"I belong to you, my lord; you know it already. The troth I plighted to you I shall keep in life and in death, for death itself could not tear it from my soul, and this immortal soul will harbour it through eternity..."
Thus and much more in the same manner wrote the niece of King Philip of Spain to Gabriel Espinosa, the pastry-cook, in his Valladolid retreat. How he filled his days we do not know, beyond the fact that he moved freely abroad. For it was in the streets of that town that meddlesome Fate brought him face to face one day with Gregorio Gonzales, under whom Espinosa had been a scullion once in the service of the Count of Nyeba.
Gregorio hailed him, staring round-eyed; for although Espinosa's garments were not in their first freshness they were far from being those of a plebeian.
"In whose service may you be now?" quoth the intrigued Gregorio, so soon as greetings had passed between them.
Espinosa shook off his momentary embarrassment, and took the hand of his sometime comrade. "Times are changed, friend Gregorio. I am not in anybody's service, rather do I require servants myself."
"Why, what is your present situation?"
Loftily Espinosa put him off. "No matter for that," he answered, with a dignity that forbade further questions. He gathered his cloak about him to proceed upon his way. "If there is anything you wish for I shall be happy, for old times' sake, to oblige you."
But Gregorio was by no means disposed to part from him. We do not readily part from an old friend whom we rediscover in an unsuspected state of affluence. Espinosa must home with Gregorio. Gregorio's wife would be charmed to renew his acquaintance, and to hear from his own lips of his improved and prosperous state. Gregorio would take no refusal, and in the end Espinosa, yielding to his insistence, went with him to the sordid quarter where Gregorio had his dwelling.
About an unclean table of pine, in a squalid room, sat the three—Espinosa, Gregorio, and Gregorio's wife; but the latter displayed none of the signs of satisfaction at Espinosa's prosperity which Gregorio had promised. Perhaps Espinosa observed her evil envy, and it may have been to nourish it—which is the surest way to punish envy—that he made Gregorio a magnificent offer of employment.
"Enter my service," said he, "and I will pay you fifty ducats down and four ducats a month."
Obviously they were incredulous of his affluence. To convince them he displayed a gold watch—most rare possession—set with diamonds, a ring of price, and other costly jewels. The couple stared now with dazzled eyes.
"But didn't you tell me when we were in Madrid together that you had been a pastry-cook at Ocana?" burst from Gregorio.
Espinosa smiled. "How many kings and princes have been compelled to conceal themselves under disguises?" he asked oracularly. And seeing them stricken, he must play upon them further. Nothing, it seems, was sacred to him—not even the portrait of that lovely, desolate royal lady in her convent at Madrigal. Forth he plucked it, and thrust it to them across the stains of wine and oil that befouled their table.
"Look at this beautiful lady, the most beautiful in Spain," he bade them. "A prince could not have a lovelier bride."
"But she is dressed as a nun," the woman protested. "How, then, can she marry?"
"For kings there are no laws," he told her with finality.
At last he departed, but bidding Gregorio to think of the offer he had made him. He would come again for the cook's reply, leaving word meanwhile of where he was lodged.
They deemed him mad, and were disposed to be derisive. Yet the woman's disbelief was quickened into malevolence by the jealous fear that what he had told them of himself might, after all, be true. Upon that malevolence she acted forthwith, lodging an information with Don Rodrigo de Santillan, the Alcalde of Valladolid.
Very late that night Espinosa was roused from his sleep to find his room invaded by alguaziles—the police of the Alcalde. He was arrested and dragged before Don Rodrigo to give an account of himself and of certain objects of value found in his possession—more particularly of a ring, on the cameo of which was carved a portrait of King Philip.
"I am Gabriel de Espinosa," he answered firmly, "a pastry-cook of Madrigal."
"Then how come you by these jewels?"
"They were given me by Dona Ana of Austria to sell for her account. That is the business that has brought me to Valladolid."
"Is this Dona Ana's portrait?"
"It is."
"And this lock of hair? Is that also Dona Ana's? And do you, then, pretend that these were also given you to sell?"
"Why else should they be given me?"
Don Rodrigo wondered. They were useless things to steal, and as for the lock of hair, where should the fellow find a buyer for that? The Alcalde conned his man more closely, and noted that dignity of bearing, that calm assurance which usually is founded upon birth and worth. He sent him to wait in prison, what time he went to ransack the fellow's house in Madrigal.
Don Rodrigo was prompt in acting; yet even so his prisoner mysteriously found means to send a warning that enabled Frey Miguel to forestall the Alcalde. Before Don Rodrigo's arrival, the friar had abstracted from Espinosa's house a box of papers which he reduced to ashes. Unfortunately Espinosa had been careless. Four letters not confided to the box were discovered by the alguaziles. Two of them were from Anne—one of which supplies the extract I have given; the other two from Frey Miguel himself.
Those letters startled Don Rodrigo de Santillan. He was a shrewd reasoner and well-informed. He knew how the justice of Castile was kept on the alert by the persistent plottings of the Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, sometime Prior of Crato. He was intimate with the past life of Frey Miguel, knew his self-sacrificing patriotism and passionate devotion to the cause of Don Antonio, remembered the firm dignity of his prisoner, and leapt at a justifiable conclusion. The man in his hands—the man whom the Princess Anne addressed in such passionate terms by the title of Majesty—was the Prior of Crato. He conceived that he had stumbled here upon something grave and dangerous. He ordered the arrest of Frey Miguel, and then proceeded to visit Dona Ana at the convent. His methods were crafty, and depended upon the effect of surprise. He opened the interview by holding up before her one of the letters he had found, asking her if she acknowledged it for her own.
She stared a moment panic-stricken; then snatched it from his hands, tore it across, and would have torn again, but that he caught her wrists in a grip of iron to prevent her, with little regard in that moment for the blood royal in her veins. King Philip was a stern master, pitiless to blunderers, and Don Rodrigo knew he never would be forgiven did he suffer that precious letter to be destroyed.
Overpowered in body and in spirit, she surrendered the fragments and confessed the letter her own.
"What is the real name of this man, who calls himself a pastry-cook, and to whom you write in such terms as these?" quoth the magistrate.