Читать книгу A Knight of Spain - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 7

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Day and night Carlos lay in a violent fever at the point of death, paralysed down his right side and in raving delirium, and day and night Juan remained by his bedside, watching, praying, and telling his beads.

For the Prince was always aware of his presence, and in his few quiet moments would always ask for him; to hold Juan's hand was the one thing that soothed him, and it was to Juan that he addressed his delirious confidences which all ran on the themes of hatred to the King and desire for his own marriage with his cousin the Archduchess Anne.

Luis Quixada, Juan's guardian, and Honorato Juan, the tutor of the royal youths, were also tireless in their attendance, and the Duke of Alba shared Juan's vigil, night and day.

On the third day the King came.

Carlos had fallen into a sick slumber; it was near noon and very hot; in the shuttered room the air was close and stifling; the polished beads had slipped from Juan's fingers and his head had fallen on his breast.

He was thinking of the old woman who carded yarn and dwelt on the bank of the Henares, and how, as soon as he was free, he would go down to her and give her a letter for Doña Aña.

He put his hand to his breast where the blue rose lay hid, he felt heavy headed and fatigued; he had not changed his clothes for three days nor left the stale air of the sick-chamber.

In the ante-chamber were the six doctors, and the Duke of Alba slept on a couch near the window. Don Alessandro had returned to his lodgings; Juan envied him.

The rosary slipped from his fingers and fell on the floor with a little rattle; at the same moment the door opened and he glanced up.

A slight pale man attired in black stood on the threshold of the chamber; his long, narrow features were pallid and delicate, his straight hair and close beard a faint reddish gold, his jaw projected heavily, his grey eyes were cold, his mouth sullen.

At sight of him Juan caught up the rosary and sank on his knees.

The King gave him one look, then took no further notice of him, but advanced to the foot of the bed and gazed at the miserable form of his only son. As if aware who had entered, Carlos opened his eyes and stared up at his father. A long, silent and deadly glance passed between them. Juan, rising from his knees, shivered.

"I have brought Our Lady of Atocha with me," said the King in a low voice, crossing himself.

Carlos answered feebly.

"I have already vowed seven times my weight in gold and four times my weight in silver to God if He will recover me."

The frugal King's brows contracted.

"So you must be extravagant even in your piety, Carlos," he said acidly. "Señor Honorato Juan does not dare to tell me the extent of your debts."

Then he pulled off his flat black cap and bent his head while Juan and the Duke of Alba, who had awakened at the King's entry, went on their knees. For two priests were carrying in the miraculous image of Our Lady of Atocha.

She was carved of olive wood, shining greenish black, and on her head was a stiff gold crown with diamond rays; her gown was stiff white brocade sewn with pearls, and there was a necklace of emeralds round her polished neck. Carlos stared at her and tried to move his paralysed limbs.

Failing in this he screamed with disappointment.

The King shot him a quick glance and ordered the image to be taken away; he could do no more than bring the Virgin of Atocha to his son's bed; if she proved obdurate, of what use were the processions of flagellants scourging themselves through the streets of Madrid and Toledo, the prayers and processions in every Spanish church? When the priests had carried the Virgin away the King came to the side of the bed.

Carlos blinked his half-blind eyes and twitched his swollen lips.

"Is the Queen praying for me?" he asked, and his speech was strange and thick.

"The Queen is on her knees in her oratory," replied the King, "and Juana has gone a barefoot pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Consolation."

He gazed down, holding his cap to his heart, and his eyes were pale and hard while his brow was twisted as if by some horrible thought.

"When am I—to marry my cousin Anne?" gasped Carlos.

"Is this a time to be thinking of marriage?" answered Don Felipe.

His glance flickered to the young handsomeness of Juan who stood in a respectful but weary attitude the other side of the bed, then travelled with an awful significance to the deformed, half-paralysed and sick creature beneath the gold-threaded coverlet.

For once the immobile calm that he so carefully preserved gave way.

"Dios! my son!" he muttered, so low that none heard it save the wretched Carlos himself, who caught up the words with an insane laugh.

"Your son and King of Spain to be!"

Then he beat his hands impotently and babbled in incoherent delirium.

Don Felipe stepped back from the bed and whispered to the doctors, then gravely beckoned to Juan to follow him out of the room.

Though the young man expected a reproof for having allowed Carlos out of his sight, he was glad to leave the sick-chamber and to move his legs, stiff from kneeling, and his hands, stiff from telling his beads.

Don Felipe preceded him into a small round chamber where the green shutters were sufficiently open for a flood of sunlight to stream over the white marble floor.

The King seated himself, Juan remained standing; his dress was disordered, his hair dishevelled, his face colourless from his long vigil, but his healthy youth was triumphant and his comeliness a vivid thing.

He waited to be addressed by this man who had had the same father as himself, and was the greatest personage in the world.

He neither loved nor feared Don Felipe, but he was grateful to him as the means of all his greatness and as the fountain of further favours.

The reproof he was expecting was not uttered; Don Felipe said no word of his stricken son.

"Are you weary of Alcalà?" he asked, in his monotonous, expressionless voice.

"No, Majesty," answered Juan truthfully.

"I hear that you are well trained in the profession of arms and but poor at your other studies. You must soon come to Court."

"I prefer the tilt-yard to the closet," returned the young man. "And I do fear that I have but small brains for learning."

Don Felipe put his pale hand to his pale face.

"It was your father's wish," he said, "that you should enter the Church, and it is mine. I will attain a Cardinal's hat for you."

A curious sense of fear gripped Juan's heart as he met the glance of the chill eyes of the King.

"I am not worthy," he replied swiftly. "I fear that the Roman purple would but stifle me."

"Ahè," said Don Felipe with a tight little smile. "But you have other ambitions, Juan?"

Juan lifted his gay young head.

"Would it be possible, Majesty, for my father's son to be without ambitions?"

The King's smile turned into a short, unpleasant laugh.

"What are these ambitions?" he demanded.

Juan pressed his lips together and did not answer.

"Have I not been an indulgent King and an affectionate brother to you?" added Don Felipe.

"Both, Majesty."

"Then speak to me more frankly. What are your ambitions, eh?"

Juan's heart swelled. "To be an Infant of Castile—to be a king" was the answer on his lips, but he checked the words.

The King was watching him intently.

"My ambition is to serve your Majesty," said Juan.

This formal compliment seemed to please the King.

"You may serve me at Rome," he answered. "You may serve me at the Holy Father's ear." He crossed himself.

Juan thought of Doña Aña and the whole glittering world.

"I would rather serve your Majesty against the Morisco," he said.

"You have heard of the rebellion?" asked the King.

"Yes; I would your Majesty would send me to quell it."

"Child," answered Don Felipe drily, "this rebellion is not a little flare that a boy's foot can stamp it out."

Juan coloured scarlet from his crumpled ruff to his bright hair.

"If you would try me, Majesty," he said, on a spent breath.

Don Felipe made no reply to this; he sat with one hand holding his elbow and the other grasping his chin.

"Tell me of Carlos," he said. "How came he by this hurt?"

Juan thought that this question should have been made to the tutor or the Duke of Alba. He was, after all, not responsible for the whimsical and sickly Prince.

"He would make music below the window of the porter's daughter, Majesty, and the stairs to the garden were rotten and dark and he fell."

"And this was allowed?"

"It was thought that this affection might cultivate gentleness in him. He is not over gentle," answered Juan with his dangerous frankness.

The King's eyes flickered.

"I spoke of the stairs," he said. "Was it allowed that they should be broken?"

Juan was about to answer, "They are safe enough for one not lame," but kindness held him silent.

The King rose and began to move stiffly towards the door.

Juan remembered the burden of the Prince's delirious ravings, and minded to do him a kindness he spoke:—

"Señor, the Prince is very set on a marriage with his cousin Anne, the Archduchess. Could your Majesty see how he cherishes this hope you would have pity on him. Indeed, I do think that if this match was hastened it would have a very good effect on his peace of mind and so on his health."

Don Felipe kept his sullen eyes on the ground.

"Carlos marries where I please," he said. "I have thought of his Aunt Juaña for him."

"Ahè!" cried Juan with his gay boldness. "She is ten years older than he, and is never out of a black gown. What has she to do with marriage? Is she not a widow, and are not her ringlets shaved and placed under the altar of the Barefoot Nuns?"

"She also marries where I please," answered the King.

"Señor, he loves the Austrian, his cousin."

"Why?" asked Don Felipe.

"For her face in the picture in little that the Emperor's Ambassador brought him."

"I have not seen it," said the King sharply; "is she very fair?"

"Fair and melancholy, Majesty."

"Fairer than the Queen," asked his Majesty jealously.

"Not so beautiful," said Juan sincerely; "yet in the painting it is a lovely face."

"The Scottish Queen has a better dowry," answered Don Felipe. "So you will not be a priest, Don Juan?"

"Señor, I could not. Yet I do pray that you will use me."

"Aye," answered the King softly, "I will use you. When you come to Court I will use you."

He left the room, and Juan, who had not received any token of dismissal, followed him.

He returned to the sick-chamber that was now filled with an odour of charnel decay that made Juan start back on the threshold.

The cause of it was soon apparent; on the rich bed beside the unconscious Infant lay the dried and crumbling corpse of a friar wrapped in a mouldy robe.

"It is Friar Diego, Majesty," explained a Franciscan brother proudly.

"Was he a saint?" asked the King.

"No, Señor, but he died full of holiness, and if he should cure the Infant the Holy Father would canonize him."

Juan crossed himself at the sight of the relic whose ancient skull lay close to the distorted face of Carlos.

He was feeling sick and giddy and as exhausted as that time at the Convent of Yuste when he had stood three days and three nights during the funeral services of the man he had not known then was his father, the great Emperor, Carlos.

Don Felipe took no notice of the doctors and priests, but went up to the bed and bent over his son who lay in a stupor, his eyes glazed, his breathing difficult, and the dark blood perpetually oozing from his head in a heavy stream under the bandages.

The King's thin fingers raised the wooden locket that lay on the Infant's narrow chest and pushed the spring.

The lid flew open and disclosed a clear Flemish painting, no larger than a walnut, but clearly showing the sad, exquisite features of the Archduchess Anne.

As if he knew that his treasure was being rifled, the unhappy Carlos groaned and opened his eyes.

When he saw his father gazing at the fair Austrian's likeness he uttered a doleful cry and tried to move his paralysed limbs.

"You shall not have her too!" he muttered. "She is mine!"

Don Felipe calmly closed the case and dropped it on his son's heart.

"If your brother was a saint, the Infant should make a quick recovery," he remarked to the Franciscan; then, putting his perfumed handkerchief to his nose, for the odour of the corpse began to be overpowering, he left the chamber to pray for Carlos in Cardinal Ximenes' Oratory.

Juan now considered himself free; he hastened up to his own chamber, and, with an impulse of horror at the atmosphere of gloom and death below, he flung wide the shutters of the delicate arched window.

The sun was just past its full heat; the light of it lay like a golden shower on the garden.

Juan thought that never had he seen it look so beautiful; for a long while he gazed into the brightness. The red, pink, and white flowers of the oleanders were in bloom among the stiff dark leaves; in the shade of cypress, laurel, and chestnut were lilies and trellises of crimson roses.

Rows of palms and pepper-trees ran along the walls and beneath the sunburnt side of the palace a tangle of pomegranate-trees grew, the vivid scarlet blossoms like patches of flame.

A bird sang shrilly.

Juan raised his face to the sky, wrinkling his eyes before the blazing sun as a Northerner would wrinkle them before the sky itself.

He stretched his arms and sighed.

He would be great; the King would advance him; he would be Infant of Castile—a king.

What other destiny was fit for the son of Carlo Magno?

Without calling his servants, he began to change his clothes.

With a sigh of relief he unbuttoned his ruff and flung it off, revealing his strong young throat, marked with the pressure of the stiff linen, then began to unfasten his doublet.

As he did so, the crumpled blue velvet rose fell oat on to the black tiles.

Doña Aña! He would send to her. He would tell her that he was going away, and that he would come back. She was wonderful, and she was waiting for him; he raised the flower she had worn, and kissed it as reverently as if it had been a crucifix.

To-night, at once, he would go and find old Eunice who carded yarn on the banks of the Henares.

Even as he made his resolution, Honorato Juan was at his door with a summons. The King wished his company.

Juan placed the poor flower whose message must still be delayed in the answering next his heart, changed his clothes, and went down to Don Felipe, who had said his prayers and was eating mushrooms stuffed with snow in the sombre dining-room.