CHAPTER XXV
At nightfall on Tuesday, the 16th of September, 1578, D. John suddenly felt the intense cold of fever and general lassitude. The fever lasted all night, and the next day, although still unwell, and with a bad headache, he got up at his usual time, heard Mass, did his business, held a council, and visited several quarters. This was at the camp of Tirlemont, where D. John had moved the royal troops after the famous battle of Mechlin, the last at which he commanded, and at which he did such valiant deeds. The plague was decimating the camp of the rebels, and although the infection had not penetrated to that of D. John, his soldiers suffered from diarrhæa, especially the Germans, who were intemperate in what they ate, and not careful about what they drank. This, with reason, worried D. John, and he took infinite precautions to avoid the contagion, inspecting everything himself, making daily rounds, visiting the sick in their huts, helping and cheering them, and striving, above all, that none died without receiving the Viaticum, which he usually accompanied. This matter of the Sacraments, as being transcendental and eternal, he had committed to his then confessor, the Franciscan Fr. Francisco de Orantes, in order that he might urge and watch over the many ecclesiastics in the camp, because D. John, who always had taken much care of the spiritual welfare of his troops, had in these latter days, according to Vander Hammen and Cabrera de Córdoba, made his camp into a real convent of monks.
It was feared, therefore, that this sudden illness of D. John was the forerunner of the plague, and this fear was strengthened when the same symptoms showed themselves in three or four gentlemen of his household, of those who attended him most closely, among them the venerable Gabrio Cervelloni, who was already seventy, and was then, by D. John's orders, making a fort on the heights of Bouges, in front of the camp at Tirlemont, and scarcely a league from Namur. Alarm was ended on the fourth day, seeing that the fever and other ills left D. John. But the next day, which was a Saturday, he suddenly grew worse, and while the other invalids went on getting better and became convalescent, he showed other symptoms of a strange illness, palpitations which made him get up in bed, tremblings of the hands, arms, tongue and eyes, and red spots showed themselves, others livid and almost blue, with black, rough heads.
Then another suspicion spread through the camp, which historians of old have transmitted to us, and which the fresh facts and discoveries of modern ones make probable. They said that D. John had been poisoned during his recovery, and Vander Hammen goes so far as to point to the hand which was the instrument of the crime. "This made his household suspect," he says, "that he was poisoned, and that Doctor Ramirez had given him something in his broth." And in the diary of D. John's illness, kept by his doctor, the original of which Porreño inserts in his life of the hero of Lepanto, these words are to be read: "With some suspicion, the antidote for poison was used, sometimes externally, sometimes internally."
Public opinion, not only in the camp, but wherever the news reached, at once pointed to the Queen of England or the Prince of Orange as authors of the suspected crime. Ratcliffe's recent attempt and the various defeated ones of Orange justified this bad opinion, and the application of the judicial principle "cui prodest" fits like a glove either the heretic Queen or the apostate Prince.
But nobody could then suspect that the sinister "cui prodest" suits the Secretary Antonio Pérez better than anyone else, because nobody yet knew that he, more than anyone, was interested in the disappearance from the world's stage of D. John. It must have been a nightmare for Antonio Pérez, even to dream that D. John might return to Spain, knowing, or at least suspecting, the crimes, infamies and artifices of which he had been the victim. And once put on the scent, investigating, proving, becoming certain, with his right and terrible thirst for justice, in a single interview with the King, his brother, he could bring everything to light, and sink Antonio Pérez in that abyss of infamy and iniquity in which the hand of God buried him later. It is, therefore, very probable that Antonio Pérez, believing at last that D. John of Austria would return to Spain, would try to keep him away for ever with "the broth of Doctor Ramirez," or by some similar means; and it is the general opinion at present that if D. John's death were caused by crime (although it is not sufficiently proved), it might be as justly attributed to the Queen of England, or the Prince of Orange as to the secretary Antonio Pérez; all three were capable of it, and for divers reasons all three gained great advantages by the death of the conqueror of Lepanto.
But be this as it may, it is certain that from the first moment of his relapse D. John understood that he was dying, and that his hoped-for end was coming to him—
... que non ha dolor
Del home que sea grande ni cuytado.[[18]]