The Story of Don John of Austria by Luis Coloma (e books for reading txt) 📖

concerns the person Y.M. knows that I have in my care, so public here, that I am frightened, and still more so by the particulars I hear. I am alarmed lest the Very Serene Princess should press me to tell her what I know, which I am not at liberty to do. I have decided to be silent and not to answer more than I did the first time, as I told Y.M. from Yuste. H.H. is so gracious that up to now she has said no word to me; so I shall answer no one who asks more than that I am ignorant of what people say; but I am also aware that the Very Serene Princess almost certainly knows the truth, from what I hear. But H.M.'s wish, as you know, was that it should be kept secret until your coming, and that afterwards what Y.M. commands should be done. I have made no more demonstration than in the Emperor's lifetime; but I am very careful that he should learn and be taught the things necessary for his age and his rank, since it is very important that every pains should be taken with him because of the way in which he was brought up before he came under my charge. So I thought that I had better advise Y.M. of what was happening and of the Emperor's intentions, so that Y.M. should understand and say what your wishes are. Also he has had, these ten days, a very severe double tertian fever; but blessed be God! when I came yesterday from my house, it had left him and he was out of danger."

D. Philip was grateful for this loyalty in Quijada, and answered with his own hand that the secret should be strictly kept, as the deceased Emperor had wished, until he himself arrived in Spain, which would be very shortly; but Quijada was not to be alarmed by the rumours as the fact was already public in Flanders. To the will that the Emperor had made in Brussels was added a sealed note with this superscription in his own writing: "No one is to open this writing but the Prince my son, and failing him, my grandson D. Carlos; and failing him, he or she who should be my heir according to my will, when it is opened."

Inside the envelope was the following declaration, signed by the Emperor and sealed with his private seal:

"Besides what is contained in my will, I say and declare, that while I was in Germany, after I was widowed, I had by an unmarried woman, a natural son called Jeromín, and my intention has been and is, for various reasons which lead me to this decision, that he shall be well guided, that of his free and spontaneous will he shall take the habit in some community of reformed friars if he inclines to it without any urging or force whatever. But if he cannot be thus guided and would rather follow the secular life, it is my wish and command that he should be given an income in the usual way each year of from 20,000 to 30,000 ducats from the Kingdom of Naples, apportioning to him places and vassals with the said income. All this, the appointing of the aforesaid and the amount of the income aforesaid shall be as the Prince, my son, thinks best, to whom I commend it; and failing him, as it appears best to my grandson, the Infante D. Carlos, or to the other person who, according to this my will, should be my heir at the time it is opened. And if the said Jeromín is not then already placed in the state I desire, he shall enjoy the said income and places all the days of his life, and after him his heirs and legitimate successors and descendants, and whatever calling the said Jeromín shall embrace, I charge the said Prince, my son, and my grandson and whoever should be my heir, as I have said, when this my will is opened, that they shall honour it and cause it to be honoured, and pay him the respect that is seemly, and that they shall cause to be kept, fulfilled and executed all that is contained in this writing. The which I sign with my name and hand, and close and seal it with my little private seal, and it is to be kept and put into effect as a clause of my aforesaid will. Done in Brussels the 6th of June, 1564. Son or grandson, or whoever at the time that this my will and writing is opened, and according to it is my heir, if you do not know where Jeromín is, you may learn it from Adrian, a groom of my chamber, or, in case of his death, from Oger, the porter of my chamber, in order that you may act towards him according to the above."

To this very important declaration was added a duplicate of the writing signed by Francisco de Massy and Ana de Medina, which had served Carlo Prevost to reclaim Jeromín at Leganés four years before.

CHAPTER XIII

Jeromín quickly recovered from his fever, and the happy, peaceful, regular life flowed on at Villagarcia as before the disturbing interlude of Yuste and Cuacos. Luis Quijada faithfully kept the Emperor's secret, according to Philip's commands, and the very existence of Jeromín, once more shut up behind the walls of Villagarcia, seemed completely forgotten.

But there is no accounting for the memory of an inquisitive woman, however discreet and prudent she may be, and if few outdid the Governess of Spain, Princess Juana, in virtue, prudence and discretion, few had more curiosity, or better means of gratifying it at their command.

As no one had found out from Luis Quijada who Jeromín really was, it occurred to her that she might obtain the information from Doña Magdalena, and with this object in view she sent a missive to Villagarcia about the 15th of May, begging her to come to see the Auto and to bring the boy she had with her, in the disguise in which he lived.

The Auto to which the Princess Juana alluded was the celebrated Auto da Fe which took place in Valladolid on the 21st of May, 1559, at which Dr. Augustin Cazalla and thirty of his heretic disciples were condemned. This Lutheran conspiracy had been discovered many months before during the lifetime of the Emperor, who had urged and begged Doña Juana and the Inspector-General D. Fernando de Valdés, Archbishop of Seville, to mete out prompt and severe punishment to the offenders.

There lived then in Valladolid, at No. 13 of the Street of the Silversmiths, a certain Juan García, a silversmith by trade. For some time his wife had noticed that he was absent-minded and irritable, and that he pretended to go to bed early and then went out again. Being a brave, decided woman, she disguised herself one night and followed him, supposing some intrigue. When Juan García reached the street now called after Dr. Cazalla, he at once knocked at the door of a house between what are now cavalry barracks and the old apothecary's shop in the Square of St. Michel. The door was opened with great caution, and the woman distinctly heard a password which seemed to be "Chinela," and Juan García answered "Cazalla," on which the door opened and he went in. The wife remained spellbound, and her astonishment grew as she noticed that, singly and by twos, men and women came from both ends of the street. The same ceremony took place, and they disappeared into the mysterious house, which was none other than that of Doña Leonora de Vibero, mother of Dr. Cazalla. Being, as we have said, a resolute woman, on seeing a very devout woman (the Juana Sánchez who afterwards committed suicide in the prison of the Inquisition by cutting her throat with scissors) approaching, she followed secretly, gave the password, and entered behind Sánchez into a large, ill-lighted room, where she saw and heard Dr. Cazalla explain to more than seventy people the doctrines of the Lutherans which he had brought back from Germany. She understood at once that she was in a conventicle of heretics, and horrified, but not losing her presence of mind, she left quietly and the same morning informed her confessor of all that she had seen and heard. Whether he was infected with the same doctrines or did not much believe the woman, he only told her not to worry over the matter. However, the same day she warned the Grand Inquisitor himself, and put the threads of the plot into his hands. Following them with much prudence and precaution, he found the plot so widespread that when in prison Cazalla rightly said, "If they had waited four months to persecute us, we should have been as numerous as they are, if six months, we should have done for them as they have for us." The affair made a great stir throughout Spain, and it is calculated that 200,000 people flocked to Valladolid to be present at the Auto da Fe, which was to take place as the crowning act of the drama on Trinity Sunday, the 21st May, 1559.

Luis Quijada was party to all this, as he had been sent by the Emperor from Yuste to the Princess and the Inquisitor to urge the swift and severe punishment of the heretics. As a man of his time, a fervent Spanish Catholic and a politician educated in Germany, Quijada thought that only severe warnings would stop Protestantism from entering Spain, and with it the breaking up of the kingdom and probably the end of the monarchy. So it appeared to him a good lesson for Jeromín to go to the Auto da Fe, and he insisted that Doña Magdalena should accept the invitation of the Princess and go to Valladolid with the child and his niece, Doña Mariana de Ulloa, heiress of his brother, the Marqués de la Mota, who was at Villagarcia at that time.

So Doña Magdalena set out with her niece and with the retainers suitable to such illustrious ladies, and arrived very early on the morning of the 20th of May, the day before the Auto. They lodged in the house of the Conde de Miranda, and to avoid tiresome visits and awkward questions, the prudent lady sent Jeromín out and about the streets all day to see the preparations for the ceremony with her squire Juan Galarza. Jeromín went off delighted, and certainly nothing was ever seen like the streets of Valladolid on that 20th day of May. So thronged were they with people that it was hardly possible for the familiars of the Holy Office, who ever since the morning had been making the usual proclamation, to force their way through the crowd. The familiars went on horseback, emblems of their office in their hands, preceded and followed by "alguaciles," and surrounded by criers who announced at the street corners the two usual proclamations, the first forbidding from that moment until the next day the use of arms defensive or offensive under the pain of excommunication and the confiscation of the said arms. Equally was prohibited by the second proclamation, from that time until one hour after the executions, the circulation of carriages, or litters, chairs, horses, or mules in the streets where the procession was to pass, or in the Plaza Mayor, where was the scaffold.

To prevent people entering the square there was a double row of guards. The finishing touches were being given to the enormous scaffold where the Auto was to be held, that is to say the reading of the evidence and the sentences, the only part of the function at which the Court and the more refined portion of the public were present. Away beyond the gates guards were also keeping a space on the Great, or Parade, Ground called the "Quemadero," or the place of burning. To execute the sentences fifteen small platforms were being made for an equal number of prisoners. These platforms were very small and rested on the faggots which were to make the fire, and above them rose a stake with its pillory, like a modern one. To this the prisoner was tied and killed before being burnt, as they were not burnt alive except in rare cases of blasphemy and impenitence. The whole way from the Campo Grande to the Plaza Mayor; and from there to the street of Pedro Barrueco, now called Bishop Street, where stood the prisons and houses of the Holy Office, there was not a corner or square without seats covered in black, for which the enormous prices of 12, 13, and even 15 reales were paid. In all the squares and at many of the cross roads pulpits also were erected, covered in black, where every order of friars preached each day to the enormous crowd which never ceased moving, all in mourning, all sad, very similar in appearance to the scene