Leatherface: A Tale of Old Flanders

III

Half an hour later, and we see courier after courier sent flying from Het Spanjaard's Kasteel to every corner of the city.

The city gates-thank the God of the Spaniards! – have been well garrisoned and well supplied with culverins and balls, it is from there that help must come, for-strange to tell-those louts have actually invested the Kasteel and have the pretension to lay a regular siege to the stronghold.

Was there ever such a farce? A couple of thousand of an undisciplined rabble-they surely cannot be more-daring to pit themselves against a picked guard! Courier to the Waalpoort where Lodrono is in command! courier to the Braepoort! – Serbelloni is there with two culverins of the newest pattern and two hundred musketeers, the like of whom are not known outside the Spanish army!

The only pity is that the bulk of the forces inside the city are Walloons! such poltroons as they have already proved themselves, surrendering in their hundreds to those confounded rebels! they have been scattered like flies out of a honey-pot, and the entire centre of the city is in the hands of the Orangists. But, anyway, the whole affair is only a question of time; for the moment the evening is closing in fast and the position cannot therefore be improved before nightfall; but in the morning a general closing-in movement, from the gates toward the centre would hold the rebels as in a claw and break their resistance within an hour. In the meanwhile the morale of the troops must be restored. Attend to that, ye captains at the city gates!

Courier follows courier out of the gate-house of the Kasteel: naked men, ready to crawl, to swim, or to dive, to escape the vigilance of the Orangist lines. Impossible! Not one is able to cross the open ground beyond the castle moat; the houses on the further bank of the Schelde are filled with Orangists; bows and muskets are levelled from every window. The culverins are down below, covered by the angles of the cross-streets; the messengers either fall ere they reach the Schelde or are sent back the way they came.

Attend to the morale of your men, ye captains at the city gates! The Duke of Alva, with some three or four thousand men, is inside the Kasteel, and no orders or communication can be got from him now before morning. And just like the flies when driven out of the honey, fly, scared, to the edges of the pot, so the Walloon soldiers, those who have escaped from the guild-houses, go and seek refuge in the shadow of the guard-houses at the gates. But the tactics of the Orangists have worked upon their nerves. At first there had appeared but a rabble upon the Vridachmart, but since then the numbers are swelling visibly; insurgents seem to be issuing out of every doorway, from under every arch in the city … they rush out with muskets and crossbows, with pikes and halberds; and to the Walloons-already unnerved and fatigued-their numbers appear to be endless and their arms of a wonderful precision. Their muskets are of the newest pattern such as are made in Germany, and these they use with marvellous skill, discharging as many as ten shots in one quarter of an hour, and none but the picked French musketeers have ever been known to do that.

And they are led by a man who seems to know neither fatigue nor fear. Here, there and everywhere he appears to the Walloon and Spanish soldiers like a mysterious being from another world. He wears no armour, but just a suit of leather which envelopes him from head to foot, and his face is hidden by a leather mask. His voice rings from end to end of the market place one moment; the next he appears inside the enclosure of the cemetery. Now he is at St. Pharaïlde and anon back at St. Jakab. Three of Alva's couriers hastily despatched to the commandants at the various gate-houses fall to his pistol, which is the only weapon he carries, and it is he who leads the last attack on the Ketel Brüghe which results in the flight of Alva and all his cavalry to the safe precincts of the Kasteel.

Before the evening Angelus has ceased to ring, the whole of the centre of the city is swept clear of Alva's troops, and the insurgents have completely surrounded the Kasteel. Darkness finds the Orangists bivouacking in the open markets and along the banks of the Schelde and the Leye with their artillery still thundering against Alva's stronghold and the gate-houses of the city, like bursts of thunder-clouds in a storm. The mantle of night has fallen over a vast hecatomb of dead and dying, of Walloons and Flemings and Spaniards, of brothers who have died side by side, with muskets raised in fratricide one against the other, and of women and children who have died of terror and of grief.

IV

And memory conjures up the vision of the tyrant, the author of all this desolation, riding slowly through the portal of the gate-house into the yard of Het Spanjaard's Kasteel a quarter of an hour or so ere the darkness of the night will finally cover all the abomination and the crimes, the murder, the misery and the bloodshed which the insatiable tyranny of this one man has called down upon a peaceable and liberty-loving people.

He rides with head erect, although fatigue and care are writ plainly on his ashen cheeks and the wearied stoop of his shoulders. His horse has received a wound in the flank from which the blood oozes and stains its rider's boots. Here in the castle-yard, some semblance of order has been brought about through the activity of the captains. The horses have been stabled in the vaulted cellars, the men have found quarters in different parts of the Kasteel; the musketeers and arquebusiers are up on the walls, the artillery well-screened behind the parapets.

The night has called a halt to men, even in the midst of barren victories and of unlooked-for defeat, and their sorrow and their hurts, their last sigh of agony or cry of triumph have all been equally silenced in her embrace; but over the city the sky is lurid and glowing crimson through a veil of smoke; the artillery and musketry have ceased their thundering; but still from out the gloom there come weird and hideous noises of hoarse shouts and cries of "Mercy" and of "Help," and from time to time the sudden crash of crumbling masonry or of charred beams falling in.

But Alva pays no heed to what goes on around him. He swings himself wearily out of the saddle and gives a few brief orders to the captains who press close beside his stirrup, anxious for a word or a look of encouragement or of praise. Then he curtly asks for water.

Don Sancho de Avila, captain of the castle guard, hands him the leather bottle and he drinks greedily.

"We are in a tight corner, Monseigneur," whispers de Avila under his breath.

"Hold thy tongue, fool!" is Alva's rough retort.

Whereupon the captain stands aside more convinced than before that disaster is in the air.

The Duke had been the last to turn his back on the Ketel Brüghe and to retire into the stronghold of the Kasteel. The banks of the Schelde by now are lined with the ranks of the insurgents, and it was a musket shot fired from the Vleeshhuis that wounded his horse-close to the saddle-bow. His quivering lips, and the ashen hue of his face testify to his consciousness of danger.

But his brow clears perceptibly when he sees Juan de Vargas coming out to meet him.

"Where is thy daughter?" he asks as soon as the other is within earshot.

"In chapel, I imagine," replies de Vargas.

"No woman should be abroad this night," says Alva dryly. "Send for her and order her to remain within her apartments."

"She has been tending the wounded, and will wish to do so again."

"Well! let her keep to the castle-yard then."

"You are not anxious, Monseigneur?"

"No. Not anxious," replies Alva with a fierce oath, "we can subdue these rebels of course. But I would I had brought Spanish soldiers with me, rather than these Walloon louts. They let themselves be massacred like sheep or else run like poltroons. Vitelli declares he has lost over a thousand men and at least a thousand more are prisoners in the various guild-houses-probably more. We ought never to have lost ground as we did," he adds sullenly, "but who would have thought that these louts meant to fight?"

"Who, indeed?" retorts de Vargas with a sneer, "and yet here we are besieged in our own citadel, and by a handful of undisciplined peasants."

"Nay! their triumph will be short-lived," exclaims Alva savagely. "We have over two thousand men inside the Kasteel and surely they cannot be more than three thousand all told unless…" He broke off abruptly, then continued more calmly: "Darkness closed in on us ere reprisals could commence … if I had more Spaniards with me, I would try a sortie in the night and catch these oafs in their sleep … but these Walloons are such damnable fools and such abominable cowards… But we'll fight our way through in the morning, never fear!"

"In the meanwhile cannot we send to Dendermonde for reinforcements? The garrison there is all Spanish and…"

"How can we send?" Alva breaks in savagely. "The way is barred by the artillery of those bandits-save upon the north and north-east, where that awful morass nearly half a league in length and width is quite impassable in autumn. No! we cannot get reinforcements unless we fight our way through first-unless one of the commandants at the gates has realised the gravity of the situation. Lodrono at the Waalpoort has intelligence," he continues more calmly, "and Serbelloni hath initiative-and by the Mass! if one of them doth not get us quickly out of this sorry place, I will have them all hanged at dawn upon their gates!"

The Duke of Alva's fierce wrath is but a result of his anxiety. He holds the Netherlanders in bitter contempt 'tis true! He knows that to-morrow perhaps he can send to Dendermonde for reinforcements and can then crush that handful of rebels as he would a fly beneath his iron heel. He would have his revenge-he knew that-but he also knew that that revenge would cost him dear. He has fought those Flemish louts, as he calls them, too often and too long not to know that when the day breaks once more he will have to encounter stubborn resistance, dogged determination and incalculable losses ere he can subdue and punish these men who have nothing now to lose but their lives-and those lives his own tyranny has anyhow made forfeit.

V

De Vargas makes no further comment on his chief's last tirade: remembering his daughter, he goes to transmit to her the order formulated by the Duke. Lenora is in the chapel, and, obedient to her father's commands, she rises from her knees and returns, silent and heavy-footed, to her apartments.

The hours drag on like unto centuries; she has even lost count of time; it is forty-eight hours now since she held Mark's wounded arm in her hand and discovered the awful, the hideous truth. Since then she has not really lived, she has just glided through the utter desolation of life, hoping and praying that it might finish soon and put an end to her misery.

She had acted, as she believed, in accordance with God's will! but she felt that her heart within her was broken, that nothing ever again would bring solace to her soul. That long, miserable day yesterday in Dendermonde whilst she was waiting for a reply from her father had been like an eternity of torment, and she had then thought that nothing on earth or in hell could be more terrible to bear. And then to-day she realised that there was yet more misery to endure, and more and more each day until the end of time, for of a truth there would be no rest or surcease from sorrow for her, even in her grave.

The one little crumb of comfort in her misery has been the companionship of Grete; the child was silent and self-contained, and had obviously suffered much in her young life, and therefore understood the sorrows of others-knew how to sympathise, when to offer words of comfort, and when to be silent.

Though Inez was a pattern of devotion, her chattering soon grated on Lenora's nerves; and anon when don Juan de Vargas agreed to allow his daughter to come with him to Ghent, Lenora arranged that Grete be made to accompany her and that Inez be sent straight on to Brussels. The girl-with the blind submission peculiar to the ignorant and the down-trodden-had consented; she had already learned to love the beautiful and noble lady, whose pale face bore such terrible lines of sorrow, and her sister Katrine and her aunt both believed that the child would be quite safe under the immediate protection of don Juan de Vargas. Inez was sent off to Brussels, and Lenora and Grete are now the only two women inside the Kasteel.

Together they flit like sweet, pale ghosts amongst the litters of straw whereon men lie groaning, wounded, often cursing-they bandage the wounds, bring water to parched lips, pass tender, soothing hands across feverish foreheads. Then, at times, Lenora takes Grete's rough little hand in hers, and together the women wander out upon the ramparts. The sentries and the guard know them and they are not challenged, and they go slowly along the edge of the walls, close to the parapets and look down upon the waters of the moat. Here the dead lie in their hundreds, cradled upon the turgid waters, washed hither through the narrow canals by the more turbulent Schelde-their pale, still faces turned upwards to the grey evening light. And Lenora wonders if anon she will perceive a pair of grey eyes-that were wont to be so merry-turning sightless orbs to the dull, bleak sky. She scans each pale face, with eyes seared and tearless, and not finding him whom she seeks, she goes back with Grete to her work of mercy among the wounded only to return again and seek again with her heart torn between the desire to know whether the one man whom she hates with a bitter passion that fills her entire soul hath indeed paid the blood-toll for the dastardly murder of Ramon, or whether God will punish her for that irresistible longing which possesses her to hold that same cowardly enemy-wounded or dying-assassin though he be-for one unforgettable moment in her arms.

VI

But it is not desolation that reigns in the refectory of the convent of St. Agneten, for here the leaders of the rebellion have assembled, as soon as the guns have ceased to roar. The numbers of their followers since last night have increased by hundreds, and still the recruits come pouring in. Those men who but four days ago had received the Prince of Orange's overtures with vague promises and obvious indifference, rushed to arms after the first musket shot had been fired. Ever since the attack in the Vridachmart men have loudly clamoured for halberts or pikes or muskets, and the captains at the various secret depots, as well as the guild of armourers, had much ado to satisfy all those who longed to shed their blood with glory rather than be massacred like insentient cattle. They are men who have fought at Gravelines and St. Quentin, and have not forgotten how to shoulder musket or crossbow or how to handle a culverin. Since then, fifteen years of oppression, of brow-beating, of terrorising, fifteen years under the yoke of the Inquisition and of Spanish tyranny have worn down the edge of their enthusiasm.

When Orange begged for money and men that he might continue the fight for liberty, the goodly burghers of Ghent forgot their glorious traditions and preferred to bend their neck to the yoke rather than risk the fate of Mons and of Mechlin. But now that danger is within their doors, now that they and their wives and daughters are at the mercy of the same brutal soldiery whom Alva and de Vargas take pleasure in driving to bestial excesses and inhuman cruelties, now that they realise that the fate of Mechlin is already inevitably theirs-their dormant courage rises once more to its most sublime altitude. Die they must-that they know! – how can they, within the enclosure of their own city walls, stand up against the armies of Spain, which can at any moment be brought up in their thousands to reinforce the tyrant's troops? But at least they will die with muskets or pikes in their hands, and their wives and daughters will be spared the supreme outrage which they count worse than death.

Thus close on five thousand volunteers file past their leaders this night in the refectory of St. Agneten and tender their oath of allegiance to fight to the last man for Orange and liberty. On the faces of those leaders-of Messire van Beveren, of Lievin van Deynse, of Laurence van Rycke and Jan van Migrode, there is plainly writ the determination to keep up the fight to the end, and the knowledge that the end can only be death for them all.

But in Mark van Rycke's deep-set eyes there is something more than mere determination. There is a latent belief that God will intervene-there is a curious exultation in their merry depths-a kind of triumphant hope: and those who stand before him and swear that they will fight for Orange and liberty with the last drop of their blood look him straight in the face for a moment and then turn away feeling less grim and more courageous with a courage not altogether born of despair.

The angel of liberty has unsheathed his sword and infused his holy breath into these men-easy-going burghers for the most part, untrained soldiers or even undisciplined rabble-who have dared to defy the might of Alva.

VII

And when the first streak of dawn folds the night in its embrace and lifts from off the stricken city the veil of oblivion and of sleep, we see some five thousand Orangists prepared to stand up before Alva's forces which still number close on eight. The streets are littered with dead, with pikes and lances hastily cast aside, with muskets and plumed bonnets, with broken rubbish and wheelless wagons, and scraps of cloth or shoes or leather belts.

And in the cemetery of St. Jakab the flag of liberty still flaunts its blazing orange in the pale morning light and around it men still rally, defiant and unconquered. The Guild House of the Tanners close by is in flames, and the tower of St. Jakab a crumbling ruin; the hostel of St. Juan ten Dullen is a charred mass of debris, and the houses that front on the Vridachmart a fast crumbling heap of masonry and glass.

The situation of the insurgents is more desperate than even Alva knows. Of their three captains, Pierre van Overbeque is dead, Jan van Migrode severely wounded, and Laurence van Rycke exhausted. Of their company of halberdiers, all the provosts except two have fallen. The investing lines around the Kasteel have five officers killed and twenty of their artillerymen have fallen. Six hundred of their wounded encumber the Vridachmart. The narrow streets which debouch upon the gates are deserted save by the dead.

But as soon as the rising day hath touched the ruined tower of St. Jakab with its pale silvery light, Mark van Rycke, their commander, intrepid and undaunted, wakes the sleeping echoes with his cry: "Burghers of Ghent! to arms! we are not vanquished yet!"

A volley of arrows from the crossbowmen upon the Waalpoort answers the defiant cry: one arrow pierces a loose corner of Mark's doublet.

"Van Rycke!" cries the provost who stands nearest to him, "spare thyself in the name of God! What shall we do if you fall?"

And Mark, unmoved, the fire of enthusiasm unquenched in his eyes, cries loudly in response:

"Do? What alone can burghers of Ghent do in face of what lies before them if they give in? Do? Why, die like heroes-to the last man."

His doublet hangs from him in rags, his hose is torn, his head bare, his face black with powder. He grasps musket or crossbow, halberd, lance or pike, whichever is readiest to his hand, whichever company hath need of a leader; a beam from the burning building has fallen within a yard of him and singed his hair: "Heroes of Ghent!" he cries, "which of you will think of giving in?"

The morning Angelus begins to ring. For a few minutes while the pure clear tones of the church bells reverberate above the din of waking men and clash of arms, Spaniards and Walloons and Flemings pause in their hate and their fight in order to pray.

Up in the council chamber of the Kasteel, Alva and de Vargas and del Rio on their knees mock the very God whom they invoke, and when the last "Amen!" has left their lips, Alva struggles to his feet and murmurs fiercely:

"And now for revenge!"

Through the wide open windows, he gazes upon the spires and roofs of the beautiful city which he hath sworn to destroy. Already many of these are crumbling ruins, and from far away near the church of St. Jakab a column of black smoke rises upwards to the sky. The windows give upon an iron balcony which runs along the entire width of the Meeste-Toren: from this balcony an open staircase leads down into the castle-yard. The yard and vaulted cellars opposite are filled with horses, and the corridors of the palace swarm with men. And as the Duke, anon, steps out upon the balcony he sees before him the five breaches in the castle-walls which testify to the power of the insurgents' culverins. He hears the groans of the wounded who lie all round the walls upon the litters of straw, he sees the faces of innumerable dead, floating wide-eyed upon the waters of the moat, and the carcasses of horses in the yard which add to the horror of the scene by their pathetic hideousness.

And seeing all this, he hath not a thought of pity for all the innocent whom he vows to punish along with the guilty.

"Now for revenge!" he reiterates fiercely and shakes a clenched fist toward the tower of St. Jakab, "and if only I had my Spaniards with me, we would have burned the town down before now."

VIII

The day drags on in the weary monotony of incessant firing, incessant fighting-constant attacks to be repulsed, numbers of wounded to be added to those who already encumber the yard-numbers of dead to be added to those who encumber the waters of the moat.

The finest general the victorious Spanish armies have ever known is besieged in his stronghold by a few hundred undisciplined, untaught, unseasoned rebel troops. What is happening beyond the wide tract of open ground which lies all round the Kasteel the Duke cannot get to know. The Orangist lines are all round him screened by the buildings which face the further bank of the Schelde; and though his culverins have turned the magnificent Vleeshhuis into a smoking ruin, those of the Orangists have made serious havoc in the castle walls.

The last onslaught delivered a couple of hours after noonday resulted in the crumbling together of three of the widest breaches already existing, making one huge yawning cavity, which has to be strongly and persistently defended-a defence which exacts an enormous toll of wounded and dead every time the Orangist artillery and musketry return to the attack.

"We cannot hold out till nightfall!" Captain de Avila cries despairingly. "We have lost two hundred men in less than two hundred minutes. If we get no help we are undone!"

"Help!" cries Alva fiercely, "where are we to get help from if those oafs at the city gates do not find us some?"

On the north-east side of the Kasteel lies the open way to Dendermonde-where Captain Gonzalo de Bracamonte is quartered with a garrison of five thousand men, and between that open way of salvation, and those who hold the Kasteel, there lies a league of spongy morass. The way through it is free from the Orangist musketry. Nature alone bars it, and does so effectually.

Three times to-day has Alva tried to send runners through that way. Stripped to the skin they are lowered by ropes from the parapet, and at first find firm foothold at the base of the walls. From up above Alva and his captains watch the naked men who walk on boldly, proud of their achievement; their skins shine like metal beneath the grey, autumnal sky on which the smouldering ruins of a devastated city have painted a crimson tint. Alva watches them until they appear as mere black dots upon the low horizon-tiny black specks that move for a while, slowly along, with arms swinging as the mud gets deeper and walking heavier. Then suddenly the speck ceases to move … the arms are thrown up with frantic wheelings and beatings of the air … sometimes the speck will turn and move back slowly toward the castle, but more often than not it grows shorter and shorter still, till even the tall arms disappear-engulfed in the morass.

Three times have men been sent out on this errand of death … three or four at a time … twice has one man come back from those hideous, yawning jaws of a loathsome death-livid, covered with green slime, trembling in every limb as if stricken with ague. After that, men refuse to go … Alva commands and threatens … another batch go off … another spectre returns from the shores of another world… Then the men are obstinate … to insist, to command, to threaten further would provoke mutiny, and the stronghold once more lapses into utter isolation.