The Errant Flock

by Jana Petken

  “I must do this, Papa. I can’t lie to him any longer. He already suspects me.”

  Juan’s panicked face paled. He opened his mouth to protest, but David raised his hand to silence him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Paco had listened to the entire story in stunned silence. Sitting beneath a tree with David, Juan, and Diego on the outskirts of town, his expression had held a mixture of anger and shock, but he’d also been pleasantly surprised to learn that the infant and little girl still lived.

  After a long discussion about the situation, the whereabouts of the girl child, and what they could do to keep David safe from another attack, Juan and Diego went back to the house they’d just rented near Paco’s home. Paco and David set off for the prison.

  “David, the duke is destroying his own town,” Paco said as they approached the prison walls. “The man I pledged my sword to – the noble lord entrusted by the king and queen to protect his people and lands – is killing his own citizens? The bastard … No more … I will serve Peráto no more. I’ll live to see the man stripped of his title and his miserable life!”

  “The common man has no weapons to fight his master. We do his bidding or die,” David said, miserable.

  “You might be right. I can’t help but think that our beloved Captain Tur has also been swept into this mire of dung. And him, a man who prays in the church every day for absolution! He took the credit for the capture of Miguel and Ignacio. He brought them to the prison, yet he wasn’t even at the port, according to Diego. I suspected he was lying. At the trial, he looked as though he’d just been kicked in the gut by a mule and had the wind knocked out of him.”

  “You think he is obeying the duke and Garcia’s orders too?” David asked.

  Paco nodded. “Yes, but he’s probably not a willing participant. I know him. He’s a good man.”

  David wondered what Paco would have done. “Would you have killed those people?” he asked, needing to know.

  “I would have carried out my orders, same as you. I would have tried to protect my family, just as you did,” he said honestly. “You have to understand, lad, that we militiamen are no better than pack mules in our nobleman’s eyes. We serve him until we drop. We carry his heavy burdens and protect his castle and his coin. We do not retire until we are too old or too infirm to be of use. The only difference between us and the mule is that the mule’s flesh gets eaten after years of gruelling service.

  “To disobey the duke’s orders is to sign one’s own death warrant. We’re fodder in his eyes, used to feed his whims. Nobles, my lad, have absolute power over their lands because they demand absolute obedience and loyalty. And make no mistake – these men of privilege and wealth may talk with fancy tongues and wear fine robes, but they are amongst the biggest thieves and murderers that God ever created.

  “Peráto killed his physician, David,” Paco continued, becoming more irate. “I knew that man. For years, he walked the castle’s hallways as regally as a noble himself. Yet the duke probably didn’t think twice about murdering him … So, lad, what do you think would have happened had you disobeyed him? I’ll tell you what would have happened. You and your family would be dead and buried by now, and another militiaman would have been appointed to carry out His Grace’s hellish orders in your stead … That person might have been me.”

  “I obeyed. I did as commanded, and the duke still wants me dead. His word means nothing,” David said angrily.

  “I agree. That’s why the duke no longer has our allegiance. Saving the people of this town is all that matters now … and somehow, with God’s good grace, we will succeed. We have to.”

  Looking at Paco, David wondered how he now viewed his future. He knew everything there was to know, yet he was still willing to risk his life. Why? David wondered. Why risk the lives of his family? It was an important question.

  “Don’t stare at me sideways,” Paco said, as though reading David’s thoughts. “And don’t ask me again why I’ve agreed to help you.”

  Chapter Forty

  After the chaotic trial and execution earlier that evening, the prison seemed almost peaceful. David and Paco set to work checking prisoners at random and delivering water to those in need. In this part of the prison, only one familiar was on duty. Sitting with his arms crossed and feet atop an upturned bucket, Raul scowled disapprovingly at David and Paco, who were making far too much noise in the middle of the night.

  “For God’s sake, can’t you two leave the prisoners’ well-being until morning?” he finally asked Paco.

  “We’ve got a couple more to do, Raul, and then we’ll take our leave. Please accept our sincerest apologies for disturbing your rest,” Paco said with a touch of sarcasm, which the man missed or chose to ignore.

  At the other end of the passageway, some distance from the guard post, David entered Sinfa’s cell. The acrid smell of excrement coming from a pile of straw heaped against the wall hit his nostrils, making his stomach twist and his eyes water. Carrying a water bucket in one hand and an oil-lit torch in the other, he kicked the door shut behind him with his heel and then raised the torch to get a better look at the prisoner.

  She tried to sit up, but her thin, weak arms lacked the strength to lift her body off the floor. Her face, white as chalk, and the ripped bodice hanging off her shoulders, blackened with dirt, tore at David’s heart, but it also strengthened his resolve. Hardening his thoughts, he placed the bucket on the floor and the torch in the wall bracket.

  “Sinfa, stand up,” he told her, gripping her arm and lifting her onto her feet.

  Sinfa, staggering like a drunk, pushed her knotted hair from her face and then shielded her eyes from the brightness. Struggling to stay on her feet, she looked disorientated. She tried to speak but apparently couldn’t. Finally, she pointed to the water bucket.

  David shifted his body weight, clenched his fist into a tight ball, drew his arm back, and then swung a punch. After hitting Sinfa hard on the face, he watched her frail body reel backwards until she hit the wall and slid to the ground unconscious. “Forgive me.” She might hate him later, he thought briefly. But that had to be done.

  “Paco, we’ve got a dead one,” David said, joining Paco, who was still speaking to Raul. “It’s the Jew girl. She’s stinking and covered in pus boils. We’ll need to scrub the cell later. I think she was diseased.”

  “I suppose we’d better take her away,” Paco said to Raul with a worried frown. “Even the dead can spread sickness. You know, I remember a time when …”

  “I don’t want to hear another one of your stories, Paco. By the time you’ve finished telling it, we’ll have a plague on our hands. Just get rid of her,” Raul said irately.

  “Do you want to help us carry the body out?” Paco asked.

  “No, why should I? The Jews don’t concern me.”

  Shrugging casually, Paco nodded.

  Back in the cell, David picked Sinfa up and threw her limp body over his shoulder. Time was short, David thought, heading towards the prison doors. If she were to wake up before he and Paco got her outside, she’d moan or struggle and he and Paco would be arrested and locked up within minutes.

  “Let me look at her,” Raul shouted from farther along the passageway.

  Paco held the outer doors open. David, who was just about to walk outside, halted. “I wouldn’t get too close if I were you, Raul!” he shouted over his shoulder. “She’s marked with open sores all over her face and body. She might infect you with her pus.”

  Holding his breath, David watched Raul take a step forward and then stare for a brief minute at Sinfa’s bare thighs and legs dangling lifelessly as she was strapped to David’s back. If the man decided to put his curiosity ahead of his well-being, their plan would be shot to hell and he and Paco would be finished. “Well, do you want a look at her or not?” David asked casually.

  “Take her – and good riddance!” Raul shouted back.

  Outside, David laid Sinfa in a coffin on the dead man’s c
art. This transport, used by the prison guards to move dead bodies to the graveyard, was no more than a wooden box sitting on a couple of planks of wood atop four wooden wheels and connected to two narrow wooden arms used as handles. It was heavy to pull, even for two men, and it made a loud noise when the badly constructed wheels grated against the wooden base. But they needed the coffin and the cart. Their plan would fail without them.

  After clearing the streets surrounding the prison, they stopped. “Do you think it’s safe now?” Paco asked David.

  Walking to the corner, David looked left and then right. There were no houses in this area, only the long zigzag road down the hill. “There’s not a soul in sight,” David told him. “I doubt we’ll see anyone on the streets until morning.”

  After hiding the cart and coffin on a grassy bank near their street, David carried Sinfa in his arms and followed Paco through the deserted streets.

  Sinfa stirred and moaned softly. Halting in mid-step, David laid her on the ground. Her eyes shot open. Filled with terror and confusion, they bore into David’s face.

  David dropped to his knees and clamped his hand over her mouth. “You’re safe but you must keep quiet,” he warned her harshly. “Not a sound, Sinfa.”

  Sinfa tried to move her head but couldn’t. Her terrified eyes darted left to right and then rolled upwards, as though she were trying to take stock of her surroundings.

  “You’re safe. You’re free,” David told her again.

  She stared again at David, and the hope in her eyes seemed to replace the terror. Finally, she nodded in understanding.

  David withdrew his hand. “I’m going to carry you. We’re almost there.”

  “Where … are you … taking me?” she asked in a barely audible whisper.

  “I’m taking you to my parents’ house. My mother will care for you. I give you my word.”

  Sinfa nodded. “Did you hit me?” she mumbled, and then she closed her eyes again.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The inquisitor rubbed his eyes, turned his head, and stared at the sleeping boy lying next to him. As always, after the sexual act, regret and a measure of guilt struck him, but never enough to replace the satisfaction and surge of vigour that followed lovemaking. He stroked the boy’s body and revelled in its youthful contours. He would take the lad again tonight. Today would be momentous, but it would also be tiring, with long hours in contemplation and devotion to duty. Sighing loudly with a reluctance to lose the boy’s warmth, he lay for a moment longer.

  An inquisitor’s life was not an easy one, he thought, and the boy brought him a well-earned respite. Did he not deserve to have comfort in the midst of his gruelling duties? Slapping the boy’s bare buttocks, he smiled.

  “Get up and see to your business. Bring me food and wine. See to my bath. Prepare my robes for High Mass – and be quick about it. I have God’s work to attend to.”

  Once alone, he picked up his Bible, which had been resting on a table, opened it and read Genesis 3–5 from the Old Testament. “Like God, you will be able to tell the difference between good and evil,” he repeated several times. That passage had always held a special meaning for him. The devil had spoken those words to Eve in the Garden of Eden, yet they could have come from God’s mouth and could quite easily have been directed towards His inquisitors. He, Gaspar de Amo, had only one mission in life: to know the difference between guilt and innocence, sin and purity, and to seek confessions from lost souls.

  He looked at his naked body in the smoky uneven glass mirror, which distorted his form somewhat. His narrow shoulders, flabby arms, chest hanging like two small sacks of wheat, and a large belly which folded over and covered his genitals reminded him of his mortality. He wasn’t the healthiest of men, he acknowledged. Cursed with the bloody flux, he had good and bad days. On particularly sickly days, he struggled to leave his daybed, so frequent were the eruptions from his arse and tight knots in his stomach.

  Life was too short, with barely enough time to achieve one’s full potential, he thought as he tried to reach a boil on his buttock so that he could squeeze it. Sagrat would be the pinnacle of his success and his lasting legacy, for he doubted he would live to see many more years. Here in this town, a statue would be built to honour him. Centuries from now, he would be remembered as the just inquisitor whose fair judgements transcended secular bias and racism.

  During his years of service to the Holy Office, he had brought order and peace to countless towns and cities. No longer were there violent acts against Jews and Moors from townspeople who would take justice into their own hands without understanding what righteousness was. Before this Inquisition, townspeople rounded up suspected heretics and brought them before the local lord, but no one knew how they were to be judged or how witnesses were to be heard and examined. The Inquisition had brought order to the proceedings and fair trials for the accused.

  The Inquisition was Christianity’s most instructive and protective body, gently shepherding its errant flock back into the fold and towards an idyllic world, where only sinners experienced God’s wrath and the pure lived blissful lives. The Inquisition was not cruel. On the contrary, it provided a means for heretics to escape death at the hands of inexperienced townspeople and to return to the community.

  He opened a wooden trunk sitting at the bottom of the bed and lifted out a leather whip. Kneeling in prayer, he asked God for guidance and clarity of mind. “Let my pain bring me closer to you. Accept my suffering as a testimony of love towards my fellow men and my devotion to you,” he whispered.

  His mind’s eye caught glimpses of the two men burning at the stake two nights previously. He had watched the fires being lit from his sleeping chamber in the municipal palace and had not moved from the window overlooking the square until the bodies had turned to ash.

  Shaking his head violently from side to side, he tried to cast out the images. An anguished sob ripped from his throat, his legs buckled, and he fell to his knees. Holding the whip tightly in his hand, he used his free hand to stroke the three arm’s length knotted leather prongs one by one. “May I bleed as Christ did for his fellow men,” he muttered. “Let this sacrificial deed atone for my sins and lead me to sanctity.”

  As the first strike of the whip slashed his back, he shuddered with a mixture of pain and ecstasy. Lifting his arm, he coiled the whip onto his back and shoulders and with each lash flogged himself more viciously than the time before.

  His body, jerking violently every time the whip dug into his flesh, stung like the kiss of a thousand stinging nettles, yet his mind urged him to continue. During flagellation, he had once crossed the thin veil between two worlds. God had spoken to him, first telling him to punish the heretics who would destroy Spain, and then saying that He and his angels would smite the sinners with rocks from heaven.

  “Speak to me, Lord!” he cried out. He needed to experience the Lord’s presence again. “I do this for you! This is your will!” he exclaimed, vividly remembering God’s words in that wondrous vision.

  Again he pictured the men at the stake, their rigid bodies tall within the high wall of smoke that surrounded them, their heads exploding with intense heat. “Oh, Lord, it was done in your name!”

  Lashing himself harder still, he tasted the blood that was spraying from his back onto his shoulders throat and mouth. His teeth were chattering, yet sweat poured down his forehead and onto his eyelids and cheeks. Conjuring up images of tortured faces, his mind settled on a young woman in Zaragoza whose body had been roped in the torture chamber. Tears sprang from his eyes and coursed down his cheeks as he recalled her agonising screams for mercy.

  Thick ropes had been coiled around her body. Between the ropes and her skin was a wooden pole which the torturer turned like a key. With each twist of the wood, the ropes had tightened until they had squeezed her belly so tightly that her skin bled and ribs broke. “I love my people!” he cried. “I am their saviour!”

  The whip slipped from his hand. His body keeled over,
and he curled himself into a tight ball on the floor. Shivering, he reached out his arm towards the bed and gripped the blanket hanging over the edge. Groaning with pain, he dragged it towards him and pulled it over him. His panting breath was like smoke rising in the cold air, and for a fleeting second, he wondered why he’d not ordered the fire to be lit. “I do what I do to save God’s flock,” he mumbled. “I am their shepherd. God, grant me Your Grace …”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The church of San Agustin was bathed in light on this last Sunday before Christmas. In the front-row pew, Luis sat with his town council. On the other side of the isle were the Dominican monks and visiting clergy from Valencia.

  There were not many pews, and every one of them was filled. Children sitting on parents’ laps shifted impatiently, waiting for permission to go outside to play in the town square and eat their caraway seed biscuits, a Sunday treat. In the centre aisle, invalids lay or sat on the floor. Halfway down the church, a throng of people, unable to find a seat, stood in dishevelled lines, ten deep in places.

  After finishing his sermon with a blessing, Bishop Sanchez left the pulpit and gave way to the inquisitor.

  Gaspar de Amo rose from his throne-like chair and allowed his chamberlain to adjust his cloak before making his way up the spiral staircase to the highest pulpit – the eagle’s eye, so called by Father Bernardo.

  Looking down at the multitude, he took a moment to search out the enthralled sea of faces waiting, probably wondering and undoubtedly fearful of the edict which he was about to read. From where he stood, he could see over the tops of the people’s heads at the back of the church and into the crowded La Placa Del Rey outside. His heart soared. Hundreds of townspeople, unable to find a spot inside, had gathered to listen to him and to learn from him. His mission had begun, he thought, for by the end of this day, many would have already come forward to confess their sins.