The Legend of Ulenspiegel. Volume 2 of 2

“Ah! we are to die!” said Nele; “I am hungry.”

“Aye,” said Lamme low to Ulenspiegel, “the dukeling of blood has said that being famished we shall be more docile when we are brought out to die.”

“I am so hungry!” said Nele.

That night soldiers came and distributed bread enough for six men.

“Three hundred Walloon soldiers have been hanged in the marketplace,” said they. “It will soon be your turn. There was always a matrimony between the Beggars and the Gallows.”

The next night they came again with their bread for six men.

“Four high burgesses,” said they, “have been beheaded. Two hundred and forty-nine soldiers have been bound together two by two and cast into the sea. The crabs will be fat this year. You do not look well, you folk, since the seventh of July that saw you come here. They are gluttons and drunkards, these dwellers in the Low Countries; we Spaniards, we have enough with two figs for our supper.”

“That is why, then,” replied Ulenspiegel, “you must needs, everywhere in the townsfolks’ houses, have four meals of meats, poultry, creams, wines, and preserves; that ye must have milk to wash the bodies of your mustachos and wine to bathe your horses’ feet?”

On the eighteenth of July, Nele said:

“My feet are wet; what is this?”

“Blood,” said Ulenspiegel.

At night the soldiers came again with their bread for six.

“Where the rope is no longer enough,” said they, “the sword does the work. Three hundred soldiers and twenty-seven burghers who tried to flee out of the town are now walking about the streets of hell with their heads in their hands.”

The next day the blood came again into the cloister; the soldiers came not to bring the bread, but merely to contemplate the prisoners, saying:

“The five hundred Walloons, Englishmen, and Scotsmen that were beheaded yesterday looked better. These are hungry, no doubt, but who then should die of hunger if not the Beggar!”

And indeed, they were like phantoms, all pale, haggard, broken, trembling with cold ague.

On the sixteenth of August, at five in the evening, the soldiers came in laughing and gave them bread, cheese, and beer. Lamme said:

“It is the feast of death.”

At ten o’clock four companies came; the captains had the doors of the cloister opened, ordering the prisoners to march four abreast behind fifes and drums, to the place where they would be told to halt. Certain streets were red, and they marched towards the Gallows Field.

Here and there shallow pools of blood defiled the meadows; there was blood all about the walls. The ravens came in clouds on every hand; the sun hid in a bed of mists; the sky was still clear, and in its depths awoke the shy stars. Suddenly they heard lamentable howlings.

The soldiers said:

“They that are crying there are the Beggars of the Fuycke Fort, without the town; they are being left to die of hunger.”

“We, too,” said Nele, “we are going to die.” And she wept.

“The ashes beat upon my heart,” said Ulenspiegel.

“Ah!” said Lamme in Flemish – for the soldiers of the escort understood not that proud speech – “Ah!” said Lamme, “if I could catch that duke of blood and make him eat, until his skin burst, each and all ropes, gallows, torture benches, wooden horses, weights, and boots; if I could make him drink the blood he has shed, if there came out of his torn skin and opened bowels splinters of wood and pieces of iron, and still he did not give up the ghost, I would tear out his heart from his breast and make him eat it raw and poisoned. Then for certain would he fall from life to death into the sulphur pit, where may the devil make him eat it and eat it again without ceasing. And thus through all long eternity.”

“Amen,” said Ulenspiegel and Nele.

“But dost thou see naught?” said she.

“Nay,” said he.

“I see in the west,” she said, “five men and two women seated in a circle. One is clad in purple and wears a crown of gold. He seems the chief over the rest, all ragged and tattered. I see from the east another band of seven coming: one commands them also who is clad in purple, without a crown. And they come against those of the west. And they fight against them in the clouds, but I see nothing more now.”

“The Seven,” said Ulenspiegel.

“I hear,” said Nele, “near by us in the foliage, a voice like a breath of wind saying:

“By war and fireBy pikes and swordsSeek;In death and bloodRuins and tears.Find.”

“Others than we shall deliver the land of Flanders,” replied Ulenspiegel. “Night grows black, the soldiers are lighting torches. We are near the Gallows Field. O sweet beloved, why didst thou follow me? Dost thou hear nothing more, Nele?”

“Aye,” said she, “a noise of arms among the corn. And there, above that ridge, surmounting the way in which we are entering, seest thou the red light of the torches gleam upon steel? I see sparks of fire gleaming upon the matches of arquebuses. Are our guardians asleep, or are they blind? Dost thou hear that clap of thunder? Seest thou the Spaniards fall pierced with bullets? Hearest thou ‘Long live the Beggar!’? They climb the path running, musket in hand; they come down with axes all along the slope. Long live the Beggar!”

“Long live the Beggar!” cry Lamme and Ulenspiegel.

“Lo,” said Nele, “here are soldiers that give us arms. Take, Lamme, take, my beloved. Long live the Beggar!”

“Long live the Beggar!” cry the whole troop of prisoners.

“The arquebuses cease not from firing,” said Nele, “they fall like flies, lit up as they are by the light of the torches. Long live the Beggars!”

“Long live the Beggar!” cry the band of rescuers.

“Long live the Beggar!” cry Ulenspiegel and the prisoners. “The Spaniards are in a ring of fire. Kill! kill! There is not one left on his feet. Kill! no pity, war without mercy. And now let us be off and run to Enckhuyse. Who hath the butchers’ clothes of cloth and silk? Who hath their weapons?”

“All! all!” they cry. “Long live the Beggar!”

And indeed, they went off for Enckhuyse by boat, and there the Germans delivered with them remained to guard the town.

And Lamme, Nele, and Ulenspiegel found their ships again. And lo once more they are singing upon the free sea: “Long live the Beggar!”

And they cruise in the roadstead of Flessingue.

XIII

There once again was Lamme joyous. He was always ready to go on shore, hunting oxen, sheep, and fowl like hares, stags, and ortolans.

And he was not alone in this nourishing hunting. Good was it then to see the huntsmen return, Lamme at their head, dragging the big beasts by the horns, driving the small cattle before them, directing flocks of geese with long wands, and carrying slung from their boathooks hens, pullets, and capons in spite of their struggling.

Then it was revel and feasting on the ships. And Lamme would say: “The fragrance of the sauces mounts up to the very sky, there delighting their worships the angels, which say: ‘’Tis the best part of the meat’.”

While they were cruising there came a fleet of merchantmen from Lisbon, whose commander knew not that Flessingue had fallen into the hands of the Beggars. It is ordered to cast anchor; it is hemmed round. Long live the Beggar! Drums and fifes sound the signal for boarding; the merchants have guns, pikes, hatchets, arquebuses.

Musket balls and cannon balls rain from the ships of the Beggars. Their musketeers, entrenched round about the main mast in their wooden forts, fire with deadly aim, without any danger. The merchants fall like flies.

“To the rescue!” said Ulenspiegel to Lamme and to Nele, “to the rescue! Here be spices, knicknacks, precious dainties, sugar, nutmegs, cloves, ginger, reals, ducats, moutons d’or all bright and shining. There are more than five hundred thousand pieces in coin. The Spaniard will pay the cost of the war. Drink ho! Let us sing the Beggars’ Mass, which is battle!”

And Ulenspiegel and Lamme rushed everywhere like lions. Nele played the fife, sheltered in the wooden castle. The whole of the fleet was taken.

The dead were counted and these were a thousand on the side of the Spaniards, three hundred on the side of the Beggars: among them was the master cook of the fly boat La Briele.

Ulenspiegel asked to be allowed to speak before Très-Long and the sailors: this Très-Long granted with a good will. And he said to them as follows:

“Master captain and ye comrades, we have but now inherited much spices, and here is Lamme, the good belly, who findeth that the poor dead man there, God have him in joy, was in no wise a doctor great enough in fricassees. Let us name him in the place of the dead. And he will prepare you divine stews and paradisaic soups.”

“We will,” said Très-Long and the others; “Lamme shall be the master cook of the ship. He shall bear the great wooden ladle to skim the froth off his sauces.”

“Messire Captain, comrades and friends,” said Lamme, “ye behold me weeping with joy, for I deserve not so great honour. Nevertheless, since ye deign to call upon my worthlessness, I accept the noble functions of master of arts in fricassees upon the stout fly boat La Briele, but with a humble prayer to you that ye invest me with the supreme command of the kitchen work, in such fashion that your master cook – the which will be myself – may by right law and might be empowered to prevent anyonesoever from coming and eating another’s share.”

Très-Long and the others cried out:

“Long live Lamme! thou shalt have right, law, and might.”

“But,” said he, “I have another prayer to make before you in all humility: I am a fat man, big and strong; deep is my paunch, deep my stomach; my poor wife – may God restore her to me – always gave me two portions instead of one: accord me this same favour.”

Très-Long, Ulenspiegel, and the sailors said:

“Thou shalt have the two portions, Lamme.”

And Lamme, suddenly fallen melancholy, said:

“My wife, my sweet darling! if anything can console me for thy absence, it will be to bring again to mind in my duties thy heavenly cooking in our sweet home.”

“You must take the oath, my son,” said Ulenspiegel. “Let the great wooden ladle and the great copper caldron be brought hither.”

“I swear,” quoth Lamme, “by God, may he be here my helper, I swear fidelity to Monseigneur the Prince of Orange, called the Silent, governing the provinces of Holland and Zealand for the king; fidelity to Messire de Lumey, the admiral commanding our gallant fleet, and to Messire Très-Long, vice-admiral and captain of the good ship La Briele; I swear to dress at my poor best, according to the use and wont of the great cooks of old, which have left behind them noble books with cuts upon the great art of cookery, what flesh and fowl Fortune shall accord to us; I swear to feed the said Messire Très-Long, our captain, his second in command, which is my friend, Ulenspiegel, and all you, master mariner, pilot, boatswain, companions, soldiers, gunners, captain’s page, chirurgeon, trumpeteer, sailors, and all others. If the roast is too underdone, the fowl unbrowned; if the soup sends up an insipid fragrance, inimical to all good digestion; if the steam of the sauces doth not entice you all to rush into the kitchen – always with my good will; if I make you not all sprightly and well favoured, I will resign my noble functions, judging myself unfit longer to occupy the throne of the kitchen. So may God help me in this life and in the next.”

“Long live the master cook,” said they, “the king of the kitchen, the emperor of fricassees. He shall have three portions instead of two on Sundays.”

And Lamme became master cook of the ship La Briele. And while the succulent soups were simmering in the saucepans, he stood at the door of the galley, proudly holding his great wooden ladle like a sceptre.

And he had his treble rations on Sundays.

When the Beggars came to grips with the enemy, he would stay preferably in his sauce laboratory but would come out every now and then to run up on the deck and fire a few rounds. Then he would hurry down again at once to keep an eye to his sauces.

Thus being trusty cook and valiant soldier, he was well beloved of all.

But no one must penetrate the sanctuary of his galley. For then he was even like a devil and with his wooden ladle he smote them pitilessly hip and thigh.

And thenceforth he was called Lamme the Lion.

XIV

On the ocean, on the Scheldt, in sunshine, in rain, in snow, in hail, winter and summer, glided the ships of the Beggars to and fro.

All sails out like mantling swans, swans of white freedom.

White for freedom, blue for great heart, orange for the prince, ’tis the standard of the proud ships.

All sails set! all sails set, the stout ships; the billows beat upon them, the waves besprinkle them with foam.

They pass, they run, they fly along the river, their sails in the water, swift as clouds in the north wind, the proud ships of the Beggars. Hear you their prows cleaving the wave? God of freemen! Long live the Beggar!

Hulks, flyboats, boyers, croustèves, swift as a wind big with tempest, like the cloud that bears the thunderbolt. Long live the Beggar!

Boyers and croustèves, flat-bottomed boats, slide along the river. The waters groan as they are cloven through, when the ships go straight on face forwards with the deadly mouth of their long culverin on the point of the bows. Long live the Beggar!

All sail out! all sail out, the gallant ships, the waves toss them, sprinkle them with foam.

Night and day, through rain, hail, and snow, they go on their way! Christ smileth on them in cloud, in sun, in starshine. Long live the Beggar.

XV

The king of blood learned the news of their victories. Death was already gnawing at the murderer and his body was full of worms. He would walk about the corridors of Valladolid, sullen and savage, dragging heavily his swollen feet and leaden legs. He never sang, the cruel tyrant; when the day came, he never laughed, and when the sun lighted up his empire like a smile from God he felt no joy in his heart.

But Ulenspiegel, Lamme, and Nele sang like birds, risking their hide, that is to say Lamme and Ulenspiegel, their white skin, to wit Nele, living from day to day, and finding more joy in one death fire quenched by the Beggars than the dark king had in the burning of a town.

At this time, too, William the Silent, Prince of Orange, broke from his rank as admiral Messire de Lumey de la Marck, by reason of his great cruelties. He appointed Messire Bouwen Ewoutsen Worst in his stead. He took measures also to pay for the grain taken by the Beggars from the peasants, to restore the forced contributions levied upon them, and to grant the Roman Catholics, like all others, the free exercise of their religion, without either persecution or insult.

XVI

On the ships of the Beggars, under the dazzling sky, over the shining waves, squealed the fifes; droned bagpipes, gurgled flasks, chimed glasses, and shone the steel of weapons and armour.

“Ho!” said Ulenspiegel, “let us beat the drum of glory, let us beat the drum of joy. Long live the Beggar! Spain is conquered; the ghoul is beaten down. Ours is the sea, Briele is taken. Ours the coast as far as Nieuport, beyond Ostende and Blanckenberghe, the islands of Zealand, the mouths of the Scheldt, the mouths of the Meuse, the Rhine mouths as far as Helder. Ours are Texel, Vlieland, Ter-Schelling, Ameland, Rottum, Borkum. Long live the Beggar!

“Ours are Delft, and Dordrecht. ’Tis a trail of powder. God holdeth the linstock. The murderers abandon Rotterdam. Free conscience, like a lion with teeth and claws of justice, seizes the county of Zutphen, the towns of Deutecom, Doesburg, Goor, Oldenzeel, and on the Welnuire, Hattem, Elburg, and Harderwyck. Long live the Beggar!

“’Tis lightning, ’tis a thunder bolt: Campen, Zwol, Hassel, Sheenwyck fall into our hands with Oudewater, Gouda, Leyden. Long live the Beggar!

“Ours are Bueren, Enckhuyse! Not yet have we Amsterdam, Schoonhoven, or Middelburg. But all cometh in time to patient blades. Long live the Beggar!

“Drink we the wine of Spain. Drink from the chalices whence they drank the blood of the victims. We shall go by way of the Zuyderzee, by rivers, streams, canals; we have North Holland, South Holland, and Zealand; we shall take East and West Frisia; La Briele shall be the refuge for our ships, the nest of the hens that hatch out liberty. Long live the Beggar!

“Hearken in Flanders, our beloved land, how there bursts forth the cry of avenging. Armour is polishing, the swords are a-whetting. All are astir, athrill like the strings of a harp in the warm breeze, the breath souls that cometh from grave pits, from torture fires, from the bleeding corpses of the victims. All, Hainaut, Brabant, Luxembourg, Namur, Liége the free city, all! Blood sprouts and springs up. The harvest is ripe for the sickle. Long live the Beggar.

“Ours the Noord-Zee, the wide North Sea. Ours are good guns, proud ships, the bold band of redoubted seamen: rogues, robbers, soldier-priests, gentlemen, townsfolk, and artisans fleeing persecution. Ours to all of us joined together for the work of freedom! Long live the Beggar!

“Philip, king of blood, where art thou? D’Alba, where art thou? Thou dost cry out and curse and blaspheme, thou with the holy hat, the Holy Father’s gift. Beat the drums of joy. Long live the Beggar! Drink all!

“The wine flows into the golden cups. Drain it with glee. Priestly robes on the backs of rough men are flooded with the red liquor; banners, ecclesiastic and Roman, wave in the wind. Eternal music! To you, fifes squealing, bagpipes droning, drums beating, peals of glory. Long live the Beggar!”

XVII

The world was then in the wolf month, which is the month of December. A thin sharp rain was falling like needles upon the sea. The Beggars were cruising in the Zuyderzee. Messire the Admiral summoned by trumpet the captains of houlques and flyboats on board his ship, and with them Ulenspiegel.

“Now,” said the Admiral, addressing himself first of all to Ulenspiegel, “the Prince is minded to recognize thy good devoirs and trusty services, and names thee as captain of the ship La Briele. Herewith I hand thee the commission engrossed upon parchment.”

“All thanks to you, Messire Admiral,” replied Ulenspiegel: “I shall be captain with all my little power, and thus captaining I have great hope, if God help me, to uncaptain Spain from the lands of Flanders and Holland: I mean from the Zuid and the Noord-Neerlande.”

“That is well,” said the admiral. “And now,” he added, speaking to them all, “I will tell you that the folk of Catholic Amsterdam are going to besiege Enckhuyse. They have not yet come out from the Y canal; let us cruise about in front that they may stay inside there and fall on each and all of their ships that may show their tyrannical carcases in the Zuyderzee.”

They made answer:

“We will knock holes in them. Long live the Beggar!”

Ulenspiegel, returned to his ship, called his soldiers and his sailors together on the deck, and told them what the admiral had decided.

They replied:

“We have wings, the which are our sails; skates, which are the keels of our ships; and giant hands, which are the grapples for boarding. Long live the Beggar!”

The fleet set forth and cruised in front of Amsterdam a sea league away, in such a sort that none could enter or come out against their will.

On the fifth day the rain ceased; the wind blew sharper in the clear sky; the Amsterdam folk made no stir.

Suddenly Ulenspiegel saw Lamme come up on deck, driving before him with great blows of his wooden ladle the ship’s truxman, a young man skilful in the French and Flemish tongues, but more skilful still in the science of the teeth.

“Good-for-naught,” said Lamme, beating him, “didst thou deem thou couldst scatheless eat my fricassees before their due time? Go up to the masthead and see if aught budges on the ships of Amsterdam. Doing this thou wilt do well.”

But the truxman answered:

“What will you give me?”

“Dost thou think,” said Lamme, “to be paid without doing the work? Thieves’ spawn, if thou dost not climb, I shall have thee flogged. And thy French shall not save thee.”

“’Tis a beauteous tongue,” said the truxman, “a tongue for love and war.”

And he climbed the mast.

“Well! lazybones?” asked Lamme.

The truxman answered:

“I see naught in the town nor on the ships.” And descending:

“Now pay me,” said he.

“Keep what thou hast stolen,” replied Lamme; “but such gains are no profit; thou wilt doubtless vomit it up.”

The truxman, climbing again to the masthead, cried out suddenly:

“Lamme! Lamme! there is a thief going into the galley.”

“I have the key in my pouch,” rejoined Lamme.

Ulenspiegel then, taking Lamme apart, said to him:

“My son, this great tranquillity of Amsterdam affrights me. They have some hidden project.”

“I thought of that,” said Lamme. “The water is freezing in the jugs in the cupboard; the fowl are like wood; hoar frost whitens the sausages; the butter is a stone, the oil is all white, the salt is dry as sand in the sun.”

“’Tis a frost at hand,” said Ulenspiegel. “They will come in great numbers to attack us with artillery.”

Going on board the admiral’s ship, he told his fear to the admiral, who answered him:

“The wind blows from England: there will be snow, but it will not freeze: go back to your ship.”

And Ulenspiegel went away.

That night heavy snow fell; but soon, the wind blowing out of Norway, the sea froze and was like a floor. The admiral beheld the sight.

Then fearing lest the Amsterdam folk might come over the ice to burn the ships, he bade the soldiers make ready their skates, in case they might have to fight around and away from the ships, and the gunners of the iron guns and the brass to pile up heaps of cannon-balls by the gun carriages, to load the pieces, and to keep the portfires always well lighted.

But the Amsterdam folk never came.

And so it was for seven days.

Towards evening on the eighth day Ulenspiegel gave orders that a good feast should be served to the sailors and men at arms, to make them a cuirass against the sharp wind that was blowing.

But Lamme said:

“There is nothing at all left now but biscuit and small beer.”

“Long live the Beggar!” said they. “’Twill be Lenten revelry until the hour of battle.”

“Which will not strike soon,” said Lamme. “The Amsterdammers will come to burn us our ships, but not on this night. First they must needs assemble themselves together around fires, and there drink many a measure of wine mulled with Madeira sugar – may God give us thereof – then having talked till midnight with patience, logic, and full stoups, they will decide that there are grounds for coming to a decision to-morrow as to whether they shall attack or not attack next week. To-morrow, again drinking wine mulled with Madeira sugar – may God give you thereof – they will decide anew with calm, patience, and full stoups, that they must assemble together another day, to the end that they may know if the ice can or cannot bear a great band of men. And they will have it proved and essayed by men of learning, who will lay down their conclusions upon parchment. Having received which, they will know that the ice is half an ell in thickness, and that it is solid enough to bear some hundreds of men with field guns and artillery. Then assembling themselves together once more to deliberate with calm, patience, and many stoups of mulled wine, they will debate whether, by reason of the treasure seized by us from the men of Lisbon, it is more suitable to assault or to burn our ships. And being thus perplexed, but temporizers, they will none the less decide that they must capture and not burn our ships, notwithstanding the great wrong and hurt they would do us by that.”

“You say well,” replied Ulenspiegel; “but see you not those fires kindle up within the town, and folk bearing lanterns running busily about there?”

“’Tis because they are cold,” said Lamme.

And he added, sighing:

“Everything is eaten. No more beef, pork, nor poultry; no more wine, alas! nor good dobbel-bier, nothing but biscuit and small beer. Let who loves me follow me!”