Chapter 19 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
PHILIP II
At the very hour in which the Inquisitor General in Toledo was considering the vexatious matters contained in Frey Juan de Arrenzuelo's communication, Sir Gervase Crosby was seeking audience of King Philip II. at the Escurial.
Fifteen days had been spent between Greenwich and Madrid, fifteen days of ageing torment, during which impatience at the slowness of their progress had almost made him mad. Whilst his Margaret in her peril was so instantly needing him, he found himself crawling like a slug across the spaces of the earth to reach her. The voyage was a nightmare. It had the effect of transmuting the buoyant, light-hearted lad into a man who was stern of countenance and of heart, with a sternness which was never thereafter quite to leave him.
They came at last into the bay of Santander, six days after the Demoiselle had cast anchor there. Contrary winds had delayed them. In making the port of Santander they had no thought of following in the track of the vessel in which her ladyship had been carried off. They made it because it was the first port of consequence and the most convenient whence to continue the journey to Madrid, which was Sir Gervase's goal. Idle to seek to ascertain whither the Lady Margaret had been taken; idle to attempt to follow her until armed with those powers which he hoped to wring from the King of Spain. Therefore it was the King of Spain, that fabulously mighty prince, whom he must seek in the first instance.
The Rose of the World flew no flag to announce her nationality as she came to anchor in those Spanish waters. If Sir Oliver Tressilian was fearless, he was also prudent. He would face whatever perils might be thrust upon him. But he would not go about the world inviting peril by any unnecessary jactancy.
Yet the lack of a flag had much the same effect to have been expected from the display of one belonging to a hostile nation. Within an hour of casting anchor in the bay, two great black barges came alongside the Rose of the World. They were filled with men in steel caps and shimmering corselets, armed with pikes and musketoons, and the first of them bore the Regidor of Santander in person, who came to inquire the nationality and business of this vessel, which with a row of canon thrusting their noses from her open ports had much the appearance of a fighting craft.
Sir Oliver ordered the ladder to be lowered, and invited the Regidor to come aboard, nor made any objection when six soldiers followed him as a guard of honour.
To the King's representative in Santander, a short pompous gentleman inclining although still young to corpulence, Sir Gervase made known in the execrable but comprehensible Spanish which he had been at pains to learn during his voyage with Drake, that he was a courier from the Queen of England with letters for King Philip of Spain. In confirmation of this he displayed the package with its royal seals and royal superscription.
This earned him black looks together with courteous words from the Regidor, Don Pablo de Lamarejo. Royal messengers he knew were sacred, even when they happened to be English and heretics ripe for damnation, and deserving on that and other accounts no mercy or even consideration from any Godfearing man. He supposed that the vessel and crew employed to bring the messenger were to lie under the same protecting aegis of international custom, and he even undertook, in response to Sir Oliver's request, to send out supplies of fresh water and provisions.
Sir Gervase went ashore alone in the Regidor's barge. He had requested to land a couple of men of his own to accompany him as servants. But the Regidor, with the utmost outward suavity, had insisted upon supplying Sir Gervase with a couple of Spaniards for the purpose, who would be so much more useful to him by virtue of their knowledge of the country and the language. Sir Gervase perfectly understood the further intention, which was that they should act as his guards. Whilst the Regidor did not in any way dare to hinder him, at the same time he deemed it prudent to take such measures as should make this Queen's messenger virtually a prisoner during his sojourn in Spain or until the King's majesty should expressly decree otherwise.
This to Sir Gervase was a matter of no account. So that he reached the King with the least delay, he cared not in what circumstances he reached him. They could have carried him to Madrid bound hand and foot had they so chosen.
Sir Oliver Tressilian was to remain at Santander to await his return. Should he not have returned within exactly one month, nor sent any message, Sir Oliver was to assume failure and go home to report it to the Queen. On that understanding the friends parted, and Sir Gervase, whose countenance, pallid, under its sunburn, was become almost that of a Spaniard in colour and in gravity, set out for Madrid with his two alguaziles who pretended to be grooms. They made as good speed as the mountainous country and the infrequent change of horses would permit. They travelled by way of Burgos, famous as having been the birthplace of the Cid, and of Roman Segovia on its rocky summit with its Flavian aqueduct. But for these and other marvels of man and of nature, Sir Gervase, had no thought or care. The eyes of his soul were set feverishly ahead, towards that Madrid where he should find an end to his torturing suspense, and perhaps—if-God were very good to him—find healing for his despair.
Six days did that land journey consume. And even then it was not ended. The King was at the Escurial, that vast monastery palace on the slopes of the Guadarrama Mountains lately completed for him by artists and craftsmen whom he had hampered at every turn by the intrusion of his own abominable tastes and opinions in matters of architecture and decoration.
It was late evening when Gervase and his companions reached the capital, and so they were forced to lie there until the morrow. Thus the circle of a full week on Spanish soil had been completed before Sir Gervase beheld the enormous palace which contained the monarch of half the world. Grey, austere, forbidding stood that edifice, built, it was said, upon the plan of the gridiron upon which St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom. The skies were themselves grey that morning, and may have heightened the illusion which made the granite mass seem almost a part of the Guadarrama Mountains that were its background, made it appear to have been planted there by nature rather than by man.
Afterwards, in retrospect, that noontide seemed to him a dream, leaving vague and misty impressions. There was a great courtyard, where magnificently-equipped soldiers paraded; a wide staircase of granite by which an officer to whom he announced his errand conducted him to a long vaulted gallery, whose small windows overlooked the quadrangle of the royal wing. Here a throng moved and hummed: courtiers in rich black, captains in steel, prelates in purple and in scarlet, and monks in brown, in grey, in white and in black.
They stood in groups or sauntered there, and the subdued murmur of their voices filled the place. They looked askance at this tall young man with his haggard eyes and cheeks that were grown swarthy under a mane of crisp auburn hair, outlandishly dressed in clothes that were stained by travel and with long boots on which the dust lay thickly.
But it was soon seen that he had some greater claim to audience than any of those who had been waiting there since Mass, for without delay came an usher to sweep him from that gallery, and conduct him by way of an ante-room where he was relieved of his weapons, into the royal presence.
Sir Gervase found himself in a small chamber of a monastic severity, where his nostrils were assailed by the nauseous smell of medicinal unguents. The walls were whitewashed and without decoration beyond that supplied by a single picture representing an infernal zodiac made up of the whirling, flaming figures of demons and of damned.
In the room's middle stood a square table of dark oak, plain and unadorned, such as might be seen in any abbot's refectory. It bore a little heap of parchments, an inkstand and some quills.
In a gothic wooden chair of monastic plainness, beside this table, his right elbow resting upon the edge of it, sat the greatest monarch of his day, the lord of half the world.
To behold him was to experience in extreme measure the shock which the incongruous must ever produce. It is probably common to all men to idealise the wielders of royal power and royal dignity, to confound in imagination the man with the office which he holds. The great title this man bore, the great dominions over which his word was law, so fired men's fancy that the very name of Philip II. conjured a vision of superhuman magnificence, of quasi-divine splendour.
Instead of some such creation of his fancy, Sir Gervase beheld a small, sickly, shrivelled old man, with a bulging forehead and pale blue, almost colourless, eyes set fairly close to a pinched, aquiline nose. The mouth was repulsive, with its under jaw thrusting grotesquely forward, its pallid lips, which gaped perpetually to reveal a ruin of teeth. A tuft of straggling fulvid beard sprouted from his elongated chin, a thin bristle of moustache made an untidy fringe above. His hair, once thick and golden, hung now in thin streaks that were of the colour of ashes.
He sat with his left leg, which was gouty and swathed, stretched across a cushioned stool. He was dressed entirely in black, and for only ornament wore the collar and insignia of the Golden Fleece about his narrow ruff. Quill in hand, he was busily annotating a document, and in this occupation continued for some moments after Sir Gervase's admission, entirely ignoring his presence. At length he passed the document to a slim man in black who stood on his left. This was Santoyo, his valet, who received it, and dusted the wet writing with sand, whilst the King, still ignoring Gervase's presence, took up another parchment from the pile at his elbow, and proceeded to deal with it in the same way.
In the background, against the wall, two writing-tables were ranged, and at each of these sat a secretary, writing busily. It was to one of these, a little hairy black-bearded fellow, that the valet delivered the document he had received from the royal hand.
Behind the King, very tall and straight, stood a middle-aged man in the black habit and long mantle of a Jesuit. This, as Sir Gervase was presently to discover, was Father Allen, who might be regarded as the ambassador at the Escurial of the English Catholics, and who stood high in the esteem of King Philip. In the deep embrasure of one of the two windows by which the chamber was abundantly lighted stood Frey Diego de Chaves, Prior of Santa Cruz, a heavily-built man of jovial countenance.
The royal pen scratched and spluttered on the margin of the document. Sir Gervase waited as immovable and patient as the officer who had conducted him; who remained a few paces behind him now. As he waited he continued in increasing wonder to consider this mean, insignificant embodiment of the hereditary principle, and there surged in his mind the image of some unclean spider seated in the very heart of his great web.
At last the second document was passed to Santoyo, and the ice-cold eyes under that bulging brow flashed a fleeting furtive glance upon the stalwart, dignified gentleman who stood so patiently before him. The pallid lips moved, and from between them issued a voice, low of pitch and level of tone and very rapid of speech. This utterance, which so commonly exasperated foreign envoys by its elusiveness, sounded like nothing so much as the heavy hum of an insect in that quiet room. His Majesty had spoken in Spanish. As ill-educated and unlettered as he was cruel, pusillanimous and debauched, this lord of half the world spoke no language but his own, could read no language but his own, save only a little, schoolboy's Latin.
Sir Gervase had a knowledge of Spanish sufficient for ordinary purposes. But of the King's speech he had caught no single word. He stood undecided a moment until Father Allen, acting as interpreter, revealed his own English origin.
"His Majesty says, sir, that he understands you to be the bearer of letters from the Queen of England."
Sir Gervase plucked the sealed package from the bosom of his doublet, and advanced to proffer it.
"Kneel, sir!" the Jesuit commanded, sharp and sternly.
Sir Gervase obeyed, going down on one knee before the monarch.
Philip of Spain put forth a hand that was like the hand of a corpse. It was of the colour and transparency of wax. He took the package, seemed to weigh it a moment whilst he read the superscription in the unmistakable writing of Elizabeth of England. Then he turned it over, and considered the seals. His lips writhed into a sneer, and again there came from him that rapid dead-level murmur of speech, the import of which this time eluded all present.
At last with a half-shrug he broke the seals, spread the sheet before him, and read.
Sir Gervase, who had risen again and stepped back, watched the royal countenance with anxious, straining interest. He saw the frown gradually descend to the root of that predatory nose, saw the lips writhe again, and the hand that held the sheet tremble violently as if suddenly palsied. If he thought and hoped that this reflected fear, he was soon disillusioned. The King spoke again, and this time, for all the rapidity of his utterance, rage lent a power to his voice to make it audible throughout the chamber. Sir Gervase heard his words clearly, and understood them as clearly.
"The insolent bastard heretic!" was what he said, and saying it, crumpled the offending letter in his lean hand as he would have crumpled the writer could that same hand have encompassed her.
The scratching of the secretaries' pens was suddenly suspended. Santoyo, at his master's elbow, Father Allen behind his chair, and Frey Diego in the window embrasure, stood immovable and appeared to have ceased to breathe. A deathly stillness followed that explosion of royal wrath from a prince who rarely suffered any outward sign of emotion to escape him.
At the end of a long pause, in which he resumed his icy composure, the King spoke again. "But is it possible that I am mistaken that I do not understand; that I misinterpret?" He smoothed the crumpled sheet again. "Allen, do you read it for me; translate it to me," he commanded. "Let me lie under no error."
The Jesuit took the letter, and as he read currently translated its message into Spanish in a voice of increasing horror.
Thus was it that Sir Gervase became acquainted with the precise tenor of the Queen's message.
Elizabeth of England had in her time written many letters that her counsellors must have accounted terrible; but never a letter more terrible than this one. It was terrible in its very brevity and lucidity, considering the message it conveyed. She had chosen to write in Latin, and in this she informed her brother-in-law, King Philip the Second of Spain and First of Portugal, that a subject of his, a gentleman of his nobility, named Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, who, being shipwrecked upon her shores, had received shelter and comfort in an English house, had repaid the hospitality by forcibly carrying off the daughter of that house, the Lady Margaret Trevanion. The bearer would give His Majesty further details of this if he desired them. She passed on to remind the Majesty of Spain that in her prison of the Tower of London lay under her hand the Spanish Admiral Don Pedro Valdez and seven noble Spanish gentlemen, besides others taken with him on the Andalusian flagship; and she warned His Majesty, taking God to witness, that unless the Lady Margaret Trevanion were returned safe and scatheless to her home, and unless the bearer of this letter, Sir Gervase Crosby, and his companions, who were going to Spain so as to serve as escort to the lady, were afforded safe-conduct and offered no least injury of any sort, she would send her brother, King Philip, the heads of Don Pedro Valdez and his seven noble companions, and this in despite of all usages of war and practices of nations that he might urge.
Utter silence followed the reading for a moment. Then the King broke it by a laugh, a short, horrible cackle of scorn.
"I read aright, it seems." Then, in another tone raising his voice to an unusual pitch: "How long, O Lord, will you suffer this Jezebel?" he cried out.
"How long, indeed!" echoed Father Allen.
In the window-embrasure Frey Diego seemed turned to stone. His florid countenance had become grey.
King Philip sat huddled, musing. Presently he made a gesture of contempt. "This," he said, "is a puerile insolence! An idle threat! Such a thing could not be. Her own barbarous people would not permit such a barbarity. It is an attempt to frighten me with shadows. But I, Philip of Spain, do not start at shadows."
"Your Majesty will find it no shadow when those eight heads are delivered to you."
It was Gervase who had spoken, with a temerity that spread consternation in the room.
The King looked at him and looked away again. It was not in King Philip's power to look any man steadily in the face.
"You spoke, I think?" he said softly. "Who bade you speak?"
"I spoke what seemed necessary," said Gervase unintimidated.
"What seemed necessary, eh? So that necessity is the excuse? I am learning, sir. I am learning I never weary of learning. There are some other things you might tell me since you are so eager to be heard." The menace of his cold rapid voice, and his dead reptilian gaze were terrible. They seemed to suggest endless resources and utter remorselessness in their employment. He half-turned his head, to summon one of the secretaries. "Rodriguez! Your tablets. Note me his replies." Then he glanced at Sir Gervase again. "You have companions, this letter tells me. Where are those companions?"
"At Santander, awaiting my return on board the ship that brought me."
"And if you do not return?"
"If I am not on board by the thirteenth of November, they sail for England to report to Her Majesty that you prefer to receive the heads of your eight gentlemen rather than administer in your own realm the justice which decency demands."
The King sucked in his breath. From behind him Father Allen admonished this daring man in English.
"Sir, bethink you to whom you speak! I warn you in your own interests."
The King made a gesture to silence him. "What is the name of the ship that is waiting in Santander?"
There was contemptuous defiance in the readiness with which Sir Gervase answered.
"The Rose of the World out of the Fal River. She is commanded by Sir Oliver Tressilian, an intrepid gentleman who understands the art of sea fighting. She carries twenty guns, and a good watch is kept on board."
The King smiled at the veiled threat. Its insolence was of a piece with the rest. "We may test the intrepidity of this gentleman."
"It has been tested already, Your Majesty, and by your own subjects. It is likely if they test it again that they will do so to their own cost as heretofore. But if it should happen that The Rose of the World is prevented from sailing and is not home by Christmas, the heads will come to you for a New Year's gift."
Thus in rough, ungrammatical but perfectly comprehensible Spanish did Sir Gervase bait the lord of half the world. It inflamed his rage that this almost inhuman prince should be concerned here only with the hurt to his own dignity and vanity, and should give no thought to the misdeed of Don Pedro de Mendoza, and the horrible suffering caused an innocent lady.
But now, having drawn forth what knowledge he required, King Philip changed his tone.
"As for you, you English dog, who match in insolence the evil woman who sent you on this audacious errand, you, too, have something to learn before we finally dismiss you." He raised a quivering hand. "Take him away, and keep him fast, until I need him again."
"My God!" cried Gervase in horror, as the officer's hand closed upon his shoulder. And because of his tone, and of a movement that he made, the officer's grip tightened, and he plucked a dagger from his girdle. But Gervase, heedless of this, was appealing in his own tongue to Father Allen.
"You, sir, who are English, and who seem to have influence here, can you remain indifferent when an English woman, a noble English lady, has been carried off in this manner by a Spanish satyr?"
"Sir," the Jesuit coldly answered him, "you have done your cause a poor service by your manner."
The officer pulled him forcibly back. "Let us go!" he said.
But still Sir Gervase protested. He appealed now in Spanish to the King. "I am a messenger, and my person should be sacred."
The King sneered at him. "A messenger? Impudent buffoon!" And by a cold wave of the hand he put an end to the matter.
Raging, but impotent, Sir Gervase went. From the doorway, over his shoulder whilst the officer was forcibly thrusting him out, he called back to the Majesty of Spain.
"Eight noble Spanish heads, remember! Eight heads which your own hands will have cut off!"
At last he was outside, and men were being summoned to take charge of him.