Lion Triumphant

by Philippa Carr

  I owed it to the child to live. Nor did I wish to die. Once again I knew that I would cling to life no matter what it held for me.

  I was there when the fires were lighted. I saw that the authorities were merciful to some because they strangled them before committing their bodies to the flames. The unrepentent, those who declared they would cling to their beliefs, were not given that benefit; the flames were lighted under them while they still lived.

  I sat there and I remembered the fires of Smithfield and the day when my mother’s stepfather was taken away. I remembered that my grandfather had died by the ax for sheltering a priest and my mother’s stepfather had burned at the stake for following the Reformed Religion; and a fierce hatred was born in me for all abuse of religion, Catholic or Protestant.

  We must never have the Inquisition set up in England. I would tell them of this day when I reached home. We must fight against it with all our might.

  And as I sat there I felt a great desire to crush all intolerance, to fight all cruelty.

  I heard the cries of agony as the flames licked already mutilated mangled bodies.

  “Oh, God,” I prayed, “take me away from this. Take me home.”

  I lay on the bed in my darkened room. I had felt faint on the way home and found it difficult to sit my mule. As soon as I was in the house I went to my bedroom and lay on the bed.

  I could not get the sight of what I had seen out of my mind.

  Don Felipe came in and sat by the bed. He was in riding habit, so he had evidently just returned to the Hacienda. It was significant that he had come first to me.

  “You attended the auto-da-fé,” he said.

  “I hope never to witness such a spectacle again,” I cried. “And most of all I marvel that this is done in the name of Christ.”

  “I wished you to see for yourself, to realize the danger,” he said gently. “It was to warn you.”

  “Would you not be glad to see me among those poor creatures? It would be a new turn to your revenge.”

  “It does not come into my plan,” he said.

  I lay very still looking up at that ceiling carved with angels ascending to heaven and I said: “Don Felipe, I hate what I have seen today. I hate your country. I hate your cold and calculating cruelty. You believe yourself to be a religious man. You say your prayers with regularity. You thank God daily that you are not as other men. You have influence and riches and, chief of all, you have pride. Is this goodness, think you? Those men who were murdered today, do you think they are so much more sinful than you are?”

  “They are heretics,” he said.

  “They dared to think differently from you. They worship the same God but with a difference; therefore, they are condemned to the flames. Did not Jesus Christ tell you to love your neighbor and is this not your neighbor?”

  “You have seen today what happens to heretics. I ask you to take care.”

  “Because I am a heretic. Must I change my faith because I fear the cruelty of wicked men?”

  “Be silent. You are foolish. I have told you there may be those to overhear. What you have seen today is a warning. I want you to understand the danger in which you could be placed. You waste your sympathy on these heretics. They are doomed to burn for eternity in hell. What can twenty minutes on earth matter?”

  “They will not go to hell—those martyrs. It is the cruel men who have gloated on their misery who will go to eternal damnation.”

  “I have tried to save you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wish to see the child born.”

  “And when he is born he and I shall leave your hateful land. I shall go home. I long for that day.”

  “You are overwrought,” he said. “Rest awhile. I will send them up with a soothing draft for you.”

  When he had gone I lay there thinking of him; it was relief to stop brooding on that terrible scene; and I marveled at his tolerance toward me. I had said enough to condemn me to the questioning and the torture by the Inquisition; yet he was gentle with me. He had given me little Carlos … and when I thought of that child and the one not yet born I despised myself for giving vent to my feelings. I must be careful. I must preserve myself … for them. I must do nothing to imperil my position. I should be grateful to Don Felipe for showing me the danger into which I could so quickly fall.

  I listened to John Gregory. I could say the Credo. I could answer the questions he put to me. I was making progress.

  We talked a little now and then. He was a sad and haunted man and I was certain he regretted having taken part in that operation which had brought me here.

  One day after the instruction I said: “You would have a story to tell if you would but tell it.”

  “Aye,” he agreed.

  “You are sad sometimes, are you not?”

  He did not answer and I went on: “You, an Englishman, to sell yourself to Spanish masters!”

  “It came about in such a way that I could have done no other than I did.”

  And gradually he told me his story.

  “I was an English seaman,” he said. “I sailed under Captain Pennlyon.”

  “So you did know him?”

  “I was fearful when we came face to face that he would recognize me; and he did know me. I was terrified that he would realize who I was when he saw me in Devon.”

  “He said that he believed he had seen you before.”

  “Aye, he had, but in different garb. He knew me as an English seaman, a member of his crew. This I was and this doubtless I should have been to this day, but I was captured. We had come through a storm, great seas lashed about us. Nor should we have expected to live through it but for our Captain, Jake Pennlyon. To see him roaring up and down the deck, giving orders, promising those who disobeyed him that damnation in hell would be preferable to the punishment he would give them, was a grand sight to weary frightened sailors. There is a legend among sailors that the Pennlyons are invincible.”

  They were not wrecked, which seemed somehow due to the skill of Jake Pennlyon. They needed to limp into port though to refit and while they were there John Gregory with others of the crew set off in a pinnace to explore the seas to discover what manner of place they were laid up in.

  “We were boarded by a Spaniard,” said John Gregory, “and we were taken back to Spain.”

  “And there?”

  “Handed over to the Inquisition.”

  “There are scars on your cheek and wrists … on your neck … and there are doubtless others.”

  “There are. I have been tortured as I never thought to be. I have been condemned to the flames.”

  “You have come near to terrible death, John Gregory. What brought you back from it?”

  “They realized that they could make good use of me. I was an Englishman who had embraced their religion under duress. I asked that I might become a priest. They had tortured me, remember. I knew what it meant to die a horrible death. I recanted. And I was given my freedom. I could not understand why. They were rarely so lenient; and then I realized that I was to be used as a spy. I made several trips to England during the last Queen’s reign. And then I was put into service with Don Felipe and he sent me on this mission.”

  “Why did you not stay in England when you had the opportunity?”

  “I had become a Catholic and I feared what would happen to me if I ever fell into their hands again.”

  “What if you had been caught spying in England?”

  He raised his shoulders and lifted his eyes.

  I went on: “And Richard Rackell?”

  “He is an English Catholic working for Spain.”

  “And Don Felipe sent you over to help him complete his revenge. And you were willing to come!”

  “Not willing, but knowing no alternative. For the sake of your child you will forget your pride and your principles. So it is with the others. My life is precious to me. Remember that I suffered torture at the hands of the Inquisition. Because of that I changed my fait
h. I worked against my own countrymen to save my body from further torture and that I might go on living.”

  “The temptation was great,” I said.

  “I trust you will think a little less hardly of me.”

  “Suffice it that I understand your dilemma. It was your body to be saved from torture, your life from extinction.”

  He breathed freely.

  “I have wanted to tell you for so long and as we sat there on that afternoon in the plaza I determined that I would.”

  I nodded and he rested his chin on his hands and looked back … far into the past, I imagined, before he had entered the prison of the Spanish Inquisition, before he had come to England and abducted three innocent women; long before, when he was an innocent sailor under Captain Jake Pennlyon.

  I went to the Cathedral; I confessed my sins to the priest who was in residence at the Hacienda; I lit my candles to the saints and sprinkled myself with Holy Water.

  I would feign to do what was expected of me until my child was born.

  I longed for the day. I talked of little else. I yearned now for the long months of waiting to be over.

  Don Felipe now and then invited me to sup with him. I looked forward to these encounters. I knew that he was not as indifferent to me as he would have me believe, or why invite me to sup with him?

  I was now heavy with child. The summer months had passed and I expected my confinement to be in January. The midwife visited me regularly. It was on the orders of Don Felipe that she did so. She used to laugh and shake her head. “This child is to have everything of the best,” she said. “Don Felipe’s orders … none less.” She was proud of her English and liked to air it. “It was a different matter when that other poor infant came into the world.”

  She meant Carlos and I wondered what had happened when the poor mad Isabella was expecting her son. And it seemed ironical that the child of his wife should have been so ill received while mine was to be ushered into the world with everything to ease his coming.

  His pride again, I thought, for after all, this child is his.

  A new relationship had sprung up between us.

  He told me now and then what was happening at home, always with a biased flavor which I learned to ignore. Our suppers were an escape from the company of Honey and Jennet. Not that I sought to avoid that. Honey’s serenity, Jennet’s delight in her situation were a continual solace to me. Carlos had taken to them too. Jennet adored him. He was only second to her own Jacko; and indeed the two boys were growing more alike every day. It made me laugh for the very incongruity of it. Two sons of Jake Pennlyon were here with us and he did not know of their existence.

  Don Felipe clearly had an immense interest in England, and so it seemed had others in Spain, for it was through Spain and the visitors who called at the Hacienda from that land that he received his information.

  He was chagrined to admit that events had not turned out as he had prophesied. He had believed that the end of Elizabeth’s reign was in sight when the wife of Robert Dudley, the man on whom she had set her heart, was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. But Elizabeth had come through that affair with an unquestionable ease. There might have been rumors, but nothing was proved against her, and there was no marriage with Dudley.

  “She is cleverer than so many of us thought,” ruminated Don Felipe as we sat at the table together. “To have taken Dudley as her husband could only have been done at the cost of her crown and she knew it. She has made her decision clear. Dudley is not worth a crown.”

  “So you admire her cleverness?”

  “She has shown a certain wisdom in this matter,” he said.

  On another occasion he talked of the death of the young King of France, François Deux, which took place in December of the last year although it was only now that we heard of it.

  Don Felipe was excited by this news because of the effect it had on the Queen of Scotland.

  François had died of an imposthume of the ear; and his young Queen, Mary of Scotland, had found there was no place for her in France. So she must return to her kingdom of Scotland.

  “She will be less powerful now,” I said.

  He answered: “She will be more of a threat to the woman who calls herself Queen of England.”

  “I doubt our Queen cares overmuch for the people beyond the border.”

  “She will have supporters everywhere, not only in Scotland but in France; and I am of the opinion that there are many Catholic gentlemen in England who would rally to her standard if she were to travel south.”

  “So you wish for a civil war in my country?”

  He did not answer; there was no need.

  Life passed by smoothly; the days of my pregnancy were drawing to a close and I longed for my child to be born. I was shut into a little cocoon of contentment.

  The preparations for the birth were almost ceremonious. The midwife was already installed in the house when my labor began; I went to the bedroom—that room of many memories—and it was there that my child was born.

  I shall never forget the moment when he was laid in my arms. He was small … much smaller than Jacko had been, he had dark eyes and there was a down of dark hairs on his head.

  I thought as soon as I saw him: My little Spaniard!

  I delighted in him. I held him against me and I felt love overwhelm me, love such as I had never known for any other living being—except perhaps once for Carey. But there was no barrier between me and this child. He was my very own.

  And as I held him in my arms Don Felipe came into the room. He stood by the bed and momentarily I remembered his standing there with the candle in his hand when I had feigned to be asleep.

  I held the baby out for him to see and he looked at him in wonder and I saw the faintest color in his olive cheeks. Then his eyes met mine; they glowed with a luminosity I had never seen in them before.

  I thought: It is the fulfillment of revenge.

  Then he was looking at me; his gaze embraced us both and I was not sure what was in his thoughts.

  Don Felipe ordained that the child should be called Roberto. I said that for me he should be Robert; but somehow I was soon calling him Roberto. It suited him better.

  He was baptized in the chapel of the Hacienda with all the pomp that would have been given to the son of the house.

  During the first weeks after his birth I thought of nothing beyond his welfare. Remembering how Honey used to feel because she had come before me and was not my mother’s own, I wanted no such heartaches for little Carlos. I tried to make him interested in the child, and he was; he took a protective attitude toward him because he was mine and was gentle with him. We were a happy little nursery. Jennet was in her element with babies; the fact that hers and mine were illegitimate worried her not in the least.

  “Law bless us,” she said on one occasion, “they’m babies … little ’uns. That be good enough for the likes of I.”

  Don Felipe often came to the nursery to see the child. I had seen him, bending over the cradle, staring at him. I knew that it satisfied his pride to have such a son.

  One day I went into the escritorio and said to Don Felipe: “Your plan is complete. I have your child. Is it not time for you to keep to your promise? You have said we should go back to our homes.”

  “The child is too young to travel,” he said. “You must wait until he is a little older.”

  “How much older?” I asked.

  “Would you take a child of a few months on the high seas?”

  I hesitated. I thought of the storms and calms; I thought of the faces of sailors driven a little crazy by long days at sea. I said: “We should have gone before the child was born.”

  “Wait awhile,” he said. “Wait until he is older.”

  I went back to my room and brooded on what he had said. I laughed inwardly. He loves his son and does not want to lose him. Love! What does such a man know of love? He is proud of his son. Who would not be of Roberto? And he doesn’t want to lose him.


  We lacked nothing. Anything we wanted we had. The only condition that was asked of us was that we show ourselves to be good Catholics. That was easy for Honey and Jennet because they were. As for myself: I had my children, Roberto and Carlos, to think of, and children were more important to me than my faith. I was not of the stuff that martyrs were made.

  Don Felipe’s attitude changed toward me. He wished me to dine with him frequently. He would come into the garden where I sat with the children; and he even spoke now and then to Carlos, who began to lose his fear of him. But it was Roberto who enchanted him. There could be little doubt that the child was his. Already Roberto had a look of him. Strangely enough it did not repel me, only amuse me; and I loved Roberto nonetheless for that. In the same way I could see Jake Pennlyon clearly in Carlos and that somehow endeared the child to me.

  And the months began to slip away without incident. Roberto was six months old and the winter was almost upon us.

  I said to Don Felipe: “He is older now. We shall be going soon.”

  “Wait for the winter to pass,” said Don Felipe.

  And then the spring came and Roberto was one year old.

  The Wives of Don Felipe

  I HAD DINED WITH Don Felipe and we sat in the light of the candles and talked of Roberto: how he had a tooth, how he was crawling; how I was sure he had said: “Madre.”

  Then I lifted my eyes and looking at him intently, I said: “I often think of my home. What news is there of England?”

  “Nothing of interest. All I can think of is that the spire of St. Paul’s Cathedral was burned down and that although it was supposed it was struck by lightning a workman has now confessed—on his deathbed—that a pan of coals was carelessly left in a steeple.”

  It must have been a mighty conflagration. They would have seen it in the sky along the river. My grandmother would have come into her garden to watch; and perhaps my mother would be with her. They would remember perhaps the way the smoke used to drift along from Smithfield. And my mother would remember her two girls who were lost to her.