“For enormous wealth I would risk my life—nay, almost my soul,” gasps Guy, whose great thought, since he has won the love of Viceroy’s daughter, has been to gain station, power and gold enough to give her Viceroy’s state and pomp.
“Then, First of the English, you are the man fitted for my post-mortem reckoning with Alva. The man who dared to visit Antwerp; I remember you there—looking straight in the Viceroy’s face—his proclamation for your head posted on the wall above you. You are the man to give me vengeance. Listen to the secret of Alva’s statue.” [[128]]
“Alva’s statue!” cries Guy, recollection of Oliver’s words coming to him.
“Hush! Don’t interrupt me. My time is very short. This great statue the Duke has erected to his honor is partly for another purpose! To protect the treasure he has gathered from his tenth penny tax, that he means to transport to Spain for his own use, honor and profit. The pedestal—”
“Ah, I remember. The pedestal of unusual size—it contains the booty of the Netherlands,” whispers Chester.
“Bah! No, Alva is too astute for that. The statue and its pedestal contain nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“And yet,” says the Italian, “the statue is the guardian of Alva’s treasure.”
“How?”
“Hearken. While altering and rebuilding the Citadel of Antwerp, I, as chief engineer, discovered an old vaulted way made for purposes of sally. It ran from the great Bastion of the Duke under the moat to a place of egress in the city itself, a house just beyond the Esplanade. Under secret instructions from the Captain-General, I excavated at the Citadel end of this passage in the solid rock thirty feet under ground a chamber. This chamber holds the treasures of Alva. The earth and solid masonry of the great bastion of the Duke are heaped upon it. It would take weeks of labor to dig down from the Citadel to obtain it, and explosives enough to blow up the bastion. Therefore it cannot be reached from the Citadel. But from the town it is accessible, though impossible to one not knowing its secret, for it has been guarded by every art the mechanism of Giovanni Alfriedo, an ingenious Italian imported from Venice, could give to its defense. Yet it is easy and quick of access to those who have the secret, and I am the only man save Alva that knows it now—Giovanni himself being slain by pirates on his return voyage to Venice, perchance by order and design.”