The Spanish Brothers: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

by Deborah Alcock

  XXXIX.

  Left Behind.

  "They are all gone into a world of light. And I alone am lingering here."--Henry Vaughan.

  The change of seasons brought little change to those dark cells in theTriana, where neither the glory of summer nor the breath of spring couldcome. While the world, with its living interests, its hopes and fears,its joys and sorrows, kept surging round them, not even an echo of itsmany voices reached the doomed ones within, who lay so near, yet so farfrom all, "fast bound in misery and iron."

  Not yet had the Deliverer come to Carlos. More than once he had seemedvery near. During the summer heats, so terrible in that prison, feverhad wasted the captive's already enfeebled frame; but this was the meansof prolonging his life, for the eve of the Auto found him unable to walkacross his cell. Still he heard without very keen sorrow the fate of hisbeloved friends, so soon did he hope to follow them.

  And yet, month after month, life lingered on. In his circumstancesrestoration to health was simply impossible. Not that he endured morethan others, or even as much as some. He was not loaded with fetters,or buried in one of the frightful subterranean cells where daylightnever entered. Still, when to the many physical sufferings his positionentailed was added the weight of sickness, weakness, and utterloneliness, they formed together a burden heavy enough to have crushedeven a strong heart to despair.

  Long ago the last gleam of human sympathy and kindness had faded fromhim. Maria Gonsalez was herself a prisoner, receiving such payment asmen had to give her for her brave deeds of charity. God's payment,however, was yet to come, and would be of another sort. Herrera, theunder-gaoler, was humane, but very timid; moreover, his duties seldomled him to that part of the prison where Carlos lay. So that he wasleft dependent upon the tender mercies of Caspar Benevidio, which wereindeed cruel.

  And yet, in spite of all, he was not crushed, not despairing. The lampof patient endurance burned on steadily, because it was continually fedwith oil by an unseen Hand.

  It has been beautifully said, "The personal love of Christ to you, felt,delighted in, returned, is actually, truly, simply, withoutexaggeration, the deepest joy and the deepest feeling that the heart ofman or woman can know. It will absolutely satisfy your heart. It wouldsatisfy your heart if it were his will that you should spend the rest ofyour life alone in a dungeon."

  Just this, nothing else, nothing less, sustained Carlos throughout thoselong slow months of suffering, which had now come to "add themselves andmake the years." It proved sufficient for him. It has provedsufficient for thousands--God's unknown saints and martyrs, whose nameswe shall learn first in heaven.

  Those who still occasionally sought access to him, in the hope oftransforming the obstinate heretic into a penitent, marvelled greatly atthe cheerful calm with which he was wont to receive them and to answertheir arguments.

  Sometimes he would even brave all the wrath of Benevidio, and raisinghis voice as loud as he could, he would make the gloomy vaults re-echoto such words as these: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whomshall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I beafraid?" Or these: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is noneupon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth;but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."

  But still it was not in Christ's promise, nor was it to be expected,that his prisoner should never know hours of sorrow, weariness, andheart-sinking. Such hours came sometimes. And on the very morning whenDon Juan and Dona Beatriz were going forth together into the springsunshine through the castle gate of Nuera, Carlos, in his dungeon, waspassing through one of the darkest of these. He lay on his mat, hisface covered with his wasted hands, through which tears were slowlyfalling. It was but very seldom that he wept now; tears had grown rareand scarce with him.

  The evening before, he had received a visit from two Jesuits, bound onthe only errand which would have procured their admission there.Irritated by his bold and ready answers to the usual arguments, they hadrecourse to declamation. And one of them bethought himself ofmentioning the fate of the Lutherans who suffered at the two great Autosof Valladolid. "Most of the heretics," said the Jesuit, "though whenthey were in prison they were as obstinate as thou art now, yet hadtheir eyes opened in the end to the error of their ways, and acceptedreconciliation at the stake. At the last great Act of Faith, held inthe presence of King Philip, only Don Carlos de Seso--" Here hestopped, surprised at the agitation of the prisoner, who had heard theirthreatenings against himself so calmly.

  "De Seso! De Seso! Have they murdered him too!" moaned Carlos, and fora few brief moments he gave way to natural emotion. But quicklyrecovering himself, he said, "I shall only see him the sooner."

  "Were you acquainted with him?" asked the Jesuit.

  "I loved and honoured him. My avowing that cannot hurt him now,"answered Carlos, who had grown used to the bitter thought that any namewould be disgraced, and its owner imperilled, by his mentioning it withaffection.

  "But if you will do me so much kindness," he added, "I pray you to tellme anything you know of his last hours. Any word he spoke."

  "He could speak nothing," said the younger of his two visitors. "Beforehe left the prison he had uttered so many horrible blasphemies againstHoly Church and Our Lady that he was obliged to wear the gag during thewhole ceremony, 'lest he should offend the little ones.'"[#]

  [#] A genuine Inquisitorial expression.

  This last cruel wrong--the refusal of leave to the dying to speak oneword in defence of the truths he died for--stung Carlos to the quick.It wrung from lips so patient hitherto words of indignant threatening."God will judge your cruelty," he said. "Go on, fill up the measure ofyour guilt, for your time is short. One day, and that soon, there willbe a grand spectacle, grander than your Autos. Then shall you,torturers of God's saints, call upon the mountains and rocks to coveryou, and to hide you from the wrath of the Lamb."

  Once more alone, his passionate anger died away. And it was well.Surrounded as he was on every side by strong, cold, relentless wrong andcruelty, if his spirit had beaten its wings against those bars of iron,it would soon have fallen to the ground faint and helpless, with crushedpinions. It was not in such vain strivings that he could find, or keep,the deep calm peace with which his heart was filled; it was in the quietplace at his Saviour's feet, from whence, if he looked at his enemies atall, it was only to pity and forgive them.

  But though anger was gone, a heavy burden of sorrow remained. De Seso'snoble form, shrouded in the hideous zamarra, his head crowned with thecarroza, his face disfigured by the gag,--these were ever before hiseyes. He well-nigh forgot that all this was over now--that for him theconflict was ended and the triumph begun.

  Could he have known even as much as we know now of the close of thatheroic life, it might have comforted him.

  Don Carlos de Seso met his doom at the second of the two great Autoscelebrated at Valladolid during the year 1559. At the first, the moststeadfast sufferers were Francisco de Vibero Cazalla, one of a family ofconfessors; and Antonio Herezuelo, whose pathetic story--the mostthrilling episode of Spanish martyrology--would need an abler pen thanours.

  During his lingering imprisonment of a year and a half, De Seso nevervaried in his own clear testimony to the truth, never compromised any ofhis brethren. Informed at last that he was to die the next day, herequested writing materials. These being furnished him, he placed onrecord a confession of his faith, which Llorente, the historian of theInquisition, thus describes:--"It would be difficult to convey an ideaof the uncommon vigour of sentiment with which he filled two sheets ofpaper, though he was then in the presence of death. He handed what hehad written to the Alguazil, with these words: 'This is the true faithof the gospel, as opposed to that of the Church of Rome, which has beencorrupted for ages. In this faith I wish to die, and in the remembranceand lively belief of the passion of Jesus Christ, to of
fer to God mybody, now reduced so low.'"

  All that night and the next morning were spent by the friars in vainendeavours to induce him to recant. During the Auto, though he couldnot speak, his countenance showed the steadfastness of his soul--asteadfastness which even the sight of his beloved wife amongst thosecondemned to perpetual imprisonment failed to disturb. When at last, ashe was bound to the stake, the gag was removed, he said to those whostood around him, still urging him to yield, "I could show you that youruin yourselves by not following my example; but there is no time.Executioners, light the fire that is to consume me."

  Even in the act of death it was given him, though unconsciously, tostrengthen the faith of another. In the martyr band was a poor man,Juan Sanchez, who had been a servant of the Cazallas, and wasapprehended in Flanders with Juan de Leon. He had borne himself bravelythroughout; but when the fire was kindled, the ropes that bound him tothe stake having given way, the instinct of self-preservation made himrush from the flames, and, not knowing what he did, spring upon thescaffold where those who yielded at the last were wont to receiveabsolution. The attendant monks at once surrounded him, offering himthe alternative of the milder death. Recovering self-possession, helooked around him. At one side knelt the penitents, at the other,motionless amidst the flames, De Seso stood,

  "As standing in his own high hall."

  His choice was made. "I will die like De Seso," he said calmly; andthen walked deliberately back to the stake, where he met his doom withjoy.

  Another brave sufferer at this Auto, Don Domingo de Roxas, ventured tomake appeal to the justice of the King, only to receive the memorablereply, never to be read without a shudder,--"I would carry wood to burnmy son, if he were such a wretch as thou!"

  All these circumstances Carlos never heard on this side of the grave.But in the quiet Sabbath-keeping that remaineth for the people of God,there will surely be leisure enough to talk over past trials andtriumphs. At present, however, he only saw the dark side--only knew thebare and bitter facts of suffering and death. He had not merely lovedDe Seso as his instructor; he had admired him with the generousenthusiasm of a young man for a senior in whom he recognizes hisideal--all that he himself would fain become. If the Spains had butknown the day of their visitation, he doubted not that man would havebeen their leader in the path of reform. But they knew it not; and so,instead, the chariot of fire had come for him. For him, and for nearlyall the men and women whose hands Carlos had been wont to clasp inloving brotherhood. Losada, D'Arellano, Ponce de Leon, Dona Isabella deBaena, Dona Maria de Bohorques,--all these honoured names, and manymore, did he repeat, adding after each one of them, "At rest withChrist." Somewhere in the depths of those dreary dungeons it might bethat the heroic Juliano, his father in the faith, was lingering still;and also Fray Constantino, and the young monk of San Isodro, FrayFernando. But the prison walls sundered them quite as hopelessly fromhim as the River of Death itself.

  Earlier ties sometimes seemed to him only like things he had read ordreamed of. During his fever, indeed, old familiar faces had oftenflitted round him. Dolores sat beside him, laying her hand on hisburning brow; Fray Sebastian taught him disjointed, meaninglessfragments from the schoolmen; Juan himself either spoke cheerful wordsof hope and trust, or else talked idly of long-forgotten trifles.

  But all this was over now: neither dream nor fancy came to break hisutter, terrible loneliness. He knew that he was never to see Juanagain, nor Dolores, nor even Fray Sebastian. The world was dead to him,and he to it. And as for his brethren in the faith, they had gone "tothe light beyond the clouds, and the rest beyond the storms," where hewould so gladly be. Why, then, was he left so long, like one standingwithout in the cold? Why did not the golden gate open for him as wellas for them? What was he doing in this place?--what _could_ he do forhis Master's cause or his Master's honour? He did not murmur. By thistime his Saviour's prayer, "Not my will, but thine be done," had beenwrought into the texture of his being with the scarlet, purple, andgolden threads of pain, of patience, and of faith. But it is well forHis tried ones that He knows longing is not murmuring. Very full oflonging were the words--words rather of pleading than of prayer--thatrose continually from the lips of Carlos that day,--"And now, Lord,_what wait I for?_"