Leatherface: A Tale of Old Flanders

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

  "Take me!" she said to Grete peremptorily, "to the house of theHigh-Bailiff of Ghent."

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE LAST STAND

  I

  The word has gone round, we must all assemble in the cathedralchurch--every burgher, every artisan, every apprentice who belongs byblood to Ghent must for the nonce cast aside pick and shovel: the deadcan wait! the living claim attention.

  Quite a different crowd from that which knelt at prayer this morning!It is just two o'clock and the sacred edifice is thronged: up in thegalleries, the aisles, the chancel, the organ loft, the pulpit,everywhere there are men--young and old--men who for two days now havebeen face to face with death and who wear on their grim faces the tracesof the past fierce struggle and of the coming cataclysm. There are nowomen present. They have nobly taken on the task of the men, and thedainty burghers' wives who used to spend their time at music orneedlework, wield the spade to-day with as much power as their strengthallows.

  Perfect order reigns despite the magnitude of the crowd: those who foundno place inside the building, throng the cemetery and the precincts.Behind the high altar the Orangist standard is unfurled, and in front ofthe altar rails stand the men who have fought in the forefront of theinsurgents' ranks, who have led every assault, affronted every danger,braved musket fire and arrow-shot and burning buildings and crumblingruins, the men who have endured and encouraged and cheered: Mark vanRycke the popular leader, Laurence his brother, Pierre Deynoot, Lievinvan Deynse, Frederic van Beveren and Jan van Migrode, who is seriouslywounded but who has risen from his sick bed and crawled hither in orderto add the weight of his counsel and of his enthusiasm to what he knowsvan Rycke will propose.

  Yes! they are there, all those that are left! and with them are theolder burghers, the civic dignitaries of their city, the Sheriffs of theKeure, the aldermen, the vroedschappen, the magistrates, and theHigh-Bailiff himself--he who is known to be such a hot adherent of Alva.

  It is he who has convened this meeting--a general rally of the citizensof Ghent. He called them together by roll of drums and by word of mouthtransmitted by volunteer messengers who have flown all over the town.This morning we spent in prayer--to-day is a day of peace--let us meetand talk things over, for if wisdom waits upon enthusiasm, all is notlost yet. The proposal has come from the High-Bailiff, at the hour ofnoon when men only thought of the grim work of burying the dead, andwomen wandered through the streets to search for the loved one who hasbeen missing since yesterday.

  But at the word of the High-Bailiff the men laid aside their picks andspades. If all is not lost, why then there's something still to doand--the dead must wait.

  And every man goes to the cathedral church to hear what the High-Bailiffhas to say: the church and precincts are crowded. In silence every onelistens whilst he speaks. He has always been a faithful subject of KingPhilip, an obedient servant of the Regent and the Lieutenant-Governor:his influence and well-known adherence to the King has saved the citymany a time from serious reprisals against incipient revolt and frommany of the horrors of the Inquisition. Now, while up there in theKasteel Alva impatiently awaits the arrival of fresh troops which willhelp to crush the rebellious city, the High-Bailiff pleads forsubmission.

  He has faith in the human tiger.

  "Let us throw ourselves at his feet," he urges, "he is a brave soldier,a great warrior. He will respect your valorous resistance if he seesthat in the hour when you have the advantage over him you are preparedto give in, and to throw yourselves upon his mercy. Let us go--we whoare older and wiser--let those who have led this unfortunate revolt keepout of the way--I will find the right words I know to melt the heart ofour Lieutenant-Governor now turned in wrath against us--let us go andcry for mercy and, by God, I believe that we shall get it."

  Like the waves upon the sea, the crowd in the church moves andoscillates: murmurs of assent and dissent mingle from end to end, fromside to side: "No!--Yes!--'Twere shameful!--'Twere wise!--There are thewomen to think of!--And the children!--He will not listen!--Why thispurposeless abasement?"

  Van Rycke and the other leaders make no comment upon the High-Bailiff'sappeal--even though their whole soul revolts at the thought of thisfresh humiliation to be endured by the burghers of Ghent, once so proudand so independent! But they won't speak! Mark knows that with oneword he can sway the whole of this crowd. They are heroes all--everyone of these men. At one word from him they will cast aside everythought save that of the renewed fight--the final fight to thedeath--they are seething with enthusiasm, their blood is up and prudenceand wisdom have to be drilled into them now that they have tasted of themartyr's cup.

  You can hear Father van der Schlicht's voice now. He too is forhumility and an appeal for mercy on this the festival day of the HolyRedeemer. The Lieutenant-Governor is a pious man and a good Catholic.The appeal is sure to please his ears. Oh! the virtues that adorn theDuke of Alva in the estimation of his adherents! He is pious and he isbrave! a good Catholic and a fine soldier! mercy in him is allied towisdom! he will easily perceive that to gain the gratitude of thecitizens of Ghent would be more profitable to him than the destructionof a prosperous city. See this truce which he himself suggested: was itnot the product of a merciful and a religious mind? To pray in peace,to obey the dictates of the Church, to give the enemy the chance ofburying the dead!--were these not the sentiments of a good and piousman?

  Messire Henri de Buck, senior Schepen and Judge of the High Court, hasmany tales to tell of the kindness and generosity of the Duke. Oh! theyare very eloquent, these wealthy burghers who have so much more to loseby this revolt than mere honour and mere life!

  And the others listen! Oh yes! they listen! need a stone be leftunturned? and since Messire the High-Bailiff hath belief in his owneloquence, why! let him exercise it of course. Not that there is onewhit less determination in any single man in the crowd! If theHigh-Bailiff fails in his mission, they will fight to the last manstill, but ... oh! who can shut his heart altogether against hope? Andthere are the women and the children ... and all those who are old andfeeble.

  God speed to you then, my Lord High-Bailiff--Charles van Rycke, thepusillanimous father of a gallant son! God speed to all of you who goto plead with a tiger to spare the prey which he already holds betweenhis claws! The High-Bailiff will go and with him Father van derSchlicht and Father Laurent Toch from St. Agneten, and Messire de Buckand Francois de Wetteren: all the men who two days ago were kneeling inthe mud at the tyrant's feet, and presented him so humbly with the gatesof the city which he had sworn to destroy. There is no cheering as theydetach themselves from the group of the rebel leaders who still standsomewhat apart, leaving the crowd to have its will.

  No cheering, it is all done in silence! Men do not cheer on the eve ofbeing butchered; they only look on their standard up above the highaltar behind the carved figure of the Redeemer, and though they havegiven silent consent for this deputation to the tyrant they still murmurin their hearts: "For Orange and Liberty!"

  Jan van Migrode, weak and ill from his wound, has had the last word. Hebegs that every one should wait--here--just as they are ... in silenceand patience ... until the High-Bailiff and his friends come back withthe news ... good or bad! peace or renewed fighting--life ordeath!--whichever it is they must all be together in order to decide.

  Just at the last the High-Bailiff turns to his son.

  "You do not approve of our going, Mark?" he asks with some diffidence.

  "I think that it is purposeless," replies Mark; "you cannot extractblood out of a stone, or mercy out of the heart of a brute!"

  II

  They go, the once proud burghers of the city of Ghent, they go to throwthemselves for the last time at the feet of that monster of tyranny andcruelty who even at this hour is gloating over the thought of the mostdeadly reprisals he hath ever dealt to these down-trodden
people.

  They go with grave yet hopeful faces, in their dark robes which are theoutward sign of the humility, the loyalty which dwell in their hearts.The crowd have wished them God speed! and as they file out of thestately cathedral and through the close, the men stand respectfullyaside and eye them with a trustful regard which is infinitely pathetic.Their leaders have remained beside the altar rails, grouped together,talking quietly among themselves: Mark van Rycke, however, goes tomingle with the crowd, to speak with all those who desire a word withhim, with the men whose heart is sore at the humiliation which they areforced to swallow, who would sooner have died than see the dignitariesof their city go once again as suppliants before that execrable tyrantwhom they loathe.

  "What is thine idea, van Rycke?" most of the men ask him as they crowdaround him, anxious to hear one word of encouragement or of hope. "Dostthink the tyrant will relent?"

  "Not unless we hold him as he holds us--not unless we have him at ourmercy."

  "Then what can we do? what can we do?"

  "Do?" he reiterates for the hundredth time to-day, "do? Fight to thelast man, die to the last man, until God, wearied of the tyrant'sobstinacy, will crush him and give us grace."

  "But we cannot win in the end."

  "No! but we can die as we have lived, clean, undaunted, unconquered."

  "But our wives, our daughters?"

  "Ask them," he retorts boldly. "It is not the women who would lick thetyrant's shoes."

  The hour drags wearily on. In imagination every one inside and aroundthe cathedral follows the burghers on their weary pilgrimage. Half anhour to walk to the Kasteel, half an hour for the audience with theDuke, half an hour to return ... unforeseen delay in obtainingadmittance ... it may be two hours before they return. Great many ofthe men have returned to the gloomy task of burying the dead, others tothat of clearing the streets from the litter which encumbers them: buteven those who work the hardest keep their attention fixed upon thecathedral and its approach.

  Van Rycke had suggested that the great bell be rung when the burgherscame back with the Duke's answer, so that all who wished could come andhear.

  III

  And now the answer has come.

  The High-Bailiff has returned with Fathers van der Schlicht and LaurentToch, with Aldermen de Buck and de Wetteren and with the others. Theyhave walked back from the Kasteel bareheaded and shoeless with theirhands tied behind their back, and a rope around their neck.

  That was the Duke of Alva's answer to the deputation of Flemishpatricians and burghers who had presented themselves before him in orderto sue for his mercy. They had not even been admitted into hispresence. The provost at the gate-house had curtly demanded theirbusiness, had then taken their message to the Duke, and returned fiveminutes later with orders to "send back the beggars whence they came,bareheaded and shoeless and with a rope around their necks in token ofthe only mercy which they might expect from him!"

  The bridge had been lowered for them when they arrived, but they werekept parleying with a provost at the gate-house: not a singleofficer--even of lower rank--deigned to come out to speak with them; theyard was filled with soldiers who insulted and jeered at them: theHigh-Bailiff was hit on the cheek by a stone which had been aimed athim, and Father Laurent Toch's soutane was almost torn off his back.Every one of them had suffered violence at the hands of the soldierywhilst the Duke's abominable orders were being carried out withappalling brutality: every one of them was bleeding from a cut or a blowdealt by that infamous crowd who were not ashamed thus to maltreatdefenceless and elderly men.

  When they crossed the open tract of country between the castle moat andthe Schelde a shower of caked mud was hurled after them from theramparts; not a single insult was spared them, not a sting to theirpride, not a crown to their humiliation. It was only when they reachedthe shelter of the streets that they found some peace. In silence theymade their way toward the cathedral. The crowds of men and women atwork amongst the dead and the wounded made way for them to allow them topass, but no one questioned them: the abject condition in which theyreturned told its own pitiable tale.

  The cathedral bell had tolled, and from everywhere the men came back tohear the full account of the miserable mission. The crowd was dense andnot every one had a view of the burghers as they stood beside the altarrail in all their humiliation, but those who were nearest told theirneighbours and soon every one knew what had happened.

  The younger leaders ground their heels into the floor, and Jan vanMigrode, sick and weak as he was, was the first to stand up and to askthe citizens of Ghent if the events of to-day had shaken them in theirresolve.

  "You know now what to expect from that fiend. Will you still die likeheroes, or be slaughtered like cattle?" he called out loudly ere he fellback exhausted and faint.

  Horror had kept every one dumb until then, and grim resolve did notbreak into loud enthusiasm now, but on the fringe of the crowd therewere a number of young men--artisans and apprentices--who at first sightof the returned messengers had loudly murmured and cursed. Now one ofthem lifted up his voice. It raised strange echoes in the mutilatedchurch.

  "We are ready enough to die," he said, "and we'll fight to the end,never fear. But before the last of us is killed, before that execrabletyrant has his triumph over us, lads of Ghent, I ask you are we not tohave our revenge?"

  "Yes! yes!" came from a number of voices, still from the fringe of thecrowd where the young artisans were massed together, "well spoken, PeterBalde! let us have revenge first!"

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

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

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

  The other, thus directly challenged by the man whose influence wasparamount in Ghent just now, looked round at his friends for approval.Seeing nothing but eager, flushed faces and eyes that glowed in responseto his suggestion, the pride of leadership entered his soul. He was afine, tall lad who yesterday had done prodigies of valour against theSpanish cavalry. Now he had been gesticulating with both arms above hishead so that he was easily distinguishable in the crowd by those who hada clear view, and in order to emphasize his spokesmanship his friendshoisted him upon their shoulders and bearing him aloft they forged theirway through the throng until they reached the centre of the main aisle.Here they paused, and Peter Balde could sweep the entire crowd with hisenthusiastic 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 hasabused the most sacred laws of humanity which bid every man to respectthe messengers of peace. He is disloyal and ignoble and false. Whyshould we be honourable and just? He neither appreciates our loyaltynor respects our valour--let us then act in the only way which he canunderstand. Citizens, we have two thousand prisoners in the cellars ofour guildhouses---two thousand Walloons who under the banner of ourcommon tyrant have fought against us ... their nearest kindred. Ipropose that we kill those two thousand prisoners and send their headsto the tyrant as a direct answer to this last outrage."

  "Yes! yes! Well said!" came from every side, from the younger artisansand the apprentices, the hot-headed faction amongst all these bravemen--brave themselves but writhing under the terrible humiliation whichthey had just endured and thirsting for anything that savoured ofrevenge.

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

  The others remained silent. Many even amongst the older men perhapswould have echoed the younger ones' call: cruelty breeds cruelty andoppression breeds callous thoughts of revenge. Individually there washardly a man there who was capable of such an act of atrocious barbarismas the murder of a defenceless prisoner, but for years now these peoplehad groaned under such abominable tyranny, ha
d seen such acts of wantonoutrage perpetrated against them and all those they held dear,that--collectively--their sense of rightful retribution had been warpedand they had imbibed some of the lessons of reprisals from theirexecrable masters.

  At the foot of the altar rails the group of leaders who stood as aphalanx around Mark van Rycke their chief, waited quietly whilst thewave of enthusiasm for Balde's proposal rose and swelled and mountedhigher and higher until it seemed to pervade the whole of the sacrededifice, and then gradually subsided into more restrained if not lessenthusiastic determination.

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

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

  "The law of treachery, of rapine, and of outrage," now broke in Mark'sfirm, clear voice once more; it rose above the tumult, above the hubbubwhich centred round the person of Peter Balde; it rang against thepillars and echoed from end to end of the aisle. "Are we miserablerabble 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 houseof Him who says 'I will repay!'"

  "God is on our side, He will forgive!" cried some of them.

  "Everything, except outrage! ... what you propose is a deed worthy onlyof hell!"

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