Book: Lysbeth

H >> H. Rider Haggard >> Lysbeth




Elsa shut her eyes. When she opened them again the woman was alone upon
the little patch of red boarding, her body splayed out over it like that
of a dead frog. So she lay a while till suddenly the cap of the Red Mill
dipped slowly like a lady who makes a Court curtsey, and she vanished.
It rose again and Meg was still there, moaning in her terror and water
running from her dress. Then again it dipped, this time more deeply, and
when the patch of rusty boarding slowly reappeared, it was empty. No,
not quite, for clinging to it, yowling and spitting, was the half-wild
black cat which Elsa had seen wandering about the mill. But of Black Meg
there was no trace.

It was dreadfully cold up there hanging to the sail-bar, for now that
the rain had finished, it began to freeze. Indeed, had it not chanced
that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and dry
from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have fallen off
and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body became numb and
her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this matter of her forced
marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon and Meg, was nothing but
a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she would awake presently to
find herself snug and warm in her own bed in the Bree Straat. Of course
it must be a nightmare, for look, there, on the bare patch of boarding
beneath, the hideous struggle repeated itself. There lay Hague Simon
gnawing at his wife's foot, only his fat, white face was gone, and in
place of it he wore the head of a cat, for she, the watcher, could
see its glowing eyes fixed upon her. And Meg--look how her lean limbs
gripped him round the body. Listen to the thudding noise as the great
knife fell between his shoulders. And now, see--she was growing tall,
she had become a giantess, her face shot across the gulf of water and
swam upwards through the shadows till it was within a foot of her. Oh!
she must fall, but first she would scream for help--surely the dead
themselves could hear that cry. Better not have uttered it, it might
bring Ramiro back; better go to join the dead. What did the voice say,
Meg's voice, but how changed? That she was not to be afraid? That the
thudding was the sound of oars not of knife thrusts? This would be
Ramiro's boat coming to seize her. Of him and Adrian she could bear no
more; she would throw herself into the water and trust to God. One, two,
three--then utter darkness.

Elsa became aware that light was shining about her, also that somebody
was kissing her upon the face and lips. A horrible doubt struck her that
it might be Adrian, and she opened her eyes ever so little to look. No,
no, how very strange, it was not Adrian, it was Foy! Well, doubtless
this must be all part of her vision, and as in dream or out of it
Foy had a perfect right to kiss her if he chose, she saw no reason to
interfere. Now she seemed to hear a familiar voice, that of Red Martin,
asking someone how long it would take them to make Haarlem with this
wind, to which another voice answered, "About three-quarters of an
hour."

It was very odd, and why did he say Haarlem and not Leyden? Next the
second voice, which also seemed familiar, said:

"Look out, Foy, she's coming to herself." Then someone poured wine down
her throat, whereupon, unable to bear this bewilderment any longer, Elsa
sat up and opened her eyes wide, to see before her Foy, and none other
than Foy in the flesh.

She gasped, and began to sink back again with joy and weakness,
whereon he cast his arms about her and drew her to his breast. Then she
remembered everything.

"Oh! Foy, Foy," she cried, "you must not kiss me."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because--because I am married."

Of a sudden his happy face became ghastly. "Married!" he stammered. "Who
to?"

"To--your brother, Adrian."

He stared at her in amazement, then asked slowly:

"Did you run away from Leyden to marry him?"

"How dare you ask such a question?" replied Elsa with a flash of spirit.

"Perhaps, then, you would explain?"

"What is there to explain? I thought that you knew. They dragged me
away, and last night, just before the flood burst, I was gagged and
married by force."

"Oh! Adrian, my friend," groaned Foy, "wait till I catch you, my friend
Adrian."

"To be just," explained Elsa, "I don't think Adrian wanted to marry me
much, but he had to choose between marrying me himself or seeing his
father Ramiro marry me."

"So he sacrificed himself--the good, kind-hearted man," interrupted Foy,
grinding his teeth.

"Yes," said Elsa.

"And where is your self-denying--oh! I can't say the word."

"I don't know. I suppose that he and Ramiro escaped in the boat, or
perhaps he was drowned."

"In which case you are a widow sooner than you could have expected,"
said Foy more cheerfully, edging himself towards her.

But Elsa moved a little away and Foy saw with a sinking of the heart
that, however distasteful it might be to her, clearly she attached some
weight to this marriage.

"I do not know," she answered, "how can I tell? I suppose that we shall
hear sometime, and then, if he is still alive, I must set to work to get
free of him. But, till then, Foy," she added, warningly, "I suppose that
I am his wife in law, although I will never speak to him again. Where
are we going?"

"To Haarlem. The Spaniards are closing in upon the city, and we dare not
try to break through their lines. Those are Spanish boats behind us. But
eat and drink a little, Elsa, then tell us your story."

"One question first, Foy. How did you find me?"

"We heard a woman scream twice, once far away and once near at hand,
and rowing to the sound, saw someone hanging to the arm of an overturned
windmill only three or four feet above the water. Of course we knew that
you had been taken to the mill; that man there told us. Do you remember
him? But at first we could not find it in the darkness and the flood."

Then, after she had swallowed something, Elsa told her story, while the
three of them clustered round her forward of the sail, and Marsh Jan
managed the helm. When she had finished it, Martin whispered to Foy,
and as though by a common impulse all four of them kneeled down upon the
boards in the bottom of the boat, and returned thanks to the Almighty
that this maiden, quite unharmed, had been delivered out of such
manifold and terrible dangers, and this by the hands of her own friends
and of the man to whom she was affianced. When they had finished their
service of thanksgiving, which was as simple as it was solemn and
heartfelt, they rose, and now Elsa did not forbid that Foy should hold
her hand.

"Say, sweetheart," he asked, "is it true that you think anything of this
forced marriage?"

"Hear me before you answer," broke in Martha. "It is no marriage at all,
for none can be wed without the consent of their own will, and you gave
no such consent."

"It is no marriage," echoed Martin, "and if it be, and I live, then the
sword shall cut its knot."

"It is no marriage," said Foy, "for although we have not stood together
before the altar, yet our hearts are wed, so how can you be made the
wife of another man?"

"Dearest," replied Elsa, when they had all spoken, "I too am sure that
it is no marriage, yet a priest spoke the marriage words over me, and a
ring was thrust upon my hand, so, to the law, if there be any law left
in the Netherlands, I am perhaps in some sort a wife. Therefore, before
I can become wife to you these facts must be made public, and I must
appeal to the law to free me, lest in days to come others should be
troubled."

"And if the law cannot, or will not, Elsa, what then?"

"Then, dear, our consciences being clean, we will be a law to ourselves.
But first we must wait a while. Are you satisfied now, Foy?"

"No," answered Foy sulkily, "for it is monstrous that such devil's work
should keep us apart even for an hour. Yet in this, as in all, I will
obey you, dear."

"Marrying and giving in marriage!" broke in Martha in a shrill voice.
"Talk no more of such things, for there is other work before us. Look
yonder, girl, what do you see?" and she pointed to the dry land. "The
hosts of the Amalekites marching in their thousands to slaughter us and
our brethren, the children of the Lord. Look behind you, what do you
see? The ships of the tyrant sailing up to encompass the city of the
children of the Lord. It is the day of death and desolation, the day of
Armageddon, and ere the sun sets red upon it many a thousand must pass
through the gates of doom, we, mayhap, among them. Then up with the
flag of freedom; out with the steel of truth, gird on the buckler of
righteousness, and snatch the shield of hope. Fight, fight for the
liberty of the land that bore you, for the memory of Christ, the King
who died for you, for the faith to which you are born; fight, fight, and
when the fray is done, then, and not before, think of peace and love.

"Nay, children, look not so fearful, for I, the mad mere-wife, tell you,
by the Grace of God, that you have naught to fear. Who preserved you in
the torture den, Foy van Goorl? What hand was it that held your life and
honour safe when you sojourned among devils in the Red Mill yonder and
kept your head above the waters of the flood, Elsa Brant? You know well,
and I, Martha, tell you that this same hand shall hold you safe until
the end. Yes, I know it, I know it; thousands shall fall upon your right
hand and tens of thousands upon your left, but you shall live through
the hunger; the arrows of pestilence shall pass you by, the sword of
the wicked shall not harm you. For me it is otherwise, at length my doom
draws near and I am well content; but for you twain, Foy and Elsa, I
foretell many years of earthly joy."

Thus spoke Martha, and it seemed to those who watched her that her wild,
disfigured face shone with a light of inspiration, nor did they who knew
her story, and still believed that the spirit of prophecy could open the
eyes of chosen seers, deem it strange that vision of the things to be
should visit her. At the least they took comfort from her words, and for
a while were no more afraid.

Yet they had much to fear. By a fateful accident they had been delivered
from great dangers only to fall into dangers greater still, for as it
chanced, on this tenth of December, 1572, they sailed straight into the
grasp of the thousands of the Spanish armies which had been drawn like
a net round the doomed city of Haarlem. There was no escape for them;
nothing that had not wings could pass those lines of ships and soldiers.
Their only refuge was the city, and in that city they must bide till the
struggle, one of the most fearful of all that hideous war, was ended.
But at least they had this comfort, they would face the foe together,
and with them were two who loved them, Martha, the "Spanish Scourge,"
and Red Martin, the free Frisian, the mighty man of war whom God had
appointed to them as a shield of defence.

So they smiled on each other, these two lovers of long ago, and sailed
bravely on to the closing gates of Haarlem.



CHAPTER XXVIII

ATONEMENT

Seven months had gone by, seven of the most dreadful months ever lived
through by human beings. For all this space of time, through the frosts
and snows and fogs of winter, through the icy winds of spring, and now
deep into the heart of summer, the city of Haarlem had been closely
beleaguered by an army of thirty thousand Spaniards, most of them
veteran troops under the command of Don Frederic, the son of Alva, and
other generals. Against this disciplined host were opposed the little
garrison of four thousand Hollanders and Germans aided by a few Scotch
and English soldiers, together with a population of about twenty
thousand old men, women and children. From day to day, from week to
week, from month to month, the struggle was waged between these
unequal forces, marked on either side by the most heroic efforts and by
cruelties that would strike our age as monstrous. For in those times the
captive prisoner of war could expect no mercy; indeed, he was fortunate
if he was not hung from a gibbet by the leg to die slowly within eyeshot
of his friends.

There were battles without number, men perished in hecatombs; among the
besieging armies alone over twelve thousand lost their lives, so that
the neighbourhood of Haarlem became one vast graveyard, and the fish in
the lake were poisoned by the dead. Assault, sortie, ambuscade, artifice
of war; combats to the death upon the ice between skate-shod soldiers;
desperate sea fights, attempts to storm; the explosion of mines and
counter-mines that brought death to hundreds--all these became the
familiar incidents of daily life.

Then there were other horrors; cold from insufficient fuel, pestilences
of various sorts such as always attend a siege, and, worse of all for
the beleaguered, hunger. Week by week as the summer aged, the food grew
less and less, till at length there was nothing. The weeds that grew in
the street, the refuse of tanneries, the last ounce of offal, the mice
and the cats, all had been devoured. On the lofty steeple of St. Bavon
for days and days had floated a black flag to tell the Prince of Orange
in Leyden that below it was despair as black. The last attempt at
succour had been made. Batenburg had been defeated and slain, together
with the Seigneurs of Clotingen and Carloo, and five or six hundred men.
Now there was no more hope.

Desperate expedients were suggested: That the women, children, aged and
sick should be left in the city, while the able-bodied men cut a way
through the battalions of their besiegers. On these non-combatants it
was hoped that the Spaniard would have mercy--as though the Spaniard
could have mercy, he who afterwards dragged the wounded and the ailing
to the door of the hospital and there slaughtered them in cold blood;
aye, and here and elsewhere, did other things too dreadful to write
down. Says the old chronicler, "But this being understood by the
women, they assembled all together, making the most pitiful cries and
lamentations that could be heard, the which would have moved a heart of
flint, so as it was not possible to abandon them."

Next another plan was formed: that all the females and helpless should
be set in the centre of a square of the fighting men, to march out
and give battle to the foe till everyone was slain. Then the Spaniards
hearing this and growing afraid of what these desperate men might do,
fell back on guile. If they would surrender, the citizens of Haarlem
were told, and pay two hundred and forty thousand florins, no punishment
should be inflicted. So, having neither food nor hope, they listened
to the voice of the tempter and surrendered, they who had fought until
their garrison of four thousand was reduced to eighteen hundred men.



It was noon and past on the fatal twelfth of July. The gates were open,
the Spaniards, those who were left alive of them, Don Frederic at their
head, with drums beating, banners flying, and swords sharpened for
murder, were marching into the city of Haarlem. In a deep niche between
two great brick piers of the cathedral were gathered four people whom we
know. War and famine had left them all alive, yet they had borne their
share of both. In every enterprise, however desperate, Foy and Martin
had marched, or stood, or watched side by side, and well did the
Spaniards know the weight of the great sword Silence and the red-headed
giant who wielded it. Mother Martha, too, had not been idle. Throughout
the siege she had served as the lieutenant of the widow Hasselaer, who
with a band of three hundred women fought day and night alongside
of their husbands and brothers. Even Elsa, who although she was too
delicate and by nature timid and unfitted to go out to battle, had done
her part, for she laboured at the digging of mines and the building of
walls till her soft hands were rough and scarred.

How changed they were. Foy, whose face had been so youthful, looked now
like a man on the wrong side of middle age. The huge Martin might have
been a great skeleton on which hung clothes, or rather rags and a
rent bull's hide, with his blue eyes shining in deep pits beneath the
massive, projecting skull. Elsa too had become quite small, like a
child. Her sweet face was no longer pretty, only pitiful, and all the
roundness of her figure had vanished--she might have been an emaciated
boy. Of the four of them Martha the Mare, who was dressed like a man,
showed the least change. Indeed, except that now her hair was snowy,
that her features were rather more horse-like, that the yellow, lipless
teeth projected even further, and the thin nervous hands had become
almost like those of an Egyptian mummy, she was much as she always had
been.

Martin leaned upon the great sword and groaned. "Curses on them, the
cowards," he muttered; "why did they not let us go out and die fighting?
Fools, mad fools, who would trust to the mercy of the Spaniard."

"Oh! Foy," said Elsa, throwing her thin arms about his neck, "you will
not let them take me, will you? If it comes to the worst, you will kill
me, won't you? Otherwise I must kill myself, and Foy, I am a coward, I
am afraid--to do that."

"I suppose so," he answered in a harsh, unnatural voice, "but oh! God,
if Thou art, have pity upon her. Oh! God have pity."

"Blaspheme not, doubt not!" broke in the shrill voice of Martha. "Has
it not been as I told you last winter in the boat? Have you not been
protected, and shall you not be protected to the end? Only blaspheme
not, doubt not!"

The niche in which they were standing was out of sight of the great
square and those who thronged it, but as Martha spoke a band of
victorious Spaniards, seven or eight of them, came round the corner and
caught sight of the party in the nook.

"There's a girl," said the sergeant in command of them, "who isn't bad
looking. Pull her out, men."

Some fellows stepped forward to do his bidding. Now Foy went mad. He did
not kill Elsa as she had prayed him, he flew straight at the throat of
the brute who had spoken, and next instant his sword was standing out
a foot behind his neck. Then after him, with a kind of low cry, came
Martin, plying the great blade Silence, and Martha after him with her
long knife. It was all over in a minute, but before it was done there
were five men down, three dead and two sore wounded.

"A tithe and an offering!" muttered Martha as, bounding forward, she
bent over the wounded men, and their comrades fled round the corner of
the cathedral.

There was a minute's pause. The bright summer sunlight shone upon the
faces and armour of the dead Spaniards, upon the naked sword of Foy,
who stood over Elsa crouched to the ground in a corner of the niche, her
face hidden in her hands, upon the terrible blue eyes of Martin alight
with a dreadful fire of rage. Then there came the sound of marching
men, and a company of Spaniards appeared before them, and at their
head--Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl.

"There they are, captain," said a soldier, one of those who had fled;
"shall we shoot them?"

Ramiro looked, carelessly enough at first, then again a long,
scrutinising look. So he had caught them at last! Months ago he had
learned that Elsa had been rescued from the Red Mill by Foy and Martin,
and now, after much seeking, the birds were in his net.

"No," he said, "I think not. Such desperate characters must be reserved
for separate trial."

"Where can they be kept, captain?" asked the sergeant sulkily.

"I observed, friend, that the house which my son and I have taken as
our quarters has excellent cellars; they can be imprisoned there for the
present--that is, except the young lady, whom the Senor Adrian will look
after. As it chances, she is his wife."

At this the soldiers laughed openly.

"I repeat--his wife, for whom he has been searching these many months,"
said Ramiro, "and, therefore, to be respected. Do you understand, men?"

Apparently they did understand, at least no one made any answer. Their
captain, as they had found, was not a man who loved argument.

"Now, then, you fellows," went on Ramiro, "give up your arms."

Martin thought a while. Evidently he was wondering whether it would not
be best to rush at them and die fighting. At that moment, as he said
afterwards indeed, the old saying came into his mind, "A game is not
lost until it is won," and remembering that dead men can never have
another chance of winning games, he gave up the sword.

"Hand that to me," said Ramiro. "It is a curious weapon to which I have
taken a fancy."

So sword Silence was handed to him, and he slung it over his shoulder.
Foy looked at the kneeling Elsa, and he looked at his sword. Then an
idea struck him, and he looked at the face of Adrian, his brother, whom
he had last seen when the said Adrian ran to warn him and Martin at the
factory, for though he knew that he was fighting with his father among
the Spaniards, during the siege they had never met. Even then, in
that dire extremity, with a sudden flash of thought he wondered how
it happened that Adrian, being the villain that he was, had taken the
trouble to come and warn them yonder in Leyden, thereby giving them time
to make a very good defence in the shot tower.

Foy looked up at his brother. Adrian was dressed in the uniform of a
Spanish officer, with a breast-plate over his quilted doublet, and a
steel cap, from the front of which rose a frayed and weather-worn plume
of feathers. The face had changed; there was none of the old pomposity
about those handsome features; it looked worn and cowed, like that of an
animal which has been trained to do tricks by hunger and the use of the
whip. Yet, through all the shame and degradation, Foy seemed to catch
the glint of some kind of light, a light of good desire shining behind
that piteous mask, as the sun sometimes shines through a sullen cloud.
Could it be that Adrian was not quite so bad after all? That he was,
in fact, the Adrian that he, Foy, had always believed him to be, vain,
silly, passionate, exaggerated, born to be a tool and think himself
the master, but beneath everything, well-meaning? Who could say? At the
worst, too, was it not better that Elsa should become the wife of Adrian
than that her life should cease there and then, and by her lover's hand?

These things passed through his brain as the lightning passes through
the sky. In an instant his mind was made up and Foy flung down his sword
at the feet of a soldier. As he did so his eyes met the eyes of Adrian,
and to his imagination they seemed to be full of thanks and promise.

They took them all; with gibes and blows the soldiers haled them away
through the tumult and the agony of the fallen town and its doomed
defenders. Out of the rich sunlight they led them into a house that
still stood not greatly harmed by the cannon-shot, but a little way
from the shattered Ravelin and the gate which had been the scene of such
fearful conflict--a house that was the home of one of the wealthiest
merchants in Haarlem. Here Foy and Elsa were parted. She struggled to
his arms, whence they tore her and dragged her away up the stairs, but
Martin, Martha and Foy were thrust into a dark cellar, locked in and
left.

A while later the door of the cellar was unbarred and some hand, they
could not see whose, passed through it water and food, good food such as
they had not tasted for months; meat and bread and dried herrings, more
than they could eat of them.

"Perhaps it is poisoned," said Foy, smelling at it hungrily.

"What need to take the trouble to poison us?" answered Martin. "Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

So like starving animals they devoured the food with thankfulness and
then they slept, yes, in the midst of all their misery and doubts they
slept.

It seemed but a few minutes later--in fact it was eight hours--when the
door opened again and there entered Adrian carrying a lantern in his
hand.

"Foy, Martin," he said, "get up and follow me if you would save your
lives."

Instantly they were wide awake.

"Follow you--_you?_" stammered Foy in a choked voice.

"Yes," Adrian answered quietly. "Of course you may not escape, but if
you stop here what chance have you? Ramiro, my father, will be back
presently and then----"

"It is madness to trust ourselves to you," interrupted Martin, and
Adrian seemed to wince at the contempt in his voice.

"I knew that you would think that," he answered humbly, "but what else
is to be done? I can pass you out of the city, I have made a boat ready
for you to escape in, all at the risk of my own life; what more can I
do? Why do you hesitate?"

"Because we do not believe you," said Foy; "besides, there is Elsa. I
will not go without Elsa."

"I have thought of that," answered Adrian. "Elsa is here. Come, Elsa,
show yourself."

Then from the stairs Elsa crept into the cellar, a new Elsa, for she,
too, had been fed, and in her eyes there shone a light of hope. A wild
jealousy filled Foy's heart. Why did she look thus? But she, she ran to
him, she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him, and Adrian did
nothing, he only turned his head aside.

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