The Laughing Cavalier by Baroness Orczy (best 7 inch ereader .TXT) 📕

the length and breadth of Europe and whom an ingrate’s hand hath branded with the mark of traitor. The Stadtholder brought my father to the scaffold, heaping upon him accusations of treachery which he himself must have known were groundless. When the Stadtholder sent John of Barneveld to the scaffold he committed a crime which can only be atoned for by his own blood. Last year we failed. The mercenaries whom we employed betrayed us. My brother, our friends went the way my father led, victims all of them of the rapacious ambition, the vengeful spite of the Stadtholder. But I escaped as by a miracle!⁠—a miracle I say it was, my friends, a miracle wrought by the God of vengeance, who hath said: ‘I will repay!’ He hath also said that whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed! I am the instrument of his vengeance. Vengeance is mine! ’tis I who will repay!”

He had never raised his voice during this long peroration, but his diction had been none the less impressive because it was spoken under his breath. The others had listened in silence, awed, no doubt, by the bitter flood of hate which coursed through every vein of this man’s body and poured in profusion from his lips. The death of father and brother and of many friends, countless wrongs, years of misery, loss of caste, of money and of home had numbed him against every feeling save that of revenge.

“This time I’ll let no man do the work for me,” he said after a moment’s silence, “if you will all stand by me, I will smite the Stadtholder with mine own hand.”

This time he had raised his voice, just enough to wake the echo that slept in the deserted edifice.

“Hush!” whispered one of his friends, “Hush! for God’s sake!”

“Bah! the church is empty,” retorted Stoutenburg, “and the verger too far away to hear. I’ll say it again, and proclaim it loudly now in this very church before the altar of God: I will kill the Stadtholder with mine own hand!”

“Silence in the name of God!”

More than one muffled voice had uttered the warning and Beresteyn’s hand fell heavily on Stoutenburg’s arm.

“Hush, I say!” he whispered hoarsely, “there’s something moving there in the darkness.”

“A rat mayhap!” quoth Stoutenburg lightly.

“No, no⁠ ⁠… listen!⁠ ⁠… someone moves⁠ ⁠… someone has been there⁠ ⁠… all along.⁠ ⁠…”

“A spy!” murmured the others under their breath.

In a moment every man there had his hand on his sword: Stoutenburg and Beresteyn actually drew theirs. They did not speak to one another for they had caught one another’s swift glance, and the glance had in it the forecast of a grim resolve.

Whoever it was who thus moved silently out of the shadows⁠—spy or merely indiscreet listener⁠—would pay with his life for the knowledge which he had obtained. These men here could no longer afford to take any risks. The words spoken by Stoutenburg and registered by them all could be made the stepping stones to the scaffold if strange ears had caught their purport.

They meant death to someone, either to the speakers or to the eavesdropper; and six men were determined that it should be the eavesdropper who must pay for his presence here.

They forced their eyes to penetrate the dense gloom which surrounded them, and one and all held their breath, like furtive animals that await their prey. They stood there silent and rigid, a tense look on every face; the one light fixed in the pillar above them played weirdly on their starched ruffs scarce whiter than the pallid hue of their cheeks.

Then suddenly a sound caught their ears, which caused each man to start and to look at his nearest companion with set inquiring eyes; it was the sound of a woman’s skirt swishing against the stonework of the floor. The seconds went by leaden-footed and full of portentous meaning. Each heartbeat beneath the vaulted roof of the cathedral tonight seemed like a knell from eternity.

How slow the darkness was in yielding up its secret!

At last as the conspirators gazed, they saw the form of a woman emerging out of the shadows. At first they could only see her starched kerchief and a glimmer of jewels beneath her cloak. Then gradually the figure⁠—ghostlike in this dim light⁠—came more fully into view; the face of a woman, her lace coif, the gold embroidery of her stomacher all became detached one by one, but only for a few seconds, for the woman was walking rapidly, nor did she look to right or left, but glided along the floor like a vision⁠—white, silent, swift⁠—which might have been conjured up by a fevered brain.

“A ghost!” whispered one of the young men hoarsely.

“No. A woman,” said another, and the words came like a hissing sound through his teeth.

Beresteyn and Stoutenburg said nothing for a while. They looked silently on one another, the same burning anxiety glowing in their eyes, the same glance of mute despair passing from one to the other.

“Gilda!” murmured Stoutenburg at last.

The swish of the woman’s skirt had died away in the distance; not one of the men had attempted to follow her or to intercept her passage.

Jongejuffrouw Beresteyn, no spy of course, just a chance eavesdropper! but possessed nevertheless now of a secret which meant death to them all!

“How much did she hear think you?” asked Stoutenburg at last.

He had replaced his sword in his scabbard with a gesture that expressed his own sense of fatality. He could not use his sword against a woman⁠—even had that woman not been Gilda Beresteyn.

“She cannot have heard much,” said one of the others, “we spoke in whispers.”

“If she had heard anything she would have known that only the west door was to remain open. Yet she has made straight for the north portal,” suggested another.

“If she did not hear the verger speaking she could not have heard what we said,” argued a third somewhat lamely.

Every one of them had some suggestion to put forward,