Chapter V: Death for Arbues De Epila

The days went by; the days of that year, 1485: and still the hideous spectacles of the Auto da Fé continued to be witnessed with shame and anguish by the inhabitants of Saragossa. Still the cry of the tortured victims ascended up to heaven, and still Arbues de Epila lived in his case of mail.

Those were busy, agitating days for Spain. The war with Granada was still in progress. King Ferdinand was much exercised in mind with various jealousies connected with French affairs, and, more than all important for future ages, the Queen's confessor, Ferdinand di Talavera, together with a council of self-sufficient pedants and philosophers, was taking into consideration that request of the Genoese, Christopher Colon, or, as we call him, Columbus, to be provided with such an equipment of ships, men, and necessary stores, as should enable him to find and found countries hitherto unheard of, and only thought of, most people declared, by crack-brained dreamers.

"Besides," finally decided Talavera and his sage council, with pompous absurdity; "besides, if there were nothing else against this scheme, such as the convex figure of the globe, for instance, which, of course, would prevent vessels ever getting back again, up the side of the world, once they got down, there was the impudence of the suggestion. It was presumptuous in any person to pretend that he alone possessed knowledge superior to all the rest of the world united."

And such impertinent presumption was certainly not to be encouraged in an "obscure Genoese pilot." And so, for that while, after weary waiting, and the weary hope deferred that maketh the heart sick, Columbus and his splendid plans were dismissed. But this result was not arrived at until four years after the months with which we are, for the minute, more immediately concerned; and so to return to the thread of our narrative, and to add yet further--and still the men of Saragossa gathered into secret bands, discussing rather by tokens, than by words, the unspeakable cruelties that were being committed in their midst, and the proposed destruction of their arch-instigator, Arbues de Epila.

All was ripe at length for the fulfilment of the fatal plot; fatal, alas, not only to the Inquisitor, but to his murderers also, and to many and many another wholly innocent of the crime.

All day long Don Alonso, Don Miguel, Don James of Navarre, with the rest of the conspirators, many of them with the noblest blood of Aragon flowing in their veins, watched with a fierce, hungry eagerness for the moment in which to strike the blow. The hours wore on, the evening came. In low-breathed murmurs one and another rekindled their own fury, or revived the flagging courage of a companion, by recalling the generosity of character, the blameless life, of some friend or relative snatched out of life by this barbarous persecution.

Night fell over the city of Saragossa, and gradually the conspirators stealthily, silently drew round about the walls of the cathedral. It was approaching midnight. The fierce persecutor of his fellow-men was on his knees before the great altar of the cathedral, on his knees before Him who has said, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice."

Arbues knelt there in the flood of brightness from the lighted altar, and his enemies gathered up around him in the gloomy shadows of the surrounding darkness. Suddenly there was a muffled shout--a cry. He raised his head;--too late,--escape was impossible. Already the arm and hand were streaming with blood that had signed so many warrants for the torture and death of others. Then came the fatal blow.

A dagger shone, gleaming red with life-blood, in the light, from the back of the victim's neck, in the flesh of which its point was firmly embedded.

Who gave that final thrust none knew but the giver. Only Don Miguel, who stood by in the fierce crush and _melée_, heard the words hissed out as the deadly weapon was darted forth:

"So dies the fiend, Arbues de Epila!"

And he, too, cast a hasty glance beside him, as Montoro de Diego had done when those words were uttered behind his ear in the Auto da Fé crowd some weeks ago.

But Montoro de Diego had found no one at his elbow but an innocent, wide-eyed child; and Don Miguel only found a crowd of terrified, cringing priests, who with pallid faces and trembling limbs bore off the dying superior to his own apartments, where he lingered two days, blindly giving thanks to God that he had been accepted as a martyr in His cause!

"The enemy of our liberty, our honour, our security is dead," muttered Don Alonso in fierce triumph to Montoro de Diego, as he sought temporary shelter from the dangers of pursuit in his friend's palace. But Don Diego shook his head with prophetic sadness as he answered:

"May the Holy Virgin grant that you have not called down worse evils upon our unhappy city!"

All too soon his fears were realized. The Church was offended, and the sovereigns, at the assassination of the great Inquisitor, and terrible was the vengeance wreaked far and wide upon all who had been, or were supposed to have been, implicated in the impious deed. Hundreds upon hundreds of people died, by torture, in the dungeons, at the stake, by persecutions innumerable, and starvation; and the whole province of Aragon was still further cruelly humiliated in the persons of its nobles, who were condemned in crowds to do penance in the Autos da Fé.

Don Alonso and Don Miguel were hanged instead of burned, not in mercy, but in sign of greater infamy, and that they might feel themselves ground to the very dust by the intense degradation of their punishment. And Don Diego did not escape the general ruin of his friends.

The heat of the search for victims had somewhat abated, when the covetous desires of one of the members of the Inquisition turned upon the possessions of the wealthy nobleman.

A path to the coveted riches was soon found. Montoro de Diego's words were suddenly remembered that he uttered on the night of Don Philip's death--"If Don Philip die others will die with him." On these words he was condemned, first to lingering months in a loathsome dungeon, then to death; and his young wife was driven forth from the gates of Saragossa in widowed penury and despair. The second Montoro de Diego was born a beggar and fatherless, but he had the brave, upright spirit of his father in him for his portion; and with his fortunes our tale is, for the future, concerned.