Flower o' the lily: A romance of old Cambray

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

'I marvel,' he had already said to himself, 'if my gallant with the Spanish accent and the languorous eyes has had a finger in this delectable pie. Between employing paid spadassins to commit deliberate murder and egging on a set of hungry wretches into achieving manslaughter, there is little to choose, and Messire de Landas has no doubt adopted the less risky course.'

But for the nonce self-preservation became the dominant necessity, and Gilles, feeling himself so closely pressed that his free movements were becoming hampered, executed a swift manoeuvre of retreat which landed him a second or two later with his back against the high encircling walls of the Archiepiscopal Palace, and with the stately limes of the Palace gardens waving their emerald-laden branches above his head. Were his position not quite so precarious, he might have laughed aloud at its ludicrousness. He, Gilles de Crohin, masquerading as a Prince of Valois, and set upon for being a Spanish spy!! That fellow, de Landas, was a clever rogue! But it was a dirty trick to use these wretched people as his tools!

Aloud, he shouted, as forcibly and vigorously as he could: 'Now then, my friends! Have I not already told you that I am no Spaniard? I am a Frenchman, I tell you, and my Liege Lord the King of France is even at this hour busy trying to free you from your Spanish tyrants. He——'

'Hark at him!' came at once, to the accompaniment of deafening clamour, from the rear. 'Feeding us with lies. 'Tis the way of spies to assume any guise that may suit their fancy or their pocket. Friends! Citizens! Do not let the Spaniard trick you! Why is he here, I ask you? If he is a Frenchman, why doth he go about masked? What is he doing here? Bargaining with the Duke of Parma, I say, with your lives and your liberties.'

'Silence, you fool!' cried Gilles, in stentorian tones. 'You miserable cur! Who pays you, I would like to know, to incite these poor people to break the laws of peace and order?'

'Peace and order, forsooth!' retorted the voice from the rear, with a prolonged, harsh laugh. 'You want peace, no doubt, so that your master the Spanish King can work his way with Cambray, send his soldiers into our city to burn our houses, pillage our homes, outrage our wives and daughters! Citizens, remember Mechlin! Remember Mons! Beware lest this man sell your city to the Spaniards and you reap the same fate as your kinsmen there!'

A stupendous cry of rage and execration greeted this abominable tirade—as abominable, indeed, as it was ludicrous. One moment of sober reflection would have convinced these poor, deluded fools how utterly futile and false were the assertions made by those who were goading them to exasperation. But a crowd never does reflect once it is aroused, once a sufficient number of hotheads are there, ready to drive them from empty bluster to actual violence. The paid agents of M. de Landas had done their work well. They had sown seeds of disaffection, of mistrust and of hostility, for days past and weeks; now they were garnering just the amount of excitement necessary to bring about a dastardly crime.

Gilles, with his back against the wall, was beginning to think that he would have to make a fight for it after all. Already the crowd was closing in around him, pressing closer and closer, completing the semicircle which barred his only means of escape. He tried to make himself heard, but he was shouted down. The work of the agitators was indeed complete; the rabble needed no more egging on. Men and women were ready for any mischief—to seize the stranger, tear off the rich clothes from his back, ransack his pockets, knock him on the head and finally drag him through the streets and throw him either into the river or over the battlements into the moat.

It became a question now how dearly Gilles would be able to sell his life. He could no longer hope to reach the gates of the Palace, and the vast courtyard, gardens and precincts which surrounded the house itself rendered it highly improbable that any one would hear the tumult and come to his assistance. Over the heads of the crowd, he could see the great, open Place where a patrol of the town guard was wont to pass from time to time on its beat. For some unexplainable reason there appeared to be no patrol in sight to-day. Had they been bribed to keep out of the way? It was at least possible. Some one had evidently planned the whole of this agitation, and that some one—an unscrupulous devil, thought Messire, if ever there was one!—was not like to have left the town guard out of his reckoning.

Even while Gilles took this rapid, mental survey of his position, one of the men in the rear had suddenly stooped and picked up a loose stone out of the gutter. Gilles saw the act, saw the man lift the stone, brandish it for a moment above his head and then fling it with all his might. He saw it just in time to dodge the stone, which struck the wall just above his head.