The Historical Nights' Entertainment by Rafael Sabatini (most important books to read .txt) đź“–
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fortunes for some years now, a born leader of men, a fellow of
infinite address at arms and resource in battle, and of a bold,
reckless courage that nothing could ever daunt. It was perhaps this
last quality that rendered him so esteemed of Charles, himself named
the Bold, whose view of courage was that it was a virtue so lofty
that in the nature of its possessor there could, perforce, be
nothing mean.
So now, to mark his esteem of this stalwart German, the Duke made
him Governor of the province of Zeeland, and dispatched him thither
to stamp out there any lingering sparks of revolt, and to rule it
in his name as ducal lieutenant.
Thus, upon a fair May morning, came Claud of Ryhnsault and his hardy
riders to the town of Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, to take up
his residence at the Gravenhof in the main square, and thence to
dispense justice throughout that land of dykes in his master’s
princely name. This justice the German captain dispensed with
merciless rigour, conceiving that to be the proper way to uproot
rebellious tendencies. It was inevitable that he should follow such
a course, impelled to it by a remorseless cruelty in his nature, of
which the Duke his master had seen no hint, else he might have
thought twice before making him Governor of Zeeland, for Charles
- despite his rigour when treachery was to be punished - was a just
and humane prince.
Now, amongst those arrested and flung into Middelburg gaol as a
result of Rhynsault’s ruthless perquisitions and inquisitions was
a wealthy young burgher named Philip Danvelt. His arrest was
occasioned by a letter signed “Philip Danvelt” found in the house
of a marked rebel who had been first tortured and then hanged. The
letter, of a date immediately preceding the late rising, promised
assistance in the shape of arms and money.
Brought before Rhynsault for examination, in a cheerless hall of
the Gravenhof, Danvelt’s defence was a denial upon oath that he had
ever taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of
the letter found, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter
made everything very simple and clear. At the date it bore he had
been away at Flushing marrying a wife, whom he had since brought
thence to Middelburg. It was ludicrous, he urged, to suppose that
in such a season - of all seasons in a man’s life - he should have
been concerned with rebellion or correspondence with rebels, and,
urging this, he laughed again.
Now, the German captain did not like burghers who laughed in his
presence. It argued a lack of proper awe for the dignity of his
office and the importance of his person. From his high seat at
the Judgment-board, flanked by clerks and hedged about by
men-at-arms, he scowled upon the flaxen-haired, fresh-complexioned
young burgher who bore himself so very easily. He was a big,
handsome man, this Rhynsault, of perhaps some thirty years of age.
His thick hair was of a reddish brown, and his beardless face was
cast in bold lines and tanned by exposure to the colour of mahogany,
save where the pale line of a scar crossed his left cheek.
“Yet, I tell you, the letter bears your signature,” he grumbled
sourly.
“My name, perhaps,” smiled the amiable Danvelt, “but assuredly not
my signature.”
“Herrgott!” swore the German captain. “Is this a riddle? What is
the difference?”
Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be
mildly insolent.
“It is a riddle that the meanest of your clerks there can read for
you,” said he.
The Governor’s blue eyes gleamed like steel as they, fastened upon
Danvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull
flush crept into his cheeks. Then he swore.
“Beim blute Gottes!” quoth he, “do you whet your trader’s wit upon
me, scum?”
And to the waiting men-at-arms:
“Take him back to his dungeon,” he commanded, “that in its quiet
he may study a proper carriage before he is next brought before us.”
Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pertness
and to reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault,
it was not only the guilty who had need to go warily.
The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt. His secretary, on
his immediate right, leaned towards him.
“It were easy to test the truth of the man’s assertion,” said he.
“Let his servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when
he was in Flushing and when married.”
“Aye,” growled von Rhynsault. “Let it be done. I don’t doubt we
shall discover that the dog was lying.”
But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt’s
household and his wife stood before the Governor to answer his
questions. Their replies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had
told, and appeared in other ways to place it beyond all doubt that
he had taken no part, in deed or even in thought, in the rebellion
against the Duke of Burgundy. His wife protested it solemnly and
piteously.
“To this I can swear, my lord,” she concluded. “I am sure no
evidence can be brought against him, who was ever loyal and ever
concerned with his affairs and with me at the time in question.
My lord” - she held out her hands towards the grim German, and her
lovely eyes gleamed with unshed tears of supplication - “I implore
you to believe me, and in default of witnesses against him to
restore my husband to me.”
Rhynsault’s blue eyes kindled now as they considered her, and his
full red lips slowly parted in the faintest and most inscrutable
of smiles. She was very fair to look upon - of middle height and
most exquisite shape. Her gown, of palest saffron, edged with fur,
high-waisted according to the mode, and fitted closely to the
gently swelling bust, was cut low to display the white perfection
of her neck. Her softly rounded face looked absurdly childlike
under the tall-crowned hennin, from which a wispy veil floated
behind her as she moved.
In silence, then, for a spell, the German mercenary pondered her
with those slowly kindling eyes, that slowly spreading, indefinite
smile. Then he stirred, and to his secretary he muttered shortly:
“The woman lies. In private I may snare the truth from her.”
He rose - a tall, massively imposing figure in a low-girdled tunic
of deep purple velvet, open at the breast, and gold-laced across a
white silken undervest.
“There is some evidence,” he informed her gruffly. “Come with me,
and you shall see it for yourself.”
He led the way from that cheerless hall by a dark corridor to a
small snug room, richly hung and carpeted, where a servant waited.
He dismissed the fellow, and in the same breath bade her enter,
watching her the while from under lowered brows. One of her women
had followed; but admittance was denied her. Danvelt’s wife must
enter his room alone.
Whilst she waited there, with scared eyes and fluttering bosom, he
went to take from an oaken coffer the letter signed “Philip Danvelt.”
He folded the sheet so that the name only was to be read, and came
to thrust it under her eyes.
“What name is that?” he asked her gruffly.
Her answer was very prompt.
“It is my husband’s, but not the writing - it is another hand; some
other Philip Danvelt; there will be others in Zeeland.”
He laughed softly, looking at her ever with that odd intentness,
and under his gaze she shrank and cowered in terror; it spoke to her
of some nameless evil; the tepid air of the luxurious room was
stifling her.
“If I believed you, your husband would be delivered from his prison
- from all danger; and he stands, I swear to you, in mortal peril.”
“Ah, but you must believe me. There are others who can bear witness.”
“I care naught for others,” he broke in, with harsh and arrogant
contempt. Then he softened his voice to a lover’s key. “But I might
accept your word that this is not your husband’s hand, even though
I did not believe you.”
She did not understand, and so she could only stare at him with those
round, brown eyes of hers dilating, her lovely cheeks blanching with
horrid fear.
“Why, see,” he said at length, with an easy, gruff good-humour, “I
place the life of Philip Danvelt in those fair hands to do with as
you please. Surely, sweeting, you will not be so unkind as to
destroy it.”
And as he spoke his face bent nearer to her own, his flaming eyes
devoured her, and his arm slipped softly, snake-like round her to
draw her to him. But before it had closed its grip she had started
away, springing back in horror, an outcry already on her pale lips.
“One word,” he admonished her sharply, “and it speaks your husband’s
doom!”
“Oh, let me go, let me go!” she cried in anguish.
“And leave your husband in the hangman’s hands?” he asked.
“Let me go! Let me go!” was all that she could answer him,
expressing the only thought of which in that dread moment her mind
was capable.
That and the loathing on her face wounded his vanity for this beast
was vain. His manner changed, and the abysmal brute in him was
revealed in the anger he displayed. With foul imprecations he drove
her out.
Next day a messenger from the Governor waited upon her at her house
with a brief note to inform her that her husband would be hanged
upon the morrow. Incredulity was succeeded by a numb, stony,
dry-eyed grief, in which she sat alone for hours - a woman entranced.
At last, towards dusk, she summoned a couple of her grooms to
attend and light her, and made her way, ever in that odd
somnambulistic state, to the gaol of Middelburg. She announced
herself to the head gaoler as the wife of Philip Danvelt, lying
under sentence of death, and that she was come to take her last
leave of him. It was not a thing to be denied, nor had the gaoler
any orders to deny it.
So she was ushered into the dank cell where Philip waited for his
doom, and by the yellow wheel of light of the lantern that hung
from the shallow vaulted ceiling she beheld the ghastly change
that the news of impending death had wrought in him. No longer
was he the self-assured young burgher who, conscious of his
innocence and worldly importance, had used a certain careless
insolence with the Governor of Zeeland. Here she beheld a man of
livid and distorted face, wild-eyed, his hair and garments in
disarray, suggesting the physical convulsions to which he had
yielded in his despair and rage.
“Sapphira!” he cried at sight of her. A sigh of anguish and he
flung himself, shuddering and sobbing, upon her breast. She put
her arms about him, soothed him gently, and drew him back to the
wooden chair from which he had leapt to greet her.
He took his head in his hands and poured out the fierce anguish of
his soul. To die innocent as he was, to be the victim of an
arbitrary, unjust power! And to perish at his age!
Hearing him rave, she shivered out of an agony of compassion and
also of some terror for herself. She would that he found it
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