THE ROYAL CONFESSOR
/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.’