The Laughing Cavalier: The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

"Great God!" exclaims Jan dully.

"Betrayed!"

"What does it mean?"

No one heeds the prisoner now. They all crowd around Lucas. Jan calls out his orders in vain: Piet the Red alone listens to what he says, the others all want to know what Lucas means. They had been in the thick of a plot of course, they all knew that: a guet-apens had been prepared by the Lord of Stoutenburg for the Stadtholder whom he hates. The heavy boxes of course—gunpowder ... to blow up the wooden bridge when the Stadtholder and his escort are half way across!

Of course they had all guessed it, thought on it all through the night while they polished the arms—the swords and the pistols and the cullivers—which had been served out to them. They had guessed of course—the foreign mercenaries who were always in the thick of every conspiracy and well paid for being so—they had been the first to guess and they had told the country louts who only grinned enjoying the prospect of the fun.

But now they were betrayed. Lucas of Sparendam had come back with the news, and even Jan stopped in his hideous task in order to listen to what he had to say.

"It all happened yesterday," quoth Lucas as soon as he had recovered his breath, "the rumour began in the lower quarters of the town. Nobody knows who began it. Some say that a foreigner came into the city in the early morning and sat down at one of the taverns to eat and drink with the Prince's soldiers."

"A foreigner?"

Jan turns to look on the prisoner and encounters his mocking glance. Smothering a curse he resumes his task of adjusting the rope upon the gibbet, but his fingers are unsteady and his work doth not progress.

"Yes, a foreigner," continued Lucas volubly, "though it all has remained very mysterious. The Prince's soldiers spoke of it amongst themselves ... the foreigner had said something about a guet-apens, a plot against the Stadtholder's life on his way to the North ... then one of the officers heard the rumour and carried it to one of his superiors.... By the evening it had reached the Stadtholder's ears."