Kitabı oku: «The Legend of Ulenspiegel. Volume 2 of 2», sayfa 7
XXX
Meanwhile, the provost Spelle le Roux, armed with his red wand, was hurrying from town to town on his lean horse, everywhere setting up scaffolds, lighting fires of execution, digging graves to bury poor women and girls alive in them. And the King inherited.
Ulenspiegel being at Meulestee with Lamme, under a tree, found himself full of weary lassitude. It was cold although the month was June. From the skies, laden with gray clouds, there fell a fine hail.
“My son,” said Lamme, “you are for the past four nights shamelessly running wild, gadding after the bona robas, you go to sleep in de Zoeten Inval, at the Sweet Fall; you will do like the man on the sign, falling head foremost into a hive of bees. Vainly do I wait for you in de Zwaen, and I draw evil forebodings from this liquorish living. Why do you not take a wife virtuously?”
“Lamme,” said Ulenspiegel, “he to whom one woman is all women, and to whom all women are one in this gentle combat that they call love, must not lightly rush upon his choice.”
“And Nele, do you not think at all on her?”
“Nele is at Damme, far away,” said Ulenspiegel.
While he was in this posture and the hail was falling thick, a young and pretty woman passed by, running and covering up her head in her petticoat.
“Eh,” said she, “dreamy one, what dost thou under that tree?”
“I am dreaming,” said Ulenspiegel, “of a woman that should make me a roof against the hail with her petticoat.”
“Thou hast found her,” said the woman. “Rise up.”
“Wilt thou leave me alone again?” said Lamme.
“Aye,” said Ulenspiegel, “but go in de Zwaen, eat a leg of mutton or two, drink a dozen tankards of beer; you will sleep and you will not be forlorn then.”
“I will do that,” said Lamme.
Ulenspiegel went up to the woman.
“Pick up my skirt on one side,” said she, “I will lift it on the other, and now let us run.”
“Why run?” asked Ulenspiegel.
“Because,” she said, “I am fain to flee from Meulestee; the provost Spelle is in it with two catchpolls and he has sworn to have all the light ladies whipped if they will not pay him five florins each. That is why I am running: run, too, and stay with me to defend me.”
“Lamme,” cried Ulenspiegel, “Spelle is in Meulestee. Go off and away to Destelberg, to the Star of the Wise Men.”
And Lamme, getting up affrighted, took his belly in both hands and began to run.
“Whither is this fat hare going?” said the girl.
“To a burrow where I shall find him again,” replied Ulenspiegel.
“Let us run,” said she, beating the ground with her foot like a restive filly.
“I would fain be virtuous without running,” said Ulenspiegel.
“What does that mean?” asked she.
Ulenspiegel made answer:
“The fat hare wants me to renounce good wine, cervoise ale, and the fresh skin of women.”
The girl looked at him with an ugly eye.
“Your breath is short; you must rest,” said she.
“Rest myself? I see no shelter,” replied Ulenspiegel.
“Your virtue,” said the girl, “will serve for a quilt.”
“I like your petticoat better,” said he.
“My petticoat,” said the girl, “would not be worthy to cover a saint such as you would fain be. Take yourself off that I may run alone.”
“Do you not know,” replied Ulenspiegel, “that a dog goes swifter with four feet than a man with two? And so, having four feet, we shall run better.”
“You have a lively tongue for a virtuous man.”
“Aye,” said he.
“But,” said she, “I have always observed that virtue is a quiet, sleepy, thick, and chilly quality. It is a mask to hide grumbling faces, a velvet cloak on a man of stone. I like men that have in their breast a stove well lighted with the fire of virility, which exciteth to valiant and gay enterprises.”
“It was ever thus,” replied Ulenspiegel, “that the lovely she-devil spake to the glorious Saint Anthony.”
There was an inn a score of paces from the road.
“You have spoken well,” said Ulenspiegel, “now you must drink well.”
“My tongue is still cool and fresh,” said the girl.
They went in. On a chest there slumbered a big jug nicknamed “belly,” because of its wide paunch.
Ulenspiegel said to the baes:
“Dost thou see this florin?”
“I see it,” said the baes.
“How many patards would thou extract from it to fill up that belly there with dobbel-clauwert?”
The baes said to him:
“With negen mannekens (nine little men), you will be clear.”
“That,” said Ulenspiegel, “is six Flanders mites, and overmuch by two mites. But fill it, anyhow.”
Ulenspiegel poured out a goblet for the woman, then rising up proudly and applying the beak of the belly to his mouth, he emptied it all every drop into his throat. And it was as the noise of a cataract.
The girl, dumbfounded, said to him:
“How did you manage to put so big a belly into your lean stomach?”
Without replying, Ulenspiegel said to the baes:
“Bring a knuckle of ham and some bread, and another full belly, that we may eat and drink.”
Which they did.
While the girl was munching a piece of the rind he took her so subtly, that she was startled, charmed, and compliant all at once.
Then questioning him:
“Whence,” she said, “have they come to your virtue, this thirst like a sponge, this wolf’s hunger, and these amorous audacities?”
Ulenspiegel replied:
“Having sinned a hundred ways, I swore, as you know, to do penance. That lasted a whole long hour. Thinking during that hour upon my life that was to come, I saw myself fed meagrely on bread, dully refreshed with water; sadly fleeing from love; daring neither to move nor sneeze, for fear to commit wickedness; esteemed by all, feared by each; alone like a leper; sad as a dog orphaned of his master, and after fifty years of martyrdom, ending by undergoing my death in melancholy fashion on a pallet. The penance was long enough: so kiss me, my darling, and let us go out from purgatory together.”
“Ah!” said she, obeying cheerfully, “what a good sign virtue is to put on the end of a pole!”
Time passed in these amorous doings; nevertheless they must needs rise and go, for the girl feared to see in the midst of their pleasure the provost Spelle suddenly appear with his catchpolls.
“Truss up thy petticoat then,” said Ulenspiegel.
And they ran like stags towards Destelberg, where they found Lamme eating at the Star of the Three Wise Men.
XXXI
Ulenspiegel often saw at Ghent, Jacob Scoelap, Lieven Smet, and Jan de Wulfschaeger, who gave him news of the good or bad fortune of the Silent.
And every time that Ulenspiegel came back to Destelberg, Lamme said to him:
“What do you bring? Good luck or bad luck?”
“Alas!” said Ulenspiegel, “the Silent, his brother Ludwig, the other chiefs and the Frenchmen were determined to go farther into France and join with the Prince of Condé. Thus they would save the poor Belgian fatherland and freedom of conscience. God willed it otherwise; the German reiters and landsknechts refused to go farther, and said their oath was to go against the Duke of Alba and not against France. Having vainly entreated them to do their duty, the Silent was forced to take them through Champagne and Lorraine as far as Strasbourg, whence they went back into Germany. All has gone awry through this sudden and obstinate departure: the King of France, despite his contract with the prince, refuses to give over the money he promised; the Queen of England would have sent him money to get back the town and the district of Calais; her letters were intercepted and despatched to the Cardinal at Lorraine, who forged an answer in the contrary sense.
“Thus we see melt away, like ghosts at the crowing of the cock, that goodly army, our hope; but God is with us, and if the earth fail us, the water will do its work. Long live the Beggar!”
XXXII
The girl came one day, all weeping, to say to Lamme and to Ulenspiegel:
“Spelle is allowing murderers and robbers in Meulestee to escape for money. He is putting the innocent to death. My brother Michielkin is among them. Alas! Let me tell you, ye will avenge him, being men. A vile and infamous debauchee, Pieter de Roose, an habitual seducer of children and girls, does all the harm. Alas! my poor brother Michielkin and Pieter de Roose were one evening, but not at the same table, in the tavern of the Valck, where Pieter de Roose was avoided by every one like the plague.
“My brother, not willing to see him in the same room as himself, called him a lecherous blackguard, and ordered him to purge the chamber of his presence.
“Pieter de Roose replied:
“‘The brother of a public baggage has no need to show such a lofty nose.’
“He lied. I am not public, and give myself only to whomsoever I please.’
“Michielkin, then, flinging his quart of cervoise ale in his face, told him he had lied like the filthy debauchee that he was, threatening, if he did not decamp, to make him eat his fist up to the elbow.
“The other would have talked more, but Michielkin did what he had said: he gave him two great blows on the jaw and dragged him by the teeth, with which he was biting, out on to the road, where he left him battered and bruised, without pity.
“Pieter de Roose, being healed, and unable to live a solitary life, went in ’t Vagevuur, a veritable purgatory and a gloomy tavern, where there were none but poor people. There also he was left to himself, even by all those ragamuffins. And no man spoke to him, save a few country folk to whom he was unknown, and a few wandering rogues, or deserters from some troop or other. He was even beaten there several times, for he was quarrelsome.
“The provost Spelle had come to Meulestee with two catchpolls, and Pieter de Roose followed them everywhere about like a dog, filling them up at his expense with wine, with meat, and many other pleasures that are bought with money. And so he became their companion and their comrade, and he began to do his wicked best to torment all he hated; which was all the inhabitants of Meulestee, but especially my poor brother.
“First of all he attacked Michielkin. False witnesses, gallows birds, greedy for florins, declared that Michielkin was a heretic, had uttered foulness about Notre Dame, and oftentimes blasphemed the name of God and the saints in the tavern of the Falcon, and that, besides all, he had full three hundred florins in a coffer.
“Notwithstanding that the witnesses were not of good life and conduct, Michielkin was arrested, and the proofs being declared by Spelle and the catchpolls good and sufficient to warrant putting the accused to the torture, Michielkin was hung up by the arms to a pulley fastened to the ceiling, and they put a weight of fifty pounds on each of his feet.
“He denied the charge, saying that if in Meulestee there was a rogue, a blackguard, a blasphemer and a lecherous brute, it was no other than Pieter de Roose, and not he.
“But Spelle would listen to nothing, and bade his catchpolls hoist Michielkin right up to the ceiling, and to let him drop heavily with his weights on his feet. And this they did, and so cruelly that the skin and the muscles of the victim were torn, and that the foot scarcely held to the leg.
“As Michielkin persisted in saying he was innocent, Spelle had him tortured afresh, while giving him to understand that if he would give him a hundred florins he would leave him free and acquitted.
“Michielkin said that he would die first.
“The folk of Meulestee, having learned the fact of the arrest and the torture, desired to be witness par turbes, which is the testimony of all the reputable inhabitants of a commune. ‘Michielkin,’ said they, unanimously, ‘is in no way or guise heretical; he goes every Sunday to mass and to the holy table; he has never said anything else of Our Lady than to call on her to succour him in difficult circumstances; having never spoken ill, even of an earthly woman, he would much less ever have dared to speak ill of the heavenly Mother of God. As for the blasphemies that the false witnesses declared they had heard him utter in the tavern of the Falcon, that was in all points false and lies.’
“Michielkin having been released, the false witnesses were punished, and Spelle cited Pieter de Roose before his court, but set him free without examination or torture, in consideration of one hundred florins paid down in one sum.
“Pieter de Roose, fearing that the money he still had left might attract Spelle’s attention to him once again, fled from Meulestee, while Michielkin, my poor brother, died of the gangrene that had caught hold of his feet.
“He who no longer wished to see me, yet had me sent for to bid me beware well of the fire in my body that would bring me into the fire of hell. And I could but weep, for the fire is within me. And he gave up his soul in my arms.”
“Ha!” said she, “he who would avenge upon Spelle the death of my beloved kind Michielkin would be my master forever, and I would obey him like a dog.”
While she spake, the ashes of Claes beat upon the breast of Ulenspiegel. And he determined to bring Spelle the murderer to the gallows.
Boelkin (that was the girl’s name) returned to Meulestee, well assured in her home against the vengeance of Pieter de Roose, for a cattle dealer, passing by Destelberg, informed her that the curé and the townsfolk had declared that if Spelle touched Michielkin’s sister, they would cite him before the duke.
Ulenspiegel, having followed her to Meulestee, came into a low chamber in Michielkin’s house, and saw there a portrait of a master pastry cook which he supposed to be that of the poor victim…
And Boelkin said to him:
“It is my brother’s portrait.”
Ulenspiegel took the picture and said, going away:
“Spelle shall be hanged!”
“What will you do?” said she.
“If you knew that,” said he, “you would have no pleasure in seeing it done.”
Boelkin nodded her head and said in a grieving voice:
“You show no confidence in me.”
“Is it not,” said he, “showing you extreme confidence to say to you ‘Spelle shall be hanged!’ For with this mere word alone you can have me hanged before him.”
“That is true,” said she.
“Then,” said Ulenspiegel, “go fetch me good potter’s clay, a double quart of bruinbier, clear water, and a few slices of beef. All separate.”
“The beef will be for me, the bruinbier for the beef, the water for the clay, and the clay for the portrait.”
Eating and drinking Ulenspiegel kneaded the clay, and now and then swallowed a morsel of it, but heeded it little, and looked most attentively at Michielkin’s portrait. When the clay was kneaded, he made a mask out of it, with a nose, a mouth, eyes, ears so much like the portrait of the dead man, that Boelkin was astonied at it.
After that he put the mask in the oven, and when it was dry, he painted it the colour corpses are, showing the haggard eyes, the solemn face, and the various contractions of a man in the act of dying. Then the girl, ceasing to be astonied, looked at the mask, without being able to take her eyes off it, grew pale and livid, covered up her face, and said shuddering:
“It is he, my poor Michielkin!”
He made also two bloody feet.
Then having conquered her first fright:
“Blessed will he be,” said she, “that will slay the murderer.” Ulenspiegel, taking the mask and the feet, said:
“I must have an assistant.”
Boelkin replied:
“Go in den Blauwe Gans, to the Blue Goose, to Joos Lansaem of Ypres, who keeps this tavern. He was my brother’s best friend and comrade. Tell him it is Boelkin that sends you.”
Ulenspiegel did as she bade him.
After having laboured for death, the provost Spelle went to drink in’t Valck, at the Falcon, a hot mixture of dobbel-clauwert, with cinnamon and Madeira sugar. They dared refuse him nothing at his inn, for fear of the rope.
Pieter de Roose, having plucked up courage again, had come back to Meulestee. Everywhere he followed Spelle and his catchpolls to have their protection. Sometimes Spelle paid the wherewithal for him to drink. And they drank up merrily the money of the victims.
The inn of the Falcon was not filled now as in the good days when the village lived joyously, serving God after the Catholic fashion; and not tormented because of religion. Now it was as though in mourning, as could be seen from its numerous houses that were empty or shut up, from its deserted streets in which there wandered a few starved dogs searching among the rubbish heaps for their rotten food.
There was no place now in Meulestee for any but the two evil and cruel men. The timid dwellers in the village saw them by day insolent and noting the houses of future victims, drawing up the lists of death; and by night venturing from the Falcon singing filthy choruses, while two catchpolls, drunk like them, followed them armed to the teeth to be their escort.
Ulenspiegel went in den Blauwe Gans, to the Blue Goose, to Joos Lansaem, who was at the bar.
Ulenspiegel took from his pocket a little flask of brandy, and said to him:
“Boelkin has two casks for sale.”
“Come into my kitchen,” said the baes.
There, shutting the door, and looking fixedly at him:
“You are no brandy merchant; what do these winkings of your eyes mean? Who are you?”
Ulenspiegel replied:
“I am the son of Claes that was burned at Damme; the ashes of the dead man beat upon my breast; I would fain kill Spelle, the murderer.”
“It is Boelkin who sends you?” asked the host.
“Boelkin sends me,” replied Ulenspiegel. “I will kill Spelle; you shall help me in it.”
“I will,” said the baes. “What must I do?”
Ulenspiegel replied:
“Go to the curé, the good pastor, an enemy to Spelle. Assemble your friends together and be with them to-morrow, after the curfew, on the Everghem road, above Spelle’s house, between the Falcon and the house aforesaid. All post yourselves in the shadows and have no white on your clothes. At the stroke of ten you will see Spelle coming out from the tavern and a wagon coming from the other side.
“Do not tell your friends to-night; they sleep too near to their wives’ ears. Go and find them to-morrow. Come, now, listen to everything closely and remember well.”
“We shall remember,” said Joos. And raising his goblet: “I drink to Spelle’s halter.”
“To the halter,” said Ulenspiegel. Then he went back with the baes into the tavern chamber where there sate drinking certain old clothes merchants of Ghent who were coming back from the Saturday market at Bruges, where they had sold for high prices doublets and short mantles of cloth of gold and silver bought for a few sous from ruined nobles who desired by their luxury and splendour to imitate the Spaniards.
And they kept revels and feasting because of their big profits.
Ulenspiegel and Joos Lansaem, sitting in a corner, as they drank, and without being heard, agreed that Joos should go to the curé of the church, a good pastor, incensed against Spelle, the murderer of innocent men. After that he would go to his friends.
On the morrow, Joos Lansaem and Michielkin’s friends, having been forewarned, left the Blauwe Gans, where they had their pints as usual, and so as to conceal their plans went off at curfew by different ways, and came to the Everghem causeway. They were seventeen in number.
At ten o’clock Spelle left the Falcon, followed by his two catchpolls and Pieter de Roose. Lansaem and his troop were hidden in the barn belonging to Samson Boene, a friend of Michielkin. The door of the barn was open. Spelle never saw them.
They heard him pass by, staggering with drink like Pieter de Roose and his two catchpolls also, and saying, in a thick voice and with many hiccups:
“Provosts! provosts! life is good to them in this world; hold me up, gallows birds that live on my leavings!”
Suddenly were heard upon the road, from the direction of the open country, the braying of an ass and the crack of a whip.
“There is a restive donkey indeed,” said Spelle, “that won’t go on in spite of that good warning.”
Suddenly they heard a great noise of wheels and a cart leaping along and coming down the middle of the road.
“Stop it!” cried Spelle.
As the cart passed beside them, Spelle and his two catchpolls threw themselves on the donkey’s head.
“This cart is empty,” said one of the catchpolls.
“Lubber,” said Spelle, “do empty carts gallop about by night all alone? There is somebody in this cart a-hiding; light the lanterns, hold them up, I am going to look in it.”
The lanterns were lighted and Spelle climbed up on the cart, holding his own lamp; but scarcely had he looked than he uttered a great cry, and falling back, said:
“Michielkin! Michielkin! Jesu! have pity upon me!”
Then there rose up from the floor of the cart a man clad in white as pastry cooks are and holding in his hands two bloody feet.
Pieter de Roose, seeing the man stand up, illuminated by the lanterns, cried with the two catchpolls:
“Michielkin! Michielkin, the dead man! Lord have pity upon us!”
The seventeen came at the noise to look at the spectacle and were affrighted to see in the light of the clear moon how like was the image of Michielkin, the poor deceased.
And the ghost waved his bleeding feet.
It was his same full round visage, but pale through death, threatening, livid, and eaten under the chin by worms.
The ghost, still waving his bleeding feet, said to Spelle, who was groaning, lying flat on his back:
“Spelle, Provost Spelle, awake!”
But Spelle never moved.
“Spelle,” said the ghost again, “Provost Spelle, awake or I fetch thee down with me into the mouth of gaping hell.”
Spelle got up, and with his hair straight up for terror, cried lamentably:
“Michielkin! Michielkin, have pity!”
Meanwhile, the townsfolk had come up, but Spelle saw nothing save the lanterns, which he took for the eyes of devils. He confessed as much later.
“Spelle,” said the ghost of Michielkin, “art thou prepared to die?”
“Nay,” replied the provost, “nay, Messire Michielkin; I am nowise prepared for it, and I would not appear before God with my soul all black with sin.”
“Dost thou know me?” said the ghost.
“May God be my helper,” said Spelle, “yea, I know thee; thou art the ghost of Michielkin, the pastry cook, who died, innocently in his bed, of the after effects of torture, and the two bleeding feet are those upon each of which I had a weight of fifty pounds hung. Ha! Michielkin, forgive me, this Pieter de Roose was so strong a tempter; he offered me fifty florins, which I accepted, to put thy name on the list.”
“Dost thou desire to confess thyself?” said the ghost.
“Aye, Messire, I desire to confess myself, to tell all and do penance. But deign to send away these demons that are there, ready to devour me. I will tell all. Take away those fiery eyes! I did the same thing at Tournay, with respect to five townsmen; the same at Bruges, with four. I no longer know their names, but I will tell them you if you insist; elsewhere, too, I have sinned, lord, and of my doing there are nine and sixty innocents in the grave. Michielkin, the king needed money. I had been informed of that, but I needed money even likewise; it is at Ghent, in the cellar, under the pavement, in the house of old Grovels my real mother. I have told all, all: grace and mercy! Take away the devils. Lord God, Virgin Mary, Jesus, intercede for me: save me from the fires of hell, I will sell all I have, I will give everything to the poor, and I will do penance.”
Ulenspiegel, seeing that the crowd of the townsmen was ready to uphold him, leapt from the cart at Spelle’s throat and would have strangled him.
But the curé came up.
“Let him live,” said he; “it is better that he should die by the executioner’s rope than by the fingers of a ghost.”
“What are you going to do with him?” asked Ulenspiegel.
“Accuse him before the duke and have him hanged,” replied the curé. “But who art thou?” asked he.
“I,” replied Ulenspiegel, “am the mask of Michielkin and the person of a poor Flemish fox who is going back into his earth for fear of the Spanish hunters.”
In the meantime, Pieter de Roose was running away at full speed.
And Spelle having been hanged, his goods were confiscated.
And the king inherited.
