escorted the Prince to Bordeaux and had a hundred matters on his mind,
left the chamber.
Jehanne sat silent, forgotten, unnoticed, beside the Prince, who, with
his head sunk on his breast, was dreaming of the life that was past and
the life he had hoped to live.
Presently candles were brought in, but he made no movement nor did the
Princess, stiff and cold on her stool.
The wind, with a gentle persistence, shook the tall window-frame and
lifted the arras on the wall; clouds were coming up from beyond the sea
and blotting the tawny crimson streaks of the sunset.
Dark settled in the chamber and the candles winked, little points of
light in a great gloom.
Pleasant, cheerful noises of horses and men came from the courtyard
where the lading and unlading was proceeding; the sounds of the mules
and their drivers could be heard as a long procession of them laden
with baggage started for the ships.
At last the Prince spoke.
“This is a homeward wind,” he said.
As he raised his head to speak he saw the door open and the Spanish
doctor enter.
Jehanne turned, and, fearful of bad news, put her finger to her lips.
But Edward got to his feet, caught her aside, and said in the voice of
a strong man–
“What news of my son?”
The doctor answered steadily, without fear or hesitancy.
“The Prince is worse, Seigneur, and it were well that you should come.”
Edward of Wales bowed his head and followed the doctor into the next
apartment.
The candles were lit and the curtains drawn; a smell of herbs, of wax,
of incense, was heavy in the air. A priest was kneeling at the foot of
the bed; the full Latin words of his whispered prayer came clearly to
the Prince’s ears.
The little Edward lay on his back with his head flung upwards.
An awful change had come over him since last his father had looked
on him; an expression of pain had also given him an expression of
maturity, the unnatural flush had faded, leaving him bluish-white,
while under his bright eyes was a purple stain.
The Prince staggered to the bed.
“Limoges, Limoges,” he muttered.
He cast himself on his knees and clutched the coverlet.
“Dear Lord Jesus, what is this coming to me!” he whispered.
Another doctor moved about; Jehanne stopped and spoke to him. He could
tell her nothing save that, despite all the most approved remedies, the
Prince had within the last hour become rapidly worse and finally lost
consciousness.
Jehanne turned desperately to the great bed where her child lay,
breathing heavily, with glazed fixed eyes and dry lips.
“Is it the plague?” she asked.
They could not tell her.
“Oh, dear, dear Lord and St. George,” prayed the Prince, “put not this
loss on England; punish me not this way!”
The child turned on his side and muttered a few words, all relating to
arms and horses and war; his eyes closed jerkily and then fluttered
open.
Johan of Lancaster entered; he whispered to the doctors, then came
lightly to the bed, walking as softly as a woman for all his great
stature and bulk.
He glanced at the child, he glanced at his brother, then touched the
kneeling priest on the shoulder.
“He will not die,” said the Prince; “in a little while he will wake and
be well again.”
The priest rose and left the room.
A long swell of wind lifted the Eastern tapestry on the floor,
fluttered the long curtains and stirred the aromatic scents and the
clouds of incense that hung in the air.
Jehanne of Kent stood rigid, staring down at the pillow; her yellow
hair had slipped and hung loose in the silver caul.
And her face showed hollow in the fluttering candlelight.
The little Prince turned from side to side, catching his breath in his
throat.
“Seigneur …” he gasped, “let me … mount the white horse … the great
horse.…”
He began to cough, and his small fingers pulled at the pillow; he
stared straight at his father.
“He does not see me,” whispered Edward; “he is blind.”
“Why do you leave me alone?” complained the child; “but I … am … not …
afraid–never … afraid.”
The Prince caught his arm passionately, then turned in a slow horror,
for he saw Jehanne and his brother sink to their knees. He looked over
his shoulder.
In the doorway stood three priests; the centre one held with upraised
hands an object swathed in white silk.
The Host.
“_In nomine patris, filiis, et spiritus sanctus_,” he said, and drew
aside the white silk, revealing the Eucharist glittering like a
captured star.
“No,” began Edward, “no—”
He turned again to the bed; a light struggle shook the child’s limbs.
He twisted his arm out of his father’s grasp and pressed his two hands
together, pointed heavenwards.
“Saint–George—” he breathed very faintly, then “England.”
His hands fell apart and his mouth dropped into a circle; a faint
quiver ran through his body, and his head sank on to his shoulder.
The Host was borne round the bed, and no one moved.
Then Edward rose, regardless of the Presence of God.
“Too late,” he said in a terrible voice. “My son, my son!”
And before the priest carrying the Eucharist the victor of Cressy sank
like a felled sapling, and Jehanne caught his head on her knee, her
heart motionless in her bosom.
So died the youngest of the three royal Edwards of England, a few days
before the sailing from Bordeaux, and soon after the other two were
both at peace in Westminster and Richard was on the throne with Johan
of Gaunt for his guardian and many troubles ahead.
TWILIGHT
LUCREZIA BORGIA, DUCHESS D’ESTE
Three women stood before a marble-margined pool in the grounds of the
Ducal palace at Ferrara; behind them three cypresses waved against a
purple sky from which the sun was beginning to fade; at the base of
these trees grew laurel, ilex, and rose bushes. Round the pool was a
sweep of smooth green across which the light wind lifted and chased the
red, white and pink rose leaves.
Beyond the pool the gardens descended, terrace on terrace of opulent
trees and flowers; behind the pool the square strength of the palace
rose, with winding steps leading to balustraded balconies. Further
still, beyond palace and garden, hung vineyard and cornfield in the
last warm maze of heat.
All was spacious, noble, silent; ambrosial scents rose from the heated
earth–the scent of pine, lily, rose and grape.
The centre woman of the three who stood by the pool was the Spanish
Duchess, Lucrezia, daughter of the Borgia Pope. The other two held her
up under the arms, for her limbs were weak beneath her.
The pool was spread with the thick-veined leaves of water-lilies and
upright plants with succulent stalks broke the surface of the water. In
between the sky was reflected placidly, and the Duchess looked down at
the counterfeit of her face as clearly given as if in a hand-mirror.
It was no longer a young face; beauty was painted on it skilfully;
false red, false white, bleached hair cunningly dyed, faded eyes
darkened on brow and lash, lips glistening with red ointment, the lost
loveliness of throat and shoulders concealed under a lace of gold and
pearls, made her look like a portrait of a fair woman, painted crudely.
And, also like one composed for her picture, her face was
expressionless save for a certain air of gentleness, which seemed as
false as everything else about her–false and exquisite, inscrutable
and alluring–alluring still with a certain sickly and tainted charm,
slightly revolting as were the perfumes of her unguents when compared
to the pure scents of trees and flowers. Her women had painted faces,
too, but they were plainly gowned, one in violet, one in crimson, while
the Duchess blazed in every device of splendour.
Her dress, of citron-coloured velvet, trailed about her in huge folds,
her bodice and her enormous sleeves sparkled with tight-sewn jewels;
her hair was twisted into plaits and curls and ringlets; in her ears
were pearls so large that they touched her shoulders.
She trembled in her splendour and her knees bent; the two women stood
silent, holding her up–they were little more than slaves.
She continued to gaze at the reflection of herself; in the water she
was fair enough. Presently she moistened her painted lips with a quick
movement of her tongue.
“Will you go in, Madonna?” asked one of the women.
The Duchess shook her head; the pearls tinkled among the dyed curls.
“Leave me here,” she said.
She drew herself from their support and sank heavily and wearily on the
marble rim of the pool.
“Bring me my cloak.”
They fetched it from a seat among the laurels; it was white velvet,
unwieldy with silver and crimson embroidery.
Lucrezia drew it round her shoulders with a little shudder.
“Leave me here,” she repeated.
They moved obediently across the soft grass and disappeared up the
laurel-shaded steps that led to the terraces before the high-built
palace.
The Duchess lifted her stiff fingers, that were rendered almost useless
by the load of gems on them, to her breast.
Trails of pink vapour, mere wraiths of clouds began to float about the
west; the long Italian twilight had fallen.
A young man parted the bushes and stepped on to the grass; he carried
a lute slung by a red ribbon across his violet jacket; he moved
delicately, as if reverent of the great beauty of the hour.
Lucrezia turned her head and watched him with weary eyes.
He came lightly nearer, not seeing her. A flock of homing doves passed
over his head; he swung on his heel to look at them and the reluctantly
departing sunshine was golden on his upturned face.
Lucrezia still watched him, intently, narrowly; he came nearer again,
saw her, and paused in confusion, pulling off his black velvet cap.
“Come here,” she said in a chill, hoarse voice.
He obeyed with an exquisite swiftness and fell on one knee before her;
his dropped hand touched the ground a pace beyond the furthest-flung
edge of her gown.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Ormfredo Orsini, one of the Duke’s gentlemen, Madonna,” he answered.
He looked at her frankly surprised to see her alone in the garden at
the turn of the day. He was used to see her surrounded by her poets,
her courtiers, her women; she was the goddess of a cultured court and
persistently worshipped.
“One of the Orsini,” she said. “Get up from your knees.”
He thought she was thinking of her degraded lineage, of the bad, bad
blood in her veins. As he rose he considered these things for the first
time. She had lived decorously at Ferrara for twenty-one years, nearly
the whole of his lifetime; but he had heard tales, though he had never
dwelt on them.
“You look as if you were afraid of me—”
“Afraid of you–I, Madonna?”
“Sit down,” she said.
He seated himself on the marble rim and stared at her; his fresh face
wore a puzzled expression.
“What do you want of me, Madonna?” he asked.
“Ahè!” she cried. “How very young you are, Orsini!”
Her eyes flickered over him impatiently, greedily; the twilight was
beginning to fall over her, a merciful veil; but he saw her for the
first time as an old woman. Slightly he drew back, and his lute touched
the marble rim as he moved, and the strings jangled.
“When I was your age,” she said, “I had been betrothed to one man and
married to another, and soon I was wedded to a third. I have forgotten
all of them.”
“You have been so long our lady here,” he answered. “You may well have
forgotten the world, Madonna, beyond Ferrara.”
“You are a Roman?”
“Yes, Madonna.”
She put out her right hand and clasped his arm.
“Oh, for an hour of Rome!–in the old days!”
Her whole face, with its artificial beauty and undisguisable look
of age, was close to his; he felt the sense of her as the sense of
something evil.
She was no longer the honoured Duchess of Ferrara, but Lucrezia, the
Borgia’s lure, Cesare’s sister, Alessandro’s daughter, the heroine of a
thousand orgies, the inspiration of a hundred crimes.
The force with which this feeling came over him made him shiver; he
shrank beneath her hand.
“Have you heard things of me?” she asked in a piercing voice.
“There is no one in Italy who has not heard of you, Madonna.”
“That is no answer, Orsini. And I do not want your barren flatteries.”
“You are the Duke’s wife,” he said, “and I am the servant of the Duke.”
“Does that mean that you must lie to me?”
She leant even nearer to him; her whitened chin, circled by the stiff
goldwork of her collar, touched his shoulder.
“Tell me I am beautiful,” she said. “I must hear that once more–from
young lips.”
“You are beautiful, Madonna.”
She moved back and her eyes flared.
“Did I not say I would not have your flatteries?”
“What, then, was your meaning?”
“Ten years ago you would not have asked; no man would have asked. I am
old. Lucrezia old!–ah, Gods above!”
“You are beautiful,” he repeated. “But how should I dare to touch you
with my mouth?”
“You would have dared, if you had thought me desirable,” she answered
hoarsely. “You cannot guess how beautiful I was–before you were born,
Orsini.”
He felt a sudden pity for her; the glamour of her fame clung round her
and gilded her. Was not this a woman who had been the fairest in Italy
seated beside him?
He raised her hand and kissed the palm, the only part that was not
hidden with jewels.
“You are sorry for me,” she said.
Orsini started at her quick reading of his thoughts.
“I am the last of my family,” she added. “And sick. Did you know that I
was sick, Orsini?”
“Nay, Madonna.”
“For weeks I have been sick. And wearying for Rome.”
“Rome,” he ventured, “is different now, Madonna.”
“Ahè!” she wailed. “And I am different also.”
Her hand lay on his knee; he looked at it and wondered if the things
he had heard of her were true. She had been the beloved child of her
father, the old Pope, rotten with bitter wickedness; she had been
the friend of her brother, the dreadful Cesare–her other brother,
Francesco, and her second husband–was it not supposed that she knew how
both had died?
But for twenty-one years she had lived in Ferrara, patroness of poet
and painter, companion of such as the courteous gentle Venetian, Pietro
Bembo.
And Alfonso d’Este, her husband, had found no fault with her; as far as
the world could see, there had been no fault to find.
Ormfredo Orsini stared at the hand sparkling on his knee and wondered.
“Suppose that I was to make you my father confessor?” she said. The
white mantle had fallen apart and the bosom of her gown glittered, even
in the twilight.
“What sins have you to confess, Madonna?” he questioned.
She peered at him sideways.
“A Pope’s daughter should not be afraid of the Judgment of God,” she
answered. “And I am not. I shall relate my sins at the bar of Heaven
and say I have repented–Ahè–if I was young again!”
“Your Highness has enjoyed the world,” said Orsini.
“Yea, the sun,” she replied, “but not the twilight.”
“The twilight?”
“It has been twilight now for many years,” she said, “ever since I came
to Ferrara.”
The moon was rising behind the cypress trees, a slip of glowing light.
Lucrezia took her chin in her hand and stared before her; a soft breeze
stirred the tall reeds in the pool behind her and gently ruffled the
surface of the water.
The breath of the night-smelling flowers pierced the slumbrous air; the
palace showed a faint shape, a marvellous tint; remote it looked and
uncertain in outline.
Lucrezia was motionless; her garments were dim, yet glittering, her
face a blur; she seemed the ruin of beauty and graciousness, a fair
thing dropped suddenly into decay.
Orsini rose and stepped away from her; the perfume of her unguents
offended him. He found something horrible in the memory of former
allurement that clung to her; ghosts seemed to crowd round her and
pluck at her, like fierce birds at carrion.
He caught the glitter of her eyes through the dusk; she was surely
evil, bad to the inmost core of her heart; her stale beauty reeked of
dead abomination.… Why had he never noticed it before?
The ready wit of his rank and blood failed him; he turned away towards
the cypress trees.
The Duchess made no attempt to detain him; she did not move from her
crouching, watchful attitude.
When he reached the belt of laurels he looked back and saw her dark
shape still against the waters of the pool that were beginning to be
touched with the argent glimmer of the rising moon. He hurried on,
continually catching the strings of his lute against the boughs of the
flowering shrubs; he tried to laugh at himself for being afraid of an
old, sick woman; he tried to ridicule himself for believing that the
admired Duchess, for so long a decorous great lady, could in truth be a
creature of evil.
But the conviction flashed into his heart was too deep to be uprooted.
She had not spoken to him like a Duchess of Ferrara, but rather as the
wanton Spaniard whose excesses had bewildered and sickened Rome.
A notable misgiving was upon him; he had heard great men praise her,
Ludovico Ariosto, Cardinal Ippolito’s secretary and the noble Venetian
Bembo; he had himself admired her remote and refined splendour. Yet,
because of these few moments of close talk with her, because of a
near gaze into her face, he felt that she was something horrible, the
poisoned offshoot of a bad race.
He thought that there was death on her glistening painted lips, and
that if he had kissed them he would have died, as so many of her lovers
were reputed to have died.
He parted the cool leaves and blossoms and came on to the borders of a
lake that lay placid under the darkling sky.
It was very lonely; bats twinkled past with a black flap of wings; the
moon had burnt the heavens clear of stars; her pure light began to fill
the dusk. Orsini moved softly, with no comfort in his heart.
The stillness was intense; he could hear his own footfall, the soft
leather on the soft grass. He looked up and down the silence of the
lake.
Then suddenly he glanced over his shoulder. Lucrezia Borgia was
standing close behind him; when he turned her face looked straight into
his.
He moaned with terror and stood rigid; awful it seemed to him that she
should track him so stealthily and be so near to him in this silence
and he never know of her presence.
“Eh, Madonna!” he said.
“Eh, Orsini,” she answered in a thin voice, and at the sound of it he
stepped away, till his foot was almost in the lake.
His unwarrantable horror of her increased, as he found that the glowing
twilight had confused him; for, whereas at first he had thought she was
the same as when he had left her seated by the pool, royal in dress and
bearing, he saw now that she was leaning on a stick, that her figure
had fallen together, that her face was yellow as a church candle, and
that her head was bound with plasters, from the under edge of which her
eyes twinkled, small and lurid.
She wore a loose gown of scarlet brocade that hung open on her arms
that showed lean and dry; the round bones at her wrist gleamed white
under the tight skin, and she wore no rings.
“Madonna, you are ill,” muttered Ormfredo Orsini. He wondered how long
he had been wandering in the garden.
“Very ill,” she said. “But talk to me of Rome. You are the only Roman
at the Court, Orsini.”
“Madonna, I know nothing of Rome,” he answered, “save our palace there
and sundry streets—”
She raised one hand from the stick and clutched his arm.
“Will you hear me confess?” she asked. “All my beautiful sins that I
cannot tell the priest? All we did in those days of youth before this
dimness at Ferrara?”
“Confess to God,” he answered, trembling violently.
Lucrezia drew nearer.
“All the secrets Cesare taught me,” she whispered. “Shall I make you
heir to them?”
“Christ save me,” he said, “from the Duke of Valentinois’ secrets!”
“Who taught you to fear my family?” she questioned with a cunning
accent. “Will you hear how the Pope feasted with his Hebes and
Ganymedes? Will you hear how we lived in the Vatican?”
Orsini tried to shake her arm off; anger rose to equal his fear.
“Weed without root or flower, fruitless uselessness!” he said hoarsely.
“Let me free of your spells!”
She loosed his arm and seemed to recede from him without movement;
the plasters round her head showed ghastly white, and he saw all the
wrinkles round her drooped lips and the bleached ugliness of her bare
throat.
“Will you not hear of Rome?” she insisted in a wailing whisper. He fled
from her, crashing through the bushes.
Swiftly and desperately he ran across the lawns and groves, up the
winding steps to the terraces before the palace, beating the twilight
with his outstretched hands as if it was an obstacle in his way.
Stumbling and breathless, he gained the painted corridors that were lit
with a hasty blaze of wax light. Women were running to and fro, and he
saw a priest carrying the Holy Eucharist cross a distant door.
One of these women he stopped.
“The Duchess—” he began, panting.
She laid her finger on her lip.
“They carried her in from the garden an hour ago; they bled and
plastered her, but she died–before she could swallow the wafer–(hush!
she was not thinking of holy things, Orsini!)–ten minutes ago—”
THE CAMP OUTSIDE NAMUR
DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA
“Sa Majesté ne résout rien; du moins, on me tient ignorant de
ses intentions. Je pousse des cris, mais en vain. Il est clair
qu’on nous laisse ici pour y languir jusqu’à notre dernier
soupir.”
_Don Juan to Mendoza_, _September 16th, 1578_,
from “The Camp” outside Namur.
“Nos vies sont en jeu et tout que nous demandons, c’est de les
perdre avec honneur.”
_Don Juan to Philip II._, _September 20th, 1578_,
from “The Camp” outside Namur.
The Imperial Army, composed of Germans, Walloons and Spanish regiments,
was encamped outside Namur, at the juncture of the Sambre and Meuse,
where Charles V. had been entrenched when pressed by the forces of
Henri II.
The Commander of the Army was the son of Charles V., Don Juan of
Austria, the hero of Christendom armed against the infidel, the victor
of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, blessed by the Pope, a brilliant
name in Europe, half-brother of the great King Philip and son of a
servant girl, near the throne, of the blood royal, but barred for ever
from it, a prince yet linked with peasants; he had blazed very brightly
over Europe, the King had flattered him, had caressed him and used him.
By the King’s favour he had swept over Italy, Sicily, Africa, a
conqueror, almost within touch of a throne; by the King’s favour he had
been sent to crush the rebel heretics who were rising against the might
of Spain in the Low Countries.
And now the King was silent; it seemed as if he meant to abandon Don
Juan. Antonio Perez was always at the King’s ear, and he hated Don
Juan; Escovedo, the Prince’s Secretary and favourite, was assassinated
in the streets of Madrid by order of Perez.
When Don Juan heard this news he thought that there was no better end
preparing for him and that Perez meant his ruin; the King did not
answer his letters, and his glory broke like a bubble.
He had been too great, too beloved, too popular; Philip tolerated no
rivals.
And now he began to be unfortunate; the Prince William of Orange, one
time page to Don Juan’s father and now the Captain of Heretics, marched
against him with a powerful army; the Duc D’Anjou joined the cause of
the rebels, and the Queen of England, Elizabeth Tudor, at last decided
to send succours to the rebellious provinces.
The forces met; the day of Rynemants was almost a defeat for Don Juan.
A haunted, hunted feeling began to possess him; in the brilliant south
everything had been right with him; here, in the cursed Low Countries,
every step he took seemed a step nearer his grave.
The death of Escovedo weighed on him day and night.
And the King would not write.
Don Juan began to fear and hate his second-in-command, the Prince of
Parma, Alessandro Farnese, a man of his own age, but his nephew, for
Farnese’s mother was Margaret, daughter of Charles V.
This man was in the confidence of the King; Don Juan knew and feared
that fact. He began to dread the sight of the dark Italian face; the
figure of Farnese seemed to him like that of a spy–or executioner.
When he had fought Boussu at Rynemants he had been ill; when he had
held the useless conference with the English envoys he had scarcely
been able to hold himself on his horse, and when he returned to the
camp on the heights of Bouges outside Namur he fell to his knees as he
dismounted and could not rise for the weight of his armour.
They carried him to the quarter of the regiment of Figueroa and lodged
him in a pigeon-house or place for fowls belonging to a Flemish farm
the Spanish guns had demolished.