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

persecution might be deprived of its

incentive. Finally, I begged him to order me to stand my trial,

that thus, since I was confident that no evidence could be produced

against me, I should force an acquittal from the courts and lay

the matter to rest for all time.

 

“Go and see the President of Castile,” he bade me. “Tell him the

causes that led to the death of Escovedo, and then let him talk to

Don Pedro de Escovedo and to Vasquez, so as to induce them to

desist.”

 

I did as I was bidden, and when the president, who was the Bishop

of Pati, had heard me, he sent for my two chief enemies.

 

“I have, Don Pedro,” he said, “your memorial to the King in which

you accuse Don Antonio Perez of the murder of your father. And I

am to assure you in the King’s name that justice will be done upon

the murderer, whoever he may be, without regard to rank. But I am

first to engage you to consider well what evidence you have to

justify your charge against a person of such consideration. For

should your proofs be insufficient I warn you that matters are

likely to take a bad turn for yourself. Finally, before you answer

me, let me add, upon my word as a priest, that Antonio Perez is as

innocent as I am.”

 

It was the truth - the absolute truth, so far as it was known to

Philip and to the Bishop - for, indeed, I was no more than the

instrument of my master’s will.

 

Don Pedro looked foolish, almost awed. He was as a man who suddenly

becomes aware that he has missed stepping over the edge of a chasm

in which destruction awaited him. He may have bethought him at last

that all his rantings had no better authority than suspicions which

no evidence could support.

 

“Sir,” he faltered, “since you tell me this, I pledge you my word

on behalf of myself and my family to make no more mention of this

death against Don Antonio.”

 

The Bishop swung then upon Vasquez, and his brow became furrowed

with contemptuous anger.

 

“As for you, sir, you have heard - which was more than your due, for

it is not your business by virtue of your office, nor have you any

obligations towards the deceased, such as excuse Don Pedro’s

rashness, to pursue the murderers of Escovedo. Your solicitude in

this matter brings you under a suspicion the more odious since you

are a priest. I warn you, sir, to abstain, for this affair is

different far from anything that you imagine.”

 

But envy is a fierce goad, a consuming, irresistible passion,

corroding wisdom and deaf to all prudent counsels. Vasquez could

not abstain. Ridden by his devil of spite and jealousy, he would

not pause until he had destroyed either himself or me.

 

Since Escovedo’s immediate family now washed their hands of the

affair, Vasquez sought out more distant relatives of the murdered

man, and stirred them up until they went in their turn to pester

the courts, not only with accusations against myself, but with

accusations that now openly linked with mine the name of the

Princess of Eboli.

 

We were driven to the brink of despair, and in this Anne wrote to

Philip. It was a madness. She made too great haste to excuse

herself. She demanded protection from Vasquez and the evil rumours

he was putting abroad, implored the King to make an example of men

who could push so far their daring and irreverence, and to punish

that Moorish dog Vasquez - I dare say there was Moorish blood in

the fellow’s veins - as he deserved.

 

I think our ruin dated from that letter. Philip sent for me to the

Escurial. He wished to know more precisely what the accusations

were. I told him, denying them. Then he desired of the Princess

proof of what she alleged against Vasquez, and she had no difficulty

in satisfying him. He seemed to believe our assurance that all was

lies. Yet he did not move to punish Vasquez. But then I knew that

sluggishness was his great characteristic. “Time and I are one,” he

would say when I pressed on matters.

 

After that it was open war in the Council between me and Vasquez.

The climax came when I was at the Escurial. I had sent a servant

to Vasquez for certain State papers to be submitted to the King.

He brought them, and folded in them a fiercely denunciatory letter

full of insults and injuries, not the least of which was the

imputation that my blood was not clean, my caste not good.

 

In a passion I sought Philip, beside myself almost, trembling under

the insult.

 

“See, Sire, what this Moorish thief has dared to write me. It

transcends all bearing. Either you take satisfaction for me of

these insults or you permit me to take it for myself.”

 

He appeared to share my indignation, promised to give me leave to

proceed against the man, but bade me first wait a while until

certain business in the competent hands of Vasquez should be

transacted. But weeks grew into months, and nothing was done. We

were in April of ‘79, a year after the murder, and I was grown so

uneasy, so sensitive to dangers about me, that I dared no longer

visit Anne. And then Philip’s confessor, Frey Diego de Chaves, came

to me one day with a request on the King’s part that I should make

my peace with Vasquez.

 

“If he will retract,” was my condition. And Chaves went to see my

enemy. What passed between them, what Vasquez may have told him,

what he may have added to those rumours of my relations with Anne,

I do not know. But I know that from that date there was a change

in the King’s attitude towards me, a change in the tone of the

letters that he sent me, and, this continuing, I wrote to him at

last releasing him from his promise to afford me satisfaction

against Vasquez, assuring him that since, himself, he could forgive

the injuries against us both, I could easily forgive those I had

received myself, and finally begging his permission to resign my

office and retire.

 

Anne had contributed to this. She had sent for me, and in tears

had besought me to make my peace with Vasquez since the King desired

it, and this was no time in which to attempt resistance to his

wishes. I remained with her some hours, comforting her, for she was

in the very depths of despair, persuaded that we were both ruined,

and inconsolable in the thought that the blame of this was all her

own.

 

It may be that I was watched, perhaps more closely than I imagined.

It may be that spies were close about us, set by the jealous Philip,

who desired confirmation or refutation of the things he had been

told, the rumours that were gnawing at his vitals.

 

I left her, little dreaming that I was never to see her again in this

life. That night I was arrested at my house by the Court alcalde

upon an order from the King. The paltry reason advanced was my

refusal to make my peace with Vasquez, and this when already the King

was in possession of my letter acknowledging my readiness to do so;

for the King was in Madrid, unknown to me. He came, it seems, that

he might be present at another arrest effected that same night. From

the porch of the Church of Santa Maria Mayor, he watched his alguazils

enter the house of the Princess of Eboli, bring her forth, bestow her

in a waiting carriage that was to bear her away to the fortress of

Pinto, to an imprisonment which was later exchanged for exile to

Pastrana lasting as long as life itself.

 

To sin against a Prince is worse, it seems, than to sin against God

Himself. For God forgives, but princes, wounded in their vanity and

pride, know nothing of forgiveness.

 

I was kept for four months a prisoner by the alcalde, no charge

being preferred against me. Then, because my health was suffering

grievously from confinement and the anxiety of suspense, I was moved

to my own house, and detained there for another eight months under

close guard. My friends besought the King in vain either to restore

me to liberty or to bring me to trial. He told them the affair was

of a nature very different from anything they deemed, and so evaded

all demands.

 

In the summer of 1580, Philip went to Lisbon to take formal

possession of the crown of Portugal, which he had inherited. I sent

my wife to him to intercede for me. But he refused to see her, and

so I was left to continue the victim of his vindictive lethargy.

After a year of this, upon my giving a formal promise to renounce all

hostility towards Vasquez, and never seek to do him harm in any way,

I was accorded some degree of liberty. I was allowed to go out and

to receive visitors, but not to visit any one myself.

 

Followed a further pause. Vasquez was now a man of power, for my

party had fallen with me, and his own had supplanted it in the royal

councils. It was by his work that at last, in ‘84, I was brought

to trial upon a charge of corruption and misappropriation. I knew

that my enemies had, meanwhile, become possessed of Enriquez, and

that he was ready to give evidence, that he was making no secret of

his share in the death of Escovedo, and that the King was being

pressed by the Escovedos to bring me to trial upon the charge of

murder. Instead, the other charge alone was preferred.

 

It was urged against me that I had kept a greater state than any

grandee of Spain, that when I went abroad I did so with a retinue

befitting a prince, that I had sold my favour and accepted bribes

from foreign princes to guard their interests with the King of Spain.

 

They sentenced me to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress, to be

followed by ten years of exile, and I was to make, within nine days,

restitution of some twenty million maravedis* - the alleged extent

of my misappropriations - besides some jewels and furniture which

I had received from the Princess of Eboli, and which I was now

ordered to deliver up to the heirs of the late Prince.

 

*Ten thousand pounds, but with at least five times the

present purchasing power of that sum.

 

Perquisitions had been made in my house, and my papers ransacked.

Well I knew what they had sought. For the thought of the letters

that had passed between Philip and myself at the time of Escovedo’s

death must now be troubling his peace of mind. I had taken due

precautions when first I had seen the gathering clouds foreshadowing

this change of weather. I had bestowed those papers safely in two

iron-bound chests which had been concealed away against the time

when I might need them to save my neck. And because now he failed

to find what he sought - the evidence of his own share in the deed

and his present base duplicity - Philip dared not slip the leash

from those dogs who would be at my throat for the murder of Escovedo.

That was why he bade them proceed against me only on the lesser

charge of corruption.

 

I was taken to the fortress of Turruegano, and there they came to

demand of me the surrender