The Laughing Cavalier

Gilda Beresteyn

Daughter of the wealthy Beresteyn family, Gilda moves through a world of political intrigue and ransom plots where her name makes her both a prize and a pawn. She is no shrinking heroine: her stiff-necked haughtiness and deliberate courage drive her to face Diogenes alone rather than send a timid maid, though her innocence leaves her blind to dangers she cannot fully appreciate. That blend of regal self-possession and childlike vulnerability unsettles the rogue who holds her, and it anchors the novel's central contest of wills.

Diogenes

Nameless yet nobly browed, Diogenes haunts the taverns of Haarlem as a mercenary who takes life as he finds it and leavens it with his own gaiety. He boasts a father who rode in Leicester's train, and that hint of hidden birth sits oddly beside his reckless disregard for sobriety and respectability. Hired for a shady abduction, he finds his easy humour and independence tested by a captive who refuses to cower, and the tension between his roguery and his unexpected chivalry propels the story forward.

Stoutenburg

The Lord of Stoutenburg moves quietly through Haarlem's shadows, unobtrusive and watchful, while his family name reeks of treason and his brother awaits condemnation. He once whispered love to Gilda before ambition drove him to a more profitable marriage, and that shameful memory still burns in her. His relentless scheming against the Stadtholder and his willingness to use those closest to him make him the dark engine behind the intrigue that ensnares Gilda and Diogenes alike.

Nicolaes Beresteyn

Nicolaes Beresteyn moves through taverns and studios with the gracious air of a man whose father patronizes Frans Hals and whose name opens doors. Yet beneath that complaisance lies something colder: he commissions Gilda's abduction himself, then presents himself as the grieving brother rallying Haarlem to her rescue. His double game—public outrage, private scheming—makes him a quietly treacherous presence in the early arc, and his broken bones conveniently keep him from leading the pursuit he helped orchestrate.

Jan Tiele

Jan Tiele belongs to the circle of would-be assassins whose plans collapsed under torture and betrayal, leaving Groeneveld condemned and Stoutenburg a wanderer. He moves at the edges of the plot, a name bound up with the aborted conspiracy that casts its gloom over Haarlem and Gilda's household. His presence reminds the reader that the intrigue reaching for Gilda is not petty crime but the wreckage of a failed political murder, and that its survivors are dangerous men with nothing left to lose.

Mynheer Ben Isaje

Ben Isaje receives Nicolaes Beresteyn's letters and, for a fee, agrees to hold the abducted Gilda in comfort at his private house outside the city. Wary and deliberate, he reads each document twice and asks pointed questions before committing himself, a man accustomed to weighing risk against guilders. His quiet complicity gives the conspiracy its respectable facade, and his household becomes the unlikely stage where Diogenes must decide whether to honour his bond or break it.