Chapter XIII: The Coming of Alva

Rénèe le Meung moved about the fine apartments of the Princess in Breda Castle, sorting clothes, arranging bags and boxes, and packing the long coffers that were to be carried into the courtyard and there loaded on the baggage mules.

Alva was coming; he had already sailed from Carthagena.

And William of Orange and his household were leaving the Netherlands for Germany, there to take up residence with his mother and Count John in the castle of Dillenburg.

As Rénèe moved about her task, she vividly recalled how she had left Germany, that hot, weary day of the feast in Leipsic, when she had moved about among Anne's things as she was moving now, folding away the bridal dresses, locking away the bridal trinkets with the sound of the joy bells in her ears and the flare of the joy fires reflected in the window-panes.

She recalled how she had crept into the gallery overlooking the great hall and had seen the Prince and Princess seated side by side on the gold couch, receiving the homage of the maskers, and all her own fatigue and distaste, the close perfumed air of the Town Hall, and the rich scents of the feast.

She had been reluctant to leave Germany, which had been a peaceful refuge, and to return to her own country, which for her was dark with horrible memories; and now she was not sorry that this Brussels life had ended—a life of magnificence, which she had only glimpsed from behind the windows of Anne's apartments; a life of great affairs and tremendous events, which she had only heard of from the mouths of pages and servants; a life of continued service, of self-denial, of submission to caprice and tyranny.

Now it was over, and she would go to Dillenburg, where every one was Protestant, and be near the Prince's mother and sisters, who perhaps would be kind to her and notice what she was doing for Anne.

Her starved heart was greedy for kindness and praise.

She was glad, too, that Anne was leaving the Netherlands without having again seen Jan Rubens or Duprès; she felt the Princess would be safe in Dillenburg.

Yet Rénèe was sad; she could not be happy leaving behind her a country so broken, so oppressed, so desolate.

She heard men mention Alva with awe and terror; she saw that the Prince was departing before he came; and she feared even worse things for the Netherlands than their present great calamities.

But her piety had strengthened; her body, denied and rendered subject to her soul, grew weaker, and the soul within became stronger, and so nearer God.

She trusted in Him not to forsake His people, and she believed in William of Orange as His Captain.

The gorgeous young Papist cavalier whom she had looked on for the first time at Leipsic on his wedding day, whom she had thought frivolous and worldly, was now become the man on whom centred all her hopes for her country and her faith.

Other and reckless men had taken up the people's cause and won the people's heart—men like Brederode, Count Louis, Ste Aldegonde, and De Hammes; but though these were the names shouted in the market-place, Rénèe had given no heed to them at all.

It was to the Prince, who was, nominally at least, still a Papist, who had acted until the very last in fulfilment of his duty to the King, who had checked the fervour of the Reformers and was even hated by the Calvinists for his behaviour after the engagement at Ostrawell—it was to him that Rénèe confidently looked to save the Netherlands.

And that confidence, strengthened by her woman's devotion to a person beloved, supported her in this second flight from her native country.

She was so lost in thought as she went about her task that it was with a little start that she became aware of the presence of another in the chamber.

Anne was standing in the door of the inner room.

She leant against the wooden lintel and stared at Rénèe. The white linen round her head and shoulders made her face look yellow and faded as that of an old woman; her blue dress clung to her meagre figure in straight lines; there was no attempt now to hide her deformity of raised shoulder and crooked hip; her hands pulled nervously at her girdle.

"Your labour is for nothing," she said. "I am not going to Dillenburg."

Rénèe went on packing.

"Your Highness will certainly go," she answered quietly.

"No," said Anne violently. "I was a fool to leave Brussels—but I will not leave the Netherlands. Why should I go into exile? Where is all my state? It has melted like snow. There is no one to look after me; I can hardly get a drink of beer or wine when I want it. He never gives me any money—has he thrown it all away on this miserable beggar war? I will not be the wife of a ruined man—am I to live on wind and eat my hands and feet? By God, I had better have married a simple German Count than this great Prince."

The resignation of the Prince and the subsequent alteration in his fortunes might certainly have frightened many women; but Rénèe had no spark of sympathy for Anne's complainings and railings.

"Your Highness came to Breda, and Your Highness will go to Dillenburg."

Anne gave her a look of hate.

"I would sooner stay and put myself at the mercy of Alva," answered the Princess sullenly. "I do not fear the Spaniards."

"His Highness has decided to leave the Netherlands," said Rénèe, with an air of finality.

Anne limped towards her.

"You hate me, don't you?" she asked, with some eagerness. "You said you hated me, once."

"I would have loved you, Madame, but you would not permit it—and—and some of your actions I needs must hate."

"Well, set yourself free of me," urged the Princess. "Help me to escape—I have friends in Cologne—I want to go to Cologne."

"Duprès and Rubens are there," was the thought that instantly stabbed Rénèe; she turned white and could not speak.

"There are some gentlewomen there I know," continued Anne. "I want to go there—help me escape. I will give you anything you wish for——"

"Oh, Highness, Highness," cried Rénèe, "you speak like a child. It is impossible for you to go to Cologne, or anywhere save to Dillenburg with His Highness."

Anne sat on the edge of the long box Rénèe was filling with clothes. Her pale blue eyes wandered round the room with a painful vacancy.

"I wish I were dead," she said foolishly. "I have never been happy."

Rénèe looked at her with an amazement not untouched with bitterness, for it was the wife of William of Orange who spoke so—a woman who had everything through the mere accident of birth, while she——! The beautiful young Fleming smiled ironically as she thought of herself and her poor life.

"Why are you not happy, Madame?" she asked. "You have all there is in the world—ease and friends and greatness—your children—the Prince."

"Yes," said Anne, with sudden sharpness, "but I am an ugly crooked woman whom no one loves."

Rénèe held her breath, it gave her a strange sensation to hear the Princess thus describe herself; she had always thought vanity completely blinded Anne.

"You thought I did not know?" continued her mistress, with that sudden look and tone of intelligence so painfully in contrast with her usual wildness. "I always knew. I had nothing from the beginning. You hated me—so did every one. When I thought _he_ loved me I nearly went mad with joy. But he had married me for ambition, of course."

Rénèe, in her confusion of thoughts, felt impelled to defend the Prince, as if, for the first time, she saw some glimmer of justice in Anne's point of view.

"These great marriages are not made for love," she said.

"I was sixteen," remarked Anne drily. "I did not know anything."

"You could have made His Highness care," urged Rénèe.

"Not with this face and body," said the Princess curtly.

"And he has been loyal to you," continued Anne, "and gentle and patient."

Anne shrugged her shoulders.

"I shall never be happy here. If he had loved me," she said, with brutal frankness, "he might have changed me—but he never did—and for his kindness, did I want that? He is kind to every one, he finds it the easier way. I have always been curst. I wish I were dead; and now we are ruined too."

"Consider, Madame, the Prince has made these sacrifices to help the Reformers, and you are a Lutheran."

"Lutheran or Papist are nothing to me," answered Anne, "nor God either—why did He make women curst and crooked?"

She lifted her head, and, seeing Rénèe with her arms full of clothes, she called out imperiously, "Put down those things! I will never leave the Netherlands!"

As she spoke the Prince entered; Anne rose and faced him with the look of an adversary.

"My wife," he said at once, "I come to implore you to hasten."

Anne's face hardened into compressed lips and puckered brows until it was like an ugly wax mask.

"News?" she asked briefly.

"Yes, I have received a letter from one of my agents in Spain" (he did not mention that this agent was Vandenesse, the King's private secretary), "and he tells me that my arrest is resolved upon the moment Alva reaches the Netherlands—and that my trial is not to last more than twenty-four hours."

"But they would do nothing to me," said Anne sullenly.

"Before God, Madame, I entreat you to hasten! Are you not a Lutheran and the Elector Maurice's daughter, and do you hope to stand in Alva's good graces?"

A slight tremor shook Anne.

"It does not please me to go to Dillenburg," she muttered.

William flushed.

"You remind me that I have no other house to offer you," he said. "I must entreat your patience, Anne."

"Let me go to Cologne," answered the Princess. "I think you could well spare me."

"It is not possible. Our separation would cause a scandal, and is there need to put our affairs in every man's mouth? And at this juncture of my affairs I cannot well afford two households."

This drove Anne into one of her sudden furies.

"Ah yes," she cried. "You are ruined in this miserable intrigue! Why could you not remain loyal? This is all the doing of Count Louis—I always hated him; little did you think of me when you suffered yourself to be led away by his boy's tricks!" William looked at her steadily.

"What I do is according to my conscience," he said quietly, "but that I think you do not comprehend. Yet let me tell you this: a man situated as I am, who sees nothing but troubles before him, could find no greater comfort than a patient wife who took her difficulties lightly. But that comfort, I fear, I shall never have from you."

"And what comfort shall _I_ get from anyone?" asked Anne wildly.

She flung into the inner chamber, harshly closing the door after her so that the panels rattled.

Rénèe felt the tears sting her eyes at the misery, the wretchedness of it all; what was wrong, she wondered, that things should be like this?

"See to these affairs, my child," said the Prince, pointing to the confusion in the chamber, "we must indeed be gone to-morrow."

"All is nearly ready, Highness," answered Rénèe; "the men may come when they will for the coffers. And I think the Princess will come quietly—she is frightened."

"She is in a melancholy," said William, "she has not all her wits. A fine discord she will strike in Dillenburg," he added grimly. "I had hoped, these humours would pass with her youth, but it is not so."

Anne was still only twenty-four, but no one thought of her as young.

"It is a sickness," answered Rénèe, "she is never well, seigneur, but always ailing and often in pain."

"I know, and therefore I forbear many things," he said.

She looked at his face that was tired and pale but absolutely composed and serene, and she saw that he had long since gauged Anne's value and that she did not trouble him.

"You are glad to return to Germany?" he suddenly asked Rénèe.

She flushed brightly.

"I am glad to think that Your Highness will return to the Netherlands," she answered boldly.

"You think I shall?"

"Yes—for who else is there to withstand Alva and Philip?"

"You still make a champion of me," he smiled. "Be-like you think of me as a heretic?"

"Men call you that, Highness."

"My enemies."

"Your friends could find no nobler name," answered Rénèe.

She stood erect, gazing at him, and the joy and terror she had in his presence and her intense love for her country and her faith fired her beauty with an ardent life that made her glow like a brilliant flower.

All her lovelinesses, always neglected and ignored, were suddenly triumphant.

"If Your Highness would but listen to the cries of the poor Netherlanders!" she said. "They say you would have followed Count Egmont if he had raised his standard for the people—will you not go on alone?"

"Against Philip?" William smiled. "Child, you think too much of politics. When we are in Germany I will find you a husband who will relieve you from this stern service."

She turned away wistfully.

"I am always overbold," she murmured; "it is my folly."

The Prince touched her lightly on the shoulder. "Hold up your heart. I, too, love the Netherlands and hope to serve them. And maybe I might accomplish something—even against Spain. God guides it all, surely."

He left her, and Rénèe went on with her task, selecting, folding, putting away; the little German girl came to help her, and two others of the Princess's women went to and fro the long suite of apartments with clothes and caskets in their hands.

The dusk fell, the candles were lit; the Ave Maria rose from the great church of Breda, the dark closed in, and the shutters were fastened over the spring night, and still the preparations for departure went on from garret to cellar.

In the library the Prince was writing his farewell letters to Egmont and Hoorne; in her chamber Anne lay prostrate and sullen on her huge brocaded bed; in all the rooms the servants and attendants worked, packing up the furniture and household goods.

There was much that had to be left behind. There was much that had been utterly abandoned, as the greater part of the rich appointments of the gorgeous Brussels hôtel, and it was but a modest train that started on the morrow for Cleves, the first stage of the journey.

But as they proceeded their number was continually swelled by crowds of fugitives and refugees who threw themselves on the protection of the Prince of Orange, and fled from the coming of Alva, whose name was beginning to sound over the provinces like the sound of a curse, and whose shadow was flung dark before him, like the shadow of death.