Читать книгу The Romantic Prince - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 8

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The abrupt disappearance of Anthony of Egmont from the Court of Burgundy was something more than a nine days’ wonder. It was a source of regret to many, of humiliation to the Lady Catharine of Bourbon, and of fury to the Duke, who accounted himself thereby affronted in his dignity as well as disappointed in his designs. Never a man to brook the disregard of his inflexible will, he at once sent messengers to the provost-marshals of the various provinces composing his State with orders for the arrest of the Count wherever found. M. de Blaumont he despatched to old Duke Arnold’s court at Nimeguen, whither he thought it most likely that Count Anthony would have gone, for the purpose of inducing him to return if he were there, or of informing his father of the event if he were not.

But neither M. de Blaumont nor any other of the score or so of messengers sent out by the Duke could come upon the fugitive, and at Nimeguen there was no news of him beyond what was contained in a letter to his father borne by the page Valburg on his return to Guelders. This letter added nothing to what was already known. It announced merely that Count Anthony had left Brussels on a personal quest which he chose to make alone and from which he could not say when he would return.

In the castle at Nimeguen they held a family council on the matter: Duke Arnold, his Duchess Catharine, who was sister to the Duke of Cleves, and their younger son Adolph, a man who, apart from a similar athletic grace, was so different in aspect from Count Anthony that it was difficult to believe them brothers. Where Count Anthony, favouring his father, was fair and frank and gentle, his brother was swarthy, hawk-faced, with a cruel, sneering mouth and mean, close-set eyes.

Sneeringly he solved the riddle. ‘A quest, he says. Some such quest as took Lalaing to England. He has always sought to model himself upon Lalaing, or upon what he conceives Lalaing to have been. Knight-errantry will be his quest.’

‘But he has gone alone, without page or esquire,’ the father reminded him.

‘Oh, knight-errantry after his own crack-brained fashion,’ was the airy counter. ‘Not to break lances in a lady’s honour. His endeavour will be done on different grounds.’ It was clear that Adolph was nowise concerned by his brother’s disappearance. It was also clear that he did not admire his brother. ‘God help Guelders when he comes to rule over it.’

‘I pray it may be long before that happens,’ said the mother gently. ‘In the meanwhile he may come by wisdom, Adolph; grow more like you, my child.’

‘May God contrive it,’ added the Duke in piety, and in affection for this younger son whom both esteemed so fondly. They were to discover their error, like many another deluded parent, later, when they had helped to place it beyond repair.

It may well be that Adolph of Egmont was correct in his sneering surmise, and that knight-errantry after his own fashion engaged Count Anthony on that part of his travels concerning which nothing is to be discovered. He reappears some eight months later in the pages of his chronicler, and Ghent, that prosperous city of weavers, is made the scene of his reappearance. It is possible, indeed probable, that the act in which he emerges out of silence was typical of the matters that engaged him in those months upon which the records are silent. Possibly nothing would be known of this affair—at least nothing remarkable—but for the influence it was to exert upon his whole future career, through which I imagine that La Marche has traced it back.

A young merchant from the town of Middelburg in Walcheren, who was in Ghent for the transaction of affairs, had permitted himself with more daring than wit loudly to animadvert in a public tavern upon the government of the Duke of Burgundy. This rash young man, whose name was Danvelt, was particularly derisive in his allusions to events which had occurred during the Duke’s accession-visit to Ghent in the previous June, at the time of the Feast of Saint Liévain. There had been rioting on that occasion in connection with the unpopular tax on all merchandise coming into the city, known as the cueillette; and this rioting had assumed such serious proportions that the Duke, who was inadequately escorted, had stood for a while in gravest peril. From this he had been extricated only by a prudent but inglorious—and, in the case of a man of his proud stomach, almost comic—submission to popular demands.

After his departure, the men of Ghent, cooling from their riotous fever, had leisure to reflect upon what they had done. They considered the intractable pride and unforgiving nature of the prince they had affronted, and dreaded at any moment such a punishment as his father had inflicted upon them at Gaveren for their previous insubordination. It was an affair which they ardently desired should be forgotten, and as a contribution towards that end did their best, themselves, to forget it. They certainly did not wish to be reminded of it in such terms as were now used by this young hot-head out of Walcheren, who alluded to it derisively as ‘the joyous entry.’

It was the constant endeavour of the purse-proud, vain, and self-sufficient Mynheer Danvelt to be accounted of consequence in the world, a man whose knowledge of the great was close and intimate; and he conceived, after the fashion of his kind, that the readiest way to his ends lay in the disparagement of his betters. You must make it plain that in some way, however undefined, you are superior to the man upon whom you make it appear that you look down. At least that is the illusion common to the Danvelts of this world. If in addition he imagined—for he was a stupid fellow—that by ridicule of the Duke of Burgundy he would render himself popular in Ghent, he was soon undeceived.

His crude philippics were received at first in a sullen silence of mingled fear and resentment. This he mistook for deference to his opinions. Emboldened by it, he waxed more and more recklessly facetious until suddenly a stalwart weaver, sitting near him, crashed a bludgeon of reproof upon his humour:

‘Swallow your tongue, you fool, and give us peace!’

Taken aback by so unexpected an interruption, Danvelt blinked at him, bewildered; then looked to those about him for sympathy and support. Instead, he was met on every side by forbidding glances, whilst the taverner, himself, leaned across the table angrily to admonish him.

‘You may hold such fool’s talk up in Zealand,’ said the fellow, having guessed Danvelt’s origin from his speech. ‘It’s a long way from the Duke’s ears. But we don’t want it here in Ghent; least of all in my house. So out you go. Out of this!’ And he flung an arm backwards, to indicate the door and the evening sunlight on the dusty street.

Danvelt, very red in the face, got to his feet. If he was short, he was sturdy, and with natural truculence he combined incaution.

‘I don’t know what blew me into your foul kennel,’ said he.

‘Some wind from hell, belike,’ the taverner answered him; and repeated more urgently: ‘Begone!’

Without urgency, Danvelt shrugged his broad shoulders in contempt, and made shift to depart.

‘Oh, I go. I go. No need to raise your voice.’

He moved on his short thick legs without any undue haste, carrying his head well back, a man whose mental attributes were to be read at a glance in his physical aspect. There was in his prominent, aggressive nose and massive jaw a vigour which his shallow brow announced would ever be ill-directed. Conceit and self-sufficiency were in his rolling gait, which the taverner was not to know habitual to him, but conceived to be assumed for this occasion as an expression of contempt. Exasperated by it, he loosed a vigorous kick at the Zealander behind, by way of accelerating his departure, and by that kick precipitated the trouble which was to go to mould the destiny of Count Anthony and of some others as far removed from Mynheer Danvelt and his hitherto trivial fortunes.

Now, whatever he may have been, this young Zealander was not the man to receive kicks with impunity. He swung about infuriated by a punishment as hurtful to his dignity as to his flesh, and with all his strength, which was that of a young bull, crashed his fist into the round, shining face of the taverner and spread-eagled him across a table.

Riot ensued. Men left their cans to avenge the taverner and at the same time physically express their resentment of this young man’s person and conduct. Had that been all, the matter would have ended in his being flung bodily into the street. Unfortunately there were some who took the view that he had been needlessly affronted, and some who in secret, perhaps, had shared his opinion of the Duke of Burgundy. It followed that in an instant two camps were formed within the narrow confines of that tavern. The company may have numbered some thirty men, members of various guilds, besides a few women who shrank in terror against the walls, entrenching themselves behind the long trestle-tables. Stools and drinking-cans and fists were the weapons employed in the writhing clot of fighters which surged hither and thither with Danvelt and the taverner in the heart of it, and which, leaving wreckage behind it, finally burst into the street.

Now it happened that this tavern, appropriately bearing the sign of the Magpie, was situated within a stone’s throw of the great market-place and the State House. And it happened further that the Burgomaster’s watch was leisurely patrolling the square at this moment. Attracted by the turbulence, it came quickly to the battle-field, some half-dozen strong, and the men, reversing their short halberts, and using the butts as staves, belaboured the heaving mass, breaking a head or two in the process. They might have done no more than add to the turmoil and confusion but that at this moment a gentleman on a big white horse came riding up the street attended by a mounted servant. The gentleman, young and fair and good to look upon, richly dressed and wearing the black liripipe from his round velvet hat swathed under his chin to make that headdress secure, took in the situation at a glance, distinguishing the men of the watch who strove shoulder to shoulder on the far side of these disturbers of the peace. Like a good citizen he accounted it his duty to lend assistance to the servants of the law. He spoke a word to his servant, and thrusting his horse forward, yet restraining it with great skill at the same time, he forced the little crowd to give way on either side of him. Into the gap he urged his steed, his servant following, whilst with the butt of his whip he smote here a head and there a shoulder, commanding them at the same time to desist and stand. It was enough. Finding themselves assailed by horsemen, the rioters imagined that they had to deal with the Burgundian provost, whose hand was a deal heavier than that of the native keepers of the peace. Incontinently they broke and fled, and in a moment all had vanished save the taverner and Mynheer Danvelt. Between the town watch and our opportune horseman stood these two, dishevelled and bleeding.

On the spot, the taverner, whose name was Groothuse, made his raging, vindictive plaint. It was not enough for him to behold Danvelt’s torn clothes and battered countenance. He meant to put a rope around his neck for the evening’s work, the wreckage of his tavern, the loss of custom, and the physical injuries which he had himself sustained. So he poured out his bitter tale. This foreigner from Walcheren, this treacherous, rebellious Zealander—and all Zealanders, he asserted, were to his knowledge treacherous rogues who would murder their lord the Duke of Burgundy if opportunity offered—this ineffable treasonmonger had dared to speak disparagingly of the Duke’s Highness in the tavern which Groothuse conducted as became a loyal Ghenter. Because he had ordered him from his house—Master Groothuse said nothing of the kick—this rascally hind had struck him, and then there had been a riot in which he had suffered, as they could see. He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, and pointed to the tavern. He had suffered not merely in his person. His house was wrecked and his custom gone, as they might behold for themselves; and all this he had suffered because he had sought to defend the honour of Our Lord the Duke, whom God preserve, against this contemptible sedition-scatterer out of Zealand. He repeated some of the things that Danvelt had said of the Duke, as instances of how lost the fellow was to decency and loyalty; things which, to his scandal and that of the watch, appeared to move the mirth of the gentleman on the white horse.

In the end, because the watch knew Master Groothuse for a respectable citizen, they accepted his account of the event, and this the more readily since Mynheer Danvelt made no attempt to contradict him. Because they knew where to find the taverner when they should come to need him for a witness, they left him for the present, and were content to carry off the battered young Zealander as their prisoner, so that he might answer in the Burgomaster’s court for having been the cause of this indecorous breach of the peace. The sergeant offered thanks to the gentleman on the horse for his timely help, and desired to know his name and place of abode in case his testimony should also be required by the Burgomaster.

‘I am,’ he was answered, ‘Anthony Egmont, a gentleman on my travels, to be found here at the Toison d’Or for the next few days and very much at your Burgomaster’s service.’

He spoke Flemish fluently and choicely, but with a French accent, from which the watchman assumed him to be French, as also from his name, which he pronounced in the French way. This and the suppression of the particle were sufficient disguise for a name which, after all, was borne by others besides the members of the ruling house of Guelders.

Now it happened that the affair made some noise through the town, and came that same night to the ears of the Sire de Vauclerc, who acted as the Duke’s provost in Ghent.

These provostships themselves were rendered necessary by the curious circumstances of Burgundian rule. It is to be remembered that no national unity existed in the States which had gradually come under the Duke of Burgundy’s sway; there was not even a bond of federation to connect them. They acknowledged under different titles the authority of a common ruler, because their various lordships happened to be united in one person. Charles, who ruled in Burgundy as Duke, also filled the like office in the dukedoms of Brabant, Limbourg, and Luxembourg, and was in addition Count of Flanders, of Artois, of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand, and of Namur, and Lord of Friesland and of Mechlin. To each of these States his accession was separate and distinct, and in the capital of each he had exchanged pledges of fidelity with the representatives of the people. Apart, however, from that common sovereignty thus imposed upon them, those various States remained separate and distinct from one another, having no common system of legislation, no court exercising jurisdiction over the whole, no magistrate or civil officer whose warrant ran beyond the limits of his own province. Not even was there any agreement amongst them for the capture and surrender of escaped criminals. So that the hunted assassin or marauder from Brabant was safe once he had slipped over the border into Hainault or Flanders or Artois.

Because Charles of Burgundy was not the man to tolerate such a fruitful source of evil in his dominions, he had placed in each province a representative for juridical purposes in the person of a provost-marshal, invested with the fullest powers to proceed summarily against malefactors by sack and cord at discretion. And because the necessity and desirability of this was recognized by each of the various States concerned, there was no opposition from the native magistrates to a measure which might have been regarded as an encroachment upon their national privileges.

Because of the impression for ready turbulence which the Ghenters had made upon him at the time of his accession as Count of Flanders in the previous year, he had sent them a strong man for their provost-marshal with a stronger backing of Burgundian spears than was usual to a provostship.

A man less stern than the Sire de Vauclerc might have perceived for himself that the Duke’s interests would best be served in such an affair as this by disregarding it. Because he lacked this vision, the Sire de Vauclerc conceived that, since it was against the Duke’s name that Danvelt had offended, he, as the Duke’s officer, was called upon to intervene and to deal with him. And because the unfortunate young merchant, being from Zealand, was regarded as a foreigner in Flanders, the magistracy of Ghent did not consider itself under any obligation to protect him, and certainly did not think it worth risking on his behalf the displeasure of a vengeful Duke who was already displeased with them more than enough for their peace of mind. They had seen at Gaveren, and more recently and more terribly at Liège and Dinant, the manner in which he commonly signified his displeasure.

So when an officer from the Sire de Vauclerc, attended by ten lances, presented himself next morning at the State House and demanded the surrender to the Duke’s provost-marshal of the person of Mynheer Danvelt, the Burgomaster made no difficulty about delivering up that unfortunate young man. The officer had precise orders from the provost, whose conception of his duty was to allow no occasion to escape of showing these mutinous Flemings the power of his ducal master and the fate of those who were rash enough to beard it. Therefore, when Mynheer Danvelt came forth from the State House, his legs were in iron gyves and a wooden yoke—a sort of portable pillory—was placed about his neck, as was usual only in the case of the most desperate malefactors.

Thus mercilessly trammelled and otherwise in most pitiful case, his clothes in rags, so that in places the flesh showed, his contused face besmeared with caked blood and with filth from the underground cellar in which he had spent the night, his straw-coloured hair unkempt and matted, the wretched man was paraded round the great market-place for all to see.

He was a spectacle to excite pity, especially considering the fate most probably reserved for him by the provost-marshal.

Among those who compassionated him was that gentleman calling himself Anthony Egmont, who, further, accounted himself in some measure responsible, by the assistance which he had rendered in the fellow’s apprehension, for his present miserable plight. From the balcony of his room on the upper floor of the Toison d’Or, our gentleman beheld the little procession of men-at-arms in steel headpieces and glittering corselets with the prisoner shambling painfully in their midst. It was the circular badge on each corselet, enclosing a Saint Andrew’s cross, the Burgundian device, which instantly informed Count Anthony of the intervention here of the ducal provost, and so increased his concern and pity on the prisoner’s behalf. With sombre eyes he watched the little procession as it passed out of sight along the busy square. Then he returned within to break his fast. But not the dish of succulent stewed eels nor the stoup of dark beer for which Ghent was famed could remove his thoughts from that unfortunate fellow. Pondering the discrepancy between the offence and its probable consequences, he was considering some form of intervention, when he was waited upon by messenger from the provost-marshal with a command that he should attend the trial that morning of Master Danvelt.

This might have its awkwardnesses, but it was not an invitation to be declined. So he presently went forth under that officer’s escort into the spring sunshine and the bustling, brick-paved market-place of that important city of a land, which, if not for natural beauty, at least for opulence and for achievement in the arts and crafts, was the rival of Italy.

By way of the Cloth Hall and under the great shadow of the Belfry, which reared its square mass three hundred feet above the ground, he was conducted by the mean alleys which had grown about Saint Pharailde into the open space before the Gravensteen, a massive fortress on the Scheldt defended by a projecting gate-house with octagonal towers above. Over the drawbridge, past the portcullis, guarded by a Burgundian sentry, and across the spacious castle-yard where grooms and soldiers idled, our gentleman was ushered into the keep and up a winding staircase of stone into a hall on the first floor. It was a grey and gloomy place, whose groined vaulting was borne on columns. It was bleak and scantily furnished. There was a long table under the tall trefoil windows at the back, with a chair of state set before it, on the leather back of which the Saint Andrew’s cross was stamped in black and purple. There was a bench ranged against the wall near the door, and in mid-apartment stood a three-legged stool, at present occupied by the prisoner under guard of two men-at-arms.

The wooden yoke had been removed from Danvelt’s neck, but the gyves were still upon his legs, and he sat there, dull-eyed, huddled together, the incarnation of dejection. The bench in the background was occupied by the taverner Groothuse, battered of countenance and inflamed of eye, his wife, and a couple of his friends who were come to support his testimony with their own. The officer signified to Count Anthony that he might be seated there, too, to await the coming of the provost-marshal. The Count, however, elected to pace the stone floor to and fro, a man clearly without any of the awe of his surroundings by which the other strangers present were so imbued that, when they ventured to speak at all, they did so in whispers. He took their eye as he slowly paced there, tall and elegant in a pourpoint of black velvet that was edged with fur at hem and wrists and caught about his loins in a girdle of hammered gold, from which a heavy gold-hilted dagger hung upon his left hip, behind, and a black leather scrip on his right hip in front. His black velvet hat was again secured upon his head by the long liripipe which was swathed under his chin. This he had retained, as if unconscious that he was expected to remove it. His boots were of the finest leather and with the exaggeratedly long, almost grotesque points which courtly mode prescribed. His gloves were of black velvet with a tiny jewel hanging from each tassel.

He afforded those present an object for admiration and speculation until at last the provost-marshal came to command attention of another sort. In advance of him, an officer in steel and leather, with a little violet tuft of plumes at the back of his peaked headpiece, clanked into the hall by a door at the far end. He was followed by two pikemen, who ranged themselves on either side of that doorway. Next came a clerkly fellow in a rusty gown bearing a wallet of parchments, which he set down on the long table before the chair of state, and a moment later the Sire de Vauclerc himself emerged, a tall, stern-faced gentleman in black with a gold chain upon his breast and a small round hat upon his grizzled head.

Followed by two pages in black and purple, one bearing his sword and the other his purse, he advanced without haste to the great chair. He remained standing a moment after he had reached it, his cold eye raking the thin ranks of those present and coming at last to rest upon the conspicuous figure of Count Anthony. His arched brows met in a sudden frown. His close-set eyes looked down his nose, and his voice rasped harshly in Flemish.

‘You know where you stand, sir. You have forgotten to uncover.’

‘Pardon,’ Count Anthony begged. He unwound the liripipe and, removing his hat, shook out his tawny mane.

The Sire de Vauclerc continued to scowl upon him intrigued now by a resemblance to someone seen elsewhere.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘A simple gentleman on his travels. Arriving yesterday in your city of Ghent, I chanced upon a brawl and lent my aid in suppressing it. Being commanded by you this morning, I am here.’

Thus he avoided mention of his name, and, since it was irrelevant, the Sire de Vauclerc did not insist. He sat down and took up the sheet of parchment proffered him by the clerk.

With the butt of his pike one of the men-at-arms prodded the dazed prisoner from his stool and almost sent him sprawling. He recovered himself, and with a clank of his irons stood hangdog before the Burgundian justiciary.

His business was soon done. The Sire de Vauclerc had a brisk way with him, and it was at once clear that he had prejudged the case from the written statement he held before hearing the depositions. Nevertheless, Groothuse was invited to speak, and he spared no vindictiveness in his recital of the prisoner’s verbal offences against the Lord Duke of Burgundy. His bones were sore and his joints stiff this morning from last evening’s business, and his condition did not make for kindliness towards the author of these ills.

He was still in full flow of accusation, which he had announced that his wife and good friends there would confirm, when the provost checked him.

‘Enough! No need for more unless the prisoner denies. You have heard, Master Danvelt, enough to hang you. How say you? Is it true or false?’

This man, who had strutted it in Middelburg like a cock on a dunghill, was a poor battered fowl indeed this morning in the Gravensteen of Ghent. There was no vestige of a swagger in him now. Humbled before, the mention of hanging reduced him now to panic. He broke into a whimper of excuses. He could not remember clearly what had passed. He had drunk too much Rhenish, and if he had said a tenth of what he was accused of saying it is clear that he could not have been sober.

‘So that you do not deny?’ said the steely voice of the Sire de Vauclerc. ‘No need then to trouble me with further witnesses.’

He passed to judgment, briefly and coldly. The law’s delays played no part in the Sire de Vauclerc’s discharge of his justiciary’s office.

‘If my sentence upon you cannot teach you wisdom, it will serve at least to teach wisdom to others, making it clear throughout our Lord Duke’s Flemish dominions as elsewhere that his lofty name is to be mentioned only in awe and honour. You would be well served were I to order your bones to be broken on the wheel. But the Duke of Burgundy is a gracious, clement overlord. Therefore you will be hanged ...’

He paused there, interrupted indeed by Danvelt, who fell on his knees and filled the vaulted hall with his quavering protests and supplications of mercy, until his guards pulled him to his feet again and shook him into silence.

‘You will be hanged,’ the provost repeated when the interruption had ceased, ‘unless it lies in your power to ransom your neck.’

‘To ransom it?’ the wretched man ejaculated, and his stricken countenance lighted with sudden hope.

‘You are from Zealand, are you not?’

‘Yes, my lord. My father is one of the wealthiest merchants of Middelburg.’ He could not suppress the rash boast, which was never far from his lips.

‘You are fortunate in having had an industrious father.’ M. de Vauclerc was sardonic. ‘Fortunate also in being a subject of so clement a prince as the Duke of Burgundy, whose name, should you be spared, you will hereafter honour.’

‘My lord, I shall bless his name all the days of my life.’

‘You’ll find it cheaper than detraction. As an alternative, then, to the rope, you will pay a fine of a thousand ducats.’

‘A thousand ducats! A thou ...’ Danvelt choked in horror at so vast a sum, vast even for the wealthiest merchant in Middelburg. True to his instincts, he offered half, and thereby moved his judge to an explosion of heat not to have been expected from so cold-seeming a man.

‘By God! Will you chaffer here? Will you haggle with Justice over the price of your neck? I am reminded that you Flemings part as reluctantly with gold as with blood. Hence most of your insubordination—in defence of your moneybags when a just taxation is imposed. Luckily for you, whilst your blood is useless when shed, your gold is useless until you shed it. Which will you shed now? Resolve yourself.’

‘But ... I have not such a sum at my command. I ... I ...’ He wrung his hands, he writhed in his distress. Finally: ‘Does your lordship give me time in which to find it, to procure it from Zealand?’

‘Provided you can find me a burgher of substance here in Ghent to be your surety.’

‘I know of none who’ll be surety for so much. It is a prince’s ransom.’

‘It was a prince’s character with which you made free. Well, well, among your burgher friends here, are there any two who will halve the surety, or any four who will quarter it?’

Danvelt hung his head and wrung his hands. ‘Too little is known of me here in Ghent.’

‘And that little not to your advantage, probably. Ah, well! You must resign yourself to hang. You have till evening to make your peace with God.’

‘My lord! For pity’s sake. I have two hundred ducats at my lodging. Take that in earnest of payment of the whole so soon as I can bring it from Middelburg.’

The provost shrugged his shoulders. ‘You weary me with your notions of how justice is dispensed. The two hundred ducats and what else you have are forfeited when you hang. How do I know your father to be what you say? And what do I care? Since you cannot find the sureties, the matter is at an end. Take him away.’

The pikemen’s hands closed upon him and he was pulled backwards. He accounted himself lost when he heard another voice ringing melodiously through the hall.

‘A moment yet, by your leave, my good Lord Provost.’ It was the tawny-headed stranger who spoke. ‘I will be this man’s surety for the sum.’