by Ken Hood
And then there was Brother Bernat.
It was time for a serious talk with Brother Bernat.
Toby found him in a shaded corner behind a shed, sitting on the ground with his back turned, so that only his pink scalp with its downy fringe was visible—that and the gray cowl covering his narrow shoulders. In front of him lay a block of building stone like a low table, with Pepita on the far side of it, facing Toby but too engrossed to notice him. They were both very intent on something. It could only be some sort of child's game, yet their concentration was so intense that he hesitated to interrupt.
Then he saw that the girl rested her hand on the stone with a crumb held in her tiny fingers. The minute brown speck creeping toward it over the gray stone was a mouse. Or perhaps it was a vole or a dormouse or something exclusively Spanish. It looked like a mouse, but it was displaying unmouselike courage, inching forward, nose and tail twitching. Toby, too, held his breath.
The mouse came to a halt and stretched out like dough until its nose could inspect the crumb. Satisfied, it took a few more steps, and gently lifted the crumb from the child's fingertips, then sat up on its haunches to nibble at it. With agonizing slowness, she slid a finger around and stroked its back. Toby stared in disbelief.
The spell broke. Mouse and crumb flashed away and were gone. An immense grin split Pepita's little elfin face from side to side. Her tiny fists clenched with glee and drummed on the stone. It had certainly been a remarkable trick.
"I did it!" she whispered excitedly.
"You did indeed," answered the old friar. "Very well done!"
She looked up and gasped in dismay. Fear! Guilt!
"It is only Captain Tobias," Brother Bernat said without turning. "He can be trusted."
Toby stepped forward and sat down at the end of the big stone. He stared into those strangely clear eyes, dark agates in a face of ancient marble. "And how did you know it was me, Brother?"
"I knew you would be at the corner, and I could see the angle of her head. No one else is so tall."
An unlikely explanation. There was much secret amusement in the old man's smile, but Pepita was staring anxiously at the big stranger.
He said, "I should like to have a word with you if I may."
"Have as many as you wish, my son. Don't mind Pepita. She doesn't gossip either." His voice was as soft as gossamer.
"Some do." Toby cursed himself as soon as he said the words.
A twinge of sorrow flashed over Bernat's face. "Whatever the senora said about me, she does not understand the truth of the situation." He had been put on the defensive, though, and that was disturbing.
But Toby was feeling defensive, also. To hint at gossip was even worse than repeating it.
"I put no stock in her babbling. What brings me is something that Hamish... Jaume, that is... Jaume insists that Senora de Gomez was seriously hurt when she fell from her horse today. This is not surprising, considering how high those seats are. He says she was unconscious, her face was flushed, her eyes were open and the pupils dilated. Her breath was harsh and irregular, her pulse very slow. He says these symptoms exactly match some that he once read about, so he knew she was very likely to die and he could nothing for her. He went to assist Senora Collel and found that she had escaped with a twisted ankle. The next time he looked at Senora de Gomez, you were helping to her feet. She was a little shaken but not badly hurt."
Brother Bernat smiled again. How could anyone so old endure these long marches, these hardships, the alarms of today's battle, all without at least looking tired? But he never looked tired. He never ran around like a puppy either, but he was no fresher in the mornings than he was at night. And he rarely bore any expression other than a tolerant smile. He made Toby feel like an obstreperous, bad-mannered child.
"Sergeant Jaume must have made an error, you mean? This disturbs you. Is he prone to errors?" The smile widened, displaying very white teeth—apparently a complete set, too.
"He is not prone to errors. I am disinclined to believe he made one today."
The friar looked at Pepita, who returned his smile hesitantly. When he spoke, though, he was plainly addressing Toby.
"And you decided it was time for a serious chat with the old man?"
Suppressing a bad-mannered, obstreperous desire to growl, Toby said, "Yes I did, Brother."
Brother Bernat turned to him again, but this time he was not smiling. "I am sorry if my manners annoy you, my son. I have had them so long that they are hard to change, but I know that I tend to counter questions with other questions. I have wandered the world a long time, and it is a dangerous place. One learns discretion or one stops wandering."
"I have no wish to pry!" That was a lie.
"You have a right to pry, because the security of all of us rests on your judgment. I think I can help you with your problem, Tobias."
Toby flinched. "My problem?"
The smile crept back, but there was no mirth in it. An attempt at reassurance, perhaps. Sympathy, possibly. "I have no problem except my manners. But you do. You ask questions, I answer with other questions, and you don't answer at all, which is your right. But it gets us nowhere. I think I can help you, but only if you will tell me the whole story. Everything." There was Toledo steel inside that cobwebby exterior.
"I—"
"You are not ready to do that, so it will have to wait. But don't wait too long, please. The sands will run out quickly once they start to go." He lifted a pale and slender hand to indicate he had not finished. His eyes bore their disturbing stare again, as if he were looking inside Toby's head. "Just answer me one thing, my son. How long has it been?"
"I don't have the faintest idea what... Three years, Brother."
The friar winced as if that news was disastrous. "So you were what, sixteen? Seventeen?"
"Eighteen." They were talking about the hob, although Toby had no idea how that had come into the conversation. It was the last thing he ever discussed.
Brother Bernat shook his head in dismay. "You have done very well to last as long as you have, then. Don't wait much longer, Tobias, please!"
He was crazier than the don, that was all.
"Wait for what? What do you mean about doing well to last?"
The clear dark eyes told him his denials did not convince.
"You are going to go insane very shortly. I think you know that, and know what will follow. It is amazing that you have lasted so long. I am surprised it did not happen today in the turmoil of the fight. You must have nerves like granite, my son."
Toby made half a move to rise and then hesitated. "I don't know what you mean, Brother."
"Fear, Tobias. Or rage. Hatred." The dark eyes widened. "Any sort of strong passion. You must avoid them. Great remorse, also."
Mezquiriz? He could not know about Mezquiriz! He must not know about Mezquiriz!
Toby jumped up and strode away, and if that was not rage he was feeling, it was fear.
CHAPTER THREE
The room was dim, with walls and floor of dark stone and a heavy-beamed ceiling high enough to be lost in shadow. Its stifling heat came from a fireplace at one end, which provided almost as much light as the two small, high-set windows at the other. Three men garbed in the simple brown hose and doublets of common workers waited patiently at the cool end. They were all burly and muscular, but nothing else could be known about them, for their heads were concealed in black bags. Once in a while one of them would move so that a glitter of eyes showed behind the eye holes.
A table along one side bore two tall candlesticks and a green crucifix inlaid with colored jewels, too large to be anything but colored glass. Behind the table sat three elderly men in the white supplicars and black robes of Dominicans, the Black Friars, all with their hoods back to display their tonsures, all sweating profusely. The one on the left fumbled endlessly through a pile of papers and parchments. The one on the right kept scribbling in a large book, recording the proceedings with a quill pen that he dipped from time to
time in a silver inkwell. Two shaven-head novices stood at the door opposite.
In the exact center of the room hung a rope.
On one side of it stood a soldier holding a musket erect beside him, and he must be the most uncomfortable person present, because he wore a thickly-padded blue doublet, black breeches, and a polished wide-brimmed helmet, and was burdened with sword, ramrod, slow match, powder horn, shot bag, and the other paraphernalia of the professional military. He looked utterly miserable, as if this was one of the worst days of his life, and perhaps more than the heat was responsible for that.
On the other side of the rope stood Toby, stinking of his jail cell. He was trying to hold up his head with a show of courage he did not feel while he glared stubbornly at the friar in the center, the one in charge, the inquisitor.
His name was Father Vespianaso. He was a frail-seeming, elderly man, with a thin white tonsure, thick black eyebrows, and a close-trimmed, piebald beard. His eyes were red-rimmed and droopy, full of such sadness that they must have viewed all the sorrows of the world. A sagging blister of flesh under each of them was the only padding on his face, which otherwise was only a skull wrapped in skin so dry that it seemed ready to crack and flake away completely.
He looked up from the document he had been reading for the last ten minutes.
"Is the accused now ready to disavow his demon and reveal its name so that it may be cast out?"
Toby understood most of the proceedings and knew that particular question by heart, but the Inquisition had its rules, and the presence of an interpreter during the examination of foreigners was one of them. He waited until the soldier translated.
"The inquisitor asks if the accused is now ready to disavow his demon and reveal its name so that it may be cast out." His English was not much easier to understand than the original Castilian. His vivid blue eyes stared fixedly ahead, as if trying to see through the prisoner's chest.
"Tell him I do not have a demon."
The friar had heard that familiar protest many times during the last four days. "Tobias, Tobias!" He shook his head sadly. "If the accused will not confess, he must be put to the Question."
Toby understood that only too well. Examination of a suspect went through clearly defined stages. They had begun three days ago in a cheerful, airy room upstairs. The questioning had grown steadily harsher and more menacing until, at the end of yesterday's session, they had brought him down to this cellar and shown him the whips and branding irons, the pulleys in the ceiling, the funnels for water torture, and the ladder-like grid to which the victim would be tied during their use. Today they had brought him straight to this chamber, where the fire was already lit and the three tormentors waited. That had been at least two hours ago. So far the tormentors had done nothing more than stoke the fire.
What was the question this time? Didn't matter.
"I do not have a demon. If I did, how could I possibly cast it out? Does he think I would voluntarily harbor a demon? Does he think such a demon would tell me its name? I do not have a demon!"
No demon, no name. Of course the hob would count as a demon in the inquisitors' eyes—at times Toby himself found the distinction fuzzy.
There was no way out of this trap. They had explained it to him many times, being patient, aggressive, understanding, and menacing by turns. A demon could only be controlled by its name, so the accused must reveal it. If he refused, he must be forced to comply. If he still would not talk or did not know the demon's name, then the demon must be driven out of him by making it suffer. That, unfortunately, meant making the accused suffer, but suffering was better than possession, wasn't it? Supposedly an incarnate would keep its husk alive, or at least operational, indefinitely. The only way a man could prove that he was not possessed was to die.
Another question.
Same answer: "I do not have a demon!" He must keep to the same answer. How much did they know? How sure were they? Demons could detect the hob in him, so was the inquisitor himself possessed? A demon looking for employment would find nothing more congenial to its tastes than being an officer of the Inquisition. But it didn't matter whether they were guessing or certain or had just chosen him at random. Once they started asking questions, they could never admit they had picked on the wrong man. There was no escape.
The inquisitor held out a paper.
Carrying his musket, the soldier marched three paces to the table to take it, then brought it back and held it up in front of the prisoner. "The inquisitor asks if the accused recognizes this notice."
The accused did, and his sweat turned cold in the heat. The paper was a smudged and tattered poster dated October 1519. The woodcut it bore was a crude drawing of himself as a youth, but a good likeness considering that it had been done from memory. The inscription in both Scots and Gaelic outlined the Parliamentary act of attainder that declared him to be possessed by a demon. It also proclaimed a reward of five thousand marks for anyone who brought in his corpse with a blade through the heart.
How had they gotten ahold of that? They had not produced that poster before, or even mentioned it. He found his voice, although it sounded strange to him.
"It lies."
The inquisitor did not wait for the translation. "But the accused does recognize it?"
The soldier translated the question and Toby's reply: "I have never seen it before. I was told about it. It lies. Whoever wrote it was lying."
Other people had been lying also, members of the pilgrim band, but he had not been told which. They had all been interrogated at the roadblock—questioned separately, most of them several times. Whatever slanders might have been spoken could be only their word against his, but that poster was damning. Who could argue against an act of Parliament? The one person who might have passed that paper to the Inquisition was Baron Oreste, because he had been responsible for it in the first place.
The interpreter returned the paper to the table and came back to thump the butt of his musket on the floor beside the prisoner and deliver the next translation.
"The inquisitor says that the evidence is strong enough to force a confession. This is the accused's last chance to repent. If the accused does not name his demon, he will now be put to the Question."
The soldier still did not meet Toby's eyes. He might be a decent enough fellow when off-duty, perhaps popular with his mates, a good singer, or skilled with women, homesick for England, planning to buy a freehold with his loot, if he ever laid his hands on any, if the war would ever end... any or all of those things. But now he was very much on duty and would do what he was told to do whether he liked it or not. He had no choice; this was not his fault. If he disobeyed an order he would be hanged or whipped to shreds, or his fate might be worse than either of those, because to argue with the Inquisition was itself evidence of possession.
Sweat streamed down Toby's face and ribs although there was a huge icy rock in his belly. "Tell him I do not have a demon. He is making a terrible mistake. He is going to torture an innocent man."
Even as the soldier was translating the prisoner's answer into a Castilian little better than Toby's own, the inquisitor beckoned to the three black-hooded tormentors who had been standing silently under the windows with brawny arms folded, waiting out the interminable preliminaries. The prospect of action at last must seem welcome to them, because they strode forward eagerly, crowding in close around the accused. He struggled to relax, to enjoy these last few moments without pain, but he knew he had passed up one faint chance. He should have run to the far end and grabbed up a branding iron or something and tried to break out. He would not have succeeded, but perhaps a misjudged blow would have broken his neck. Now he was hemmed in, and it was too late.
"The accused will remove all his garments."
Was this it, or just a bluff? Toby glanced at the menacing black hoods closing in, and their sinister dark eye holes. Three to one. They were all smaller men than he, but they might well be faster. Resistance would only bring violence and incr
ease his suffering, although he suspected he did not know what real suffering was yet—the inquisitor was about to teach him.
Unless it was only a bluff. The interrogation had advanced in slow stages, so they would probably just frighten him today and start the real hurting tomorrow. He shrugged and reached for the laces of his doublet.
When he had stripped, one of the novices took away his clothes. The tormentors roped his wrists behind him and clamped fetters on his ankles. The pulley overhead jangled. Calloused hands fumbled at his back, fastening the rope to his bonds.
It did not feel like a bluff. They were going to begin with the strappado. Oh, spirits!
How long would the hob make him endure? It had never cared how much he suffered—it had done nothing on the two occasions he had been whipped and had once let him be beaten to a pulp in a fight so vicious that his opponent had died under his fists. It had not interfered at all, except possibly to keep him alive, and if it did start to intervene now, that would merely prove to the friars that they had been right all along.
"Tobias," the inquisitor sighed. He spoke again through the English soldier. "The accused is a strong man, but a heavy one. This will hurt the accused and may do him permanent damage. The brothers do not wish to make the accused suffer. They have his interests at heart, and they will persevere for however long it takes. The accused must tell them the name of his demon so they may cast it out and he will be a free man again."
The soldier's pink face was streaming sweat as he fumbled through to the end of that speech. He still did not look at the accused's eyes.
Toby bit back a savage desire to tell the venerable cleric to stuff his own head into a certain dark place—they would merely see abuse as confirmation of his possession. He blinked the sweat away and looked at the other two friars, who stared back sympathetically. But neither was going to help him. They mourned his plight. They thought that they knew the only way to save him from it. He was not a person any more, he was only the accused.