A Knight of Spain, page 25
“Winning battles will not help Don Felipe’s cause in the Netherlands—you cannot deny that.”
“No, I cannot.”
“Nor that his sway will ever again be acknowledged in these countries.”
“No, nor that.”
“Why then,” she asked, wildly, “do you go on?”
“I obey the King.”
“In a hopeless cause, in a bad cause! Don Juan, I feel as if this coming conflict was accursed for Spain, for you.”
“I, too, feel that,” he said; “but the King will not recall me and there is nothing for me to do but to go on.”
He added instantly:—
“Do not, however, let us talk of this.”
The sullen rain began to beat on the stone ledge of the window; Juan turned and closed the casement.
“A storm across the Lowlands! A storm!” cried Madame de Havrech.
She came and leant her sick head against the mullions.
“Juan,” she whispered, “I am ill.” She held the pomander to her nostrils.
“It is strange,” he answered, “that you also should think of Death to-night.”
“I do think of him,” she cried. “If you should meet him here!”
“Let me see your hair, Marie,” he said. “You have beautiful hair. I have always wanted to see it unbound.”
She put up her left hand and took out the gold-headed pins.
“Whose hair have you in your ear-ring?” she whispered.
“It does not matter now,” he answered.
Madame de Havrech’s curling locks fell below her waist, tumbling over her cambric open ruff on to the sombre folds of her black velvet overskirt.
There was a deep terror in her eyes as, with the gold-headed pins in one hand and the pomander in the other, she looked at Juan.
“Why are we both so silent and so sad?” she asked in a tone of awe.
Her mind was confused, she did not know clearly or definitely what was round her; the pins and the pomander dropped from her slackened fingers, and she put her hands before her face.
The wind and rain were threatening and dismal without, the room dark save for that one candle burning before its reflection.
The Marquise lifted her face and put up her hands, Juan took them and laid them on his breast as he had laid the hands of Aña de Santofimia over the same toison d’or many years before.
More than wind and rain seemed to be howling and beating at the window; all the forces of fear and might, of the conflict and struggle that was about to renew itself, all the threat and defiance of persecutor and persecuted seemed to Madame de Havrech to assail her ears mingled with the cries for vengeance of all those slain since Felipe began to rule the Netherlands.
And she was of the heretics, the rebels, trained to hate the Spanish. Yet, on the eve of the terrible struggle between her own people and the tyrants, it was Felipe’s tool who came and asked her for comfort, Felipe’s Viceroy who held her hands and looked down into her eyes.
The strangeness of this beat at Madame de Havrech’s heart—more than the horror of it, or the joy of it, the strangeness oppressed her; she felt as if the world would never be real and sane again; she thought that her brain was breaking, or her heart.
“You will return to Spain,” she said; “but I—I must stay among the blood and ruin.”
Then a great numbness came over her; it seemed to her that it was senseless to talk; she laid her face, buried in the fallen flowing hair, against the window frame.
Juan knelt at her feet and put his tired head on the folds of her black skirt that swept over the window seat, and put one of her limp hands under his cheek.
The tempest gathered in a fury over the Lowlands and shook the Chateau de Havrech; the one candle sent a shuddering gleam through the darkness and strongly to Juan’s nostrils came the scent of the spices in the pomander that had broken open when it fell from the grasp of the Marquise, and filled the gloomy chamber with the ominous perfume of the antidotes men used against the plague.
Chapter Six – FELIPE’S PLAYTHING
He kept his boast and smote the rebels at Gembloux so that nothing remained of their gallant forces but a scattered remnant, and while the Prince of Orange and the Estates were deciding how to use their army it had ceased to exist.
Juan took his victory as a thing he had expected; it gave him no elation, and in no way altered his sense of foreboding nor his conviction of the hopelessness of his task.
He moved towards Namur; his army, ill paid, ill fed, and largely composed of mercenaries, fell continually into mutiny and, even after Gembloux, deserted by the score to the Estates or the French.
There was no money nor answer to be had from Felipe, Escovedo wrote in despair from Madrid; the King, he said, was close shut in a sullen silence, he would not reveal his wishes nor his intentions and Antonio Perez feigned to know nothing.
Juan wrote to his brother and asked again for his recall, confessing his inability to cope any longer with the Netherlands; he had been formally deposed by the Estates who had put up the Protestant Archduke Mathias in his place (though the real ruler was and always would be Prince of Orange); he was recognized only by his own immediate army and following, and, besides being without authority, he was without money.
The King’s credit could not raise a guilder on the Antwerp Exchange, and Juan, a man without property or revenues, had no credit to pledge; he was in debt even for the wages of his servants, and he wrote to the King in his despair that there was nothing but starvation before the entire army if His Majesty did not speedily rescue them.
Worse than anything, perhaps, was his own sickness, that steadily grew on him; this was a thing that he was scarcely able to face; he had always taken his strength so for granted; his youth and his health were things that he had never thought about, and a peculiar despair settled on him as he realized his present weakness.
The spirit that had made him dance on the gun-deck of his ship before the battle of Lepanto had utterly left him; even his ambition faded; the glitter of the visionary crown that had so long lured him glimmered out of sight; he no longer cherished the hope of leading an army on England and rescuing the Scottish Queen, nor did he even still dream of a Kingdom in Greece or Africa—he longed merely for rest.
To his appeals for money he always added one for Escovedo; but the secretary was detained on one excuse or another; chiefly, so he wrote to his master, through the machinations of Antonio Perez and the Princess of Eboli, who seemed to have every desire to keep him in Spain.
Escovedo did not add that a Moorish slave of his had lately been hanged for putting poison in his food and that he believed this slave was but the tool of some great person; and that he went in daily fear of his life; he had tried to use the weapon Anne of Austria had wielded with good effect; he had told Aña de Mendoza that he would reveal her perfidy with Perez if she would not speak for Juan with the King.
The immediate result of this was a grudging supply of money sent to the Low Countries and a promise of more.
But there was no letter and no answer to the questions the young Governor was continually pressing.
He broke out fiercely to the Prince of Parma:—
“Does the King wish to ruin me?”
“Antonio Perez does,” answered Don Alessandro.
“Why?” demanded Juan. Nor could he understand or indeed scarce believe the intriguing of the powerful minister against him; he had always been of the party of Ruy Gomez and Perez, he saw no reason for this hatred.
Of the desire for vengeance the Princess of Eboli cherished against the Queen, of her immense influence over Perez, of the reason both she and the minister had to fear Escovedo, he knew nothing; that tortuous policies and intrigues were working against him in Madrid he guessed, but he lacked the clue to them.
The Prince of Parma, who was climbing more slowly, warily, with less brilliancy and splendour than Don Juan, but more surely and safely, knew something of the attitude of Perez and the Princess towards the King’s brother, something too, of the insane jealousy Felipe felt towards youth and achievement, but he kept his counsel. In these days Juan turned to him with an almost desperate affection, and Alessandro did not repulse him.
Neither did he desire to risk his own secure standing with Don Felipe by too openly befriending a man the King had turned his face from.
His continual advice to Juan was to urge his recall; he saw, with the instinct of military genius, that Juan was in the wrong place, and that the victor of Lepanto was not fitted to become the conqueror of the Netherlands.
“The King means my ruin,” repeated Juan, not as a question now, but as a statement.
“Princes of the House of Austria are not so plentiful,” smiled the Prince of Parma, “that His Majesty can afford to lose one.”
“Alessandro,” replied the Viceroy gloomily, “if the King had meant well by me he would have left me in Italy or sent me against the heathen. Did I not know what I could do and what I could not do? Entering this miserable country has been for me like creeping into a grave.”
As he spoke, he wearily turned his eyes to the window of his chamber which overlooked Namur, in which town he had been for some days sick; the active duties of commander were deputed to the Prince of Parma, who had just returned from an expedition where he had distinguished himself by the capture of Limburg and several places of less importance in the province of that name, including Dalem, which had refused to surrender, and on being taken by a storm had been bathed in blood by a general butchery of the inhabitants.
Don Juan approved of this, though his rule encouraged the army to lawfulness and order, and he had none of the fury of the bigot; he saw no other way, but by fire and the sword, of dealing with people who were both rebels and heretics.
His distracted mind roving from one subject to another, he spoke now of Dalem.
“I hope,” he said, “it will be a lesson to the other towns.”
“I hear,” answered the Prince of Parma with satisfaction, “that it made a gloomy impression in Antwerp. Orange was struck to the heart, they say.”
Juan moved restlessly on his couch.
“Ah, the Prince of Orange,” he said. “I am in an amaze at that man. Surely he will soon see what an ill thing he has done for himself.”
“He plays a long game,” answered Don Alessandro, whose intricate mind could understand even a good man’s motives, far as these were removed from his own. “And he may fool us yet by the aid of Francois d’Alenà§on, or the Queen of England.”
“Never,” exclaimed Don Juan angrily, starting up on his couch. “D’Alençcon is a puppet for anyone’s pulling, and Elizabeth is too cautious to be of real use to anyone.”
But he was secretly vexed; he knew that both the French Duke and the English Queen were being as successfully as delicately worked by the Prince of Orange, who had already received money from England and men from the French Prince, and promises of further aid from both.
“Where are the rebels now?” he asked impatiently. He had lately been too ill to bear any news.
“Between Herenthal and Lier,” replied the Prince of Parma.
“Who commands them?”
“Orange’s lieutenant, Comte Bossu; under him are the De la Noue-Aerschat; Lalaing, Egmont Havrech—”
Don Alessandro paused and glanced at Juan who remained sitting on the end of his couch, looking at the floor.
“Havrech,” he repeated.
Juan raised bright and feverish eyes.
“Well?” he asked.
“Did you not pay court to Madame de Havrech? I have heard it.”
“What of it?” questioned Juan wearily.
“Dios!” returned the Prince of Parma with a shrug. “She is dead.”
Juan winced; he looked down at the floor again.
“After being fifteen days sick, she died last Sunday. Her illness was thought to be the plague.”
“The plague,” repeated Juan. He roused himself from depths of gloomy reflection with an effort. “We have the plague in the Army too. Alessandro, if Orange succeeds in buying Duke Ernst Casimir’s troops and d’Alenà§on musters an army (his sister well prepared the ground for him!) we are lost. Indeed we are lost and the King will not write, why does he disgrace me thus? Abandoned, without money or men, or orders, this is a fine reward for all my long services, this is a fine answer to all my encouraged hopes!”
He rose and began pacing the floor; a corslet of light mail showed under his dressing-gown, his life had been attempted of late, and an Englishman was at present under arrest for endeavouring to assassinate him.
“Is this to be the end!” he cried, wildly; “am I to be trapped here like a wild beast in a net whom the hunters may slay at leisure? So Madame de Havrech is dead,” he added, gloomily and abruptly.
“I heard that the fall of Dalem greatly overwhelmed her—it struck most of the heretics—and that she fell into a melancholy that hastened her end.”
Don Juan fixed his eyes on the Prince of Parma.
“Alessandro,” he said, suddenly, “do you remember Doña Aña de Santofimia?”
“Dios! No.”
“The lady in Alcalà—the night the Infant was ill.”
The Prince of Parma recalled the incident with a laugh.
“Why, I remember.”
“I have travelled very far away from her,” said Juan. “Do you know if she is alive or dead?”
“Nay, I have not been to Alcalà since we left the college. She must be past her beauty now.”
Juan sighed.
“When I can mount a horse,” he said, irrelevantly, “we will march against the rebels.”
“God give us a good issue from this pass,” answered the Prince of Parma gravely. “I think we are scarcely fit to fall on Bossu—and if we lose this army where are we to raise another? Orange has the whole country as a recruiting ground, but we have only what the King may send us.”
“I dispatched Señor Billi to His Majesty with an account of the victory at Gembloux, as you know,” said Don Juan, “but he has made no sign. I bid him ask for money and the return of Escovedo. You cannot imagine how I long for Escovedo.”
His whole face darkened with a profound melancholy; he cast himself down on the couch again, and lay motionless, his head buried in the satin cushions.
The Prince of Parma left; he had much business on his mind.
Juan closed his eyes; he saw a picture of Marie de Havrech dead, in her black and brown robes, with her fallen hair and despairing face.
Dead! And if he might believe his own creed, damned.
He shuddered in horror; was she in the flames of hell, this beautiful, sad creature who had loved him?
Never before had he thought of the fate of a heretic, but now it was borne on him with deep terror that they burnt for ever and ever—to God’s judgment and beyond. His blood ran hot with fever and his brain was confused; she had died of the plague—she had infected him, he thought; love and death, love and loss, ever went hand in hand for him—this time his own death perhaps.
He did not want to die in this exile, in this gray, hateful country; he did not want to die without seeing the Southern sun again; he set his teeth and dragged himself up on his couch; his heavy eyes turned to his helmet, gloves, and sword, lying in the window seat; he had ordered them to be brought yesterday in the hopes that he might have worn them and have ridden forth, but his strength had failed him.
He longed in his sickness to smite the rebels down, to butcher them all, to bathe the country in blood, to return to the King and say. “There are no more Netherlanders!”
A great hatred of the country possessed him; he thought that he would sooner die a slave in Italy than a king here.
The only creature that he had ever cared for in this blood-stained land had been seized by death, and he felt that he, too, would soon follow Madame de Havrech.
Presently he fell into a sleep disfigured by desperate dreams from which he was roused, near nightfall, by Ottavio Gonzago.
The news this gentleman brought was such as to rouse Don Juan to his ancient courage; Señor Billi had returned from Madrid with a supply of money and promises of more.
He also brought a triumphant letter from the faithful Escovedo, who declared the money had been wrung from Felipe through Aña de Mendoza, and further a brief letter from the King himself, who also sent his own doctor, Ramirez. “Having heard that you are lately ill,” wrote Felipe, and, finally, a packet from the Princess of Eboli.
This last killed utterly all Juan’s joy in the other messages.
There was no line of writing in it; but it contained the boxwood case that held the portrait of Anne of Austria over which Carlos had wept and prayed.
Juan’s sick eyes stared, gazed with something near terror at this little picture to which a sinister addition had been made.
Some artist had painted in long and elaborate ear-rings, and one was half broken off.
“She knows,” said the young Viceroy.
He could now understand many things.
Chapter Seven – FELIPE STRIKES
Felipe’s mean, timid policy veered again; his meagre advices were for patching a peace with the Netherlands at all costs.
“He means to ruin me,” said Juan again when he heard. He still asked for money, what he had received being totally insufficient, and for Escovedo, the secretary being still detained in Madrid.
In obedience to the King he convened a meeting of Spanish and the Estates (who had been heartened lately by the battle of Rynemants, where they had more than held their own against the Spanish forces) at Louvain, with the envoys of England and the Emperor present to assist the deliberations. Don Juan knew perfectly well that these proceedings were merely a solemn farce, and if he had not been humbled by sickness and disappointment he would never so quickly and quietly consented to them, for he knew that Orange was resolved to make this a struggle to a finish, and Orange was the only man who counted in the Netherlands now.
