Flower o' the lily: A romance of old Cambray

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

Here it is that Gilles is holding his own with a small troop of French horsemen. His steel bonnet has been knocked off, his wounded arm roughly bandaged, the sleeves of his jerkin fly behind him like a pair of wings, his invincible sword strikes and flashes and gleams in the grey afternoon light.

For a few seconds, while the distance between himself and his enemy grows rapidly less, de Landas sees and hears nothing. The blood is beating in his temples, with a weird thumping which drowns the din of battle. His eyes are blinded by a crimson veil; his hand, stiff and convulsed, can scarcely grasp the pistol. The next instant he is in the very thick of the turmoil.

'For Spain and Our Lady!' he cries, and empties his pistol into the seething mass of Spanish horsemen who bar the way twixt him and his enemy. The horsemen are scattered. Already on the verge of a stampede, they are scared by this unexpected onslaught from the rear. They fear to be taken between cross-fires, are seized with panic, turn and flee to right and left. Two of them fall, hit by that madman's pistol. All is now tumult and a whirling ferment. The air is thick with smoke and powder, horses, maddened with terror, snort and struggle and beat the air with their hoofs. De Landas' own troop join in the mêlée; the French horsemen dash in pursuit; there is a scrimmage, a stampede; men fight and tear and hit and slash, for dear life and for safety.

But de Landas does not care, is past caring now. Another disaster more or less, another scare, final humiliation, what matters? The day is lost anyhow, and all his own hopes finally dashed to the ground by the relief of Cambray and the irrevocable loss to him of Jacqueline and her fortune. Already he has thrown aside his smoking pistol, seized another from the hand of his nearest follower, and points it straight at Gilles.

'For Spain and Our Lady!'

'Fleur de Lys and Liberty!'

The two cries rang out simultaneously—then the report of de Landas' pistol, and Gilles' horse hit in the neck, suddenly swerves, rears and paws the air, and would have thrown its rider had not the latter jumped clean out of the saddle.

To de Landas' maddened gaze the smoke around appears to be the colour of blood. Blindly he gropes for another pistol. His henchman is near him, thrusts a weapon into the young Spaniard's trembling hand. For the fraction of a second, destiny, waiting, stays her hand. Gilles is free of his struggling horse, he has his sword in his hand; but de Landas once more points a pistol straight at him.

'Satan! guide thou my hand this time!' he calls out, in a passion of fury.

Then suddenly a raucous cry rises above the din; there is a double, sharp report, a loud curse, a final groan of despair and of rage, and de Landas, struck in the breast by an almost savage blow from a lance, throws up his arms, falls, first on his knees, then backwards on the soft earth, would have been buried then and there under a seething mass of struggling men and beasts, had not Gilles rushed to him with one bound, caught him by the shoulders and dragged his now lifeless body to comparative shelter a few paces away. Now Gilles picks up a fallen cloak from the ground and lays it reverently over his fallen foe.