LYSBETH by H. RIDER HAGGARD (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

teeth and staggered on, guided by the light gleaming faintly on the sword of Ramiro--to whatever haven that sword should lead him.

Before dawn broke it had led him out of Leyden.

 

It was after ten o'clock that night when a woman, wrapped in a rough frieze coat, knocked at the door of the house in the Bree Straat and asked for the Vrouw van Goorl.

"My mistress lies between life and death with the plague," answered the servant. "Get you gone from this pest-house, whoever you are."

"I do not fear the plague," said the visitor. "Is the Jufvrouw Elsa Brant still up? Then tell her that Martha, called the Mare, would speak with her."

"She can see none at such an hour," answered the servant.

"Tell her I come from Foy van Goorl."

"Enter," said the servant wondering, and shut the door behind her.

A minute later Elsa, pale-faced, worn, but still beautiful, rushed into the room, gasping, "What news? Does he live? Is he well?"

"He lives, lady, but he is not well, for the wound in his thigh has festered and he cannot walk, or even stand. Nay, have no fear, time and clean dressing will heal him, and he lies in a safe place."

In the rapture of her relief Elsa seized the woman's hand, and would have kissed it.

"Touch it not, it is bloodstained," said Martha, drawing her hand away.

"Blood? Whose blood is on it?" asked Elsa, shrinking back.

"Whose blood?" answered Martha with a hollow laugh; "why that of many a Spanish man. Where, think you, lady, that the Mare gallops of nights? Ask it of the Spaniards who travel by the Haarlemer Meer. Aye, and now Red Martin is with me and we run together, taking our tithe where we can gather it."

"Oh! tell me no more," said Elsa. "From day to day it is ever the same tale, a tale of death. Nay, I know your wrongs have driven you mad, but that a woman should slay----"

"A woman! I am no woman; my womanhood died with my husband and my son. Girl, I tell you that I am no woman; I am a Sword of God myself appointed to the sword. And so to the end I kill, and kill and kill till the hour when I am killed. Go, look in the church yonder, and see who hangs to the high arm of the Rood--the fat Abbe Dominic. Well, I sent him there to-night; to-morrow you will hear how I turned parson and preached a sermon--aye, and Ramiro and Adrian called van Goorl, and Simon the spy, should have joined him there, only I could not find them because their hour has not come. But the idols are down and the paintings burnt, and the gold and silver and jewels are cast upon the dung-heap. Swept and garnished is the temple, made clean and fit for the Lord to dwell in."

"Made clean with the blood of murdered priests, and fit by the smoke of sacrilege?" broke in Elsa. "Oh! woman, how can you do such wicked things and not be afraid?"

"Afraid?" she answered. "Those who have passed through hell have no more fear; death I seek, and when judgment comes I will say to the Lord: What have I done that the Voice which speaks to me at night did not tell me to do? Look down, the blood of my husband and my son still smokes upon the ground. Hearken, Lord God, it cries to Thee for vengeance!" and as she spoke she lifted her blackened hands and shook them. Then she went on.

"They murdered your father, why do you not kill them also? You are small and weak and timid, and could not run by night and use the knife as I do, but there is poison. I can brew it and bring it to you, made from marsh herbs, white as water and deadly as Death itself. What! You shrink from such things? Well, girl, once I was beautiful as you and as loving and beloved, and I can do them for my love's sake--for my love's sake. Nay, /I/ do not do them, they are done through me. The Sword am I, the Sword! And you too are a sword, though you know it not, though you see it not, you, maiden, so soft and white and sweet, are a Sword of Vengeance working the death of men; I, in my way, you in yours, paying back, back, back, full measure pressed down and running over to those appointed to die. The treasure of Hendrik Brant, your treasure, it is red with blood, every piece of it. I tell you that the deaths that I have done are but as a grain of sand to a bowlful compared to those which your treasure shall do. There, maid, I fright you. Have no fear, it is but Mad Martha, who, when she sees, must speak, and through the flames in the kirk to-night I saw visions such as I have not seen for years."

"Tell me more of Foy and Martin," said Elsa, who was frightened and bewildered.

At her words a change seemed to come over this woman, at once an object of pity and of terror, for the scream went out of her voice and she answered quietly,

"They reached me safe enough five days ago, Red Martin carrying Foy upon his back. From afar I saw him, a naked man with a named sword, and knew him by his size and beard. And oh! when I heard his tale I laughed as I have not laughed since I was young."

"Tell it me," said Elsa.

And she told it while the girl listened with clasped hands.

"Oh! it was brave, brave," she murmured. "Red Martin forcing to the door and Foy, weak and wounded, slaying the warder. Was there ever such a story?"

"Men are brave and desperate with the torture pit behind them," answered Martha grimly; "but they did well, and now they are safe with me where no Spaniard can find them unless they hunt in great companies after the ice forms and the reeds are dead."

"Would that I could be there also," said Elsa, "but I tend his mother who is very sick, so sick that I do not know whether she will live or die."

"Nay, you are best here among your people," answered Martha. "And now that the Spaniards are driven out, here Foy shall return also so soon as it is safe for him to travel; but as yet he cannot stir, and Red Martin stays to watch him. Before long, however, he must move, for I have tidings that the Spaniards are about to besiege Haarlem with a great army, and then the Mere will be no longer safe for us, and I shall leave it to fight with the Haarlem folk."

"And Foy and Martin will return?"

"I think so, if they are not stopped."

"Stopped?"--and she put her hand upon her heart.

"The times are rough, Jufvrouw Elsa. Who that breathes the air one morning can know what breath will pass his nostrils at the nightfall? The times are rough, and Death is king of them. The hoard of Hendrik Brant is not forgotten, nor those who have its key. Ramiro slipped through my hands to-night, and doubtless by now is far away from Leyden seeking the treasure."

"The treasure! Oh! that thrice accursed treasure!" broke in Elsa, shivering as though beneath an icy wind; "would that we were rid of it."

"That you cannot be until it is appointed, for is this not the heritage which your father died to save? Listen. Do you know, lady, where it lies hid?" and she dropped her voice to a whisper.

Elsa shook her head, saying:

"I neither know nor wish to know."

"Still it is best that you should be told, for we three who have the secret may be killed, every one of us--no, not the place, but where to seek a clue to the place."

Elsa looked at her questioningly, and Martha, leaning forward, whispered in her ear:

"/It lies in the hilt of the Sword Silence/. If Red Martin should be taken or killed, seek out his sword and open the hilt. Do you understand?"

Elsa nodded and answered, "But if aught happens to Martin the sword may be lost."

Martha shrugged her shoulders. "Then the treasure will be lost also, that is if I am gone. It is as God wills; but at least in name you are the heiress, and you should know where to find its secret, which may serve you or your country in good stead in time to come. I give you no paper, I tell you only where to seek a paper, and now I must be gone to reach the borders of the Mere by daybreak. Have you any message for your love, lady?"

"I would write a word, if you can wait. They will bring you food."

"Good; write on and I will eat. Love for the young and meat for the old, and for both let God be thanked."

CHAPTER XXV

THE RED MILL

After a week's experience of that delectable dwelling and its neighbourhood, Adrian began to grow weary of the Red Mill. Nine or ten Dutch miles to the nor'west of Haarlem is a place called Velsen, situated on the borders of the sand-dunes, to the south of what is known to-day as the North Sea Canal. In the times of which this page of history tells, however, the canal was represented by a great drainage dyke, and Velsen was but a deserted village. Indeed, hereabouts all the country was deserted, for some years before a Spanish force had passed through it, burning, slaying, laying waste, so that few were left to tend the windmills and repair the dyke. Holland is a country won from swamps and seas, and if the water is not pumped out of it, and the ditches are not cleaned, very quickly it relapses into primeval marsh; indeed, it is fortunate if the ocean, bursting through the feeble barriers reared by the industry of man, does not turn it into vast lagoons of salt water.

Once the Red Mill had been a pumping station, which, when the huge sails worked, delivered the water from the fertile meadows into the great dyke, whence it ran through sluice gates to the North Sea. Now, although the embankment of this dyke still held, the meadows had gone back into swamps. Rising out of these--for it was situated upon a low mound of earth, raised, doubtless, as a point of refuge by marsh-dwellers who lived and died before history began, towered the wreck of a narrow-waisted windmill, built of brick below and wood above, of very lonesome and commanding appearance in its gaunt solitude. There were no houses near it, no cattle grazed about its foot; it was a dead thing in a dead landscape. To the left, but separated from it by a wide and slimy dyke, whence in times of flood the thick, brackish water trickled to the plain, stretched an arid area of sand-dunes, clothed with sparse grass, that grew like bristles upon the back of a wild hog. Beyond these dunes the ocean roared and moaned and whispered hungrily as the wind and weather stirred its depths. In front, not fifty paces away, ran the big dyke like a raised road, secured by embankments, and discharging day by day its millions of gallons of water into the sea. But these embankments were weakening now, and here and there could be seen a spot which looked as though a giant ploughshare had been drawn up them, for a groove of brown earth scarred the face of green, where in some winter flood the water had poured over to find its level, cutting them like cheese, but when its volume sank, leaving them still standing, and as yet sufficient for their purpose.

To the right again and behind, were more marshes, broken only in the distance by the towers of Haarlem and the spires of village churches, marshes where