The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

was Claudius von Rhynsault, who had followed the Duke’s

fortunes for some years now, a born leader of men, a fellow of

infinite address at arms and resource in battle, and of a bold,

reckless courage that nothing could ever daunt. It was perhaps this

last quality that rendered him so esteemed of Charles, himself named

the Bold, whose view of courage was that it was a virtue so lofty

that in the nature of its possessor there could, perforce, be

nothing mean.

 

So now, to mark his esteem of this stalwart German, the Duke made

him Governor of the province of Zeeland, and dispatched him thither

to stamp out there any lingering sparks of revolt, and to rule it

in his name as ducal lieutenant.

 

Thus, upon a fair May morning, came Claud of Ryhnsault and his hardy

riders to the town of Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, to take up

his residence at the Gravenhof in the main square, and thence to

dispense justice throughout that land of dykes in his master’s

princely name. This justice the German captain dispensed with

merciless rigour, conceiving that to be the proper way to uproot

rebellious tendencies. It was inevitable that he should follow such

a course, impelled to it by a remorseless cruelty in his nature, of

which the Duke his master had seen no hint, else he might have

thought twice before making him Governor of Zeeland, for Charles

- despite his rigour when treachery was to be punished - was a just

and humane prince.

 

Now, amongst those arrested and flung into Middelburg gaol as a

result of Rhynsault’s ruthless perquisitions and inquisitions was

a wealthy young burgher named Philip Danvelt. His arrest was

occasioned by a letter signed “Philip Danvelt” found in the house

of a marked rebel who had been first tortured and then hanged. The

letter, of a date immediately preceding the late rising, promised

assistance in the shape of arms and money.

 

Brought before Rhynsault for examination, in a cheerless hall of

the Gravenhof, Danvelt’s defence was a denial upon oath that he had

ever taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of

the letter found, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter

made everything very simple and clear. At the date it bore he had

been away at Flushing marrying a wife, whom he had since brought

thence to Middelburg. It was ludicrous, he urged, to suppose that

in such a season - of all seasons in a man’s life - he should have

been concerned with rebellion or correspondence with rebels, and,

urging this, he laughed again.

 

Now, the German captain did not like burghers who laughed in his

presence. It argued a lack of proper awe for the dignity of his

office and the importance of his person. From his high seat at

the Judgment-board, flanked by clerks and hedged about by

men-at-arms, he scowled upon the flaxen-haired, fresh-complexioned

young burgher who bore himself so very easily. He was a big,

handsome man, this Rhynsault, of perhaps some thirty years of age.

His thick hair was of a reddish brown, and his beardless face was

cast in bold lines and tanned by exposure to the colour of mahogany,

save where the pale line of a scar crossed his left cheek.

 

“Yet, I tell you, the letter bears your signature,” he grumbled

sourly.

 

“My name, perhaps,” smiled the amiable Danvelt, “but assuredly not

my signature.”

 

“Herrgott!” swore the German captain. “Is this a riddle? What is

the difference?”

 

Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be

mildly insolent.

 

“It is a riddle that the meanest of your clerks there can read for

you,” said he.

 

The Governor’s blue eyes gleamed like steel as they, fastened upon

Danvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull

flush crept into his cheeks. Then he swore.

 

“Beim blute Gottes!” quoth he, “do you whet your trader’s wit upon

me, scum?”

 

And to the waiting men-at-arms:

 

“Take him back to his dungeon,” he commanded, “that in its quiet

he may study a proper carriage before he is next brought before us.”

 

Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pertness

and to reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault,

it was not only the guilty who had need to go warily.

 

The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt. His secretary, on

his immediate right, leaned towards him.

 

“It were easy to test the truth of the man’s assertion,” said he.

“Let his servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when

he was in Flushing and when married.”

 

“Aye,” growled von Rhynsault. “Let it be done. I don’t doubt we

shall discover that the dog was lying.”

 

But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt’s

household and his wife stood before the Governor to answer his

questions. Their replies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had

told, and appeared in other ways to place it beyond all doubt that

he had taken no part, in deed or even in thought, in the rebellion

against the Duke of Burgundy. His wife protested it solemnly and

piteously.

 

“To this I can swear, my lord,” she concluded. “I am sure no

evidence can be brought against him, who was ever loyal and ever

concerned with his affairs and with me at the time in question.

My lord” - she held out her hands towards the grim German, and her

lovely eyes gleamed with unshed tears of supplication - “I implore

you to believe me, and in default of witnesses against him to

restore my husband to me.”

 

Rhynsault’s blue eyes kindled now as they considered her, and his

full red lips slowly parted in the faintest and most inscrutable

of smiles. She was very fair to look upon - of middle height and

most exquisite shape. Her gown, of palest saffron, edged with fur,

high-waisted according to the mode, and fitted closely to the

gently swelling bust, was cut low to display the white perfection

of her neck. Her softly rounded face looked absurdly childlike

under the tall-crowned hennin, from which a wispy veil floated

behind her as she moved.

 

In silence, then, for a spell, the German mercenary pondered her

with those slowly kindling eyes, that slowly spreading, indefinite

smile. Then he stirred, and to his secretary he muttered shortly:

 

“The woman lies. In private I may snare the truth from her.”

 

He rose - a tall, massively imposing figure in a low-girdled tunic

of deep purple velvet, open at the breast, and gold-laced across a

white silken undervest.

 

“There is some evidence,” he informed her gruffly. “Come with me,

and you shall see it for yourself.”

 

He led the way from that cheerless hall by a dark corridor to a

small snug room, richly hung and carpeted, where a servant waited.

He dismissed the fellow, and in the same breath bade her enter,

watching her the while from under lowered brows. One of her women

had followed; but admittance was denied her. Danvelt’s wife must

enter his room alone.

 

Whilst she waited there, with scared eyes and fluttering bosom, he

went to take from an oaken coffer the letter signed “Philip Danvelt.”

He folded the sheet so that the name only was to be read, and came

to thrust it under her eyes.

 

“What name is that?” he asked her gruffly.

 

Her answer was very prompt.

 

“It is my husband’s, but not the writing - it is another hand; some

other Philip Danvelt; there will be others in Zeeland.”

 

He laughed softly, looking at her ever with that odd intentness,

and under his gaze she shrank and cowered in terror; it spoke to her

of some nameless evil; the tepid air of the luxurious room was

stifling her.

 

“If I believed you, your husband would be delivered from his prison

- from all danger; and he stands, I swear to you, in mortal peril.”

 

“Ah, but you must believe me. There are others who can bear witness.”

 

“I care naught for others,” he broke in, with harsh and arrogant

contempt. Then he softened his voice to a lover’s key. “But I might

accept your word that this is not your husband’s hand, even though

I did not believe you.”

 

She did not understand, and so she could only stare at him with those

round, brown eyes of hers dilating, her lovely cheeks blanching with

horrid fear.

 

“Why, see,” he said at length, with an easy, gruff good-humour, “I

place the life of Philip Danvelt in those fair hands to do with as

you please. Surely, sweeting, you will not be so unkind as to

destroy it.”

 

And as he spoke his face bent nearer to her own, his flaming eyes

devoured her, and his arm slipped softly, snake-like round her to

draw her to him. But before it had closed its grip she had started

away, springing back in horror, an outcry already on her pale lips.

 

“One word,” he admonished her sharply, “and it speaks your husband’s

doom!”

 

“Oh, let me go, let me go!” she cried in anguish.

 

“And leave your husband in the hangman’s hands?” he asked.

 

“Let me go! Let me go!” was all that she could answer him,

expressing the only thought of which in that dread moment her mind

was capable.

 

That and the loathing on her face wounded his vanity for this beast

was vain. His manner changed, and the abysmal brute in him was

revealed in the anger he displayed. With foul imprecations he drove

her out.

 

Next day a messenger from the Governor waited upon her at her house

with a brief note to inform her that her husband would be hanged

upon the morrow. Incredulity was succeeded by a numb, stony,

dry-eyed grief, in which she sat alone for hours - a woman entranced.

At last, towards dusk, she summoned a couple of her grooms to

attend and light her, and made her way, ever in that odd

somnambulistic state, to the gaol of Middelburg. She announced

herself to the head gaoler as the wife of Philip Danvelt, lying

under sentence of death, and that she was come to take her last

leave of him. It was not a thing to be denied, nor had the gaoler

any orders to deny it.

 

So she was ushered into the dank cell where Philip waited for his

doom, and by the yellow wheel of light of the lantern that hung

from the shallow vaulted ceiling she beheld the ghastly change

that the news of impending death had wrought in him. No longer

was he the self-assured young burgher who, conscious of his

innocence and worldly importance, had used a certain careless

insolence with the Governor of Zeeland. Here she beheld a man of

livid and distorted face, wild-eyed, his hair and garments in

disarray, suggesting the physical convulsions to which he had

yielded in his despair and rage.

 

“Sapphira!” he cried at sight of her. A sigh of anguish and he

flung himself, shuddering and sobbing, upon her breast. She put

her arms about him, soothed him gently, and drew him back to the

wooden chair from which he had leapt to greet her.

 

He took his head in his hands and poured out the fierce anguish of

his soul. To die innocent as he was, to be the victim of an

arbitrary, unjust power! And to perish at his age!

 

Hearing him rave, she shivered out of an agony of compassion and

also of some terror for herself. She would that he found it