A Loyal Traitor

by H. C. Bailey

A LOYAL TRAITOR

BEING AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF RAOUL, GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE

By H. C. BAILEY

 

VALDEZ had set up his rest before Leyden, and the town was starving in his grip. Its fire signals shone through the dark across the flat lands of the Rhine mouth and cried aloud for help. William of Orange, William the Silent, brooding at Delft over the fate of his people, saw the red glare night by night; and at last: "Liever bedorven dan verloren Land," said he, "Better drown the land than lose it," and bade open the sluices and break the dikes and call the ocean in aid. And the gray waves rose over the land, and Boisot brought his wild Zeelanders in two hundred rowboats of war to bear Leyden bread across the waters. By night and day, by land and wave, the Zeelanders fought the Grand Commander's armies, harpooned them like fishes, tore out their hearts and ate them.

On a morning just before the dawn, when nerves are tightest strained, the guard at the Eastern Watergate suffered a sore shock. They were all duly at their posts, two on high, four on the ground, peering out through the dim light to the Spanish pickets, when lo, a great gurgle and a sputtering behind them, and they turned to see one who had come into Leyden under water. They gathered round him and gaped speechless while he dripped. Their starved faces were like in the grayness to fleshless skulls.

"Oh, I belong to this world," Raoul gasped. "But do you?"

"We are the guards."

"You are sure you are not corpses?"

"And we do not jest, fellow."

"Dieu merci!" Raoul squeezed the water out of his breeches. "Graciously present me now to the illustrious burgomaster."

"What have you to do with him?"

"I will tell him when I see him."

They muttered a little, and then two of them took him, shedding a small stream of Rhine water, to the burgomaster's house. Raoul was brought into the hall, and stood, he remarks, "on the tiles to drain," before they took him into the presence of Adrian van der Werf, tall, gaunt, swarthy. "And you, sir?" he asked.

"I, sir? Why, I, sir, am Raoul"—he made a magnificent gesture—"Raoul de Tout le Monde."

The burgomaster was not impressed. "M. de Tout le Monde, your errand?"

Raoul fished out of his damp bosom a tiny oilskin packet, and presented it.

The burgomaster tore it open; then: "From the Prince!" says he, surprised, and looked at Raoul.

"As your intelligence perceives," says Raoul airily.

You will find that letter in the chroniclers. It promised all that man might do in aid. It begged the town hold out yet. It spoke of hope and courage and faith, as William the Silent well knew how.

The burgomaster read, and his hollow eye brightened. "I thank you, sir, I thank you," he said eagerly. "And now can I serve you?"

"Dry me and feed me."

"Why, sir, for the drying, willingly. And for the food—you shall share all I have."

Raoul was brought to the cleanest room he had ever seen. In a little while the burgomaster came to him again with an armful of dry clothes, stood waiting while Raoul disrobed, seemed to desire to say something. "Sir—sir"—he hesitated—"you have come through the Spanish lines; you know their strength: do you think we may be relieved?"

Raoul in his shirt struck an attitude. "Master burgomaster," he cried, "do you think there is a God?"

"Aye, sir, aye." The burgomaster bowed his head, and stood silent a moment. "I thank you," he said then, and went out.

"Ah," says Raoul, getting out of his shirt, "but I think there is a devil, too."

After a while a lean servant brought him a scrap of barley bread and a small steaming basin of stew. "Oh, you are too generous, friend," Raoul sneered.

"Then give me them back, master."

"Hum," says Raoul, and sniffed at the stew and probed it. "Now what is this?"

"Better not ask," growled the servant.

Raoul rubbed his chin and stared. "Hum," says he again. "And what is the vintage of your wine?"

"All the wine is kept for the women and the sick," said the servant, and left him.

"For the women who do not like it; for the sick who cannot taste it. Bah—and again bah!" says Raoul, peevishly, and sniffed again at the stew. Then: "Come, Raoul, never be a coward," says he, and ate it up. Little the better for it, he lay back and gloomily stared at his legs, which were overwhelmed in the burgomaster's lengthy breeches.

A slip of a girl came in upon him, a dark-haired child with blue eyes big in a wan face. She stared straight at Raoul and said nothing.

"Well, my queen?"

"You are the man that has eaten father's dinner."

"By your Majesty's leave—his breakfast."

"He does not have any breakfast," said the child.

Raoul laughed, and she stared at him still.

"You are just like what I thought," said she.

Raoul stood up in his over-long garments and, laughing, made her a splendid bow—arising from which he beheld through the window men dragging themselves up the trees in the market place.

"Are the gentlemen bird-nesting?" he inquired.

"They are picking the leaves to eat them," said the solemn child.

"I wish them good appetite," said Raoul.

"I think you are a pig," said the child, and twirled round, her short skirts flying wide and her braid of hair, and went out.

Then Raoul, feeling that he could do nothing else in those flapping garments, went to sleep.

A noise in the market place woke him. The lean burghers were crowded together and murmuring, shouting. Raoul lounged yawning to the window. Between two bare limes in the shadow of the church tower stood the burgomaster, tall and gaunt, waving his hat for silence. The tumult died soon, and he spoke. Raoul opened the window. The deep voice came clear.

"I tell you I have made an oath to hold the city. May God give me strength to keep my oath! Your threats do not move me. Here is my sword"—it gleamed in the sunlight—"plunge it into my breast and portion my flesh among you. Take my body to stay your hunger, but hope for no surrender while I am alive." He ended, and a moment's silence changed to a roar of assent.

"There is certainly not much meat on him," said Raoul, and shut the window. Then he huddled himself together after his manner, and considered circumstances. He had eaten all the dinner there was, and was still hungry as a pike. That impressed him deeply.

Endued again in his own clothes, he spent the afternoon lounging about the town.

There was a strange sunset that night, and the air was very still. Only as Raoul stood on the ramparts he seemed to feel (it was hardly hearing) some faint, dull sound, a sound that never grew louder nor ever ceased. Then the sun fell to the horizon, and sky and water paled, and the cloud bank massed heavy and dark. Night came.

They were changing the guards at the gates. The sentries climbed down from the walls. And Raoul climbed down, too—but he climbed to the outer side.

Through the darkness he marched nonchalant to the Spanish camp. When the sentry challenged him, he waved a white kerchief (the burgomaster's, if you care to know), and, professing himself the burgomaster's envoy, was brought to the general's presence in Lammen House.

Don Guzman de Valdez turned in his chair. "Oh, you are the burgomaster's messenger?"

His companion, a bull-necked Italian, glowered at Raoul: "What is your errand, fellow?"

"First, sir, to announce that I have told you a lie. I am not the burgomaster's messenger, but my own. My lie, sir, has achieved. I am in the presence of Don Guzman de Valdez."

Valdez laughed. "I think you will soon be in the devil's, master liar."

"I profess, sir, it could not be more entertaining."

Valdez laughed aloud. "Pray try," said he, and took up a pistol and pointed it at Raoul's breast.

"Sir, you should have precedence thither," said Raoul, quickly, but he did not flinch. "I have come out of Leyden very empty to tell you how you may get in."

Valdez tossed his pistol away, "Expound, my little liar, expound."

"First, sir, I would not be thought anything but a great liar. Nevertheless, I now tell truth. Betwixt the Cowgate and the Tower of Burgundy the mortar is crumbling out of the wall and the wall is weak at the base. Turn your demicannons on that and"—he kissed his hands to the air—"and good night to Leyden. For the which salute I pray only your Excellency's gracious thanks—and a hundred golden florins."

Raoul concluded with a flourish and looked in triumph from one to the other. Borgia glowered and growled:

"Where is this Cowgate, fellow?"

"I will point your guns for you, colonel," Borgia grunted and looked at Valdez, who suddenly broke out:

"Aha! my little liar, you are a jewel. I am Neoptolemus, and Leyden is my Troy."

"Precisely, Excellency. But touching certain florins——"

"'Oh, curst greed of gold!'" quoted Valdez, and leaned back for a coffer and took a bag and tossed it to Raoul.

Raoul had no prejudices. He had turned traitor: he sold man and woman and child to the torture of a Spanish storm. Yes, but he filled his pockets and filled himself—and he slept the sleep of a little child. But that night the wind rose.

All night the west wind howled over Lammen and Leyderdorp, and when they woke the sky gloomed gray like dull steel, and the roaring air was wet. Westward the water heaved rough as the open sea and the crash of breakers came down wind. Borgia stood on the ramparts of Lammen, bull neck and head bare to the blast, and swore. For the water was nearer. The land was drowning. And Boisot's daredevil fleet lay close.

So Borgia came down in a hurry and found Raoul, and began the new battery. But the work dragged. The ground was sodden and heavy, and it was not easy to build the emplacements nor to move the guns, and the guns had far to come. All day they labored, and all day the west wind blew and the driven rain beat down.

Raoul was not the man to pull and haul save under sore constraint. He gave his orders and watched Borgia's Walloons work. As amusement this palled, and in the afternoon he wandered off to the apple orchards that lay close to the town. Darkness came early under that iron sky, and Raoul swaggered on through the twilight. The gale had brought down a host of mellow fruit, and Raoul ate some, and between bites sang. And then: "O Madonna!"

For there under the trees was the wan child of the big blue eyes and long braid of black hair, with a boy of her own age or less, very like her.

Raoul came up to them quickly. ("I count this," says he, "among my mistakes.") "And what do you here, my queen?" he asked.

The girl—her bosom was swollen with apples—looked defiance. "What do you?" she snapped.

"I, my queen, take my ease. But you are like to take death."

"You are a coward," said the girl, and the boy, her brother, thrust himself between her and Raoul.

"Go away, go away. You are bad," he cried, and threatened Raoul with small clinched fists.

"Your majesties," says Raoul, "would be better in bed," and he pointed through the gathering dark.

The children, little wan faces reddening, glared defiance.

"You—Frenchman—Raoul!" Borgia came riding up. "Heh! What are these?"

Raoul drew in his breath. Then he saw a chance for them. He began a lie, and spoke it in Dutch so that the children should know their part and play it.

"Two small friends from——"

But the honest little souls would have none of it. "We are not your friends!" the girl cried.

"——from Leyden, who have been telling me all——"

"We have not told you anything! You are a coward."

"Humph! Who are you?" Borgia leaned forward to look at her.

"I am the burgomaster's daughter, and——"

"Good fortune!" cried Borgia, and snatched at her and caught her up. "Bring the other babe, you—Raoul." And he reined round.

Raoul, as he says, had done his possible. He never attempted more. He picked up the boy and marched off with him, kicking, struggling. And then (Raoul always took thought for himself) he began to boast of the capture. "I saw the little whelps come after the apples, colonel, and I thought I would catch them. One never knows what may be useful. But two pups of the burgomaster's litter! This——"

The girl leaned down from Borgia's saddle and struck him across the eyes.

Borgia laughed. "D'you know, little man, I would like to see the babes thrash you," says he.

Raoul said nothing. He dropped behind Borgia and bit his lips and crushed the boy in his arms till the child gasped for breath. Raoul was not admiring himself. The sensation was new and unpleasant.

So the burgomaster's children came into the Spanish camp.

You are to see a little grim room in Lammen with candles flaring and sputtering, Borgia's bull neck and head, Valdez dark and pretty, and two children little and thin and wan. Raoul stood behind them by the door, his hand clinched on his sword hilt, his face in shadow.

"So you are the burgomaster's progeny, my innocents," says Valdez. "Oh, blessed burgomaster!" He leaned back and his eyes narrowed as he watched them. And the children bore the cruel stare bravely. Only the boy glanced an instant at his sister, and took her hand in his—then he faced the Spaniard, man to man.

Valdez's lips moved. "I have it!" he cried. He was silent a moment, then:

"I have caught my birds, and—eh, my pretties, will you grill prettily?" He leaned forward over the table and chucked the girl's chin. "Do you hear me, sweeting? I will cook you over a slow fire for your longer enjoyment."

And still the little folk (one hopes they did not understand) stood hand in hand, quiet, braving him.

Borgia moved in his chair. "And how does that help us to Leyden?" he growled.

"Colonel, you have no taste," sighed Valdez. "Nor any wit either. I will send to master burgomaster. I will tell him that unless he gives me Leyden he shall see his children grill. Little liar here shall take my message and——"

"Cœur de Dame! no!" Raoul thundered.

"Eh, what, what?" Valdez leaned forward, smiling.

Raoul recovered himself. "Your Excellency will see," he spoke blankly, "that I value my poor life at a little. And for me to go to the burgomaster is to make myself sure of a hanging."

"Sooner or later, does it matter?" Valdez laughed.

"I prefer it," says Raoul, "later."

Valdez turned to the Italian; but before he spoke, "I will see you burned first," growled Borgia, and heaved himself up and strode out. And Raoul followed him.

Raoul tells how the Italian turned upon him on the stair and cursed him in many oaths. He remarks that Borgia was an unreasonable man. Raoul saw the children borne up and locked in the storeroom, where for bed and chair was nothing but the empty oaken chests. Valdez came out in a while smiling, humming.

Raoul had the night to consider himself. After all, you ask, what were the children to him? He had sold all the babes in Leyden to torture. Why should he boggle at two?

But Raoul did not reason like that. In fact, he did not reason at all. "Dieu merci," says he, "I always knew logic was folly, and I am all out of logic." Blue eyes sunk in a wan, worn little face and a child's bosom bulging with apples abode with him all night long. At least, he complains so.

And the west wind howled all night, and all night the driven rain rattled upon the walls, and nearer and nearer came the beat of the waters.

When dawn broke late and pale it showed them little land left. Only the causeways to Zoeterwoude and The Hague kept back the foaming waves, and Boisot's fleet lay within gunshot of Lammen. Borgia, anxious, cursing, turned falconets upon them and drove them out of range, then hurried to counsel with Valdez. But Valdez laughed at him.

For the message had gone to the burgomaster:

 

Most Illustrious:

I have your pretty children. Either you give me the keys of Leyden or you see them grill under your walls.

Valdez.

 

About noontide the wind lulled. About noontide came the burgomaster's answer:

 

To Don Guzman de Valdez:

How you deal with my children you shall account to God. Leyden will never surrender.

Adrian van der Werf.

 

Valdez laughed and went off to tell the children that their father had written to bid him have them cooked. That pleasant jest made, he required a party to plant him stakes and build a fire under the walls of the town. The burghers howled curses and shot at them and killed a few, so Valdez bade bring the children. The two little folk were dragged there in the rain to be a target for their friends' muskets. There they stood, under guard, looking with wild, frightened eyes to the kindly walls and the stakes and the fagots. God knows what they thought, what they felt.

The stakes were planted, the chains were fixed. But the wind had fallen and was almost dead, and as it died came a great rain. The dull heavens opened and a flood came. A flood that soaked the fagots and set them floating away; a flood of rain that swept timber and earth and stone before it like a river in spate. The stakes stood in a pond. And so the poor little folks, fear-numbed in body, in mind, were borne back to Lammen. The heavens would suffer no fire that day. On Leyden walls the burghers sang a psalm, but Valdez stood out, the rain streaming from his helmet, and shouted: "To-morrow, to-morrow!"

That night in the deluge Borgia finished his battery, and he, too, as the wet darkness covered all, went back to camp with a growl—"To-morrow."

And Raoul? Raoul had heard the burgomaster's answer, and cursed him heartily. Why in the name of heaven or hell could the man not yield and save his babes' skin? You would not expect Raoul to understand. But the man had not yielded. And Raoul hovered like a restless dog about Valdez's heels, and watched while the stakes and chains were fixed, and watched the little, wan, fear-wrought faces, and gnawed his nails. Then came the deluge, and Raoul stood very still and rubbed his eyes like a man just waked. "Hola, Raoul!" says he to himself, "God is doing something. Help Him then."

Back he hurried to Lammen. He was first into Lammen House.

With nightfall the wind rose again, but still the rain beat pitilessly down. The soldiers huddled together in hut and cottage and barn, chilled and steaming, heard the rising waves crash on the causeways, and cursed Leyden and Valdez and their fate and themselves.

In an upper room in Lammen House, all in the dark, two children knelt together hand in hand, and prayed. Behind them silently rose the lid of the largest chest. Silently Raoul stepped out and stood on tiptoe, listening. There was no sound save the little thin voices murmuring, and the roar of the storm. Raoul drew his cloak about him and touched the boy's shoulder.

"Hush!" says he in a whisper, as the children started up.

They could but see him dimly in the dark. "Who are you?" the girl whispered.

"I come from God—your God. I come to save you. Hush!"

Silent, swift, he moved to the window, opened it, and peered out. Below, all was dark. He was back beside the children again, he pressed them together. "Trust God, trust me," he muttered, and he bound the two together and lifted them out of the window, and let the rope burn his hands as he lowered them to the sodden ground. He let fall the rope, he stood in the open casement crouching for a spring, flung himself through the dark to an apple tree and caught a bough and swung an instant, then dropped to the ground. He sprang to them, he sliced the rope with his dagger and caught it up, he flung the girl over his shoulder and snatched the boy's hand, and ran through the storm.

In that black night in that driving rain no man could see another. Raoul had no fear for sentries, if any sentries were braving the storm. He was only mightily anxious not to run into the Rhine. But his dog's sense of place served him well. Soon the lights at the Eastgate shone clear, and he stopped.

"Good-by, my queen," says he, setting her down. "There is your home. Pick no more apples to-night."

"You—" the child gasped—"why, you——"

"'Are the pig,'" said Raoul, and went off into the dark. But he checked to listen and laugh as a glad cry rose from the gate. He desired infinitely to hear also the erudite Valdez gladly cry.

As he hurried back to Lammen with that benevolent purpose a lantern surprised him. It was far in front, it was moving from the town toward Lammen. It came to the camp before Raoul, and some drenched sentry saw it and challenged. While the sentry parleyed with it, Raoul came peaceably within the lines and was mildly grateful. Then he hid his drenched cloak and hat and wiped the mud off his boots and sauntered into Lammen House.

The quarter guard was gathered on the stair, and from above from the dining hall came Valdez's voice: "A woman, you say? Aha, funesta venustas—my fatal beauty, Borgia. Bring me the victim."

Raoul went up with the guard. They had a woman, a tall woman, white-faced, of a very noble bearing.

"You are General Valdez?" she said.

"My infatuate, I am."

"I am the wife of Adrian van der Werf."

Borgia twisted in his chair and growled an oath of amazement. Raoul frowned at her and bit his nails again. God was muddling the affair.

But Valdez leaned forward, chin in hand, and the smile grew on his lean lips. "And you would like to try me in his stead, good wife?"

She flung out her arm to him. "Sir, sir, I have brought you myself, and I pray you spare my children—I pray, sir, I pray you."

Valdez's smile broke into a laugh, his nostrils swelled, his eyes dilated. He rose, and approached. "But not at all, my infatuate. I shall spare neither you nor them," he said, and signed to the guard. "Away! Away!"

Borgia heaved himself up with a laugh. This he appreciated. Before him the men went grinning out, and Valdez came closer to the woman. She flung herself down before him, and he was raising her. Raoul lingered, gnawing his lip. What was to do? God had blundered.

Then louder far than the rain-beat, louder than the howl of the wind, came a long echoing roar. Valdez stopped still, with his hands on the woman, and Borgia turned to listen. But Raoul ran out; down the winding stairs and beyond. The camp was roused. From cottage and hut heads looked out into the dark, men rushed forth and peered this way and that and babbled. But Raoul ran straight and swift. The long roar grew fainter, and faded amid the storm-blast and the crash of the waters. Raoul was far past the sentries, out on the causeway to Zoeterwoude, with the breakers beating below him, the spray stinging his face. He stopped an instant, dropped over and drenched himself, then, streaming with water, back he ran to the sentry. "Alarm! Alarm!" he gasped. "The causeway is down, the sea is upon us!"

That sentry did his duty nobly. The night was alive with yells. Out from their shelters the men came pouring. Zoeterwoude causeway was down—the news ran through them as the tide over a sand bank. They surged disorderly like frightened sheep. Then some hero headed out of the lines, and like sheep they followed him away through the night along the one road left, the causeway to The Hague.

Valdez and Borgia ran out upon them cursing, and learned the news. They heard it in scraps from breathless men, men who would not be stayed. The tramp of their flying army strove with the din of wind and wave. "They are fools, they are right," said Borgia, and struck into the throng howling for officers and labored to put some order into flight. But it was a flight of black panic. Borgia was swept away. Trampling their comrades down, thrusting them off the causeway into the waves, they fled from their fear through that black night of storm.

Valdez, sneering, went back to Lammen House for his guard and his woman. There was neither guard nor woman. Valdez shouted, and only the storm and tramp of the fleeing answered. He shrugged his shoulders, sought his horse and fled, too.

When the tramp of the fugitives was faint and the din of the storm held lonely sway, Raoul arose out of a ditch and hauled out the burgomaster's wife. "Wait here," says he to her upon the edge, and stole off. But there was little need for caution. Lammen and Leyderdorp were swept bare of men. Soon he had brought her all trembling and shivering back to Lammen House, and he heaped fresh logs on Valdez's dying fire and struck an attitude before her ('twas inveterate in him), and: "Lady, I have achieved. You are safe," says he; and drank off Valdez's cup of wine. "For I am Raoul de Tout le Monde, Little Raoul of All the World"; and he offered her wine.

And the woman, taking it in her trembling hand, gasped: "But my children, sir—my children?"

Raoul tapped his breast. "Again, I. I conveyed them to Leyden two hours ago."

"Ah, is it true, is it true?" Down fell the wine cup and she caught at Raoul's hands.

"As God is in heaven—which begins to seem likely," said Raoul.

"'Tis true, 'tis true indeed?" Her voice; her eyes, were piteous.

"Lady, yes."

She caught Raoul's hands to her lips and kissed them again and again. He liked that.

After a while she looked up and let him go and fell back in her chair. "But it is strange. So strange. The Spaniards have gone. And I—why—how is it?"

Raoul made her drink wine. He struck another dramatic attitude. "Lady! Conceive Zoeterwoude causeway broken: the sea upon them: horrific!"

"That—that was the noise? Then we—we, too, shall be drowned!" and she started up.

Raoul sat down. "I saw that it was not broken. I said that it was. They ran. I betook me to you and a ditch."

"I—I do not understand."

"You need not understand; but you need much to eat and drink."

"But—but the noise? What was it?"

"God probably knows," said Raoul, and went out to forage.

So before a blazing fire Mistress Van der Werf ate, for the first time in four months, a plenteous meal.

Dawn broke gray, and Raoul on the battlements looked to Leyden and laughed. The noise was no more mysterious. Clear from Burgundy Tower to the Cowgate the weak wall had fallen and lay flat. From Burgundy Tower to the Cowgate! His wisdom was proven. Leyden was open to the foe. An army might have marched through the breach.

But the army lay wearied out with no heart in it at The Hague.

Raoul slapped Valdez's florins in his breeches, and laughed and looked and laughed. He conceived himself justified to God and man. Then he turned westward. Driven by the great wind, swollen by the rain, the waters lay close below him. Boisot's boats were moving hither and thither sounding. Raoul waved his hat to them and shouted.

Loaded with thanks and kindly promises, Raoul was borne to a grand chamber in the burgomaster's house. He flung himself down, weary but well content, and there came a faint knock at the door, and timidly a little girl stole in.

"Well, my queen?"

"Sir—sir—please, I am so sorry. I was very rude to you. I called names, and—you"—the brave little lips trembled—"you are very—very brave—and you are good——"

Raoul waved his hand and laughed. "Never care for all that, my queen."

She waited, fronting him, and the big blue eyes filled with tears. "Then—then—you won't forgive me?"

"Why, with all my heart."

She came nearer and waited again; then came quite close to him and laid her hand on his shoulder and put up her cheek to be kissed. Raoul clumsily lifted her and kissed her, and then she put her arms round his neck and kissed him in turn. "I'll always love you—always," she said.

She ran happy away.

Raoul, left alone, drew out the bag of Valdez's money, and let the bright gold run through his fingers. Then he made a grimace.

If you would like to know more of the siege of Leyden, there is a bright little Dutch lyric in six hundred and eleven stanzas of eight lines each.