For some instants the King and his page lay half stunned where they had fallen, and well might it have been for them had they so continued. But Darnley, recovering, staggered to his feet, pulling the boy up with him and supporting him. Then, as he began to move, he heard a soft whistle in the gloom behind him. Over his shoulder he looked towards the house, to behold a great, smoking gap now yawning in it. Through this gap he caught a glimpse of shadowy men moving in the close beyond, and he realized that he had been seen. The white shirt he wore had betrayed his presence to them.
With a stifled scream, he began to run towards the wall, the page staggering after him. Behind them now came the clank and thud of a score of overtaking feet. Soon they were surrounded. The King turned this way and that, desperately seeking a way out of the murderous human ring that fenced them round.
“What d’ye seek? What d’ye seek?” he screeched, in a pitiful attempt to question with authority.
A tall man in a trailing cloak advanced and seized him.
“We seek thee, fool!” said the voice of Bothwell.
The kingliness that he had never known how to wear becomingly now fell from him utterly.
“Mercy — mercy!” he cried.
“Such mercy as you had on David Rizzio!” answered the Border lord.
Darnley fell on his knees and sought to embrace the murderer’s legs. Bothwell stooped over him, seized the wretched man’s shirt, and pulled it from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about the royal neck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight, nor relaxed his hold until the young man’s struggles had entirely ceased.
Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in the chapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there, as a contemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, “not only without grief, but with greedy eyes.” Thereafter it was buried secretly in the night by Rizzio’s side, so that murderer and victim lay at peace together in the end.
III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL — Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain
“You a Spaniard of Spain?” had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous. “I do not believe it.”
And upon that she had put spur to the great black horse that bore her and had ridden off along the precipitous road by the river.
After her he had flung his answer on a note of laughter, bitter and cynical as the laughter of the damned, laughter that expressed all things but mirth.
“Oh, a Spaniard of Spain, indeed, Madame la Marquise. Very much a Spaniard of Spain, I assure you.”
The great black horse and the woman in red flashed round a bend of the rocky road and were eclipsed by a clump of larches. The man leaned heavily upon his ebony cane, sighed wearily, and grew thoughtful. Then, with a laugh and a shrug, he sat down in the shade of the firs that bordered the road. Behind him, crowning the heights, loomed the brown castle built by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, two hundred years ago, and the Tower of Montauzet, its walls scarred by the shots of the rebellious Biscayans. Below him, nourished by the snows that were dissolving under the sunshine of early spring, sped the tumbling river; beyond this spread pasture and arable land to the distant hills, and beyond those stood the gigantic sharp-summited wall of the Pyrenees, its long ridge dominated by the cloven cone of the snow clad Pic du Midi. There was in the sight of that great barrier, at once natural and political, a sense of security for this fugitive from the perils and the hatreds that lurked in Spain beyond. Here in Bearn he was a king’s guest, enjoying the hospitality of the great Castle of Pau, safe from the vindictive persecution of the mean tyrant who ruled in Spain. And here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been but for the thought of this woman — this Marquise de Chantenac — who had gone to such lengths in her endeavours to soften his exile that her ultimate object could never have been in doubt to a coxcomb, though it was in some doubt to Antonio Perez, who had been cured for all time of Coxcombry by suffering and misfortune, to say nothing of increasing age. It was when he bethought him of that age of his that he was chiefly intrigued by the amazing ardour of this great lady of Bearn. A dozen years ago — before misfortune overtook him — he would have accepted her flagrant wooing as a proper tribute. For then he had been the handsome, wealthy, witty, profligate Secretary of State to His Catholic Majesty King Philip II, with a power in Spain second only to the King’s, and sometimes even greater. In those days he would have welcomed her as her endowments merited. She was radiantly lovely, in the very noontide of her resplendent youth, the well-born widow of a gentleman of Bearn. And it would not have lain within the strength or inclinations of Antonio Perez, as he once had been, to have resisted the temptation that she offered. Ever avid of pleasure, he had denied himself no single cup of it that favouring Fortune had proffered him. It was, indeed, because of this that he was fallen from his high estate; it was a woman who had pulled him down in ruin, tumbling with him to her doom. She, poor soul, was dead at last, which was the best that any lover could have wished her. But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with gall in his veins instead of blood. He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant, reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly from long years of incarceration.
What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal snows of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him to awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac? Was it that his tribulations stirred her pity, or that the fame of him which rang through Europe shed upon his withering frame some of the transfiguring radiance of romance?
It marked, indeed, the change in him that he should pause to question, whose erstwhile habit had been blindly to accept the good things tossed by Fortune into his lap. But question he did, pondering that parting taunt of hers to which, for emphasis, she had given an odd redundancy— “You a Spaniard of Spain!” Could her meaning have been plainer? Was not a Spaniard proverbially as quick to love as to jealousy? Was not Spain, that scented land of warmth and colour, of cruelty and blood, of throbbing lutes under lattices ajar, of mitred sinners doing public penance, that land where lust and piety went hand in hand, where passion and penitence lay down together — was not Spain the land of love’s most fruitful growth? And was not a Spaniard the very hierophant of love?
His thoughts swung with sudden yearning to his wife Juana and their children, held in brutal captivity by Philip, who sought to slake upon them some of the vindictiveness from which their husband and father had at last escaped. Not that Antonio Perez observed marital fidelity more closely than any other Spaniard of his time, or of any time. But Antonio Perez was growing old, older than he thought, older than his years. He knew it. Madame de Chantenac had proved it to him.
She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac, neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him here at Pau.
“You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul,” he had excused himself. “Believe one who knows the world, to his bitter cost. Tongues will wag.”
“And your Spanish pride will not suffer that clods may talk of you?”
“I am thinking of you, madame.”
“Of me?” she had answered. “Why, of me they talk already — talk their fill. I must pretend blindness to the leering eyes that watch me each time I come to Pau; feign unconsciousness of the impertinent glances of the captain of the castle there as I ride in.”
“Then why do you come?” he had asked point-blank. But before her sudden change of countenance he had been quick to add: “Oh, madame, I am full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I am deeply, deeply grateful; but—”
“Charity?” she had interrupted sharply, on a laugh that was self-mocking. “Charity?”
“What else, madame?”
“Ask yourself,” she had answered, reddening and averting her face from his questioning eyes.
“Madame,” he had faltered, “I dare not.”
“Dare not?”
; “Madame, how should I? I am an old man, broken by sickness, disheartened by misfortune, daunted by tribulation — a mere husk cast aside by Fortune, whilst you are lovely as one of the angels about the Throne of Heaven.”
She had looked into the haggard face, into the scars of suffering that seared it, and she had answered gently: “Tomorrow you shall come to me at Chantenac, my friend.”
“I am a Spaniard, for whom to-morrow never comes.”
“But it will this time. To-morrow I shall expect you.”
He looked up at her sitting her great black horse beside which he had been pacing.
“Better not, madame! Better not!” he had said.
And then he saw the eyes that had been tender grow charged with scorn; then came her angry taunt:
“You a Spaniard of Spain! I do not believe it!”
Oh, there was no doubt that he had angered her. Women of her temperament are quick to anger as to every emotion. But he had not wished to anger her. God knows it was never the way of Antonio Perez to anger lovely women — at least not in this fashion. And it was an ill return for her gentleness and attention to himself. Considering this as he sat there now, he resolved that he must make amends — the only amends it was possible to make.
An hour later, in one of the regal rooms of the castle, where he enjoyed the hospitality of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, he announced to that most faithful equerry, Gil de Mesa, his intention of riding to Chantenac to-morrow.
“Is it prudent?” quoth Mesa, frowning.
“Most imprudent,” answered Don Antonio. “That is why I go.”
And on the morrow he went, escorted by a single groom. Gil de Mesa had begged at first to be allowed to accompany him. But for Gil he had other work, of which the instructions he left were very full. The distance was short — three miles along the Gave de Pau — and Don Antonio covered it on a gently ambling mule, such as might have been bred to bear some aged dignitary of Holy Church.
The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most great lords of Bearn. Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls short. And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual complaint than any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved matters by a certain habit of gaming contracted in youth. The chateau bore abundant signs of it. It was a burnt red pile standing four-square on a little eminence, about the base of which the river went winding turbulently; it was turreted at each of its four angles, imposing in its way, but in a sad state of dilapidation and disrepair.
The interior, when Don Antonio reached it, was rather better; the furnishings, though sparse, were massive and imposing; the tapestries on the walls, if old, were rich and choice. But everywhere the ill-assorted marriage of pretentiousness and neediness was apparent. The floors of hall and living-room were strewn with fresh-cut rushes, an obsolescent custom which served here alike to save the heavy cost of carpets and to lend the place an ancient baronial dignity. Whilst pretence was made of keeping state, the servitors were all old, and insufficient in number to warrant the retention of the infirm seneschal by whom Don Antonio was ceremoniously received. A single groom, aged and without livery, took charge at once of Don Antonio’s mule, his servant’s horse, and the servant himself.
The seneschal, hobbling before him, conducted our Spaniard across the great hall, gloomy and half denuded, through the main living-room of the chateau into a smaller, more intimate apartment, holding some trace of luxury, which he announced as madame’s own room. And there he left him to await the coming of the chatelaine.
She, at least, showed none of the outward disrepair of her surroundings. She came to him sheathed in a gown of shimmering silk that was of the golden brown of autumn tints, caught to her waist by a slender girdle of hammered gold. Eyes of deepest blue pondered him questioningly, whilst red lips smiled their welcome. “So you have come in spite of all?” she greeted him. “Be very welcome to my poor house, Don Antonio.”
And regally she proffered her hand to his homage.
He took it, observing the shapely, pointed fingers, the delicately curving nails. Reluctantly, almost, he admitted to himself how complete was her beauty, how absolute her charm. He sighed — a sigh for that lost youth of his, perhaps — as he bowed from his fine, lean height to press cold lips of formal duty on that hand.
“Your will, madame, was stronger than my prudence,” said he.
“Prudence?” quoth she, and almost sneered. “Since when has Antonio Perez stooped to prudence?”
“Since paying the bitter price of imprudence. You know my story?”
“A little. I know, for instance, that you murdered Escovedo — all the world knows that. Is that the imprudence of which you speak? I have heard it said that it was for love of a woman that you did it.”
“You have heard that, too?” he said. He had paled a little. “You have heard a deal, Marquise. I wonder would it amuse you to hear more, to hear from my own lips this story of mine which all Europe garbles? Would it?”
There was a faint note of anxiety in his voice, a look faintly anxious in his eyes.
She scanned him a moment gravely, almost inscrutably. “What purpose can it serve?” she asked; and her tone was forbidding — almost a tone of fear.
“It will explain,” he insisted.
“Explain what?”
“How it comes that I am not this moment prostrate at your feet; how it happens that I am not on my knees to worship your heavenly beauty; how I have contrived to remain insensible before a loveliness that in happier times would have made me mad.”
“Vive Dieu!” she murmured, half ironical. “Perhaps that needs explaining.”
“How it became necessary,” he pursued, never heeding the interruption, “that yesterday you should proclaim your disbelief that I could be, as you said, a Spaniard of Spain. How it happens that Antonio Perez has become incapable of any emotion but hate. Will you hear the story — all of it?”
He was leaning towards her, his white face held close to her own, a smouldering fire in the dark, sunken eyes that now devoured her.
She shivered, and her own cheeks turned very pale. Her lips were faintly twisted as if in an effort to smile.
“My friend — if you insist,” she consented.
“It is the purpose for which I came,” he announced.
For a long moment each looked into the other’s eyes with a singular intentness that nothing here would seem to warrant.
At length she spoke.
“Come,” she said, “you shall tell me.”
And she waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently down to the river.
Don Antonio sank into the chair, placing his hat and whip upon the floor beside him. The Marquise faced him, occupying the padded window-seat, her back to the light, her countenance in shadow.
And here, in his own words, follows the story that he told her as she herself set it down soon after. Whilst more elaborate and intimate in parts, it yet so closely agrees throughout with his own famous “Relacion,” that I do not hesitate to accept the assurance she has left us that every word he uttered was burnt as if by an acid upon her memory.
THE STORY OF ANTONIO PEREZ
As a love-story this is, I think, the saddest that ever was invented by a romancer intent upon wringing tears from sympathetic hearts. How sad it is you will realize when I tell you that daily I thank God on my knees — for I still believe in God, despite what was alleged against me by the inquisitors of Aragon — that she who inspired this love of which I am to tell you is now in the peace of death. She died in exile at Pastrana a year ago. Anne de Mendoza was what you call in France a great parti. She came of one of the most illustrious families in Spain, and she was a great heiress. So much all the world knew. What the world forgot was that she was a woman, with a woman’s heart and mind, a woman’s natural instincts to select her mate. There are fools who envy the noble and the wealthy. They are little to be envied,
those poor pawns in the game of statecraft, moved hither and thither at the will of players who are themselves no better. The human nature of them is a negligible appendage to the names and rent-rolls that predetermine their place upon the board of worldly ambition, a board befouled by blood, by slobberings from the evil mouth of greed, and by infamy of every kind.
So, because Anne was a daughter of the House of Mendoza, because her endowments were great, they plucked her from her convent at the age of thirteen years, knowing little more of life than the merest babe, and they flung her into the arms of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, who was old enough to have been her father. But Eboli was a great man in Spain, perhaps the greatest; he was, first Minister to Philip II, and between his House and that of Mendoza an alliance was desired. To establish it that tender child was sacrificed without ruth. She discovered that life held nothing of all that her maiden dreamings had foreseen; that it was a thing of horror and greed and lovelessness and worse. For there was much worse to come.
Eboli brought his child-princess to Court. He wore her lightly as a ribbon or a glove, the insignificant appendage to the wealth and powerful alliance he had acquired with her. And at Court she came under the eye of that pious satyr Philip. The Catholic King is very devout — perfervidly devout. He prays, he fasts, he approaches the sacraments, he does penance, all in proper season as prescribed by Mother Church; he abominates sin and lack of faith — particularly in others; he has drenched Flanders in blood that he might wash it clean of the heresy of thinking differently from himself in spiritual matters, and he would have done the same by England but that God — Who cannot, after all, be quite of Philip’s way of thinking — willed otherwise. All this he has done for the greater honour and glory of his Maker, but he will not tolerate his Maker’s interference with his own minor pleasures of the flesh. He is, as you would say, a Spaniard of Spain.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 662
