Lysbeth | Page 4

lives in terror of being
overheard:--
"That's a pretty dress of yours, Van Hout's daughter. Oh, yes, I know
you; your father used to play with me when I was a child, and once he
kissed me on the ice at just such a fete as this. Think of it! Kissed me,
Martha the Mare," and she laughed hoarsely, and went on: "Yes,
well-warmed and well-fed, and, without doubt, waiting for a gallant to
kiss you"; here she turned and waved her hand towards the people--"all
well-warmed and well-fed, and all with lovers and husbands and
children to kiss. But I tell you, Van Hout's daughter, as I have dared to
creep from my hiding hole in the great lake to tell all of them who will
listen, that unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard, a day shall come
when the folk of Leyden must perish by thousands of hunger behind
those walls. Yes, yes, unless they cast out the cursed Spaniard and his

Inquisition. Oh, I know him, I know him, for did they not make me
carry my own husband to the stake upon my back? And have you heard
why, Van Hout's daughter? Because what I had suffered in their
torture-dens had made my face--yes, mine that once was so beautiful--
like the face of a horse, and they said that 'a horse ought to be ridden.'"
Now, while this poor excited creature, one of a whole class of such
people who in those sad days might be found wandering about the
Netherlands crazy with their griefs and sufferings, and living only for
revenge, poured out these broken sentences, Lysbeth, terrified, shrank
back before her. As she shrank the other followed, till presently
Lysbeth saw her expression of rage and hate change to one of terror. In
another instant, muttering something about a request for alms which
she did not wait to receive, the woman had wheeled round and fled
away as fast as her skates would carry her--which was very fast indeed.
Turning about to find what had frightened her, Lysbeth saw standing on
the bank of the mere, so close that she must have overheard every word,
but behind the screen of a leafless bush, a tall, forbidding- looking
woman, who held in her hand some broidered caps which apparently
she was offering for sale. These caps she began to slowly fold up and
place one by one in a hide satchel that was hung about her shoulders.
All this while she was watching Lysbeth with her keen black eyes,
except when from time to time she took them off her to follow the
flight of that person who had called herself the Mare.
"You keep ill company, lady," said the cap-seller in a harsh voice.
"It was none of my seeking," answered Lysbeth, astonished into
making a reply.
"So much the better for you, lady, although she seemed to know you
and to know also that you would listen to her song. Unless my eyes
deceived me, which is not often, that woman is an evil-doer and a
worker of magic like her dead husband Van Muyden; a heretic, a
blasphemer of the Holy Church, a traitor to our Lord the Emperor, and
one," she added with a snarl, "with a price upon her head that before
night will, I hope, be in Black Meg's pocket." Then, walking with long

firm steps towards a fat man who seemed to be waiting for her, the tall,
black-eyed pedlar passed with him into the throng, where Lysbeth lost
sight of them.
Lysbeth watched them go, and shivered. To her knowledge she had
never seen this woman before, but she knew enough of the times they
lived in to be sure that she was a spy of the priests. Already there were
such creatures moving about in every gathering, yes, and in many a
private place, who were paid to obtain evidence against suspected
heretics. Whether they won it by fair means or by foul mattered not,
provided they could find something, and it need be little indeed, to
justify the Inquisition in getting to its work.
As for the other woman, the Mare, doubtless she was one of those
wicked outcasts, accursed by God and man, who were called heretics;
people who said dreadful things about the Pope and the Church and
God's priests, having been misled and stirred up thereto by a certain
fiend in human form named Luther. Lysbeth shuddered at the thought
and crossed herself, for in those days she was an excellent Catholic.
Yet the wanderer said that she had known her father, so that she must
be as well born as herself--and then that dreadful story--no, she could
not bear to think of it. But of course heretics deserved all these things;