Hunger's Brides (23 page)

Out into the bright morning stumble the condemned, sad jesters in their black sacking emblazoned with flames and devils, in their dunce caps painted with serpents. The women hold little green crosses.

But the onlookers have been expecting to see fourteen condemned prisoners, not thirteen.

During the night, Isabel Núñez has confessed and repented of her Judaizing. But this will not be known until ten days later, when she and another whore of Babylon—stripped to the waist—are each tied to the back of an ass and whipped through the streets. Two hundred lashes each.

Thirteen prisoners … The number raises a perplexed murmur all along the procession route to the amphitheatre. Scores of bleachers and platforms have been built and rented out along the way. By eight o'clock, the Procession of the Green Cross is within a few blocks of the plaza of the Indian fliers, the Plaza del Volador. The bullfights have been cancelled, the barbershops shuttered, the market stalls boarded.

The amphitheatre has been built to hold eighteen thousand. It covers the south, east and west; to the north it is open to the palace balconies and to a ructious mass of spectators unable to get seats. The total number in the square would exceed thirty thousand but for a hastily delivered order forbidding, on pain of excommunication, further entry into the desperately crowded square.

To the left, on the west side, is a grandstand constructed to accommodate the noble families of the realm and the officers of the Church, the most eminent being seated at the base. The various dignitaries, families and Inquisition officials can be seen retiring, throughout a long, hot day
of sentencing, to comfortable lounges under the grandstand for the taking of rest and refreshments. The prisoners' dock is pyramidal, and the prisoners are distributed equitably. No side of the square is favoured. Between the dock and the grandstand is a large mahogany table to record the proceedings upon. The secretaries of the Holy Office sit in a row of heavy, carved chairs, each with its own canopy. Across from the table rise two pulpits for sermons and the reading of the edicts. Between these is a massive scaffold for the prisoners' sentences to be read from.

For the past hour, the armies of Christ Triumphant have driven the squadrons of Satan through the Plazuela del Marquez, then down the Calle de Mercaderes de San Agustín and up to the corner of the Calle del Arco. The Green Cross has at last reached the approaches of the square. Close behind the file of the condemned, and surrounded by the University's rectors, the warden of the Inquisition's prisons leads a white mule. On its back sways a lacquered chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It contains the charges against the condemned.

Here the situation gets out of hand.

Throughout the course of the procession, Tomas Trebino de Sobremonte has never ceased to trumpet his guiltlessness. Even knowing he is to burn alive, as the one unrepentant Judaizer, defiantly he swears through his metal gag to practise the law of Moses to the death. Wildly gesticulating, violently shaking his head, Trebino roars back his insolence to a crowd hurling fierce insults and exhortations to repent. As he makes his way through the streets, a hard-pressed company of infantry struggles to protect him from the incensed mob armed with paving stones and staves.

But when, still mouthing abominations, he nears the entrance to the square where thousands have been kneeling in hushed adoration of the Green Cross, the crowd closes in to silence him.

The soldiers panic, unwilling to die protecting a heretic. Yet the mob is so dense that they cannot get out of the way, and they fight back to save themselves. Before wading into the fray, the Archbishop sends someone through the empty back streets to the cathedral, with an order to silence the massive bells. The Archbishop waits. Each contingency and response has been anticipated—for the rigour of his forethought, the providence of his planning, he is rightly famed. Before long all the bells of the city fall silent and a languid stillness blankets the square, damping the fires of Christian fury.

The Archbishop, mounted on the back of his little mule, enters the sea of men and the waters part. At nine o'clock that morning, calmly, slowly, the Archbishop's venerable mule rounds the corner of the University with both troops and prisoners in tow … Combatants in the everlasting war between God and Nature, Spirit and Flesh, they shuffle awkwardly down the little flight of steps and into the throng in the now silent plaza.

In reverence the crowd kneels until the Archbishop has taken up his station atop the scaffold. He sits under a black velvet baldachin, its coping adorned with gold brocade and golden fringes. The Inquisitors file in behind him.

By now the prisoners have occupied the dock. On the lowermost benches, Indians hold the effigies. Next, those prisoners to be penanced; above them, those to be reconciled. At the tip of the pyramid, and all around the uppermost rung, huddle the condemned, each between two Jesuits ceaselessly whispering.

Cloaked in shame in their sackcloth and dunce caps they sit, the bedraggled crew of a foundered ship, faces drained by insomnia, white with terror or fury.

The accused are prodded to stand. The crowd rises from its knees as the Archbishop sits—erect, without reclining—in a great white throne of marble. Behind him, the exchequer plants the Standard of the Faith. Before him stands an ebony table. Upon it a great book and a little brass bell. Visible beneath the table are glimpses of the Archbishop's sandalled feet.

Feet like fine brass
.

All through the day of judgement he will toy absent-mindedly with a great key. It hangs on a thick golden chain in his left hand. From time to time his right hand reaches out and rings the little bell to accelerate the proceedings: time is short.

The Inquisitors settle onto cushions around his table, and throughout the proceedings are seen lounging like Persians, leonine eyes alert.

After the adoration of the Green Cross, still draped in black, after the reading of the Proclamation of the Faith, after the Bull conferring papal authority on the Holy Office of the Inquisition, the most profound silence reigns over the expectant multitude.

Each slow step rings out as the Dean of the Cathedral labours up to the pulpit. He salutes the Tribunal on his right, and glancing up at the Archbishop begins his sermon.

… Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgement of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters …

The lacquered chest bearing the suits against the accused is brought forward. Four secretaries scuttle to and fro, conveying the heavy briefs to the pulpits, from which the charges are read in slow, rhythmic alternation. Three secretaries at a table sit scrabbling intently, quill hands lightly convulsed, to capture every nuance of the proceedings, just as they have done at interrogations.

… And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened …

Over the hushed plaza a little bell rings out with the sound of glass cracking in a flame. Then from a rostrum on the high scaffold at the centre of the amphitheatre, the sentences for each case are called out. Clasping the ceremonial black staff in front of his chest, the warden of the secret prisons brings each prisoner in turn to stand alone at the foot of the scaffold.

All eyes are on the Archbishop as he cants slightly forward to consult his notebook.

… And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire …

First to be judged are the dead. Among them an eighty-year-old woman who lasted a full six months in prison. Her remains and effigy are consigned to the flames.

Now it is the turn of the living.

An exultant roar goes up as Tomas Trebino is sentenced first—to burn alive. Merciful, the Tribunal orders that the other twelve, before burning, be garrotted. From the prisoners' dock to the scaffold, the warden weaves back and forth like a shuttle.

… And upon her forehead was a name written
, Mystery,
Babylon the Great
, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth …

Among those condemned to die, it may be that one face at least, that of an old woman, is suffused with the peace of a loving god. The warden brings her, the last of the condemned, forward to hear her judgement. Ana de Carvajal staggers to the base of the scaffold. She is sixty-seven. Her breast cancer is so advanced, and she so wraithlike, that the heart-shaped tumour is visible beneath her
sambenito
.

She, too, is the Inquisition. In the
auto
of 1590, her father was burned in effigy. In 1596, her mother burned garrotted, her brother Luís burned
alive. In the
auto
of 1601, when Ana was nineteen, the Holy Office reconciled her: but to lapse into the cult of the Pharisees was to be condemned to the flames.

Now, forty-eight years later, the Inquisition finds she has relapsed. At last her long wait is over.

… How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow …

Again the little bell rings. The warden brings forward the scores of the reconciled one by one. Since reconciliation comes at the price of confiscation of property, many in this group are wealthy. Among them are several women, and chief among these is Juana Enriquez, widely resented for the refinement of her manners and dress, for the luxury and glamour of her parties and balls, for her coaches and the bevies of servants that once followed her wherever she went.

Gone now the servants.

In yellow sackcloth before the scaffold she stands alone. She hears her fate read. Two hundred lashes. Confiscation of all estates. Banishment from the realm. Shrill cries of satisfaction rise from the crowd. Babylon, the Great, is fallen.

… And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning …

Next, Simón Váez Sevilla: the richest man in the New World. At the foot of the scaffold, he stands in sackcloth, a green candle in his soft hands, a noose around his white neck: all behold the arrogant kingpin of a mercantile network of false converts spanning both oceans—
the whole globe
—from Malta to Manila.

Two hundred lashes. Confiscation. Banishment. Perpetual and irremissible prison. The crowd bellows another note in its paean to Apollo.

… For true and righteous are his judgements: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand …

The condemned are led away through the jeering crowd to the
quemadero
, the burning ground. From the chapel, the last terrible strains of
De Miserere
die out.

The reconciled and the penanced are made to abjure their errors once more, to swear not to relapse, and to kiss a little iron cross thrust against
their lips. The tension mounts; teasingly the black baize draped over the Green Cross falls away inch by inch in little tugs, as each sinner submits and returns to the bosom of the Church.

When at last the Green Cross stands clear of its black cloak of mourning, a great clamour of joy and triumph goes up, like the sound of many waters. Kettledrums, trumpet blasts, shouts—
Long live the Faith!
—the choir singing
Te Deum
now like larks, soldiers firing volleys into the air….

The Archbishop's eyes are as a sheet of flame.

… And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God … that ye may eat the flesh of kings …

An uncanny scene surrounds Tomas Trebino as they attempt to strap him to the back of an ass for the procession to the
quemadero
. The creature goes mad the instant it feels Trebino's weight. Braying wildly, it charges into the other animals brought to carry the condemned. One beast after another balks. The animals, normally docile, are so restive now that the prisoners, many of them aged, will have to walk to meet their death. It is an outrage to all aficionados, who for months to come, in taverns all over New Spain, will denounce this breach.

Only by firing repeatedly over the heads of the maddened crowd can Captain Mendoza's escort prevent the wildly ranting Trebino from being torn apart along the route.

He will not walk at all unless permitted to walk backwards. For a few steps he does, until his Jesuits call out for him to be carried.

The rest of the condemned, some silent, others crying or ceaselessly muttering—the satanic, half-mad citizens of Gog and Magog—crawl along the Alameda. For hours, hundreds of watchers have been clustering like pine cones in the branches of the giant trees that line the boulevard. Thousands more have scrambled up onto the piping of the aqueduct and squat like sagging rows of buzzards above the newly renovated Plaza de San Diego.

The stakes on scaffolds above the pyres are arranged over a rectangular area covered with lime. The shoddy construction also scandalizes many: the steps are narrow and unsteady; the arrangement of ropes and pegs on each stake does not allow the condemned to sit comfortably. It is a disgrace.

Eleven chests are stopped, eleven breaths. Eleven pairs of Jesuits may rest.

The last to mount and be strangled is Símon Montero. Hands bound behind his back, he does a little dance of contempt and clowns for the crowd, then feigns a stumble on the narrow steps to force his confessors to keep him from falling to his death.

“The carpentry,” he cries out in the instant before his garrotting, “is better in Seville—”

The order is given to light the pyres. Silent Indians work the bellows.

… And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years … And cast him into the bottomless pit …