Chapter V: The Knight-Errant

AS the Prince of Orange returned to his palace he passed a mansion which defied the stormy night with light and music, and from the great doors, which emitted rays of rose and gold on to the bitter rain, a band of young cavaliers came forth, mounted, and turned their several ways, with joyous farewells to each other.

William recognized the persons and voices of several—Brederode, Hoogstraaten, Culemburg, Nicolas de Hammes, commonly called Golden Fleece, and his own brother Louis, who was newly come to Brussels.

The Prince reined up his wet and steaming horse and waited for the Count, who bared his head to the rain at sight of his brother.

"From the Council?" he asked, as he brought his horse long-side his brother.

"Yes," said William briefly, and neither spoke again as, bending before the weather, they made their way to the Nassau palace.

For once the Prince did not appear at the almost public table he kept, but dined alone with Louis in his private apartments.

The princely chamber was warmly lit by the yellow glow of fair wax candles; the gay tapestries, the heavy furniture gleamed with gold; among the crystal and lace of the dining-table gold shone too, and in the brocade of the chairs and in the great heart of the fire burning behind the sparkling brass and irons on the wide brick hearth.

In the magnificence of their persons the two young men were worthy of the gorgeous setting. The tawny velvet and violet silk of the Prince's attire was drawn and purfled with gold, the triple ruff that framed his dark face as high as the close waves of hair above the small ears was edged with gold lace, gold flashed again in the chain which was twisted in heavy links round and round his neck.

Louis wore black satin cut over yellow velvet and a falling ruff of Malines lace; his fair and charming face was as fresh as a flower, his eyes flashed as brightly as any gold in the room, and the ruby clasps fastening his doublet rose and fell with his eager and impatient breaths.

William usually ate with a hearty appetite, and enjoyed the luxurious pleasure of a richly set meal; but to-night he let the courses pass almost untouched, and broke the pieces upon his plate and left them.

Neither did he speak much, though it was not his habit to be taciturn. After he had given his brother a brief account of the momentous Council he was silent.

But Louis glowed with swift anger and boundless enthusiasm.

"We have not been idle," he declared. "The festivities, the weddings of Parma and Montigny, have been a fair pretext for our meetings. We have already a league among ourselves."

"I know something of that," answered William. "It will be as dangerous a matter as Egmont's livery."

"Do you bid me hold back—now?" cried Louis impetuously.

"I bid no man hold back," replied the Prince quietly. "Who are with you in this design?"

"Brederode, Ste Aldegonde, Culemburg, Hoogstraaten, de Hammes, Montigny—all the younger nobility——"

"Montigny!" said William softly, "and he has just taken a wife."

"Is she not a beautiful creature?" answered Louis. "Half of those who jousted before her would have given half their rents to win Hélène d'Espinoy. Montigny loves his wife," he added, in a lower voice. "Did you not notice it at the jousts?"

"I hope he will not go to Madrid," remarked William. "I hear that he and Berghen think of undertaking an embassy to Philip."

"Egmont—will he not go again?" asked Louis.

"No—he is still sore at the success of his last mission."

The Prince rose and crossed to the hearth, resting his elbow against the chimney-side and his face in his hand.

Louis, still seated at the table, glanced at his brother wistfully.

"You take my news coldly," he said in a tone of disappointment. "I thought that you would be rejoiced to hear that there was this league to protect the rights of the nobles and the liberties of the people."

"It was no news to me," answered William. "I knew your designs. You are all young and ardent and reckless—God keep you all."

Louis bit his lip and drank the last drop of yellow wine that lay like liquid amber in his sparkling crystal glass.

"We do what we can," he said, with great emotion, "and none but a coward would do less at such a time as this."

William was silent; his face was turned away from his brother and his shoulders drooped a little.

The young Count flushed all over his sensitive face at what he thought the Prince's disapproval.

He rose and stood before the brilliant disorder of the dining-table in the attitude of a man justifying himself.

His ardent gaiety had gone; he was passionately grave, passionately in earnest.

"If Your Highness will not support me in what I do, I must go on alone. I too am one of these doomed people, I too am a heretic. I am one of those whom the Church and Philip have thrice cursed, thrice damned; and every poor artisan whose flesh smokes above the market-place, and every wandering preacher who is tortured to death, is my brother in God. I cannot speak of these things without tears. We may tourney and dance and feast, but the nation is bleeding to death from a thousand wounds, and I cannot go on in my own easy safety——"

"It is not your country, Louis, nor your quarrel."

"Yes, it is my quarrel," returned the young Count eagerly, "because I too am a heretic. This cause I espouse, to this quarrel I devote myself."

"You are knight-errant," said the Prince.

Louis flushed again.

"No, I am nothing but a poor soldier, as which I shall live and die."

William suddenly moved so as to face him.

"How far will you go?" he demanded.

"As far as any."

"Would you take up arms against the King?"

"With all my heart and, I think, God's blessing," answered the young man gravely. "If Egmont should lead a rising against the King——"

"Egmont!" said William quickly. "Egmont never will—Egmont is a good Catholic. Egmont is loyal to Philip."

"Even now?"

"Even now—he is not the man of this moment."

"Brederode will lead us, then," replied Louis.

"Brederode is reckless, imprudent——"

"He is popular, loyal, brave. Then there is Ste Aldegonde——"

"Another fiery spirit—a poet, too!"

"Culemburg, then De Hammes."

"Too low in rank—you yourself are better suited than any of these."

Louis replied soberly—

"If I am called, I am willing to serve—to the death."

"I know," said William, "I know."

Louis stood doubtful, distressed, his brown fingers pulling nervously at the edge of the fine tablecloth.

"Would you not be willing for me to take this charge upon myself?" he asked earnestly and imploringly.

The Prince did not reply; his face seemed drained of blood beneath the brown skin, his dark eyes were black with the dilation of the pupils.

"And you, you?" urged Louis. "What will you do? Bow the neck to Philip?"

He moved away from the table, crushing his hands together.

William turned now and spoke; he made an effort with his words. Choosing them carefully, arranging them exactly, often faltering in the endeavour to force his wide and far-reaching thoughts into speech; in all he said was great patience, great sincerity, great gentleness.

"You must not think me cold. Indeed I am not cold. I know Spain and Philip better than you—better than your friends. I know his power, his resources, his persistency—above all his power! 'Tis the King of half the world. And now he has spoken, he will not go back from his word. Do you think the Regent will long serve his turn? Before this present crisis she will fail utterly. A dull woman. Philip will send Alva and an army—the finest army in the world, Louis. It was Alva who advised this stern decree. I know that—a great soldier, the Duke of Alva, a loyal Catholic—he will come. Nothing will stop Philip now. No laws, no charters, no promises—he has condemned to death the Netherlands, and he will not fail to send the executioner."

Louis listened intently, one hand pressing the ruby buttons on his breast, his eyes eagerly on his brother's face.

"I have been like a watchman over this land since King Henry spoke to me in Vincennes wood. I have seen havoc and ruin and desolation coming nearer and nearer," continued the Prince mournfully; "I see it very near now. I see this country overwhelmed as if the dikes had been cut down and the sea were rushing in—a flood no man can withstand—and do you think I wish to see all I love dash forward vainly, to be swept away by the first wave of this deluge? Ah, Louis," he added, in a tone of anguish, "what is your defiance against Philip's might—what are all the gentlemen of Flanders against Alva's army? But a stone in the way to be flung aside and forgotten."

"Are we, then, to submit?" asked Louis in a low voice.

The Prince took a restless turn about the room.

"Philip is not to be defeated by knight-errantry, but by subtle ways, like to his own—by policy, by patience, by long years of endeavour and waiting. He is not to be met openly in the field, but snared in secret places."

"Meanwhile, we shall grow old and palsied," cried Louis, "and all the hot blood in us will go for nothing."

"You see the glory of the combat, I see the anguish of the defeat," said William slowly. "You remember the skryer in Leipsic? How he saw the future in the crystal—and the end, all blood and blackness? To me too it seems like that—darkness ahead and death—the sacrifice of all our house."

"Speak words of good import," cried the Count. "Why should God utterly forsake us? Will He not set high the standard of the good cause?"

William looked at him thoughtfully.

"Yea, if one gave all one had, if one suffered and waited, if one sacrificed—all—for what one dared to think the right, perhaps God might help one—God! But doth He help, or rather leave us to depend on our own poor energies?"

Louis was startled by the emotion in his brother's voice, by the look of his pallid face on which the dews of anguish had started.

"What do you mean? What will you do?"

"I do not know," said William. "I do not know. I say I see it all dark ahead—last night the stars were red and flashing through the blackness of hideous clouds, and methought it needed no great fancy to believe these tales of spectral battalions who nightly combat in the skies and rain blood upon the earth. Two days ago at Leyden the sentries felt warm blood upon their hands and heard the shouts of battle overhead."

Louis shuddered.

"At Utrecht and Haarlem they saw armed men fighting in the air," he answered; "one told the very pattern of the flint-locks and the manner of caps they wore."

"I would consult my skryer," smiled William sadly, "but the strange rogue has left me on the sudden. And we need no skryer to warn us of what is before us, and no portents in the air to prepare us."

"And I, what must I do?" asked Louis, with a noble and winning deference to the other.

"Wait," replied the Prince. "Wait—persuade the others to do so too. Put no other check upon yourselves but prudence—be secret, take only those on whom you can rely into your League—watch Ste Aldegonde, Brederode, and de Hammes; they are too reckless—do not trust Charles Mansfeld—rely on Hoogstraaten and Culemburg——Ah, what can I say!" He passionately caught the young Count by the shoulders. "I leave it to your own heart, your own judgment; but remember that you will be needed, do not fling yourself away."

"Princely brother," answered Louis, and the tears stood in his eyes, "I am always at your service, and only ask leave to die at your feet."

William kissed him on the brow, then releasing him, drew from the gilded pocket that hung at his own waist a curious iron ring set with a large opal the colour of milk, and holding blood and fire in the heart.

"Wear this," said the Prince. "It is an Eastern talisman which shall protect you from evil."

Louis slipped it on his signet finger.

"When another than myself brings you this, you will know that I am dead," he smiled.

"God grant that I may never see it save on your hand!" exclaimed the Prince. "And now I give you leave to go—you are due at Hoogstraaten's supper?"

"Yes; will you not come?"

"Not to-night—my duty to all. Until to-morrow, adieu."

They touched hands again, and each looked at the other with a certain wistfulness, as if their hearts were full of a yearning affection they did not dare express.

When Louis had gone William returned to the fire, which was falling into ashes at the edges.

Of all the conversation with his brother one phrase suddenly leapt to his mind unbidden; he seemed to read it in the dying heart of the flame—

"Montigny loves his wife."

The four words gave the Prince a strange pang in the remembrance; he crossed the room and looked at a little painting of Anna van Buren, the first Princess of Orange, which hung on the opposite wall.

The pale prim face, her gentle eyes, her drooping mouth, the very dress she wore, and the jewel round her neck which he had given—he recalled her so clearly—even as she was painted now—yet how remote she was; she had made no impression on his life, and he never thought of her now save as he might think of some playmate of his youth—for they had been married at seventeen, and she had died almost before he had reached full manhood; but she had been to him what the wives of most great nobles were to their husbands—a little more than the wives of Hoorne and Brederode were to them, a little less than Egmont's wife was to him. In the misery and humiliation of his present marriage he could recall her gratefully.

But love—"Montigny _loves_ his wife"—the words came again to him like the echo in a shell held to the ear, and sounded sadly in the loneliness of the Prince's heart. "If a man had great difficulties and a hard and toilsome task, a loving wife would be a marvellous comfort," he thought. Then he laughed at his own fancies. "A man must not depend on women. There are things to be done in which no woman can help."

He went to the window, opened the shutters and looked out upon the storm.

The rain had ceased, and the bitter winds were tearing the black clouds apart and hurling them across the heavens; the curled thread of the new moon glimpsed here and there amid the vapours like a frail barque amid the wreckage of a hideous sea.

The fair fields of Brabant and the proud gay town of Brussels were blotted out in the darkness, but a faint strain of melody rose fitfully on the winds: it was the carillon from some hidden clock tower.

William of Orange stood silent, holding the window casement open with either hand and listening to the storm that for him held the sound of gathering armies, the tramp of feet, the galloping of horses, the flapping of banners straining at their poles—the coming of great multitudes onrushing in the agony and the exultation of supreme conflict.