Leatherface: A Tale of Old Flanders

"Pray for her, Messire," replied Leatherface quietly, "she suffers more than you do."

"Must we all curse her then? or else be traitors to our own people."

"Nay! you can pity her! What she did, she did from her own sense of patriotism and of justice. She hates us all, Messire, as the enemies of her people. She hates and despises me as the assassin of the man she loved. Pray for her, Messire, but in pity pray also for the man who whilst striving to win her heart, only succeeded in breaking his own."

VI

An hour later in the house in the Nieuwstraat, Clémence van Rycke was still awake. She sat in her favourite tall chair beside the hearth, and Laurence her son was kneeling beside her.

"It is too late now, mother," he was saying gloomily. "No power on earth can save you. Would to God you had let me take you to Brügge this afternoon."

"And desert my post like a coward," retorted Clémence hotly. "I can do little, 'tis true; but when the hour comes I can tend the sick and the dying, and pray for the dead; and if you are taken from me, Laurence, I can be laid beside you… But," she added, with such an intensity of bitterness and hatred that her voice nearly choked her as she spoke, "I would not owe my safety to that execrable traitress…"

"Hush, mother, in the name of Heaven…" broke in Laurence with a heart-broken sob.

"Are you, too, going to defend her?" retorted the mother fiercely.

"She was compelled to act as she did," murmured Laurence; "she acted in ignorance and innocence. I'd stake my life that she is pure and good."

"Pure and good!" exclaimed Clémence with a strident laugh. "A spawn of the devil, without virtue and without mercy. Oh! that my lips should ever have touched her lying face-that white forehead which concealed thoughts of falsehood and treachery! Do not defend her, Laurence, or you will break my heart. Leave her defence to your brother Mark, who cares nothing for his country and for his kindred, who will smile and drink whilst the walls of Ghent fall about his ears, who hath allowed his weak and cowardly heart to be captured by that murderess! Leave him to defend her, I say. Lenora de Vargas is worthy of Mark van Rycke!"

"Mother!" cried Laurence with uncontrolled vehemence as he threw his arms round his mother's shoulders. "In the name of God stop, for you almost blaspheme. Speak not of Mark save with a blessing on your lips. Pray for him this night, as you have never prayed before."

"Laurence," cried the mother, "are you mad? What do you mean? What has happened to Mark? Where is he?"

"In his bed, no doubt, at this moment, mother."

"Sleeping whilst we all weep and pray!"

"Sleeping in peace whilst giving up life, and more than life, to try and save us all!" retorted Laurence, as he slowly rose to his feet.

"Laurence! you are mad! Mark is…"

"Mark is the friend and saviour of the Prince of Orange, mother dear," said the young man quietly, "and we have all known him hitherto as Leatherface."

"It is false!" cried Clémence vehemently.

"I swear by God that it is true," proclaimed Laurence, fervently.

The exclamation which she would have uttered froze upon Clémence van Rycke's lips; for a moment she remained quite still, leaning slightly forward with hands resting upon the arms of the chair. Then a pitiable moan escaped her, and slowly she rose and then fell upon her knees.

"Oh God! forgive me," she cried, "if this be true."

"It is true, mother," said Laurence firmly. "For close on two hours to-night I sat close to him whilst he spoke. In the absence of the Prince of Orange we have chosen him as our leader; if the Duke of Alva refuses the proposals which we are going to put before him, Mark will lead us to fight or to death."

"The proposal! What proposal?"

"That Leatherface be given up to the tyrant as the price of the safety of the city."

"And you-his brother-agreed to this infamous suggestion?" murmured Clémence hoarsely.

"We must not leave a stone unturned or a man alive to save the women and children," replied Laurence sombrely.

"Then may God have mercy on us all!" cried Clémence, and she fell back heart-broken against the cushions of her chair.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TYRANTS

I

The next morning, at the tenth hour, five reverend seigniors presented themselves before the Duke of Alva, Lieutenant-Governor of the Low Countries and Captain-General of the Forces, in the apartments which he occupied in Het Spanjaards Kasteel.

They were Messire Pierre van Overbeque, Vice-Bailiff of Ghent; Messire Deynoot, Procurator-General, and Messire Jan van Migrode, Chief Sheriff of the Keure; then there was Messire Lievin van Deynse, the brewer at the sign of the "Star of the North," and Baron van Groobendock, chief financial adviser on the Town Council.

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 petition 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 hellish 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! God 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."