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

her husband he was but thirteen years older than

herself - but in nothing else. He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking

man, weakly of frame, rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks,

and a countenance that was almost grotesque, with its protruding

jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike eyes, and yellow tuft of beard.

A great king, perhaps, this Philip, having so been born; but a

ridiculous man and an unspeakable lover. And yet this incomparable

woman seemed to love him.

 

Let me pass on. For ten years I nursed that love of mine in secret.

I was helped, perhaps, by the fact that in the mean time I had

married - oh, just as Eboli himself had married, an arrangement

dictated by worldly considerations - and no better, truer mate did

ever a man find than I in Juana Coello. We had children and we

were happy, and for a season - for years, indeed - I began to think

that my unspoken passion for the Princess of Eboli was dead and done

with. I saw her rarely now, and my activities increased with

increasing duties. At twenty-six I was one of the Ministers of the

Crown, and one of the chief supporters of that party of which Eboli

was the leader in Spanish politics. I sat in Philip’s Council, and

I came under the spell of that taciturn, suspicious man, who,

utterly unlovable as he was, had yet an uncanny power of inspiring

devotion. From the spell of it I never quite escaped until after

long years of persecution. Yet the discovery that one by nature so

entirely antipathetic to me should have obtained such sway over my

mind helped me to understand Anne’s attachment to him.

 

When Eboli died, in 1573, I had so advanced in ability and Royal

favour that I took his place as Secretary of State, thus becoming

all but the supreme ruler of Spain. I do not believe that there

was ever in Spain a Minister so highly favoured by the reigning

Prince, so powerful as I became. Not Eboli himself in his halcyon

days had been so deeply esteemed of Philip, or had wielded such

power as I now made my own. All Europe knows it - for it was to me

all Europe addressed itself for affairs that concerned the Catholic

King.

 

And with my power came wealth - abundant, prodigious wealth. I was

housed like a Prince of the blood, and no Prince of the blood ever

kept greater state than I, was ever more courted, fawned upon, or

t flattered. And remember I was young, little more than thirty,

with all the strength and zest to enjoy my intoxicating eminence.

I was to my party what Eboli had been, though the nominal leader of

it remained Quiroga, Archbishop of Toledo. On the other side was

the Duke of Alva with his following.

 

You must know that it was King Philip’s way to encourage two rival

parties in the State, between which he shared his confidence and

sway. Thus he stimulated emulation and enlightened his own views

in the opposing opinions that were placed before him. But the

power of my party was absolute in those days, and Alva himself was

as the dust beneath our feet.

 

Such eminences, they say, are perilous. Heads that are very highly

placed may at any moment be placed still higher - upon a pike. I

am all but a living witness to the truth of that, and yet I wonder

would it so have fallen out with me had I mistrusted that slumbering

passion of mine for Anne. I should have known that where such fires

have once been kindled in a man they never quite die out as long as

life endures. Time and preoccupations may overlay them as with a

film of ashes, but more or less deeply down they smoulder on, and

the first breath will fan them into flame again.

 

It was at the King’s request I went to see her in her fine Madrid

house opposite Santa Maria Mayor some months after her husband’s

death. There were certain matters of heritage to be cleared up,

and, having regard to her high rank, it was Philip’s wish that I

- who was by now Eboli’s official successor - should wait on her

in person.

 

There were documents to be conned and signed, and the matter took

some days, for Eboli’s possessions were not only considerable, but

scattered, and his widow displayed an acquired knowledge of affairs

and a natural wisdom that inspired her to probe deeply. To my

undoing, she probed too deeply in one matter. It concerned some

land - a little property - at Velez. She had been attached to the

place, it seemed, and she missed all mention of it from the papers

that I brought her. She asked the reason.

 

“It is disposed of,” I told her.

 

“Disposed of!” quoth she. “But by whom?”

 

“By the Prince, your husband, a little while before he died.”

 

She looked up at me - she was seated at the wide, carved

writing-table, I standing by her side - as if expecting me to say

more. As I left my utterance there, she frowned perplexedly.

 

“But what mystery is this?” she asked me. “To whom has it gone?”

 

“To one Sancho Gordo.”

 

“To Sancho Gordo?” The frown deepened. “The washerwoman’s son?

You will not tell me that he bought it?”

 

“I do not tell you so, madame. It was a gift from the Prince, your

husband.”

 

“A gift!” She laughed. “To Sancho Gordo! So the washerwoman’s

child is Eboli’s son!”

 

And again she laughed on a note of deep contempt.

 

“Madame!” I cried, appalled and full of pity, “I assure you that

you assume too much. The Prince - “

 

“Let be,” she interrupted me. “Do you dream I care what rivals I

may have had, however lowly they may have been? The Prince, my

husband, is dead, and that is very well. He is much better dead,

Don Antonio. The pity of it is that he ever lived, or else that I

was born a woman.”

 

She was staring straight before her, her hands fallen to her lap,

her face set as if carved and lifeless, and her voice came hard as

the sound of one stone beating upon another.

 

“Do you dream what it can mean to have been so nurtured on

indignities that there is no anger left, no pride to wound by the

discovery of yet another nothing but cold, cold hate? That, Don

Antonio, is my case. You do not know what my life has been. That

man - “

 

“He is dead, madame,” I reminded her, out of pity.

 

“And damned, I hope,” she answered me in that same cold, emotionless

voice. “He deserves no less for all the wrongs he did to me, the

least of which was the great wrong of marrying me. For advancement

he acquired me; for his advancement he bartered and used me and made

of me a thing of shame.”

 

I was so overwhelmed with grief and love and pity that a groan

escaped me almost before I was aware of it. She broke off short,

and stared at me in haughtiness.

 

“You presume to pity me, I think,” she reproved me. “It is my own

fault. I was wrong to talk. Women should suffer silently, that

they may preserve at least a mask of dignity. Otherwise they incur

pity - and pity is very near contempt.”

 

And then I lost my head.

 

“Not mine, not mine!” I cried, throwing out my arms; and though

that was all I said, there was such a ring in my choking voice that

she rose stiffly from her seat and stood tense and tall confronting

me, almost eye to eye, reproof in every line of her.

 

“Princess, forgive me!” I cried. “It breaks my heart in pieces to

hear you utter things that have been in my mind these many years,

poisoning the devotion that I owed to the late Prince, poisoning

the very loyalty I owe my King. You say I pity you. If that were

so, none has the better right.”

 

“Who gave it you?” she asked me, breathless.

 

“Heaven itself, I think,” I answered recklessly. “What you have

suffered, I have suffered for you. When I came to Court the infamy

was a thing accomplished - all of it. But I gathered it, and

gathering it, thanked Heaven I had been spared the pain and misery

of witnessing it, which must have been more than ever I could have

endured. Yet when I saw you, when I watched you - your wistful

beauty, your incomparable grace - there was a time when the thought

to murder stirred darkly in my mind that I might at least avenge you.”

 

She fell away before me, white to the very lips, her eyes dilating

as they regarded me.

 

“In God’s name, why?” she asked me in a strangled voice.

 

“Because I loved you,” I replied, “always, always, since the day I

saw you. Unfortunately, that day was years too late, even had I

dared to hope - “

 

“Antonio!” Something in her voice drew my averted eyes. Her lips

had parted, her eyes kindled into life, a flush was stirring in

her cheeks.

 

“And I never knew! I never knew!” she faltered piteously.

 

I stared.

 

“Dear Heaven, why did you withhold a knowledge that would have

upheld me and enheartened me through all that I have suffered?

Once, long, long agog I hoped - “

 

“You hoped!”

 

“I hoped, Antonio - long, long ago.”

 

We were in each other’s arms, she weeping on my shoulder as if her

heart would burst, I almost mad with mingling joy and pain - and

as God lives there was more matter here for pain than joy.

 

We sat long together after that, and talked it out. There was no

help for it. It was too late on every count. On her side there

was the King, most jealous of all men, whose chattel she was become;

on mine, there was my wife and children, and so deep and true was

my love for Anne that it awakened in me thoughts of the loyalty I

owed Juana, thoughts that had never troubled me hitherto in my

pleasure-loving life - and this not only as concerned Anne herself,

but as concerned all women. There was something so ennobling and

sanctifying about our love that it changed at once the whole of my

life, the whole tenor of my ways. I abandoned profligacy, and

became so staid and orderly in my conduct that I was scarcely

recognizable for the Antonio Perez whom the world had known hitherto.

 

We parted there that day with a resolve to put all this behind us;

to efface from our minds all memory of what had passed between us!

Poor fools were we to imagine we could resist the vortex of

circumstance which had caught us. For three months we kept our

engagement scrupulously; and then, at last, resistance mutually

exhausted, we yielded each to the other, both to Fate.

 

But because we cherished our love we moved with caution. I was

circumspect in my comings and goings, and such were the precautions

we observed, that for four years the world had little suspicion, and

certainly no knowledge, that I had inherited from the Prince of

Eboli more than his office as Secretary of State. This secrecy was

necessary as long as Philip lived, for we were both fully aware of

what manner of vengeance we should have to reckon with did knowledge

of our relations reach the jealous King. And I think