The mob looked on and murmured; but it was intimidated by the show of ordered force; it had perhaps tired a little of the whole affair, and did not see that it should shed its blood and lay up trouble for itself for the sake of one who, after all, was of no account in the affairs of Aragon. I stood upon the threshold of my ruin. All my activities were to go unrewarded. Doom awaited me. And then the unexpected happened. The alguazil of the Holy Office was in the very act of setting the gyves upon my legs when the first shot was fired, followed almost at once by a fusillade.
It was Gil de Mesa, faithfullest servant that ever any man possessed. He had raised an armed band, consisting of some Aragonese gentlemen and their servants, and with this he fell like a thunderbolt upon the Castilian men-at-arms and the familiars of the Inquisition. The Alguazil fled, leaving me one leg free, the other burdened by the gyve, and as he fled so fled all others, being thus taken unawares. The Inquisitors scuttled to the nearest shelter; the Viceroy threw himself into his house and barricaded the door. There was no one to guide, no one to direct. The soldiery in these circumstances, accounting themselves overpowered, offered no resistance. They, too, fled before the fusillade and the hail of shot that descended on them.
Before I realized what had happened, the iron had been struck from my leg, I was mounted on a horse, and, with Gil at my side, I was galloping out of Saragossa by the gate of Santa Engracia, and breasting the slopes with little cause to fear pursuit just yet, such was the disorder we had left behind.
And there, very briefly, you have the story of my sufferings and my escapes. Not entirely to be baulked, numerous arrests were made by the Inquisitors in Saragossa when order was at last restored. There followed an auto-da-fe, the most horrible and vindictive of all those horrors, in which many suffered for having displayed the weakness of charity towards a persecuted man. And, since my body was no longer in their clutches, they none the less sentenced me to death as contumaciously absent, and my effigy was burnt in the holy fires they lighted, amongst the human candles which they offered up for the greater honour and glory of a merciful God. Let me say no more, lest I blaspheme in earnest.
After months of wandering and hiding, Gil and I made our way here into Navarre, where we remain the guests of Protestant King Henri IV, who does not love King Philip any better since he has heard my story.
Still King Philip’s vengeance does not sleep. Twice has he sent after me his assassins — since assassination is the only weapon now remaining to him. But his poor tools have each time been taken, exposed to Philip’s greater infamy and shame — and hanged as they deserve who can so vilely serve so vile a master. It has even been sought to bribe my faithful Gil de Mesa into turning his hand against me, and that attempt, too, has been given the fullest publication. Meanwhile, my death to-day could no longer avail Philip very much. My memorial is published throughout Europe for all to read. It has been avidly read until Philip of Spain has earned the contempt of every upright man. In his own dominions the voice of execration has been raised against him. One of his own nobles has contemptuously announced that Spain under Philip has become unsafe for any gentleman, and that a betrayal of a subject by his king is without parallel in history.
That is some measure of vengeance. But if I am spared I shall not leave it there. Henry of Navarre is on the point of turning Catholic that his interests may be better served. Elizabeth of England remains. In her dominions, where thrives the righteous hatred of Philip and all the evil that he stands for, I shall find a welcome and a channel for the activities that are to show him that Antonio Perez lives. I have sent him word that when he is weary of the conflict he can signify his surrender by delivering from their prison my wife and children, upon whom he seeks still to visit some of the vengeance I have succeeded in eluding. When he does that, then will I hold my hand. But not before.
“That, madame, is my story,” said Don Antonio, after a pause, and from narrowing eyes looked at the beauty who had heard him through.
Daylight had faded whilst the tale was telling. Night was come, and lights had long since been fetched, the curtains drawn over the long windows that looked out across the parkland to the river.
Twice only had he paused in all that narrative. Once when he had described the avowal of his love for Anne, Princess of Eboli, when a burst of sobs from her had come to interrupt him; again when a curious bird-note had rung out upon the gathering dusk. Then he stopped to listen.
“Curious that,” he had said— “an eagle’s cry. I have not heard it these many months, not since I left the hills of Aragon.”
Thereafter he had continued to the end.
Considering her now, his glance inscrutable, he said:
“You weep, madame. Tell me, what is it that has moved you — the contemplation of my sufferings, or of your own duplicity?”
She started up, very white, her eyes scared.
“I do not understand you. What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should hire it at an assassin’s fee to serve the crapulous King of Spain.”
He rose and towered before her, a figure at once of anger, dignity, and some compassion.
“So much ardour from youth and beauty to age and infirmity was in itself suspicious. The Catholic King has the guile of Satan, I remembered. I wondered, and hoped my suspicions might be unfounded. Yet prudence made me test them, that the danger, if it existed, should manifest itself and be destroyed. So I came to tell you all my story, so that if you did the thing I feared, you might come to the knowledge of precisely what it was you did. I have learnt whilst here that what I suspected is — alas! quite true. You were a lure, a decoy sent to work my ruin, to draw me into a trap where daggers waited for me. Why did you do this? What was the bribe that could corrupt you, lovely lady?”
Sobs shook her. Her will gave way before his melancholy sternness.
“I do not know by what wizardry you have discovered it!” she cried. “It was true; but it is true no longer. I knew not what I did. By that window, across the meadows, you can reach the river in safety.” She rose, controlling her emotion that she might instruct him. “They wait for you in the enclosed garden.”
He smiled wistfully.
“They waited, madame. They wait no longer, unless it be for death. That eagle’s cry, thrice repeated, was the signal from my faithful Gil, not only that the trap was discovered, but that those who baited it were taken. Suspecting what I did, I took my measures ere I came. Antonio Perez, as I have told you, is not an easy man to murder. Unlike Philip, I do not make war on women, and I have no reckoning to present to you. But I am curious, madame, to know what led you to this baseness.”
“I — I thought you evil, and — and they bribed me. I was offered ten thousand ducats for your head. We are very poor, we Chantenacs, and so I fell. But, sir — sir” — she was on her knees to him now, and she had caught his hand in hers— “poor as I am, all that I have is yours to do with as you will, to help to avenge yourself upon that Spanish monster. Take what you will. Take all I have.”
His smile grew gentler. Gently he raised her.
“Madame,” he said, “I am myself a sinner, as I have shown you, a man unequal to resisting temptation when it took me in its trammels. Of all that you offer, I will take only the right to this kiss.”
And bending, he bore her hand to his lips.
Then he went out to join Gil and his men, who waited in the courtyard, guarding three prisoners they had taken.
Perez considered them by the light of the lantern that Gil held aloft for him.
“One of you,” he announced, “shall return to Castile and give tidings to Philip, his master, that Antonio Perez leaves for England and the Court of Elizabeth, to aid her, by his knowledge of the affairs of Spain, in her measures against the Catholic King, and to continue his holy work, which is to make the name of Philip II stink in the nostrils of all honest men. One of
you I will spare for that purpose. You shall draw lots for it in the morning. The other two must hang.”
IV. THE NIGHT OF CHARITY — The Case Of The Lady Alice Lisle
Of all the cases tried in the course of that terrible circuit, justly known as the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at all in the popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle. Her advanced age, the fact that she was the first woman known in English history to have suffered death for no worse an offence than that of having exercised the feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further fact that, even so, this offence — technical as it was — was never fully proved against her, are all circumstances which have left their indelible stamp of horror upon the public mind. There is also the further circumstance that hers was the first case tried in the West by that terrible Chief Justice, Baron Jeffreys of Wem.
But the feature that renders her case peculiarly interesting to the historical psychologist — and it is a feature that is in danger of being overlooked — is that she cannot really be said to have suffered for the technical offence for which she took her trial. That was the pretext rather than the cause. In reality she was the innocent victim of a relentless, undiscerning Nemesis.
The battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost by the Protestant champion, James, Duke of Monmouth. In the West, which had answered the Duke’s summons to revolt, there was established now a horrible reign of terror reflecting the bigoted, pitiless, vindictive nature of the King. Faversham had left Colonel Percy Kirke in command at Bridgwater, a ruthless ruffian, who at one time had commanded the Tangier garrison, and whose men were full worthy of their commander. Kirke’s Lambs they were called, in an irony provoked by the emblem of the Paschal Lamb on the flag of this, the First Tangier Regiment, originally levied to wage war upon the infidel.
From Bridgwater Colonel Kirke made a horrible punitive progress to Taunton, where he put up at the White Hart Inn. Now, there was a very solid signpost standing upon a triangular patch of green before the door of the White Hart, and Colonel Kirke conceived the quite facetious notion of converting this advertisement of hospitality into a gallows — a signpost of temporal welfare into a signpost of eternity. So forth he fetched the prisoners he had brought in chains from Bridgwater, and proceeded, without any form of trial whatsoever, to string them up before the inn. The story runs that as they were hoisted to that improvised gibbet, Kirke and his officers, standing at the windows, raised their glasses to pledge their happy deliverance; then, when the victims began to kick convulsively, Kirke would order the drums to strike up, so that the gentlemen might have music for their better dancing.
The colonel, you see, was a humorist, as humour was then understood upon the northern shores of Africa, where he had been schooled.
When, eventually, Colonel Kirke was recalled and reprimanded, it was not because of his barbarities many of which transcend the possibilities of decent print — but because of a lenity which this venal gentleman began to display when he discovered that many of his victims were willing to pay handsomely for mercy.
Meanwhile, under his reign of terror, men who had cause to fear the terrible hand of the King’s vengeance went into hiding wherever they could. Among those who escaped into Hampshire, thinking themselves safer in a county that had not participated in the war, were a dissenting parson named George Hicks, who had been in Monmouth’s army, and a lawyer named Richard Nelthorp, outlawed for participation in the Rye House Plot. In his desperate quest for shelter, Hicks bethought him of the charitable Nonconformist lady of Moyle’s Court, the widow of that John Lisle who had been one of Cromwell’s Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, and most active in bringing King Charles I to justice.
John Lisle had fled to Switzerland at the Restoration; but Stuart vengeance had followed him, set a price upon his head, and procured his murder at Lausanne. That was twenty years ago. Since then his lady, because she was known to have befriended and sheltered many Royalists, and because she had some stout Tory friends to plead for her, was allowed to remain in tranquil possession of her estates. And there the Lady Alice Lisle — so called by courtesy, since Cromwell’s titles did not at law survive the Restoration — might have ended her days in peace, but that it was written that those who hated her — innocent and aged though she was — for the name she bore, who included her in the rancour which had procured her husband’s assassination, were to be fully satisfied. And the instrument of fate was this parson Hicks. He prevailed upon Dunne, a baker of Warminster, and a Nonconformist, to convey to the Lady Lisle his prayer for shelter. With that message Dunne set out on July 25th for Ellingham, a journey of some twenty miles. He went by way of Fovant and Chalk to Salisbury Plain. But as he did not know the way thence, he sought out a co-religionist named Barter, who undertook, for a consideration, to go with him and direct him.
Together the pair came in the late afternoon of that Saturday to the handsome house of Moyle’s Court, and to my lady’s steward, who received them. Dunne, who appears to have been silly and imprudent, states that he is sent to know if my lady will entertain a minister named Hicks.
Carpenter, the steward, a staid, elderly fellow, took fright at once. Although he may not have associated an absconding Presbyterian parson with the late rebellion, he must have supposed at least that he was one of those against whom there were warrants for preaching in forbidden private meetings. So to her ladyship above stairs Carpenter conveyed a warning with the message.
But that slight, frail, homely lady of seventy, with kindly eyes of a faded blue, smiled upon his fears. She had sheltered fugitives before — in the old days of the Commonwealth — and nothing but good had ever come of it. She would see this messenger.
With misgivings, Carpenter haled Dunne into her presence, and left them alone together. The impression conveyed by Dunne was that Hicks was in hiding from the warrants that were out against all Nonconformist preachers. But when he mentioned that Hicks had a companion, she desired to know his name.
“I do not know, my lady. But I do not think he has been in the army, either.”
She considered a while. But in the end pity conquered doubt in her sweetly charitable soul.
“Very well,” she said, “I will give them entertainment for a week. Bring them on Tuesday after dark, and come by the back way through the orchard, that they may not be seen.”
And upon this she rose, and took up an ebony cane, herself to reconduct him and to see to his entertainment before he left. Not until they came to the kitchen did she realize that he had a companion. At sight of Barter, who rose respectfully when she entered, she checked, turned to Dunne, and whispered something, to which his answer provoked from her a laugh.
Now Barter, intrigued by this whispering and laughing, of which he deemed himself the object, questioned Dunne upon it as they rode forth again together.
“She asked me if you knew aught of the business,” replied Dunne; “and I answered ‘No.”’
“Business, say’st thou?” quoth Barter. “What business?”
“Sure, the business on which we came,” Dunne evaded; and he laughed.
It was an answer that left Barter uneasy. Nor was his mind set at rest by the parting words with which Dunne accompanied the half-crown for his services.
“This is but an earnest of what’s to come if you will meet me here on Tuesday to show me the way to Moyle’s Court again. I shall be bringing two gentlemen with me — wealthy men, of a half-score thousand pounds a year apiece. I tell you there will be a fine booty for my part, so fine that I shall never want for money again all the days of my life. And, so that you meet us here, you too may count upon a handsome reward.”
Consenting, Barter went his ways home. But as he pondered Dunne’s silly speech, and marvelled that honest men should pay so disproportionately for an honest service, he came to the reasonable conclusion that he had to do with rebels. This made him so uneasy that he resolved at last to lodge information with the nearest justice.
Now, it happened, by the
irony of Fate, that the justice sought by Barter was one Colonel Penruddock — the vindictive son of that Penruddock whom the late John Lisle — whilst Lord President of the High Court — had sentenced to death some thirty years ago for participation in an unsuccessful Wiltshire rising against the Commonwealth.
The colonel, a lean, stark man of forty-five, heard with interest Barter’s story.
“Art an honest fellow!” he commended him. “What are the names of these rogues?”
“The fellow named no names, sir.”
“Well, well, we shall discover that for ourselves when we come to take them at this trysting-place. Whither do you say you are to conduct them?”
“To Moyle’s Court, sir, where my Lady Lisle is to give them entertainment.”
The colonel stared a moment; then a heavy smile came to light the saturnine face under the heavy periwig. Beyond that he gave no sign of what was passing in his mind.
“You may go,” he said slowly, at last. “Be sure we shall be at the tryst to take these rascals.”
But the colonel did not keep his promise. To Barter’s surprise, there were no soldiers at the tryst on Salisbury Plain on the following Tuesday; and he was suffered to lead Dunne and the two men with him the short, corpulent Mr. Hicks and the long, lean Nelthorp — to Moyle’s Court without interference.
The rich reward that Dunne had promised him amounted in actual fact to five shillings, that he had from Nelthorpe at parting. Puzzled by Colonel Penruddock’s failure to do his part, Barter went off at once to the colonel’s house to inform him that the pair were now at Lady Lisle’s.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 668