tell me your story.”
“Then can you interpret these letters bearing, I think, upon the
welfare, yes, the life, of my sovereign?” whispers the Englishman. And
producing the packet wrapped in oiled silk which he had taken from the
body of the drowned Italian the evening before, Guy tells the artist
the curious story of the preceding night. His recital is punctuated by
vivacious exclamations of surprise, deep interest, and several times by
uproarious laughter from his Flemish listener.
As the Englishman finishes the painter takes up the conversation.
“Ah!” he exclaims, looking carefully at the documents, “you took these
from the body of the secretary of Chiapin Vitelli.” Then he adds: “I am
one of the few men who could read them. They are in the private cipher
used by the secret correspondence bureau of my master, my benefactor,
he who pays me my stipend, the man whose hand I kiss—he of Alva!” A
strange light coming into his eyes as he speaks of his benefactor. “The
reading is very simple when you know the key, which I have memorized
and have in my head—I dare not keep it anywhere else.”
“Then give me the meaning of these letters!”
“Certainly,” says the artist. “You can amuse yourself with my sketches
as I look over them.”
This he does hastily, while Guy passes the time examining a number of
studies in charcoal upon canvas and panels, apparently the work of the
young Fleming. At one side of the apartment is a marble slab used in
grinding colors, upon it a number of brushes, a palette, and some
little bladders of ground paint, such as were used by the artists of
that day. Upon an easel stands an unfinished picture of a fair haired,
blue eyed Flemish girl of great beauty, though it is of almost the
peasant style. This has been sketched after the manner of the Venetian
school upon what was known then as the red ground. At the back of the
apartment is a large curtain, apparently concealing some more important
work, as it is quite large, covering the whole rear of the garret floor
of the house.
“Don’t peep behind,” says the painter, looking up as Guy’s footsteps
approach the curtain. “I have a surprise for you there, I think,” and
pausing in his reading, he looks up with a quizzical expression at the
Englishman. “Something you will be interested in, I imagine; you could
not see the face of the fair one of the barge!” For Guy, in his
description of his evening’s adventure, has omitted, with the
instinctive delicacy of the gentleman and the lover, any account of his
interview at the house of the Countess de Mansfeld, with the lady he
rescued.
“What do you mean?” asks Chester, eagerly. “Wait for a moment,” and a
muttered exclamation of surprise calls Guy to the painter’s side, who
has apparently become greatly excited over the cipher letters.
Here he stands, impatient, awaiting the outcome of the Fleming’s
inspection of the documents.
A minute later Oliver looks up and remarks: “I can now tell you in
rough form the contents of these letters.”
“What are they?” inquires Guy eagerly.
“These are two letters, written by Chiapin Vitelli, Alva’s confidential
officer, and evidently given to his secretary—such is their value—to
deliver in person to one Ridolfi, an Italian, who is a banker in
London.”
“Ridolfi? Yes, I’ve heard of him. He has a great many dealings with
Italy; he is a goldsmith as well as banker; his place is on Cheapside,”
mutters Chester. “What about him?”
“Well, this is apparently a letter of a series, some of which must have
been answered, in which Alva is arranging with Ridolfi, who is
apparently the agent of the Duke of Norfolk, the man who would marry
the Queen of Scots, now in Elizabeth’s hands, for the poisoning of the
Queen of England!”
“The poisoning of my sovereign! Good God!” gasps Guy. A moment after,
forcing himself to calmness, he continues: “Yes; rumors of this or of a
similar plot have been brought to the notice of Lord Burleigh,
Secretary of State. You know it is to investigate such matters that I
am sent over here and disowned by my sovereign, who wishes at present
to appear at peace with Alva, but who, in her time, will have her
reckoning—and an English reckoning at that—with your Netherland
tyrant!”
“I know that. That is why I aid you,” mutters the painter. “Elizabeth
is the only hope of the Netherlands. We have been crushed and butchered
at Jemmingen, the Prince of Orange is now in exile, a fugitive in
Germany, France distracted with her own affairs, Coligny and Condé at
swords points with the league, can give us but uncertain aid—England is
our only hope. As such I have welcomed you as the ‘First of the
English’ to come to aid the Flemings. You will not be the last—I know
it! But”—here the light of patriotism comes into the painter’s face,
“we must do our part. As such I have condemned myself to live under the
most terrible suspense that can be put upon a man—a traitor in the very
household, at the very writing table, of the Spanish Viceroy, so that I
may give information of his movements to Louis of Nassau and William
the Silent. Discovery means—you know what!”
Then he laughs a ghastly laugh and whispers: “What would Alva, who
burns people alive slowly for eating meat on Friday; who beheads women
for sheltering their own husbands; who permits his troops to burn,
outrage, pillage and ravage defenseless burghers and peaceful citizens;
what would he do with a discovered spy in his own retinue? Are there
enough racks, thumb-screws and faggots for him?” he shudders; then adds
determinedly: “But all for my country!”
“And I all for my own,” answers Guy. “A price set upon my head as a
pirate, and all for my Queen. Elizabeth smiles on me at court, calls me
her valiant freebooter, yet tells the ambassador of Philip of Spain
that I am here on my own account, and disowns me; though she knows it
is for her interests, to guard her life, to discover such damnable
plots as these, that I take my life within my hand! Besides,” he goes
on, his eyes beginning to blaze, “I don’t love the Spaniards.”
“Personally,” remarks the Flemish painter, “I have found some very
pleasant gentlemen among them; though among those who flock here to
Alva’s banner are scoundrels innumerable. But it is for my country that
I live a life of suspense, each breath almost an apprehension.”
Looking at the painter, Guy sees that this is true. He is rather small
of figure, though well-built and agile; but has dark soft eyes,
singularly delicate, mobile lips for a man, and a high, intellectual
forehead. As Chester gazes, he is sure Antony Oliver is a brave man. At
the same instant he knows he is a man with such a terrible fate hanging
over him that his nerves are unstrung by constant and never-ending
apprehension.
However, he speaks to the point.
“I hate every Spaniard, gentleman or no gentleman, peasant or noble,
because I have a brother in the prisons of the Inquisition at
Hispaniola.”
“Poor fellow!” mutters the painter, with a little shudder. “In
Hispaniola! That’s a long way off.”
“Not for an English sailor. Seven years ago Dick and I, full of youth
and ardor, sailed with Captain Ned Lovell to the Spanish Main, and
traded there with the Dons of Hispaniola, and as we were Catholics,
lived quite comfortably in the town of Haytien, accumulating wealth.
Then I, with my doubloons and pieces of eight, returned to merry
England, leaving Dick to turn the rest of our merchandise into gold and
follow after. A year passed. Then no Dick; but word was brought me by
Hawkins coming back from his third voyage, that Dick had fallen in love
with a Spanish girl; that his rivals, for revenge, had denounced him as
an English heretic, and the—the Inquisition—.” The Englishman’s voice
is broken, there are tears in his eyes, though they burn fiercely.
“Then I was ready to hate the Spaniards and do Queen Elizabeth’s work,”
mutters Guy, after a moment’s pause, “the work that gave me this
miniature.”
“Can you tell me,” he says suddenly, producing the likeness, on ivory
set with diamonds, “the name and title of the lady whose face is here?”
“Oho!” chuckles the painter, a twinkle in his eye, “I had been
expecting some such question ever since you told me about the lady of
the barge. Did she give you this? Has she also been smitten by Cupid’s
dart?”
“What do you mean?” growls the Englishman, blushes showing beneath his
sun-burned skin.
“I mean,” laughs Antony, “that you are a man very deeply in love. In
your tale of last night every time you mentioned the ‘divinity of the
barge,’ the ‘fair unknown,’ the ‘graceful creature of the shadow,’ the
‘fairy-like form the gloom could not conceal,’ the ‘voice soft as an
angel’s,’ your manner betrayed that even the darkness had not prevented
your falling in love with the lady you rescued from our Sea Beggars;
that though she had been your captive, you really were hers. Did she
reciprocate enough to give you this?”
“No,” returns Guy, “I believe I’ve been in love with this picture ever
since I captured it three years ago.”
This answer astounds the painter. He murmurs: “I never supposed you
English a romantic race, but you prove to me that the Italians are as
beggars to you islanders in impetuous passion. In love with a picture?”
“Yes, it came to me under peculiar circumstances,” answers the
Englishman, a little sulkily perhaps, for the artist’s tone is somewhat
bantering. “Towards the end of ’68 I was playing tennis in a London
court. Elizabeth of England and her prime minister, Sir William Cecil,
now Lord Burleigh, sent for me. The Queen’s exchequer was empty. Five
Italian vessels bearing a loan from the bankers of Genoa to Alva, and
loaded with eight hundred thousand crowns in silver, on their way to
Antwerp—”
“Yes,” interjects the other with a chuckle, “I know—the money with
which the Duke intended to pay his troops—”
“Had been driven into the harbor of Southampton by privateers
commissioned by the Prince de Condé, who had been on the lookout to
seize this treasure. The Spanish ambassador had appealed to the Queen
for naval protection. Being at peace this must be accorded him, but
Elizabeth’s exchequer was empty, and harassed by milliner’s bills and
other feminine expenses, she had determined to have this silver for her
own. Cecil had sent for me, as he knew I spoke Spanish, and thought I
was the man for the business. They had already notified the Spanish
ambassador to make arrangements for the transport of the treasure from
Southampton to Dover by land, so that the Queen’s vessels could meet it
there. But while he was making his preparations I received the
following curious commission: I was to go down and offer ten thousand
crowns to the French privateers not to leave their position outside of
Southampton water, so the Genoese vessels dared not sail. Meanwhile the
Queen investigated and found the money was loaned by Italian merchants.
‘If they can loan to Alva, they can loan to me,’ she thought. Under the
private directions of the Queen of England I seized the eight hundred
thousand crowns of silver.”
“And that nearly drove Alva crazy! I can see him now,” laughs the
painter, “the morning he received the news twisting both his long
pendants of beard in impotent rage. Since then he has hated your Queen
and you who forced him to put this tenth penny tax on the Netherlands
to pay his troops. But what has the theft of Elizabeth of England to do
with your miniature, my marauder?”
“Only this,” answers Guy. “On board the Genoese vessel, when I made the
seizure, the only spoil I took for myself was this likeness. Judging
from the direction on the packet that contained it, that the lady whom
it represented must be living in the Netherlands, I was very happy to
accept Queen Elizabeth’s private commission to come over here and turn
sea rover in her cause, knowing that I took my life in my hand, but
also knowing it was my one chance of meeting in the flesh the face that
I have loved from that day to this. If that’s romance, make the best of
it! Who is she?”
“Ah!” says the painter, “In reply may I show you another picture?”
“Of whom? What do I care for pictures except this one? You artists are
always thinking of art—I think of flesh and blood, which beats art.”
“Does it beat THIS?” laughs Oliver, and drawing away the curtain from
the rear of the room he discloses an enormous altar piece, unfinished
except the central figure, the Madonna, at which Guy looks and gasps,
for it is the picture of the woman whose lips he had kissed the night
before, whose miniature he now holds in his hand, gazing alternately
from it to the magnificent altar piece figure, the Mother of God, on
the canvas. It has apparently been a work of love. The Englishman grows
red in the face, then deathly pale, and mutters: “You love her also!”
scowling at his supposed artistic rival.
“No,” answers Antony, “I do not love the lady; though I love my
picture. You need not be jealous my dear Englishman, the woman I love
is a much more flesh-and-blood being—Juffer Wilhelmina, daughter of the
ex-burgomaster Bodé Volcker. Her blonde picture is on that easel. I
don’t hesitate to tell you my secret, as I have yours. But this,” he
looks affectionately at the canvas, “is a work of love, love for my
art. It is my one hope to leave a name in the world. If I can finish my
altar piece before the time comes when the hand that is forever over me
crushes me in its iron grasp, I hope to be remembered—not as the
patriot, but as the artist!”
“And, by heaven! you will be,” cries Guy, who would certainly give this
picture of the woman he loves the post of honor and the wreath of fame,
“for you have painted not only a Madonna, but a goddess, fit to be the
mother of God.” Here he crosses himself devoutly and looks lovingly at
the picture again, which well merits his admiration, not only for the
loveliness of its model, but for the originality of its effects and
richness of its coloring.
Unlike the picture on the easel, this altar piece is sketched upon a
pearl gray background, the only completed figure in it being the
central Madonna, the likeness of Guy’s love.
The girl stands posed in virgin beauty; her white, blue-veined feet
rest light as a fairy’s on a rainbow of softest sunlight; her form,
outlined with all the beauty curves of woman, but full of maiden grace
and lightness, draped by robe of softest clinging white, and decked
with floating azure mantle. Above the ivory throat is the face of
exquisite brunette beauty, those soft though shining eyes, those lips
of coral red, those cheeks of changing lilies and roses that made Guy’s
heart beat so madly before, and make it beat so madly now.
The whole, deified by the grand soul that shines out from the lovely
face, backgrounded by and floating upon sun rays, and full of those
wondrous effects of golden light and deep warm shadow peculiar to the
school of the Venetian Tintoretto, makes Guy very eager; for it is the
breathing, speaking portrait of the woman he loves, yet still is not
equal to her.
For this is but one view of her mobile loveliness, and the night before
she had given him a different effect, a varied expression, a new
rapture, each time he had gazed upon her changing, vivacious, yet
always noble beauty.
He cries impatiently to the painter: “You don’t answer my question. You
only show me what makes me more hungry for her name. Tell me who she
is?”
The answer that comes startles him, dismays him. “She is,” says Oliver,
sighing his words, “the only thing upon this earth that Alva loves!”
“No, no, I’ll not believe,” gasps Chester.
“You must! She is the only thing he adores, the only being to whom the
Viceroy of Spain ever gives the loving ‘thou’.”
“I can’t believe you,” cries the Englishman, clenching his hands in
agony. “She is too pure to be the love of any one, least of all of that
fiend.”
“She is not too pure,” says the painter slowly, “to be his daughter.”
“His DAUGHTER? Saints above us!”
“Yes, Hermoine de Alva is the Duke’s natural daughter. Her mother, the
Countess di Perugia, an Italian lady, of great beauty, died four years
ago. Since then the Duke has given Doña Hermoine his own name. She is
the purest, sweetest, noblest flower that Spain has ever sent to the
Netherlands. Her mind is as bright, her intellect as strong, as her
father’s, but her heart is as tender as his is cruel. Still, she is the
daughter of Alva, and as such, my Englishman, I fear your love is
hopeless! Beware! Your brother loved a Spanish girl!”
To this Guy answers nothing. In a flash he feels the truth of the
painter’s last crushing remark. But a moment after Anglo-Saxon pluck
springs up again in him, and he mutters:
“By heaven! what a triumph to pluck the thing Alva loves most out of
his hands; to make his own daughter that he prizes the most of anything
on this earth the bride, the honored bride, of the man upon whose head
he has placed three thousand carolus guilders reward—the sea
pirate—‘The First of the English.’” and he bursts out into mocking,
triumphant, but loving laughter.
CHAPTER V.
“THE LION’S JAWS GAPE FOR ME!”
“Bravo!” cries the Fleming, “Bravo! But first she must love you.”
“I’ll make her love me,” exclaims Chester, looking at the ruby ring
upon his finger that seems to him not the red light of danger, but the
beacon of Cupid.
“Well, I’m glad you are so confident. I wish I were equally so.” the
painter sighs; then goes on energetically: “But now to business. You
cannot linger over your love-making. Queen Elizabeth must be warned of
the plots against her life, and of Ridolfi, the Italian banker in
London.”
“Oh, we’ll take good care of him,” says Guy, savagely. “I must join my
ship this evening and sail for England, and to do this I must get the
words of to-night so I can pass the gates of the town after sunset.”
“Why not leave at once?”
“Because,” answers the Englishman, “you have not yet given me the
translation of those letters. That will take you some time.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I shall not make the translation; I shall simply give you the
key to the cipher, then they can be interpreted in England, and any
other letters of this correspondence that may come into your hands will
be equally readable by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers. It will save
you many dangerous visits here.” With this the artist sits down and
writes in a few minutes the explanation of the cipher.
Then saying: “Place that with the letters,” he gives it to Guy, smiles
at him, and murmurs: “Now I should think you would be in a hurry to
leave, with that price upon your head.”
“I’m not going until to-night,” answers Chester, almost surlily. “The
evening tide will serve as well for my vessel—it will not delay me
much. Besides—” here he catches sight of the painter’s face in
quizzical smile, and cries out: “Gadzooks, man! you don’t think I’m
going to leave Antwerp without seeing her again.” He waves his hand
toward the divine beauty of the face upon the canvas lighted up by the
morning sun, and shining upon him not only with heavenly, but with
earthly, love—at least so this audacious young man imagines.
“Ah! going to ask papa for the young lady?” jeers the painter.
“Not yet, though I have a letter of introduction to him,” remarks Guy,
piqued into producing the billet given to him by Doña Hermoine the
evening before, the one addressed to Alva, Viceroy of Spain.
“And you haven’t opened it?” queries Oliver, examining the missive.
“Certainly not; it is sealed.”
“Ah! my boy,” rejoins the painter, “you have too difficult a game to
play to be over scrupulous. You must know how you stand with this lady
before you attempt to see her again.” Then he horrifies Guy, for he
says: “You have powerful rivals; General Niorcarmesis looked upon not
altogether unfavorably by the lady’s father, in whose confidence that
officer stands very high.”
“A rival?” falters Guy.
“A rival? A host of rivals! Do you pay your beautiful inamorata so poor
a compliment as to think she has charmed no other man than you? Every
one is bowing down to the beauty and the wit of the Countess Hermoine
de Alva—generals and nobles.” Then he continues commandingly: “You must
open this letter. The game you are playing forces you to use every
card. It is apparently not a confidential communication, and must apply
to you, for she told you to deliver it with your own hand.”
While he is speaking, and before Guy can interpose, Oliver has rapidly
lighted a taper, passed the letter over it with the deft hand of one
accustomed to such business, and is presenting it, seal removed, open
to the inspection of the Englishman.
“Read it you must,” he says. “Your life might be the forfeit of too
strained an honor. Read it! Some day you may be compelled from the
exigencies of the case to deliver this to Alva. In your position you
should know what it contains. Read it, or I have no further
communication with you.”
“Why not?” mutters Guy, who, though desperately anxious to see the
handwriting of his sweetheart, still holds out.
“Because,” says the painter, solemnly, “this is a game in which both
you and I have put up our lives as the stake; and I play everything in
my hand. You must do the same, for my sake as well as yours. If I
communicate with you, if I am seen in your company, and you are
arrested, perhaps I fall with you. Besides, we owe it to our countries
to use every weapon that God throws into our hands. READ!”
While saying this he has opened the delicately scented billet, which
has only been held together by its seal, and is suspending it before
the eyes of the Englishman, which become radiant with hope as they read
this short but pithy note in the very prettiest of feminine
handwriting:
“Dear Papa:
“Please make the bearer of this, Captain Guido, of Romero’s foot,
my rescuer from the Beggars of the Sea (though he is too modest to
give me any other name) a Colonel as soon as possible, and then
give him a chance to make himself a General, and oblige, your
loving
Hermoine.”
Rapture and pride are too great in the Englishman for him to avoid
showing this note to his friend and mentor.
“By Saint Denis!” cries Oliver, inspecting the missive, “I believe she
does love you. If you have hit her heart you’re the first, and she has
had half of Spain at her feet, I’m told.” Then, looking over the young
man, he adds contemplatively: “It must be your peculiar blonde ferocity
that has done it. If you had been a brunette Adonis, I wouldn’t have
given a stiver for your chance. Dark eyed dandies about here are as
plentiful as windmills.”
“With this in my hand can I fail to make the attempt to see her before
I go?” says Guy stoutly, securing the missive with a lover’s care in
the breast of his doublet.
“Apparently you will not, no matter what I say,” smiles the artist.
Then he goes on earnestly and solemnly: “But let me give you a little
advice. Under no circumstances; no matter how much she loves you; no
matter if she swears to you she adores you better than all else in this
world, do you tell her your secret.”
“You think she would betray me?”
“No! A thousand times no!”
“You think it might destroy her love for me?”
“Not if she loved you before. Hermoine de Alva once true, will be
forever true.”
“Then why should I fear to tell her?”
“For this reason. She knows how much her father loves her. She has no
fear of the human tiger; to her his claws are always velvet. By this
note you can tell that Doña Hermoine thinks her word is law with the
dictator of the Netherlands. So it is in little things!—a diamond
necklace, a dozen new dresses, even the discarding of a suitor; for if
she says no, that is the end of the gentleman with her father also. But
in matters of State policy she has never run against him. She does not
know that in affairs of government, in upholding his own laws, edicts
and proclamations, Alva is ice and iron together. What I fear is that
you may one day be persuaded to go with her and tell the dictator your
story, and she will tell papa that she loves you, assured that he will
spare you and pardon you and put you up on high for her sake; but for
God’s sake don’t ever deceive yourself about Alva’s mercy. If you do,
you are lost. Her tears, her prayers, will never save you. Remember
that, my Guido, who are in love with the tiger’s cub!”
“Why should you call her that?” cries Guy savagely.
“I should not call her that,” returns the painter sadly. “She has been
all condescension and kindness to me; she has permitted me to take her
beautiful face and put it on my canvas, to give me a chance for fame
and immortality.”
“Ah! she has granted you sittings here?”
“Yes, with her duenna present.”
“Then arrange an interview for me this afternoon here.”
“It would do you no good. She would not come without attendants. Do not
think that Hermoine de Alva will forget any point of etiquette, even
though she adores you—of which you seem to be very confident.”
“But I must arrange a meeting. I’ll kill two birds with one stone. She
will know the words of the night. From her I can obtain them. She will
come to me, I know,” says Guy very confidently. “You can gain admission
to her as the under-secretary of Alva. Do so to-day. Give her this
ring;” he takes the beautiful ruby from his finger and puts it into the
painter’s hand.
“Mon Dieu! You have exchanged rings—did kisses go with them?” laughs
Oliver; and as a flaming blush appears upon Guy’s face, he mutters:
“Parbleu! I believe they have. Talk about Italian passion! It is as ice
to you wonderful English.” Getting no answer from Chester he continues:
“I can arrange an interview to-day, but it cannot be here. The duenna
would stand in the path of any tête-à-tête between you. The only way I
can think of private word for you with your love, you fortunate young
man—you unfortunate young man—is at the house of the man I hope one day
to call ‘papa.’”
“The burgomaster, Niklaas Bodé Volcker?” exclaims Guy.
“Yes. On the plea of rare bargains in silks that have been slightly
damaged by the flood Doña Hermoine can bring her duenna into the town.
At the merchant’s you can speak privately with Doña de Alva.”
“But the duenna—the infernal duenna?” growls Chester.
“The duenna will be made blind and harmless in the next room inspecting
bargains. If we arrange to have Bodé Volcker’s stock low enough, the
Countess de Pariza is good for an hour of rapture and bargains.
Besides, they will probably be coming in to-day to learn the talk of
the town, about the great drinking bout between”—here the painter
flushes with indignation—“between the man who disgraces his genius and
his art, by intemperance, and the Six Drunkards of Brussels. You have
seen it placarded on the walls of the inns and wine houses, bearing the
name of the greatest artist the Netherlands has yet produced, the
Raphael of the North, the man whose disciple I was, the man whose altar
piece in the great Church of Our Dear Lady would have made him renowned
forever had it not been burnt by the Iconoclasts four years ago, when
they threw down all the images of the church, and destroyed innumerable
masterpieces of art, in blind rage at the Inquisition. I and another
old pupil of Floris’s saved that night one picture of his, a smaller
one, ‘The Fall of the Angels;’ it is not his best work; in fact, it is
very much beneath his genius, but it is the one thing of his that will
go down to posterity, for now he has become a sot and a drunkard,” and
Oliver sighs.
“Very well,” cries Guy, breaking in upon the artist’s indignant
rhapsody, during which he has remembered he has not eaten since he has
risen. “Now having finished our business, perhaps when Achille returns
with the provisions you will give me a little breakfast, perchance a
little pigeon pie, eh?” and he playfully pokes the painter in the ribs,
for Antony’s remarks about Hermoine de Alva have made this audacious
young man very jovially happy.
It is a laughing remark, but the laugh dies away as Guy sees its
extraordinary effect upon the Flemish painter. At the words “pigeon
pie” Oliver’s face grows pale. He turns and says suspiciously: “What do
you know about pigeon pie?”
“Only what I heard last evening from little Marvedie, son of Touraine
the barber.”
“What did he say about pigeon pie?” asks the painter, whose manner
begins to impress Guy, as he mutters; “Speak quick—our lives may depend
upon it!”
“Only this,” says the Englishman, “that when you were here he had
plenty of pigeon pie. He asked me if I liked pigeon pie, and then
afterward—I think, yes, I am almost positive, he said perhaps he
wouldn’t have so much pigeon pie now, as a man had taken away so many
pigeons.”
“A man—taken away so many pigeons—from here!” falters Antony. Then he
suddenly exclaims: “That explains why there were no letters from Louis
of Nassau in my cote above—no pigeons bearing them. I thought it was
curious; I was nervous. My God! I must know.”
Just then a rap coming upon the door he draws aside the curtain and
opens it, confronting his apprentice Achille, a bright-eyed French
youth, who says discontentedly: “I can’t get anything without the cash.
Our great artist, Frans Floris, owes so much money that no other
artists can buy anything for credit.”
“Very well, put down your basket. I’ll see if I can get you some
money,” says Oliver meditatively. Then a sudden idea seems to come to
him, he cries: “Achille, where is little Marvedie? Bring him up, and
we’ll send out and get some pigeons, and have some pigeon pie for him,”
affecting great lightness of manner, though with evident effort.
“All right. Marvedie is death on pigeon pie, and so am I,” says the
youth, and flies downstairs.
“I must question him,” murmurs the painter. “If this is true, the sword
suspended by the hair is about to fall.”
A moment later and the laughing voices of childhood are heard on the
stairs, Achille and his little brother bound into the room, crying:
“Pigeon pie! pigeon pie! Hurrah for Monsieur Oliver’s pigeon pie!”
“Yes, pigeon pie,” cries the painter, “pigeon pie. But what has become
of my pigeons? Have you taken them, Achille?”
“No!”
“Were there any flying about the cote? Not those in the coop, but in
the cote—around in the air flying?” The artist’s voice has become
hoarse—his eyes terrible.
“Oh yes, a good many, for the last day or two,” answers the boy. Then
noting his master’s manner, he screams out: “But I have not taken them,
I swear to heaven, Monsieur Oliver, I have never taken any from the
cote. On the word of an honest boy—do not discharge me!”
“No, he didn’t take any,” cries little Marvedie; “a big tall man with
nasty black eyes took them away.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you see him? How do you know?”
“Oh, I remember him because he laughed and seemed very happy, and gave
me two stivers to get him a bag to put them in.”
“Can you tell anything about him? Do you know his name, little
Marvedie—little pigeon pie Marvedie?” gasps Antony, attempting a
grimace, with a face that is like a death mask.
“No, but he was ugly and had nasty eyes, eyes that looked like the
codfish they sell in the market.”
“How many pigeons did this man take away? Did you count them, little
Marvedie—little pigeon pie Marvedie?” and the painter achieves a
ghastly chuckle.
“Yes, there were six, with bunches on their beaks and eyes that looked
back and front. The kind whose necks you wring when you give me pigeon
pie,” says the little child.
“And where was your brother?” The painter’s voice is low and stern.
“Oh, I was out trying to sell one of your pictures,” says Achille. “At
least I think I was. That’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since you
went away, but they’re all here yet. The Duke’s tenth penny is ruining
everybody. No body has any money to spare, at least not for works of
art.”
“Very well,” sighs Antony, “here’s a florin. Yes, get the pigeons!” he
laughs dismally. “We’ll have the pigeon pie.”
The two boys run away. The painter’s face is white as his own chalk,
and he falters. “At last it has come. Some one has my secret.”
“What secret” mutters Guy, half guessing.
“The letters brought to me by carrier pigeons from Louis of Nassau,
with whom I am in correspondence for the benefit of the Netherlands. Of
course they are in cipher, they cannot be construed in a moment; but
the hair has been cut, the sword is descending, I am no better than a
dead man; worse than that—I am a tortured man! Oh, my God! think of the
rack, the faggot, that await me!” and the Fleming’s eyes become
bloodshot, his cheeks gray, and his lips blue.
“If we could discover the man who has your secret,” says the
Englishman, prompt to action, well knowing that danger to Oliver now
means danger to himself.
“Ah! but how? When Alva arrives the man will surely give him the
information; it would be very valuable, warning of a traitor in the
Duke’s own corresponding bureau. I—I had been anxious all the morning.
When I—I arrived here I expected to find the pigeons with the letters
tied to their tails from Louis. Now I know—the reason. Six! Six
letters—each one of them enough to send me to the slow fire!” moans the
painter, striking his hands together till his finger nails are blue.
“Six! Six pigeons!” echoes Guy. Then he suddenly cries: “Do you know a
man with dark, fishy eyes, such as the boy described, and a black
mustache with one single, whitish gray lock in it?”
“My God!” cries the artist. “I do. He—you have told me who—Vasco de
Guerra—my enemy! He has—has my letters!—What gave you the clue?”
“Only this, that Vasco de Guerra, at supper last night, gave to the Six
Drunkards of Brussels, who have come here for the drinking bout with
Floris, a pigeon pie containing six pigeons which he asserted he had
shot with his cross-bow, but he spoke of the seventh, declaring for the
head of the seventh he would receive such a reward that would enable
him to give a great banquet to his comrades.”
With this Guy tells the astounded Oliver what he saw and heard at the
carouse of the Six Drunkards of Brussels in the Painted Inn the night
before.
“Yes, that’s proof enough, proof that he has my secret—he of all men,
he who is sure to use it—this Vasco de Guerra is my enemy. He is a
miserable scamp, disreputable enough to be cashiered from the Spanish
army—think what that must be, when soldiers are permitted to beg,
steal, murder, torture and ravage without one word of rebuke from their
officers. What must a man be who is cast out from such troops as this?
He is a drunken fortune hunter; he seeks the hand of Mina Bodé Volcker,
who loves me. He has her maid, Wiarda Schwartz in his pay.”
“Aha!” returns Guy. “That is the reason she treated me so cavalierly
when I asked for you last night.”
“Wiarda? Yes, miserable little paid soubrette. But we must think—we
must act—and that quickly,” returns the painter, who seems to have
regained composure, now that he knows his betrayer. “Vasco must guess
the value of these letters, for he must have been upon my scent for
weeks. He will try to decipher them himself, for he will not wish to
trust the information to others who might obtain the reward for it. He
can hardly act to-day. He doubtless keeps them on his person.”
“In that case we must kill him at once,” says Guy. “That’s what we’ve
got to do. We must kill him for both our sakes. At all events, we must
have the papers. Send for him, get him here, and I will do his business
with a dirk. Then we can carry him out and toss him into the flood.
He’ll float away to the ocean. There are plenty of drowned carcasses
like his, so it will not be noticed.”
“No,” says the painter, “that might bring suspicion upon us. Perhaps I
can suggest a better way,” and begins to think, racking his subtle
Flemish brain as it has never been racked before. Ten seconds and he
cries out, hope in voice, joy in his eyes: “At the drinking bout Floris
is sure to win. Floris will drink every one of the Six Drunkards of
Brussels under the table, insensible, inert, lifeless. In the confusion
we can assist the insensible Vasco from the table, take him to a room
apparently to revive him, and steal from him the letters he has stolen
from me.”
“But if Vasco wins?”
“Impossible! I’ve seen Floris drink more wine at one sitting than any
other human beast on earth, I think, can hold and live.”
“But we must be prepared in case he does not,” says the Englishman;
then he adds slowly: “Perhaps I can aid you; I have here,” he produces
from his breast a small glass flagon of Venetian manufacture, this is
protected from breakage by golden filigree work and its stopper
carefully sealed, in it is a colorless, limpid fluid.
“What is it? Poison?” asks the painter. “The poison of the Borgias?”
“No, the poison of the Antilles. This is the juice of the Manchineel
tree, prepared by the Indians of the Carrabees, after some secret
process of their own. You know the wonderful properties of the tree; to
sleep under it even for the night is death. It is peculiarly volatile,
therefore I keep it sealed. I have carried this with me in case I
should be captured and given over to the rack, to make me sleep so that
my tortured lips can tell no secrets of my Queen. If it should happen
that the painter doesn’t drink Vasco de Guerra insensible and inert, a
few drops of this in his flagon will make the Spanish spy sleep
forever.”
“Then if Frans Floris doesn’t succeed—the poison of the Antilles,”
mutters the painter. “It is his life or ours.” After a second’s thought
he continues: “I must kill mine enemy Vasco anyway. Were he only made
insensible, even did I recover the letters of Louis of Nassau, he would
still suspect me. Some day he would get other proof. If I don’t kill
him now I must fly at once, and William the Silent will have no spy at
Alva’s elbow. For my country’s cause, I stay here. At the drinking bout
Vasco de Guerra dies. The lion’s jaws gape for me. By heaven, they
shall not close!”
“That’s well said,” returns Guy, briefly. “Put a dose of this into the
Spanish spy.”
He presses the flagon of Manchineel poison into the painter’s hand, but
suddenly looks doubtful, and asks anxiously this pertinent question:
“How, by all the saints, will you get this into Vasco’s drinking cup
and not into the flagons of the others?”
CHAPTER VI.
THE DRINKING BOUT AT THE PAINTED INN.
This question seems to stagger the artist. He mutters feebly, “How?”
then says: “Let me think. I know the customs of this country,” and
meditates with knitted brows.
A few moments thought and he cries: “I have solved the problem.”
“How?” asks the Englishman eagerly.
“How? Why, it is the usage at these drinking bouts when the banquet is
at its height for friends of the combatants, for the honor of Bacchus,
to send huge drinking beakers full of the finest wine with their
compliments to the various contestants. Vasco de Guerra is a suitor for
the hand of Mademoiselle Bodé Volcker, the fair Mina that I love. That
shall be his destruction. After the tenth round, it would not be
prudent before—perhaps in his case I had better make it the fifteenth
huge goblet that he drinks—I shall send to him a flagon of wine
containing this, the poison of the Antilles,” he taps the vial the
Englishman has given him, “with the compliments of Wilhelmina Bodé
Volcker. De Guerra will not refuse a wine cup with such a message as
this, and then—, then—you and I,” he whispers this last, “my dear
Guido, in some quiet, happy, peaceful country would be called
murderers; but here we are simply playing out the game of life and
death. Now to business.”
The two now go to mapping out their plan with the cool precision of men
who, having made up their minds, act rapidly upon their resolutions.
“The drinking bout will take place at twelve. It is now ten o’clock. I
don’t think De Guerra has yet risen,” says Guy, “but I’ll watch him to
see that he doesn’t leave the inn to give your secret to any one. If he
makes any effort toward this, by some means I will detain him; while
you, my dear friend, go to the Citadel, get word with the lady
Hermoine, and arrange the meeting that is necessary, not only to my
safety but to my love.”
Then, while Chester secures upon his person the cipher letters of
Vitelli and the key furnished by the artist, and perchance with even
greater care deposits in his bosom the miniature and letter of his
love, Antony Oliver arms himself with sword and pistols and looks
carefully to the keen Italian stiletto he always wears ready to his
hand.
This done, the two go out together, Oliver leaving word with the barber
that his sons can get their meal for themselves when they return, but
that Achille is to meet them at the Painted Inn at the hour of noon.
Then striding through the narrow alleys into which the sun is but now
finding its way, the two pass to the pleasanter portion of the town.
Here the painter takes leave of the Englishman, whispering: “Don’t lose
sight of Vasco.”
“While you will do my errand?” suggests Chester wistfully.
“Certainly. I have a good excuse for my interview with Doña Hermoine.
Her father only leaves Brussels at noon to-day. Alva will not be here
until late this evening, and would wish word of this given to his
daughter,” answers Oliver, and takes his way toward the Esplanade,
beyond which lies the Citadel.
Going once more to the Painted Inn, Chester discovers that it is now
the scene of unusual animation.
The wine room is crowded so that he can hardly get a seat to order his
breakfast, appetite having by this time obtained temporary ascendency
over love. By some deft questioning and pumping of the waiter who
attends him, the Englishman soon learns that the man he is in search of
only left his late carouse at three o’clock in the morning, and has not
yet arisen; probably thinking that retirement will best fit him for a
supremely great feat at the shrine of Bacchus.
The conversation at the neighboring tables naturally turns upon the
drinking bout. The room is full of burghers and artists, some of whom
have come to enjoy the artist’s triumph, others to sorrow at the genius
that is being killed with wine. There is also a goodly delegation of
his creditors, who are here with anxiety in their hearts and on their
lips, for Frans Floris’s life is worth a large sum to them on account
of the paintings his facile brush creates; but Frans Floris dead is of
very little use to them, and they fear that some day he will kill
himself by the enormous quantity of wine he may imbibe in his effort to
place his competitors beneath the table.
“Ah, Mijn Heer Dirk Coornhert, this is a sad day,” remarks a fat,
adipose citizen, whose smell of the malt-house proclaims the brewer.
“Yes,” replies a man evidently of artistic tastes and education. “Have
you seen the poem I’ve printed to warn Floris of the danger of his
dissolute habits, not only to his genius but to his life? I read it to
him last night. It was an inspiration in which I depicted a dream
wherein the spirit of Albert Durer appeared to me and spoke in
melancholy and ghostly tones of the spirit sadness that was brought to
him even after a hundred years in the other world by an artist of
Floris’s ability becoming a drunkard.”
“And did it reform him?” jeers the other.
“Reform him!” cries Dirk Coornhert. “No, he swore he’d drink the health
of Albert Durer’s ghost to-day, and laughed in my face: ‘When I’m
drunk, I’m happy; I forget my creditors. When I’m sober my creditors
don’t let me forget them.’”
“Verdomd! And I’m one of them,” growls the brewer. “Two thousand
carolus guilders for malt beer consumed at his house. A painter
building the greatest palace in Antwerp! Above its portal that drunken
conceit he’s painted: himself standing brush in hand and the muses
flying from all over the heavens to crown him. And out of it he drives
each day with four white horses in state, everybody doffing their hats
to him, his creditors bowing most humbly of all. If I didn’t think the
populace would mob me, I’d have him in the debtors’ prison. And then
his wife! Faugh! her dandy airs—as if she were a countess.”
“Yes, she has ruined him,” murmurs the painter. “A woman’s ambition to
flaunt it with the noblesse, which a painter cannot do, though some of
our burghers seem to think it an easy task. There’s poor Bodé Volcker!
Have you heard of his daughter? They say the fair Wilhelmina aspires to
consort with the nobility, and has been taught to shake her feet under
the rod of a French dancing master and play on the harpsichord and
spinet, and sing with rare shakes and quavers and high-screeching notes
like a lewd Italian masquer. Ah! the days of Antwerp are changing. What
would her poor mother say? But old Niklaas is up in arms, and swears
his daughter shall go into his shop and sell his silks and satins
behind his counter, as her mother did, though they say he’s worth a
million crowns or more.”
“Donder en Bliksem!” growls the brewer, “what’s a million crowns, or
two million, either, now—it’s only so much more for the accursed tenth
penny tax to eat up.”
“Yes, God help every one,” assents the printer. “The tenth penny tax
will in time take all we have.”
Then the brewer shakes his head sadly over a mug of strongest Flemish
ale and the printer sips his Rhine wine in silence; for Alva has just
levied his celebrated tenth penny tax, which decrees that every
transfer of merchandise in the Netherlands shall yield one-tenth of its
amount to the royal treasury, each and every time it is bought or sold.
This, of course, on active business means ultimately complete
confiscation and absolute ruin to the great trading classes of Brabant,
Flanders and Holland.
This tenth penny tax does not make the crowd very loving to the
smattering of Spanish and Italian officers of the garrison, who stride
about with jingling spurs and clattering swords and armor, caring very
little whether they tread on burghers’ toes or not, and burying every
now and then their fiercely curled mustachios in flagons of Spanish
wine, mine host and his assistants serving them with greatest deference
and humility; for Antwerp writhed and groaned, but still lay prone
under the iron heel of Spanish military rule—from noble to peasant,
from merchant to fisherman.
Among these military gallants none swagger more proudly than Ensign de
Busaco. Seeing Guy, this ferocious little dandy strides over, and,
slapping the Englishman cordially on the shoulder, cries: “What do you
wager, Capitan Guido, on the drinking bout? I am offering even
doubloons on the Drunkards of Brussels.”
“That’s hardly fair,” says Guy, “six drunkards to one drunkard. But sit
down, and remember your promise of last night to join me in a friendly
beaker.”
“Gracios, Señor Capitan,” murmurs the young officer, and soon he and
Chester are chatting over the juice of the grape.
“You have come, I suppose, from the Middelburg garrison,” remarks the
Spaniard, “to see about your back pay. We haven’t had a stiver here,
one of us, for a good many months, and I imagine you are no better off.
But the tenth penny, my boy, will open up the paymaster’s department of
the army If it doesn’t—” he looks savagely round, “we intend to take
things into our own hands. This is a rich city, eh, for looting; the
spoils of the Indies and Peru right here within our grasp. Some day
we’ll make mincemeat of these burghers and take their goods and
chattels and wives and daughters into our keeping for a day or two, eh!
Booty and beauty!”
“God help them,” thinks Guy, looking round the place, and into his mind
coming a vision of that awful “Spanish Fury” that broke forth on
Antwerp a few years afterwards. But he turns the conversation,
murmuring: “Of course we haven’t been paid, but still I have a few
doubloons in my pocket!” then cries: “Boy, another flask of wine!”
This the two discuss together, the Spaniard telling the Englishman
that, though Floris is owned to be the greatest wine bibber in the
world, it is thought that the Six Drunkards of Brussels have some
extraordinary plan for defeating him, at least so it is whispered
about, and that if he has any money to venture on the game, to put it
against the artist.
“They’ll win, my boy,” he laughs. “I’ve seen little Tomasito himself
drink eighteen flagons and never flinch a hair. Fancy what he will do
when stimulated by the magnificent banquet that is going in there,” he
points to the great wedding room at the rear, “and with the chance of
winning five hundred guilders and side bets as well. Besides, De Guerra
has been strangely happy for the last day, and he is never chuckling
except when he sees the ducats ahead. But I think I can get a bet from
Valdes, of our regiment. He has seen Floris drink, and swears that no
man under heaven is his equal. Excuse me on this little matter of
business,” and Ensign de Busaco rises and joins a group of Spanish
officers at the other end of the room, much to Guy’s pleasure, for he
sees that the painter, Antony Oliver, has returned and is anxiously
looking at him.
As the Spaniard turns his back the Flemish artist is by Chester’s side
whispering: “I have done your errand.”
“She will come?”
“Yes, but I had great difficulty. She was as chilly as an iceberg at
first, asking how I dared bring such an audacious message.”
“And then?” queries Guy eagerly.
“Then I gave her the ring and told her that it was necessary for your
safety that she meet you; that you had periled yourself coming to this
town for her escort when you were absent from your garrison without
leave.”
“What next?” says Chester.
“Next she said nonchalantly: ‘I shall be at the house of the burgher
Bodé Volcker at three o’clock this day. My duenna, the Countess de
Pariza, thinks she would like to see the merchant’s daughter dance
again.’”
“Anything else?” mutters Guy, discontentedly.
“Oh, yes, she also remarked that her duenna would probably spend some
of her time, as she usually did, cheapening the silks, laces and
velvets in the merchant’s stock, while she would remain in the
burgomaster’s house and enjoy herself with the arts and graces of
Señorita Wilhelmina. ‘Where you will be, too, I suppose?’ she laughed,
‘Señor Oliver, and, perchance, the gentleman whose messenger and envoy
you are. Have you transferred your service from my father to the
Capitan Guido?’ At this,” says Oliver, with a slight chuckle, “I had
the audacity to remark, ‘Perhaps it may be all in the family,’ and left
her as red as the ruby ring she was holding in her hand.”
This makes Chester flush with delight, and the room which had been dark
and gloomy to him at the painter’s first words, is very sunny and
bright.
A moment after it is brighter still, as Oliver remarks: “I never saw
Hermoine de Alva blush at the mention of a human being before. Neither
do I think, my audacious gallant, there is a man in this world, saving
her own father, to whom she would accord a meeting. But you’d better
stop drinking,” he adds, “or you’ll be considered one of the Drunkards
of Brussels yourself, and we’ve something more than a drinking bout on
hand. Come, they are going in, I see my enemy and know he has my fate
in his hands.” He looks anxiously across the room, for there stands
Vasco, surrounded by his five fellow topers, all bearing the arms of
Brussels on their doublets.
As De Guerra’s eyes meet those of Oliver a smile of cruel triumph
lights them up, and, with one quick, perchance unconscious, gesture,
his hand goes to his bosom, as if to reassure himself that something
very precious to him is still safe and ready.
“See that movement?” whispers Guy to Antony. “That’s to be certain of
the letters that are your ruin if you don’t get them now!”
“And will,” gasps the painter, though his hand trembles slightly, as he
feels to make sure on his part that he has the poison of the Antilles.
With this the two join the surging throng that is now squeezing into
the great painted room at the rear of the inn, in which the grand
weddings of Antwerp are celebrated. This is now set apart for the
banquet which is to test the drinking powers of Antwerp’s genius and
the Brussels’ society for the prevention of intemperance—by drinking up
all the liquor in the world themselves.
A minute later there is a wild cry—“He has come!” the people turning
from the dining-room and rushing toward the entrance of the house to
see De Vriendt, the artist, riding up upon his white horse, followed by
six of his pupils.
This gives Guy and Oliver an easier entrance to the banquet room, of
which they take advantage, finding themselves in a high, heavily
studded apartment, with beautifully carved balustrades and roof beams,
the walls decorated by paintings and frescoes, some of them from the
brush of the contesting artist himself.
In the center is a large oaken table, with seats for seven, covered
with everything that can increase the thirst and appetite for wine—salt
fish, caviare, and viands steeped in oil, which is supposed to develop
the capacity of man for liquor—all these decorated and arranged in
highest style of Netherland garniture; for there are flowers on the
table, and a wreath of roses with which to crown the victor. The whole
is a horrible hurly-burly of art, mediæval luxury and barbaric vice.
Six seats about the board are occupied by the Drunkards of Brussels,
Vasco de Guerra sitting at the foot of the table as manager and captain
of his band of topers. Each man has before him an immense silver
frankforter or beaker glass holding a quantity of wine that would put a
temperance society in convulsions of righteous indignation.
The seat at the head of the table is reserved for the one man who
contests against the many; the glory of Antwerp; the great genius who
is going to drown it in drink; the great toper who, in honor of his
city and a wager of five hundred guilders, is going to drink these six
other topers under the table; while all around this board dedicated to
gluttony and to Bacchus stands a melange of the masculine society of
the town, from Spanish General Vargas to little Ensign de Busaco; from
the fat merchant prince to the brawny representative of the Butchers’
Guild—even to little Achille Touraine, who comes crawling and sneaking
in between the legs of the assembly to reach his master, getting
viciously kicked and spurred in this business by several dandy officers
whose uniforms he disarranges in his transit.
“I am here as you directed, Monsieur Oliver,” he pants. “That is, part
of me—one of the officer’s spurs lanced me like my father does his
bleeding patients, and my face has been scraped as papa does his
shaving customers. But I—I couldn’t get here before, it took so long
for Marvedie and me to eat the last of the pigeon pie.”
Here the boy’s voice is drowned by the buzz that greets the entrance of
the painter; as De Vriendt comes striding in, his pale Flemish face and
mild blue eyes lighted with a convivial smile, while tossing his hat on
high he cries: “Welcome, brother junketers of Brussels!” taking his
seat at the head of the table.
This is responded to in kind, little Tomasito remarking: “Greeting,
brother pig of Antwerp.” A sally of mediæval wit, that makes the crowd
roar with laughter, though Floris’s pale face grows red with
humiliation—for one moment.
The next he has forgotten all save the pleasure of the wine cup, for a
serving man places before him an immense Frankforter of strongest
Markobrunner, and in the love of the liquor he forgets his love of the
esteem of his fellows and townsmen. Rising from his chair he calls out:
“Let us begin, Drunkards of Brussels. The terms of the wager are
settled. I drink every one of you under the table, and leave you all
there.”
“Those are the terms, Señor Floris,” murmurs De Guerra, a snicker in
his voice, and the six topers stand up, each man in his place, and each
with flagon in his hand, filled to the brim with the same strong wine
that faces De Vriendt.
“Then DOWN!” cries Floris, and each man tosses off his ration with a
smack of delight, at which the crowd cries bravo.
But the contestants have hardly seated themselves and got pick at
caviare or salted herring or potted anchovy, when the attendants have
refilled their beakers, and Floris shouts: “Again!”
With this they rise once more, and down flies the Rhenish wine; then
take to eating—for with drunkenness goes gluttony.
So the drinking bout goes on, viewed with varying faces by the crowd,
the excitement growing higher; but none have faces like Guy Chester and
Antony Oliver, for none, not even the greatest gambler in the town, has
so high a stake at risk upon this battle of giants at the shrine of
Bacchus.
All the time the crowd gets greater, and dogs creep snarling in—they
have scented the feast, and hope for bones and pickings—and the dresses
of women can be seen in the great balcony used by musicians at the
wedding banquets, that stands at the further end of the hall; and
friends commence to send flagons of wine with their compliments and
good wishes to the various contestants.
But the drinking is even, flagon for flagon, each man tossing off his
goblet at the same moment with the others, and then calling for
another—though sometimes the brand of wine is changed to stimulate
their appetites by varying flavors. Rothenberger has succeeded
Markobrunner and been displaced by Hochheimer.
It is the tenth round. Seven immense silver mugs of strongest Rhine
wine are just passing the lips and sizzling down the gullets of the
contestants.
“At the fifteenth,” whispers Oliver.
“Why not do it now?” says Guy in his ear.
“No, it wouldn’t be prudent before the fifteenth,” returns the painter.
“No one would believe that ten goblets would be the death of him.”
A minute or two and the twelfth turn has passed, and after drinking
this one of the contestants, the little weazened Italian, Guisseppi
Pisa, attempting to rise from his chair—staggers, and goes down quietly
under the table.
“Do it now,” whispers Guy.
“I dare not—not yet,” returns Oliver.
The thirteenth round is quaffed amid laughter and cheers, and as De
Guerra takes the goblet from his lips, Oliver’s face grows white and
drawn, and Guy’s also, for to their horror they see the man they
intended to poison at the fifteenth round, reel and fall insensible
beneath the table.
“Too late! My God, he’s escaped me,” falters Antony.
“We can get the documents anyway, from his insensible carcass when the
bout is over,” mutters the Englishman, recovering first.
“Yes, but that is only postponing my destruction. Vasco’s suspicions
are aroused—the torture chamber gapes for me. I shall have to fly. I
can no longer do the work I had laid out for myself.” This is sighed
from white lips.
But another shout goes up from the surrounding crowd; at the fourteenth
round two of the remaining Drunkards of Brussels have gone down. Two
more are left for the painter to vanquish, but these are very tough
ones. De Vriendt smiles in triumph; his Flemish face, though red and
flushed, appears mocking now; but his legs are a little shaky.
Thus four more rounds pass; another of the Drunkards of Brussels joins
the company of those beneath the table. Now only one, little Tomasito,
is standing up for the ducats his friends have wagered upon him, and
the honor of the capital; when suddenly (for Guy has turned away his
head, only awaiting his opportunity at the finish of the bout to rob De
Guerra of the papers, and cares but little who wins the contest) the
Englishman feels his sleeve plucked, and looking up, sees Antony’s eyes
blazing.
“He’s recovering!” whispers Oliver.
“Who?”
“Vasco! See him! He is staggering up to his feet again. He will win the
bout. It’s a trick—a trick to gain the advantage of so many flagons
over De Vriendt.”
This is the feeling of Floris’s friends; and when De Guerra, staggering
up, shouts: “Another stoup of Rhine wine for the Drunkards of
Brussels,” they interpose and engage in angry altercation.
But De Vriendt says: “I give him the advantage of five flagons, I will
finish him up also.”
Another round is quaffed. Before it little Tomasito goes down as if
struck by a cannon ball, leaving only De Guerra and Floris standing
fronting each other, looking in each other’s faces, one with the smile
of the Fleming, the other filled with that curious rage peculiar to the
Spaniard, who, when excited, becomes savage in everything—savage in
war, savage in play, savage in love.
Each pours down another beaker, and Floris is reeling.
“Now’s your last chance,” whispers Guy.
Calling a waiter Antony says: “A flagon of your strongest Rhine wine at
once.”
While De Vriendt and the Spaniard are appetizing themselves for another
bout, one eating caviare savagely and the other lovingly dallying with
some pickled cod’s livers, to give him greater thirst, is the
opportunity of Oliver.
The waiter, pouring the wine from the flask into the flagon, goes his
way, and a moment after, with a hand that has become deft by using the
delicate brushes of his art, the hunted artist skillfully unseals the
little vial and drops unnoticed a portion of its subtle poison into the
beaker.
“Be sure you give him enough,” whispers Guy, who has been standing in
front of his friend to screen him, though the crowd is so great and the
excitement so intense, bets being offered two to one on the Spaniard,
it would have been unnoticed had no precaution been taken.
At this suggestion Oliver pours a double dose into the flagon. Then,
handing it to Achille, who has been devoting his time to sucking the
oranges thrown from the table by the reeling and unsteady hands of the
contestants, he whispers: “Take this to the Spaniard, Vasco de Guerra.”
“Yes!”
“Be sure! The one with the black mustache with the single gray lock!”
“Certainly, the brunette, I’m not a fool!”
“Give it to him with the compliments and good wishes of Mademoiselle
Wilhelmina Bodé Volcker. Quick! get it to him at once!”
As the two contestants rise and confront each other for another round,
the Spaniard standing up more strongly, for his tactics have given him
a great advantage, the boy Achille glides to De Guerra, gives him the
beaker prepared for him by the hand of the hunted one, and whispers
words into his ear that makes a flush of delight run over the drunken
redness of his face.
Tossing aside the goblet that was to his hand, Vasco de Guerra cries:
“This is old red Rhine wine; I drink this, my reeling Floris, to the
beauty of Antwerp!”
And clapping the flagon to his lips he pours down the whole stoup in
one long continued, triumphant gulp. Then looking at his rival the joy
of winning comes into Vasco de Guerra’s eye, for the painter, having
drunk his flagon, can scarce keep his feet.
“Malediction!” whispers Oliver, “The drug does not work.”
“Wait,” answers Guy.
Then, too anxious to speak, their faces distorted with suspense, the
two gaze on while the contesting topers sink into their chairs and
fortify themselves with condiments for the next round.
As the Spaniard eats he smiles on the painter, whose hands seem scarce
able to do their office.
But their goblets are re-filled, and the two rise once more, Floris
supporting himself with one hand, as his feet need help now.
“Drink!” says De Guerra, and the painter manages to get his portion
down, his competitor standing firm, erect and mocking.
“Now see me!” and Vasco raises his flagon lightly, easily,
triumphantly, his backers giving a shout of joy.
But just as he gets the goblet to his lips a kind of dazed expression
comes into De Guerra’s face, his hand falls nerveless by his side, and
the beaker, dropping from it, goes clattering to the floor, then
clutching with both hands at his throat as if for breath, he sinks
down, senseless and inert, upon the bodies of his companions, who lie
there in drunken stupor, while a cry of triumph goes up from the
assembled backers of Floris.
A moment after De Vriendt, staggering, reeling, surrounded by his
friends, gets to the fresh air of the street, which gives him new
strength. Assisted by his six pupils, who will take him home and put
him to bed and nurse him after his drunken bout, he cries: “Ho! for
another stoup of Rhine wine, strong Rhine wine, landlord of the Painted
Inn!” and putting one foot in the stirrup, quaffs down a mighty
libation to his defeated ones. Then he rides reeling to his palace on
the street named after him, surrounded by happy creditors, who think if
Floris lives he will paint more pictures and pay some of his debts.
The crowd, as it surges about, gives very little attention to the
Drunkards of Brussels, save one who indulges in a sly kick or two at
the recumbent forms that have lost him his money; but almost as he fell
Guy and Oliver have taken De Guerra, who is breathing heavily, and
borne him to an adjoining room.
Here hastily opening his doublet the painter slips his hand in, and
sewn between the linings of his garments he feels a little packet.
Ripping this out, he whispers, as he examines it, “Thank God! the six
letters from Louis of Nassau!”
A moment after, Guy, putting his hand upon the breast of the Spaniard,
mutters: “The spy is dead.” And a great, deep-drawn breath of relief
comes from the Fleming—this one of his many dangers has died with Vasco
de Guerra.
The color has returned to his face, and he laughs: “It was your lucky
coming and the pigeon pie that saved me—for a little while—my friend,
my Guido!”
The two go out together, and on the street Oliver again looks serious
and mutters: “Alva! Here before his time. He was not to arrive till
evening. What has brought him so suddenly from Brussels?”
For a cavalcade is prancing up the street; thirty horsemen armored in
steel with long lances bearing the pennon of Vargas. Before these, upon
a strong Andalusian charger, rides a man of spare but very tall
stature, in complete, glistening, gold-embossed Milan armor. Over the
gorget about his neck is the ribbon of the Golden Fleece upon which
hangs the Lamb of God, the insignia of that Order. This is covered by a
long sable, silvered beard that falls in two peculiar pointed locks
upon his breast, his dark hair cut short, is likewise grizzled; so is
his mustache, which drapes peculiar lips, the upper thin, firm and
determined; the lower sensual—but determined also; his forehead high,
pale, blue-veined and strangely intellectual, that of the military
mathematician; his nose aquiline and of rare beauty, keen cut, precise,
immovable, his cheeks sallow and pallid—altogether a face cold as
death, lighted by two blazing, sparkling, unflinching, serpent’s eyes,
and yet at times in certain features so like the woman that made Guy’s
heart beat with love the night before that he knows it is her father,
and murmurs: “Alva!”
The Duke is talking quietly to Alfonso de Ulloa and Pedro Paciotto, his
great military engineer, who ride immediately behind him. All are
covered with the dust of hasty travel.
As they pass the Painted Inn the Viceroy’s piercing eyes look haughtily
upon the crowd that stand upon the steps and throng the pentice of the
hostelry with doffed hats to do him reverence. Suddenly reining up, he
cries: “Oliver! Antonius Oliver!” and the painter, stepping forth, bows
before the Duke of Alva’s charger.
“It is fate I have got word with you so soon. Find for me at once one
Vasco de Guerra, ex-Captain in Ladroño’s Musketeers. Tell him I will
hear his tale within the hour, and bring him with you to the Citadel at
once,” commands the captain-general.
“Under favor, your—your Highness,” returns Oliver, “the—the man you ask
for—”
“Yes, speak quickly. What are you stammering about?” says the Viceroy,
for the sudden demand for the man he has murdered has staggered the
painter, tactician though he is—for a moment.
“I was about to say, your Highness, that this Vasco de Guerra, who is
one of the Six Drunkards of Brussels, now lies stupefied from his
potations at the drinking bout.”
“What, with that rattle-brain artist Floris!” says Alva; then he
suddenly remarks in tones that send a tremor through the frame of
Oliver: “And that drunkard thought I would reinstate him in his rank in
the army! Some communication he would make to me to-day—something upon
which the safety of the realm perhaps depended—something that brought
me to Antwerp four hours ahead of my time! Take word to the captain of
the provost guard to arrest De Guerra at once. I will speak with him in
prison when he recovers his senses—this fool, this drunkard, this
wine-bibber. And yet—I wonder what he had to tell me? Forward,
gentlemen!”
And the Duke rides on, leaving the painter standing almost as
breathless as the corpse inside the Painted Inn; for Oliver knows the
hand of death has been almost as near to him as to the dead, and
mutters, as he rejoins Guy; “Ehu! truly the lion’s jaws had nearly
closed!”
CHAPTER VII.
LOVE—BY A COUP DE MAIN.
“Yes, just in time,” whispers the Englishman, drawing a long breath
also. Then he takes a hasty look at the tall Dutch clock ticking lazily
away in the wine room.
Noting this the painter laughs. “The sight of the father makes you
impatient for the daughter, eh? But you’ve another half an hour to
wait, my impulsive gallant. Besides, I haven’t eaten to-day. The
provost marshal must wait until I get a bite. Join me in—in my dinner.”
So giving order to an alert serving man, the two sit down to a very
hasty, yet comfortable meal, seasoned by peace and contentment, for
these young men are so accustomed to danger that any little breathing
spell in their struggle with sudden death seems to them a calm, quiet
and contented time.
As he eats and drinks Guy looks lazily up and down the street; crowds
of people are passing along the Shoemarket. This throng is made
picturesque by a smattering of the costumes of most of the nations of
the earth; for at this time Antwerp is the mart of Northern Europe, and
the greatest commercial emporium of the age.
Ships are taking cargo at its river front for the Indies, East and
West, for even the distant coasts of Peru and the Cape of Good Hope,
and others are unloading from the Baltic and the Mediterranean:
consequently seamen and visitors from all known portions of the globe
increase the vivacity of the scene.
Curiously enough, there are no English walking the streets of Antwerp
to-day, for since Elizabeth stole Alva’s eight hundred thousand crowns,
the Duke has forbidden any commerce with Great Britain, and has
sequestered all English property and driven out all English merchants
living or doing business in Antwerp, of which before this there have
been a great number, the English wool trade being one of the great
sources of revenue of the city. Just now Antwerp is at its very zenith,
from which it is about to go down under the exactions, taxes and
tyranny of the Spaniard into a fourth-rate commercial town.
But the burghers, though gloomy and oppressed, do not anticipate, and
the merchants still laugh lightly upon the street, thinking themselves
princes upon the throne of a commerce that can never be destroyed.
This absence of English blood and English feature would make Guy
conspicuous, were not several Danish officers of De Billy striding
about the street, and some of these have fair hair, blue eyes and Saxon
blondness.
“Now I must carry Alva’s orders to the provost marshal. Fortunately his
office is not far from here. Wait for me, I will return in quarter of
an hour. You need not look so impatiently at the clock,” remarks
Oliver.
But Guy is not looking at the clock. His eyes are fixed upon a man in
the costume of a South Zeeland trader who is carefully wiping a pair of
tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles and inspecting the placard offering
reward for the head of the “First of the English.” As the Zeelander
turns the Englishman knows that he has seen him before.
A moment after Chester thinks this man recognizes him, for, though he
turns away his head, he keeps one eye upon this gentleman, and notes
this gentleman has one eye on him.
“Take me to the provost marshal’s with you,” he whispers to Oliver.
“You—want to go there?” gasps Antony, opening his eyes very wide.
“Yes,” returns Guy. “There’s a gentleman here who recognizes me, and
has also made himself acquainted with the value of my head. If he
follows me I’ll astonish him.”
As the two rise, Oliver’s face very serious at this, they are joined by
little De Busaco, who comes striding up to them to be rather effusively
welcomed by Chester, who thinks that apparent intimacy with Spanish
officers may remove the suspicions of the man who is watching him.
“You’re in good company, I see, Amati,” says the little ensign.
“Introduce me to the honor of the acquaintance of the Duke’s
under-secretary.”
And this being done the young Spaniard says: “Where are you going?”
“To the provost marshal’s office.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” remarks De Busaco. “I’ve business there
myself. I wish to get leave to remain in the town this evening. A
little Flemish girl, you understand!” he strokes his mustachios
knowingly.
As they walk along the street together, De Busaco, who apparently has
joined them for this purpose, goes to questioning and pumping Oliver as
to what prospect there is of a near pay-day for the garrison of
Antwerp; if he knows anything of the Duke’s plans; how the tenth penny
tax comes on, etc., etc., his losses at the drinking bout having
apparently made him anxious on this subject.
Guy, however, pays little heed to this. Eye and ear are intent to
discover if he is followed by the Zeeland trader. The Shoemarket is so
well peopled that this is difficult to determine, but after they have
walked from it to Kammer street, past the Inn of the Red Lion, and
turned into the network of narrow alleys that lead to the main
watergate of the town, where the provost marshal’s office is situated,
the crowd grows less and Chester, turning slightly, catches sight of
the man whom he fears.
This personage dogs them straight to the city gate, but stands gaping
in astonishment as Guy and Oliver, accompanied by the young Spanish
officer, enter the office of Alva’s provost marshal, the very door of
which is placarded with the reward of three thousand Carolus guilders.
“De Busaco,” remarks the Englishman, pausing at the door, “do you see
that man in South Zeeland dress?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want something that will save you anxiety about your back pay?”
“Santos! yes!”
“Then take a couple of men and get him. He lives in the disaffected
provinces at Flushing. I think the Council of Troubles are looking for
him.”
“A reward!” cries the little Spaniard, then flying into the guard room
and unheeding military etiquette he calls out, “Some men with me,
quick—there’s money in it!”
Two Spanish soldiers, springing up at his bidding from the crowd
lounging about the guard-room, he starts with these hurriedly for the
street, and is soon in hot pursuit of the trader from South Zeeland,
crying: “Heretico fugitivo!” and other words of rage and fury which
make that gentleman quicken his steps to so good a purpose that
apparently knowing the town well, he dodges into some of the blind
alleys in this densely crowded portion of the city, and escapes from
the little Spaniard, whose jack boots are not conducive to extreme
fleetness of foot.
“I couldn’t catch him,” remarks De Busaco, five minutes afterward,
returning breathless, “but I’ll keep my eye open for him.”
“Very well, his reward will make you forget your back pay,” remarks
Guy, as Oliver returns from the inner office, where he has been
closeted with the captain of the guard, and says the necessary orders
have been given for the arrest of De Guerra.
“I don’t think,” laughs Chester, as he and Oliver walk along the street
together (for they have left the ensign at the provost marshal’s) “that
that gentleman from South Zeeland will be anxious to report himself at
any of the guard-houses of this town to give information about me. And
now, after danger—” the look on his face tells his meaning to the
little painter, who murmurs: “Love!”
So the two stride up Kammer street again, and along the Shoemarket to
the Place de Meir, where the great house of Bodé Volcker is situated,
and going in, find themselves very shortly en rapport with the family
of a merchant of that day.
As they reach the arched passageway leading to the courtyard, seeing no
signs of equipage, the corner of Guy’s mouth droops.
“Don’t be impatient; it is better to be first, then I can arrange our
little scheme of bargains before the arrival of the duenna Countess and
her charge,” says the artist.
Leading the way with the familiarity that denotes a friend of the
house, Oliver raps upon a side door situated at the further end of the
courtyard, and almost immediately is admitted by the servant girl of
the evening before; the lady’s maid, Wiarda, she of the haughty nose,
apparently being engaged elsewhere.
They enter directly into what is the living room of the house. Here the
family of Bodé Volcker, consisting of himself, Jakob, a boy of sixteen,
who has just left school for the counting room, and the daughter,
Wilhelmina, whose soft blonde curls and merry blue eyes have induced
Oliver not only to put her upon his canvas but in his heart, are
apparently engaged in a family discussion that is becoming highly
flavored.
The old gentleman, an energetic but fat Fleming, with commercial
expression and commercial eyes, is evidently excited. His cheeks are
red and angry. The young lady’s blue eyes are equally angry, though
they are slightly dimmed by latent tears, and one of the corners of her
dear little mouth is twitching nervously. The boy, like most cubs of
his age, is seemingly enjoying some dispute between papa and sister,
for his blonde German face has a suppressed snicker in it. If he dared
he would laugh.
“Ah, Oliver,” cries the merchant, rising with outstretched hands, “back
from Brussels! A short trip,” and welcomes the painter with the easy
familiarity of a friend of his house.
Miss Wilhelmina, on the contrary, greets Antony in haughty Spanish
style, extending white fingers for her sweetheart to kiss.
The cub merely snickers; “Hoe maakt je ’t?”
“I’ve taken the liberty of bringing a friend, Captain Guido Amati, of
the Middelburg garrison,” remarks the painter.
“A friend of yours, Oliver! Welcome—welcome to everything in my house,”
says Niklaas with Flemish hospitality, giving Guy cordial greeting.
“Captain Amati is known to the Doña Hermoine, and as the Duke’s
secretary—”
It is unnecessary to say more; at mention of the Viceroy’s daughter
Miss Wilhelmina most affably seconds her father’s hospitality and
extends her white fingers for Spanish welcome. These Guy, making no
mistake this time, kisses, perhaps lingering a shade too long over the
soft, fair hand for the pleasure of his friend Oliver.
Then the merchant cries out suddenly with Flemish primitiveness:
“Chairs, Wilhelmina; chairs for the gentlemen!”
“Father!” remarks the young lady haughtily, “you forget we have lackeys
in the house,” and, ringing a hand bell, orders the serving man to
place seats for the cavaliers.
“Oh, ho! more foreign airs!” jeers the old gentleman snappishly,
apparently taking up a discussion that has been dropped. “Don’t forget
Flanders simplicity, my daughter. Though your father is called a
millionaire, perhaps he won’t be a millionaire long, with that accursed
tenth penny tax,” adds Niklaas, grinding his teeth.
“You come from Brussels, Señor Antony,” interrupts the young lady,
adopting the Spanish style of address. “While there I presume, as the
Duke’s under-secretary, you met the Duchess of Aerschot. She arrives in
Antwerp to-day, and gives an entertainment to-morrow evening. You will
be there, I presume, Captain Amati, also Señor Oliver?”
“Unfortunately I leave Antwerp this evening,” answers Guy.
“And under-secretaries and heralds are not invited,” remarks the
painter, apparently by no means pleased at the idea.
“You’ll go, I presume, Freule Bodé Volcker?” suggests Guy,
persuasively. “Your dance, I believe, is much admired.”
“Of course,” murmurs the young lady, nonchalantly.
“Of course not!” cries the Flemish father with the air of a Roman one.
“Papa!”
“Verdomd! Do you suppose I’ll have you, my young lady, keep my carriage
horses out again as you did last night, so that they went to sleep in
the goods van this morning! The Countess of Mansfeld’s yesterday and
the Duchess of Aerschot’s to-morrow and you not up until dinner to-day.
My servants eating me out of house and home; you haven’t kept your
household accounts for a week! Don’t answer me, miss, I have looked at
your market book, not written up—not written up—no commercial ideas!
But let me tell you,” adds the old gentleman, “if this happens again,
down you come at eight in the morning and attend to women customers in
the wareroom,” he points toward the commercial end of the house.
“Remember that!”
And bottling up his wrath, Papa Bodé Volcker makes adieu to Guy and
Oliver, remarking that he must attend to business if none of the rest
of the family do, but dragging off the snickering boy Jakob.
“Papa is very eccentric. This sort of discussion always begins with the
tenth penny tax,” remarks the young lady solemnly. Then she half sighs,
half laughs: “We have this every week or two, though not generally in
public. He’ll be coming back again in a minute,” giving a little
horrified snicker as the old gentleman fulfils her prophecy by popping
his head in at the door and crying:
“And that French jumping-jack, who teaches you to sling your feet
about! I flung him out, waistband and neck ruff, this morning!”
But this news is too much for the fair Wilhelmina’s complacency. She
springs up with a scream of horror, “Oh, papa! Poor, dear little
Monsieur de Valmy!” and there are tears in her eyes.
“Yes, and the music master, that spinet playing fellow, goes also. No
more flipping the heel and raising the toe; no more semi-quavers and
high Italian screeches,” jabbers the ex-burgomaster. “Remember the
tenth penny tax! Some day I will be a music teacher myself,” and with
this extraordinary prophecy Bodé Volcker darts for his counting room.
But this astounding prediction is too much for every one. They go into
laughter, which Miss Wilhelmina leads, ejaculating: “A music teacher,
indeed! Screeches and semi-quavers!”
Tossing herself into a chair in front of a near-by spinet, she gives
out smilingly a little Provençal chançon with such unaffected ease and
grace that both Guy and Oliver declare it would be a shame if the music
master should be suppressed, tenth penny tax or no.
This seems to put them all at their ease, Miss Bodé Volcker regaling
the gentlemen with an account of the grand fête of the Countess
Mansfeld in honor of Doña de Alva the night before, mentioning the
names of the Signeurs de la Noircarmes, D’Avila, Mondragon, Gabriel de
Cerbolloni, and other officers and nobles as being present, as well as
the younger Countess Mansfeld, the aristocratic Baroness d’ Ayala, and
the beautiful Doña Anica de la Medrado, just come with the latest
Madrid fashions. “I was the only one from the town,” she adds
innocently, “but my dancing was greatly admired.”
A moment after they have proof of this.
There is a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard and four prancing Spanish
mules come clattering in dragging a coach of state, their outriders and
lackeys in the glittering liveries of Alva.
A second after Doña Hermoine, robed in priceless furs, her glorious
head shaded by jaunty Spanish hat and long white plumes, her face
brilliant with brunette radiance, her eyes growing, perchance, more
brilliant, as they look upon Guy Chester’s well-knit form, enters the
apartment. Behind her comes the attendant Countess de Pariza,
duenna-like aspect on her formal face.
Though Guy and Oliver rise quickly to greet rank, title and beauty,
Miss Bodé Volcker is before them at the door welcoming the ladies who
do her and her house so much honor.
“It is so condescending of you, Doña de Alva, so kind of you, Countess
de Pariza,” she murmurs, “to honor me in my own home,” and courtesying
to the ground, kisses Hermoine’s hand, which that young lady, daughter
of the Viceroy of Spain, courteously permits,—then steps immediately
across the apartment to allow the two gentlemen, bowing before her, the
same privilege.
The Countess de Pariza does not extend her formal, thin, severe hand,
as the daughter of the ex-burgomaster courtesies to the floor before
her, but says rather brusquely: “We have called, Juffrouw Bodé Volcker
to see you dance again. It pleased me greatly last night.”
“To see me dance—here?” says the young lady, pouting, as the Countess
uses to her Juffrouw, the title of the middle classes, with little more
ceremony than she would to a serving girl. “I—I am not in costume.
Besides, these gentlemen—.” Miss Bodé Volcker looks embarrassed, as the
request has the form of a command, that will make her seem more like a
dancing girl than a young lady of society to Captain Guido Amati.
“To be sure. You can put on your costume. Run upstairs, and deck
yourself at once. Those pink silk stockings become you,” replies Señora
de Pariza. “As for these gentlemen,” she turns her argus eyes upon
Chester and Oliver, who are in conversation with Doña Hermoine, though
as her father’s under-secretary, Antony has stepped slightly behind the
Englishman, who is a military swell under his title Captain of
Musketeers, “they must be relatives, you converse with them alone,
Juffrouw Bodé Volcker. It’s a very bad habit for girls of your age to
adopt. Lines of propriety are drawn at brothers; cousins are very
dangerous. So trip upstairs and put on the costume of Hungary, which
became you so well last night. I will call in one of my Moorish girls
who plays the spinet.”
With this the duenna would stride to the door to summon an attendant,
but Doña Hermoine, noting the embarrassment the order causes the
aspiring Mina, with that unaffected condescension which very great rank
permits the potentates of this world to make those below them in
station easy and happy, suddenly cries;
“Dancing, Countess? then I’m your young lady!” and tossing off with one
graceful gesture her furry wraps, with another sweeps up a trailing
silken skirt and stands a picture before them, laughing: “Castanets,
and I am an Andalusian gipsy!”
But the duenna, suddenly drawing herself up, utters a horrified
ejaculation: “Before these gentlemen, Doña de Alva?”
“Why not, if I can dance well enough to please them? Captain Guido has
placed me last night under obligations that permit me to do anything
for his benefit and pleasure, and Señor Oliver is one of my father’s
household, and as such very near to me.”
Here Oliver winces. He could betray the tyrant father, but the thought
that this being of goodness and kindness will one day think him a
traitor and ignoble brings with it twinges of remorse.
“Dance! The daughter of the Viceroy tossing her feet about?” ejaculates
the duenna.
“Pooh!” laughs the girl archly. “Have I not posed for Señor Oliver’s
Madonna—in bare feet too. Some day I am to make Señor Antony
celebrated, or, rather, he will make me worshiped by his genius and his
altar piece.”
“You posed for your foot” murmurs Guy, casting an enraptured glance at
the exquisite member the girl displays as she still holds the Gitana
attitude.
“Yes, I hope he painted them small enough to please you,” laughs the
young lady. “But sit down at the spinet, Señorita Mina, and play for me
so that I may enrapture the Countess de Pariza by dancing,” adds Doña
Hermoine, looking archly at her duenna, who seems to have lost her
appetite for Terpsichore.
To this, the dragon says sharply: “Since Juffrouw Bodé Volcker is
indisposed to repeat for me the pleasure of last evening, I will go
into her father’s shop and see if there are any bargains to-day in
Lyons silks and velvets and the lace of Venice.”
“There should be,” remarks Oliver, suggestively. “Great bargains! The
damage from the flood must have cheapened everything.”
“Bargains! Come, let me see,” and La Pariza would call her two Moorish
attendants, but Guy, who has been wishing her God-speed in his heart
ever since she has entered, very politely opens the door for her
departure across the courtyard to the warerooms of the merchant.
Doña Hermoine has apparently not come on a shopping expedition, at
least not for laces and dress goods; she does not accompany her duenna,
but remains standing, a picture of grace, in the attitude she has taken
for the dance.
“You don’t care for new costumes, Doña de Alva,” remarks Guy dreamily,
the beauty of the girl’s pose enchanting him, as well it may, for the
young lady wears some soft clinging costume of southern Spain with
Moorish effects in it, that outlines her lithe graceful beauty in every
curve, and, swept up by one dainty hand, permits a suspicion of ankle
so exquisite in proportion and symmetry that poets would dream over
it—but this audacious sailor simply loves it.
“No, why should I? I have dozens I never use, and papa would give me a
thousand if I were foolish enough to want them,” replies Doña Hermoine,
resigning Gitana attitude and sweeping her Moorish jupe upon the floor
again. “He gives me everything I ask for.” Then she remarks naively:
“You have discovered my name—that I am the daughter of the Viceroy,
Captain Guido Amati. You—you see I have discovered your name. Or rather
I should say, Major Guido Amati.”
“Major?”
“Yes; promoted since noon!”
“But your father—?”
“Oh, I told him nothing about it. You are absent without leave. Neither
did I tell Sancho d’Avila, who is colonel of your regiment in the
absence of Romero in Spain. But there was a vacancy, and it was easily
granted to Captain Guido Amati, who, I am informed, is the bravest
officer in the army, or one of the bravest. That is all that can be
said for any man under Alva.”
“Major in Romero’s foot!” gasps Guy, who, during this speech, has been
gazing at her in a dazed, startled way.
“Yes, I took the muster-roll of the regiment myself, and saw that
Captain was altered to Major.”
“The muster-roll!” murmurs Chester, not believing his ears.
“Yes, there are duplicates at the Citadel.”
“The muster-rolls at the Citadel,” he stammers, stunned by surprise.
Then suddenly it flashes through him that amazement will betray him,
that gratitude is the only way he can receive this astounding
communication; a gratitude that is very pleasant to him. Taking
advantage of the young lady’s position, for she has extended a hand
toward him in happy, gracious gesture, he imprints one kiss of
obligation upon it and two more of rapturous love, and Miss Brunette’s
lilies become roses.
This is effected without undue publicity, as Oliver has taken the fair
Mina into the next room, and is whispering into her ear: “Look in Doña
Hermoine’s eyes. Don’t you see a request, you foolish girl? She saved
you from the embarrassment of the dance; do something for her. Please
your father. Go in and be a saleswoman. Show the Countess de Pariza
every bargain in your store. Furthermore, make them bargains. Cut the
price of everything in half.”
“Cut prices one-half! Great heavens, my father!”
“I’ll pay the balance, or rather Captain Amati will.”
“Oh, I see,” laughs the girl. “But what will her father, the awful
Duke, say?”
“He’ll never know if you give Countess de Pariza bargains enough to
keep her busy. Do it—for me.”
“Oh, you—!”
For the painter has emphasized his “for me” by a lover’s salute.
Thus urged, and catching Hermoine’s bright eyes with a request in them,
Mina runs away under Oliver’s promptings to make a bargain counter of
her father’s whole store, and to cut prices in such a way that would
rouse the old Bodé Volcker to madness were he present; but fortunately
Heer Bodé Volcker has gone down to the quay to see about the unloading
of a ship.
A minute later Oliver has sauntered to the extreme end of the great
banqueting room. Though theoretically he is present, practically he
sees nothing, hears nothing, and the daughter of the Viceroy and Guy
Stanhope Chester are alone together.
“You see,” says the young lady, archly, “I’ve been inquiring about you.
Oh, don’t be afraid. No one knows that you are here—absent from duty.
They wouldn’t have made you Major, perhaps, if they had. But it has
been whispered to me that you are even more than Major Guido Amati. You
are Major Guido Amati de Medina, son of Hernandez de Medina, once
Viceroy of Hispaniola, and have sworn never to assume your exalted
family name until you are a general, which you soon must be.”
Then she cries out suddenly, clapping her hands, “Why, since you’re a
Medina, you must be a cousin to the Duke of Medina Cœli.”
“Only—only third cousin,” stammers Guy, who thinks his ears are playing
him false, though he knows his eyes are doing very good work, indeed.
“Well, anyway, you have the blood of the grandees of Spain, and as such
your family is equal to mine,” murmurs the girl, a curious emphasis on
the last remark. “As such, of course, you may sit by my side,” and the
young lady sinking upon a Turkish sofa, a dream of vivacious grace,
motions Guy to the familiarity of equal social station.
As she looks on the Englishman a great wave of color flies over
Hermoine de Alva’s face, and in response Chester’s heart gives a big
jump or two as he sees what must have been the drift of the girl’s
mind.
“I am glad that you know so much about me,” he says, laughingly, then
goes on grimly: “Glad that what you have learned has not displeased
you.”
“Oh, I don’t know altogether that,” remarks the young lady; then she
says, archness in her tone, but a quiver on her lip: “It was also
whispered that Captain Guido Amati was a very wild young man. I hope
that Major Guido Amati will be more circumspect. But still, they said
you were the bravest officer in the army.” And the girl looks at him
joyously, radiantly, proudly.
She has apparently been conjuring up some dream, some vision of her
imagination, the center of which has always been Guido Amati; it brings
a light into her eyes that adds even to her beauty, for at times were
it not for womanly graces, vivacity and emotion, her brilliant
intellect would, perchance, give too great coldness to Hermoine de
Alva’s exquisite face.
But, fired by the latent romance of her nature, her delicate face is as
inspired—it would put glow into a saint: but with a sailor—.
And what she says gives golden opportunity. She has held up the ruby
ring and whispered, “You returned this to me?”
“Only that I might see you again,” and Guy is seated beside her.
“Then if you wish to see me once more, take the ruby from me—quick!”
“Never!”
“Never?”
“Never, unless on your finger, you wear this, one of my spoils of
Hispaniola.” And the Englishman has taken from a chain about his neck a
ring bearing a single brilliant.
“Oh, Santos! What are you doing?” falters the girl.
He has got possession of her fair hand now, and her eyes look into his
for one great glance, then turn from him, and droop; their long lashed
lids falling upon flaming cheeks. The next instant the diamond sparkles
on the taper finger and Hermoine de Alva, the daughter of Spain’s
Viceroy is only woman—loving woman—before this man, who has not wooed
her heart, but has seized it.
“Take the ruby—now you’ve given me the diamond,” she murmurs. “You—you
know what this means?”
“Please God, I do! You are my plighted bride. Mine—mine now forever!”
And his audacious lips give lover’s greeting, not as the night before,
the kiss of hasty mistletoe effect, but the long rapture of clinging
hearts.
“Beware! I—I am the Viceroy’s daughter,” murmurs the lady. She hangs
her head, then suddenly raises her eyes to his and goes on firmly,
distinctly: “My Guido, you are audacious!”
“Yes,” he whispers, “Were you the Queen of Spain, I’d love you.”
“Then you could not win me!”
“But as, thank God, you are Hermoine de Alva,” answers Guy sturdily, “I
will win you and wear you, daughter of the Viceroy though you be, for
my beloved wife. You hear the term!”—for she gives sudden start at this
new title. “Wife! And every time you say to me, ‘I am the daughter of
Alva,’ or ‘Beware the Captain General of the Netherlands!’ your lips
that do the deed shall pay the price, two for each word.”
“Madre Mia! How impulsive you are,” cries the girl panting and
struggling under the penalty exacted. For Guy Stanhope Chester is half
mad with love and rapture, and though he respects this captive of his
masculine bow and spear, still he woos her in a free and easy sailor
manner which enthralls but astounds this daughter of the Viceroy. “Holy
Virgin! you—you are so—so different.”
“From whom?” cries Guy in jealous tones.
“From—from the other suitors, who come bowing to the earth, mincing
compliments and fawning for the honor of my hand.”
“And they have dared?” snarls this gallant, who now regards all this
brunette loveliness, these drooping, melting eyes, these lily and rose
tinted cheeks, these ivory shoulders, this exquisite form, half girl’s,
half woman’s—in short Hermoine de Alva—as his very own.
“Dared!” pouts the young lady; then laughs, “Why not? Am I so very
ugly?”
“No, no! too beautiful.”
“Then why should not grandees of Spain and generals in the army and
Hidalgos of twenty-four quarterings aspire in humble tones and modest
manner for an honor you take, my audacious Guido, as if heaven had
given you title to me, the daughter of a Viceroy!”
“And so it has, and love likewise, thy love,” and Guy has her in his
arms again, murmuring: “You spoke the words ‘the daughter of a
Viceroy!’ Beware the penalty.”
“Take it, tyrant,” whispers the girl, and with this name that women
love to give to those whose domination commands their love, she puts
her soul upon her lips and gives it to him.
And this game might go on indefinitely, the two seeming to like to play
it very well, did not the sound of Oliver’s rapid footsteps announce
his coming from the banqueting room.
He steps to them, and bowing before the young lady says: “Doña de Alva,
I have the honor, as your father’s herald, to announce his coming!”
“Papa! Here!” and with these words the girl is up.
“Yes, the Duke’s cavalcade is already in the Shoemarket, doubtless he
is in search of you. I will tell the Countess de Pariza.”
As Oliver on his errand closes the door Guy knows his time is very
short, for Hermoine is dallying with her furs and whispering: “Away
from your garrison without leave, papa had better not see you. I will
meet him in the street.”
Then as Guy is wrapping the cloak about her, each touch a caress, she
adds significantly; “I shall spend a month or two in Brussels, but if
Major Guido Amati de Medina asks for leave from the Middelburg
garrison, he will doubtless get it. Though don’t, for sight of me,
neglect the duties of your post. Remember, my Guido, that every step
you take in the army brings you nearer to the church door where a bride
awaits you—whom you have made forget she is the daughter of a Viceroy!”
“Penalty!” mutters Guy, and takes this kiss very solemnly, for already
the murmur of the approaching crowd tells of the coming father.
At this the young lady says, with a delicious moue: “How doleful! One
would think you an unsuccessful suitor! But your message by Oliver
spoke of danger,” and there is a tremor in her voice.
“Yes, I must have the word of the night to pass the sentries. I must
leave this evening.”
“Of course to be in Middelburg when your commission arrives. I have
thought of that and brought it with me.” With this she hands him a
little paper.
It reads:
THE WORD IS “SANTA CRUZ.”
COUNTERSIGN “DON FREDRICO.”
As he glances at this, she smiles in his face: “I’ve half a mind not to
give it to you—not to let you go. What brought my rash young officer to
Antwerp without leave?”
“You.”
“Oh!”
“And for you I’d come again a thousand times. I was going to the
Drowned Lands duck shooting, when, by the blessing of God, I saved you
from the Beggars of the Sea, my own—my prize.” And knowing that every
chance of this earth is against his wearing as his bride this
sweetheart he has won, Guy’s face is drawn and contorted with the agony
of a parting that is to him like death. Sadness is catching as well as
love, and the girl gets to sighing and sobbing under his farewells that
are so solemn—though she can’t guess why.
But Oliver, with rattling door-latch, cries: “The Countess de Pariza is
already in the carriage. Quick!”
Then Guy, seeing his time has come, though his sweetheart would linger
longer, and begins to cling to him with little sighs of love, hurriedly
assists her to the carriage and puts her in.
Half turning round, his affianced holds up her white finger to him.
Upon it glistens the ring of his love.
The postilions crack their whips, the state vehicle flies through the
arch, and all that he has to remind him of the woman who was but now in
his arms, is the memory of her kisses, her ruby ring upon his finger,
and a little document that bears the talisman that will make him safe
from her father’s sentries at the gates.
CHAPTER VIII.
“THE UNGAINABLE!—BUT I’LL GAIN HER!”
“Look,” says the painter, leading the way to a window opening on the
street.
And Guy, from the curtains of Bodé Volcker’s house, sees the man of the
death’s face, before whom the crowd cower and tremble, bow to his
saddle-bow before the coach of his daughter, his face illuminated by
the proud eyes of father’s love.
“Egad! I think I’ve run up my account with him,” mutters the
Englishman. Then he turns suddenly to Antony and says: “A word with
you. On my first visit here, for my safety you invented for my use the
name of Captain Guido Amati, of Romero’s foot. There is another living
Guido Amati, Captain of Romero’s foot.”
“Certainly there is,” returns Oliver, and astounds Guy. “I took the
name from the roster of Romero’s regiment. It was then quartered in
Friesland, two hundred miles from here, the most distant of all the
Netherland provinces, and I thought it better to give you a name that
could be verified. But what does this matter?”
“Matter!” replies Chester glumly. “Only this, that I have just learned
that Guido Amati has been promoted on my account to Major in his
regiment; that Captain Guido Amati of Romero’s foot has been behaving
in some wild, reckless kind of manner, apparently with ladies, and that
Major Guido Amati has just been severely cautioned to behave himself
from this time forth most circumspectly. Zounds!” he goes on savagely,
“if this gentleman I am christened after doesn’t take good care he’ll
have an account to render to me, who have now his sins on my
shoulders!”
Then he bursts into a laugh in which Oliver joins, and says more
complacently: “But I’ve also got the reputation of being the bravest
man in the army. Besides, I am the third cousin of the Duke of Medina
Cœli, and, I imagine, entitled to keep my hat on in the presence of
Philip II. of Spain.”
“Very well, my grandee,” returns Antony smiling. “Here is the bill the
Countess de Pariza has run up against you—two hundred guilders! That’s
your half of the affair. If his Highness of Alva hadn’t chanced along I
imagine she’d have bought all in Bodé Volcker’s warehouses.”
“A—ah,” sighs Guy, passing over the money, “I’d give everything I have
for another tête-à-tête with my—my promised wife,” he struggles with a
tear as he thinks of the beautiful being whose love he has captured by
a coup de main.
“Your promised wife!” gasps Oliver. “Morbleu! you have been making
hay,” next shortly says: “By heaven, if Alva ever puts hand on you and
knows this, dread the reckoning, my audacious Englishman. Besides,
you’ll have to be quick about this matter if you ever get her!”
“Why so?”
“Alva will not remain in the Netherlands much longer. The country is
crushed (pacified he calls it), though the embers are smouldering. He’s
collecting the tenth penny tax, but not paying the troops. Some of the
money he sends to Spain—just enough to keep Philip quiet, but the
balance—God knows what he does with it, though I guess it is for
transmission to Italy or to Spain, to make him equal in wealth to many
a king.”
“By St. George, if I could get my hands on it,” answers the Englishman,
the instinct of the sea rover coming up in him. “That would be a
fitting dower for his fair daughter.”
“As far as my information goes,” says Oliver, “no living man has put
his eyes on where he keeps this treasure, though I have a suspicion.
The great statue that he is erecting, the one that will be undraped
next week, in the enceinte of the Citadel here, has something peculiar
in its dimensions. Its pedestal is enormous. The workmen employed upon
its base have been brought from Italy, and are under the direct
personal supervision of Paciotto, his engineer. These having finished
the pedestal, have all been reshipped, bountifully rewarded, to their
native country. Not one has been permitted to remain in the
Netherlands. There’s a secret in that statue!”
Further consideration of this is suddenly broken in upon by the
entrance of the ex-burgomaster and his daughter. The old gentleman
seems pleased.
“You’ll stay and sup with me, gentlemen, I hope,” he remarks. “I am
happy to announce that my daughter Mina has been an obedient little
girl this afternoon, and sold goods for me in my shop—four hundred
guilders worth, to the Countess de Pariza, two hundred paid in cash,
something that never happened to me before in my dealings with the
nobility. But then,” he chucks Mina under the chin, “my little girl is
a very sharp business woman. Some day she’ll be as valuable as her poor
mother was.”
“Father,” says the young lady, taking advantage of the circumstances,
“can I go to the Duchess of Aerschot’s?”
“Humph! Well, you’re young, you shall be happy; but don’t keep the
horses out all night; you know I use them in the goods van in the
morning. Gentlemen, remain, and I’ll show you my little girl is not
only a good saleswoman, but a cook and housewife.”
“Father!” ejaculates the young lady very sternly, “Remember that we
have a Frenchman-cook in the house!”
But Guy does not stay to test the cuisine of the Bodé Volcker mansion.
Having had his tête-à-tête with brunette, he gives Oliver a chance of
interview with blonde, and goes off to the Painted Inn, where Antony
promises to join him early in the evening.
It is now dark, and seating himself in the wine room, which is
illuminated by oil lamps and flickering candles, the Englishman orders
a bounteous supper, knowing that he may be up all the night returning
to his ship. Success has given him appetite, though he scarce knows
what he is eating, for his whole meal is a succession of recollections,
each one a rapture. These rhapsodies are suddenly and disagreeably
broken in upon.
A man, apparently from his dress and demeanor the captain of some
trading vessel, strides into the room followed by a burgher, and with a
muttered oath slaps himself into a chair at the table next to Chester.
“Voor den duivel!” he growls, “not permitted to pass the city gates to
go to my own ship. What’ll become of my cargo, half landed. The mate
and drunken crew will be having a fine time!”
“Calm yourself, Captain,” says his consignee in soothing tone. “The
regulation is very unusual. You will doubtless be permitted to pass
through the gates to the quay at daylight.”
“Yes, giving me the expense of a berth at an inn, and my comfortable
cabin unoccupied. Another guilder wrung out of me in this port of
Antwerp. If this thing goes on, the commerce of this place will be
damned forever.”
“But it will probably never occur again,” says the merchant. “Such a
thing has not been heard of before for a year.” And the two go into
conversation discussing the why’s and wherefore’s of this unusual
vigilance at the gates.
Guy gets to meditating upon this also. He had noticed before, during
the early part of his meal, this same captain, apparently the guest of
the same merchant at supper at one of the tables. Half an hour before
this they had gone out; they have now returned, the captain having
evidently been unable to pass the guards. If such orders have been
issued the word of the night is probably useless. What can have caused
it? Can it be some suspicion of his presence in the town?
Even as he meditates, Oliver enters, a very serious look on his face.
Stepping up to Guy’s table he seats himself by him and whispers: “Come
with me.”
“Why?” This is a whisper also.
“Orders have been given for nobody to pass out of the gates of Antwerp
to-night.”
“The reason?”
“I don’t know, unless they suspect your presence in the town. Come to
my lodgings with me.”
“No, I shall remain here,” replies the Englishman firmly.
“Why?”
“For two reasons. First, I won’t put further jeopardy upon you. Second,
if orders are given for no one to pass the gates, I expect they will
very shortly come to the quick ears of a young lady who is interested
in one Major Guido Amati de Medina, an officer of Romero’s foot, absent
from his post without leave. Incidentally to-day I mentioned to her
that I stopped at the Painted Inn. This is the place where she would
send to find me. But don’t stay with me, Oliver. My seizure in your
company might bring suspicion on you—sit at another table!”
“I won’t leave you, when perchance I can aid you,” says the generous
artist. Then he mutters suddenly: “By heaven, perhaps it has come now!”
And it has, though not as Antony fears, for little Ensign de Busaco,
swinging through the door, takes one glance about the room and strides
up to the Englishman.
“I want you,” he says, while Guy’s hand quietly seeks the dirk in his
bosom. “I want you to take one of the state barges down to Sandvliet
to-night.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, I was unable to obtain leave to remain out of barracks to-night
at the provost marshal’s office, and went to the Citadel to get it.
While there I was summoned to Doña de Alva. She remarked to me that
Captain Amati, who had brought her barge up so successfully last night,
was just the man to take it down this evening. It goes on some errand
of the young lady. She charged me to give this note to you, and to
conduct you through the Citadel to the place of landing the night
before, where the rowers and a new crew will be ready—I believe the
Beggars of the Sea killed the last.”
With this he presents a sealed letter to the Englishman in the
handwriting that he loves.
Breaking the seal of Alva, Guy hastily reads:
My Dearest Guido.
I can’t help calling you that. It is, perhaps, rash, but that is
how I think of you.
It is just now known to me that the gates of the city are closed to
egress to-night, information of some daring pirate or outlaw being
concealed in Antwerp having reached headquarters. Knowing the
necessity of an officer absent without leave reaching Middelburg
before his commission, I am despatching my galley to my country
house at Sandvliet to bring up some articles left behind in the
hasty retreat of last night. Will you not be kind enough to steer
the boat down the Schelde as successfully as you steered it up?
Ensign de Busaco will pass you through the Citadel.
Praying that God will watch over you and bring you back to me with
as much love in your heart as I have for you in mine, I am, as I
ever shall be, your
Hermoine.
“You look happy,” laughs De Busaco, “at an order for a long night boat
journey?”
“I am always at the orders of Doña de Alva,” remarks Guy. “Come!”
“Quick,” replies the little Ensign. “I’ve got my leave to stay out of
barracks this night. The sooner we get through with this the sooner I
am free for my affair.”
So, Guy hastily settling his score, the three leave the Painted Inn and
making their way to Beguin street, stride rapidly along that
thoroughfare to the Esplanade, where Oliver, in low tones, and with
hearty grasp, says: “Good-bye.”
“God bless you!” mutters Guy.
And though they speak it not, as their hands clasp they mean friendship
and brotherhood.
A few minutes after Chester and De Busaco are at the Citadel, where,
passing over the drawbridge and through the great gateway, Guy learns
that the word of the night has been changed and is now “San Sebastian,”
countersign “Corpus Christi.”
From here they pass through the enceinte right by the statue of Alva,
De Busaco remarking parenthetically: “They’ve got his arm up to-day.
They’ll be all ready to show him off next week. Caramba! that means the
trouble of a dress parade. And no pay day yet. Some day we may dig out
our arrears from this hollow pedestal. Alva is cunning, but his troops
have their eyes open also!”
Going across this great fortification, they come out at the little
sally-port in the moat where Guy had landed the night before. Here they
have no difficulty of exit. The same galley that the Englishman brought
up is waiting for them; the rowers in place with a new crew, to whom De
Busaco introduces him as the officer who will take charge of the boat
to Sandvliet; then goes on his way with a hasty “Adios, Señor!” for the
little ensign is behind in his appointment with some young lady of the
city.
Just as the boat is casting off, for Guy does not waste much time about
this matter, a waiting maid, one of the Moorish handmaidens of the
night before, comes running over the little drawbridge crying:
“Stay!—one moment—stay!”
Then, as Guy stands up in the barge, she whispers to him, holding out a
belt of heavy leather: “Buckle this round your waist, Señor Capitan, my
mistress charges me to tell you to be careful of it. It is the one you
left in the boat so carelessly last night.”
“Oh—ah, yes,” says the Englishman, to whom lies this day have become
easy. “I was looking for it. I didn’t know where I’d left it,” and
buckling it about him, wonders what the deuce is in it.
“Egad, it’s not a life preserver,” he thinks. “It would send me to the
bottom like a shot.”
Anyway, whatever it is, he is enraptured to get it from the hands of
Hermoine de Alva.
But he has not much time to think of this; he has called to the rowers
and the boat is now under way and gliding through the moat that
surrounds the great bastions of the Spaniard.
Five minutes after they are in the open river, and, though the tide is
against them, they are en route toward Sandvliet and safety. Keeping
well across by the further bank of the river they pass unchallenged,
though Guy can see the lights of several guard and patrol boats moving
among the shipping on the city’s edge.
“Give way, my lads,” cries the Englishman enthusiastically, “and I’ll
stand a cask of wine when we reach Sandvliet.”
Thus adjured the men bend to their oars, while the cockswain of the
barge gets into quite friendly chat with Chester, telling him that this
place they are going to is a beautiful summer chateau used sometimes by
Alva himself, but mostly by his daughter, to enjoy the fresh sea
breezes blowing up the Schelde estuary during the hot months of summer.
“We came down very early this year,” he says, “the weather was so
pleasant. Fortunately I was in Antwerp last night, otherwise I would
have been done to death with poor Antonio and the rest by those
murdering Beggars of the Sea.”
The conversation of this man whiles away the time, and in three hours,
the wind aiding them a little, they are off the Fort of Lillo.
Here four guard boats are on duty, one of them stopping their barge. As
the Costa Guarda comes alongside, her commander recognizing a state
barge of Alva, and Guy giving him the new words of the night, which
have apparently been sent hurriedly down to Lillo, the captain of the
boat wishes Chester God-speed, remarking: “Take care of yourself. It is
reported that the First of the English is somewhere down below. Two
galleys, the Santa Cruz and the Holy Trinity, go down to see if they
can capture this pirate to-morrow morning.”
“Thank you for the information,” replies Guy, as his boat dashes on its
way.
At the last dyke left standing by the flood below Fort Lillo, Guy sees
three lanterns displayed in line and knows his boat is awaiting him. He
suddenly says: “I’ve piloted you through the worst of the journey. You
are now within a mile of the country place. What is it named?”
“Bella Vista,” replies the cockswain.
“Very well, take the galley to Bella Vista and perform the errand you
are charged with. Here’s two doubloons for the wine I promised you and
the crew. Land me upon the dyke. A boat is awaiting me there. I am
going duck shooting on the Drowned Lands; if my men row fast enough I
shall get there for the morning flight. I have arquebuses and a cross
bow in my skiff.”
The two doubloons making the men very happy, they quickly land Guy upon
the dyke and depart on their way.
A few minutes after the Englishman, getting to the three lanterns,
waves them.
Continuing this some little time, the splash of oars is heard, and a
boat comes very cautiously through the darkness, feeling its way up to
the land, apparently fearing ambuscade.
“Ahoy!” shouts Guy.
Then he hears Martin Corker cry: “Give way, lads! That’s the captain’s
voice,” and with three or four sturdy strokes the boat glides up to the
dyke.
A moment after Chester, pulled by English arms, is driving as fast as
oars can take him towards the Dover Lass. The little ship is difficult
to discover, as she has no lights out; but the boat, giving flash
signals, the vessel hangs up a lantern to show them where to find her.
Upon his deck Chester receives report from his first officer:
“I’m glad you’re here,” says Dalton. “We would have been attacked
to-morrow, I think. I am sure a patrol boat came down the river to see
if they could discover us.”
“We’ll not be attacked to-morrow,” laughs Guy, and taking speaking
trumpet, he gives orders to break ground with the anchor and to hoist
the head sails.
“You’re not going to fight the Spaniards?”
“No, run away to England. I have such an important communication for my
Queen it would be treason if I risked losing it.”
Then, his vessel being handy, and his crew numerous, the Dover Lass is
very quickly under way, driving down the Schelde for the open ocean.
And in the cabin is Guy Stanhope Chester, securing under lock and key
the spoils of this strange trip to Antwerp.
These are: a package of letters in cipher touching the assassination of
Elizabeth of England, and the key by which to read them; a ruby ring
that tells him he has won the love of the Viceroy’s daughter, and two
letters in her handwriting.
“Egad, I’ve done pretty well,” thinks Guy. Then he looks at the
miniature he has carried with him for over three years and mutters:
“Marvelous that I at last should find and win her. Who says romance
died with the troubadours? Egad, I feel like a troubadour myself.
Ta-la-la!”—and taking troubadour step, he suddenly mutters: “Gadzooks!
I have also something else,” for the heavy belt about his waist reminds
him of the last thing Doña de Alva has sent to him.
Inspecting it he finds it is really a strong leather bag, made to
buckle on securely.
Opening it he growls: “Pish!” for it is laden with golden doubloons,
but a moment after pounces on a little packet that he has swept out
with the coin. Then he suddenly laughs: “Egad! She didn’t know I had
one of her before,” for another miniature of his fair Castilian
sweetheart greets his devouring eyes. A little note is folded up with
the portrait. It reads:
“Dearest:
“I have taken the liberty of sending you my face to help you
remember it. It is not the living image for you to carry with you;
God knows I wish it were. But some day when Major Guido Amati de
Medina becomes a General, I’ll make it the real one—oh God! what
happiness!
“I have taken the liberty of enclosing with this a hundred golden
doubloons. The officers in the Middelburg garrison have not been
paid for over a year, and I would wish a gentleman who is one day
to wed the daughter of Alva to live in suitable style, appointment
and equipage. If you hesitate to accept this I shall not think you
love me as I want you to. It is but a little first payment in
advance on the dower of
“Your future spouse,
“Hermoine de Alva.”
“My future spouse she shall be,” cries Guy. Then in that wildness
passion brings to young hearts he puts the two miniatures of the
exquisite beauty who has just signed herself his future wife before
him, and chuckles: “Behold my old love—the unfindable that I have
found! See my new sweetheart, the ungainable, that, by heaven! I will
win and wear as my wife, though she be the daughter of Alva, mine
enemy.”
BOOK II.
TWIXT LOVE AND WAR.