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

the delays and

longueurs that are inseparable from the sluggish majesty of the law.

one of these pauses I wrote to Philip, inviting him to desist, and

to grant me the liberty to live out my days in peace with my family

in some remote corner of his kingdom. I warned him that I was not

helpless before his persecution, as he imagined; that whilst I had

made surrender of two chests of papers, I yet retained enough

authentic documents - letters in his own hand - to make my innocence

and his guilt apparent in a startling degree, with very evil

consequences to himself.

 

His answer was to seize my wife and children and cast them into

prison, and then order the courts of Madrid to pronounce sentence

of death against me for the murder of Escovedo. Such were the sops

with which he sought to quench his vindictive rage.

 

Thereupon the trial proceeded. I prepared my long memorial of the

affair, supporting it with proofs in the shape of those letters I

had retained. And then at last Philip of Spain took fright. He was

warned by one of his representatives that there was little doubt I

should be acquitted on all counts, and, too late, he sought to save

his face by ordering the cessation of the prosecution he had

instructed.

 

He stated that since I had chosen a line of defence, to answer

which - as it could be answered - it would be necessary to touch

upon matters of a secrecy that was inviolable, and to introduce

personages whose reputation and honour was of more consequence to

the State than the condemnation of Antonio Perez, he preferred to

renounce the prosecution before the tribunal of Aragon. But he

added a certificate upon his royal word to the effect that my crimes

were greater than had ever been the crimes of any man, and that,

whilst he renounced the prosecution before the courts of Aragon, he

retained the right to demand of me an account of my actions before

any other tribunal at any future time.

 

My acquittal followed immediately. And immediately again that was

succeeded by fresh charges against me on behalf of the King. First

it was sought to prove that I had procured the death of two of my

servants - a charge which I easily dispersed by proving them to have

died natural deaths. Then it was sought to prosecute me on the

charge of corruption, for which I had once already been prosecuted,

condemned, and punished. Confidently I demanded my release, and

Philip must have ground his teeth in rage to see his prey escaping

him, to see himself the butt of scorn and contempt for the wrongs

that it became clear he had done me.

 

One weapon remained to him, and a terrible weapon this - the Holy

Office of the Inquisition, a court before which all temporal courts

must bow and quail. He launched its power against me, and behold

me, in the moment when I accounted myself the victor in the unequal

contest, accused of the dread sin of heresy. Words lightly weighed

- uttered by me in prison under stress - had been zealously

gathered up y spies.

 

On one occasion I had exclaimed: “I think God sleeps where my

affairs are concerned, and I am in danger of losing my faith.” The

Holy Office held this to be a scandalous proposition, offensive to

pious ears.

 

Again, when I heard of the arrest of my wife and children I had

cried out in rage: “God sleeps! God sleeps! There cannot be a God!”

 

This they argued at length to be rank heresy, since it is man’s

duty positively to believe, and who does not believe is an infidel.

 

Yet again it seems I had exclaimed: “Should things so come to pass,

I shall refuse to believe in God!” This was accounted blasphemous,

scandalous, and not without suspicion of heresy.

 

Upon these grounds the Supreme Council of the Inquisition at Madrid

drew up its impeachment, and delivered it to the inquisitors of

Aragon at Saragossa. These at once sent their familiars to demand

the surrender of me from the Grand Justiciary, in whose hands I

still remained. The Grand Justiciary incontinently refused to

yield me up.

 

Thereupon the three Inquisitors drew up a peremptory demand,

addressed to the lieutenants of the Justiciary, summoning them by

virtue of holy obedience, under pain of greater excommunication, of

a fine in the case of each of them of one thousand ducats, and

other penalties to which they might later be condemned, to deliver

me up within three hours to the pursuivants of the Holy Office.

 

This was the end of the Justiciary’s resistance. He dared not

refuse a demand so framed, and surrender of me was duly made. But

the news of what was doing had run abroad. I had no lack of

friends, whom I instantly warned of what was afoot, and they had

seen to it that the knowledge spread in an inflammatory manner.

Saragossa began to stir at once. Here was a thinly masked violation

of their ancient privileges. If they suffered this precedent of

circumventing their rights, what was to become of their liberties

in future, who would be secure against an unjust persecution? For

their sympathies were all with me throughout that trial.

 

I was scarcely in the prison of the Holy Office before the dread

cry of Contrafueros! was ringing through the streets of Saragossa,

summoning the citizens to arm and come forth in defence of their

inviolable rights. They stormed the palace of the Grand Justiciary,

demanded that he should defend the fueros, to whose guardianship he

had been elected. Receiving no satisfaction, they attacked the

palace of the Inquisition, clamouring insistently that I should

immediately be returned to the Justiciary’s prison, whence I had so

unwarrantably been taken.

 

The Inquisitors remained firm a while, but the danger was increasing

hourly. In the end they submitted, for the sake of their skins, and

considering, no doubt, a later vengeance for this outrage upon their

holy authority. But it was not done until faggots had been stacked

against the Holy House, and the exasperated mob had threatened to

burn them out of it.

 

“Castilian hypocrites!” had been the insurgent roar. “Surrender

your prisoner, or you shall be roasted in the fire in which you roast

so many!”

 

Blood was shed in the streets. The King’s representative died of

wounds that he received in the affray, whilst the Viceroy himself

was assailed and compelled to intervene and procure my deliverence.

 

For the moment I was out of danger. But for the moment only. There

was no question now of my enlargement. The Grand Justiciary,

intimidated by what had taken place, by the precise expression of

the King’s will, dared not set me at liberty. And then the Holy

Office, under the direction of the King, went to work in that

subterranean way which it has made its own; legal quibbles were

raised to soothe the sensibilities of the Aragonese with respect to

my removal from the Justiciary’s prison to that of the Holy Office.

Strong forces of troops were brought to Saragossa to overawe the

plebeian insolence, and so, by the following September, all the

preliminaries being concluded, the Inquisition came in force and in

form to take possession of me.

 

The mob looked on and murmured; but it was intimidated by the show

of ordered force; it had perhaps tired a little of the whole affair,

and did not see that it should shed its blood and lay up trouble

for itself for the sake of one who, after all, was of no account in

the affairs of Aragon. I stood upon the threshold of my ruin. All

my activities were to go unrewarded. Doom awaited me. And then the

unexpected happened. The alguazil of the Holy Office was in the

very act of setting the gyves upon my legs when the first shot was

fired, followed almost at once by a fusillade.

 

It was Gil de Mesa, faithfullest servant that ever any man possessed.

He had raised an armed band, consisting of some Aragonese gentlemen

and their servants, and with this he fell like a thunderbolt upon

the Castilian men-at-arms and the familiars of the Inquisition. The

alguazil fled, leaving me one leg free, the other burdened by the

gyve, and as he fled so fled all others, being thus taken unawares.

The Inquisitors scuttled to the nearest shelter; the Viceroy threw

himself into his house and barricaded the door. There was no one

to guide, no one to direct. The soldiery in these circumstances,

and accounting themselves overpowered, offered no resistance. They,

too, fled before the fusillade and the hail of shot that descended

on them.

 

Before I realized what had happened, the iron had been struck from

my leg, I was mounted on a horse, and, with Gil at my side, I was

galloping out of Saragossa by the gate of Santa Engracia, and

breasting the slopes with little cause to fear pursuit just yet,

such was the disorder we had left behind.

 

And there, very briefly, you have the story of my sufferings and my

escapes. Not entirely to be baulked, numerous arrests were made by

the Inquisitors in Saragossa when order was at last restored. There

followed an auto-da-fe, the most horrible and vindictive of all

those horrors, in which many suffered for having displayed the

weakness of charity towards a persecuted man. And, since my body

was no longer in their clutches, they none the less sentenced me to

death as contumaciously absent, and my effigy was burnt in the holy

fires they lighted, amongst the human candles which they offered up

for the greater honour and glory of a merciful God. Let me say no

more, lest I blaspheme in earnest.

 

After months of wandering and hiding, Gil and I made our way here

into Navarre, where we remain the guests of Protestant King Henri IV,

who does not love King Philip any better since he has heard my story.

 

Still King Philip’s vengeance does not sleep. Twice has he sent

after me his assassins - since assassination is the only weapon now

remaining to him. But his poor tools have each time been taken,

exposed to Philip’s greater infamy and shame - and hanged as they

deserve who can so vilely serve so vile a master. It has even been

sought to bribe my faithful Gil de Mesa into turning his hand

against me, and that attempt, too, has been given the fullest

publication. Meanwhile, my death to-day could no longer avail

Philip very much. My memorial is published throughout Europe for

all to read. It has been avidly read until Philip of Spain has

earned the contempt of every upright man. In his own dominions the

voice of execration has been raised against him. One of his own

nobles has contemptuously announced that Spain under Philip has

become unsafe for any gentleman, and that a betrayal of a subject

by his king is without parallel in history.

 

That is some measure of vengeance. But if I am spared I shall not

leave it there. Henry of Navarre is on the point of turning Catholic

that his interests may be better served. Elizabeth of England

remains. In her dominions, where thrives the righteous hatred of

Philip and all the evil that he stands for, I shall find a welcome

and a channel for the activities that are to show him that Antonio

Perez lives. I have sent him word that when he is weary of the

conflict he can signify his surrender by delivering from their

prison my wife and children, upon whom he seeks still to visit some

of the vengeance I