Читать книгу The Romantic Prince - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 10

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The provost-marshal looked up in surprise as Count Anthony, easy and self-assured, advanced until only the table was between them.

‘You will be his surety? Why? What is he to you?’

‘A human being in urgent need of assistance.’

The Sire de Vauclerc stared hard at the speaker, and his thin black brows were raised. It is probable that he had never before met philanthropy.

‘What is your name?’ he asked.

‘You shall read it on the bond, my lord.’

Something in Count Anthony’s bearing, something in the calm assurance of his tone, checked the provost-marshal’s insistence. Instead he asked him:

‘But are you acquainted, then, with the prisoner?’

‘I saw him for the first time last evening.’

‘Then, sir, why ... ?’

‘One reason, I have given you. If you must have another, shall we say that I gratify a whim?’

‘A whim! God’s mercy! A whim that may cost you a thousand ducats!’

‘Whims are commonly costly.’

‘Costly, ay. But .... You must be a man of great wealth.’

‘I’ve never ascertained its extent.’

‘You’ld better ascertain it now, by Heaven! Ascertain that you can pay a thousand ducats.’

‘You’ll judge so, I think, when you have my seal.’ Calmly the Count helped himself to a quill and dipped it in the ink-horn. Unbidden, as if obeying the unspoken command of this stranger’s will, the clerk proffered him a sheet of parchment. Count Anthony bent down and wrote rapidly, signing with a flourish. He returned the parchment to the clerk. ‘Set me the wax,’ he commanded.

The fellow glanced at the document, and his countenance altered to such an extent that the provost-marshal, already sufficiently impatient, leaned sideways to read what was written. One glance at this order upon the Intendant of the Finances of the Duchy of Guelders at Nimeguen, and the Sieur de Vauclerc understood why the stranger’s appearance had intrigued him. He had seen him at Bruges with the Duke a year ago. Almost awe-stricken he looked up; then he came deferentially to his feet.

‘You are ...’

The Count was quick to interrupt him.

‘A simple gentleman on my travels, my lord, as I have said. If you will accept the bond in payment, you may now set this man at liberty, leaving the debt transferred from him to me.’

The Sire de Vauclerc bowed without a shadow of hesitation.

‘Of course, of course,’ and gave the order for the prisoner’s release and dismissal even before Count Anthony had sealed the bond with the heavy ring which he removed from his finger for the purpose.

‘You have been favoured,’ the provost admonished Master Danvelt, ‘by a most singular good fortune. Let your near escape serve you as a lesson for the future.’

It was to Danvelt and to the others present a bewildering conclusion. Whilst all alike marvelled and speculated upon the identity of this gentleman who had intervened to such effective purpose and upon his interest in this trader out of Zealand, Danvelt himself was so dazed that he scarcely observed the removal of the fetters from his legs, and Groothuse so infuriated that he forgot his awe of the provost-marshal, and broke into violent protestations, demanding to know who was to compensate him for all that he had suffered materially and morally.

He was rebuked by M. de Vauclerc with the assurance that all that he pretended to have suffered was as nothing to what he should yet suffer if he permitted himself to forget the respect due to the Duke of Burgundy in the person of his representative. Groothuse trembled into silence and mortified dejection. And then, again to the general amazement and particularly Groothuse’s own, the stranger raised his voice on the man’s behalf.

‘After all, my Lord Provost, what this vintner claims is just. He should be indemnified by Mynheer Danvelt.’

The spectators expected the roof to fall. The manner in which this stranger had intervened as surety had been sufficiently presumptuous. But to go the length of instructing the Sire de Vauclerc in the administration of justice was to transcend all bounds. The morning, however, was not yet at the end of its surprises. For the Sire de Vauclerc, usually so dominant, intolerant, and harsh, showed no slightest resentment of this impertinence. He just laughed.

‘Let him be indemnified by Master Danvelt, all you please. But I thought you were the prisoner’s friend.’

‘I am the friend of justice,’ he was answered in a tone almost of rebuke; and on that Count Anthony turned to the vintner. ‘At what do you set your damage?’

Groothuse gulped, recovered, and blurted abruptly: ‘Fifty ducats.’

Again the Sire de Vauclerc laughed, on a jeering note this time. ‘You lying dog! You’ld be well paid with ten.’

‘Let him have twenty,’ said Count Anthony. ‘I will add the sum to the bond and so to Master Danvelt’s debt to me.’ In this high-handed fashion he disposed, and, having done so, would have taken his leave, but that the provost begged him to remain, and this for a purpose which Count Anthony readily guessed.

When the hall had been cleared, and the two were alone, the Sire de Vauclerc addressed him with a deference which contained a new note of firmness. ‘And now, my lord, there is yourself. How am I to proceed without offending you? I have a duty to perform.’

‘What duty is that?’

‘Orders to detain you, wherever found, and to send you to the Duke’s highness under escort have been circulated to all officers throughout the provinces.’

‘As a man of law, you know that such orders are illegal. I am neither subject nor vassal of the Duke of Burgundy.’

‘Within his dominions, my lord, even those who are not his subjects are amenable to his laws.’

‘When they have transgressed them. I have transgressed none.’

The Sire de Vauclerc was uneasy. ‘I dare not, my lord, do other than detain you.’

‘Force will be necessary, sir,’ he was answered, to increase his discomfort.

‘I trust not, my lord.’

Count Anthony looked at him in silence for a long moment, studying the gravity of that lean, shaven countenance, and reading there how little the provost relished his task.

‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I am lodged, as you know, at the Toison d’Or. You may send your officer to apprehend me there at noon.’

Returning his glance, the provost’s cold eyes grew keen as dagger points.

‘You will await his coming?’

Count Anthony laughed. ‘That is to ask for my parole, and I have already said that I will yield only to force. Regard for your lord the Duke must compel you to exercise it. Regard for me, if I deserve it, may induce you to postpone the step for an hour. The Duke could hardly desire you to be more urgent, or to use unnecessary harshness towards me.’

The Sire de Vauclerc considered. The service of princes is not without perils, as he well knew, and, indeed, as the Count was very subtly reminding him. If he did not arrest Count Anthony, he would have to answer to his stern master for a dereliction of duty. If he did arrest him, he would make an enemy of him, and it could not be good to make an enemy of one who had been, and no doubt would be again when present differences were adjusted, the Duke’s closest friend.

Count Anthony, he perceived, was showing him how by the exercise of a little craft both horns of the dilemma might be avoided. He would be failing in his duty if he did as Count Anthony requested, yet he would fail without afterwards seeming to have failed. It would be easy to make it appear that he had used all diligence.

‘Indeed, my lord, not only have we no orders to use harshness with you, but we are all commanded to treat you with every consideration. No doubt you will have affairs to settle here in Ghent, and an hour is hardly too much to ask. My officer shall wait on you at noon, my lord. I trust you will be ready for him.’

Gravely Count Anthony bowed to him. ‘I shall bear your courtesy in very kindly memory,’ said he; and on that they parted with mutual esteem and perfect understanding of what lay immediately ahead.

In the courtyard Count Anthony found himself awaited by Mynheer Danvelt. A little awe-stricken still by his late amazing experiences, the young man announced that he had stayed to thank him and do what else was required in the matter of the enormous sum by which he was indebted. The Count desired to be waited upon by the young man at the Toison d’Or in half an hour precisely, and passed on.

Master Danvelt must have bestirred himself in his anxiety to obey, for within the half-hour not only did he present himself at the Toison d’Or, but he came almost spruce in a new suit of grey cloth, and a bundle of luggage was strapped behind him on the short tubby grey mare he rode. Mynheer Danvelt had had enough of Ghent.

In the inn-yard he found the Count’s servant with the Count’s horses, and from their saddle-bags it was plain that the Count, too, was on the point of definite departure.

‘Which way do you ride?’ the Count asked him when, within doors, the burgher had made known his intentions.

‘Back to Middelburg, sir.’

‘You’ll go by way of Bruges, then, so that we may ride together and there is no need now to delay. The sooner we are out of Ghent, the better.’

‘By God, sir, we are of one mind in that.’

They left the city by the Bruges Gate, and rode amain through those flat, low-lying lands from which the ocean is excluded by an embankment, compared more than a century earlier by the Italian Dante with that which separates the desert from the River of Tears. The melancholy of the landscape was mitigated to-day by the spring sunshine irradiating the dusty road between rows of tall burgeoning poplars planted with almost mathematical regularity.

They rode at first in single file, Count Anthony ahead and closely followed by his servant, with the Zealander a little distance in the rear. But some five miles out of the city, when the towering Belfry looked no more than a spear thrusting up into the sky, the Count slackened his hot pace and beckoned the young burgher to his side.

Danvelt went readily enough. Not only was he a man of no reserves, but he was spurred here by a curiosity natural enough on the score of this benefactor who was obviously a person of some consequence. Without even waiting to be addressed, the burgher opened the conversation and this by a question, easily familiar in tone and manner.

‘Do you go beyond Bruges, sir?’

For a moment Count Anthony appeared to be studying the contusions on that bold countenance, then answered shortly: ‘As far as Flushing.’

He did not consider it necessary to add that from Flushing he hoped to cross to England in his quest of knowledge and reality, and in pursuit of a knight-errantry rather different from that which had taken Lalaing thither years ago.

‘To Flushing?’ echoed the burgher, and satisfaction was blent with his surprise. ‘So far then we shall be companions. That will be very pleasant.’

The Count received the assurance with a smile. ‘Pleasant for whom?’ quoth he, and by that simple question disconcerted the other’s self-complacency.

‘For me, of course,’ the burgher made haste to explain. ‘That is ... that is, if you will suffer my company.’ And then, sensing the aloofness in this gentleman and becoming dimly conscious that he had perhaps used a greater familiarity of tone than was relished, he proceeded to offer some further explanation. ‘If I make so bold as to hope so, sir, it is because in Flushing it may be my good fortune to discharge at least some part of this heavy debt between us.’

‘Why, as to that——’ Count Anthony was beginning almost disdainfully, and there paused, remembering that to disdain a thousand ducats scarcely sorted with the character of simple gentleman which he had assumed. He changed the intended course of the sentence in completing it. ‘As to that, it shall be as you please.’

Danvelt, growing more at ease again, now that he had in a sense explained himself, became at last voluble in expressions of thanks for the great service this gentleman had rendered him.

‘I owe you my life and more, sir,’ was his peroration, ‘and I shall hope for the occasion to prove my gratitude.’

‘So shall not I, sir,’ he was answered, and again was disconcerted. He found the unexpected quality of his companion’s answers a tax on his wits. He was not accustomed to persons who answered unexpectedly. ‘Such an occasion,’ Count Anthony enlightened him, ‘must mean trouble for me, and inconvenience for you.’

‘Oh, I see!’ The burgher laughed. ‘I’ld weigh no inconvenience, sir. I would not, by God.’ His tone rang sincere, and the Count liked him a little better for it. Hitherto he had found him singularly unprepossessing, and had written him down as a fellow of little heart and less brain.

And then Danvelt asked the question that had been in his mind since first he had ridden alongside. ‘May I know, sir, the name of my protector, my saviour?’

‘My name? I am called Anthony Egmont.’

‘Egmont? Just that?’

‘Just that. Is it not enough?’

‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’ The answer came precipitatedly. The burgher wondered almost had he given offence by his silly question. But he was conscious of a pang of disappointment. In a gentleman with such an air and of such stupendous gestures as that which had saved his neck that morning he had expected something more sonorous, more imposing than a name so plain and simple and unadorned by any title. He spent some seconds in considering the deceptiveness of appearances. He had fancied—and he had been gratified by the fancy—that his protector was some great nobleman. And yet appearances there were that still continued to mystify him; if anything his mystification was deepened by the very simplicity of his companion’s quality.

‘Forgive me, sir, if ... if I am indiscreet. Though I think you should consider the question natural enough. What led your worship ... Why was it that you came to my rescue—to the rescue of a man unknown to you? Or is it, perhaps,’ he went on quickly, without waiting for the answer, imagining that he held the explanation, ‘is it that you had heard of, that you perhaps know, my father?’

That was it, of course. This Master Egmont must have heard of Frederick Danvelt, the most prosperous merchant in Middelburg, and in befriending the son of so wealthy a man would have had an eye to his own ultimate profit. The friendship of Frederick Danvelt was after all a very valuable possession, and the acquiring of it worth some risk.

Coldly his companion pricked the swelling bubble of that pleasant assumption.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I did not know of the existence of your father.’

‘You didn’t?’ Master Danvelt was plunged once more into the depths of bewilderment. ‘Then, why? What reason had you to save me as you did? You had no profit to make, no object to serve?’

‘None. I suppose, Master Danvelt, that in the world in which you have had your being, profit is the lodestar of men’s actions, and you can conceive of no other. You would find it difficult to believe a man should take personal risks or expose himself to heavy loss on no better grounds than a humane desire to serve a fellow-creature in distress. Probably you would regard such a man as not quite sane.’

That was precisely how Master Danvelt was beginning to regard his companion. He thought he discerned something fantastic in the very way he expressed himself. Nor did anything that subsequently passed between them during their journey to Flushing serve to modify the opinion. So that, instead of coming to know him better as a result of association, Danvelt found that hourly he knew his companion less in a measure as this companion’s expressions demolished one theory after another that Danvelt built up concerning him. So widely divergent were their habits of thought and their outlook upon life that it was almost as if they belonged to different races of beings. But that this Master Egmont was a person of some worldly consequence impressed itself more and more deeply upon Danvelt. It was announced in his very bearing, in his air of command, in the calm manner in which he imposed upon others a will which none ever dreamed of disputing; and whilst he used Danvelt with all friendliness, yet Danvelt was ever conscious of a certain condescension, of a gulf between them which not all his natural impudence could successfully bridge. It was a source to him at once of resentment and pride. One attempt which he made to know more of his protector was based upon a shrewd enough inference of his own.

‘There is one thing, sir, I cannot understand,’ said he.

That was on the following day, when, having lain the night at Bruges, they were pushing on along the yellow dunes towards the estuary of the Scheldt.

‘Sir, you are to be envied,’ the Count answered him.

‘Envied?’

‘In that there is one thing only you cannot understand.’

Danvelt perceived the joke, or what he supposed to be the joke, and laughed. ‘I mean, sir, of course, one thing concerning yourself.’

‘Even there you have the advantage of me. But proceed, sir. Expound this thing.’

‘That black-avisaged provost-marshal in Ghent accepted your bond, just your note of hand, as a sufficient surety for the fine. That seems to me very strange; very significant.’

‘I have this in common with you, Master Danvelt—indeed, perhaps I even transcend you a little in it: my father’s name, too, is well known and honoured. The Sire de Vauclerc knew that my father, failing myself, would fulfil the obligations of the bond.’

‘A wealthy man, indeed, your father, sir. Whence is he?’

‘From Nimeguen,’ said the Count, who did not think it worth while to prevaricate.

Danvelt nodded. ‘Ay, ay. I’ve heard my father say there are wealthy men in Guelders. But I thought you were French.’

‘I have lived a deal in France.’ A flight of ducks went overhead, and afforded the Count a pretext for changing the conversation. ‘A great fowling country this, I’ve always heard. There should be good hawking in such open lands. Yet they tell me that Walcheren is chiefly famed for its decoys.’

And Danvelt, as light of mind as he was heavy of body, veered readily to the new topic. ‘Faith, yes,’ he agreed with his loud and ready laugh. ‘The decoy makes a quicker and fuller return than any hawking.’

An hour or so before sunset they came to Breskens, and there hired a great flat-bottomed ferry in which they and their horses were ferried across the Scheldt.

As the vessel drew alongside the quay at Flushing, Count Anthony was inquiring, of one of the watermen who had brought them over, what was the town’s best inn, when Master Danvelt interrupted peremptorily:

‘No inn for us to-night, sir. We’ll lie with my father’s good friend Mynheer Claessens, who’ll make you very welcome for my sake, and whose house you’ll find a deal more comfortable than any inn. A wealthy man, Mynheer Claessens; prodigiously wealthy; a builder of ships and of all that goes to them; and a man of great weight in the town.’

Count Anthony yielded without further persuasion. The prospect of being received on terms of equality in a burgher household was not without allurement.

Having paid the waterman, they landed, and by the Scheldt Gate in the massive fortifications entered the town and rode the short distance to Mynheer Claessens’s handsome house by the Groote.