The Historical Nights' Entertainment: Second Series — John Shaqi
The Historical Nights' Entertainment: Second SeriesSabatini, Rafael
History
The Historical Nights' Entertainment: Second Series
Sabatini, Rafael
Europe -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Historical fiction, English
In the case of “The _Hermosa Fembra_” I confess to having blended
together into one single narrative two historical episodes closely
connected in time and place. Susan’s daughter was, in fact, herself the
betrayer of her father, and it was in penitence for that unnatural act
that she desired her skull to be exhibited as I describe. Into the
story of Susan’s daughter I have woven that of another New-Christian
girl, who, like the Hermosa Fembra, her taken a Castilian lover—in this
case a youth of the house of Guzman. This youth was driven into
concealment in circumstances more or less as I describe them. He
overheard the judaizing of several New-Christians there assembled, and
bore word of it at once to Ojeda. The two episodes were separated in
fact by an interval of three years, and the first afforded Ojeda a
strong argument for the institution of the Holy Office in Seville.
Between the two there are many points of contact, and each supplies
what the other lacks to make an interesting narrative having for
background the introduction of the Inquisition to Castile. The
denouement I supply is entirely fictitious, and the introduction of
Torquemada is quite arbitrary. Ojeda was the inquisitor who dealt with
both cases. But if there I stray into fiction, at least I claim to have
sketched a faithful portrait of the Grand Inquisitor as I know him from
fairly exhaustive researches into his life and times.
The story of the False Demetrius is here related from the point of view
of my adopted solution of what is generally regarded as a historical
mystery. The mystery lies, of course, in the man’s identity. He has
been held by some to have been the unfrocked monk, Grishka Otropiev, by
others to have been a son of Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. I am not
aware that the theory that he was both at one and the same time has
ever been put forward, and whilst admitting that it is speculative, yet
I claim that no other would appear so aptly to fit all the known facts
of his career or to shed light upon its mysteries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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