Crockett Samuel Rutherford
The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion

CHAPTER XLVI.
KING AND KING'S DAUGHTER

Upon the high, black, slaty ledges of the Sierra of Guadarrama, winter descends early. Indeed, Peñalara, looking down on the Escorial, keeps his snow-cap all the year. From the Dome of Philip the King, one may see in mid-August the snow-swirls greying his flanks and foot-hills almost to the limits of the convent domain.

It was now October, and along the splendid road which joins the little village of San Ildefonso to the Escorial, a sturdy cavalcade of horses and mules took its way – a carriers' convoy this, a muleteers' troop, not by any means a raffle of gay cavaliers.

"Ho, the Maragatos! Out of the way – the Maragatos!" shouted any that met them, over their shoulders. For that strange race from the flat lands of Astorga has the right of the highway – or rather, of the high, the low, and the middle way – wherever these exist in Spain. They are the carriers of all of value in the peninsula – assurance agents rather – stout-built men, curiously arrayed in leathern jerkins, belted broadly about the middle, and wearing white linen bragas– a sort of cross between "breeks" and "kilt," coming a little above the knee. Even bandits think twice before meddling with one of these affiliated Maragatos. For the whole bees' byke of them would hunt down the robber band. The King's troops let them alone. The Maragatos have always had the favour of kings, and as often as not carry the King's own goods from port to capital far more safely than his own troopers. Only they do not hurry. They do not often ride their horses, which carry – carry – only carry, while their masters stride alongside, with quarter-staff, a two-foot spring-knife, and a pair of holster-pistols all ready primed for any emergency.

But in the midst of this particular cavalcade were two women riding upon mules. They were dressed, so far as the eye of the passer-by could observe, in the costume of all the Maragatas – dresses square-cut in the bodice, with chains and half-moons of silver tinkling on neck and forehead, while a long petticoat, padded in small diamond squares, fell to the points of their red Cordovan shoes. These Maragatas sat sideways on their mules and were completely silent.

It was not a warlike party to look at. Nevertheless, gay young cavaliers of the capital on duty at La Granja, who might have sought adventure had the ladies been protected only by guards in mail and plume, drew aside and whispered behind their hands as the Maragatas went by.

Now these women were probably the two fairest in Spain at that moment – being by denomination Claire Agnew and Valentine la Niña. In the rear a huge, vaguely misshapen giant in shepherd's dress – fleece-coat and cap of wolf-skin, with the ears sticking out quaintly on either side, herded the entire party. He seemed to be assuring himself that it was not followed or spied upon.

Beneath them, in the grey of the mist, as they turned a corner of the blue-black Sierra, there suddenly loomed up the snow-sprinkled roofs of a vast building – palace, monastery, tomb – what not. It was the Escorial, built by Philip of Spain to commemorate the famous victory of St. Quentain, and completed just in time to receive, as a cold water baptism, the news of the defeat of his Great Armada.

The pile of the Escorial seemed too huge to be wrought by man – a part of the mountain rather, hewn by giant hands into domes and doors and fantastic pinnacles. Indeed, the grey snow-showers, mere scufflings of sleet and hail, drifting low and ponderous, treated it as part of the Sierra, one moment whitening it – then, the sun coming out with Spanish fierceness for a few minutes, lo! vast roofs of blue slate would show through, glistening like polished steel.

And a king dwelt there – not discrowned, but still the mightiest on the earth. In spite of his defeats, in spite of his solitude, his broken purposes, his doubtful future, his empty exchequer, his ruined health, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death opening before him, there was nothing on earth – not pope nor prelate, not unscrupulous queen nor victorious fleet, not even the tempests which had blown his great Armada upon the inhospitable rocks of Ireland – that could subdue his stubborn will. He warred for Holy Church against the Pope. He claimed the throne of France from the son of Saint Louis. Once King of England, he held the title to the last, and in defence of it broke his power against the oaken bulwarks of that stiff-necked isle.

In his youth a man of as many marriages, secret and open, as Henry VIII. himself, he had been compelled to imprison and perhaps to suppress his son Don Carlos. The English ambassadors found him a man of domestic virtues. Yet the sole daughter who cherished him he sacrificed in a moment to his dynastic projects. And the other? Well, there is something to be said concerning that other.

Philip II. dwelt in the Escorial as in a fenced city. But Valentine la Niña had a master-key to unlock all doors. The next morning very early – for the King rose and donned his monk's robe in the twilight, stealing to his place in the stalls like any of his Jeronomite fellows – the two found their way along the vast corridors to the tiny royal chambers, bare of comfort as monastic cells, but loaded with petitions, reports, and letters from the four corners of the earth.

"Tell the King that Valentine la Niña, Countess of Astorga, would see him!"

And at that word the royal confessor, who had come to interview them, grew suddenly ashen pale in the scant light of a covered morning, as if the granite of the court in which they stood had been reflected in his face.

He made a low reverence and withdrew without a word.

At last the two girls were at the door of the King's chamber – a closet rather than a room. Philip was seated at his desk, his gouty foot on the eternal leg-rest, a ghastly picture of St. Lawrence over his head, and a great crucifix in ivory and silver nailed upon the wall, just where the King's eyes would rest upon it each time he lifted his head.

Claire took in the outward appearance of the mighty monarch who had been but a name to her up to this moment. He looked not at all like the "Demon of the South" of her imagination.

A little fair man, in appearance all a Flamand of the very race he despised, a Flamand of the Flamands His blue eyes were already rheumy and filmed with age, and when he wished to see anything very clearly he had a trick of covering the right eye with his hand, thrusting his head forward, and peering short-sightedly with the other. His hair, though white, retained some of the saffron bloom which once had marked him in a crowd as the white panache served the Bearnais. His beard, dirty white also, was straggling and tufted, as if in secret hours of sorrow it had been plucked out, Oriental fashion, by the roots.

"My father," said Valentine la Niña, looking at him straight and fearlessly, "I have come to bid you a good morning. My uncle of Astorga would have come too, but he prays in his canon's stall in the cathedral of Leon for his near and dear 'parent,' your Majesty."

The King rose slowly from his chair. His glabrous face showed no emotion.

"Aid me, my daughter," he said, "I would look in your face."

As he rose, his short-sighted eyes caught the dim silhouette of Claire standing behind. All a-tremble from head to foot, he stopped short in what he was about to say.

"And who may that be?" he demanded, in the thick, half-articulate mumble which so many ambassadors found a difficulty in understanding.

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

"Ah," said the King, as one who all his life had had knowledge of such requests. But without further question he took Valentine la Niña 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 Gesù. 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 Niña.

"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 butt 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 Niña 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 Niña, "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 assassination, 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 Niña.

"She loved me – yes – God be her judge!" said the King. "She died for me!"

"Then," continued Valentine la Niña 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 Niña 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 Niña 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 nobles 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.

Therefore, from the point of view of dynasty, the Osorios of Astorga held the succession of the kingdom of Spain in their hands. At the least they could have produced a bloody war, which would have rent Spain from one end to the other, on behalf of the succession of Isabel Osorio's children. Therefore it had been the main purpose of Philip to keep them all unmarried. The sons, Pierre and Bernardino, he had severally made priors of great Flemish and Italian monasteries. Only Valentine la Niña he had never been able to dispose of according to his will. Now he had her word. No wonder that the King slept more soundly that night.

After all, what did it matter to him if a couple of heretics escaped – if only Valentine la Niña were once safely cloistered within the house of the Carmelites of El Parral. It cannot be denied, however, that a thought of treachery passed across the royal – oh, so little royal – mind.

"Afterwards?" he murmured "But no – that would not do. I must keep my word – a painful necessity, but a necessity. The Osorios of Astorga are too powerful. To spite me, Valentine might return to the world. And the Pope would be glad enough to embroil the succession of Spain, in the interests of the Milanais and his own Italian provinces."

After all, better to keep his word! So, satiated with well-doing and well-intending, the King said a prayer, clicked his beads, and as he turned towards the slit in his bedroom through which he could see the high altar, he thanked God that he was not as other men. He could forgive. He could fulfil. Nay, he would go himself and witness the ceremony of the Black Veil – to make sure that his daughter really became the bride of Holy Church. And to this end he sent certain orders to Tarragona.

Philip II. had a natural eye for artistic effect. He would, indeed, have preferred to send the inconvenient Valentine willy-nilly to a convent. He would have delighted to arrange the details of the funeral pyre of these two dangerous heretics, John d'Albret and Francis the Scot. It would have cost him nothing, even, to permit the piquant young beauty of Claire Agnew to perish with the rest.

But Valentine la Niña had posed her conditions most carefully. The Marquis, her near kinsman, had come specially from Leon, with many gentlemen of the province in his train. For, though never insisted on, the nativity of Valentine was no secret for the grandees of her own province.

The chapel of the Convent of the Carmelites on the Parral of Madrid had been arranged by Philip's orders for a great ceremonial. He attended to the matter in person, for nothing was too great or too little for him.

A sweet sound of chanting was heard, and from behind the tall iron bars of the coro the spectators, as they assembled, could dimly see the forms of the cloistered nuns – of that Carmelite Order, the most austere in Spain, no one of whom would ever again look upon the face of man.

There before an altar, dressed for the occasion, and in presence of the King, Claire and John d'Albret stood hand in hand. There they exchanged their vows, with many onlookers, but with one sole maid of honour. And when it was demanded, as is customary, "Who giveth this woman?" the tall figure of Francis Agnew, bent and bearded, took his daughter's hand and placed it in that of Valentine, who, herself arrayed like another bride, all in white, with lace and veil, stood by Claire's side. Valentine la Niña looked once, a long, holding look, into the eyes of John d'Albret. Then she took the hand of the bride and placed it in his. The officiating priest said no word.

For, indeed, it was she who had given this woman to this man – more, too, she had given him her own life.

King Philip looked on, sternly smiling, from the stall which, as a canon of Leon, was his right. Now, however, he had laid aside his monk's dress, and was arrayed royally, as became the first cavalier of Spain. What the King was really waiting for came later.

Valentine la Niña retired to a tiring-room where, the first ceremonies accomplished, her splendid hair was cut close, and she was attired in the white and brown of the Order of the Carmelites. Then the final black veil was thrown over her head. She came forth with her sponsors – two cardinal-archbishops in the splendid array of their rank as princes of the Church. The chant from the choir rose high and clear. Behind the black bars the cloistered nuns, their veils about their faces, clustered closer. The wedding-party had drawn back, John d'Albret standing in the midst, with Claire on his arm, clinging close and sobbing – for the debt which another had paid. The procession of priests passed slowly back down the aisle. Valentine was left kneeling before the altar with only her sponsors on either side.

"Sister Maria of the Renunciation!"

The Archbishop of Toledo proclaimed the new name of this latest bride of Holy Church. Claire whispered, "What is it? Oh, what does it mean? I do not understand!"

For the Protestant and foreigner can never understand the awfulness of that sacrifice. Even now it did not seem real to Claire. Surely, oh, surely she was walking in a vain show. Soon she must awake from this dream and find Valentine by her side, as she had been for weeks past.

But, in the midst of the solemn chant, the black gratings of iron opened. The nuns could be seen kneeling on either side, their heads bowed almost to the ground. Only the abbess came forward, a tall old woman, groping and tottering, her bony hand scarce able to find its way through the dense folds of her veil.

She stretched out her hand, feeling this way and that, like a creature of the dark blinded by the light. The two cardinals delivered the new sister of the Order into her charge. This was done silently. The sound of Claire's sobs could be heard distinctly.

But ere the tall iron gratings shut together, ere the interrupted chant lifted itself leisurely out of the silence, ere the groping hands of the old blind abbess could grasp hers, Valentine la Niña had turned once more to look her last on the world she was leaving.

Her eyes searched for and met those of John d'Albret. And if soul ever spoke to soul these were the words they said to him, "This I have done for you!"

The huge barred doors creaked and rasped their way back, shutting with a clank of jarring iron, not to be again opened till another sister entered that living tomb.

Dimly the files of phantom Carmelites could be seen receding farther and farther towards the high altar. The chant sank to a whisper. Valentine la Niña was no more for this world.

With a choking sob Claire fell into her husband's arms.

"God make me worthy!" she whispered, holding very close.