Don Juan of Austria

The Imperial Army, composed of Germans, Walloons and Spanish regiments, was encamped outside Namur, at the juncture of the Sambre and Meuse, where Charles V. had been entrenched when pressed by the forces of Henri II.

The Commander of the Army was the son of Charles V., Don Juan of Austria, the hero of Christendom armed against the infidel, the victor of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, blessed by the Pope, a brilliant name in Europe, half-brother of the great King Philip and son of a servant girl, near the throne, of the blood royal, but barred for ever from it, a prince yet linked with peasants; he had blazed very brightly over Europe, the King had flattered him, had caressed him and used him.

By the King’s favour he had swept over Italy, Sicily, Africa, a conqueror, almost within touch of a throne; by the King’s favour he had been sent to crush the rebel heretics who were rising against the might of Spain in the Low Countries.

And now the King was silent; it seemed as if he meant to abandon Don Juan. Antonio Perez was always at the King’s ear, and he hated Don Juan; Escovedo, the Prince’s Secretary and favourite, was assassinated in the streets of Madrid by order of Perez.

When Don Juan heard this news he thought that there was no better end preparing for him and that Perez meant his ruin; the King did not answer his letters, and his glory broke like a bubble.

He had been too great, too beloved, too popular; Philip tolerated no rivals.

And now he began to be unfortunate; the Prince William of Orange, one time page to Don Juan’s father and now the Captain of Heretics, marched against him with a powerful army; the Duc D’Anjou joined the cause of the rebels, and the Queen of England, Elizabeth Tudor, at last decided to send succours to the rebellious provinces.

The forces met; the day of Rynemants was almost a defeat for Don Juan.

A haunted, hunted feeling began to possess him; in the brilliant south everything had been right with him; here, in the cursed Low Countries, every step he took seemed a step nearer his grave.

The death of Escovedo weighed on him day and night.

And the King would not write.

Don Juan began to fear and hate his second-in-command, the Prince of Parma, Alessandro Farnese, a man of his own age, but his nephew, for Farnese’s mother was Margaret, daughter of Charles V.

This man was in the confidence of the King; Don Juan knew and feared that fact. He began to dread the sight of the dark Italian face; the figure of Farnese seemed to him like that of a spy–or executioner.

When he had fought Boussu at Rynemants he had been ill; when he had held the useless conference with the English envoys he had scarcely been able to hold himself on his horse, and when he returned to the camp on the heights of Bouges outside Namur he fell to his knees as he dismounted and could not rise for the weight of his armour.

They carried him to the quarter of the regiment of Figueroa and lodged him in a pigeon-house or place for fowls belonging to a Flemish farm the Spanish guns had demolished.

No one knew what illness ailed him; some spoke of the plague, some of the Dutch fever, others said he had worn himself out with the fatigues of war and the delights of Italy.

The fever increased on him; he wrote to Mendoza, the Spanish agent at Genoa; he wrote to Andrea D’Aria, his companion in arms of Lepanto; he wrote to the King. But with little hope, for he felt himself abandoned.

Monseigneur FranÇois D’Anjou, brother of the King of France, was at Mons and had taken on himself the title of Defender of the Low Countries against the Spanish Tyranny; Don Juan had only eighteen thousand men, of which six thousand were Spanish, old, tried troops, and the rest merely Walloon and German mercenaries of doubtful loyalty.

They had scarcely any artillery and but little powder.

The plague appeared in the camp, numbers of the small army sickened and died.

There came news that the English were sailing for Flushing and that William of Orange was advancing on Namur.

Don Juan of Austria lay in the pigeon-house, prostrate with fever, sad and silent.

It was the end of September; day after day was sunny, with a honey-coloured peaceful light resting on the camp, on the two rivers, on the fortifications of Namur; the windmills stood motionless in the stagnant air; the few willows by the river turned from grey-green to dull amber and shook their long leaves on the soft, muddy bank; the horizon was veiled in mist, yellow, soft and mournful; at night the moon rose pale gold through languid dusky vapours; in the morning the sun rose, glimmering through melancholy mists, and above the camp hung, day and night, the fumes of the plague, of fever, the exhalations of decay and sickness, the close odours of death.

Juan of Austria loathed this place as passionately as he had loved Naples and Sicily; the plain with the two rivers embracing the frowning town of Namur seemed to him hateful as some roadway to Hell; he dreaded the warm moist nights, the long misty days, the veiled Northern skies, the flat, distant melancholy horizon, and he hated these things more because he sometimes felt that he would never see any other skies or fields but these, never see any moon or sun rise over any town but this high battlemented fortress of Namur.

He was trapped, abandoned, forgotten; the hero of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, was left to die miserably in this vile swamp–forsaken!

He resolved, when the fever left his mind clear, that he would not die, that he would live to face Philip in the Escurial and demand an account for this–and for other things.

On September 28th he confessed, on the 28th he received the communion.

His confessor, Francisco Orantes, told him that he was dying, but he laughed that away.

In the evening of that day he fell into a delirium and for two days tossed unconscious, in great torments, talking continually of wars, of soldiers, of conquests and arms.

On the first of October the fever abated and he seemed much recovered; he fell into a little sleep about the dawn, and when it was fully light he woke and sent for the Prince of Parma.

When that general came, Juan of Austria raised himself on his elbow and looked at him with a searching kind of eagerness, and Farnese stood arrested, in the poor doorway, glaring at the sick man.

The pigeon-house, in which Don Juan lay, was the size of a small tent, of clay with niches in the walls for the birds; part of the tiled roof and a portion of one wall had gone, and through this the early, misty Northern sunlight streamed, for the canvas that had been dragged over the aperture was drawn away to admit the air.

On the rough mud floor a carpet of arras had been flung; there were a couple of camp chairs of steel and leather; a pile of armour, helmet, greaves, cuirass, cruises, vambraces, damascened in black and gold and hung with scarlet straps, was in one corner; above swung a lantern and a crucifix.

Facing the entrance the Emperor’s son lay on a pile of rich cloaks and garments embroidered with a thousand colours in a thousand shapes of fantasy; two cloth of gold cushions served to support his head and gleamed incongruously against the dull clay wall.

He was himself swathed to the breast in a mantle of black and orange, and covering his lower limbs was a robe of crimson samite lined with fox’s fur.

The fine ruffled shirt he wore had been torn in his delirious struggles and showed his throat and the gaunt lines of his shoulders.

His face was colourless with the pure pallor of a blonde complexion, and his long, pale waving hair clung to his damp forehead and hung dishevelled either side of his hollow cheeks; his large grey eyes, whose usual expression was so joyous, careless and ardent, now shone with the brilliancy of fever and were sunk and shadowed beneath with the bluish tinge that stained his close-drawn lips.

His right hand, on which sparkled an emerald ring, clutched at the linen over his heart; the other was taut on the ground with the effort of supporting his body.

In the niche above him a solitary white pigeon sat contented and surveyed his invaded home.

Alessandro Farnese, tall and very slender, dark-haired, from head to foot in black save for a great chain of linked gold and jewels over his velvet doublet, let the improvised curtain fall into place over the doorway and stood leaning against the wall, never moving his sombre eyes from the Prince whose gleaming glance fiercely returned the scrutiny.

“Your Highness is a whole man to-day,” he said; his voice was smooth, low, carefully trained like his expression and his gestures; Philip’s favourites always had this quiet way.

“Whether I shall get well or no I cannot tell,” answered Don Juan hoarsely. “But this I know–that His Majesty hath forsaken me.”

The Prince of Parma took his right elbow in his left hand and put his right hand to his pointed chin.

“You speak too plainly, seÑor,” he said. His subtle mind disliked boldness of speech and action; he had always been annoyed by these qualities in Don Juan.

“I have done with pretences,” answered the Prince. “I think I must be dying, for I care very little what happens on earth–yet I have some curiosity; it is because of that I sent for you—” he paused gathering his strength. “Why hath the King forsaken me?” he asked intensely.

“Even if this were so,” said Alessandro Farnese, “how should I know it?”

“It is so and you know it,” replied Don Juan. “The King hath cast me down, and he is putting you in my place.”

The Prince of Parma lifted his dark, arched brows.

“The mind of your Highness is still bemused by your sickness,” he answered soothingly. “Any hour may bring a post from Madrid.”

Don Juan dropped from his elbow, and his head sank on the gold brocade cushions.

“I was lost when they killed Escovedo,” he muttered; “there went my last friend. It would have been more honourable to die on the battle-field—”

Farnese answered smoothly–

“Your Highness will win many battles yet.”

The Emperor’s son smiled up at him.

“What did Philip pay you to mislead me?” he asked.

The Italian’s shallow cheek flushed faintly, and a little quiver, it might be of rage or fear, ran through his sensitive frame.

“The fever returns on you, seÑor,” he said coldly.

Again Don Juan dragged himself into a sitting posture.

“No,” he answered with a terrible air, “my mind is very clear. I see what I have been all my life. Philip’s plaything–no more. And I dreamt to be a King! He used me till I climbed too high and then cast me away. And you, seÑor, are to take my place. It was never meant that I should leave the Low Countries. It was never meant that I should return again a victor to Madrid–as servant and as brother I have served the King well, and in his own fashion he hath rewarded me.”

He put his hands before his face and a shudder went through his body, for in that moment he thought of all the glorious past that had ended so suddenly and so terribly.

“I suffer!” he moaned. “JÉsu and Maria, I suffer!”

He fell prostrate, face downwards, on the tumbled couch, and the strengthening sunlight played with a mocking brilliance on the scattered strands of his fair hair.

The Prince of Parma lifted the curtain before the door and spoke to one of his servants who waited outside, then crossed and knelt beside his general.

“Prince,” he said in a low tone, “the fever has turned your mind—”

Juan raised his head.

“I am no prince,” he answered. “I never was–but what I am your mother is, Farnese–you and I alike are tainted.”

A sickly pallor crept into the Italian’s cheek; he clasped his fingers together as if he prayed for patience.

“But you are too crafty to be deceived as I was,” resumed Don Juan faintly. “You would never dream as I dreamt of being ‘Infante’ of Spain, of being a King! Therefore Philip spares you, for you are a useful man, Farnese, and puts his foot on me because I dared too high–but we are both–his puppets.”

The Prince of Parma clenched his hands till the knuckles showed white through the dark skin.

“You–always–hated–me,” gasped Don Juan.

“Are you in pain?” asked Farnese gently.

“In the torments of Hell,” answered the sick man with a ghostly smile; “there is fire eating my heart, my blood, my brains.”

The Prince of Parma’s face changed in an extraordinary fashion; it was a slight change, yet one that transformed his expression into that of utter and satisfied cruelty.

But Don Juan kept his eyes closed, and did not notice this look bending over him.

Farnese spoke, and his voice was still very gentle.

“Will your Highness drink this potion?”

The Prince lifted his burning lids and saw his page advancing with a goblet of rock crystal, in which a pale gold liquid floated.

The boy gave this to the kneeling Farnese, who took it between his long, dark, capable hands.

“This draught has often soothed your Highness,” he said.

Don Juan dragged himself to a sitting posture; as he moved such a weak giddiness seized him that the clay walls, the rift of sky and the figure of Farnese swung round him like reflections in troubled water.

He set his teeth and put out his hot hands for the goblet; as he drank a sweet languor and a grateful cessation of pain swept over him; he drained the last drop and gave a little sigh as Farnese took the shining cup from his feeble grasp.

As he sank back on his cushions he noticed that a drop of the liquid had fallen on the brocade cushion, and lay there like an amber bead holding a spark of sunlight.

The Prince of Parma rose silently, and beckoning to the page, left the sick man alone.

An exquisite lassitude crept over Don Juan; his limbs relaxed, his breath came easily, he became certain that there were long years of glorious and pleasant life before him; it was only necessary for him to regain his health–to defeat the heretics and return to Spain to confound that villain Perez.…

He was slipping out of consciousness; the blue sea of Italy began to rise before his eyes–an endless expanse of celestial colour over which sailed the galleys of Spain, Genoa and Venice bearing down on the infidel fleet.

The victor of Lepanto quivered with joy; he thought he was back in Naples, in Sicily; the warm scent of a thousand flowers floated round the rose and amber pillars of the heathen temples, and from the high windows of gold and painted palaces dark-eyed women looked, leaning on folds of glimmering tapestry and twisting wreaths of roses and laurels in gemmed fingers.

He saw the myrtle with the frail bridal blossoms, he saw the vineyards with the opulent grapes, he saw ladies in dresses stiff with jewels and heavy sleeves slipping from polished shoulders, he saw peasant girls with flushed faces and dusky hair.…

Then these pictures faded; he was in the dark silence of the Escurial; his terrible brother was speaking to him, caressing him; then Perez pulled a curtain back, and he saw his confidant Escovedo, lying mangled on a bier, bloody, with a fearful face.

Don Juan moaned and opened his eyes; he was light-headed; he beat his hands on the cushions.

“Escovedo!” he muttered. “Escovedo!”

The pigeon above, startled by his sudden movement, flew out over his head and away into freedom through the broken wall.

Juan of Austria shivered and blenched before the swift flash of the white wings as if an angel had passed him.

“I am a great sinner,” he said with trembling lips. He remembered how the Pope had embraced and blessed him after Lepanto; he hoped that, in case he died, God would remember it too, and how he had slain the infidel on the coast of Africa. His mind cleared, he looked round for Farnese, he called his secretary, his page, but no one came.

He lay quite still, thinking now of the great ambition, the great chimera of his life, the passionate desire to be recognised as royal, as a Prince, to one day be a King.

He had dreamt that he might be King of many countries, even King of England with Marie Stewart for wife, but he had never attained even recognition as a Prince of Spain.

All Philip’s promises, all Philip’s flatteries had amounted to nothing. While he was useful he was caressed; when he grew too great he was forsaken, left without arms, without money, without men, left with Farnese watching him night and day.

And they had killed the man he loved, his friend, his confidant Escovedo.

That fact rose up horrid, insistent, burning his heart with rage.

He could not forgive Perez; he could not forgive Philip.

In discomfort of mind and body he tossed from side to side. One of the gold cushions slipped from beneath him, and he was too weak to recover it; he lay with his eyes vacantly on it, and presently sat up with sudden strength and pointed at it with a quivering finger.

On the gold brocade was a round black hole where the stuff had been burnt away.

Don Juan began to laugh; he remembered the yellow drop of liquid that had gleamed on the rich fabric; he shouted for some one to come.

There was no answer; he supposed that they, thinking he suffered from the plague, would not through fear approach him.

He waited; his attention wandered from the cushion; he heard the trumpets without and smiled.

Presently a party of horsemen galloped past; he could catch a glimpse of them through the aperture in the wall; one carried his flag–a cross on the royal standard with the proud legend: “In hoc haereticos signo vici Turcos; in hoc signo vincam haereticos.” The heavy silk folds recalled these words to the Prince’s mind; he thought of his success at Gembloux.

“I could defeat them now,” he murmured, “if I was–on horseback–with a thousand men–behind me—”

The Lowland sun was creeping across the floor and glimmering in the armour in the corner, showing the dints and marks in it, the worn straps, the beautiful gold inlay and the long pure white plumes floating above the helmet.

Juan of Austria shivered at the sight of the pale sky, the pale sunlight; he longed passionately for the South, for all the purple heat, the violet shade, the soft hours of noonday silence in a marble chamber overlooking the sea, the glossy darkness of laurel and ilex.

“I will not die here,” he said in his throat.

Presently his confessor came, a slow-footed priest, and asked him if he would not make his will.

“No, for I have nothing to leave,” he answered, “so I am spared that trouble.”

Francisco Orantes then asked if he would have the canvas drawn over the broken roof and wall, for the sun was creeping very near his face.

He answered yes, and it was done; the barn was now only lit by the glimmer from the one small window.

“Father, I am not dying,” said Don Juan. “When I die it will be in Spain or Italy; tell the King so–tell him I know that he wants me dead–but that I will not die like this.”

The priest, seeing he was out of his wits, made no answer, but approached and felt his wrist and brow.

“Poison,” said Don Juan rapidly. “Poison–why not the sword–as with Escovedo? I have made my peace with heaven–but when shall Philip clear himself before God?”

The priest moved away silently as he had come; the sick man lay staring at the partial darkness; his blood was flaming with a returning agony.

“Philip!” he cried. “Philip! Will you bury me in the Escurial? If I die will you put me next my father? My father as well as yours, Philip! Hold my hand, some one–are you all afraid? This is not the plague. I have watched the heretics burning–I am burning now–I shall not go to Hell; I am absolved. Who will absolve Philip? Give me a little ease—”

The priest stood motionless beside the entrance, watching him; Juan dropped into silence, and then Francisco Orantes came again to his side and gazed as intently as the dim light allowed into the young, distorted and beautiful face.

The Prince was unconscious; the priest’s bloodless hand crept gently to his heart, which still beat, though reluctantly and faintly.

Farnese entered.

“He sleeps,” said Francisco Orantes.

The Prince of Parma made no answer; a slight convulsion shook him, and his face was swept with a look of limitless pride and ambition which distorted his fine features hideously.

The priest glanced up at him and shrunk away.

“This seems a foul end for one who loved life so,” he muttered.

Farnese fingered his long gemmed chain.

“You serve Philip,” he answered coldly.

Don Juan struggled back to consciousness, opened his eyes and looked up at the two bending over him; a sensation that he had never known before in all his life overcame him–a sensation of wild fear.

He fought with his weakness and dragged himself up.

“Is there no one to help me?” he implored. “To save me from Philip and Philip’s men! JÉsu whom I served in Africa do not let me die this way!”

Farnese leant swiftly down and caught the Prince by the shoulder.

“Hush!” he said, “Hush!” and forced him gently back into the cushions.

Juan resisted him with all his feeble strength, his eyes glittering with terror.

“You are murdering me as Carlos was murdered–and Escovedo,” his voice was hoarse, broken, but tense with fear, “as you will be murdered when Philip is weary of you. I do not want to die–I–will–not—”

“Hush!” said Farnese again.

Juan dragged away from him and crouched back against the wall.

“I leave you heir,” he panted, “to all my honours, all my commands. Philip meant you as my successor. I leave you heir to my death of loneliness and exile. When did one of Philip’s servants escape this reward?”

The priest shivered and his figure bowed together, but Farnese listened patiently like a man waiting for the cessation of something that soon must end.

The Prince’s fear rose and swelled to a stronger passion, hate.

He thought that he saw in these two instruments of the King a symbol of the two things that had dogged his glory all his life, the powerful cruelty of his brother that had used his gifts, his successes, his popularity for his own ends, lured him with the promise of rewards and always withheld them, and the opinion of the world that the degradation of his mother equalled the splendour of his father and would always prevent him taking that last step into royal rank.

It had prevented him; he saw that now, he saw how hopeless his ambition had been from the first.…

“If I had my life again I would not serve Philip,” he muttered.

Then pain began to seize and grip him, and he became unconscious of everything save the physical agony; he fell on his face and clutched the rich mantles on which he lay, groaned and shrieked in blasphemous ravings.

“He hath not much fortitude after all,” said Farnese, who had looked on suffering so often that no anguish could move him; his cold eyes had many times rested on men and women flaming at the stake with the same expression of cruel indifference with which they now rested on this man of his own blood, who had served his turn and was no longer useful to the policies of Spain.

“How long will this last?” asked the priest.

“I cannot tell,” answered the Prince of Parma. “He must have great strength.”

“He had until he used it in the delights of Italy,” said Francisco Orantes. “Such a life as his, seÑor, does not make for old age—”

“Escovedo! Escovedo!” moaned Don Juan. “Help me! Succour me! I am burning–burning to the bone, the marrow! JÈsu! JÈsu and Maria!”

“Ay, pray for your sins,” remarked Farnese sombrely, “or you will go to light the flames that burn to all eternity.”

“Nay, seÑor,” said the priest; “he confessed and received absolution.”

“Who shall absolve Philip?” murmured Don Juan, who had caught the sentence. “I wish I had not betrayed Don Carlos. How awful it is to die!”

Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, and his fingers trembled on the brocade covering him.

“The war,” he whispered, “the war.”

He thought of the great armies sweeping to and fro over the Low Countries, of all the toss and turmoil of Europe through which he had moved so gaily, so splendidly, of the infidel smitten in Africa; he did not think of his childhood at all. Life seemed to have begun for him on the day on which he had first met the King in the green forest glade.

“Pray,” urged the priest, “pray, seÑor.”

He shook his head feebly; he was not at all afraid of God–only of Philip. Besides, he did not mean to die.

The dreadful pain was lessening in his veins; he turned over on his side and looked up at Farnese.

“Where shall we put your body when your soul has left us?” asked the priest.

The sick man’s eyes gleamed.

“The Escurial,” he muttered. “Philip, remembering Lepanto might give me that–if not, then Our Lady of Montserrat–but I am not dying,” he added. “My life is not finished–you must see that–my life is–not–finished.”

An extraordinary feeling of peace came over him; he wondered at it and closed his eyes; he again saw the blue Sicilian seas encompassing him and heard their lapping waves in his ears.

“I will sleep now,” he thought, “and when I wake I will plan a victory–life is so long and I am so young—”

He smiled, for all the agony had ceased, and he was no longer conscious of his body; his head sank to one side so that his face was turned towards the wall.…

Francisco Orantes rose from his knees.

“He died very gently,” he said; “his soul passed as lightly as a bird to the bough.”

Farnese made the sign of the cross, and his figure dilated with pride, ambition and power; he went to the armour in the corner and picked up the dead man’s bÂton of command.

Philip buried his brother in the Escurial near the great Emperor who was their father.