A Knight of Spain, page 15
“Did I not tell you and your fellows this morning,” he said, “that you would this day be free, either by my wish as reward for your service in my victory, or as the result of God’s will in my defeat?”
By now the soldier had made his sword ready; he struck off the head of the Pasha, whose blood ran out and over the feet of his own galley slave.
“Now I shall get a great reward from Don Juan!” cried the soldier; but the slave was so wrath at his pitilessness that he attacked him and the soldier leapt into the sea, still holding the head of the Pasha Ali by the long black hair, for the turban had fallen off and rolled away along the deck.
Don Lope de Figueroa was now on the poop, hauling down the Turkish flag, and to his support went Don Juan, all imbrued with blood, and as the crossed standard was run up for the whole battle to see, the soldier who had swum round the vessel and climbed again on deck, came and flung himself before his commander and offered him the head of Pasha Ali. Don Juan looked at him with displeasure and said:—
“What would you have me do with that head? Cast it into the sea. Had you been any but a raw soldier you would have spared him, for he was a noble bassa and kind to his slaves.” But Don Lope took the head and put it on a high pike and raised it on the poop to be a terror and a sign to the other Infidels.
So was the flagship of the Pasha captured, and soon after the rest of the heathen fleet, excepting the ships of Ali Aluch, the “Algerine,” who had destroyed the galleys of the knights of Malta and sailed away from the disaster.
But the green standard of the prophet was hauled down and lay under the feet of Don Juan, and the blue banner of the Pope waved in triumphant glitter over the bloody gulf of Lepanto when night veiled the waters that heaved with carnage.
Chapter Four – ANTONIO PEREZ
“It was a great victory,” said Felipe, “and it has made my brother a famous man; yea, almost the greatest Prince in Europe in point of high-sounding fame.”
“Did I not tell you,” answered Aña de Mendoza, “that he would serve you well?”
“Does he serve me well this way—does he serve me?” asked the King.
“It has been a great glory for Spain.”
“Yes,” said Felipe gloomily; “but has it not been too much of glory for Don Juan?”
The Princess of Eboli surveyed him calmly.
“Bubble glory,” she said; “what does it amount to? A gilded shadow. The only command he holds is one you may take at a moment from him, he has neither position nor wealth—he is no more than your hired captain, dependent on your bounty.”
The King was not to be comforted.
“That is not how the world sees it,” he replied sullenly. “All admire him, praise him, bow before him; the Pope hails him as the champion of Christendom; Italy rings with his lauds; he grows above himself.”
“It is always in your power to clip his wings,” said the Princess of Eboli.
She stood near the narrow window of the King’s private closet in the Escorial and looked out on the scaffolded towers that covered the slopes of the Guadamarra.
Ruy Gomez, the King’s powerful minister, was dead, but his widow retained her influence over the King, and there was now a secret door and passage leading from her apartments to the closet of Felipe.
She wore her widow’s garb, black from head to foot, with a great silver rosary at her side; a sombre figure, sallow-faced, with large melancholy eyes.
Felipe sat before his desk that was piled, as usual, with the orderly heaps of his immense correspondence.
His head was sunk on his narrow chest, his white, long hands grasped the polished arms of his chair, covered with worn red leather; his clothes were black and dingily trimmed with dull gold braid.
“Aña,” he said sharply, but without looking up, “he would be a king—this boy.”
“Did I not tell you? Can you wonder?” she replied.
“I know. But before it was only a dream—now dreams have materialized. There has been a suggestion made to him that he should found himself a kingdom in Morea and Albania.”
“Ah!”
“He referred this suggestion to me,” said Felipe, still without looking up. “Of course I told him to defer the project. I have told him that I will do better for him than this.” He gave a dry laugh.
“Lure him, delude him,” said the Princess; “do not quell his hopes.”
“Then he petitioned me that he might be created Infant of Castile.”
“And you?”
“That I also deferred,” smiled the King.
“These base-born climbers have high ambitions,” remarked the Princess calmly; “but speak him fair, there is much to be got from him yet.”
Felipe looked at her out of his tired, cold eyes with sinister meaning.
“He dreams to marry with the Scottish Queen.”
“So Señor Perez told me.”
“Ah, Señor Perez!” Felipe laughed. The new minister was the only person who shared the confidence he gave Aña de Mendoza, and it pleased him to think that these two powerful rivals hated each other and intrigued for the first place in his favour. “So you have been conversing with Antonio Perez, eh?”
“One must bow to the rising sun, Felipe.”
“You hate Perez, do you not?”
She glanced at him from under drooped lids.
“I do not love him, Majesty.”
“No,” smiled Felipe.
She came and stood by the side of his chair, her wide, dark, frilled skirts filled the space between the King and the desk; she fingered the edge of the black lace mantilla that hung from her small erect head.
“You know whom I love,” she said, with a wise smile.
“I know you for a jealous piece, too,” nodded Felipe. “But let Perez be—he is a clever fellow and he suits me.”
“Does he suit you better than I do?” she asked.
“You are a woman.”
Aña de Mendoza laughed now.
“I am more than that. For I am not fair, but I hold you, Felipe.”
He put out his lean hand and caught her wrist and fingered it thoughtfully.
“Aye, you hold me,” he admitted.
“The Queen has marked it,” said the Princess quietly.
Felipe’s brow clouded.
“Ah, the Queen,” he muttered heavily; “she is a quick creature.”
“Surely Elizabeth de Valois suited your humour better,” answered the Princess maliciously. “But you have your heir.
“Almighty God and Our Lady of Atocha be thanked!” Felipe crossed himself piously. “But of Juan—I have recalled Quiroga, his secretary, for he had so won him to himself that he was no longer my creature.”
“Whom have you sent in his place?”
“Perez recommended Juan de Escovedo—as a retainer of the house of Guzman, he should be faithful, and I have instructed him to cling to Juan day and night and to mark his every action. I’ll have no treason. They say he is a great favourite with the soldiers.”
“He did not find it difficult to make friends—my husband (God rest his soul!) often told me that the Admiral’s gift of popularity would take him far.”
“Only as far as I choose,” said Felipe sourly. “He had best beware.”
“Who is to be his wife?”
“His wife?”
“Will you not marry him? He is very much the servant of the ladies.”
“He is twenty-two! But he will never marry, Aña.”
“Why?”
“Because I will not find him a Princess and he is too proud to take a commoner, as you will see.”
“Well, let him die a bachelor—though I doubt not that many royal ladies might fancy him as their lord. All the women in Spain seem to have run wild for him since this battle in Lepanto Bay—even the Queen.”
“The Queen?” Felipe dropped the brown wrist he had been coldly fondling.
Aña smiled with deep malice.
“The Queen can talk of nothing else but Juan,” she said, “and can hardly endure the days until he comes to Court and she may see him.”
“Women are all fools!” exclaimed the King, moved to real anger, and to showing what he felt. “You alone have wisdom, Aña, you alone I trust; but as for these others with red and white in their faces, Argus could not safely be their jailor. Watch her, Aña—watch the Queen. She will have her gallants next and slip her posies and her notes into some apt page’s sleeve!”
“The Queen is very virtuous,” smiled the Princess, with a sidelong glance.
“I trust no one,” replied the King briefly.
“Save me.”
“Ah—you!” he stressed the word with great meaning and looked steadily into her keen and thin face.
“You trust me, do you not, Felipe?” she asked gravely.
“I have trusted you with my inmost secrets for many years,” returned Felipe earnestly. “I trust nothing on earth as I trust you, Aña de Mendoza.”
She bent swiftly and kissed his hand that rested on the arm of the old, worn chair.
“Ah, Aña!” He made a movement to prevent her.
“Do not let Perez outrun me in your favour,” she said. Her face was flushed and her voice shook.
“Antonio Perez serves me,” he answered, with a sudden flash in his eyes; “you know that, and if you wish it I may cast him down.”
“Nay, let him stay,” she said indifferently; “what is it to me what servant waits upon my lord, as long as he is useful to you?”
“He is clever, Aña, and cunning, and full of likely turns and tricks. I would that you would get to better know him, so that you might come to see in him the value that I prize.”
“Why, let it be,” she answered. “I like not Perez, but let that pass. Marc Antonio Colonna had a triumph in Rome for his success at Lepanto and Don Juan protested not.”
Felipe, never quick, blinked at her swift change of subject.
“What has that to do with Perez?” he asked slowly.
“Nothing,” Aña smiled; “I but thought of it—why should Colonna and the Pope take the credit of this victory?”
“It was not a complete triumph,” said Felipe peevishly, pulling towards him the letter from his ambassador in Rome in which this event was described; “he only rode the Appian Way on a white jennet to taste the plaudits of the populace.”
“As you will, but I thought that it would have shown great dignity in Don Juan if he had protested against this display.”
“He had a great triumph at Messina,” returned Felipe jealously, “and they are to set up a gilt statue to him.”
“And Robusto, the Venetian painter, is to paint a whole wall with his picture in the battle.”
“Aye, I think every artificer in Italy is carving or painting his features and every poet singing his lauds. The Pope has sent him a silver shield with Our Blessed Lord on it—also two tables of black marble set with jaspers and a morsel of the true cross.”
“What will he do with that?” asked the Princess with some envy.
“It is to go to Doña Magdalena da Ulloa for the new church she is building at Villagarcia.”
“He should have thought of your Majesty first,” remarked the Princess.
“The Holy Father should have thought of me,” commented Felipe with asperity. “It was with difficulty that he would grant me an indulgence of fifty years for my chapel here and to Juan he would give a perpetual indulgence for the asking.”
“His Holiness ages,” said Aña de Mendoza, “and he was always set on his Holy League above all things.”
“Juan is his darling now,” continued Felipe sullenly; “he would coin the Vatican to send him money.”
“When comes this hero home?” asked the Princess.
“When he has taken Tunis, I think there will be little more for him to do. He is now sailing from Sicily, there to rest. The Prince of Parma goes with him. That youth will do bravely.”
“He showed himself of true mettle at Lepanto. Juan waited on this Prince’s mother at Apulia, I hear.”
“Yea; the Princess was taken with his fair face, as others are, and was completely his servant,” said the King drily.
Doña Aña hunched her shoulders.
“Send him to me when he comes to Court,” she answered, “and I will sound him; nor shall I be blinded by his beauty. Now it is time I attended to my duties, and you are engaged with your letters, therefore, farewell.”
Felipe kissed her hand with some show of feeling, and courteously conducted her to the secret door behind the arras that led to her apartments.
She gathered her great skirts about her, and stepped silently into the dark passage, and went lightly up the dark, short winding stairway that led her into her own antechamber.
In the centre of this room, that was magnificently furnished with all the resources of Spanish and Italian art, a man in a habit of dead silver and rose brocade waited, playing, to beguile the time, with an elegant white dog.
A delicate change came over the Princess when she saw this man; like a rich perfume spreading from an insignificant flower the charm that made her a powerful woman was suddenly disclosed; her small face sparkled and her large eyes grew soft, yet brilliant, as she advanced with her hands outstretched.
The gentleman took her hands and kissed her cheek.
“You are late,” he said.
“Forgive me. The King kept me.”
She sank on to a seat of crimson brocade near the open fire.
“Ah, Antonio!” she exclaimed, with an air of utter weariness, “I am stale, stale with playing to the King!”
“He becomes,” answered Antonio Perez, “old and tiresome.”
She smiled wickedly.
“He trusts me—that is my one reward for all this labour. To-day he bid me learn to know your worth!”
“Do I stand firm in his graces?” asked the minister anxiously.
“He leans on you. He could not do without you. At present you must humour him with regard to Don Juan. He is mad with jealousy of this Prince, who may be removed as Carlos was, if he step not carefully.”
“Escovedo is watching Don Juan,” answered Perez. “I can trust him, and he is safer out of Spain, for lately I have thought that he knew too much of you and me.”
“Ah!” cried Aña de Mendoza sharply, “but he could not open the King’s eyes.”
“I would not risk it,” said the minister grimly.
The Princess Eboli regarded his handsome, stately face with eager eyes.
“We are safe,” she answered; “the King thinks us enemies.”
Then, to distract her lover’s mind from the subject, she opened the great embroidered pocket that hung by her side, and took out a small object that she laid on the palm of her hand, and showed to Perez who was now leaning on the back of her chair.
“Felipe grows afraid of the dead Carlos,” she smiled; “he gave me this to-day, and said that he thought that it was of ill omen, and bid me destroy it.”
Perez laughed.
“The Infant used to make his prayers to that picture,” he remarked, and took from the Princess’s hand the boxwood case containing the portrait of the Archduchess Anne, who had been betrothed to Carlos, and was now his father’s fourth queen.
Chapter Five – THE FOURTH QUEEN
The King had been called to Madrid, and in his absence the Queen had much leisure and some liberty.
Antonio Perez had gone with Felipe, and the Princess of Eboli was the only one left to keep watch on Felipe’s wife.
When the King had been gone a week Anne resolved to visit a neighbouring convent famous for magnificent gardens, and Aña de Mendoza had no choice but to accompany her, though it was nearing winter and the Princess loved to keep the house on gloomy days.
The Queen and her crowd of ladies dined at the convent, and afterwards she must go over the gardens, and the Princess of Eboli must follow her, though she limped lamer at every step.
And before that day was over Aña de Mendoza found that she hated the Austrian.
In an arbour surrounded by the still green shrubs of autumn, laurel and box and veronica, and trees of ash and pine, Anne took her seat, and as the Princess of Eboli kept her company, her ladies, with a clear understanding of their duty, made no scruple to forgo their attendance on her; therefore, for a while at least, these two women were alone, and for the first time since the coming of the Austrian to Spain.
Doña Aña de Mendoza, looking old and weary in her gloomy widow’s dress, eyed the young Queen with a careful scrutiny. Anne was beautiful.
No judgment, however envious, could deny that she was young and lovely and golden, in much different from and in much like the little Flemish painting Don Carlos had cherished, and which was now in the possession of the Princess of Eboli.
Her complexion was pale, her eyes a sparkling brown, and her full rosy underlip and proud chin had the projection that was a notable feature of all the descendants of Carlo Quinto.
She wore now a blue habit of soft velvet that gave full value to her graceful slenderness, and a huge white ruff, pointed and stiffened, that framed her fair face with many inches of lace. On her hair, which was of the most admired shade of gold, was a black velvet cap with a long crimson feather held in place by a pearl brooch; there were pearls in her ears, too, and on the long white fingers which she had ungloved. Her expression seemed, at the first glance, to be one of melancholy, but if one long observed her countenance the dominant quality in it appeared to be pride or resolution.
Aña de Mendoza already knew that she was not made of the same stuff as Elizabeth de Valois, whose memory was still cherished in the hearts of the Spanish people; she was also set more proudly on her throne than her predecessor had ever been by the fact that she was the mother of the heir, Don Fernandi, a sickly infant with an uncertain hold on life; yet he lived and was Prince of Castile and counted for more than the two Infantas the late Queen had left.
