she, if he were twenty times my son or even her own, she would not raise a finger to save him. Nor, I told her, would I ; but my Philip I knew was as devout and faithful as we were, and was no heretic. My earnestness convinced her almost, in spite of her judgment, that the officers of the Inquisition must have made a mistake, and she consented to give me recommendations to her son, the Duke of Feria, in Madrid, to Secretary Vasquez, and, above all, to Cardinal Quiroga, the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, and one of King Philip's chief advisers. It was a sad and hurried meeting and parting, and Jane would have had me stay at Zafra for a time; but I would trust no other hands than mine with my son's safety, and started without an hour's delay on my long, long journey to Madrid, in better comfort now, for the Duchess had provided for me a litter and mules. But slow, ah! so slow it seemed to me, for I was burning with impatience, and every hour seemed a day to me. Over the parched plain at last at evening I saw again the Alcazar on its cliff, and the red tiles of Madrid; and I thanked God, for I knew that here, if anywhere, I could beg the life of my son. My cousin, the Duke, was kindly and sympathetic, but he was a soldier, a fine gentleman, and a courtier, and was loath to interfere in matters of faith. All he could do was to send his chaplain, a Dominican, with me, so that I might get easy access to Cardinal Quiroga. The King and Court were at the Escorial, for it was early summer-only a year ago, though it seems an age to me-and thither early next morning I wended my way. It was nearly midnight when I arrived, but I could not sleep, and sat rocking myself to and fro before the inn fire all night, counting the minutes as they dragged along. At last the day came, and I went up to the monastery to see the Cardinal. Armed with my cousin's letter, and aided by the Duke's chaplain, I had no difficulty in seeing him whilst he took his breakfast after early mass. He was rosy and plump, and laughed a good deal; God knows why, for I was well-nigh distraught, and can hardly have been a subject for merriment, but he said he did not see how he could interfere with the Council of the Office in Portugal. There could be no mistake, he said; my son must have become a heretic, in which case he had better remain where he was. The man was cruel and heartless for all his smiles; and my entreaties were powerless to move him. Secretary Vasquez looked hard and sour, but was much kinder. He of himself, he said, could do nothing, but would speak to the King, and perhaps His Majesty himself might see me. Ah! if I could only see King Philip, I thought, all would be well, for he would recollect me in the old days, and my son was called Philip too. All the long day I remained on my knees praying in the church before the high altar, and once or twice methought a little wicket high up in the wall opened, and I felt keen eyes watching me. As I rose at last to go, and tottered towards the door, for I was fainting with hunger and fatigue, a priest came and told me to follow him. Up many granite stairs and through many passages we went; and at length he left me alone in an ante-room. Presently Secretary Vasquez came from an inner door and led me forward into the small room from which he had emerged. It was nearly filled with papers, stacked up on every side; and at a table, with his back to the window, sat a figure in black velvet, which I knew to be that of the King, though I could hardly see his face, for he was bending over his writing. I knelt, though he did not see me for a time; but, when he looked up, his sad, wan face lit up with a sweet smile of recognition as he raised me kindly, whilst I kissed his hand. "Tut! Tut! my daughter," said he, "what trouble is this of yours I hear?" And then I told him how the accursed English had killed my husband and eldest son, and how the younger had gone to fight in the Armada, and was now by some dire mistake in prison as a heretic. The smile faded, and the lines in his face deepened as he heard the story. "There is little mistake, I fear, my daughter. The poisonfangs strike where least expected, as I well know to my sorrow: but heresy must be rooted out, let who will suffer. This is a matter of faith in which I cannot interfere." The words struck my heart like death, and I was blindly groping to the door to go out in my misery, when an usher entered, and I stood aside, grasping the panelling whilst I tried to conquer the deadly faintness that was creeping over me. A moment afterwards, as it seemed to me, I heard a voice I knew well, and I saw kneeling before the King my countryman, Father Persons, chief of the English Jesuit College of Valladolid, under whom my Philip for a time had studied. In another moment I was on my knees by the side of him, frantically imploring the King to hear him bear witness that my boy was no heretic. Good Father Persons calmed and soothed me, and, in reply to the King's question, said he would answer for my Philip's faithfulness with his life. What balm to my heart was this! I could not refrain from weeping for very joy; and, as the King bade me rise again, he told me he would see what he could do to help me. Then, with a word to Vasquez, he motioned me to retire. The next day Father Persons told me that my boy was to be brought to Madrid and re-tried before the General Council, and that, in the meanwhile, he would approach the members and influence them in his favour. All was bright and happy for me now, and the world seemed young again. Hope came that all would yet be well, and for the next few weeks I was busy in my Madrid lodging getting ready for my boy's return-for I knew he was no heretic and would be absolved. A hundred times I arranged and rearranged the little room I had prepared for him; a hundred times I smoothed and laid out in readiness the new garments I had bought for him. At last the happiest news of all came-Philip had been brought to Madrid, and at the King's instance was not to be tried again, but to be handed over to my care, nominally a prisoner still, and to be rearrested if he showed signs of heresy; whilst I was bound solemnly by oath to report to the Holy Office any relapse from the faith. Ah! the happiness of it. What cared I for such conditions? My boy would never relapse into heresy, that I well knew, and was content to have him on any terms. And then I waited, waited for days which seemed like years for my boy to come, and at last they brought him to me gaunt and in rags, nearly blind with the unaccustomed sunlight, but, oh! so beautiful he seemed to me then. How I kissed him and wept over him, my lost one who had suffered so much! I would not let him speak; but at last he held me at arm's-length and gazed upon me. "Mother," he said, always speaking in English, "how you have changed! Mother, I must know-how come you here? What does it all mean? It must be a dream." I thought his mind was wandering, and told him how I had sold the old home and come to Madrid to live. "Sold the old hall!" he said in amazement. "And what about my father?" But now I felt sure that his suffering had turned his brain for a time, and I would suffer him to speak no more until he had slept. For many hours he slept like a tired child, and, as I peeped in upon him again and again, I thought he looked just as he did years ago, only he was so much taller and thinner than when he went away. At length, when he awoke, a barber was sent to him, and by-andby he came down trimmed, bathed, and clothed in the smart new slashed doublet and trunks I had bought him, looking almost bonny again. I had a good meal spread for him, and pressed him to partake of it. "No, mother," he said, "I will not touch bit nor drop until I know why you are here, and how you knew I was in the hands of these accursed Spanish Papists-for I refused my name so as not to grieve you at my miserable fate." "Spanish Papists!" I echoed in horror, shutting the door that none might hear; "you did well not to give your name if you so defame your country and your faith, miserable, misguided boy. Say you are mad, for God's sake! but do not tell me you are a heretic; for no Sarmiento ever was that yet." "I suppose I must be mad," he replied. "What means this of Sarmiento? They would insist upon calling me Sarmiento for weeks past in prison, but I know not what they meant. And you, mother, to talk as if you were a Papist too! What strange thing is this? What would my father say? For though your house were long ago Papist, as I have heard, the Sendyes ever were true Protestants, as I am, and have suffered for their faith." Even as he spoke the scales fell from my eyes, and I felt as if my brain was on fire. This man was not my son at all, but my twinsister Millicent's son, Philip Sendye. And as he gazed upon me his blue eyes opened wider and aghast as if a phantom stood before him. "Ah, good God!" he gasped, "you cannot be my mother, after all-you must be my Aunt Mercy who lives in Spain." "Cheat impostor!" I cried as I cast myself in fury upon him, "what have you done with my Philip? Have you murdered him as you murdered the rest?" But he kindly and calmly held me off whilst the tears gathered in his eyes. "Alas! I know nothing," he said, "of all this. I have murdered no one; but was captured by Spanish ships last year on a voyage to Barbary, and have been held a prisoner ever since. "Have pity apon me," he continued, "in this strange, cruel land; for my mother's sake send me back to her." As he spoke he looked so much like my own boy that all my anger against him went out of my heart, and I almost loved him again; but at the same time there arose a black jealousy of my sister Millicent that she should have a son whilst mine were taken from me. But I soothed the poor fellow and cared for him, and tried to school my rebellious heart to the Divine decree. But every now and again during the next few days a great gust of hatred of him passed over my being because he was not my Philip, to be followed by a wave of tenderness because he was so much like him. I think even I could have grown to love him but for one thing. He was for ever thinking of plans for leaving me and going to his own mother. What had Millicent done so much better than I that she should have a son Philip, whilst mine perhaps was in his grave, or at the bottom of the cruel sea? And then sometimes I would think that my own Philip might even now be on his way home to me. Perhaps some kind souls in England had succoured him ; and this thought made me gentle to my nephew, and I swore to myself that if my boy came back to me I would send Millicent's Philip to her again at any risk, heretic though he was. One day, when my nephew had been with me for a week, a messenger came with a letter for me. I did not know the handwriting, but my heart was bursting as I cut the ribbon, for I knew instinctively that it would tell me the fate of my son. It was from Don Pedro Valdez, from his home at Gijon; and as I patiently spelt it through without excitement or apparent emotion, I felt gradually turned to stone, except only my brain, which seemed on fire. It told me that after Don Pedro had been basely deserted, disabled as he was, by the rest of the Armada, and was engaged alone with all the English fleet, to which he was about to surrender, my boy, with others, was swept off the deck by some falling wreckage. He fell into the water, and for safety swam to an English boat not far off to beg for quarter, and to surrender himself. He grasped the gunwale of the boat with both hands, and cried for quarter in English. Then a fiend in the boat shouted, with a brutal oath, "This is one of the English traitors," and, seizing a hatchet, he struck off my poor boy's two hands at the wrists, and, with a piteous cry, Philip's fair curly head sank into the crimson water to rise no more. No complaint fell from me. I shed no tears. I could not pray; and to Philip's frequent inquiry what ailed me I replied not a word. But at the hour of vespers I crept out of the house like a reptile to the palace of the Holy Office, and reported that my prisoner was a blasphemer and a heretic of the deepest dye. That night, when Philip was sleeping, the masked familiars came and took him away; and two days afterwards I was summoned to give my evidence against him. I swore falsely that he had scoffed and mocked at holy things and ridiculed the mass. In answer to it all he would say no word to the Inquisitors; but stood gazing upon them with his clear blue eyes, whilst his lips moved in prayer in English. It was hardly audible, but I caught the words, "Save my mother, and forgive those who unjustly persecute me." And, as I turned to go, an officer standing by him raised the butt of his pike and struck him on the mouth, to silence, as he said, the vile language of the heretics. But I was all unmoved and as cold as ice, for I had always before C |