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

muskets or crossbows, or in the dark, with a sudden blow which no man knows from whence it comes.

All night we sit and wait, and all night we are under the eye of Jan. He serves his lord and helps him to carry those heavy boxes from the molens to some unknown place by the Schie, but he is always there when you least expect him, watching to see that all is well, that there is not too much noise, that no one has been tempted to light a fire, that we do not quarrel too hotly among ourselves.

He keeps a watchful eye too, upon the prisoner: poor beggar! with a broken shoulder and a torn hip, and some other wounds too, about his body. A good fighter no doubt! but there were seven against him, and that was a good idea to swing heavy skates by their straps and to bring him down with them. His head was too high, else a blow from those sharp blades might have ended his life more kindly than the Lord of Stoutenburg hath planned to do.

A merry devil too! full of quaint jokes and tales of gay adventure! By Gad! a real soldier of fortune! devil-may-care! eat and drink and make merry for tomorrow we may die. Jan has ordered him to be kept tied to a beam! God-verdomme! but ’tis hard on a wounded man, but he seems tougher than the beams, and laughter in his throat quickly smothers groans.

Tied to a beam, he is excellent company! Ye gods, how his hands itch to grip his sword. Piet the Red over there! let him feel the metal against his palms, ’twill ease his temper for sure! Jan is too severe: but ’tis my lord’s rage that was unbridled. Ugh! to strike a prisoner in the face. ’Twas a dirty trick and many saw it.

Heigh-ho, but what matter! Tomorrow we fight, tomorrow he hangs! What of that? Tomorrow most of us mayhap will be lying stark and stiff upon the frozen ground, staring up at next night’s moon, with eyes that no longer see! A rope round the neck, a hole in the side, a cracked skull! what matters which mode Dame Death will choose for our ultimate end. But ’tis a pity about the prisoner! A true fighter if there was one, a stoic and a philosopher. “The Cavalier” we pretty soon call him.

“What ho!” he shouts, “call me the Laughing Cavalier!”

Poor devil! he tries not to show his hurts. He suffers much what with that damnable wind and those ropes that cut into his tough sinews, but he smiles at every twinge of pain: smiles and laughs and cracks the broadest jokes that have e’er made these worm-eaten beams ring with their echo.

The Laughing Cavalier in sooth!

There! now we can ease him somewhat. Jan’s back is turned: we dare not touch the ropes, but a cloak put between his back and the beam, and another just against his head.

Is that not better, old compeer?

Aye! but is it not good to be a villain and a rogue and herd with other villains and other rogues who are so infinitely more kind and gentle than all those noble lords?

Diogenes⁠—his head propped against the rude cushion placed there by the hand of some rough Samaritan⁠—has fallen into a fitful doze.

Whispers around him wake him with a start. Ye gods! was there ever so black a night? The whispers become more eager, more insistent.

“Let us but speak with him. We’ll do no harm!”

St. Bavon tell us how those two scarecrows have got here! For they are here in the flesh, both of them, Diogenes would have spotted his brother philosophers through darkness darker than the blackest hell. Pythagoras rolling in fat and Socrates lean and hungry-looking, peering like a huge gaunt bird through the gloom. Someone is holding up a lantern and Pythagoras’ tip-tilted nose shines with a ruddy glow.

“But how did you get here, you old mushroom-face?” asks one of the men.

“We had business with him at Rotterdam,” quoth Socrates with one of his choicest oaths and nodding in the direction of the prisoner. “All day we have wondered what has become of him.”

“Then in the afternoon,” breaks in Pythagoras, to the accompaniment of a rival set of expletives, “we saw him trussed like a fowl and tied into a sledge drawn by a single horse, which started in the wake of a larger one wherein sat a lovely jongejuffrouw.”

“Then what did you do?” queries someone.

“Do?” exclaimed the philosophers simultaneously and in a tone of deep disgust.

“Followed on his trail as best we could,” rejoins Socrates simply, “borrowed some skates, ran down the Schie in the wake of the two sledges and their escort.”

“And after that?”

“After that we traced him to this solitary Godforsaken hole, but presently we saw that this molens was not so deserted as it seemed, so we hung about until now⁠ ⁠… then we ventured nearer⁠ ⁠… and here we are.”

Here they were of course, but how was it possible to contravene the orders of Jan? What could these scarecrows have to say to the Laughing Cavalier?

“Just to ask him if there’s anything we can do,” murmurs Socrates persuasively. “He’s like to hang tomorrow, you said, well! grant something then to a dying man.”

Grave heads shake in the gloom.

“Our orders are strict.⁠ ⁠…”

“ ’Tis a matter of life and death it seems.⁠ ⁠…”

“Bah!” quoth Pythagoras more insinuatingly still, “we are two to your thirty! What have ye all to fear?”

“Here! tie my hands behind my back,” suggests Socrates. “I only want to speak with him. How could we help him to escape?”

“We would not think of such a thing,” murmurs Pythagoras piously.

Anxious glances meet one another in consultation. More than one kindly heart beats beneath these ragged doublets. Bah! the man is to hang tomorrow, why not give pleasure to a dying man?

If indeed it be pleasure to look on such hideous scarecrows a few hours before