Chapter VII: The Petition

The third day of April, which dawned over Brussels fair as refined silver, found Rénèe at her post, leaning from her narrow window, its harsh stone frame serving as a sombre setting for her face, so unconsciously beautiful and so sadly serene.

She saw the Prince ride away with his gentlemen; the long green cloak in which he was wrapped could not quite conceal the glitter of the Order of the Golden Fleece flaming on his breast.

Rénèe knew that he was going to attend the Regent in Council, for this was the day that the Confederates or Covenanters, as they were severally named, were to present their Petition to Madame Parma; and to-day, instead of going downstairs to her duties beside Anne, Rénèe put on a hood and cloak of black cloth over her white linen whimple and her dark yellow gown, and went from the palace and out through the great gates into the street.

She allowed herself this much advantage from the secret hold she had over Anne—this one day's holiday; the night before she had told her mistress of her intention, and Anne had said nothing.

It was strange to be in the streets after the long confinement in the palace and the palace gardens; it was strange to be one of the people, amidst the ordinary life of a great city, after having been so long merely part of the machinery of a princely establishment.

Rénèe received a sense of energy, of hope, of courage in thus finding herself free and one of the crowd. She wished she could learn some trade or art by which she could earn her own living; but she was too old to be taken as an apprentice, and even were she not, she had not sufficient money to keep herself while she acquired it, nor one friend or relation to whom she could appeal to help her.

No, there was no means of life open to Rénèe but the one she was following, especially in these times of ruin and panic, when so many people were out of work, and those who had money were clutching it tight.

But she was not one to be daunted even by hopeless difficulties; she asked so little of life, cared so little when it ended, that if she had been considering only herself she would have left Anne's service and tried to find another great lady to take her, or have gone as a servant into some Protestant family. But she stayed with Anne because to wait on his wife, to control her, to soften her furies, to check her excesses, was the sole poor unknown service she could render the man for whom she would have gladly done anything.

And now that she knew Anne's sordid and shameful secret, she had a power, an influence over her such as none other possessed, and could restrain her and bring her to some reason when all else had failed. The Prince might entreat his wife to appear on some state occasion, and she would rudely refuse; but when Rénèe insisted, she would suffer herself to be attired and go.

So with a sigh Rénèe relinquished her fleeting dreams of freedom and a sane, wholesome life among her own people.

As she moved further into the city she felt with overmastering pain how lonely she was, how unutterably lonely; all the companies she passed—women together, families, men with their wives and sisters—emphasized the terrible feeling of her loneliness.

If it had not been for Philip and the Holy Inquisition, her life would not have been broken, her heart seared; she would have been as one of these; she would have had parents, money, position, friends, probably a lover—in a word, happiness.

Then she remembered that she was only one of thousands left desolate—perhaps more desolate than she was; fifty thousand, she had heard, had died under the Inquisition and the Edicts, and how many aching, maddened hearts had each of these deaths left behind? Rénèe felt rebuked in her complaint of her loneliness; she shuddered as she went down the hill to the church of Ste Gudule—shuddered though the spring breezes were soft and the spring sun warm.

On the steps of the church she paused and looked down at the city lying in the hollow of the hills, all the spires and vanes of the Town Hall and the palace, of the various guilds in the market-place rising delicate and erect into the pale and pure sky, while on all the irregular tumbled-looking roofs and gables the sun changed lead to gold and casement glass to diamonds.

She turned, lifted the heavy curtain at the low door in the greater door, and entered the church whose twin towers she had watched so constantly that they had come to mean to her the Papist power which dominated the land.

She had not been in a Romish church since she was a child and had crept into the great church of St. Baron at Ghent. She had not meant to enter this now, but a fascinated sense of horror drew her on—horror because she could not regard this faith with toleration; it stood to her for an epitome of idolatry, cruelty, wickedness, oppression, and uncharitableness.

She was not a Protestant by chance; her whole nature detested the Church of Rome. She stepped forward into the gloom, pulling her hood further over her eyes.

At first she could distinguish nothing but the seven thick wax candles burning on the altar and the red lamps flickering their eternal light before the shrines.

Then from the mystical shadows began to loom the shapes of pillars, massive, yet so dimly coloured as to seem impalpable, as if they were beneath the sea; brocades, marbles, altars set with jasper, silver, and chrysolite became visible in the side chapels, here and there the rapt faces of angels showed from some dark painting on the wall, the air was redolent of the incense, the wax smoke, and the scent of flowers. This mingled perfume was near as ancient as the church, which had remained for so long enclosed from the light and air that it seemed as if built underground.

Such light as there was streamed richly from the coloured glass windows where saints and bishops blazed together in wheels and panels of glory.

Rénèe fixed her eyes on the High Altar which was flushed with a shadow like golden-red wine, in the middle of which the flat, gold, ruby-studded doors of the shrine that held the Eucharist flashed and shone like the Eye of God itself. Beyond, the pillars and arches of the Lady Chapel rose up dim, and appearing of a translucent quality in the shade which here, flushed with the light from gold-coloured windows, was sea-green and amber behind the crimson of the altar.

Round the huge candlesticks of dark red Florentine copper were alabaster bowls, almost transparent, veined with violet, which held the first lilies of the year in sweet clusters—the lilies from wood and field called Easter lilies from the time of their coming.

The church was empty save for here and there the dark bent figure of a peasant before some side altar.

Rénèe could not bring herself to bend the knee before the idols her father had perished to disown, and, with a trembling in her limbs as if some physical power had seized her and a choking in her throat as if the sweet thick air was poisonous, she turned and fled quickly into the pale sunshine without.

The excited people were already beginning to gather to watch the passing of the petitioners on their way to the palace.

Rénèe did not know which way the procession was to pass, and she was largely ignorant of the city, but she followed the direction in which the great mass of the crowd was going.

She particularly noticed this crowd and its demeanour, the soberness, the earnestness, the silence of these people.

None of them seemed to be treating the occasion as a festival or as a holiday, if they showed a certain satisfaction it was grave and serious; very few of them were armed, and all of them were restrained in gestures and speech.

There were some gentry, on foot and on horse, but the great number were burghers, traders, and apprentices belonging to the seven great guilds of Brussels.

Rénèe following in the wake of this crowd climbed the hill again, left the towers of Ste Gudule below, and came out on the heights above the town where stood the parks and mansions of the great nobles, and the Brabant palace which was the residence of the Regent.

As she passed the palace Rénèe caught sight of the spare figure and excited face of the skryer Duprès, as he pushed his way through the crowd.

Rénèe was disgusted to think the man was still in Brussels; she had hoped that he would find it wise to leave the Netherlands, or at least the town; but probably he had given up his dangerous occupation of rhetoric player and, with the spoils of the Nassau mansion, had established himself as a respectable Papist.

Now a great movement shook the crowd, a low hum rose from the throats of the men, and the women began to tiptoe excitedly and to lift their little children to their shoulders.

Rénèe was at the back and could see nothing, but two men who had a point of vantage on the steps of a mansion near by gravely helped her up beside them.

One asked her if she was a Fleming?

"My father was hanged for a heretic in Ghent," answered Rénèe, "and I am in the service of the Prince of Orange."

It gave her pleasure to mention the Prince and not his wife; and it was truly _his_ service in which she was.

The two men took off their caps to her.

"The Spaniards will not hang many more Netherlanders," one remarked; and they supported Rénèe against the balustrade of the steps so that she could see over the heads of the closely packed people.

Suddenly the humming changed into a clapping of hands and a deep shouting that made Rénèe's blood tingle with excitement and deep emotion; she pushed back the hood from her flushed face and gazed at the procession which now appeared marching up the street and turning in at the splendid gates of the palace.

All were on foot and unarmed, all were nobles, many of the highest rank, and all were young and gorgeously attired, so that it was a magnificent procession, such as all the great festivals of Brussels had not seen before, which now wound under the portals of the Brabant palace.

"He who goes first," said the man next to Rénèe, "is Philip de Billeuel."

"And some think it an ill augury that he should be lame," remarked the other doubtfully.

Rénèe had indeed remarked that the young nobleman who led the petitioners halted unmistakably.

"And he in the black and blue," added her informant, straining his voice to make it heard above the clapping and the shouting—"with the look of fire, who is answering the cries of the people—is Nicolas de Hammes whom they call Golden Fleece, and he behind in the sable cloak is Ste Aldegonde——"

Rénèe had already recognized these two as well as several others whom she had seen at the Nassau palace, and as the rich and brilliant company of gentlemen passed before her, there were several of the eager, proud, young faces she knew as related to some of the noblest families of the land.

The enthusiasm of the crowd became almost piteous in its eager gratitude to these nobles who were making themselves the champions of the people and protesting so openly and in such an imposing fashion against the loathed Spaniards and the loathed Inquisition.

Encouraging shouts, adjurations, blessings, and thanks were showered on the petitioners, and some of the more reckless, as Golden Fleece and Ste Aldegonde, replied by shouting curses on the Inquisition and the Cardinalists. Rénèe recognized Count Culemburg and Count van der Berg, the Prince of Orange's brother-in-law, glittering in French brocades and Genoese velvet and great chains about their necks and round their hats.

Finally, closing the procession, came the two leaders—Henry Brederode and Louis of Nassau.

They walked alone, arm in arm, the last of all, and for them the affectionate greetings of the crowd arose to a frenzy.

Count Brederode looked fitted to be the hero of such a moment: his tall and noble figure, his military carriage, his handsome face flushed with pleasure and triumph, his eyes sparkling with a reckless fire, the full locks of blond hair streaming on to his falling ruff, gave him the kingly presence of a leader of men.

He wore a suit of rose cloth of silver, and a great mantle of peacock-coloured velvet; in his high black hat was a long heron's feather clasped by a diamond.

Beside his grandeur Louis of Nassau looked very slight and youthful; he was more soberly dressed in dark blood red, with a great ruff of many points rising up above his face.

And whereas Brederode appeared mightily at his ease and greatly pleased with his task and his reception, Louis held himself more modestly and looked grave and even anxious; but there was about him a gallantry almost moving.

And so the last of them went into the palace, and the crowd broke up and stayed about in groups, talking eagerly together in excited voices while they waited for the reappearance of the petitioners.

Rénèe wandered into a side street and entered a baker's shop which was filled with tired women and children.

The waiting-woman bought bread and cake and a kind of sweetmeat, and while she ate she listened to the conversation that flowed round her like many currents of the one river.

For the theme was always the same: the executions, the torturings, the ruin falling on trade and work.

And all spoke soberly without laughter or jest, and many had eyes swollen and frayed from weeping.

One only was unconcerned: a small child who stood in a world of his own, oblivious to the talk of death and ruin crossing above his head, while his eyes were fixed with an eager smiling look on the piece of sweetmeat Rénèe held.

She found something marvellous and yet terrible in this utter absorption of the child in his own thoughts, in his calm, and his pleasure.

She put the sweet into his hand and left the shop.

For more than an hour she wandered about the streets, and, when she made her way back to the Brabant palace, the petitioners were beginning to leave.

Reports of their audience, that had been passed from soldiers and servants within the palace to those without, were already rife among the crowd and eagerly repeated from one to the other.

The Regent had wept when Brederode had made his speech, the tears had run down her face while the famous Compromise was read, and when all the members of the deputation had come forward, one by one, to make the "caroale" before the Duchess as a mark of respect, and she had thus had time to severally note their appointments, their importance, and their number, her agitation had increased so that Barlaymont had tried to reassure her: "What, Madame," he had said, "do you fear these beggars, who do not know enough to manage their own estates and then must needs prate of state affairs? Had I my way they should leave the palace quicker than they came!" This the Cardinalist was reported to have uttered loudly enough to reach the ears of some of the gentlemen, who repeated it among themselves with wrath and indignation.

Rénèe waited until the Prince came from the palace; he rode out of the gates with Egmont, looking unhappy and troubled, at his side. The two grandees were greeted less warmly than the confederates. As neither had openly sided with the people, and as Egmont, at least, was a strict Catholic and something of a persecutor, they were not so popular as they had been in the days when they caused the downfall of Cardinal Granvelle.

Rénèe stood in the roadway, where the passing of the Prince cast dust on her gown; she had one glimpse of his dark ardent face and he was gone.

Suddenly she felt very tired; the strangeness, the unnaturalness of her life, without home or ties, without friends or interests or diversions, and always supervised by a dull and ceaseless tyranny, weighed on her with the horror of tragedy. And this deep concealed passion, this strong faith, this devotion that lit this dreary life like a beacon on a desert was not in the nature of comfort, nay, rather it was a light that lit up dullness, dreariness, and barrenness which darkness would have mercifully concealed.

Had not all the suppressed feeling in her breast turned to this worship, she might have been happier, for she would not have known so keenly what she lacked; as it was she knew not even the peace of apathy.

Clouds were gathering over the April sky as she returned to the palace; every one talked of the Petition and what success it was likely to have; the streets were all filled with murmurs of hope, of doubt, of eagerness, and of expectation.