CHAPTER XIII

Jeromín quickly recovered from his fever, and the happy, peaceful, regular life flowed on at Villagarcia as before the disturbing interlude of Yuste and Cuacos. Luis Quijada faithfully kept the Emperor's secret, according to Philip's commands, and the very existence of Jeromín, once more shut up behind the walls of Villagarcia, seemed completely forgotten.

But there is no accounting for the memory of an inquisitive woman, however discreet and prudent she may be, and if few outdid the Governess of Spain, Princess Juana, in virtue, prudence and discretion, few had more curiosity, or better means of gratifying it at their command.

As no one had found out from Luis Quijada who Jeromín really was, it occurred to her that she might obtain the information from Do?a Magdalena, and with this object in view she sent a missive to Villagarcia about the 15th of May, begging her to come to see the Auto and to bring the boy she had with her, in the disguise in which he lived.

The Auto to which the Princess Juana alluded was the celebrated Auto da Fe which took place in Valladolid on the 21st of May, 1559, at which Dr. Augustin Cazalla and thirty of his heretic disciples were condemned. This Lutheran conspiracy had been discovered many months before during the lifetime of the Emperor, who had urged and begged Do?a Juana and the Inspector-General D. Fernando de Valdés, Archbishop of Seville, to mete out prompt and severe punishment to the offenders.

There lived then in Valladolid, at No. 13 of the Street of the Silversmiths, a certain Juan García, a silversmith by trade. For some time his wife had noticed that he was absent-minded and irritable, and that he pretended to go to bed early and then went out again. Being a brave, decided woman, she disguised herself one night and followed him, supposing some intrigue. When Juan García reached the street now called after Dr. Cazalla, he at once knocked at the door of a house between what are now cavalry barracks and the old apothecary's shop in the Square of St. Michel. The door was opened with great caution, and the woman distinctly heard a password which seemed to be "Chinela," and Juan García answered "Cazalla," on which the door opened and he went in. The wife remained spellbound, and her astonishment grew as she noticed that, singly and by twos, men and women came from both ends of the street. The same ceremony took place, and they disappeared into the mysterious house, which was none other than that of Do?a Leonora de Vibero, mother of Dr. Cazalla. Being, as we have said, a resolute woman, on seeing a very devout woman (the Juana Sánchez who afterwards committed suicide in the prison of the Inquisition by cutting her throat with scissors) approaching, she followed secretly, gave the password, and entered behind Sánchez into a large, ill-lighted room, where she saw and heard Dr. Cazalla explain to more than seventy people the doctrines of the Lutherans which he had brought back from Germany. She understood at once that she was in a conventicle of heretics, and horrified, but not losing her presence of mind, she left quietly and the same morning informed her confessor of all that she had seen and heard. Whether he was infected with the same doctrines or did not much believe the woman, he only told her not to worry over the matter. However, the same day she warned the Grand Inquisitor himself, and put the threads of the plot into his hands. Following them with much prudence and precaution, he found the plot so widespread that when in prison Cazalla rightly said, "If they had waited four months to persecute us, we should have been as numerous as they are, if six months, we should have done for them as they have for us." The affair made a great stir throughout Spain, and it is calculated that 200,000 people flocked to Valladolid to be present at the Auto da Fe, which was to take place as the crowning act of the drama on Trinity Sunday, the 21st May, 1559.

Luis Quijada was party to all this, as he had been sent by the Emperor from Yuste to the Princess and the Inquisitor to urge the swift and severe punishment of the heretics. As a man of his time, a fervent Spanish Catholic and a politician educated in Germany, Quijada thought that only severe warnings would stop Protestantism from entering Spain, and with it the breaking up of the kingdom and probably the end of the monarchy. So it appeared to him a good lesson for Jeromín to go to the Auto da Fe, and he insisted that Do?a Magdalena should accept the invitation of the Princess and go to Valladolid with the child and his niece, Do?a Mariana de Ulloa, heiress of his brother, the Marqués de la Mota, who was at Villagarcia at that time.

So Do?a Magdalena set out with her niece and with the retainers suitable to such illustrious ladies, and arrived very early on the morning of the 20th of May, the day before the Auto. They lodged in the house of the Conde de Miranda, and to avoid tiresome visits and awkward questions, the prudent lady sent Jeromín out and about the streets all day to see the preparations for the ceremony with her squire Juan Galarza. Jeromín went off delighted, and certainly nothing was ever seen like the streets of Valladolid on that 20th day of May. So thronged were they with people that it was hardly possible for the familiars of the Holy Office, who ever since the morning had been making the usual proclamation, to force their way through the crowd. The familiars went on horseback, emblems of their office in their hands, preceded and followed by "alguaciles," and surrounded by criers who announced at the street corners the two usual proclamations, the first forbidding from that moment until the next day the use of arms defensive or offensive under the pain of excommunication and the confiscation of the said arms. Equally was prohibited by the second proclamation, from that time until one hour after the executions, the circulation of carriages, or litters, chairs, horses, or mules in the streets where the procession was to pass, or in the Plaza Mayor, where was the scaffold.

To prevent people entering the square there was a double row of guards. The finishing touches were being given to the enormous scaffold where the Auto was to be held, that is to say the reading of the evidence and the sentences, the only part of the function at which the Court and the more refined portion of the public were present. Away beyond the gates guards were also keeping a space on the Great, or Parade, Ground called the "Quemadero," or the place of burning. To execute the sentences fifteen small platforms were being made for an equal number of prisoners. These platforms were very small and rested on the faggots which were to make the fire, and above them rose a stake with its pillory, like a modern one. To this the prisoner was tied and killed before being burnt, as they were not burnt alive except in rare cases of blasphemy and impenitence. The whole way from the Campo Grande to the Plaza Mayor; and from there to the street of Pedro Barrueco, now called Bishop Street, where stood the prisons and houses of the Holy Office, there was not a corner or square without seats covered in black, for which the enormous prices of 12, 13, and even 15 reales were paid. In all the squares and at many of the cross roads pulpits also were erected, covered in black, where every order of friars preached each day to the enormous crowd which never ceased moving, all in mourning, all sad, very similar in appearance to the scene which used to be general, and still is common, in many places in Spain on Good Friday. The official mourning, the real compunction of some, and the affected piety of others covered the indifference of the many, and gave to the whole concourse an appearance of sadness, even of terror, well in keeping with the terrible scene which was to be enacted. At four o'clock the sermons ceased, and in the streets, windows and balconies the crowd grew greater. The traditional procession called "of the Green Cross" began to leave the chapel. First walked all the religious communities of Valladolid and its neighbourhood, the friars two by two, holding lighted wax torches. Then the commissaries, clerks and familiars of the Holy Office, then the high officers of the Tribunal, with the secretaries, mayor and attorney-general, all carrying lighted candles. Last of all this immense procession, a Dominican friar carried under a canopy of black velvet a great cross of green wood covered with crape. The choirs of the chapel intoned the hymn Vexilla regis prodeunt, which all the people answered, alternating the verses. At the street corners from time to time the voice of some friar was to be heard, imploring Heaven in vehement language to grant repentance to the prisoners, which the people answered with ejaculations, groans and prayers. It was rumoured that among the fifty condemned men only one, the Bachelor of Arts, Herreruelos, remained obstinate and impenitent.

The procession passed slowly and solemnly through the principal streets, and late at night found its way back to the Plaza Mayor, where the scaffold was now finished. Then was prepared an altar on which the Green Cross was solemnly placed with twelve lighted wax candles. Four Dominican monks and a company of halberdiers were to watch it all night.