OF THE AMBASSADOR OF THE RUDE CASTILIAN PRINCE
WHEN the ambassador came into the room, the duke rose from his stool,
and having carefully and politely removed the grease from the fingers
of his right hand, held out his hand for the cartel in an imperious
manner.
“Señor Ambassador,” said he, with the inimitable air which requires a
grandee of I know not how many quarterings to support, “I understand
you to come from our nephew of Castile. I will heed this, his mandate,
carefully.”
Upon receiving the parchment sealed massively in wax he removed the
grease from the fingers of his left hand and proceeded with patient
dignity to peruse the challenge.
In the meantime, the Countess Sylvia, seated at the board in the midst
of her council, was in a fury.
“Look at that old man!” she cried out. “Look at his thumbs! Why does he
use them upon the missive of the Castilian? Look, Sirrah Red Dragon, he
is reading it upside down!”
“Silence there at the top of the table,” said the duke, with the
grandeur of one who has wielded an unquestioned authority for
threescore years, yet having vainly endeavoured to peruse the document
in the manner his daughter had indicated. “Do you read it to us, good
plenipotentiary. Silence there, I say! If you do not close your trap,
you hulks, I will have you flogged with severity. Silence, I say again!
Ods nig and nog! was ever one who is old and a parent beset with so
much incivility!”
While the ambassador, a dark man in a dusty riding suit of Cordovan
leather, and accompanied by a retinue of three as dusty as himself,
proceeded to read the terms of the cartel aloud to the duke, his
lordship’s grace fell again to devouring the ortolan. By the time the
messenger had reached the part in which the Castilian bade his uncle
deliver up his castle hard by the city of Toledo, and bade him retire
to his lesser manor in the province of Leon, the old man began to
babble and whimper, and finally to break into tears.
“Look at him! look at him!” cried the Countess Sylvia. “If your
lordship’s grace would wipe your old red eyes on your cuff, and eat
your fowl like a Christian, and cease to roar like a horse as it walks
up a hill, I and my good counsellors might frame a fitting answer to
the Castilian.”
“Ods myself!” snuffled his lordship’s grace, “sooner than I will be a
parent again I will cut my throat.”
With a proud voice the Lady Sylvia bade the envoy of the Castilian come
up to the high table and present the cartel to her. She received it
with every mark of disgust; and, indeed, the fingers of his lordship’s
grace had robbed it of that fair appearance it may have formerly
enjoyed. But when she came to read this document her mood changed to
one of flaming anger, since the manner of the Castilian’s epistle was
indeed of the sort to fret a lofty spirit.
“‘Too long, good my uncle Roldan, hast thou held thy demesne’”--the
little countess read particular passages aloud with unutterable scorn.
“‘Thy situation above the great city of Toledo, the first of our
realm, cannot be borne. Yourself is a good and honest prince, good
my uncle Roldan, but your grace hath the whole of your worthy manor
of Aldoleda in which to inhabit your excellent old age. Your noble
mountain fortress is necessary to our design, for our kingdom must
be so strong that we fear no enemies. We would have you deliver this
fortress, together with two hundred men-at-arms, unto us within the
space of twenty days; and by these presents we do engage not to molest
your grace and good my uncle Roldan in your worthy manor of Aldoleda,
in which fair place your honourable old age will not lack security.’”
Verily I think there never was such an imperious anger as that of
the Countess Sylvia as slowly she deciphered the contents of this
pronunciamento with the aid of myself and the Count of Nullepart. She
tore the missive down the middle and flung it on the ground.
“Envoy,” she said, “get you gone as you value your neck, and do you
inform our cousin Castile that I spurn him as I would a mad wolf.”
“Softly, softly,” whispered the Count of Nullepart to his mistress. “I
pray you, madam, not to forget your statecraft in this affront to your
ambition.”
“Peace, sirrah!” said the Countess Sylvia. “If the envoy doth not
withdraw I will have him impaled.”
The emissary of the king bowed low.
“Madam,” he said, “my business, under your favour, is with his grace
the Duke of Montesina.”
“There is no Duke of Montesina; his lordship’s grace was deposed at
twelve o’clock this day. Myself am the master and the mistress here.”
“She speaks sooth, Master Envoy,” said Sir Richard Pendragon. “If the
gracious countess so much as frowns since this morning, every stick and
stone within these walk doth fall into a most violent trembling.”
“My business is with his grace the Duke of Montesina,” said the envoy
staunchly.
“Do I not tell thee his lordship’s grace is deposed?” said the Countess
Sylvia. “He is as weak in his mind as a seamew.”
“And I venture, Master Envoy,” said I, with a touch of our famous
northern penetration, “to suggest that the king your master is aware of
this calamity.”
“That is nothing to the case, sir,” said the envoy, waiving this
inconvenient suggestion aside. “My business is with your master the
duke, and I would fain transact it.”
“There is no duke, do I not tell thee, stupid one!” said the Countess
Sylvia. “Do I not say he is deposed?”
“Deposed!” cried his lordship’s grace, hearing the words of his
daughter and understanding them, for although his wits were deranged
they were susceptible of strong flashes of reason. “Deposed! Who speaks
thus? Who dares say that there is no duke? I would have you to know,
Master Ambassador, and all the world to know it also, that there is a
duke, and he is a duke of vim and valiance. Deposed! Ods myself! these
are the words of a wicked hulks. As I am a parent, Master Ambassador,
I have the most ingrateful daughter in Spain.”
“Envoy,” said the Countess Sylvia, “I pray you do not heed that old
man. He is as immoderate in his motions as a frog in a moist afternoon.
His wits are weak; there is a cloud in his mind; he babbles foolishly.”
“Luiz!” cried the duke--“where’s my good Luiz? Where art thou, Luiz?
Fetch the guard, good gossip, and as I am a parent, this ingrateful
hulks shall go to the house of correction.”
“Do not heed him, envoy,” said her ladyship. “This old man is
forwandered in his mind like a bat in the daylight. Speak him fair, but
heed him not. He is a babbler.”
“Come to me, Luiz--come to me!” cried the duke, brandishing the carcass
of the ortolan. “Why do you not come to me, good fat man? Will you
see me sounced by the tongue of a jade? Deposed, says she! I babble
foolishly! Come to me, Luiz, as thou art a good Christian man, and I
will have her scourged.”
There could never have been a more whimsical sight since the world
set up in business than the distraction of the King of Castile’s
ambassador, himself a man of bearing and nobility, standing in the
midst of his astonished retinue, as he gazed from one to the other of
those who addressed him. Yet it was presently borne in upon him by
the outrageous speaking of the poor old duke, and the vacancy of his
eyes, that all his politics, in whatever they might consist, were like
to be over-ridden by the imperious will that had assumed the reins
of governance. Therefore, after awhile, he adopted the only wise
and possible course, which was to accept the little countess as the
principal in this affair. And in spite of all that we, her counsellors,
could do to impose some check upon her speech--for the Castilian had
the name of being as proud a prince as there was on the earth--she
refused to soften her words, and insisted that the envoy should bear
them to his master.
“And further, Don Jose de Fermosilla,” said she, “I would have you bid
Castile, our cousin, assemble all his hosts and bring them hither, and
they shall not lack for a welcome. They shall receive good play of
sword and pike, halberd and musket, and every conceivable engine of
belligerency. Are we mud, Don Jose de Fermosilla--are we mud, I say,
myself and his lordship’s grace (myself having all the grace of his
lordship since a little before noon this day)--are we mud, sirrah, that
this Castilian speaks us unmannerly? By my sooth, Don Jose, this is a
rude prince; but as there is a nerve in our right hand--do you mark me,
sirrah?--upon a day his sauciness shall not go unvisited.”
“O statecraft! O statecraft!” said the Count of Nullepart in a low
voice and smiling softly.
At these words of the Lady Sylvia, which had been uttered with every
mark of disdain, the bearer of the cartel drew himself up with a proud
mien, and said with much haughtiness on his own part,--
“Madam, as you are young and a woman, I would humbly propose, although
it is no part of my province to propose it, that you weigh your words
again in the scale before you publish them to the King’s majesty. It
would be a pitiful matter if in the inclemency of his temper he harried
his lordship’s dominion and razed both his castles to the earth.
For I would have you to know, madam, that there is no prince in all
Christendom to whom such words would come more amiss. He is so instant
in his nature that on shorter terms than these he would put the whole
of this garrison to the sword.”
“He is welcome to do this, Don Jose,” said our mistress fearlessly,
in spite of the fact that the Count of Nullepart was plucking at the
sleeve of her robe, “if he is able.”
“He does not stand without ability, madam, if the truth must be
spoken,” said Don Jose. “He can come before your gates in a fortnight
with five thousand men, with artillery and engines of the latest
capacity.”
“He shall be welcome, sirrah.”
“You, madam,” said Don Jose scornfully, “have three hundred soldiers in
your service, as I am informed. Whoever heard such proud words, madam,
upon so much insufficiency?”
“Harkee, Don Jose,” said the little countess menacingly, “I would not
have you give too free an expression to your private ideas, for there
are dungeons under this castle which on a day have held your betters.”
“So I believe, madam,” said Don Jose. “But I stand in the light of one
who would come between a woman and her inclination. Yet I would ask you
to believe, madam, that in this matter I am your sincere well-wisher.”
“We none of us doubt that, sir,” said the Count of Nullepart in his
sweetest accent, and looking upon the messenger with his charming
melancholy. “And if, sir, you will heed madam’s youth rather than her
speaking, you will be her good servant. If you will have the goodness
to inform the King your master that his cartel has been received with
all consideration and honourable courtesy; that his grace the Duke
of Montesina will bestow all possible attention upon it during the
interregnum of twenty days which his Majesty has nominated with so much
kindness; and that any decision at which his grace may arrive shall
be delivered to the King your master by another hand, all within this
castle shall ever be yours in all humility.”
“Yes, that is right speaking,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, who had
almost assumed the demeanour of a cardinal; “that is a ripe wisdom and
a courteous maturity.”
“You speak well, sir,” said Don Jose de Fermosilla, making a low bow.
“And I convey that message to the King, my master.”
“Perhaps it were not amiss, Sir Count,” said I, “if you put your good
words in writing. Were it not well to call a scrivener?”
“Truly,” said the ambassador, “that would indeed be well.”
The Countess Sylvia, however, was furiously angry, but those three
councillors who strove humbly to serve her attended her humours with
the highest patience. Yet, for all their devices, they were not able
entirely to succeed, for as soon as the scrivener was come into the
room she bade him leave her presence on the pain of death.
In such circumstances our natural ally was the duke. But so completely
had his lordship’s grace been overborne by the heats and violences
of the day, that having picked his ortolan, he had duly fallen asleep
on his stool in the middle of the negotiations. Therefore it remained
for us, her councillors, to soften the affront that was like to be
put by our mistress upon the Castilian. Yet in the end we could do no
better than put our faith in the humanity and discretion of Don Jose de
Fermosilla to represent the attitude of madam with a becoming leniency.
For again and yet again did she announce her determination to flout her
insolent cousin. And presently matters were brought to such a pass that
it was only the highly diplomatic conduct of Sir Richard Pendragon in
feigning utter deafness when she called on him in peremptory tones to
summon the guard to have the envoy and the Count of Nullepart himself
placed in a dungeon for seeking to outface her, that made it possible
to conclude the matter at all.
In the end Don Jose took his departure with a promise to the Count of
Nullepart, Sir Richard Pendragon, and myself that he would represent
this matter to the King his master in a spirit of forbearance. In spite
of that, I think none of us reposed much faith in his assurances,
which, in the face of madam’s arrogance, were given by no means
heartily. Indeed, as he took his leave his eyes were furtive and
lowering, and in his mien was neither kindness nor friendship. As for
our mistress, surely there never was so much queenly insolence as when
the ambassador made to withdraw.
“We take no leave of you, Don Jose de Fermosilla,” said she. “We make
you and your master no compliments. You have incurred our highest
displeasure.”
Don Jose de Fermosilla bowed stiffly, and with his retinue passed out
at the door.
“Call him again!” cried the Countess Sylvia to those who were in
attendance.
Don Jose returned, yet there was no abatement of his dark looks.
“I would have you proceed backwards, out of our presence, Don Jose de
Fermosilla,” said madam insolently. “And do you inform our cousin that
it is nothing to our pleasure that we must keep a school of manners for
his emissaries.”
Don Jose de Fermosilla withdrew in the desired manner, biting at his
lips with chagrin.