The First of the English 17 – Gunter · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The First of the English 17Book 2 · Advanced Womanhood in 1573
18
Literature · Romance
The First of the English 17
Book 2 · Advanced Womanhood in 1573
GunterEnglish
Such a welcome is given Guy and Haring as only the besieged, despairing and cut-off give to friends from the outer world.
“You bring news of succor?” cries one Dutch burgher on guard.
“The Prince’s fleet is almost ready,” whispers another with anxious lips. “We have word by a carrier pigeon that he is fitting out an expedition by land.”
“Tell me of my wife in Delft, Margaret Enkhuysen—you left there, didn’t you?” asks another.
But explaining their business and delivering over their three sacks of flour they are shortly afterward taken into the town by the Schalkwyker gate. Here Guy needs no word of mouth to tell him that he is in a town stricken by wounds and death, by siege and famine. The streets are dark, no lights burn save in the great church, now used as a hospital, and in the town-hall, where Ripperda, the Commandant, is busy with his officers.
The place is unnaturally silent. There are no barking dogs, nor even yelling cats; these have been eaten. The only sounds in the streets are the tramp of patrols relieving each other, or companies of men marching to duty on the walls. The voices of the sentries are hollow and weak with hunger.
Guy, leaving Haring at the Swan Inn, before which sit no happy burghers, and within which all is dark, makes his way to the great ravelin between the St. Jan’s gate and the Kruys gate, where he is informed that Pieter Kies is on guard, and gets interview with him.
“Why didn’t you send the daughter of Niklaas Bodé Volcker out of the town when it was besieged?” Guy asks indignantly.
“Because we had use for her.”
“Use for her? How? She is a woman, a non-combatant.”
“Women are not non-combatants here. Were it not for women we men would hardly hold this town.”
“You don’t mean to say that Mina fights?”
“No, she fills sand bags and sews them up, but there are plenty of women who do fight. Fight as well as men. Women are men here! no, they are more than that, they are angels of mercy—angels of death; nursing the wounded one day and killing the Spaniards the next, with their own hands. There’s the widow Kenau Hasselaer, the Spaniards fly from her faster than they would from any man in the garrison.”
“Nevertheless,” says Guy, unheeding this tribute to the advanced womanhood of the sixteenth century, “I have promised my friend, this girl’s lover, to take her safely out of Haarlem.”
“How can you get her out?” queries the burgher grimly.
“That will be my business if she will take the chance.”
“You’ll have to see Commandant Ripperda. If he says so, well and good. If not, I’ll not let you take the responsibility of trying to get Mina out of this town. She’s safer here. Do you believe we’re going to surrender? Not while we have anything to eat.”
With this Guy goes away. But Ripperda, the commandant, is busy and cannot be seen; so Chester, going to the Swan, there meets Haring, and finds the inn as clean as it was before; in fact, too clean, for there is nothing to dirty it with—nothing to eat save a porridge made of grass taken from the streets. Therefore the two, having taken the precaution of bringing their provisions with them in a bag, fall to upon their own.
But the smell of strong salt red herrings is so great that the children congregate about the door, and the widow Hasselaer, who has just come in from active duty, and is putting aside her breast-plate and head piece, cries out savagely: “Dolts! what are you doing? Luxuries are for the wounded!” With this she sweeps the Spanish wine, spirits, bread, herrings, and every morsel they have, away from them to carry out to the Kerk hospital, though her lips water at the sight of such unknown delicacies, and the children follow her, sobbing for “a little herring—just a taste, just a smell!”
But Kenau Hasselaer is made of sterner stuff and the wounded get even the herring smell.
Guy and Haring look glumly at each other. “To-morrow morning,” says the Englishman, “we’ll report ourselves and get rationed. It’s half a pound of mouldy bread, I believe, made of rye husks and ground oats.”
“Voor den duivel!” growls the Dutchman. “We must get out of here while we have strength. If that infernal woman had only left us the spirits!”
Then the two go gloomily to bed and fall into the deep sleep of tremendous fatigue, having toiled with their boat all the night before.
From this they are awakened by the awful din of arms, the clang of all the bells in the Groote Kerk and the lesser churches mingling with the clash and boom of bombard and culverin and saker.
Besides this Vrouw Hasselaer’s sturdy hand is upon them, shaking them out of their slumbers.
“Wake up, sluggards!” she cries, “and fight for your lives! Up! I’ll show you the way.”
Knowing that if the Spaniards take the town they will certainly butcher them, Guy and his companion hastily seize their arms and run with the widow through dark streets that are now full of men turning out to fight for their desolate homes.
Arriving at the wall just east of the Kruys gate, which has been made into a block house, the two, used as they are to scenes of battle, find themselves in such a fight as they have never seen before.
For they are in the woman’s department.
“Hel en duivel! There’s not a man here. We two can’t hold this long work,” cries Haring.
“You can’t?” exclaims Kenau Hasselaer, “but we’ll do it for you. Women of Haarlem, show these Springalds how to fight!”
This they do with all the might, potency and viciousness of the advanced womanhood of the Sixteenth Century, almost shaming Haring, who is a hero, and Chester, who is as sturdy a Captain as ever England sent forth, by deeds of prowess done by Kenau Hasselaer and her sister Amazons that night.
“Weerlicht! Cats are nothing to them!” gasps Haring, as he sees the way they handle the Spanish veterans, who come on thinking the town is already in their grasp; for this attack has been a surprise and nearly succeeded.
To make preparations for the great sortie that is to be combined with Orange’s attack from the lake, word of which has been brought into town by carrier pigeons, the guards had been weakened upon the outer ravelin, the great work just behind the moat running between the Kruys and the St. Jan’s gates, and immediately facing Don Frederico’s headquarters.
This ravelin having been crumbled down and breached under the unremitting fire of the heavy Spanish batteries; during the night the moat had been quickly bridged by pontoons thrown across by Vargas. Crossing this the veterans of Romero, De Billy and Vargas had ensconced themselves quietly at the foot of the ravelin.
Then taking breath, their advance had crawled up the breaches and before the Dutch sentinels, worn out with watching, fatigue and hunger, knew what they were about, had killed a good many of them and got possession of the work the Spaniards think the key to the town.
Besides this, they have gained the great block house at the Kruys gate, and Romero has captured the Jan’s gate.
“Cut in! Slay, kill—Haarlem is ours!” is the cry that reaches Don Frederico’s happy ears as he orders up reinforcements to make his success certain.
But even as the Spaniards spring over the ravelin to drop down right into Haarlem, they find they have not captured it.
As the batteries, week after week, have crumbled the ravelin, the besieged, chiefly the women and children, have erected directly behind it a great demi-lune of sandbags and earth, stronger against cannon and quite as difficult of escalade as the ravelin. This, masked from sight, is unknown to the Spanish until they mount the first fortification to see the second confronting them.
As Alva’s soldiers look on it, this demi-lune is being manned by the hastily alarmed people of the neighboring streets. A moment after they are joined by the German troops of the garrison—with a shout, the Spaniards come on—the fight begins.
The weakest spot in Haarlem wall is that immediately next the block house of the Kruys gate, the one now held by Vargas’s veterans. This intrenchment is held by Kenau and her lady militia. This has been their post of honor, and Ripperda, commander of the city, knows that into no hands (and he has veterans of many wars, and eight hundred gallant Scotchmen now reduced to one-half, and the French company under Courie) could he so well trust this point of weakness as to those unto whom he has given it.
For these women are fighting not only for all that manhood values, but in addition to all that their safety from defilement. Every one of them, maid, wife or widow, shudders as she thinks of Spanish mercy in a stormed town to hapless womanhood.
Alva’s veterans come confidently on. They have conquered one rampart, why not the other?
Up the slope they surge with cries of “Philip!” and “Don Frederico!” to find a cordial welcome from Sorosis at the summit.
Behind the rampart is a great fire and a mighty cauldron full of boiling brine. First comes a volley to make the enemy give back for one fatal minute, each woman firing her musket in the faces of the coming foe, who hesitate under the carnage.
“Wash out these Spaniards!—pass the water up!” cries the widow, and seizing the first bucket-full of boiling stuff, she swashes it in the face of an Italian captain, whose tried armor is not proof against this cruel scalding. As he screams in agony she cuts him down.
Then with the deft hands of the washtub her women deluge with boiling brine the Spaniards, who shriek and scream and writhe in agony.
But others from behind press on; at these the women go with broadswords. Caring naught for death, they carry no shields, but swing the big weapons with both arms. Against the weight of such a blow no skill of fence from single arm is potent.
“Pikemen to the front!” screams De Billy, but a moment after he is wounded and carried from the fray and the pikemen do not come soon enough, for Kenau Hasselaer, heading her women veterans, charges down the demi-lune and sweeps every living Spaniard into the block house by the Kruys gate.
With this she laughs hoarsely: “We’ve got it full. Now, Vrouw Jannaps—thy work!”
And a woman who has been waiting quietly on the top of the demi-lune springs down and coming back a minute later cries, “I’ve fired the mine!”
This is reported almost at the same moment by the mine itself and the great block house of the Kruys gate, that has been prepared for its Spanish visitors with some twenty barrels of gunpowder, goes up into the air, and with it some hundred Walloon infantry of De Billy and a detachment of Vargas veterans.
Then they pelt the last unwounded Spaniard back across the little bridge and though Romero holds with his company the St. Jan’s gate on the other side of the demi-lune, the fire from the gabled houses near by, and two or three small cannon and sakers that have been brought up, is so fierce, that not one of the sentries can put his head outside its masonry and live. From this reception, Romero having had an eye shot out leads back his men—those that can get away;—for now comes the greatest horror of it all.
Taught by their adversaries’ many deeds of hideous cruelty, the Dutch sally forth and slowly and in cold blood as butchers do their work, dispatch the Spanish wounded, who cry in vain for quarter.
In all this fight Guy and Haring have stood side by side with Kenau Hasselaer. Where the women have charged they have charged with them, and she coming back laughs and pats them on the shoulders, crying: “Good boys, you did well, almost as well as if you had been women! You have the courage to fight, will you have the courage to starve with us?”
But this starving matter is neither to Haring’s nor Guy’s liking; besides this, they are there for a special purpose. So getting word with Ripperda, who stands on the rampart surrounded by his officers, Guy broaches his errand to him, asking permission to take Bodé Volcker’s daughter from the place.
“I am right glad to see you again, First of the English, and supposed you had come to stay with us,” answers the Holland commander.
“Oh! you don’t need fighters, men nor women,” returns Chester. “You’ve got too many eaters in the town now.”
“You don’t think they’ll capture us?”
“Not by arms,” says the Englishman. “Therefore I say the fewer mouths to feed the safer you are. A provision train or a few boat loads of flour are worth more to you than a thousand veterans.”
“You are right,” responds Ripperda, his face growing gloomy. “But I and those with me are here to stay, even with these horrors—Look!”
Daylight has now broken, and peering forth from an embrasure for fear of Spanish arquebus balls, Guy sees the picture of a Dutch town leaguered by the Spaniards. Before him is the demi-lune, its face dotted with dead, its ditch filled with them. Opposite stands the other rampart, the one won by the Spaniards and still occupied by them. Behind this the moat fed by the Spaarne river, commanded by the Spanish batteries of bombards and breaching cannon.
Then come clumps of trees to the left, and the Leprosy hospital; beyond that and all around circling the view are the tents and huts of Alva’s besieging army, cutting off this hapless town from friends and food.
To Chester’s ears come faintly on the morning breeze the clang of arms and moving companies and reliefs marching to the intrenchments.
Scattered over this scene are half a dozen windmills, and in front of them another erection, which makes Guy, soldier as he is, bite his lips.
It is a huge gallows upon which twenty bodies dangle, some by the necks, others by the feet.
And now, horror of horrors, the Spanish executioner, comes with his assistants quite early to his morning work. With him on hurdles are despairing wretches bound hand and foot. So getting to their business, they take down the dead to hang up the living who here, in sight of their friends and townsmen, shall occupy it with their dying agonies this day.
There is a cry of rage and anguish from the walls—these tortured ones are neighbors they had talked with the day before, prisoners taken during a sortie. And one woman screams: “Oh, merciful God, I see him—they are hanging up my Klaas!” and falls down moaning.
“We’ll do the same,” says Ripperda, “head for head! Call the Provost Captain!”
Soon some twenty Spaniards dangle from the walls in hideous reply to savage challenge.
Enraged by this Alva’s soldiers on the neighboring ravelin toss something into the Dutch demi-lune.
It falls almost at the feet of Guy and Ripperda.
The Dutch captain bending down inspects this, then mutters suddenly to Guy: “This head is placarded ‘Captain Oliver, of Mons.’”
“Good God!” and with eyes filled with anguish Chester sees once more, for the last time, the face of his dead friend.
“You knew he was dead?” asks Ripperda.
“Yes,” mutters Guy, “but I couldn’t tell of it here; his betrothed would learn.”
“Yes, the girl Mina was to marry our patriot!” sighs the commander. Then he says hoarsely: “Take her away if you can get her forth alive. Take her away quickly; don’t tell her until you get her from the horror of this. Good bye, my English friend. If we meet again Haarlem will be free from Spanish butchers.”
And the two make their farewell with mutual respect.
From this Guy, going to Pieter Kies, says: “I have the Commandant’s orders. Take me to Mina Bodé Volcker!”
Getting word with the girl, who is very pale from famine and anxiety, she sobs to him: “You have come to take me to Antony. I know it. I see it in your face.”
“Yes,” mutters Chester.
“Where is he? How was it Oliver didn’t come with you?”
“Oh he—he came part way,” falters Guy, and goes with Haring to make arrangements for their journey.
The only chance to get the girl out is by the lake. To do that they must escape at night.
Taking Mina down through the Schalkwyker gate by the little line of intrenchments and fortifications along the left bank of the Spaarne, by which the besieged still keep communication open with the lake, they get to the fort upon its shore over which the flag of Orange flies, and preparing their boat, wait for nightfall.
This comes, but scarce soon enough, they are so very hungry. But with it also comes something that aids their enterprise.
Five Spanish galleys are guarding the Fuik. Sails are seen to the southeast. Four of these spreading their canvas, go out to reconnoiter, and by night have not returned. There is now but one galley to avoid, though she puts out two patrol boats.
“I think I can give a good account of those cursed bateaux that keep provisions from us,” mutters the Holland commander of the fort. Forthwith he prepares three boats to attack the patrolling ones of the Spaniards at nightfall.
As these go out to make attack, Chester and Haring set sail upon the little skiff, and, dodging the galley, which is now engaged with the Haarlemers, are soon out upon the open lake, scudding to the south before a fair wind.
Before daylight they are at the Kaag, and passing from there to Delft; the next evening, Guy finds himself acquitted of his oath.
Having placed his charge in comfort and retirement in the inn called the Gilded Tower, Chester strolls into the wine room of the hostelry to meet astonishment. A wild-eyed creature on seeing him rises up, his teeth chattering as he mutters: “Hel en duivel! It is a dead man!”
It is the merchant Bodé Volcker, who has been at Delft for months beseeching the Prince of Orange to save his daughter.
“Not at all,” whispers Guy. Then he adds savagely: “Shut your chattering teeth till you hear,” and seizing Niklaas’s arm leads him to private converse.
“So you recognized me?” the Englishman says under his breath.
“Yes, but you are dead. The news came months ago to Antwerp that Colonel Guido Amati was killed at the battle on the ice in combat with ‘The First of the English.’”
“No, I’ve recovered from my wounds!”
“Then, unfortunate man, if they discover you, a colonel in the Spanish army, here, you’re no better than dead. But I will not betray you,” mutters Bodé Volcker. “You saved my child once, to take her where she is worse off.” Then he cries, wringing his hands: “Save her again, my Mina! She’s in Haarlem, a refugee from justice. If they take the city it is her death. You have Alva’s ear, plead with him. You have influence with his daughter, speak to her!”
“That is unnecessary,” answers Guy, “I have saved your daughter already.”
“Saved her? How? Where?
“Right here at the Gilded Tower.”
“Here! In Gods naam! You have saved her? Take me to her, my Mina who was lost—my Mina who is found!”
And the old man, delirious with joy, fondles Guy’s hand and invokes blessings upon him.
A minute after he turns to fly to the child he had grieved for, but Guy stays him and says: “First I must tell you something.”
“What is it? Don’t keep me.”
“Only for her sake,” he answers, and pours out his tale of Oliver’s death, then whispers: “Tell it to her—I tried but could not.”
In his story Chester is compelled to reveal to the merchant who he really is, and this seems to take more hold upon Bodé Volcker than even the painter’s death. He gasps astounded: “You! ‘The First of the English?’ You! You came to Antwerp—did mortal man ever take such risk? Ten thousand crowns are now put upon your head since the battle on the ice. Why did you take such risk?” Here he suddenly cries: “Oh! Bij den hemel! I see. You’re in love with Alva’s daughter.”
“Yes,” says Guy, who feels that he has now put this man under such obligation that his secret is safe with him. “She is my affianced wife, I am going to marry the Duke’s daughter.”
“Then you must hurry, young man, you must hurry,” says Bodé Volcker solemnly.
“Why?”
“Because—Ah I guess the reason now!—it was after the death of Guido Amati—she has become religious. It is said she will become a nun.”
“A NUN!” screams Guy. “Because she’s heard that Guido Amati is dead. This is a rare and cruel joke!” and bursts, with sinking heart and sickening soul, into hideous laughter, jeering at himself, as Bodé Volcker hurries away to take his daughter once more to his arms.
