Montezumas Daughter | Page 9

'I pray you take
back your son, and let him find some other road to the stake than that
which runs through the gates of Bungay Priory.'
Now at this story my grandfather was so enraged that he almost fell

into a fit; then recovering, he bethought him of his cudgel of holly, and
would have used it. But my father, who was now nineteen years of age
and very stout and strong, twisted it from his hand and flung it full fifty
yards, saying that no man should touch him more were he a hundred
times his father. Then he walked away, leaving the prior and my
grandfather staring at each other.
Now to shorten a long tale, the end of the matter was this. It was
believed both by my grandfather and the prior that the true cause of my
father's contumacy was a passion which he had conceived for a girl of
humble birth, a miller's fair daughter who dwelt at Waingford Mills.
Perhaps there was truth in this belief, or perhaps there was none. What
does it matter, seeing that the maid married a butcher at Beccles and
died years since at the good age of ninety and five? But true or false,
my grandfather believed the tale, and knowing well that absence is the
surest cure for love, he entered into a plan with the prior that my father
should be sent to a monastery at Seville in Spain, of which the prior's
brother was abbot, and there learn to forget the miller's daughter and all
other worldly things.
When this was told to my father he fell into it readily enough, being a
young man of spirit and having a great desire to see the world,
otherwise, however, than through the gratings of a monastery window.
So the end of it was that he went to foreign parts in the care of a party
of Spanish monks, who had journeyed here to Norfolk on a pilgrimage
to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham.
It is said that my grandfather wept when he parted with his son, feeling
that he should see him no more; yet so strong was his religion, or rather
his superstition, that he did not hesitate to send him away, though for
no reason save that he would mortify his own love and flesh, offering
his son for a sacrifice as Abraham would have offered Isaac. But
though my father appeared to consent to the sacrifice, as did Isaac, yet
his mind was not altogether set on altars and faggots; in short, as he
himself told me in after years, his plans were already laid.
Thus it chanced that when he had sailed from Yarmouth a year and six
months, there came a letter from the abbot of the monastery in Seville

to his brother, the prior of St. Mary's at Bungay, saying that my father
had fled from the monastery, leaving no trace of where he had gone.
My grandfather was grieved at this tidings, but said little about it.
Two more years passed away, and there came other news, namely, that
my father had been captured, that he had been handed over to the
power of the Holy Office, as the accursed Inquisition was then named,
and tortured to death at Seville. When my grandfather heard this he
wept, and bemoaned himself that his folly in forcing one into the
Church who had no liking for that path, had brought about the shameful
end of his only son. After that date also he broke his friendship with the
prior of St. Mary's at Bungay, and ceased his offerings to the priory.
Still he did not believe that my father was dead in truth, since on the
last day of his own life, that ended two years later, he spoke of him as a
living man, and left messages to him as to the management of the lands
which now were his.
And in the end it became clear that this belief was not ill- founded, for
one day three years after the old man's death, there landed at the port of
Yarmouth none other than my father, who had been absent some eight
years in all. Nor did he come alone, for with him he brought a wife, a
young and very lovely lady, who afterwards was my mother. She was a
Spaniard of noble family, having been born at Seville, and her maiden
name was Donna Luisa de Garcia.
Now of all that befell my father during his eight years of wandering I
cannot speak certainly, for he was very silent on the matter, though I
may have need to touch on some of his adventures. But I know it is true
that he fell under the power of