The First of the English: A Novel
herald and pursevant, and at times assistant secretary to Alva, Viceroy
of the Netherlands. This gentleman’s salary is not great; his position,
while partially confidential, is not very exalted; though it often
brings him into direct contact with the great Duke himself. For Oliver
has striven, with all his might and main to gain the confidence of his
master.
He is a native of Mons, near the French border of the Netherlands, and
is partly of Flemish and partly of Gallic extraction. At present he is
apparently washing the dust of travel from his face, as he makes his
appearance minus his cloak and doublet, towel in hand, and answers the
Englishman’s smart knock on his door.
“Ah!” he cries, his face full of sunny smile, “I am delighted to see
you, my friend, my Guido!”
“And so am I, Antony, my boy,” answers Chester, with hearty
outstretched hand. For a few weeks of supreme mutual danger have made
these two men as good comrades as years of ordinary friendship.
“So glad to see you,” goes on the Fleming, “and yet sorry.” He
whispers: “You know of the reward for you?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” answers Guy, shortly.
“Ah! at your inn?”
“No, in the guard-room of the Citadel.”
“Mon Dieu! You have been arrested and examined,” the painter gasps,
anxiously.
“No, I went as cavalier to a great court lady!” laughs the English
sailor. “For it I am to be promoted to a colonelship in Romero’s
musketeers!”
“Impossible! Tell me your story!”
“I will,” says Guy, “it contains the business that brought me to
Antwerp.”
“Yes,” answers the other, meditatively, “your business must be of the
greatest importance to make you again take this risk.”
“It is for the same old reason—my Queen!” whispers Guy; “Is there no
one about?”
“No; Achille, my apprentice, I have sent out on a long errand, as I
expected your coming and wanted to have private converse.”
“What long errand?”
“I sent him out to buy wine, bread, provisions, cheese, beef, on
credit. Achille is an active boy, if I had given him the money he would
have been back in half an hour.” Then carefully barring the door and
drawing a heavy curtain over it, Oliver says: “Tell me your story.”
“Then can you interpret these letters bearing, I think, upon the
welfare, yes, the life, of my sovereign?” whispers the Englishman. And
producing the packet wrapped in oiled silk which he had taken from the
body of the drowned Italian the evening before, Guy tells the artist
the curious story of the preceding night. His recital is punctuated by
vivacious exclamations of surprise, deep interest, and several times by
uproarious laughter from his Flemish listener.
As the Englishman finishes the painter takes up the conversation.
“Ah!” he exclaims, looking carefully at the documents, “you took these
from the body of the secretary of Chiapin Vitelli.” Then he adds: “I am
one of the few men who could read them. They are in the private cipher
used by the secret correspondence bureau of my master, my benefactor,
he who pays me my stipend, the man whose hand I kiss—he of Alva!” A
strange light coming into his eyes as he speaks of his benefactor. “The
reading is very simple when you know the key, which I have memorized
and have in my head—I dare not keep it anywhere else.”
“Then give me the meaning of these letters!”
“Certainly,” says the artist. “You can amuse yourself with my sketches
as I look over them.”
This he does hastily, while Guy passes the time examining a number of
studies in charcoal upon canvas and panels, apparently the work of the
young Fleming. At one side of the apartment is a marble slab used in
grinding colors, upon it a number of brushes, a palette, and some
little bladders of ground paint, such as were used by the artists of
that day. Upon an easel stands an unfinished picture of a fair haired,
blue eyed Flemish girl of great beauty, though it is of almost the
peasant style. This has been sketched after the manner of the Venetian
school upon what was known then as the red ground. At the back of the
apartment is a large curtain, apparently concealing some more important
work, as it is quite large, covering the whole rear of the garret floor
of the house.
“Don’t peep behind,” says the painter, looking up as Guy’s footsteps
approach the curtain. “I have a surprise for you there, I think,” and
pausing in his reading, he looks up with a quizzical expression at the
Englishman. “Something you will be interested in, I imagine; you could
not see the face of the fair one of the barge!” For Guy, in his
description of his evening’s adventure, has omitted, with the
instinctive delicacy of the gentleman and the lover, any account of his
interview at the house of the Countess de Mansfeld, with the lady he
rescued.
“What do you mean?” asks Chester, eagerly. “Wait for a moment,” and a
muttered exclamation of surprise calls Guy to the painter’s side, who
has apparently become greatly excited over the cipher letters.
Here he stands, impatient, awaiting the outcome of the Fleming’s
inspection of the documents.
A minute later Oliver looks up and remarks: “I can now tell you in
rough form the contents of these letters.”
“What are they?” inquires Guy eagerly.
“These are two letters, written by Chiapin Vitelli, Alva’s confidential
officer, and evidently given to his secretary—such is their value—to
deliver in person to one Ridolfi, an Italian, who is a banker in
London.”
“Ridolfi? Yes, I’ve heard of him. He has a great many dealings with
Italy; he is a goldsmith as well as banker; his place is on Cheapside,”
mutters Chester. “What about him?”
“Well, this is apparently a letter of a series, some of which must have
been answered, in which Alva is arranging with Ridolfi, who is
apparently the agent of the Duke of Norfolk, the man who would marry
the Queen of Scots, now in Elizabeth’s hands, for the poisoning of the
Queen of England!”
“The poisoning of my sovereign! Good God!” gasps Guy. A moment after,
forcing himself to calmness, he continues: “Yes; rumors of this or of a
similar plot have been brought to the notice of Lord Burleigh,
Secretary of State. You know it is to investigate such matters that I
am sent over here and disowned by my sovereign, who wishes at present
to appear at peace with Alva, but who, in her time, will have her
reckoning—and an English reckoning at that—with your Netherland
tyrant!”
“I know that. That is why I aid you,” mutters the painter. “Elizabeth
is the only hope of the Netherlands. We have been crushed and butchered
at Jemmingen, the Prince of Orange is now in exile, a fugitive in
Germany, France distracted with her own affairs, Coligny and Condé at
swords points with the league, can give us but uncertain aid—England is
our only hope. As such I have welcomed you as the ‘First of the
English’ to come to aid the Flemings. You will not be the last—I know
it! But”—here the light of patriotism comes into the painter’s face,
“we must do our part. As such I have condemned myself to live under the
most terrible suspense that can be put upon a man—a traitor in the very
household, at the very writing table, of the Spanish Viceroy, so that I
may give information of his movements to Louis of Nassau and William
the Silent. Discovery means—you know what!”
Then he laughs a ghastly laugh and whispers: “What would Alva, who
burns people alive slowly for eating meat on Friday; who beheads women
for sheltering their own husbands; who permits his troops to burn,
outrage, pillage and ravage defenseless burghers and peaceful citizens;
what would he do with a discovered spy in his own retinue? Are there
enough racks, thumb-screws and faggots for him?” he shudders; then adds
determinedly: “But all for my country!”
“And I all for my own,” answers Guy. “A price set upon my head as a
pirate, and all for my Queen. Elizabeth smiles on me at court, calls me
her valiant freebooter, yet tells the ambassador of Philip of Spain
that I am here on my own account, and disowns me; though she knows it
is for her interests, to guard her life, to discover such damnable
plots as these, that I take my life within my hand! Besides,” he goes
on, his eyes beginning to blaze, “I don’t love the Spaniards.”
“Personally,” remarks the Flemish painter, “I have found some very
pleasant gentlemen among them; though among those who flock here to
Alva’s banner are scoundrels innumerable. But it is for my country that
I live a life of suspense, each breath almost an apprehension.”
Looking at the painter, Guy sees that this is true. He is rather small
of figure, though well-built and agile; but has dark soft eyes,
singularly delicate, mobile lips for a man, and a high, intellectual
forehead. As Chester gazes, he is sure Antony Oliver is a brave man. At
the same instant he knows he is a man with such a terrible fate hanging
over him that his nerves are unstrung by constant and never-ending
apprehension.
However, he speaks to the point.
“I hate every Spaniard, gentleman or no gentleman, peasant or noble,
because I have a brother in the prisons of the Inquisition at
Hispaniola.”
“Poor fellow!” mutters the painter, with a little shudder. “In
Hispaniola! That’s a long way off.”
“Not for an English sailor. Seven years ago Dick and I, full of youth
and ardor, sailed with Captain Ned Lovell to the Spanish Main, and
traded there with the Dons of Hispaniola, and as we were Catholics,
lived quite comfortably in the town of Haytien, accumulating wealth.
Then I, with my doubloons and pieces of eight, returned to merry
England, leaving Dick to turn the rest of our merchandise into gold and
follow after. A year passed. Then no Dick; but word was brought me by
Hawkins coming back from his third voyage, that Dick had fallen in love
with a Spanish girl; that his rivals, for revenge, had denounced him as
an English heretic, and the—the Inquisition—.” The Englishman’s voice
is broken, there are tears in his eyes, though they burn fiercely.
“Then I was ready to hate the Spaniards and do Queen Elizabeth’s work,”
mutters Guy, after a moment’s pause, “the work that gave me this
miniature.”
“Can you tell me,” he says suddenly, producing the likeness, on ivory
set with diamonds, “the name and title of the lady whose face is here?”
“Oho!” chuckles the painter, a twinkle in his eye, “I had been
expecting some such question ever since you told me about the lady of
the barge. Did she give you this? Has she also been smitten by Cupid’s
dart?”
“What do you mean?” growls the Englishman, blushes showing beneath his
sun-burned skin.
“I mean,” laughs Antony, “that you are a man very deeply in love. In
your tale of last night every time you mentioned the ‘divinity of the
barge,’ the ‘fair unknown,’ the ‘graceful creature of the shadow,’ the
‘fairy-like form the gloom could not conceal,’ the ‘voice soft as an
angel’s,’ your manner betrayed that even the darkness had not prevented
your falling in love with the lady you rescued from our Sea Beggars;
that though she had been your captive, you really were hers. Did she
reciprocate enough to give you this?”
“No,” returns Guy, “I believe I’ve been in love with this picture ever
since I captured it three years ago.”
This answer astounds the painter. He murmurs: “I never supposed you
English a romantic race, but you prove to me that the Italians are as
beggars to you islanders in impetuous passion. In love with a picture?”
“Yes, it came to me under peculiar circumstances,” answers the
Englishman, a little sulkily perhaps, for the artist’s tone is somewhat
bantering. “Towards the end of ’68 I was playing tennis in a London
court. Elizabeth of England and her prime minister, Sir William Cecil,
now Lord Burleigh, sent for me. The Queen’s exchequer was empty. Five