The Story of Don John of Austria

Like a flock of frightened sparrows the children of Leganés arrived that afternoon at Ana de Medina's door, just as the bells were ringing for vespers. Ana's son Jeromín was the first to get there, with his big blue eyes staring and his beautiful golden hair thrown back. But there was good cause for all this, and twenty shrill voices hastened to explain it to Ana, who, startled, came to the door distaff in hand, and a scolding on her lips.

There was no school in Getafe that afternoon; the sun had stricken down Sancha Apelza, the master's wife, while working on the farm of the Comunero, and she was to receive the last sacraments that night. The children from Leganés were coming back to the village, playing as usual by the way at Moors and Christians. Jeromín always insisted on this, and never would play at Comuneros, or at being Padilla, Adelentado or Bishop Acuña, all recent and popular heroes. He said it was enough for him to be Jeromín and to pretend to cut off the heads of Moors. He entrenched himself in the Canon's well as if it were a castle on a rock, and Pedro Verde defended the orchard of Maricuernos opposite, declaring it to be the Vega of Granada. Jeromín gave the word "Santiago," and from both sides, like bullets from an arquebus, came lumps of soft earth. At this inopportune moment, while the battle was raging along the road from Madrid bordering the orchard of Maricuernos, four mules appeared, harnessed in pairs with long traces to what seemed to be a little wooden house, with two tiny windows and four big wheels. A man was riding the foremost mule on the off side, and another was seated on the roof of the house, guiding the mules with a long stick. Through one of the windows a very fat man with grey moustaches and a pointed beard, could be seen, sitting inside. Four well-armed horsemen and two baggage-mules escorted the unwieldy vehicle. The children were frightened at the sight of this extraordinary machine, such as they had never seen before, but curiosity overcame their fear and they all grouped themselves, very silent, in the orchard of Maricuernos to see it pass closer. The boys' terror increased when they realised that the heavy machine was halting in front of them, and the fat gentleman, putting his head out of window, was asking them very politely whether the Emperor's former guitar-player, Francis Massy, who had married Ana de Medina, a native of the village, still lived there.

The boys began to giggle and look at each other, not daring to answer, stir or even take off their caps as a mark of respect. The fat man repeated the question two or three times very politely and kindly, till at last Pedro Verde, who was eleven years old, and had been twice to Pinto, and had seen the cavalcade of Ruy Gómez de Silva from afar, made up his mind to answer, his mouth dry with fear and keeping his cap on, that the musician Francisquin, as they called him, had died some years previously, but that his widow Ana de Medina still lived there and that her son Jeromín, was one of those present. This Pedro demonstrated by seizing Jeromín by the neck of his doublet and pulling him forward. For the fat man to hear this, look at Jeromín and stretch his arms out of the window as if to seize him and drag him into the coach was only the work of a second. But it took the children, terrified at the old man's behaviour, even less time to scamper up the hill towards the village as if they had legions of devils at their heels. The gentleman called to them to stop. The escort also called out. But the children, spurred on by fright, ran harder and harder up the hill like hunted hares, until they stopped at the threshold of Ana de Medina where we met them.