The First Sir Percy

A moonless night upon the sandy waste⁠—the sky a canopy of stars, twinkling with super-radiance through the frosty atmosphere; the gently undulating ground like a billowy sea of silence and desolation, with scarce a stain upon the smooth surface of the snow; the mantle of night enveloping every landmark upon the horizon beyond the hills in folds of deep, dark indigo, levelling every chance hillock and clump of rough shrub or grass, obliterating road and wayside ditch, which in the broad light of day would have marred the perfect evenness of the wintry pall.

It was a bitterly cold night of mid-March in that cruel winter of 1624, which lent so efficient a hand to the ghouls of war and of disease in taking toll of human lives.

Not a sound broke the hushed majesty of this forgotten corner of God’s earth, save perhaps at intervals the distant, melancholy call of the curlew, or from time to time the sigh of a straying breeze, which came lingering and plaintive from across the Zuyder Zee. Then for awhile countless particles of snow, fanned by unseen breaths, would arise from their rest, whirl and dance a mad fandango in the air, gyrate and skip in a glistening whirlpool lit by mysterious rays of steel-blue light, and then sink back again, like tired butterflies, to sleep once more upon the illimitable bosom of the wild. After which Silence and Lifelessness would resume their ghostlike sway.

“You cannot stay on here forever, my good Stoutenburg,” the younger of the two men said, with some impatience. “Sooner or later you will be discovered, and⁠—”

He paused, and the other gave a grim laugh.

“And there is a price of two thousand guilders upon my head, you mean, my dear Heemskerk?” he said dryly.

“Well, I did mean that,” rejoined Heemskerk, with a shrug of the shoulders. “The people round about here are very poor. They might hold your father’s memory in veneration, but there is not one who would not sell you to the Stadtholder if he found you out.”

Again Stoutenburg laughed. He seemed addicted to the habit of this mirthless, almost impish laugh.

“I was not under the impression, believe me, my friend,” he said, “that Christian charity or loyalty to my father’s memory would actuate a worthy Dutch peasant into respecting my sanctuary. But I am not satisfied with what I have learned. I must know more. I have promised De Berg,” he concluded firmly.

“And De Berg counts on you,” Heemskerk rejoined. “But,” he added, with a shrug of the shoulders, “you know what he is. One of those men who, so long as they gain their ambitious ends, count every life cheap but their own.”

“Well,” answered Stoutenburg, “ ’tis not I, in truth, who would place a high price on mine.”

“Easy, easy, my good man,” quoth the other, with a smile. “Hath it, perchance, not occurred to you that your obstinacy in leading this owl-like life here is putting a severe strain on the devotion of your friends?”

“I mean,” Stoutenburg gave impatient answer, “that you should know me well enough by now, my good Heemskerk, to realize that I am no swearer of futile oaths. Last year, when I was over in Madrid, I cultivated the friendship of one Francis Borgia. You have heard of him, no doubt; they call him the Prince of Poets over there. He is a direct descendant of the illustrious Cesare, and I soon discovered that most of the secrets possessed by his far-famed ancestor were known to my friend the poet.”

“Poisons!” Heemskerk murmured, under his breath.

“Poisons!” the other assented dryly. “And other things.”

With finger and thumb of his right hand, he extracted a couple of tiny packets from a secret pocket of his doublet, toyed with them for awhile, undid the packets and gazed meditatively on their contents. Then he called to his friend. “They’ll not hurt you,” he said sardonically. “Look at this powder, now. Is it not innocent in appearance? Yet it is of incalculable value to the man who doth not happen to possess a straight eye or a steady hand with firearms. For add but a pinch of it to the charge in your pistol, them aim at your enemy’s head, and if you miss killing him, or if he hold you at his mercy, you very soon have him at yours. The fumes from the detonation will cause instant and total blindness.”

A mounted equerry, dressed in rough leather jerkin and leading another horse by the bridle, had taken up his stand in the forefront of the crowd. Now at a signal unheard by all save him, he jumped out of the saddle and stood beside the stirrup leathers of the second charger. At that same instant Diogenes, with movements quick as lightning, had thrown the cloak, which he was carrying round Gilda’s shoulders, and before she could utter a scream or even a gasp, he had stooped and picked her up in his arms as if she were a weightless doll.

Another second and he was outside the door, at the top of the steps which led down to the quay. For an instant he stood there, his keen eyes sweeping over the picture before him. Like a young lion that hath been caged and now scents liberty once more, he inhaled the biting air; a superb figure, with head tossed back, eyes and lips laughing with the joy of deliverance, the inert figure of the girl lying in his arms.

He felt her clinging more closely to him, and revelled in that intoxicating sense of power when the one woman yields who holds a world of happiness in her tiny hand. He felt the tightening of her hold, watched the look of contentment stealing over her face, saw her eyes close, her lips smile, and knew that they were ready for a kiss.

Nicolaes was beyond the power of speech, and so the silence for a moment or two remained absolute.

Then the blind man suddenly sat up, craning his neck and rolling his sightless eyes.

“I wonder where the devil I am!” he murmured through set lips. He appeared to listen intently; no doubt caught the sound of life around him, for he added quickly: “Is anybody here?”

“I am here,” Stoutenburg replied curtly. “Do you know whom I am, sirrah?”

“In truth, I do not,” Diogenes replied. “But by your accent I would judge you to be a man who at this moment is mightily afraid.”

“Afraid?” Stoutenburg retorted, with a loud laugh. “I, afraid of a helpless vagabond who has been fool enough to run his head into a noose which I had not even thought of preparing for him?”

“Yet you are afraid my lord,” the other rejoined quietly, “else you would not have ordered your bodyguard to watch over your precious person whilst you parleyed with a blind man.”

“My bodyguard is only waiting for final orders to take you to the gallows,” Stoutenburg rejoined roughly. “You may as well know now as later that it is my intention to hang you.”

“As well now as later,” the blind man assented, with easy philosophy. “I understand that for the nonce, whoever you Magnificence may be, you are master in Amersfoort. As such, you have a right to hang anyone you choose. Me or another. What matters? I was very nearly hung once, you must know, by the Lord of Stoutenburg. I did not mind much then; I’d mind it still less now. People talk of a hereafter.