Captain from Castile (16 page)

"Get a move on, heretic, or you'll miss saying hasta la vista to your friends."

Yes, he had forgotten. It was a big day. A couple of dozen men and women were scheduled to make confession of their sins in the public square and to receive penance. For some, the lash and the galleys; for some, the lash and prison; for some, the stake. It was rumored that six were to burn.

He turned faint a moment; black dots wheeled in front of his eyes. But remembering himself, he fought the dizziness off, lifted his head. He had witnessed several auto-da-fes with the indifference bred of familiarity. Now his point of view" had suddenly altered, and it took no great shrewdness to understand why.

The pride of an hidalgo helped him out. He was carried forward amid the taunts of the crowd, impassive as a statue, closing his mind to the future, scornful of the present.

At last the shadow of the city gates shut off the sun. The troop plodded uphill through streets choked with people flocking in the same direction. As they drew closer to the Plaza Santa Maria in front of the cathedral, it was only by sheer weight of horseflesh that the riders could force a passage.

"Why not see the show?" called one of them to the captain, when they plunged into the milling crowd that filled the square.

"No, not till we've reported to the Castle," came the answer. "We'll have time later. Skirt the crowd."

But it was not so easy. The place was packed to suffocation, except for the center where a cordon of pikemen kept sufficient space clear. Brought to a halt in spite of himself, the captain looked for a crevice, through which he could wedge his way, and found none.

With new eyes, Pedro stared at the objects in the center of the plaza. There was the familiar low platform, erected during the night and standing a few steps above the cobblestones. On one side, it supported low benches, where the condemned would sit; and facing these were higher seats for the Inquisitor and the town magistrates. There, not far

off, half-hidden by faggots, stood the thick, blunt posts with their blackened chains.

"Demonio!" chafed the captain, standing in his stirrups. But at that moment came a sound that put an end to any thought of advance.

It was a distant chant, growing steadily louder. The pikemen on the opposite side of the square, shouldering and shoving, cleared the end of the street leading down from the Castle. A hush fell on the crowd, as the diapason of the chant came nearer.

''Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam: et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam."

Into the square, under the hot sky, slowly advanced the procession. To a philosopher, such as Germany was then producing, it might have symbolized many things: a once redeeming faith now fossilized and distorted by human corruption into the opposite of everything its Founder had advocated; a demonstration of the past, still powerful and alert to keep the New Age in leading strings. But Pedro de Vargas was no philosopher. He had been conditioned to accept humbly and in trembling the sternness of God as exercised by a divine Church. Not for him to question or protest; the very instinct of protest was in itself a proof of Original Sin. To the people in the square and to him among them, this ought, indeed, to be a joyful occasion: it manifested the victory of God over the forces of evil.

So, humbly and in trembling, he gazed at the banner of the Inquisition borne in front, and then at the column of chanting friars—white, black, and gray—of the monastic orders, and then at the shuffling procession behind. These last were the penitents. They came in single file, each one flanked by Soldiers of Christ, as the familiars of the Holy Office styled themselves. Each penitent was clad in the hideous san-henitOj to be worn by many of them till death, a loose, yellow garment like a nightshirt, plastered front and back with red crosses. Each had a rope about the neck and carried a long, green candle unlighted.

They limped and stumbled forward on limbs dislocated by torture. Their faces were putty gray, their hair matted; they blinked painfully in the unfamiliar sunlight. One old woman, too crippled to walk, was drawn on a hurdle, her distorted frame bumping over the cobblestones. At a pause in the chanting could be heard her shrill outcries. Most of the penitents were of Jewish or Moorish blood and had confessed to lapsing back into heresy. A few were self-admitted practitioners of the Black Art; a few were convicted blasphemers.

Hobble, hobble. They dragged themselves up on the platform, each

to his or her appointed place on the benches, in the order in which they would receive judgment. The old woman, still feebly moaning, was carried to her place and propped upright between two Jews. The ranks of scarecrows behind their candles looked like a red and yellow crazy quilt threaded with green. Now that they came nearer, Pedro recognized some of the faces, but was struck by the change in them. They were half-crazed men and women, only a blur of what they had been once. Fortunately, too, their minds seemed blurred, and they sat vacantly blinking at what went on.

The procession closed with another column of chanting monks and a detachment of soldiers. Then, from the cathedral, emerged the dignitaries of Church and town: the Bishop in purple, the canons and lesser clergy in their finest laces and berettas, the Alcalde and Alguazil Mayor with their badges of office, the leading noblemen of Jaen and officers of the Miliz Christi. Silks and velvets, gold and jewels. The crowd gaped. The peasants from the country had something to talk about for the rest of the summer. There was the Marquis de Carvajal, his beard uptilted above the Cross of Santiago on his chest, his eyes heavy with self-importance. There (Pedro's lips tightened) was Diego de Silva in black and gold. A red plume curled from the jeweled brooch of his velvet cap. Pedro knew all of them; but, concealed by the shoulders of the trooper and by the coating of dust on his face, they would hardly have recognized him. For the fraction of a moment, he expected to see his father among them.

They were only a background, however. In fact, it seemed to him that the whole concourse in the square, spectators and actors alike, was merely a setting for the white-robed figure of Ignacio de Lora. Every eye focused on the Inquisitor, as he headed the glittering procession onto the platform and took his raised seat opposite the condemned. Except for his glowing black eyes, he looked more than ever like a granite statue.

Unnecessarily the criers proclaimed silence, for everyone was now intent enough. A mass was said at an improvised altar on the platform, and then de Lora rose to preach the day's sermon. He spoke in a business-like, penetrating voice that reached everywhere and had an effect on the mind like the probing of a lancet. He discussed heresy, God's wrath, and hell-fire. He extolled the mercy of the Church, who, by bringing souls to a state of grace and by imposing a brief and corporal penance, saved them from the eternal flames.

The voice ran on. Pedro's dangling legs felt heavier, his arms more numb. Sweat streaked his face. He tried to escape from the insistent

voice by gazing up at the gothic front of the cathedral, at the roof line of houses hemming in the square.

But at one point his glance happened to fall on a man in the crowd next to the pikemen. Something familiar about him fixed Pedro's attention. Then suddenly he recognized him. It was Garcia. Although now disguised in the steel helmet and cuirass of a soldier, the broad nose, bull neck, and bulk of the man were unmistakable.

What was he doing here? Wasn't this the morning when—? Pedro stiffened. Wasn't Garcia's mother to have been discharged from prison this morning? Then why—?

From where he gazed, Pedro could see only Garcia's profile, but he observed that the man was not looking at de Lora. He stood with a fixed stare turned on the benches of the penitents. Following it, Pedro noticed the old woman who had been carried to the platform, and who was being held upright by the arm of one of the Jews. Looking more intently, he recognized, in spite of the skeleton features and sparse white hair, Dorotea Romero.

She looked more like a clay-colored mummy than a woman. Her face had been contorted by pain into a mask; but some dim resemblance to her former self lingered on. Glancing back at Garcia, Pedro saw that he did not move or take his eyes from her. Only now and then he ran his tongue between his lips as if to moisten them.

Well, this was de Lora's way. After all, perhaps he could not be expected to release the woman secretly. When it came her turn to receive judgment, he would declare her free.

Meanwhile, Pedro, forgetting his own situation, shared Garcia's suspense. He wondered what the latter would do when his mother had been discharged. His military disguise was a clever stroke. Probably he would present himself as a soldier out of service, who had been paid by the woman's brother to take charge of her. It remained to be seen whether he could get away with it.

The sermon ended, and the crowd stirred with suppressed excitement. Even the human derelicts on the benches stirred. The supreme moment of the day had arrived.

In a booming voice, an ecclesiastic of the Inquisitorial Court summoned the penitents one by one to hear their imposed penance.

Francisco Cadena stumbled forward and lurched to his knees in front of the Inquisitor's high seat. He was shaking in every limb. Pedro knew him as a prosperous owner of olive groves in the vicinity of Jaen. He had a young wife whom he was proud of and liked to dress in the newest style. Of course, whatever penance he received, all that was now

over, because everything he possessed had already been confiscated by the Holy Office. The same held true for the other penitents. They had nothing left to lose but their skin and bones.

The deep-voiced clerk reviewed Cadena's crimes. His maternal grandparents had been proved to be Jews. He had confessed to ma-rrania, a lapse into Jewishness from the Catholic faith. For this deadly sin, he now felt true repentance. The Church, ever merciful, decreed the following penance, upon the performing of which she would reconcile him to herself.

The clerk paused. Cadena groveled and rubbed his hands feverishly.

"Three hundred stripes on horseback and ten years in the galleys."

Cadena still groveled. It meant only protracted death. First, the slow parade through town, half-naked, bound to a horse's back, while the executioners plied their whips. Then the rower's bench and the scourge of the overseers. Ten years.

He raised his clasped hands toward the Inquisitor.

"Your Reverence, Your Reverence," he babbled, "think ... in the prison . . . three times the garrucha, three times the trampazo . . . Have mercy!"

De Lora made a motion with his hand. Francisco Cadena now belonged to the secular arm. One of the hangman's lackeys took charge of him, haled him back to his bench, where he sat mumbling and staring. He would never reach the galleys, Pedro reckoned.

"Panchito Marin."

An apostatay a backslider of Moorish blood. He was "reconciled" at the price of two hundred lashes and eight years at the oars.

Dolores Marin, his wife. "Reconciled" for two hundred stripes and eight years of prison.

The toughs in the crowd licked their chops; the whipping of heretics made good entertainment. Pedro closed his mind to the possibility of another day several months later. . . . No, it was absurd. He wouldn't think of it. Looking at Garcia, he saw a bead of sweat roll down the man's cheeks and drip to the ground.

"The Church, ever merciful . . . perpetual prison . . . the sanbe-nito for life . . . lago Hasta . . . two hundred stripes . . . blasphemer . . . the galleys . . ."

The clerk's unctuous voice rolled along like an innkeeper's announcing his bill of fare. The penitents' benches were now filling up with those who had heard their sentence. Some looked unmoved, as if the capacity for suffering had been exhausted; others wept feebly; others sat shrunken and trembling. The mind of one man snapped; he

threshed his arms about, making faces at the crowd. And meanwhile those who had not yet heard were on tenterhooks, for the sentences ol-death came last. If a church painter had sought models for a "Lasi Judgment," the choice would have been rich. The platform exhibited a corner of hell.

"Henriquez Guzman . . . the Church, ever merciful . . . 'reconciled' ... to burn presently at the stake."

A higher wave of excitement swept the crowd. There were eight left. This meant that eight, not six, would burn. An unexpected bonus of two. No wonder that there was an unusual supply of faggots! The executioner began laying out his instruments, the "agony-pears," which, being thrust into the mouths of those condemned to burn, stopped their screams and thus spared the ears of too sensitive spectators.

Whether it was by chance or design, Dorotea Romero's name was read last. It occurred to Pedro that probably de Lora wished to end the proceedings with one act of complete mercy, which would redound to his reputation for saintliness. After all, the crowd would never hear of the eight hundred ducats. But the suspense was hard on Garcia. His face had grown white; it looked as if his nerve was on the point of cracking.

At last—"Dorotea Romero." Two guards bundled the old woman forward, thrust her on her knees. The clerk detailed her crimes. She had confessed to a pact with Satan; she had attended the Black Mass; she had compassed the death of sundry people by her spells. She now repented of these unspeakable sins, and the Church, ever merciful, admitted her to penance.

"Wherefore she is now remanded to the secular arm to be burned presently at the stake."

For a moment Pedro stared incredulously at the granite figure of the Inquisitor. Surely even now he would intervene. He had taken the bribe, he had given his word. But de Lora's features looked as stony as ever. Then, in a devastating flash, Pedro understood the cheat. Was not Dorotea Romero being delivered from prison on the day assigned? A casuist, like de Lora, could maintain that the promise had been kept. And at that moment something perished in Pedro de Vargas, perished utterly, something which had given to life one of its best illusions.