Part 17

And then, to the memory of both, came the most tragic figure in the tragedy. In the glow of the great fire stood a young man, Philip von Königsmarck, one of a wild and unfortunate family; his brother Charles and his sister Aurora were sadly known to fame, but neither had a fate so dark as his.… Wind and rain increased in violence and swept and howled round the towers of Schloss Ahlden and beat in at the draughty window of the Princess’s bedroom.

She put her hands over her eyes; memory was becoming so strong that she felt herself back in that moment she had not talked of for thirty-two years.

“The kitchen was very large,” she said, “and he stood waiting for me. Do you remember him, Annette?”

“_Herr Jesus!_” muttered the old woman. “He had on a great coat–light–and black satins under it and high soft boots and a little useless sword with a steel tassle–and a steinkirk cravat. They were fashionable that year, pulled through the buttonhole of the waistcoat—”

The Princess did not move her hand from her eyes; she saw all these details. She saw more; she saw the young Swede’s passionate face, his deep blue eyes, the cluster of his blonde hair on his brow.

“You stood at the door,” she said, “and we both forgot you, and then—”

Annette remembered.

The bright young beauty had gone straight to her lover’s arms, and without a word they had kissed.

Then he had drawn her to the settle, and she had sat beside him, loosening her cloak, and on her throat, her shoulders, her arms he had kissed her again.

And presently he had gone on his knees and kissed her gown and her cloak and her hands.

The while they never spoke a word, and the Countess von Arlestein watched by the big door.

“You did not hear them come,” said the Princess, dropping her hand from her eyes.

“No,” answered the old woman. “The first I knew of them was when the door opened—”

They could both see that too, in their memory–the door opening on Prince Georg, whose pale eyes saw the Electress in the arms of Philip von Königsmarck while his lips rested on her brow.

A woman had betrayed them: a jealous woman enamoured of the young Count had brought the Elector back a day before he was due and sent him here to the kitchens, which the spy had discovered was the meeting-place.

Sophia Dorothea remembered how she had lifted her head from her lover’s shoulder to see her husband standing within the door, four officers behind him and a fifth holding Madame von Arlestein.

“I am glad I kissed him again,” she muttered.

“The firelight was full in the room–like this,” said the old woman. Her blurred eyes gleamed madly; she seemed inspired by her memories. She got to her feet, and the embroideries fell to the hearth. “He fought for you–with his silly little court sword–but he was one to four, all well armed—”

“The Elector held my wrists,” said the Princess, “and I had never known he was so strong.… I struggled; _Mein Gott_, how fiercely! but I could not shake his hands.”

“They had me against the wall with a bare blade at my breast, and I never moved,” added the Countess. “They had him down–then _she_ came in, the spy, the traitress. ‘Eh, Königsmarck,’ she said (how she had always hated you!), and she set her heel on his mouth as he writhed—”

“And I cursed her,” whispered Sophia Dorothea, “and I cursed him and the children I had borne him—”

“Ay, you cursed; but they picked him up and—”

“Stop!” shrieked the Princess. “Have I not lived with that all these years? He was dead.”

“I hope he was dead,” said the Countess; “but the Elector hoped he was alive when the oven door was shut. What did _she_ say? ‘This is not the couch my lord looked for to-night. Your oven takes dainty meat, Serenity!’”

“I bit his thumb to the bone,” answered the Princess, clutching the edge of the mantelshelf. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus!”

“Why should the High God hear you?” sneered the old woman.

“I have lain awake at night remembering that I hurt him. He cried out under his breath, and there was blood on his lace—”

“And he struck you in the face as the others stepped back from the fire and gave you a vile name—”

“It was the last word he ever spoke to me.”

“Aye,” muttered the Countess, “we were dragged upstairs and cast into a coach, and no one there ever saw us again nor spoke our names.”

“They drove us through the night to Schloss Ahlden … thirty-two years ago.”

The Princess paced up and down the hearth.

“I have thought of so many things–if he would have been different, if he had ever loved me–it was the hate of fourteen years vented then–if Philip von Königsmarck cursed me when he saw he was trapped.”

She drew a deep breath and put her pallid fingers to her pallid face.

“I kissed him again,” she said, “when all was over—”

With a fumbling gesture Madame von Arlestein groped for her sewing. “Why do we rip up this?” she asked.

“I have never been kissed since,” added Sophia Dorothea, unheeding.

The Countess pointed a skinny finger at the clock.

“We have never been so late before. Get to your bed, Highness.”

“Not to-night–never since by man, woman nor child–stay with me to-night.”

“Why should I stay? I want my sleep.”

“Who could sleep to-night? Hark at the rain.”

She moved to the upright press in the corner and opened the doors, showing a gulf of shadow.

As she stood there with one hand on either wing of the door, she looked like one peering with calmly curious eyes beyond the portals of the tomb.

“Why did we recall it all to-night?” whimpered Madame von Arlestein. “I have lost my needle and the thread is entangled.”

She pulled discontentedly at her sewing.

Sophia Dorothea stepped into the press and sought among the clothes.

“What are you doing?” asked Madame von Arlestein peevishly.

The Princess stepped out of the press with a dress across her arm.

A dress of faded white brocade embroidered with wreaths of blue roses and a petticoat gleaming dully with tarnished gold thread.

“_Der Herr Jesus!_” cried the Countess.

The Princess closed the press; then she threw off her gown and stood a wraith-like figure in her white shift.

With a ghastly look she put on the brocade, which rustled drearily as if it groaned at being drawn from its tomb. She laced it across the bosom with the pink cord, she spread out the skirts, she shook the yellow lace into place.

With a steady step she crossed the room to the bed.

“In the firelight, in the firelight, like this, eh, Annette?”

“What has happened to you?” quavered the old woman.

“I do not know,” answered the Princess. “I feel strange to-night, almost as if hope had come once more; almost as if I should never see the flats and the road and the Aller again; almost as if I should never count the plovers again nor drive three miles forth, three miles back along the Hayden road; almost as if Philip von Königsmarck were near.”

“It is the wind,” said the Countess.

The storm wailed and shuddered without, and splash, splash fell the rain from the leads.

“It brings the ghosts,” she added. She peered at the clock. “_Mein Gott!_ It is–_twenty minutes after one_. You should be in bed,” she added.

“Do you think I have ever slept at the hour of one to two any night of all the long nights here?” answered Sophia Dorothea. “But this is the first time I have passed it in this dress–in the firelight.”

“There was a great clock in the corner,” said Madame von Arlestein in her indistinct, failing voice, “and when they shut him in it was just striking two.”

“Do you think,” asked the Princess violently, “that I did not hear it?”

She came again to the hearth, moving with the rigidity of age; the brocade hung loosely on her hollowed form, showing how the soft flesh that had once filled it out had shrunk and withered.

“What a life mine has been,” she said, standing as if she listened to the wind; “that one night and thirty-two years to think over it. For I have never been able to think of anything else, Annette.”

“_Twenty minutes after one_,” mumbled the Countess; “that was the time you opened the door and stepped into the kitchen—”

The Princess put her hand to her bosom.

“Annette, Annette, are there no spells to conjure him back? But if he came he would not know us–two old women!”

“Get to bed,” answered the Countess von Arlestein. “I am tired.”

“Go then–leave me,” said her mistress.

The old woman took one of the candles from the mantelpiece; her hand shook so that the wax ran down the stick and over her fingers.

“One word,” the Princess turned commanding eyes on her. “If I should die first, Annette, you will never let them know the truth.”

“I have forgotten the truth,” returned the other with something of a sneer.

“No–you _know_ it–you and I only. Guilty, they say; but some say, perhaps my son says, innocent. Let it remain unsolved.”

“Whatever I said would not be believed now, and I am older than you; I shall die first. Oh, content you, Serenity, I shall not speak.”

She moved slowly, a bunchy black figure, towards the door, which she pulled open on the black corridor.

Holding aloft her candle, she peered into this darkness.

“It is so late; the lights are out,” she quavered, “and I am afraid of the ghosts in the passages.”

“If _he_ thought in his heart that I might be innocent, it would trouble him on the day of his death, I think,” said the Princess. She seated herself in the worn chair. “I feel very cold,” she added.

Madame von Arlestein turned back into the room and let the door swing to behind her.

“My eyes dazzle with the firelight,” said Sophia Dorothea. “Something is going to happen–at last.”

“It was speaking of the past,” answered the Countess. “Why did we when we had been silent so long?”

“I have described a circle,” murmured the Princess, “and I am back again to that night.”

“You are ill. I will call some one—”

“No,” said her mistress in a terrible voice. “Call no one.”

The Countess replaced the candle on the mantelshelf.

“Will you pray?”

“Why should I pray? My prayers were exhausted long ago.”

Her head drooped to one side.

“Get to your bed,” she added. “Leave me here. The fire is falling out, and when it is dead I will go to bed. But now I want to keep watch.”

“Keep watch?”

“I am waiting.”

The storm was subsiding; the casements rattled slightly and mournfully and the rain splashed with a more gentle violence against the panes.

The firelight glimmered along the stiff folds of the white brocade and sparkled in the tarnished gold threads of the petticoat. Sophia Dorothea, gaunt and white, was flushed by this warm glow that was growing fainter and dying as the logs broke and fell into ashes.

For some minutes she sat so; then she looked up at the old woman leaning over her.

“Remember,” she said, “never tell.”

Utter silence again, save for the mutter of the departing wind and the patter of the ceasing rain.

“She is ill,” muttered Madame von Arlestein, and hobbled to the door.

She clapped her hands and cried out for help in a feeble voice that fell uselessly, unheard, into the dark passages of Schloss Ahlden.

Then came a sound that silenced her, the clock striking two.

“_Ach, Gott in Himmel!_” she muttered, cold with fright. “I heard that oven door closing again—”

She hurried back to her mistress, the clear clang of iron still in her ears.

Sophia Dorothea lay back in her chair; her face was tilted upwards; she looked as fresh, as beautiful, as young as on that night thirty-two years ago. There seemed no white in her hair and her limbs filled triumphantly the rich brocade.

“I am getting blind,” said Annette von Arlestein, “and this cursed firelight–but you look as you looked _then_—” She peered closer and gave a cracked scream.

It was a corpse she stared at; Sophia Dorothea had gone.

THE YELLOW INTAGLIO

GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

“D. M. C. Johannes jacet hic Mirandula caetera morut Et Tagus et Ganges forsan et Antipodes Ob. an. sal. McLXXXIII, vix. an. XXXII.

Hieronimus Beninienius ne disiunetus post mortem locus orsa separet quor animas

In vita coniunxit amor hac humo supposita ponu curarit

Ob. an. M.D.XXXXII. vix. an. lxxxix Mens. vi.”

_Tablet to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the Church of St. Mark, Florence._

Giovanni Pico, Conte della Mirandola, sat at the window of his apartment; the midday glow of a gentle winter sun was on his face; against the straight pink-toned marble front of the Palazzo opposite three dark pines rose and flung their long shadows up the street. The November sky was clear and cold in colour–the blue of chilly water.

Below in the street was silence, and in the chamber with the dull terra-cotta walls and sandstone floor was silence too.

Giovanni Pico was ill of slow fever that had long sucked his strength. He sat in a polished chair with gilt on it, and rested his long white hands on the sides of it; he wore a straight robe of soft red from his ears to his ankles; his sleeves were tight, and of gold net over orange velvet, and fell in embroidered points to his finger tips.

Round the high, close collar of his gown was a fine chain of silver and amber beads, which, passing several times round his throat, fell to his waist.

His hair, which was smooth and thick and fair, was parted in the middle and combed either side of his face; it fell in large curls on his breast and was finely scented. His countenance was sweet and good and lovely, the gray eyes large and gentle, the lips calm and sweetly curved. At present he was very pale, and there was a stillness in his expression and a motionlessness in his attitude that made his head and bust look like a carving in tinted alabaster.

The chamber was simple but beautiful. A low bed covered with silk draperies stood in one corner and near it was a table bearing costly books and a silver lamp.

On a dark cabinet stood a little broken figure of Tanagra, showing a dancing woman with a full robe held out; near her was an elusive glass of blue colour on a milk-white stem, like a bubble trembling to disperse. Above the bed hung a black crucifix and under it a red light burned with a quivering flame.

A scent of sandal-wood, nard and spikenard, was in the chamber; stirred occasionally by the breeze that whispered over Florence and entered the open window, this perfume strengthened and was wafted out into the street.

The sick man never moved as the hours went by; save that his eyes were opened and fixed with an enigmatic look on the quiet street below, he might have been asleep.

This young man, who sat alone gazing at Florence this November midday was one of the most famous people in Italy. The “Phoenix of Genius,” they called him, and he had early been renowned for his precocious learning, his vast industry, his beauty and his noble nature. To all his qualities his princely rank gave lustre; he had been one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and there was no one who could excel the brilliance of his reputation. As a prince who preferred letters to arms and distinction in the arts to any other ambition, he was unique; no man could ever have been more courted and praised and extolled than this man had been.

But to-day he was forgotten.

For it was the day fixed for the entry of the King of France into Florence, and though he came under the pretence of peace and an invitation to a treaty, he came stained with Italian blood and in the guise of a conqueror. And the Conte della Mirandola had been among the brightest in the bright rule of the resplendent Medici. Giovanni Pico had been at the death-bed of the great Lorenzo, who had spoken almost his last words to the gentle youth who had heard the Friar he had brought to Florence, Frà Girolamo, refuse the haughty ruler absolution unless he gave Florence her liberty.

And Lorenzo had turned his face to the wall and refused, and died with his sins on his head, and now his sons were eating the bread of charity in Rome, and Frà Girolamo was the greatest man in Florence, and Charles of France was entering the proud city at the twenty-first hour to-day.

Giovanni Pico thought of these things and of his dead friend, Lorenzo dei Medici; he believed that it was better for that Prince to have died, in pain of soul, than to have lived to see Florence to-day, changed indeed as it was since the days of his rule.

The Conte della Mirandola was changed also. It would have amazed Lorenzo to know that his most brilliant courtier was yearning for the plain habit of the brotherhood of St. Mark, and that the most learned and splendid noble in Florence wished to leave the world and follow Frà Girolamo Savonarola the steep way to Heaven.

But so it was with Giovanni. For some years past the eloquence of the Friar had wrought much with him; and lately, as the fierce politics of Italy sifted and clashed–as all the things he had known and loved fell and were broken–Giovanni Pico turned, as so many of the Florentines, to the shelter offered by the brotherhood of St. Mark.

Now, as he gazed down into the empty street, he wished that he had not so long delayed; he wished that he was, even now, in the dark robe of a brother of St. Mark, lying in his cell, face downwards, before the crucifix, praying for mercy for his soul and for those long years he had filled with worldly learning and in following the vain shadows of heathen philosophy.

He moved his fair head and sighed and lifted his right hand vaguely and looked at it. On the second finger was a yellow intaglio of a bull wreathed with flowers. It gave him pleasure even now in the midst of his thoughts of God. He watched the liquid light slip in and out of it in glints of amber and gold, and in looking at the exquisite workmanship and reflecting that there was not such another in the world, he forgot the convent of St. Mark in his joy in the heathen jewel.

The red hanging was lifted from the doorway and a dark figure entered–a monk in a russet gown, with a thin face and ardent eyes.

The young Prince looked up.

“Frà Girolamo!”

Savonarola approached him, looked at him with some tenderness in his harsh features.

“Why are you at the window?” he asked.

Giovanni Pico smiled in a melancholy manner. “I wish to see the French,” he answered. “Seated here I can view them, where the street ends, passing—”

He raised his pure face.

“On such a day as this can you find time for me?” he murmured.

Frà Girolamo’s eyes were flaming and troubled with many thoughts.

“It was you who persuaded the Medici to summon me to Florence,” he said. “But for you I should never have been here, doing what I can to save the city. Judge, then, if I cannot find time to come and watch with you a little when you are sick.”

“So sick!” smiled Giovanni. “I feel as if I was very old and had outlived all that I ever loved. What are my attainments now, or the praises I garnered? Where is the Prince who flattered me and the courtiers who bowed down? Gone, leaving a great emptiness; and you are the one person now who can bring me peace.”

“Will you follow the Lord?” asked Frà Girolamo quickly.

“I will. I will leave the world; though I am ‘lighter than vanity,’ I have the strength to do that. I will be one of your humble friars. Hark, what was that?”

A sound of trumpets quivered in the gentle stillness, and the sick man leant forward, gripping the arms of his chair.

“The French,” said Savonarola, and stepped out on to the balcony. “We have no fear of them; they come to treat with the Republic, not to conquer her, and Capponi is stronger than King Charles.”

He might have added that he was himself stronger than either, and that when he had walked into the French camp to warn the King of the Lord’s wrath if he behaved dishonourably to Florence that monarch had cowered before him.

Still, the fact was that King Charles had come as a conqueror into Italy, and that a foreign army was entering Florence, and this fact rankled in the mind of both Dominican and noble.

Giovanni Pico rang the silver handbell on the table near him, and two pages came from the next apartment. The Prince bade them lift him up and carry him out on to the balcony, which was done; and he hung weak as a woman between them, yet managed with their help to reach the balcony, and supported against the stone balustrade to stand feebly in the sunshine.

At the end of the street, a couple of houses away, was a good view of the Ponte Vecchio which spanned the Arno, and was to-day gaily decorated with flags and triumphal arches.

A great crowd of people had already assembled, and were running to and fro, shouting and laughing and hustling against one another; some had already overflowed into this side-street, which a while before had been so quiet, while at every window heads appeared and figures began to show on the roofs. Most of the houses were hung with arras and flags.

“We have no decoration,” said Pico della Mirandola.

Savonarola gave him a quick look, then passed into the chamber; he seemed like a man exalted in his soul.

But the friend of Lorenzo dei Medici remained on the balcony, supported by his pages and leaning on the stone that was pale gold in the winter sun.

A huge noise encroached on the lesser noises of the crowd–a noise like the din of an enormous fair, beating of drums, blowing pipes, and the shriek of trumpets, the clatter of arms and the sound of horses’ hoofs and horses’ harness as they jostled together.

A varie-coloured throng came jostling over the bridge; the foremost, before whom a little space was with some difficulty cleared, was mounted on a tall and handsome charger, over which a gorgeous baldaquin was upheld.

Giovanni noticed that this man was riding with his lance levelled–the sign of a conqueror; and as he hesitated, not knowing which way to turn, the Florentine had a good view of his person, which was extraordinarily misshapen.

He wore black velvet, and sat hunched together on the saddle, his body being prodigiously small, his legs long and twisted, his feet huge and deformed. A rich and cumbersome mantle of cloth of gold hung from his shoulders, emphasizing the meanness of his presence; his head was huge and lolled on his chest; his mouth was gaping; his hair so pale as to be almost white. This was all Giovanni could see of his face before a footman seized his bridle and he was guided out of sight.

Giovanni knew this horseman for the King of France. He was followed by four big drums played at the double, and two pipes; and close behind him, endeavouring to regain their places at his side, which they had lost in the jostle of the turning, came the two Cardinals of St. Piero in Vincoli St. Malo, and at a short distance some French Marshals, who were closely followed by the Royal bodyguard of bowmen; then some French knights on foot and the Swiss vanguard–the finest infantry in Europe, splendid in many colours, bearing burnished street-halberds and distinguished by the waving plumes on the helmets of the officers.

After them came the agile, small, Gascon Infantry, and then the gorgeous Cavalry, the finest knights among the French aristocracy, glittering in their gold and silver armour, their brocade mantles, their chains of gold and sparkling jewels.

Above their heads floated the silk pennons they carried, while the velvet banners clung round their poles in the breezeless air.

Tall and fierce-looking Scotch archers armed with terrible and heavy weapons came after these.

The French Artillery had gone on to Rome by another route, and there were no guns with the army; but their numbers, their strange attire and stranger weapons, the richness of their appointments, the discipline they used in their marching, made them a new and terrifying spectacle to a city that only knew mercenaries.

The knights, soldiers, and archers were still pouring over the bridge when Giovanni whispered to his pages to help him back to his chair.