Читать книгу Prince and Heretic - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Leipsic was unfamiliar to Rénée le Meung, she did not know where the sunny streets she chose would lead her, but as she knew no one and had no object in her walk, this did not trouble her. She walked slowly, enjoying the sun, which was the only thing left her to enjoy.

She did not seem a lady of the court, so simple and even poor was her dark green kirtle and mantle, so unpretentious her whole appearance; even if she had wished to follow some degree of fashion she was unable to, for her sole resource was what was given her as waiting-woman to the Elector's niece, and that was little enough.

But she was utterly unconscious of her plainness of attire as she walked unnoticed by the hurrying crowd that now and then pushed her against the wall or the street posts in their haste.

Every one was full of the wedding and the subsequent festivities; the name of Anne and of her groom was on every lip; there seemed no room in Leipsic for anything but rejoicing. The air of gaiety, of idleness, and holiday was accentuated by the great glory of the late afternoon sun which filled the air with golden motes, blazed in golden flame in the casement windows, gleamed on the weathercocks, and filled the upper boughs of the elms and chestnuts in the squares and gardens.

As Rénée was turning into one of these squares she met the Elector's alchemist walking thoughtfully under the shade of the trees with a small brass-covered book in his hand.

She would have passed and left him to his meditations, but he chanced to see her and instantly paused and saluted her. He had a kindness for her; she had always been gentle and interested in his work when they had chanced to meet.

"This may remind you," he said, holding out the little volume, "of that wonderful Book given by a Jew to the great Nicolas Flamel by which he finally discovered the secret of secrets. Does he not describe it as with brass covers, leaves of bark engraved with an iron pencil, and symbolic pictures finely coloured?"

"And he discovered the stone?" asked Rénée.

"Ay," answered Vanderlinden wistfully, "and in evidence of it may be seen his statue to this day in Paris, together with fourteen churches and seven hospitals that he founded with the gold he manufactured."

"And the secret died with him?"

"He disclosed it to no one," admitted the alchemist. "I bought this book in memory of his—it cost but two florins and I doubt it is worth more."

He put the book under his arm and asked Rénée if she would see his house, which was but a few yards away; he had taken, he said, for his stay in Leipsic, the dwelling of another alchemist philosopher who had lately gone travelling; this man had had a shop for perfumery, soaps, and engraved gems which he—Vanderlinden—was continuing to hold open, and where he did some little trade among those gathered in Leipsic for the wedding.

"I would rather have stayed in Dresden," he added, "and concluded my experiment there, but His Princely Grace insisting on my coming hither, though not paying my expenses of the road, so I am obliged to make what I can with these washes and unguents."

"I am sorry the experiment failed," said Rénée gently. The occupation of the alchemist seemed to her more worthy than that of most other men; at least he had set his aim high, and was searching for what would benefit mankind as much as it would himself.

"Perhaps the next may succeed," answered the alchemist diffidently, "but I doubt if God hath reserved this great honour for me—this high favour."

They turned towards the house, which was situated at the corner of the square, and entered the shop—a room which was opposite the parlour where Vanderlinden had received the Elector.

This room faced west, and the full light of the setting sun poured through the broad low window on to the shelves where stood the pots, bottles, cases, boxes, vases containing the alchemist's wares, and on to the long smooth counter where the glittering scales gleamed, and where two men were leaning over a tray of engraved gems such as are used for signet rings.

He behind the counter was the alchemist's foremost assistant, the companion of all his wanderings, and the sharer of his fortunes—a lean, silent Frenchman, named Duprès, who was a noted spirit raiser, and possessed a mother-of-pearl table on which he could bring the angels to discourse with him, and a tablet of polished jet in which he could foresee future events.

He was now engaged in holding a violet stone, clear and pure as crystal and engraved with the first labour of Hercules, against the strong sunlight, which flashed through it, giving a glorious strength of colour to the little square gem.

The customer was a young cavalier, not much over twenty, splendidly vested in black velvet cross cut over stiff white satin; a cloak of orange cloth hung from one shoulder, fastened across the breast with cords of gold, three ruffs encircled his throat, the topmost or master ruff being edged with silver lace and touching his ears.

His appearance was singularly charming; though rather below the average height, he was extremely graceful, and he carried his small, well-shaped head with the noble carriage of a fine stag; his features were aristocratic and aquiline, and expressed gaiety, frankness, and good humour; his thick, dark-brown hair fell in waves on to his ruff, and was curled low on to the brow.

His well-formed right hand lay open on the counter, palm upwards, and was filled with the sparkle and light of yellow and red stones.

Rénée knew this young seigneur well; he was Louis of Nassau, the brother and envoy of Anne's bridegroom, whose mouthpiece and proxy he had been during the three years of the negotiations.

The waiting-woman, with her instinct and training of self-effacement, was drawing back at sight of the young Count, but with his usual gay friendliness he rose and addressed her, asking her opinion of the jewels before him.

"I am a poor judge of such things," smiled Rénée. "I do not know why I am here at all, save that I was asked very courteously."

She came and stood by the counter, looking, with her habitual utter indifference, at Louis of Nassau; she did not know much of him nor had they ever spoken together further than a few words, but she did not like him despite his courtesy, his charm, his undeniable attraction.

And this dislike was because he, a Protestant himself, had been eagerly forwarding the marriage of his Papist brother with Protestant Anne, because he was known to be looking for a wealthy bride himself, and because she judged him frivolous, extravagant, and thoughtless.

"Will you be glad, seigneur," she asked with a flicker of curiosity, "when His Highness, your brother's wedding is really accomplished?"

He raised his fresh young face quickly.

"If I shall be glad?" he said, and for the first time Rénée noticed the lines of fatigue and anxiety beneath the brilliant eyes and on the fair brow.

"We shall all be glad," said Duprès, with the freedom he always assumed, "when the little lady is safely in the Netherlands."

"Not I," said Rénée. "I would rather live in Saxony than Brussels."

"Does the Lady Anne hold that opinion?" asked the Count.

The question at first amazed Rénée, then she swiftly recalled how Anne had been shut away and guarded by the Elector (her sickly unattractiveness being more hedged about than beauty, for fear reports of her should reach and disgust her prospective husband), and that Louis could only have obtained rare glimpses of her, and never have had an opportunity to know her temper nor her mind as the waiting-woman knew both.

"My mistress is very glad to go to Brussels, and very devoted to His Highness," she answered conventionally, adding, with more feeling, "She is very young, princely Count, and frail, and the excitement of these days exalts her spirit."

"She does not regret Saxony, I think," remarked the alchemist, "which is well for the future tranquillity of His Highness."

"Nor is she afraid of a Papist Court, eh?" asked the young Count with a frank laugh. "I believe the maiden thinks more of her gowns and her new titles than of the sermons and prayer books she leaves behind."

He spoke carelessly, slipping a ring with a dark honey coloured stone on his finger the while. Rénée wondered at him.

"Her Grace will remain of the Reformed Faith," she said.

"'But she will live Catholicly,'" quoted the Count with a smile. He spoke as if he was pleased (as indeed he was) that the laborious negotiations had ended in the Prince getting what he had been striving for from the first, namely, the lady without any conditions as to her faith, for a Protestant wife was obviously impossible for a noble of King Philip. Rénée had watched the troubled course of the tangled diplomacies of guardian and suitor with equal disdain for the Elector who gave his niece to a Papist for his own convenience and the Prince who took a bride, who was to him a heretic, merely because it suited his ambitions.

Louis of Nassau noticed her silence; he had remarked before that she was strangely quiet and also that she was exceedingly comely. His glance, quick to appreciate and admire fair women, now fell kindly over her graceful figure, her face so finely coloured and so delicate in line, the rose carnation of lip and cheek, the glow of the heavy, carelessly dressed hair.

"I wonder what you think of?" he said.

Rénée started at the personal address, she had been so long a mere part of the background that when one treated her as an individual it always confused her.

"What should I think of, princely Count?" she answered. "Foolish things, of course."

Louis handed the ring and the violet gem to Duprès, who packed them into little cases of cedar wood.

"You do not look as if your thoughts were foolish," he replied, with more gravity than she had ever associated with him.

"Nay, I think she is a very wise lady, noble seigneur," said the alchemist.

"Your thoughts, then?" smiled Louis of Nassau.

Rénée's deep-set indifference to all things overcame her momentary confusion.

"I am too good a Protestant to rejoice at this marriage," she replied quietly, "and my thoughts were all sad ones, noble Count, and did not in any way touch your high policies."

Louis of Nassau answered gently; he knew something of her history.

"It is all a question of policy certainly," he paid her the compliment of sincere speaking. "The marriage suits the Elector and my brother—the lady too, I think—and religious differences are easily accommodated among people of sense. The Prince is no fanatic—your faith will be protected as long as you are in his household. He, too, was bred a Protestant."

Rénée could make no answer; she knew the Prince had left his faith when the splendid heritages, rank, and honours of his cousin Rénée of Orange had fallen to him—his father had sent the German Protestant to the Emperor's Court to become a Papist, and almost a Spaniard. Rénée saw nothing splendid in any of this—it was a piece with the rest of the world.

"You dislike my brother?" asked Louis shrewdly.

"I like no one," said the waiting-woman calmly.

"Have you seen the Prince?"

"Nay; when His Highness came to Dresden I was very ill."

"I thought that you had not seen him," remarked Louis. "No one who has seen him dislikes him."

"You put me in the wrong," protested Rénée. "Who am I to judge great ones? Take no heed of me, gracious Count. I am looking for a hero, and that is as hard to find as the holy stone," she added, with a smile at the alchemist.

"You have been reading Amadis de Gaul, or Charlemagne and his paladins—fie, I did not think it of your gravity," jested Louis of Nassau.

Rénée flushed into animation, and it was like the sudden blooming of a tightly closed flower, so did the quick flash of her feeling light her features into beauty.

"There were such men," she said, "and might be again, surely—do you not believe so, Magister? And never were they more needed than now—"

She checked herself sharply and the lovely flush faded. She turned away and picked up one of the slender glass bottles of essences Vanderlinden had placed before her.

Louis of Nassau looked at her curiously. "She is beautiful," he thought.

"Perhaps one day you will find your hero and Vanderlinden his stone," he said, and the sun flickered like a caress over his brilliant person and his pleasant young face.

"Perhaps? Nay, surely," replied the alchemist. "Or if we do not, another will. For both are there as surely as God is in heaven."

"You, too, think the world needs some knight, some paladin?" asked the Count, drawing on his white gloves stitched with gold.

"I have travelled much," replied the alchemist, "and could not avoid seeing, albeit that I was ever engaged in abstruse studies, the great horrid cruelties and wrongs abroad, especially under the reign of His Majesty King Philip, in whose dominions God grant me never to set foot again. I was in England, princely seigneur, while he was King of that country, and I did see things that made me weary of life. So, too, in Spain from whence I fled hastily. And, lately, it is no better in the Netherlands; indeed there are few places where a man can think as he please and speak freely, save only in these states of Germany."

Louis of Nassau looked thoughtfully at the speaker, and then at Rénée whose fair head was bent over the rows of alabaster pots and bottles of twisted glass and crystal. He had never lived under a tyrant, his brief joyous life had passed in absolute freedom, and with him his faith was not the result of conviction but of heritage. Still the old man's words and the girl's eloquent face were not without effect on him; some emotion strange and vague echoed in his heart, and he sighed as he took the two little boxes from Duprès.

"There are many changes abroad," he said. "Who knows but that this hero may appear to put straight all these tangled wrongs."

He took up his high-crowned white hat with the cluster of black plumes, and, saluting all very pleasantly, left the shop.

"There goes no hero there at least," said Duprès softly, glancing through the window at the Count, who glittered in the sun without. "He spent fifty thalers to-day in unguents—conserve of violets, lotion of citrons, sweetmeats of pistachio nut, rose and orange water!"

"Is his brother like him?" asked Rénée.

"I have never seen the Prince of Orange," answered the alchemist, but Duprès, who appeared to have been everywhere and seen every one, declared he knew the Prince well by sight.

"He is more magnificent than Count Louis, and more to be feared though so few years older—for he is certainly a great Prince. But prodigal and greatly in debt, they say—and not very pious, nor straight-living—at least, no more so than any man of his blood and youth."

"Ah, Dominus," said Rénée, "cannot you look in your jet tablets and see what the future of this marriage will be?"

"I have looked for the Elector time enough," replied Duprès with a little smile, "and saw nothing but confusion."

"Have you tried to see the future of the poor Protestant peoples?" asked Rénée earnestly.

The Frenchman carefully put away the tray of gems.

"That is too large a thing to be looked for in a square of jet or any magic mirror whatever," he replied.

"We must look for it in our own hearts," said Rénée sadly. "Well, I have out-stayed my leisure; give me leave to come another time and see your treasures."

Vanderlinden took up a tall bottle of milk-white glass with a stopper of scarlet porcelain and filled with jasmine essence; he offered it to Rénée with a half-awkward kindness.

The waiting-woman, who never received any kind of gift, felt the tears swiftly sting her lids.

"I shall not come to see you since you treat me so well," she said, with an eager little smile; she did not realize that she was the only lady who had ever come to the shop without a cavalier to buy gifts for her, nor that if she had been as other women Count Louis would have offered her as much perfumery as she could need; she was unaware how her reserve and her indifference hedged her from common courtesies. She did not miss gallantry and compliments, but she often missed kindness, and therefore the alchemist's action stirred her heart, while Count Louis' flattery would have left her cold.

She passed out into the street, the aromatic odours of the shop still about her. She saw Vanderlinden's two apprentices hurrying along with rosettes of Anne's colours threaded with orange ribbons. The streets were now in shadow, for the sun had set behind the houses, but over all was that sense of festival, of excitement, and in the air were the names of Anne and William of Orange.