THE RHETORIC PLAY
The months passed with terrible monotony for Rénèe le Meung and perhaps
for all at the Court of Brussels; the long and bitter struggle between
the grandees and the Cardinal filled the air with intrigue and
dissension; the Regent began to hesitate in her allegiance to Granvelle,
and hung miserably undecided between the two parties; Montigny had been
sent to Madrid to remonstrate with Philip, but without avail; a second
letter of protest was sent, equally fruitless; the Cardinal, serene as
always, triumphed quietly over his enemies and continued to be the
predominant influence in the Councils of Margaret; heretics continued to
be seized and slaughtered wherever the civil authorities could be
induced to support the Inquisitors, and the raging discontent of the
people was repressed with a heavy hand.
In the sumptuous household of William of Orange life went with the old
magnificence but not with the old joyousness; politically it was the
rallying-point of the grandees, who had now refused to sit in the
councils with the Cardinal, and met in William's gorgeous saloons to
discuss their plans; it was also the headquarters of the Prince's
brothers, sisters, and brothers-in-law. During the year after his
marriage, too, his German relatives visited him there, causing great
offence to the Cardinalists; but all these comings and goings, all these
intrigues, meetings, entertainments, were clouded by two things: the
growing embarrassment of the Prince's finances, and the element of
bitter discord provided by Anne of Saxony.
Whatever the festivities or excitements might be, Rénèe saw none of
them; she was for ever closeted with her mistress, who, now the Prince's
quarrel with Granvelle made her appearance at Court impossible, sulked
week after week in her rooms. She had taken a capricious liking to have
Rénèe, and Rénèe only, with her; and the waiting-woman submitted to the
slavery of her position with a curious dumb patience.
There was no distraction, no change, no interest in Anne's life. Her
first child she had lost at birth, and this had further embittered her;
her one time extravagant love for her husband, her pleasure in fine
clothes and jewels, were completely dead; she never appeared but she
created a disturbance with her temper; she refused to admit any of the
court ladies into her intimacy, and so she remained closed within her
rooms, a slattern, a shrew, a scold, and daily becoming worse; entirely
indifferent to the great events taking place at her very gates, but
keenly alive to any detail in which she might find excuse for complaint
or fury.
Rénèe wondered why she stayed; the life was almost intolerable, and she
had had two chances of escape since she came to Brussels: one of the
Regent's secretaries had asked her in marriage, and the Countess of
Egmont was willing to take her into her service.
But Rénèe had declined both, and remained in the great Nassau palace,
tending her mistress with tireless devotion and eagerly watching what
news she could of the movement of the events in which she perceived the
Prince of Orange was the leader; she was like one waiting—but for what
she did not know. It was in the winter after the grandees had dispatched
their second letter to Philip, and when affairs seemed to be reaching a
crisis in the Netherlands, that matters in the Nassau household reached
a climax of discord.
Anne had taken a whim to have the Prince's children by his first
marriage under her care, and had been fiercely angered by William's
decision to place his little girl in the household of the Regent, and to
keep the boy in Louvain. As a result of this Anne kept her room for
nearly a week; but the day came when the Prince, entertaining his
friends at one of his lavish dinners, demanded her presence as
necessary.
It was, as usual, Rénèe's task, first to persuade her mistress to
appear, and secondly to make her fit to take the head of the Prince's
table, and, as the short afternoon began to fail, Rénèe went in search
of her; she found Anne in her bedchamber hunched up against the white
porcelain stove; she was eating sweets.
Rénèe, whose natural instincts were towards the beautiful, the refined,
even the voluptuous, never came into her mistress's presence without a
sense of absolute repulsion.
Anne, though still under twenty, was now as careless in her dress and
person as any hag of ninety; increased ill-health had deadened her
always dull complexion, her eyes were swollen beneath, her mouth loose
and ragged; her colourless hair was gathered untidily in her neck, her
twisted figure further bent.
To-day she wore a bedgown of stained dark blue velvet, trodden-over
slippers, and a soiled linen cap; yet she cost the Prince more in
clothes than ever the charming and elegant Anne of Egmont had done.
Though it was not yet dark, the windows were tightly closed and
curtained, and candles flared and guttered untidily on the various
tables. The Princess had sat all day in this artificial light, and the
atmosphere of the chamber was thick and close. As Rénèe entered Anne
looked up.
"You were out yesterday," she said, breaking the utter silence she had
preserved for two days.
"Yes, Highness, it was my hour."
"Where did you go?"
"About the town, as always."
"I saw you in the Gardens with Count Louis," sneered Anne.
"I met him," replied Rénèe, unmoved. "We spoke together for, I think,
two minutes."
"Why were you so late?"
"There was a rhetoric play, Highness, and I was hindered by the crowd."
"What is a rhetoric play?"
"A morality, Highness," replied Rénèe patiently, "that the poor
oppressed heretics make to expose their wrongs and strike at their
tyrants."
"Ah, plays that make a jest of monks and nuns and all those in
authority!"
"It is a grave jest," said Rénèe. "They do it at peril of their lives."
"Are they not often apprehended?" asked Anne spitefully.
"Very often, Highness, and then they are strangled or burnt or tortured,
or hacked to death with a rusty sword, as a poor schoolmaster was the
other day for reading the Bible to his wife. And it was in her presence
they slew him, and she died of it," added Rénèe quietly.
"And they still persist?"
"Ay, they still persist," repeated Rénèe.
"I wish you would keep away from them," said the Princess. "Do you want
to involve me in this unruliness?"
Rénèe smiled.
"There is no fear of that," she replied; "and if they are bold enough to
perform, I am bold enough to be of the audience, Highness."
"Do not come to _me_, if you are taken," said Anne.
"I shall come to no one. I am not afraid to die as the others do, when
the time comes," replied Rénèe, laying out and making ready Anne's
garments for the evening.
"What do you mean by 'when the time comes'?" demanded Anne.
Rénèe very faintly blushed.
"I mean that perhaps there may be some use for me—something for me to
do." She changed the subject by adding: "And now it is time that Your
Highness made ready for the supper."
"Why should I go at his bidding?" cried Anne stormily. "Why does he ask
me to come? Merely to slight me before these others, these rebellious
Netherlanders he gathers about him. God, what a life!" Her eyes sparkled
wildly, she clasped her hands on her knees and rocked herself to and
fro. "I had better have stayed in Saxony. I was better treated there,
more taken notice of—here I am nothing in my own household! What does he
care? He spends his time with other women, I will warrant."
"His Highness spends his time in affairs, Madame, and laborious
business, and gives all his leisure to you," said Rénèe.
"Affairs, business!" sneered Anne. "What do you know of it? He will not
attend Court because of this foolish quarrel with the Cardinal; and as
for his own matters, if he attended to them he would not be in the
confusion and debt he is, with mortgages and money from the Jews. Where
does his fortune go?" she added, working herself up. "I was a
well-dowered maiden, but what I brought him was like water thrown down a
well. What have I seen of it? His idle brothers and his mincing sisters
bleed him, I will swear."
Her glance fell on the dress Rénèe had put out, and her mood changed.
"Perhaps he is hoping that I shall not come down and that he can roister
alone with his worthless friends, but I will disappoint him."
This idea seemed to give her pleasure, and she suffered two of her
tire-women to array her in a gold and scarlet brocade she was fond of, a
wide ruff of Mechlin lace, and a violet mantle with silver tissue. As
she sat with an unusual patience under the hands of the little German
girl who was crimping her hair with hot irons, she asked the reason of
all the grey camlet liveries she had observed from her window.
"I note that many of the great lords' men wear them," she added.
"Oh, Madame," said the little maid, Katrine, glad that her mistress was
so quiet, "it is because of a dinner given the other day by the Seigneur
de Groblendonck, where the talk fell on the extravagance of the
Cardinal, and the great splendour of his liveries; and it was agreed, to
spite him, that the grandees' men should all wear a plain livery, grey
camlet, as Your Highness saw it."
"A pack of fools!" said Anne. "And was there no protest?"
"They say the first device on the sleeve was changed from a Cardinal's
hat to a bundle of arrows, at the Regent's request; and she would have
stopped the liveries, but there were too many ordered and cut. It was
the Count of Egmont who thought of the design."
"He is a big fool," said Anne shrewdly. "Does he think the King will
ever forgive that? Who else was at this dinner?"
"The Seigneur Montigny and Seigneur Berghen and others, Highness."
"Silly child's jests!" cried the Princess. "Where did you hear all
this?"
"Oh, Madame, one cannot stir without hearing it; the town is full of the
talk of it. If Your Highness had not been indisposed," she added
tactfully, "you too would have heard of this dinner and the liveries."
Anne turned to Rénèe.
"Why did you not tell me of this?" she demanded. "It is much more
interesting than your rhetoric plays."
"The rhetoric play! I saw that!" cried little Katrine. "I was with
Rénèe—it was so amusing. There was a fellow with chalk on his face made
up like the Cardinal—and some one called out to arrest him; but the
people only laughed, and when one of the town guard came up there was
the Seigneur Brederode standing by the stage with his sword half out and
offering to spit anyone who touched the players. And the guard made off,
buffeted by the crowd, who cheered my Lord Brederode finely——"
"You talk too much," said Anne crossly, "and you have done my hair ill."
She rose, fiercely pushing away the combs and brushes that cumbered her
dressing-table, and limped to the door, a tragic enough figure in her
ravaged and useless youth.
It was Rénèe's duty to attend her to the dining-room, for it pleased
Anne to have a lady behind her chair as if she was an Empress, and many
and many a weary hour had the waiting-woman spent observing the sulks,
violences, and rudenesses of Anne, and the unfailing gentleness of the
Prince—a gentleness which, however, was becoming rather stern of late.
To-night Anne received her guests with passable civility. The brilliant
saloon, the splendid dresses, the music, the honour paid her, seemed to
raise her spirits; but the effect was only temporary. Half-way through
the meal she fell into sullenness; she clouted the ears of the page who
brought her napkin, and then, because he spilt some drops of water on
her gown, she screamed out for the music to cease, saying the sound of
it was tearing her head in two; she abused the cooking, then sank into
silence, emptying glass after glass of wine.
Rénèe had noticed that the Princess drank far too much of late; with the
excuse of her headaches she always had wine in her apartments, and the
quantity of this she consumed had considerably increased.
And to-night the Prince observed it for himself; for he moved his wife's
glass away, and the steward, understanding, brought no more wine to Her
Highness. Anne noticed this, and her eyes flamed with rage; she dragged
nervously at the tablecloth and pulled at her mouth. Rénèe shuddered;
she was somehow desperately desirous that Anne should not shame the
Prince.
But the waiting-woman was powerless; she could only stand there silent,
a mere unnoticed spectator. It was a brilliant company: Egmont was there
with his wife, Hoorne, Mansfeld, Montigny, Berghen, Brederode, and other
of the grandees and lesser nobles and their wives now all openly banded
against the Cardinal.
Most of the talk turned on the famous new liveries, and Egmont described
how he won the toss which was to decide the design, and how eagerly his
livery had been accepted.
At this point Anne lifted her smouldering eyes and turned to her
husband.
"Will our men appear in this beggarly camlet?" she asked, and her tone
was a direct insult to Egmont and his fellows.
"Why not?" smiled William. "It will be an easy means of economy, _ma
mie_."
"Economy!" repeated Anne scornfully. "That is a strange point on which
to begin economy; and is it not rather late, too, now when your affairs
stand almost past helping?"
"Her Highness speaks like a Cardinalist," smiled the Countess of Egmont,
in the hope of distracting Anne from her temper. "Yet she must have
little love for the persecutor of the Protestants."
Anne leant forward, put her arm on the table, and stared rudely at the
Countess across the gold and silver, china and porcelain of her own
luxurious table.
"I did not come to Brussels, Madame," she said, "to bicker with the
Cardinal and flout His Majesty, nay, nor to live cooped away like a sick
pigeon within four walls——"
"Anne!" said the Prince, turning in his chair. "Hush, Anne."
The Princess faced him with sudden frenzy.
"I may speak at my own table! I may say what I wish! Do you think that I
am Griselda in the silly tale to suck my thumb patiently while you do
what you please! By the living God, I would that I was back in Saxony!
But little you care——"
"Anne!" cried William. "Oh, Anne!"
"'Anne, Anne,'" she mocked him. "How long is Anne to endure it?"
The Countess of Egmont rose in her place and beckoned to Rénèe.
"Her Highness is ill," she said quickly. "It is a shame to expose her."
The Prince caught at the words.
"Yes, you are ill—let them see you to your chamber."
"I am not ill!" cried Anne, with a look of hate at the Countess, "but
heart-sick with the treatment I get."
She rose too, glittering in her brocades and dragging the cloth awry.
"So I am to be sent from my own table," her railing continued. She
swayed on her feet and burst into hysteric tears; the Prince caught her
arm; she turned and struck him feebly with her other hand.
Count Louis rose and clapped his hands, and the musicians began to play,
while Rénèe and the Prince led Anne from the dining-hall.
As they reached her room the little German girl came running to meet
them with a frightened face.
"What is the matter with her?" demanded William sternly, as the sobbing,
protesting Princess collapsed, a shaken heap, on a chair.
"She is ill," said Rénèe. She could not bear to look at him, so pale he
was, so suddenly grave and sad, all look of youth gone from him. Rénèe
felt personally shamed.
"A strange illness," he replied. "I can but hope that she will improve
as she becomes older."
He was turning away when Katrine broke out—
"Your Highness—it is the wine. To-night when I was arranging the room I
found these,"—she pointed to a dismal row of empty flasks on a side
table,—"and the steward told me he brought them to Madame—and pounds of
sugar. It is the wine which makes Her Highness ill."
Rénèe shuddered at the girl's boldness in thus unveiling what the
waiting-woman had concealed even from herself; but perhaps, she thought
desperately, it was as well that the Prince should know.
"Is that it?" exclaimed the Prince; he flushed, and his voice was full
of an extraordinary bitterness. He turned and looked at the intoxicated
girl in her disarrayed splendour and her imbecile tears. Rénèe knew as
well as if he spoke that he was thinking how dear he had paid for this
wedding, which he had so long striven for, and so triumphantly achieved.
Anne struggled up, supporting herself on the arm of the chair.
"I wish you had left me in Saxony," she sobbed foolishly. "What life is
this for me?"
"It is not over-sweet for me, Madame," replied the Prince. "But do not
think that you can trouble me further. I now know your worth, and can
dismiss you from my mind."
She was frightened, half-sobered, for never before had he spoken so
coldly to her, and the finality of his tone struck even her dazed brain,
and she dimly realized that she had lost him.
"This comes of all these miserable quarrels," she muttered
confusedly—"your livery—your rhetoric play——"
"There is no need for a rhetoric play wherewith to mock me," interrupted
William. "Your Highness plays a sorrier morality here than any mouthed
in the streets."
He left her; he went back to his guests. Rénèe and Katrine, helped by
another frightened woman, got the Princess to bed.
They then sat down, drearily enough, to their supper, and conversed in
whispers of Egmont's livery, their mistress, the rhetoric play, and the
things, big and small, which went to make their life.