The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

that but for

Don John of Austria’s affairs, and the intervention in them of the

Escovedo whom you say - whom the world says I murdered, all might

have been well to this day.

 

Escovedo had been, like myself, one of Eboli’s secretaries in his

day, and it was this that won him after Eboli’s death a place at

the Royal Council board. It was but an inferior place, yet the

King remarked him for a man shrewd and able, who might one day have

his uses.

 

That day was not very long in coming, though the opportunity it

afforded Escovedo was scarcely such as, in his greedy, insatiable

ambition, he had hoped for. Yet the opportunity, such as it was,

was afforded him by me, and had he used it properly it should have

carried him far, certainly much farther than his talent and

condition warranted.

 

It came about through Don John of Austria’s dreams of sovereignty.

You will have heard - as who has not? - so much of Don John, the

natural son of Charles V, that I need tell you little concerning

him. In body and soul he was a very different man, indeed, from

his half-brother Philip of Spain. As joyous as Philip was gloomy,

as open and frank as Philip was cloudy and suspicious, and as

beautiful as Philip was grotesque, Don John was the Bayard of our

day, the very mirror of all knightly graces. To the victory of

Lepanto, which had made him illustrious as a soldier, he had added,

in ‘73 - the year of Eboli’s death the conquest of Tunis, thereby

completing the triumph of Christianity over the Muslim in the

Mediterranean. Success may have turned his head a little. He

was young, you know, and an emperor’s son. He dreamt of an empire

for himself, of sovereignty, and of making Tunis the capital of

the kingdom he would found.

 

We learnt of this. Indeed, Don John made little secret of his

intentions. But they went not at all with Philip’s views. It was

far from his notions that Don John should go founding kingdoms of

his own. His valour and talents were required to be employed for

the greater honour and glory of the Crown of Spain, and nothing

further.

 

Philip consulted me, who was by then the depositary of all his

secrets, the familiar of his inmost desires. There was evidence

that Don John’s ambitions were being fomented by his secretary,

who dreamt, no doubt, of his own aggrandizement in the

aggrandizement of his master. Philip proposed the man’s removal.

 

“That would be something,” I agreed. “But not enough. He must be

replaced by a man of our own, a man loyal to Your Majesty, who will

not only seek to guide Don John in the course that he should follow,

but will keep close watch upon his projects, and warn you should

they threaten to neglect your interests the interests of Spain for

his own.”

 

“And such a man? Where shall we find him?”

 

I considered a moment, and bethought me of Escovedo. He was able;

he had charm and an ingratiating manner; I believed him loyal, and

imagined that I could quicken that loyalty by showing him that

advancement would wait upon its observation; he could well be

spared from the Council, where, as I have said, he occupied a quite

inferior post; lastly, we were friends, and I was glad of the

opportunity to serve him, and place him on the road to better things.

 

All this I said to Philip, and so the matter was concluded. But

Escovedo failed me. His abilities and ingratiating manner endeared

him quickly to Don John, whilst himself he succumbed entirely, not

only to Don John of Austria’s great personal charm, but also to Don

John’s ambitious projects. The road to advancement upon which I

had set him seemed to him long and toilsome by contrast with the

shorter cut that was offered by his new master’s dreams. He fell

as the earlier secretary had fallen, and more grievously, for he

was the more ambitious of the two, and from merely seconding Don

John’s projects, it was not long before he spurred them on, not

long before he was dreaming dreams of his own for Don John to

realize.

 

>From Tunis, which had by now been recovered by the Turks, and any

hopes concerned with which King Philip had discouraged, the eyes of

Don John were set, at Escovedo’s bidding, I believe, upon the crown

of England.

 

He had just been invited by Philip to make ready to take in hand

the affairs of Flanders, sadly disorganized under the incompetent

rule of Alva. It occurred to him that if he were to issue

victoriously from that enterprise - and so far victory had waited

upon his every venture - if he were to succeed in restoring peace

and Spanish order in rebellious Flanders, he would then be able to

move against England with the Spanish troops under his command,

overthrow Elizabeth, deliver Mary Stuart from the captivity in which

she languished, and by marriage with her set the crown of England

on his brow. To this great project he sought the support of Rome,

and Rome accorded it very readily being naturally hostile to the

heretic daughter of Anne Boleyn.

 

It was Escovedo himself who went as Don John’s secret ambassador to

the Vatican in this affair Escovedo, who had been placed with Don

John to act as a curb on that young man’s ambitions. Nor did he

move with the prudence he should have observed.

 

Knowledge of what was brewing reached us from the Papal Nuncio in

Madrid, who came to see me one day in the matter.

 

“I have a dispatch from Rome,” he announced, “in which His Holiness

instructs me to enjoin upon the King that the expedition against

England be now executed, and that he consider bestowing its crown

upon Don John of Austria for the greater honour and glory of Holy

Church.”

 

I was thunderstruck. The expedition against England, I knew, was

no new project. Three years before a secret envoy from the Queen

of Scots, an Italian named Ridolfi, had come to propose to Philip

that, in concert with the Pope, he should reestablish the Catholic

faith in England and place Mary Stuart upon the throne. It was a

scheme attractive to Philip, since it agreed at once with his policy

and his religion. But it had been abandoned under the dissuasions

of Alva, who accounted that it would be too costly even if

successful. Here it was again, emanating now directly from the

Holy See, but in a slightly altered form.

 

“Why Don John of Austria?” I asked him.

 

“A great soldier of the faith. And the Queen of Scots must have a

husband.”

 

“I should have thought that she had had husbands enough by now,”

said I.

 

“His Holiness does not appear to share that view,” he answered

tartly.

 

“I wonder will the King,” said I.

 

“The Catholic King is ever an obedient child of Mother Church,” the

oily Nuncio reminded me, to reprove my doubt.

 

But I knew better - that the King’s own policy was the measure of

his obedience. This the Nuncio should learn for himself; for if

I knew anything of Philip’s mind, I knew precisely how he would

welcome this proposal.

 

“Will you see the King now?” I suggested maliciously, anxious to

witness the humbling of his priestly arrogance.

 

“Not yet. It is upon that I came to see you. I am instructed

first to consult with one Escoda as to the manner in which this

matter shall be presented to His Majesty. Who is Escoda?”

 

“I never heard of him,” said I. “Perhaps he comes from Rome.”

 

“No, no. Strange!” he muttered, frowning, and plucked a parchment

from his sleeve. “It is here.” He peered slowly at the writing,

and slowly spelled out the name: “Juan de Escoda.”

 

In a flash it came to me.

 

“Escovedo you mean,” I cried,

 

“Yes, yes - Escovedo, to be sure,” he agreed, having consulted the

writing once more. “Where is he?”

 

“On his way to Madrid with Don John,” I informed him. “He is Don

John’s secretary.”

 

“I will do nothing, then, until he arrives,” he said, and took his

leave.

 

Oh, monstrous indiscretion! That dispatch from Rome so cunningly

and secretly contrived in cipher had yet contained no warning that

Escovedo’s share in this should be concealed. There are none so

imprudent as the sly. I sought the King at once, and told him all

that I had learnt. He was aghast. Indeed, I never saw him more

near to anger. For Philip of Spain was not the man to show wrath

or any other emotion. He had a fish-like, cold, impenetrable

inscrutability. True, his yellow skin grew yellower, his gaping

mouth gaped wider, his goggle eyes goggled more than usual. Left

to himself, I think he would have disgraced Don John and banished

Escovedo there and then, as he did, indeed, suggest. And I have

since had cause enough to wish to God that I had left him to

himself.

 

“Who will replace Don John in Flanders?” I asked him quietly. He

stared at me. “He is useful to you there. Use him, Sire, to

your own ends.”

 

“But they will press this English business.”

 

“Acquiesce.”

 

“Acquiesce? Are you mad?”

 

“Seem to acquiesce. Temporize. Answer them, ‘One thing at a time.’

Say, ‘When the Flanders business is happily concluded, we will think

of England.’ Give them hope that success in Flanders will dispose

you to support the other project. Thus you offer Don John an

incentive to succeed, yet commit yourself to nothing.”

 

“And this dog Escovedo?”

 

“Is a dog who betrays himself by his bark. We will listen for it.”

 

And thus it was determined; thus was Don John suckled on the windy

pap of hope when presently he came to Court with Escovedo at his

heels. Distended by that empty fare he went off to the Low

Countries, leaving Escovedo in Madrid to represent him, with secret

instructions to advance his plans.

 

Now Escovedo’s talents were far inferior to my conception of them.

 

He was just a greedy schemer, without the wit to dissemble his

appetite or the patience necessary to secure attainment.

 

Affairs in Flanders went none too well, yet that did not set a curb

upon him. He pressed his master’s business upon the King with an

ardour amounting to disrespect, and disrespect was a thing the awful

majesty of Philip could never brook. Escovedo complained of delays,

of indecision, and finally - in the summer of ‘76 - he wrote the

King a letter of fierce upbraidings, criticizing his policy in terms

that were contemptuous, and which entirely exasperated Philip.

 

It was in vain I strove to warn the fellow of whither he was

drifting; in vain I admonished and sought to curb his headlong

recklessness. I have said that I had a friendship for him, and

because of that I took more pains, perhaps, than I should have taken

in another’s case.

 

“Unless you put some judgment into that head of yours, my friend,

you will leave it in this business,” I told him one day.

 

He flung into a passion at the admonition, heaped abuse upon me,

swore that it was I who thwarted him, I who opposed the fulfilment

of Don John’s desires and fostered the dilatory policy of the King.

 

I left him after that to pursue his course, having no wish to

quarrel with this headstrong upstart; yet, liking him as I did, I

spared no endeavour to shield