Chapter X: 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.