The First of the English: A Novel
“About three days,” says a Gueux captain. “But what does that matter to
you, who are to die in three minutes?”
At this Paciotto, smiting his hands together and his eyes flashing with
anger even above their despair, utters these astounding words:
“My God! Sacrificed. Holy Virgin! Killed for my secret!” And suddenly
whispers to Guy: “You are the First of the English?”
“Yes.”
“Ask the Dutch officers that I may have ten minutes in which to make my
peace with God, alone with you, who, from the rosary you wear upon your
neck, must be of my faith.”
This appeal is answered by Van Tresslong with a surly “Yes!”
Whereupon Paciotto, his hands even now bound with the ligatures of
execution, is thrust into a little adjoining room from which there is
no escape, and into which, moved by the Italian’s pleading eyes, and,
perchance, prompted by some latent curiosity, Chester follows him.
“Close the door,” the Italian whispers. Then he bursts out still under
his breath: “You are the only one who has been my friend in this my
last hour on earth. Behold my reward! I can give you a fighting chance
to become one of the magnates of this earth.”
“How?”
But the Italian scarcely answers this, muttering: “Sacrificed! The
shadow of death is over me—put there by him of Alva, who never spares
what it is his interest to destroy. This town threatened—for three
days! He knew of this outbreak of the Gueux—that Flushing would be a
place of extreme danger, and sent me here ostensibly to complete the
fortifications, but really that his secret should pass away—with my
life. For I am the only man in the Netherlands who knows it.” Then he
breaks out suddenly, whispering hoarsely: “You, I am told, are one who
cares as nothing for his life. Would you, for enormous wealth, avenge
me of my enemy, though at a desperate risk?”
“For enormous wealth I would risk my life—nay, almost my soul,” gasps
Guy, whose great thought, since he has won the love of Viceroy’s
daughter, has been to gain station, power and gold enough to give her
Viceroy’s state and pomp.
“Then, First of the English, you are the man fitted for my post-mortem
reckoning with Alva. The man who dared to visit Antwerp; I remember you
there—looking straight in the Viceroy’s face—his proclamation for your
head posted on the wall above you. You are the man to give me
vengeance. Listen to the secret of Alva’s statue.”
“Alva’s statue!” cries Guy, recollection of Oliver’s words coming to
him.
“Hush! Don’t interrupt me. My time is very short. This great statue the
Duke has erected to his honor is partly for another purpose! To protect
the treasure he has gathered from his tenth penny tax, that he means to
transport to Spain for his own use, honor and profit. The pedestal—”
“Ah, I remember. The pedestal of unusual size—it contains the booty of
the Netherlands,” whispers Chester.
“Bah! No, Alva is too astute for that. The statue and its pedestal
contain nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“And yet,” says the Italian, “the statue is the guardian of Alva’s
treasure.”
“How?”
“Hearken. While altering and rebuilding the Citadel of Antwerp, I, as
chief engineer, discovered an old vaulted way made for purposes of
sally. It ran from the great Bastion of the Duke under the moat to a
place of egress in the city itself, a house just beyond the Esplanade.
Under secret instructions from the Captain-General, I excavated at the
Citadel end of this passage in the solid rock thirty feet under ground
a chamber. This chamber holds the treasures of Alva. The earth and
solid masonry of the great bastion of the Duke are heaped upon it. It
would take weeks of labor to dig down from the Citadel to obtain it,
and explosives enough to blow up the bastion. Therefore it cannot be
reached from the Citadel. But from the town it is accessible, though
impossible to one not knowing its secret, for it has been guarded by
every art the mechanism of Giovanni Alfriedo, an ingenious Italian
imported from Venice, could give to its defense. Yet it is easy and
quick of access to those who have the secret, and I am the only man
save Alva that knows it now—Giovanni himself being slain by pirates on
his return voyage to Venice, perchance by order and design.”
“Thy time is up!” shouts Van Tresslong, thundering on the door.
“Ten minutes more for the soul of a dying man,” murmurs Paciotto.
“Yes, time that he may die in his church,” cries Guy, desperate now for
Alva’s secret.
So a few minutes more are given to them, not for mercy, but to find a
hangman. For the town executioner is absent at Middelburg and word of
this being now brought to Van Tresslong he raises his voice in the
crowd in front of the town hall, proclaiming largess for a hangman.
But none wish to undertake this degrading office—save one man, who
being told Paciotto is a Spaniard, cries: “I’ll do the job, I’ll hang
the Spanish forever! Only I must have liberty to attack and kill anyone
who scorns me for having been a Spaniard’s hangman,” and makes his
preparations with noose and ladder.
While they are finding executioner for him, Paciotto rapidly whispers
in Guy’s ear: “The entrance to the passage is from a house now occupied
by an old deaf and dumb woman, Señora Sebastian. She knows nothing
about it, the place having been rented to her at little stipend after
the work had been completed. You take up four stones in the center of
the cellar and it shows you the passageway. But this vaulted gallery at
two places before you come to the moat, and one right under the fosse
itself, is guarded by iron doors of strength sufficient to resist
anything but barrels of gunpowder. Each of these doors is opened by
ingenious locks. According to the device of this skilled mechanic, each
of these locks requires three peculiar keys that must be used in a
certain varying order. Employed outside of this rotation the locks will
yield no vantage to the keys. Any attempt to blow down the iron gates
with powder would destroy the passageway itself, and let the Schelde in
upon and drown you.”
“But what has the statue to do with this?” whispers Guy.
“Ah! that is Alva’s cunning joke upon his turbulent soldiery. By the
Captain General’s mystery in regard to it half the mercenaries of his
Antwerp garrison swear that the statue itself is the storehouse of
Alva’s gold. This is by his design. He does not fear the citizens
taking his treasure, but that his own soldiers, unpaid for years, may
break into open mutiny. The first thing they would seize would be the
booty of their commander. Therefore the first thing they would break
into for his gold would be the pedestal of his statue. That done, the
vaulted passageway from the town would be impassable to anything save
fish, for the statue is so contrived that if disturbed on its base a
sluice gate is opened and the waters of the moat flood the only path to
Alva’s treasure. After that, even if they discovered the true hiding
place of his gold, it would be a month before the mercenaries could
obtain it by mining and blowing up the Bastion of the Duke. Within that
month the mutiny would certainly be put down and the treasure saved.”
“But the keys?” whispers Guy impatiently, for the rising murmurs of the
crowd outside shows him time is precious.
“I have here—open my doublet and cut away the lining,” whispers
Paciotto, “for my hands are bound—drafts of each key with its number,
from which you can have them made, besides an account of how they
should be used; also a drawing of the excavation leading to the
treasure of the Duke. Give me vengeance on him—you mean to try, I can
see it in your face—if you succeed, a rare surprise for him of Alva.
How he will rave when in his empty treasure house he finds no plunder.
All his tenth penny tax gone; the thing for which he has imperilled his
favor with the king, the thing for which he has crushed these
Netherlands to the earth. No gold for Alva—no gold—ho! ho!—ha! ha!—he!
he!” and bursts into hideous despairing chuckle—his last laugh on
earth.
Even as Guy takes from him a small package carefully sealed up in
parchment cover, the door is thrown open, and Tresslong, De Ryk, and
the Gueux officers enter.
“It is time the gallows should bear its fruit!” cries the admiral.
“And you have no mercy?” says the Italian.
“None to the confidant of Alva. We give you your master’s mercy!”
Then they seize him and drag him out, he desperately crying: “Give me
the death of a gentleman—not the gallows, but the sword. I am as noble
as Egmont and Horn—I will have death by the sword, the noble’s death.”
But this mention of Egmont and Horn, the two murdered chiefs of the
Netherland nobility, produces rage not consideration, and Paciotto is
forced out on to the square facing the town hall. Here he looks up at
the ladder standing against the gallows, upon which already the two
officers who had accompanied him dangle; then putting despairing eyes
on Chester, murmurs: “Remember, avenge me!”
So, in the midst of all that laughing, jeering gang of Beggars of the
Sea, some gazing at him from the crowded square, others for better view
climbing the riggings of their ships, that are but half a hundred yards
away, most of them habited as monks and nuns, in fantastic garments,
the spoil of the nunnery at Briel, Pedro Paciotto, engineer and man of
science, gallant and man of war, steps up the ladder, a crucifix upon
his lips, and though he is hung like a dog, dies like a gentleman and a
Catholic.
But Guy scarce sees the convulsed limbs and dying agony. His eyes have
before them only the heaping gold of Alva, the taxes of the
Netherlands, the mighty treasures of the father that he will make his
daughter’s wedding dower.
CHAPTER XI.
MAJOR GUIDO AMATI HAS A SPREE.
Chester is not the man to long for Alva’s treasure without desperate
and immediate efforts to get them. He is soon on board the Dover Lass,
and, locking himself in his cabin, makes examination of the packet he
has taken from the doublet of Paciotto, who is now hanging, food for
the crows, in the market-place of Flushing.
On carefully opening the parchment wrapping he discovers drawings of
three large keys to their exact size and dimensions, numbered,
respectively, one, two and three. Beneath directions for their use:
“For first door use in succession keys numbers one, two and three.
“For second door, keys numbered three, two and one.
“For third door, key number two, then number one, then number
three.
“Use exactly in the order noted. Any change in this rotation may
injure locks.”
Besides this there is a sketch showing the direction and length of the
passage under the Citadel, also where the sluice gate connected with
the statue of Alva opens into the vaulted passage, and how that can be
made immovable so that even if the statue is destroyed the waters of
the Schelde will not enter the passageway to drown those at work upon
the doors.
These drawings and directions are upon the finest and lightest Italian
paper, so as to be of very small bulk and easy of concealment.
Of these he makes an exact and careful copy, this he deposits in his
strong box in the cabin of the Dover Lass. The original he carefully
secures upon his person.
Then the Englishman goes to meditating. To gain this treasure it is
evident that he must not only go to Antwerp for a sufficient time to
have the keys manufactured by some skilled locksmith, but also have
with him a vessel and crew, capable of conveying away the booty after
he has obtained it. To visit Antwerp alone is an achievement of the
greatest danger. To take with him any portion of his crew with a vessel
and lie off the docks seems to him impossible.
But finally, after turning over the enterprise in his mind again and