H. Rider Haggard

“ As gaunt, haggard, and long-haired, he stepped upon the balcony, they saw him and his burden, and there went up such a yell as shook the very roofs of Leyden. Martin held up his hand, and there was silence, deep silence, through which the breath of all that multitude rose in sighs, like the sighing of a little wind.
“Citizens of Leyden, my masters,” the Frisian cried, in a great, deep voice that echoed down the street, “I have a word to say to you. This man here—do you know him?” ”

“ Heavens! to think that such a creature should have sprung from me, a human jackass only fit to bear the blows and burdens of others, to fill the field with empty brayings, and wear himself out by kicking at the air. Oh! don’t twist up your face at me, for I am your master as well as your father, however much you may hate me. You are mine, body and soul, don’t you understand; a bond-slave, nothing more. You lost the only chance you ever had in the game when you got me down at Leyden. You daren’t draw a sword on me again for your soul’s sake, dear Adrian, for your soul’s sake ”

“ Adrian heard, and an inspiration took him. He dashed his hand to his brow and thought a moment; then he laughed loud and shrilly.
“I have it,” he said. “It is the love charm which has worked perversely. Elsa, you are under a spell, poor woman; you do not know the truth. I gave you the philtre in your drinking water, and Foy, the traitor Foy, has reaped its fruits. Dear girl, shake yourself free from this delusion, it is I whom you really love, not that base thief of hearts, my brother Foy.” ”

“ Adrian made no answer, but lifted his sword.
“One moment, young gentleman,” went on Ramiro, drawing his own weapon and putting himself on guard; “are you in earnest? Do you really wish to fight?”
“Yes,” answered Adrian.
“What a fool you must be,” mused Ramiro. “Why at your age should you seek to be rid of life, seeing that you have no more chance against me than a rat in a corner against a terrier dog? Look!” and suddenly he lunged most viciously straight at his heart. But Adrian was watching and parried the thrust. ”

“ I will not go without Elsa.”
“I have thought of that,” answered Adrian. “Elsa is here. Come, Elsa, show yourself.”
Then from the stairs Elsa crept into the cellar, a new Elsa, for she, too, had been fed, and in her eyes there shone a light of hope. A wild jealousy filled Foy’s heart. Why did she look thus? But she, she ran to him, she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him, and Adrian did nothing, he only turned his head aside.
“Foy,” she gasped, “he is honest after all; he has only been unfortunate. Come quickly, there is a chance for us; come before that devil returns. ”

“ Therefore, Foy, whatever chances, I am sure you will remember that in life or in death I am yours only—yes, to you, dead or living, you dead and I living, or you living and I dead, while or wherever I have sense or memory, I will be true; through life, through death, through whatever may lie beyond our deaths, I will be true as woman may be to man. So, dear Foy, for this present fare you well until we meet again in the days to come, or after all earthly days are done with for you and me. ”

“ I tell you that I wish that this cursed treasure, these cases of precious gems and these kegs of hoarded gold, had been shivered to the winds of heaven with the timbers of the ship Swallow. For, mark you, Ramiro has escaped, and with him another man, and they will know well that having the night to hide it, you did not destroy those jewels with the ship. They will track you down, these Spanish sleuthhounds, filled with the lust of blood and gold, and it will be well if the lives of every one of us do not pay the price of the secret of the burying-place of the wealth of Hendrik Brant. ”

“ And yet that Divine reply may in no wise be delayed; even as our liberty of this hour may be the fruit of those who died when Dirk van Goorl and Hendrik Brant walked upon the earth; even as the vengeance that but now is falling on the Spaniard may be the reward of the deeds of shame that he worked upon them and upon their kin long generations gone. For the Throne is still the Throne, and the star is still the star; from the one flows justice and from the other light, and to them time and space are naught. ”

“ Foy, whose face had been so youthful, looked now like a man on the wrong side of middle age. The huge Martin might have been a great skeleton on which hung clothes, or rather rags and a rent bull’s hide, with his blue eyes shining in deep pits beneath the massive, projecting skull. Elsa too had become quite small, like a child. Her sweet face was no longer pretty, only pitiful, and all the roundness of her figure had vanished—she might have been an emaciated boy. Of the four of them Martha the Mare, who was dressed like a man, showed the least change. ”

“ I have a long count to pay; for every time that he was tortured a life, for every groan he uttered at the stake a life; yes, so many for the father and half as many for the son. Well, I shall live to be old, I know that I shall live to be old, and the count will be discharged, ay, to the last stiver.”
As she spoke, the outlawed Water Wife had risen, and the flare of the fire struck full upon her. It was an awful face that Lysbeth beheld by the light of it, full of fierceness and energy, the face of an inspired avenger, dread and unnatural, yet not altogether repulsive. ”

“ The Spanish horse is cold and cannot stay, but the poor Netherland Mare—ah! she may be thrust beneath the blue ice and bide there till her bones rot at the bottom of the moat. You have sought the Spaniards, you, whose blood should have warned you against them, and I tell you that it shall cost you dear; but if you say this word they seek, then it shall cost you everything, not only the body, but the spirit also. Woe to you, Lysbeth van Hout, if you cut me off before my work is done. ”

“ But if she was seen, or if they know that she has the secret, then let them get it from Mother Martha. Oh! mares can gallop and ducks can dive and snakes can hide in the grass. When they can catch the wind and make it give up its secrets, when they can charm from sword Silence the tale of the blood which it has drunk throughout the generations, when they can call back the dead saints from heaven and stretch them anew within the torture-pit, then and not before, they will win knowledge of the hoard’s hiding-place from the lips of the witch of Haarlem Meer. ”

“ While Martin spoke the strangeness of the thing came home to Foy. Here were four of them, two of whom knew a secret and two who did not, while those who did not implored those who did to impart to them nothing of the knowledge which, if they had it, might serve to save them from a fearful doom. Then for the first time in his young and inexperienced life he understood how great erring men and women can be and what patient majesty dwells in the human heart, that for the sake of a trust it does not seek can yet defy the most hideous terrors of the body and the soul. ”

“ In a second Foy had drawn the weapon out of the belt of the dead man, and wheeled round. The porter from the wicket was running on them sword in hand. Foy forgot that he was wounded—for the moment his leg seemed sound again. He doubled himself up and sprang at the man like a wild-cat, as one springs who has the rack behind him. There was no fight, yet in that thrust the skill which Martin had taught him so patiently served him well, for the sword of the Spaniard passed over his head, whereas Foy’s long dagger went through the porter’s throat. ”

“ Amazed and terrified, Lysbeth said nothing.
“I frighten you, gentle one,” went on the Mare, “you who, although you have suffered, are still full of the milk of human kindness. Wait, woman, wait till they have murdered the man you love, till your heart is like my heart, and you also live on, not for love’s sake, not for life’s sake, but to be a Sword, a Sword, a Sword in the hand of God!” ”

“ Leyden is safe at last, and through the broken dykes Foy and Martin, with the rescuing ships, have sailed, shouting and red-handed, into her famine-stricken streets. For the Spaniards, those that are left of them, are broken and have fled away from their forts and flooded trenches.
So the scene changes from warring, blood-stained, triumphant Holland to the quiet city of Norwich and a quaint gabled house in Tombland almost beneath the shadow of the tall spire of the cathedral, which now for about a year had been the home of Lysbeth van Goorl and Elsa Brant. ”

“ She liked Elsa well indeed—who would not?—but oh! this brought them a step nearer to that accursed treasure, the treasure which from generation to generation had been hoarded up that it might be a doom to men. If Foy were affianced to Elsa, it was his inheritance as well as hers, for those trusts of Hendrik Brant’s will were to Lysbeth things unreal and visionary, and its curse would fall upon him as well as upon her. Moreover it might be said that he was marrying her to win the wealth.
“This betrothal does not please you; you are sad, wife,” said Dirk, looking at her quickly. ”

“ In Adrian’s case, however, the weirdness of the sand-hills and the grandeur of the seascape with the bitter wind that blew between and the solitude which brooded over all, served only to exasperate nerves that already were strained well nigh to breaking.
Why had his father brought him to this hideous swamp bordered by a sailless sea? To save their lives from the fury of the mob? This he understood, but there was more in it than that, some plot which he did not understand, and which the ruffian, Hague Simon, and that she-fiend, his companion, had gone away to execute. ”

“ The priests, still crouched in corners, rolling on the ground, their white lips muttering who knows what; the sacristan in a swoon, Hague Simon hugging a coffin in a niche, as a drowning man hugs a plank, and, standing in the midst of them, calm, sardonic and watchful, a drawn rapier in his hand, his father Ramiro.
“We are lost,” moaned a priest, losing control of himself. “We are lost. They will kill us as they have killed the holy Abbe.” ”

“ Two days went by, and a fugitive rode into the city, a worn and wounded man of Leyden, with horror stamped upon his face.
“What news?” cried the people in the market-place, recognising him.
“Mechlin! Mechlin!” he gasped. “I come from Mechlin.”
“What of Mechlin and its citizens?” asked Pieter van de Werff, stepping forward.
“Don Frederic has taken it; the Spaniards have butchered them; everyone, old and young, men, women, and children, they are all butchered. I escaped, but for two leagues and more I heard the sound of the death-wail of Mechlin. Give me wine.” ”

“ Like birds in the heavens, cleaving the keen, crisp air, they sped forward over the smooth ice. The gay throng vanished, the dead reeds and stark bushes seemed to fly away from them. The only sounds in their ears were the rushing of the wind, the swish of the iron runners, and the hollow tapping of the hooves of their galloping horses. Certain sledges drew ahead in the first burst, but the Wolf and the Badger were not among these. The Count de Montalvo was holding in his black stallion, and as yet the grey Flemish gelding looped along with a constrained and awkward stride. ”

“ After this Elsa did not argue any more.
At length they turned and walked homeward through the quiet evening twilight, hand clasped in hand, and were happy in their way. It was not a very demonstrative way, for the Dutch have never been excitable, or at least they do not show their excitement. Moreover, the conditions of this betrothal were peculiar; it was as though their hands had been joined from a deathbed, the deathbed of Hendrik Brant, the martyr of The Hague, whose new-shed blood cried out to Heaven for vengeance. ”

“ Better not have uttered it, it might bring Ramiro back; better go to join the dead. What did the voice say, Meg’s voice, but how changed? That she was not to be afraid? That the thudding was the sound of oars not of knife thrusts? This would be Ramiro’s boat coming to seize her. Of him and Adrian she could bear no more; she would throw herself into the water and trust to God. One, two, three—then utter darkness.
Elsa became aware that light was shining about her, also that somebody was kissing her upon the face and lips. ”

“ What an end that would be, to be frozen to death in the snow on these sand-hills while the spirit of Dirk van Goorl sat near and watched him die with those hollow, hungry eyes. The sweat came upon Adrian’s forehead at the thought, and he broke into a run, heading for the bank of the great dyke that pierced the dunes half a mile or so away, which bank must, he knew, lead him to the mill. ”

“ Weak and wounded as he was, Foy’s heart sank in him at the words of this man, this devil who had betrayed his mother with a mock marriage, and who was the father of Adrian. The idea of making the heiress his wife was one worthy of his evil ingenuity, and why should he not put it into practice? Elsa, of course, would rebel, but Alva’s officials in such days had means of overcoming any maidenly reluctance, or at least of forcing women to choose between death and degradation. Was it not common for them even to dissolve marriages in order to give heretics to new husbands who desired their wealth? ”

“ Then Foy fell into sleep or stupor, and there was silence for a long while, until they heard the bolts and bars of the door of the dungeon creaking, and the glint of a lantern appeared floating on the gloom. Several men tramped down the narrow gangway, and one of them, unlocking their cage, entered, filled the jug of water from a leathern jack, and threw down some loaves of black bread and pieces of stockfish, as food is thrown to dogs. Having examined the pair of them he grunted and went away, little knowing how near he had been to death, for the heart of Martin was mad. ”