Leatherface Part 35

They had waited on His Highness at a very early hour, but had been kept waiting in the guard-room for two hours, without a chair to sit on, and with a crowd of rough soldiers around them, some of whom were lounging about on the benches, others playing at cards or dice, whilst all of them improved the occasion and whiled away the time by indulging in insolent jests at the expense of the reverend burghers, who--humiliated beyond forbearance and vainly endeavouring to swallow their wrath--did not dare to complain to the officer in command, lest worse insults be heaped upon them.

At one hour before noon the seigniors were at last told very peremptorily that they might present themselves before His Highness.

They were marched between a detachment of soldiers through the castle yard to the magnificent apartments in the Meeste-Toren, which at one time were occupied by the Counts of Flanders. Now the Duke of Alva's soldiery and his attendants were in every corridor and every ante-room.

They stared with undisguised insolence at the grave seigniors who belonged to the despised race.

The Lieutenant-Governor was graciously pleased to receive the burghers in his council-chamber where, seated upon a velvet-covered chair upon an elevated platform and beneath a crimson dais, he looked down upon these free citizens of an independent State as if he were indeed possessed of divine rights over them all. The officer in command of the small detachment which had escorted the deputation into the dreaded presence, now ordered the five seigniors to kneel, and they, who had a pet.i.tion to present and an act of mercy to entreat, obeyed with that proud humility wherewith their fathers had knelt thirty-two years ago in sackcloth and ashes before the throne of the Emperor Charles.

"Your desire, seigniors?" queried the Duke curtly.

Some of the members of his abominable Grand Council sat around him, on benches placed well below the level of the platform. Alberic del Rio was there--bland and submissive; President Viglius, General de Noircarmes, and President Hessels--men who were as bitter against Orange and his followers as was Alva himself--and, sitting a little apart from the others, don Juan de Vargas, but recently arrived from Brussels.

"Your desire, seigniors?" the Duke had questioned peremptorily, and after a few moments Messire Deynoot, the Procurator-General, who was spokesman of the deputation, began timidly at first--then gradually more resolutely.

"It is with profound grief," he said, "that we became aware last night that your Highness' visit to our city was not one of goodwill and amity.

Your Highness' severe restrictions upon our citizens and stern measures taken against them hath filled our hearts with sorrow."

"Your abominable treachery hath filled our heart with wrath," retorted the Duke roughly, "and nothing but the clemency enjoined upon us by our suzerain Lord and King prevented us from reducing this accursed city to ashes and putting every one of her citizens to the sword, without giving them a single chance of retrieving their h.e.l.lish conduct by surrendering themselves unconditionally to our will."

"It is with the utmost confidence," rejoined the Procurator-General humbly, "that we rely upon the well-known clemency of our suzerain Lord the King, and place the future of our beautiful city unconditionally in your Highness' hands."

"The future of the city is in my hands, Messire," said the Duke dryly, "by the power of our suzerain Lord and with the help of the troops at my command. I told you last night under what condition I will spare your town from total destruction. I am not in the habit of changing my mind during the course of one night."

"Alas, your Highness! but the city is quite unable to fulfil the one condition which would appease the wrath of our suzerain Lord and your own."

"Then," retorted Alva haughtily, "why waste my time and your own in bandying words which must remain purposeless? Either William of Orange is delivered into my hands, or my soldiers burn your city down at sunset to-morrow. By our Lady! is that not clear enough?"

"Clear enough, alas!" rejoined the Procurator-General, and suddenly in his mind there rose a picture of the tall man last night beneath the dais, of his inspiring words, his whole-hearted sacrifice: his ringing voice seemed to echo through this narrow room, and some of the words which he spoke knocked at the gates of the grave seignior's memory.

"Yours will be the harder task," he had said gaily; "you will have to fawn and to cringe, to swallow your wrath and to bend your pride!"

Well! G.o.d knew that they had done all that: they had swallowed their wrath and bent their pride before an insolent soldiery, and now they were fawning and cringing to a tyrant whom they abhorred.

Ghent! beloved city! once the home of the free! what must thy citizens endure for thy sake?

And the Procurator-General--the descendant of an hundred free men--had to lick the dust before Alva's throne. He forced his voice to tones of humility, he looked up at the tyrant with eyes full of unspoken devotion.

"What can we do?" he said timidly, "to prove our loyalty? I entreat your Magnificence to look down on our helplessness. Orange is no longer in Ghent, and we do not know where to find him."

"A pretty tale, indeed," interposed de Vargas suddenly, with a strident laugh which was echoed obsequiously by the other members round the council board, "a pretty, likely tale, which I trust your Highness will not think to believe."

"I neither believe nor disbelieve any tale which these grave seigniors choose to tell me," rejoined the Duke. "I want Orange--or we burn this city down till not a stone in it be left upon stone."

And Messire Deynoot, whose entire soul rose in revolt against that rough dictate of a h.e.l.lish tyrant, had perforce to subdue his pa.s.sionate wrath and to speak with affected humility and unconcern.

"We had hoped," he said quietly, "that we might offer to your Highness such a proof of our loyalty that you would no longer wish to cast aside a city that hath always. .h.i.therto proved staunch and true."

"What mean you, sirrah? What proofs can you give me now of this accursed city's loyalty, when you harbour a veritable army of traitors within your walls?"

"We would wish to prove to your Magnificence that the city itself takes no part in the vagaries and plottings of a few hot-headed malcontents."

"Hot-headed malcontents, forsooth!" exclaimed the Duke fiercely. "Two thousand men prepared to take up arms against our Suzerain Lord the King! ... arms concealed in churches and cemeteries! money poured into the lap of Orange and all his rebels!"

"There are more than two thousand men who are prepared to fight and die for their country and their King," said the Fleming suavely, "and who are equally ready to pour money into the coffers of their Liege Lord, as represented by His Highness Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, and by the reverend members of his Council."

This he had said very slowly and with marked emphasis, and even while he spoke he had the satisfaction of seeing more than one pair of eyes round that Council board gloating with delight at the vision of treasure and wealth which his words had called forth. He and his colleagues had long after the a.s.sembly of last night discussed between them this one proposal, which might, they hoped, tempt the cupidity of the Spaniards, which they knew to be boundless. They were wealthy men all of them--the town was wealthy beyond the dreams of Alva's avarice, and the five men who had been deputed to offer up a brave man's life as the price of a city's safety, had resolved to sacrifice their last stiver, and keep the hero in their midst.

But Alva, with a sneer, had already destroyed all the fond hopes which had been built upon that resolve.

"If you offered me every treasure--to the last gulden--contained in your city," he said, with emphasis no less strongly marked than had been the other man's offer, "I would not deny myself the pleasure of razing this abominable nest of rebels to the ground. Why should I," he added with a cynical shrug of the shoulders, "take from you as a bribe what my soldiers can get for me by the might of fire and sword? Orange alone would tempt me, for I would wish to have him alive--we might kill him by accident when we destroy the town."

"We can collect two million gulden in gold," said Messire Deynoot insinuatingly, "and lay that sum at the feet of your Magnificence to-morrow."

"Ah?" said the Duke blandly, "then I am greatly relieved that so much money can be got voluntarily out of this city. Your words, Messire, are honey to mine ears; they prove, beyond a doubt, that if you can raise two million gulden in forty-eight hours my soldiers can put up ten times that amount in a two days' sacking of this town."

"The money voluntarily offered, Monseigneur," here interposed the Vice-Bailiff, "would shame neither the giver nor the receiver. The destruction of a free and loyal city would be an eternal disgrace upon the might of Spain."

"Spare me thy heroics, sirrah!" quoth Alva fiercely, "or I'll have that impudent tongue of thine cut out before nightfall."

And once more the burghers had to bend their pride before the appalling arrogance of their tyrant.

"Begone now!" added the Lieutenant-Governor peremptorily, seeing that the Flemings were silent for the moment. "The business of the State cannot be held up by such profitless talk. And if you have nothing better to offer to our Gracious King than money which is already his, why, then, you are wasting my time, and had best go back to those who sent you."

"No one sent us, Monseigneur," resumed the Procurator-General, with as much dignity as he could command, even though his back ached and his knees were painfully cramped. "We are free burghers of the city of Ghent, which, alas! hath earned your Highness' displeasure. We have offered of our treasure so as to testify to our loyalty ... but this offer your Magnificence hath thought fit to refuse. At the same time we are not at the end of our resources or of our protestations of loyalty.

We have yet another offer to place before your Highness which, perhaps, may be more agreeable in your sight."

"And what is that offer, sirrah? Be quick about it, as my patience, of a truth, is at the end of its resources."

The Procurator-General did not make immediate reply. Truly he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his determination for the terrible ordeal which was before him. He hung his head, and, despite his fort.i.tude--probably because of weakness following on fatigue--he felt that tears gathered in his eyes, and he feared that his voice now as he spoke would become unsteady. The others, too, kept their eyes fixed to the ground. They could not bear to look on one another, at this moment when they were about to offer up so brave and gallant a life in sacrifice for their city and for all the townsfolk. Indeed, Messire Deynoot ere he spoke forced his mind to dwell upon all the horrors of Mons and Valenciennes and Mechlin, upon all the women and children, the feeble and the old, his own wife, his daughters and his mother, so as to gather courage for the task which had been imposed upon him.

Thus there was silence for a minute or so in this narrow room, wherein the close velvet draperies made the air heavy, so that the number of men here a.s.sembled--Spaniards and Flemings and soldiers--felt as if an awful load was weighing their senses down. Councillor Hessels, as was his wont, had fallen asleep. He woke up in the oppressive silence in order to murmur drowsily: "To the gallows with them all!" Alva sat sullen and wrathful, looking down with contempt and scorn on the kneeling burghers before him. De Vargas, now and again, turned anxious, furtive eyes to where a rich portiere of damask-velvet hid a door in the panelling of the wall. Even now it seemed as if that portiere stirred--as if an unseen hand was grasping it with a febrile nervous clutch--it seemed, in fact, as if some one lived and breathed there behind the curtain, and as if all that was said and would be said in the room would find its echo in a palpitating heart.

II

Anon the Duke of Alva's impatience broke its bounds: "An you'll not speak, sirrah," he cried, "get you gone! Get you gone, I say, ere I order my lacqueys to throw you out of my house."

"Your pardon, Monseigneur," said Messire Deynoot with sudden resolution, "I but paused in order to choose the words which might best please your ears. The offer which I am about to make to your Highness is in the name of all the citizens of Ghent, and I feel confident that your Highness will gladly acknowledge that no greater mark of loyalty could be offered by any town to our suzerain Lord the King."

"Speak!" commanded Alva.

"Next to the Prince of Orange himself," said the Procurator-General timidly, "is there not a man who hath gravely incurred your Highness'

displeasure, but who hath hitherto evaded the punishment which your Highness would no doubt mete out to him?"

"Yes; there is!" replied the Duke curtly. "A man who chooses to wrap himself up in a mantle of mystery; a spy of Orange--a rebel and traitor to the King. There is such a man, sirrah! He hath several times thwarted my projects with regard to Orange. If, as you say, Orange is not in Ghent then hath that man had a hand in helping him to get away.

Well! what of that man, sirrah? I want him. He is called Leatherface by my soldiers. What of him, I say?"

"Leatherface is in Ghent, Monseigneur," murmured Deynoot, scarce above his breath.