Lysbeth, a Tale of the DutchHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
History
Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Netherlands -- History -- House of Habsburg, 1477-1556 -- Fiction
So sword Silence was handed to him, and he slung it over his shoulder.
Foy looked at the kneeling Elsa, and he looked at his sword. Then an
idea struck him, and he looked at the face of Adrian, his brother, whom
he had last seen when the said Adrian ran to warn him and Martin at the
factory, for though he knew that he was fighting with his father among
the Spaniards, during the siege they had never met. Even then, in that
dire extremity, with a sudden flash of thought he wondered how it
happened that Adrian, being the villain that he was, had taken the
trouble to come and warn them yonder in Leyden, thereby giving them
time to make a very good defence in the shot tower.
Foy looked up at his brother. Adrian was dressed in the uniform of a
Spanish officer, with a breast-plate over his quilted doublet, and a
steel cap, from the front of which rose a frayed and weather-worn plume
of feathers. The face had changed; there was none of the old pomposity
about those handsome features; it looked worn and cowed, like that of
an animal which has been trained to do tricks by hunger and the use of
the whip. Yet, through all the shame and degradation, Foy seemed to
catch the glint of some kind of light, a light of good desire shining
behind that piteous mask, as the sun sometimes shines through a sullen
cloud. Could it be that Adrian was not quite so bad after all? That he
was, in fact, the Adrian that he, Foy, had always believed him to be,
vain, silly, passionate, exaggerated, born to be a tool and think
himself the master, but beneath everything, well-meaning? Who could
say? At the worst, too, was it not better that Elsa should become the
wife of Adrian than that her life should cease there and then, and by
her lover’s hand?
These things passed through his brain as the lightning passes through
the sky. In an instant his mind was made up and Foy flung down his
sword at the feet of a soldier. As he did so his eyes met the eyes of
Adrian, and to his imagination they seemed to be full of thanks and
promise.
They took them all; with gibes and blows the soldiers haled them away
through the tumult and the agony of the fallen town and its doomed
defenders. Out of the rich sunlight they led them into a house that
still stood not greatly harmed by the cannon-shot, but a little way
from the shattered Ravelin and the gate which had been the scene of
such fearful conflict—a house that was the home of one of the
wealthiest merchants in Haarlem. Here Foy and Elsa were parted. She
struggled to his arms, whence they tore her and dragged her away up the
stairs, but Martin, Martha and Foy were thrust into a dark cellar,
locked in and left.
A while later the door of the cellar was unbarred and some hand, they
could not see whose, passed through it water and food, good food such
as they had not tasted for months; meat and bread and dried herrings,
more than they could eat of them.
“Perhaps it is poisoned,” said Foy, smelling at it hungrily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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