Leatherface: A Tale of Old Flanders

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

Now the men halt, and still in silence they strip to their skins; then with their pistols in their right hand and their sword between their teeth they plunge ankle deep into the mud. They are men of Ghent every one of them--men of the Low Countries who know their morasses as mariners know the sea: they know how to keep their foothold in these slimy tracks, where strangers would inevitably be sucked into a hideous grave.

They make their way to the foot of the wall, they move like ghosts now, and are well-nigh waist deep in the mud. Night closes in rapidly round them: behind them the sky is suffused with the crimson reflection of an autumnal sunset. Their arms, chests and backs are shiny with sweat, their hot breath comes and goes rapidly with excitement and the scent of danger which hovers behind them in that yawning morass and ahead of them on the parapet of those walls.

"Victory waits for you, my men," says Mark in a commanding voice, "up on yonder wall. Whoever is for Orange and for Liberty, follow me!"

Then he starts to climb, and one by one the men follow. What atoms they look up on those high walls, crawling, creeping, scrambling, with hands and knees and feet clinging to the unevenness in the masonry, or scraps of coarse grass that give them foothold: like ants crawling up a heap--on they go--their bare backs reflect the crimson glow of the sun. Mark, their hero, leads the way, his torn arm and lacerated shoulder leave a trail of blood upon the stones.

At the breach the Walloons must be hard pressed, for cries of triumph follow each volley from the Spanish musketry.

"On, on, Netherlanders! for Orange and Liberty!"

Now Mark has reached the top: his arm is over the parapet, then his knee. The look-out man has seen him: he shoulders his musket to give the alarm, but before he can fire Mark is on him, and three more Flemings now have scrambled over the wall. This portion of the Kasteel is never seriously guarded: the morass is thought to be impassable, and forms the only guard on the northeast wall; but these men of Ghent have conquered the morass and they are on the walls, and have overpowered the look-out men ere these have had time to scream.

Naked, sweating, bleeding at hands and knees, they look like wraiths from some inferno down below. They rush down helter-skelter into the castle yard. The Spanish musketeers caught in their rear whence they never expected attack, down their weapons and run with a mad Sauve qui peut to the shelter of the Meeste-Toren. The Walloons--not understanding what has happened--see the Spaniards running and seize the lucky moment. Laurence van Rycke leads them through the breach, and they rush into the yard with pikes and halberds fixed and fill it suddenly with their cry of triumph: then they fight their way round to the gatehouse and lower the bridge, and the Flemings in their turn come pouring into the Kasteel.

Within ten minutes every Spaniard inside the Kasteel has laid down his arms: the stronghold is in the hands of the Orangists, and Mark van Rycke up on the iron balcony outside the Duke of Alva's council chamber, surrounded by his naked stalwarts, demands the surrender of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Netherlands in the name of Orange and of Liberty.

Then without a sigh or a groan he throws up his arms, and those who are nearest to him are only just in time to catch him ere he falls.