You see what a twist he had given to the facts. It was I who had urged
the death of Escovedo; it was I who had advanced reasons which he had
considered sufficient, trusting to my word; and it was because of this
he had consented to give the order. Let me confess so much, let me prove
it, and prove, too, that the motives I had advanced were sound ones, or
I must be destroyed. That was all clear. And that false king held fast
the two trunks of papers that would have given the lie to this atrocious
note of his, that would have proved that again and again I had shielded
Escovedo from the death his king designed for him.
I looked into the face of my enemy, and there was a twisted smile on my
lips.
“What fresh trap is this?” I asked him. “King Philip never wrote that
note.”
“You should know his hand. Look closer,” he bade me harshly.
“I know his hand--none better. But I claim, too, to know something of
his heart. And I know that it is not the heart of a perjured liar such
as penned those lines.”
That was as near as a man dared to go in expressing his true opinion of
a prince.
“For the rest,” I said, “I do not understand it. I know nothing of the
death of Escovedo. I have nothing to add to what already I have said in
open court unless it be to protest against you, who are a passionate,
hostile judge.”
Six times in the month that followed did Vasquez come to me, accompanied
now by a notary, to press me to confess. At last, seeing that no
persuasions could bend my obstinacy, they resorted to other measures.
“You will drive us to use the torture upon you so that we may loosen
your tongue!” snarled Vasquez fiercely, enraged by my obduracy.
I laughed at the threat. I was a noble of Spain, by birth immune from
torture. They dared not violate the law. But they did dare. There was
no law, human or divine, the King was not prepared to violate so that
he might slake his vengeance upon the man who had dared to love where he
had loved.
They delivered me naked into the hands of the executioner, and I
underwent the question at the rope. They warned me that if I lost my
life or the use of any of my limbs, it would be solely by my own fault.
I advanced my nobility and the state of my health as all-sufficient
reasons why the torture should not be applied to me, reminding them that
for eleven years already I had suffered persecution and detention, so
that my vigour was all gone.
For the last time they summoned me to answer as the King desired. And
then, since I still refused, the executioner was recalled, he crossed my
arms upon my breast, bound them securely, thrust a long rod beneath the
cord, and, seizing one end of this in either hand, gave the first turn.
I screamed. I could not help it, enfeebled as I was. But my spirit being
stouter than my flesh, I still refused to answer. Not indeed, until
they had given the rope eight turns, not until it had sliced through my
muscles and crushed the bone of one of my arms, so that to this day
it remains of little use to me, did they conquer me. I had reached the
limit of endurance.
“In Christ's name, release me!” I gasped. “I will say anything you
wish.”
Released at last, half swooning, smothered in blood, agonized by pain,
I confessed that it was myself had procured the death of Escovedo for
reasons of State and acting upon the orders of the King. The notary made
haste to write down my words, and, when I had done, it was demanded of
me that I should advance proof of the State reasons which I had alleged.
Oh, I had never been under any delusion on that score, as I have shown
you. The demand did not take me by surprise at all. I was waiting
for it, knowing that my answer to it would pronounce my doom. But I
delivered it none the less.
“My papers have been taken from me, and without them I can prove
nothing. With them I could prove my words abundantly.”
They left me then. On the morrow, as I afterwards learnt, they read my
confession to my devoted Martinez, and the poor fellow, who hitherto had
remained staunch and silent under every test, seeing that there was no
further purpose to be served by silence, gave them the confirmation they
desired of Enriquez's accusation.
Meanwhile, I was very ill, in a raging fever as you may well conceive,
and in answer to my prayer my own doctor was permitted to visit me in
prison. He announced that he found my case extremely grave, and that I
must perish unless I were relieved. As a consequence, and considering my
weakness and the uselessness just then of both my arms, one of which was
broken, first a page of my own, then other servants, and lastly my wife
were allowed to come and tend me.
That was at the end of February. By the middle of April my wounds had
healed, I had recovered the use of my limbs, though one remains half
maimed for life, and my condition had undergone a very considerable
improvement. But of this I allowed no sign to show, no suspicion even. I
continued to lie there day after day in a state of complete collapse,
so that whilst I was quickly gathering strength it was believed by my
gaolers that I was steadily sinking, and that I should soon be dead.
My only hope, you see, lay now in evasion, and it was for this that
I was thus craftily preparing. Once out of Castile I could deal with
Philip, and he should not find me as impotent, as toothless as he
believed. But I go too fast.
One night at last, on April 20th, by when all measures had been
concerted, and Gil de Mesa awaited me outside with horses--the whole
having been contrived by my dear wife--I made the attempt. My apparent
condition had naturally led to carelessness in guarding me. Who would
guard a helpless, dying man? Soon after dark I rose, donned over my own
clothes a petticoat and a hooded cloak belonging to my wife, and thus
muffed walked out of my cell, past the guards, and so out of the prison
unchallenged. I joined Gil de Mesa, discarded my feminine disguise,
mounted and set out with him upon that ninety-mile journey into Aragon.
We reached Saragossa in safety, and there my first act was to surrender
myself to the Grand Justiciary of Aragon to stand my trial for the
murder of Escovedo with which I was charged.
It must have sent a shudder through the wicked Philip when he received
news of that. A very stricken man he must have been, for he must
have suspected something of the truth, that if I dared, after all the
evidence amassed now against me, including my own confession under
torture, openly to seek a judgment, it was because I must possess some
unsuspected means of establishing all the truth--the truth that must
make his own name stink in the nostrils of the world. And so it was.
Have you supposed that Antonio Perez, who had spent his life in studying
the underground methods of burrowing statecraft, had allowed himself to
be taken quite so easily in their snare? Have you imagined that when I
sent for Diego Martinez to come to me at Turruegano and instructed him
touching the surrender of those two chests of documents, that I did
not also instruct him carefully touching the abstraction in the first
instance of a few serviceable papers and the renewal of the seals that
should conceal the fact that he had tampered with the chests? If you
have thought that, you have done me less than justice. There had been so
much correspondence between Philip and myself, so many notes had passed
touching the death of Escovedo, and there was that habit of Philip's of
writing his replies in marginal notes to my own letters and so returning
them, that it was unthinkable he should have kept them all in his
memory, and the abstraction of three or four could not conceivably be
detected by him.
Ever since then those few letters, of a most deeply incriminating
character, selected with great acumen by my steward, had secretly
remained in the possession of my wife. Yet I had not dared produce them
in Castile, knowing that I should instantly have been deprived of them,
and with them of my last hope. They remained concealed against precisely
such a time as this, when, beyond the immediate reach of Philip's
justice, I should startle the world and clear my own character by their
production.
You know the ancient privileges enjoyed by Aragon, privileges of which
the Aragonese are so jealous that a King of Castile may not assume the
title of King of Aragon until, bareheaded, he shall have received from
the Grand Justiciary of Aragon the following admonition: “We, who are of
equal worth and greater power than you, constitute you our king on the
condition that you respect our privileges, and not otherwise.” And to
that the king must solemnly bind himself by oath, whose violation would
raise in revolt against him the very cobbles of the streets. No king of
Spain had ever yet been found to dare violate the constitution and
the fueros of Aragon, the independence of their cortes, or parliament,
composed of the four orders of the State. The Grand Justiciary's Court
was superior to any royally constituted tribunal in the kingdom; to
that court it was the privilege of any man to appeal for justice in any
cause; and there justice was measured out with a stern impartiality that
had not its like in any other State of Europe.
That was the tribunal to which I made surrender of my person and my
cause. There was an attempt on the part of Philip to seize me and drag
me back to Castile and his vengeance. His officers broke into the prison
for that purpose, and already I was in their power, when the men of the
Justiciary, followed by an excited mob, which threatened open rebellion
at this violation of their ancient rights, delivered me from their
hands.
Baffled in this--and I can imagine his fury, which has since been vented
on the Aragonese--Philip sent his representatives and his jurists to
accuse me before the Court of the Grand Justiciary and to conduct my
prosecution.
The trial began, exciting the most profound interest, not only in
Aragon, but also in Castile, which, as I afterwards learnt, had openly
rejoiced at my escape. It proceeded with 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 by 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 deliverance.
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, 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 have succeeded in
eluding. When he does that, then will I hold my hand. But not before.
“That, madame, is my story,” said Don Antonio, after a pause, and from
narrowing eyes looked at the beauty who had heard him through.
Daylight had faded whilst the tale was telling. Night was come, and
lights had long since been fetched, the curtains drawn over the long
windows that looked out across the parkland to the river.
Twice only had he paused in all that narrative. Once when he had
described the avowal of his love for Anne, Princess of Eboli, when a
burst of sobs from her had come to interrupt him; again when a curious
bird-note had rung out upon the gathering dusk. Then he stopped to
listen.
“Curious that,” he had said--“an eagle's cry. I have not heard it these
many months, not since I left the hills of Aragon.”
Thereafter he had continued to the end.
Considering her now, his glance inscrutable, he said:
“You weep, madame. Tell me, what is it that has moved you--the
contemplation of my sufferings, or of your own duplicity?”
She started up, very white, her eyes scared.
“I do not understand you. What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you
should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should hire it
at an assassin's fee to serve the crapulous King of Spain.”
He rose and towered before her, a figure at once of anger, dignity, and
some compassion.
“So much ardour from youth and beauty to age and infirmity was in itself
suspicious. The Catholic King has the guile of Satan, I remembered. I
wondered, and hoped my suspicions might be unfounded. Yet prudence made
me test them, that the danger, if it existed, should manifest itself and
be destroyed. So I came to tell you all my story, so that if you did the
thing I feared, you might come to the knowledge of precisely what it was
you did. I have learnt whilst here that what I suspected is--alas! quite
true. You were a lure, a decoy sent to work my ruin, to draw me into
a trap where daggers waited for me. Why did you do this? What was the
bribe that could corrupt you, lovely lady?”
Sobs shook her. Her will gave way before his melancholy sternness.
“I do not know by what wizardry you have discovered it!” she cried.
“It was true; but it is true no longer. I knew not what I did. By that
window, across the meadows, you can reach the river in safety.” She
rose, controlling her emotion that she might instruct him. “They wait
for you in the enclosed garden.”
He smiled wistfully.
“They waited, madame. They wait no longer, unless it be for death. That
eagle's cry, thrice repeated, was the signal from my faithful Gil, not
only that the trap was discovered, but that those who baited it were
taken. Suspecting what I did, I took my measures ere I came. Antonio
Perez, as I have told you, is not an easy man to murder. Unlike Philip,
I do not make war on women, and I have no reckoning to present to you.
But I am curious, madame, to know what led you to this baseness.”
“I--I thought you evil, and--and they bribed me. I was offered ten
thousand ducats for your head. We are very poor, we Chantenacs, and so
I fell. But, sir--sir”--she was on her knees to him now, and she had
caught his hand in hers--“poor as I am, all that I have is yours to do
with as you will, to help to avenge yourself upon that Spanish monster.
Take what you will. Take all I have.”
His smile grew gentler. Gently he raised her.
“Madame,” he said, “I am myself a sinner, as I have shown you, a man
unequal to resisting temptation when it took me in its trammels. Of all
that you offer, I will take only the right to this kiss.”
And bending, he bore her hand to his lips.
Then he went out to join Gil and his men, who waited in the courtyard,
guarding three prisoners they had taken.
Perez considered them by the light of the lantern that Gil held aloft
for him.
“One of you,” he announced, “shall return to Castile and give tidings to
Philip, his master, that Antonio Perez leaves for England and the Court
of Elizabeth, to aid her, by his knowledge of the affairs of Spain, in
her measures against the Catholic King, and to continue his holy work,
which is to make the name of Philip II stink in the nostrils of all
honest men. One of you I will spare for that purpose. You shall draw
lots for it in the morning. The other two must hang.”