The historical nights' entertainment. Second series

Front matter

THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS’

ENTERTAINMENT

By Rafael Sabatini

Preface

Tue kindly reception accorded to the first volume of “The Historical Nights’ Entertainment,”’ issued in December of 1917, has encouraged me to prepare the second series here assembled.

As in the case of the narratives that made up the first volume, I set out again with the same ambitious aim of adhering scrupulously in every instance to actual, recorded facts; and once again I find it desirable at the outset to reveal how far the achievement may have fallen short of the admitted aim.

On the whole, I have to confess to having allowed myself perhaps a wider latitude, and to having taken greater liberties than was the case with the essays constituting the previous collection. This, however, applies, where applicable, to the parts rather than to the whole.

The only entirely apocryphal narrative here: included is the first — “The Absolution.” This is one of those stories which, if resting upon no sufficient authority to compel its acceptance, will, nevertheless, resist all attempts at final refutation, having its roots at least in the soil of fact. It is given in the rather discredited Portuguese chronicles of Acenheiro, and finds place, more or less as related here, in Duarte Galvao’s “Chronicle of Affonso Henriques,” whence it was taken by the Portuguese historical writer, Alexandre Herculano, to be included in his “‘Lendas e Narrativas.” If it is to be relegated to the limbo of x PREFACE the ben trovato, at least I esteem it to afford us a precious glimpse of the naive spirit of the age in which it is set, and find in that my Justification for including It.

The next to require apology is “His Insolence of Buckingham,” but only in so far as the incident of the diamond studs is concerned. The remainder of the narrative, the character of Buckingham, the details of his embassy to Paris, and the particulars of his audacious courtship of Anne of Austria, rest upon unassailable evidence. I would have omitted the very apocryphal incident of the studs but that I considered it of peculiar interest as revealing the source of the main theme of one of the most famous historical romances ever written — “The Three Musketeers.” I give the story as related by La Rochefoucauld in his ‘“‘Memoirs,” whence Alexandre Dumas culled it that he might turn it to such excellent romantic account. In La Rochefoucauld’s narrative it is the painter Gerbier who, in a far less heroic manner, plays the part assigned by Dumas to d’Artagnan, and it is the Countess of Carlisle who carries out the political theft which Dumas attributes to Milady. For the rest, I do not invite you to attach undue credit to it, which is not, however, to say that I account it wholly false.

In the case of ““The Hermosa Fembra,” I confess to having blended together into one single narrative two historical episodes closely connected in time and place. Susan’s daughter was, in fact, herself the betrayer of her father, and it was in penitence for that unnatural act that she desired her skull to be exhibited as I describe. Into the story of Susan’s daughter I have woven that of another New-Christian girl,

PREFACE xi who, like the Hermosa Fembra, had taken a Castilian lover — in this case a youth of the house of Guzman. This youth was driven into concealment in circumstances more or less as I describe them. He overheard the Judaizing of several New-Christians there assembled, and bore word of it at once to Ojeda. The two episodes were separated in fact by an interval of three years, and the first afforded Ojeda a strong argument for the institution of the Holy Office in Seville. Between the two there are many points of contact, and each supplies what the other lacks to make an interesting narrative having for background the introduction of the Inquisition to Castile. The dénouement I supply is entirely fictitious and the introduction of Torquemada is quite arbitrary. Ojeda was the inquisitor who dealt with both cases. But if there I stray into fiction, at least I claim to have sketched a faithful portrait of the Grand Inquisitor as I know him from fairly exhaustive researches into his life and times.

The story of the False Demetrius is here related from the point of view of my adopted solution of what is generally regarded as an historical mystery. The mystery lies, of course, in the man’s identity. He has been held by some to have been the unfrocked monk, Grishka Otropiev, by others to have been a son of Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. I am not aware that the theory that he was both at one and the same time has ever been put forward, and whilst admitting that it is speculative, yet I claim that no other would appear so aptly to fit all the known facts of his career or to shed light upon its mysteries.

Undoubtedly I have allowed myself a good deal of xil PREFACE licence and speculation in treating certain unwitnessed scenes in “The Barren Wooing.” But the theory that I develop in it to account for the miscarriage of the matrimonial plans of Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley seems to me to be not only very fully warranted by de Quadra’s correspondence, but the only theory that will convincingly explain the events. Elizabeth, as I show, was widely believed to be an accessory to the murder of Amy Robsart. But in carefully following her words and actions at that critical time, as reported by de Quadra, my reading of the transaction is as given here. The most damning fact against Elizabeth was held to be her own statement to de Quadra on the eve of Lady Robert Dudley’s murder to the effect that Lady Robert was “already dead, or very nearly so.” This foreknowledge of the fate of that unfortunate lady has been accepted as positive evidence that the Queen was a party to the crime at Cumnor, which was to set her lover free to marry again. Far from that, however, I account it positive

roof of Elizabeth’s innocence of any such part in the deed. Elizabeth was far too crafty and clear-sighted not to realize how her words must incriminate her afterwards if she knew that the murder of Lady Robert was projected. She must have been merely repeating what Dudley himself had told her; and what he must have told her — and she believed — was that his wife was at the point of a natural death. Similarly, Dudley would not have told her this, unless his aim had been to procure his wife’s removal by means which would admit of a natural interpretation. Difficulties encountered, much as I relate them — and for

which there is abundant evidence — drove his too-

PREFACE xili zealous agents to rather desperate lengths, and thus brought suspicion, not only upon the guilty Dudley, but also upon the innocent Queen. The manner of Amy’s murder is pure conjecture; but 1t should not be far from what actually took place. The possibility of an accident — extraordinarily and suspiciously opportune for Dudley as it would have been — could not be altogether ruled out but for the further circumstance that Lady Robert had removed everybody from Cumnor on that day. To what can this point — unless we accept an altogether incredible chain of coincidence — but to some such plotting as I here suggest?

In the remaining six essays in this volume the liber. ties taken with the absolute facts are so slight as to require no apology or comment.

R.S.

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Contents

I. THE ABSOLUTION 3 Affonso Henriques, First King of Portugal IJ. Tue Fatse DEmeETRIvs 26 Boris Godunov and the Pretended Son of Ivan the Terrible III. THe Hermosa FemMBRA 45 An Episode of the Inquisition in Seville IV. Tue Pastry-Cook or Mapricar 71 The Story of the False Sebastian of Portugal V. Tue Enp or THE “Vert GALAanT” IO! The Assassination of Henry IV VI. Tue Barren Wooinc 128 The Murder of Amy Robsart VII. Sir Jupas 156 The Betrayal of Sir Walter Ralegh | VIII. His Insotence or BuckincHAM 181 George Villiers’ Courtship of Anne of Austria IX. Tue Patu or Exite 203 The Fall of Lord Clarendon X. THe Tracepy or HERRENHAUSEN 227 Count Philip K6nigsmark and the Princess Sophia Dorothea | XI. THe TyranniciDE 249

Charlotte Corday and Jean Paul Marat xvi

_ Tue Honour or VARANO ©

II Boris Godunov And The Pretended Son Of Ivan The Terrible

HE news of it first reached him whilst he sat

at supper in the great hall of his palace in the Kremlin. It came at a time when already there was enough to distract his mind; for although the table before him was spread and equipped as became an emperor’s, the gaunt spectre of famine stalked outside in the streets of Moscow, and men and women were so reduced by it that cannibalism was alleged to be breaking out amongst them.

Alone, save for the ministering pages, sat Boris

Godunov under the iron lamps that made of the table, with its white napery and vessels of gold and silver plate, an island of light in the gloom of that vast apartment. The air was fragrant with the scent of burning pine, for although the time of year was May, the nights were chill, and a great log-fire was blazing on the distant hearth. To him, as he sat there, came his trusted Basmanov with those tidings which startled him at first, seeming to herald that at last the sword of Nemesis was swung above his sinful head. _ Basmanov, a flush tinting the prominent cheek-bones of his sallow face, an excited glitter in his long eyes, began by ordering the pages out of earshot, then leaning forward quickly muttered forth his news. -

At the first words of it, the Tsar’s knife clashed into his golden platter, and his short, powerful hands clutched the carved arms of his great gilded chair. Quickly he controlled himself, and then as he continued to listen he was moved to scorn, and a faint smile began to stir under his grizzled beard.

A man had appeared in Poland — such was the burden of Basmanov’s story — coming none knew exactly whence, who claimed to be Demetrius, the son of Ivan Vassielivitch, and lawful Tsar of Russia — Demetrius, who was believed to have died at Uglich ten years ago, and whose remains lay buried in Moscow, in the Church of Saint Michael. This man had found shelter in Lithuania, in the house of Prince Wisniowiecki, and thither the nobles of Poland were now flocking to do him homage, acknowledging him the son of Ivan the Terrible. He was said to be the living image of the dead Tsar, save that he was swarthy and black-haired, like the dowager Tsarina, and there were two warts on his face, such as it was remembered had cishoUa the countenance of the boy Demetrius.

Thus Basmanov, age that he had dispatched a messenger into Lithuania to obtain more precise confirmation of the story. That messenger — chosen in consequence of something else that Basmanov had been told — was Smirnoy Otrepiev.

The Tsar Boris sat back in his chair, his eyes on the gem-encrusted goblet, the stem of which his fingers were mechanically turning. There was now no vestige of the smile on his round white face. It had grown set and thoughtful.

“Find Prince Shuiski,” he said presently, “and send him to me here.”

THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 27 Upon the tale the boyar had brought him he offered now no comment.

“We will talk of this again, Basmanov,” was all he said in acknowledgment that he had heard, and in dismissal.

But when the boyar had gone, Boris Godunov heaved himself to his feet, and strode over to the fire, his great head sunk between his massive shoulders. He was a short, thick-set bow-legged man, inclining to corpulence. He set a foot, shod in red leather reversed with ermine, upon an andiron, and, leaning an elbow on the carved overmantel, rested his brow against his hand. His eyes stared into the very heart of the fire, as if they beheld there the pageant of the past, upon which his mind was bent.

Nineteen years were sped since Ivan the Terrible had passed away, leaving two sons, Feodor Ivanovitch, who had succeeded him, and the infant Demetrius. Feodor, a weakling who was almost imbecile, had married Irene, the daughter of Boris Godunov, whereby it had fallen out that Boris became the real ruler of Russia, the power behind the throne. But his insatiable ambition coveted still more. He must wear | the crown as well as wield the sceptre; and this’ could not be until the Ruric dynasty which had ruled Russia for nearly seven centuries should be stamped out. Between himself and the throne stood his daughter’s husband and their child, and the boy Demetrius, who had been dispatched with his mother, the dowager Tsarina, to Uglich. The three must be removed.

Boris began with the last, and sought at first to’ drive him out of the succession without bloodshed. |

He attempted to have him pronounced illegitimate, on the ground that he was the son of Ivan’s seventh wife (the Orthodox Church recognizing no wife as legitimate beyond the third). But in this he failed. The memory of the terrible Tsar, the fear of him, was still alive in superstitious Russia, and none dared to _dishonour his son. So Boris had recourse to other and surer means. He dispatched his agents to Uglich, and presently there came thence a story that the boy, whilst playing with a knife, had been taken with a fit of epilepsy, and had fallen, running the blade into his throat. But it was not a story that could carry con- -viction to the Muscovites, since with it came the news that the town of Uglich had risen against the emissaries of Boris, charging them with the murder of the boy, and killing them out of hand.

Terrible had been the vengeance which Boris had exacted. Of the luckless inhabitants of the town two hundred were put to death by his orders, and the rest sent into banishment beyond the Ural Mountains, whilst the Tsarina Maria, Demetrius’s mother, for having said that her boy was murdered at the instigation of Boris, was packed off to a convent, and had remained there ever since in close confinement.

_ That had been in 1591. The next to go was Feodor’s infant son, and lastly — in 1598 — Feodor himself, succumbing to a mysterious illness, and leaving Boris a clear path to the throne. But he ascended it under the burden of his daughter’s curse. Feodor’s widow had boldly faced her father, boldly accused him of poisoning her husband to gratify his remorseless ambitions, and on a passionate appeal to God to let it be done by him as he had done by others she had departed to a convent, swearing never to set eyes upon him again.

The thought of her was with him now, as he stood there looking into the heart of the fire; and perhaps it was the memory of her curse that turned his stout heart to water, and made him afraid where there could surely be no cause for fear. For five years now had he been Tsar of Russia, and in these five years he had taken such a grip of power as was not lightly to be loosened.

Long he stood there, and there he was found by the magnificent Prince Shuiski, whom he had bidden Basmanov to summon.

“You went to Uglich when the Tsarevitch Demetrius was slain,” said Boris. His voice and mien were calm and normal. “Yourself you saw the body. There is no possibility that you could have been mistaken in ate’?

“Mistaken?” The boyar was taken aback by the question. He was a tall man, considerably younger than Boris, who was in his fiftieth year. His face was lean and saturnine, and there was something sinister in the dark, close-set eyes under a single heavy line of eyebrow.

Boris explained his question, telling him what he had learnt from Basmanov. Basil Shuiski laughed. The story was an absurd one. Demetrius was dead. Himself he had held the body in his arms, and no mistake was possible.

Despite himself, a sigh of relief fluttered from the lips of Boris. Shuiski was right. It was an absurd story, this. There was nothing to fear. He had beena fool to have trembled for a moment.

Nevertheless, in the weeks that followed, he brooded more and more over all that Basmanov had said. It was in the thought that the nobility of Poland was flocking to the house of Wisniowiecki to do honour to this false son of Ivan the Terrible, that Boris found the chief cause of uneasiness. There was famine in Moscow, and empty bellies do not make for loyalty. Then, too, the Muscovite nobles did not love him. He had ruled too sternly, and had curbed their power. There were men like Basil Shuiski who knew too much — greedy, ambitious men, who might turn their knowledge to evil account. The moment might be propitious to the pretender, however false his claim. Therefore Boris dispatched a messenger to Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he would yield up the person of this false Demetrius.

But that messenger returned empty-handed. He had reached Bragin too late. The pretender had already left the place, and was safely lodged in the castle of George Mniszek, the Palatine of Sandomir, to whose daughter Maryna he was betrothed. If these were ill tidings for Boris, there were worse to follow soon. Within a few months he learned from Sandomir that Demetrius had removed to Cracow, and that there he had been publicly acknowledged by Sigismund III of Poland as the son of Ivan Vassielivitch, the rightful heir to the crown of Russia. He heard, too, the story upon which this belief was founded. Demetrius had declared that one of the agents employed by Boris Godunov to procure his murder at Uglich had bribed his physician Simon to perform the deed. Simon had pretended to agree as the only means of saving him. He had dressed the son of a serf, who slightly resembled Demetrius, in garments similar to those worn by the young Prince, and thereafter cut the lad’s throat, leaving those who had found the body to presume it to be the Prince’s. Meanwhile, Demetrius himself had been concealed by the physician, and very shortly thereafter carried away from Uglich, to be placed in safety in a monastery, where he had been educated.

. Such, in brief, was the story with which Demetrius convinced the Court of Poland, and not a few who had known the boy at Uglich came forward now to identify with him the grown man, who carried in his face so strong a resemblance to Ivan the Terrible. That story which Boris now heard was soon heard by all Russia, and Boris realized that oes must be done to refute it.

But something more than assurances — his own assurances — were necessary if the Muscovites were to believe him. And so at last Boris bethought him of the Tsarina Maria, the mother of the murdered boy. He had her fetched to Moscow from her convent, and told her of this pretender who was setting up a claim to the throne of Russia, supported by the King of Poland.’ | She listened impassively, standing before him in the black robes and conventual coif which his tyranny had imposed upon her. When he had done, a faint smile swept over the face that had grown so hard in these last twelve years since that day when her boy had been slain almost under her very eyes.

“Tt is a circumstantial tale,” she said. “It is perhaps true. It is probably true.’

“True!” He bounded from his seat. ‘True?

What are you saying, woman? Yourself you saw the boy dead.”

“I did, and I know who killed him.”

“But you saw him. You recognized him for your own, since you set the people on to kill those whom you believed had slain him,”

“Yes,” she answered. And added the question: “What do you want of me now?”

“What do I want?” He was amazed that she should ask, exasperated. Had the conventual confinement turned her head? “I want your testimony. I want you to denounce this fellow for the impostor that he is. The people will believe you.”

“You think they will?” Interest had kindled in her

lance. |

“What else? Are you not the mother of Demetrius, and shall not a mother know her own son?”’

“You forget. He was ten years of age then—a child. Now he is a grown man of three-and-twenty. How can I be sure? How can I be sure of anything?”

He swore a full round oath at her. “Because you saw him dead.”

“Yet I may have been mistaken. I thought I knew the agents of yours who killed him. Yet you made me swear — as the price of my brothers’ lives — that I was mistaken. Perhaps I was more mistaken than we thought. Perhaps my little Demetrius was not slain at all. Perhaps this man’s tale is true.”

“Perhaps...” He broke off to stare at her, mistrustfully, searchingly. ‘“‘What do you mean?” he asked her sharply. ~*~

Again that wan smile crossed the hard, sharp-featured face that once had been so lovely. “1 mean that if the devil came out of hell and called himself my son, | should acknowledge him to your undoing.”

Thus the pent-up hate and bitterness of years of brooding upon her wrongs broke forth. Taken aback, he quailed before it. His jaw dropped foolishly, and he stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes.

“The people will believe me, you say — they will believe that a mother should know her own son. Then are your hours of usurpation numbered.”

If for a moment it appalled him, yet in the end, forewarned, he was forearmed. It was foolish of her to let him look upon the weapon with which she could destroy him. The result of it was that she went back | to her convent under close guard, and was thereafter confined with greater rigour than hitherto.

Desperately Boris heard how the belief in Demetrius was gaining ground in Russia with the people. The nobles might still be sceptical, but Boris knew that he could not trust them, since they had no cause to love him. He began, perhaps, to realize that it is not good to rule by fear.

And then at last came Smirnoy Otrepiev back from Cracow, where he had been sent by Basmanov to obtain with his own eyes confirmation of the rumour which had reached the boyar on the score of the pretender’s real identity.

The rumour, he declared, was right. The false Demetrius was none other than his own nephew, Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a monk, but, unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had abandoned himself to licentious ways. You realize now why Smirnoy had been chosen by Basmanov for this particular mission.

The news heartened Boris. At last he could denounce the impostor.in proper terms, and denounce him he did. He sent an envoy to Sigismund III to proclaim the fellow’s true identity, and to demand his expulsion from the Kingdom of Poland; and his denunciation was supported by a solemn excommunica- | tion pronounced by the Patriarch of Moscow against the unfrocked monk, Grishka Otrepiev, who now falsely called himself Demetrius Ivanovitch.

But the denunciation did not carry the conviction that Boris expected. It was reported that the Tsarevitch was a courtly, accomplished man, speaking Polish and Latin, as well as Russian, skilled in horsemanship and in the use of arms, and it was asked how an unfrocked monk had come by these accomplishments. Moreover, although Boris, forewarned, had prevented the Tsarina Maria from supporting the pretender out of motives of revenge, he had forgotten her two brothers; he had not foreseen that, actuated by the same motives, they might do that which he had prevented her from doing. This was what occurred. The brothers Nagoy repaired to Cracow publicly to acknowledge Demetrius their nephew, and to enrol themselves under his banner.

Against this Boris realized that mere words were useless. The sword of Nemesis was drawn, indeed. His sins had found him out. Nothing remained him but.to arm and go forth to meet the impostor, who was advancing upon Moscow with a great host of Poles and Cossacks.

He appraised the support of the Nagoys at its right value. They, too, had been at Uglich, and had seen the dead boy, almost seen him slain. Vengeance upon himself was their sole motive. But was it possible that Sigismund of Poland was really deceived, as well as the Palatine of Sandomir, whose daughter was betrothed to the adventurer, Prince Adam Wisniowiecki, in whose house the false Demetrius had first made his appearance, and all those Polish nobles who flocked to his banner? Or were they, too, moved by some ulterior motive which he could not fathom?

That was the riddle that plagued Boris Godunov what time — in the winter of 1604 — he sent his armies to meet the invader. He sent them because, crippled now by gout, even the satisfaction of leading them was denied him. He was forced to stay at home in the gloomy apartments of the Kremlin, fretted by care, with the ghosts of his evil past to keep him company, and assure him that the hour of judgment was at hand.

With deepening rage he heard how town after town capitulated to the adventurer, and mistrusting Basmanov, who was in command, he sent Shuiski to replace him. In January of 1605 the armies met at Dobrinichi, and Demetrius suffered a severe defeat, which compelled him to fall back on Putioli. He lost all his infantry, and every Russian taken in arms on the pretender’s side was remorselessly hanged as Boris had directed.

Hope began to revive in the heart of Boris; but as months passed and no decision came, those hopes faded again, and the canker of the past gnawed at his vitals and sapped his strength. And then there was ever present to his mind the nightmare riddle of the

pretender’s identity. At last, one evening in April, he sent for Smirnoy Otrepiev to question him again concerning that nephew of his. Otrepiev came in fear this time. It is not good to be the uncle of aman who is giving so much trouble to a great prince.

Boris glared at him from blood-injected eyes. His round, white face was haggard, his cheeks sagged, and his fleshly body had lost all its erstwhile firm vigour.

“JT have sent for you to question you again,” he said, “‘touching this lewd nephew of yours, this Grishka Otrepiev, this unfrocked monk, who claims to be Tsar of Muscovy. Are you sure, man, that you have made no mistake — are you sure?”

Otrepiev was shaken by the Tsar’s manner, by the ferocity of his mien. But he made answer: “Alas, Highness! I could not be mistaken. I am sure.”

Boris grunted, and moved his body irritably in his chair. His terrible eyes watched Otrepiev mistrustfully. He had reached the mental stage in fpr he mistrusted everything and everybody.

“You lie, you dog,” he snarled savagely.

“Highness, I swear...”

“Ties!” Boris roared him down. “And here’s the proof. Would Sigismund of Poland have acknowledged him had he been what you say? When I denounced him the unfrocked monk Grishka Otrepiev, would not Sigismund have verified the statement had it been true?”

“The brothers Nagoy, the uncles of the dead Demettius...” Otrepiev was beginning, when again Boris interrupted him.

“Their acknowledgment of him came after Sigismund’s, after — long after — my denunciation.”’ He broke into oaths. “I say you lie. Will you stand there and palter with me, man? Will you wait until the rack pulls you joint from joint before you speak the truth?”

“Highness!” cried Otrepiev, “I have served you faithfully these years.”

“The truth, man; as you hope for life,” thundered the Tsar, “the whole truth of this foul nephew of yours, if so be he is your nephew.”

And Otrepiev spoke the whole truth at last in his great dread. “He is not my nephew.”

“Not?” It was a roar of rage. “You dared lie to me?”

Otrepiev’s knees were loosened by terror, and he went down upon them before the irate Tsar.

“TI did not lie — not altogether. I told you a halftruth, Highness. His name is Grishka Otrepiev; it is the name by which he always has been known, and he is an unfrocked monk, all as I said, and the son of my brother’s wife.”

“Then...then...” Boris was bewildered. Suddenly he understood. “And his father?”