Читать книгу A Knight of Spain - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 9

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Elizabeth De Valois, daughter of Henri II. and Catherine de Medicis, and Don Felipe's third wife, sat in a closed-in chamber, slowly waving a large painted fan to and fro.

Behind her, in the back of the sombre room, were two French ladies playing trictrac, and two Spanish ladies carding yarn. On the Queen's knee was a white velvet breviary, but she was not reading.

Her eyes were fixed before her with melancholy intensity; there was a strange look on her face, a look that was never long absent from it, an expression of silent fear as if she had passed through some ordeal of horror that had left her with clouded senses.

In Spain she was called "Isabella of the Peace," and her extreme gentleness won for her a saint-like reputation, but there was neither peace nor holy calm in her sweet face, but rather the stillness of terror.

Her pearl-coloured silk gown billowed over and concealed the leathern chair with arms on which she sat, and where the folds of it touched the black-tiled floor Don Carlos, but recently recovered from his illness, crouched on an inlaid stool.

To the Queen's right was a table on which stood a water-clock; against this leant Don Juan reading out of a book with turquoises on the cover.

His pleasant, full voice recited aloud a holy story.

"'Now the pagans had a great hatred of these persons, namely, Sancta Maria of Magdala, Maria, and Marta who were sisters to Lazarus Celidonias, to whom the Lord had given sight, and Joseph of Arimathea, who had begged the body of the Lord from Pontius Pilate.

"'Now this was early in the struggle between the devils and Almighty God for the power of Rome, and as yet the forces of Hell were the stronger.

"'Therefore these holy people were overcome; yet did the pagans not dare to harm them directly, but shut them up in a crazy ship that was full of holes, and drove this ship off the coasts of Italy that it might perish in the deep sea waves.

"'But this was not pleasing to the Lord, who sent an angel to guide the ship into a safe harbour.

"'Now the angel, being absorbed in heavenly matters, did not notice that he had brought the saints to Marseilles in Gaul, which was a town of pagans.

"'So the devil gave them a buffet, for the pagans of Marseilles could by no means supply them with food or shelter; thereupon another angel appeared with a basket of fruit—'"

Carlos interrupted.

"Read of their tortures, Juan; how they flayed them and pinched them and dipped them in pitch—"

"I beseech you," said the Queen hastily, "read no more."

Juan closed the book; he was in mounting spirits, for at the late christening of the little Infanta, Clara Eugenia, he had been allowed to hold the child at the font, as Carlos had been too weak, and this mark of King's favour seemed only a presage of higher to come.

"Will you not hear it?" asked Carlos, disappointed.

"No." The Queen moved her pale lips with difficulty and spoke faintly.

"They were God's saints," insisted Carlos. "And He ordered them to be tortured."

"Hèlas!" murmured Elizabeth. "I am too weak to hear these things."

Had it been anyone else Carlos would have been transported with horrible rage, but he was always gentle with his stepmother, who was perhaps the only person who had ever shown him real kindness. He therefore contented himself by saying, "It is no worse than the heretics have to suffer now."

Elizabeth shuddered.

"There is to be another auto-da-fé next week," continued Carlos. "Valdès"—he named the energetic Grand Inquisitor—"says the prisons are so full. He must clear them out to make room for the fresh heretics he captures day by day—Dios! There are seventy-three to be burnt, besides the Jews, and thirty are women."

The Queen's face was white as the high ruff that pressed her cheeks and touched the edges of her pale curls.

"Do not speak of it," she said faintly.

"Of the burnings!" exclaimed Carlos.

Juan looked at her in surprise. Did she pity the heretics?

He crossed himself.

Elizabeth looked from one youth to another, her lovely eyes, shaded beneath by illness, were full of tears.

"I know they are lost souls," she said, "but it is terrible to see them burn."

"We shall all go," answered Juan. He had seen his first auto-da-fé when he was twelve; when he recalled the scene he remembered that it had been clouded by a sickly horror, yet Doña Magdalena, his foster-mother, gentlest of women, had taken him there and never turned her eyes from the blazing stakes, to which were chained women as high-born and delicate as herself.

He looked at the Queen with troubled eyes.

"I will not go," she said in deep agitation. "I cannot go."

"It is wrong to pity the heretics," answered Carlos sullenly.

"It saves their souls," added Juan.

"I would rather be sent to God for Him to judge me! Is he not a God of mercy? And men are not merciful." She pressed her frail little hands to her bosom and repeated, "Men are not merciful."

Carlos raised his sickly face, still distorted from his recent illness, and stared up at her. A pitiful effort at comprehension of her attitude cost him a moment's silence, then he spoke.

"When I am King there shall be no auto-da-fé if it pleases you."

"Heaven bless you, Carlos!" broke from the poor Queen. "I believe you love me."

He seized the pearl-sown borders of her gown and covered them with kisses. As she looked down at the deformed creature who was so grateful to her for her kindness the tears overbrimmed and ran down the cheeks of Elizabeth de Valois.

"I have given a gold girdle to our Lady of Atocha," she said, "for having saved you, Carlos."

"No, it was Fray Diego," he answered, "and I have asked the Holy Father to make him a saint."

The Queen faintly smiled at Juan.

"Which was it?" she asked.

"I think that it was the Morisco surgeon," he replied, with his gay carelessness.

Carlos screamed out at him.

"It was Fray Diego! It was Fray Diego!" He sprang up and struck Juan a feeble blow.

The Queen caught his wrist.

"Carlos," she said with great dignity, "you displease me."

He desisted at once, and Juan laughed good-humouredly.

"Dios! doubtless it was Fray Diego."

The dark doors were suddenly flung wide, and the ushers in the royal livery announced:—

"His Majesty the King."

Elisabeth rose to her feet.

Don Felipe entered slowly. He wore a violet suit, and his face was the tint of old parchment; only the corners of his eyes were scarlet, as if they had been dyed in blood.

There were jewels round his neck, and his huge trunk hose were stiff with lines of gold and silver, so that he glistened sombrely even in the shadows of the arras-hung room.

After one pale glance at his wife he looked straight at his son; his thin nostrils widened and his full mouth twitched.

Juan instantly glanced at Carlos and saw that his whole face writhed with fear.

The Queen saw it too, and instinctively stepped between her husband and his son as she had so often done before.

Carlos got hold of the ends of her black lace shawl and pressed it to his quivering lips.

"Carlos," said the King, "you have been in the stables."

The Infant gave an insane laugh.

"The groom who gave you the keys is being scourged," contined Felipe.

The Queen shuddered and dropped her eyes. The King, still looking past her and speaking to his shrinking son, continued:—"My favourite stallion is dead, Carlos."

The awful silence was unbroken for a moment, then Carlos said—"I thought it would die. I cut it with my sword. Would you have thought that a little horse would be so difficult to kill?"

Elizabeth sprang aside from the Prince, leaving her shawl in his hands.

"Carlos!" she shrieked.

He laughed again.

"Go to your apartments," said the King. "I do perceive that you are not fit to be entrusted with your liberty. Don Ruy Gomez y de Sylva will be your guardian."

On hearing the name of his greatest enemy the wretched Prince broke into lamentations and cries and besought the Queen to save him.

But she stood white against the wall and for the first time spoke no word in answer to his appeal.

And Juan regarded him with a contemptuous glance.

"Go," said Felipe.

A convulsion passed over the bent frame of Carlos, he gave one appealing wild look at the shrinking figure of the Queen, then limped from the room. Felipe watched him go with eyes of dull hate.

Elizabeth glanced at him and struggled with her breath, then she gazed round the room; the French ladies had not looked up from their game nor the Spanish ladies from their yarn-carding; in the back chamber, visible through an open door, four old duennas were telling their beads.

It was like a prison, or a cage.

"What is his punishment to be, Majesty?" trembled the Queen. "I think he is not in his senses."

Felipe gave her a cold look; she had not been so high in his favour lately; he could not forgive her that her child was not a boy.

"It was a fine Barbary steed," was his sole answer; "cannot he content himself with dogs and rabbits?"

"Does Carlos—kill—things?" stammered the Queen.

Again Don Felipe would not answer; he put his hands on his hips above the swell of his brocaded breeches and gave her a counter question.

"What was it you wished to say to me to-day, Elizabeth, when we were leaving the chapel and I could not hear you because the Prince of Eboli wished to speak?"

The Queen, if it were possible, became even paler; it was obvious that her limbs shook, concealed as they were in her monstrous farthingale.

"I would ask your Majesty to excuse me," she faltered, "from the auto-da-fé. I am not well. Indeed, I am not well."

Her fragile face, her shrinking body confirmed her words; the King looked at her as he might have looked at a dog that refused to follow him; the cold Castiliam courtesy of his manner did not alter. "Your Majesty must consult your physicians," he said.

The Queen put her hand to her throat and answered hoarsely.

"Señor, I want no physician. But spare me the auto-da-fé"

Don Felipe's face was blank of expression; she might as well have turned her trembling countenance for pity to a marble figure.

"Spare you?" he repeated. "Spare you?"

"I do not love these sights," she said desperately, "I never forget them. Never. Never." She checked herself. "Forgive me. I am not well."

"You are well enough to attend a Church festival," he answered. "Do you wish to bring the anger of God on me after He has restored my son?"

"I cannot go," said the Queen. "They are men and women—and they burn. And there is one there whom I knew—Doña Luisa, who sat at my side six months ago. Can I see the flames eating holes in her body?"

"You should rejoice," answered Don Felipe sullenly, "that you have the privilege to see the punishment of these heretics whom the Lord hath damned."

The Queen's strength utterly failed her; she again gave that helpless glance round the darkened chamber.

The maids-of-honour and the old women never moved; no breeze stirred the long, dull curtains. Don Juan stood motionless, leaning against the wall, his eyes downcast Elizabeth de Valois sank into the stiff dark chair.

"If you have any pity for me," she pleaded, "I entreat you spare me this."

This breaking down of the formality he valued and always maintained infuriated Don Felipe though he showed no change in his countenance.

"The subject is closed," he answered haughtily. "You will attend the auto-da-fé."

He made her a courtly salutation and left the chamber.

Elizabeth looked wildly at Juan; her expression was the expression of one whose soul is bruised and beaten.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed in her own language, "I suffer! I suffer!"

Juan looked at her; he was troubled and confused; he hated the King; something was wrong; he had been happier tramping barefoot across the rice-fields to school or living retired with Doña Magdalena at Villagarcia; the palace was horrible—no better than a tomb.

The generous blood rushed to his face. "Why should not God punish the heretics?" he said impulsively. "Surely it is horrible to see them burn."

The Queen put up her hands in the attitude of prayer and lifted her sad blue eyes.

"God loves blood and suffering." she answered passionately; "God looks on to a mangled world and is pleased. But somewhere there is something that hates it all—that would not have a fly, nay, or a flower robbed of its little happiness!"

"There is only God and the devil," answered Juan wonderingly.

"Can you well distinguish one from another?" asked the Queen desperately.

At this blasphemy Juan was silent. It seemed to him that Elizabeth was speaking against the Almighty; yet he felt as great a respect for her as he had done for Doña Magdalena and a great pity for her, and a dislike for the holy King.

The values of his world were being upset and he was bewildered.

Elizabeth glanced round to see that the ladies were not looking; the Spanish duennas were, she well knew, all spies on her words and looks.

With feverish passion she clasped Don Juan's hand.

"Get away from here," she whispered, "they flatter you, they beguile you—get away while you can! It is a tomb. I shall die here and be buried here, and another woman will be in my place. And would I could die to-night! I am only twenty-two years old, but I am old in loneliness and sorrow that can never change!"

"Ah, Dios!" cried Juan, white to the lips, "something is wrong!"

"I have never been happy a single moment," continued the poor Queen. Her voice sank even lower, "Did not his English wife die of his cold ways of cruelty? Carlos will die too. Getaway! Is there anyone you love anywhere? Then go to them and never return to the Escorial, never, never!"

One of the duennas, perceiving the Queen whispering, rose, and coming forward, reminded Her Majesty that it was time for Mass. Elizabeth turned eyes on her that were dark with pain.

Then she held out her hand to Don Juan. "Go," she said aloud, "and remember my words. Do not be involved in this tragedy."

Juan kissed the shaking hand that was loaded with the finest jewels in Spain and silently left the presence of his brother's wife.