Inquisitor Dreams

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  Ah! sweet Mother of God! if only I had stayed in Italy!

  After a long time he rose. Like one stunned, he understood that High Mass would be almost over. He had missed it. No matter. Possibly men and women had seen him there, as they had seen the Holy Child and his companions on Good Friday. As though half drowning in dense fog, he made his way alone to the tribunal and sat waiting for Fra Guillaume’s return from church.

  The Dominican reached his small lodging aglow with a tranquility that would have been natural after High Mass during this holiest triduum of any other year, but today seemed out of keeping with the city’s mood. “Felipe, my friend!” he greeted the Ordinary in mild surprise. “Do you not dine with his Reverence the bishop?”

  “I have had information, brother,” Don Felipe replied, now on his feet. Somehow, in the fog that had choked him, mind and soul, since Fray Bartomeu’s Confession, he found that his decision had been formed. “Secret information, from an anonymous source, concerning a case of suspected heresy.”

  The old inquisitor heaved a sigh. “On this, of all days! Well, dine with me, and we will speak of it after our midday sleep.”

  “It is a matter of some urgency. I believe that it concerns this matter which has inflamed the city against our Jewish brethren.”

  Fra Guillaume seemed to ponder for the space of a Gloria, then smiled and shook his head. “My friend, my young friend. You have yet to learn that there is no matter so urgent that it cannot wait until after dinner and digestion. Does not the Apostle himself instruct us to take a little wine, for our stomachs’ sake? We will, however, cut our rest a little short, so as to look into this, whatever it is, without too much delay. Until then, as you value your health and mine, not another word.”

  There was no help for it. Not for our Lord Himself in Person, Don Felipe thought, would Fra Guillaume have broken his iron rule of allowing no serious talk over meals, nor would he have omitted his nap afterwards. As for the younger man, he ate and drank only as much as necessary to escape comment, and felt even that small amount knot his stomach like a chain of lead as he waited, in forced idleness, for the Dominican to have his fill of dozing.

  He turned the pages of a small volume, pretending to read; but his conscience thrust itself between his eyes and the print as if every serif were a thorn, and if ever he were aware what author it was whose work he gazed at, he immediately forgot it.

  And yet, he kept repeating to his conscience, how does God work, in the daily course, if not through human beings? How can I know but that God, Whose secret this is to keep or to reveal, chooses to reveal it, not through miracle, but through my weakness—that I have been predestined, like Judas Iscariot, to commit grievous sin that greater good may come of it?

  At last Fra Guillaume snorted, woke, and gently shook himself. “Now!” said he. “Let us go where we may more fittingly examine this information that you bring.”

  They went into the audience chamber, which served Fra Guillaume’s tribunal also as council room. Toeing aside one soft lump of dust, Don Felipe mused briefly upon an audience chamber in stark black and white, awesome in its unfrayed cleanliness, where no flocks of dust lambkins grazed the floor; and a council room completely separate, with warm hangings on its walls and cushions on its chairs.

  Feeling less like a bishop’s Ordinary than an unfortunate under investigation, Don Felipe moved his chair opposite that of the inquisitor, sat some moments hesitant to broach the matter he had been fretting to speak of since making his decision, and finally, beneath Fra Guillaume’s mildly expectant gaze, began:

  “My witness—who claims the strict rule of secrecy—saw three young lads heretically re-enacting our Lord’s Crucifixion upon a fourth boy, this Good Friday just past, near the cave where Estevan del Quivir’s body was found.”

  It gave him some satisfaction to see that even an experienced and sleepy inquisitor could still on rare occasion be shocked. Fra Guillaume’s eyes first widened, then blinked. His hands, clasped before him on the table, tightened until the knuckles turned pale.

  At length the Dominican asked, “Did your witness recognize these lads?”

  “One definitely: Pedro Choved.”

  “And the others? Were they truly Estevan del Quivir and his elder brothers?”

  “So my witness thought.”

  The old man drew a long breath and splayed his fingers over the dusty wood of a table left always in place. His nails whitened as he pressed down, holding his hands steady. “This…would change the aspect of the case. Holy Mother! I am not sure that Estevan even merits the title of martyr, if this can be proved.”

  “How willing or unwilling was the victim’s involvement, who can say?” Guessing at Fra Guillaume’s thoughts, Don Felipe shook his head. “No, brother, in my humble opinion, we need not worry ourselves over the cultus that will inevitably grow up around our Holy Child. Whoever actually killed him, they who reverence him as martyr surely do so in all orthodox good faith. But must we not investigate this case of his brothers and their friend?”

  “Certainly, certainly.” The heaviest of sighs. “The witness came to you, my friend. Let the bishop’s court investigate this case.”

  No! thought Don Felipe. I cannot act alone—I am known to be Gamito’s friend. And to perjure my soul yet again, in repeating, as if I had the right to repeat it, what came to me under the Seal of Confession…

  Aloud, he argued, “Think, Fra Guillaume! If you should fail to represent the true Inquisition in examining such a notorious case as this, will we not give them one more pretext for forcing their new Castilian Inquisition into our diocese…into Aragon?”

  The old inquisitor pondered slowly, sighed again, and nodded. “You are right. It was, perhaps, for this very hour that our Lord put me in this place. But…you will act with me?”

  “To do otherwise, would be to turn my back upon God.” Uttering these words, Don Felipe half expected God to strike him dead for compounding sacrilege with hypocrisy. But no—had He not left Judas to hang himself?

  “Well!” Fra Guillaume leaned on the table for support as he got to his feet. “If we are to look into it, we must do so quickly. Let us go at once.”

  * * * *

  The merchant who owned the house wherein Fra Guillaume kept his tribunal had among his servants a former soldier, one Luis Albogado, still strong and sturdy in his sixtieth year. This former soldier the merchant had placed at Fra Guillaume’s disposal whenever the Holy Inquisition should need a man at arms in Daroca, which had not happened for many years. Attended only by Luis Albogado, inquisitor and Ordinary made their way to the house of Don Enrique Choved’s widow. No more than a Gloria after Albogado’s announcement of “A matter of Faith!” accompanied by his three firm raps, the door was opened by a young maidservant, wide-eyed, pale, and breathless, who immediately shrank back like a frightened fawn out of their way. Poor creature, thought Don Felipe, our errand cannot touch you…except as it touches this entire household.

  The widow of Don Enrique stood midway down the stairs. “Fra Guillaume,” she acknowledged, inclining her head to the inquisitor. “Don… Forgive me, my memory does not hold many names. Who in this sad house has sinned against our Holy Faith?” Her glance went in the direction of the poor maidservant, as much as to say, “If one of my servants…my servant no longer!”

  Don Felipe took it upon himself to step forward and answer the widow as gently as possible in so stern a matter. “Doña Beatriz, we have cause to suspect your son, and him alone in this house.”

  “My son Enrique is in Granada, fighting his king’s holy war against the infidel Moors.”

  “It is your younger son, Pedro, whom we have cause to suspect.”

  Pressing her lips together before speaking again, she answered at last, “If guilty of sinning against our Faith, he is no longer his father’s son, nor mine.”

  “He is still God’s son, Doña,” Fra Guillaume told her, in a voice between mercy and sternness, “and he has still a soul, which m
ust be saved at any cost.”

  She descended the stairs and stood to one side. “Save it, then. He is on the floor above us.”

  They went up, Luis Albogado leading and Don Felipe, as the younger priest, next. Pretense it might be, as if a bodyguard were needed against a ten-year-old boy; and yet this ten-year-old boy was under grave suspicion of having taken part in the heretical murder of a friend.

  They found Pedro sitting on the floor between bed and window, staring up at the intruders, a bowl of nutmeats, pile of whole nuts, and two or three heaps of broken nutshells surrounding him like toy fortifications.

  Luis repeated the dread words: “A matter of Faith!”

  The boy leaped to his feet, dropping his knife and the nut he had been holding, as if his guilt consisted of shelling nuts on Easter Monday. Knife and nut fell with a clatter, the nut rolling across the floorboards to catch in a knothole near Don Felipe’s toe.

  “Remember, Pedro Choved,” Fra Guillaume intoned, “that our first concern is for your immortal soul, and that He Whom you must fear is not us, but God, and God alone, Who sees all. Bear ever in your mind that it is worse than useless to lie to the Lord our God, and answer the questions of your bishop’s Ordinary as if you were already answering God Himself upon the Day of Judgment.”

  Wondering when it had been decided that he should be the one to do the questioning, Don Felipe began, “Well, Pedro, is this your room, where you sleep?”

  The child nodded.

  Don Felipe said to the former soldier: “Search it thoroughly. I will question the suspect in the courtyard.”

  “Yes, my lord. What should I search for?”

  Exchanging a glance with the inquisitor, the Ordinary replied, “Perhaps Fra Guillaume will deign to oversee your findings.”

  “If you fail to discover anything here,” Fra Guillaume added, with—Felipe thought—some relief, “we must see the rest of the house searched as well.”

  Nodding, Luis laid one hand heavily upon Pedro’s shoulder and delivered him to Don Felipe, who received him with a hand upon the other shoulder and conducted him downstairs, past his mother’s frown, to the courtyard below.

  Here they stood in silence, facing the fountain, while Don Felipe repeated two Paternosters in his mind. At last he said, “Look at that water, Pedro. It ought to remind you of your holy Baptism.”

  The boy said nothing.

  “Not that you can remember the actual event,” the man went on, “but you know, by virtue of having been taught, what an indelible mark of grace was bestowed on you that day.”

  A slight tremor seemed to pass through the little body. That was all.

  “Are you not deeply ashamed to have so blotted out and disgraced the holy purity you received that day, as God’s sacred gift to you?”

  Still Pedro said nothing.

  “Speak, boy!” Felipe exclaimed in exasperation and bafflement, shaking him by the shoulder.

  “Sir,” the boy answered dully, “what do you want me to say?”

  “It is for you to confess! But know this: your sin did not pass unseen.”

  “Who saw us?” He must finally have panicked, to blurt it out like that.

  “The One Whose displeasure you ought to fear above that of any earthly court. God, Who sees all things!” (Even as He sees my own sin at this moment, the priest thought heavily, His Holy Mother help me!) He finished aloud, “This is not to say that you went unseen by mortal eyes, as well.”

  “No!”

  Don Felipe drew a deep breath. What was one more lie in comparison with the sin already on his soul? “Your accomplices have already confessed.”

  “No! They would not! Never!”

  “Confess, Pedro Choved, or it will come to the torture.”

  “No! Not here! Not in Aragon! Our fueros—”

  “The fueros of proud Aragon mean nothing before the sacred duty of the Holy Inquisition!” Don Felipe said with mock assurance. “Do you know what torture is, boy? Do you know what it is to cause another human creature cruel and deliberate—”

  “No!” Breaking away from his grip, Pedro fled across the courtyard—to come face to face with his mother, who had just entered on that side. Hands tight on the silver cross she wore round her neck, she frowned down upon him without speaking. Turning at bay like some hunted animal, he cried, “We were all in church! Together! Everyone saw us!”

  “Do you know what it is to hear screams brought forth by the work of your hands?” Don Felipe continued, seeing his advantage and—hardening his heart for Gamito’s sake—relentlessly pursuing it. “Do you know what it is to see the face writhe up beneath your ministrations? To feel the warm blood—”

  “No! No! No!”

  Heavy footsteps interrupted them. The inquisitor’s bodyguard appeared, followed by Fra Guillaume. In his left hand, Luis Albogado held before him half of a linen sheet, thickly stained with blood.

  * * * *

  “I do not understand,” Gamito remarked, some weeks later and some distance beyond the town, “why he kept the bloodstained sheet.”

  “They still hoped, I believe,” Felipe replied, stroking the neck of his mule, “that the Holy Child’s blood would form into his image. In any case, whether or not they hoped for a miraculous shroud, they had the true relic of a martyr.”

  The two friends were effectively in private, as they had not been since before Passover. Having chosen Zaragoza as his destination, Gamaliel Ben Joseph, the “foreign Jew,” had ridden forth from Daroca alone except for Don Felipe, who brought only Gubbio and Luis Albogado to attend him. The Italian, for once showing some deep sense of delicacy, was hanging behind, engaging the former soldier in a conversation of their own, near enough to guard their master but not to overhear him talking.

  Gamito rode another moment in silence before adding, “But why hide it so carelessly?”

  “Ah, my friend! For Estevan’s brothers to have kept it, knowing that their house would surely be searched as matter of course even while the boy was still merely missing—that would have been to hide it carelessly. As for keeping it in the bottom of Pedro’s chest, how could they expect blame to fall anywhere else than upon your people?” Don Felipe spoke with a heart made all the heavier by the secret knowledge that, had it not been for his own actions taken upon information given, received, and given again under the strict Seal of Confession, the boys would have been safe in their expectation. “Even those children themselves,” he went on bitterly, “knowing their own guilt, saw nothing wrong in allowing the blame to fall on Jews! This is not the world as we knew it under the infidel Moors of Karnattah, old friend.”

  “I fear,” said Gamito, “that it will grow worse yet. We may live to see more such massacres as those of our grandparents’ days.”

  “And you, Gamito? Would it not be better for you to join your brother and his wife in Rome?”

  The Jew shook his head. “I will not abandon my people as long as need remains here.”

  “There are still those who cling to their belief that you caused the Holy Child’s death, who refuse to believe in the guilt of his brothers and their playfellow. Rumor may point you out even in Zaragoza.”

  Gamito shook his head. “It is a large enough city, I hope, for me to live quietly in its Jewish quarter, unseen by any save my own kind.”

  “And if our monarchs force Aragon to accept their new Inquisition?”

  “Old friend,” said Gamaliel Ben Joseph, “I no longer so greatly fear the Inquisition. Is it not thanks to your Inquisition that I am free? No, it is the mob that I most fear now, and not the Inquisition that holds it somewhat in check.”

  Far back though his servant and the former soldier were, Felipe lowered his voice. “Then never allow yourself to be baptized, Gamito—not, at least, without feeling true conversion in your heart,” he added, prudent even in their privacy. “And never, even if asked, speak a word concerning your beliefs to any Christian, for that might be called proselytizing. Avoid these things, and you should r
emain safe even from this new Inquisition.”

  Gamito nodded, and they rode on.

  Not that the investigation of local inquisitor and bishop’s Ordinary had been enough, Don Felipe thought with some anger. No, it had been necessary after all to appeal to the Justicia on behalf of Gamaliel Ben Joseph and Nathaniel Ben Solomon. The Justicia was a man able to weigh evidence, and pardons for both Jews had come, along with a document ordering the Christians of Daroca to keep the peace and withhold hasty judgment as regarded their Hebrew neighbors. Alas, not even this had crushed out the earliest opinions concerning the death of Estevan del Quivir. Nathaniel the Silversmith had already traded his house for mules and taken his family across the mountains to France. Certain others of Daroca’s Jews, even though never accused by name of this crime, had followed his example.

  Another half hour, and Gamito said, “There is the inn where two of my brethren from Zaragoza are to meet me. Farewell, old friend. Peace be with you. I shall not risk either of us by writing letters.”

  Swallowing hard, Felipe brought himself to say, “Except in need, Gamito. If need should press you, let me know of it.”

  Because of the servants behind, they ventured nothing more, save that halfway to the inn, the Jew turned back briefly and gave the Christian a single wave of one hand.

  Felipe returned it, then sat and watched until Gamito reached the inn. His friend would never know how much he had sacrificed—the peace of his own conscience, perhaps the very salvation of his soul—for the sake of friendship and justice.

  Gubbio and Luis eventually came up to him and sat in silence, awaiting his pleasure and meanwhile leaving him to his own thoughts, which had turned back to the three boys: victims, in some sense, of his own sin. Especially was Pedro Choved his victim. Merely pointing to a door and naming it as that of the torture chamber—an irregularity which shamed Fra Guillaume’s with the Moorish lad Mehmoud Aben Fazoud into insignificance—had sufficed to bring from young Pedro, already broken in spirit as he was, a tearful admission at last, complete with the names of Estevan’s older brothers. Neither of them, however, had confessed to anything. Seeing his friends’ resolve, Pedro had refused to ratify his admission. Without public confession, there could be little use in so much as offering the young killers to the law’s secular arm. Nor, to Felipe’s secret relief, would Fra Guillaume even hear of holding a consultation on resorting to any degree in more regular fashion, let alone of attempting to find a laborer for the manual work attendant on exercising the long-disused inquisitorial privilege here in Aragon.