Then uprose the young Lord of Arkell.
“Hold, there!” he cried hotly. “This Hubert of Malsen is but a craven, sirs, if he doth say the merchants of Dort are rascal cowards. Had they been fairly mated, he had no more dared to put his nose within the gates of Dort than dare one of you here to go down yonder amid Count William’s lions!”
“Have a care, friend Otto,” said the little Lady of Holland, with warning finger; “there is one here, at least, who dareth to go amid the lions—my father, sir.”
“I said nothing of him, madam,” replied Count Otto. “I did mean these young red hats here, who do no more dare to bait your father’s lions than to face the Cods of Dort in fair and equal fight.”
At this bold speech there was instant commotion. For the nobles and merchants of Holland, four centuries and a half ago, were at open strife with one another. The nobles saw in the increasing prosperity of the merchants the end of their own feudal power and tyranny. The merchants recognized in the arrogant nobles the only bar to the growth of Holland’s commercial enterprise. So each faction had its leaders, its partisans, its badges, and its followers. Many and bloody were the feuds and fights that raged through all those low-lying lands of Holland, as the nobles, or “Hooks,” as they were called—distinguishable by their big red hats,—and the merchants, or “Cods,” with their slouch hats of quiet gray, struggled for the lead in the state. And how they DID hate one another!
Certain of the younger nobles, however, who were opposed to the reigning house of Holland, of which Count William, young Jacqueline’s father, was the head, had espoused the cause of the merchants, seeing in their success greater prosperity and wealth for Holland. Among these had been the young Lord of Arkell, now a sort of half prisoner at Count William’s court because of certain bold attempts to favor the Cods in his own castle of Arkell. His defiant words therefore raised a storm of protests.
“Nay, then, Lord of Arkell,” said the Dauphin John, “you, who prate so loudly, would better prove your words by some sign of your own valor. You may have dared fight your lady mother, who so roundly punished you therefor, but a lion hath not the tender ways of a woman. Face YOU the lions, lord count, and I will warrant me they will not prove as forbearing as did she.”
It was common talk at Count William’s court that the brave Lady of Arkell, mother of the Count Otto, had made her way, disguised, into we castle of her son, had herself lowered the drawbridge, admitted her armed retainers, overpowered and driven out her rebellious son; and that then, relenting, she had appealed to Count William to pardon the lad and to receive him at court as hostage for his own fealty. So this fling of the Dauphin’s cut deep.
But before the young Otto could return an angry answer, Jacqueline had interfered.
“Nay, nay, my lord,” she said to her husband, the Dauphin; “‘t is not a knightly act thus to impeach the honor of a noble guest.”