I sprang up the stairs into the room and looked round, my eyes seeming to take in everything at once. It was a big bare room, with signs of habitation only in one corner. On the side toward the town was a long, low window, through which--a score of the diamond panes were broken already--the flare of the besiegers' torches fell luridly on the walls and vaulted roof. By the dull embers of a wood fire, over which hung a huge black pot, Master Bertie was lying on the boards, breathing loudly and painfully, his head pillowed on the Duchess's kerchief. Beside him sat Mistress Anne, her face hidden, the child wailing in her lap. A glance round assured me that there was no other staircase, and that on the side toward the country, the wall was pierced with no window bigger than a loophole or an arrow-slit; with no opening which even a boy could enter. For the present, therefore, unless the top of the tower should be escaladed from the adjacent houses--and I could do nothing to provide against that--we had nothing to fear except from the staircase and the window I have mentioned. Every moment, however, a missile or a shot crashed through the latter, adding the shiver of falling glass to the general din. No wonder the child wailed and the girl sank over it in abject terror. Those savage yells might well make a woman blench. They carried more fear and dread to my heart than did the real danger of our position, desperate as it was.
And yet it was so desperate that, for a moment, I leant against the wall dazed and hopeless, listening to the infernal tumult without and within. Had Bertie been by my side to share the responsibility and join in the risk, I could have borne it better. I might have felt then some of the joy of battle, and the stern pleasure of the one matched against the many. But I was alone. How was I to save these women and that poor child from the yelling crew outside? How indeed? I did not know the enemy's language; I could not communicate with him, could not explain, could not even cry for quarter for the women.
A stone which glanced from one of the mullions and grazed my shoulder roused me from this fit of cowardice, which, I trust and believe, had lasted for a few seconds only. At the same moment an unusual volley of missiles tore through the window as if discharged at a given signal. We were under cover, and they did us no harm, rolling for the most part noisily about the floor. But when the storm ceased and a calm as sudden followed, I heard a dull, regular sound close to the window--a thud! thud! thud!--and on the instant divined the plan and the danger. My courage came back and with it my wits. I remembered an old tale I had heard, and, dropping my sword where I stood, I flew to the hearth, and unhooked the great pot. It was heavy; half full of something--broth, most likely; but I recked nothing of that, I bore it swiftly to the window, and just as the foremost man on the ladder had driven in the lead work before him with his ax, flung the whole of the contents--they were not scalding, but they were very hot--in his face. The fellow shrieked loudly, and, blinded and taken by surprise, lost his hold and fell against his supporter, and both tumbled down again more quickly than they had come up.
Sternly triumphant, I poised the great pot itself in my hands, thinking to fling it down upon the sea of savage upturned faces, of which I had a brief view, as the torches flared now on one, now on another. But prudence prevailed. If no more blood were shed it might still be possible to get some terms. I laid the pot down by the side of the window as a weapon to be used only in the last resort.
Meanwhile the Duchess, posted in the dark, had heard the noise of the window being driven in, and cried out pitifully to know what it was. "Stand firm!" I shouted loudly. "Stand firm. We are safe as yet."
Even the uproar without seemed to abate a little as the first fury of the mob died down. Probably their leaders were concerting fresh action. I went and knelt beside Master Bertie and made a rough examination of his wound. He had received a nasty blow on the back of the head, from which the blood was still oozing, and he was insensible. His face looked very long and thin and deathlike. But, so far as I could ascertain, the bones were uninjured, and he was now breathing more quietly. "I think he will recover," I said, easing his clothes.
Anne was crouching on the other side of him. As she did not answer I looked up at her. Her lips were moving, but the only word I caught was "Clarence!" I did not wonder she was distraught; I had work enough to keep my own wits. But I wanted her help, and I repeated loudly, "Anne! Anne!" trying to rouse her.
She looked past me shuddering. "Heaven forgive you!" she muttered. "You have brought me to this! And now I must die! I must die here. In the net they have set for others is their own foot taken!"
She was quite beside herself with terror. I saw that she was not addressing me; and I had not time to make sense of her wanderings. I left her and went out to speak to the Duchess. Poor woman! even her brave spirit was giving way. I felt her cold hands tremble as I took the halbert from her. "Go into the room a while," I said softly. "He is not seriously hurt, I am sure. I will guard this. If any one appears at the window, scream."
She went gladly, and I took her place, having now to do double duty. I had been there a few minutes only, listening, with my soul in my ears, to detect the first signs of attack, either below me or in the room behind, when I distinguished a strange rustling sound on the staircase. It appeared to come from a point a good deal below me, and probably, whoever made it was just within the doorway. I peered into the gloom, but could see no one as yet. "Stand!" I cried in a tone of warning. "Who is that?"
The sound ceased abruptly, but it left me uneasy. Could they be going to blow us up with gunpowder? No! I did not think so. They would not care to ruin the gateway for the sake of capturing so small a party. And the tower was strong. It would not be easy to blow it up.
Yet in a short time the noise began again; and my fears returned with it. "Stand!" I cried savagely, "or take care of yourself."
The answer was a flash of bright light--which for a second showed the rough stone walls winding away at my feet--a stunning report, and the pattering down of half a dozen slugs from the roof. I laughed, my first start over. "You will have to come a little higher up!" I cried tauntingly, as I smelt the fumes. My eyes had become so accustomed to the darkness that I felt sure I should detect an assailant, however warily he might make his approach. And my halbert was seven feet long, so that I could reach as far as I could see. I had had time, too, to grow cool.
After this there was comparative quiet for another space. Every now and then a stone or, more rarely, the ball of an arquebuse would come whizzing into the room above. But I did not fear this. It was easy to keep under cover. And their shouting no longer startled me. I began to see a glimpse of hope. It was plain that the townsfolk were puzzled how to come at us without suffering great loss. They were unaware of our numbers, and, as it proved, believed that we had three uninjured men at least. The staircase was impracticable as a point of assault, and the window, being only three feet in height and twenty from the ground, was not much better, if defended, as they expected it would be, by a couple of desperate swordsmen.
I was not much astonished, therefore, when the rustling sound, beginning again at the foot of the staircase, came this time to no more formidable issue than a hail in Spanish. "Will you surrender?" the envoy cried.
"No!" I said roundly.
"Who are you?" was the next question.
"We are English!" I answered.
He went then; and there for the time the negotiations ended. But, seeing the dawn of hope, I was the more afraid of any trap or surprise, and I cried to the Duchess to be on her guard. For this reason, too, the suspense of the next few minutes was almost more trying than anything which had gone before. But the minutes came at last to an end. A voice below cried loudly in English, "Holloa! are you friends?"
"Yes, yes," I replied joyfully, before the words had well ceased to rebound from the walls. For the voice and accent were Master Lindstrom's. A cry of relief from the room behind me showed that there, too, the speaker was recognized. The Duchess came running to the door, but I begged her to go back and keep a good lookout. And she obeyed.
"How come you here? How has it happened?" Master Lindstrom asked, his voice, though he still remained below, betraying his perplexity and unhappiness. "Can I not do something? This is terrible, indeed."
"You can come up, if you like," I answered, after a moment's thought. "But you must come alone. And I cannot let even you, friend as you are, see our defenses."
As he came up I stepped back and drew the door of the room toward me, so that, though a little light reached the head of the stairs, he could not, standing there, see into the room or discern our real weakness. I did not distrust him--Heaven forbid! but he might have to tell all he saw to his friends below, and I thought it well, for his sake as well as our own, that he should be able to do this freely, and without hurting us. As he joined me I held up a finger for silence and listened keenly. But all was quiet below. No one had followed him. Then I turned and warmly grasped his hands, and we peered into one another's faces. I saw he was deeply moved; that he was thinking of Dymphna, and how I had saved her. He held my hands as though he would never loose them.
"Well!" I said, as cheerfully as I could, "have you brought us an offer of terms? But let me tell you first," I continued, "how it happened." And I briefly explained that we had mistaken the captain of the guard and his two followers for Clarence and the two Spaniards. "Is he dead?" I continued.
"No, he is still alive," Master Lindstrom answered gravely. "But the townsfolk are furious, and the seizure of the tower has still further exasperated them. Why did you do it?"
"Because we should have been torn to pieces if we had not done it," I answered dryly. "You think we are in a strait place?"
"Do you not think so yourself?" he said, somewhat astonished.
I laughed. "That is as may be," I answered with an affectation of recklessness. "The staircase is narrow and the window low. We shall sell our lives dearly, my friend. Yet, for the sake of the women who are with us, we are willing to surrender if the citizens offer us terms. After all, it was an accident. Cannot you impress this on them?" I added eagerly.
He shook his head. "They will not hear reason," he said.
"Then," I replied, "impress the other thing upon them. Tell them that our swords are sharp and we are desperate."
"I will see what I can do," he answered slowly. "The Duke of Cleves is expected here to-morrow, and the townsfolk feel they would be disgraced forever if he should find their gate held by a party of marauders, as they consider you."
"The Duke of Cleves?" I repeated. "Perhaps he may be better affected toward us."
"They will overpower you before he comes," Master Lindstrom answered despondently. "I would put no trust in him if I were you. But I will go to them, and, believe me, I will do all that man can do."
"Of that I am sure," I said warmly. And then, cautioning me to remain strictly on the defensive, he left me.
Before his footsteps had ceased to echo on the stairs the door beside me opened, and Mistress Anne appeared at it. I saw at once that his familiar voice had roused her from the stupor of fear in which I had last seen her. Her eyes were bright, her whole frame was thrilling with excitement, hope, suspense. I began to understand her; to discern beneath the disguise thrown over it in ordinary times by a strong will, the nervous nature which was always confident or despairing, which felt everything so keenly--everything, that is, which touched itself. "Well?" she cried, "well?"
"Patience! patience!" I replied rather sharply. I could not help comparing her conduct with that of the Duchess, and blaming her, not for her timidity, but for the selfishness which she had betrayed in her fear. I could fancy Petronilla trembling and a coward, but not despairing nor utterly cast down, nor useless when others needed her, nor wrapped in her own terrors to the very exclusion of reason. "Patience!" I said; "he is coming back. He and his friends will do all they can for us. We must wait a while and hope, and keep a good lookout."
She had her hand on the door, and by an abrupt movement, she slipped out to me and closed it behind her. This made the staircase so dark that I could no longer distinguish her face, but I judged from her tone that her fears were regaining possession of her. "Clarence," she muttered, her voice low and trembling. "Have you thought of him? Could not he help us? He may have followed us here, and may be here now. Now! And perhaps he does not know in what danger we are."
"Clarence!" I said, astonished and almost angry. "Clarence help us? Go back, girl, go back. You are mad. He would be more likely to complete our ruin. Go in and nurse the baby!" I added bitterly.
What could she mean, I asked myself, when she had gone in. Was there anything in her suggestion? Would Clarence follow us hither? If so, and if he should come in time, would he have power to help us, using such mysterious influence, Spanish or English, as he seemed to possess? And if he could help us, would it be better to fall into his hands than into those of the exasperated Santonese? I thought the Duchess would say "No!"
So it mattered not what I answered myself. I hoped, now Master Lindstrom had appeared, that the women would be allowed to go free; and it seemed to me that to surrender to Clarence would be to hand over the Duchess to her enemy simply that the rest of us might escape.
Master Lindstrom returned while I was still considering this, and, observing the same precautions as before, I bade him join me. "Well?" I said, not so impetuously, I hope, as Mistress Anne, yet I dare say with a good deal of eagerness. "Well, what do they say?" For he was slow to speak.
"I have bad news," he answered gently.
"Ah!" I ejaculated, a lump which was due as much to rage as to any other emotion rising in my throat. "So they will give us no terms? Then so be it! Let them come and take us."
"Nay," he hastened to answer. "It is not so bad as that, lad. They are fathers and husbands themselves, and not lanzknechts. They will suffer the women to go free, and will even let me take charge of them if necessary."
"They will!" I exclaimed, overjoyed. I wondered why on earth he had hesitated to tell me this. "Why, that is the main point, friend."
"Yes," he said gravely, "perhaps so. More, the men may go too, if the tower be surrendered within an hour. With one exception, that is. The man who struck the blow must be given up."
"The man who struck the blow!" I repeated slowly. "Do you mean--you mean the man who cut the patrol down?"
"Yes," he said. He was peering very closely at me, as though he would learn from my face who it was. And I stood thinking. This was as much as we could expect. I divined, and most truly, that but for the honest Dutchman's influence, promises, perhaps bribes, such terms would never have been offered to us by the men who hours before had driven us to hold as if we had been vermin. Yet give up Master Bertie? "What," I said, "will be done to him? The man who must be given up, I mean?" Master Lindstrom shook his head. "It was an accident," I urged, my eyes on his.
He grasped my hand firmly, and, turning away his face, seemed for a while unable to speak. At last he whispered, "He must suffer for the others, lad. I fear so. It is a hard fate, a cruel fate. But I can do no more. They will not hear me on this. It is true he will be first tried by the magistrate, but there is no hope. They are very hard."
My heart sank. I stood irresolute, pondering on what we ought to do, pondering on what I should say to the wife who so loved the man who must die. What could I say? Yet, somehow I must break the news. I asked Master Lindstrom to wait where he was while I consulted the others, adding, "You will answer for it that there will be no attack while you are here, I suppose?"
"I will," he said. I knew I could trust him, and I went in to the Duchess, closing the door behind me. A change had come over the room since I had left it. The moon had risen and was flinging its cold white light through the twisted and shattered framework of the window, to fall in three bright panels on the floor. The torches in the street had for the most part burned out, or been extinguished. In place of the red glare, the shouts and the crash of glass, the atmosphere of battle and strife I had left, I found this silvery light and a stillness made more apparent by the distant hum of many voices.
Mistress Anne was standing just within the threshold, her face showing pale against the gloom, her hands clasped. The Duchess was kneeling by her husband, but she looked up as I entered.
"They will let us all go," I said bluntly; it was best to tell the tale at once--"except the one who hurt the patrol, that is."
It was strange how differently the two women received the news; while Mistress Anne flung her hands to her face with a sobbing cry of thankfulness, and leaned against the wall crying and shaking, my lady stood up straight and still, breathing hard but saying nothing. I saw that she did not need to ask what would be done to the one who was excepted. She knew. "No," she murmured at last, her hands pressed to her bosom, "we cannot do it! Oh, no, no!"
"I fear we must," I said gently--calmly, too, I think. Yet in saying it I was not quite myself. An odd sensation was growing upon me in the stillness of the room. I began on a sudden, I did not know why, to thrill with excitement, to tremble with nervousness, such as would rather have become one of the women than a man. My head grew hot, my heart began to beat quickly. I caught myself looking out, listening, waiting for something to happen, something to be said. It was something more terrible, as it seemed to me, than the din and crash of the worst moments of the assault. What was it? What was it that was threatening my being? An instant and I knew.
"Oh, no, never!" cried the Duchess again, her voice quivering, her face full of keenest pain. "We will not give you up. We will stand or fall together, friend."
Giveyouup! Giveyouup! Ha! The veil was lifted now, and I saw what the something with the cold breath going before it was. I looked quietly from her to her husband; and I asked--I fancy she thought my question strangely irrelevant at that moment, "How is he? Is he better?"
"Much better. He knew me for a moment," she answered. "Then he seemed to sink away again. But his eyes were quite clear."
I stood gazing down at his thin face, which had ever looked so kindly into mine. My fingers played idly with the knot of my sword. "He will live?" I asked abruptly, harshly.
She started at the sudden question. But, brutal as it must have sounded, she was looking at me in pity so great and generous that it did not wound her. "Oh, yes," she said, her eyes still clinging to me. "I think he will live, thank Heaven!"
Thank Heaven! Ah, yes, thank Heaven!
I turned and went slowly toward the door. But before I reached it she was at my side, nay, was on her knees by me, clasping my hand, looking up to me with streaming eyes. "What are you going to do?" she cried, reading, I suppose, something in my face.
"I will see if Master Lindstrom cannot get better terms for us," I answered.
She rose, still detaining me. "You are sure?" she said, still eying me jealously.
"Quite sure," I answered, forcing a smile. "I will come back and report to you."
She let me go then, and I went out and joined Lindstrom on the staircase.
"Are you certain," I asked, speaking in a whisper, "that they will--that the town will keep its word and let the others go?"
"I am quite sure of it," he replied nodding. "They are Germans, and hard and pitiless, but you may trust them. So far I will answer for them."
"Then we accept," I said gravely. "I give myself up. Let them take me."
I had not seen the first moonbeams pierce the broken casement of the tower-room, but I was there to watch the last tiny patch of silver glide aslant from wall to sill, and sill to frame, and so pass out. Near the fire, which had been made up, and now glowed and crackled bravely on the hearthstone at my elbow, my three jailers had set a mattress for me; and on this I sat, my back to the wall and my face to the window. The guards lounged on the other side of the hearth round a lantern, playing at dice and drinking. They were rough, hard men, whose features, as they leaned over the table and the light played strongly on their faces, blazoning them against a wall of shadow, were stern and rugged enough. But they had not shown themselves unkindly. They had given me a share of their wine, and had pointed to the window and shrugged their shoulders, as much as to say that it was my own fault if I suffered from the draught. Nay, from time to time, one of them would turn from his game and look at me--in pity, I think--and utter a curse that was meant for encouragement.
Even when the first excitement had passed away, I felt none of the stupefaction which I have heard that men feel in such a position. My brain was painfully active. In vain I longed to sleep, if it were only that I might not be thought to fear death. But the fact that I was to be tried first, though the sentence was a certainty, distracted and troubled me. My thoughts paced from thing to thing; now dwelling on the Duchess and her husband, now flitting to Petronilla and Sir Anthony, to the old place at home and the servants; to strange petty things, long familiar--a tree in the chase at Coton, an herb I had planted. Once a great lump rose in my throat, and I had to turn away to hide the hot tears that would rise at the thought that I must die in this mean German town, in this unknown corner, and be buried and forgotten! And once, too, to torment me, there rose a doubt in my mind whether Master Bertie would recover; whether, indeed, I had not thrown my life away for nothing. But it was too late to think of that! And the doubt, which the Evil One himself must have suggested, so terrible was it passed away quickly.
My thoughts raced, but the night crawled. We had surrendered about ten, and the magistrates, less pitiful than the jailers, had forbidden my friends to stay with me. An hour or more after midnight, two of the men lay down and the other sat humming a drinking-song, or at intervals rose to yawn and stretch himself and look out of the window. From time to time, the cry of the watchman going his rounds came drearily to my ears, recalling to me the night I had spent behind the boarding in Moorgate Street, when the adventure which was to end to-morrow--nay, to-day--in a few hours--had lured me away. To-day? Was I to die to-day? To perish with all my plans, hopes, love? It seemed impossible. As I gazed at the window, whose shape began to be printed on my brain, it seemed impossible. My soul so rose in rebellion against it, that the perspiration stood on my brow, and I had to clasp my hands about my knees, and strain every muscle to keep in the cry I would have uttered! a cry, not of fear, but of rage and remonstrance and revolt.
I was glad to see the first streaks of dawn, to hear the first cock-crowings, and, a few minutes later, the voices of men in the street and on the stairs. The sounds of day and life acted magically upon me. The horror of the night passed off as does the horror of a dream. When a man, heavily cloaked and with his head covered, came in, the door being shut behind him by another hand, I looked up at him bravely. The worst was past.
He replied by looking down at me for a few moments without disclosing himself, the collar of his cloak being raised so high that I could see nothing of his features. My first notion that he must be Master Lindstrom passed away; and, displeased by his silent scrutiny, and thinking him a stranger, I said sharply, "I hope you are satisfied, sir."
"Satisfied?" he replied, in a voice which made me start so that the irons clanked on my feet, "Well, I think I should be--seeing you so, my friend!"
It was Clarence! Of all men, Clarence! I knew his voice, and he, seeing himself recognized, lowered his cloak. I stared at him in stupefied silence, and he at me in a grim curiosity. I was not prepared for the blunt abruptness with which he continued--using almost the very words he had used when face to face with me in the flood: "Now tell me who you are, and what brought you into this company?"
I gave him no answer. I still stared at him in silence.
"Come!" he continued, his hawk's eyes bent on my face, "make a clean breast of it, and perhaps--who knows? I may help you yet, lad. You have puzzled and foiled me, and I want to understand you. Where did my lady pick you up just when she wanted you? I had arranged for every checker on the board except you. Who are you?"
This time I did answer him--by a question. "How many times have we met?" I asked.
"Three," he said readily, "and the last time you nearly rid the world of me. Now the luck is against you. It generally is in the end against those who thwart me, my friend." He chuckled at the conceit, and I read in his face at once his love of intrigue and his vanity. "I come uppermost, as always."
I only nodded.
"What do you want?" I asked. I felt a certain expectation. He wanted something.
"First, to know who you are."
"I shall not tell you!" I answered.
He smiled dryly, sitting opposite to me. He had drawn up a stool, and made himself comfortable. He was not an uncomely man as he sat there playing with his dagger, a dubious smile on his lean, dark face. Unwarned, I might have been attracted by the masterful audacity, the intellect as well as the force which I saw stamped on his features. Being warned, I read cunning in his bold eyes, and cruelty in the curl of his lip. "What do you want next?" I asked.
"I want to save your life," he replied lightly.
At that I started--I could not help it.
"Ha! ha!" he laughed, "I thought the stoicism did not go quite down to the bottom, my lad. But there, it is true enough, I have come to help you. I have come to save your life if you will let me."
I strove in vain to keep entire mastery over myself. The feelings to which he appealed were too strong for me. My voice sounded strange, even in my own ears, as I said hoarsely, "It is impossible! What can you do?"
"What can I do?" he answered with a stern smile. "Much! I have, boy, a dozen strings in my hands, and a neck--a life at the end of each!"
He raised his hand, and extending the fingers, moved them to and fro.
"See! see! A life, a death!" he exclaimed. "And for you, I can and will save your life--on one condition."
"On one condition?" I murmured.
"Ay, on one condition; but it is a very easy one. I will save your life on my part; and you, on yours, must give me a little assistance. Do you see? Then we shall be quits."
"I do not understand," I said dully. I did not. His words had set my heart fluttering so that I could for the moment take in only one idea--that here was a new hope of life.
"It is very simple," he resumed, speaking slowly. "Certain plans of mine require that I should get your friend the Duchess conveyed back to England. But for you I should have succeeded before this. In what you have hindered me, you can now help me. You have their confidence and great influence with them. All I ask is that you will use that influence so that they may be at a certain place at a certain hour. I will contrive the rest. It shall never be known, I promise you, that you----"
"Betrayed them!"
"Well, gave me some information," he said lightly, puffing away my phrase.
"No. Betrayed them!" I persisted.
"Put it so, if you please," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyebrows. "What is in a word?"
"You are the tempter himself, I think!" I cried in bitter rage--for itwasbitter--bitter, indeed, to feel that new-born hope die out. "But you come to me in vain. I defy you!"
"Softly! softly!" he answered with calmness.
Yet I saw a little pulse beating in his cheek that seemed to tell of some emotion kept in subjection.
"It frightens you at first," he said. "But listen. You will do them no harm, and yourself good. I shall get them anyway, both the Duchess and her husband; though, without your aid, it will be more difficult. Why, help of that kind is given every day. They need never know it. Even now there is one of whom you little dream who has----"
"Silence!" I cried fiercely. "I care not. I defy you!"
I could think of only one thing. I was wild with rage and disappointment. His words had aggravated the pain of every regret, every clinging to life I felt.
"Go!" I cried. "Go and leave me, you villain!"
"If I do leave you," he said, fixing his eyes on me, "it will be, my friend--to death."
"Then so be it!" I answered wildly. "So be it! I will keep my honor."
"Your honor!" The mask dropped from his face, and he sneered as he rose from his seat. A darker scowl changed and disfigured his brow, as he lost hope of gaining me. "Your honor? Where will it be by to-night?" he hissed, his eyes glowering down at me. "Where a week hence, when you will be cast into a pit and forgotten? Your honor, fool? What is the honor of a dead man? Pah! But die, then, if you will have it so! Die, like the brainless brute you are! And rot, and be forgotten!" he concluded passionately.
They were terrible words; more terrible I know now than either he or I understood then. They so shook me that when he was gone I crouched trembling on my pallet, hiding my face in a fit of horror--taking no heed of my jailers or of appearances. "Die and be forgotten! Die and be forgotten!" The doom rang in my ears.
Something which seemed to me angelic roused me from this misery. It was the sound of a kindly, familiar voice speaking English. I looked up and found the Dutchman bending over me with a face of infinite distress. With him, but rather behind him, stood Van Tree, pale and vicious-eyed, tugging his scanty chin-beard and gazing about him like a dog seeking some one to fasten upon. "Poor lad! poor lad!" the old man said, his voice shaking as he looked at me.
I sprang to my feet, the irons rattling as I dashed my hand across my eyes.
"It is all right!" I said hurriedly. "I had a--but never mind that. It was like a dream. Only tell the Duchess to look to herself," I continued, still rather vehemently. "Clarence is here. He is in Santon. I have seen him."
"You have seen him?" both the Dutchmen cried at once.
"Ay!" I said, with a laugh that was three parts hysterical--indeed, I was still tingling all over with excitement. "He has been here to offer me my life if I would help him in his schemes. I told him he was the tempter, and defied him. And he--he said I should die and be forgotten!" I added, trembling, yet laughing wildly at the same time.
"I think heisthe tempter!" said Master Lindstrom solemnly, his face very grim. "And therefore a liar and the father of lies! You may die, lad, to-day; perhaps you must. But forgotten you shall not be, while we live, or one of us lives, or one of the children who shall come after us. He is a liar!"
I got my hands, with a struggle, from the old man, and turning my back upon him, went and looked out of the window. The sun was rising. The tower of the great minster, seen row for the first time, rose in stately brightness above the red roofs and quaint gables and the rows of dormer windows. Down in the streets the grayness and chill yet lingered. But above was a very glory of light and warmth and color--the rising of the May sun. When I turned round I was myself again. The calm beauty of that sight had stolen into my soul. "Is it time?" I said cheerfully. For the crowd was gathering below, and there were voices and feet on the stairs.
"I think it is," Master Lindstrom answered. "We have obtained leave to go with you. You need fear no violence in the streets, for the man who was hurt is still alive and may recover. I have been with the magistrates this morning," he continued, "and found them better disposed to you; but the Sub-dean has joint jurisdiction with them, as the deputy of the Bishop of Arras, who is dean of the minster; and he is, for some reason, very bitter against you."
"The Bishop of Arras? Granville, do you mean?" I asked. I knew the name of the Emperor's shrewd and powerful minister, by whose advice the Netherlands were at this time ruled.
"The same. He, of course, is not here, but his deputy is. Were it not for him---- But there, it is no good talking of that!" the Dutchman said, breaking off and rubbing his head in his chagrin.
One of the guards who had spent the night with me brought me at this moment a bowl of broth with a piece of bread in it. I could not eat the bread, but I drank the broth and felt the better for it. Having in my pocket a little money with which the Duchess had furnished me, I put a silver piece in the bowl and handed it back to him. The man seemed astonished, and muttered something in German as he turned away.
"What did he say?" I asked the Dutchman.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," he answered.
"But what was it? It was something," I persisted, seeing him confused.
"He--well, he said he would have a mass said for you!" Lindstrom answered in despair. "It will do no harm."
"No, why should it?" I replied mechanically.
We were in the street by this time, Master Lindstrom and Van Tree walking beside me in the middle of a score of soldiers, who seemed to my eyes fantastically dressed. I remarked, as we passed out, a tall man clothed in red and black, who was standing by the door as if waiting to fall in behind me. He carried on his shoulder a long broad-bladed sword, and I guessed who he was, seeing how Master Lindstrom strove to intercept my view of him. But I was not afraid ofthat. I had heard long ago--perhaps six months in time, but it seemed long ago--how bravely Queen Jane had died. And if a girl had not trembled, surely a man should not. So I looked steadfastly at him, and took great courage, and after that was able to gaze calmly on the people, who pressed to stare at me, peeping over the soldiers' shoulders, and clustering in every doorway and window to see me go past. They were all silent, and it even seemed to me that some--but this may have been my fancy--pitied me.
I saw nothing of the Duchess, and might have wondered, had not Master Lindstrom explained that he had contrived to keep her in ignorance of the hour fixed for the proceedings. Her husband was better, he said, and conscious; but, for fear of exciting him, they were keeping the news from him also. I remember I felt for a moment very sore at this, and then I tried to persuade myself that it was right.
The distance through the streets was short, and almost before I was aware of it I was in the court-house, the guard had fallen back, and I was standing before three persons who were seated behind a long table. Two of them were grave, portly men wearing flat black caps and scarlet robes, with gold chains about their necks. The third, dressed as an ecclesiastic, wore a huge gem ring upon his thumb. Behind them stood three attendants holding a sword, a crosier, and a ducal cap upon a cushion; and above and behind all was a lofty stained window, whose rich hues, the sun being low as yet, shot athwart the corbels of the roof. At the end of the table sat a black-robed man with an ink-horn and spectacles, a grave, still, down-looking man; and the crowd being behind me, and preserving a dead silence, and the attendants standing like statues, I seemed indeed to be alone with these four at the table, and the great stained window and the solemn hush. They talked to one another in low tones for a minute, gazing at me the while. And I fancied they were astonished to find me so young.
At length they all fell back into their chairs. "Do you speak German?" the eldest burgher said, addressing me gravely. He sat in the middle, with the Sub-dean on his right.
"No; but I speak and understand Spanish," I answered in that language, feeling chilled already by the stern formality which like an iron hand was laying its grip upon me.
"Good! Your name?" replied the president.
"I am commonly called Francis Carey, and I am an Englishman." The Sub-dean--he was a pale, stout man, with gloomy eyes--had hitherto been looking at me in evident doubt. But at this he nodded assent, and, averting his eyes from me, gazed meditatively at the roof of the hall, considering apparently what he should have for breakfast.
"You are charged," said the president slowly, consulting a document, "with having assaulted and wounded in the highway last night one Heinrich Schröder, a citizen of this town, acting at the time as Lieutenant of the Night Guard. Do you admit this, prisoner, or do you require proof?"
"He was wounded," I answered steadily, "but by mistake, and in error. I supposed him to be one of three persons who had unlawfully waylaid me and my party on the previous night between Emmerich and Wesel."
The Sub-dean, still gazing at the roof, shook his head with a faint smile. The other magistrates looked doubtfully at me, but made no comment, and my words seemed to be wasted on the silence. The president consulted his document again, and continued: "You are also charged with having by force of arms, in time of peace, seized a gate of this town, and maintained it, and declined to surrender it when called upon so to do. What do you say to that?"
"It is true in part," I answered firmly. "I seized not the gate, but part of the tower, in order to preserve my life and to protect certain ladies traveling with me from the violence of a crowd which, under a misapprehension, was threatening to do us a mischief."
The priest again shook his head, and smiled faintly at the carved roof. His colleagues were perhaps somewhat moved in my favor, for a few words passed between them. However, in the end they shook their heads, and the president mechanically asked me if I had anything further to say.
"Nothing!" I replied bitterly. The ecclesiastic's cynical heedlessness, his air of one whose mind is made up, seemed so cruel to me whose life was at stake, that I lost patience. "Except what I have said," I continued--"that for the wounding, it was done in error; and for the gate-seizing, I would do it again to save the lives of those with me. Only that and this: that I am a foreigner ignorant of your language and customs, desiring only to pass peacefully through your country."
"That is all?" the president asked impassively.
"All," I answered, yet with a strange tightening at my throat. Was it all? All I could say for my life?
I was waiting, sore and angry and desperate, to hear the sentence, when there came an interruption. Master Lindstrom, whose presence at my side I had forgotten, broke suddenly into a torrent of impassioned words, and his urgent voice, ringing through the court, seemed in a moment to change its aspect--to infuse into it some degree of life and sympathy. More than one guttural exclamation, which seemed to mark approval, burst from the throng at the back of the hall. In another moment, indeed, the Dutchman's courage might have saved me. But there was one who marked the danger. The Sub-dean, who had at first only glowered at the speaker in rude astonishment, now cut him short with a harsh question.
"One moment, Master Dutchman!" he cried. "Are you one of the heretics who call themselves Protestants?"
"I am. But I understand that there is here liberty of conscience," our friend answered manfully, nothing daunted in his fervor at finding the attack turned upon himself.
"That depends upon the conscience," the priest answered with a scowl. "We will have no Anabaptists here, nor foreign praters to bring us into feud with our neighbors. It is enough that such men as you are allowed to live. We will not be bearded by you, so take warning! Take heed, I say, Master Dutchman, and be silent!" he repeated, leaning forward and clapping his hand upon the table.
I touched Master Lindstrom's sleeve--who would of himself have persisted--and stayed him. "It is of no use," I muttered. "That dog in a crochet has condemned me. He will have his way!"
There was a short debate between the three judges, while in the court you might have heard a pin drop. Master Lindstrom had fallen back once more. I was alone again, and the stained window seemed to be putting forth its mystic influence to enfold me, when, looking up, I saw a tiny shadow flit across the soft many-hued rays which streamed from it athwart the roof. It passed again, once, twice, thrice. I peered upward intently. It was a swallow flying to and fro amid the carved work.
Yes, a swallow. And straightway I forgot the judges; forgot the crowd. The scene vanished and I was at Coton End again, giving Martin Luther the nest for Petronilla--a sign, as I meant it then, that I should return. I should never return now. Yet my heart was on a sudden so softened that, instead of this reflection giving me pain, as one would have expected, it only filled me with a great anxiety to provide for the event. She must not wait and watch for me day after day, perhaps year after year. I must see to it somehow; and I was thinking with such intentness of this, that it was only vaguely I heard the sentence pronounced. It might have been some other person who was to be beheaded at the east gate an hour before noon. And so God save the Duke!