The Spanish Brothers: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

by Deborah Alcock

  XLVII.

  The Dominican Prior.

  "Oh, deep is a wounded heart, and strong A voice that cries against mighty wrong! And full of death as a hot wind's blight. Doth the ire of a crushed affection light."--Hemans.

  "Tell the prior Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya desires tospeak with him, and that instantly," said Juan to the drowsy lay brotherwho at last answered his impatient summons, lantern in hand.

  "My lord has but just retired to rest, and cannot now be disturbed,"answered the attendant, looking with some curiosity, not to saysurprise, at the visitor, who seemed to think three o'clock of a wintermorning a proper and suitable hour to demand instant audience of a greatman.

  "I will wait," said Juan, walking into the court.

  The attendant led him to a parlour; then, holding the door ajar, hesaid, "Let his Excellency pardon me, I did not hear distinctly hisworship's honourable name."

  "Don Juan Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya. The prior knows it--toowell."

  It was evident from his face that the poor lay brother knew it also.And so that night did every man, woman, and child in Seville. It hadbecome a name of infamy.

  With a hasty "Yes, yes, senor," the door was closed, and Juan was leftalone.

  What had brought him there? Did he mean to accuse the Dominican of hisbrother's murder, or did he only intend to reproach him--him who hadonce shown some pity to the captive--for not saving him from thathorrible doom? He himself scarcely knew. He had been driven thither bya wild, unreasoning impulse, an instinct of passionate rage, promptinghim to grasp at the only shadow of revenge that lay within his reach. Ifhe could not execute God's awful judgments against the persecutors, atleast he could denounce them. A poor substitute, but all that remainedto him. Without it his heart must break.

  Yet that unreasoning impulse had a kind of unconscious reason in it,since it led him to seek the presence of the Dominican prior, and notthat of the far more guilty Munebraga. For who would accuse a tiger,reproach a wolf? Words would be wasted upon such. For them there is noargument but the spear and the bullet. A man can only speak to men.

  To do Fray Ricardo justice, he was so much of a man that sleep did notvisit his eyes that night. When at length his attendants thought fit toinform him that Don Juan desired to see him, he was still kneeling, ashe had knelt for hours, before the crucifix in his private oratory."Saviour of the world, so much didst thou suffer," this was the key-noteof his thoughts; "and shall I weakly pity thine enemies, or shrink fromseeing them suffer what they have deserved at thy hands and those of thyholy Church?"

  "Alvarez de Santillanos y Menaya waits below!" Just then Don FrayRicardo would rather have held his right hand in the fire than have goneforth to face one bearing that name. But, for that very reason, nosooner did he hear that Don Juan awaited him than he robed himself inhis cowl and mantle, took a lamp in his hand (for it was still dark),and went down to meet the visitor. For that morning he was in the moodto welcome any form of self-torture that came in his way, and to find astrange but real relief in it.

  "Peace be with thee, my son," was his grave but courteous salutation, ashe entered the parlour. He looked upon Juan with mournful compassion,as the last of a race over which there hung a terrible doom.

  "Let your peace be with murderers like yourselves, or with slaves likethose that work your will; I fling it back to you in scorn," was thefierce reply.

  The Dominican recoiled a step--only a step, for he was a brave man, andhis face, pale with conflict and watching, grew a shade paler.

  "Do you think I mean to harm you?" cried Juan in yet fiercer scorn."Not a hair of your tonsured head. See there!" He unbuckled his sword,and threw it from him, and it fell with a clang on the floor.

  "Young man, you would consult your own safety as well as your own honourby adopting a different tone," said the prior, not without dignity.

  "My safety is little worth consulting. I am a bold, rough soldier, usedto peril and violence. Would it were such, and such alone, that youmenaced. But, fiends that you are, would no one serve you for a victimsave my young, gentle, unoffending brother; he who never harmed you norany one? Would nothing satisfy your malice but to immure him in yourhideous dungeons for two-and-thirty long slow months, in what sufferingof mind and body God alone can tell; and then, at last, to bring himforth to that horrible death? I curse you! I curse you! Nay, that isnothing; who am I to curse? I invoke God's curse upon you! I give youup into God's hands this hour! When He maketh inquisition forblood--another inquisition than yours--I pray him to exact from you,murderers of the innocent, torturers of the just, every drop of blood,every tear, every pang of which he has been the witness, as he shall bethe avenger."

  At last the prior found a voice. Hitherto he had listened spell-bound,as one oppressed by nightmare, powerless to free himself from thehideous burden. "Man!" he cried, "you are raving; the Holy Office--"

  "Is the arch-fiend's own contrivance, and its ministers his favouriteservants," interrupted Juan, reckless in his rage, and defying allconsequences.

  "Blasphemy! This may not be borne," and Fray Ricardo stretched out hishand towards a bell that lay on the table.

  But Juan's strong grasp prevented his touching it. He could not shakeoff that as easily as he had shaken off a pale thin hand two daysbefore. "I shall speak forth my mind this once," he said. "After that,what you please.--Go on. Fill your cup full to the brim. Immure,plunder, burn, destroy. Pile up, high as heaven, your hecatomb ofvictims, offered to the God of love. At least there is one thing thatmay be said in your favour. In your cruelties there is a horribleimpartiality. It can never be spoken of you that you have gone out intothe highways and hedges, taken the blind and the lame, and made of themyour burnt sacrifice. No. You go into the closest guarded homes; youtake thence the gentlest, the tenderest, the fairest, the best, and ofsuch you make your burnt-offering. And you--are your hearts human, orare they not? If they are, stifle them, crush them down into silencewhile you can; for a day will come when you can stifle them no longer.That will begin your punishment. You will feel remorse."

  "Man, let me go!" interrupted the indignant yet half-frightened prior,struggling vainly to free himself from his grasp. "Cease yourblasphemies. Men only feel remorse when they have sinned; and I serveGod and the Church."

  "Yet, servant of the Church (for God's servant I am not profane enoughto call you), speak to me this once as man to man, and tell me, did avictim's pale face never haunt you, a victim's agonized cry never ringin your ears?"

  For just an instant the prior winced, as one who feels a sharp suddenpain, but determines to conceal it.

  "There!" cried Juan--and at last he released his arm and flung it fromhim--"I read an answer in your look. You, at least, are capable ofremorse."

  "You are false there," the prior broke in. "Remorse is not for me."

  "No? Then all the worse for you--infinitely the worse. Yet it may be.You may sleep and rise, and go to your rest again untroubled by anaccusing conscience. You may sit down to eat and drink with the wail ofyour brother's anguish ringing in your ears, like Munebraga, who sitsfeasting yonder in his marble hall, with the ashes yet hot on theQuemadero. Until you go down quick into hell, and the pit shuts hermouth upon you. Then, THEN shall you drink of the wine of the wrath ofGod, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of hisindignation; and you shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in thepresence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb."

  "Thou art beside thyself," cried the prior; "and I, scarce less mad thanthou, to listen to thy ravings. Yet hear me a moment, Don Juan Alvarez.I have not merited these insane reproaches. To you and yours I havebeen more a friend than you wot of."

  "Noble friendship! I thank you for it, as it deserves."

  "You have given me, this hour, more than cause enough to order yourinstant arrest."

  "You are welcome. It were shame
indeed if I could not bear at yourhands what my gentle brother bore."

  The last of his race! The father dead in prison; the mother dead longago (Fray Ricardo himself best knew why); the brother burned to ashes."I think you have a wife, perhaps a child?" asked the prior hurriedly.

  "A young wife, and an infant son," said Juan, softening a little at thethought.

  "Wild as your words have been, I am yet willing, for their sakes, toshow you forbearance. According to the lenity which ministers of theHoly Office--"

  "Have learned from their father the devil," interrupted Juan, the flameof his wrath blazing up again. "After what the stars looked down onlast night, dare to mock me with thy talk of lenity!"

  "You are in love with destruction," said the prior. "But I have heardyou long enough. Now hear me. You have been, ere this, under gravesuspicion. Indeed, you would have been arrested, only that your brotherendured the Question without revealing anything to your disadvantage.That saved you."

  But here he stopped, struck with astonishment at the sudden change hiswords had wrought.

  A man stabbed to the heart makes no outcry, he does not even moan orwrithe. Nor did Juan. Mutely he sank on the nearest seat, all his rageand defiance gone now. A moment before he stood over the shrinkingInquisitor like a prophet of doom or an avenging angel; now he coweredcrushed and silent, stricken to the soul. There was a long silence.Then he raised a changed, sad look to the prior's face. "He bore _that_for me," he said, "and I never knew it."

  In the cold gray morning light, now filling the room, he looked utterlyforlorn and broken. The prior could even afford to pity him. Hequestioned, mildly enough, "How was it you did not know it? FraySebastian Gomez, who visited him in prison, was well aware of the fact."

  In Juan's present mood every faculty was stimulated to unnaturalactivity. This perhaps enabled him to divine a truth which in calmermoments might have escaped him. "My brother," he said, in a low tone ofdeep emotion, "my heroic, tender-hearted brother must have bidden himconceal it from me."

  "It was strange," said the prior, and his thoughts ran back to otherthings which were strange also--to the uniform patience and gentlenessof Carlos; to the fortitude with which, whilst acknowledging his ownfaith, he had steadily refused to compromise any one else; to theself-forgetfulness with which he had shielded his father's last hoursfrom disturbance. Granted that the heretic was a wild beast, "made tobe taken and destroyed," even the hunter may admire unblamed the graceand beauty of the creature who has just fallen beneath his relentlessweapon. Something like a mist rose to the eyes of Fray Ricardo, takinghim by surprise.

  Still, the interests of the Faith were paramount with him. All that hadbeen done had been well done; he would not, if he could, undo any partof it. But did his duty to the Faith and to Holy Church require that heshould hunt the remaining brother to death, and thus "quench the coalthat was left"? He hoped not; he thought not. And, although he wouldnot have allowed it to himself, the words that followed were really apeace-offering to the shade of Carlos.

  "Young man, I am willing, for my own part, to overlook the wild wordsyou have uttered, regarding them as the outpourings of insanity, andmaking moreover due allowance for your natural fraternal sorrow. Stillyou must be aware that you have laid yourself open, and not for thefirst time, to grave suspicion of heresy. I should not only sin againstmy own conscience, but also expose myself to the penalties of a grievousirregularity, did I take no steps for the vindication of the Faith andyour just and well-merited punishment. Therefore give ear to what Isay. _This day week_ I bring the matter before the Table of the HolyOffice, of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member. And Godgrant you the grace of repentance, and his forgiveness."

  Having said this, Fray Ricardo left the room. He disappears also fromour pages, where he occupied a place as a type of the less numerous andless guilty class of persecutors--those who not only thought they weredoing God service (Munebraga may have thought that, but he was onlywilling to do God such service as cost him nothing), but who werehonestly anxious to serve him to the best of their ability. His futureis hidden from our sight. We cannot even undertake to say whether, whendeath drew near,--if the name of Alvarez de Menaya occurred to him atall,--he reproached himself for his sternness to the brother whom he hadconsigned to the flames, or for his weakness to the brother to whom hehad generously given a chance of life and liberty.

  It is not usually the most guilty who hear the warning voice thatdenounces their crimes and threatens their doom. Such words as Don Juanspoke to Fray Ricardo could not, by any conceivable possibility, havebeen uttered in the presence of Gonzales de Munebraga.

  Soon afterwards a lay brother, the same who had admitted Don Juan,entered the room and placed wine on the table before him. "My lord theprior bade me say your Excellency seemed exhausted, and should refreshyourself ere you depart," he explained.

  Juan motioned it away. He could not trust himself to speak. But didFray Ricardo imagine he would either eat bread or drink water beneaththe roof that sheltered _him_?

  Still the poor man lingered, standing before him with the air of one whohad something to say which he did not exactly know how to bring out.

  "You may tell your lord that I am going," said Juan, rising wearily, andwith a look that certainly told of exhaustion.

  "If it please your noble Excellency--" and the lay brother stopped andhesitated.

  "Well?"

  "Let his Excellency pardon me. Could his worship have the misfortune tobe related, very distantly no doubt, to one of the heretics who--"

  "Don Carlos Alvarez was my brother," said Juan proudly.

  The poor lay brother drew nearer to him, and lowered his voice to amysterious whisper. "Senor and your Excellency, he was here in prisonfor a long time. It was thought that my lord the prior had a kindnessfor him, and wished him better used than they use the criminals in theSanta Casa. It happened that the prisoner whose cell he shared died theday before his--_removal_. So that the cell was empty, and it fell tomy lot to cleanse it. Whilst I was doing it I found this; I think itbelonged to him."

  He drew from beneath his serge gown a little book, and handed it toJuan, who seized it as a starving man might seize a piece of bread.Hastily taking out his purse, he flung it in exchange to the laybrother; and then, just as the matin bells began to ring, he buckled onhis sword and went forth.