The First of the English: A Novel
tied to their tails from Louis. Now I know—the reason. Six! Six
letters—each one of them enough to send me to the slow fire!” moans the
painter, striking his hands together till his finger nails are blue.
“Six! Six pigeons!” echoes Guy. Then he suddenly cries: “Do you know a
man with dark, fishy eyes, such as the boy described, and a black
mustache with one single, whitish gray lock in it?”
“My God!” cries the artist. “I do. He—you have told me who—Vasco de
Guerra—my enemy! He has—has my letters!—What gave you the clue?”
“Only this, that Vasco de Guerra, at supper last night, gave to the Six
Drunkards of Brussels, who have come here for the drinking bout with
Floris, a pigeon pie containing six pigeons which he asserted he had
shot with his cross-bow, but he spoke of the seventh, declaring for the
head of the seventh he would receive such a reward that would enable
him to give a great banquet to his comrades.”
With this Guy tells the astounded Oliver what he saw and heard at the
carouse of the Six Drunkards of Brussels in the Painted Inn the night
before.
“Yes, that’s proof enough, proof that he has my secret—he of all men,
he who is sure to use it—this Vasco de Guerra is my enemy. He is a
miserable scamp, disreputable enough to be cashiered from the Spanish
army—think what that must be, when soldiers are permitted to beg,
steal, murder, torture and ravage without one word of rebuke from their
officers. What must a man be who is cast out from such troops as this?
He is a drunken fortune hunter; he seeks the hand of Mina Bodé Volcker,
who loves me. He has her maid, Wiarda Schwartz in his pay.”
“Aha!” returns Guy. “That is the reason she treated me so cavalierly
when I asked for you last night.”
“Wiarda? Yes, miserable little paid soubrette. But we must think—we
must act—and that quickly,” returns the painter, who seems to have
regained composure, now that he knows his betrayer. “Vasco must guess
the value of these letters, for he must have been upon my scent for
weeks. He will try to decipher them himself, for he will not wish to
trust the information to others who might obtain the reward for it. He
can hardly act to-day. He doubtless keeps them on his person.”
“In that case we must kill him at once,” says Guy. “That’s what we’ve
got to do. We must kill him for both our sakes. At all events, we must
have the papers. Send for him, get him here, and I will do his business
with a dirk. Then we can carry him out and toss him into the flood.
He’ll float away to the ocean. There are plenty of drowned carcasses
like his, so it will not be noticed.”
“No,” says the painter, “that might bring suspicion upon us. Perhaps I
can suggest a better way,” and begins to think, racking his subtle
Flemish brain as it has never been racked before. Ten seconds and he
cries out, hope in voice, joy in his eyes: “At the drinking bout Floris
is sure to win. Floris will drink every one of the Six Drunkards of
Brussels under the table, insensible, inert, lifeless. In the confusion
we can assist the insensible Vasco from the table, take him to a room
apparently to revive him, and steal from him the letters he has stolen
from me.”
“But if Vasco wins?”
“Impossible! I’ve seen Floris drink more wine at one sitting than any
other human beast on earth, I think, can hold and live.”
“But we must be prepared in case he does not,” says the Englishman;
then he adds slowly: “Perhaps I can aid you; I have here,” he produces
from his breast a small glass flagon of Venetian manufacture, this is
protected from breakage by golden filigree work and its stopper
carefully sealed, in it is a colorless, limpid fluid.
“What is it? Poison?” asks the painter. “The poison of the Borgias?”
“No, the poison of the Antilles. This is the juice of the Manchineel
tree, prepared by the Indians of the Carrabees, after some secret
process of their own. You know the wonderful properties of the tree; to
sleep under it even for the night is death. It is peculiarly volatile,
therefore I keep it sealed. I have carried this with me in case I
should be captured and given over to the rack, to make me sleep so that
my tortured lips can tell no secrets of my Queen. If it should happen
that the painter doesn’t drink Vasco de Guerra insensible and inert, a
few drops of this in his flagon will make the Spanish spy sleep
forever.”
“Then if Frans Floris doesn’t succeed—the poison of the Antilles,”
mutters the painter. “It is his life or ours.” After a second’s thought
he continues: “I must kill mine enemy Vasco anyway. Were he only made
insensible, even did I recover the letters of Louis of Nassau, he would
still suspect me. Some day he would get other proof. If I don’t kill
him now I must fly at once, and William the Silent will have no spy at
Alva’s elbow. For my country’s cause, I stay here. At the drinking bout
Vasco de Guerra dies. The lion’s jaws gape for me. By heaven, they
shall not close!”
“That’s well said,” returns Guy, briefly. “Put a dose of this into the
Spanish spy.”
He presses the flagon of Manchineel poison into the painter’s hand, but
suddenly looks doubtful, and asks anxiously this pertinent question:
“How, by all the saints, will you get this into Vasco’s drinking cup
and not into the flagons of the others?”
CHAPTER VI.
THE DRINKING BOUT AT THE PAINTED INN.
This question seems to stagger the artist. He mutters feebly, “How?”
then says: “Let me think. I know the customs of this country,” and
meditates with knitted brows.
A few moments thought and he cries: “I have solved the problem.”
“How?” asks the Englishman eagerly.
“How? Why, it is the usage at these drinking bouts when the banquet is
at its height for friends of the combatants, for the honor of Bacchus,
to send huge drinking beakers full of the finest wine with their
compliments to the various contestants. Vasco de Guerra is a suitor for
the hand of Mademoiselle Bodé Volcker, the fair Mina that I love. That
shall be his destruction. After the tenth round, it would not be
prudent before—perhaps in his case I had better make it the fifteenth
huge goblet that he drinks—I shall send to him a flagon of wine
containing this, the poison of the Antilles,” he taps the vial the
Englishman has given him, “with the compliments of Wilhelmina Bodé
Volcker. De Guerra will not refuse a wine cup with such a message as
this, and then—, then—you and I,” he whispers this last, “my dear
Guido, in some quiet, happy, peaceful country would be called
murderers; but here we are simply playing out the game of life and
death. Now to business.”
The two now go to mapping out their plan with the cool precision of men
who, having made up their minds, act rapidly upon their resolutions.
“The drinking bout will take place at twelve. It is now ten o’clock. I
don’t think De Guerra has yet risen,” says Guy, “but I’ll watch him to
see that he doesn’t leave the inn to give your secret to any one. If he
makes any effort toward this, by some means I will detain him; while
you, my dear friend, go to the Citadel, get word with the lady
Hermoine, and arrange the meeting that is necessary, not only to my
safety but to my love.”
Then, while Chester secures upon his person the cipher letters of
Vitelli and the key furnished by the artist, and perchance with even
greater care deposits in his bosom the miniature and letter of his
love, Antony Oliver arms himself with sword and pistols and looks
carefully to the keen Italian stiletto he always wears ready to his
hand.
This done, the two go out together, Oliver leaving word with the barber
that his sons can get their meal for themselves when they return, but
that Achille is to meet them at the Painted Inn at the hour of noon.
Then striding through the narrow alleys into which the sun is but now
finding its way, the two pass to the pleasanter portion of the town.
Here the painter takes leave of the Englishman, whispering: “Don’t lose
sight of Vasco.”
“While you will do my errand?” suggests Chester wistfully.
“Certainly. I have a good excuse for my interview with Doña Hermoine.
Her father only leaves Brussels at noon to-day. Alva will not be here
until late this evening, and would wish word of this given to his
daughter,” answers Oliver, and takes his way toward the Esplanade,
beyond which lies the Citadel.
Going once more to the Painted Inn, Chester discovers that it is now
the scene of unusual animation.
The wine room is crowded so that he can hardly get a seat to order his
breakfast, appetite having by this time obtained temporary ascendency
over love. By some deft questioning and pumping of the waiter who
attends him, the Englishman soon learns that the man he is in search of
only left his late carouse at three o’clock in the morning, and has not
yet arisen; probably thinking that retirement will best fit him for a
supremely great feat at the shrine of Bacchus.
The conversation at the neighboring tables naturally turns upon the
drinking bout. The room is full of burghers and artists, some of whom
have come to enjoy the artist’s triumph, others to sorrow at the genius
that is being killed with wine. There is also a goodly delegation of
his creditors, who are here with anxiety in their hearts and on their
lips, for Frans Floris’s life is worth a large sum to them on account
of the paintings his facile brush creates; but Frans Floris dead is of
very little use to them, and they fear that some day he will kill
himself by the enormous quantity of wine he may imbibe in his effort to
place his competitors beneath the table.
“Ah, Mijn Heer Dirk Coornhert, this is a sad day,” remarks a fat,
adipose citizen, whose smell of the malt-house proclaims the brewer.
“Yes,” replies a man evidently of artistic tastes and education. “Have
you seen the poem I’ve printed to warn Floris of the danger of his
dissolute habits, not only to his genius but to his life? I read it to
him last night. It was an inspiration in which I depicted a dream
wherein the spirit of Albert Durer appeared to me and spoke in
melancholy and ghostly tones of the spirit sadness that was brought to
him even after a hundred years in the other world by an artist of
Floris’s ability becoming a drunkard.”
“And did it reform him?” jeers the other.
“Reform him!” cries Dirk Coornhert. “No, he swore he’d drink the health
of Albert Durer’s ghost to-day, and laughed in my face: ‘When I’m
drunk, I’m happy; I forget my creditors. When I’m sober my creditors
don’t let me forget them.’”
“Verdomd! And I’m one of them,” growls the brewer. “Two thousand
carolus guilders for malt beer consumed at his house. A painter
building the greatest palace in Antwerp! Above its portal that drunken
conceit he’s painted: himself standing brush in hand and the muses
flying from all over the heavens to crown him. And out of it he drives
each day with four white horses in state, everybody doffing their hats
to him, his creditors bowing most humbly of all. If I didn’t think the
populace would mob me, I’d have him in the debtors’ prison. And then
his wife! Faugh! her dandy airs—as if she were a countess.”
“Yes, she has ruined him,” murmurs the painter. “A woman’s ambition to
flaunt it with the noblesse, which a painter cannot do, though some of
our burghers seem to think it an easy task. There’s poor Bodé Volcker!
Have you heard of his daughter? They say the fair Wilhelmina aspires to
consort with the nobility, and has been taught to shake her feet under
the rod of a French dancing master and play on the harpsichord and
spinet, and sing with rare shakes and quavers and high-screeching notes
like a lewd Italian masquer. Ah! the days of Antwerp are changing. What
would her poor mother say? But old Niklaas is up in arms, and swears