His Majesty summoned the secretary Rodriguez, and dictated a brief command to the Primate to wait upon him instantly at the Escurial. The Cardinal might enlighten him upon this, and at the same time he would take order with him, as Inquisitor-General, for dealing with these other English heretics now lying in his power.
A courier was instantly despatched, with orders to ride all night and spare neither himself nor horseflesh.
On that the King sought to dismiss the matter for the present from his mind, to be resumed anon in consultation with the Inquisitor-General. But the matter would not be dismissed. The image excited by the vivid phrase of Frey Diego de Chaves persisted. Ever and anon as the King looked into his lap he beheld there a little heap of bleeding, truncated heads. One of them showed him the stern features of the brave Valdez who had served him so well, and might but for this have lived to serve him better; the glazed eyes of the Marquis of Fuensalida looked up at him with undying reproach, as did the others. He had let those heads fall so that he might preserve his dignity. But how had he preserved it? If the act should bring execration upon Elizabeth who had executed it, what must it bring upon him who might have averted it, but would not? He covered his reptilian eyes with his corpse-like hands in a futile attempt to shut out a vision that lay within his brain. Obstinately his purpose hardened before an opposition arising, as he accounted it, from a weakness in his nature. He would not yield.
Late on the following evening, whilst the King was at supper, eating, as he did all things, alone, Cardinal Quiroga was announced. He bade him in at once, and only momentarily interrupted his consumption of pastry to greet the Primate.
From this interview he derived at last great comfort and assurance. Not only was Don Pedro in the prison of the Inquisition, but so was the woman he had carried off from England. She was accused of heresy and witchcraft. It was the exercise of her arts upon Don Pedro which had plunged him into offences against the Faith. He was to expiate these offences by doing penance in the great Auto de Fé which was to be held in Toledo on the following Thursday. In that same Auto the woman would be abandoned to the secular arm to be burnt as a witch, together with some others whom the Cardinal enumerated. He expressed a hope in passing that His Majesty would grace the Auto by his royal presence.
The King took a fresh piece of pastry from the gold dish, crammed it into his royal mouth, licked his fingers, and asked a question. What was the evidence of witchcraft against this woman?
The Inquisitor-General, familiar now with the particulars of a case which so closely concerned his nephew, returned a full and detailed answer.
The King sat back and half-closed his eyes. His lips smiled a little. He was extremely satisfied. The ground was cut from under his feet. His duty to the Faith made it impossible for him to yield to the demands of Elizabeth. Aforetime and successfully when protests had been addressed to him from England on behalf of seamen who had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, he had replied that it was idle to appeal to him for anything that lay outside the province of the secular power in Spain. In matters of the Faith, in the province of God, he had no power to interfere with the proceedings of the Holy Office to which he might himself be amenable did he offend against religion. And this was no piece of hypocrisy. It was entirely sincere. As sincere as was now his thankfulness that, if those noble Spanish heads must fall as a consequence, none could reproach him with it. The whole world should hear his answer to the Queen of England: that not by him, but by the Holy Office, had judgment been passed upon crimes against the Faith; if meanly to avenge this upon guiltless gentlemen she took their innocent lives, there being against them no charge to warrant putting them to death, the responsibility for that dark deed must lie upon her evil soul as surely as it must earn her the contempt and reprobation of the world.
And since his duty to the Faith, whose foremost champion he was, now bound his hands, he need fear no more the vision of those bloody heads in his lap.
Of all this, however, he said nothing to Quiroga. He thanked His Eminence for information which he had been driven to seek, because a rumour had reached him that Don Pedro de Mendoza was alive, and so dismissed him.
That night the King of Spain slept peacefully as do men whose consciences are tranquil.
After Vespers on Sunday, which the Cardinal-Archbishop had returned to celebrate in person in Toledo, having for the purpose quitted the Escurial at dawn and travelled at a speed possible only to royal or inquisitorial personages, His Eminence took up the papers concerned with the case of his errant nephew. He recalled that, when the royal messenger had arrived to summon him to the Escurial, he had been on the point of sending for the Inquisitor Arrenzuelo so as to discuss with him certain points in it which remained obscure.
Having refreshed his memory upon those points, which were contained in the appended note from Arrenzuelo, having indeed given them now an attention—prompted by his recent interview with the King—which they had not at first received, the Inquisitor-General found himself assailed by something of the uneasiness in which Frey Juan wrote. It appeared to him that they were here upon the edge of complexities which Arrenzuelo himself had failed to appreciate. He sent for him at once, and Frey Juan was prompt and even eager to obey the summons.
Honest and God-fearing, Frey Juan de Arrenzuelo never hesitated frankly and fully to express the doubts by which he was assailed once the Inquisitor-General had invited him to do so.
He began by confessing that all might well be as Frey Luis Salcedo so cogently reasoned in his accusation. But in his conscience he could not account the accusation of witchcraft proven. Because for Don Pedro’s sake he desired to account it proven, he must practise the greater vigilance over his judgment. It was so perilously easy to believe what one desired to believe. The acts and words from which Frey Luis made his deductions, although clearly of the utmost gravity in the aggregate, might nevertheless be susceptible of interpretations quite other than those which he placed upon them.
It might well be, for instance, as Don Pedro himself insisted, that the only magic the woman had used had been the magic which Nature places in the hands of every woman. God had placed women in the world to test men’s fortitude. Don Pedro might have succumbed; and, succumbing, have grown unmindful of all those guides of conduct proper to a God-fearing man. In his desire to make this woman his wife, he had neglected to ascertain that she was a Lutheran. This in itself was serious. But after all Don Pedro had immediately perceived its seriousness when pointed out to him, and had been ready, even eager, that the woman should be converted to the True Faith. The words he had used to her, where he spoke of forces outside himself which had driven him to love her, words to which Frey Luis attached so much importance, might also be no more than the fantastic vapourings of a lovelorn man. Frey Juan did not say that any of this was so. He merely displayed the doubts which had come to afflict him on this question of sorcery. He concluded with the statement that the woman was of an unusual and commanding beauty, such as had often driven men to extravagances of conduct.
Cardinal Quiroga, a tall, handsome, vigorous man of fifty, imposing in his scarlet robes, sat stern and thoughtful, his hands clasping and unclasping the carved arms of his great chair. They were beautiful hands, and it was said that to preserve their beauty of texture he wore, whilst sleeping, mittens that were rubbed in lamb’s fat. He looked at the tall Dominican who stood before him in his black-and-white habit, his pallid face in every line of which self-abnegation had set its imprint, as thoughtful as the Cardinal’s own. His Eminence spoke slowly.
‘I perceive the difficulty. I suspected it before you came, which indeed was the reason why I sent for you. Nothing that you have said has done anything but increase it. Do you offer no counsel?’
They looked into each other’s eyes. Frey Juan made a little gesture of helplessness, slightly raising his shoulders.
‘I seek the path of duty. It seems to me almost that it must lie in abandoning this charge of sorcery of which we have no clear, irrefutable evidence. Both the prisoner and your nephew himself meet the charge by accusing us of having invented it so as to shelter Don Pedro from the consequences of having slain an officer of the Holy Office.’
‘Since that is not true, why need it perturb you?’
‘It perturbs me that if really innocent of sorcery the woman is justified in believing it true. There remains against her the offence of heresy, which must be purged. But I desire her conversion and the salvation of her soul, and how shall we accomplish this if we are discredited in her eyes by her conviction that we proceed as we do out of ignoble worldly motives?’
The Cardinal bowed his head. ‘You probe deeply, Frey Juan.’
‘Is my duty less, Eminence?’
‘But, if this charge of sorcery is abandoned, what then of my nephew? He has committed sacrilege, other sins apart. For that a heavy expiation is required—his very life is forfeit—unless it can be shown that responsibility for his actions lies elsewhere.’
Frey Juan stiffened. ‘Are we to fall into the very offence of which already this woman accuses us?’ he cried. ‘Are we to justify her accusation?’
That brought the Cardinal to his feet. He stood as tall as Frey Juan, confronting the sudden sternness of the Dominican, a flush upon his cheeks, a kindling of anger in his dark eyes.
‘What do you presume to conclude?’ he demanded. ‘Could I have said what I have said in the assumption that my nephew is guilty? Am I not entitled, by every act of his past life, to assume him innocent of intentional evil, and to believe that he must, indeed, have been bewitched? That is what, in my conscience, I do believe,’ he insisted. ‘But because we lack the means fully to establish this thing, is Don Pedro de Mendoza to be left to suffer infamy, death, and the confiscation of his estates?’
If Frey Juan remained unconvinced of the Cardinal’s sincerity and freedom from nepotism, he was willing charitably to believe that his affection for his nephew made him build assumptions into convictions.
He perceived the dilemma; but he could do no more than briefly recapitulate the situation.
‘The actual facts upon which Frey Luis has built his accusation are admitted by the prisoner. What she does not admit, what indeed her arguments go some way to dispel, are the inferences drawn from them by Frey Luis. These inferences are undoubtedly cogent, plausible, and well-reasoned. Yet, as the evidence stands, and without independent confirmation, it does not permit us to sentence the accused. I do not see,’ he ended gloomily, ‘whence this confirmation is to be obtained.’
‘Whence but from the prisoner herself!’ exclaimed the Cardinal, in the tone of a man who states the obvious.
Frey Juan shook his head. ‘That I am persuaded she will never yield.’
Quiroga looked him in the face again, and his eyes narrowed.
‘You have not yet proceeded to the question,’ he softly reminded him.
Frey Juan spread his hands. He spoke in a tone of self-accusation. ‘If I have not employed it, although urged to it already by my assessors, it is because of my fear, my firm persuasion that it must fail.’
‘Fail!’
The amazement of the exclamation was eloquent indeed. It provoked a wistful little smile from the Dominican.
‘You have not seen this woman, Eminence. You have had no opportunity of judging the strength of her spirit, the toughness of her fibre, the determination of her nature. If the truth sustains her—as well it may, remember, in this matter of witchcraft—I do not believe that, if the tormentors were slowly to rend her limb from limb, an incriminating admission would be wrung from her. I say this upon long and deep consideration, Eminence. My office has taught me something of humanity. There are men and women in whom mental exaltation produces a detachment of the spirit which renders them unconscious of the flesh, and, therefore, insensible to pain. Such a woman do I judge this one to be. If innocent of sorcery, consciousness of her innocence would produce in her such an exaltation.’
He paused before concluding: ‘If we are to persist in the accusation of sorcery, we may have to come to the audience of torment before the end is reached. But, if we come to it, and fail in spite of it, as I believe we shall, what will then be the position of Don Pedro de Mendoza?’
The Inquisitor-General sat down again, heavily. He sank his chin to his breast, and muttered through his teeth: ‘Devil take the fool for having placed himself in this position!’ More vehemently he added: ‘And Devil take this Frey Luis Salcedo for yielding to his excessive zeal!’
‘Frey Luis acted in accordance with his lights and without regard to anything but his duty to his habit. He was within his rights, Eminence.’
‘But something rash, I think. Yourself you have come to perceive it and to be troubled by it. An accusation of this nature should never have been brought until I had been consulted. Witchcraft is a charge never easy to establish.’
‘Yet had the accusation not been lodged, Eminence, in what case must Don Pedro have found himself?’
The Cardinal raised his hands, and let them fall back resoundingly and heavily upon the arms of his chair. ‘Yes, yes! So we swing—backwards and forwards—in this matter. We are in a circle which we cannot break. Either this woman is convicted of having bewitched my nephew, or else Don Pedro is guilty of an offence for which the Holy Office prescribes the penalty of death with confiscation of his possessions; and you tell me that you do not believe the woman can be so convicted.’
‘That is my firm persuasion.’
The Cardinal heaved himself up slowly, a deep frown of perplexity between his fine, thoughtful, wide-set eyes. He paced slowly the length of the room and back, his chin sunk upon his breast, and for some moments there was no sound there beyond the soft fall of his slippered feet upon the wood mosaics of the floor, the rustle of his trailing gown of scarlet silk.
At length he came to stand once more before the Dominican. He looked at him with eyes that did not seem to see him, so introspective was their gaze. His fine hand, on which a great sapphire glowed sombrely, toyed absently with the broad jewelled cross that hung upon his breast. His full lips parted at last. He spoke very quietly and slowly.
‘There is, I think, a way out of this difficulty, after all. I hesitate even now to urge its adoption, because it might appear to some to be not quite a legitimate way according to the laws that govern us.’ He broke off to ask a question. ‘Is it a truth, Frey Juan, that the end may justify the means?’
‘The Jesuits assert it,’ answered the Dominican uneasily.
‘Here is a case that may serve to show that they are sometimes right. Consider me now this nephew of mine. He is a man who has served God and the Faith as loyally as he has served his King. As much in the service of one as the other did he sail upon the ship which he commanded. He is a tertiary of the Order of Saint Dominic, and a man of a devout and God-fearing nature. Remembering all this, are we not justified of the persuasion that it would have been impossible for him to have committed the offences against the Faith with which he is now charged unless he had been the victim of some aberration? Whether this aberration was the result of black arts employed against him, according to the arguments of Frey Luis Salcedo, or whether, as you seem to consider a possible alternative, it results from the simple and normal magic of Nature in such cases, we may be able to determine later. At the moment all that we can determine is that the aberration exists. Of this, you, who have examined him and the English woman, entertain, like myself, no doubt?’
‘No doubt whatever,’ answered Frey Juan promptly and truthfully.
‘In that case, there would be no violence to our consciences or our duty if we were in this instance to reverse the normal order of procedure. The proper course is naturally that we first sift the charge against the woman, so as to establish clearly the grounds upon which Don Pedro is to be sentenced. But since in our own minds and consciences these grounds are firmly established already, might we not, ignoring the forms of law, proceed at once to sentence Don Pedro upon the indictment as drawn up by Frey Luis Salcedo? Upon that, which presumes that he was bewitched and not responsible for his deeds, the Holy Office will be appeased by imposing a penance de leviter, but public, to be performed at next Thursday’s Auto de Fé. Thus he will be purged of his sin before we finally proceed against the woman. If, then, the charge of witchcraft should fail for lack of confirmation, and only the charge of heresy remain upon which to sentence her, at least it will be too late to reopen the case against Don Pedro.’
The Cardinal paused, his eyes closely scanning the face of his subordinate inquisitor.
Frey Juan remained gravely impassive. It was a moment before he spoke.
‘I, too, had thought of that,’ he said slowly.
The Cardinal’s glance quickened. His hand fell upon the Dominican’s shoulder and gripped it. ‘You had! Why, then… ?’ He left his question there.
But Frey Juan shook his head, and sighed. ‘It is never too late in questions of the Faith to reopen a case against an accused, if it is shown that there was more against him than appeared at the trial in which he was sentenced.’
‘Why, that I know. But here… Who is there would dream of reopening it?’
Frey Juan hesitated before answering. ‘There are other consciences than ours, Eminence. An enemy of Don Pedro’s might be moved by his conscience to see him expiate to the full his offence against the Faith. A successor of mine or yours, Eminence, perusing the records might perceive the irregularity and be moved to correct it.’
‘Those risks we could take without loss of sleep.’
‘Those, perhaps yes. But there is yet another. There is the delator, Frey Luis Salcedo.’
The Cardinal stared at him. ‘Frey Luis Salcedo? But it is he who argues and insists upon the witchcraft!’ He removed his hand from the Dominican’s shoulder as he spoke.
‘I say it without hostility to him, Eminence: his zeal is greater than his discretion. He is of a terrible singleness of aim, and in this matter he has shown a tenacity and persistence which have led me to remind him that hatred, even when springing from righteousness, can be a mortal sin. If I know him at all, he will be driven to frenzy if the accusation of witchcraft is not established. He is intolerant of all doubts in the matter; violent in asserting his conviction and in insisting upon the cogency of his arguments. If the witchcraft being presumed, we penance Don Pedro de leviter, Frey Luis will be the first to raise an outcry and denounce that penancing as a mockery should the witchcraft not subsequently be proven against the woman.’
The Cardinal, a human man after all, not to be blamed by any reasonable person for his efforts on his nephew’s behalf, flushed now with anger.
‘But for what does he count, then, this man, in your tribunal? He is but a witness there, without powers or voice of any kind.’
‘He has the voice of a delator, and the voice of a delator is the one voice which the Holy Office has no power to silence. The Fiscal Advocate has been on his side in what arguments we have had, and I think that even the Diocesan Ordinary is becoming impatient with my endeavours to hold the scales level. In their opinion, I am too tender of a heretic.’
The Inquisitor-General looked into the fine ascetic face of his subordinate.
‘You think that Frey Luis might become vindictive?’
‘That is what I have hesitated to say. But since Your Eminence has used the word, I confess that it is what is in my mind. If the woman is sentenced only as a heretic, he may take vengeance upon those whom he regards as having frustrated him, by seeking in turn to frustrate them where Don Pedro is concerned; by demanding that Don Pedro be tried again, and sentenced for deeds which will then be beyond condonation.’
Cardinal Quiroga was reduced to exasperation. He could only cry out again that they were held within a circle so that in whatever direction they moved they encountered ever the same points. He became, on the subject of his nephew and his folly, as nearly blasphemous as was possible to a prelate in the presence of a subordinate. Finally he urged that they should stake everything upon the question and its efficacy in wringing the requisite admission of guilt from the woman.
Frey Juan bowed his head. ‘If Your Eminence commands it, as is your right,’ he said. ‘But I solemnly warn you that it is a stake upon which Don Pedro will lose all.’
This the Inquisitor-General perceived was but to recommence the arguments, to make another turn round that exasperating circle. Abruptly he dismissed Frey Juan.
‘I must consider,’ he announced. ‘It is all before me now. I shall pray for guidance, and do you do the same, Frey Juan. Go with God!’
With the full facts of the sequel before us in intimate detail (for even where these details depend upon inference, the indications are too clear to admit of error), it may be permissible to point out—as has been pointed out so repeatedly already—that the most trivial causes may be pregnant of the most terrible and even tragical effects.
Grotesque though it may seem, it is hardly too much to conclude that, if King Philip of Spain had been less gluttonously addicted to pastry, the fortunes of the Lady Margaret Trevanion, whom he had never seen and whose very name, heard but once, he did not even remember, would have run a totally different course.
On that Sunday night, at the Escurial, the lord of half the world indulged that gluttony of his to a more than normal degree. In the early hours of Monday morning he awoke in a cold sweat of terror with a cramp in the pit of his stomach produced, as he believed even after awakening, by the weight upon it of the bloody heads of eight gentlemen of Spain.
He sat up in his great carved bed with a scream which brought Santoyo instantly to his side. The valet found him straining frantically to thrust with both hands that imagined bloody heap from his royal lap.
There were cordials and sedatives at hand prescribed for the use of this sickly, valetudinarian monarch, and practice had rendered Santoyo expert in the administration of them. Quickly he mixed a dose. The King drank it, lay down again in response to the valet’s solicitudinous advice, and, partially soothed, remained thereafter gently moaning.
The valet sent for the physician. The latter when he came, probing by questions to discover the cause of this sudden indisposition, came upon the pastry, and shrugged his shoulders in despair. He had remonstrated about it before with the King, and had been vituperated for his pains and dubbed an incompetent, ignorant ass. It was not worth his while to risk the loss of the King’s confidence by venturing again to tell him the truth.
He took counsel with Santoyo. The sleek, shrewd Andalusian valet suggested that it might be a matter for the King’s confessor. Santoyo had picked up a good deal of theology in King Philip’s service, and he was aware that gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. Restraint might be imposed upon His Majesty if it were delicately pointed out to him that these excesses were of spiritual as well as physical injury; in other words, that in ruining his digestion he also damned his soul.
The physician, something of a cynic, as such men must be who have so wide and so intimate an acquaintance with their fellows, wondered from which of the other six deadly sins the King had ever been made to abstain by fear of damnation. In fact, he rather regarded His Majesty as an expert in the practice of the deadly sins, immunity from the consequences of which he no doubt ensured himself by the perfervidness of his devotions.
Santoyo, however, was much more practical. ‘A deadly sin that brings no evil material sequel to the satisfaction afforded by committing it is one thing. A deadly sin that gives you the stomach-ache is quite another.’
The physician was constrained to acknowledge that the valet was the greater philosopher, and left the matter in his hands. Later in the course of that Monday, Santoyo sought Frey Diego de Chaves, and told him what had passed: he gave him details of the King’s indigestion, its probable cause and peculiar manifestation.
Santoyo was flattered by the unusual and lively interest which the royal confessor displayed. He knew himself for the best valet in Spain, and much else besides; but he now gathered, from Frey Diego’s warm commendation of his zeal and conclusions, that he was also a considerable theologian.
He was not aware of the distress of mind in which he had found the Prior of Santa Cruz, or of how opportunely the matter came to his need. Ramon de Chaves, the Prior’s elder brother, and the head of that distinguished family to which the Prior was himself an ornament, was one of the eight gentlemen in the Tower of London whose heads were placed in jeopardy by what Frey Diego accounted the fierce inhumanity of the Queen of England and the proud obstinacy of the King of Spain. When Santoyo found him, he had been mentally torn between philosophic reflections upon the peril and futility of serving princes and practical considerations of how he might so move the King as to abstract his brother’s head from the English axe.
The advent of Santoyo with his tale was like an answer to the prayers which last night he had addressed to Heaven. It opened out before him a way by which he might approach the King in the matter, without appearing to be actuated by any considerations of serving his own family. He was too well acquainted with the King’s dark nature to entertain any hopes of moving him by entreaties.
The difficulty lay in the fact that the King usually confessed himself on Fridays, and this was Monday. The Prior had also informed himself—again out of fraternal solicitude—that there was to be an Auto de Fé in Toledo on Thursday when the English woman who was at the root of all this bother was to be burnt as a witch or a heretic, or both; and he knew that once this happened, whatever else might happen, nothing could save his brother’s head from the sawdust.
Thus you have the interesting situation of the Inquisitor-General, moved by nepotism on the one hand, and the Prior of Santa Cruz, also an Inquisitor of the Faith, moved by brotherly love, on the other, both seeking a scheme by which to frustrate the ends of the Holy Office.
The Prior, betraying to the valet solicitude only for the condition of the King, left it to him to induce His Majesty to send for him at the earliest moment. To reward his affection and fidelity to the King, to mark his appreciation of Santoyo’s zeal in matters of religion, and to encourage its continuance, the Prior made him a handsome present, gave him his blessing, and so dismissed him. Thereafter Frey Diego awaited the royal summons with some confidence.
Santoyo went to work astutely, postponing all operations until the King should afford him a clear opening.
Philip II had been at his eternal labours of annotating documents in that monastic room in which he worked. These Santoyo had taken from him, dusted with pounce where necessary, and passed on to the secretaries, as usual, closely watching his royal master the while.
Came a moment when the King paused in his labours, sighed, and passed a hand wearily across his pallid brow. Presently he stretched out his hand to take another document from the pile on the oak table at his elbow. It resisted him. He turned his head, and found Santoyo’s hand pinning down the heap of parchments, Santoyo’s eyes gravely upon him.
The heavy insect-like drone of the royal voice sounded in the room. ‘What is it? What do you do?’
‘Has not Your Majesty laboured enough for to-day? You will remember that you were indisposed in the night. Your Majesty shows signs of weariness.’
This was an unusual interference, almost an impertinence on the part of Santoyo. The King’s pale cold eyes looked up at him, to drop again immediately. Not even the glance of his valet could this man support.
‘Of weariness?’ he hummed. ‘I?’ But the suggestion did its work upon that sickly and enfeebled body. He removed his hand from the parchments, and reclining in his chair closed his eyes, so as to concentrate upon himself, and discover whether his valet might not be right. He found himself weary, indeed, he thought. He opened his eyes again.
‘Santoyo, what did Gutierrez say of my condition?’
‘He seemed to think that it arose from too much pastry…’
‘Who told him that I ate pastry?’
‘He asked me what you had eaten, Majesty.’
‘And so, to hide his ignorance, he fastened upon that. The ass! The unspeakable ass!’
‘I told him, Majesty, that he was clearly wrong.’
‘So, so? You told him he was wrong. Behold you turned doctor, now, Santoyo!’
‘It scarcely needed a doctor to perceive what ailed Your Majesty. As I told Master Gutierrez, the unrest came not from your stomach, Majesty, but from your spirit.’
‘Tush, fool! What do you know of my spirit?’
‘What I gathered from Your Majesty’s words when you were stricken in the night.’ And he went on quickly: ‘Frey Diego de Chaves said something here on Friday which preyed upon your mind, Majesty. It would need the Prior of Santa Cruz to heal the wound he opened, to restore you the quiet that Your Majesty’s spirit needs.’
Now this was a disturbing reminder. It brought back the vivid phrase which had haunted the King ever since. At the same time it showed the King the shrewdness of Santoyo’s diagnosis. He muttered something utterly inaudible, then, rousing himself again, put forth his hand to resume his labours. This time Santoyo dared not hinder him. But whilst he annotated the document he had taken, Santoyo behind his back was guilty of shuffling the waiting heap so that a sheet which had been at the bottom of the pile was now uppermost, and was the next to be taken by the King.
In this Santoyo revealed his shrewdness even more signally. Well aware of what was troubling the royal mind, of the mingled rage and fear and obstinacy provoked by the Queen of England’s letter, he concluded that these emotions must be fed if His Majesty was to seek relief of them at the hands of the Prior of Santa Cruz, as Santoyo was conspiring that he should.
The letter which he had now judged it suitable to bring to the top of the pile—on the principle of striking the iron whilst it was hot—was from the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had led the disastrous adventure against England. It was a letter which had arrived that morning, most opportunely.
The old Duke wrote humbly from his retirement to inform King Philip that he had sold one of his farms to raise the heavy sum required by England for the ransom of the gallant admiral Pedro Valdez. It was a small enough act, the Duke protested, imploring His Majesty to behold an earnest of his love and loyalty in this sacrifice made to restore to Spain the services of the first of her surviving admirals.
The letter fluttered from the royal fingers gone suddenly nerveless. He sank back in his wooden monastic chair, closed his eyes and groaned; then opened them again and raged.
‘Infidel! Bastard! Excommunicate heretic! Indemoniated she-wolf!’
Santoyo was leaning over him in solicitude. ‘Majesty!’ he murmured.
‘I am ill, Santoyo,’ droned the dull voice. ‘You are right! I’ll work no more. Give me your arm.’
Supported by a stick on one side, and leaning heavily on Santoyo on the other, he hobbled from the room. Santoyo craftily introduced again the name of Frey Diego de Chaves, suggested mildly that perhaps His Majesty required spiritual advice. His Majesty bade him be silent, and he dared not insist.
But that night again King Philip’s sleep was troubled, and this time there was no pastry to account for it—at least, not directly. Perhaps it was that the terrible images excited by the indigestion of Sunday night left their memories in his brain, so that they recurred now without extraneous stimulus; and undoubtedly they were assisted to recur by the thought of that letter from Medina Sidonia announcing the despatch of the ransom of that gallant Valdez, whose head was ever the foremost in that imagined heap in the royal lap, whose head must fall lest Elizabeth of England should be able to announce with a laugh that she had coerced Philip of Spain.
Another twenty-four hours of such haunting as this, and at last on Wednesday morning, after yet another night of broken sleep, the King capitulated to the repeated suggestion of his valet that he should see his confessor. It may be that at the back of his mind, if only subconsciously, there was the thought of the Auto de Fé on the morrow and the knowledge that if he delayed another twenty-four hours, it would be too late for action of any kind.
‘In God’s name!’ he cried at last, to Santoyo’s insistence, ‘let Frey Diego come. Since he raised these ghosts, let him come and exorcise them.’
The Prior of Santa Cruz did not keep the King waiting. He had been watching the passage of the hours in a mounting fever of panic. He had reached that point where, whether the King sent for him or not, he would use his position as keeper of the royal conscience to thrust himself upon the King and make a last effort by intercession, by reasoning, by bullying at need, to save his brother’s head. But since the King sent for him, even at this late hour, all was well. He would lay aside those weapons of despair until others failed.
Calm and self-contained looked the portly man as he entered the royal bedroom, and, having dismissed Santoyo and closed the door, approached the great carved bed in that austere room, flooded now with the sunshine of the autumn morning.
He drew up a stool, sat down, and, after some platitudes on the score of the royal health and in answer to the royal complaints, he invited the King to confess himself and so ease his soul of any troublesome burden which might be retarding the healing of his flesh.
Philip confessed himself. Frey Diego probed the royal conscience with questions here and there. As a surgeon dissects and lays bare the recesses of the body, so did the Prior of Santa Cruz now dissect and lay bare some of the horrible recesses of King Philip’s soul.
When it was done, and before he passed to the awaited absolution, Frey Diego diagnosed the royal condition.
‘It is so plain, my son,’ he said in the paternal tone of his office. ‘In this distemper which afflicts you, two deadly sins are coöperating. You will not be healed until you cast them out. Neglect to do so will destroy you here and hereafter. The indigestion resulting from the sin of gluttony let loose against you tormenting visions resulting from the sin of pride. Beware of pride, my son, the first and deadliest of the sins. Through pride was Lucifer cast out of his high place in heaven. But for pride there would have been no devil, no tempter, and no sin. It is Satan’s great gift to man. A mantle so light that a man may wear it without consciousness that it sits upon his shoulders, whilst in the folds of it are sheltered all the evils that labour for man’s eternal damnation.’
‘Jesu!’ droned the King. ‘All my life I have studied humility…’
The confessor interrupted him, where the man would not have dared. ‘The visions that you tell me have haunted you these nights, whence come they, think you?’
‘Whence? From regret, from fear, from love for those gentlemen of mine, whom that evil heretic in England is to butcher.’
‘Unless you banish the pride which prevents you from putting forth your hand to save them.’
‘What? Am I the King of Spain, and shall I bow my neck to that insolent demand?’
‘Unless the deadly sin of pride insists that you carry your head erect whilst eight noble lives are immolated on the altar of pride.’
The King writhed as if in physical pain. Suddenly he rallied, perceiving something that had been overlooked, something in which he fancied that he must find salvation.
‘I can do nothing if I would. The matter is out of my hands. I am but King of Spain. I do not rule the Holy Office. I do not presume to meddle in the Kingdom of God. I do not presume, I say: I, whom you accuse of pride.’
But the Prior of Santa Cruz smiled pityingly as his eyes momentarily met the King’s furtive glance. ‘Will you cheat God with such a subterfuge? Do you think God is to be cheated? Can you conceal from Him what is in your heart? If the good of Spain, valid reasons of State, demand that you should stay the hand of the Inquisition, is your Inquisitor-General to deny you? Has no King of Spain ever intervened? Be honest with your God, King Philip. Behold already one of the evils which I warned you lurk within pride’s mantle. Cast off that mantle, my son. It is a garment of damnation.’
The King looked at him and away again. There was agony in those pale eyes—the agony of pride.
‘It is unthinkable,’ he droned. ‘Must I humble myself…’
‘Out of your own mouth, my son!’ Frey Diego cried in a voice like a trumpet call, and rose, his arm flung out in denunciation. ‘Out of your own mouth! Must you humble yourself, you ask. Ay, must you, or God will humble you in the end. There is no other escape for you from these ghosts. These bleeding heads grin at you now from your lap. They grin so while they are still firm upon the shoulders of living men; men who have loved you and served you and ventured their lives in your service and in Spain’s. What will they look like when they shall indeed have fallen, because your pride would not stay the axe of the executioner? Will that lay those ghosts, do you think, or will it bring them gibbering about you until you are driven mad, assuring you that like another Lucifer by your pride have you forfeited your place in heaven, by your pride doomed yourself to an eternity of torment!’
‘Cease!’ cried the King, writhing in his great bed, and thus convinced, appalled to perceive under the Prior’s fiery indication the pit on the edge of which he stood, he capitulated. He would rend his pride; he would bow his neck; he would submit to the insolent demand of that heretical woman.
‘Thus,’ said the Prior in a gentle, soothing voice, applying an unguent now that the irritant had done its work, ‘shall you lay up treasure in heaven, my son.’
Having been driven by the spiritually minatory persuasions of his confessor into that consumption of his monstrous pride, King Philip, in prey to a reaction common enough in such cases, displayed a feverish, anxious haste to perform in the eleventh hour what three days ago might have been done in dignified leisure.
An hour or so before noon on that Wednesday, Sir Gervase Crosby was haled from the underground stone chamber of the Escurial in which he had been imprisoned. Such had been his angry distress at his failure to save Margaret that it is to be doubted if through those interminable days of maddeningly impotent conjecture he had given a thought to the fate in store for himself.
He was brought now, not before the King, who could not bear the humiliation of announcing his surrender to this man whose bones he had hoped to have broken in the torture chamber of the Inquisition, but before the little hirsute gentleman he had seen at work in the royal closet on the occasion of his audience. This was the secretary Rodriguez, who himself had penned at the King’s dictation the letter to the Inquisitor-General of Castile, which His Majesty had signed and sealed, the letter which the secretary now proffered to Sir Gervase.
In curt terms and with great dignity of manner, the little man informed Sir Gervase of the situation in a formal speech which sounded like a lesson learnt by heart.
‘His Majesty the King of Spain, having further considered the matter of the letter from the Queen of England, has decided to comply with the request contained in it. He has reached this decision in spite of the gross terms employed by Her Majesty, and unintimidated by threats which he is persuaded that she would not dare in any case to execute. He has been moved solely by a justice inclining to clemency, having ascertained that a wrong has been done by a subject of his own which for the honour of Spain it behoves him to right.’
It was at this stage that he displayed the sealed package which he held.
‘The woman, whose surrender is demanded, is a prisoner of the Holy Office, charged not only with heresy, but with witchcraft exercised against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, whereby he was so far seduced from his duty to his God and his own honour that he carried her off and brought her here to Spain. She lies at present in the prison of the Holy House at Toledo, having been in the hands of the Inquisitors of the Faith from the moment that she landed on Spanish soil. So far, as we believe, no harm or hurt has come to her beyond the inconvenience of detention. But she is under sentence to suffer in the Auto de Fé which is to be held to-morrow in Toledo, wherefore you are enjoined by His Majesty to make all speed in bearing this letter to Don Gaspar de Quiroga, Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo and Inquisitor-General of the Faith. This letter commands him to deliver into your hands the person of the Lady Margaret Trevanion, and you are further accorded by His Majesty’s gracious clemency fourteen days in which to leave Spain, taking this woman with you. Should you still be within His Majesty’s dominions after the expiry of that term, the consequences will be of the utmost gravity.’
Sir Gervase took the proffered letter in a hand that trembled. Relief was blending with a fresh dreadful anxiety to unman him. He knew the distance to Toledo, perceived how short was the time and how the slightest mischance, even now that this miracle had happened, might render him too late.
But the King was now as anxious as he was that there should be no mischance. He was further informed by the secretary Rodriguez that a suitable escort would be provided for him as far as Toledo, and that the relays of horses maintained by the royal post would be at his disposal. Finally he was handed a brief document, also bearing the royal arms and signature, commanding all dutiful subjects of the King of Spain to assist him and his companions in his journey from Toledo to Santander and warning them that who hindered him did so at his peril. Upon that the secretary dismissed him with an enjoinder to set out at once, and not to delay.
He was conducted to the courtyard by the officer who had fetched him from his prison. Here he was delivered into the care of another officer, who waited there with six mounted men and a spare horse. His weapons were restored to him, and, riding beside the officer at the head of that little escort, he quitted the gloomy palace of the Escurial, and galloped away from the granite mass of the Guadarrama Mountains towards Villalba. Here, turning south, they rode at speed down the narrow valley through which the river Guadarrama winds its way to the mighty Tagus. But the road was rough, often no better than a mule-track, and delays were frequent and inevitable, with the result that it was nightfall before they reached Brunete, where fresh horses would be available.
Still forty miles from Toledo, and informed that the Auto would be held in the forenoon, Sir Gervase was racked by a desperate anxiety, which would not permit him to take here even the hour’s rest which the officer had advised as they approached the place. The fellow, a slim youngster of about Sir Gervase’s own age, showed himself courteous and considerate, but he was a Catalan and spoke with an accent that rendered him almost incomprehensible to the Englishman whose imperfect knowledge of Spanish was confined to pure Castilian.
At Brunete, however, a setback awaited them. Three fresh horses only were available. Normally a dozen were stabled there. But a courier from the Inquisitor-General to the Council of State in Madrid had passed that way at noon, travelling with an escort, and had made a heavy draught upon the royal post.
The young officer, whose name was Nuno Lopez, a man of a New-Christian family, in whose blood there was a Moorish taint, accepted the situation with the placid Saracen fatalism of his forbears. He shrugged.
‘No hay que hacer,’ he announced. ‘There is nothing to be done.’
You conceive Sir Gervase’s exasperation at this calm finality. ‘Nothing to be done?’ he cried. ‘Something is to be done to get me to Toledo by sunrise.’
‘That is impossible.’ Don Nuno was imperturbable. Perhaps he was glad to have so good a reason for not spending a night in the saddle. ‘In six hours’ time—by midnight, perhaps—the cattle left here by the Grand-Inquisitor’s courier may be in case to travel. But they will hardly travel fast.’
Sir Gervase sensed rather than understood Don Nuno’s meaning. He answered very slowly and emphatically so that Don Nuno might have no difficulty in understanding him.
‘There are three fresh horses here: enough for you and me and one of your men. Let us take these at once, and go.’
Standing in the yellow light that streamed from the open door of the post-house to mingle with the fading October daylight, Don Nuno smiled tolerantly as he shook his head.
‘It would not be safe. There are brigands in these hills.’
But to this Sir Gervase had a ready answer. ‘Oh, if you’re afraid of brigands, saddle me one of the fresh horses, and I’ll ride on alone.’
The officer no longer smiled. He had drawn himself up stiffly, and above his tightened mouth his moustaches appeared to bristle. For a moment Sir Gervase thought the fellow was going to strike him. Then the Catalan span round on his heel, and to his men, dismounted and standing in line at their horses’ head, he spat out in a rasping, angry voice orders which to Sir Gervase were utterly incomprehensible.
Within five minutes the three fresh horses were waiting and one of Don Nuno’s troopers with them. Meanwhile Don Nuno had provided himself with supper, consisting of a piece of bread and an onion. He washed this down with a draught of rough Andalusian wine, and climbed into the saddle.
‘Vamos!’ he peremptorily commanded.
Sir Gervase mounted, and the three men trotted out of the village and resumed their journey.
As they rode, the officer found it necessary to ease his mind. Addressing his companion uncompromisingly as ‘Sir English Dog—Señor perro de inglez’—he informed him that he had said something which hurt his honour, and which must be corrected between them as soon as occasion served.
Sir Gervase had no desire to find himself with a quarrel on his hands. Nightmare enough was provided already by this ride through the dark against time and to a destination bristling with unknown difficulties. He swallowed his vexation, ignored the insult in the form of address, and apologized for any offence he might have given.
‘It will not serve,’ said the Catalan. ‘You have placed me under the necessity of proving my courage.’
‘You are proving it now,’ Sir Gervase reassured him. ‘This was all the proof I desired of you. I knew you would afford it, which was why I demanded it. Forgive the subterfuge which would have been wasted on any but a brave man.’
The Catalan made out with difficulty his meaning, and was mollified.
‘Well, well,’ he grumbled. ‘For the present we will leave it there. But later on a little more may be necessary.’
‘As you please. Meanwhile, in God’s name, let us remain friends.’
They rode amain through that lonely valley, where an almost full moon was casting inky fantastic shadows and turning the gurgling stream whose course they followed into a ribbon of rippling silver. It grew very cold. The wind came icily from the Sierra to the north, and Don Nuno and his man wrapped themselves tightly in their cloaks for protection. Sir Gervase had no cloak, not even a jerkin over his velvet doublet. But he was insensible to the cold as to any other physical sensation. He was conscious of nothing beyond the sense of a lump in his throat cast up there it seemed by the anxiety consuming his soul.
An hour or so after midnight his horse put its foot in a hole in the road, and came down heavily. It was a moment before Sir Gervase could raise himself from where he had been flung. Beyond some bruises, he had suffered no hurt, but he was still half-stunned, as in the moonlight he watched Don Nuno running his hand over the fetlock of the quivering beast which had meanwhile also risen.
The officer announced in a voice of relief that there was no harm done. But a moment or two later it was found that the horse was lame, and could not be ridden farther.
They were, Don Nuno announced, near the village of Chozas de Can. It could not be more than a couple of miles away. The trooper surrendered his mount to Sir Gervase, and, taking the reins of the lamed horse, trudged along beside it whilst the other two moved with him at that slow walking pace, Sir Gervase’s giddiness from his fall dispelled by mounting anxiety at the loss of time involved in this snail’s crawl.
It took them an hour to reach Chozas de Can. They knocked up a tavern in the village ‘in the King’s name.’ But horses there were none to be had. So the trooper was left there, and Sir Gervase and Nuno Lopez now pushed on alone.
They were within twenty-five miles of Toledo, and only some twelve or thirteen miles from Villamiel, where fresh horses awaited them for the last swift stage of the journey. But however swift might be that last stage when they came to it, the present one was little swifter than had been the progress since the laming of Sir Gervase’s horse. The moon had set, and in that narrow valley road the darkness was almost palpable. They advanced at little more than a walking pace, until the autumn dawn enabled them to move more briskly, and thus came at last to Villamiel just after seven o’clock, with still fifteen miles to go.
The officer emphatically announced himself hungry, and as emphatically asserted that he would go no farther until his fast was broken. Sir Gervase asked him at what hour exactly the Auto was held.
‘The procession from the Holy House usually sets out between eight and nine.’
It was an answer that turned Sir Gervase’s anxiety to frenzy. He would not wait an instant beyond the time necessary for the saddling of a fresh horse. Don Nuno, hungry and weary, having been in the saddle now for over eighteen hours with little food and no sleep, was out of temper. The Englishman’s demands appeared to him unreasonable in that mood. An altercation arose between them. It might have been protracted but for the sudden coming of the fresh horse which Sir Gervase had so peremptorily commanded.
Sir Gervase flung away from the angry officer and vaulted into the saddle.
‘Follow me at your leisure, sir, when you have broken your fast,’ he shouted to him as he rode off.
Nor did he look behind him for all the din that he could hear the Spaniard making in calling to him. He rode now at a breakneck pace through an empty village—for almost every inhabitant had left it to attend the show in Toledo—swung to the left over the narrow old bridge across the river, and then turned south again towards his destination.
Afterwards he could remember nothing of that ride. Jaded by nights of broken slumber culminating in this last night spent in the saddle, racked by maddening fears that even now he might arrive too late, he was conscious of nothing until suddenly at about nine o’clock he beheld before him and a little below him the great city of Toledo, contained within its circle of Moorish fortifications. Above the burnt-red tiles of the roofs surged the vast grey mass of the Cathedral of this Spanish Rome, and dominating all from its eminence above the city on the far eastward side stood the noble palace of the Alcazar, aglow in the morning sunlight.
At breakneck speed Gervase rode down the hill from whose summit he obtained his first glimpse of that terrible city of his goal, then up again to the heights of that great rampart of granite upon which the city stood, a rampart encircled on three sides of its precipitous base by the broad deep swirling water of the pellucid Tagus.
As he advanced now, he overtook straggling groups of country-folk on foot, on horseback, on mules and donkeys, and even in ox-wains, all making for the city, and all of them very obviously dressed in their best. As he approached the Visagra Gate, the stragglers had become a multitude, with all the shouting and confusion resulting from their being detained there by the guard which would admit only those on foot. It was then that Sir Gervase understood the meaning of this concourse. The Auto de Fé was the attraction drawing the people of the surrounding countryside to Toledo, and these were the late-comers meeting the fate of late-comers.
He thrust impatiently through them, trusting to his safe-conduct to ensure him exception to the delaying rule. He announced himself as a royal messenger to the officer of the gate, who eyed him mistrustfully. He displayed his letter to the Inquisitor-General with its royal seals and thrust his safe-conduct under the man’s nose.
The officer was impressed and became courteous. But he was not to be shaken in the matter of the horse. He gave reasons, rapidly, why it could not enter. Gervase, not understanding these, insisted that there was not a moment to lose, since the orders he carried were concerned with the Auto de Fé which was already being held.
The officer stared impatiently; but, perceiving that he had to deal with a foreigner, explained himself now very slowly and clearly.
‘You would lose more time if you attempted to take your horse into the city. You would not ride a mile in an hour. The streets are choked with people from here to the Zocodover. Leave your horse with us. It will be waiting for you when you return.’
Gervase dismounted, understanding at last that there was nothing else to be done. He inquired of the officer the shortest way to the Archiepiscopal Palace. The man directed him to the Cathedral, advising him to inquire again when he had got as far as that.
He passed under the barrel vaulting and the portcullis of that great Arab gate, and so entered the city. At first progress was easy, and he fancied that the guard with the officiousness of his kind had made difficulties where none existed. But presently in a measure, as he advanced through those narrow, crooked streets, still stamped with the character of their Saracen builders, he found the wayfarers increasing to the proportions of a crowd. Soon, as he continued to advance, the crowd became an almost solid press in which presently he found himself wedged, and compelled to move with it as relentlessly as if he were being swept along by a torrent. Desperately he protested, and attempted to clear himself a way, announcing himself a royal messenger. The general noise drowned his puny voice, leaving it audible only to those immediately about him in that noisome, reeking press. These eyed him with mistrust. His foreign accent and unkempt appearance earned him only contempt and derision. If his clothes were those of a gentleman, they were now so travel-stained that their nature was no longer to be discerned, whilst his countenance on which the dust had caked, with its stubble of auburn beard and its haggard, red-rimmed, blood-injected eyes, was by no means in case to inspire confidence. The human stream swept him along the narrow street and into a broader one at a point where this entered a vast open space. In the middle of this he beheld an enormous scaffold, enclosed on three sides and flanked on two of these by tiers of benches.
The stream swept him to the left, and thrust him against a wall. For a moment he was content to remain there that he might draw breath. He began to be conscious of a terrible and alarming lassitude, the natural result of sleeplessness, lack of food, anxiety and exertion almost transcending the limits of human endurance. His left knee was pressed hard against a projection in the wall. Heaving a little space about him, he saw that he had brought up against what he supposed to be a mounting-block some two feet high. Instinctively, to gain ease and air, he climbed upon it, and found himself now raised clear above that sea of human heads and so placed that none could press upon him, breathe in his face, or thrust their elbows into his flanks. In prey to that increasing lassitude, he was content to remain there a moment, snatching a brief rest from battling with that human tide.
The street at the corner of which he had come to rest was packed with people, save in the middle where a space was kept clear by a barricade of wood, guarded at intervals by men-at-arms in black, wearing corselet and steel cap and leaning upon their short halberts. This barricade was continued across the square to the wide steps of the great scaffold, which he now considered more attentively. On the left stood a pulpit, and immediately facing it in the middle of the scaffold a cage of wood and iron within which there was a seat. At the scaffold’s far end, midway between the tiers, an altar had been raised. It was draped in purple and surmounted by a veiled cross between tall gilded candlesticks. To the left of this there was a miniature pavilion surmounted by a gilded dome, from which curtain-like draperies of purple fringed with gold descended to the ground. On the dais within this was placed a great gilded throne-like chair flanked by a lesser one on either side. Above at the meeting-point of the draperies two escutcheons were affixed, one bearing the green cross of the Inquisition, the other the arms of Spain.
About that vast scaffold the people seethed and writhed in perpetual movement, resembling some monstrous ant-heap, sending up a rolling murmur that was like the sound of waves upon a shore, into which was blended intermittently the note of a bell that was being tolled funereally.
Of the houses overlooking the square, and of those in the street, as far as his glance could carry, Gervase saw that every window was thronged, as indeed was every roof. The balconies were all draped in black, and black he observed were the garments of every person of consideration, man or woman, in all that concourse.
A moment thus, to become conscious of all this, and then the meaning of it recurred to startle him into action. That dreadful bell was tolling for his Margaret amongst others; this droning heap of pestilential human insects was assembled here for the spectacle of her martyrdom, which had begun already and which would certainly be consummated unless he bestirred himself.
He made a vigorous attempt to descend from that mounting-block, sought to thrust back those who stood immediately before it, so as to clear a way for himself. But they being so wedged by others that they could not stir answered him with fiercely virulent Spanish vituperations, and threats of how they would deal with him if he persisted in incommoding them. What did he want? Was he not better placed, and had he not a better view than they? Let him be content with that and not seek to thrust himself nearer to the front or it would be the worse for him.
The noise they made, the shrill voice of a woman in particular, drew the attention among others of four black alguaziles who stood on the steps of a house close by. But as there was nothing unusual in the character of the altercation, those apparitors of the Holy Office who were there to preserve order where possible, and perhaps to spy for sympathizers with the penanced when they should appear, would hardly have bestirred themselves had it not been for one comparatively trivial detail. Scanning the man responsible for that turmoil, one of them observed that he was armed; sword and dagger hung from the carriages of his belt. Now the bearing of arms in the street during the holding of an Auto de Fé was a flagrant offence against the laws of the Holy Office, punishable by a term of rigorous imprisonment. The apparitors conferred a moment, and accounted it their duty to take action.
They called for room, and by a miracle room was made for them. The awe in which men stood of the liveries of the Holy Office was enough to make them prefer the risk of being crushed to death rather than remain indifferent before such a demand. Two by two the sturdy black figures advanced until they stood before Sir Gervase. Using their staves with a brutal callousness, such as no secular soldiers would have dared employ in so dense a throng, they cleared a little space before the mounting-block. Their action provoked not so much as a murmur from any of the sufferers. They were empanoplied as much against reproof as against resistance by the spiritual armor of their office.
Sir Gervase found himself contemptuously challenged by one who appeared their leader, a burly, swarthy fellow whose cheeks were blue from the razor. In an accent which made the rascal stare, Sir Gervase informed him that he was the bearer of a letter from the King of Spain to the Inquisitor-General, which it was the utmost urgency he should deliver without a moment’s delay.
The man grinned contemptuously, in which his fellows followed his example.
‘By my faith, you look like a royal messenger!’ he sneered.
The grins became laughs in which several bystanders joined. When a man in authority condescends to jest, however poorly, every clown within hearing will flatter him by a guffaw.
Sir Gervase thrust sealed package and safe-conduct under the mocker’s eyes. He mocked no more. He even overlooked the serious matter of the weapons Sir Gervase was wearing. He thrust back his hat to scratch his head and so presumably stimulate the brain within it to activity. He half-turned and looked across the press of people. He took counsel with his three companions, finally he made up his mind.
‘The procession to the Auto started half an hour ago from the Holy House,’ he informed Sir Gervase. ‘His Eminence is with the procession. Impossible to approach him now. You must wait in any case until he returns to the palace. Then we will escort you to him.’
Distraught, Sir Gervase flung back at him that the matter could not wait. The letter was concerned with this Auto. The apparitor became stolid, as men do to defend themselves from hopeless unreason. He conveyed that he was a very clever fellow, but not quite omnipotent; and nothing less than omnipotence would enable anyone to approach His Eminence at present or until the Auto was over. As he finished, a cry went up from the multitude, and a sudden heave ran through it, stirring its surface as when a ripple runs over water.
The apparitor looked down the long street, Sir Gervase looked with him, and caught in the clear sunlight a distant glint of arms. The cry all about him was: ‘They come! They come!’ and by this he knew that what he beheld was the head of the vanguard of the dread procession.
He plagued the apparitor now with anxious questions, touching this scaffold and the various parts of it. When he betrayed the fact that he supposed the condemned would suffer there, he provoked a smile and a question as to his origin which had left him so ignorant in matters of universal knowledge. But he also elicited the information that the place of execution was outside the walls of the city. This scaffold was for the announcement of the offences, the Mass, and the sermon of the Faith. How should he suppose it a place of execution, seeing that the Holy Office shed no blood.
This was news to Sir Gervase. He ventured to question its accuracy. The alguazil afforded him the enlightenment of which an outlandish barbarian appeared to stand in need. Here the Holy Office publicly penanced those who were guilty of pardonable offences against the Faith, and publicly cast out from the Church those who refused to be reconciled or who, by relapsing into an infidelity from which they had formerly been rescued, placed themselves beyond the reach of pardon. In casting them out, the Holy Office abandoned them to the secular arm, whose duty to the Faith involved the obligation of putting them to death. But it was not, he repeated, the Holy Office which did this, as Sir Gervase had so foolishly supposed, for the Holy Office, he further repeated, could shed no blood.
It was a nice distinction over which at a remote distance of space or time a man might smile. But in the grim theatre of the event no smile was possible.
The procession drew nearer. Sir Gervase looked about him in his distraction, to right, to left, ahead, and up at the balconies of the houses under which he stood, as if seeking somewhere a way of escape, a way of reaching the Inquisitor-General. As he looked upwards, his eyes met those of a girl leaning from an iron balcony, from which was hung a cloth of black velvet edged with silver. She was one of a half-dozen women who stood there to behold the show, a slight wisp of a creature, olive-skinned, with brilliant lips, and eyes like two black jewels. She had been considering, it must be supposed, with approval the Englishman’s stalwart inches and bared auburn head. The disfiguring grime and stubble she could hardly discern at that distance. The attitude towards him of the apparitors may further have marked him for a person of consequence.
As their eyes met in that momentary flash, she let fall, as if by accident, a rose. It brushed his cheek in falling, but, to the beauty’s deep chagrin, went entirely unheeded by him in his preoccupation of spirit.
Slowly and solemnly the procession was entering the square. At its head marched the soldiers of the Faith: a regiment of javelin-men in funereal livery, relieved by the gleam of their morions and the flash of the partizans they shouldered. Gravely, looking neither to right nor to left, they passed towards the scaffold about the base of which they were to range themselves.
Next came a dozen surpliced choristers intoning the Miserere as they slowly advanced into the square. They were followed after a little pause by a Dominican bearing the sable banner of the Inquisition, charged with the green cross between an olive branch and a naked sword, the emblems of mercy and of justice. On his left walked the Provincial of the Dominicans, on his right the Prior of Our Lady of Alcantara, each attended by three monks. Then came a body of lay tertiaries of the Order of Saint Dominic, members of the Confraternity of Saint Peter the Martyr, walking two by two, with the cross of Saint Dominic embroidered in silver upon their mantles. After them, on horseback, also two by two, came some fifty nobles of Castile to give worldly pomp to the procession. Their horses were caparisoned in sable velvet; they themselves were all in black, though it was a black relieved by the gleam of gold chains and the sparkle of jewels. So solemnly and slowly did they pass, sitting their horses in such rigid immobility, that they presented the appearance of a troop of funereal equestrian statues.
The crowd had fallen into an awe-stricken silence, in which the beat of iron-shod hooves rang out, in rhythm as it seemed, with the doleful, receding chaunt of the choristers. Over all went still the tolling of that passing-bell from the Cathedral.
The Andalusian sunshine beat down from a sky as clear as blue enamel. It was reflected vividly from the white walls of the houses that served as background for this black phantasmagoria. To Gervase there was a moment in which it all became, not merely incredible, but unreal. It did not exist. Nothing existed, not even his own limp, weary body leaning there against the wall. He was simply a mind into which he had brought absurd conceptions of a world of independent beings of imagined shape and attributes and habits. None of these things about him had any concrete existence; they were simply ideas with which he had peopled a dream.
The moment of detachment passed. He was aroused from it by a sudden rustle and movement in the throng, which was behaving as a field of corn behaves when a sudden gust of wind sweeps rippling over it. Men and women were falling on their knees in a continuous movement proceeding from the right. So odd was this continuity that it almost seemed as if each unit of that throng in kneeling touched his neighbour and so drove him down whilst he, in his turn, did the like by the person next to him.
An imposing scarlet figure advanced upon a milk-white mule whose scarlet trappings fringed with gold trailed along the dusty ground. Coming abruptly thus after the black gloom of the long lines of figures that had preceded him, he seemed of a startling vividness. Save for the violet amice of the Inquisitor, which he wore, he was all flame from the point of his velvet shoes to the crown of his broad-brimmed hat. A cloud of pages and halberdiers attended him. He rode very stiff and straight and stern, his right hand raised, its thumb and two fingers erect to bless the people.
Thus, at comparatively close quarters, Gervase beheld the man to whom his letter was addressed, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, the Pope of Spain, the President of the Supreme Council and Inquisitor-General of Castile.
He passed, and with a reversing of the movement that had heralded his approach, the crowd came gradually erect again. Informed of his identity, Gervase importuned the alguazil to make a way for him, so that he might at once deliver his letter.
‘Patience!’ he was admonished. ‘While the procession passes that will be impossible. Afterwards, we shall see.’
Uproar broke out now, shouts, execrations, epithets of infamy. The noise came rolling up the street to infect those in the square as the foremost victims came into view. They were flanked on each side by guarding pikemen, and each was accompanied by a Dominican, crucifix in hand. There were some fifty of them, bareheaded, barefoot, and almost naked under the zamarra, the penitential sack of coarse yellow serge, streaked by a single arm of a Saint Andrew’s cross. In his hand each carried an unlighted taper of yellow wax, to be lighted presently at the altar when the patient’s reconciliation should have been pronounced. There were tottering old men and feeble old women, stalwart lads and weeping girls, and all of them staggered onwards in their cassocks of infamy with lowered heads and eyes upon the ground, crushed under their load of shame, terrified by the execrations hurled at them as they passed.