Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “You are charged,” said the president slowly, consulting a document, “with having assaulted and wounded in the highway last night one Heinrich Schröder, a citizen of this town, acting at the time as Lieutenant of the Night Guard. Do you admit this, prisoner, or do you require proof?”

  “He was wounded,” I answered steadily, “but by mistake, and in error. I supposed him to be one of three persons who had unlawfully waylaid me and my party on the previous night between Emmerich and Wesel.”

  The Sub-dean, still gazing at the roof, shook his head with a faint smile. The other magistrates looked doubtfully at me, but made no comment, and my words seemed to be wasted on the silence. The president consulted his document again, and continued: “You are also charged with having by force of arms, in time of peace, seized a gate of this town, and maintained it, and declined to surrender it when called upon so to do. What do you say to that?”

  “It is true in part,” I answered firmly. “I seized not the gate, but part of the tower, in order to preserve my life and to protect certain ladies traveling with me from the violence of a crowd which, under a misapprehension, was threatening to do us a mischief.”

  The priest again shook his head, and smiled faintly at the carved roof. His colleagues were perhaps somewhat moved in my favor, for a few words passed between them. However, in the end they shook their heads, and the president mechanically asked me if I had anything further to say.

  “Nothing!” I replied bitterly. The ecclesiastic’s cynical heedlessness, his air of one whose mind is made up, seemed so cruel to me whose life was at stake, that I lost patience. “Except what I have said,” I continued— “that for the wounding, it was done in error; and for the gate-seizing, I would do it again to save the lives of those with me. Only that and this: that I am a foreigner ignorant of your language and customs, desiring only to pass peacefully through your country.”

  “That is all?” the president asked impassively.

  “All,” I answered, yet with a strange tightening at my throat. Was it all? All I could say for my life?

  I was waiting, sore and angry and desperate, to hear the sentence, when there came an interruption. Master Lindstrom, whose presence at my side I had forgotten, broke suddenly into a torrent of impassioned words, and his urgent voice, ringing through the court, seemed in a moment to change its aspect — to infuse into it some degree of life and sympathy. More than one guttural exclamation, which seemed to mark approval, burst from the throng at the back of the hall. In another moment, indeed, the Dutchman’s courage might have saved me. But there was one who marked the danger. The Sub-dean, who had at first only glowered at the speaker in rude astonishment, now cut him short with a harsh question.

  “One moment, Master Dutchman!” he cried. “Are you one of the heretics who call themselves Protestants?”

  “I am. But I understand that there is here liberty of conscience,” our friend answered manfully, nothing daunted in his fervor at finding the attack turned upon himself.

  “That depends upon the conscience,” the priest answered with a scowl. “We will have no Anabaptists here, nor foreign praters to bring us into feud with our neighbors. It is enough that such men as you are allowed to live. We will not be bearded by you, so take warning! Take heed, I say, Master Dutchman, and be silent!” he repeated, leaning forward and clapping his hand upon the table.

  I touched Master Lindstrom’s sleeve — who would of himself have persisted — and stayed him. “It is of no use,” I muttered. “That dog in a crochet has condemned me. He will have his way!”

  There was a short debate between the three judges, while in the court you might have heard a pin drop. Master Lindstrom had fallen back once more. I was alone again, and the stained window seemed to be putting forth its mystic influence to enfold me, when, looking up, I saw a tiny shadow flit across the soft many-hued rays which streamed from it athwart the roof. It passed again, once, twice, thrice. I peered upward intently. It was a swallow flying to and fro amid the carved work.

  Yes, a swallow. And straightway I forgot the judges; forgot the crowd. The scene vanished and I was at Coton End again, giving Martin Luther the nest for Petronilla — a sign, as I meant it then, that I should return. I should never return now. Yet my heart was on a sudden so softened that, instead of this reflection giving me pain, as one would have expected, it only filled me with a great anxiety to provide for the event. She must not wait and watch for me day after day, perhaps year after year. I must see to it somehow; and I was thinking with such intentness of this, that it was only vaguely I heard the sentence pronounced. It might have been some other person who was to be beheaded at the east gate an hour before noon. And so God save the Duke!

  CHAPTER XVI.

  IN THE DUKE’S NAME.

  They took me back to the room in the tower, it being now nearly ten o’clock. Master Lindstrom would fain have stayed with me constantly to the end, but having the matter I have mentioned much in my mind, I begged him to go and get me writing materials. When he returned Van Tree was with him. With a particularity very curious at that moment, I remarked that the latter was carrying something.

  “Where did you get that?” I said sharply and at once.

  “It is your haversack,” he answered, setting it down quietly. “I found the man who had taken possession of your horse, and got it from him. I thought there might be something in it you might like.”

  “It is my haversack,” I assented. “But it was not on my horse. I have not seen it since I left it in Master Lindstrom’s house by the river. I left it on the pallet in my room there, and it was forgotten. I searched for it at Emmerich, you remember.”

  “I only know,” he replied, “that I discovered it behind the saddle of the horse you were riding yesterday.”

  He thought that I had become confused and was a little wrong-headed from excitement. Master Lindstrom also felt troubled, as he told me afterward, at seeing me taken up with a trifle at such a time.

  But there was nothing wrong with my wits, as I promptly showed them.

  “The horse I was riding yesterday?” I continued. “Ah! then, I understand. I was riding the horse which I took from the Spanish trooper. The Spaniard must have annexed the haversack when he and his companions searched the house after our departure.”

  “That is it, no doubt,” Master Lindstrom said. “And in the hurry of yesterday’s ride you failed to notice it.”

  It was a strange way of recovering one’s property — strange that the enemy should have helped one to it. But there are times — and this to me was one — when the strange seems the ordinary and commonplace. I took the sack and slipped my hand through a well-known slit in the lining. Yes, the letter I had left there was there still — the letter to Mistress Clarence. I drew it out. The corners of the little packet were frayed, and the parchment was stained and discolored, no doubt by the damp which had penetrated to it. But the seal was whole. I placed it, as it was, in Master Lindstrom’s hands.

  “Give it,” I said, “to the Duchess afterward. It concerns her. You have heard us talk about it. Bid her make what use she pleases of it.”

  I turned away then and sat down, feeling a little flurried and excited, as one about to start upon a journey might feel; not afraid nor exceedingly depressed, but braced up to make a brave show and hide what sadness I did feel by the knowledge that many eyes were upon me, and that more would be watching me presently. At the far end of the room a number of people had now gathered, and were conversing together. Among them were not only my jailers of the night, but two or three officers, a priest who had come to offer me his services, and some inquisitive gazers who had obtained admission. Their curiosity, however, did not distress me. On the contrary, I was glad to hear the stir and murmur of life about me to the last.

  I will not set down the letter I wrote to the Duchess, though it were easy for me to do so, seeing that her son has it now. It contains some things very proper to be said by a dying man, of which I am not ashame
d — God forbid! but which it would not be meet for me to repeat here. Enough that I told her in a few words who I was, and entreated her, in the name of whatever services I had rendered her, to let Petronilla and Sir Anthony know how I had died. And I added something which would, I thought, comfort her and her husband — namely, that I was not afraid, or in any suffering of mind or body.

  The writing of this shook my composure a little. But as I laid down the pen and looked up and found that the time was come, I took courage in a marvelous manner. The captain of the guard — I think that out of a compassionate desire not to interrupt me they had allowed me some minutes of grace — came to me, leaving the group at the other end, and told me gravely that I was waited for. I rose at once and gave the letter to Master Lindstrom with some messages in which Dymphna and Anne were not forgotten. And then, with a smile — for I felt under all those eyes as if I were going into battle — I said: “Gentlemen, I am ready if you are. It is a fine day to die. You know,” I added gayly, “in England we have a proverb, ‘The better the day, the better the deed!’ So it is well to have a good day to have a good death, Sir Captain.”

  “A soldier’s death, sir, is a good death;” he answered gravely, speaking in Spanish and bowing.

  Then he pointed to the door.

  As I walked toward it, I paused momentarily by the window, and looked out on the crowd below. It filled the sunlit street — save where a little raised platform strewn with rushes protruded itself — with heads from wall to wall, with faces all turned one way — toward me. It was a silent crowd standing in hushed awe and expectation, the consciousness of which for an instant sent a sudden chill to my heart, blanching my cheek, and making my blood run slow for a moment. The next I moved on to the door, and bowing to the spectators as they stood aside, began to descend the narrow staircase.

  There were guards going down before me, and behind me were Master Lindstrom and more guards. The Dutchman reached forward in the gloom, and clasped my hand, holding it, as we went down, in a firm, strong grip.

  “Never fear,” I said to him cheerily, looking back. “It is all right.”

  He answered in words which I will not write here; not wishing, as I have said, to make certain things common.

  I suppose the doorway at the bottom was accidentally blocked, for a few steps short of it we came to a standstill; and almost at the same moment I started, despite myself, on hearing a sudden clamor and a roar of many voices outside.

  “What is it?” I asked the Dutchman.

  “It is the Duke of Cleves arriving, I expect,” he whispered. “He comes in by the other gate.”

  A moment later we moved on and passed out into the light, the soldiers before me stepping on either side to give me place. The sunshine for an instant dazzled me, and I lowered my eyes. As I gradually raised them again I saw before me a short lane formed by two rows of spectators kept back by guards; and at the end of this, two or three rough wooden steps leading to a platform on which were standing a number of people. And above and beyond all only the bright blue sky, the roofs and gables of the nearer houses showing dark against it.

  I advanced steadily along the path left for me, and would have ascended the steps. But at the foot of them I came to a standstill, and looked round for guidance. The persons on the scaffold all had their backs turned to me, and did not make way, while the shouting and uproar hindered them from hearing that we had come out. Then it struck me, seeing that the people at the windows were also gazing away, and taking no heed of me, that the Duke was passing the farther end of the street, and a sharp pang of angry pain shot through me. I had come out to die, but that which was all to me was so little to these people that they turned away to see a fellow-mortal ride by!

  Presently, as we stood there, in a pit, as it were, getting no view, I felt Master Lindstrom’s hand, which still clasped mine, begin to shake; and turning to him, I found that his face had changed to a deep red, and that his eyes were protruding with a kind of convulsive eagerness which instantly infected me.

  “What is it?” I stammered. I began to tremble also. The air rang, it seemed to me, with one word, which a thousand tongues took up and reiterated. But it was a German word, and I did not understand it.

  “Wait! wait!” Master Lindstrom exclaimed. “Pray God it be true!”

  He seized my other hand and held it as though he would protect me from something. At the same moment Van Tree pushed past me, and, bounding up the steps, thrust his way through the officials on the scaffold, causing more than one fur-robed citizen near the edge to lose his balance and come down as best he could on the shoulders of the guards.

  “What is it?” I cried. “What is it?” I cried in impatient wonder.

  “Oh! my lad, my lad!” Master Lindstrom answered, his face close to mine, and the tears running down his cheeks. “It is cruel if it be not true! Cruel! They cry a pardon!”

  “A pardon?” I echoed.

  “Ay, lad, a pardon. But it may not be true,” he said, putting his arm about my shoulder. “Do not make too sure of it. It is only the mob cry it out.”

  My heart made a great bound, and seemed to stand still. There was a loud surging in my brain, and a mist rose before my eyes and hid everything. The clamor and shouting of the street passed away, and sounded vague and distant. The next instant, it is true, I was myself again, but my knees were trembling under me, and I stood flaccid and unnerved, leaning on my friend.

  “Well?” I said faintly.

  “Patience! patience a while, lad!” he answered.

  But, thank Heaven! I had not long to wait. The words were scarcely off his tongue, when another hand sought mine and shook it wildly; and I saw Van Tree before me, his face radiant with joy, while a man whom he had knocked down in his hasty leap from the scaffold was rising beside me with a good-natured smile. As if at a signal, every face now turned toward me. A dozen friendly hands passed me up the steps amid a fresh outburst of cheering. The throng on the scaffold opened somehow, and I found myself in a second, as it seemed, face to face with the president of the court. He smiled on me gravely and kindly — what smiles there seemed to be on all those faces — and held out a paper.

  “In the name of the Duke!” he said, speaking in Spanish, in a clear, loud voice. “A pardon!”

  I muttered something, I know not what; nor did it matter, for it was lost in a burst of cheering. When this was over and silence obtained, the magistrate continued, “You are required, however, to attend the Duke at the courthouse. Whither we had better proceed at once.”

  “I am ready, sir,” I muttered.

  A road was made for us to descend, and, walking in a kind of beautiful dream, I passed slowly up the street by the side of the magistrate, the crowd everywhere willingly standing aside for us. I do not know whether all those thousands of faces really looked joyfully and kindly on me as I passed, or whether the deep thankfulness which choked me, and brought the tears continually to my eyes, transfigured them and gave them a generous charm not their own. But this I do know: that the sunshine seemed brighter and the air softer than ever before; that the clouds trailing across the blue expanse were things of beauty such as I had never met before; that to draw breath was a joy, and to move, delight; and that only when the dark valley was left behind did I comprehend its full gloom — by Heaven’s mercy. So may it be with all!

  At the door of the court-house, whither numbers of the people had already run, the press was so great that we came to a standstill, and were much buffeted about, though in all good humor, before, even with the aid of the soldiers, we could be got through the throng. When I at last emerged I found myself again before the table, and saw — but only dimly, for the light now fell through the stained window directly on my head — a commanding figure standing behind it. Then a strange thing happened. A woman passed swiftly round the table, and came to me and flung her arms round my neck and kissed me. It was the Duchess, and for a moment she hung upon me, weeping before them all.

  “Madam,”
I said softly, “then it is you who have done this!”

  “Ah!” she exclaimed, holding me off from her and looking at me with eyes which glowed through her tears, “and it was you who did that!”

  She drew back from me then, and took me by the hand, and turned impetuously to the Duke of Cleves, who stood behind smiling at her in frank amusement. “This,” she said, “is the man who gave his life for my husband, and to whom your highness has given it back.”

  “Let him tell his tale,” the Duke answered gravely. “And do you, my cousin, sit here beside me.”

  She left me and walked round the table, and he came forward and placed her in his own chair amid a great hush of wonder, for she was still meanly clad, and showed in a hundred places the marks and stains of travel. Then he stood by her with his hand on the back of the seat. He was a tall, burly man, with bold, quick-glancing eyes, a flushed face, and a loud manner; a fierce, blusterous prince, as I have heard. He was plainly dressed in a leather hunting-suit, and wore huge gauntlets and brown boots, with a broad-leaved hat pinned up on one side. Yet he looked a prince.

  Somehow I stammered out the tale of the surrender.

  “But why? why? why, man?” he asked, when I had finished; “why did you let them think it was you who wounded the burgher, if it was not?”

  “Your highness,” I answered, “I had received nothing but good from her grace, I had eaten her bread and been received into her service. Besides, it was through my persuasion that we came by the road which led to this misfortune instead of by another way. Therefore it seemed to me right that I should suffer, who stood alone and could be spared — and not her husband.”

  “It was a great deed!” cried the prince loudly. “I would I had such a servant. Are you noble, lad?”

  I colored high, but not in pain or mortification. The old wound might reopen, but amid events such as those of this morning it was a slight matter. “I come of a noble family, may it please your highness,” I answered modestly; “but circumstances prevent me claiming kinship with it.”