IX. THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS--Charles The Bold And Sapphira Danvelt
When Philip the Good succumbed at Bruges of an apoplexy in the earlypart of the year 1467, the occasion was represented to the stout folkof Flanders as a favourable one to break the Burgundian yoke under whichthey laboured. It was so represented by the agents of that astute king,Louis XI, who ever preferred guile to the direct and costly exertion offorce.
Charles, surnamed the Bold (le Temeraire), the new Duke of Burgundy, wasof all the French King's enemies by far the most formidable and menacingjust then; and the wily King, who knew better than to measure himselfwith a foe that was formidable, conceived a way to embarrass the Dukeand cripple his resources at the very outset of his reign. To thisend did he send his agents into the Duke's Flemish dominions, there tointrigue with the powerful and to stir up the spirit of sedition thatnever did more than slumber in the hearts of those turbulent burghers.
It was from the Belfry Tower of the populous, wealthy city ofGhent--then one of the most populous and wealthy cities of Europe--thatthe call to arms first rang out, summoning the city's forty thousandweavers to quit their looms and take up weapons--the sword, the pike,and that arm so peculiarly Flemish, known as the goedendag. From Ghentthe fierce flame of revolt spread rapidly to the valley of the Meuse,and the scarcely less important city of Liege, where the powerful guildsof armourers and leather workers proved as ready for battle as theweavers of Ghent.
They made a brave enough show until Charles the Bold came face to facewith them at Saint-Trond, and smashed the mutinous burgher army intoshards, leaving them in their slaughtered thousands upon the strickenfield.
The Duke was very angry. He felt that the Flemings had sought to take abase advantage of him at a moment when it was supposed he would not beequal to protecting his interests, and he intended to brand it for alltime upon their minds that it was not safe to take such liberties withtheir liege lord. Thus, when a dozen of the most important burghers ofLiege came out to him very humbly in their shirts, with halters roundtheir necks, to kneel in the dust at his feet and offer him the keys ofthe city, he spurned the offer with angry disdain.
"You shall be taught," he told them, "how little I require your keys,and I hope that you will remember the lesson for your own good."
On the morrow his pioneers began to smash a breach, twenty fathoms wide,in one of the walls of the city, rolling the rubble into the ditch tofill it up at the spot. When the operation was complete, Charles rodethrough the gap, as a conqueror, with vizor lowered and lance onthigh at the head of his Burgundians, into his city of Liege, whosefortifications he commanded should be permanently demolished.
That was the end of the Flemish rising of 1467 against Duke Charles theBold of Burgundy. The weavers returned to their looms, the armourers totheir forges, and the glove-makers and leather workers to their shears.Peace was restored; and to see that it was kept, Charles appointedmilitary governors of his confidence where he deemed them necessary.
One of these was Claudius von Rhynsault, who had followed the Duke'sfortunes for some years now, a born leader of men, a fellow of infiniteaddress at arms and resource in battle, and of a bold, reckless couragethat nothing could ever daunt. It was perhaps this last quality thatrendered him so esteemed of Charles, himself named the Bold, whose viewof courage was that it was a virtue so lofty that in the nature of itspossessor there could, perforce, be nothing mean.
So now, to mark his esteem of this stalwart German, the Duke made himGovernor of the province of Zeeland, and dispatched him thither to stampout there any lingering sparks of revolt, and to rule it in his name asducal lieutenant.
Thus, upon a fair May morning, came Claud of Ryhnsault and his hardyriders to the town of Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, to take up hisresidence at the Gravenhof in the main square, and thence to dispensejustice 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. Itwas inevitable that he should follow such a course, impelled to it by aremorseless cruelty in his nature, of which the Duke his master had seenno hint, else he might have thought twice before making him Governorof Zeeland, for Charles--despite his rigour when treachery was to bepunished--was a just and humane prince.
Now, amongst those arrested and flung into Middelburg gaol as a resultof Rhynsault's ruthless perquisitions and inquisitions was a wealthyyoung burgher named Philip Danvelt. His arrest was occasioned by aletter signed "Philip Danvelt" found in the house of a marked rebelwho had been first tortured and then hanged. The letter, of a dateimmediately preceding the late rising, promised assistance in the shapeof arms and money.
Brought before Rhynsault for examination, in a cheerless hall of theGravenhof, Danvelt's defence was a denial upon oath that he had evertaken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of the letterfound, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter made everythingvery simple and clear. At the date it bore he had been away at Flushingmarrying a wife, whom he had since brought thence to Middelburg. It wasludicrous, he urged, to suppose that in such a season--of all seasonsin a man's life--he should have been concerned with rebellion orcorrespondence with rebels, and, urging this, he laughed again.
Now, the German captain did not like burghers who laughed in hispresence. It argued a lack of proper awe for the dignity of hisoffice and the importance of his person. From his high seat at theJudgment-board, flanked by clerks and hedged about by men-at-arms, hescowled upon the flaxen-haired, fresh-complexioned young burgher whobore 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 reddishbrown, and his beardless face was cast in bold lines and tanned byexposure to the colour of mahogany, save where the pale line of a scarcrossed 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 mysignature."
"Herrgott!" swore the German captain. "Is this a riddle? What is thedifference?"
Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be mildlyinsolent.
"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 uponDanvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull flushcrept 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 maystudy a proper carriage before he is next brought before us."
Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pertness andto reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault, itwas not only the guilty who had need to go warily.
The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt. His secretary, on hisimmediate right, leaned towards him.
"It were easy to test the truth of the man's assertion," said he. "Lethis servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when he was inFlushing and when married."
"Aye," growled von Rhynsault. "Let it be done. I don't doubt we shalldiscover that the dog was lying."
But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt's householdand his wife stood before the Governor to answer his questions. Theirreplies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had told, and appeared inother ways to place it beyond all doubt that he had taken no part, indeed 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 evidencecan be brought against him, who was ever loyal and ever concerned withhis affairs and with me at the time in question. My lord"--she heldout her hands towards the grim German, and her lovely eyes gleamedwith unshed tears of supplication--"I implore you to believe me, and indefault of witne
sses against him to restore my husband to me."
Rhynsault's blue eyes kindled now as they considered her, and his fullred lips slowly parted in the faintest and most inscrutable of smiles.She was very fair to look upon--of middle height and most exquisiteshape. Her gown, of palest saffron, edged with fur, high-waistedaccording to the mode, and fitted closely to the gently swelling bust,was cut low to display the white perfection of her neck. Her softlyrounded 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 withthose 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 ofdeep purple velvet, open at the breast, and gold-laced across a whitesilken undervest.
"There is some evidence," he informed her gruffly. "Come with me, andyou shall see it for yourself."
He led the way from that cheerless hall by a dark corridor to asmall snug room, richly hung and carpeted, where a servant waited. Hedismissed the fellow, and in the same breath bade her enter, watchingher 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 wentto take from an oaken coffer the letter signed "Philip Danvelt." Hefolded the sheet so that the name only was to be read, and came tothrust 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 otherPhilip Danvelt; there will be others in Zeeland."
He laughed softly, looking at her ever with that odd intentness, andunder his gaze she shrank and cowered in terror; it spoke to her of somenameless evil; the tepid air of the luxurious room was stifling her.
"If I believed you, your husband would be delivered from hisprison--from all danger; and he stands, I swear to you, in mortalperil."
"Ah, but you must believe me. There are others who can bear witness."
"I care naught for others," he broke in, with harsh and arrogantcontempt. Then he softened his voice to a lover's key. "But I mightaccept your word that this is not your husband's hand, even though I didnot believe you."
She did not understand, and so she could only stare at him with thoseround, brown eyes of hers dilating, her lovely cheeks blanching withhorrid fear.
"Why, see," he said at length, with an easy, gruff good-humour, "I placethe 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 eyesdevoured her, and his arm slipped softly, snake-like round her to drawher 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'sdoom!"
"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, expressingthe 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 wasvain. His manner changed, and the abysmal brute in him was revealed inthe anger he displayed. With foul imprecations he drove her out.
Next day a messenger from the Governor waited upon her at her house witha brief note to inform her that her husband would be hanged upon themorrow. Incredulity was succeeded by a numb, stony, dry-eyed grief, inwhich she sat alone for hours--a woman entranced. At last, towards dusk,she summoned a couple of her grooms to attend and light her, andmade her way, ever in that odd somnambulistic state, to the gaol ofMiddelburg. She announced herself to the head gaoler as the wife ofPhilip Danvelt, lying under sentence of death, and that she was come totake her last leave of him. It was not a thing to be denied, nor had thegaoler 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 theshallow vaulted ceiling she beheld the ghastly change that the news ofimpending death had wrought in him. No longer was he the self-assuredyoung burgher who, conscious of his innocence and worldly importance,had used a certain careless insolence with the Governor of Zeeland. Hereshe beheld a man of livid and distorted face, wild-eyed, his hair andgarments in disarray, suggesting the physical convulsions to which hehad yielded in his despair and rage.
"Sapphira!" he cried at sight of her. A sigh of anguish and he flunghimself, shuddering and sobbing, upon her breast. She put her arms abouthim, soothed him gently, and drew him back to the wooden chair fromwhich he had leapt to greet her.
He took his head in his hands and poured out the fierce anguish ofhis 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 alsoof some terror for herself. She would that he found it less hard to die.And thinking this she thought further, and uttered some of her thoughtaloud.
"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 yousay? Then--then why--"
"Ah, but the price, my dear," she sobbed.
"Price?" quoth he in sudden, fierce contempt. "What price is too greatto pay for life? Does this Rhynsault want all our wealth, then yield itto 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 aprice. Yourself, you could not have condoned it, or done aught else butloathe me afterwards."
But he was not as stout-mettled as she deemed him, or else theall-consuming thirst of life, youth's stark horror of death, made him atemporizing craven in that hour.
"Who knows?" he answered. "Certes, I do not. But a thing so done, athing in which the will and mind have no part, resolves itself perhapsinto a sacrifice--"
He broke off there, perhaps from very shame. After all he was a man, andthere are limits to what manhood will permit of one.
But those words of his sank deeply into her soul. They rang again andagain in her ears as she took her anguished way home after the agony oftheir farewells, and in the end they drove her out again that very nightto seek the Governor of Zeeland.
Rhynsault was at supper when she came, and without quitting the tablebade them usher her into his presence. He found her very white, butsingularly 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 hiselbow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sat back in histall 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 hiscoarse, red mouth. His glance had read her meaning clearly.
"Look you, mistress, here I am lord of life and death. Yet in the caseof your husband I yield up that power to you. Say but the word and Isign 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 tohis cheek-bones. Then he rose and sent his chair crashing behind him tothe ground.
"Herrgott!"
he grunted; and he gathered her slim, trembling body to hismassive gold-laced breast.
Soon after sunrise on the morrow she was beating at the gates ofMiddelburg gaol, a paper clutched convulsively in her left hand.
She was admitted, and to the head gaoler she showed the paper that shecarried.
"An order from the Governor of Zeeland for the gaol delivery of PhilipDanvelt!" 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 cellwhere 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 foldedupon his breast, his face waxen, his eyes staring glassily throughhalf-closed lids.
She sped to his side in a sudden chill of terror. She fell on her kneesand touched him.
"Dead!" she screamed, and, kneeling, span round questioning to face thegaoler in the doorway. "Dead!"
"He was hanged at daybreak, mistress," said the gaoler gently.
She rocked a moment, moaning, then fell suddenly forward across herhusband's body in a swoon.
That evening she was again at the Gravenhof to see Rhynsault, and againshe was admitted--a haggard faced woman now, in whom there was no traceof beauty left. She came to stand before the Governor, considered himin silence a moment with a loathing unutterable in her glance, thenlaunched 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 toDanvelt's gaol delivery, and was not my gaol delivery effective? Youcould hardly suppose that I should allow it to be of such a fashion asto interfere with our future happy meetings."
Before his leering glance she fled in terror, followed by the sound ofhis bestial laugh.
For a week thereafter she kept her house and brooded. Then one day shesallied forth all dressed in deepest mourning and attended by a trainof servants, and, embarking upon a flat-bottomed barge, was borne up theriver Scheldt towards Antwerp. Bruges was her ultimate destination, ofwhich she left no word behind her, and took the longest way round toreach it. From Antwerp her barge voyaged on to Ghent, and thence bycanal, drawn by four stout Flemish horses, at last to the magnificentcity where the Dukes of Burgundy kept their Court.
Under the June sunshine the opulent city of Bruges hummed with activitylike the great human hive it was. For Bruges at this date was the marketof the world, the very centre of the world's commerce, the cosmopolisof the age. Within its walls were established the agencies of a score offoreign great trading companies, and the ambassadors of no less anumber of foreign Powers. Here on a day you might hear every language ofcivilization spoken in the broad thoroughfares under the shadow of suchimposing buildings as you would not have found together in another cityof Europe. To the harbour came the richly laden argosies from Veniceand Genoa, from Germany and the Baltic, from Constantinople and fromEngland, 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 inthe Grande Place was casting a lengthening shadow athwart the crowdedsquare. Above the Babel of voices sounded on a sudden the note of ahorn, and there was a cry of "The Duke! The Duke!" followed by a generalscuttle of the multitude to leave a clear way down the middle of thegreat square.
A gorgeous cavalcade some twoscore strong came into sight, advancingat an amble, a ducal hunting party returning to the palace. A hush fellupon the burgher crowd as it pressed back respectfully to gaze; andto the din of human voices succeeded now the clatter of hoofs upon thekidney-stones of the square, the jangle of hawkbells, the baying ofhounds, and the occasional note of the horn that had first broughtwarning of the Duke's approach.
It was a splendid iridescent company, flaunting in its apparel everycolour of the prism. There were great lords in silks and velvets ofevery hue, their legs encased in the finest skins of Spain; therewere great ladies, in tall, pointed hennins or bicorne headdresses andfloating veils, with embroidered gowns that swept down below thebellies of their richly harnessed palfreys. And along the flanks of thiscavalcade ran grooms and huntsmen in green and leather, their jaggedliripipes flung about their necks, leading the leashed hounds.
The burghers craned their necks, and Levantine merchant argued withLombard 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 detachhimself from the surrounding splendour. He was of middle stature, ofa strong and supple build, with a lean, swarthy face and lively eyes.Beside him, on a white horse, rode a dazzling youth dressed from headto foot in flame-coloured silk, a peaked bonnet of black velvet set uponhis 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 ducalresidence. It had all but crossed the square when suddenly a voice--awoman's voice, high and tense--rang out.
"Justice, my Lord Duke of Burgundy! Justice, Lord Duke, for a woman'swrongs!"
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 obtaina 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 steeplehead-dress, throwing into greater relief her pallid loveliness which theyouth's glance was quick to appraise. He saw, too, from her air and fromthe grooms attending her, that she was a woman of some quality, and thetragic appeal of her smote home in his gay, poetic soul. He put forth ahand and clutched the Duke's arm, and, as if yielding to this, the Dukereined up.
"What is it that you seek?" Charles asked her not unkindly, his livelydark eyes playing over her.
"Justice!" was all she answered him very piteously, and yet with acertain fierceness of insistence.
"None asks it of me in vain, I hope," he answered gravely. "But I do notdispense 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 andmen-at-arms and huntsmen, who were draining the measure sent them by theDuke. She stood apart, wrapped in her tragic sorrow, and none molestedher. 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. Hesat in a tall chair of oak and leather, and leaning on the back of itlounged gracefully the lovely scarlet youth who had ridden at his side.
Standing before him, with drooping eyes and folded hands, she told hershameful story. Darker and darker grew his brow as she proceeded withit. 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 Teutonswine? Me he never could deceive, for all his--"
"Be silent, Arnault," said the Duke sharply. And to the woman: "It isa grave, grave charge," he said, "against a man I trusted and haveesteemed, else I should not have placed him where he is. What proof haveyou?"
She proffered him a strip of parchment--the signed order for the gaoldelivery of Philip Danvelt.
"The gaoler of Middelburg will tell Your Grace that he was hangedalready when I presented this. My woman Catherine, whom I have withme, can testify to part. And there are some other servants who can bearwitness to my husband's innocence. Captain von Rhynsault h
ad ceased todoubt it."
He studied the parchment, and fell very grave and thoughtful.
"Where are you lodged?" he asked.
She told him.
"Wait there until I send for you again," he bade her. "Leave this orderwith me, and depend upon it, justice shall be done."
That evening, a messenger rode out to Middelburg to summon von Rhynsaultto Bruges, and the arrogant German came promptly and confidently,knowing nothing of the reason, but conceiving naturally thatfresh honours were to be conferred upon him by a master who lovedstout-hearted servants. And that Rhynsault was stout-hearted he showedmost of all when the Duke taxed him without warning with the villainy hehad wrought.
If he was surprised, he was not startled. What was the life of a Flemishburgher more or less? What the honour of a Flemish wife? These were notconsiderations to daunt a soldier, a valiant man of war. And becausesuch was his dull mood--for he was dull, this Rhynsault, as dull ashe was brutish--he considered his sin too venial to be denied. And theDuke, who could be crafty, perceiving that mood of his, and simulatingalmost an approval of it, drew the German captain into self-betrayal.
"And so this Philip Danvelt may have been innocent?"
"He must have been, for we have since taken the guilty man of the samename," said the German easily. "It was unfortunate, but--"
"Unfortunate!" The Duke's manner changed from silk to steel. He heavedhimself out of his chair, and his dark eyes flamed. "Unfortunate! Isthat all, you dog?"
"I conceived him guilty when I ordered him to be hanged," spluttered thecaptain, greatly taken aback.
"Then, why this? Answer me--why this?"
And under his nose the Duke thrust the order of gaol delivery Rhynsaulthad signed.
The captain blenched, and fear entered his glance. The thing wasbecoming serious, it seemed.
"Is this the sort of justice you were sent to Middelburg to administerin my name? Is this how you dishonour me? If you conceived him guilty,why did you sign this and upon what terms? Bah, I know the terms. Andhaving made such foul terms, why did you not keep your part of thebargain, evil as it was?"
Rhynsault had nothing to say. He was afraid, and he was angry too. Herewas a most unreasonable bother all about nothing, it seemed to him.
"I--I sought to compromise between justice and--and--"
"And your own vile ends," the Duke concluded for him. "By Heaven, youGerman dog, I think I'll have you shortened by a head!"
"My lord!" It was a cry of protest.
"There is the woman you have so foully wronged, and so foully swindled,"said the Duke, watching him. "What reparation will you make to her? Whatreparation can you make? I can toss your filthy head into her lap. Butwill that repair the wrong?"
The captain suddenly saw light, and quite a pleasant light it was, forhe had found Sapphira most delectable.
"Why," he said slowly, and with all a fool's audacity, "having made hera widow, I can make her a wife again. I never thought to wive, myself.But if Your Grace thinks such reparation adequate, I will afford ither."
The Duke checked in the very act of replying. Again the expression ofhis countenance changed. He strode away, his head bowed in thought; thenslowly he returned.
"Be it so," he said. "It is not much, but it is all that you can do, andafter a fashion it will mend the honour you have torn. See that you wedher within the week. Should she not consent, it will be the worse foryou."
She would not have consented--she would have preferred death,indeed--but for the insistence that the Duke used in private with her.And so, half convinced that it would in some sort repair her honour,the poor woman suffered herself to be led, more dead than living, to thealtar in the Duke's private chapel, and there, scarcely knowing what shedid, she became the wife of Captain Claudius von Rhynsault, the man shehad most cause to loathe and hate in all the world.
Rhynsault had ordered a great banquet to celebrate his nuptials, for onthe whole he was well satisfied with the issue of this affair. But as heleft the altar, his half-swooning bride upon his arm, the Duke in persontapped his shoulder.
"All is not yet done," he said. "You are to come with me."
The bridal pair were conducted to the great hall of the Prinssenhof,where there was a great gathering of the Court--to do honour to hisnuptials, thought the German captain. At the broad table sat two clerklyfellows with quills and parchments, and by this table the Duke tookhis stand, Arnault beside him--in peacock-blue to-day--and called forsilence.
"Captain von Rhynsault," he said gravely and quietly, "what you havedone is well done; but it does not suffice. In the circumstances of thismarriage, and after the revelation we have had of your ways of thoughtand of honour, it is necessary to make provision against the future. Itshall not be yours, save at grave cost, to repudiate the wife you havenow taken."
"There is no such intent--" began Rhynsault, who misliked this homily.
The Duke waved him into silence.
"You are interrupting me," he said sharply. "You are a wealthy man,Rhynsault, thanks to the favours I have heaped upon you ever sincethe day when I picked you from your German kennel to set you where youstand. Here you will find a deed prepared. It is in the form of a will,whereby you bequeath everything of which you are to-day possessed--andit is all set down--to your wife on your death, or on the day on whichyou put her from you. Your signature is required to that."
The captain hesitated a moment. This deed would fetter all his future.The Duke was unreasonable. But under the steady, compelling eyes ofCharles he moved forward to the table, and accepted the quill the clerkwas proffering. There was no alternative, he realized. He was trapped.Well, well! He must make the best of it. He stooped from his greatheight, and signed in his great sprawling, clumsy, soldier's hand.
The clerk dusted the document with pounce, and handed it to the Duke.Charles cast an eye upon the signature, then taking the quill himself,signed under it, then bore the document to the half-swooning bride.
"Keep this secure," he bade her. "It is your marriage-gift from me."
Rhynsault's eyes gleamed. If his wife were to keep the deed, the thingwas none so desperate after all. But the next moment he had other thingsto think of.
"Give me your sword," the Duke requested.
Wondering, the German unsheathed the weapon, and proffered the hiltto his master. Charles took it, and a stern smile played about hisbeardless mouth. He grasped it, hilt in one hand and point in the other.Suddenly he bent his right knee, and, bearing sharply downward with theflat of the weapon upon his thigh, snapped in into two.
"So much for that dishonourable blade," he said, and cast the piecesfrom him. Then he flung out an arm to point to Rhynsault. "Take himout," he commanded; "let him have a priest, and half an hour in which tomake his soul, then set his head on a spear above the Cloth Hall, thatmen may know the justice of Charles of Burgundy."
With the roar of a 'goaded bull the German attempted to fling forward.But men-at-arms, in steel and leather, who had come up quietly behindhim, seized him now. Impotent in their coiling arms, he was borneaway to his doom, that thereby he might complete the reparation of hishideous offence, and deliver Sapphira from the bondage of a wedlockwhich Charles of Burgundy had never intended her to endure.
The Historical Nights' Entertainment: First Series Page 11
