The Laughing Cavalier - Baroness Orczy (chapter books to read to 5 year olds .txt) 📗

brother’s name⁠ ⁠… for this you did do, did you not?” she asked insistently.

“Have I not confessed to it?” he retorted quietly.

“Alas! And for these crimes must I despise you,” she added quaintly. “But since then my mind hath been greatly troubled. Something tells me⁠—and would to God I saw it all more clearly⁠—that much that you so bravely endure just now, is somehow because of me. Am I wrong?”

He laughed, a dry, gentle, self-mocking laugh.

“That I have endured much because of you, mejuffrouw,” he said gaily, “I’ll not deny; my worthy patron St. Bavon being singularly slack in his protection of me on two or three memorable occasions; but this does not refer to my present state, which has come about because half a dozen men fell upon me when I was unarmed and pounded at me with heavy steel skates, which they swung by their straps. The skates were good weapons, I must own, and have caused one or two light wounds which are but scraps of evil fortune that a nameless adventurer like myself must take along with kindlier favours. So I pray you, mejuffrouw, have no further thought of my unpleasant bodily condition. I have been through worse plights than this before, and if tomorrow I must hang.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, no!” she interrupted with a cry of horror, “that cannot and must not be.”

“Indeed it can and must, mejuffrouw. Ask the Lord of Stoutenburg what his intentions are.”

“Oh! but I can plead with him,” she declared. “He hath told me things today which have made me very happy. My heart is full of forgiveness for you, who have wronged me so, and I would feel happy in pleading for you.”

Something that she said appeared to tickle his fancy, for at her words he threw his head right back and laughed immoderately, loudly and long.

“Ye gods!” he cried, while she⁠—a little frightened and puzzled⁠—looked wide-eyed upon him⁠—“let me hear those words ringing in mine ears when the rope is round my neck. The Lord of Stoutenburg hath the power to make a woman happy! the words he speaks are joy unto her heart! Oh! ye gods, let me remember this and laugh at it until I die!”

His somewhat wild laugh had not ceased to echo in the low-raftered room nor had Gilda time to recover her composure, before the door was thrown violently open and the Lord of Stoutenburg re-entered, followed by Jan and a group of men.

He threw a quick, suspicious glance on Gilda and on Diogenes, the latter answered him with one of good-humoured irony, but Gilda⁠—pale and silent⁠—turned her head away.

Stoutenburg then pointed to Diogenes.

“Here is your prisoner,” he said to Jan, “take him back to the place from whence you brought him. Guard him well, Jan, for tomorrow he must hang and remember that your life shall pay for his if he escapes.”

Jan thereupon gave a brief word of command, the men ranged themselves around the prisoner, whose massive figure was thus completely hidden from Gilda’s view; only⁠—towering above the heads of the soldiers⁠—the wide sweep of the brow caught a glimmer of light from the flickering lamp overhead.

Soon the order was given. The small knot of men turned and slowly filed out. The Lord of Stoutenburg was the last to leave. He bowed nearly to the ground when he finally left Gilda’s presence.

And she remained alone, sitting by the fire, and staring into the smouldering ashes. She had heard news tonight that flooded her soul with happiness. Her brother whom she loved was innocent of crime, and God Himself had interfered. He had touched the heart of the Lord of Stoutenburg and stopped the infamous plot against the Stadtholder’s life. Yet Gilda’s heart was unaccountably heavy, and as she sat on, staring into the fire, heavy tears fell unheeded from her eyes.

XXXVI Brother Philosophers

And now for the clang of arms, the movement, the bustle, the excitement of combat! There are swords to polish, pistols to clean, cullivers to see to! Something is in the air! We have not been brought hither all the way to this Godforsaken and fog-ridden spot in order to stare on a tumble-down molens, or watch a solitary prisoner ere he hang.

Jan knows of course, and Jan is eager and alert, febrile in his movements, there is a glow in his hollow eyes. And Jan always looks like that when fighting is in the air, when he sniffs the scent of blood and hears the resonance of metal against metal. Jan knows of course. He has no thought of sleep, all night he wanders up and down the improvised camp. No fires allowed and it is pitch dark, but an occasional glimmer from a lantern lights up compact groups of men lying prone upon the frozen ground, wrapped in thick coats, or huddled up with knees to chin trying to keep warm.

A few lanterns are allowed, far into the interior of that weird forest of beams under the molens where slender protection against a bitter northwesterly wind can alone be found.

Shoulder to shoulder, getting warmth one from the other, we are all too excited to sleep. Something is in the air, some fighting to be done, and yet there are only thirty or forty of us at most: but swords and cullivers have been given out, and half the night through my lord and his friends, served only by Jan, have been carrying heavy loads from the molens out toward the Schie and the wooden bridge that spans it.

Silently, always coming away with those heavy loads from the molens, and walking with them away into the gloom, always returning empty-handed, and served only by Jan. Bah, we are no cullions! ’tis not mighty difficult to guess. And by the saints! why all this mystery? Some of us are paid to fight, what care we how we do it? in the open with