Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch by H. Rider Haggard (fantasy books to read txt) 📕

In a house down a back street not very far from the Leyden prison, a man and a woman sat at breakfast on the morning following the burning of the Heer Jansen and his fellow martyr. These also we have met before, for they were none other than the estimable Black Meg and her companion, named the Butcher. Time, which had left them both strong and active, had not, it must be admitted, improved their personal appearance. Black Meg, indeed, was much as she had always been, except that her hair was now grey and her features, which seemed to be covered with yellow parchment, had become sharp and haglike, though her dark eyes still burned with their ancient fire. The man, Hague Simon, or the Butcher, scoundrel by nature and spy and thief by trade, one of the evil spawn of an age of violence and cruelty, boasted a face and form that became his reputation well. His countenance was villainous, very fat and flabby, with small, pig-like eyes, and framed, as it were, in a fringe of sandy-coloured whiskers, running from the throat to the temple, where they faded away into a great expanse of utterly bald head. The figure beneath was heavy, pot-haunched, and supported upon a pair of bowed but sturdy legs.

But if they were no longer young, and such good looks as they ever possessed had vanished, the years had brought them certain compensations. Indeed, it was a period in which spies and all such wretches flourished, since, besides other pickings, by special enactment a good proportion of the realized estates of heretics was paid over to the informers as blood-money. Of course, however, humble tools like the Butcher and his wife did not get the largest joints of the heretic sheep, for whenever one was slaughtered, there were always many honest middlemen of various degree to be satisfied, from the judge down to the executioner, with others who never showed their faces.

Still, when the burnings and torturings were brisk, the amount totalled up very handsomely. Thus, as the pair sat at their meal this morning, they were engaged in figuring out what they might expect to receive from the estate of the late Heer Jansen, or at least Black Meg was so employed with the help of a deal board and a bit of chalk. At last she announced the result, which was satisfactory. Simon held up his fat hands in admiration.

“Clever little dove,” he said, “you ought to have been a lawyer’s wife with your head for figures. Ah! it grows near, it grows near.”

“What grows near, you fool?” asked Meg in her deep mannish voice.

“That farm with an inn attached of which I dream, standing in rich pasture land with a little wood behind it, and in the wood a church. Not too large; no, I am not ambitious; let us say a hundred acres, enough to keep thirty or forty cows, which you would milk while I marketed the butter and the cheeses——”

“And slit the throats of the guests,” interpolated Meg.

Simon looked shocked. “No, wife, you misjudge me. It is a rough world, and we must take queer cuts to fortune, but once I get there, respectability for me and a seat in the village church, provided, of course, that it is orthodox. I know that you come of the people, and your instincts are of the people, but I can never forget that my grandfather was a gentleman,” and Simon puffed himself out and looked at the ceiling.

“Indeed,” sneered Meg, “and what was your grandmother, or, for the matter of that, how do you know who was your grandfather? Country house! The old Red Mill, where you hide goods out there in the swamp, is likely to be your only country house. Village church? Village gallows more likely. No, don’t you look nasty at me, for I won’t stand it, you dirty little liar. I have done things, I know; but I wouldn’t have got my own aunt burned for an Anabaptist, which she wasn’t, in order to earn twenty florins, so there.”

Simon turned purple with rage; that aunt story was one which touched him on the raw. “Ugly——” he began.

Instantly Meg’s hand shot out and grasped the neck of a bottle, whereon he changed his tune.

“The sex, the sex!” he murmured, turning aside to mop his bald head with a napkin; “well, it’s only their pretty way, they will have their little joke. Hullo, there is someone knocking at the door.”

“And mind how you open it,” said Meg, becoming alert. “Remember we have plenty of enemies, and a pike blade comes through a small crack.”

“Can you live with the wise and remain a greenhorn? Trust me.” And placing his arm about his spouse’s waist, Simon stood on tiptoe and kissed her gently on the cheek in token of reconciliation, for Meg had a nasty memory in quarrels. Then he skipped away towards the door as fast as his bandy legs would carry him.

The colloquy there was long and for the most part carried on through the keyhole, but in the end their visitor was admitted, a beetle-browed brute of much the same stamp as his host.

“You are nice ones,” he said sulkily, “to be so suspicious about an old friend, especially when he comes on a job.”

“Don’t be angry, dear Hans,” interrupted Simon in a pleading voice. “You know how many bad characters are abroad in these rough times; why, for aught we could tell, you might have been one of these desperate Lutherans, who stick at nothing. But about the business?”

“Lutherans, indeed,” snarled Hans; “well, if they are wise they’d stick at your fat stomach; but it is a Lutheran job that I have come from The Hague to talk about.”

“Ah!” said Meg, “who sent you?”

“A Spaniard named Ramiro, who has recently turned up there, a humorous dog connected with the Inquisition, who seems to know everybody and whom nobody knows. However, his money is right enough, and no doubt he has authority behind him. He says that you are old friends of his.”

“Ramiro? Ramiro?” repeated Meg reflectively, “that means Oarsman, doesn’t it, and sounds like an alias? Well, I’ve lots of acquaintances in the galleys, and he may be one of them. What does he want, and what are the terms?”

Hans leant forward and whispered for a long while. The other two listened in silence, only nodding from time to time.

“It doesn’t seem much for the job,” said Simon when Hans had finished.

“Well, friend, it is easy and safe; a fat merchant and his wife and a young girl. Mind you, there is no killing to be done if we can help it, and if we can’t help it the Holy Office will shield us. Also it is only the letter which he thinks that the young woman may carry that the noble Ramiro wants. Doubtless it has to do with the sacred affairs of the Church. Any valuables about them we may keep as a perquisite over and above the pay.”

Simon hesitated, but Meg announced with decision,

“It is good enough; these merchant woman generally have jewels hidden in their stays.”

“My dear,” interrupted Simon.

“Don’t ‘my dear’ me,” said Meg fiercely. “I have made up my mind, so there’s an end. We meet by the Boshhuysen at five o’clock at the big oak in the copse, where we will settle the details.”

After this Simon said no more, for he had this virtue, so useful in domestic life—he knew when to yield.

On this same morning