IV. THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL
The Story of the False Sebastian of Portugal
There is not in all that bitter tragi-comic record of human frailtywhich we call History a sadder story than this of the Princess Anne, thenatural daughter of the splendid Don John of Austria, natural son of theEmperor Charles V. and, so, half-brother to the bowelless King PhilipII. of Spain. Never was woman born to royal or semi-royal state who wasmore utterly the victim of the circumstances of her birth.
Of the natural sons of princes something could be made, as witness thedazzling career of Anne's own father; but for natural daughters--andespecially for one who, like herself, bore a double load ofcadency--there was little use or hope. Their royal blood set them in aclass apart; their bastardy denied them the worldly advantages of thatspurious eminence. Their royal blood prescribed that they must mate withprinces; their bastardy raised obstacles to their doing so. Therefore,since the world would seem to hold no worthy place for them, itwas expedient to withdraw them from the world before its vanitiesbeglamoured them, and to immure them in convents, where they mightaspire with confidence to the sterile dignity of abbesshood.
Thus it befell with Anne. At the early age of six she had been sent tothe Benedictine convent at Burgos, and in adolescence removed thenceto the Monastery of Santa Maria la Real at Madrigal, where it wasforeordained that she should take the veil. She went unwillingly. Shehad youth, and youth's hunger of life, and not even the repressiveconditions in which she had been reared had succeeded in extinguishingher high spirit or in concealing from her the fact that she wasbeautiful. On the threshold of that convent which by her dread uncle'swill was to be her living tomb, above whose gates her spirit may havebeheld the inscription, "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate!" shemade her protest, called upon the bishop who accompanied her to bearwitness that she did not go of her own free will.
But what she willed was a matter of no account. King Philip's was,under God's, the only will in Spain. Still, less perhaps to soften thesacrifice imposed upon her than because of what he accounted due to oneof his own blood, his Catholic Majesty accorded her certain privilegesunusual to members of religious communities: he granted her a littlecivil list--two ladies-in-waiting and two grooms--and conferred upon herthe title of Excellency, which she still retained even when after herhurried novitiate of a single year she had taken the veil. She submittedwhere to have striven would have been to have spent herself in vain;but her resignation was only of the body, and this dejected body movedmechanically through the tasks and recreations that go to make up thegrey monotone of conventual existence; in which one day is as anotherday, one hour as another hour; in which the seasons of the yearlose their significance; in which time has no purpose save for itssubdivision into periods devoted to sleeping and waking, to eating andfasting, to praying and contemplating, until life loses all purpose andobject, and sterilizes itself into preparation for death.
Though they might command and compel her body, her spirit remainedunfettered in rebellion. Anon the claustral apathy might encompass her;in time and by slow degrees she might become absorbed into the greyspirit of the place. But that time was not yet. For the present she mustnourish her caged and starving soul with memories of glimpses caught inpassing of the bright, active, stirring world without; and where memorystopped she had now beside her a companion to regale her with tales ofhigh adventure and romantic deeds and knightly feats, which served butto feed and swell her yearnings.
This companion, Frey Miguel de Souza, was a Portuguese friar of theorder of St. Augustine, a learned, courtly man who had moved in thegreat world and spoke with the authority of an eye-witness. And aboveall he loved to talk of that last romantic King of Portugal, withwhom he had been intimate, that high-spirited, headstrong, gallant,fair-haired lad Sebastian, who at the age of four-and-twenty had ledthe disastrous overseas expedition against the Infidel, which had beenshattered on the field of Alcacer-el-Kebir some fifteen years ago.
He loved to paint for her in words the dazzling knightly pageants he hadseen along the quays at Lisbon, when that expedition was embarking withcrusader ardour, the files of Portuguese knights and men-at-arms, thearray of German and Italian mercenaries, the young king in his brightarmour, bare of head--an incarnation of St. Michael--moving forwardexultantly amid flowers and acclamations to take ship for Africa. Andshe would listen with parted lips and glistening eyes, her slim bodybending forward in her eagerness to miss no word of this great epic.Anon when he came to tell of that disastrous day of Alcacer-el-Kebir,her dark, eager eyes would fill with tears. His tale of it was hardlytruthful. He did not say that military incompetence and a presumptuousvanity which would listen to no counsels had been the cause of a ruinthat had engulfed the chivalry of Portugal, and finally the very kingdomitself. He represented the defeat as due to the overwhelming numbersof the Infidel, and dwelt at length upon the closing scene, told herin fullest detail how Sebastian had scornfully rejected the counsels ofthose who urged him to fly when all was lost, how the young king, whohad fought with a lion-hearted courage, unwilling to survive the day'sdefeat, had turned and ridden back alone into the Saracen host to fighthis last fight and find a knightly death. Thereafter he was seen nomore.
It was a tale she never tired of hearing, and it moved her more and moredeeply each time she listened to it. She would ply him with questionstouching this Sebastian, who had been her cousin, concerning his waysof life, his boyhood, and his enactments when he came to the crownof Portugal. And all that Frey Miguel de Souza told her served butto engrave more deeply upon her virgin mind the adorable image of theknightly king. Ever present in the daily thoughts of this ardent girl,his empanoplied figure haunted now her sleep, so real and vivid thather waking senses would dwell fondly upon the dream-figure as upon thememory of someone seen in actual life; likewise she treasured up thememory of the dream--words he had uttered, words it would seem begottenof the longings of her starved and empty heart, words of a kind notcalculated to bring peace to the soul of a nun professed. She wasenamoured, deeply, fervently, and passionately enamoured of a myth, amental image of a man who had been dust these fifteen years. She mournedhim with a fond widow's mourning; prayed daily and nightly for therepose of his soul, and in her exaltation waited now almost impatientlyfor death that should unite her with him. Taking joy in the thought thatshe should go to him a maid, she ceased at last to resent the maidenhoodthat had been imposed upon her.
One day a sudden, wild thought filled her with a strange excitement.
"Is it so certain that he is dead?" she asked. "When all is said, noneactually saw him die, and you tell me that the body surrendered byMulai-Ahmed-ben-Mahomet was disfigured beyond recognition. Is it notpossible that he may have survived?"
The lean, swarthy face of Frey Miguel grew pensive. He did notimpatiently scorn the suggestion as she had half-feared he would.
"In Portugal," he answered slowly, "it is firmly believed that he lives,and that one day he will come, like another Redeemer, to deliver hiscountry from the thrall of Spain."
"Then... then..."
Wistfully, he smiled. "A people will always believe what it wishes tobelieve."
"But you, yourself?" she pressed him.
He did not answer her at once. The cloud of thought deepened on hisascetic face. He half turned from her--they were standing in the shadowof the fretted cloisters--and his pensive eyes roamed over the widequadrangle that was at once the convent garden and burial ground.Out there in the sunshine amid the hum of invisible but ubiquitouslypulsating life, three nuns, young and vigorous, their arms bared tothe elbows, the skirts of their black habits shortened by a cincture ofrope, revealing feet roughly shod in wood, were at work with spade andmattock, digging their own graves in memento mori. Amid the shadows ofthe cloisters, within sight but beyond earshot, hovered Dona Maria deGrado and Dona Luiza Nieto, the two nobly-born nuns appointed by KingPhilip to an office as nearly akin to that of ladies-in-waiting asclaustral conditions would permit.
br /> At length Frey Miguel seemed to resolve himself.
"Since you ask me, why should I not tell you? When I was on my way topreach the funeral oration in the Cathedral at Lisbon, as befittedone who had been Don Sebastian's preacher, I was warned by a person ofeminence to have a care of what I said of Don Sebastian, for not onlywas he alive, but he would be secretly present at the Requiem."
He met her dilating glance, noted the quivering of her parted lips.
"But that," he added, "was fifteen years ago, and since then I have hadno sign. At first I thought it possible... there was a story afloat thatmight have been true... But fifteen years!" He sighed, and shook hishead.
"What... what was the story?" She was trembling from head to foot.
"On the night after the battle three horsemen rode up to the gates ofthe fortified coast-town of Arzilla. When the timid guard refused toopen to them, they announced that one of them was King Sebastian, andso won admittance. One of the three was wrapped in a cloak, hisface concealed, and his two companions were observed to show him thedeference due to royalty."
"Why, then..." she was beginning.
"Ah, but afterwards," he interrupted her, "afterwards, when allPortugal was thrown into commotion by that tale, it was denied that KingSebastian had been among these horsemen. It was affirmed to have been nomore than a ruse of those men's to gain the shelter of the city."
She questioned and cross-questioned him upon that, seeking to draw fromhim the admission that it was possible denial and explanation obeyed thewishes of the hidden prince.
"Yes, it is possible," he admitted at length, "and it is believed bymany to be the fact. Don Sebastian was as sensitive as high-spirited.The shame of his defeat may have hung so heavily upon him that hepreferred to remain in hiding, and to sacrifice a throne of which henow felt himself unworthy. Half Portugal believes it so, and waits andhopes."
When Frey Miguel parted from her that day, he took with him the clearconviction that not in all Portugal was there a soul who hopedmore fervently than she that Don Sebastian lived, or yearned morepassionately to acclaim him should he show himself. And that was much tothink, for the yearning of Portugal was as the yearning of the slave forfreedom.
Sebastian's mother was King Philip's sister, whereby King Philip hadclaimed the succession, and taken possession of the throne of Portugal.Portugal writhed under the oppressive heel of that foreign rule, andFrey Miguel de Sousa himself, a deeply, passionately patriotic man,had been foremost among those who had sought to liberate her. When DonAntonio, the sometime Prior of Crato, Sebastian's natural cousin, anda bold, ambitious, enterprising man, had raised the standard of revolt,the friar had been the most active of all his coadjutators. In thosedays Frey Miguel, who was the Provincial of his order, a man widelyrenowned for his learning and experience of affairs, who had beenpreacher to Don Sebastian and confessor to Don Antonio, had wielded avast influence in Portugal. That influence he had unstintingly exertedon behalf of the Pretender, to whom he was profoundly devoted. After DonAntonio's army had been defeated on land by the Duke of Alba, and hisfleet shattered in the Azores in 1582 by the Marquis of Santa Cruz,Frey Miguel found himself deeply compromised by his active share in therebellion. He was arrested and suffered a long imprisonment in Spain. Inthe end, because he expressed repentance, and because Philip II.,aware of the man's gifts and worth, desired to attach him to himself bygratitude, he was enlarged, and appointed Vicar of Santa Maria la Real,where he was now become confessor, counsellor and confidant of thePrincess Anne of Austria.
But his gratitude to King Philip was not of a kind to change hisnature, to extinguish his devotion to the Pretender, Don Antonio--who,restlessly ambitious, continued ceaselessly to plot abroad--or yet toabate the fervour of his patriotism. The dream of his life was everthe independence of Portugal, with a native prince upon the throne.And because of Anne's fervent hope, a hope that grew almost daily intoconviction, that Sebastian had survived and would return one day toclaim his kingdom, those two at Madrigal, in that quiet eddy of thegreat stream of life, were drawn more closely to each other.
But as the years passed, and Anne's prayers remained unanswered and thedeliverer did not come, her hopes began to fade again. Gradually shereverted to her earlier frame of mind in which all hopes were set upon areunion with the unknown beloved in the world to come.
One evening in the spring of 1594--four years after the name ofSebastian had first passed between the priest and the princess--FreyMiguel was walking down the main street of Madrigal, a village whoseevery inhabitant was known to him, when he came suddenly face to facewith a stranger. A stranger would in any case have drawn his attention,but there was about this man something familiar to the friar, somethingthat stirred in him vague memories of things long forgotten. His garb ofshabby black was that of a common townsman, but there was something inhis air and glance, his soldierly carriage, and the tilt of his beardedchin, that belied his garb. He bore upon his person the stamp ofintrepidity and assurance.
Both halted, each staring at the other, a faint smile on the lips ofthe stranger--who, in the fading light, might have been of any age fromthirty to fifty--a puzzled frown upon the brow of the friar. Then theman swept off his broad-brimmed hat.
"God save your paternity," was his greeting.
"God save you, my son," replied Frey Miguel, still pondering him. "Iseem to know you. Do I?"
The stranger laughed. "Though all the world forget, your paternityshould remember me."
And then Frey Miguel sucked in his breath sharply. "My God!" he cried,and set a hand upon the fellow's shoulder, looking deeply into thosebold, grey eyes. "What make you here?"
"I am a pastry-cook."
"A pastry-cook? You?"
"One must live, and it is a more honest trade than most. I was inValladolid, when I heard that your paternity was the Vicar of theConvent here, and so for the sake of old times--of happier times--Ibethought me that I might claim your paternity's support." He spoke witha careless arrogance, half-tinged with mockery.
"Assuredly..." began the priest, and then he checked. "Where is yourshop?"
"Just down the street. Will your paternity honour me?"
Frey Miguel bowed, and together they departed.
For three days thereafter the convent saw the friar only in thecelebration of the Mass. But on the morning of the fourth, he wentstraight from the sacristy to the parlour, and, despite the early hour,desired to see her Excellency.
"Lady," he told her, "I have great news; news that will rejoice yourheart." She looked at him, and saw the feverish glitter in his sunkeneyes, the hectic flush on his prominent cheek-bones. "Don Sebastianlives. I have seen him."
A moment she stared at him as if she did not understand. Then she paleduntil her face became as white as the nun's coil upon her brow; herbreath came in a faint moan, she stiffened, and swayed upon her feet,and caught at the back of a prie-dieu to steady and save herself fromfalling. He saw that he had blundered by his abruptness, that he hadfailed to gauge the full depth of her feelings for the Hidden Prince,and for a moment feared that she would swoon under the shock of the newshe had so recklessly delivered.
"What do you say? Oh, what do you say?" she moaned, her eyeshalf-closed.
He repeated the news in more measured, careful terms, exerting allthe magnetism of his will to sustain her reeling senses. Gradually shequelled the storm of her emotions.
"And you say that you have seen him? Oh!" Once more the colour suffusedher cheeks, and her eyes glowed, her expression became radiant. "Whereis he?"
"Here. Here in Madrigal."
"In Madrigal?" She was all amazement. "But why in Madrigal?"
"He was in Valladolid, and there heard that I--his sometime preacher andcounsellor--was Vicar here at Santa Maria la Real. He came to seek me.He comes disguised, under the false name of Gabriel de Espinosa,and setting up as a pastry-cook until his term of penance shall becompleted, and he shall be free to disclose himself once more to hisimpatiently awaiting peop
le."
It was bewildering, intoxicating news to her. It set her mind inturmoil, made of her soul a battle-ground for mad hope and dreadfulfear. This dream-prince, who for four years had been the constantcompanion of her thoughts, whom her exalted, ardent, imaginative,starved Soul had come to love with a consuming passion, was a livingreality near at hand, to be seen in the flesh by the eyes of her body.It was a thought that set her in an ecstasy of terror, so that she darednot ask Frey Miguel to bring Don Sebastian to her. But she plied himwith questions, and so elicited from him a very circumstantial story.
Sebastian, after his defeat and escape, had made a vow upon the HolySepulchre to lay aside the royal dignity of which he deemed that hehad proved himself unworthy, and to do penance for the pride that hadbrought him down, by roaming the world in humble guise, earning hisbread by the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow like anycommon hind, until he should have purged his offense and renderedhimself worthy once more to resume the estate to which he had been born.
It was a tale that moved her pity to the point of tears. It exalted herhero even beyond the eminence he had already held in her fond dreams,particularly when to that general outline were added in the days thatfollowed details of the wanderings and sufferings of the Hidden Prince.At last, some few weeks after that first startling announcement of hispresence, in the early days of August of that year 1594, Frey Miguelproposed to her the thing she most desired, yet dared not beg.
"I have told His Majesty of your attachment to his memory in all theseyears in which we thought him dead, and he is deeply touched. He desiresyour leave to come and prostrate himself at your feet."
She crimsoned from brow to chin, then paled again; her bosom heaved intumult. Between dread and yearning she spoke a faint consent.
Next day he came, brought by Frey Miguel to the convent parlour,where her Excellency waited, her two attendant nuns discreetly in thebackground. Her eager, frightened eyes beheld a man of middle height,dignified of mien and carriage, dressed with extreme simplicity, yetwithout the shabbiness in which Frey Miguel had first discovered him.
His hair was of a light brown--the colour to which the golden locks ofthe boy who had sailed for Africa some fifteen years ago might well havefaded--his beard of an auburn tint, and his eyes were grey. His face washandsome, and save for the colour of his eyes and the high arch of hisnose presented none of the distinguishing and marring features peculiarto the House of Austria, from which Don Sebastian derived through hismother.
Hat in hand, he came forward, and went down on one knee before her.
"I am here to receive your Excellency's commands," he said.
She steadied her shuddering knees and trembling lips.
"Are you Gabriel de Espinosa, who has come to Madrigal to set up as apastry-cook?" she asked him.
"To serve your Excellency."
"Then be welcome, though I am sure that the trade you least understandis that of a pastry-cook."
The kneeling man bowed his handsome head, and fetched a deep sigh.
"If in the past I had better understood another trade, I should not nowbe reduced to following this one."
She urged him now to rise, hereafter the entertainment between them wasvery brief on that first occasion. He departed upon a promise to comesoon again, and the undertaking on her side to procure for his shop thepatronage of the convent.
Thereafter it became his custom to attend the morning Mass celebratedby Frey Miguel in the convent chapel--which was open to the public--andafterwards to seek the friar in the sacristy and accompany him thenceto the convent parlour, where the Princess waited, usually with oneor another of her attendant nuns. These daily interviews were briefat first, but gradually they lengthened until they came to consumethe hours to dinner-time, and presently even that did not suffice, andSebastian must come again later in the day.
And as the interviews increased and lengthened, so they grew also inintimacy between the royal pair, and plans for Sebastian's future cameto be discussed. She urged him to proclaim himself. His penance had beenoverlong already for what was really no fault at all, since it is theheart rather than the deed that Heaven judges, and his heart had beenpure, his intention in making war upon the Infidel loftily pious.Diffidently he admitted that it might be so, but both he and Frey Miguelwere of opinion that it would be wiser now to await the death of PhilipII., which, considering his years and infirmities, could not be longdelayed. Out of jealousy for his possessions, King Philip might opposeSebastian's claims.
Meanwhile these daily visits of Espinosa's, and the long hours he spentin Anne's company gave, as was inevitable, rise to scandal, within andwithout the convent. She was a nun professed, interdicted from seeingany man but her confessor other than through the parlour grating,and even then not at such length or with such constancy as this. Theintimacy between them--fostered and furthered by Frey Miguel--had soripened in a few weeks that Anne was justified in looking upon him asher saviour from the living tomb to which she had been condemned, inhoping that he would restore her to the life and liberty for which shehad ever yearned by taking her to Queen when his time came to claim hisown. What if she was a nun professed? Her profession had been againsther will, preceded by only one year of novitiate, and she was stillwithin the five probationary years prescribed. Therefore, in her view,her vows were revocable.
But this was a matter beyond the general consideration or knowledge,and so the scandal grew. Within the convent there was none boldenough, considering Anne's royal rank, to offer remonstrance or advice,particularly too, considering that her behaviour had the sanction ofFrey Miguel, the convent's spiritual adviser. But from without, from theProvincial of the Order of St. Augustine, came at last a letter to Anne,respectfully stern in tone, to inform her that the numerous visits shereceived from a pastry-cook were giving rise to talk, for which it wouldbe wise to cease to give occasion. That recommendation scorched herproud, sensitive soul with shame. She sent her servant Roderos at onceto fetch Frey Miguel, and placed the letter in his hands.
The friar's dark eyes scanned it and grew troubled.
"It was to have been feared," he said, and sighed.
"There is but one remedy, lest worse follow and all be ruined. DonSebastian must go."
"Go?" Fear robbed her of breath. "Go where?"
"Away from Madrigal--anywhere--and at once; tomorrow at latest." Andthen, seeing the look of horror in her face, "What else, what else?"he added, impatiently. "This meddlesome provincial may be stirring uptrouble already."
She fought down her emotion. "I... I shall see him before he goes?" shebegged.
"I don't know. It may not be wise. I must consider." He flung away indeepest perturbation, leaving her with a sense that life was slippingfrom her.
That late September evening, as she sat stricken in her room, hopingagainst hope for at least another glimpse of him, Dona Maria de Gradobrought word that Espinosa was even then in the convent in Frey Miguel'scell. Fearful lest he should be smuggled thence without her seeinghim, And careless of the impropriety of the hour--it was already eighto'clock and dusk was falling--she at once dispatched Roderos to thefriar, bidding him bring Espinosa to her in the parlour.
The friar obeyed, and the lovers--they were no less by now--came face toface in anguish.
"My lord, my lord," she cried, casting all prudence to the winds, "whatis decided?"
"That I leave in the morning," he answered.
"To go where?" She was distraught.
"Where?" He shrugged. "To Valladolid at first, and then... where Godpleases."
"And when shall I see you again?"
"When... when God pleases."
"Oh, I am terrified... if I should lose you... if I should never see youmore!" She was panting, distraught.
"Nay, lady, nay," he answered. "I shall come for you when the time isripe. I shall return by All Saints, or by Christmas at the latest, and Ishall bring with me one who will avouch me."
"What need any to avouch you to me?" she pr
otested, on a note offierceness. "We belong to each other, you and I. But you are free toroam the world, and I am caged here and helpless..."
"Ah, but I shall free you soon, and we'll go hence together. See."He stepped to the table. There was an ink-horn, a box of pounce, somequills, and a sheaf of paper there. He took up a quill, and wrote withlabour, for princes are notoriously poor scholars:
"I, Don Sebastian, by the Grace of God King of Portugal, take to wifethe most serene Dona ulna of Austria, daughter of the most serenePrince, Don John of Austria, by virtue of the dispensation which I holdfrom two pontiffs."
And he signed it--after the manner of the Kings of Portugal in allages--"El Rey"--the King.
"Will that content you, lady?" he pleaded, handing it to her.
"How shall this scrawl content me?"
"It is a bond I shall redeem as soon as Heaven will permit."
Thereafter she fell to weeping, and he to protesting, until Frey Miguelurged him to depart, as it grew late. And then she forgot her own grief,and became all solicitude for him, until naught would content her butshe must empty into his hands her little store of treasure--a hundredducats and such jewels as she possessed, including a gold watch set withdiamonds and a ring bearing a cameo portrait of King Philip, and last ofall a portrait of herself, of the size of a playing-card.
At last, as ten was striking, he was hurried away. Frey Miguel had goneon his knees to him, and kissed his hand, what time he had passionatelyurged him not to linger; and then Sebastian had done the same by thePrincess both weeping now. At last he was gone, and on the arm of DonaMaria de Grado the forlorn Anne staggered back to her cell to weep andpray.
In the days that followed she moved, pale and listless, oppressed by hersense of loss and desolation, a desolation which at last she sought tomitigate by writing to him to Valladolid, whither he had repaired. Ofall those letters only two survive.
"My king and lord," she wrote in one of these, "alas! How we suffer byabsence! I am so filled with the pain of it that if I did not seekthe relief of writing to your Majesty and thus spend some moments incommunion with you, there would be an end to me. What I feel to-day iswhat I feel every day when I recall the happy moments so deliciouslyspent, which are no more. This privation is for me so severe apunishment of heaven that I should call it unjust, for without cause Ifind myself deprived of the happiness missed by me for so many yearsand purchased at the price of suffering and tears. Ah, my lord,how willingly, nevertheless, would I not suffer all over again themisfortunes that have crushed me if thus I might spare your Majesty theleast of them. May He who rules the world grant my prayers and set aterm to so great an unhappiness, and to the intolerable torment Isuffer through being deprived of the presence of your Majesty. It wereimpossible for long to suffer so much pain and live.
"I belong to you, my lord; you know it already. The troth I plighted toyou I shall keep in life and in death, for death itself could nottear it from my soul, and this immortal soul will harbour it througheternity..."
Thus and much more in the same manner wrote the niece of King Philip ofSpain to Gabriel Espinosa, the pastry-cook, in his Valladolid retreat.How he filled his days we do not know, beyond the fact that he movedfreely abroad. For it was in the streets of that town that meddlesomeFate brought him face to face one day with Gregorio Gonzales, under whomEspinosa had been a scullion once in the service of the Count of Nyeba.
Gregorio hailed him, staring round-eyed; for although Espinosa'sgarments were not in their first freshness they were far from beingthose of a plebeian.
"In whose service may you be now?" quoth the intrigued Gregorio, so soonas greetings had passed between them.
Espinosa shook off his momentary embarrassment, and took the hand ofhis sometime comrade. "Times are changed, friend Gregorio. I am not inanybody's service, rather do I require servants myself."
"Why, what is your present situation?"
Loftily Espinosa put him off. "No matter for that," he answered, with adignity that forbade further questions. He gathered his cloak about himto proceed upon his way. "If there is anything you wish for I shall behappy, for old times' sake, to oblige you."
But Gregorio was by no means disposed to part from him. We do notreadily part from an old friend whom we rediscover in an unsuspectedstate of affluence. Espinosa must home with Gregorio. Gregorio's wifewould be charmed to renew his acquaintance, and to hear from his ownlips of his improved and prosperous state. Gregorio would take norefusal, and in the end Espinosa, yielding to his insistence, went withhim to the sordid quarter where Gregorio had his dwelling.
About an unclean table of pine, in a squalid room, sat thethree--Espinosa, Gregorio, and Gregorio's wife; but the latter displayednone of the signs of satisfaction at Espinosa's prosperity whichGregorio had promised. Perhaps Espinosa observed her evil envy, andit may have been to nourish it--which is the surest way to punishenvy--that he made Gregorio a magnificent offer of employment.
"Enter my service," said he, "and I will pay you fifty ducats down andfour ducats a month."
Obviously they were incredulous of his affluence. To convince them hedisplayed a gold watch--most rare possession--set with diamonds, a ringof price, and other costly jewels. The couple stared now with dazzledeyes.
"But didn't you tell me when we were in Madrid together that you hadbeen a pastry-cook at Ocana?" burst from Gregorio.
Espinosa smiled. "How many kings and princes have been compelled toconceal themselves under disguises?" he asked oracularly. And seeingthem stricken, he must play upon them further. Nothing, it seems, wassacred to him--not even the portrait of that lovely, desolate royal ladyin her convent at Madrigal. Forth he plucked it, and thrust it to themacross the stains of wine and oil that befouled their table.
"Look at this beautiful lady, the most beautiful in Spain," he badethem. "A prince could not have a lovelier bride."
"But she is dressed as a nun," the woman protested. "How, then, can shemarry?"
"For kings there are no laws," he told her with finality.
At last he departed, but bidding Gregorio to think of the offer hehad made him. He would come again for the cook's reply, leaving wordmeanwhile of where he was lodged.
They deemed him mad, and were disposed to be derisive. Yet the woman'sdisbelief was quickened into malevolence by the jealous fear thatwhat he had told them of himself might, after all, be true. Upon thatmalevolence she acted forthwith, lodging an information with Don Rodrigode Santillan, the Alcalde of Valladolid.
Very late that night Espinosa was roused from his sleep to find his roominvaded by alguaziles--the police of the Alcalde. He was arrested anddragged before Don Rodrigo to give an account of himself and of certainobjects of value found in his possession--more particularly of a ring,on the cameo of which was carved a portrait of King Philip.
"I am Gabriel de Espinosa," he answered firmly, "a pastry-cook ofMadrigal."
"Then how come you by these jewels?"
"They were given me by Dona Ana of Austria to sell for her account. Thatis the business that has brought me to Valladolid."
"Is this Dona Ana's portrait?"
"It is."
"And this lock of hair? Is that also Dona Ana's? And do you, then,pretend that these were also given you to sell?"
"Why else should they be given me?"
Don Rodrigo wondered. They were useless things to steal, and as for thelock of hair, where should the fellow find a buyer for that? The Alcaldeconned his man more closely, and noted that dignity of bearing, thatcalm assurance which usually is founded upon birth and worth. He senthim to wait in prison, what time he went to ransack the fellow's housein Madrigal.
Don Rodrigo was prompt in acting; yet even so his prisoner mysteriouslyfound means to send a warning that enabled Frey Miguel to forestall theAlcalde. Before Don Rodrigo's arrival, the friar had abstractedfrom Espinosa's house a box of papers which he reduced to ashes.Unfortunately Espinosa had been careless. Four letters not confidedto the box were discovered by the
alguaziles. Two of them were fromAnne--one of which supplies the extract I have given; the other two fromFrey Miguel himself.
Those letters startled Don Rodrigo de Santillan. He was a shrewdreasoner and well-informed. He knew how the justice of Castile was kepton the alert by the persistent plottings of the Portuguese Pretender,Don Antonio, sometime Prior of Crato. He was intimate with the pastlife of Frey Miguel, knew his self-sacrificing patriotism and passionatedevotion to the cause of Don Antonio, remembered the firm dignity ofhis prisoner, and leapt at a justifiable conclusion. The man in hishands--the man whom the Princess Anne addressed in such passionate termsby the title of Majesty--was the Prior of Crato. He conceived that hehad stumbled here upon something grave and dangerous. He ordered thearrest of Frey Miguel, and then proceeded to visit Dona Ana at theconvent. His methods were crafty, and depended upon the effect ofsurprise. He opened the interview by holding up before her one of theletters he had found, asking her if she acknowledged it for her own.
She stared a moment panic-stricken; then snatched it from his hands,tore it across, and would have torn again, but that he caught her wristsin a grip of iron to prevent her, with little regard in that moment forthe blood royal in her veins. King Philip was a stern master, pitilessto blunderers, and Don Rodrigo knew he never would be forgiven did hesuffer that precious letter to be destroyed.
Overpowered in body and in spirit, she surrendered the fragments andconfessed the letter her own.
"What is the real name of this man, who calls himself a pastry-cook, andto whom you write in such terms as these?" quoth the magistrate.
"He is Don Sebastian, King of Portugal." And to that declarationshe added briefly the story of his escape from Alcacer-el-Kebir andsubsequent penitential wanderings.
Don Rodrigo departed, not knowing what to think or believe, butconvinced that it was time he laid the whole matter before King Philip.His Catholic Majesty was deeply perturbed. He at once dispatched DonJuan de Llano, the Apostolic Commissary of the Holy Office to Madrigalto sift the matter, and ordered that Anne should be solitarily confinedin her cell, and her nuns-in-waiting and servants placed under arrest.
Espinosa, for greater security, was sent from Valladolid to the prisonof Medina del Campo. He was taken thither in a coach with an escort ofarquebusiers.
"Why convey a poor pastry-cook with so much honour?" he asked hisguards, half-mockingly.
Within the coach he was accompanied by a soldier named Cervatos, atravelled man, who fell into talk with him, and discovered that he spokeboth French and German fluently. But when Cervatos addressed him inPortuguese the prisoner seemed confused, and replied that although hehad been in Portugal, he could not speak the language.
Thereafter, throughout that winter, examinations of the three chiefprisoners--Espinosa, Frey Miguel, and the Princess Anne--succeeded oneanother with a wearisome monotony of results. The Apostolic Commissaryinterrogated the princess and Frey Miguel; Don Rodrigo conducted theexaminations of Espinosa. But nothing was elicited that took the matterforward or tended to dispel its mystery.
The princess replied with a candour that became more and moretinged with indignation under the persistent and at times insultinginterrogatories. She insisted that the prisoner was Don Sebastian, andwrote passionate letters to Espinosa, begging him for her honour's saketo proclaim himself what he really was, declaring to him that the timehad come to cast off all disguise.
Yet the prisoner, unmoved by these appeals, persisted that he wasGabriel de Espinosa, a pastry-cook. But the man's bearing, and theair of mystery cloaking him, seemed in themselves to belie thatasseveration. That he could not be the Prior of Crato, Don Rodrigo hadnow assured himself. He fenced skilfully under examination, ever evadingthe magistrate's practiced point when it sought to pin him, and he wasno less careful to say nothing that should incriminate either of theother two prisoners. He denied that he had ever given himself out to beDon Sebastian, though he admitted that Frey Miguel and the princess hadpersuaded themselves that he was that lost prince.
He pleaded ignorance when asked who were his parents, stating that hehad never known either of them--an answer this which would have fittedthe case of Don Sebastian, who was born after his father's death, andquitted in early infancy by his mother.
As for Frey Miguel, he stated boldly under examination the convictionthat Don Sebastian had survived the African expedition, and the beliefthat Espinosa might well be the missing monarch. He protested thathe had acted in good faith throughout, and without any thought ofdisloyalty to the King of Spain.
Late one night, after he had been some three months in prison, Espinosawas roused from sleep by an unexpected visit from the Alcalde. At oncehe would have risen and dressed.
"Nay," said Don Rodrigo, restraining him, "that is not necessary forwhat is intended."
It was a dark phrase which the prisoner, sitting up in bed with tousledhair, and blinking in the light of the torches, instantly interpretedinto a threat of torture. His face grew white.
"It is impossible," he protested. "The King cannot have ordered what yousuggest. His Majesty will take into account that I am a man of honour.He may require my death, but in an honourable manner, and not upon therack. And as for its being used to make me speak, I have nothing to addto what I have said already."
The stern, dark face of the Alcalde was overspread by a grim smile.
"I would have you remark that you fall into contradictions. Sometimesyou pretend to be of humble and lowly origin, and sometimes a person ofhonourable degree. To hear you at this moment one might suppose that tosubmit you to torture would be to outrage your dignity. What then..."
Don Rodrigo broke off suddenly to stare, then snatched a torch from thehand of his alguaziles and held it close to the face of the prisoner,who cowered now, knowing full well what it was the Alcalde had detected.In that strong light Don Rodrigo saw that the prisoner's hair and beardhad turned grey at the roots, and so received the last proof that he hadto do with the basest of impostures. The fellow had been using dyes,the supply of which had been cut short by his imprisonment. Don Rodrigodeparted well-satisfied with the results of that surprise visit.
Thereafter Espinosa immediately shaved himself. But it was too late, andeven so, before many weeks were past his hair had faded to its naturalgrey, and he presented the appearance of what in fact he was--a man ofsixty, or thereabouts.
Yet the torture to which he was presently submitted drew nothing fromhim that could explain all that yet remained obscure. It was from FreyMiguel, after a thousand prevarications and tergiversations, that thefull truth--known to himself alone--was extracted by the rack.
He confessed that, inspired by the love of country and the ardent desireto liberate Portugal from the Spanish yoke, he had never abandoned thehope of achieving this, and of placing Don Antonio, the Prior ofCrato, on the throne of his ancestors. He had devised a plan, primarilyinspired by the ardent nature of the Princess Anne and her impatience ofthe conventual life. It was while casting about for the chief instrumentthat he fortuitously met Espinosa in the streets of Madrigal. Espinosahad been a soldier, and had seen the world. During the war between Spainand Portugal he had served in the armies of King Philip, had befriendedFrey Miguel when the friar's convent was on the point of being invadedby soldiery, and had rescued him from the peril of it. Thus they hadbecome acquainted, and Frey Miguel had had an instance of the man'sresource and courage. Further, he was of the height of Don Sebastian andof the build to which the king might have grown in the years that weresped, and he presented other superficial resemblances to the late king.The colour of his hair and beard could be corrected; and he might bemade to play the part of the Hidden Prince for whose return Portugal waswaiting so passionately and confidently. There had been other impostorsaforetime, but they had lacked the endowments of Espinosa, and theirorigins could be traced without difficulty. In addition to these naturalendowments, Espinosa should be avouched by Frey Miguel than whom nobodyin the world was better qualified in such a matter--
and by the niece ofKing Philip, to whom he would be married when he raised his standard.It was arranged that the three should go to Paris so soon as thearrangements were complete, where the Pretender would be accredited bythe exiled friends of Don Antonio residing there--the Prior of Cratobeing a party to the plot. From France Frey Miguel would have worked inPortugal through his agents, and presently would have gone therehimself to stir up a national movement in favour of a pretender sofully accredited. Thus he had every hope of restoring Portugal to herindependence. Once this should have been accomplished, Don Antonio wouldappear in Lisbon, unmask the impostor, and himself assume the crown ofthe kingdom which had been forcibly and definitely wrenched from Spain.
That was the crafty plan which the priest had laid with a singleness ofaim and a detachment from minor considerations that never hesitatedto sacrifice the princess, together with the chief instrument of theintrigue. Was the liberation of a kingdom, the deliverance of a nationfrom servitude, the happiness of a whole people, to weigh in the balanceagainst the fates of a natural daughter of Don John of Austria and asoldier of fortune turned pastry-cook? Frey Miguel thought not, and hisplot might well have succeeded but for the base strain in Espinosa andthe man's overweening vanity, which had urged him to dazzle the Gonzalesat Valladolid. That vanity sustained him to the end, which he sufferedin October of 1595, a full year after his arrest. To the last he avoidedadmissions that should throw light upon his obscure identity and origin.
"If it were known who I am..." he would say, and there break off.
He was hanged, drawn and quartered, and he endured his fate with calmfortitude. Frey Miguel suffered in the same way with the like dignity,after having undergone degradation from his priestly dignity.
As for the unfortunate Princess Anne, crushed under a load of shame andhumiliation, she had gone to her punishment in the previous July. TheApostolic Commissary notified her of the sentence which King Philiphad confirmed. She was to be transferred to another convent, there toundergo a term of four years' solitary confinement in her cell, and tofast on bread and water every Friday. She was pronounced incapable ofever holding any office, and was to be treated on the expiry of her termas an ordinary nun, her civil list abolished, her title of Excellencyto be extinguished, together with all other honours and privilegesconferred upon her by King Philip.
The piteous letters of supplication that she addressed to the King, heruncle, still exist. But they left the cold, implacable Philip of Spainunmoved. Her only sin was that, yielding to the hunger of her starvedheart, and chafing under the ascetic life imposed upon her, she hadallowed herself to be fascinated by the prospect of becoming theprotectress of one whom she believed to be an unfortunate and romanticprince, and of exchanging her convent for a throne.
Her punishment--poor soul--endured for close upon forty years, but themost terrible part of it was not that which lay within the prescriptionof King Philip, but that which arose from her own broken and humiliatedspirit. She had been uplifted a moment by a glorious hope, to be castdown again into the blackest despair, to which a shame unspeakable and atortured pride were added.
Than hers, as I have said, there is in history no sadder story.