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

less

hard to die. And thinking this she thought further, and uttered

some of her thought aloud.

 

“I could have saved you, my poor Philip.”

 

He started up, and showed her again that livid, distorted face of

his.

 

“What do you mean?” he asked hoarsely. “You could have saved me,

do you say? Then - then why - “

 

“Ah, but the price, my dear,” she sobbed.

 

“Price?” quoth he in sudden, fierce contempt. “What price is too

great to pay for life? Does this Rhynsault want all our wealth,

then yield it to him yield it so that I may live - “

 

“Should I have hesitated had it been but that?” she interrupted.

 

And then she told him, whilst he sat there hunched and shuddering.

 

“The dog! The foul German dog!” he muttered through clenched teeth.

 

“So that you see, my dear,” she pursued brokenly, “it was too great

a price. Yourself, you could not have condoned it, or done aught

else but loathe me afterwards.”

 

But he was not as stout-mettled as she deemed him, or else the

all-consuming thirst of life, youth’s stark horror of death, made

him a temporizing craven in that hour.

 

“Who knows?” he answered. “Certes, I do not. But a thing so done,

a thing in which the will and mind have no part, resolves itself

perhaps into a sacrifice - “

 

He broke off there, perhaps from very shame. After all he was a

man, and there are limits to what manhood will permit of one.

 

But those words of his sank deeply into her soul. They rang again

and again in her ears as she took her anguished way home after the

agony of their farewells, and in the end they drove her out again

that very night to seek the Governor of Zeeland.

 

Rhynsault was at supper when she came, and without quitting the

table bade them usher her into his presence. He found her very

white, but singularly calm and purposeful in her bearing.

 

“Well, mistress?”

 

“May I speak to you alone?”

 

Her voice was as steady as her glance.

 

He waved away the attendants, drank a deep draught from the cup at

his elbow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sat back

in his tall chair to hear her.

 

“Yesterday,” she said, “you made, or seemed to make, me a proposal.”

 

He looked up at first in surprise, then with a faint smile on his

coarse, red mouth. His glance had read her meaning clearly.

 

“Look you, mistress, here I am lord of life and death. Yet in the

case of your husband I yield up that power to you. Say but the word

and I sign the order for his gaol delivery at dawn.”

 

“I have come to say that word,” she informed him.

 

A moment he looked up at her, his smile broadening, a flush mounting

to his cheekbones. Then he rose and sent his chair crashing behind

him to the ground.

 

“Herrgott!” he grunted; and he gathered her slim, trembling body to

his massive gold-laced breast.

 

Soon after sunrise on the morrow she was beating at the gates of

Middelburg gaol, a paper clutched convulsively in her left hand.

 

She was admitted, and to the head gaoler she showed the paper that

she carried.

 

“An order from the Governor of Zeeland for the gaol delivery of

Philip Danvelt!” she announced almost hysterically.

 

The gaoler scanned the paper, then her face. His lips tightened.

 

“Come this way,” he said; and led her down a gloomy corridor to the

cell where yesterday she had seen her husband.

 

He threw wide the door, and Sapphira sprang in.

 

“Philip!” she cried, and checked as suddenly.

 

He lay supine and still upon the miserable pallet, his hands folded

upon his breast, his face waxen, his eyes staring glassily through

half-closed lids.

 

She sped to his side in a sudden chill of terror. She fell on her

knees and touched him.

 

“Dead!” she screamed, and, kneeling, span round questioning to face

the gaoler in the doorway. “Dead!”

 

“He was hanged at daybreak, mistress,” said the gaoler gently.

 

She rocked a moment, moaning, then fell suddenly forward across her

husband’s body in a swoon.

 

That evening she was again at the Gravenhof to see Rhynsault, and

again she was admitted - a haggard faced woman now, in whom there

was no trace of beauty left. She came to stand before the Governor,

considered him in silence a moment with a loathing unutterable in

her glance, then launched into fierce recriminations of his broken

faith.

 

He heard her out, then shrugged and smiled indulgently.

 

“I performed no less than I promised,” said he. “I pledged my word

to Danvelt’s gaol delivery, and was not my gaol delivery effective?

You could hardly suppose that I should allow it to be of such a

fashion as to interfere with our future happy meetings.”

 

Before his leering glance she fled in terror, followed by the sound

of his bestial laugh.

 

For a week thereafter she kept her house and brooded. Then one day

she sallied forth all dressed in deepest mourning and attended by a

train of servants, and, embarking upon a flat-bottomed barge, was

borne up the river Scheldt towards Antwerp. Bruges was her ultimate

destination, of which she left no word behind her, and took the

longest way round to reach it. From Antwerp her barge voyaged on

to Ghent, and thence by canal, drawn by four stout Flemish horses,

at last to the magnificent city where the Dukes of Burgundy kept

their Court.

 

Under the June sunshine the opulent city of Bruges hummed with

activity like the great human hive it was. For Bruges at this date

was the market of the world, the very centre of the world’s commerce,

the cosmopolis of the age. Within its walls were established the

agencies of a score of foreign great trading companies, and the

ambassadors of no less a number of foreign Powers. Here on a day

you might hear every language of civilization spoken in the broad

thoroughfares under the shadow of such imposing buildings as you

would not have found together in another city of Europe. To the

harbour came the richly laden argosies from Venice and Genoa, from

Germany and the Baltic, from Constantinople and from England, and

in her thronged markets Lombard and Venetian, Levantine, Teuton,

and Saxon stood jostling one another to buy and sell.

 

It was past noon, and the great belfry above the Gothic Cloth Hall

in the Grande Place was casting a lengthening shadow athwart the

crowded square. Above the Babel of voices sounded on a sudden the

note of a horn, and there was a cry of “The Duke! The Duke!”

followed by a general scuttle of the multitude to leave a clear way

down the middle of the great square.

 

A gorgeous cavalcade some twoscore strong came into sight, advancing

at an amble, a ducal hunting party returning to the palace. A hush

fell upon the burgher crowd as it pressed back respectfully to gaze;

and to the din of human voices succeeded now the clatter of hoofs

upon the kidney-stones of the square, the jangle of hawkbells, the

baying of hounds, and the occasional note of the horn that had

first brought warning of the Duke’s approach.

 

It was a splendid iridescent company, flaunting in its apparel

every colour of the prism. There were great lords in silks and

velvets of every hue, their legs encased in the finest skins of

Spain; there were great ladies, in tall, pointed hennins or bicorne

headdresses and floating veils, with embroidered gowns that swept

down below the bellies of their richly harnessed palfreys. And

along the flanks of this cavalcade ran grooms and huntsmen in

green and leather, their jagged liripipes flung about their necks,

leading the leashed hounds.

 

The burghers craned their necks, and Levantine merchant argued with

Lombard trader upon an estimate of the wealth paraded thus before

them. And then at last came the young Duke himself, in black, as

if to detach himself from the surrounding splendour. He was of

middle stature, of a strong and supple build, with a lean, swarthy

face and lively eyes. Beside him, on a white horse, rode a

dazzling youth dressed from head to foot in flame-coloured silk,

a peaked bonnet of black velvet set upon his lovely golden head,

a hooded falcon perched upon his left wrist, a tiny lute slung

behind him by a black ribbon. He laughed as he rode, looking the

very incarnation of youth and gaiety.

 

The cavalcade passed slowly towards the Prinssenhof, the ducal

residence. It had all but crossed the square when suddenly a voice

- a woman’s voice, high and tense - rang out.

 

“Justice, my Lord Duke of Burgundy! Justice, Lord Duke, for a

woman’s wrongs!”

 

It startled the courtly riders, and for a moment chilled their

gaiety. The scarlet youth at the Duke’s side swung round in his

saddle to obtain a view of her who called so piteously, and he

beheld Sapphira Danvelt.

 

She was all in black, and black was the veil that hung from her

steeple headdress, throwing into greater relief her pallid

loveliness which the youth’s glance was quick to appraise. He saw,

too, from her air and from the grooms attending her, that she was

a woman of some quality, and the tragic appeal of her smote home

in his gay, poetic soul. He put forth a hand and clutched the

Duke’s arm, and, as if yielding to this, the Duke reined up.

 

“What is it that you seek?” Charles asked her not unkindly, his

lively dark eyes playing over her.

 

“Justice!” was all she answered him very piteously, and yet with

a certain fierceness of insistence.

 

“None asks it of me in vain, I hope,” he answered gravely. “But I

do not dispense it from the saddle in the public street. Follow us.”

 

And he rode on.

 

She followed to the Prinssenhof with her grooms and her woman

Catherine. There she was made to wait in a great hall, thronged

with grooms and men-at-arms and huntsmen, who were draining the

measure sent them by the Duke. She stood apart, wrapped in her

tragic sorrow, and none molested her. At last a chamberlain came

to summon her to the Duke’s presence.

 

In a spacious, sparsely furnished room she found the Duke awaiting

her, wearing now a gown of black and gold that was trimmed with

rich fur. He sat in a tall chair of oak and leather, and leaning

on the back of it lounged gracefully the lovely scarlet youth who

had ridden at his side.

 

Standing before him, with drooping eyes and folded hands, she told

her shameful story. Darker and darker grew his brow as she proceeded

with it. But it was the gloom of doubt rather than of anger.

 

“Rhynsault?” he cried when she had done. “Rhynsault did this?”

 

There was incredulity in his voice and nothing else.

 

The youth behind him laughed softly, and shifted his attitude.

 

“You are surprised. Yet what else was to be looked for in that

Teuton swine? Me he never could deceive, for all his - “

 

“Be silent, Arnault,” said the Duke sharply. And to the woman: “It

is a grave, grave charge,” he said, “against a man I trusted and

have esteemed, else I should not have placed him where he is. What

proof have you?”

 

She proffered him a strip of parchment - the signed order for the

gaol delivery of Philip