Chapter 22 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
THE ROYAL CONFESSOR
With the full facts of the sequel before us in intimate detail (for even where these details depend upon inference, the indications are too clear to admit of error) it may be permissible to point out—as has been pointed out so repeatedly already—that the most trivial causes may be pregnant of the most terrible and even tragical effects.
Grotesque though it may seem, it is hardly too much to conclude that if King Philip of Spain had been less gluttonously addicted to pastry, the fortunes of the Lady Margaret Trevanion, whom he had never seen and whose name, heard but once, he did not even remember, would have run a totally different course.
On that Sunday night, at the Escurial, the lord of half the world indulged that gluttony of his to a more than normal degree. In the early hours of Monday morning he awoke in a cold sweat of terror with a cramp in the pit of his stomach produced, as he believed even after awakening, by the weight upon it of the bleeding heads of eight gentlemen of Spain.
He sat up in his great carved bed with a scream which brought Santoyo instantly to his side. The valet found him straining frantically to thrust with both hands that imagined bloody heap from his royal lap.
There were cordials and sedatives at hand prescribed for the use of this sickly, valetudinarian monarch, and practise had rendered Santoyo expert in the administration of them. Quickly he mixed a dose. The King drank it, lay down again in response to the valet's solicitudinous advice, and, partially soothed, remained thereafter gently moaning.
The valet sent for the physician. The latter, when he came, probing by questions to discover the cause of this sudden indisposition, came upon the pastry, and shrugged his shoulders in despair. He had remonstrated about it before with the King, and had been vituperated for his pains and dubbed an incompetent, ignorant ass. It was not worth his while to risk the loss of the King's confidence by venturing again to tell him the truth.
He took counsel with Santoyo. The sleek, shrewd Andalusian valet suggested that it might be a matter for the King's confessor. Santoyo had picked up a good deal of theology in King Philip's service, and he was aware that gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins. Restraint might be imposed upon His Majesty if it were delicately pointed out to him that these excesses were of spiritual as well as physical injury; in other words, that in ruining his digestion he also damned his soul.
The physician, something of a cynic, as such men must be who have so wide and so intimate an acquaintance of their fellows, wondered from which of the` other six deadly sins the King had ever been made to abstain by fear of damnation. In fact, he rather regarded His Majesty as an expert in the practise of the deadly sins, immunity from the consequences of which he no doubt ensured himself, by the perfervidness of his devotions.
Santoyo, however, was much more practical. "A deadly sin that brings no evil material sequel to the satisfaction afforded by committing it, is one thing. A deadly sin that gives you the stomach-ache is quite another."
The physician was constrained to acknowledge that the valet was the greater philosopher, and left the matter in his hands. Later in the course of that Monday, Santoyo sought Frey Diego de Chaves, and told him what had passed: he gave him details of the King's indigestion, its probable cause and peculiar manifestation.
Santoyo was flattered by the unusual and lively interest which the royal confessor displayed. He knew himself for the best valet in Spain, and much else besides; but he now gathered, from Frey Diego's warm commendation of his zeal and conclusions, that he was also a considerable theologian.
He was not aware of the distress of mind in which he had found the Prior of Santa Cruz, or of how opportunely the matter came to his need. Ramon de Chaves, the Prior's elder brother, and the head of that distinguished family to which the Prior was himself an ornament, was one of the eight gentlemen in the Tower of London whose heads were placed in jeopardy by what Frey Diego accounted the fierce inhumanity of the Queen of England and the proud obstinacy of the King of Spain. When Santoyo found him he had been mentally torn between philosophic reflections upon the peril and futility of serving princes, and practical considerations of how he might so move the King as to abstract his brother's head from the English axe.
The advent of Santoyo with his tale was like an answer to the prayers which last night he had addressed to Heaven. It opened out before him a way by which he might approach the King in the matter, without appearing to be actuated by any considerations of serving his own family He was too well acquainted with the King's dark nature to entertain any hopes of moving him by entreaties.
The difficulty lay in the fact that the King usually confessed himself on Fridays, and this was Monday. The Prior had also informed himself—again out of fraternal solicitude—that there was to be an Auto de Fé in Toledo on Thursday, when the English woman who was at the root of all this bother was to be burnt as a witch or a heretic, or both; and he knew that once this happened, whatever else might happen, nothing could save his brother's head from the sawdust.
Thus you have the interesting situation of the Inquisitor General, moved by nepotism on the one hand, and the Prior of Santa Cruz, also an Inquisitor of the Faith, moved by brotherly love, on the other, both seeking a scheme by which to frustrate the ends of the Holy Office.
The Prior betraying to the valet solicitude only for the condition of the King, left it to him to induce His Majesty to send for him at the earliest moment. To reward his affection and fidelity to the King, to mark his appreciation of Santoyo's zeal in matters of religion, and to encourage its continuance, the Prior made him a handsome present, gave him his blessing, and so dismissed him. Thereafter Frey Diego awaited the royal summons with some confidence.
Santoyo went to work astutely, postponing all operations until the King should afford him a clear opening.
Philip II had been at his eternal labours of annotating documents in that monastic room in which he worked. These Santoyo had taken from him, dusted with pounce where necessary, and passed on to the secretaries, as usual, closely watching his royal master the while.
Came a moment when the King paused in his labours, sighed and passed a hand wearily across his pallid brow. Presently he stretched out his hand to take another document from the pile on the oak table at his elbow. It resisted him. He turned his head, and found Santoyo's hand pinning down the heap of parchments, Santoyo's eyes gravely upon him.
The heavy insect-like drone of the royal voice sounded in the room. "What is it? What do you do?"
"Has not Your Majesty laboured enough for to-day? You will remember that you were indisposed in the night. Your Majesty shows signs of weariness."
This was an unusual interference, almost an impertinence, on the part of Santoyo. The King's pale cold eye looked up at him, to drop again immediately. Not even the glance of his valet could this man support.
"Of weariness?" he hummed. "I?" But the suggestion did its work upon that sickly and enfeebled body. He removed his hand from the parchments, and reclining in his chair closed his eyes, so as to concentrate upon himself, and discover whether his valet might not be right. He found himself weary, indeed, he thought. He opened his eyes again.
"Santoyo, what did Gutierrez say of my condition?"
"He seemed to think that it arose from too much pastry..."
"Who told him that I ate pastry?"
"He asked me what you had eaten, Majesty."
"And so, to hide his ignorance, he fastened upon that. The ass! The unspeakable ass!"
"I told him, Majesty, that he was clearly wrong."
"So, so! You told him he was wrong. Behold you turned doctor, now, Santoyo!"
"It scarcely needed a doctor to perceive what ailed Your Majesty. As I told Master Gutierrez, the unrest came not from your stomach, Majesty, but from your spirit."
"Tush, fool! What do you know of my spirit?"
"What I gathered from Your Majesty's words when you were stricken in the night." And he went on quickly: "Frey Diego de Chaves said something here on Friday which preyed upon your mind, Majesty. It would need the Prior of Santa Cruz to heal the wound he opened, to restore you the quiet that Your Majesty's spirit needs."
Now this was a disturbing reminder. It brought back the vivid phrase which had haunted the King ever since. At the same time it showed the King the shrewdness of Santoyo's diagnosis. He muttered something utterly inaudible, then rousing himself, again put forth his hand to resume his labours. This time Santoyo dared not hinder him. But whilst he annotated the document he had taken, Santoyo; behind his back; was guilty of shuffling the waiting heap so that a sheet which had been at the bottom of the pile was now uppermost and was the next to be taken by the King.
In this Santoyo revealed his shrewdness even more signally. Well aware of what was troubling the royal mind, of the mingled rage and fear and obstinacy provoked by the Queen of England's letter, he concluded that these emotions must be fed if His Majesty was to seek relief of them at the hands of the Prior of Santa Cruz, as Santoyo was conspiring that he should.
The letter which he had now judged it suitable to bring to the top of the pile—on the principle of striking the iron whilst it was hot—was from the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had led the disastrous adventure against England. It was a letter which had arrived that morning, most opportunely.
The old Duke wrote humbly from his retirement to inform King Philip that he had sold one of his farms to raise the heavy sum required by England for the ransom of the gallant admiral Pedro Valdez. It was a small enough act, the duke protested, imploring His Majesty to behold an earnest of his love and loyalty in this sacrifice made to restore to Spain the services of the first of her surviving admirals.
The letter fluttered from the royal fingers gone suddenly nerveless. He sank back in his wooden monastic chair, closed his eyes and groaned; then opened them again and raged.
"Infidel! Bastard! Excommunicated heretic! Indemoniated she-wolf!"
Santoyo was leaning over him in solicitude. "Majesty!" he murmured.
"I am ill, Santoyo," droned the dull voice. "You are right! I'll work no more. Give me your arm."
Supported by a stick on one side, and leaning heavily on Santoyo on the other, he hobbled from the room. Santoyo craftily introduced again the name of Frey Diego de Chaves, suggested mildly that perhaps His Majesty required spiritual advice. His Majesty bade him be silent, and he dared not insist.
But that night again King Philip's sleep was troubled and this time there was no pastry to account for it—at least, not directly. Perhaps it was that the terrible images excited by the indigestion of Sunday night left their memories in his brain, so that they recurred now without extraneous stimulus; and undoubtedly they were assisted to recur by the thought of that letter from Medina Sidonia announcing the dispatch of the ransom of that gallant Valdez, whose head was ever the foremost in that imagined heap in the royal lap, whose head must fall lest Elizabeth of England should be able to announce with a laugh that she had coerced Philip of Spain.
Another twenty-four hours of such haunting as this, and at last, on Wednesday morning, after yet another night of broken sleep, the King capitulated to the repeated suggestion of his valet that he should see his confessor. It may be that at the back of his mind, if only subconsciously, there was the thought of the Auto de Fé on the morrow and the knowledge that if he delayed another twenty-four hours, it would be too late for action of any kind.
"In God's name!" he cried at last, to Santoyo's insistence. "Let Frey Diego come. Since he raised these ghosts, let him come and exorcise them."
The Prior of Santa Cruz did not keep the King waiting. He had been watching the passage of the hours in a mounting fever of panic. He had reached that point where, whether the King sent for him or not, he would use his position as keeper of the royal conscience to thrust himself upon the King and make a last effort by intercession, by reasoning, by bullying at need, to save his brother's head. But since the King sent for him, even at this late hour, all was well. He would lay aside those weapons of despair until others failed.
Calm and self-contained looked the portly man as he entered the royal bedroom, and having dismissed Santoyo and closed the door, approached the great carved bed in that austere room, flooded now with the sunshine of the autumn morning.
He drew up a stool, sat down, and after some platitudes on the score of the royal health and in answer to the royal complaints, he invited the King to confess himself, and so ease his soul of any troublesome burden which might be retarding the healing of his flesh.
Philip confessed himself. Frey Diego probed the royal conscience with questions here and there. As a surgeon dissects and lays bare the recesses of the body, so did the Prior of Santa Cruz now dissect and lay bare some of the horrible recesses of King Philip's soul.
When it was done, and before he passed to the awaited absolution, Frey Diego diagnosed the royal condition.
"It is so plain, my son," he said, in the paternal tone of his office. "In this distemper which afflicts you, two deadly sins are co-operating. You will not be healed until you cast them out. Neglect to do so will destroy you here and hereafter. The indigestion resulting from the sin of gluttony, let loose against you tormenting visions resulting from the sin of pride. Beware of pride, my son, the first and deadliest of the sins. Through pride was Lucifer cast out of his high place in Heaven. But for pride there would have been no devil, no tempter and no sin. It is Satan's great gift to man. A mantle so light that a man may wear it without consciousness that it sits upon his shoulders, whilst in the folds of it are sheltered all the evils that labour for man's eternal damnation."
"Jesu!" droned the King. "All my life I have studied humility..."
The confessor interrupted him, where the man would not have dared. "The visions that you tell me have haunted you these nights, whence come they, think you?"
"Whence? From regret, from fear, from love for those gentlemen of mine, whom that evil heretic in England is to butcher."
"Unless you banish the pride which prevents you from putting forth your hand to save them."
"What? Am I the King of Spain, and shall I bow my neck to that insolent demand?"
"Unless the deadly sin of pride insists that you carry your head erect whilst eight noble lives are immolated on the altar of pride."
The King writhed as if in physical pain. Suddenly he rallied, perceiving something that had been overlooked, something in which he fancied that he must find salvation.
"I can do nothing if I would. The matter is out of my hands. I am but King of Spain. I do not rule the Holy Office. I do not presume to meddle in the Kingdom of God. I do not presume, I say: I, whom you accuse of pride."
But the Prior of Santa Cruz smiled pityingly as his eyes momentarily met the King's furtive glance. "Will you cheat God with such a subterfuge? Do you think God is to be cheated? Can you conceal from Him what is in your heart? If the good of Spain, valid reasons of State, demand that you should stay the hand of the Inquisition, is your Inquisitor General to deny you? Has no King of Spain ever intervened? Be honest with your God, King Philip. Behold already one of the evils which I warned you lurk within pride's mantle. Cast off that mantle, my son. It is a garment of damnation."
The King looked at him and away again. There was agony in those pale eyes—the agony of pride.
"It is unthinkable," he droned. "Must I humble myself..."
"Out of your own mouth, my son!" Frey Diego cried in a voice like a trumpet call, and rose, his arm flung out in denunciation. "Out of your own mouth! Must you humble yourself, you ask? Ay, must you, or God will humble you in the end. There is no other escape for you from these ghosts. These bleeding heads grin at you now from your lap. They grin so while they are still firm upon the shoulders of living men; men who have loved you and served you and ventured their lives in your service and in Spain's. What will they look like when they shall indeed have fallen, because your pride would not stay the axe of the executioner? Will that lay those ghosts, do you think, or will it bring them gibbering about you until you are driven mad, assuring you that, like another Lucifer, by your pride have you forfeited your place in Heaven, by your pride doomed yourself to an eternity of torment."
"Cease!" cried the King, writhing in his great bed, and thus convinced, appalled to perceive under the Prior's fiery indication the pit on the edge of which he stood, he capitulated. He would rend his pride; he would bow his neck; he would submit to the insolent demand of that heretical woman.
"Thus," said the Prior in a gentle, soothing voice, applying an unguent now that the irritant had done its work, "shall you lay up treasure in Heaven, my son."