But some of the Walloons and Spaniards contrive to escape this generalrounding up and it was they who first raised the cry of "_Sauve quipeut!_"
Now it is repeated and repeated again and again: it echoes from streetto street; it gains in volume and in power until from end to end of thecity it seems to converge toward the Vridachmart in one huge, alldominating wave of sound: "_Sauve qui peut!_" and the tramp of runningfeet, the calls and cries drown the clash of lance and pike.
Suddenly the bowmen of the Orangists scale the low cemetery wall as oneman and their defence is turned into a vigorous onslaught: the cavalryis forced back upon the market square, they catch up the cry: "_Sauvequi peut_! They are on us! _Sauve qui peut!_" They break theirranks--a panic hath seized them--their retreat becomes a rout. TheOrangists are all over the cemetery wall now: they charge with halberdand pike and force the Spaniards and Walloons back and back into thenarrow streets which debouch upon the Schelde. Some are able to escapeover the Ketel Brueghe, but two entire companies of Spanish infantry anda whole squadron of cavalry are--so Messire Vaernewyck avers--pushedinto the river where they perish to the last man.
II
At this hour all is confusion. The picture which the mind conjures upof the stricken city is a blurred mass of pikes and lances, of musketsand crossbows, of Spaniards and Walloons and Flemings, of raggeddoublets and plumed hats--a medley of sounds: of arrows whizzing with along whistling sound through the air, of the crash of muskets and clashof lance against lance, the appeal of those who are afraid and thegroans of those who are dying--of falling timber and sizzling woodwork,and crumbling masonry, and through it all the awful cry of "_Sauve quipeut!_" and the sound of the tocsin weirdly calling through the fastgathering night.
And amidst this helter-skelter and confusion, the Duke of Alva upon hisblack charger--untiring, grim, terrible--tries by commands, cajoleries,threats, to rally those who flee. But the voice which erstwhile had thepower to make the stoutest heart quake had none over the poltroon. Heshouts and admonishes and threatens in vain. They run and run--cavalry,infantry, halbertmen and lancers--the flower of the Spanish force sentto subdue the Netherlands--they run; and in the general vortex offleeing cavalry the Duke is engulfed too, and he is carried along as faras the Ketel Brueghe, where he tries to make a stand.
His doublet and hose are covered with mud and grime; his mantle is torn,his hat has fallen off his head and his white hair floats around hisface which is as pale as death.
"Cowards!" he cries with fierce and maddened rage: "would you fly beforesuch rabble?" But his voice has lost its magic; they do not heedhim--they fly--past him and over the bridge to the safety of HetSpanjaard's Kasteel.
Then prudence dictates the only possible course, or capture might becomeinevitable. Cursing savagely and vowing more bitter revenge than everbefore, the Duke at last wheels his horse round and he too hastens backto the stronghold--there to work out a plan of campaign against thedesperate resistance of that handful of Flemish louts whom His Highnessand all Spanish grandees and officials so heartily despise.
III
Half an hour later, and we see courier after courier sent flying fromHet Spanjaard's Kasteel to every corner of the city.
The city gates--thank the God of the Spaniards!--have been wellgarrisoned and well supplied with culverins and balls, it is from therethat help must come, for--strange to tell--those louts have actuallyinvested the Kasteel and have the pretension to lay a regular siege tothe stronghold.
Was there ever such a farce? A couple of thousand of an undisciplinedrabble--they surely cannot be more--daring to pit themselves against apicked guard! Courier to the Waalpoort where Lodrono is in command!courier to the Braepoort!--Serbelloni is there with two culverins of thenewest pattern and two hundred musketeers, the like of whom are notknown outside the Spanish army!
The only pity is that the bulk of the forces inside the city areWalloons! such poltroons as they have already proved themselves,surrendering in their hundreds to those confounded rebels! they havebeen scattered like flies out of a honey-pot, and the entire centre ofthe city is in the hands of the Orangists. But, anyway, the wholeaffair is only a question of time; for the moment the evening is closingin fast and the position cannot therefore be improved before nightfall;but in the morning a general closing-in movement, from the gates towardthe centre would hold the rebels as in a claw and break their resistancewithin an hour. In the meanwhile the morale of the troops must berestored. Attend to that, ye captains at the city gates!
Courier follows courier out of the gate-house of the Kasteel: naked men,ready to crawl, to swim, or to dive, to escape the vigilance of theOrangist lines. Impossible! Not one is able to cross the open groundbeyond the castle moat; the houses on the further bank of the Scheldeare filled with Orangists; bows and muskets are levelled from everywindow. The culverins are down below, covered by the angles of thecross-streets; the messengers either fall ere they reach the Schelde orare sent back the way they came.
Attend to the morale of your men, ye captains at the city gates! TheDuke of Alva, with some three or four thousand men, is inside theKasteel, and no orders or communication can be got from him now beforemorning. And just like the flies when driven out of the honey, fly,scared, to the edges of the pot, so the Walloon soldiers, those who haveescaped from the guild-houses, go and seek refuge in the shadow of theguard-houses at the gates. But the tactics of the Orangists have workedupon their nerves. At first there had appeared but a rabble upon theVridachmart, but since then the numbers are swelling visibly; insurgentsseem to be issuing out of every doorway, from under every arch in thecity ... they rush out with muskets and crossbows, with pikes andhalberds; and to the Walloons--already unnerved and fatigued--theirnumbers appear to be endless and their arms of a wonderful precision.Their muskets are of the newest pattern such as are made in Germany, andthese they use with marvellous skill, discharging as many as ten shotsin one quarter of an hour, and none but the picked French musketeershave ever been known to do that.
And they are led by a man who seems to know neither fatigue nor fear.Here, there and everywhere he appears to the Walloon and Spanishsoldiers like a mysterious being from another world. He wears noarmour, but just a suit of leather which envelopes him from head tofoot, and his face is hidden by a leather mask. His voice rings fromend to end of the market place one moment; the next he appears insidethe enclosure of the cemetery. Now he is at St. Pharailde and anon backat St. Jakab. Three of Alva's couriers hastily despatched to thecommandants at the various gate-houses fall to his pistol, which is theonly weapon he carries, and it is he who leads the last attack on theKetel Brueghe which results in the flight of Alva and all his cavalry tothe safe precincts of the Kasteel.
Before the evening Angelus has ceased to ring, the whole of the centreof the city is swept clear of Alva's troops, and the insurgents havecompletely surrounded the Kasteel. Darkness finds the Orangistsbivouacking in the open markets and along the banks of the Schelde andthe Leye with their artillery still thundering against Alva's strongholdand the gate-houses of the city, like bursts of thunder-clouds in astorm. The mantle of night has fallen over a vast hecatomb of dead anddying, of Walloons and Flemings and Spaniards, of brothers who have diedside by side, with muskets raised in fratricide one against the other,and of women and children who have died of terror and of grief.
IV
And memory conjures up the vision of the tyrant, the author of all thisdesolation, riding slowly through the portal of the gate-house into theyard of Het Spanjaard's Kasteel a quarter of an hour or so ere thedarkness of the night will finally cover all the abomination and thecrimes, the murder, the misery and the bloodshed which the insatiabletyranny of this one man has called down upon a peaceable andliberty-loving people.
He rides with head erect, although fatigue and care are writ plainly onhis ashen cheeks and the wearied stoop of his s
houlders. His horse hasreceived a wound in the flank from which the blood oozes and stains itsrider's boots. Here in the castle-yard, some semblance of order hasbeen brought about through the activity of the captains. The horses havebeen stabled in the vaulted cellars, the men have found quarters indifferent parts of the Kasteel; the musketeers and arquebusiers are upon the walls, the artillery well-screened behind the parapets.
The night has called a halt to men, even in the midst of barrenvictories and of unlooked-for defeat, and their sorrow and their hurts,their last sigh of agony or cry of triumph have all been equallysilenced in her embrace; but over the city the sky is lurid and glowingcrimson through a veil of smoke; the artillery and musketry have ceasedtheir thundering; but still from out the gloom there come weird andhideous noises of hoarse shouts and cries of "Mercy" and of "Help," andfrom time to time the sudden crash of crumbling masonry or of charredbeams falling in.
But Alva pays no heed to what goes on around him. He swings himselfwearily out of the saddle and gives a few brief orders to the captainswho press close beside his stirrup, anxious for a word or a look ofencouragement or of praise. Then he curtly asks for water.
Don Sancho de Avila, captain of the castle guard, hands him the leatherbottle and he drinks greedily.
"We are in a tight corner, Monseigneur," whispers de Avila under hisbreath.
"Hold thy tongue, fool!" is Alva's rough retort.
Whereupon the captain stands aside more convinced than before thatdisaster is in the air.
The Duke had been the last to turn his back on the Ketel Brueghe and toretire into the stronghold of the Kasteel. The banks of the Schelde bynow are lined with the ranks of the insurgents, and it was a musket shotfired from the Vleeshhuis that wounded his horse--close to thesaddle-bow. His quivering lips, and the ashen hue of his face testifyto his consciousness of danger.
But his brow clears perceptibly when he sees Juan de Vargas coming outto meet him.
"Where is thy daughter?" he asks as soon as the other is within earshot.
"In chapel, I imagine," replies de Vargas.
"No woman should be abroad this night," says Alva dryly. "Send for herand order her to remain within her apartments."
"She has been tending the wounded, and will wish to do so again."
"Well! let her keep to the castle-yard then."
"You are not anxious, Monseigneur?"
"No. Not anxious," replies Alva with a fierce oath, "we can subduethese rebels of course. But I would I had brought Spanish soldiers withme, rather than these Walloon louts. They let themselves be massacredlike sheep or else run like poltroons. Vitelli declares he has lostover a thousand men and at least a thousand more are prisoners in thevarious guild-houses--probably more. We ought never to have lost groundas we did," he adds sullenly, "but who would have thought that theselouts meant to fight?"
"Who, indeed?" retorts de Vargas with a sneer, "and yet here we arebesieged in our own citadel, and by a handful of undisciplinedpeasants."
"Nay! their triumph will be short-lived," exclaims Alva savagely. "Wehave over two thousand men inside the Kasteel and surely they cannot bemore than three thousand all told unless..." He broke off abruptly,then continued more calmly: "Darkness closed in on us ere reprisalscould commence ... if I had more Spaniards with me, I would try a sortiein the night and catch these oafs in their sleep ... but these Walloonsare such damnable fools and such abominable cowards.... But we'll fightour way through in the morning, never fear!"
"In the meanwhile cannot we send to Dendermonde for reinforcements? Thegarrison there is all Spanish and..."
"How can we send?" Alva breaks in savagely. "The way is barred by theartillery of those bandits--save upon the north and north-east, wherethat awful morass nearly half a league in length and width is quiteimpassable in autumn. No! we cannot get reinforcements unless we fightour way through first--unless one of the commandants at the gates hasrealised the gravity of the situation. Lodrono at the Waalpoort hasintelligence," he continues more calmly, "and Serbelloni hathinitiative--and by the Mass! if one of them doth not get us quickly outof this sorry place, I will have them all hanged at dawn upon theirgates!"
The Duke of Alva's fierce wrath is but a result of his anxiety. Heholds the Netherlanders in bitter contempt 'tis true! He knows thatto-morrow perhaps he can send to Dendermonde for reinforcements and canthen crush that handful of rebels as he would a fly beneath his ironheel. He would have his revenge--he knew that--but he also knew thatthat revenge would cost him dear. He has fought those Flemish louts, ashe calls them, too often and too long not to know that when the daybreaks once more he will have to encounter stubborn resistance, doggeddetermination and incalculable losses ere he can subdue and punish thesemen who have nothing now to lose but their lives--and those lives hisown tyranny has anyhow made forfeit.
V
De Vargas makes no further comment on his chief's last tirade:remembering his daughter, he goes to transmit to her the orderformulated by the Duke. Lenora is in the chapel, and, obedient to herfather's commands, she rises from her knees and returns, silent andheavy-footed, to her apartments.
The hours drag on like unto centuries; she has even lost count of time;it is forty-eight hours now since she held Mark's wounded arm in herhand and discovered the awful, the hideous truth. Since then she hasnot really lived, she has just glided through the utter desolation oflife, hoping and praying that it might finish soon and put an end to hermisery.
She had acted, as she believed, in accordance with God's will! but shefelt that her heart within her was broken, that nothing ever again wouldbring solace to her soul. That long, miserable day yesterday inDendermonde whilst she was waiting for a reply from her father had beenlike an eternity of torment, and she had then thought that nothing onearth or in hell could be more terrible to bear. And then to-day sherealised that there was yet more misery to endure, and more and moreeach day until the end of time, for of a truth there would be no rest orsurcease from sorrow for her, even in her grave.
The one little crumb of comfort in her misery has been the companionshipof Grete; the child was silent and self-contained, and had obviouslysuffered much in her young life, and therefore understood the sorrows ofothers--knew how to sympathise, when to offer words of comfort, and whento be silent.
Though Inez was a pattern of devotion, her chattering soon grated onLenora's nerves; and anon when don Juan de Vargas agreed to allow hisdaughter to come with him to Ghent, Lenora arranged that Grete be madeto accompany her and that Inez be sent straight on to Brussels. Thegirl--with the blind submission peculiar to the ignorant and thedown-trodden--had consented; she had already learned to love thebeautiful and noble lady, whose pale face bore such terrible lines ofsorrow, and her sister Katrine and her aunt both believed that the childwould be quite safe under the immediate protection of don Juan deVargas. Inez was sent off to Brussels, and Lenora and Grete are now theonly two women inside the Kasteel.
Together they flit like sweet, pale ghosts amongst the litters of strawwhereon men lie groaning, wounded, often cursing--they bandage thewounds, bring water to parched lips, pass tender, soothing hands acrossfeverish foreheads. Then, at times, Lenora takes Grete's rough littlehand in hers, and together the women wander out upon the ramparts. Thesentries and the guard know them and they are not challenged, and theygo slowly along the edge of the walls, close to the parapets and lookdown upon the waters of the moat. Here the dead lie in their hundreds,cradled upon the turgid waters, washed hither through the narrow canalsby the more turbulent Schelde--their pale, still faces turned upwards tothe grey evening light. And Lenora wonders if anon she will perceive apair of grey eyes--that were wont to be so merry--turning sightless orbsto the dull, bleak sky. She scans each pale face, with eyes seared andtearless, and not finding him whom she seeks, she goes back with Greteto her work of mercy among the wounded only to return again and seekagain with her heart torn between the desire to know whether
the one manwhom she hates with a bitter passion that fills her entire soul hathindeed paid the blood-toll for the dastardly murder of Ramon, or whetherGod will punish her for that irresistible longing which possesses her tohold that same cowardly enemy--wounded or dying--assassin though hebe--for one unforgettable moment in her arms.
VI
But it is not desolation that reigns in the refectory of the convent ofSt. Agneten, for here the leaders of the rebellion have assembled, assoon as the guns have ceased to roar. The numbers of their followerssince last night have increased by hundreds, and still the recruits comepouring in. Those men who but four days ago had received the Prince ofOrange's overtures with vague promises and obvious indifference, rushedto arms after the first musket shot had been fired. Ever since theattack in the Vridachmart men have loudly clamoured for halberts orpikes or muskets, and the captains at the various secret depots, as wellas the guild of armourers, had much ado to satisfy all those who longedto shed their blood with glory rather than be massacred like insentientcattle. They are men who have fought at Gravelines and St. Quentin, andhave not forgotten how to shoulder musket or crossbow or how to handle aculverin. Since then, fifteen years of oppression, of brow-beating, ofterrorising, fifteen years under the yoke of the Inquisition and ofSpanish tyranny have worn down the edge of their enthusiasm.
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