Читать книгу Prince and Heretic - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 5

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When the Elector returned to the palace occupied by the Saxon Court during this stay in Leipsic, he was still engaged in considering the wisdom of this marriage of his ward.

He had striven for it during three years, and he had accomplished it in spite of King Philip, in spite of the Landgrave of Hesse, but now, on the eve of success, his heart misgave him.

True, there was no possible objection to the marriage from any worldly point of view. Anne of Saxony could not hope for any better match, and so the Elector had always argued. There remained also his strong personal reasons for getting the girl whose sex alone prevented her from filling his place—out of the country with a husband whose interests did not lie in Germany. But there was always the one fact that troubled the conscience and vexed the repose of Augustus the fact that had caused the old Landgrave Philip to withhold his consent and only bestow a very chary blessing on his granddaughter—she was to marry a Roman Catholic Prince, a friend of Philip, a one-time favourite of Charles; and the bridegroom's assurances that she should be allowed to practise according to the Augsburg Confession were extremely vague and unsatisfactory—indeed, he had stated that the Lutheran Princess would be expected to 'live Catholicly' when she took up her residence in the dominions of Philip of Spain.

However, it was a fine marriage, a brilliant marriage, a marriage eminently convenient to the Elector, and he endeavoured to stifle these late doubts and scruples.

As soon as he reached the palace he went in search of his niece that he might at once present her with the protective amulet, which was to preserve her from the snares and lures of Popery.

The rooms were overcrowded with people; everywhere was confusion and excitement. No one, from the scullions to the Electress, talked of anything but the wedding; preparations for receiving the guests, the coming and going of armourers, tailors, cooks, confectioners, filled the air with noise and bustle; the stewards and heralds were overwhelmed with work; loud disputes as to the arrangements for the feasts and tourneys echoed in the corridors; the pages and valets were too excited to be useful; and the women did nothing but chatter about clothes.

As the Elector made his way through the confusion and thought of the cost of his share in all this elaborate merry-making, he, too, began to be sick of this wedding, to wish it well over and his niece safely in the Netherlands.

He found the Lady Anne in the dark, lofty, antechamber of her apartments. Here the confusion of the palace had culminated, the whole room was strewn with dresses, hats, cloaks, and bales of stuff; waiting-women, serving-women, and tailors were running here and there displaying, explaining, and arranging their wares.

Near the tall, pointed Gothic window stood a structure of polished wood the shape of a gallows, and on this elegant gibbet hung several brilliantly dressed dolls, swinging by their necks like so many gay little corpses.

They were the models showing the bride the completed splendours of some of her bridal gowns, and she stood near them, pulling them out on their strings and examining them; the strong sunlight was over her and them and lying in a pool of gold at her feet.

Anne of Saxony, the heroine of this important and long-debated marriage, whose name was now in every one's mouth, and whose approaching union to a Papist noble had roused the compassionate chivalry of others beside Vanderlinden's two apprentices, was now sixteen years of age. Being the sole child of the great Elector Maurice, she would, if a boy, have been in the place her uncle now held. Connected by her mother's side with the Hesses, she was of the finest blood in Germany, and numbered most of the great families among her kinsmen; and her early orphanage, her high rank, the glory of her father's fame, and this famous marriage project had made of her a heroine in the eyes of Lutheran Germany.

The maiden who stood turning over the dressmaker's dolls looked, however, far from a heroine of any manner of romance.

She was of medium height, and her whole body was twisted, crooked in shoulder and hip; when she walked she halted in the fashion known in her country as the devil's limp; her figure was thin, undeveloped; her face pale, her features commonplace, save for the mouth, which was abnormally wide and loose though closed with a certain firmness; her eyes were light, large, and expressive; her hair dull, between brown and flaxen, and growing in a straight ugly fashion from her high brows.

In her whole person there was not one charm nor grace, ill-health had robbed her even of the bloom of her early youth, nor did her manners or her expression compensate for her defects; her gestures were awkward and ungraceful, her voice shrill, and her look conveyed the utmost arrogance and unbridled temper.

She was indeed both so unattractive and so unamiable, that the Elector had used her defects with the Landgrave as an argument to induce him to consent to her marriage.

"There will not be too many suitors for one crooked in mind and body," he had said, and, looking at her now as she stood eagerly snatching at the swinging dolls, his scruples and regrets at having found her a Papist husband banished in satisfaction at having found her any husband at all.

"Gracious uncle," said Anne, giving him a quick glance, "I am very much occupied."

Augustus took no notice of this rebuke, he was used to her curtness. She considered herself his superior, and her haughtiness, her tempers, and her unreasonableness had often caused the Electress to beseech her husband to hasten, at any cost, the marriage which would relieve them of her.

"I have brought you the jewel which Vanderlinden made for you," he said, and held out the little box-wood case.

Anne turned from the dolls and came forward with some interest. She wore a long gown of tawny coloured cloth, and a white lawn wimple; the heaviness of her attire added to her years but hardly disguised her deformity.

She took the jewel-case with hands that trembled a little, her lips were dry, her eyes bright, in her cheeks an unusual flush showed; excitement burnt her like a fever, her whole poor distorted body was quivering.

The Elector saw this, and a strange sort of pity for his brother's only child touched him; after all she was but a girl, and this was three days before her wedding.

"Dear niece," he said, putting his great hand gently on her crooked shoulder, "may that amulet preserve your faith pure in the strange land and keep you safe in body and spirit."

Anne laughed affectedly and gazed critically at the jewel in her palm.

"It is not very beautiful," she remarked.

"It is very potent, and I hope you will always wear it," replied her uncle anxiously. "And every time you look at it, remember you were born and bred in the Reformed Faith."

"As to that," said Anne, "His Highness himself said I was to read Amadis de Gaul and play the lute and enjoy such diversions as were fitted to one of my station, and not trouble my head about matters of religion."

Anne had often quoted this remark of her future husband, and the Elector frowned to hear it again on her lips.

"The Prince spoke as a man to a child," he returned, "but you are no longer a child and cannot reason as one. His Highness has promised to respect your faith, and you must respect it also in heart and in spirit, Anne."

The girl carelessly placed the amulet round her neck.

"Oh, I shall do very well, dear uncle," she replied. "I am quite content to trust to His Highness."

"But it is you yourself who must keep the faith alive within you when in the midst of idolaters," said the Lutheran Prince sternly.

"You speak like Grandfather Hesse!" cried the girl peevishly. "I believe you regret my marriage already, but, as I wrote His Highness, God wills it, and the Devil shall not hinder it!"

His frown deepened and a flush of anger mounted to his cheek.

"I shall regret it if you behave like a wilful child, dear niece."

"I have put on your amulet," returned Anne ungraciously. "What else would you? And my serving-women wait—"

"I shall not keep you from them," interrupted the Elector, "but remember that there are more serious matters than gowns and chains appertaining to this marriage."

With that he turned away, for he saw that to argue further with the bride was useless, since her natural pride and vanity had been augmented past reason by the excitement and importance of her present position.

Anne was, indeed, almost beside herself. For three years she had been bent on this marriage with all the passion of which she was capable. She wanted her freedom, she wanted increased grandeur, she wanted the enjoyments of the gay court of Brussels—of which she had heard so much—and she believed herself violently enamoured of the gorgeous cavalier whom she had seen once on the occasion of his visit to Dresden and who was to be her husband.

She watched with pleasure the departure of her uncle, and impatiently called the tailor who was responsible for the dolls. She had some fault to find with each of them: one model had the skirt too long, in another the colour was hideous, the gold lacing of a third did not please her. These objections were taken at random, for she was far too overwrought to consider or even notice the details of the beautiful little dresses.

When the man had bowed himself out with his small gallows full of puppets, Anne sank into one of the deep chairs of blue-and-yellow velvet; her back ached from standing, her head throbbed, her heavy gown dragged at her shoulders, she had not slept for several nights and her whole feeble body was fatigued, but she would spare neither herself nor those who had to please her humour.

Gowns, petticoats, mantles, caps, hoods, gloves, shoes, jewels, every ornament or trinket luxury could devise was brought before her for her inspection. She had been most extravagant in her purchases, and it was already said that when her debts and the feasts had been paid, there would not be anything left of the hundred thousand thalers that formed her dowry. Her thin, feverish ringers handled the brocades and velvets, the silks and lawns, the girdles and chains with a kind of eager energy, as if these things were so many weapons she was piling up against fate.

And so unconsciously she regarded them, she meant to be the grandest lady at the Court of the Regent; her whole small soul was centred on this childish ambition and had no room for any other emotion save a fierce, jealous, but inchoate desire that her brilliant husband should love her. She thought all this bravery would help her accomplish both ends, and therefore devoted all her passionate interest to these splendours of silvered silk, Venetian velvet, cloaks of miniver and red fox, skirts of many coloured brocade, doe-skin fringed gloves and shoes sewn with gold thread.

At last her weakness could endure no more; with an hysteric petulance that bordered on tears she dismissed every one, and, taking the arm of her favourite waiting-woman, she limped through the bowing ranks of tailors, jewellers, and sewing-maids into her inner and private chamber.

There she dropped into the cushion-piled chair near the window that stood open on the sunshine, and so sat, looking huddled and dwarfish, her right hand, sparkling with the hard brilliance of an emerald ring, supporting her aching head, her feet resting on a great footstool, her knees drawn up.

The waiting-woman stood at the end of the huge crimson-curtained bed, waiting the pleasure of her mistress.

She was a tall girl, subdued, quiet, patient—qualities to which she owned the dangerous favour of capricious Anne's preference. Her father had served under the Elector Maurice, but returning to his native city, Ghent in the Netherlands, he had been executed as a heretic under the rule of the late Regent, and his entire property confiscated. His wife had fled with her child to the Saxon Court, where she had soon after died of her miseries, leaving her daughter under the protection of the Electress.

Such was the short, sad experience of Rénée le Meung, which had left her reliant, reserved, self-effacing, humble, but passionately attached to the faith for which her parents and her happiness had been sacrificed, and of an earnest gravity beyond her years.

She endured the whims and caprices, the tempers and tyrannies of Anne with more than the usual submission of the dependant, and her lack of vanity and her indifference made her a foil that was precious to the arrogance of her mistress.

Rénée was beautiful with the opulent beauty of her country, but she ignored it, and she had no lover, so Anne was content to ignore it too. Besides, her own vanity was too great for her to be aware how her own unattractiveness was heightened by the loveliness of the graceful Fleming, with her crimson-brown hair and eyes, her rose complexion, her white skin, and exact features, though she was so plain in her dress, so grave in her manner, so always and completely in the background that many besides her mistress might have discounted this beauty that lacked all flash and allure.

As she stood now, outwardly patiently at attention, her thoughts were far away, returning, as always, to the dear past when she had had a home and those who loved her, the times when she had heard her father laugh, her mother sing, when she had herself been full of life and hope and all pleasantness; her present situation, that of an exile employed by charity, she forgot she seemed for a moment free, as she had once been behind the loved walls of Ghent—

"Rénée," said Anne, opening her eyes, "the Prince wrote to know what my colours were. When he enters Leipsic he will have a thousand knights and gentlemen with him is it not magnificent?"

The waiting-woman closed her thoughts.

"Indeed, Your Grace is very fortunate," she answered quietly, taking up her wearisome part of confidante. She endured Anne's futile vanities not so much from good humour as from sheer indifference; her disinterest in her present life was her surest buckler against what she had to endure.

"He is indeed a very splendid cavalier," said Anne, with vast satisfaction, "and he made me such fine speeches and compliments. I wish you had seen him when he came to Dresden, but you will soon see him now. And I am higher born than he, for he is only a Count in Germany. Yet he is a sovereign Prince too, and I shall give way to no one at the Court of Brussels. Is it not all very pleasant?"

So the girl chattered on in her shrill, high voice, and the waiting-woman dutifully assented to all she said; but Rénée's calm, Rénée's self-effacement, usually so grateful to Anne, to-day offended her. She wanted a more human interest shown in her affairs, some excitement, some envy, some jealousy.

"You talk as if you were sick!" she cried fretfully. "Do you not care at all about my wedding?"

Rénée flushed at the rare personal address; it was seldom Anne spoke to her as to another human being.

"Of course I care," she answered gravely, "but how can I comment on matters so much above me?"

Anne Was mollified.

"Would you not like a husband, rich and handsome?" she asked, trying to provoke the flattery of the other's envy.

"I?" asked Rénée, in genuine surprise. "Who will ever marry me?"

Anne smiled.

"Perhaps some day I shall find some one for you. How old are you?"

"Twenty-five, Your Grace."

"That is not very young! Nearly ten years older than I am! Is it not very fine to be married at sixteen? Would you not like to be married soon?"

"I would never marry any but a Lutheran," replied Rénée calmly.

Anne flushed, and her bright eyes flashed with amazing fury.

"Ah! You, too, dare to blame me because the Prince is a Papist!" she exclaimed.

"Nay," said Rénée gently. "I know there are reasons of State."

"Reasons of State?" shrieked Anne. "I love him and he loves me! You are jealous because you will never have such a knight!"

"Never, truly," replied the waiting-woman with undiminished sweetness. "It is only great ladies like Your Grace who can wed with such as the Prince of Orange."

"You would not marry save with a Lutheran," said Anne. "Then you would not marry the Prince?"

"That is a jest—to suppose such a thing."

"Ay, but would you?" insisted Anne.

Rénée's native courage and honesty flashed through her long reserve, her self-effacement.

"I would not wed with a Papist were he the Emperor himself," she replied firmly.

"You proud hard creature!" cried Anne, vexed to tears. "But it is all a lie—a jealous lie, you would wed the first Papist who asked you."

Rénée was silent.

"Wait until you see the Prince," insisted Anne childishly. "There is no one like him—no one."

"So I have always heard," said Rénée sincerely.

"Did you ever see his first wife?" asked Anne abruptly. "Was she pretty? Did he care for her?"

"I never saw the first Princess, Your Grace. They were very young when they married, and she died very soon."

"Well, I am sure he has forgotten her. If you are so afraid of the Papists and hate them so, why do you come with me to Brussels?" she added maliciously.

The bitter truth, "I must go where I can earn my bread," rose to Rénée's lips, but she suppressed it and merely replied, "I am not afraid of any one corrupting my faith, Your Grace, and I shall be with a Protestant mistress."

"I suppose you would rather stay here," said Anne, "if you could find some Lutheran to marry, but you are not very young and you have red hair, therefore you must make the best of it and come to Brussels."

Rénée was absolutely unmoved by her mistress's rudeness; she hardly heard the words.

"Have you any relations in Brussels?" asked Anne.

"No," replied the waiting-woman, "nor any in the Netherlands. I think—we are all scattered—wandering, or still for ever in the grave;" then quickly changing a subject on which she had been betrayed into speaking with feeling, she asked, "Has His Grace's alchemist's experiment succeeded? It was to be known whether or no this week."

"The Elector said nothing to me of it," replied Anne fretfully. "He gave me a silly little jewel Vanderlinden made. Of course the experiment has failed."

"Poor alchemist!" said Rénée. A vast pity for all endeavour, all disappointment, was now her strongest feeling; the grief of others had more power to move her than her own distress.

Anne began to moan that her head was aching beyond bearing; she indeed looked ill. There was something tragic in her frailty and her excitement, her deformity and her vanity.

Rénée went to fetch the sweet wine and comfits for which she called and which were her usual medicine; as always, she drank greedily and soon fell heavily asleep.

The waiting-woman put back the engraved silver plate and tankard on the black sideboard, and crept softly to the window where the August sun might fall on her face.

She turned her full gentle eyes with a great pity on the wretched little figure of her mistress, whose thin hands were nervously twitching, even in her sleep.

What could this marriage promise?—the groom one of King Philip's courtiers, worldly, handsome, able; the bride this miserable, fretful, ignorant child, mad with vanity, sick with excitement, diseased in body, unbalanced in mind. Rénée, who knew Anne as few did, was almost sorry for the Papist Prince who could not know her at all.

"And for such a union they rejoice and dance and hold their jousts!" thought the waiting-woman wearily.

She gazed out into the sunny air, it was near late afternoon and very peaceful.

Rénée did not see the towers of Leipsic; her mind spread the world before her like a great map painted with bright pictures—great tyrants slaughtering, burning, oppressing; poor people flying homeless, dying unnoticed—everywhere wrong, violence, cruelty—and no one to rise against it, no one to defy such a man as King Philip.

Every one was for himself, his private gain; even the Protestant Princes of Germany who had stood for the faith of Martin Luther, they put their own convenience first, as in this marriage which the Elector had urged forward for his personal interest. There was a Protestant monarch on the throne of England, but she remained friendly with Catholic potentates and raised no finger to help those of her faith so horribly persecuted.

"Always policy, ambition, self-seeking," thought Rénée wearily. "Is there not one in all the world would stand for his God, his country only? Not one to be the champion of liberty of faith?"

Not one, she believed; they kept the gaudy show of chivalry in the tourneys and jousts, but the spirit of it was long since lost. There were no more knights, there was no one to stand forward for the weak and the miserable, the humble and the helpless; the Reformed Faith had produced saints and martyrs but not yet a champion or a protector.

"They all bow to circumstance, these great princes and nobles," thought Rénée; "there is not one of them who would endanger the tenth part of his possessions for the cause of the poor Protestants, for liberty, for country—not one."

She leant her sick head against the mullions and closed her eyes; life seemed so long, so futile, the world so wrong, so ugly.

"There have been heroes," the eternal romance of youth whispered in her heart. "Why should not one come now when he is so needed, ah, so sorely needed?"

She opened her eyes on the sun, on the hot, silent city with the languorous air of festival and holiday.

"If I ever met such an one, or knew of him, how I would worship him!"

Love she never thought of; she did not believe that it was possible for her to ever love, but she knew that she would gladly die for one who would champion her persecuted faith, her oppressed country—very gladly die, or live, in happy abnegation in his service.

The clock struck six; the tire-women entered to rouse Anne and dress her for supper; it was Rénée's one time of freedom. She hastened away before her mistress's peevish caprice should have decided to detain her, and went forth into the clean, bright streets.