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The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series

R >> Rafael Sabatini >> The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series




"Nothing! What sort of advice is that?"

"The best advice that you can follow, sire. This affair should be
talked of as little as possible, nor should it appear to be of
any consequence to you, or capable of giving you the least
uneasiness."

The Queen cleared her throat huskily. "Good advice, Monsieur le
Duc," she approved him. "He will be wise to follow it." Her voice
strained, almost threatening. "But in this matter I doubt wisdom
and he have long since become strangers."

That put him in a passion, and in a passion he left her to do the
maddest thing he had ever done. In the garb of a courier, and
with a patch over one eye to complete his disguise, he set out in
pursuit of the fugitives. He had learnt that they had taken the
road to Landrecy, which was enough for him. Stage by stage he
followed them in that flight to Flanders, picking up the trail as
he went, and never pausing until he had reached the frontier
without overtaking them.

It was all most romantic, and the lady, when she learnt of it,
shed tears of mingled joy and rage, and wrote him impassioned
letters in which she addressed him as her knight, and implored
him, as he loved her, to come and deliver her from the detestable
tyrant who held her in thrall. Those perfervid appeals completed
his undoing, drove him mad, and blinded him to everything--even
to the fact that his wife, too, was shedding tears, and that
these were of rage undiluted by any more tender emotion.

He began by sending Praslin to require the Archduke to order the
Prince of Conde to leave his dominions. And when the Archduke
declined with dignity to be guilty of any such breach of the law
of nations, Henry dispatched Cccuvres secretly to Brussels to
carry off thence the princess. But Maria de' Medici was on the
alert, anti frustrated the design by sending a warning of what
was intended to the Marquis Spinola, as a result of which the
Prince de Conde and his wife were housed for greater security in
the Archduke's own palace.

Checkmated at all points, yet goaded further by the letters which
he continued to receive from that most foolish of princesses,
Henry took the wild decision that to obtain her he would invade
the Low Countries as the first step in the execution of that
design of a war with Spain which hitherto had been little more
than a presence. The matter of the Duchy of Cleves was a pretext
ready to his hand. To obtain the woman he desired he would set
Europe in a blaze.

He took that monstrous resolve at the very beginning of the
new year, and in the months that followed France rang with
preparations. It rang, too, with other things which should have
given him pause. It rang with the voice of preachers giving
expression to the popular vied; that Cleves was not worth
fighting for, that the war was unrighteous--a war undertaken by
Catholic France to defend Protestant interests against the very
champions of Catholicism in Europe. And soon it began to ring,
tool with prophecies of the King's approaching end.

These prognostics rained upon him from every quarter. Thomassin,
and the astrologer La Brosse, warned him of a message from the
stars that May would be fraught with danger for him. From Rome--
from the very pope himself Came notice of a conspiracy against
him in which he was told that the very highest in the land
were engaged. From Embrun, Bayonne, and Douai came messages of
like purport, and early in May a note was found one morning on
the altar of the church of Montargis announcing the King's
approaching death.

But that is to anticipate. Meanwhile, Henry had pursued his
preparations undeterred by either warnings or prognostications.
There had been so many conspiracies against his life already that
he was become careless and indifferent in such matters. Yet
surely there never had been one that was so abundantly heralded
from every quarter, or ever one that was hatched under conditions
so propitious as those which he had himself created now. In his
soul he was not at ease, and the source of his uneasiness was the
coronation of the Queen, for which the preparations were now
going forward.

He must have known that if danger of assassination threatened him
from any quarter it was most to be feared from those whose
influence with the Queen was almost such as to give them a
control over her--the Concinis and their unavowed but obvious
ally the Duke of Epernon. If he were dead, and the Queen so left
that she could be made absolute regent during the Dauphin's
minority, it was those adventurers who would become through her
the true rulers of France, and so enrich themselves and gratify
to the full their covetous ambitions. He saw clearly that his
safety lay in opposing this coronation--already fixed for the
13th May--which Maria de' Medici was so insistent should take
place before his departure for the wars. The matter so preyed
upon his mind that last he unburdened himself to Sully one day at
the Arsenal.

"Oh, my friend," he cried, "this coronation does not please me.
My heart tells me that some fatality will follow."

He sat down, grasping the case of his reading-glass, whilst Sully
could only stare at him amazed by this out-burst. Thus he remained
awhile in deep thought. Then he started up again.

"Pardieu!" he cried. "I shall be murdered in this city. It is
their only resource. I see it plainly. This cursed coronation
will be the cause of my death."

"What a thought, sir!"

"You think that I have been reading the almanach or paying heed
to the prophets, eh? But listen to me now, Grand Master." And
wrinkles deepened about the bold, piercing eyes. "It is four
months and more since we announced our intention of going to war,
and France has resounded with our preparations. We have made no
secret of it. Yet in Spain not a finger has been lifted in
preparation to resist us, not a sword has been sharpened. Upon
what does Spain build? Whence her confidence that in despite of
my firm resolve and my abundant preparations, despite the fact
announced that I am to march on the lath of this month, despite
the fact that my troops are already in Champagne with a train of
artillery so complete and well-furnished that France has never
seen the like of it, and perhaps never will again--whence the
confidence that despite all this there is no need to prepare
defences? Upon what do they build, I say, when they assume, as
assume they must, that there will be no war? Resolve me that,
Grand Master."

But Sully, overwhelmed, could only gasp and ejaculate.

"You had not thought of it, eh? Yet it is clear enough Spain
builds on my death. And who are the friends of Spain here in
France? Who was it intrigued with Spain in such a way and to
such ends as in my lifetime could never have been carried to an
issue? Ha! You see."

"I cannot, sire. It is too horrible. It is impossible!" cried
that loyal, honest gentleman. "And yet if you are convinced of
it, you should break off this coronation, your journey, and your
war. If you wish it so, it is not difficult to satisfy you."

"Ay, that is it." He came to his feet, and gripped the duke's
shoulder in his strong, nervous hand. "Break off this coronation,
and never let me hear of it again. That will suffice. Thus I can
rid my mind of apprehensions, and leave Paris with nothing to
fear."

"Very well. I will send at once to Notre Dame and to St. Denis,
to stop the preparations and dismiss the workmen."

"Ah, wait." The eyes that for a moment had sparkled with new
hope, grew dull again; the lines of care descended between the
brows. "Oh, what to decide! What to decide! It is what I wish, my
friend. But how will my wife take it?"

"Let her take it as she will. I cannot believe that she will
continue obstinate when she knows what apprehensions you have of
disaster."

"Perhaps not, perhaps not," he answered. But his tone was not
sanguine. "Try to persuade her, Sully. Without her consent I
cannot do this thing. But you will know how to persuade her. Go
to her."

Sully suspended the preparations for the coronation, and sought
the Queen. For three days, he tells us, he used prayers, entreaties,
and arguments with which to endeavour to move her. But all was
labour lost. Maria de' Medici was not to be moved. To all Sully's
arguments she opposed an argument that was unanswerable.

Unless she were crowned Queen of France, as was her absolute
right, she would be a person of no account and subject to the
Council of Regency during the King's absence, a position unworthy
and intolerable to her, the mother of the Dauphin.

And so it was Henry's part to yield. His hands were tied by the
wrongs that he had done, and the culminating wrong that he was
doing her by this very war, as he had himself openly acknowledged.
He had chanced one day to ask the Papal Nuncio what Rome thought
of this war.

"Those who have the best information," the Nuncio answered
boldly, "are of opinion that the principal object of the war is
the Princess of Conde, whom your Majesty wishes to bring back to
France."

Angered by this priestly insolence, Henry's answer had been an
impudently defiant acknowledgment of the truth of that allegation.

"Yes, by God!" he cried. "Yes--most certainly I want to have her
back, and I will have her back; no one shall hinder me, not even
God's viceregent on earth."

Having uttered those words, which he knew to have been carried to
the Queen, and to have wounded her perhaps more deeply than
anything that had yet happened in this affair, his conscience
left him, despite his fears, powerless now to thwart her even to
the extent of removing those pernicious familiars of hers of
whose plottings he had all but positive evidence.

And so the coronation was at last performed with proper pomp and
magnificence at St. Denis on Thursday, the 13th May. It had been
concerted that the festivities should last four days and conclude
on the Sunday with the Queen's public entry into Paris. On the
Monday the King was to set out to take command of his armies,
which were already marching upon the frontiers.

Thus Henry proposed, but the Queen--convinced by his own
admission of the real aim and object of the war, and driven by
outraged pride to hate the man who offered her this crowning
insult, and determined that at all costs it must be thwarted--had
lent an ear to Concini's purpose to avenge her, and was ready to
repay infidelity with infidelity. Concini and his fellow-
conspirators had gone to work so confidently that a week before
the coronation a courier had appeared in Liege, announcing that
he was going with news of Henry's assassination to the Princes of
Germany, whilst at the same time accounts of the King's death
were being published in France and Italy.

Meanwhile, whatever inward misgivings Henry may have entertained,
outwardly at least he appeared serene and good-humoured at his
wife's coronation, gaily greeting her at the end of the ceremony
by the title of "Madam Regent."

The little incident may have touched her, arousing her conscience.
For that night she disturbed his slumbers by sudden screams, and
when he sprang up in solicitous alarm she falteringly told him
of a dream in which she had seen him slain, and fell to imploring
him with a tenderness such as had been utterly foreign to her of
late to take great care of himself in the days to come. In the
morning she renewed those entreaties, beseeching him not to leave
the Louvre that day, urging that she had a premonition it would
be fatal to him.

He laughed for answer. "You have heard of the predictions of La
Brosse," said he. "Bah! You should not attach credit to such
nonsense."

Anon came the Duke of Vendome, his natural son by the Marquise de
Verneuil, with a like warning and a like entreaty, only to
receive a like answer.

Being dull and indisposed as a consequence of last night's broken
rest, Henry lay down after dinner. But finding sleep denied him,
he rose, pensive and gloomy, and wandered aimlessly down, and out
into the courtyard. There an exempt of the guard, of whom he
casually asked the time, observing the King's pallor and
listlessness, took the liberty of suggesting that his Majesty
might benefit if he took the air.

That chance remark decided Henry's fate. His eyes quickened
responsively. "You advise well," said he. "Order my coach. I will
go to the Arsenal to see the Duc de Sully, who is indisposed."

On the stones beyond the gates, where lackeys were wont to await
their masters, sat a lean fellow of some thirty years of age, in
a dingy, clerkly attire, so repulsively evil of countenance that
he had once been arrested on no better grounds than because it
was deemed impossible that a man with such a face could be other
than a villain.

Whilst the coach was being got ready, Henry re-entered the
Louvre, and startled the Queen by announcing his intention. With
fearful insistence she besought him to countermand the order, and
not to leave the palace.

"I will but go there and back," he said, laughing at her fears.
"I shall have returned before you realize that I have gone." And
so he went, never to return alive.

He sat at the back of the coach, and the weather being fine all
the curtains were drawn up so that he might view the decorations
of the city against the Queen's public entry on Sunday. The Duc
d'Epernon was on his right, the Duc de Montbazon and the Marquis
de la Force on his left. Lavordin and Roquelaure were in the
right boot, whilst near the left boot, opposite to Henry, sat
Mirebeau and du Plessis Liancourt. He was attended only by a
small number of gentlemen on horseback, and some footmen.

The coach turned from the Rue St. Honore into the narrow Rue de
la Ferronerie, and there was brought to a halt by a block
occasioned by the meeting of two carts, one laden with hay, the
other with wine. The footmen went ahead with the exception of
two. Of these, one advanced to clear a way for the royal vehicle,
whilst the other took the opportunity to fasten his garter.

At that moment, gliding like a shadow between the coach and the
shops, came that shabby, hideous fellow who had been sitting on
the stones outside the Louvre an hour ago. Raising himself by
deliberately standing upon one of the spokes of the stationary
wheel, he leaned over the Duc d'Epernon, and, whipping a long,
stout knife from his sleeve, stabbed Henry in the breast. The
King, who was in the act of reading a letter, cried out, and
threw up his arms in an instinctive warding movement, thereby
exposing his heart. The assassin stabbed again, and this time the
blade went deep.

With a little gasping cough, Henry sank together, and blood
gushed from his mouth.

The predictions were fulfilled; the tale borne by the courier
riding through Liege a week ago was made true, as were the
stories of his death already at that very hour circulating in
Antwerp, Malines, Brussels, and elsewhere.

The murderer aimed yet a third blow, but this at last was parried
by Epernon, whereupon the fellow stepped back from the coach, and
stood there, making no attempt to escape, or even to rid himself
of the incriminating knife. St. Michel, one of the King's
gentlemen-in-waiting, who had followed the coach, whipped out his
sword and would have slain him on the spot had he not been
restrained by Epernon. The footmen seized the fellow, and
delivered him over to the captain of the guard. He proved to be a
school-master of Angouleme--which was Epernon's country. His name
was Ravaillac.

The curtains of the coach were drawn, the vehicle was put about,
and driven back to the Louvre, whilst to avoid all disturbance it
was announced to the people that the King was merely wounded.

But St. Michel went on to the Arsenal, taking with him the knife
that had stabbed his master, to bear the sinister tidings to
Henry's loyal and devoted friend. Sully knew enough to gauge
exactly whence the blow had proceeded. With anger and grief in
his heart he got to horse, ill as he was, and, calling together
his people, set out presently for the Louvre, with a train one
hundred strong, which was presently increased to twice that
number by many of the King's faithful servants who joined his
company as he advanced. In the Rue de la Pourpointicre a man in
passing slipped a note into his hand.

It was a brief scrawl: "Monsieur, where are ye going? It is done.
I have seen him dead. If you enter the Louvre you will not escape
any more than he did."

Nearing St. Innocent, the warning was repeated, this time by a
gentleman named du Jon, who stopped to mutter:

"Monsieur le Duc, our evil is without remedy. Look to yourself,
for this strange blow will have fearful consequences."

Again in the Rue St. Honore another note was thrown him, whose
contents were akin to those of the first. Yet with misgivings
mounting swiftly to certainty, Sully rode amain towards the
Louvre, his train by now amounting to some three hundred horse.
But at the end of the street he was stopped by M. de Vitry, who
drew rein as they met.

"Ah, monsieur," Vitry greeted him, "where are you going with such
a following? They will never suffer you to enter the Louvre with
more than two or three attendants, which I would not advise you
to do. For this plot does not end here. I have seen some persons
so little sensible of the loss they have sustained that they
cannot even simulate the grief they should feel. Go back,
monsieur. There is enough for you to do without going to the
Louvre."

Persuaded by Vitry's solemnity, and by what he knew in his heart,
Sully faced about and set out to retrace his steps. But presently
he was overtaken by a messenger from the Queen, begging him to
come at once to her at the Louvre, and to bring as few persons as
possible with him. "This proposal," he writes, "to go alone and
deliver myself into the hands of my enemies, who filled the
Louvre, was not calculated to allay my suspicions."

Moreover he received word at that moment that an exempt of the
guards and a force of soldiers were already at the gates of the
Arsenal, that others had been sent to the Temple, where the
powder was stored, and others again to the treasurer of the
Exchequer to stop all the money there.

"Convey to the Queen my duty and service," he bade the messenger,
"and assure her that until she acquaints me with her orders I
shall continue assiduously to attend the affairs of my office."
And with that he went to shut himself up in the Bastille, whither
he was presently followed by a stream of her Majesty's envoys,
all bidding him to the Louvre. But Sully, ill as he was, and now
utterly prostrated by all that he had endured, put himself to bed
and made of his indisposition a sufficient excuse.

Yet on the morrow he allowed himself to be persuaded to obey her
summons, receiving certain assurances that he had no ground for
any apprehensions. Moreover, he may by now have felt a certain
security in the esteem in which the Parisians held him. An
attempt against him in the Louvre itself would prove that the
blow that had killed his master was not the independent act of a
fanatic, as it was being represented; and vengeance would follow
swiftly upon the heads of those who would thus betray themselves
of having made of that poor wretch's fanaticism an instrument to
their evil ends.

In that assurance he went, and he has left on record the burning
indignation aroused in him at the signs of satisfaction,
complacency, and even mirth that he discovered in that house of
death. The Queen herself, however, overwrought by the events, and
perhaps conscience-stricken by the tragedy which in the eleventh
hour she had sought to avert, burst into tears at sight of Sully,
and brought in the Dauphin, who flung himself upon the Duke's
neck.

"My son," the Queen addressed him, "this is Monsieur de Sully.
You must love him well, for he was one of the best and most
faithful servants of the King your father, and I entreat him to
continue to serve you in the same manner."

Words so fair might have convinced a man less astute that all his
suspicions were unworthy. But, even then, the sequel would very
quickly have undeceived him. For very soon thereafter his fall
was brought about by the Concinis and their creatures, so that no
obstacle should remain between themselves and the full gratification
of their fell ambitions.

At once he saw the whole policy of the dead King subversed; he
saw the renouncing of all ancient alliances, and the union of the
crowns of France and Spain; the repealing of all acts of
pacification; the destruction of the Protestants; the dissipation
of the treasures amassed by Henry; the disgrace of those who
would not receive the yoke of the new favourites. All this Sully
witnessed in his declining years, and he witnessed, too, the
rapid rise to the greatest power and dignity in the State of that
Florentine adventurer, Concino Concini--now bearing the title of
Marshal d'Ancre--who had so cunningly known how to profit by a
Queen's jealousy and a King's indiscretions.

As for the miserable Ravaillac, it is pretended that he
maintained under torture and to the very hour of his death that
he had no accomplices, that what he had done he had done to
prevent an unrighteous war against Catholicism and the Pope--
which was, no doubt, the falsehood with which those who used him
played upon his fanaticism and whetted him to their service. I
say "pretended" because, after all, complete records of his
examinations are not discoverable, and there is a story that when
at the point of death, seeing himself abandoned by those in whom
perhaps he had trusted, he signified a desire to confess, and did
so confess; but the notary Voisin, who took his depositions in
articulo mortis, set them down in a hand so slovenly as to be
afterwards undecipherable.

That may or may not be true. But the statement that when the
President du Harlay sought to pursue inquiries into certain
allegations by a woman named d'Escoman, which incriminated the
Duc d'Epernon, he received a royal order to desist, rests upon
sound authority.

* * * * * *

That is the story of the assassination of Henry IV. re-told in
the light of certain records which appear to me to have been
insufficiently studied. They should suggest a train of speculation
leading to inferences which, whilst obvious, I hesitate to define
absolutely.

"If it be asked," says Perefixe, "who were the friends that
suggested to Ravaillac so damnable a design, history replies that
it is ignorant and that upon an action of Such consequences it is
not permissible to give suspicions and conjectures for certain
truths. The judges themselves who interrogated him dared not open
their mouths, and never mentioned the matter but with gestures of
horror and amazement."





VI. THE BARREN WOOING

The Murder of Amy Robsart



There had been a banquet, followed by a masque, and this again by
a dance in which the young queen had paired off with Lord Robert
Dudley, who in repute was the handsomest man in Europe, just as
in fact he was the vainest, shallowest, and most unscrupulous.
There had been homage and flattery lavishly expressed, and there
was a hint of masked hostility from certain quarters to spice the
adventure, and to thrill her bold young spirit. Never yet in all
the months of her reign since her coronation in January of last
year had she felt so much a queen, and so conscious of the power
of her high estate; never so much a woman, and so conscious of
the weakness of her sex. The interaction of those conflicting
senses wrought upon her like a heady wine. She leaned more
heavily upon the silken arm of her handsome Master of the Horse,
and careless in her intoxication of what might be thought or
said, she--who by the intimate favour shown him had already
loosed the tongue of Scandal and set it chattering in every court
in Europe--drew him forth from that thronged and glittering
chamber of the Palace of Whitehall into the outer solitude and
friendly gloom.

And he, nothing loth to obey the suasion of that white hand upon
his arm, exultant, indeed, to parade before them all the power he
had with her, went willingly enough. Let Norfolk and Sussex
scowl, let Arundel bite his lip until it bled, and sober Cecil
stare cold disapproval. They should mend their countenances soon,
and weigh their words or be for ever silenced, when he was master
in England. And that he would soon be master he was assured to-
night by every glance of her blue eyes, by the pressure of that
fair hand upon his arm, by the languishing abandonment with which
that warm young body swayed towards him, as they passed out from
the blaze of lights and the strains of music into the gloom and
silence of the gallery leading to the terrace.

"Out--let us go out, Robin. Let me have air," she almost panted,
as she drew him on.

Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he might have been
master already but for that wife of his, that stumbling-block to
his ambition, who practiced the housewifely virtues at Cumnor
Place, and clung so tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in
spite of all his plans to relieve her of the burden of it.

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