Chapter 20 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
THE KING'S CONSCIENCE
You have beheld an unusual spectacle. That of King Philip II of Spain acting upon impulse and under the sway of passion. It was conduct very far from his habit. Patience was the one considerable—perhaps the only—virtue in his character, and to his constant exercise of it he owed such greatness as he had won.
"God and Time and I are one," was his calm boast, and sometimes he asserted that, like God, he moved against his enemies with leaden feet, but smote with iron hands.
It was not by any means the only matter in which he perceived a likeness between God and himself, but it is the only one with which at the moment we need be concerned. For here, for once, you behold him departing from it, yielding to an impulse of rage provoked by the outrageous tone of that message from the detestable Elizabeth.
This letter with its cold threat of perpetrating an abomination revolting to all equity and humanity, he must regard as an impudent attempt to intimidate and coerce him. And further to incense him there had been added to the incredible insolence of the letter, the even more incredible insolence of its bearer.
As he presently informed Father Allen, it was as if, having slapped his face with that impudent communication, she had entrusted its delivery to a messenger who was to administer a kick on his own behalf. In all his august career he could not remember to have had a man stand before his face with such contumely and so little awe of his quasi-divinity. Is it any wonder that this demi-god, accustomed only to incense, should have found his nostrils irritated by that dose of pepper, and that under this irritation he should have become so human as to sneeze?
He was certainly the wrong man with whom such liberties could be taken, and of all moments in his life the present was certainly the moment in which his temper could least brook them. At another time he might have sustained his patience by the conviction of a heavy reckoning to be presented to that arrogant bastard who usurped the throne of England; he might have smiled at these stings of a gnat which in his own good time his mighty hand should crush. But now, in the season of his humiliation, his great fleet dispersed and shattered, with scarcely a noble house in Spain that did not mourn a son, his strength so exhausted that it would hardly be in his own lifetime that the King of Spain would recover sufficiently to make himself feared again upon the seas, he was denied even this consolation. To the shattering blow delivered to his consequence in the world, were added now such personal insults as these, which he could only punish by petty vengeances upon worthless underlings.
He bethought him of other letters which Elizabeth of England had written him, defiant, mocking letters, now bitter-sweet, now caustically sarcastic. He had smiled his patient, cruel smile as he read them. He could afford to smile then, in his assurance that the day of reckoning would surely come. But now that by some incomprehensible malignity of fortune he was cheated of that assurance, now that the day of reckoning was overpast, having brought him only shame and failure, he could smile no longer at her insults, could bear them no longer with the dignified calm that becomes a demi-god.
But if weakened, he was not yet so weak that he could with impunity be mocked, coerced and threatened.
"She shall learn," he said to Father Allen, "that the King of Spain is not to be moved by threats. This insolent dog who was here and those others with him on that ship at Santander, heretics all, like her pestilent heretical self, are the concern of the Holy Office." He turned to the bulky figure in the window-embrasure. "Frey Diego, this becomes your affair."
Frey Diego de Chaves stirred at last to life again, and moved slowly forward. His dark eyes under bushy grey eyebrows were preternaturally solemn. He delivered himself now of some common sense in a deep rich voice.
"It is not Your Majesty who is threatened so much as those unfortunate gentlemen who have served you well, and who languish now in an English prison awaiting the ransoms that are being sent from Spain."
The King blinked his pale eyes. Sullenly, impatiently, he corrected the Prior's statement.
"They are being threatened only in their lives. I am threatened in my dignity and honour, which are the dignity and honour of Spain."
Frey Diego had come to lean heavily upon the heavy oaken table. "Will the honour of Spain be safe if she suffers this threat to be executed upon her sons?"
The King gave him one of his furtive glances; whereupon the Dominican continued:
"The nobility of Spain has been bled white in this disastrous enterprise against England. Can Your Majesty afford to add to the blood that has been already shed, that of so great and valuable a servant as Valdez, the greatest of your surviving captains on the sea, that of Ortiz, of the Marquis of Fuensalida, of Don Ramon Chaves, of..."
"Your brother, eh?" the King snapped to interrupt him. "Behold your impulse! A family concern."
"True," said the friar gravely. "But is it not a family concern also for Your Majesty? Does not all Spain compose the family of the King, and are not her nobles the first-born of that family? This insolent Englishman who was lately here and his shipmates at Santander, what are they to set in the balance against those Spanish gentlemen in London? You may fling them to the Holy Office for heretics, as is your right, indeed almost your duty to the Faith, but how will that compensate for the eight noble heads—eight truncated, bleeding heads—which the Queen of England will cast into Your Majesty's lap?"
His Majesty started visibly, appalled by the vivid phrase. It was as if he beheld those bleeding heads in his lap already. But he recovered instantly.
"Enough!" he rapped. "I do not yield to threats." But the source of his strength of spirit was revealed by what he added: "They are threats which that woman will not dare to execute. It would earn her the execration of the whole world." He swung to the Jesuit. "Am I not right, Allen?"
The Englishman avoided a direct answer. "You are dealing, Majesty, with a godless, headstrong woman, a female antichrist without regard for any laws of God or man."
"But this!" cried the King, clinging to the belief in what he hoped.
"Execrable as it would be, it is no more execrable than the murder of the Queen of Scots. That, too, was a deed that all the world believed she would never dare."
Here was a blow to the faith he built on Elizabeth's fear of the world's judgment. It brought him to doubt whether, indeed, he might not be building upon sand. It was a doubt that angered him. That he should yield to that detestable woman's threats was a draught too bitter for his lips. He could not, would not, swallow it, however men might seek to press the cup upon him. He said so harshly, and upon that dismissed both the Jesuit and the Dominican.
But when they were gone he found it impossible to resume, as he had intended, work upon those documents awaiting his attention. He sat there, shivering with anger as he read again the offensive letter or recalled again the offensive bearing of the messenger.
At long last his mind came to the matter which had provoked the threat. In his wrath at the effect, he had hitherto neglected to cast so much as a glance upon the cause. He pondered it now. What tale was this? Was it even true? The Concepcion which Don Pedro de Mendoza had commanded had been definitely reported lost with all hands. How, then, came Don Pedro alive? The letter itself told him. He had been sheltered in an English household. He had escaped, then. And according further to this letter, he had returned to Spain bringing with him the daughter of the house in question. But if so, how came it that there was no word of this return, that Don Pedro had not come to report himself and pay his duty to his King?
One man might know: The Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, who was Don Pedro's uncle.
His Majesty summoned the secretary Rodriguez, and dictated a brief command to the Primate to wait upon him instantly at the Escurial. The Cardinal might enlighten him upon this, and at the same time he would take order with him as Inquisitor General for dealing with these other English heretics now lying in his power.
A courier was instantly despatched, with orders to ride all night and spare neither himself nor horseflesh.
On that the King sought to dismiss the matter for the present from his mind, to be resumed anon in consultation with the Inquisitor General. But the matter would not be dismissed. The image excited by the vivid phrase of Frey Diego de Chaves persisted. Ever and anon as the King looked into his lap he beheld there a little heap of bleeding, truncated heads. One of them showed him the stern features of the brave Valdez, who had served him so well, and might but for this have lived to serve him better; the glazed eyes of the Marquis of Fuensalida looked up at him with undying reproach, as did the others. He had let those heads fall so that he might preserve his dignity. But how had he preserved it? If the act should bring execration upon Elizabeth who had executed it, what must it bring upon him who might have averted it but would not? He covered his reptilian eyes with his corpse-like hands in a futile attempt to shut out a vision that lay within his brain. Obstinately his purpose hardened before an opposition arising, as he accounted it, from a weakness in his nature. He would not yield.
Late on the following evening, whilst the King was at supper, eating, as he did all things, alone, Cardinal Quiroga was announced. He bade him in at once, and only momentarily interrupted his consumption of pastry to greet the Primate.
From this interview he derived at last great comfort and assurance. Not only was Don Pedro in the prison of the Inquisition, but so was the woman he had carried off from England. She was accused of heresy and witchcraft. It was the exercise of her arts upon Don Pedro which had plunged him into offences against the Faith. He was to expiate these offences by doing penance in the great Auto de Fé which was to be held in Toledo on the following Thursday. In that same Auto the woman would be abandoned to the secular arm to be burnt as a witch together with some others whom the Cardinal enumerated. He expressed a hope in passing that His Majesty would grace the Auto by his royal presence.
The King took a fresh piece of pastry from the gold dish, crammed it into his royal mouth, licked his fingers, and asked a question. What was the evidence of witchcraft against this woman?
The Inquisitor General, familiar now with the particulars of a case which so closely concerned his nephew, returned a full and detailed answer.
The King sat back and half-closed his eyes. His lips smiled a little. He was extremely satisfied. The ground was cut from under his feet. His duty to the Faith made it impossible for him to yield to the demands of Elizabeth. Aforetime and successfully when protests had been addressed to him from England on behalf of seamen who had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, he had replied that it was idle to appeal to him for anything that lay outside the province of the secular power in Spain. In matters of the Faith, in the province of God, he had no power to interfere with the proceedings of the Holy Office to which he might himself be amenable did he offend against religion. And this was no piece of hypocrisy. It was entirely sincere. As sincere as was now his thankfulness that if those noble Spanish heads must fall as a consequence, none could reproach him with it. The whole world should hear his answer to the Queen of England: that not by him, but by the Holy Office, had judgment been passed upon crimes against the Faith; if meanly to avenge this upon guiltless gentlemen she took their innocent lives, there being against them no charge to warrant putting them to death, the responsibility for that dark deed must lie upon her evil soul as surely as it must earn her the contempt and reprobation of the world.
And since his duty to the Faith, whose foremost champion he was, now bound his hands, he need fear no more the vision of those bloody heads in his lap.
Of all this, however, he said nothing to Quiroga. He thanked his eminence for information which he had been driven to seek, because a rumour had reached him that Don Pedro de Mendoza was alive, and so dismissed him.
That night the King of Spain slept peacefully as do men whose consciences are tranquil.