2

When Count Horn rode in through the gate of the Palais de Nassau in Brussels, he could scarcely penetrate the courtyard, which was filled with heavy ox-drawn wagons and servants rushing between them and the palace doors. The servants, he noticed, were loading goods from the palace into the wagons, rather than the other way around, the usual order of things. The place looked as if it were being looted.

He found a groom to take his horse, and leaving his retainers to keep out of the way of all this hubbub he went into the palace in search of his friend the Prince of Orange.

Orange was in his living quarters, on the second story of the south wing, overseeing the removal from the walls of the mirrors and paintings and their packing into crates. When he saw Count Horn, he smiled and held out his hand in greeting, but his face remained grave as ever behind the courtly mask.

“My dear friend.” Horn came to his side, his gaze surveying the clutter of packing and goods that took up all the space in the room. The carpets were rolled up and tied fast, and even the ornate fastenings on the windows were coming down. “Are you moving to another palace?”

That seemed impossible. The Palais de Nassau had been the seat of the Princes of Orange for their last several manifestations; no finer house stood in the Low Countries.

Orange still wore his smile, but his dark eyes were hooded and morose. “I am moving my household to Germany, my friend,” he said.

“To Germany! Whatever for?”

“This past week I have had news that the Duke of Alva is leading the Spanish armies in Italy north, to take them through the Alps and bring them here. I do not mean to be within his reach when he arrives.”

Horn stared at him, his lips parted. With a shake he brought himself out of his astonishment, laughed, and plucking at the snowy masses of lace at his throat adjusted his enormously expensive coat. “You must be joking, my lord. You’d abandon the field to the enemy before he even appears? After your brilliant success at Antwerp?”

Orange had lost his smile. He watched Horn with an impassive face, cocked his hand to a servant standing nearby, and said, “I beg your pardon, my dear Count. I have been unforgivably rude—will you join me for a glass of wine?” A nod to the servant sent him hurrying off.

When they had gone out onto a little balcony, where the sun shone warmly and the evidence of the Prince’s activity was gone from view, Horn relaxed. He felt now that this would make a splendid joke—the Prince’s loss of nerve at the mere mention of the name of the Duke of Alva. In spite of the disruption of his household, Orange’s staff was still perfect in his service; within moments the servant brought a flagon of a very fine pale Moselle wine, and another servant presented Horn with a tray of sweets and fruits for his selection.

“You will be the laughingstock of Brussels, you know,” said Horn, lifting a candied lime to his mouth. “And after all the expense and bother of moving everything out, you’ll only have to move it all back in again, when the season starts. I hope you don’t break that mirror from your salon; you’ll never find another as handsome.”

“If you want my advice, you’ll leave as well,” said Orange.

He sat, not on the embroidered cushion of the chair to Horn’s left, but on its carved wooden arm; he looked very restless.

Horn laughed. “I am not afraid of Alva.”

Orange said nothing.

“We are in control here,” said the count. He leaned forward over the silver tray of sweets, his fingers poised, searching out another candied lime. “The Governess had to rely on you to help quell the iconoclasts, did she not? The country is restored to order—”

“There are many who call me traitor now on both sides,” said Orange. “The Governess hates and fears me the more because of my work in Antwerp, and the Calvinists hate me for refusing to shelter their army there.”

“That will pass.” Horn licked sugar from his fingertips. “Alva is a barbarian. The Netherlands is a civilized place.”

“Alva is not a barbarian,” Orange said sharply. “I know him far better than you do, and he is as subtle and keen witted a man as there is in Europe. Let me tell you something. Years ago, when the Emperor was still alive, he sent me and two others to France, after the conclusion of the treaty between him and Henri the Second, to secure the provisions of the treaty.” Orange picked up the wine flask and filled his friend’s cup. “One day I found myself in the company of Monsieur le Roi de France in a wood at Chantilly, where he was enjoying a picnic supper, and Monsieur le Roi turned to me and began talking about ‘our common plan.’ I knew nothing of this plan, but I held my tongue and listened, to know more. Soon it became clear that those who knew me better than Monsieur le Roi had kept the Common Plan from me, because they knew I had no heart for slaughter and persecution, and this plan was for the slaughter and persecution of every heretic in Europe. Beginning with the Low Countries.”

Horn licked his lips. The taste of the lime still clung to his mouth. But Henri II was dead, he reminded himself, and so was the Emperor.

“I sat there in the wood in Chantilly,” said the Prince, “and listened to him speak of killing his own subjects—some by the sword, some by the rope, and by fire—as if he talked of treading on locusts who devoured his fields, or pulling up weeds in his garden. He thought I knew of every detail. He thought so because one of the other hostages was a chief framer of the Common Plan, and had been sent to France especially to acquire Monsieur le Roi’s support for it.”

He leaned forward, his dark, hooded eyes sharp. “That hostage was the Duke of Alva.”

Horn pressed his lips together. For a moment he entertained a high hot anger at the Prince of Orange for this overdramatic speech, for trying to frighten him.

“He is coming here to destroy heresy in the Low Countries,” said the Prince. “The Beggars have given him the excuse, and into the bargain they have quenched all sympathy they could have enjoyed with the Catholics.”

“All the more reason to stay,” Horn said, in a full courageous voice. “To stay and fight.”

“To stay and be wiped out.”

“What can he do to us? He can hang a few peasants, but we are the greatest men of the Provinces, my dear Prince—we are Knights of the Golden Fleece, stadtholders, counts, and princes—he cannot touch us.”

As he spoke Horn relaxed, reassured. He drew a deep breath, happy with himself.

“I hope you are right, sir,” said Orange.

“Of course I am right.” Horn finished his wine and set down his cup. “However, if you’re leaving—I don’t suppose you would sell me that mirror? You’ll break it certainly, hauling it off to Germany.”

The Prince of Orange laughed. “It’s yours,” he said. “I’ll send it to your palace this afternoon.”

“A noble gesture. When you return, you shall have it back.”

“Only see that it is not broken in my absence, Count.”

“Be sure of it,” said Count Horn, pleased.

The Prince of Orange intended to make his departure from the Low Countries covertly, and so he returned to Antwerp for a while, after he had sent all his possessions to Germany from Brussels. But a few days after he reached Antwerp he gathered up his servants and his retainers and rode off to the gate of the city.

The people in the streets knew him at once; everyone in Antwerp knew him, from his work during the iconoclasm and his rule since then, and they loved him. A small crowd followed him as he rode through the city toward the gate. A boy ran up beside his horse, calling, “Where are you going? Oh, where are you going?”

“To Dillenburg,” said the Prince, in breezy fashion. “For the hunting. I am only going to Dillenburg, friends—no cause for alarm.”

The boy would not be put off; he ran alongside him, still crying out, “Where are you going? Oh, where are you going?” And the crowd grew larger that followed along after him.

He smiled at them; he tried to reassure them, but his smile was tight and forced, and as if he gave off an aura of uneasiness and tension the crowd, swelling in numbers with every step, grew more distressed. They pressed after him to the gate.

“Oh, where are you going?”

“Goodbye,” the Prince said, and turned and waved to them. “I shall come back soon—have no fear.” He smiled at them; he rode out the gate, still smiling, but many saw the sweat that stood on his brow, and many saw the smile stiff as a grimace, like the rictus of death.

Don Fernando Alvarez De Toledo, Duke of Alva, gathered under his banner the three tercios of the Spanish soldiery stationed in Italy and marched them north through the Alpine passes. In slow orderly progress, he led these thousands of men, beneath their banners of the Virgin and the saints, from the Catholic south to the reformed north of Europe, and from the rocky heaths of Scotland to the swampy Polish plain, the Protestant Christians tensed like bowstrings. Alva knew the effect of his march, and being a patient man he was content with that for now and kept his troops in good order and made no trouble on the way.

Tall, with hair and beard gone white in the service of his King and his God, he rode usually near the head of his columns. He knew everything that happened in the army and he gave every general order himself. His son was one of his officers, but Alva treated Don Federico de Alvarez no differently from any other Spanish soldier; he expected absolute discipline and unfaltering courage from everyone he commanded, the same discipline and courage he demanded of himself.

In the spring of the year he led his army into the Low Countries.

As he marched toward Brussels, he studied the terrain. His confidence fed on what he saw. He had been here before, and it was easily understood, this countryside—flat and low, the plain swept toward the North Sea without a barrier more formidable than an occasional wood. The roads were excellent, but the canals were a real marvel, connecting every part of the Provinces. On this flat and open game board stood the major pieces of the opposition, the great cities, divided within into hostile classes, jealous one city of another, intensely competitive.

The game was almost too easy. Alva entered Brussels without opposition, without even a stir of alarm among the people who lined the streets to watch. He found that nearly all his immediate enemies were waiting, within easy grasp, for him to make the first move. And Alva moved.

At breakfast, Mies said the prayer as usual, and they all sat down at the table, and the maidservant brought in the hot dishes. Hanneke spread her napkin on her knees, her hands quick with impatience. She had talked her mother into making a rare excursion out to the market today and she wanted to leave before the older woman changed her mind. She watched her father serve himself the broiled fish, wondering if he deliberately loitered over the choice and the removal of the crusty brown filets to his plate.

He laid the fish knife down along the platter’s edge. Sitting back so that the maidservant could take the plate away to Hanneke’s mother, he raised his eyes to her brother, across the table.

“You are coming with me today on my shop rounds.”

Hanneke lifted her head, startled. Mies’ rule of silence at mealtimes was almost never broken. Usually he had settled with Jan what he was to do the night before.

Jan was bent over his plate. When he raised his head his eyes were dark with temper.

He said, “I have other plans.”

“Jan, dear,” his mother said, in soft reproof. She turned to the fish.

“You are coming with me,” said Mies, in a tone that meant to shut down all objection.

Jan said, “I see no reason to obey someone who betrayed his God and his God’s faithful—”

There was a thunderous pounding on the front door of the house.

“—and who puts profit and goods ahead of truth and justice!”

Father and son glared at each other across the table. Hanneke gripped her napkin in her lap, her heart pounding. This could not be happening; as well shout God down from the sky as challenge a father over his own table. But it was. The pounding on the door went on, but it seemed to be taking place in another world, unimportant.

Mies said, “I shall accept no more of this insolence. You are coming with me, or I shall resort to such punishments as are suitable for the misdemeanors of a child.”

“When you betrayed our faith and our people, you lost your power over me, Mijnheer van Cleef.”

The front door burst open. Now Mies turned his head, blinking; all the family sat up stiff in their chairs to goggle at the strange men who tramped into their dining room.

They wore iron shirts and carried muskets. Soldiers. Hanneke’s mouth fell open, and her mother screamed. Mies thrust back his chair. Standing, he strode around the table to the obvious leader of these men, a neatly bearded officer in a black coat.

“What do you mean by this trespass? Who are you?”

“You are Mies van Cleef,” the officer said, unruffled. His accent was strange; he spoke in French. He smiled a meaningless pleasant smile at Jan, staring at him from across the table. “You are under arrest.”

Mies stood still where he was, but he swayed, as if a strong wind shook him, and his face went white. Hanneke’s teeth caught her lower lip. When the soldiers closed around her father, she said, “No.”

“You can’t take him now,” her mother said. “He hasn’t finished his breakfast.”

Jan passed behind her chair so violently he knocked her forward into the table; he set himself at the men around his father. Mies shouted. In a wild confusion, the soldiers, their prisoner, and Jan all whirled together in a milling of arms and the soldiers’ long guns. There was a sharp thud and Jan fell to the floor.

The officer looked amused. His men folded around Mies and walked him out the door, and the officer turned to Hanneke and her mother.

“This house is forfeit to the Crown. You have until noon to get out.” He jabbed his thumb at Jan. “We will come for him next.” He went out after his men.

Hanneke shot up out of her place and ran around the table to her brother, groaning on the floor. A glance showed her he was well enough. Her mother sat motionless at the table, staring at Mies’ empty chair. “Where have they taken him? When will he be home again?” Hanneke went out the door to the front sitting room.

The furniture here was all draped against the dust; the room was used only on feast days. At the window the maidservant and the cook were pressed to the glass looking into the street. Hanneke forced a way in between them.

Out there the soldiers were pushing Mies into a line of other men, each with his hands manacled behind his back and a halter around his neck linking him to the man in front of him. Other soldiers with pikes and helmets stood around them. The men who had taken Mies pulled his hands behind him and fastened him up to the last man in the line. Hanneke bit her lip. He looked dazed, her father, unready and helpless. His breakfast not even eaten. Among the other men in line, she saw faces she recognized. Near the front of the line was Albert van Luys, the preacher.

At a gesture from the officer, a man with a hammer strode up to the door of the van Cleef house, took a roll of paper from beneath his arm, and tacked a notice to the door. The officer barked an order. The column of prisoners marched away, soldiers on either side and coming after. The man with the hammer hurried after them, breaking into a run to catch up. She thought Mies turned his head to look back, but the dust of so many feet made it hard to see; within minutes he was gone from sight.

The day was overcast and cold. Jan shivered without his jacket. At the tower by the river where his father had been taken, he found a crowd of people fidgeting and pacing around, trying to find out what had happened to their own relatives, who had been marched off as peremptorily as Mies. There seemed to be no one who could give them any answers.

The tower gates were locked and barred and the windows were shuttered. People stood before the doors hammering on them with their fists and shouting. Other people talked in little groups. Jan walked through the crowd, his shoulders hunched, the cold driving him on. He wondered if this had befallen him for his impiety—if God had heard his defiance of his father and with the suddenness of a thunderclap had taken Mies away to punish him. The tower was made of grim gray stone, several stories high. He imagined scaling a rope to one of the narrow windows at the top and bearing Mies away on his back.

“They’ve taken every important man in Antwerp,” an old woman was saying, near the gate. “Even some of the Catholics.”

“They can’t do this; it’s against the law.” A man in black came up to Jan and spoke earnestly to him, as if they knew one another well. “They can’t do this; they must all be released at once.”

A clump of men stood opposite the main gate of the tower; their heads together, they were planning something, with many calculating glances at the prison, and Jan went over to join them. They let him without hesitation into their midst.

“We’ll need weapons.” The big bearded man at the center spoke to all of them, his eyes shifting from face to face. Jan knew him, a brewer from the German quarter. “Rakes, clubs, knives, anything. And something heavy to break down the door with.”

The man beside Jan turned to him and said, “They can’t do this. We are right to free our people, who are false prisoners.”

From behind the tower a trumpet blew. All the men wheeled.

A column of pikemen was trotting up the gentle slope from the river. The sun, just breaking through the dense dark clouds, caught on a helmet here and there and on the long leaf-shaped blades of their pikes. Uncertain, the people around the tower waited and watched them approach. Jan flexed his hands. His mouth was dry. He wished he had a sword, a stick, any sort of weapon. The Spanish pikemen reached the tower, swung their long lances down, and charged into the crowd.

Women screamed; all around the tower, people turned and struggled to get out of the way of the blades. Jan let out a bellow of rage. Whatever these soldiers were, they were cowards, attacking unarmed men and women. Spreading apart his bare hands, he rushed forward at the pikemen, determined to grab one of their weapons and use it on them.

Shrieking, a woman blundered into him, her hands raised to shield herself; he slipped by her and planted his feet. The line of soldiers swept toward him like an ocean wave, close packed, their pikes laid down horizontal in a moving fence of blades. There was no way past them, no way to take one at a time. They spitted a young man to Jan’s left and threw him down to the ground and while he screamed trampled over him. Jan thrust his hands out, his breath coming fast, in whines. The wall of blades swung toward him. Blood dripped from the points. He backed up, stumbled, fell, and rolled frantically away.

The memory swept over him of the time he had nearly been trampled; suddenly his body broke free of his mind’s discipline. Without thought he sprang to his feet and ran away. There was someone in his path and he knocked her down and ran by her without a glance. The shrieks and curses of other Dutchmen sounded in his ears but he heard nothing except the thunder of his heart. Ahead of him other people were fleeing. They ran too slowly for him; he threw them aside and raced on, on, up the slope toward the city, away from the pikes, away to safety.

When he reached the house in the Canal Street there were boxes piled on the front step, and his sister was in their parents’ bedroom packing jewelry and money and books into the wooden chest from his father’s cupboard. Their mother stood over her, wringing her hands and weeping.

“Why are you doing this? There’s no need for this. Your father will be home soon—what will he say? Wait for him to tell us what to do.” The older woman’s face was swollen and twisted with crying. She put her hands out to Jan. “Tell her to stop.”

One hand pressed to his aching side, Jan lowered himself to the floor beside Hanneke. She ignored him; she laid books in the chest in a neat brickwork.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“The Kelmans will rent us a room,” Hanneke said. “In the Swan Street, the Joseph and Mary House.”

“Tell her to stop,” their mother pleaded, crying tears.

“What happened to you?” Hanneke asked him.

“At the tower,” he said. “The soldiers came and drove us off. There were lots of people there but they drove us off. Some were killed.”

“Are you all right?” Hanneke laid her hand on his arm.

He nodded, his gaze sliding away from hers; he could not face her when he thought how he had fled away from his enemies like a coward.

“Is Father in the tower?” she asked.

He nodded.

“He will be home soon,” their mother said. “I’ll go watch for him.” She fled out of the room.

Hanneke stroked her brother’s sleeve; now suddenly there were tears on her cheeks. “What will happen to us? Why is this happening to us?”

He put his arms around her and pulled her against his shoulder, and she wept. “There, now, Hanneke,” he said, and rubbed her back.

There was a sudden banging on the door downstairs, and she jumped so violently she spilled books from her lap onto the floor. Jan got up to his feet.

“I’ll see who it is.”

It was the soldiers, come to take the house. Jan longed to fight them; he wanted to snarl brave words into their faces, but there were ten of them, all with pikes and guns. He hoisted the chest his sister showed him up onto his shoulder, and under the cold foreign eyes of the Spaniards he and Hanneke and their mother with their belongings on their backs trudged out of their house into the street. One of the soldiers said something to his sister as she passed and reached out his hand to pat her breast. She wheeled away, dropping the wooden chest of books into the street. The soldiers all laughed. Jan helped her put the books away again and led her off down the street.

“Just a few troublemakers,” said Alva, smiling. He fixed Count Horn with an unblinking stare and spread his hands. “I must protect my troops from the fanatics who have already proven themselves enemies of the state, capable of any crime.”

Count Horn clenched his fist. A glance around the council chamber showed him the other men divided into two unequal groups; those who supported Alva watched with sleek satisfied faces, while the few who opposed him—very few—wore looks etched deep with strain and uncertainty.

Horn coughed into his cupped palm. He had the sensation of losing the ground under his feet, as if the floor had suddenly dropped away.

Stubbornly, he said, “We in these Provinces are governed by laws, my lord duke. Such measures as you have taken violate our privileges.”

Alva said, “People who destroy churches and sacred relics do not deserve privileges.”

“The Duke of Burgundy is not the Duke of Burgundy without the law!” Horn leaned forward, urgent with his idea; Alva’s bland smiling mask infuriated him. “The law makes the ruler. Without the law there is no rule. Don’t you see—”

“The King,” said Alva slowly, with emphasis, “is master of far more than these few little territories. He cannot be bound by the moss-grown superstitions of one little corner of his realm, or he loses his grandeur as King.”

Beside Horn, Count Egmont lifted his head and his deep clear voice. “He rules here because he is Duke of Burgundy—all else is irrelevant here.”

“He rules here because he is the son and successor of Charles the Fifth,” said Alva. “Because he is King. Because he has the power—the only power—which you will obey, because you have no choice.”

Egmont muttered, “Would that Orange were here.”

Alva seemed not to hear that. He went on, smiling, smiling, to reassure them. “I am concerned with the safety of my troops—therefore, I have caused the arrest of some few troublemakers throughout the land. Let me promise you no honest man shall be disturbed. And now I ask your leave to dismiss this council until the afternoon, as I am hungry.”

Horn leaned over to whisper into Egmont’s ear. “Have you heard from Orange?”

“Nothing.” Egmont gestured, and the servant behind him moved his chair back away from the table. All around the long polished slab, the others of the council were getting up. If Orange were here, he would have new arguments, subtle disputations of reason and tradition to hurl against Alva, but Egmont was tired and baffled. He could not reach this man, who rejected the very basis of the Burgundian state while pretending to serve its master. “The King has blundered, sending Alva here. He must be made to see that.”

Horn did not reply to him. With their aides and their pages around them, the two noblemen went out of the chamber into the large room beyond, where the secretaries sat at their desks and the sentries stood along the walls. As the councillors came out, the secretaries shot up onto their feet and the sentries stiffened to attention, tapping the butts of their pikes on the slick tiled floor. Egmont pulled his gaze away from the soldiers. Their round Spanish helmets oppressed his spirit. He turned to his page for his gloves, his cloak.

A soldier marched up to him. “Count Egmont.”

Egmont nodded, holding out one hand, to allow his glove to be drawn on.

“You are under arrest, sir.”

From Horn, behind him, a choked gasp; Egmont’s head snapped up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Come with me, sir. You are under arrest, by order of the Governor-general.”

Egmont gaped at him, his mind frozen by surprise; this could not be happening and in a moment would resolve itself into order and right again, the soldier bowing, leaving him alone. Instead the man reached out a hand to take him by the arm, and Egmont recoiled.

“How dare you touch me! I am a Knight of the Golden Fleece—I am a councillor of the Duke of Burgundy—”

The soldier seized his arm and Egmont threw him off with a violent thrust. “You have no right!” Behind him, they were taking Horn, too. The ground was gone from beneath his feet. He was walking into a void that would devour him. They had him by the arms now. Someone, some Spanish soldier, was actually removing his sword from its scabbard. A hard knot formed in his chest.

“You have no right.”

“Only the King has rights.” Alva came up beside him, smiling. “The only law is the King’s will. Good day, Count Egmont.” With a little bow, he favored Horn with a look. “You cannot know, sir, how I agree with you: Would that the Prince of Orange were here.” He laughed; he strode away down the antechamber, his back stiff as a pikestaff, arrogant and assured. The soldiers took Horn and Egmont down the stairs.

“I want you to come with me,” Hanneke said.

“With you? Where? To the prison?” Jan gave an angry mirthless grunt of laughter. “I have been there.”

Hanneke was on her knees, packing clothes for her father into a chest; she did not look up at her brother. The room she and he and their mother were sharing, above the Kelmans’ kitchen, was so small there was scarcely room for the three of them together. Her mother was still asleep in the cupboard bed; the chest and Hanneke herself took up the center of the floor, and Jan stood in the doorway, watching her.

“It will only be a few hours of your time,” she said. “You can spare him that, at least.”

“I can. How well you know what time I have.”

“You aren’t working.”

The factory and the shops of Mies van Cleef had been confiscated along with his house.

“It takes time to steal,” Jan said.

She said nothing to that. She knew that was how he was getting their food. They had a little money left—not much—but she was clinging to it, reluctant to spend even a penny, with the future so uncertain. She got up from the chest and went to the back of the room, where the books were lined up against the wall, and pored over the titles until she decided on Thomas à Kempis and the Gospels.

When she went back to the chest, Jan was gone. The door hung open, the sunlight glittering with suspended dust.

She made a sound in her chest. He could have stayed to help her. Furious, she shut the lid of the chest and heaved it up onto her shoulder. Her mother still slept, to Hanneke’s relief; the older woman made such a fuss when Hanneke went out alone. She slipped out the door into the late autumn sunlight.

In spite of the bright weather, it was cold. Her shoulder already aching from the weight of the chest, she started away across the city to the prison.

At the gate a long line of people waited to see the jailers; they carried petitions in their hands, and bundles of clothes and food for their relatives inside the old tower. Down at the other side of the broad damp meadow that lay between the river and the canal was a crew of workmen, clearing the ground for the new fortress to be built there. Hanneke waited in line with the others, gnawing her lip, impatient. Surely by now her mother would have wakened. There would be trouble when she got back.

There was nothing to do, anyway, but argue with her mother. Better that she was here, doing some good. She fixed her eyes on the broad back of the man in front of her in the line and waited.

At noon, at last, she was let in to see the jailer, in the tiny courtyard of the tower: a tall man in a leather apron. He took her chest of clothes and books and tossed it over onto a heap of other baskets and bundles against the wall.

“But—” she said, startled. “Aren’t you going to put his name on it? How will you know whom to give it to?”

The man laughed at her, his eyes glinting. “Oh, I have a splendid memory.”

“Can I see him?”

“No, no one can see any of the prisoners, little lady.”

She stood before him, irresolute; lifting her head, she scanned the blackened stone wall of the tower, the tiny windows crisscrossed with iron bars. Suddenly she realized that Mies would never come out again, that none of the things she had brought for his comfort would ever reach him, that to her he was already dead. She trembled; her soul seemed to shrink inside her.

A touch on her arm made her jump. The jailer was fingering her sleeve. He smirked at her, his eyes unblinking.

“Of course,” he said, purring like a big cat, “if I wanted to, I could make some arrangements. If you made me want to.” His fingertips stroked her wrist, sliding under the cuff of her sleeve to her bare arm.

She jerked her arm back out of his reach. Her stomach rolled over. With one more glance up at the tower, she turned and rushed away out of the courtyard.

Outside, she stopped; she wondered if she ought to go back—what he would ask of her. She knew what he would ask of her. She could not do that. Not even for Mies—and Mies would not want it of her. Blindly she walked forward through the skeins of people waiting to get inside. They moved out of her way; she bumped into someone and apologized. Her eyes hurt. She was going to cry. The cold sunlight burned her cheeks. Mies would not want that of her. Mies was dead. She wheeled and looked up again at the gaunt stone tower. Tufts of grass sprouted on the black roof.

She should go back. Do whatever she had to do for her father’s sake. But her feet were moving, taking her away into Antwerp, back into Antwerp, home to her mother.

When she came into the street that ran by Kelman’s house she saw her mother in the middle of it, walking toward her. Hanneke stopped, amazed. In all her life she could never remember her mother leaving the house by herself.

The older woman saw her and turned toward her, walking slowly, her head down. She looked strange. Her hair was slipping free of the tight linen cap that covered her head and her long dark housecoat was dingy. She was barefoot. Suddenly ashamed of her, Hanneke hurried toward her, to get her away out of sight.

Her mother gave her such a strange look, when she came up to her, that Hanneke paused without touching her and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I am looking for—” Griet said, and stopped.

Hanneke waited a moment for the rest of the answer; her heart was pounding. She cast a quick look in either direction along the street, to see if anyone was watching them.

“For what, Mother?”

The older woman raised her face, gaunt and seamed with age lines. “The way to Hell.”

Abruptly tears spilled down from her eyes. Hanneke took her by the arm and led her back to Kelman’s house.

In the little room above the kitchen, she helped her mother take off her clothes and get into the cupboard bed. All the while her mother cried like a child. Hanneke sat beside her in the semidarkness, one hand on her shoulder, and thought of her father in prison and her brother fled away into the streets.

“Mama,” she said, “this is already Hell.”

In the darkness deeper inside the dungeon someone was screaming, had been screaming now for hours; Mies had gotten used to that. He kept his back to that. His eyes fixed on the dim slot of light at the top of the door. The only light there was.

His arms hurt from the manacles on his wrists, but his arms had been hurting for so long he had learned to ignore that too. In prison a man learned to ignore so many things, the hunger, the stench, the thirst, the curses and screams. He kept his mind going; he kept his attention on what happened inside his head, what he could manage. He kept thinking about his trial.

When they took him out to be tried, he meant to offer such a defense that they would set him free and everyone else they had arrested. He knew the law. They had made a mistake, taking Mies van Cleef in their net. He would talk his way free and destroy them in the process. They couldn’t do this to him.

He lined up his arguments again, for the tenth time, or maybe the hundredth, the arguments so well worn in his mind now, like paths through the tangle of his mind, which led him surely and certainly through the dangers toward the light and safety on the other side. The other side of what, he did not question. This could not go on, this screaming and darkness and waiting and hunger and thirst, not forever, and at the end of it surely would be …

Something.

His home again, his family, his work. His children. His wife. Out there somewhere, without him to care for them; what was to become of them? Hanneke and her mother: where were they? He imagined them hungry, like him, without his strength of will to resist fear and hunger. Jan would take care of them. In a burst of fury he cursed his son, knowing Jan would not be able to keep the two women safe and fed and housed, the dolt, the stupid fool; why did he have such a fool for a son? And now in the opening made by one passion another swept in, a cold fear, a shaking in all his limbs and a blank terror in his mind. He had to get out of here. Oh, please, let me out of here—

The screaming from behind him struck him like a knife in the heart, and he groaned and wept and banged his head against the wall.

They can’t do this to me.

No. They could not. The law said they could not. And now once again he piled up the arguments, brick by brick, into a wall around him, a containment of his fear, a bulwark of his only hope.

Jan leaned against the wall of the warehouse, his hands behind him, watching the street, waiting. There were a lot of people loitering around the street, poor laborers who gathered here every day in hopes that one of the warehouses all around this quarter would put out a call for daywork. There was very little work to be had in Antwerp since so many factories had been shut down.

It was cold; in the shadow of the wall Jan began to feel the bite of the autumn air. He had left his coat back in the alley where he had spent the night, down by the river; he kept most of his things there, hidden in a broken barrel behind a heap of garbage. There was no room for any of his things in the airless attic where his sister and mother lived, and anyhow he avoided them as much as he could, going there only to take them food; his mother always reproached him for one thing or another, and his sister usually wanted him to help her do something. Something meaningless, like taking books to their father.

He spat into the street. Everything he had heard since the day Mies was taken convinced him that his father would never see daylight again.

The day of the Lord had come like a thief in the night. He laughed, thinking of that, of the unlooked-for truth in that. The day of the Lord had come to steal away even the sunlight from such as Mies van Cleef and the others unlucky enough to be seized in the first pass. Jan had no doubt at all that there would be more arrests—another reason why he spent as little time as possible in his mother’s rented room—and he had seen the workmen building scaffolds in the square before the cathedral and did not think they were for pageants and music.

The beer wagon was rounding the corner into the street. He straightened up a little, and his hands slipped around in front of him; he hooked his thumbs in his belt.

It was noontime. The bells would ring within a few minutes all over Antwerp. The streets were crowded with people. Through the dense moving mass of bodies the two roan horses in their belled harness dragged the heavy wagon toward him over the cobblestones. The brasses on their harness glinted. Jan narrowed his eyes. The wagon rumbled past him; he took three steps away from the wall and grabbed the tailgate.

The driver did not see him. He vaulted up lightly into the back of the wagon, yanked the cotter pins out of the tailgate, threw open the back of the wagon, and began heaving the barrels out into the street.

The first one was empty and bounced, and someone in the street yelled. The driver wheeled around in time to see Jan fling the second barrel out after the first. With a screech he leapt up in the seat and uncurled his whip, and Jan ducked and pushed another barrel over, and it rolled off the wagon and hit the street and burst.

The crowd was yelling and laughing now, chasing the wagon, the first few stooping to scoop up the spilled beer with their hands. The driver cracked his whip and Jan jumped away from the lash, seized another barrel, and leapt off the wagon with it.

“Thief! Stop—”

He landed in the middle of the crowd, which surged around him like a friendly sea, enclosing him as they fought to get to the beer in the street. At least one of the first barrels he had tossed out had not broken, and someone was cracking it open and the mob was fighting to get to it to drink. The driver shrieked and waved his whip from the back of his wagon, helpless; his horses, used to their route, plodded on down the street. Jan hoisted up the barrel he had gotten for himself and went off down the alley.

In the evening Hanneke helped Vrouw Kelman prune her rosebushes; the housewife liked to gossip and wanted an ear to aim at, even if Hanneke knew none of the people she gossiped about. They went around the garden in front of the Kelmans’ house and trimmed back the branches of the heavy-thorned shrubs, and Vrouw Kelman talked about people’s babies and bad manners and follies.

“Of course,” said Vrouw Kelman, in the twilight, as she bent over a bush with the clippers in her hand, “no one’s free from folly. Had I known about these soldiers they are sending to us, I should not have rented you the room, dear.”

“What soldiers?” Hanneke asked. She gathered up the fallen rose branches and laid them carefully into a basket, to be taken out and burned.

“Oh, this new army. They say all of us will have to take in at least one, and if I had not rented you that room, why, he could move in there. As it is—

“Who?” Hanneke said, startled.

Vrouw Kelman looked over her shoulder at her. “The soldier I shall be expected to quarter, dear. Do pay heed when I speak to you.”

“I’m sorry,” Hanneke said.

“Of course I shall not turn you and your dear mother out, not now. And anyway with another mouth to feed, your guilder will come in very nicely.”

Hanneke picked up a rose branch and stabbed herself on the thorn. “When will this soldier come?”

“I don’t know. It’s only rumor, anyway. Don’t worry about you and your dear mother. Although I think you ought to see your dear mother stays indoors, or at least inside the garden.”

“What?” Hanneke said, stupidly. “Has she been going out often?”

“I wondered if you knew about that. Yes, she’s been going off into the street. She’s not a happy woman, your mother.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“The children tease her.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

A whistle from the street brought Hanneke upright, her head turning in that direction. The darkness was almost complete; she could just make out the figure standing by the gate.

“I beg your pardon, Vrouw Kelman, my brother is here.”

“Yes, I see that.”

Hanneke put down the bundle of clippings and went over to the gate. Jan waited, silent in the darkness, his face masked in the darkness; uncertainly, she said his name.

“Yes,” he said. “Here, I brought you some money.”

He put out his hand, and she cupped her palm under it and felt the coins drop into her grasp, the metal still warm from his hand.

“Thank you,” she said. “Why don’t you come inside? We have some beer.”

He laughed at that, and she wondered crossly if he were drunk. But he did not seem drunk. He said, “I’ll stay out here, just the same, thank you.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose you’re right. Have you heard anything about an army coming to Antwerp? That they will quarter a whole army on us?”

“I’ve heard that, yes,” he said. “That’s only to be expected. Why, does that bother you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You remember what they said, when they took Father, that you would be next. If they’re bringing an army here, then they must mean to arrest more people.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “I have to go, Hanneke. Tell Mother—”

“No.” Her hand shot out and clutched at his sleeve. “Listen to me. You have to leave—get away—before they take you too.”

He moved, in the dark; his hand closed over hers. “What about you and Mother?”

“I’ll find work,” she said. “I went by the silk factory this morning—they are opening it up again, now that it belongs to the King. They will give me work there.”

“Hanneke, what can you do? You are no weaver.”

“I’ll sweep,” she said. “Scrub floors. Anything.” She leaned across the fence to put her arms around him. “Oh, Jan, what if they take you too?” Suddenly she began to weep.

“Hanneke,” he said, and pushed the gate open and drew her out to the street. Gratefully she went into his warm embrace.

“Keep the gate closed,” called Vrouw Kelman. “You will let out the dog.”

Hanneke fumbled behind her to shut the gate. She leaned her head against her brother’s shoulder, thinking of the tower, of her father, of the jailer pawing her arm. Of the soldiers who would live in the same house as she did, Spanish soldiers, watching her. Tears flooded into her eyes.

“Don’t worry about me,” her brother said, and hugged her. “It’s you I’m concerned for. You can’t work in a silk factory.”

“I can,” she said, and sniffed, to keep her nose from dripping.

“Who will stay with Mother?”

“I can’t stay with her,” Hanneke said. “She’s driving me crazy.”

Now she could not keep from crying, and she turned her face against his shoulder and wept bitterly. He patted her back and murmured to her, and she rubbed her fingers against his sleeve and cried until she was empty.

“Oh, well,” he said, and stroked her back. “I’m not leaving, not yet, anyway. Where would I go, after all?”

She had not thought of that. She leaned her face against him and thought.

“There’s Uncle Pieter, I guess,” Jan said.

“Pieter!” She pulled away and stared up at him. “He’s a pirate.”

“He’s Father’s brother. He’d have to take me in.”

“But—Father always said he was worthless.”

“Father’s always said I’m worthless,” Jan said mildly. “And there’s really no one else, except Mother’s family, and they’re all Catholics.”

That was true. Hanneke wiped her face on her sleeve. “Well,” she said, “maybe you ought to stay a while longer.”

He laughed; he leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Be good, Hanneke. Say my regards to Mother.”

He was going; he was walking away. She opened her mouth to call him back. She felt cold and small without him. Already he was halfway down the street, half lost in the darkness, a shadow moving through the shadows. She turned and went back into the Kelmans’ garden.

Mies startled out of a half sleep, banged awake by the sudden invasion of the tower room by a horde of people, clanking in their chains and wailing in their despair, stumbling over his legs and falling against the wall near him. He thrust up his arms, to ward them off, and drew his cramped throbbing legs up close to his body.

“Peace,” a man said, in Dutch, and sank down beside him. “Oh, my God.”

A dozen feet shuffled through the filthy straw past them, going deeper into the room, and there stirred the other prisoners into calling and cursing and shifting around in the dark. Mies twitched himself from side to side, trying to find a way to sit that did not hurt. He had been here so long—how long, he had no notion—that sores were opening up on the places where he rested against the stone floors and walls. His wrists hurt under the iron manacles; his arms had begun to swell, so that the wristbands that when first put on had hung down over his hands now cut deeply into his taut stinking skin.

He licked his lips, waiting for the hubbub to settle, and when the noise lessened a little he turned to the man beside him.

“My name is Mies.”

“Willem.”

Through the dark came a hand, which he shook, heartened by this simple amenity.

“Do you know the day?”

“Aye, yes, curse it forever—the day after All Saints.”

“All Saints. Are you then a Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Everyone will be here eventually,” said Willem.

Mies stared through the dark at him, wondering at that; he wished he could make out the man’s face. Did he know him? The voice was unfamiliar. But he knew many people only by face.

“Have you heard anything about the trials?”

Willem said, “No.”

The door banged open again, and the warders came in, shouting for quiet. “Keep your teeth together!” A whip cracked. Mies pulled his arms up close to his body and lowered his head to protect himself. It was impossible to see the lash coming in the dark and he had caught the whip more than once across his cheek and arm. The warders tramped around the room frightening the people into silence. There were many more here than before, so many the jailers kept treading on them. The whips cracked again. Their boots heavy on the rotten straw, the warders marched out the door, and it shut with a boom.

“Well,” Mies said, “they can’t put many more in without taking some of us out. They’ll have to hold trials soon.”

“Trials,” Willem said, in a voice as harsh as the warder’s. “We’ll be lucky if we ever leave here again. If they take us out to hang us we’ll be better off. Odds are they’ll leave us here to starve.”

“They’ve got to try us. That’s the law.”

Only a rough burst of laughter answered that. Mies reached out and grabbed the man’s arm in the dark.

“They have to try us!”

“Leave me alone. I’ll call the guard.”

Mies let go of Willem’s sleeve; the cloth slid away from his fingers and he was left holding the air. His hand dropped again to his lap. He opened his mouth to speak but shut it again without voicing anything more. His body felt as if it were crawling all over with vermin, or cold, or just the understanding he had been holding himself stiff against, all these days and weeks.

There would be no trials. Willem was right. They would leave here to go to their deaths.

He lifted his hands, the heavy chain hanging between them in the dark, and the urge to lay about him with the chain, to pulp the flesh and blood around him, was so strong he nearly got to his feet, although chained to the wall as he was he could have gone nowhere.

He flung himself back against the wall. Banged his head against the wall and moaned. There had to be a way to die. To cheat them of his death. If he had nothing left but to die, let death come now, here, at his own hand. He thrust himself back against the wall again and groaned and sobbed and thrashed his legs. Curse God and die. There was nothing left but that. When would it come, oh, God, when?

“Shut up,” Willem said, and moved away from him.

Mies swore at him. His arms hurt. He could feel the poisons seeping up along his arms into his body, needles of venom running under the skin. Racing toward his brain, his heart; would they kill him, or the Spanish gallows? Or would he burn, or be drowned, or be buried under rocks? Curse God and die.

The doors opened again and the warders came in with chains and hammers, to fasten the newly come prisoners up against the wall. They had a little lantern, to show their work. Mies’ eyes followed it, starved for light, fascinated.

They bent to hammer shut the iron ring that bound Willem’s chain to the ring in the wall. The light shone on the Catholic’s face. Unknown. Mies turned his eyes away, although a moment later the light drew his gaze back like a balm.

The phrase ran back and forth through his mind like a rat in a trap. Curse God and die. Curse God and die. He had never admired Job. There seemed nothing stoic in Job at all, no fortitude, no heart. Now bitterly he knew there was nothing much at all in himself, just a bitter despair that could not wait for death.

He groaned, and the warder nearest him struck out with his whip and clubbed him over the face with the butt end. Mies bit his lips together, tasting blood.

Even Christ had despaired on the Cross. Mies leaned his head against the wall. Why did this happen to me—what did I do to deserve this? He picked through all his sins, his boyish defiance of his father, his marriage to Griet above the objections of both families. His greed, his cold charity. He had done nothing that hundreds of other men had not done, and did yet, in freedom still. Curse God—

The light went off, deeper into the room. He saw glowing patches of people, squatting in the filth, their clothes like shreds of skin that hung from them. Sores on their arms and bodies and faces. Like his. His back itched where the wall had worn it open. Vermin in it probably. Eating away his flesh. Not worth anything anyway. Just a pile of meat. God deserted me.

Even Christ despaired.

At least, crucified, He had died swiftly. Relatively swiftly. He thought of hanging from nails through his hands and the swollen infected flesh of his arms and hands throbbed painfully against the manacles. I don’t deserve this. I’m innocent.

No one is innocent. He thought of the times he had cheated in his business and thought himself clever. Of beating his son out of bad temper when the boy was too slow to do something probably no child would have done well anyway.

God, forgive me, he thought, and suddenly, from nowhere, a light unlike the dirty light of the lantern came on inside his skull. God had forgiven him. That was why Christ died on the Cross.

He shivered; some enormous force swept through him, too strong for his flesh to bear, and nearly made him weep. He lifted his weighted hands to his face. Oh, God, he thought. It is true.

Down there at the end of the room, someone moaned, and the whip cracked. The lantern shifted through the filth and darkness, and the hammers rang on iron, chaining up someone else. Mies bent forward, his face against his knees.

All his life he had heard it, that Christ died for him, that Christ had won him life eternal, and never understood, but now he understood. When he needed Christ, all he had to do was turn toward Him and He was there.

He sobbed. The manner of his death to come seemed trivial now. He had found something else. The wild rush of gratitude to God Who had saved him, and Who would take him through that death into Paradise, warmed his body and lit up his mind like the coming of daybreak. The animal sounds of his prison, the stench, the hunger, nothing mattered now. He wept for gratitude; in the first white heat of his understanding he saw that everything was worth this. Falling into prison, losing his life, all this suffering was well worth the understanding that now he had: that God had saved him. He pressed his face against his knees and prayed to God in thanks for having sent him to this place.

Hanneke was gone. Everybody was gone.

Griet opened the door a little and looked out. The steps that led down to the backyard of this strange house shone yellow in the sunlight. Nobody was there. She could get away now.

She pulled her housedress around her and held it fast with one hand. Carefully, because her feet were bare, she went out step by step down into the yard. It was cold. No matter. In a little while she would find her own home, where it was always warm, and Mies would bring her her slippers and a foot-warmer. Mies was so kind to her, always; if only she could find him again, everything would be all right.

She crept through the yard to the gate and went out to the street. No one had seen her. If Vrouw Kelman saw her she would shout and call for help to get her back into the attic room, but she did not belong there. She belonged somewhere in a tall house with painted shutters and a stork on the chimney. She set off up the street to find it.

Before she had gone very far, two little boys ran out of a yard by the street and shouted at her and threw clods of earth at her. Griet hurried away from them. A dog chased after her, barking.

At the corner, where the little foundry shop was, she picked up a broken iron pot out of the street. She had seen the Spanish soldiers wear pots on their heads, to protect them, and she put the iron pot on her head, in case the children threw stones.

That was a good idea, because now there were more children, and they were throwing stones. She walked off as fast as she could, turned into the next street, and began searching for her house. A volley of pebbles pelted her back and shoulders and she wheeled around, furious, and yelled and made faces and waved her arms.

The children laughed. She did not frighten them enough. When she turned to go on in her search, they rushed after her again, and more stones came, more bits of dirt and even dog turds, horrible smelly things. She broke into a run to get away from them and they ran after her, streaming after her, laughing and yelling. People were looking out their windows at her now. Humiliated, she stopped and turned again to face them, and the children skidded to a stop, a dozen or more of them, ten feet behind her.

“Yeeaaw!” She waved her arms at them. They laughed. A stone whizzed past her shoulder.

Devils. Imps. Her breath whined between her teeth. If Mies saw them he would lash them. Take a stick to them. That was what she needed. She looked around her, saw a stick lying in the gutter, and ran over to it.

“Now,” she cried, and lifted the stick high over her head, like a sword. “Now let’s have at it, you devils!” She ran straight at them, hooting.

They scattered. The smiles vanished from their faces, and they turned their backs and ran. She darted after one or another, just a few steps, driving them away; her stick swung at their backs. She hit nothing, but the stick made a lovely sound in the air as it passed, and more than one little boy wailed in terror. Griet howled with delight. Long-striding, she dashed after one boy until he disappeared, and wheeled and made for another, until they were all gone from sight. With a yell of triumph, she tossed the stick high up into the air; it fell with a clatter to the ground. Square-shouldered, she marched off to find her house.

The crowd was pressed so tight together that Hanneke’s basket was crushed. It was hard to breathe. She wondered if the crowd did that or if she were just afraid. Afraid of what? She knew what she had come here to see.

Behind her was the broad high façade of the Fullers’ Guildhall; people stood on the roof of it and hung out the windows, waiting. Before her, held open by ropes that kept the crowd back, was the square, and beyond that, the cathedral, its door obscured by the scaffolds that filled the square, and its off-center tower rising up into the sky like some huge scaffold of its own. She thought she was going to be sick. The crowd surged forward and carried her along, nearly off her feet, up to the rope barriers.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!”

She pulled and shoved at the shoulders and backs around her, trying to see past them. The shout went up from a thousand tongues, and now the crowd pressed up to the ropes and knocked them down and would have flooded across the square, carrying her in their midst, but for a row of soldiers that ran up with their pikes at the ready and forced the people back.

The soldiers calmed them all. Hanneke gripped her basket in both hands, thought of praying, but could not. She looked up at the scaffolds, wagon wheels set up on poles, and no prayer would find its way into her mind. And now they were coming, the condemned, to the throbbing of drums.

Her back tingled, and her hair stood on end. In white shirts, each carrying a cross, they marched up like soldiers into the square. Many were too weak to walk by themselves; others in the row supported them. On their arms and legs she saw the marks of chains. Her heart sank. There were too many of them. She would never see Mies here, in all this mob. She would never see her father again.

The executioners started almost directly before her; they took the first two prisoners and flung ropes up over the spokes on the wheels overhead, adjusted them to balance, and pulled the condemned people up by the necks into the air.

Hanneke screamed. It was awful. They did not die. They hung there and kicked and their faces turned blue and swelled up, and as they jiggled in the air a filthy rain of urine and feces splattered down on the cobblestones under them, so that some in the crowd even laughed. She recoiled. More and more were going up into the air now. She doubled up, hiding her face, and struggled to get away.

Near the building, she stopped, trying to catch her breath—to get her soul in harness again. Over the heads of the crowd she could see the first row of bodies, quiet now, in God’s hands, hanging there. Their faces were black. She tore her gaze from them. Not Mies. Not that way.

One hand on the rough stone wall of the Guildhall, she walked along behind the crowd, clutching her basket. She was tired; she had to get home. Get some sleep, before her work started in the morning. What was going on here was over, an end of things, to be forgotten. Forget she ever had a father. Her stomach heaved. Not like that, not Mies. Then in the crowd ahead of her she thought she saw Jan.

She called his name; she struggled to reach him. But the crowd was moving, shifting forward to see those dying in the rows nearer the cathedral, and in their midst her brother was carried farther and farther away from her even while she tried her hardest to close with him. She wailed, desperate: “Jan!” He didn’t hear her. Or maybe it wasn’t he at all; now she could not even see him, for the press of bodies between them. She sank back, exhausted and defeated, and slowly made her way back home.

In the evening after the executions Jan went to the Kelmans’ house, to say goodbye to his sister. There were many more soldiers in Antwerp now, and he had decided to take her advice and go away, to their Uncle Pieter in Nieuport.

He went up to the gate, to call her. The night was falling and the breeze blew cold and bright into his face. In the blue twilight he made out some people in the garden, and he was about to call to them to fetch his sister for him when he noticed that one of them was a foreigner.

It was a Spanish soldier. At once he understood; there would be a soldier quartered here on the Kelmans.

His hand slipped from the gate. He turned his head, looking away down the street; for a moment longer he stood there, in case she should see him and call to him, but no one called him back, and he went away down the street, away to Nieuport and his uncle.

In Brussels there were hangings too, hundreds of dead, ornaments, folk said, for the Duke of Alva’s Advent. After the common folk had been dragged out and executed, the executioner stood up on a broad platform in the Grand Place, with all of Brussels looking on, and there on a cloth of black velvet he stood waiting with his ax while his last two victims came out.

The first was Count Horn, who knelt down, and put his head to the block, and was killed. Silence met this act, the execution of so great a man, this downfall from the heights of life to the black pit of disgrace.

They put a cloth over Horn’s body, and led out Egmont. “You, too, my friend,” said Count Egmont, and went as tamely to the block, to have his head struck off. Then the executioner came forward, displaying their heads in his hands, and called on men to cheer the name of the King.

No one cheered, except a few soldiers; there was a breathless hush, as if all the air had been sucked up out of the square.

In a loud voice the executioner read a proclamation, declaring forfeit and lost all the estates and titles of William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, who had fled from Alva, and announcing that should this Prince of Orange come back to the Low Countries, the same lot would befall him as had befallen these two friends of his, who lay dead on the scaffold.

No one cheered that, either. It did not seem to matter. To most of the people watching, Orange seemed as good as dead. Night was coming. They gathered themselves and took one another by the hand and went away home.