In some ways this whole matter seemed so strange to the blacksmith that he wanted to know more about it. Therefore he got up very early in the morning and went to his compadre's house: meaning to ask him what was the occasion of this journey that had to be taken in such a hurry, and who those strange blacks were who so cruelly had beaten his meritorious mule. But when he was come to the house he had to wait a while before the door was opened; and when at last it did open, there was his compadre half asleep—and his compadre said that he was not going on any journey, and that most certainly he had not sent his mule to be shod. And then, as he got wider awake, he began to laugh at the blacksmith because of the trick that had been put upon him; and that the woman might share in the joke of it—they all were great friends together—he knocked at the door of her room and called to her. But the woman did not answer back to him; and when he knocked louder and louder she still gave no sign.
Then he, and the blacksmith too, became anxious about the woman; and together they opened the door and went into the room. And what they saw when they were come into the room, Señor, was the most terrible sight that ever was seen in this world! For there, lying upon her bed, was that unhappy woman looking all distraught and agonized; and nailed fast to the feet and to the hands of her were the very same iron shoes that the blacksmith—who well knew his own forge-work—had nailed fast to the hoofs of the mule! Moreover, upon her body were the welts and the bruises left there when the blacks had beaten the mule with their cruel blows. And the woman, Señor, was as dead as she possibly could be. So they knew that what had happened was a divine punishment, and that the blacks were two devils who had changed the woman into a mule and so had taken her to be shod.
Perceiving, because of such a sign being given him, Señor, that he had committed an error, the master of that house of horror immediately went out from it—and at once disappeared completely and never was heard of again. As for the blacksmith, he was so pained by his share in the matter that always afterward, until the death of him, he was a very unhappy man. And that is the story of the Iron-shod Woman, Señor, from first to last.
This story, Señor—it is about the accursed bell that once was the clock-bell of the Palace—has so many beginnings that the only way really to get at the bones of it would be for a number of people, all talking at once, to tell the different first parts of it at the same time.
For, you see, the curse that was upon this bell—that caused it to be brought to trial before the Consejo of the Inquisition, and by the Consejo to be condemned to have its wicked tongue torn out and to be banished from Spain to this country—was made up of several curses which had been in use in other ways elsewhere previously: so that one beginning is with the Moor, and another with Don Gil de Marcadante, and another with the devil-forged armor, and still another with the loosing of all the curses from the cross (wherein for some hundreds of years they were imprisoned) and the fusing of them into the one great curse wherewith this unfortunate bell was afflicted—which happened when that holy emblem was refounded, and with the metal of it this bell was made.
Concerning the Moor, Señor, I can give you very little information. All that I know about him is that he had the bad name of Muslef; and that he was killed—as he deserved to be killed, being an Infidel—by a Christian knight; and that this knight cut his head off and brought it home with him as an agreeable memento of the occasion, and was very pleased with what he had done. Unfortunately, this knight also brought home with him the Moor's armor—which was of bronze, and so curiously and so beautifully wrought that it evidently had been forged by devils, and which was farther charged with devilishness because it had been worn by an Infidel; and then, still more unfortunately, he neglected to have the armor purified by causing the devils to be exorcised out of it by a Christian priest. Therefore, of course, the devils remained in the armor—ready to make trouble whenever they got the chance.
How Don Gil de Marcadante came to be the owner of that accursed devil-possessed armor, Señor, I never have heard mentioned. Perhaps he bought it because it happened to fit him; and, certainly—he being a most unusually sinful young gentleman—the curse that was upon it and the devils which were a part of it fitted him to a hair.
This Don Gil was a student of law in Toledo; but his studies were the very last things to which he turned his attention, and the life that he led was the shame of his respectable brother and his excellent mother's despair. Habitually, he broke every law of the Decalogue, and so brazenly that all the city rang with the stories of his evil doings and his crimes. Moreover, he was of a blusterous nature and a born brawler: ready at the slightest contradiction to burst forth with such a torrent of blasphemies and imprecations that his mouth seemed to be a den of snakes and toads and scorpions; and ever quick to snatch his sword out and to get on in a hurry from words to blows. As his nearest approach to good nature was after he had killed some one in a quarrel of his own making, and as even at those favorable times his temper was of a brittleness, he was not looked upon as an agreeable companion and had few friends.
This Don Gil had most intimate relations with the devil, as was proved in various ways. Thus, a wound that he received in one of his duels instantly closed and healed itself; on a night of impenetrable darkness, as he went about his evil doings, he was seen to draw apart the heavy gratings of a window as though the thick iron bars had been silken threads; and a stone that he cast at a man in one of his rages—mercifully not hitting him—remained burning hot in the place where it had fallen for several days. Moreover, it was known generally that in the night time, in a very secret and hidden part of his dwelling, he gave himself up to hideous and most horrible sacrileges in which his master the devil had always a part. And so these facts—and others of a like nature—coming to the knowledge of the Holy Office, it was perceived that he was a sorcerer. Therefore he was marched off—wearing his devil-forged armor, to which fresh curses had come with his use of it—to a cell in the Inquisition; and to make sure of holding him fast until the next auto de fé came round, when he was to be burned properly and regularly, he was bound with a great chain, and the chain was secured firmly to a strong staple in the cell wall.
But the devil, Señor, sometimes saves his own. On a morning, the jailer went as usual to Don Gil's cell with the bread and the water for him; and when he had opened the cell door he saw, as he believed, Don Gil in his armor waiting as usual for his bread and his water: but in a moment he perceived that what he saw was not Don Gil in his armor, but only the accursed armor standing upright full of emptiness; and that the staple was torn out; and that the great chain was broken; and that Don Gil was gone! And then—so much to the horror of the jailer that he immediately went mad of it—the empty armor began slowly to walk up and down the cell!
After that time Don Gil never was seen, nor was he heard of, again on earth; and so on earth, when the time came for burning him at the auto de fé, he had to be burned in effigy. However—as there could be no doubt about the place to which the devil had taken him—everybody was well satisfied that he got his proper personal burning elsewhere.
Then it was, Señor, that the Holy Office most wisely ordered that that devil-possessed and doubly accursed armor should be melted, and refounded into a cross: knowing that the sanctity of that blessed emblem would quiet the curses and would hold the devils still and fast. Therefore that order was executed; and the wisdom of it—which some had questioned, on the ground that devils and curses were unsuitable material to make a cross of—was apparent as soon as the bronze turned fluid in the furnace: because there came from the fiery seething midst of it—to the dazed terror of the workmen—shouts of devil-laughter, and imprecations horrible to listen to, and frightful blasphemies; and to these succeeded, as the metal was being poured into the mould, a wild outburst of defiant remonstrance; and then all this demoniac fury died away—as the metal hardened and became fixed as a cross—at first into half-choked cries of agony, and then into confused lamentations, and at the last into little whimpering moans. Thus the devils and the curses were disposed of: and then the cross—holding them imprisoned in its holy substance—was set up in a little townlet not far from Madrid in which just then a cross happened to be wanted; and there it remained usefully for some hundreds of years.
At the end of that period—by which time everybody was dead who knew what was inside of it—the cross was asked for by the Prior of a little convent in that townlet near Madrid, who desired it that he might have it refounded into a bell; and as the Prior was a worthy person, and as he really needed a bell, his request was granted. So they made out of the cross a very beautiful bell: having on one side of it the two-headed eagle; and having on the other side of it a calvario; and having at the top of it, for its hanging, two imperial lions supporting a cross-bar in the shape of a crown. Then it was hung in the tower of the little convent; and the Prior, and all the Brothers with him, were very much pleased. But that worthy Prior, and those equally worthy Brothers, were not pleased for long, Señor: because the curses and the devils all were loose again—and their chance to do new wickednesses had come!
On a night of blackness, without any warning whatever, the whole of the townlet was awakened by the prodigious clangor of a bell furiously ringing. In an instant—seeking the cause of this disturbance—everybody came out into the night's blackness: the Señor Cura, the Señor Alcalde, the alguaciles, the Prior, the Brothers, all the townsfolk to the very last one. And when they had looked about them they found that the cause of the disturbance was the new bell of the convent: which was ringing with such an excessive violence that the night's blackness was corrupted with its noise.
Terror was upon everyone; and greater terror was upon every one when it was found out that the door of the bell-tower was locked, and that the bell was ringing of its lone self: because the bad fact then became evident that only devils could have the matter in hand. The Señor Alcalde alone—being a very valiant gentleman, and not much believing in devils—was not satisfied with that finding. Therefore the Señor Alcalde caused the door to be unlocked and, carrying a torch with him, entered the bell-tower; and there he found the bell-rope crazily flying up and down as though a dozen men were pulling it, and nobody was pulling it—which sight somewhat shook his nerves. However, because of his valorousness, he only stopped to cross himself; and then he went on bravely up the belfry stair. But what he saw when he was come into the belfry fairly brought him to a stand. For there was the bell ringing tempestuously; and never a visible hand was near it; and the only living thing that he found in the belfry was a great black cat with its tail bushed out and its fur bristling—which evil animal for a moment leered at him malignantly, with its green eyes gleaming in the torch-light, and then sprang past him and dashed down the stair.
Then the Señor Alcalde, no longer doubting that the bell was being rung by devils, and himself not knowing how to manage devils, called down from the belfry to the Señor Cura to come up and take charge of the matter: whereupon the Señor Cura, holding his courage in both hands, did come up into the belfry, bringing his hisopo with him, and fell to sprinkling the bell with holy water—which seemed to him, so far as he could see his way into that difficult tangle, the best thing that he could do. But his doing it, of course, was the very worst thing that he could have done: because, you see, Señor, the devils were angered beyond all endurance by being scalded with the holy water (that being the effect that holy water has upon devils) and so only rang the bell the more furiously in their agony of pain. Then the Señor Alcalde and the Señor Cura perceived that they could not quiet the devils, and decided to give up trying to. Therefore they came down from the belfry together—and they, and everybody with them, went away through the night's blackness crossing themselves, and were glad to be safe again in their homes.
The next day the Señor Alcalde made a formal inquest into the whole matter: citing to appear before him all the townsfolk and all the Brothers, and questioning them closely every one. And the result of this inquest was to make certain that the bell-ringer of the convent had not rung the bell; nor had any other of the Brothers rung it; nor had any of the townsfolk rung it. Therefore the Señor Alcalde, and with him the Señor Cura—whose opinion was of importance in such a matter—decided that the devil had rung it: and their decision was accepted by everybody, because that was what everybody from the beginning had believed.
Therefore—because such devilish doings affected the welfare of the whole kingdom—a formal report of all that had happened was submitted to the Cortes; and the Cortes, after pondering the report seriously, perceived that the matter was ecclesiastical and referred it to the Consejo of the Inquisition; and the members of the Consejo, in due course, ordered that all the facts should be digested and regularized and an opinion passed upon them by their Fiscal.
Being a very painstaking person, the Fiscal went at his work with so great an earnestness that for more than a year he was engaged upon it. First he read all that he could find to read about bells in all the Spanish law books, from the Siete Partidas of Alonzo the Wise downward; then he read all that he could find about bells in such law books of foreign countries as were accessible to him; then, in the light of the information so obtained, he digested and regularized the facts of the case presented for his consideration and applied himself to writing his opinion upon them; and then, at last, he came before the Consejo and read to that body his opinion from beginning to end. Through the whole of a long day the Fiscal read his opinion; and through the whole of the next day, and the next, and the next; and at the end of the fourth day he finished the reading of his opinion and sat down. And the opinion of the Fiscal was that the devil had rung the bell.
Then the Consejo, after debating for three days upon what had been read by the Fiscal, gave formal approval to his opinion; and in conformity with it the Consejo came to these conclusions:
1. That the ringing of the bell was a matter of no importance to good Christians.
2. That the bell, being possessed of a devil, should have its tongue torn out: so that never again should it dare to ring of its lone devilish self, to the peril of human souls.
3. That the bell, being dangerous to good Christians, should be banished from the Spanish Kingdom to the Indies, and forever should remain tongueless and exiled over seas.
Thereupon, that wise sentence was executed. The devil-possessed bell was taken down from the belfry of the little convent, and its wicked tongue was torn out of it; then it was carried shamefully and with insults to the coast; then it was put on board of one of the ships of the flota bound for Mexico; and in Mexico, in due course, it arrived. Being come here, and no orders coming with it regarding its disposition, it was brought from Vera Cruz to the Capital and was placed in an odd corner of one of the corridors of the Palace: and there it remained quietly—everybody being shy of meddling with a bell that was known to be alive with witchcraft—for some hundreds of years.
In that same corner it still was, Señor, when the Conde de Revillagigedo—only a little more than a century ago—became Viceroy; and as soon as that most energetic gentleman saw it he wanted to know in a hurry—being indisposed to let anything or anybody rust in idleness—why a bell that needed only a tongue in it to make it serviceable was not usefully employed. For some time no one could tell him anything more about the bell than that there was a curse upon it; and that answer did not satisfy him, because curses did not count for much in his very practical mind. In the end a very old clerk in the Secretariat gave him the bell's true story; and proved the truth of it by bringing out from deep in the archives an ancient yellowed parchment: which was precisely the royal order, following the decree of the Consejo, that the bell should have its tongue torn out, and forever should remain tongueless and exiled over seas.
With that order before him, even the Conde de Revillagigedo, Señor, did not venture to have a new tongue put into the bell and to set it to regular work again; but what he did do came to much the same thing. At that very time he was engaged in pushing to a brisk completion the repairs to the Palace—that had gone on for a hundred years languishingly, following the burning of it in the time of the Viceroy Don Gaspar de la Cerda—and among his repairings was the replacement of the Palace clock. Now a clock-bell, Señor, does not need a tongue in it, being struck with hammers from the outside; and so the Conde, whose wits were of an alertness, perceived in a moment that by employing the bell as a clock-bell he could make it useful again without traversing the king's command. And that was what immediately he did with it—and that was how the Palace clock came to have foisted upon it this accursed bell.
But, so far as I have heard, Señor, this bell conducted itself as a clock-bell with a perfect regularity and propriety: probably because the devils which were in it had grown too old to be dangerously hurtful, and because the curse that was upon it had weakened with time. I myself, as a boy and as a young man, have heard it doing its duty always punctually; and no doubt it still would be doing its duty had not the busybodying French seen fit—during the period of the Intervention, when they meddled with everything—to put another bell in the place of it and to have it melted down. What was done with the metal when the bell was melted, Señor, I do not know; but I have been told by an old founder of my acquaintance that nothing was done with it: because, as he very positively assured me, when the bell was melted the metal of it went sour in the furnace and refused to be recast.
If that is true, Señor, it looks as though all those devils in the bell—which came to it from the Moor and from the devil-forged armor and from Don Gil de Marcadante—still had some strength for wickedness left to them even in their old age.
Who Padre Lecuona was, Señor, and what he did or had done to him in this street that caused his name to be given to it, I do not know. The Padre about whom I now am telling you, who had this strange thing happen to him in this street, was named Lanza; but he was called by everybody Lanchitas—according to our custom of giving such endearing diminutives to the names of those whom we love. He deserved to be loved, this excellent Padre Lanchitas: because he himself loved everybody, and freely gave to all in sickness or in trouble his loving aid. Confessing to him was a pleasure; and his absolution was worth having, because it was given always with the approval of the good God. My own grandfather knew him well, Señor, having known a man who had seen him when he was a boy. Therefore this strange story about him is true.
On a night—and it was a desponding night, because rain was falling and there was a chill wind—Padre Lanchitas was hurrying to the house of a friend of his, where every week he and three other gentlemen of a Friday evening played malilla together. It is a very serious game, Señor, and to play it well requires a large mind. He was late, and that was why he was hurrying.
When he was nearly come to the house of his friend—and glad to get there because of the rain and the cold—he was stopped by an old woman plucking at his wet cloak and speaking to him. And the old woman begged him for God's mercy to come quickly and confess a dying man. Now that is a call, Señor, that a priest may not refuse; but because his not joining them would inconvenience his friends, who could not play at their game of malilla without him, he asked the woman why she did not go to the parish priest of the parish in which the dying man was. And the woman answered him that only to him would the dying man confess; and she begged him again for God's mercy to hurry with her, or the confession would not be made in time—and then the sin of his refusal would be heavy on his own soul when he himself came to die.
So, then, the Padre went with her, walking behind her along the cold dark streets in the mud with the rain falling; and at last she brought him to the eastern end of this street that is called the Callejón del Padre Lecuona, and to the long old house there that faces toward the church of El Carmen and has a hump in the middle on the top of its front wall. It is a very old house, Señor. It was built in the time when we had Viceroys, instead of the President Porfírio; and it has no windows—only a great door for the entering of carriages at one end of it, and a small door in the middle of it, and another small door at the other end. A person who sells charcoal, Señor, lives there now.
It was to the middle door that the woman brought Padre Lanchitas. The door was not fastened, and at a touch she pushed it open and in they went together—and the first thing that the Padre noticed when he was come through the doorway was a very bad smell. It was the sort of smell, Señor, that is found in very old houses of which all the doors and windows have been shut fast for a very long time. But the Padre had matters more important than bad smells to attend to, and all that he did about it was to hold his handkerchief close to his nose. One little poor candle, stuck on a nail in a board, was set in a far corner; and in another corner was a man lying on a mat spread upon the earth floor; and there was nothing else whatever—excepting cobwebs everywhere, and the bad smell, and the old woman, and the Padre himself—in that room.
That he might see him whom he was to confess, Padre Lanchitas took the candle in his hand and went to the man on the mat and pulled aside the ragged and dirty old blanket that covered him; and then he started back with a very cold qualm in his stomach, saying to the woman: "This man already is dead! He cannot confess! And he has the look of having been dead for a very long while!" And that was true, Señor—for what he saw was a dry and bony head, with yellow skin drawn tight over it, having shut eyes deep sunken. Also, the two hands which rested crossed upon the man's breast were no more than the same dry yellow skin shrunk close over shrunken bones! And, seeing such a bad strange sight, the Padre was uneasy and alarmed.
But the woman said back to him with assurance, yet also coaxingly: "This man is going to confess, Padrecito"—and, so speaking, she fetched from its far corner the board with the nail in it, and took the candle from him and set it fast again upon the nail. And then the man himself, in the light and in the shadow, sat up on the mat and began to recite in a voice that had a rusty note in it the Confiteor Deo—and after that, of course, there was nothing for the Padre to do but to listen to him till the end.
What he told, Señor, being told under the seal of confession, of course remained always a secret. But it was known, later, that he spoke of matters which had happened a good two hundred years back—as the Padre knew because he was a great reader of books of history; and that he put himself into the very middle of those matters and made the terrible crime that he had committed a part of them; and that he ended by telling that in that ancient time he had been killed in a brawl suddenly, and so had died unconfessed and unshriven, and that ever since his soul had blistered in hell.
Hearing such wild talk from him, the Padre was well satisfied that the poor man's wits were wandering in his fever—as happens with many, Señor, in their dying time—and so bade him lie quietly and rest himself; and promised that he would come to him and hear his confession later on.
But the man cried out very urgently that that must not be: declaring that by God's mercy he had been given one single chance to come back again out of Eternity to confess his sins and to be shriven of them; and that unless the Padre did hearken then and there to the confession of his sins, and did shrive him of them, this one chance that God's mercy had given him would be lost and wasted—and back he would go forever to the hot torments of hell.
Therefore the Padre—being sure, by that time, that the man was quite crazy in his fever—let him talk on till he had told the whole story of his frightful sinnings; and then did shrive him, to quiet him—just as you promise the moon to a sick, fretful child. And the devil must have been very uneasy that night, Señor, because the good nature of that kind-hearted priest lost to him what by rights was his own!
As Padre Lanchitas spoke the last words of the absolution, the man fell back again on his mat with a sharp crackling sound like that of dry bones rattling; and the woman had left the room; and the candle was sputtering out its very last sparks. Therefore the Padre went out in a hurry through the still open door into the street; and no sooner had he come there than the door closed behind him sharply, as though some one on the inside had pushed against it strongly to shut it fast.
Out in the street he had expected to find the old woman waiting for him; and he looked about for her everywhere, desiring to tell her that she must send for him when the man's fever left him—that he might return and hear from the man a real confession, and really shrive him of his sins. But the old woman was quite gone. Thinking that she must have slipped past him in the darkness into the house, he knocked at the door lightly, and then loudly; but no answer came to his knocking—and when he tried to push the door open, using all his strength, it held fast against his pushing as firmly as though it had been a part of the stone wall.
So the Padre, having no liking for standing there in the cold and rain uselessly, hurried onward to his friend's house—and was glad to get into the room where his friends were waiting for him, and where plenty of candles were burning, and where it was dry and warm.
He had walked so fast that his forehead was wet with sweat when he took his hat off, and to dry it he put his hand into his pocket for his handkerchief; but his handkerchief was not in his pocket—and then he knew that he must have dropped it in the house where the dying man lay. It was not just a common handkerchief, Señor, but one very finely embroidered—having the letters standing for his name worked upon it, with a wreath around them—that had been made for him by a nun of his acquaintance in a convent of which he was the almoner; and so, as he did not at all like to lose it, he sent his friend's servant to that old house to get it back again. After a good long while, the servant returned: telling that the house was shut fast, and that one of the watch—seeing him knocking at the door of it—had told him that to knock there was only to wear out his knuckles, because no one had lived in that house for years and years!
All of this, as well as all that had gone before it, was so strange and so full of mystery, that Padre Lanchitas then told to his three friends some part of what that evening had happened to him; and it chanced that one of the three was the notary who had in charge the estate of which that very house was a part. And the notary gave Padre Lanchitas his true word for it that the house—because of some entangling law matters—had stood locked fast and empty for as much as a lifetime; and he declared that Padre Lanchitas must be mixing that house with some other house—which would be easy, since all that had happened had been in the rainy dark. But the Padre, on his side, was sure that he had made no mistake in the matter; and they both got a little warm in their talk over it; and they ended by agreeing—so that they might come to a sure settlement—to meet at that old house, and the notary to bring with him the key of it, on the morning of the following day.
So they did meet there, Señor, and they went to the middle door—the one that had opened at a touch from the old woman's hand. But all around that door, as the notary bade Padre Lanchitas observe before they opened it, were unbroken cobwebs; and the keyhole was choked with the dust that had blown into it, little by little, in the years that had passed since it had known a key. And the other two doors of the house were just the same. However, Padre Lanchitas would not admit, even with that proof against him, that he was mistaken; and the notary, smiling at him but willing to satisfy him, picked out the dust from the keyhole and got the key into it and forced back hardly the rusty bolt of the lock—and together they went inside.
Coming from the bright sunshine into that dusky place—lighted only from the doorway, and the door but part way open because it was loose on its old hinges and stuck fast—they could see at first nothing more than that the room was empty and bare. What they did find, though—and the Padre well remembered it—was the bad smell. But the notary said that just such bad smells were in all old shut-up houses, and it proved nothing; while the cobwebs and the closed keyhole did prove most certainly that Padre Lanchitas had not entered that house the night before—and that nobody had entered it for years and years. To what the notary said there was nothing to be answered; and the Padre—not satisfied, but forced to give in to such strong proof that he was mistaken—was about to come away out of the house, and so have done with it. But just then, Señor, he made a very wonderful and horrifying discovery. By that time his eyes had grown accustomed to the shadows; and so he saw over in one corner—lying on the floor close beside where the man had lain whose confession he had taken—a glint of something whitish. And, Señor, it was his very own handkerchief that he had lost!
That was enough to satisfy even the notary; and as nothing more was to be done there they came out, and gladly, from that bad dark place into the sunshine. As for Padre Lanchitas, Señor, he was all mazed and daunted—knowing then the terrible truth that he had confessed a dead man; and, what was worse, that he had given absolution to a sinful soul come hot to him from hell! He held his hat in his hand as he came out from the house—and never did he put it on again: bareheaded he went thenceforward until the end of his days! He was a very good man, and his life had been always a very holy life; but from that time on, till the death of him, he made it still holier by his prayings and his fastings and his endless helpings of the poorest of the poor. At last he died. And it is said, Señor, that in the walls of that old house they found dead men's bones.
Apparitions of dead people, Señor, of course are numerous and frequent. I myself—as on other occasions I have mentioned to you—have seen several spectres, and so have various of my friends. But this spectre of which I now am telling you—that appeared on the Plaza Mayor at noonday, and was seen by everybody—was altogether out of the ordinary: being not in the least a dead person, but a person who wore his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and was alive in them; yet who certainly was walking and talking here on the Plaza Mayor of this City of Mexico in the very self-same moment that he also was walking and talking in a most remote and wholly different part of the world. Therefore—in spite of his wearing his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and being alive in them—it was certain that he was a spectre: because it was certain that his journeying could have been made only on devils' wings. The day on which this marvel happened is known most exactly: because it happened on the day after the day that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had his head murderously split open, and died of it, in the Molucca Islands; and that gentleman was killed in that bad manner on the 25th of October in the year 1593. Therefore—since everything concerning this most extraordinary happening is known with so great an accuracy—there can be no doubt whatever but that in every particular all that I now am telling you is strictly true.
Because it began in two different places at the same time, it is not easy to say certainly, Señor, which end of this story is the beginning of it; but the beginning of it is this: On a day, being the day that I have just named to you, the sentries on guard at the great doors of the Palace—and also the people who at that time happened to be walking near by on the Plaza Mayor—of a sudden saw an entirely strange sentry pacing his beat before the great doors of the Palace quite in the regular manner: marching back and forth, with his gun on his shoulder; making his turns with a soldierly propriety; saluting correctly those entitled to salutes who passed him; and in every way conducting himself as though he duly had been posted there—but making his marchings and his turnings and his salutings with a wondering look on the face of him, and having the air of one who is all bedazzled and bemazed.
What made every one know that he was a stranger in this City was that the uniform which he wore was of a wholly different cut and fabric from that belonging to any regiment at that time quartered here: being, in fact—as was perceived by one of the sentries who had served in the Filipinas—the uniform worn in Manila by the Palace Guard. He was a man of forty, or thereabouts; well set up and sturdy; and he had the assured carriage—even in his bedazzlement and bemazement—of an old soldier who had seen much campaigning, and who could take care of himself through any adventure in which he might happen to land. Moreover, his talk—when the time came for him to explain himself—went with a devil-may-care touch to it that showed him to be a man who even with witches and demons was quite ready to hold his own.
His explanation of himself, of course, was not long in coming: because the Captain of the Guard at once was sent for; and when the Captain of the Guard came he asked the stranger sentry most sharply what his name was, and where he came from, and what he was doing on a post to which he had not been assigned.
To these questions the stranger sentry made answer—speaking with an easy confidence, and not in the least ruffled by the Captain's sharpness with him—that his name was Gil Pérez; that he came from the Filipinas; and that what he was doing was his duty as near as he could come to it: because he had been duly detailed to stand sentry that morning before the Governor's Palace—and although this was not the Governor's Palace before which he had been posted it certainly was a governor's palace, and that he therefore was doing the best that he could do. And to these very curious statements he added—quite casually, as though referring to an ordinary matter of current interest—that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands the evening before.
Well, Señor, you may fancy what a nest of wasps was let loose when this Gil Pérez gave to the Captain of the Guard so incredible an account of himself; and, on top of it, told that the Governor of the Filipinas had been badly killed on the previous evening in islands in the Pacific Ocean thousands and thousands of miles away! It was a matter that the Viceroy himself had to look into. Therefore before the Viceroy—who at that time was the good Don Luis de Velasco—Gil Pérez was brought in a hurry: and to the Viceroy he told over again just the same story, in just the same cool manner, and in just the same words.
Very naturally, the Viceroy put a great many keen questions to him; and to those questions he gave his answers—or said plainly that he could not give any answers—with the assured air of an old soldier who would not lightly suffer his word to be doubted even by a Viceroy; and who was ready, in dealing with persons of less consequence, to make good his sayings with his fists or with his sword.
In part, his explanation of himself was straightforward and satisfactory. What he told about the regiment to which he belonged was known to be true; and equally known to be true was much of what he told—being in accord with the news brought thence by the latest galleon—about affairs in the Filipinas. But when it came to explaining the main matter—how he had been shifted across the ocean and the earth, and all in a single moment, from his guard-mount before the Governor's Palace in Manila to his guard-mount before the Viceroy's Palace in the City of Mexico—Gil Pérez was at a stand. How that strange thing had happened, he said, he knew no more than Don Luis himself knew. All that he could be sure of was that it had happened: because, certainly, only a half hour earlier he had been in Manila; and now, just as certainly, he was in the City of Mexico—as his lordship the Viceroy could see plainly with his own eyes. As to the even greater marvel—how he knew that on the previous evening the Governor of the Filipinas had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands—he said quite freely that he did not in the least know how he knew it. What alone he could be sure of, he said, was that in his heart he did know that Don Gómez had been killed on the previous evening in that bad manner; and he very stoutly asserted that the truth of what he told would be clear to Don Luis, and to everybody, when the news of the killing of Don Gómez had had time to get to Mexico in the ordinary way.
And then Gil Pérez—having answered all of the Viceroy's questions which he could answer, and having said all that he had to say—stood quite at his ease before the Viceroy: with his feet firmly planted, and his right hand on his hip, and his right arm akimbo—and so waited for whatever might happen to be the next turn.
Well, Señor, the one thing of which anybody really could be sure in this amazing matter—and of which, of course, everybody was sure—was that the devil was at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also, there seemed to be very good ground for believing that Gil Pérez was in much closer touch with the devil than any good Christian—even though he were an old soldier, and not much in the way of Christianity expected of him—had any right to be. Therefore the Viceroy rid himself of an affair that was much the same to him as a basket of nettles by turning Gil Pérez over to the Holy Office—and off he was carried to Santo Domingo and clapped into one of the strongest cells.
Most men, of course, on finding themselves that way in the clutches of the Inquisition, would have had all the insides of them filled with terror; but Gil Pérez, Señor—being, as I have mentioned, an old campaigner—took it all as it came along to him and was not one bit disturbed. He said cheerfully that many times in the course of his soldiering he had been in much worse places; and added that—having a good roof over his head, and quite fair rations, and instead of marching and fighting only to sit at his ease and enjoy himself—he really was getting, for once in his life, as much of clear comfort as any old soldier had a right to expect would come his way. Moreover, in his dealings with the Familiars of the Holy Office his conduct was exemplary. He stuck firmly to his assertion that—whatever the devil might have had to do with him—he never had had anything to do with the devil; he seemed to take a real pleasure in confessing as many of his sins as he conveniently could remember; and in every way that was open to him his conduct was that of quite as good a Christian as any old soldier reasonably could be expected to be.
Therefore—while he staid on in his cell very contentedly—the Familiars of the Holy Office put their heads together and puzzled and puzzled as to what they should do with him: because it certainly seemed as though the devil, to suit his own devilish purposes, simply had made a convenience of Gil Pérez without getting his consent in the matter; and so it did not seem quite fair—in the face of his protest that he was as much annoyed as anybody was by what the devil had done with him—to put him into a flame-covered sanbenito, and to march him off to be burned for a sorcerer at the next auto de fé. Therefore the Familiars of the Holy Office kept on putting their heads together and puzzling and puzzling as to what they should do with him; and Gil Pérez kept on enjoying himself in his cell in Santo Domingo—and so the months went on and on.
And then, on a day, a new turn was given to the whole matter: when the galleon from the Filipinas arrived at Acapulco and brought with it the proof that every word that Gil Pérez had spoken was true. Because the galleon brought the news that Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas—the crew of the ship that he was on having mutinied—really had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands; and that this bad happening had come to him at the very time that Gil Pérez had named. Moreover, one of the military officers who had come from the Filipinas in the galleon, and up from Acapulco to the City of Mexico with the conducta, recognized Gil Pérez the moment that he laid eyes on him; and this officer said that he had seen him—only a day or two before the galleon's sailing—on duty in Manila with the Palace Guard. And so the fact was settled beyond all doubting that Gil Pérez had been brought by the devil from Manila to the City of Mexico; and, also, that the devil—since only the devil could have done it—had put the knowledge of the murderous killing of Don Gómez into his heart. Wherefore the fact that Gil Pérez was in league with the devil was clear to all the world.
Then the Familiars of the Holy Office for the last time put their heads together and puzzled and puzzled over the matter; and at the end of their puzzling they decided that Gil Pérez was an innocent person, and that he undoubtedly had had criminal relations with the devil and was full of wickedness. Therefore they ordered that, being innocent, he should be set free from his cell in Santo Domingo; and that, being a dangerous character whose influence was corrupting, he should be sent back to Manila in the returning galleon. And that was their decree.
Gil Pérez, Señor, took that disposition of him in the same easy-going way that he had taken all the other dispositions of him: save that he grumbled a little—as was to be expected of an old soldier—over having to leave his comfortably idle life in his snug quarters and to go again to his fightings and his guard-mounts and his parades. And so back he went to the Filipinas: only his return journey was made in a slow and natural manner aboard the galleon—not, as his outward journey had been made, all in a moment on devils' wings.
To my mind, Señor, it seems that there is more of this story that ought to be told. For myself, I should like to know why the Familiars of the Holy Office did not deal a little more severely with a case that certainly had the devil at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also, I should like to know what became of Gil Pérez when he got back to Manila in the galleon—and there had to tell over again about his relations with the devil in order to account for his half year's absence from duty without leave. But those are matters which I never have heard mentioned; and what I have told you is all that there is to tell.
Two dead lovers, Señor, stand always in the Calle de los Parados, one at each end of it; and that is why—because they remain steadfastly on parade there, though it is not everybody who happens to see their yellow skeletons on those corners—the street of the Parados is so named.