Lochinvar: A Novel
Page 6
CHAPTER III
THE BULL, THE CALF, AND THE KILLER
Wat Lochinvar rode out of the city of Amersfort with anger hummingfierce in his heart, the Black Horseman riding pickaback behind him.He paid little attention to the three cutthroat-looking knaves who hadbeen provided as his escort, till the outer port of the city gateshad closed behind him and the chill airs of the outlands, unwarmed byfriendly civic supper-fires, met him shrilly in the teeth.
He had been played with, tricked, betrayed, so he told himself. Nevermore would he think of her--the light trifler with men's hearts. Shemight gang her own wilful gait for him; but there was one thing he waswell assured of--never more would Wat Gordon trust any woman born ofwoman, never speak a word of love to one of the fickle breed again. Onthis he was resolved like steel. For him, henceforth, only the sternelation of combat, the clatter of harness, the joy of the headlongcharge--point to point, eye to eye, he would meet his man, when neitherwould be afraid of aught, save of yielding or craving a favor. Fromthat day forth his sword should be his love, his regiment his marriedwife, his cause and king his family; while his faithful charger,nuzzling against his breast, would bestow on him the only passionatecaresses he would ever know, until on some stricken field it was hisfate to fill a soldier's grave.
Almost could Walter Gordon have wept in his saddle to think of hiswrongs, and death seemed a sweet thing to him beside the fickle favorsof any woman. He bethought him of his cousin Will with something of apitying smile.
"Poor fool!" he said to himself; "he is married. He thinks himselfhappy. How much better had it been to live for glory!"
But even as he battered himself into a conviction of his own rootedindifference to the things of love, he began to wonder how long hispresent adventure would detain him. Could he be back in time onthe morrow to hear the first trip of a light foot on the stairs inZaandpoort Street, as _she_ came from her sleeping-room, fresh asthough God had made her all anew that morning?
For this is a quality of the wisdom of man, that thinking upon a maidofttimes makes it vain--especially if the man be very brave or verywise, and the maid exceeding fair. Gradually, however, the changingclatter of the dozen hoofs behind Lochinvar forced itself upon hishearing, and he remembered that he was not alone.
He turned to his followers, and, curbing his horse a little, waited forthem to come up. They ranged themselves two on one side of him and oneon the other. Lochinvar eyed them with surprising disfavor.
"You are surely the last scourings of the camp," he said, brusquely,for it was too little his habit to beat about the bush; "what may youhave been doing with yourselves? You could not all three have been madeso unhallowedly ugly as that. After all, God is a good God, and kind tothe evil and to the good."
The fellow on Lochinvar's left was a great red-faced man with animmense scar, where (as it appeared) one side of his face had been cutaway wellnigh to the cheek-bone--a wound which had healed unevenly inridges and weals, and now remained of a deep plum-color.
"What is your name?" said Lochinvar to this man.
"I am called Haxo the Bull," he answered, "and I am of the retinue ofmy Lord of Barra."
"And how came you by your English?" asked Lochinvar.
"My mother always declared that my father was of that nation," answeredthe man, readily enough.
"To conclude," continued Wat, who was impatient of further conferencewith such rank knaves, "what might be your distinguished rank in theservice of my Lord of Barra?"
"I am his camp butcher," said the man, laying his hand on a long, keenknife which swung at his belt on the opposite side from his sword.
"And these other two gentlemen, your honorable companions?" queriedWat, indicating them over his shoulder with contemptuous thumb.
The hulking fellow of the scar made a gesture with his shoulders, whichsaid as plain as might be, "They are of age; ask themselves."
But the nearer of the two did not wait to be asked. He was a hairless,flaccid-faced rogue of a pasty gray complexion, and even uglier thanthe plum-colored Bull, with a certain intact and virgin hideousness ofhis own.
"I, for my part, am called Haxo's Calf, and I am not ashamed of thename!" he said.
And, thinking this an excellent jest, he showed a row of teeth likethose of a hungry dog when he snatches a bone from a comrade not hisequal in the fray.
"And, I doubt not, a fit calf of such a sire," quoth Lochinvar, lookingfrom one to the other.
"He is my apprentice, not my son--praise to the Virgin and all thesaints!" said Haxo, looking at the Calf quite as scornfully as Wathimself.
Lochinvar now transferred his attention to the third. He wore a smallround cap on the top of his head, and his narrow and meagre foreheadran back shining and polished to the nape of his neck. His lack-lustreeyes were set curiously at different angles in his head. He had thinlips, which parted nervously over black, gaping teeth, and his nose wasbroken as if with a blow of a hammer.
"And is this gentleman also of Monsieur Haxo's gallant company, and inthe suite of his Excellency my Lord of Barra?"
Haxo nodded his head with some appreciation of Wat's penetration.
"He is, indeed," he said; "he is my chief slaughterman, and a prince athis business."
"He is called 'The Killer,'" interjected the Calf, smacking his lipswith unction. "It is a good name for him."
Wat Gordon urged his horse onward with great and undisguised disgust.To be sent on a dangerous mission with three such arrant rascals toldhim the value that his employers set upon his life. And if he hadchanced at that moment to turn him about in his saddle, the evil smileof triumph which passed simultaneously over the faces of his companionsmight have told him still more.
The small cavalcade of four went clattering on through the duskycoolness of night, across many small wooden bridges and overmultitudinous canals. It passed through villages, in which theinhabitants were already snoring behind their green blinds theunanimous antiphonal bass of the rustic just--though, as yet, it waslittle past nine of the clock on the great kirk tower of Amersfort,and in the city streets and in the camp every one was at the height ofmerriment and enjoyment.
Wafts of balmy country scents blew across the by-ways along which theywent; and through the limpid gray coolness where the young leaves ofthe sparse hedgerow trees brushed his face, Wat could see that he waspassing countless squares of parti-colored bloom. Miles of hyacinth,crocus, and narcissus gardens stretched away on either hand beyond thelow, carefully cut Dutch hedges. Haxo the Bull rode first, showing themthe way to the inn of Brederode, silently, save that every now and thenhe would cry a word over his shoulder, either to one of his ill-favoredretinue or to an unseen watcher at some lonely cross-road.
Wat followed sullenly and fiercely, without caring much about thedirection in which he was being taken. His mind, however, waspreternaturally busy, going carefully over all the points of hisinterview with Kate, and very soon from the heights of justifiedindignation he fell to accusing himself of rude stupidity.
"I fear she will never look kindly on me again," he said, aloud. "Thistime I have certainly offended her forever."
And the thought troubled him more than all the traitorous Barras andill-conditioned Bull Haxos in the world.
A breath of perfume blew fresh across the way from a field of darkpurple bloom, and with an overpowering rush there came back to him thesweet scent of Kate's hair as for a moment he had bent over her by thewindow. He let the reins fall on his horse's neck, and almost criedaloud in agony at the thought of losing so great a treasure.
"And shall I never see her more," he said, "never watch the responsiveblood spring redly to her cheek, never see the anger flash proudly inher eye, never (were it but for once) touch the sweet tangle of herhair?"
Wat's love-lorn melancholy might have driven him to further and yetwilder utterance had he not been conscious of a slight metallic clickbehind him, which certainly did not come from the hoofs of the horses.He turned sharply at the sound and caught Ha
xo's Calf with a pistolin his right hand, and the Killer with his long butcher's knife bareand uplifted. Haxo himself was riding unconcernedly on in front. Watquickened the pace of his horse, and rode alongside the Bull.
"Sir Butcher," he said, calmly, "do your men behind there wish to havetheir weapons ready in case of meeting the enemy, or do they perchancedesire to flesh them in my back? It may seem a trifling matter totrouble you with, and of no great consequence, nevertheless I shouldsomewhat like to ascertain their intentions."
Haxo glanced behind him. The Calf and the Killer were closing in uponWat.
"Varlets," cried Haxo, in a terrible voice, "put your weapons in yourbelts, ride wide apart and far behind, or I will send you both quick tohell!"
The men fell asunder at the words, and for a mile or two only thesound of the horses' feet pounding the hard paven road came to Wat'sears. But he did not again return to that entrancing dream of Kate,her beauty, and her hard-heartedness which had so nearly led to hisdestruction. Yet, nevertheless, whatever he said or did, he remainedthrough all that followed conscious of his love for her, and for theremainder of the night the desire of getting back to Amersfort in orderto see her sharpened every faculty and kept every sense on the alert.
More than once during the night Haxo endeavored to enter intoconversation, but Wat, indignant at the cowardly attempt on his life(for so he was bound to consider it), waved him peremptorily aside.
"Do your duty without further words," he said; "lead on directly to theinn of Brederode."
It was long past the gloaming, and already wearing nigh to thewatershed of the night, before the perfectly flat country of marsh andpolder through which they had been riding gave place to a districtin which the undulations of the surface were distinctly felt beneaththe horses' feet. Here, also, the hard-baked, dusty roads gave placeto softer and more loosely knit tracks of sand, on which the iron-shodhoofs made no sound. They were, in fact, fast approaching that broadbelt of dunes which shuts off the rich, flower-covered nurseriesof Haarlem from the barren, heathy wastes along the borders of theNorthern Sea.
On their right they passed the dark walls of the castle of Brederode,and pursued their way to the very edge of the lofty dunes, which atthis point are every year encroaching upon the cultivated fields.Presently they came to a long, low, white building surrounded by darkhedges, which in the coolness of the night sent out a pleasant odor ofyoung beech leaves. The court-yard was silent, the windows black. Not aray of light was visible anywhere.
Walter Gordon rode directly up to the door. He felt with his handthat it stood open to the wall, and that a dark passage yawned beforehim. Instinctively he drew back a little way to decide what he shoulddo. With an unknown house before him and a cut-throat crew behind, hejudged that he would be wiser to proceed with extreme caution.
"Keep wide from me at your peril," he cried, threateningly, to hisrascal company. The three horses backed simultaneously, and Haxo, hisCalf and his Killer, waited in an irregular semicircle, while Wat tookout of his pocket a tinder-box and from his holster a candle. There wasnot a breath of air, and when Lochinvar lighted the taper the flamemounted steadily upwards, so that he had no need even to shelter itwith his hand while the flame went down and then as slowly came again,as all candles do when they are first lighted.
Wat glanced up at the sign of the Black Bull's Head, which was set inrude caricature over the door of the inn. His mind wandered grimly tothe significance of that emblem in his own country, and to the manygood men and true who had dined with the Black Bull's head on thetable--and thereafter dined no more in this world. And to think thathe, Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, had brought the Bull with him, togetherwith the Bull-calf and the Killer, to keep him company to the BlackBull of Brederode! He took the conceit as an omen, and gritted histeeth to remember what an arrant gull he had been.
"I shall never see my love more," he said under his breath; "well,never mind, Wat Gordon, lad--if die you must, there are some now alivewho will be in a similar plight ere you turn up your toes. And at allevents I am glad that I kissed her."
He dismounted and drew his sword.
"Stand still where you are," he cried to Haxo. "Advance an inch at yourperil till I give the word."
He looped his horse's rein to the iron hook at the cheek of the inndoor. Then he gripped his sword tighter, and said a prayer which endedsomewhat unorthodoxly:
"I wish I had that glove which I threw into the canal. For, afterall, she gave it to me. Also, her lips pout most adorably when she isangered."
And this seemed strange enough information to give the Deity. Butwithout doubt its sincerity carried it further heavenward than many anempty Credo. For the God who made love does not, like Jove, laugh atlovers' vows.