Mary of Burgundy; or, The Revolt of Ghent

by G. P. R. James

Strict search was immediately instituted. The eschevins, and other officers appointed by the Duke of Burgundy, were furious at their authority being set at nought, and both held out threats and offered rewards for the discovery of the body. But it was all in vain: and while some of the more malevolent--remembering the course of young Ganay's life, and into the hands of what Being it had appeared likely to cast him in the end--accounted for the disappearance of his body, by supposing that the great enemy of mankind had carried it off as his due, others, more charitable, but not less superstitious, chose to believe that the father, by some drugs only known to himself, had found means to resuscitate his son, and had sent him away to some distant land, where his crimes and their punishment were equally unknown.

This version of the affair, indeed, obtained by far the most numerous body of supporters; and the tale, swollen and disfigured by tradition, is still to be heard at the firesides of the citizens of Ghent.

CHAPTER XIX.

Other matters of more general interest occurred soon after the events we have narrated in the last chapter, and imperatively called the attention of the citizens of Ghent from the unhappy druggist and his son. Strange rumours of a battle fought and lost beneath the walls of Nancy, circulated in the good town during the evening of the ninth of January. No one, however, could trace them to their source. No messenger had arrived in the city from the army of the Duke of Burgundy; and the wise and prudent amongst the citizens, after a few inquiries concerning the authority on which these reports rested, rejected them as false and malicious.

They were borne, however, in the evening, by Maillotin du Bac, to the ears of the druggist Ganay; and the chance of such an event was eagerly canvassed between them, as well as the course of action to be pursued in case the tidings should prove true; which, as they calculated all the probabilities, and suffered their wishes in some degree to lead their judgments, they gradually persuaded themselves was even more than likely.

Long and anxious were their deliberations; and it was verging fast towards the hour of three in the morning when the Prevot left the dwelling of the rich merchant. It was a clear, frosty night, with the bright small stars twinkling in thousands through a sky from which every drop of vapour and moisture seemed frozen away by the intense cold. The world was all asleep; and the sound of a footfall in the vacant streets was enough to make even the journeyer himself start at the noise his step produced, so still and silent was the whole scene. The sinking moon, though she still silvered over with her beams the frost-work on the high roofs of the various buildings, and poured a flood of mellow splendour down the long streets that led to the westward, cast the broad shadows of the principal buildings completely over all the other parts of the town, leaving no light but that which was diffused through the whole air by the general brightness of the sky, and its glistening reflection from the thin film of ice upon the canals.

There is always something sublime and touching in the aspect of a large city sleeping calmly in the moonlight of a clear quiet night, with all its congregated thousands reposing beneath the good providence of God. But the mind of Maillotin du Bac had reached that point of obduracy at which the sweetest or the most solemn, the most refreshing or the most awful of the pages in Nature's great monitory book are equally unheeded. Wrapping his cloak round him, to guard against the cold, he walked on, close to the houses, and turned into the first small narrow alley that he found, in order that no watchful eye, if such existed, might trace him from the house of the druggist. Thence, again deviating into one of those lateral streets that lead along by the side of the principal ones, he continued his course over the stones, rendered black and slippery by the intense frost.

All was still. Not a sound fell upon the ear, except every now and then the distant crowing of a cock heard through the clear air from the country beyond the walls. After a little, however, as the Prevot walked on, he caught the tramp of a horse's feet sounding afar off, and, in a few minutes, the challenge of the sentries at the Alost gate, the clang of the portcullis, the fall of the drawbridge, a brief murmured conversation at the gate, and then again the sound of the horse's feet advancing at the slow pace which the state of the pavement rendered necessary, down the principal street. All this he heard clearly and distinctly; for the sound must have been small, indeed, which, in the calm still winter air of the night, did not reach his practised ear.

He was now too far from the house of the druggist for his appearance in the streets, even at that late hour, to lead to any suspicion of their connexion, especially as his official duties were always a fair excuse for conduct that in other men might have led to doubt and question. At the same time the very habits of his life gave him a propensity to investigate every occurrence, however slight, so that the sound of some one entering the city, at such an hour of the night, instantly attracted his attention, and his curiosity at once led him to take a short cut into the street down which the horseman was riding. It was one of those which, running nearly east and west, was still illumined by the pale light of the moon; and the eye of Maillotin du Bac, which never forgot the form that it had once rested upon, instantly perceived and recognised an armed cavalier riding towards him, whom he had known as a boon companion in the army of the Duke of Burgundy.

His resolution was instantly taken to accost him; and, stepping out of the shadow, as the cavalier approached, he exclaimed, "Why, how now? What news, Paul Verdun? How long have you left the camp?"