VALENTINE LA NINA
The girl stood smiling upon the young man, a spray of the great scarlet
blossom of the pomegranate freshly plucked and held easily in her hand.
She had broken it from the tree in the courtyard as she came in. The
flowers showed like handfuls of blood splashed upon the bosom and neck
of her white clinging robe.
"You are very beautiful," said the Abbe John, his voice no more than a
hoarse gasp; "what are you doing here in this place? Tell me your name.
I seem to have seen you long ago, in dreams. But I have forgotten--I
forget everything!"
Then, without taking her eyes, mystically amber and gold, softly
caressing as the sea and as changeful, from the young man's face, she
beckoned him forward.
"We shall speak more at ease in another place," she said. And held out
her hand to him, carelessly, palm downwards, as if he had been her
brother, and they were playing some lightheart game, or taking positions
for an old-time dance of woven hands and measured paces.
Valentine la Nina led John d'Albret into a summer parlour, equally
secure from escape, being surrounded by the high fortress walls of the
Hotel of the Inquisition, but full of rich twilight, of flowers, of
broidery, and of faint wafted perfumes from forgotten shawl or dropped
kerchief, which told of a woman's abiding there.
"Now," said Valentine la Nina, throwing herself back luxuriously on a
wide divan of Seville, her hands clasped behind her head, "tell me all
there is to tell--keep back nothing. Then we will take counsel what is
best to be done! I have not forgotten, if you have!"
And John d'Albret, exhausted by the ceaseless searching of the Eyes into
his soul, and the need of the dark which would not come, told her all.
To which Valentine la Nina listened, and saw the fear fade out and the
reasonable man return. But as John d'Albret spoke, something moved
strangely in the depths of her own heart. Her face flushed; her temples
throbbed; her hands grew chill.
"And you have done this for the sake of a woman--of a girl?" she said.
"For Claire Agnew's sake," the Abbe John answered, still uncertainly;
"so would any one--any one who loved her!"
Valentine la Nina smiled, stirring uneasily on her divan, and as she
smiled she sighed also, leaning forward, her great eyes on the youth.
"Any one?" she repeated, "any one who loved her! Aye, it may be so. She
is a happy girl. I have found none such. I am fair--I should be loved.
Yet I have only served and served and served all my life--ah!"
Suddenly, with a quick under-sob and an outward drive of the palm, as if
to thrust away some hateful thing, she rose to her feet and caught John
d'Albret by the wrist. So lithe was her body that it seemed one single
gesture.
"If I had met you before she did," she whispered fiercely, "would you
have loved me like that? Answer me! Answer me! I command you! It is life
or death, I tell you!"
But the Abbe John, not yet himself, could only stare at her blindly. The
girl's eyes, large and mystic, held him in that dim place, and some of
his pain returned. He covered his face with both hands.
She shook him fiercely.
"Look at me--you are a man," she cried, "say--am I not beautiful? You
have said it already. If you had not met this Huguenot--this daughter of
Geneva, would you have loved me--not as men, ordinary men love, but as
you have loved, with a love strong enough to brave prison, torture, and
death for me--for me?"
The Abbe John, too greatly astonished to answer in words, gazed at the
strange girl. Suddenly the anger dropped, the fierce curves faded from
the lips that had been so haughty. Her eyes were soft and moist with
unshed tears.
Valentine la Nina was pleading with him.
"Say it," she said, "oh, even if it be not true--say it! It would be
such a good lie. It would comfort a torn heart, made ever to do the
thing it hates. If I had been a fisher-girl spreading nets on the sands,
a shepherdess on the hills, some brown sailor-lad or a bearded shepherd
would have loved me for myself. Children would have played about my
door. Like other women, I would have had the sweet bitterness of life on
my lips. I would have sorrowed as others, rejoiced as others. And, when
all was done, turned my face to the wall and died as others, my children
about me, my man's hand in mine. But now--now--I am only poor Valentine
la Nina, the tool of the League, the plaything of politics, the lure of
the Jesuits, a thing to be used when bright, thrown away when rusted,
but loved--never! No, not even by those who use me, and, in using, kill
me!"
And the Abbe John, moved at sight of the pain, answered as best he
might.
"A man can only love as the love comes to him," he murmured. "What might
have been, I do not know. I have thought I loved many, but I never knew
that I loved till I saw little Claire Agnew."
"But if you had not--tell me," she sobbed; "I will be content, if you
will only tell me."
"I do not know," said John d'Albret, driven into a corner; "perhaps I
might--if I had seen you first."
To the young man it seemed an easy thing to say--a necessary thing,
indeed. For, coming fresh from the fear and the place of torment, he was
glad to say anything not to be sent thither again.
"But say it," she cried, coming nearer and clasping his arm hard, "say
it all--not that you might, but that you would--with the same love that
goes easily to death, that I--I--I might escape. Oh, for me, I would go
to a thousand deaths if only I knew--surely--surely, that one man in the
world would do as much for me!"
But the Abbe John had reached his limit. Not even to escape the Place of
the Eyes could he deny his love, or affirm that he could ever have loved
to the death any but his little Claire.
"I saw her, and I loved!" he said simply--"that is all I know. Had I
seen you, I might have loved--that also I do not know. More I cannot
say. But be assured that, if I had loved you, not knowing the other, I
should have counted, for your sake, my poor life but as a leaf,
wind-blown, a petal fallen in the way."
Valentine la Nina nervously crumpled the glorious red and fleshy
blossoms of the pomegranate clusters in her fingers, till they fell in
blood-drops on the floor.
"You are noble," she said; "I knew it when I saw you at Collioure on the
hillside--more, a prince in your own land, near to the throne even. So
am I--and Philip the King himself would not deny me. He is your
country's enemy. Yet at my request he would stay his hand. He must fight
the English. He must subdue the Low Countries. That is his oath. But if
you will--if you will--he would aid the Bearnais, or better still, you
yourself to a throne, and give me--who can say what?--perhaps this very
Roussillon for a dower. For I am close of kin to the King. He would
acknowledge me as such. I have vowed a vow, but now it is almost paid;
and if it were not I would go to the Pope himself, though I walked every
step of the road to Rome!"
"I cannot--I cannot----" cried John d'Albret. "Thank God, I am not of
the first-born of kings, whose hands are put up to the highest bidder.
Where I have loved, there will I wed or not at all!"
"Ah, cruel!" cried Valentine la Nina, stamping her foot--"cruel, not
only to me, but to her whom you say you love. Think you she will be safe
from the Society, from the Holy Office in France? There is no rack or
torture perhaps, no Place of Eyes. But was Henry of Valois safe, who
slew the Duke of Guise? From whose bosom came forth Jacques Clement? My
uncle put the knife in his hand and blessed him ere he went. For me he
would do more. Think--this Claire of yours is condemned already. She is
young. By your own telling she has many lovers. She will be happy. I
know the heart of such maids. Besides, she has never promised you
anything--never humbled herself to you as I--I, Valentine la Nina, who
till now have been the proudest maid in Spain!"
"I am not worthy," cried the Abbe John. "I cannot; I dare not; I will
not!"
"Ah," said Valentine la Nina, with a long rising inflection, and drawing
herself back from him, "I have found it ever so with you heretics. You
are willing to die--to suffer. Because then you would wear the martyr's
crown, and have your name commemorated--in books, on tablets, and be
lauded by the outcasts of Geneva. But for your own living folk you will
do nothing. With all Roussillon, from Salses to the Pyrenees, for my
dowry (Philip would be glad to be rid of it--and perhaps also of me--my
friends of the Society are too strong for him), there would be an end to
this prisoning and burning and torturing through the land. Teruel and
Frey Tullio we would send to their own place. By a word you could save
thousands. Yet you will not. You think only of one chit of a girl, who
laughs at you, who cares not the snap of her finger for you!"
She stopped, panting with her own vehemence.
"Likely enough," said the Abbe John, "the more is the pity. But that
cannot change my heart."
"Was her love for you like mine?" she cried; "did she love you from the
first moment she saw you? NO! Has she done for you what I have
done--risked my all--my uncle's anger--the Society's--that of the Holy
Office even? No!--No!--_No!_ She has done none of these things. She has
only graciously permitted you to serve her on your knees--she, the
daughter of a spy, a common go-between of your Huguenot and heretic
princes! Shame on you, Jean d'Albret of Bourbon, you, a cousin of the
King of France, thus to give yourself up to fanatics and haters of
religion."
But by this time the Abbe John was completely master of himself. He
could carry forward the interview much more successfully on these lines.
"I am no Huguenot," he said calmly, "more is the pity, indeed. I have no
claim to be zealous for any religion. I have fought on the Barricades of
Paris for the Guise, because I was but an idle fellow and there was much
excitement and shouting. I have fought for the Bearnais, not because he
is a Huguenot, but because he is my good cousin and a brave
soldier--none like him."
Valentine la Nina waved her hand in contempt.
"None like him!" she exclaimed. "Have you never heard of my cousin
Alexander of Parma? To him your Bearnais is no better than a ruffler, a
banditti captain, a guerilla chief. If you must fight, why, we will go
to him. It is a service worth a thousand of the other. Then you will
learn the art of war indeed----"
"Aye, against my countrymen," said John d'Albret, with firmness. Bit by
bit his courage was coming back to him. "I am but a poor idlish fellow,
who have taken little thought of religion, Huguenot or Catholic. Once I
had thought she would teach me, if life had been given me, and--and if
she had been willing. But now I must take what Fate sends, and trust
that if I die untimeously, the Judge I shall chance to meet may prove
less stern than He of the Genevan's creed, and less cruel than the God
of Dom Teruel and the Holy Inquisition!"
"Then you refuse?" She uttered the words in a low strained voice. "You
refuse what I have offered? But I shall put it once more--honourable
wedlock with an honourable maiden, of a house as good as your own, a
province for your dower, the most Catholic King for sponsor of your
vows, noble service, and it like you, with the greatest captain of the
age, the safety of all your kin, free speech, free worship, the entrance
of these thousands of French folk into France. Ah, and love--love such
as the pale daughters of the north never dreamt of----"
She took a step towards him, her clasped hands pleading for her, her
lips quivering, her head thrown back so far that the golden comb
slipped, and a heavy drift of hair, the colour of ripe oats, fell in
waves far below her shoulders.
"Do not let the chance go by," she said, "because you think you do not
love me now. That will come in time. I know it will come. I would love
you so that it could not help but come!"
"I cannot--ah, I cannot!" said John d'Albret, his eyes on the floor, so
that he might not see the pain he could not cure.
The girl drew herself up, clenched her hands, and with a hissing indraw
of the breath, she cried, "You cannot--you mean you will not, because
you love--the other--the spy's daughter--of whom I will presently make
an end, as a child kills a fly on a window-pane--for my pleasure!"
"No," said John d'Albret clearly, lifting his head and looking into the
angry eyes, flashing murkily as the sunlight flashes in the deep water
at a harbour mouth or in some estuary--"no, I will not do any of the
things you ask of me. And the reason is, as you have said, because I
love Claire Agnew until I die. I know not at all whether she loves me or
not. And to me that makes no matter----"
"No, you say right," cried Valentine la Nina, "it will indeed make no
difference. For by these words--they are printed on my heart--you have
condemned her; the spy's daughter to the knife, and yourself----"
"To the fires of the Inquisition?" demanded the Abbe John. "I am ready!"
"Nay, not so fast," said Valentine la Nina, "that were far too easy a
death--too quick. You shall go to the galleys among the lowest
criminals, your feet in the rotting wash of the bilge, lingering out a
slow death-in-life--slow--very slow, the lash on your back and--no,
no--I cannot believe this is your answer. Here, here is yet one chance.
Surely I have not humbled myself only for this?"
The Abbe John answered nothing, and after a pause the girl drew herself
up to her height, and spoke to him through her clenched teeth.
"You shall go to the galleys and pray--ah, you say you have never
learned to pray, but you will--you will on Philip's galleys. They make
good theologians there; they practise. You will pray in vain for the
death that will not come. And I, when I wake in the night, will turn me
and sleep the sweeter on my pillow for the thought of you chained to
your oar, which you will never quit alive. Ah, I will teach you, Jean
d'Albret of the house of Bourbon, cousin of kings, what it is to love
the spy's daughter, and to despise me--me--Valentine la Nina, a daughter
of the King of Spain!"