The Historical Nights' Entertainment - Rafael Sabatini (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📗
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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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.
*Ten thousand pounds, but with at least five times the
present purchasing power of that sum.
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
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