VIII
And far away in the Spanish camps, the soldiers and their captains marvelled how joy-bells could be ringing in a city which was in the throes of her death agony. But the Duke of Parma knew what it meant, as did the members of his staff—del Fuente, his second in command, de Salvado, Bracamonte, de Landas and the others. More than one of their wily spies had succeeded before now in swimming across the Schelde and in scaling the tumble-down walls of the heroic city, and had brought back the news of what was doing in there, in the midst of a starving and obstinate population.
'The public betrothal to a fickle Prince who will never come,' said the Duke grimly, between his teeth. 'At any rate, not before we have worked our will with those mulish rebels.'
'We could take their pestilent town by storm to-morrow,' remarked de Landas, with a note of fierce hatred in his voice, 'if your Highness would but give the order.'
'Bah!' retorted the Duke. 'Let them rot! Why should we waste valuable lives and precious powder, when the next few days must see the final surrender of that peccant rat-hole?'
He gave a coarse laugh and shrugged his shoulders.
'I believe,' he said to de Landas, 'that I once promised you Cambray and all that it contains—what?'
'For ridding your Highness of the abominable rebel who organized the defence last April,' assented de Landas. 'Yes! Cambray and all that it contains was to be my reward.'
'You killed the miscreant, I believe?'
'I shot him through the heart. He lies rotting now beneath the walls.'
'Well!' riposted the Duke. 'You earned your reward easily enough. There will be plenty left in Cambray, even after I have had my first pick of its treasures.'
De Landas made no protest. It would have been not only useless, but also impolitic to remind His Highness that, at the moment when he offered Cambray and all its contents to the man who would rid him of a valiant foe, he had made no proviso that he himself should fill his pockets first. There was no honour among these thieves and no probity in these savage tyrants—brute beasts, most of them, who destroyed and outraged whatever resisted their might. So de Landas held his tongue; for even so, he was not dissatisfied. The Duke, being rid of the rebel whom he feared, might easily have repudiated the ignoble bargain in its entirety, and de Landas would have had no redress.
As it was, there was always Jacqueline. The Spanish commanders were wont to make short shrift of Flemish heiresses who happened to be in a city which they entered as conquerors. By decree of His Highness, Jacqueline de Broyart would certainly be allocated to him—de Landas—if he chose to claim her. Of a truth, she was still well worth having—more so than ever, perhaps; for her spirit now would be chastened by bodily privations, broken by humiliation at the hands of the faithless Valois and by the death of her mysterious lover.
'So long as the heiress is there for me,' he said carelessly to the Duke, 'I am satisfied to let every other treasure go.'
'Oh! you shall have the heiress,' riposted His Highness hilariously. 'Rumour hath described her as passing fair. You lucky devil! Methinks you were even betrothed to her once.'
'Oh! long ago, your Highness. Since then the oily promises of the Duc d'Anjou have helped to erase my image from the tablets of Madame Jacqueline's heart.'
'Then she'll be all the more ready to fall back into your arms, now that she has discovered the value of a Valois prince's faith.'
After which pronouncement, the Duke of Parma dismissed the matter from his mind and turned his attention to the table, richly spread with every kind of delicacy, which had been laid for him in his tent. He invited the gentlemen of his staff to sit, and as he dug his fork into the nearest succulent dish, he said complacently:
'Those pestiferous rebels out there cannot have as much as a mouse between the lot of them, to fill their Flemish paunches. Messeigneurs, here is to Cambray!' he added, as he lifted his silver goblet filled to the brim with Rhenish wine. 'To Cambray, when we march through her streets, ransack her houses and share her gold! To Cambray, and the pretty Flemish wenches, if so be they have an ounce of flesh left upon their bones! To de Landas' buxom heiress and his forthcoming marriage with her! To you all, and the spoils which these many months of weary waiting will help you to enjoy! To Cambray, all ye gallant seigneurs!'
His lusty toast was greeted with loud laughter. Metal goblets clicked one against the other, every one drank to the downfall of the rebellious city. De Landas accepted the jocose congratulations of his boon-companions. He, too, raised his goblet aloft, and having shouted: 'To Jacqueline!' drained it to its last drop.
But when he set the goblet down, his hand was shaking perceptibly. Cain-like, he had seen a vision of the man whom he had so foully murdered. Accidentally he knocked over a bottle of red Burgundy, which stood on the table close by, and the linen cloth all around him was spread over with a dark crimson stain, which to the assassin appeared like the colour of blood.