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

to some country where folk may live at peace, and see no one killed, except it be now and again an evil-doer? It is much to ask, but oh! Foy, will you promise?”

“Yes, I promise,” said Foy, for he, too, was weary of this daily terror. Who would not have been that had passed through the siege of Haarlem?

Foy was steering, but now Martha slipped aft and took the tiller from his hand. For a moment she studied the stars that grew clearer in the light of the sinking moon, then shifted the helm a point or two to port and sat still.

“I am hungry again,” said Martin presently; “I feel as though I could eat for a week without stopping.”

Adrian looked up from over his oar, at which he was labouring dejectedly, and said:

“There are food and wine in the locker. I hid them there. Perhaps Elsa could serve them to those who wish to eat.”

So Elsa, who was doing nothing, found the drink and victuals, and handed them round to the rowers, who ate and drank as best they might with a thankful heart, but without ceasing from their task. To men who have starved for months the taste of wholesome provender and sound wine is a delight that cannot be written in words.

When at length they had filled themselves, Adrian spoke.

“If it is your good will, brother,” he said, addressing Foy, “as we do not know what lies in front, nor how long any of us have to live, I, who am an outcast and a scorn among you, wish to tell you a story.”

“Speak on,” said Foy.

So Adrian began from the beginning, and told them all his tale. He told them how at the first he had been led astray by superstitions, vanity, and love; how his foolish confidences had been written down by spies; how he had been startled and terrified into signing them with results of which they knew. Then he told them how he was hunted like a mad dog through the streets of Leyden after his mother had turned him from her door; how he took refuge in the den of Hague Simon, and there had fought with Ramiro and been conquered by the man’s address and his own horror of shedding a father’s blood. He told them of his admission into the Roman faith, of the dreadful scene in the church when Martha had denounced him, of their flight to the Red Mill. He told them of the kidnapping of Elsa, and how he had been quite innocent of it although he loved her dearly; of how at last he was driven into marrying her, meaning her no harm, to save her from the grip of Ramiro, and knowing at heart that it was no marriage; of how, when the flood burst upon them, he had been hustled from the mill where, since she could no longer be of service to him and might work him injury, as he discovered afterwards, Ramiro had left Elsa to her fate. Lastly, in a broken voice, he told them of his life during the long siege which, so he said, was as the life of a damned spirit, and of how, when death thinned the ranks of the Spaniards, he had been made an officer among them, and by the special malice of Ramiro forced to conduct the executions and murders of such Hollanders as they took.

Then at last his chance had come. Ramiro, thinking that now he could never turn against him, had given him Elsa, and left him with her while he went about his duties and to secure a share of the plunder, meaning to deal with his prisoners on the morrow. So he, Adrian, a man in authority, had provided the boat and freed them. That was all he had to say, except to renounce any claim upon her who was called his wife, and to beg their forgiveness.

Foy listened to the end. Then, dropping his oar for a moment, he put his arm about Adrian’s waist and hugged him, saying in his old cheery voice:

“I was right after all. You know, Adrian, I always stood up for you, notwithstanding your temper and queer ways. No, I never would believe that you were a villain, but neither could I ever have believed that you were quite such an ass.”

To this outspoken estimate of his character, so fallen and crushed was he, his brother had not the spirit to reply. He could merely tug at his oar and groan, while the tears of shame and repentance ran down his pale and handsome face.

“Never mind, old fellow,” said Foy consolingly. “It all went wrong, thanks to you, and thanks to you I believe that it will all come right again. So we will cry quits and forget the rest.”

Poor Adrian glanced up at Foy and at Elsa sitting on the thwart of the boat by his side.

“Yes, brother,” he answered, “for you and Elsa it may come right, but not for me in this world, for I—I have sold myself to the devil and—got no pay.”

After that for a while no one spoke; all felt that the situation was too tragic for speech; even the follies, and indeed the wickedness, of Adrian were covered up, were blotted out in the tragedy of his utter failure, yes, and redeemed by the depth of his atonement.

The grey light of the summer morning began to grow on the surface of the great inland sea. Far behind them they beheld the sun’s rays breaking upon the gilt crown that is set above the tower of St. Bavon’s Church, soaring over the lost city of Haarlem and the doomed patriots who lay there presently to meet their death at the murderer’s sword. They looked and shuddered. Had it not been for Adrian they would be prisoners now, and what that meant they knew. If they had been in any doubt, what they saw around must have enlightened them, for here and there upon the misty surface of the lake, or stranded in its shallows, were the half-burnt out hulls of ships, the remains of the conquered fleet of William the Silent; a poor record of the last desperate effort to relieve the starving city. Now and again, too, something limp and soft would cumber their oars, the corpse of a drowned or slaughtered man still clad perchance in its armour.

At length they passed out of these dismal remains of lost men, and Elsa could look about her without shuddering. Now they were in fleet water, and in among the islands whereon the lush summer growth of weeds and the beautiful marsh flowers grew as greenly and bloomed as bright as though no Spaniard had trampled their roots under foot during all those winter months of siege and death. These islets, scores and hundreds of them, appeared on every side, but between them all Martha steered an unerring path. As the sun rose she stood up in the boat, and shading her eyes with her hand to shut out its level rays, looked before her.

“There is the place,” she said, pointing to a little bulrush-clad isle, from which a kind of natural causeway, not more than six feet wide, projected like a tongue among muddy shallows peopled by coots and water-hens with their red-beaked young.

Martin rose too. Then he looked back behind him and said;

“I see the cap of a sail upon the skyline. It is Ramiro.”

“Without doubt,” answered Martha calmly. “Well, we have the half of an hour to work in. Pull, bow oar, pull, we will go round the island and beach her in the mud on the further side. They will be less likely to see us there, and I know a place whence we can push off in a hurry.”