The White Plumes of Navarre Part 47

"A maid of Scotland, for whom I have come to ask a favour," answered Valentine la Nina.

"Ah," said the King, as one who all his life had had knowledge of such requests. But without further question he took Valentine la Nina by the hand and led her to the window, so that the grey light, half-reflected from the clay-muddy sky, and half from the snowy courtyard, might strike directly upon her face.

"Isabel Osorio's daughter--yes!" he said very low, "herself indeed!"

"The lawful daughter of your lawful wife," said the girl, "also an obedient daughter. For I have done ever what you wished me--save only in one thing. And that--that--I am now ready to do, on one condition."

"Ah," said the King again, pulling at his beard, "now aid me to sit down again, my daughter. We will talk."

"Aye," the girl answered, "we will talk--you and I. You and I have not talked much in my life. I have always obeyed--you--my uncle of Astorga--Mariana of the Gesu. For that reason I am alive--I am free--there is still a place for me in the world. But I know--you have told me--Isabel Osorio's brother himself has told me, that I too must sacrifice myself for your other and younger children, the sons and daughters of princesses. You have often asked me--indeed bidden me to enter a nunnery. The Jesuits have made me great promises. For what? That I might leave the way clear for others--I, the King's eldest-born--I, whom you dare not deny of blood as good as your own, a daughter of the Osorio who fought at Clavijo shoulder to shoulder with Santiago himself."

"I do not deny," said the King softly, "you have done a good work. But the Faith hath need of you. To it you consecrate your mother's beauty as I have consecrated my life----"

"Yes," said the girl, "but first you lived your life--you did not yield it up on the threshold--unlived."

Silently Philip crossed himself, raising his thick swollen fingers from the rosary which hung about his neck as low as his waist.

"Then why have you come," he said, again resuming the steady fingering of his beads, "when you have not thought it fitting to obey, save upon condition? One does not play the merchant with one's father."

"I have been too young--yes," she broke out, her voice hurrying in fear of interruption--"too like my mother--ah, even you cannot reproach me with that!--to bury myself under a veil, with eternal walls shutting me in on every side. I have served you well. I have served the Society--I have done your will, my father--save only in this."

"And now," said the King drily, "you have returned to a better mind?"

"I have," said Valentine, "on conditions!"

"Again I warn you I do not bargain," said the King, "my will is my will.

Refuse or submit. I make no terms."

The girl flashed into fire at the word.

"Ah, but you must," she cried. "I am no daughter of Flanders--no Caterina de Lainez to be shut up with the Ursulines of Brussels against my will. I am an Osorio of the Osorios. The brother of my mother will protect me. And behind him all Astorga and Leon would rise to march upon Madrid if any harm befell me. I bargain because it is my right--because I can stand between your children and their princely thrones--because I can prove your marriage no marriage--because, without my consent and that of my brothers Pedro and Bernardino, you had never either been King of England nor left children to sit in the seat of Charles your father.

But neither they nor I have asked for aught save life from your hands.

We have effaced ourselves for the kingdom's good and yours. A king of Spain may not marry a subject, but you married my mother--your friend's sister. Now will you bargain or no?"

"I will listen," said Philip grimly; "place my foot-rest a little nearer me, my daughter."

The calmness of the King immediately reacted on Valentine la Nina.

"Listen, my father," she said, "there are in your galleys at Tarragona two men--one of them the father of this young Scottish girl--the other, her--her betrothed. Pardon them. Let them depart from the kingdom----"

"Their crime?" interrupted the King.

"They were delivered over by the fathers of the Inquisition," said Valentine, less certainly.

"Then it is heresy," said the King. "I can forgive anything but that!"

"For one and the other," said the girl, "their heresy consists in good honest fighting, outside of your Majesty's kingdom--against the Guisard League. They are not your subjects, and were found in your province of Roussillon only by chance."

"Ah, in Roussillon?" said Philip thoughtfully. And picking up a long pole like the b.u.t.t of a fishing-rod furnished with a pair of steel nippers like a finger-and-thumb at the top, he turned half round to an open cabinet of many pigeon-holes, where were bundles innumerable of papers all arranged and neatly tied. The pincers clicked, and the King, with a smile of triumph at his little piece of dexterity, withdrew half-a-dozen folded sheets.

"Yes, I have heard," he said, "the men you commanded my Viceroy to remove from the galleys and to place in Pilate's House at Tarragona--a young Sorbonnist whom once before you allowed to escape at Perpignan, and the Scottish spy Francis Agnew."

"My father," began Claire, catching the name, but only imperfectly understanding the Castilian which they were speaking--"my father is----"

But Valentine la Nina stopped her with an imperious gesture of the hand.

It was her affair, the movement said.

The King shook his head gravely and a little indulgently.

"My daughter," he said, "you have taken too much on yourself already.

And my Viceroy in Catalonia is also to blame----"

"Pardon me," cried Valentine la Nina, "and listen. This is what I came to say. There is in your city of Madrid a convent of the Carmelites, the same which Theresa reformed. It is strictly cloistered, the rule serene, austere. Those who enter there have done with life. Give these two men their liberty, escort them to France, and I promise you I will enter it of my own free will. I will take the Black Veil, and trouble neither you nor your heirs more in this world."

The King did not answer immediately, but continued to turn over the sheaf of papers in his hand.

"And why," he said at last, "will you do for this maid--for the lives of these two men, what no persuasion of family or Church could previously persuade you to do?"

Valentine went hastily up to the King's side who, dwelling in perpetual fear of a.s.sa.s.sination, moved a little uneasily, watching her hand. But when she bent and whispered softly, none heard her words but himself.

Yet they moved him.

"Yes, I loved her--the wife of my youth!" he answered aloud (and as if speaking involuntarily) the whispered question.

"And she loved you?" said Valentine la Nina.

"She loved me--yes--G.o.d be her judge!" said the King. "She died for me!"

"Then," continued Valentine la Nina slowly, "you understand why for this young man's sake I am willing to accept death in life! I desire that he shall wed the woman he loves--whom he has chosen--who loves him!"

But under her breath she added, "Though not as I!"

And Valentine la Nina took the King's hand in hers, and motioned to Claire to come near and kiss it.

But Claire, kneeling, kissed that of Valentine la Nina instead.

Then, for the first time in many years, a tear lay upon the cheek of the King of Spain, wondering mightily at itself.

CHAPTER XLVII.

GREAT LOVE--AND GREATER

Now this is the explanation of these things.

In his hot youth, Philip, son of the great Emperor, had wedded in secret his comrade's sister, that comrade being one of the richest and most ancient n.o.bles of his kingdom, Osorio, Marquis of Astorga. But by a miracle of abnegation, Isabel Osorio had stood aside, her brother and the full family council approving her act, in order that her husband, and the father of her three children, should add Portugal, and afterwards England, to his Spanish domains.