XXI
Now Philip was married to Marie of Portugal, and with her he acquired her lands for the crown of Spain; and together they had a son, Don Carlos, he who was afterwards called “the mad” and “the cruel.” And Philip had no love for his wife.
The Queen was lying-in. She kept her bed, and by her side were the maids of honour, the Duchess of Alba among them.
Oftentimes did Philip leave his wife to go and see the burning of heretics. And all the gentlemen and ladies of the Court did likewise. And thus also did the Duchess of Alba and the other noble ladies whose duty it was to watch by the Queen in her childbed.
Now at that time the ecclesiastical judges had seized a certain sculptor of Flanders, a good Roman Catholic, on the following charge: He had been commissioned, it seems, by a certain monk to carve a wooden statue of Our Lady for a certain sum, and on the monk refusing to pay the price which had been agreed between them, the sculptor had slashed at the face of the image with his chisel, saying that he would rather destroy his work than let it go at the price of a piece of dirt.
He was straightway denounced by the monk as an iconoclast, tortured most piteously and condemned to be burnt alive. During the torture they had scalded the soles of his feet, so that he cried out as he passed along from the prison to the stake: “Cut my feet off! For God’s sake cut my feet off!”
And Philip, hearing these cries from afar, was glad, though smiled he never a smile.
Queen Marie’s dames of honour all left her, wishing to be present at the burning, and the last of all to desert her was the said Duchess of Alba, who, hearing the cries of the sculptor, could not forbear to witness the spectacle.
So, in the presence of King Philip and of his lords, princes, counts, equerries, and ladies, the sculptor was bound to the stake by a long chain. And all round the stake was a circle of flaming bundles of straw and fiery torches, the idea being that if he wished, the sculptor could be roasted very gently by keeping close to the stake in the centre of the circle, thus avoiding the full rigour of the fire.