Leatherface Part 47

"Revenge! Revenge!" echoed from those same ranks.

Every word echoed from pillar to pillar in the great, bare, crowded church; and now it was from the altar rails that Mark van Rycke's voice rang out clear and firm:

"What revenge dost propose to take, Peter Balde?" he asked.

The other, thus directly challenged by the man whose influence was paramount in Ghent just now, looked round at his friends for approval.

Seeing nothing but eager, flushed faces and eyes that glowed in response to his suggestion, the pride of leadership entered his soul. He was a fine, tall lad who yesterday had done prodigies of valour against the Spanish cavalry. Now he had been gesticulating with both arms above his head so that he was easily distinguishable in the crowd by those who had a clear view, and in order to emphasize his spokesmanship his friends hoisted him upon their shoulders and bearing him aloft they forged their way through the throng until they reached the centre of the main aisle.

Here they paused, and Peter Balde could sweep the entire crowd with his enthusiastic glance.

"What I revenge would take?" he said boldly. "Nay! let me rather ask: what revenge must we take, citizens of Ghent? The tyrant even now has abused the most sacred laws of humanity which bid every man to respect the messengers of peace. He is disloyal and ign.o.ble and false. Why should we be honourable and just? He neither appreciates our loyalty nor respects our valour--let us then act in the only way which he can understand. Citizens, we have two thousand prisoners in the cellars of our guildhouses---two thousand Walloons who under the banner of our common tyrant have fought against us ... their nearest kindred. I propose that we kill those two thousand prisoners and send their heads to the tyrant as a direct answer to this last outrage."

"Yes! yes! Well said!" came from every side, from the younger artisans and the apprentices, the hot-headed faction amongst all these brave men--brave themselves but writhing under the terrible humiliation which they had just endured and thirsting for anything that savoured of revenge.

"Yes! yes! the axe for them! send their heads to the tyrant! Well spoken, Peter Balde," they cried.

The others remained silent. Many even amongst the older men perhaps would have echoed the younger ones' call: cruelty breeds cruelty and oppression breeds callous thoughts of revenge. Individually there was hardly a man there who was capable of such an act of atrocious barbarism as the murder of a defenceless prisoner, but for years now these people had groaned under such abominable tyranny, had seen such acts of wanton outrage perpetrated against them and all those they held dear, that--collectively--their sense of rightful retribution had been warped and they had imbibed some of the lessons of reprisals from their execrable masters.

At the foot of the altar rails the group of leaders who stood as a phalanx around Mark van Rycke their chief, waited quietly whilst the wave of enthusiasm for Balde's proposal rose and swelled and mounted higher and higher until it seemed to pervade the whole of the sacred edifice, and then gradually subsided into more restrained if not less enthusiastic determination.

"We will do it," said one of Balde's most fervent adherents. "It is only justice, and it is the only law which the tyrant understands--the law of might."

"It is the law which he himself has taught us," said another, "the law of retributive justice."

"The law of treachery, of rapine, and of outrage," now broke in Mark's firm, clear voice once more; it rose above the tumult, above the hubbub which centred round the person of Peter Balde; it rang against the pillars and echoed from end to end of the aisle. "Are we miserable rabble that we even dream of murder?"

"Not of murder," cried Balde in challenge, "only of vengeance!"

"Your vengeance!" thundered Mark, "do you dare speak of it in the house of Him who says 'I will repay!'"

"G.o.d is on our side, He will forgive!" cried some of them.

"Everything, except outrage! ... what you propose is a deed worthy only of h.e.l.l!"

"No! no! Balde is right! Magnanimity has had its day! But for this truce to-day who knows? we might have been masters of the Kasteel!"

"Will the murdering of helpless prisoners aid your cause, then?"

"It will at least satisfy our craving for revenge!"

"Right, right, Balde!" they all exclaimed, "do not heed what van Rycke says."

"We will fight to-morrow!"

"Die to-morrow!" they cried.

"And blacken your souls to-day!" retorted Mark.

The tumult grew more wild. Dissension had begun to sow its ugly seed among these men whom a common danger, united heroism, and courage had knit so closely together. The grim, silent, majestic determination of a while ago was giving place slowly to rabid, frenzied calls of hatred, to ugly oaths, glowing eyes and faces heated with pa.s.sion. The presence of the dozen elderly patricians and burghers still bare-headed and shoeless, still with the rope around their necks, helped to fan up the pa.s.sions which their misfortunes had aroused. For the moment, however, the hot-headed malcontents were still greatly in the minority, but the danger of dissent, of mutiny was there, and the set expression on the faces of the leaders, the stern look in Mark van Rycke's eyes testified that they were conscious of its presence.

IV

Then it was that right through this tumult which had spread from the building itself to the precincts and even beyond, a woman's cry rang out with appalling clearness. It was not a cry of terror, rather one of command, but so piercing was it that for the moment every other cry was stilled: Peter Balde's adherents were silenced, and suddenly over this vast a.s.sembly, wherein but a few seconds ago pa.s.sions ran riot, there fell a hush--a tension of every nerve, a momentary lull of every heart-beat as with the prescience of something momentous to which that woman's cry was only the presage.

And in the midst of that sudden hush the cry was heard again--more clearly this time and closer to the cathedral porch, so that the words came quite distinctly:

"Let me get to him ... take me to your leader ... I must speak with him at once!"

And like distant thunder, the clamour rose again: men and women shouted and called; the words: "Spaniard!" and "Spy!" were easily distinguishable: the crowd could be seen to sway, to be moving like a huge wave, all in one direction toward the porch: hundreds of faces showed plainly in the dull grey light as necks were craned to catch a glimpse of the woman who had screamed.

But evidently with but rare exceptions the crowd was not hostile: those who had cried out the word "Spy!" were obviously in the minority. With death looming so near, with deadly danger to every woman in the city within sight, every instinct of chivalry toward the weak was at its greatest height. Those inside the cathedral could see that the crowd was parting in order to let two women move along, and that the men in the forefront elbowed a way for them so that they should not be hindered on their way. It was the taller of the two women who had uttered the piteous yet commanding appeal: "Let me go to him!--take me to your leader!--I must speak with him!"

She reiterated that appeal now--at the south porch to which she had been literally carried by the crowd outside: and here suddenly three stalwart men belonging to one of the city guilds took, as it were, possession of her and her companion and with vigorous play of elbows and of staves forged a way for them both right up to the altar rails. Even whilst in the west end of the church the enthusiastic tumult around Peter Balde which this fresh incident had momentarily stilled, arose with renewed vigour, and the young artisans and apprentices once more took up their cry: "Revenge! Death to all the prisoners!" the woman, who was wrapped up in a long black mantle and hood, fell--panting, exhausted, breathless--almost at Mark van Rycke's feet and murmured hoa.r.s.ely:

"Five thousand troops are on their way to Ghent ... they will be here within two hours ... save yourselves if you can."

Her voice hardly rose above a whisper. Mark alone heard every word she said; he stooped and placing two fingers under her chin, with a quick and firm gesture he lifted up the woman's head, so that her hood fell back and the light from the east window struck full upon her face and her golden hair.

"I come straight from the Kasteel," she said, more clearly now, for she was gradually recovering her breath, "let your friends kill me if they will ... the Duke of Alva swore a false oath ... a messenger left even last night for Dendermonde...."

"How do you know this?" queried Mark quietly.

"Grete and I heard the Duke speak of it all with my father just now,"

she replied. "He asked for the truce in order to gain time.... He hopes that the troops from Dendermonde will be here before nightfall ...

the guards at the gate-houses are under arms, and three thousand men are inside the Kasteel ready to rush out the moment the troops are in sight."

It was impossible to doubt her story. Those who stood nearest to her pa.s.sed it on to their neighbours, and the news travelled like wild-fire from end to end of the church: "They are on us! Five thousand Spaniards from Dendermonde to annihilate us all!"

"G.o.d have mercy on our souls!"

"G.o.d have mercy on our women and children!"

Panic seized a great many there; they pushed and scrambled out of the building, running blindly like sheep, and spread the terrible news through the streets, calling loudly to G.o.d to save them all: the panic very naturally spread to the women and children who thronged the streets at this hour, and to the silent workers who had quietly continued their work of burial. Soon all the market squares were filled with shrieking men, women and children who ran about aimlessly with wild gestures and cries of lamentation. Those who had kept indoors all to-day--either fearing the crowds or piously preparing for death--came rushing out to see what new calamity was threatening them, or whether the supreme hour had indeed struck for them all.

Inside the cathedral the cries of revenge were stilled; dulled was the l.u.s.t to kill. The immense danger which had been forgotten for a moment in that frantic thirst for revenge made its deathly presence felt once more. Pallid faces and wide-open, terror-filled eyes were turned toward the one man whose personality seemed still to radiate the one great ray of hope.

But just for a moment Mark van Rycke seemed quite oblivious of that wave of sighs and fears which tended toward him now and swept all thought of mutiny away.

He was supporting Lenora who was gradually regaining strength and consciousness: just for a few seconds he allowed tumult and terror to seethe unheeded around him: just for those few seconds he forgot death and danger, his friends, the world, everything save that Lenora had come to him at the hour when his heart yearned for her more pa.s.sionately than ever before, and that she was looking up into his face with eyes that told so plainly the whole extent of her love for him.

Only a few seconds, then he handed her over to the gentle care of Father van der Schlicht, but as with infinite gentleness he finally released himself from her clinging arms he murmured in her ear: "G.o.d reward you, Madonna! With your love as my shield, I feel that I could conquer the universe."

Then he faced the terror-stricken crowd once more.

V