The Historical Nights' Entertainment. First Series

III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain

"You a Spaniard of Spain?" had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous. "I do not believe it."

And upon that she had put spur to the great black horse that bore her and had ridden off along the precipitous road by the river.

After her he had flung his answer on a note of laughter, bitter and cynical as the laughter of the damned, laughter that expressed all things but mirth.

"Oh, a Spaniard of Spain, indeed, Madame la Marquise. Very much a Spaniard of Spain, I assure you."

The great black horse and the woman in red flashed round a bend of the rocky road and were eclipsed by a clump of larches. The man leaned heavily upon his ebony cane, sighed wearily, and grew thoughtful. Then, with a laugh and a shrug, he sat down in the shade of the firs that bordered the road. Behind him, crowning the heights, loomed the brown castle built by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, two hundred years ago, and the Tower of Montauzet, its walls scarred by the shots of the rebellious Biscayans. Below him, nourished by the snows that were dissolving under the sunshine of early spring, sped the tumbling river; beyond this spread pasture and arable land to the distant hills, and beyond those stood the gigantic sharp-summited wall of the Pyrenees, its long ridge dominated by the cloven cone of the snow clad Pic du Midi. There was in the sight of that great barrier, at once natural and political, a sense of security for this fugitive from the perils and the hatreds that lurked in Spain beyond. Here in Bearn he was a king's guest, enjoying the hospitality of the great Castle of Pau, safe from the vindictive persecution of the mean tyrant who ruled in Spain. And here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been but for the thought of this woman—this Marquise de Chantenac—who had gone to such lengths in her endeavours to soften his exile that her ultimate object could never have been in doubt to a coxcomb, though it was in some doubt to Antonio Perez, who had been cured for all time of Coxcombry by suffering and misfortune, to say nothing of increasing age. It was when he bethought him of that age of his that he was chiefly intrigued by the amazing ardour of this great lady of Bearn. A dozen years ago—before misfortune overtook him—he would have accepted her flagrant wooing as a proper tribute. For then he had been the handsome, wealthy, witty, profligate Secretary of State to His Catholic Majesty King Philip II, with a power in Spain second only to the King's, and sometimes even greater. In those days he would have welcomed her as her endowments merited. She was radiantly lovely, in the very noontide of her resplendent youth, the well-born widow of a gentleman of Bearn. And it would not have lain within the strength or inclinations of Antonio Perez, as he once had been, to have resisted the temptation that she offered. Ever avid of pleasure, he had denied himself no single cup of it that favouring Fortune had proffered him. It was, indeed, because of this that he was fallen from his high estate; it was a woman who had pulled him down in ruin, tumbling with him to her doom. She, poor soul, was dead at last, which was the best that any lover could have wished her. But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with gall in his veins instead of blood. He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant, reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly from long years of incarceration.

What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal snows of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him to awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac? Was it that his tribulations stirred her pity, or that the fame of him which rang through Europe shed upon his withering frame some of the transfiguring radiance of romance?

It marked, indeed, the change in him that he should pause to question, whose erstwhile habit had been blindly to accept the good things tossed by Fortune into his lap. But question he did, pondering that parting taunt of hers to which, for emphasis, she had given an odd redundancy—"You a Spaniard of Spain!" Could her meaning have been plainer? Was not a Spaniard proverbially as quick to love as to jealousy? Was not Spain, that scented land of warmth and colour, of cruelty and blood, of throbbing lutes under lattices ajar, of mitred sinners doing public penance, that land where lust and piety went hand in hand, where passion and penitence lay down together—was not Spain the land of love's most fruitful growth? And was not a Spaniard the very hierophant of love?

His thoughts swung with sudden yearning to his wife Juana and their children, held in brutal captivity by Philip, who sought to slake upon them some of the vindictiveness from which their husband and father had at last escaped. Not that Antonio Perez observed marital fidelity more closely than any other Spaniard of his time, or of any time. But Antonio Perez was growing old, older than he thought, older than his years. He knew it. Madame de Chantenac had proved it to him.

She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac, neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him here at Pau.

"You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul," he had excused himself. "Believe one who knows the world, to his bitter cost. Tongues will wag."

"And your Spanish pride will not suffer that clods may talk of you?"

"I am thinking of you, madame."

"Of me?" she had answered. "Why, of me they talk already—talk their fill. I must pretend blindness to the leering eyes that watch me each time I come to Pau; feign unconsciousness of the impertinent glances of the captain of the castle there as I ride in."

"Then why do you come?" he had asked point-blank. But before her sudden change of countenance he had been quick to add: "Oh, madame, I am full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I am deeply, deeply grateful; but—"

"Charity?" she had interrupted sharply, on a laugh that was self-mocking. "Charity?"

"What else, madame?"

"Ask yourself," she had answered, reddening and averting her face from his questioning eyes.

"Madame," he had faltered, "I dare not."

"Dare not?"

"Madame, how should I? I am an old man, broken by sickness, disheartened by misfortune, daunted by tribulation—a mere husk cast aside by Fortune, whilst you are lovely as one of the angels about the Throne of Heaven."

She had looked into the haggard face, into the scars of suffering that seared it, and she had answered gently: "Tomorrow you shall come to me at Chantenac, my friend."

"I am a Spaniard, for whom to-morrow never comes."

"But it will this time. To-morrow I shall expect you."

He looked up at her sitting her great black horse beside which he had been pacing.

"Better not, madame! Better not!" he had said.

And then he saw the eyes that had been tender grow charged with scorn; then came her angry taunt:

"You a Spaniard of Spain! I do not believe it!"

Oh, there was no doubt that he had angered her. Women of her temperament are quick to anger as to every emotion. But he had not wished to anger her. God knows it was never the way of Antonio Perez to anger lovely women—at least not in this fashion. And it was an ill return for her gentleness and attention to himself. Considering this as he sat there now, he resolved that he must make amends—the only amends it was possible to make.

An hour later, in one of the regal rooms of the castle, where he enjoyed the hospitality of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, he announced to that most faithful equerry, Gil de Mesa, his intention of riding to Chantenac to-morrow.

"Is it prudent?" quoth Mesa, frowning.

"Most imprudent," answered Don Antonio. "That is why I go."

And on the morrow he went, escorted by a single groom. Gil de Mesa had begged at first to be allowed to accompany him. But for Gil he had other work, of which the instructions he left were very full. The distance was short—three miles along the Gave de Pau—and Don Antonio covered it on a gently ambling mule, such as might have been bred to bear some aged dignitary of Holy Church.

The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most great lords of Bearn. Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls short. And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual complaint than any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved matters by a certain habit of gaming contracted in youth. The chateau bore abundant signs of it. It was a burnt red pile standing four-square on a little eminence, about the base of which the river went winding turbulently; it was turreted at each of its four angles, imposing in its way, but in a sad state of dilapidation and disrepair.

The interior, when Don Antonio reached it, was rather better; the furnishings, though sparse, were massive and imposing; the tapestries on the walls, if old, were rich and choice. But everywhere the ill-assorted marriage of pretentiousness and neediness was apparent. The floors of hall and living-room were strewn with fresh-cut rushes, an obsolescent custom which served here alike to save the heavy cost of carpets and to lend the place an ancient baronial dignity. Whilst pretence was made of keeping state, the servitors were all old, and insufficient in number to warrant the retention of the infirm seneschal by whom Don Antonio was ceremoniously received. A single groom, aged and without livery, took charge at once of Don Antonio's mule, his servant's horse, and the servant himself.

The seneschal, hobbling before him, conducted our Spaniard across the great hall, gloomy and half denuded, through the main living-room of the chateau into a smaller, more intimate apartment, holding some trace of luxury, which he announced as madame's own room. And there he left him to await the coming of the chatelaine.

She, at least, showed none of the outward disrepair of her surroundings. She came to him sheathed in a gown of shimmering silk that was of the golden brown of autumn tints, caught to her waist by a slender girdle of hammered gold. Eyes of deepest blue pondered him questioningly, whilst red lips smiled their welcome. "So you have come in spite of all?" she greeted him. "Be very welcome to my poor house, Don Antonio."

And regally she proffered her hand to his homage.

He took it, observing the shapely, pointed fingers, the delicately curving nails. Reluctantly, almost, he admitted to himself how complete was her beauty, how absolute her charm. He sighed—a sigh for that lost youth of his, perhaps—as he bowed from his fine, lean height to press cold lips of formal duty on that hand.

"Your will, madame, was stronger than my prudence," said he.

"Prudence?" quoth she, and almost sneered. "Since when has Antonio Perez stooped to prudence?"

"Since paying the bitter price of imprudence. You know my story?"

"A little. I know, for instance, that you murdered Escovedo—all the world knows that. Is that the imprudence of which you speak? I have heard it said that it was for love of a woman that you did it."

"You have heard that, too?" he said. He had paled a little. "You have heard a deal, Marquise. I wonder would it amuse you to hear more, to hear from my own lips this story of mine which all Europe garbles? Would it?"

There was a faint note of anxiety in his voice, a look faintly anxious in his eyes.

She scanned him a moment gravely, almost inscrutably. "What purpose can it serve?" she asked; and her tone was forbidding—almost a tone of fear.

"It will explain," he insisted.

"Explain what?"

"How it comes that I am not this moment prostrate at your feet; how it happens that I am not on my knees to worship your heavenly beauty; how I have contrived to remain insensible before a loveliness that in happier times would have made me mad."

"Vive Dieu!" she murmured, half ironical. "Perhaps that needs explaining."

"How it became necessary," he pursued, never heeding the interruption, "that yesterday you should proclaim your disbelief that I could be, as you said, a Spaniard of Spain. How it happens that Antonio Perez has become incapable of any emotion but hate. Will you hear the story—all of it?"

He was leaning towards her, his white face held close to her own, a smouldering fire in the dark, sunken eyes that now devoured her.

She shivered, and her own cheeks turned very pale. Her lips were faintly twisted as if in an effort to smile.

"My friend—if you insist," she consented.

"It is the purpose for which I came," he announced.

For a long moment each looked into the other's eyes with a singular intentness that nothing here would seem to warrant.

At length she spoke.

"Come," she said, "you shall tell me."

And she waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently down to the river.

Don Antonio sank into the chair, placing his hat and whip upon the floor beside him. The Marquise faced him, occupying the padded window-seat, her back to the light, her countenance in shadow.

And here, in his own words, follows the story that he told her as she herself set it down soon after. Whilst more elaborate and intimate in parts, it yet so closely agrees throughout with his own famous "Relacion," that I do not hesitate to accept the assurance she has left us that every word he uttered was burnt as if by an acid upon her memory.

As a love-story this is, I think, the saddest that ever was invented by a romancer intent upon wringing tears from sympathetic hearts. How sad it is you will realize when I tell you that daily I thank God on my knees—for I still believe in God, despite what was alleged against me by the inquisitors of Aragon—that she who inspired this love of which I am to tell you is now in the peace of death. She died in exile at Pastrana a year ago. Anne de Mendoza was what you call in France a great parti. She came of one of the most illustrious families in Spain, and she was a great heiress. So much all the world knew. What the world forgot was that she was a woman, with a woman's heart and mind, a woman's natural instincts to select her mate. There are fools who envy the noble and the wealthy. They are little to be envied, those poor pawns in the game of statecraft, moved hither and thither at the will of players who are themselves no better. The human nature of them is a negligible appendage to the names and rent-rolls that predetermine their place upon the board of worldly ambition, a board befouled by blood, by slobberings from the evil mouth of greed, and by infamy of every kind.

So, because Anne was a daughter of the House of Mendoza, because her endowments were great, they plucked her from her convent at the age of thirteen years, knowing little more of life than the merest babe, and they flung her into the arms of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, who was old enough to have been her father. But Eboli was a great man in Spain, perhaps the greatest; he was, first Minister to Philip II, and between his House and that of Mendoza an alliance was desired. To establish it that tender child was sacrificed without ruth. She discovered that life held nothing of all that her maiden dreamings had foreseen; that it was a thing of horror and greed and lovelessness and worse. For there was much worse to come.

Eboli brought his child-princess to Court. He wore her lightly as a ribbon or a glove, the insignificant appendage to the wealth and powerful alliance he had acquired with her. And at Court she came under the eye of that pious satyr Philip. The Catholic King is very devout—perfervidly devout. He prays, he fasts, he approaches the sacraments, he does penance, all in proper season as prescribed by Mother Church; he abominates sin and lack of faith—particularly in others; he has drenched Flanders in blood that he might wash it clean of the heresy of thinking differently from himself in spiritual matters, and he would have done the same by England but that God—Who cannot, after all, be quite of Philip's way of thinking—willed otherwise. All this he has done for the greater honour and glory of his Maker, but he will not tolerate his Maker's interference with his own minor pleasures of the flesh. He is, as you would say, a Spaniard of Spain.

This satyr's protruding eyes fell upon the lovely Princess of Eboli—for lovely she was, a very pearl among women. I spare you details. Eboli was most loyal and submissive where his King was concerned, most complacent and accommodating. That was but logical, and need not shock you at all. To advance his worldly ambitions had he taken Anne to wife; why should he scruple, then, to yield her again that thus he might advance those ambitions further?

If poor Anne argued at all, she must have argued thus. For the rest, she was told that to be loved by the King was an overwhelming honour, a matter for nightly prayers of thankfulness. Philip was something very exalted, hardly human in fact; almost, if not quite, divine. Who and what was Anne that she should dispute with those who knew the world, and who placed these facts before her? Never in all her little life had she belonged to herself. Always had she been the property of somebody else, to be dealt with as her owner might consider best. If about the Court she saw some men more nearly of her own age—though there were not many, for Philip's Court was ever a gloomy, sparsely peopled place—she took it for granted that such men were not for her. This until I taught her otherwise, which, however, was not yet a while. Had I been at Court in those days, I think I should have found the means, at whatever cost, of preventing that infamy; for I know that I loved her from the day I saw her. But I was of no more than her own age, and I had not yet been drawn into that whirlpool.

So she went to the arms of that rachitic prince, and she bore him a son—for, as all the world knows, the Duke of Prastana owns Philip for his father. And Eboli increased in power and prosperity and the favour of his master, and also, no doubt, in the contempt of posterity. There are times when the thought of posterity and its vengeances is of great solace.

It would be some six years later when first I came to Court, brought thither by my father, to enter the service of the Prince of Eboli as one of his secretaries. As I have told you, I loved the Princess from the moment I beheld her. From the gossip of the Court I pieced together her story, and pitied her, and, pitying her, I loved her the more. Her beauty dazzled me, her charm enmeshed me, and she had grown by now in worldly wisdom and mental attainments. Yet I set a mask upon my passion, and walked very circumspectly, for all that by nature I was as reckless and profligate as all the world could ever call me. She was the wife of the puissant Secretary of State, the mistress of the King. Who was I to dispute their property to those exalted ones?

And another consideration stayed me. She seemed to love the King. Young and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me. In age he compared favourably with her husband he was but thirteen years older than herself—but in nothing else. He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking man, weakly of frame, rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks, and a countenance that was almost grotesque, with its protruding jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike eyes, and yellow tuft of beard. A great king, perhaps, this Philip, having so been born; but a ridiculous man and an unspeakable lover. And yet this incomparable woman seemed to love him.

Let me pass on. For ten years I nursed that love of mine in secret. I was helped, perhaps, by the fact that in the mean time I had married—oh, just as Eboli himself had married, an arrangement dictated by worldly considerations—and no better, truer mate did ever a man find than I in Juana Coello. We had children and we were happy, and for a season—for years, indeed—I began to think that my unspoken passion for the Princess of Eboli was dead and done with. I saw her rarely now, and my activities increased with increasing duties. At twenty-six I was one of the Ministers of the Crown, and one of the chief supporters of that party of which Eboli was the leader in Spanish politics. I sat in Philip's Council, and I came under the spell of that taciturn, suspicious man, who, utterly unlovable as he was, had yet an uncanny power of inspiring devotion. From the spell of it I never quite escaped until after long years of persecution. Yet the discovery that one by nature so entirely antipathetic to me should have obtained such sway over my mind helped me to understand Anne's attachment to him.

When Eboli died, in 1573, I had so advanced in ability and Royal favour that I took his place as Secretary of State, thus becoming all but the supreme ruler of Spain. I do not believe that there was ever in Spain a Minister so highly favoured by the reigning Prince, so powerful as I became. Not Eboli himself in his halcyon days had been so deeply esteemed of Philip, or had wielded such power as I now made my own. All Europe knows it—for it was to me all Europe addressed itself for affairs that concerned the Catholic King.

And with my power came wealth—abundant, prodigious wealth. I was housed like a Prince of the blood, and no Prince of the blood ever kept greater state than I, was ever more courted, fawned upon, or t flattered. And remember I was young, little more than thirty, with all the strength and zest to enjoy my intoxicating eminence. I was to my party what Eboli had been, though the nominal leader of it remained Quiroga, Archbishop of Toledo. On the other side was the Duke of Alva with his following.

You must know that it was King Philip's way to encourage two rival parties in the State, between which he shared his confidence and sway. Thus he stimulated emulation and enlightened his own views in the opposing opinions that were placed before him. But the power of my party was absolute in those days, and Alva himself was as the dust beneath our feet.

Such eminences, they say, are perilous. Heads that are very highly placed may at any moment be placed still higher—upon a pike. I am all but a living witness to the truth of that, and yet I wonder would it so have fallen out with me had I mistrusted that slumbering passion of mine for Anne. I should have known that where such fires have once been kindled in a man they never quite die out as long as life endures. Time and preoccupations may overlay them as with a film of ashes, but more or less deeply down they smoulder on, and the first breath will fan them into flame again.

It was at the King's request I went to see her in her fine Madrid house opposite Santa Maria Mayor some months after her husband's death. There were certain matters of heritage to be cleared up, and, having regard to her high rank, it was Philip's wish that I—who was by now Eboli's official successor—should wait on her in person.

There were documents to be conned and signed, and the matter took some days, for Eboli's possessions were not only considerable, but scattered, and his widow displayed an acquired knowledge of affairs and a natural wisdom that inspired her to probe deeply. To my undoing, she probed too deeply in one matter. It concerned some land—a little property—at Velez. She had been attached to the place, it seemed, and she missed all mention of it from the papers that I brought her. She asked the reason.

"It is disposed of," I told her.

"Disposed of!" quoth she. "But by whom?"

"By the Prince, your husband, a little while before he died."

She looked up at me—she was seated at the wide, carved writing-table, I standing by her side—as if expecting me to say more. As I left my utterance there, she frowned perplexedly.

"But what mystery is this?" she asked me. "To whom has it gone?"

"To one Sancho Gordo."

"To Sancho Gordo?" The frown deepened. "The washerwoman's son? You will not tell me that he bought it?"

"I do not tell you so, madame. It was a gift from the Prince, your husband."

"A gift!" She laughed. "To Sancho Gordo! So the washerwoman's child is Eboli's son!"

And again she laughed on a note of deep contempt.

"Madame!" I cried, appalled and full of pity, "I assure you that you assume too much. The Prince—"

"Let be," she interrupted me. "Do you dream I care what rivals I may have had, however lowly they may have been? The Prince, my husband, is dead, and that is very well. He is much better dead, Don Antonio. The pity of it is that he ever lived, or else that I was born a woman."

She was staring straight before her, her hands fallen to her lap, her face set as if carved and lifeless, and her voice came hard as the sound of one stone beating upon another.

"Do you dream what it can mean to have been so nurtured on indignities that there is no anger left, no pride to wound by the discovery of yet another nothing but cold, cold hate? That, Don Antonio, is my case. You do not know what my life has been. That man—"

"He is dead, madame," I reminded her, out of pity.

"And damned, I hope," she answered me in that same cold, emotionless voice. "He deserves no less for all the wrongs he did to me, the least of which was the great wrong of marrying me. For advancement he acquired me; for his advancement he bartered and used me and made of me a thing of shame."

I was so overwhelmed with grief and love and pity that a groan escaped me almost before I was aware of it. She broke off short, and stared at me in haughtiness.

"You presume to pity me, I think," she reproved me. "It is my own fault. I was wrong to talk. Women should suffer silently, that they may preserve at least a mask of dignity. Otherwise they incur pity—and pity is very near contempt."

And then I lost my head.

"Not mine, not mine!" I cried, throwing out my arms; and though that was all I said, there was such a ring in my choking voice that she rose stiffly from her seat and stood tense and tall confronting me, almost eye to eye, reproof in every line of her.

"Princess, forgive me!" I cried. "It breaks my heart in pieces to hear you utter things that have been in my mind these many years, poisoning the devotion that I owed to the late Prince, poisoning the very loyalty I owe my King. You say I pity you. If that were so, none has the better right."

"Who gave it you?" she asked me, breathless.

"Heaven itself, I think," I answered recklessly. "What you have suffered, I have suffered for you. When I came to Court the infamy was a thing accomplished—all of it. But I gathered it, and gathering it, thanked Heaven I had been spared the pain and misery of witnessing it, which must have been more than ever I could have endured. Yet when I saw you, when I watched you—your wistful beauty, your incomparable grace—there was a time when the thought to murder stirred darkly in my mind that I might at least avenge you."

She fell away before me, white to the very lips, her eyes dilating as they regarded me.

"In God's name, why?" she asked me in a strangled voice.

"Because I loved you," I replied, "always, always, since the day I saw you. Unfortunately, that day was years too late, even had I dared to hope—"

"Antonio!" Something in her voice drew my averted eyes. Her lips had parted, her eyes kindled into life, a flush was stirring in her cheeks.

"And I never knew! I never knew!" she faltered piteously.

I stared.

"Dear Heaven, why did you withhold a knowledge that would have upheld me and enheartened me through all that I have suffered? Once, long, long agog I hoped—"

"You hoped!"

"I hoped, Antonio—long, long ago."

We were in each other's arms, she weeping on my shoulder as if her heart would burst, I almost mad with mingling joy and pain—and as God lives there was more matter here for pain than joy.

We sat long together after that, and talked it out. There was no help for it. It was too late on every count. On her side there was the King, most jealous of all men, whose chattel she was become; on mine, there was my wife and children, and so deep and true was my love for Anne that it awakened in me thoughts of the loyalty I owed Juana, thoughts that had never troubled me hitherto in my pleasure-loving life—and this not only as concerned Anne herself, but as concerned all women. There was something so ennobling and sanctifying about our love that it changed at once the whole of my life, the whole tenor of my ways. I abandoned profligacy, and became so staid and orderly in my conduct that I was scarcely recognizable for the Antonio Perez whom the world had known hitherto.

We parted there that day with a resolve to put all this behind us; to efface from our minds all memory of what had passed between us! Poor fools were we to imagine we could resist the vortex of circumstance which had caught us. For three months we kept our engagement scrupulously; and then, at last, resistance mutually exhausted, we yielded each to the other, both to Fate.

But because we cherished our love we moved with caution. I was circumspect in my comings and goings, and such were the precautions we observed, that for four years the world had little suspicion, and certainly no knowledge, that I had inherited from the Prince of Eboli more than his office as Secretary of State. This secrecy was necessary as long as Philip lived, for we were both fully aware of what manner of vengeance we should have to reckon with did knowledge of our relations reach the jealous King. And I think that but for Don John of Austria's affairs, and the intervention in them of the Escovedo whom you say—whom the world says I murdered, all might have been well to this day.

Escovedo had been, like myself, one of Eboli's secretaries in his day, and it was this that won him after Eboli's death a place at the Royal Council board. It was but an inferior place, yet the King remarked him for a man shrewd and able, who might one day have his uses.

That day was not very long in coming, though the opportunity it afforded Escovedo was scarcely such as, in his greedy, insatiable ambition, he had hoped for. Yet the opportunity, such as it was, was afforded him by me, and had he used it properly it should have carried him far, certainly much farther than his talent and condition warranted.

It came about through Don John of Austria's dreams of sovereignty. You will have heard—as who has not?—so much of Don John, the natural son of Charles V, that I need tell you little concerning him. In body and soul he was a very different man, indeed, from his half-brother Philip of Spain. As joyous as Philip was gloomy, as open and frank as Philip was cloudy and suspicious, and as beautiful as Philip was grotesque, Don John was the Bayard of our day, the very mirror of all knightly graces. To the victory of Lepanto, which had made him illustrious as a soldier, he had added, in '73—the year of Eboli's death the conquest of Tunis, thereby completing the triumph of Christianity over the Muslim in the Mediterranean. Success may have turned his head a little. He was young, you know, and an emperor's son. He dreamt of an empire for himself, of sovereignty, and of making Tunis the capital of the kingdom he would found.

We learnt of this. Indeed, Don John made little secret of his intentions. But they went not at all with Philip's views. It was far from his notions that Don John should go founding kingdoms of his own. His valour and talents were required to be employed for the greater honour and glory of the Crown of Spain, and nothing further.

Philip consulted me, who was by then the depositary of all his secrets, the familiar of his inmost desires. There was evidence that Don John's ambitions were being fomented by his secretary, who dreamt, no doubt, of his own aggrandizement in the aggrandizement of his master. Philip proposed the man's removal.

"That would be something," I agreed. "But not enough. He must be replaced by a man of our own, a man loyal to Your Majesty, who will not only seek to guide Don John in the course that he should follow, but will keep close watch upon his projects, and warn you should they threaten to neglect your interests the interests of Spain for his own."

"And such a man? Where shall we find him?"

I considered a moment, and bethought me of Escovedo. He was able; he had charm and an ingratiating manner; I believed him loyal, and imagined that I could quicken that loyalty by showing him that advancement would wait upon its observation; he could well be spared from the Council, where, as I have said, he occupied a quite inferior post; lastly, we were friends, and I was glad of the opportunity to serve him, and place him on the road to better things.

All this I said to Philip, and so the matter was concluded. But Escovedo failed me. His abilities and ingratiating manner endeared him quickly to Don John, whilst himself he succumbed entirely, not only to Don John of Austria's great personal charm, but also to Don John's ambitious projects. The road to advancement upon which I had set him seemed to him long and toilsome by contrast with the shorter cut that was offered by his new master's dreams. He fell as the earlier secretary had fallen, and more grievously, for he was the more ambitious of the two, and from merely seconding Don John's projects, it was not long before he spurred them on, not long before he was dreaming dreams of his own for Don John to realize.

From Tunis, which had by now been recovered by the Turks, and any hopes concerned with which King Philip had discouraged, the eyes of Don John were set, at Escovedo's bidding, I believe, upon the crown of England.

He had just been invited by Philip to make ready to take in hand the affairs of Flanders, sadly disorganized under the incompetent rule of Alva. It occurred to him that if he were to issue victoriously from that enterprise—and so far victory had waited upon his every venture—if he were to succeed in restoring peace and Spanish order in rebellious Flanders, he would then be able to move against England with the Spanish troops under his command, overthrow Elizabeth, deliver Mary Stuart from the captivity in which she languished, and by marriage with her set the crown of England on his brow. To this great project he sought the support of Rome, and Rome accorded it very readily being naturally hostile to the heretic daughter of Anne Boleyn.

It was Escovedo himself who went as Don John's secret ambassador to the Vatican in this affair Escovedo, who had been placed with Don John to act as a curb on that young man's ambitions. Nor did he move with the prudence he should have observed.

Knowledge of what was brewing reached us from the Papal Nuncio in Madrid, who came to see me one day in the matter.

"I have a dispatch from Rome," he announced, "in which His Holiness instructs me to enjoin upon the King that the expedition against England be now executed, and that he consider bestowing its crown upon Don John of Austria for the greater honour and glory of Holy Church."

I was thunderstruck. The expedition against England, I knew, was no new project. Three years before a secret envoy from the Queen of Scots, an Italian named Ridolfi, had come to propose to Philip that, in concert with the Pope, he should reestablish the Catholic faith in England and place Mary Stuart upon the throne. It was a scheme attractive to Philip, since it agreed at once with his policy and his religion. But it had been abandoned under the dissuasions of Alva, who accounted that it would be too costly even if successful. Here it was again, emanating now directly from the Holy See, but in a slightly altered form.

"Why Don John of Austria?" I asked him.

"A great soldier of the faith. And the Queen of Scots must have a husband."

"I should have thought that she had had husbands enough by now," said I.

"His Holiness does not appear to share that view," he answered tartly.

"I wonder will the King," said I.

"The Catholic King is ever an obedient child of Mother Church," the oily Nuncio reminded me, to reprove my doubt.

But I knew better—that the King's own policy was the measure of his obedience. This the Nuncio should learn for himself; for if I knew anything of Philip's mind, I knew precisely how he would welcome this proposal.

"Will you see the King now?" I suggested maliciously, anxious to witness the humbling of his priestly arrogance.

"Not yet. It is upon that I came to see you. I am instructed first to consult with one Escoda as to the manner in which this matter shall be presented to His Majesty. Who is Escoda?"

"I never heard of him," said I. "Perhaps he comes from Rome."

"No, no. Strange!" he muttered, frowning, and plucked a parchment from his sleeve. "It is here." He peered slowly at the writing, and slowly spelled out the name: "Juan de Escoda."

In a flash it came to me.

"Escovedo you mean," I cried,

"Yes, yes—Escovedo, to be sure," he agreed, having consulted the writing once more. "Where is he?"

"On his way to Madrid with Don John," I informed him. "He is Don John's secretary."

"I will do nothing, then, until he arrives," he said, and took his leave.

Oh, monstrous indiscretion! That dispatch from Rome so cunningly and secretly contrived in cipher had yet contained no warning that Escovedo's share in this should be concealed. There are none so imprudent as the sly. I sought the King at once, and told him all that I had learnt. He was aghast. Indeed, I never saw him more near to anger. For Philip of Spain was not the man to show wrath or any other emotion. He had a fish-like, cold, impenetrable inscrutability. True, his yellow skin grew yellower, his gaping mouth gaped wider, his goggle eyes goggled more than usual. Left to himself, I think he would have disgraced Don John and banished Escovedo there and then, as he did, indeed, suggest. And I have since had cause enough to wish to God that I had left him to himself.

"Who will replace Don John in Flanders?" I asked him quietly. He stared at me. "He is useful to you there. Use him, Sire, to your own ends."

"But they will press this English business."

"Acquiesce."

"Acquiesce? Are you mad?"

"Seem to acquiesce. Temporize. Answer them, 'One thing at a time.' Say, 'When the Flanders business is happily concluded, we will think of England.' Give them hope that success in Flanders will dispose you to support the other project. Thus you offer Don John an incentive to succeed, yet commit yourself to nothing."

"And this dog Escovedo?"

"Is a dog who betrays himself by his bark. We will listen for it."

And thus it was determined; thus was Don John suckled on the windy pap of hope when presently he came to Court with Escovedo at his heels. Distended by that empty fare he went off to the Low Countries, leaving Escovedo in Madrid to represent him, with secret instructions to advance his plans.

Now Escovedo's talents were far inferior to my conception of them.

He was just a greedy schemer, without the wit to dissemble his appetite or the patience necessary to secure attainment.

Affairs in Flanders went none too well, yet that did not set a curb upon him. He pressed his master's business upon the King with an ardour amounting to disrespect, and disrespect was a thing the awful majesty of Philip could never brook. Escovedo complained of delays, of indecision, and finally—in the summer of '76—he wrote the King a letter of fierce upbraidings, criticizing his policy in terms that were contemptuous, and which entirely exasperated Philip.

It was in vain I strove to warn the fellow of whither he was drifting; in vain I admonished and sought to curb his headlong recklessness. I have said that I had a friendship for him, and because of that I took more pains, perhaps, than I should have taken in another's case.

"Unless you put some judgment into that head of yours, my friend, you will leave it in this business," I told him one day.

He flung into a passion at the admonition, heaped abuse upon me, swore that it was I who thwarted him, I who opposed the fulfilment of Don John's desires and fostered the dilatory policy of the King.

I left him after that to pursue his course, having no wish to quarrel with this headstrong upstart; yet, liking him as I did, I spared no endeavour to shield him from the consequences he provoked. But that letter of his to Philip made the task a difficult one. Philip showed it to me.

"If that man," he said, "had uttered to my face what he has dared to write, I do not think I should have been able to contain myself without visible change of countenance. It is a sanguinary letter."

I set myself to calm him as best I could.

"The man is indiscreet, which has its advantage, for we always know whither an indiscreet man is heading. His zeal for his master blinds him and makes him rash. It is better, perhaps, than if he were secretive and crafty."

With such arguments I appeased his wrath against the secretary. But I knew that his hatred of Escovedo, his thirst for Escovedo's blood, dated from that moment in which Escovedo had forgotten the reverence due to majesty. I was glad when at last he took himself off to Flanders to rejoin Don John. But that was very far from setting a term to his pestering. The Flanders affair was going so badly that the hopes of an English throne to follow were dwindling fast. Something else must be devised against the worst, and now Don John and Escovedo began to consider the acquisition of power in Spain itself. Their ambition aimed at giving Don John the standing of an Infante. Both of them wrote to me to advance this fresh project of theirs, to work for their recall, so that they could ally themselves with my party—the Archbishop's party—and ensure its continuing supreme. Escovedo wrote me a letter that was little better than an attempt to bribe me. The King was ageing, and the Prince was too young to relieve him of the heavy duties of State. Don John should shoulder these, and in so doing Escovedo and myself should be hoisted into greater power.

I carried all those letters to the King, and at his suggestion I even pretended to lend an ear to these proposals that we might draw from Escovedo a fuller betrayal of his real ultimate aims. It was dangerous, and I enjoined the King to move carefully.

"Be discreet," I warned him, "for if my artifice were discovered, I should not be of any further use to you at all. In my conscience I am satisfied that in acting as I do I am performing no more than my duty. I require no theology other than my own to understand that much."

"My theology," he answered me, "takes much the same view. You would have failed in your duty to God and me had you failed to enlighten me on the score of this deception. These things," he added in a dull voice, "appal me."

So I wrote to Don John, urging him as one who counselled him for his good, who had no interest but his own at heart, to remain in Flanders until the work there should be satisfactorily completed. He did so, since he was left no choice in the matter, but the intrigues continued. Later we saw how far he was from having forsaken his dreams of England, when I discovered that he had engaged the Pope to assist him with six thousand men and one hundred and fifty thousand ducats when the time for that adventure should be ripe.

And then, quite suddenly, entirely unheralded, Escovedo reappeared in Madrid, having come to press Philip in person for reinforcements that should enable Don John to finish the campaign. He brought news that there had been a fresh rupture of the patched-up peace, that Don John had taken the field once more, and had forcibly made himself master of Namur. This was contrary to all the orders we had sent, a direct overriding of Philip's wishes. The King desired peace in the Low Countries because he was in no case just then to renew the war, and Escovedo's impudently couched demands completed his exasperation.

"My will," he said, "is as naught before the ambitions of these two. You sent my clear instructions to Escovedo, who was placed with Don John that he might render him pliant to my wishes. Instead, he stiffens him in rebellion. There must be an end to this man."

"Sire," I cried, "it may be they think to advance your interests."

"Heaven help me!" he cried. "Did ever villain wear so transparent a mask as this dog Escovedo? To advance my interests—that will be his tale, no doubt. He will advance them where I do not wish them advanced; he will advance them to my ruin; he will stake all on a success in Flanders that shall be the preliminary to a descent upon England in the interests of Don John. I say there must be an end to this man before he works more mischief."

Again I set myself to calm him, as I had so often done before, and again I was the shield between Escovedo and the royal lightnings, of whose menace to blot him out the fool had no suspicion. For months things hung there, until, in January of '78, when war had been forced in earnest upon Spain by Elizabeth's support of the Low Countries, Don John won the great victory of Gemblours. This somewhat raised the King's depression, somewhat dissipated his overgrowing mistrust of his half-brother, and gave him patience to read the letters in which Don John urged him to send money—to throw wood on the fire whilst it was alight, or else resign himself to the loss of Flanders for all time. As it meant also resigning himself to the loss of all hope of England for all time, Escovedo's activities were just then increased a hundredfold.

"Send me money and Escovedo," was the burden of the almost daily letters from Don John to me, and at my elbow was Escovedo, perpetually pressing me to bend the King to his master's will. Another matter on which he pressed me then was that I should obtain for himself the governorship of the Castle of Mogro, which commands the port of Santander, an ambition this which intrigued me deeply, for I confess I could not fathom what it had to do with all the rest.

And then something else happened. From the Spanish Ambassador at the Louvre we learnt one day of a secret federation entered into between Don John and the Guises, known as the Defence of the Two Crowns. Its object was as obscure as its title. But it afforded the last drop to the cup of Philip's mistrust. This time it was directly against Don John that he inveighed to me. And to defend Don John, in the interests of common justice, I was forced to place the blame where it belonged.

"Nay, Sire," I assured him, "these ambitions are not Don John's. With all his fevered dreams of greatness, Don John has ever been, will ever be, loyal to his King."

"If you know anything of temptation," he answered me, "you should know that there is a breaking-point to every man's resistance of it. How long will Don John remain loyal while Escovedo feeds his disloyalty, adds daily to the weight of temptation the burden of a fresh ambition? I tell you, man, I feel safe no longer." He rose up before me, a blotch on his sallow face, his fingers tugging nervously at the tuft of straw-coloured beard. "I tell you some blow is about to fall unless we avert it. This man this fellow Escovedo—must be dispatched before he can kill us."

I shrugged and affected carelessness to soothe him.

"A contemptible dreamer," I said. "Pity him, Sire. He has his uses. To remove him would be to remove a channel through which we can always obtain knowledge precisely of what is doing."

Again I prevailed, and there the matter hung a while. But the King was right, his fears were well inspired. Escovedo, always impatient, was becoming desperate under persistent frustration. I reasoned with him—was he not still my friend?—I held him off, urged prudence and patience upon him, and generally sought to temporize. I was as intent upon saving him from leaving his skin in this business as I was, on the other hand, intent upon doing my duty without pause or scruple to my King. But the fool forced my hand. A Court is a foul place always, even so attenuated a Court as that which Philip of Spain encouraged. Rumour thrives in it, scandal blossoms luxuriantly in its fetid atmosphere. And rumour and scandal had been busy with the Princess of Eboli and me, though I did not dream it.

We had been indiscreet, no doubt. We had been seen together in public too often. We had gone to the play together more than once; she had been present with me at a bull-fight on one occasion, and it was matter of common gossip, as I was to learn, that I was a too frequent visitor at her house.

Another visitor there was Escovedo when in Madrid. Have I not said that in his early days he had been one of Eboli's secretaries? On that account the house of Eboli remained open to him at all times. The Princess liked him, was kindly disposed towards him, and encouraged his visits. We met there more than once. One day we left together, and that day the fool set spark to a train that led straight to the mine on which, all unconsciously, he stood.

"A word of advice in season, Don Antonio," he said as we stepped forth together. "Do not go so often to visit the Princess."

I sought to pull my arm from his, but he dung to it and pinned it to his side.

"Nay, now—nay, now!" he soothed me. "Not so hot, my friend. What the devil have I said to provoke resentment? I advise you as your friend."

"In future advise that other friend of yours, the devil," I answered angrily, and pulled my arm away at last. "Don Juan, you have presumed, I think. I did not seek your advice. It is yourself that stands in need of advice this moment more than any man in Spain."

"Lord of the World," he exclaimed in amiable protest, "listen to him! I speak because I owe friendship to the Princess. Men whisper of your comings and goings, I tell you. And the King, you know well, should he hear of this I am in danger of losing my only friend at Court, and so—"

"Another word of this," I broke in fiercely, "now or at any other time, and I'll skewer you like a rabbit!"

I had stopped. My face was thrust within a hand's-breadth of his own; I had tossed back my cloak, and my fingers clutched the hilt of my sword. He became grave. His fine eyes—he had great, sombre, liquid eyes, such as you'll scarcely ever see outside of Spain—considered me thoughtfully a moment. Then he laughed lightly and fell back a pace.

"Pish!" said he. "Saint James! I am no rabbit for your skewering. If it comes to skewers, I am a useful man of my hands, Antonio. Come, man"—and again he took my arm—"if I presume, forgive it out of the assurance that I am moved solely by interest and concern for you. We have been friends too long that I should be denied."

I had grown cool again, and I realized that perhaps my show of anger had been imprudent. So I relented now, and we went our ways together without further show of ill-humour on my part, or further advice on his. But the matter did not end there. Indeed, it but began. Going early in the afternoon of the morrow to visit Anne, I found her in tears—tears, as I was to discover, of anger.

Escovedo had been to visit her before me, and he had dared to reproach her on the same subject.

"You are talked about, you and Perez," he had informed her, "and the thing may have evil consequences. It is because I have eaten our bread that I tell you this for your own good."

She had risen up in a great passion.

"You will leave my house, and never set foot in it again," she had told him. "You should learn that grooms and lackeys have no concern in the conduct of great ladies. It is because you have eaten my bread that I tell you this for your own good."

It drove him out incontinently, but it left her in the condition in which I was later to discover her. I set myself to soothe her. I swore that Escovedo should be punished. But she would not be soothed. She blamed herself for an unpardonable rashness. She should not have taken that tone with Escovedo. He could avenge himself by telling Philip, and if he told Philip, and Philip believed him—as Philip would, being jealous and mistrustful beyond all men—my ruin must follow. She had thought only of herself in dismissing him in that high-handed manner. Coming since to think of me it was that she had fallen into this despair. She clung to me in tears.

"Forgive me, Antonio. The fault is all mine—the fault of all. Always have I known that this danger must overhang you as a penalty for loving me. Always I knew it, and, knowing it, I should have been stronger. I should have sent you from me at the first. But I was so starved of love from childhood till I met you. I hungered so for love—for your love, Antonio—that I had not the strength. I was weak and selfish, and because I was ready and glad to pay the price myself, whatever it should be and whenever asked, I did not take thought enough for you."

"Take no thought now," I implored her, holding her close.

"I must. I can't help it. I have raised this peril for you. He will go to Philip."

"Not he; he dare not. I am his only hope. I am the ladder by which he hopes to scale the heaven of his high ambition. If he destroys me, there is the kennel for himself. He knows it."

"Do you say that to comfort me, or is it really true?"

"God's truth, sweetheart," I swore, and drew her closer.

She was comforted long before I left her. But as I stepped out into the street again a man accosted me. Evidently he had been on the watch, awaiting me. He fell into step beside me almost before I realized his presence. It was Escovedo.

"So," he said, very sinister, "you'll not be warned."

"Nor will you," I answered, no whit less sinister myself.

It was broad daylight. A pale March sunshine was beating down upon the cobbled streets, and passers-by were plentiful. There was no fingering of hilts or talk of skewering on either side. Nor must I show any of the anger that was boiling in me. My face was too well known in Madrid streets, and a Secretary of State does not parade emotions to the rabble. So I walked stiff and dignified amain, that dog in step with me the while.

"She will have told you what I have said to her," he murmured.

"And what she said to you. It was less than your deserts."

"Groom and lackey, eh?" said he. "And less than I deserve—a man of my estate. Oh, ho! Groom and lackey! Those are epithets to be washed out in blood and tears."

"You rant," I said.

"Or else to be paid for—handsomely." His tone was sly—so sly that I answered nothing, for to answer a sly man is to assist him, and my business was to let him betray the cause of this slyness. Followed a spell of silence. Then, "Do you know," said he, "that several of her relatives are thinking seriously of killing you?"

"Many men have thought seriously of that—so seriously that they never attempted it. Antonio Perez is not easily murdered, Don Juan, as you may discover."

It was a boast that I may claim to have since justified.

"Shall I tell you their names?" quoth he.

"If you want to ruin them."

"Ha!" It was a short bark of a laugh. "You talk glibly of ruining—but then you talk to a groom and lackey." The epithets rankled in his mind; they were poison to his blood, it seemed. It takes a woman to find words that burn and blister a man. "Yet groom and lackey that I am, I hold you both in the hollow of my hand. If I close that hand, it will be very bad for you, very bad for her. If, for instance, I were to tell King Philip that I have seen her in your arms—"

"You dog!"

"I have—I swear to God I have, with these two eyes—at least with one of them, applied to the keyhole half an hour ago. Her servants passed me in; a ducat or two well bestowed—you understand?"

We had reached the door of my house. I paused and turned to him.

"You will come in?" I invited.

"As the wolf said to the lamb, eh? Well, why not?" And we went in.

"You are well housed," he commented, his greedy, envious eyes considering all the tokens of my wealth. "It were a pity to lose so much, I think. The King is at the Escurial, I am told."

He was. He had gone thither into retreat, that he might cleanse his pious, murky soul against the coming of Eastertide.

"You would not, I am sure, compel me to undertake so tedious a journey," said he.

"Will you put off this slyness and be plain?" I bade him. "You have some bargain in your mind. Propound it."

He did, and left me aghast.

"You have temporized long enough, Perez," he began. "You have been hunting with the dogs and running with the stag. There must be an end to all that. Stand by me now, and I will make you greater than you are, greater than you could ever dream to be. Oppose me, betray me—for I am going to be very frank—and the King shall hear things from me that will mean your ruin and hers. You understand?"

Then came his demands. First of all the command of the fortress of Mogro for himself. I must obtain him that at once. Secondly, I must see to it that Philip pledged himself to support Don John's expedition against England and Elizabeth and to seat Don John upon the throne with Mary Stuart for his wife. These things must come about, and quickly, or I perished. Nor was that all. Indeed, no more than a beginning. He opened out the vista of his dreams, that having blackmailed me on the one hand, he might now bribe me on the other. Once England was theirs, he aimed at no less than a descent upon Spain itself. That was why he wanted Mogro to facilitate a landing at Santander. Thus, as the Christians had originally come down from the mountains of the Asturias to drive the Moors from the Peninsula, so should the forces of Don John descend again to reconquer it for himself.

It was a madman's fancy utterly—fruit of a brain that ambition had completely addled; and I do not believe that Don John had any part in it or even knowledge of it. Escovedo saw himself, perhaps, upon the throne of one or the other of the two kingdoms as Don John's vice-regent—for himself and for me, if I stood by him, there was such power in store as no man ever dreamed of. If I refused, he would destroy me.

"And if I go straight to the Escurial and lay this project before the King?" I asked him.

He smiled.

"You will force me to tell him that it is a lie invented to deliver you from a man who can destroy you by the knowledge he possesses, knowledge which I shall at once impart to Philip. Think what that will mean to you. Think," he added very wickedly, "what it will mean to her."

As I am a Christian, I believe that had it been but the consideration of myself I would have flung him from my house upon the instant and bade him do his worst. But he was well advised to remind me of her. Whatever Philip's punishment of me, it would be as nothing to his punishment of that long-suffering woman who had betrayed him. Oh, I assure you it is a very evil, ill judged thing to have a king for rival, particularly a fish-souled tyrant of King Philip's kind.

I was all limp with dread. I passed a hand across my brow, and found it chill and moist.

"I am in your hands, Escovedo," I confessed miserably.

"Say, rather, that we are partners. Forget all else." He was eager, joyous, believing all accomplished, such was his faith in my influence with Philip. "And now, Mogro for me, and England for Don John. About it with dispatch."

"The King is in retreat. We must wait some days."

"Till Easter, then." And he held out his hand. I took it limply, thus clenching the bargain of infamy between us. What else was there for me. What, otherwise, was to become of Anne?

Oh, I may have been self-seeking and made the most of my position, as was afterwards urged against me. I may have been extortionate and venal, and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs. But always was I loyal and devoted to the King. Never once had I been bribed to aught that ran counter to his interests; never until now, when at a stroke I had sold my honour and pledged myself to this betrayal of my trust.

Not in all Spain was there a more miserable man than I. All night I sat in the room where I was wont to work, and to my wife's entreaties that I should take some rest I answered that the affairs of Spain compelled attention. And when morning found me haggard and distraught came a courier from Philip with a letter.

"I have letters from Don John," he wrote, "more insistent than ever in their tone. He demands the instant dispatch of money and Escovedo. I have been thinking, and this letter confirms my every fear. I have cause to apprehend some stroke that may disturb the public peace and ruin Don John himself if he is allowed to retain Escovedo any longer in his service. I am writing to Don John that I will see to it that Escovedo is promptly dispatched as he requests. Do you see him dispatched, then, in precise accordance with his deserts, and this at once, before the villain kills us."

My skin bristled as I read. Here was fatality itself at work. Philip was at his old fears—and, Heaven knows, he was not without justification of his intuitions, as I had learnt by now—that Escovedo meditated the most desperate measures. He was urging me again, as he had urged me before, and more than once, to dispatch this traitor whose restless existence so perpetually perturbed him. I was not deceived as to the meaning he set upon that word "dispatch." I knew quite well the nature of the dispatch he bade me contrive.

Conceive now my temptation. Escovedo dead, I should be safe, and Anne would be safe, and this without any such betrayal as was being forced upon me. And that death the King himself commanded a secret, royal execution, such as his confessor Frey Diego de Chaves has since defended as an expedient measure within the royal prerogative. He had commanded it before quite unequivocally, but always I had stood between Escovedo and the sword. Was I to continue in that attitude? Could it humanly be expected of me in all the circumstances again to seek to deflect the royal wrath from that too daring head? I was, after all, only a man, subject to the temptations of the flesh, and there was a woman whom I loved better than my own salvation to whose peace and happiness that fellow Escovedo was become a menace.

If he lived, and for as long as he lived, she and I were to be as slaves of his will, and I was to drag my honour and my loyalty through the foul kennels of his disordered ambitions. And the King my master was bidding me clearly see to it that he died immediately.

I sat down and wrote at once, and the burden of my letter was: "Be more explicit, Sire. What manner of dispatch is it your will that Escovedo should be given?"

On the morrow, which was Thursday of Holy Week, that note of mine was returned to me, and on the margin of it, in Philip's own hand, Escovedo's death-warrant. "I mean that it would be well to hasten the death of this rascal before some act of his should render it too late; for he never rests, nor will anything turn him from his usual ways. Do it, then, and do it quickly, before he kills us."

There was no more to be said. My instructions were clear and definite. Obedience alone remained. I went about it.

Just as all my life I have been blessed with the staunchest friends, so have I, too, been blessed with the most faithful servants. And of these none was more faithful than my steward, Diego Martinez, unless, indeed, it be my equerry, Gil de Mesa, who to this day follows my evil fortunes. But Mesa at that time was as yet untried, whilst in Diego I knew that I had a man devoted to me heart and soul, a man who would allow himself to be torn limb from limb on the rack on my behalf.

I placed the affair in Diego's hands. I told him that I was acting under orders from the King, and that the thing at issue was the private execution of a dangerous traitor, who could not be brought to trial lest there he should impeach of complicity one whose birth and blood must be shielded from all scandal. I bade him get what men he required, and see the thing done with the least possible delay. And thereupon I instantly withdrew from Madrid and went to Alcala.

Diego engaged five men to assist him in the task; these were a young officer named Enriquez, a lackey named Rubio, the two Aragonese—Mesa and Insausti—and another whose name was Bosque. He clearly meant to take no chances, but I incline to think that he overdid precaution, and employed more hands than were necessary for the job. However, the six of them lurked in waiting on three successive nights for Escovedo near his house in the little square of Santiago. At last, on the night of Easter Monday, March 31st, they caught him and dispatched him. He died almost before he realized himself beset, from a sword-thrust with which Insausti transfixed him. But there were at least half a dozen wounds in the body when it was found. Diego, I have said, was a man who made quite certain.

No sooner was it done than they dispersed, whilst the lackey Rubio, instantly quitting Madrid, brought me news of the deed to Alcala, and the assurance that no arrests had been made. But there was a great ado in Madrid upon the morrow, as you may imagine, for it is no everyday occurrence to find a royal secretary murdered in the streets.

The alcaldes set out upon a rigorous search, and they began by arresting and questioning all who attempted to leave the city. On the next day they harassed with their perquisitions all those who let lodgings. They were still at this work in the evening when I returned to Madrid, brought back—as it would seem—from my country rest by the news of this murder of my friend and colleague. I bore myself as I should have done had I no knowledge of how the thing had been contrived. That was a necessity as imperative as it was odious, and no part of it more odious than the visit of condolence I was forced to pay to the Escovedo family, which I found plunged in grief.

From the very outset suspicion pointed its finger at me, although there were no visible traces to connect me with the deed. Rumour, however, was astir, and as I had powerful friends, so, too, I had the powerful enemies which envy must always be breeding for men in high places such as mine. Escovedo's wife mistrusted me, though at first she seems equally to have suspected in this deed the hand of the Duke of Alva, who was hostile to Don John and all his creatures. Very soon, as a result of this, came the Court alcalde to visit and question me. His stated object was in the hope that I might give him information which would lead to the discovery of the assassin; but his real object, rendered apparent by the searching, insistent nature of his questions, was to lead me to incriminate myself. I presented a bold front. I pretended to see in this, perhaps, the work of the Flemish States. I deplored—that I might remind him of it—my absence from Madrid at the time.

He was followed by another high official, who came in simulated friendship to warn me that certain rumours linking me with the deed were in circulation, in reality to trap me into some admission, to watch my countenance for some betraying sign.

I endured it stoutly, but inwardly I was shaken, as I wrote to Philip, giving him full details of what had been said and what answers I had returned, what bitter draughts I had been forced to swallow.

He wrote in reply: "I find that you answered very well. Continue to be prudent. They will tell you a thousand things, not for the sake of telling them, but in the hope of drawing something out of you. The bitter draughts you mention are inevitable. But use all the dissimulation and address of which you are capable."

We corresponded daily after that, and I told him of every step I took; how I kept my men about me, for fear that if they attempted to leave Madrid they would be arrested, and how, finally, I contrived their departure one by one, under conditions that placed them beyond all suspicion. Juan de Mesa set out for Aragon on a mission concerned with the administration of some property of the Princess of Eboli's. Rubio, Insausti, and Enriquez were each given an ensign's commission, bearing the King's own signature, and ordered to join the armies in various parts of Italy; the first was sent to Milan, the second to Sicily, and the last to Naples. Bosque went back to Aragon. Thus all were placed beyond the reach of the active justice of Castile, all save myself—and the King, who wrote to me expressing his satisfaction that there had been no arrests.

But rumour continued to give tongue, and the burden of its tale was that the murder had been my work, in complicity with the Princess of Eboli. How they came to drag her name into the affair I do not know. It may have been pure malice trading upon its knowledge of the relations between us. She may have lent colour to the charge by her own precipitancy in denying it. She announced indignantly that she was being accused, almost before this had come to pass, and as indignantly protested against the accusation, and threatened those who dared to voice it.

The end of it all was that, a month later, the Escovedo family drew up a memorial for the consideration of the King, in which they laid the murder to my charge, and Philip consented to receive Don Pedro de Escovedo—the dead man's son—and promised him that he would consider the memorial, and that he would deliver up to justice whomsoever he thought right. He was embarrassed by these demands of the Escovedos, my own danger, his duty as king, and his interests as an accomplice, or, rather, as the originator of the deed.

The Escovedos were powerfully seconded by Vasquez, the Secretary of the Council, a member of Alva's party, a secret enemy of my own, consumed by jealousy of my power, and no longer fearing to disclose himself and assail me since he believed himself possessed of the means of ruining me. He spoke darkly to the King of a woman concerned in this business, without yet daring to mention Anne by name, and urged him for the satisfaction of the State, where evil rumours were abroad, to order an inquiry that should reveal the truth of the affair.

It was Philip himself who informed me of what had passed, sneering at the wildness of rumours that missed the truth so wildly, and when I evinced distress at my position, he sought to reassure me; he even wrote to me after I had left him: "As long as I live you have nothing to fear. Others may change, but I never change, as you should know who know me."

That was a letter that epitomized many others written me in those days to Madrid from the Escurial, whither he had returned. And those letters comforted me not only by their expressed assurances, but by the greater assurance implicit in them of the King's good faith. I had by now a great mass of his notes dealing with the Escovedo business, in almost every one of which he betrayed his own share as the chief murderer, showing that I was no more than his dutiful instrument in that execution. With those letters in my power what need I ever fear? Not Philip himself would dare to betray me.

But I went now in a new dread—the dread of being myself murdered. There were threats of it in the air. The Escovedo family and their partisans, who included all my enemies, and even some members of the Eboli family, who considered that I had sullied the honour of their name by my relations with Anne, talked openly of vengeance, so that I was driven to surround myself by armed attendants whenever now I went abroad.

I appealed again to Philip to protect me. I even begged him to permit me to retire from my Ministerial office, that thus the clamant envy that inspired my persecution might be deprived of its incentive. Finally, I begged him to order me to stand my trial, that thus, since I was confident that no evidence could be produced against me, I should force an acquittal from the courts and lay the matter to rest for all time.

"Go and see the President of Castile," he bade me. "Tell him the causes that led to the death of Escovedo, and then let him talk to Don Pedro de Escovedo and to Vasquez, so as to induce them to desist."

I did as I was bidden, and when the president, who was the Bishop of Pati, had heard me, he sent for my two chief enemies.

"I have, Don Pedro," he said, "your memorial to the King in which you accuse Don Antonio Perez of the murder of your father. And I am to assure you in the King's name that justice will be done upon the murderer, whoever he may be, without regard to rank. But I am first to engage you to consider well what evidence you have to justify your charge against a person of such consideration. For should your proofs be insufficient I warn you that matters are likely to take a bad turn for yourself. Finally, before you answer me, let me add, upon my word as a priest, that Antonio Perez is as innocent as I am."

It was the truth—the absolute truth, so far as it was known to Philip and to the Bishop—for, indeed, I was no more than the instrument of my master's will.

Don Pedro looked foolish, almost awed. He was as a man who suddenly becomes aware that he has missed stepping over the edge of a chasm in which destruction awaited him. He may have bethought him at last that all his rantings had no better authority than suspicions which no evidence could support.

"Sir," he faltered, "since you tell me this, I pledge you my word on behalf of myself and my family to make no more mention of this death against Don Antonio."

The Bishop swung then upon Vasquez, and his brow became furrowed with contemptuous anger.

"As for you, sir, you have heard—which was more than your due, for it is not your business by virtue of your office, nor have you any obligations towards the deceased, such as excuse Don Pedro's rashness, to pursue the murderers of Escovedo. Your solicitude in this matter brings you under a suspicion the more odious since you are a priest. I warn you, sir, to abstain, for this affair is different far from anything that you imagine."

But envy is a fierce goad, a consuming, irresistible passion, corroding wisdom and deaf to all prudent counsels. Vasquez could not abstain. Ridden by his devil of spite and jealousy, he would not pause until he had destroyed either himself or me.

Since Escovedo's immediate family now washed their hands of the affair, Vasquez sought out more distant relatives of the murdered man, and stirred them up until they went in their turn to pester the courts, not only with accusations against myself, but with accusations that now openly linked with mine the name of the Princess of Eboli.

We were driven to the brink of despair, and in this Anne wrote to Philip. It was a madness. She made too great haste to excuse herself. She demanded protection from Vasquez and the evil rumours he was putting abroad, implored the King to make an example of men who could push so far their daring and irreverence, and to punish that Moorish dog Vasquez—I dare say there was Moorish blood in the fellow's veins—as he deserved.

I think our ruin dated from that letter. Philip sent for me to the Escurial. He wished to know more precisely what the accusations were. I told him, denying them. Then he desired of the Princess proof of what she alleged against Vasquez, and she had no difficulty in satisfying him. He seemed to believe our assurance that all was lies. Yet he did not move to punish Vasquez. But then I knew that sluggishness was his great characteristic. "Time and I are one," he would say when I pressed on matters.

After that it was open war in the Council between me and Vasquez. The climax came when I was at the Escurial. I had sent a servant to Vasquez for certain State papers to be submitted to the King. He brought them, and folded in them a fiercely denunciatory letter full of insults and injuries, not the least of which was the imputation that my blood was not clean, my caste not good.

In a passion I sought Philip, beside myself almost, trembling under the insult.

"See, Sire, what this Moorish thief has dared to write me. It transcends all bearing. Either you take satisfaction for me of these insults or you permit me to take it for myself."

He appeared to share my indignation, promised to give me leave to proceed against the man, but bade me first wait a while until certain business in the competent hands of Vasquez should be transacted. But weeks grew into months, and nothing was done. We were in April of '79, a year after the murder, and I was grown so uneasy, so sensitive to dangers about me, that I dared no longer visit Anne. And then Philip's confessor, Frey Diego de Chaves, came to me one day with a request on the King's part that I should make my peace with Vasquez.

"If he will retract," was my condition. And Chaves went to see my enemy. What passed between them, what Vasquez may have told him, what he may have added to those rumours of my relations with Anne, I do not know. But I know that from that date there was a change in the King's attitude towards me, a change in the tone of the letters that he sent me, and, this continuing, I wrote to him at last releasing him from his promise to afford me satisfaction against Vasquez, assuring him that since, himself, he could forgive the injuries against us both, I could easily forgive those I had received myself, and finally begging his permission to resign my office and retire.

Anne had contributed to this. She had sent for me, and in tears had besought me to make my peace with Vasquez since the King desired it, and this was no time in which to attempt resistance to his wishes. I remained with her some hours, comforting her, for she was in the very depths of despair, persuaded that we were both ruined, and inconsolable in the thought that the blame of this was all her own.

It may be that I was watched, perhaps more closely than I imagined. It may be that spies were close about us, set by the jealous Philip, who desired confirmation or refutation of the things he had been told, the rumours that were gnawing at his vitals.

I left her, little dreaming that I was never to see her again in this life. That night I was arrested at my house by the Court alcalde upon an order from the King. The paltry reason advanced was my refusal to make my peace with Vasquez, and this when already the King was in possession of my letter acknowledging my readiness to do so; for the King was in Madrid, unknown to me. He came, it seems, that he might be present at another arrest effected that same night. From the porch of the Church of Santa Maria Mayor, he watched his alguazils enter the house of the Princess of Eboli, bring her forth, bestow her in a waiting carriage that was to bear her away to the fortress of Pinto, to an imprisonment which was later exchanged for exile to Pastrana lasting as long as life itself.

To sin against a Prince is worse, it seems, than to sin against God Himself. For God forgives, but princes, wounded in their vanity and pride, know nothing of forgiveness.

I was kept for four months a prisoner by the alcalde, no charge being preferred against me. Then, because my health was suffering grievously from confinement and the anxiety of suspense, I was moved to my own house, and detained there for another eight months under close guard. My friends besought the King in vain either to restore me to liberty or to bring me to trial. He told them the affair was of a nature very different from anything they deemed, and so evaded all demands.

In the summer of 1580, Philip went to Lisbon to take formal possession of the crown of Portugal, which he had inherited. I sent my wife to him to intercede for me. But he refused to see her, and so I was left to continue the victim of his vindictive lethargy. After a year of this, upon my giving a formal promise to renounce all hostility towards Vasquez, and never seek to do him harm in any way, I was accorded some degree of liberty. I was allowed to go out and to receive visitors, but not to visit any one myself.

Followed a further pause. Vasquez was now a man of power, for my party had fallen with me, and his own had supplanted it in the royal councils. It was by his work that at last, in '84, I was brought to trial upon a charge of corruption and misappropriation. I knew that my enemies had, meanwhile, become possessed of Enriquez, and that he was ready to give evidence, that he was making no secret of his share in the death of Escovedo, and that the King was being pressed by the Escovedos to bring me to trial upon the charge of murder. Instead, the other charge alone was preferred.

It was urged against me that I had kept a greater state than any grandee of Spain, that when I went abroad I did so with a retinue befitting a prince, that I had sold my favour and accepted bribes from foreign princes to guard their interests with the King of Spain.

They sentenced me to two years' imprisonment in a fortress, to be followed by ten years of exile, and I was to make, within nine days, restitution of some twenty million maravedis*—the alleged extent of my misappropriations—besides some jewels and furniture which I had received from the Princess of Eboli, and which I was now ordered to deliver up to the heirs of the late Prince.

Perquisitions had been made in my house, and my papers ransacked. Well I knew what they had sought. For the thought of the letters that had passed between Philip and myself at the time of Escovedo's death must now be troubling his peace of mind. I had taken due precautions when first I had seen the gathering clouds foreshadowing this change of weather. I had bestowed those papers safely in two iron-bound chests which had been concealed away against the time when I might need them to save my neck. And because now he failed to find what he sought—the evidence of his own share in the deed and his present base duplicity—Philip dared not slip the leash from those dogs who would be at my throat for the murder of Escovedo. That was why he bade them proceed against me only on the lesser charge of corruption.

I was taken to the fortress of Turruegano, and there they came to demand of me the surrender of my papers which the alcalde had failed to discover at my house. I imagined the uneasiness of Philip in dispatching those emissaries. I almost laughed as I refused. Those papers were my buckler against worse befalling me than had befallen already. Even now, if too hard pressed, I might find the opportunity of breaking my bonds by means of them. I sometimes wonder why I did not apply myself to that. Yet there is small cause for wonder, really. From boyhood, almost, King Philip had been my master. Loyalty to him was a habit that went to the very roots of my being. I had served him without conscience and without scruple, and the notion of betraying him, save as a very last and very desperate resource, was inconceivable. I do not think he ever knew the depth and breadth of that loyalty of mine.

My refusal led those sons of dogs to attempt to frighten my wife with threats of unmentionable horrors unless she delivered up the papers I had secreted. She and our children were threatened with perpetual imprisonment on bread and water if she persisted in refusing to surrender them. But she held out against all threats, and remained firm even under the oily persecution to the same end of Philip's confessor, Frey Diego. Finally, I was notified that, in view of her stubbornness and my own, she and our children were cast into prison, and that there they would remain until I saw fit to become submissive to the royal will.

It is a subtle form of mental torture that will bid a man contemplate the suffering for his sake to which those who are dear to him are being subjected.

I raged and stormed before the officer who brought me this infamous piece of news. I gave vent to my impotent anger in blasphemous expressions that were afterwards to be used against me. The officer was subtly sympathetic.

"I understand your grief, Don Antonio," he said. "Believe me, I feel for you—so much that I urge you to set an end to the captivity of those dear ones who are innocent, who are suffering for your sake."

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

"Reflection may show that even that is your duty in the circumstances."

I looked into his smug face, and I was within an ace of striking him. Then I controlled myself, and my will was snapped.

"Very well," I said. "The papers shall be surrendered. Let my steward, Diego Martinez, come to me here, and he shall receive my instructions to deliver the chests containing them to my wife, that she in turn may deliver them to the King."

He withdrew, well pleased. No doubt he would take great credit to himself for this. Within three days, such haste did they make, my faithful steward stood before me in my prison at Turruegano.

You conceive the despair that had overwhelmed me after giving my consent, the consciousness that it was my life I was surrendering with those papers,—that without them I should be utterly defenceless. But in the three days that were sped I had been thinking, and not quite in vain.

Martinez left me with precise instructions, as a result of which those two iron-bound chests, locked and sealed, were delivered, together with the keys, to the royal confessor. Martinez was asked what they contained.

"I do not know," he answered. "My orders are merely to deliver them."

I can conceive the King's relief and joy in his conviction that thus had he drawn my teeth, that betide now what might, I could never defend or justify myself. The immediate sequel took me by surprise. We were at the end of '85, and my health was suffering from my confinement and its privations. And now my captivity was mitigated. My wife Juana even succeeded in obtaining permission that I should be taken home to Madrid, and there for fourteen months I enjoyed a half liberty, and received the visits of my old friends, among whom were numbered most of the members of the Court.

I imagined at first that since my teeth were drawn the King despised me, and intended nothing further. But I was soon to be disillusioned on that score. It began with the arrest of Martinez on a charge of complicity in the murder of Escovedo. And then one day I was again arrested, without warning, and carried off for a while to the fortress of Pinto. Thence I was brought back in close captivity to Madrid, and there I learnt at last what had been stirring.

In the previous summer King Philip had gone into Aragon to preside over the Cortes, and Vasquez, who had gone with him, had seized the opportunity to examine the ensign Enriquez, who had, meanwhile, denounced himself of complicity in the murder of Escovedo. Enriquez made a full confession—turned accuser under a promise of full pardon for himself and charged Mesa, Rubio, and my steward Martinez with complicity, denouncing Martinez as the ringleader of the business. The other two, Insausti and Bosque, were already dead.

Immediately Vasquez attempted to seize the survivors. But Mesa had gone to earth in Aragon, and Rubio was with him. Martinez alone remained, and him they seized and questioned. He remained as cool and master of himself as he was true and loyal to me. Their threats made no impression on him. He maintained that the tale was all a lie, begotten of spite, that I had been Escovedo's best friend, that I had been greatly afflicted by his death, and that no man could have done more than I to discover his real murderers. They confronted him with Enriquez, and the confrontation no whit disturbed him. He handled the traitor contemptuously as a perjured, suborned witness, a false servant, a man who, as he proceeded to show, was a scoundrel steeped in crime, whose word was utterly worthless, and who, no doubt, had been bought to bring these charges against his sometime master.

The situation, thanks to Martinez's stoutness, had reached a deadlock. Between the assertions of one man, who was revealed to the judges for a worthless scoundrel, and the denials of the other, against whom nothing was known, it was impossible for the court of inquiry to reach any conclusion. At least another witness must be obtained. And Vasquez laboured with all his might and arts and wiles to draw Rubio out of Aragon into the clutches of the justice of Castile. But he laboured in vain, for I had secretly found the means to instruct my trusty Mesa to retain the fellow where he was.

In this inconclusive state of things the months dragged on and my captivity continued. I wrote to Philip, imploring his mercy, complaining of these unjust delays on the part of Vasquez, which threatened to go on forever, and begging His Majesty to command the conclusion of the affair. That was in August of '89. You see how time had sped. All that came of my appeal was at first an increased rigour of imprisonment, and then a visit from Vasquez to examine and question me upon the testimony of Enriquez. As you can imagine, the attempt to lure me into self-betrayal was completely fruitless. My enemy withdrew, baffled, to go question my wife, but without any better success.

Nevertheless, Vasquez proclaimed the charge established against myself and Martinez, and allowed us ten days in which to prepare our answer. Immediately upon that Don Pedro de Escovedo lodged a formal indictment against us, and I was put into irons.

To rebut the evidence of one single, tainted witness I produced six witnesses of high repute, including the Secretary of the Council of Aragon. They testified for me that I was at Alcala at the time of Escovedo's death, that I had always been Escovedo's friend, that I was a good Christian incapable of such a deed, and that Enriquez as an evil man whose word was worthless, a false witness inspired by vengeance.

Thus, in spite of the ill-will of my judges and the hatred of my enemies, it was impossible legally to condemn me upon the evidence. There were documents enough in existence to have proved my part in the affair; but not one of them dared the King produce, since they would also show me to have been no more than his instrument. And so, desiring my death as it was now clear he did, he must sit impotently brooding there with what patience he could command, like a gigantic, evil spider into whose web I obstinately refused to fling myself.

My hopes began to revive. When at last the court announced that it postponed judgment whilst fresh evidence was sought, there was an outcry of indignation on all sides. This was a tyrannical abuse of power, men said; and I joined my voice to theirs to demand that judgment be pronounced and my liberty restored to me, pointing out that I had already languished years in captivity without any charge against me—beyond that of corruption, which had been purged by now—having been established.

Then at last the King stirred in his diabolical underground manner. He sent his confessor to me in prison. The friar was mild and benign.

"My poor friend," he said, "why do you allow yourself to suffer in this fashion, when a word from you can set a term to it? Confess the deed without fear, since at the same time you can advance a peremptory reason of State to justify it."

It was too obvious a trap. Did I make confession, indeed, upon such grounds, they would demand of me proof of what I asserted; and meanwhile the documents to prove it had been extorted from me and had passed into the King's possession. In the result I should be ruined completely as one who, to the crime of murder, added a wicked, insidious falsehood touching the honour of his King.

But I said naught of this. I met guile with guile. "Alas! I have been tempted," I answered him. "But I thank Heaven I have known even in my extremity how to resist the temptation of such disloyalty. I cannot forget, Brother Diego, that amongst the letters from the King was one that said, 'Be not troubled by anything your enemies may do against you. I shall not abandon you, and be sure their animosity cannot prevail. But you must understand that it must not be discovered that this death took place by my order."'

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

"When His Majesty in his goodness and generosity sends me a note in his own hand to say, 'You may confess that it was by my express order that you contrived the death of Escovedo,' then I shall thankfully account myself absolved from the silence his service imposes on me."

He looked at me narrowly. He may have suspected that I saw through the transparent device to ruin me, and that in a sense I mocked him with my answer.

He withdrew, and for some days nothing further happened. Then the rigours of my captivity were still further increased. I was allowed to communicate with no one, and even the alguazil who guarded me was forbidden, under pain of death, to speak to me.

And in January I was visited by Vasquez, who brought me a letter from the King, not, indeed, addressed to me and in the terms I had suggested, but to Vasquez himself, and it ran:

You may tell Antonio Perez from me, and, if necessary, show him this letter, that he is aware of my knowledge of having ordered him to put Escovedo to death and of the motives which he told me existed for this measure; and that as it imports for the satisfaction of my conscience that it be ascertained whether or not those motives were sufficient, I order him to state them in the fullest detail, and to advance proof of what he then alleged to me, which is not unknown to yourself, since I have clearly imparted it to you. When I shall have seen his answers, and the reasons he advances, I shall give order that such measures be taken as may befit.

I, THE KING

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 y spies.

On one occasion I had exclaimed: "I think God sleeps where my affairs are concerned, and I am in danger of losing my faith." The Holy Office held this to be a scandalous proposition, offensive to pious ears.

Again, when I heard of the arrest of my wife and children I had cried out in rage: "God sleeps! God sleeps! There cannot be a God!"

This they argued at length to be rank heresy, since it is man's duty positively to believe, and who does not believe is an infidel.

Yet again it seems I had exclaimed: "Should things so come to pass, I shall refuse to believe in God!" This was accounted blasphemous, scandalous, and not without suspicion of heresy.

Upon these grounds the Supreme Council of the Inquisition at Madrid drew up its impeachment, and delivered it to the inquisitors of Aragon at Saragossa. These at once sent their familiars to demand the surrender of me from the Grand Justiciary, in whose hands I still remained. The Grand Justiciary incontinently refused to yield me up.

Thereupon the three Inquisitors drew up a peremptory demand, addressed to the lieutenants of the Justiciary, summoning them by virtue of holy obedience, under pain of greater excommunication, of a fine in the case of each of them of one thousand ducats, and other penalties to which they might later be condemned, to deliver me up within three hours to the pursuivants of the Holy Office.

This was the end of the Justiciary's resistance. He dared not refuse a demand so framed, and surrender of me was duly made. But the news of what was doing had run abroad. I had no lack of friends, whom I instantly warned of what was afoot, and they had seen to it that the knowledge spread in an inflammatory manner. Saragossa began to stir at once. Here was a thinly masked violation of their ancient privileges. If they suffered this precedent of circumventing their rights, what was to become of their liberties in future, who would be secure against an unjust persecution? For their sympathies were all with me throughout that trial.

I was scarcely in the prison of the Holy Office before the dread cry of Contrafueros! was ringing through the streets of Saragossa, summoning the citizens to arm and come forth in defence of their inviolable rights. They stormed the palace of the Grand Justiciary, demanded that he should defend the fueros, to whose guardianship he had been elected. Receiving no satisfaction, they attacked the palace of the Inquisition, clamouring insistently that I should immediately be returned to the Justiciary's prison, whence I had so unwarrantably been taken.

The Inquisitors remained firm a while, but the danger was increasing hourly. In the end they submitted, for the sake of their skins, and considering, no doubt, a later vengeance for this outrage upon their holy authority. But it was not done until faggots had been stacked against the Holy House, and the exasperated mob had threatened to burn them out of it.

"Castilian hypocrites!" had been the insurgent roar. "Surrender your prisoner, or you shall be roasted in the fire in which you roast so many!"

Blood was shed in the streets. The King's representative died of wounds that he received in the affray, whilst the Viceroy himself was assailed and compelled to intervene and procure my 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, and accounting themselves overpowered, offered no resistance. They, too, fled before the fusillade and the hail of shot that descended on them.

Before I realized what had happened, the iron had been struck from my leg, I was mounted on a horse, and, with Gil at my side, I was galloping out of Saragossa by the gate of Santa Engracia, and breasting the slopes with little cause to fear pursuit just yet, such was the disorder we had left behind.

And there, very briefly, you have the story of my sufferings and my escapes. Not entirely to be baulked, numerous arrests were made by the Inquisitors in Saragossa when order was at last restored. There followed an auto-da-fe, the most horrible and vindictive of all those horrors, in which many suffered for having displayed the weakness of charity towards a persecuted man. And, since my body was no longer in their clutches, they none the less sentenced me to death as contumaciously absent, and my effigy was burnt in the holy fires they lighted, amongst the human candles which they offered up for the greater honour and glory of a merciful God. Let me say no more, lest I blaspheme in earnest.

After months of wandering and hiding, Gil and I made our way here into Navarre, where we remain the guests of Protestant King Henri IV, who does not love King Philip any better since he has heard my story.

Still King Philip's vengeance does not sleep. Twice has he sent after me his assassins—since assassination is the only weapon now remaining to him. But his poor tools have each time been taken, exposed to Philip's greater infamy and shame—and hanged as they deserve who can so vilely serve so vile a master. It has even been sought to bribe my faithful Gil de Mesa into turning his hand against me, and that attempt, too, has been given the fullest publication. Meanwhile, my death to-day could no longer avail Philip very much. My memorial is published throughout Europe for all to read. It has been avidly read until Philip of Spain has earned the contempt of every upright man. In his own dominions the voice of execration has been raised against him. One of his own nobles has contemptuously announced that Spain under Philip has become unsafe for any gentleman, and that a betrayal of a subject by his king is without parallel in history.

That is some measure of vengeance. But if I am spared I shall not leave it there. Henry of Navarre is on the point of turning Catholic that his interests may be better served. Elizabeth of England remains. In her dominions, where thrives the righteous hatred of Philip and all the evil that he stands for, I shall find a welcome and a channel for the activities that are to show him that Antonio Perez lives. I have sent him word that when he is weary of the conflict he can signify his surrender by delivering from their prison my wife and children, upon whom he seeks still to visit some of the vengeance I 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."