PART IITHE HOLY INQUISITION
"Lièver Turcx dan Paus."—Legend on a Beggar Medal, 1574
"Lièver Turcx dan Paus."—Legend on a Beggar Medal, 1574
"Lièver Turcx dan Paus."—Legend on a Beggar Medal, 1574
"Lièver Turcx dan Paus."—Legend on a Beggar Medal, 1574
CHAPTER ITHE PIGEON
The sunshine of late summer was mellow in the beautiful room that looked on the garden where the last roses bloomed amid the heavy luxuriance of foreign shrubs and flowers; golden the fair light of afternoon filled the chamber as amber-coloured wine might fill a dark cup, and there was no sound save the insistent ticking of the tall clock in the corner.
The room served no particular purpose, but was a mere antechamber to the library or corridor between that and a great chamber used for receptions and feasts.
Rénèe le Meung stood at the window looking on the hushed and sunny garden. She liked this chamber, and spent her little leisure there. She was not commonly disturbed, as the Prince's luxurious household seldom used this handsome library, and she had come to be fond of the room, to regard it almost as her own—more her own than the hot little bedchamber under the eaves, where she was within sound of Anne's persistent bell and ceaseless shrill demands.
She knew and liked the several pieces of furniture here—the large dark cupboard opposite to the window which was polished till it gleamed like steel; the Spanish chairs with gilt leather fringed seats either side; the waxed and shining picture, as bright as a jewel and as flat as a mosaic, that hung above the door into the library, and the other picture, a portrait of a fat, stern gentleman in black, handling the massive chain round his neck, which wasopposite above the other door; and the tall wooden clock with the delicately engraved steel face and the numbers cut in flourishes fine as pen-strokes.
There was no other furnishing save the three brocade cushions that filled the seat of the high Gothic window, yet the chamber had an air of richness and beauty and peace.
Rénèe's eyes lifted presently to the picture above the library door and dwelt there curiously.
It was a Flemish painting, perhaps a hundred years old, and represented a young saint, Agnes, Barbara, or Cecilia, being led out to martyrdom.
The virgin, robed in white, with fair hair, combed carefully in thin curls over her slanting shoulders, stood in the midst of a neat and flowery field, on which daisies and other little plants shone like stars.
She lifted her round and smiling face, which was freshly coloured and seemed never to have known care nor trouble, to a clear and lovely blue sky.
Behind her the executioners, elaborately clad in ruffled scarlet breeches and embroidered doublet, stood ready with rope and axe, and in the distance a hill town showed against the blue horizon with the distinctness of a toy model.
The picture fascinated Rénèe, it was so serene, so pleasant, so far removed from horror or disgust, terror or pain, that it might make a tired soul long to die that way, calm and smiling in a daisied meadow that was but one step from the paradise where a martyr's crown was already being plaited by the angels and saints.
There were martyrs now; men, women, and children as pious, as steadfast as any of the early Christians whom heathens slaughtered and to whom altars were set up all over Europe, died every day in the Netherlands. But not that way.
Rénèe knew it was not that way, the way of peace, with flowers beneath and the blue heavens above—nay, it was in the common day-time, amid the sordid surroundings of the market-place, with insults, with jeers, with flames,smoke, the shrieks of fellow-victims, the frenzied preaching of the monks, the groans of the crowd, with their ravaged homes perhaps within sight, their frantic children driven back by the soldiers, with all the details of pain and misery and dreariness, with none to comfort nor encourage—Rénèe knew that this was how the Netherlanders died—died daily by every manner of torture, by every form of terrible and horrible death.
There were some who were never seen in the market-place nor on the public gallows; these were they who were thrown into the prisons of the Holy Inquisition, and never more came forth from the dark only lit by the glare of the torture fires, or the silence broken only by groans of mortal agony and the calm adjurations of the monks.
Rénèe turned her eyes away from the picture. "It was never like that," she said to herself; "it lies—and who can tell that the heavens opened to receive them, and the saints crowded to welcome them? Who can tell? Who has seen it?"
She gazed into the Prince's garden, but the fairness of it brought no peace to her heart.
A warm breeze waved the costly flowers and the carefully tended trees in the groves and alleys. Two young men were playing tennis in the foremost court; the white balls sped gracefully against the green, the soft-shod figures moved noiselessly to and fro behind the nets.
In and out of the gables and crevices of the palace pigeons flew; their hoarse cooing was steady in the stillness. Now and then their strong wings beat past the window, and presently one settled on the open lattice, and moving its flexible head, gazed at Rénèe with an eye as red and bright as a ruby.
She looked at the bird with admiration; it was an exquisite thing, white and black shot with purple, all gleaming in the sunlight and ruffled with pride.
Then suddenly, as Rénèe looked, it flew straight past her into the room and beat against the black bureau.
Rénèe rose and clapped her hands to frighten it away, but the bird clung to the polished wood, fluttering the gleaming wings, the soft body panting and quivering.
As she approached, it flew again with a powerful stroke of the fine wings cutting the air, and beat frantically from door to door, passing and repassing the open window.
"Poor silly thing!" cried Rénèe; "so do we all beat about in our prisons when the door is open on the sky!"
The pigeon settled on the frame of the Flemish picture, and looked down, palpitating, the tumbled breast heaving, the bright eyes alert and anxious.
Rénèe stood helpless by the open window, her hand on her bosom and a little flush of colour in her grave face.
The opening of the door from the reception room caused her to turn with a start (she was so seldom disturbed in this chamber) and the pigeon to fly up and round the ceiling.
He who entered shut the door instantly and gave a quick glance at Rénèe in her warm, opulent beauty and severe blue gown, and then at the bird flashing like a gleam of light in the dusky darkness of the high ceiling.
It was the Prince.
Rénèe stood in a foolish confusion; it was long since she had seen him save at a distance, and his sudden appearance bewildered her completely.
"The bird is a prisoner?" he asked, and he spoke quite gravely, though he smiled a little.
"It will not see the open window, Highness," she replied; and as she spoke, the pigeon circled lower in exhausted fashion, and settled on the back of one of the black chairs.
The Prince put out his hand gently and easily and caught the bird by the wings, and so held it out, the coral-coloured feet contracted, the red gold-rimmed eyes bright with fear.
He took the struggling creature to the window and let it fly; it sped far away, above and beyond the tennis court.
He turned to look at Rénèe. Their eyes met; words rushed to her lips, and she spoke almost without meaning to and against her own awe and shamefacedness.
"Oh, Seigneur!" she exclaimed, "you are so tender with a little bird, will you not do something for the Netherlands?"
His look was surprised, almost startled. "Do I not do something for them?" he asked.
"I do not know," was wrung from Rénèe's bitter heart. "Your Highness is orthodox. Your Highness conforms. There were great hopes of you—I, among the first, believed; but now—the time goes—and—you do nothing!"
Then, seeing his expression of marvel, her face became burning with painful red, and she turned her head quickly away.
"It must be to Your Highness as if your dog should turn to speak to you," she said humbly. "I entreat you to pass on and forget."
"No," replied William, with perfect graciousness. "It is not my way to either pass on or forget. Tell me what you mean."
"I cannot," said Rénèe. "My heart is very full, and prompts me to foolishness. I am a heretic, and therefore life cannot be pleasant to me."
"But you are safe here," answered the Prince gently.
That stung her into again forgetting who he was and her own insignificance.
"That makes it more horrible!" she cried, and she turned towards him. Her flushed and glowing face was very beautiful in its utter unconsciousness of either beauty or allure. "Iam safe, but others better than I die every day—die horribly—burned alive, buried alive, tortured to death. The Netherlands are a shambles, Seigneur; the smoke of human sacrifice fouls the air. And it will be worse."
"Ay," said William quietly. "If the King enforce the findings of the Council of Trent, it will be worse."
"He will not dare!" exclaimed the girl, "for that would mean to exterminate the Netherlanders."
"I do not know what he would dare," returned William, in the same low, quiet tone. "I do not know."
Rénèe bit her lip to keep the hot words back; the long habit of her servitude controlled her to silence. She stood dutifully waiting for him to go from her presence, and forget her amid the thousand incidents of his gorgeous life.
But instead he stopped directly before her and spoke again, kindly, but with a certain challenge.
"What makes you appeal to me? What makes you think I could or would do anything for these heretics against whom the infallible voice of the Church has just cried, 'Anathema, three times anathema'?"
His tone spurred her to answer.
"Because you are the greatest Prince in the land—because the people have faith in you."
"But I am only half trusted," he smiled. "You may see as many pasquils pasted on my walls as on those of any man in Brussels."
"That is because Your Highness will not declare yourself. At one time, when you led the faction against the Cardinal, we all hoped"—her voice faltered a little—"but since then you have chosen to be secret, close——"
"There are others," he said—"Brederode, Egmont, Hoorne——"
"Ah," replied Rénèe, lifted beyond her tumultuous fear of him, the sweet dread of his presence, "none of these is the man we seek. In the people is the strength, the ardour, the force; these nobles dance and jest and brawl and spend, but do they believe, do they care—would theydiefor their God? All in the hands of Philip, all conforming to Church and State, all bowing the neck to the Regent and Peter Titelmann with his Holy Inquisition."
"You do some wrong," said William. "Montigny and Berghen have refused to enforce the Inquisition in their provinces, and all the nobles have protested to His Majesty against the dicta of the Council of Trent becoming law in the Netherlands."
"Forgive me," said Rénèe, "I fear I grow bitter—Iforget all bounds—I forget even that I am your servant."
"Speak to me," answered the Prince. "I would hear your thoughts. It is not often I meet with one so well versed in affairs, and so warm-hearted. You are a fair young woman," he added, with great gentleness, "to be so weighted with sad business."
The blood flowed back on her heart and left her unnaturally pale at these kind words from him; she dared to look into his face; he stood near enough for her to have touched him with a half-outstretched hand.
Her quick glance saw that his face was tired in expression; his dress, black, gold, and crimson, less gorgeous than usual, almost careless compared with his habitual magnificence.
The small head with the close waves of stiff dark chestnut hair was held a little droopingly; the charming ardent countenance, brilliant and dark, the dusky complexion showing the fine blood in warm tints, the wide vivacious eyes, the lips soft and firm, was overcast, the level brows knitted, the firm chin fallen on the double ruff of gold-edged cambric.
What was troubling him, servant of King Philip, principal adviser of the Regent, most powerful noble in the Netherlands? What care had he unless the woes of these wretched thousands the Council of Trent had condemned to fire for soul and body touched and moved him?
In his gravity, in his look of fatigue and preoccupation, Rénèe found hope; she stepped back from him and stood with her shoulders pressed against the window embrasure where the waxed wood gleamed in the sunlight that was reddening to the west.
"Oh, you could do so much, you could do it all," she said, and her gentle voice was rough and unsteady with passion. "I have dreamt it—others have thought it—you, you might be the man! You might redeem usfrom slavery, from tyranny, from misery unutterable—you are he who might defy Philip."
"I am his subject," said William, narrowing his eyes on her face, "and I am a Papist."
"But you are united to Protestant princes, and the young princes, your brothers, are heretics," she answered, as if she was pleading with him.
"I am in Philip's service," he said, and lifted his head, looking at her straightly and intently.
She was quick in her reply.
"But your first loyalty is to the statutes of this land, which Philip rends and spurns, and your first obligation is the freedom and liberty of the land you help govern."
"Ah! You know that, do you?" exclaimed the Prince, and his expressive face changed, and seemed for a moment to be joyous; then the look of reserve closed over the flash of daring and animation, and he added quietly: "The Regent has sent a protest to His Majesty telling him it is impossible to enforce stringent laws against heretics in the Netherlands. And it is likely, it must be, that the King will see reason in her arguments."
"Is it likely?" asked Rénèe, looking steadily at the Prince. "Your Highness knows the King."
"Why, if he does not——" said William, then suddenly checked himself.
"If he does not?" repeated the girl swiftly. "What will Your Highness do?"
He seemed to utterly withdraw into himself, and his face was smooth and serene as a mask.
"I see you still have hopes of me," he smiled.
She could not answer; she felt that he was lightly putting her off, gently showing her she had overstepped all etiquette, only to speak folly. Her enthusiasm, her exaltation were swept away by a wave of humiliation. She stood with downcast eyes, trembling in her place.
William looked at her.
"My child," he said, with that note of pity and tendernessin his voice Rénèe found unbearable, "there was never tyrant yet without some one to withstand, nor any oppression or cruelty some strength did not break through. Take courage, hold up your heart—some one will arise to face even King Philip and his Holy Inquisition."
She could only bend her head and say, "Forgive me, forgive what I have said——"
He raised his hand with a little gesture as if he would check her protestations, then turned away and entered the library.
There, amid the rich furnishings, in the silence, broken only by the call of the pigeons without, he stood thoughtfully, as if he had forgotten what he had come here for; the sunshine, red now as molten gold, flushed the tapestries, the rows of gilded books, the carved walls and ceilings, the bureaus of gleaming Chinese lacquers, the brocade and velvet chairs, and this slender figure of the young man standing erect, frowning, with one hand on his hip and his face strangely sombre for one so young and splendid.
CHAPTER IITHE LOYALTY OF LAMORAL EGMONT
Presently he turned and mounted the little step leading to the low gallery which ran round the bookcases that lined the rooms to the height of a man.
The Prince put his hand over the backs of a row of ponderous books in gilt and calf which dealt with the laws and statutes of the Netherlands; then, not finding the particular volume he required, or losing interest in his impulse, he turned away and crossed to a rare bureau of Chinese work, the smooth brick-red lacquer surface of which was heavily encrusted with gold birds and flowers, and there seated himself and stared across the rich room to the garden filled by the warm light of sunset.
His face was very grave, almost weary; his mouth was set tightly, so that the lines of it were strained, and his nostrils slightly distended.
Presently he took from his pocket a little notebook of scented leather and slowly turned over the vellum pages, which were closely covered with numbers and calculations.
It was only lately that the Prince had deigned to take more than the most superficial interest in the management of his vast affairs; he had been too great, too rich, too powerful for any misgivings as to the future. But recently it had been forced on his attention that his fortunes needed mending; his debts were enormous, many of his estates mortgaged; half of his French lordships were not paying their revenues, many others were let at below their value. For fifteen years, ever since he had had an establishment ofhis own, he had been spending money like water to maintain a life and a magnificence such as many emperors had not attained; his houses, his horses, his falcons, his kitchens, his entertainments were the most splendid in the land, and famous in Europe, and even his enormous income had felt the strain of such lavishness.
None of his services under Philip had been lucrative; his mission to offer the crown imperial to the new Emperor on the abdication of Charles had been a costly honour, as it had been undertaken at his own expense, and had meant the expenditure of a fortune; his emoluments from his present offices did not touch his outlay, and he was outside that circle of the Regent's favourites (such as the Spanish secretary, Armenteros) who enriched themselves from public funds, nor had he ever received any of the rewards and benefits which had permitted Cardinal Granvelle to retire a rich man.
His second marriage, put through in face of so much opposition and difficulty, had proved a disastrous failure. Anne, unbalanced from the beginning, was now almost a maniac, a disgrace and a humiliation to her proud husband; her dowry had done little more than pay for the wedding festivities, and the alliance with the German Princes, her kinsmen, which William had hoped to create, remained more than doubtful.
There were his brothers—Louis, now sick and at Spa; Adolphus and Henry, who had just left the college of Louvain,—looking to him for advancement, for John, who had set up his household at Dillenburg, was too limited in means to do anything, and there were his own son and the little daughters; responsibilities, burdens, anxieties there were in plenty, and he stood alone to meet them.
Certainly he was at present the most powerful person in the Netherlands, and had been since the fall of Granvelle, but he knew perfectly well that this power was principally rather in outward seeming than in reality, and that his position was more perilous than glorious.
He did not trust Philip; he knew that Monarch hated him, and was only waiting for the opportunity to hurl him down; and he knew Philip hated him because he feared him. Egmont had lately visited Spain, and there had been caressed and flattered and cajoled by the King into forgetting his grievances and those of the country he represented; Montigny and Berghen were ready to accept an invitation to Madrid; Hoorne stood out to trust His Majesty; but William of Orange was not for a moment to be deceived nor cajoled nor lured.
He knew the King.
And he felt a great loneliness in this knowledge, a great sense of standing alone; every one seemed to be either Philip's tool, Philip's puppet, or else utterly deceived by a few sweet words from the royal lips.
It astonished as much as it grieved William that Egmont should be so deceived, that Philip's kindness, Philip's presents, Philip's hospitality should make the envoy of the wrongs of the Netherlands forget his errand, and return praising Philip's charity, Philip's clemency, Philip's generosity.
The thought of Egmont's folly spurred William to his feet.
He walked about the room, frowning, thinking; how was he, the only man who did not fear nor trust Philip, to act now?
Supposing Philip forced the Inquisition and, in the fury of his bigotry, exterminated the Netherlanders in seas of blood and flame?
William stopped short in his pacing to and fro.
"You shall not," he said suddenly, as if he spoke to a living man before him.
And indeed it was not difficult for the Prince to conjure from the dusk the figure once so familiar to him: the meagre form, the pallid face, the mild and blank blue eyes, the projecting lower jaw with the full and tremulous under lip, the yellow-red hair and beard—the figure of the manwho, with less brains than the meanest of his clerks, and more bitter insane bigotry than any fanatic devotee, imposed the terror of his rule over half the world.
William could picture him as he had last seen him in the streets of Flushing, the pallid face livid, the lips twisted into a snarl that showed the broken teeth, the foolish blue eyes injected with blood, while he stammered, in answer to the Prince's serene and courteous excuse—"Not the States, but you—you!" using the first person as if he had addressed a servant. William had turned on his heel and left him, not even escorting him as far as the shore where he was to embark.
They had not seen each other since; in spite of his constant promises it did not seem as if Philip would ever set foot in the Netherlands again, and William would have as soon walked into fire as have gone to Spain.
Yet the presence of the King was ever with him, an intangible foe, an all-pervading enemy.
The Prince did not know which of his servants, nay, which of his friends, was secretly in the pay or service of Philip.
But William also had been trained at the Court of Charles V; he had his spies in the Escorial, his agents in Madrid, and he was better informed as to the King's doings than the Regent herself, who was but a puppet in that vast game of triple intrigue and interwoven duplicity, that confusion of lies and counter-lies and manifold deceptions which the Court of Spain called statecraft.
William's thoughts went back to the same point again and again—the point that was indeed the centre of his problem—
"If the King forces the edicts against heretics—what to do?"
The final issue of slaughter, torture, emigration, and woe unutterable he saw with vision unconfused; he foresaw, too, the ruin of all the great Flemish nobles who refused to be Philip's executioners.
All Stadtholders, all magistrates, all officials who refused to enforce the King's orders would be dismissed from their offices, probably imprisoned, certainly disgraced; their estates would, of a necessity, share the inevitable ruin of the country; their fortunes would be lost in the general bankruptcy.
So much was obvious; it was obvious also that the only way to escape this ruin would be to submit to Philip, to support his policy, to fulfil his decrees, to obey him in everything with implicit loyalty.
And what was Philip going to demand?—that these noblemen, of as proud a birth as his own, become inquisitors, executioners, the despoilers of their native land or the land whose charters and liberties they had sworn to protect?
Impatient with his own thoughts and with circumstances William left the library and returned to his cabinet, where two secretaries were working by the light of lamps of red Florentine copper.
William had scarcely entered when Lamoral Egmont was ushered into his presence; the Prince took his friend by the hand and, greeting him pleasantly, led him into the outer chamber, already lit by tall candles in polished brass sticks shining like pale gold.
William had not had so much of the Count's company of late; Egmont was generally in attendance on the Regent, who flattered his vanity by affecting to lean on his advice, and since his return from Madrid he had rather shunned the society of the Prince, for he was a little uneasy, a little ashamed, at the ease with which Philip had lured him from his ancient allegiance to the plans and policy of his friend.
He stood now awkwardly, like a man with something on his mind, his fine and gallant head held rather defiantly high, his handsome features flushed and troubled. The Prince observed him closely, but was silent, waiting for him to speak.
"I have been with the Regent to-day," said Egmont atlast; "she commands my assistance in the preparation of these wedding festivities. It becomes wearisome," he added, with some impatience.
The Prince made no comment; he was not very interested either in all these pompous feasts and tourneys which were to celebrate the marriage of the Regent's son (whom Egmont had brought back from Spain with him) and the Princess Maria of Portugal. It was an ill time for this extravagant and lavish rejoicing, and neither bride nor groom pleased the Prince; besides, the memory of his own costly wedding festivities was still fresh and unpleasantly vivid in his mind.
"The Regent heard to-day from Spain," added Egmont suddenly.
The Prince looked at him sharply.
"Was it an answer to the protest about the decrees of the Council of Trent?" he asked.
"I do not know—she would not make the news public. But I know the tidings were ill, the tears were in her eyes and her breath came short, and on the first excuse she could, she hurried from me and retired to her chamber. And, later, I heard the young Prince, her son, say that if all the heretics were exterminated, God would be well pleased."
"He will be a rod and a scourge, that youth," remarked William. "I never met one with so much pride. So Philip will cut the Netherlanders to the measure of the Pope's yardstick?"
"I do not say so," replied Lamoral Egmont hurriedly.
"Nay, but in your heart you know it," returned the Prince. "Now you are away from the seductions of the Escorial you know that Philip is—Philip."
The Stadtholder of Flanders winced and flushed.
"I see no cause to mistrust the King's word," he answered obstinately. "He spoke to me graciously—with charity and kindness——"
"My poor Lamoral!" exclaimed William with asarcasm he could not restrain, "and could a little sweetness, the false Spanish honey, so easily lure you into the net? Do you really believe in Philip's caresses, Philip's promises?"
"I have always been loyal," said Egmont. "I have never offended His Majesty."
"You have—we all have," answered William. "Do you think he has forgotten that we forced him to remove Granvelle? Do you think he has forgiven the jest of the livery?"
The Count laughed.
"Why, I have dined at the Regent's table in camlet, doublet, and the device——"
"And she has smiled and flattered. She is Philip's sister," remarked the Prince drily. "Trust none of them. The King is only waiting for his revenge."
Egmont paled a little and looked at William uneasily; he felt himself again coming under the Prince's influence, again affected by the Prince's warning; he began to entertain a horrid doubt: Philip's sincerity, if that was all a snare?—if the King was offended with him beyond appeasement?—his very soul shuddered before that possibility and what it meant.
William saw his hesitancy and spoke again—spoke earnestly and ardently as a man would to save a friend.
"Egmont, believe none of them," he said. "The King loves us not—he has those about him who do not allow him to forget—keep out of his power, eschew his flatteries, trust neither him nor his creatures."
But Philip's blandishments were still too fresh in the Count's ears, he was too secure in the consciousness of his own loyalty to give more than a passing heed to any warning, much as he was impressed by the force of the Prince's stronger character. He reassured himself by recalling the Regent's favour, the King's promises of benefits and rewards; and he was a man hampered with debts, with daughters to dower presently—a man whoneeded magnificence, splendour, the atmosphere of Courts,—a man ductile under the flattery of the great.
"You are too prudent, too cautious," he answered, with a vehemence to cover his momentary hesitation and alarm. "I cannot overstep loyalty—you sail near to defiance of His Majesty's authority."
"If the King forces the Inquisition, what will you do?" asked William suddenly and abruptly.
Egmont flushed and stammered.
"I? I must stand by my duty—it is true these heretics must be outrooted. I am treating them with severity——"
"You will stand by the King," said the Prince briefly.
"What else?" demanded the Count. "I am satisfied His Majesty will not push matters past prudence."
"Do you call it prudence if he insists on measures being forced on the country which will mean every inhabitant being put to the sword or flying overseas?—that will mean the ruin of every trade, every industry, every business?"
"Nay," said Egmont, "the heretics will come back to the true Church."
William smiled at the weakness of this.
"If Philip were to send every soldier he possesses to the Netherlands to force the Inquisition and the decrees of the Council of Trent by the sword, not one of these people would change his faith."
"You speak as one too favourable to heresy," cried the Count.
"I speak as one knowing well these heretics and the power of the faith they hold."
"Would we could extirpate that cursed faith," exclaimed Egmont impatiently, "which, like a foul weed in a fair garden, has brought confusion and misery where there was order and peace!"
"Ah, you are a good Catholic," said William quietly, "and you, too, have tried to put a bridle on men's consciences and whip them to the mass—you have hangedand burned to clear heresy from Flanders—but you will never succeed, Count Egmont, and all your efforts will not save you from King Philip, loyal and pious as you are."
"You, too, are a good Catholic," answered Egmont.
"Ah, yes, I am a good Catholic," replied the Prince indifferently.
He turned aside to snuff the candles that stood on the low table by the heavy carved fireplace.
Egmont was silent; with every moment, with every word, these two, once so inseparably friends and allies, were widening the distance between each other.
It was evident that in the struggle between Philip and William for Egmont, Philip had won; the Stadtholder of Flanders stood firm to Church and King; he had been bought, as Granvelle had always said he could be, by a little flattery, a few promises.
But still the charm and power of the Prince held him, he regretted the old confidence, the old alliance.
"What will Your Highness do?" he asked a little wistfully.
The Prince smiled and, turning towards him, pressed his hand.
"Whatever I do, I think I shall stand alone," he answered. "You will remain my friend though, Lamoral?" he added, and his dark eyes were eloquent with affection.
"Always," replied Egmont. "Come what will, I do not leave my friends so easily, Prince."
"We will talk no more of politics when we are together, and so we shall keep our conversation sweet; the times are difficult and bloody, and it is well to forget them," replied William.
They spoke together a while on indifferent topics, their hawks, their hounds, their debts, the last extravagance of Brederode, Montigny's approaching marriage, the arrogance of the young Prince of Parma—Margaret's son—and the severe piety of his bride—the Portuguese Princess.
Only when Egmont was leaving did William refer again to the first topic of their conversation.
"Is Count Hoorne of your mind?" he asked, as he stood with his guest on the great stairs. "About trusting Spain?" he explained.
"Ah yes," said Lamoral Egmont.
"And Hoogstraaten?"
"That—I do not know."
They parted affectionately, and William returned into his palace which, for all the magnificence and luxury and splendour and moving to and fro of servitors, was somehow lonely and desolate.
The Prince mounted the gorgeous stairs slowly, with his eyes downcast; as he gained the first landing he raised them, to see the figure of his wife.
She was going up the stairs before him, half-crouching against the wall and dragging at the tapestries; her heavy handsome skirts trailed loosely after her; her white head-cloth was soiled and disarranged; she was sucking a stick of sweetmeat, and her pale flaccid face clouded with an instant expression of dislike and annoyance touched with fear when she observed her husband.
He glanced away, and turned across the landing to his cabinet; she crept on up the stairs, muttering to herself, and looking back at him with a half-snarl like a malignant animal.
So now the Prince and his wife met and passed.
CHAPTER IIITHE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PRINCESS OFORANGE
Duprès—the skryer, alchemist, and religious refugee whom the Prince of Orange was sheltering—had arranged the two chambers allotted to him as half shop, half laboratory, in the fashion of Vanderlinden, the Elector Augustus' alchemist and Duprès' former master.
This fellow, partly charlatan, yet genuinely gifted, and not without a wild flash of genius at times, and real moments of spiritual insight and exaltation, had contrived, by the fascination of the supernatural arts he professed and by his wit and readiness in following the politics and scandals, the rumours and whispers of the hour, to attach to himself a considerable following, both in the Prince's household and among those who came and went in the palace, and whose visits to the alchemist (as he chose to call himself, though he had little real pretension to any of the honours of hermetic philosophy) were not noticed amid the manifold distractions of the huge establishment.
The Princess of Orange continued Duprès' most ardent patroness and most credulous dupe; she spent hours in his laboratory watching him tell her fortune by means of melted lead, by the markings in the blade bone of a freshly killed sheep, by the arrangement of strange Eastern playing-cards, or in observing the fusing and transformation of various chemicals into powder and essences which Duprès declared were the first steps to the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone.
Anne was hot on this pursuit; the events that shook the Netherlands, the threatened upheaval which might overshadow her husband, the daily torture and death of heretics, the cries arising from the tortured prisoners, the Regent's anxiety and confusion, the enigmatic attitude of the awful Philip—none of these things interested the Lutheran Princess whose father had been so splendid a champion of the Reformed Faith; but to stand over glass retorts and glowing furnaces, to listen to the Frenchman's tedious and learned explanations of matter she could not even begin to understand, to meddle with signs and wonders, to attempt to raise spirits, to experiment with perfumes, dyes, and cosmetics—all this had a deep and irresistible fascination for Anne of Orange.
And Duprès made his full profit thereby, for he obtained from her considerable sums of money, and when she had not these to give, jewels, ornaments, and even costly articles from her chambers. Rénèe le Meung had known Duprès at Dresden and then believed him to be a worthless, though cunning creature, and she found it hard to stand by and see him fool the Princess and mock the Prince; but William and all the members of the Nassau family who came and went in Brussels treated Anne and her doings with magnificent indifference, Duprès was beneath their notice, and it was not in Rénèe to play the tale-bearer and carry complaints of her mistress to her master, so she, too, had to spend the dreariest of hours listening to Duprès' jargon and watching his futile experiments, while the sickly smell of perfumes and the acrid odour of chemicals made her head heavy and feverish.
But when the Princess began visiting the laboratory alone, and the whispers and laughter grew among her women, Rénèe went through an agony of hot shame and bitter indignation compared to which the dullness of her former life was peace.
Anne was making a jest of herself, and Rénèe wincedas if she had herself been humiliated, not because of Anne, but because of the name she carried.
Towards this momentous winter, when Brussels was brilliant with the pompous marriage of Alexander of Parma, Anne's women began to openly laugh at their hated mistress.
They had ceased to believe that she went to Duprès' studios solely to study magic and alchemy.
"It is to meet that young lawyer, Jan Rubens," they said, and made a mock of her behind her back.
Rénèe, sick of living, sick of loving, weak and pale with watching the ruin of her people and her faith, roused at this.
"The charlatan must go," she said, and all the women laughed again and asked, 'Why? If Anne was quiet with these amusements, why take them from her?'
But Rénèe repeated, "He must go."
She meant to take the desperate step of frightening the fellow into leaving the palace, and so closing Anne's dangerous means of communication with the outside world.
The Princess of Orange and a Flemish lawyer!—it was impossible that she should stoop so low or he look so high, yet in her heart Rénèe did not trust Anne, and meanwhile, if nothing else, she was trampling on her husband's dignity and giving cause for little men to laugh at him.
It was a wild winter day when Anne, in a bitter and stormy mood, had locked herself into her darkened chamber, that Rénèe went on her distasteful errand to the alchemist.
Rain was hurled against the palace windows with a force that shook the painted glass in the frames, and lay in great pools beneath the swaying and broken trees and bushes in the garden, until a great gust of wind would come and suck up the water in the hollows and dry the wet lashings on the windows and make the whole great building tremble, then it would die away reluctantly, and another black cloud would burst, drenching all again.
Rénèe shuddered in her worn velvet (none of Anne's women went splendidly) as she passed through the magnificent corridors and stairways to the obscure chamber where Duprès lodged.
To her surprise as much as to her relief and satisfaction she found him alone, though she had to use some authority to gain admission from the idle lad who kept his door.
Duprès was in his outer room which opened directly from the antechamber.
He was bending over an alabaster table set on gilt legs, which stood in the corner by the high window, and mixing several brilliant liquids by means of a long silver spoon.
At the sound of Rénèe's firm step he turned, and the sight of his face startled her, for he wore a glass mask bound tightly round forehead and chin by strips of black leather.
"Mademoiselle le Meung!" he cried, in tones of surprise and vexation, and, quickly covering his mixtures with silver lids, he took off the mask and looked at her keenly with his bright tired eyes.
"You did not wish to see me," remarked Rénèe.
"No," replied Duprès, at once courteous and composed, "you are wrong—no one could have been more welcome, but I am engaged on an important experiment, and told the lad I did not wish to be disturbed."
"Oh, Monsieur Duprès," said Rénèe, "do not seek to delude me with these labours of yours—I knew you in Dresden."
He placed a deep-seated leather chair for her in front of the cedar-wood fire which emitted a perfumed heat, and he answered calmly—
"You despise me and what I do, but there again you are wrong. If I can make invisible ink, potent sleeping-draughts, swift poisons, keen medicines, and cosmetics to keep women beautiful, am I not of some use in the great affairs of the world?"
"Ah, you suit your argument to your listener," replied Rénèe. "Since you cannot dazzle me with your magic and your alchemy you speak straightly, and I am thankful for it."
"Blaspheme neither magic nor alchemy," he returned thoughtfully. "All miracles are possible, but our wit is so muddy we may not achieve them. I have talked with angels and glimpsed infinity as certainly as I have been drunk and a cheat."
"Maybe," said Rénèe; she sat still, looking round the strange room full of curious pictures and diagrams, planetary signs, shelves of bottles and jars, rows of ancient books and astronomical instruments. She was tired, as always, and, as always, sad in spirit, and she felt that what she had to say was an effort difficult to make.
Duprès came and stood the other side of the wide hearth; his long black gown, his flat velvet cap, the thick gold chain round his neck, his grave, pallid, and wasted face gave him the air of a scholar long closed from the light, but his restless hands and his reckless eyes were those of a man of action.
"You have heard what is taking place in Brussels?" he asked keenly.
"I hear nothing," said Rénèe, "but the last scraps of gossip from the pages and servants. I never leave the palace and hardly the Princess's apartments."
"I can tell you this," said Duprès, with an air of lively interest, "that the younger nobles, Brederode, Culemburg, Hoogstraaten, De Hammes, have organized a league against the enforcement of the decrees of the Council of Trent. They had a meeting on the very eve of the Parma wedding. What do you think of that?" he added, smacking his lips. "Does it not look like splendid times ahead—confusion, chances, war, perhaps?"
"Is the Prince in this, or Egmont or Hoorne?" asked Rénèe.
"None of those, but the Count Louis—and Egmont's house is as full of heretics as Geneva, while our dear masteris hardly a very good Catholic nor a very good loyalist," he added, with a slight, unpleasant smile.
The waiting-woman flushed and felt her heart beating fast.
"I must come to my errand," she said, "before we are interrupted."
"Yes, your errand," repeated Duprès keenly. "But first, lest we misunderstand one another, are you in the confidence of your mistress?"
"As much as anyone is, perhaps," replied Rénèe.
He looked at her searchingly, then his eyes fell; the waiting-woman was conscious of a sudden wave of disgust, of loathing for him and all the pretentious details of this room so obviously arranged to impress the foolish and ignorant, and this feeling gave her strength and courage to speak.
"You must leave the palace, Duprès," she said; "it would be better if you left Brussels, but this you must leave, and at once."
His whole face paled and hardened into a set look of defiance and alarm.
"What do you mean? Who told you to say that?" he asked roughly.
Rénèe rose.
"I speak on my own authority," she said quietly, "but if you refuse to take my warning, I will go to the Prince."
Duprès winced so palpably and looked so hideously alarmed that Rénèe was slightly astonished, slightly softened.
"Go at once," she added, following up her advantage; "you have made enough plunder and may now try your fortunes elsewhere."
Duprès rallied himself; his eyes flickered to the fire.
"What have you against me?" he asked anxiously.
"You are a plague spot, a fester in this house," answered Rénèe. "You seduce the Prince's people with lies and foolishness, you bring those here who have no right to enter these doors."
"The Princess wishes me to stay—go to her with these complaints, and hear her answer," cried Duprès, with a sudden snarl.
His words woke Rénèe's lurking anger; she flashed from coldness to heat.
"The Prince maintains you, shelters you, saved you—not his wife—and your gratitude is to pander to her foolishness and drain her of her very jewels by your tricks. And there is worse than that, Duprès, she meets here those whom she should not meet, she degrades herself by consorting with idlers in a charlatan's company. You know this—again I tell you, as a warning, you must go."
"Who gave you authority to talk so boldly?" exclaimed the alchemist in a rage. "If my honoured lady deigns to come here to watch my poor experiments, what is it to you?"
"I will not argue on this theme," returned Rénèe. "But if you are not gone within the week it shall be put before His Highness that you bring disgrace and disorder into his house."
A curious expression of dislike, rage, and half-amusement gleamed in the alchemist's narrowed eyes, but Rénèe, already hot, agitated, and half-ashamed of her own errand, her own plain speaking, was turning quickly and resolutely away, when a sudden sound caused her to stop and turn violently towards Duprès.
It was a woman's laugh she heard—a high, shrill, long laugh; it came from the alchemist's inner room, and was unmistakably the laugh of Anne of Orange.
In a flash Rénèe remembered the private door from the Princess's apartments which Anne had affected to have locked and hidden under the tapestries, in a flash she recalled the hours Anne had been seemingly enclosed in her chamber—now it was all clear enough.
"So she comes thus," said Rénèe, with tears in her eyes, "and you have been the go-between!"
"No one is here—no one," stammered Duprès, but he backed before the door, and he was colourless and quivering.
"She is there, and I will take her away," cried Rénèe. "Who is with her—who?"
"Go, go!" implored Duprès; "there is none here but a young wench who serves me. Oh, gods and angels!" he cried in real terror, as Rénèe slipped behind him and seized the handle of the door.
She thought he was going to strike her or use his short dagger on her, and she did not care; but the irresolution and the mocking fatalism that were so strongly in this man's character kept him from action.
"There is an end now," he said cynically, and stepped behind the great chair where Rénèe had sat.
The waiting-woman opened the door.
The inner room was glowing with a rich firelight which warmed the chilly gleam of the stormy daylight; the round table was set with a lace cloth and all manner of sweets, cakes, fruits, and wines; and before it, on a long couch, sat the Princess of Orange and Jan Rubens, the young lawyer.
One of his arms was round her waist, one of hers round his neck; their flushed faces were pressed together, and they were endeavouring to drink out of the same goblet, a rare thing of rock crystal, in the form of a fish, mounted in rubies and gold.
All this Rénèe saw in a breath, and while she saw she realized her own utter failure, the uselessness of all her years of effort, of watchfulness, of endurance, of patience; she had been outwitted like a fool. Anne had eluded her, and gone straight to that shame, that degradation from which Rénèe had laboured to save her; not even this service had she been able to render the Prince, and that was the bitterest thought of all.
She stood silent, holding the door open, and the two at the table stopped their foolish laughter and rose. Rubens dropped the goblet; the wine spilt over his crumpled ruff and his violet velvet suit.
"Go to your room, Madame," said Rénèe, and spoke as a mistress to a servant.
Anne was too frightened to answer; she shrank together as if she expected to be beaten.
The young lawyer tugged at his sword.
"That fool Duprès," he kept saying, "that fool Duprès——"
Rénèe could see he was half-intoxicated; she turned her back on him and spoke again to Anne.
"Go, go!" she cried. "Do you realize that you are playing with death?"
This last word seemed to recall Jan Rubens to his senses.
"I am ruined!" he cried. "I have a wife and children. God forgive me! Oh, God forgive me!"
He turned his face away and put his hands before his eyes.
Anne limped towards the door.
"Oh, make haste!" whispered Rénèe, through strained lips.
Duprès came forward; he was the most composed of the four, though there was terror in his eyes and his hands shook.
"Mademoiselle will not speak?" he said in a low voice, catching hold of Rénèe's sleeve. "A little foolishness, a little indiscretion—Mademoiselle would not make mischief for that?"
"A little foolishness," repeated Anne vaguely. She began to weep. "May I not have my amusements? You were always hard, Rénèe; do not be hard——"
"See," said Duprès, in a quick, eager whisper. "Keep this from the Prince, and I will go away—hewill leave Brussels——"
"Make no bargains with me," cried Rénèe passionately, exasperated with disdain of the cringing attitude of all of them, by Anne's utter lack of dignity, by the horrid sordidness of the thing she had disclosed, which sickened her as one might be sickened by lifting a smooth stone and discovering beneath a foul reptile. "You will go—all of you—and at once."
The young Fleming now stumbled forward into theouter room. He was a big, clumsy man, fresh-coloured, blonde, fair-bearded, and blue-eyed; his face was grey and distorted with terror; he stood before Rénèe shuddering like a lashed hound. She noted, with further contempt for his utter cowardice, that he neither tried to bribe nor threaten her.
"Will it be the rope—the rope?" he asked. "Or would the Prince grant the sword—for my family's sake?"
"Go," cried Rénèe, "escape from here like the thing you are!"
She caught Anne's limp hand and dragged her to the door.
"If he kills me," said the Princess sullenly, "he will take a life that is worth nothing to me." She twisted round in Rénèe's grasp to throw insult at the two men standing foolishly side by side.
"And you could neither strike a blow nor say a word, tricksters and churls!"
She said nothing more while Rénèe led her back through the palace until they came to the great staircase window which looked on the courtyard.
A cavalcade, muffled against the weather, was leaving the palace gates.
"My husband going to the Council," muttered Anne. "My husband!"
When they reached the Princess's apartments, Rénèe locked the secret door and took away the key.
Anne watched from where she crouched over the fire.
"I suppose you despise me, hate me now?" she asked.
Rénèe turned her beautiful haggard face towards her mistress, and for the first time in her long bondage she spoke what had ever been in her heart.
"I always despised and hated you," she said.
"I knew it," answered Anne apathetically, and sat silent over the warmth of the flames till she fell heavily asleep.
But the waiting-woman paced her little chamber in agonies of torment, weeping unbearably bitter tears of pain and shame and unavailing regret.