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

At nightfall on the morrow Adrian returned as appointed, and was admitted into the same room, where he found Black Meg, who greeted him openly by name and handed to him a tiny phial containing a fluid clear as water. This, however, was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that it was water and nothing else.

“Will it really work upon her heart?” asked Adrian, eyeing the stuff.

“Ay,” answered the hag, “that’s a wondrous medicine, and those who drink it go crazed with love for the giver. It is compounded according to the Master’s own receipt, from very costly tasteless herbs that grow only in the deserts of Arabia.”

Adrian understood, and fumbled in his pocket. Meg stretched out her hand to receive the honorarium. It was a long, skinny hand, with long, skinny fingers, but there was this peculiarity about it, that one of these fingers chanced to be missing. She saw his eyes fixed upon the gap, and rushed into an explanation.

“I have met with an accident,” Meg explained. “In cutting up a pig the chopper caught this finger and severed it.”

“Did you wear a ring on it?” asked Adrian.

“Yes,” she replied, with sombre fury.

“How very strange!” ejaculated Adrian.

“Why?”

“Because I have seen a finger, a woman’s long finger with a gold ring on it, that might have come off your hand. I suppose the pork-butcher picked it up for a keepsake.”

“May be, Heer Adrian, but where is it now?”

“Oh! it is, or was, in a bottle of spirits tied by a thread to the cork.”

Meg’s evil face contorted itself. “Get me that bottle,” she said hoarsely. “Look you, Heer Adrian, I am doing much for you, do this for me.”

“What do you want it for?”

“To give it Christian burial,” she replied sourly. “It is not fitting or lucky that a person’s finger should stand about in a bottle like a caul or a lizard. Get it, I say get it—I ask no question where—or, young man, you will have little help in your love affairs from me.”

“Do you wish the dagger hilt also?” he asked mischievously.

She looked at him out of the corners of her black eyes. This Adrian knew too much.

“I want the finger and the ring on it which I lost in chopping up the pig.”

“Perhaps, mother, you would like the pig, too. Are you not making a mistake? Weren’t you trying to cut his throat, and didn’t he bite off the finger?”

“If I want the pig, I’ll search his stye. You bring that bottle, or——”

She did not finish her sentence, for the door opened, and through it came the sage.

“Quarrelling,” he said in a tone of reproof. “What about? Let me guess,” and he passed his hand over his shadowed brow. “Ah! I see, there is a finger in it, a finger of fate? No, not that,” and, moved by a fresh inspiration, he grasped Meg’s hand, and added, “Now I have it. Bring it back, friend Adrian, bring it back; a dead finger is most unlucky to all save its owner. As a favour to me.”

“Very well,” said Adrian.

“My gifts grow,” mused the master. “I have a vision of this honest hand and of a great sword—but, there, it is not worth while, too small a matter. Leave us, mother. It shall be returned, my word on it. Yes, gold ring and all. And now, young friend, let us talk. You have the philtre? Well, I can promise you that it is a good one, it would almost bring Galatea from her marble. Pygmalion must have known that secret. But tell me something of your life, your daily thoughts and daily deeds, for when I give my friendship I love to live in the life of my friends.”

Thus encouraged, Adrian told him a great deal, so much, indeed, that the Señor Ramiro, nodding in the shadow of his hood, began to wonder whether the spy behind the cupboard door, expert as he was, could possibly make his pen keep pace with these outpourings. Oh! it was a dreary task, but he kept to it, and by putting in a sentence here and there artfully turned the conversation to matters of faith.

“No need to fence with me,” he said presently. “I know how you have been brought up, how through no fault of your own you have wandered out of the warm bosom of the true Church to sit at the clay feet of the conventicle. You doubt it? Well, let me look again, let me look. Yes, only last week you were seated in a whitewashed room overhanging the market-place. I see it all—an ugly little man with a harsh voice is preaching, preaching what I think blasphemy. Baskets—baskets? What have baskets to do with him?”

“I believe he used to make them,” interrupted Adrian, taking the bait.

“That may be it, or perhaps he will be buried in one; at any rate he is strangely mixed up with baskets. Well, there are others with you, a middle-aged, heavy-faced man, is he not Dirk van Goorl, your stepfather? And—wait—a young fellow with rather a pleasant face, also a relation. I see his name, but I can’t spell it. F—F—o—i, faith in the French tongue, odd name for a heretic.”

“F-o-y—Foy,” interrupted Adrian again.

“Indeed! Strange that I should have mistaken the last letter, but in the spirit sight and hearing these things chance: then there is a great man with a red beard.”

“No, Master, you’re wrong,” said Adrian with emphasis; “Martin was not there; he stopped behind to watch the house.”

“Are you sure?” asked the seer doubtfully. “I look and I seem to see him,” and he stared blankly at the wall.

“So you might see him often enough, but not at last week’s meeting.”

It is needless to follow the conversation further. The seer, by aid of a ball of crystal that he produced from the folds of his cloak, described his spirit visions, and the pupil corrected them from his intimate knowledge of the facts, until the Señor Ramiro and his confederates in the cupboard had enough evidence, as evidence was understood in those days, to burn Dirk, Foy, and Martin three times over, and, if it should suit him, Adrian also. Then for that night they parted.

Next evening Adrian was back again with the finger in the bottle, which Meg grabbed as a pike snatches at a frog, and further fascinating conversation ensued. Indeed, Adrian found this well of mystic lore tempered with shrewd advice upon love affairs and other worldly matters, and with flattery of his own person and gifts, singularly attractive.

Several times did he return thus, for as it chanced Elsa had been unwell and kept her room, so that he discovered no opportunity of administering the magic philtre that was to cause her heart to burn with love for him.

At length, when even the patient Ramiro was almost worn out by the young gentleman’s lengthy visits, the luck changed. Elsa appeared one day at dinner, and with great adroitness Adrian, quite unseen of anyone, contrived to empty the phial into her goblet of water, which, as he rejoiced to see, she drank to the last drop.

But no opportunity such as he sought ensued, for Elsa, overcome, doubtless, by an unwonted rush of emotion, retired to battle it in her own chamber. Since it was impossible to follow and propose to her there, Adrian, possessing his soul in such patience as he could command, sat in the sitting-room to await her return, for he knew that it was not her habit to go out until five o’clock. As it happened, however, Elsa had other arrangements for the afternoon, since she had promised to accompany Lysbeth upon several visits to the wives of neighbours, and then to meet her cousin Foy at the factory and walk with him in the meadows beyond the town.

So while Adrian, lost in dreams, waited in the sitting-room Elsa and Lysbeth left the house by the side door.

They had paid three of their visits when their path chanced to lead them past the old town prison which was called the Gevangenhuis. This place formed one of the gateways of the city, for it was built in the walls and opened on to the moat, water surrounding it on all sides. In front of its massive door, that was guarded by two soldiers, a small crowd had gathered on the drawbridge and in the street beyond, apparently in expectation of somebody or something. Lysbeth looked at the three-storied frowning building and shuddered, for it was here that heretics were put upon their trial, and here, too, many of them were done to death after the dreadful fashion of the day.

“Hasten,” she said to Elsa, as she pushed through the crowd, “for doubtless some horror passes here.”

“Have no fear,”