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

of my papers which the alcalde had failed

to discover at my house. I imagined the uneasiness of Philip in

dispatching those emissaries. I almost laughed as I refused. Those

papers were my buckler against worse befalling me than had befallen

already. Even now, if too hard pressed, I might find the opportunity

of breaking my bonds by means of them. I sometimes wonder why I

did not apply myself to that. Yet there is small cause for wonder,

really. From boyhood, almost, King Philip had been my master.

Loyalty to him was a habit that went to the very roots of my being.

I had served him without conscience and without scruple, and the

notion of betraying him, save as a very last and very desperate

resource, was inconceivable. I do not think he ever knew the depth

and breadth of that loyalty of mine.

 

My refusal led those sons of dogs to attempt to frighten my wife

with threats of unmentionable horrors unless she delivered up the

papers I had secreted. She and our children were threatened with

perpetual imprisonment on bread and water if she persisted in

refusing to surrender them. But she held out against all threats,

and remained firm even under the oily persecution to the same end

of Philip’s confessor, Frey Diego. Finally, I was notified that,

in view of her stubbornness and my own, she and our children were

cast into prison, and that there they would remain until I saw fit

to become submissive to the royal will.

 

It is a subtle form of mental torture that will bid a man

contemplate the suffering for his sake to which those who are dear

to him are being subjected.

 

I raged and stormed before the officer who brought me this infamous

piece of news. I gave vent to my impotent anger in blasphemous

expressions that were afterwards to be used against me. The officer

was subtly sympathetic.

 

“I understand your grief, Don Antonio,” he said. “Believe me, I

feel for you - so much that I urge you to set an end to the

captivity of those dear ones who are innocent, who are suffering

for your sake.”

 

“And so make an end of myself?” I asked him fiercely.

 

“Reflection may show that even that is your duty in the

circumstances.”

 

I looked into his smug face, and I was within an ace of striking

him. Then I controlled myself, and my will was snapped.

 

“Very well,” I said. “The papers shall be surrendered. Let my

steward, Diego Martinez, come to me here, and he shall receive my

instructions to deliver the chests containing them to my wife, that

she in turn may deliver them to the King.”

 

He withdrew, well pleased. No doubt he would take great credit to

himself for this. Within three days, such haste did they make, my

faithful steward stood before me in my prison at Turruegano.

 

You conceive the despair that had overwhelmed me after giving my

consent, the consciousness that it was my life I was surrendering

with those papers, - that without them I should be utterly

defenceless. But in the three days that were sped I had been

thinking, and not quite in vain.

 

Martinez left me with precise instructions, as a result of which

those two iron-bound chests, locked and sealed, were delivered,

together with the keys, to the royal confessor. Martinez was asked

what they contained.

 

“I do not know,” he answered. “My orders are merely to deliver

them.”

 

I can conceive the King’s relief and joy in his conviction that

thus had he drawn my teeth, that betide now what might, I could

never defend or justify myself. The immediate sequel took me by

surprise. We were at the end of ‘85, and my health was suffering

from my confinement and its privations. And now my captivity was

mitigated. My wife Juana even succeeded in obtaining permission

that I should be taken home to Madrid, and there for fourteen months

I enjoyed a half liberty, and received the visits of my old friends,

among whom were numbered most of the members of the Court.

 

I imagined at first that since my teeth were drawn the King despised

me, and intended nothing further. But I was soon to be disillusioned

on that score. It began with the arrest of Martinez on a charge of

complicity in the murder of Escovedo. And then one day I was again

arrested, without warning, and carried off for a while to the fortress

of Pinto. Thence I was brought back in close captivity to Madrid,

and there I learnt at last what had been stirring.

 

In the previous summer King Philip had gone into Aragon to preside

over the Cortes, and Vasquez, who had gone with him, had seized the

opportunity to examine the ensign Enriquez, who had, meanwhile,

denounced himself of complicity in the murder of Escovedo. Enriquez

made a full confession - turned accuser under a promise of full

pardon for himself and charged Mesa, Rubio, and my steward Martinez

with complicity, denouncing Martinez as the ringleader of the

business. The other two, Insausti and Bosque, were already dead.

 

Immediately Vasquez attempted to seize the survivors. But Mesa had

gone to earth in Aragon, and Rubio was with him. Martinez alone

remained, and him they seized and questioned. He remained as cool

and master of himself as he was true and loyal to me. Their threats

made no impression on him. He maintained that the tale was all a

lie, begotten of spite, that I had been Escovedo’s best friend, that

I had been greatly afflicted by his death, and that no man could have

done more than I to discover his real murderers. They confronted

him with Enriquez, and the confrontation no whit disturbed him. He

handled the traitor contemptuously as a perjured, suborned witness,

a false servant, a man who, as he proceeded to show, was a scoundrel

steeped in crime, whose word was utterly worthless, and who, no

doubt, had been bought to bring these charges against his sometime

master.

 

The situation, thanks to Martinez’s stoutness, had reached a

deadlock. Between the assertions of one man, who was revealed to

the judges for a worthless scoundrel, and the denials of the other,

against whom nothing was known, it was impossible for the court of

inquiry to reach any conclusion. At least another witness must be

obtained. And Vasquez laboured with all his might and arts and

wiles to draw Rubio out of Aragon into the clutches of the justice

of Castile. But he laboured in vain, for I had secretly found the

means to instruct my trusty Mesa to retain the fellow where he was.

 

In this inconclusive state of things the months dragged on and my

captivity continued. I wrote to Philip, imploring his mercy,

complaining of these unjust delays on the part of Vasquez, which

threatened to go on forever, and begging His Majesty to command the

conclusion of the affair. That was in August of ‘8g. You see how

time had sped. All that came of my appeal was at first an increased

rigour of imprisonment, and then a visit from Vasquez to examine and

question me upon the testimony of Enriquez. As you can imagine, the

attempt to lure me into self-betrayal was completely fruitless. My

enemy withdrew, baffled, to go question my wife, but without any

better success.

 

Nevertheless, Vasquez proclaimed the charge established against

myself and Martinez, and allowed us ten days in which to prepare our

answer. Immediately upon that Don Pedro de Escovedo lodged a formal

indictment against us, and I was put into irons.

 

To rebut the evidence of one single, tainted witness I produced six

witnesses of high repute, including the Secretary of the Council of

Aragon. They testified for me that I was at Alcala at the time of

Escovedo’s death, that I had always been Escovedo’s friend, that I

was a good Christian incapable of such a deed, and that Enriquez

as an evil man whose word was worthless, a false witness inspired

by vengeance.

 

Thus, in spite of the ill-will of my judges and the hatred of my

enemies, it was impossible legally to condemn me upon the evidence.

There were documents enough in existence to have proved my part in

the affair; but not one of them dared the King produce, since they

would also show me to have been no more than his instrument. And

so, desiring my death as it was now clear he did, he must sit

impotently brooding there with what patience he could command, like

a gigantic, evil spider into whose web I obstinately refused to

fling myself.

 

My hopes began to revive. When at last the court announced that it

postponed judgment whilst fresh evidence was sought, there was an

outcry of indignation on all sides. This was a tyrannical abuse of

power, men said; and I joined my voice to theirs to demand that

judgment be pronounced and my liberty restored to me, pointing out

that I had already languished years in captivity without any charge

against me - beyond that of corruption, which had been purged by

now - having been established.

 

Then at last the King stirred in his diabolical underground manner.

He sent his confessor to me in prison. The friar was mild and benign.

 

“My poor friend,” he said, “why do you allow yourself to suffer in

this fashion, when a word from you can set a term to it? Confess

the deed without fear, since at the same time you can advance a

peremptory reason of State to justify it.”

 

It was too obvious a trap. Did I make confession, indeed, upon such

grounds, they would demand of me proof of what I asserted; and

meanwhile the documents to prove it had been extorted from me and

had passed into the King’s possession. In the result I should be

ruined completely as one who, to the crime of murder, added a wicked,

insidious falsehood touching the honour of his King.

 

But I said naught of this. I met guile with guile. “Alas! I have

been tempted,” I answered him. “But I thank Heaven I have known even

in my extremity how to resist the temptation of such disloyalty. I

cannot forget, Brother Diego, that amongst the letters from the King

was one that said, ‘Be not troubled by anything your enemies may do

against you. I shall not abandon you, and be sure their animosity

cannot prevail. But you must understand that it must not be

discovered that this death took place by my order.”’

 

“But if the King were to release you from that command?” he asked.

 

“When His Majesty in his goodness and generosity sends me a note

in his own hand to say, ‘You may confess that it was by my express

order that you contrived the death of Escovedo,’ then I shall

thankfully account myself absolved from the silence his service

imposes on me.”

 

He looked at me narrowly. He may have suspected that I saw through

the transparent device to ruin me, and that in a sense I mocked him

with my answer.

 

He withdrew, and for some days nothing further happened. Then the

rigours of my captivity were still further increased. I was allowed

to communicate with no one, and even the alguazil who guarded me was

forbidden, under pain of death, to speak to me.

 

And in January I was visited by Vasquez, who brought me a letter

from the King, not, indeed, addressed to me and in the terms I had

suggested, but to Vasquez himself, and it ran:

 

You may tell Antonio Perez from me, and, if necessary, show him this

letter, that he