Madrigal de las Altas Torres! Could one find in all Spain a town more suited for swift intrigue and high romance? It lay in a gentle plain of considerable beauty and was completely surrounded by a high wall marked by many towers. Its small streets ran under poetic arches and its plazas were dignified by sturdy ancient buildings. It was particularly noted for its convent, because in one of its cells the great Queen of Spain, Isabel the Catholic, had been born, and here many fine ladies from renowned families lived as nuns, helping the poor and keeping out of the way of their richer relatives.
In 1594 the convent housed one beautiful nun who was to become famous in history, Doña Ana de Austria, twenty-six years old and the granddaughter of Carlos V. She took her name from her father, who had been the savior of Spain, Don Juan de Austria, half brother to Felipe, which made her niece to the king. This would be important.
Doña Ana was in the convent for a reason common to that age. She was without question the daughter of the great Don Juan, but her father had never bothered to marry her mother, so the child was put in the convent to expiate her father’s sin. She was gracious, well educated and tender in spirit. She was also romantic and often wondered what her life might have been if she were not illegitimate. Finally, she was dreadfully uninformed about life in the world at large, for like all female bastards of the royal line she had been stuck away in the convent at the age of six and had known only uneducated country girls who were taking orders and who were required to address her as ‘Your Excellency.’ Oh yes, Doña Ana also had a collection of jewels, some of them so stamped as to indicate that they were part of the crown treasure, and this too would be important.
The only man whom Doña Ana saw regularly was her confessor, Fray Miguel de los Santos, an Augustinian monk who had once served as royal courier from the court of Portugal to Rome and twice as provincial of his order. He had an intensity of spirit that Doña Ana liked and a willingness to talk with her for extended periods following her confession. He told her that he supposed he was the most saintly of all living men in that he prayed most of each night, disciplined himself three times each week and gave all his money to the needy. Then he told her something which must have excited her profoundly. ‘I believe God has selected me for some special task, because each day of my life, when I come to the most solemn part of the Mass, I see in the heavens a giant crucifix, and beside it dressed in kingly armor with a baton of gold and flag of green silk a blond young man whose face I cannot see.’ ‘Who might the young king be?’ Doña Ana asked. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ her confessor replied. ‘When God wants us to know who he is, we’ll see his face.’ What no one in Madrigal seemed to know was that Fray Miguel had once been preacher to the royal family of Portugal.
In the spring of 1593, before any overt acts had occurred in Madrigal, Fray Miguel began having a new set of visions, and these, too, he communicated to Doña Ana. as was only natural since she appeared in them. ‘I saw a vision of Jerusalem,’ he told her, and it was groaning under the heel of Islam, but at the right side of the city I saw you standing to bring deliverance and on the left side the handsome young man who now wore the crown of a king.’ When Doña Ana asked what this signified, her confessor replied, ‘I suppose it means that you are destined to save Jerusalem.’ And the young man? It was someone Fray Miguel had seen before but he could not remember exactly who he was.
He next had a vision of Jesus Christ being crucified, with Doña Ana on his right side and the same fair king on the left. This signified, he said, that Doña Ana and the king were to work together for Jesus, as man and wife.
Hard on this exciting vision came one which spelled out the future in specific terms. The young king was her cousin. Sebastián of Portugal. He was alive and God intended Doña Ana to be his wife and queen. For the rest of that year the monk continued to ensnare the nun with a kaleidoscope of visions in which she appeared as the bride of King Sebastián, and he hammered at how much more pleasant it would be to rule as queen with a handsome man at her side than to wither away as a nun in a cell. ‘Where is the king?’ she asked. ‘We have only to wait,’ Fray Miguel assured her. ‘If it is God’s intention that you marry the king, God will bring him to you.’ So the beautiful nun waited.
Even in the north, where one is not accustomed to the relics of the Moorish occupation, figures like this appear at the creche to remind one that even cities like Salamanca were under Moorish rule for centuries.
Everything I have told you so far is a matter of history, well recorded in documents, because what happened in Madrigal beginning in June of 1594 shook Spain, and many self-serving reports were filed in the royal archives by participants in the drama. What happened in the next four months, however, cannot be accurately determined and has been the subject of much speculation. The best historical summary is found in A King for Portugal, published in 1964, by the student of Portuguese history, Mary Elizabeth Brooks. The best dramatic account appeared on the Madrid stage in 1849 and often thereafter, Unconfessed Traitor and Martyr, the work that José Zorilla, who also wrote Don Juan Tenorio, considered his masterpiece. And recently, at a date I have not been able to determine, Alonso de Encinas, a native of Madrigal, published an enchanting little essay titled ‘The Pastry Cook of Madrigal.’ The Zorrilla play is pure invention and I shall not borrow from it. The Encinas essay purports to be fact but is at variance with Dr. Brooks, so I shall use it sparingly. I shall, however, rely for the next few pages upon fact and legend as I heard it in Madrigal.
A major point of difference between history and legend centers upon the person of Don Rodrigo de Santillán. Legend says that he was the leading citizen of Madrigal, and a man who took seriously his role of alcalde and confidential agent of King Felipe. A petty noble, pompous, suspicious and easily swayed by the merest whisper from the king, he kept an eye on all that happened in Madrigal and dispensed an honest justice in any matter that did not impinge upon the crown. That is, if two farmers quarreled over a pig, Don Rodrigo could be depended upon to ferret out the facts and render a just decision. But if the pig happened to belong to the king … well, that was quite another matter. That demanded looking into, and when Don Rodrigo looked into something where the king’s interest was at stake, there was apt to be a hanging.
On this point history is clear-cut and firm. Don Rodrigo de Santillán was not the mayor of Madrigal; he was a senior and respected judge of the Chancilléria de Valladolid (High Tribunal of Justice) and so far as can be ascertained had no personal connection with Madrigal. The Royal Archives at Simancas contain literally a thousand pages of reports written by Judge Santillán and these show him to have been a perspicacious gentleman, jealous of his prerogatives and determined to do the king’s will. Legend required him to be the alcalde of Madrigal so that his daughter María, a quiet girl, reserved and lovely, could play a major role in developments. When the events began to unfold she had not yet given signs of being interested in any of the young men in nearby towns who would normally have married her, and villagers began to wonder what was going to happen to her.
They liked her and their speculations were without rancor. They were therefore pleased when a tall stranger, who seemed to be about forty years old, accompanied by a fair-haired girl of two and a maidservant, appeared in town to open a pastry shop. He announced that his name was Gabriel de Espinosa and he posed only as an honest workman who baked good pastry and looked after his little girl, but his bearing was so noble, his speech so refined and his accidental references to past deeds in which he had participated so convincing, that the citizens of Madrigal were satisfied that he must be an important man in hiding.
‘The younger son of some noble family,’ was the general judgment. ‘Got into trouble with the daughter of a duque or something. The mother died and he has their little girl. He’s here in Madrigal only till it’s safe to go back home and claim his inheritance. And his titles.’
Among those bedazzled by the handsome, taciturn pastry cook was María. She started frequenting hi
s shop and soon made no secret of the fact that she was madly in love with him. Don Rodrigo had rather more exalted plans for his daughter than a pastry cook, and he interposed all sorts of objections, but María was firm. ‘He’s a great gentleman,’ she insisted. ‘One day you’ll be proud of him.’ Whenever her father was obliged to be in Valladolid, strong-willed María crept out of her house to visit with Gabriel.
On one such occasion Gabriel dropped certain hints about his past. When he had come to Venice … ‘From where, Gabriel?’ ‘From Africa.’ And in Venice he had had a series of wild adventures. He’d been married to a noble Italian lady, had fought duels, had been privy to many secrets of the Venetian government. ‘Why?’ ‘Because they saw in me someone who …’ Whenever pressed about his exact identity his voice trailed off. But it was clear that the Venetian state had devised plans whereby Gabriel de Espinosa could be of service to them in their war against Spain. ‘I left Venice,’ he said. ‘Is the little girl the daughter of the Venetian noble lady?’ He preferred not to speak of that.
The love affair of the alcalde’s daughter and the pastry cook went forward at a steady rate, except that the more María spoke in behalf of her lover, the more the mayor objected. ‘He’s a tricky one,’ Don Rodrigo said. Sometimes he would leave his office in one of the towers and stand looking at the pastry shop, and when he had about decided that this Espinosa was a fraud, the cook would greet a customer in such grandeur that even Don Rodrigo had to acknowledge that here was a most unusual man. Most unusual.
Don Rodrigo’s problem was about to be resolved in a way he could not have anticipated. As soon as Gabriel de Espinosa arrived in Madrigal, Fray Miguel, still serving as confessor to Doña Ana, doubled his visits to her cell and warned her that the hour of decision was at hand. ‘I had a vision. God appeared and told me that he was about to bring King Sebastián into our presence. Are you prepared?’ She said she was ready for whatever God required of her, but how could she marry Sebastián, since she was already a nun? Her confessor reasoned, ‘You were thrown into this convent at a tender age and against your will. When you took your vows to become a nun, did you do so willingly?’ Doña Ana said she had never wanted to become a nun, and Fray Miguel cried, ‘See! Your vows are void and you are free to marry.’
When this was settled, Fray Miguel had a further vision telling him that the long-absent king was about to arrive in Madrigal. ‘How will we know him?’ Doña Ana asked, and the friar said, ‘When I was preacher to the kings of Portugal I knew Sebastián well. He was tall and gracious, bold and daring, a superb horseman and blond. I would know him.’
Finally, one day Fray Miguel arrived in a state of agitation. In his vision the night before he had seen God’s finger pointing at a handsome man whom he had seen earlier standing with Doña Ana at Jerusalem and at the Crucifixion. ‘He is King Sebastián and he lives,’ said the voice of God. What was more, he was hiding right here in Madrigal until the day came to disclose himself. And what was best of all, he was now in the anteroom. Fray Miguel kept Doña Ana from fainting, and when she had composed herself he kicked open the door and there stood the king, waiting to claim her as his bride.
It was not long before the pastry cook was sleeping at the convent. (Many historians, especially those of the Church, deny that the affair reached this point; however, much evidence suggests that it did. At any rate, oral tradition in Madrigal insists that it did.) At the trial several nuns were convicted of having connived at slipping Gabriel into the convent, and the conspiracy was probably greater than the testimony admitted to public record showed. The whole convent seems to have been enchanted at the prospect that one of their members might become Queen of Portugal.
The demureness of the Spanish woman and the arrogance of the Spanish man begin early.
Espinosa had no trouble in convincing Doña Ana of his royal claims. He had indeed fled Africa in disguise, as Fray Miguel had guessed, and he had been wandering the earth looking for a queen exactly like Doña Ana. All auguries were now good for his recovery of the throne, and if she would stand by him in the months ahead … She wanted to know exactly what this meant, and he said there was the matter of expenses. ‘I have these jewels,’ she said, and he thought they would just about cover the cost of regaining the crown.
At the same time, however, he was not neglecting his duties with the alcalde’s daughter, ‘because,’ as an old gentleman at Madrigal suggested, ‘he wasn’t at all sure he could get Doña Ana out of the convent.’
In October, 1594, events came to a climax and Fray Miguel prevailed upon Doña Ana, who was hopelessly in love with the pastry cook, whom she habitually called ‘Your Majesty,’ to give him her jewels to pay for a clandestine trip to France. ‘There are in that country,’ Fray Miguel said, ‘thousands of loyal men waiting to rise on your husband’s behalf.’ The friar had fallen in the habit of speaking to Doña Ana as if she were already married to the king. ‘It will be a simple matter,’ he assured her, ‘to explain to the Pope that you were made a nun against your will. He’ll permit you to marry the king.’ The passionately involved nun gave Espinosa her jewels, but at the last moment she either enclosed or mailed him two love letters as well, and in so doing condemned him to a dreadful death.
So much for the blend of legend and fact. From here on, each item of the story is historically founded and based on existing documents except as specifically noted. On October 7, 1594, Gabriel de Espinosa, on his way to consult with a group of supporters in France, left Madrigal and journeyed to Valladolid, where at an inn he fell in with a pretty country girl, whom he sought to impress by showing her the jewels he was carrying. He looked forward to spending a pleasant evening with the girl and offered her a drink from a cup carved from what he assured her was the horn of a unicorn. But she was no fool. She knew that unicorns were so rare that if a man of apparently modest means had such a cup he must have come by it evilly. She slipped out of the inn to inform upon him and by sheer coincidence came upon Judge Rodrigo de Santillán, making his nightly snooping rounds, for as he later boasted in a letter to King Felipe,
You have undoubtedly understood and noticed, sir, throughout my life, how lacking I have been in greed and how much more I esteem honor than wealth, and I seek this by patrolling by night and laboring by day as everyone knows.
Don Rodrigo listened to the girl’s story and agreed with her that it sounded suspicious. He accompanied her to the inn and found there the mysterious pastry cook of Madrigal. Here was the chance he had been awaiting and he summoned the guard to arrest the man. When he searched Gabriel’s belongings he found a cache of jewels, some of which were so marked as to make him think they belonged to Her Excellency Doña Ana de Austria, the nun at the convent in Madrigal.
‘We have caught a thief,’ Don Rodrigo announced, and after clapping Espinosa into jail, he returned to his quarters and at midnight wrote two letters which speak well for his sagacity in dealing with matters touching upon the royal family. The first was to Doña Ana and was couched in deferential terms, as befitted a letter addressed to the king’s niece.
Señora Doña Ana de Austria,
Most Excellent Lady: Tonight I have personally arrested, at an inn of Valladolid, a certain Gabriel Espinosa, who claims to be a pastry-maker in the town of Madrigal, in whose possession I have found some valuable jewels which seem to belong to Your Excellency, and he says that he has been commissioned by Your Excellency to come to Valladolid to sell them. I humbly beg Your Excellency to inform me if what this Gabriel Espinosa has claimed is true, and, in the meantime, he remains in jail and the jewels in my possession, at the disposal of Your Excellency. May God keep Your Excellency many years as is the wish of this humble servant of Your Excellency, who kisses your hands. From Valladolid, September 28, 1594.
The Judge, Don Rodrigo de Santillán
As soon as this was dispatched to Madrigal, Don Rodrigo sent a much different type of directive to Don Luis Portocarrero, Alcalde de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid.
/> My esteemed and respected friend:
Upon receipt of this letter, I ask you, the better to serve Our Lord the King, to go to the house of the pastry-maker Gabriel Espinosa in Madrigal and take possession of everything you find in it, and to arrest those who normally live in the house, except for any guests who might be there, whom you will order to find other lodgings unless they seem suspicious to you, for in that case you will arrest them also; search the house and, if you find documents, make a packet of them and send them to me as safely and rapidly as you can. This is all that I need to tell you, Don Luis, and I reiterate my friendship for you and bid you farewell. May God keep you. From Valladolid, September 28, 1594.
The Judge, Don Rodrigo de Santillán
The second of these two letters and the one that follows shortly are not reported in the archives but are of ancient tradition. For what happened next we have documentary evidence from Judge Santillán himself. Next morning, September 28, when Espinosa was already in jail as a thief, Don Rodrigo happened upon the two love letters from Doña Ana and in them found the words, several times repeated, ‘Your Majesty.’ On the evidence of these letters it was clear that the pastry cook had been passing himself off as the vanished King of Portugal, and this was quite a different matter. This was treason.
Don Rodrigo, recognizing that he had come upon something monstrous, immediately reported his conclusions to King Felipe at El Escorial. A full-scale investigation was launched, and then a trial, and in each, Judge Santillán conducted himself with dignity, if not impartiality. From the first he was determined to accomplish two ends: he would hang the pastry cook, and he would protect his own relationship with the king, to whom he wrote: “Since, according to the indications given by the beginning of this affair, it seems that it might offer me some profit, I beg you not to let me be deprived of it now by those who used to sleep and wench while I was patrolling and working.’ He was ambitious, but to accomplish his aims he did not pervert justice and at his hands the accused received fair trials. The daughter María, which legend gives him, does not appear in the official records as pleading for the life of her lover, but on this matter Madrigal tradition is unequivocal. She never wavered in her affection for the pastry cook nor in her belief in his innocence. She remained convinced that he was the younger son of a noble family and that he had behaved with pundonor.