CHAPTER XVIIIOF THE AMBASSADOR OF THE RUDE CASTILIAN PRINCE
Whenthe ambassador came into the room, the duke rose from his stool, and having carefully and politely removed the grease from the fingers of his right hand, held out his hand for the cartel in an imperious manner.
“Señor Ambassador,” said he, with the inimitable air which requires a grandee of I know not how many quarterings to support, “I understand you to come from our nephew of Castile. I will heed this, his mandate, carefully.”
Upon receiving the parchment sealed massively in wax he removed the grease from the fingers of his left hand and proceeded with patient dignity to peruse the challenge.
In the meantime, the Countess Sylvia, seated at the board in the midst of her council, was in a fury.
“Look at that old man!” she cried out. “Look at his thumbs! Why does he use them upon the missive of the Castilian? Look, Sirrah Red Dragon, he is reading it upside down!”
“Silence there at the top of the table,” said the duke, with the grandeur of one who has wielded an unquestioned authority for threescore years, yet having vainly endeavoured to peruse the document in the manner hisdaughter had indicated. “Do you read it to us, good plenipotentiary. Silence there, I say! If you do not close your trap, you hulks, I will have you flogged with severity. Silence, I say again! Ods nig and nog! was ever one who is old and a parent beset with so much incivility!”
While the ambassador, a dark man in a dusty riding suit of Cordovan leather, and accompanied by a retinue of three as dusty as himself, proceeded to read the terms of the cartel aloud to the duke, his lordship’s grace fell again to devouring the ortolan. By the time the messenger had reached the part in which the Castilian bade his uncle deliver up his castle hard by the city of Toledo, and bade him retire to his lesser manor in the province of Leon, the old man began to babble and whimper, and finally to break into tears.
“Look at him! look at him!” cried the Countess Sylvia. “If your lordship’s grace would wipe your old red eyes on your cuff, and eat your fowl like a Christian, and cease to roar like a horse as it walks up a hill, I and my good counsellors might frame a fitting answer to the Castilian.”
“Ods myself!” snuffled his lordship’s grace, “sooner than I will be a parent again I will cut my throat.”
With a proud voice the Lady Sylvia bade the envoy of the Castilian come up to the high table and present the cartel to her. She received it with every mark of disgust; and, indeed, the fingers of his lordship’s grace had robbed it of that fair appearance it may have formerly enjoyed. But when she came to read this document her mood changed to one of flaming anger,since the manner of the Castilian’s epistle was indeed of the sort to fret a lofty spirit.
“‘Too long, good my uncle Roldan, hast thou held thy demesne’”—the little countess read particular passages aloud with unutterable scorn. “‘Thy situation above the great city of Toledo, the first of our realm, cannot be borne. Yourself is a good and honest prince, good my uncle Roldan, but your grace hath the whole of your worthy manor of Aldoleda in which to inhabit your excellent old age. Your noble mountain fortress is necessary to our design, for our kingdom must be so strong that we fear no enemies. We would have you deliver this fortress, together with two hundred men-at-arms, unto us within the space of twenty days; and by these presents we do engage not to molest your grace and good my uncle Roldan in your worthy manor of Aldoleda, in which fair place your honourable old age will not lack security.’”
Verily I think there never was such an imperious anger as that of the Countess Sylvia as slowly she deciphered the contents of this pronunciamento with the aid of myself and the Count of Nullepart. She tore the missive down the middle and flung it on the ground.
“Envoy,” she said, “get you gone as you value your neck, and do you inform our cousin Castile that I spurn him as I would a mad wolf.”
“Softly, softly,” whispered the Count of Nullepart to his mistress. “I pray you, madam, not to forget your statecraft in this affront to your ambition.”
“Peace, sirrah!” said the Countess Sylvia. “If the envoy doth not withdraw I will have him impaled.”
The emissary of the king bowed low.
“Madam,” he said, “my business, under your favour, is with his grace the Duke of Montesina.”
“There is no Duke of Montesina; his lordship’s grace was deposed at twelve o’clock this day. Myself am the master and the mistress here.”
“She speaks sooth, Master Envoy,” said Sir Richard Pendragon. “If the gracious countess so much as frowns since this morning, every stick and stone within these walk doth fall into a most violent trembling.”
“My business is with his grace the Duke of Montesina,” said the envoy staunchly.
“Do I not tell thee his lordship’s grace is deposed?” said the Countess Sylvia. “He is as weak in his mind as a seamew.”
“And I venture, Master Envoy,” said I, with a touch of our famous northern penetration, “to suggest that the king your master is aware of this calamity.”
“That is nothing to the case, sir,” said the envoy, waiving this inconvenient suggestion aside. “My business is with your master the duke, and I would fain transact it.”
“There is no duke, do I not tell thee, stupid one!” said the Countess Sylvia. “Do I not say he is deposed?”
“Deposed!” cried his lordship’s grace, hearing the words of his daughter and understanding them, for although his wits were deranged they were susceptible of strong flashes of reason. “Deposed! Who speaks thus? Who dares say that there is no duke? I would have you to know, Master Ambassador, and all the world to know it also, that there is a duke, and he is a duke of vim and valiance. Deposed! Ods myself! these arethe words of a wicked hulks. As I am a parent, Master Ambassador, I have the most ingrateful daughter in Spain.”
“Envoy,” said the Countess Sylvia, “I pray you do not heed that old man. He is as immoderate in his motions as a frog in a moist afternoon. His wits are weak; there is a cloud in his mind; he babbles foolishly.”
“Luiz!” cried the duke—“where’s my good Luiz? Where art thou, Luiz? Fetch the guard, good gossip, and as I am a parent, this ingrateful hulks shall go to the house of correction.”
“Do not heed him, envoy,” said her ladyship. “This old man is forwandered in his mind like a bat in the daylight. Speak him fair, but heed him not. He is a babbler.”
“Come to me, Luiz—come to me!” cried the duke, brandishing the carcass of the ortolan. “Why do you not come to me, good fat man? Will you see me sounced by the tongue of a jade? Deposed, says she! I babble foolishly! Come to me, Luiz, as thou art a good Christian man, and I will have her scourged.”
There could never have been a more whimsical sight since the world set up in business than the distraction of the King of Castile’s ambassador, himself a man of bearing and nobility, standing in the midst of his astonished retinue, as he gazed from one to the other of those who addressed him. Yet it was presently borne in upon him by the outrageous speaking of the poor old duke, and the vacancy of his eyes, that all his politics, in whatever they might consist, were like to be over-ridden by the imperious will that had assumed the reins of governance. Therefore, after awhile, headopted the only wise and possible course, which was to accept the little countess as the principal in this affair. And in spite of all that we, her counsellors, could do to impose some check upon her speech—for the Castilian had the name of being as proud a prince as there was on the earth—she refused to soften her words, and insisted that the envoy should bear them to his master.
“And further, Don Jose de Fermosilla,” said she, “I would have you bid Castile, our cousin, assemble all his hosts and bring them hither, and they shall not lack for a welcome. They shall receive good play of sword and pike, halberd and musket, and every conceivable engine of belligerency. Are we mud, Don Jose de Fermosilla—are we mud, I say, myself and his lordship’s grace (myself having all the grace of his lordship since a little before noon this day)—are we mud, sirrah, that this Castilian speaks us unmannerly? By my sooth, Don Jose, this is a rude prince; but as there is a nerve in our right hand—do you mark me, sirrah?—upon a day his sauciness shall not go unvisited.”
“O statecraft! O statecraft!” said the Count of Nullepart in a low voice and smiling softly.
At these words of the Lady Sylvia, which had been uttered with every mark of disdain, the bearer of the cartel drew himself up with a proud mien, and said with much haughtiness on his own part,—
“Madam, as you are young and a woman, I would humbly propose, although it is no part of my province to propose it, that you weigh your words again in the scale before you publish them to the King’s majesty. It would be a pitiful matter if in the inclemency of his temper he harried his lordship’s dominion and razedboth his castles to the earth. For I would have you to know, madam, that there is no prince in all Christendom to whom such words would come more amiss. He is so instant in his nature that on shorter terms than these he would put the whole of this garrison to the sword.”
“He is welcome to do this, Don Jose,” said our mistress fearlessly, in spite of the fact that the Count of Nullepart was plucking at the sleeve of her robe, “if he is able.”
“He does not stand without ability, madam, if the truth must be spoken,” said Don Jose. “He can come before your gates in a fortnight with five thousand men, with artillery and engines of the latest capacity.”
“He shall be welcome, sirrah.”
“You, madam,” said Don Jose scornfully, “have three hundred soldiers in your service, as I am informed. Whoever heard such proud words, madam, upon so much insufficiency?”
“Harkee, Don Jose,” said the little countess menacingly, “I would not have you give too free an expression to your private ideas, for there are dungeons under this castle which on a day have held your betters.”
“So I believe, madam,” said Don Jose. “But I stand in the light of one who would come between a woman and her inclination. Yet I would ask you to believe, madam, that in this matter I am your sincere well-wisher.”
“We none of us doubt that, sir,” said the Count of Nullepart in his sweetest accent, and looking upon the messenger with his charming melancholy. “And if, sir,you will heed madam’s youth rather than her speaking, you will be her good servant. If you will have the goodness to inform the King your master that his cartel has been received with all consideration and honourable courtesy; that his grace the Duke of Montesina will bestow all possible attention upon it during the interregnum of twenty days which his Majesty has nominated with so much kindness; and that any decision at which his grace may arrive shall be delivered to the King your master by another hand, all within this castle shall ever be yours in all humility.”
“Yes, that is right speaking,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, who had almost assumed the demeanour of a cardinal; “that is a ripe wisdom and a courteous maturity.”
“You speak well, sir,” said Don Jose de Fermosilla, making a low bow. “And I convey that message to the King, my master.”
“Perhaps it were not amiss, Sir Count,” said I, “if you put your good words in writing. Were it not well to call a scrivener?”
“Truly,” said the ambassador, “that would indeed be well.”
The Countess Sylvia, however, was furiously angry, but those three councillors who strove humbly to serve her attended her humours with the highest patience. Yet, for all their devices, they were not able entirely to succeed, for as soon as the scrivener was come into the room she bade him leave her presence on the pain of death.
In such circumstances our natural ally was the duke. But so completely had his lordship’s grace been overborneby the heats and violences of the day, that having picked his ortolan, he had duly fallen asleep on his stool in the middle of the negotiations. Therefore it remained for us, her councillors, to soften the affront that was like to be put by our mistress upon the Castilian. Yet in the end we could do no better than put our faith in the humanity and discretion of Don Jose de Fermosilla to represent the attitude of madam with a becoming leniency. For again and yet again did she announce her determination to flout her insolent cousin. And presently matters were brought to such a pass that it was only the highly diplomatic conduct of Sir Richard Pendragon in feigning utter deafness when she called on him in peremptory tones to summon the guard to have the envoy and the Count of Nullepart himself placed in a dungeon for seeking to outface her, that made it possible to conclude the matter at all.
In the end Don Jose took his departure with a promise to the Count of Nullepart, Sir Richard Pendragon, and myself that he would represent this matter to the King his master in a spirit of forbearance. In spite of that, I think none of us reposed much faith in his assurances, which, in the face of madam’s arrogance, were given by no means heartily. Indeed, as he took his leave his eyes were furtive and lowering, and in his mien was neither kindness nor friendship. As for our mistress, surely there never was so much queenly insolence as when the ambassador made to withdraw.
“We take no leave of you, Don Jose de Fermosilla,” said she. “We make you and your master no compliments. You have incurred our highest displeasure.”
Don Jose de Fermosilla bowed stiffly, and with his retinue passed out at the door.
“Call him again!” cried the Countess Sylvia to those who were in attendance.
Don Jose returned, yet there was no abatement of his dark looks.
“I would have you proceed backwards, out of our presence, Don Jose de Fermosilla,” said madam insolently. “And do you inform our cousin that it is nothing to our pleasure that we must keep a school of manners for his emissaries.”
Don Jose de Fermosilla withdrew in the desired manner, biting at his lips with chagrin.