Volume I Part 18 (1/2)

Katheline was taken back to prison. Three days after, the sheriff's court being a.s.sembled in the Vierschare, Katheline after deliberation was condemned to the fire.

The executioner and his a.s.sistants brought her to the marketplace of Damme where there was a scaffold on which she mounted. In the marketplace were the provost, the herald, and the judges.

The trumpets of the town herald sounded three times, and turning to the people he announced:

”The magistrate of Damme, having had compa.s.sion on the woman Katheline, has been pleased not to exact punishment according to the extreme rigour of the law of the town, but in order to bear witness that she is a witch, her hair shall be burned, she shall pay twenty gold carolus by way of fine, and shall be banished for three years from the precincts of Damme under pain of losing one limb.”

And the people applauded this harsh lenity.

The executioner thereupon bound Katheline to the stake, set a wig of tow upon her shaven head and set it on fire. And the tow burned long and Katheline cried out and wept.

Then she was unbound and taken without the boundaries of Damme upon a cart, for her feet were burned.

x.x.xIX

Ulenspiegel being now at Bois-le-Duc in Brabant, the magnates of the town would fain have appointed him their fool, but he would none of this dignity. ”Pilgrim on pilgrimage cannot play fool as a permanency, but only at inns and on the highways.”

At this same time Philip, who was King of England, came to visit the countries of his future inheritance, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Holland, and Zealand. He was then in his twenty-ninth year; in his grayish eyes dwelt sour melancholy, savage dissimulation, and cruel resolution. Cold was his countenance, and stiff his head covered with tawny hair; stiff, too, his meagre torso and spindle limbs. Slow was his speech and thick as though he had wool in his mouth.

Amid tourneys, jousts, and feastings, he visited the joyous duchy of Brabant, the rich county Flanders, and his other seignories. Everywhere he swore to observe and confirm the privileges; but when at Brussels he took oath upon the Testament to observe the Golden Bull of Brabant his hand clenched so tight that he must needs take it away from the sacred book.

He went to Antwerp, where they put up twenty-three triumphal arches to receive him. The city disbursed two hundred and eighty-seven thousand florins to pay for these arches and for the costumes of eighteen hundred and seventy-nine merchants all clad in crimson velvet and for the rich livery of four hundred and sixteen lackeys and the brilliant silk trappings of four thousand burgesses, all clad alike. Many feasts were given by the rhetoricians of all the cities in the Low Countries, or nearly all.

There were seen, with their fools male and female, the Prince of Love, of Tournai, mounted upon a sow that was called Astarte; the King of Fools, of Lille, who led a horse by the tail and walked behind; the Prince of Pleasure, of Valenciennes, who amused himself counting how many times his donkey broke wind; the Abbot of Mirth, of Arras, who drank Brussels wine from a flask shaped like a breviary, and that was gay reading; the Abbot of the Paux-Pourvus, of Ath, who was provided with linen full of holes and boots down at heel, but had a sausage with which he made good provision for his belly; the Provost of Madcaps, a young man mounted on a shy goat, and who trotting in the crowd got many a thwack because of her; the Abbot of the Silver Dish, from Quesnoy, who mounted on his horse pretended to be sitting in a dish, saying ”there is no beast so big that fire cannot cook him.”

And they played all kinds of harmless foolery, but the King remained sad and severe.

That same evening, the Markgrave of Antwerp, the burgomasters, captains and deans, a.s.sembled together to find out some game or play that might win Philip the King to laughter.

Said the Markgrave:

”Have ye not heard tell of a certain Pierkin Jacobsen, the town-fool of Bois-le-Duc, and far renowned for his merry tricks?”

”Yes,” said the others.

”Well!” said the Markgrave, ”let us summon him to come hither, and bid him do us some nimblewitted turn, since our own fool has his boots stuffed with lead.”

”Let us summon him hither,” said they.

When the messenger from Antwerp came to Bois-le-Duc, they told him that the fool Pierkin had snuffed out his candle with over-much laughing, but that there was in the town another fool, a bird of pa.s.sage, called Ulenspiegel. The messenger went to look for him in a tavern where he was eating a frica.s.see of mussels and making a petticoat for a girl with the sh.e.l.ls.

Ulenspiegel was delighted when he knew that it was for him the courier of the commune had come all the way from Antwerp, mounted upon a fine horse of Vuern-Ambacht and leading another by the bridle.

Without setting foot to ground, the courier asked him if he knew where to find a new trick to make King Philip laugh.

”I have a mine of them under my hair,” answered Ulenspiegel.

They went away together. The two horses galloping loose-reined brought Ulenspiegel and the courier to Antwerp.