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.