The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

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.

 

This satyr’s protruding eyes fell upon the lovely Princess of Eboli

- for lovely she was, a very pearl among women. I spare you

details. Eboli was most loyal and submissive where his King was

concerned, most complacent and accommodating. That was but logical,

and need not shock you at all. To advance his worldly ambitions

had he taken Anne to wife; why should he scruple, then, to yield

her again that thus he might advance those ambitions further?

 

If poor Anne argued at all, she must have argued thus. For the

rest, she was told that to be loved by the King was an overwhelming

honour, a matter for nightly prayers of thankfulness. Philip was

something very exalted, hardly human in fact; almost, if not quite,

divine. Who and what was Anne that she should dispute with those

who knew the world, and who placed these facts before her? Never

in all her little life had she belonged to herself. Always had she

been the property of somebody else, to be dealt with as her owner

might consider best. If about the Court she saw some men more

nearly of her own age - though there were not many, for Philip’s

Court was ever a gloomy, sparsely peopled place - she took it for

granted that such men were not for her. This until I taught her

otherwise, which, however, was not yet a while. Had I been at Court

in those days, I think I should have found the means, at whatever

cost, of preventing that infamy; for I know that I loved her from

the day I saw her. But I was of no more than her own age, and I

had not yet been drawn into that whirlpool.

 

So she went to the arms of that rachitic prince, and she bore him

a son - for, as all the world knows, the Duke of Prastana owns

Philip for his father. And Eboli increased in power and prosperity

and the favour of his master, and also, no doubt, in the contempt

of posterity. There are times when the thought of posterity and

its vengeances is of great solace.

 

It would be some six years later when first I came to Court, brought

thither by my father, to enter the service of the Prince of Eboli

as one of his secretaries. As I have told you, I loved the Princess

from the moment I beheld her. From the gossip of the Court I pieced

together her story, and pitied her, and, pitying her, I loved her

the more. Her beauty dazzled me, her charm enmeshed me, and she had

grown by now in worldly wisdom and mental attainments. Yet I set a

mask upon my passion, and walked very circumspectly, for all that by

nature I was as reckless and profligate as all the world could ever

call me. She was the wife of the puissant Secretary of State, the

mistress of the King. Who was I to dispute their property to those

exalted ones?

 

And another consideration stayed me. She seemed to love the King.

Young and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me. In age he compared

favourably with