The First Sir Percy · I · Chapter 1 4 (1/3)

IV

If a stranger travelling through Gelderland these days had thought it fit to inquire from a native whether that particular molen upon the Veluwe was doing work or was inhabited, he would of a certainty have been told that the only possible inhabitants of the molen were gnomes and sprites, and that if any corn was ground there it could only be in order to bake bread for the devil’s dinner.

The mill was disused and uninhabited, had been for many years⁠—a quarter of a century or more probably⁠—so any and every native of Gelderland and Utrecht would have emphatically averred. Nevertheless, on this same memorable night in March, 1624, there were evident signs of life⁠—human life⁠—about that solitary and archaic molen on the Veluwe. Tiny slits of light showed clearly from certain angles through the chinks of the wooden structure; there were vague sounds of life and movement in and about the place; the weatherworn boards creaked and the timber groaned under more tangible pressure than that of the winds. Nay, what’s more two horses were tethered down below, under the shelter afforded by the overhanging platform. These horses were saddled; they had nosebags attached to their bridles, and blankets thrown across their withers; all of which signs denoted clearly, methinks, that for once the mill was inhabited by something more material than ghosts.

More ponderous, too, than ghoulish footsteps were the sounds of slow pacing up and down the floor of the millhouse, and of two voices, now raised to loud argument, now sunk to a mere cautious whisper.

Two men were, in effect, inside the millhouse at this hour. One of them⁠—tall, lean, dark in well-worn, almost ragged, black doublet and cloak, his feet and legs encased in huge boots of untanned leather which reached midway up his long thighs, his black bonnet pushed back from his tall, narrow forehead and grizzled hair⁠—was sitting upon the steps of the steep, ladder-like stairs which led to the floor above; the other⁠—shorter, substantially, even richly clad, and wearing a plumed hat and fur-lined cloak, was the one who paced up and down the dust-covered floor. He was younger than his friend, had fair, curly hair, and a silken, fair moustache, which hid the somewhat weak lines of his mouth.

An old, battered lantern, hanging to a nail in the wall, threw a weird, flickering light upon the scene, vaguely illumined the gaunt figure of the man upon the steps, his large hooked nose and ill-shaven chin, and long thin hands that looked like the talons of some bird of prey.

“You cannot stay on here forever, my good Stoutenburg,” the younger of the two men said, with some impatience. “Sooner or later you will be discovered, and⁠—”

He paused, and the other gave a grim laugh.

“And there is a price of two thousand guilders upon my head, you mean, my dear Heemskerk?” he said dryly.

“Well, I did mean that,” rejoined Heemskerk, with a shrug of the shoulders. “The people round about here are very poor. They might hold your father’s memory in veneration, but there is not one who would not sell you to the Stadtholder if he found you out.”

Again Stoutenburg laughed. He seemed addicted to the habit of this mirthless, almost impish laugh.

“I was not under the impression, believe me, my friend,” he said, “that Christian charity or loyalty to my father’s memory would actuate a worthy Dutch peasant into respecting my sanctuary. But I am not satisfied with what I have learned. I must know more. I have promised De Berg,” he concluded firmly.

“And De Berg counts on you,” Heemskerk rejoined. “But,” he added, with a shrug of the shoulders, “you know what he is. One of those men who, so long as they gain their ambitious ends, count every life cheap but their own.”

“Well,” answered Stoutenburg, “ ’tis not I, in truth, who would place a high price on mine.”

“Easy, easy, my good man,” quoth the other, with a smile. “Hath it, perchance, not occurred to you that your obstinacy in leading this owl-like life here is putting a severe strain on the devotion of your friends?”

“I make no appeal to the devotion of my friends,” answered Stoutenburg curtly. “They had best leave me alone.”

“We cannot leave you to suffer cold and hunger, mayhap to perish of want in this Godforsaken eyrie.”

“I’m not starving,” was Stoutenburg’s ungracious answer to the young man’s kindly solicitude; “and have plenty of inner fire to keep me warm.”

He paused, and a dark scowl contracted his gaunt features, gave him an expression that in the dim and flickering light appeared almost diabolical.

“I know,” said Heemskerk, with a comprehending not. “Still those thoughts of revenge?”

“Always!” replied the other, with sombre calm.

“Twice you have failed.”

“The third time I shall succeed,” Stoutenburg affirmed with fierce emphasis. “Maurice of Nassau sent my father to the scaffold⁠—my father, to whom he owed everything: money, power, success. The day that Olden Barneveldt died at the hands of that accursed ingrate I, his son, swore that the Stadtholder should perish by mine. As you say, I have twice failed in my attempt.

“My brother Groeneveld has gone the way of my father. I am an outlaw with a price upon my head, and my poor mother has three of us to weep for now, instead of one. But I have not forgotten mine oath, nor yet my revenge. I’ll be even with Maurice of Nassau yet. All this fighting is but foolery. He is firmly established as Stadtholder of the United Provinces⁠—the sort of man who sees others die for him. He may lose a town here, gain a city there, but he is the sovereign lord of an independent State, and his sacred person is better guarded than was that of his worthier father.

“But it is his life that I want,” Stoutenburg went on fiercely, and his thin, claw-like hand clutched in imaginary dagger and struck out through the air as if against the breast of the hated foe. “For this I’ll scheme and strive. Nay, I’ll never rest until I have him at my mercy as Gérard in his day held William the Silent at his.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Heemskerk hotly. “You would not emulate that abominable assassin!”

“Why not call me a justiciary?” Stoutenburg retorted dryly. “The Archduchess would load me with gifts. Spain would proclaim me a hero. Assassin or executioner⁠—it only depends on the political point of view. But doubt me not for a single instant, Heemskerk. Maurice of Nassau will die by my hand.”

“That is why you intend to remain here?”

“Yes. Until I have found out his every future plan.”

“But how can you do it? You dare not show yourself abroad.”

“That is my business,” replied Stoutenburg quietly, “and my secret.”

“I respect your secret,” answered Heemskerk, with a shrug of the shoulders. “It was only my anxiety for your personal safety and for your comfort that brought me hither tonight.”

“And De Berg’s desire to learn what I have spied,” Stoutenburg retorted, with a sneer.

“De Berg is ready to cross the Ijssel, and Isembourg to start from Kleve. De Berg proposes to attack Arnheim. He wishes to know what forces are inside the city and how they are disposed, and if the Stadtholder hath an army wherewith to come to their relief or to offer us battle, with any chance of success.”

“You can tell De Berg to send you or another back to me here when the crescent moon is forty-eight hours older. I shall have all the information then that he wants.”

“That will be good news for him and for Isembourg. There has been too much time wasted as it is.”

“Time has not been wasted. The frosts have in the meanwhile made the Veluwe a perfect track for men and cannon.”

“For Nassau’s men and Nassau’s cannon, as well as for our own,” Heemskerk rejoined dryly.

“A week hence, if all’s well, Maurice of Nassau will be too sick to lead his armies across the Veluwe or elsewhere,” said Stoutenburg quietly, and looked up with such a strange, fanatical glitter in his deep-sunk eyes that the younger man gave an involuntary gasp of horror.

“You mean⁠—” he ejaculated under his breath; and instinctively drawing back some paces away from his friend, stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

“I mean,” Stoutenburg went on slowly and deliberately, “that De Berg had best wait patiently a little while longer. Maurice of Nassau will be a dying man ere long.”

His harsh voice, sunk to a strange, impressive whisper, died away in a long-drawn-out sigh, half of impatience, wholly of satisfaction. Heemskerk remained for a moment or two absolutely motionless, still staring at the man before him as if the latter were some kind of malevolent and fiend-like wraith, conjured up by devilish magic to scare the souls of men. Nor did Stoutenburg add anything to his last cold-blooded pronouncement. He seemed to be deriving a grim satisfaction in watching the play of horror and of fear upon Heemskerk’s usually placid features.

Thus for a space of a few moments the old molen appeared to sink back to its habitual ghost-haunted silence, whilst the hovering spirits of Revenge and Hate called up by the sorcery of a man’s evil passions held undisputed sway.

“You mean⁠—” reiterated Heemskerk after awhile, vaguely, stupidly, babbling like a child.

“I mean,” Stoutenburg gave impatient answer, “that you should know me well enough by now, my good Heemskerk, to realize that I am no swearer of futile oaths. Last year, when I was over in Madrid, I cultivated the friendship of one Francis Borgia. You have heard of him, no doubt; they call him the Prince of Poets over there. He is a direct descendant of the illustrious Cesare, and I soon discovered that most of the secrets possessed by his far-famed ancestor were known to my friend the poet.”

“Poisons!” Heemskerk murmured, under his breath.

“Poisons!” the other assented dryly. “And other things.”

With finger and thumb of his right hand, he extracted a couple of tiny packets from a secret pocket of his doublet, toyed with them for awhile, undid the packets and gazed meditatively on their contents. Then he called to his friend. “They’ll not hurt you,” he said sardonically. “Look at this powder, now. Is it not innocent in appearance? Yet it is of incalculable value to the man who doth not happen to possess a straight eye or a steady hand with firearms. For add but a pinch of it to the charge in your pistol, them aim at your enemy’s head, and if you miss killing him, or if he hold you at his mercy, you very soon have him at yours. The fumes from the detonation will cause instant and total blindness.”

Despite his horror of the whole thing, Heemskerk had instinctively drawn nearer to his friend. Now, at these words, he stepped back again quickly, as if he had trodden upon an adder. Stoutenburg, with his wonted cynicism, only shrugged his shoulders.

“Have I not said that it would not hurt you?” he said, with a sneer. “In itself it is harmless enough, and only attains its useful properties when fired in connection with gunpowder. But when used as I have explained it to you, it is deadly and unerring. I saw it at work once or twice in Spain. The Prince of Poets prides himself on its invention. He gave me some of the precious powder, and I was glad of it. It may prove useful one day.”

He carefully closed the first packet and slipped it back into the secret receptacle of his doublet; then he fell to contemplating the contents of the second packet⁠—half a dozen tiny pillules, which he kept rolling about in the palm of his hand.

“These,” he mused, “are of more proved value for my purpose. Have not De Berg,” he added, with a sardonic grin, as he looked once more on his friend, “and the Archduchess, too, heard it noised abroad that Maurice of Nassau hath of late suffered from a mysterious complaint which already threatens to cut him off in his prime, and which up to now hath baffled those learned leeches who were brought over specially from England to look after the health of the exalted patient? Have not you and your friends, my good Heemskerk, heard the rumour too?”

The young man nodded in reply. His parched tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth; he could not utter a word. Stoutenburg laughed.

“Ah!” he said, with a nod of understanding. “I see that the tale did reach your ears. You understand, therefore, that I must remain here for awhile longer.”

And with absolute calm and a perfectly steady hand, he folded up the pillules in the paper screw and put them back in his pocket.

“I could not leave my work unfinished,” he said simply.

“But how⁠—” Heemskerk contrived to stammer at last; and his voice to his own ears sounded hoarse and toneless, like a voice out of the grave.

“How do I contrive to convey these pillules into the Stadtholder’s stomach?” retorted Stoutenburg, with a coarse chuckle. “Well, my friend, that is still my secret. But De Berg and the others must trust me a while longer⁠—trust me and then thank me when the time comes. The Stadtholder once out of the way, the resistance of the United Provinces must of itself collapse like a house of cards. There need be no more bloodshed after that⁠—no more sanguinary conflicts. Indeed, I shall be acclaimed as a public benefactor⁠—when I succeed.”

“Then⁠—then you are determined to⁠—to remain here?” Heemskerk murmured, feeling all the while that anything he said was futile and irrelevant.

But how can a man speak when he is confronted with a hideous spectre that mocks him, even whilst it terrifies?

“I shall remain here for the present,” Stoutenburg replied, with perfect coolness.

“I⁠—I’d best go, then,” the other suggested vaguely.

“You had best wait until the daylight. ’Tis easy to lose one’s way on the Veluwe.”

The young man waited for a moment, irresolute. Clearly he was longing to get away, to put behind him this ghoul-infested molen, with its presiding genii of hatred and of crime. Nay, men like Heemskerk, cultivated and gently nurtured, understood the former easily enough. Men and women knew how to hate fiercely these days, and there were few sensations more thoroughly satisfying than that of holding an enemy at the sword’s point.

But poison! The slow, insidious weapon that worked like a reptile, stealthily and in the dark! Bah! Heemskerk felt a dizziness overcome him; sheer physical nausea threatened to rob him of his faculties.

But there was undoubted danger in venturing out on the arid wild, in the darkness and with nought but instinct and a few half-obliterated footmarks to guide one along the track. The young man went to the door and pulled it open. A gust of ice-laden air blew into the great, empty place, and almost knocked the old lantern off its peg. Heemskerk stepped out into the night. He felt literally frightened, and, like a nervous child, had the sensation of someone or something standing close behind him and on the point of putting a spectral hand upon his shoulder.

But Stoutenburg had remained sitting on the steps, apparently quite unmoved. No doubt he was accustomed to look his abominable project straight in the face. He even shrugged his shoulders in derision when he caught sight of Heemskerk’s white face and horror-filled eyes.

“You cannot start while this blind man’s holiday lasts,” he said lightly. “Can I induce you to partake of some of the refreshment you were good enough to bring for me?”

But Heemskerk gave him no answer. He was trying to make up his mind what to do; and Stoutenburg, with another careless laugh, rose from his seat and strode across the great barn-like space. There, in a remote corner, where sacks of uncrushed grain were wont to be stacked, stood a basket containing a few simple provisions; a hunk of stale bread, a piece of cheese and two or three bottles of wine. Stoutenburg stooped and picked one of these up. He was whistling a careless tune. Then suddenly he paused, his long back still bent, his arm with the hand that held the bottle resting across his knee, his face, alert and hawk-like, turned in an instant toward the door.

“What was that?” he queried hurriedly.