they could not condemn Perez, a mere accessory to Philip, without
condemning the King, and how could the judges do that? Perez, I think,
would have taken his chance of the judges' severity, as against their
King, rather than disobey the King's command to confess all, and so
have to face torture. He did face the torture, which proves, perhaps,
that he knew Philip could, somehow, escape from the damning evidence
of his own letters. Philip's loophole, Major Martin Hume thinks, was
this: if Perez revealed the King's reasons for ordering the murder,
they would appear as obsolete, at the date of the deed. Pedro alone
would be culpable. In any case he faced torture.

Like most people in his circumstances, he miscalculated his own power
of bearing agony. He had not the endurance of the younger Auchendrane
murderer: of Mitchell, the choice Covenanting assassin: of the gallant
Jacobite Nevile Payne, tortured nearly to death by the minions of the
Dutch usurper, William of Orange. All of these bore the torment and
kept their secrets. But 'eight turns of the rope' opened the mouth of
Perez, whose obstinacy had merely put him to great inconvenience. Yet
he did not produce Philip's letters in corroboration; he said that
they had been taken from him. However, next day, Diego Martinez, who
had hitherto denied all, saw that the game was up, and admitted the
truth of all that Enriquez had confessed in 1585.

About a month after the torture Perez escaped. His wife was allowed to
visit him in prison. She had been the best, the bravest, the most
devoted of women. If she had reason for jealousy of the Princess,
which is by no means certain, she had forgiven all. She had moved
heaven and earth to save her husband. In the Dominican church, at high
mass, she had thrown herself upon the King's confessor, demanding
before that awful Presence on the altar that the priest should refuse