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

old fears - and, Heaven knows, he was not without

justification of his intuitions, as I had learnt by now - that

Escovedo meditated the most desperate measures. He was urging me

again, as he had urged me before, and more than once, to dispatch

this traitor whose restless existence so perpetually perturbed him.

I was not deceived as to the meaning he set upon that word

“dispatch.” I knew quite well the nature of the dispatch he bade

me contrive.

 

Conceive now my temptation. Escovedo dead, I should be safe, and

Anne would be safe, and this without any such betrayal as was being

forced upon me. And that death the King himself commanded a secret,

royal execution, such as his confessor Frey Diego de Chaves has

since defended as an expedient measure within the royal prerogative.

He had commanded it before quite unequivocally, but always I had

stood between Escovedo and the sword. Was I to continue in that

attitude? Could it humanly be expected of me in all the

circumstances again to seek to deflect the royal wrath from that

too daring head? I was, after all, only a man, subject to the

temptations of the flesh, and there was a woman whom I loved better

than my own salvation to whose peace and happiness that fellow

Escovedo was become a menace.

 

If he lived, and for as long as he lived, she and I were to be as

slaves of his will, and I was to drag my honour and my loyalty

through the foul kennels of his disordered ambitions. And the King

my master was bidding me clearly see to it that he died immediately.

 

I sat down and wrote at once, and the burden of my letter was: “Be

more explicit, Sire. What manner of dispatch is it your will that

Escovedo should be given?”

 

On the morrow, which was Thursday of Holy Week, that note of mine

was returned to me, and on the margin of it, in Philip’s own hand,

Escovedo’s death-warrant. “I mean that it would be well to hasten

the death of this rascal before some act of his should render it

too late; for he never rests, nor will anything turn him from his

usual ways. Do it, then, and do it quickly, before he kills us.”

 

There was no more to be said. My instructions were clear and

definite. Obedience alone remained. I went about it.

 

Just as all my life I have been blessed with the staunchest friends,

so have I, too, been blessed with the most faithful servants. And

of these none was more faithful than my steward, Diego Martinez,

unless, indeed, it be my equerry, Gil de Mesa, who to this day

follows my evil fortunes. But Mesa at that time was as yet untried,

whilst in Diego I knew that I had a man devoted to me heart and

soul, a man who would allow himself to be torn limb from limb on

the rack on my behalf.

 

I placed the affair in Diego’s hands. I told him that I was acting

under orders from the King, and that the thing at issue was the

private execution of a dangerous traitor, who could not be brought

to trial lest there he should impeach of complicity one whose birth

and blood must be shielded from all scandal. I bade him get what

men he required, and see the thing done with the least possible

delay. And thereupon I instantly withdrew from Madrid and went to

Alcala.

 

Diego engaged five men to assist him in the task; these were a young

officer named Enriquez, a lackey named Rubio, the two Aragonese -

Mesa and Insausti - and another whose name was Bosque. He clearly

meant to take no chances, but I incline to think that he overdid

precaution, and employed more hands than were necessary for the job.

However, the six of them lurked in waiting on three successive

nights for Escovedo near his house in the little square of Santiago.

At last, on the night of Easter Monday, March 31st, they caught him

and dispatched him. He died almost before he realized himself

beset, from a sword-thrust with which Insausti transfixed him. But

there were at least half a dozen wounds in the body when it was

found. Diego, I have said, was a man who made quite certain.

 

No sooner was it done than they dispersed, whilst the lackey Rubio,

instantly quitting Madrid, brought me news of the deed to Alcala,

and the assurance that no arrests had been made. But there was a

great ado in Madrid upon the morrow, as you may imagine, for it is

no everyday occurrence to find a royal secretary murdered in the

streets.

 

The alcaldes set out upon a rigorous search, and they began by

arresting and questioning all who attempted to leave the city. On

the next day they harassed with their perquisitions all those who

let lodgings. They were still at this work in the evening when I

returned to Madrid, brought back - as it would seem - from my

country rest by the news of this murder of my friend and colleague.

I bore myself as I should have done had I no knowledge of how the

thing had been contrived. That was a necessity as imperative as

it was odious, and no part of it more odious than the visit of

condolence I was forced to pay to the Escovedo family, which I

found plunged in grief.

 

>From the very outset suspicion pointed its finger at me, although

there were no visible traces to connect me with the deed. Rumour,

however, was astir, and as I had powerful friends, so, too, I had

the powerful enemies which envy must always be breeding for men in

high places such as mine. Escovedo’s wife mistrusted me, though

at first she seems equally to have suspected in this deed the hand

of the Duke of Alva, who was hostile to Don John and all his

creatures. Very soon, as a result of this, came the Court alcalde

to visit and question me. His stated object was in the hope that

I might give him information which would lead to the discovery of

the assassin; but his real object, rendered apparent by the

searching, insistent nature of his questions, was to lead me to

incriminate myself. I presented a bold front. I pretended to see

in this, perhaps, the work of the Flemish States. I deplored - that

I might remind him of it - my absence from Madrid at the time.

 

He was followed by another high official, who came in simulated

friendship to warn me that certain rumours linking me with the deed

were in circulation, in reality to trap me into some admission, to

watch my countenance for some betraying sign.

 

I endured it stoutly, but inwardly I was shaken, as I wrote to

Philip, giving him full details of what had been said and what

answers I had returned, what bitter draughts I had been forced to

swallow.

 

He wrote in reply: “I find that you answered very well. Continue

to be prudent. They will tell you a thousand things, not for the

sake of telling them, but in the hope of drawing something out of

you. The bitter draughts you mention are inevitable. But use all

the dissimulation and address of which you are capable.”

 

We corresponded daily after that, and I told him of every step I

took; how I kept my men about me, for fear that if they attempted

to leave Madrid they would be arrested, and how, finally, I

contrived their departure one by one, under conditions that placed

them beyond all suspicion. Juan de Mesa set out for Aragon on a

mission concerned with the administration of some property of the

Princess of Eboli’s. Rubio, Insausti, and Enriquez were each given

an ensign’s commission, bearing the King’s own signature, and

ordered to join the armies in various parts of Italy; the first was

sent to Milan, the second to Sicily, and the last to Naples. Bosque

went back to Aragon. Thus all were placed beyond the reach of the

active justice of Castile, all save myself - and the King, who wrote

to me expressing his satisfaction that there had been no arrests.

 

But rumour continued to give tongue, and the burden of its tale was

that the murder had been my work, in complicity with the Princess

of Eboli. How they came to drag her name into the affair I do not

know. It may have been pure malice trading upon its knowledge of

the relations between us. She may have lent colour to the charge

by her own precipitancy in denying it. She announced indignantly

that she was being accused, almost before this had come to pass,

and as indignantly protested against the accusation, and threatened

those who dared to voice it.

 

The end of it all was that, a month later, the Escovedo family drew

up a memorial for the consideration of the King, in which they laid

the murder to my charge, and Philip consented to receive Don Pedro

de Escovedo - the dead man’s son - and promised him that he would

consider the memorial, and that he would deliver up to justice

whomsoever he thought right. He was embarrassed by these demands

of the Escovedos, my own danger, his duty as king, and his interests

as an accomplice, or, rather, as the originator of the deed.

 

The Escovedos were powerfully seconded by Vasquez, the Secretary of

the Council, a member of Alva’s party, a secret enemy of my own,

consumed by jealousy of my power, and no longer fearing to disclose

himself and assail me since he believed himself possessed of the

means of ruining me. He spoke darkly to the King of a woman

concerned in this business, without yet daring to mention Anne by

name, and urged him for the satisfaction of the State, where evil

rumours were abroad, to order an inquiry that should reveal the

truth of the affair.

 

It was Philip himself who informed me of what had passed, sneering

at the wildness of rumours that missed the truth so wildly, and when

I evinced distress at my position, he sought to reassure me; he even

wrote to me after I had left him: “As long as I live you have

nothing to fear. Others may change, but I never change, as you

should know who know me.”

 

That was a letter that epitomized many others written me in those

days to Madrid from the Escurial, whither he had returned. And those

letters comforted me not only by their expressed assurances, but by

the greater assurance implicit in them of the King’s good faith. I

had by now a great mass of his notes dealing with the Escovedo

business, in almost every one of which he betrayed his own share as

the chief murderer, showing that I was no more than his dutiful

instrument in that execution. With those letters in my power what

need I ever fear? Not Philip himself would dare to betray me.

 

But I went now in a new dread - the dread of being myself murdered.

There were threats of it in the air. The Escovedo family and their

partisans, who included all my enemies, and even some members of the

Eboli family, who considered that I had sullied the honour of their

name by my relations with Anne, talked openly of vengeance, so that

I was driven to surround myself by armed attendants whenever now I

went abroad.

 

I appealed again to Philip to protect me. I even begged him to

permit me to retire from my Ministerial office, that thus the

clamant envy that inspired my