Inquisitor Dreams

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “And that one his own loyal lieutenant in banditry!” shouted Fray Junípero.

  The ordinary observed wryly, “His entire village of Axtilan accused him, and he listed his entire village among his personal enemies.”

  “Except his lieutenant and dear friend Enrico Carranza!” Fray Junípero insisted. “Enrico’s testimony ratifies all! Whom else are we to credit, if not a close comrade in arms of the accused?”

  “No one, perhaps,” said Don Felipe. “The very uniformity of the charges bespeaks conspiracy!”

  Fray Roberto nodded. “Or, at the least, strongly suggests it.”

  Fray Juan, who was filling his goblet with water, gave a grunt. “Or, possibly, the simple truth.”

  “I find some difficulty,” the Benedictine said, “in comprehending how the same individual can both deny the existence of Hell, and invoke demons.”

  “He may have invoked the demons in mockery,” Don Guillen suggested, “to demonstrate that they would not appear. This would somewhat reduce his sin.”

  “It would not!” said Fray Junípero. “It is also heretical to make light of these matters!”

  “Properly speaking,” the jurist put in, “to deny the existence of Heaven and Hell does not necessarily entail denying that of God and the Devil.”

  “And where, then, would he have God to live? seeing that he also denies God’s omnipresence!” Fray Junípero exclaimed, not apparently aware that he might be undermining his own argument.

  “I believe,” said Don Felipe, “that when the laity say that there is no Heaven and no Hell, what they actually deny is that they themselves have eternal souls to go to either place.”

  “Which is the heresy of the Sadducees!” Fray Junípero shouted in triumph.

  Having finished the last of the dried fruit, Fray Juan reached for a few wafers as he said, “There can be little question as to the slanders he has uttered against men of our holy cloth.”

  The Benedictine eyed the Dominican as if counting the crumbs on his habit. “But did he utter them against us as priests and clerics, or did he utter them against our merely human failings?”

  “Against us as priests and clerics,” Don Felipe admitted in all fairness. “That, at least, is what I make of his words as reported to us. But, again, they are reported with so great a uniformity as to suggest conspiracy, and the man has in fact named his accusers as personal enemies—”

  “Except his lieutenant!” repreated Fray Junípero. “Do not forget his own lieutenant, Enrico Carranza!”

  The ordinary, who had been scanning the written record, observed, “Concerning the virginity of Mary, at least, Enrico Carranza’s testimony does not quite agree with that of the other villagers. They testify to hearing Manuel on two separate occasions declare that her Child was Joseph’s son, begotten on her before marriage. Enrico testifies to hearing his captain say, ‘I wish that I had had the chance to get that Virgin with child—I would have shown her Blessed Highness what it is to lie with a real man!’”

  At the mere repetition, for council purposes, of such words, every man present crossed himself. Don Felipe, however, did so with different thoughts, perhaps, than those of his fellows. Would Manuel Urtigo have left even the Blessed Virgin Mary alive to bear his bastard, Felipe wondered, remembering the rape and murder of his own sister Serafina almost as clearly, it seemed somehow, as if he had witnessed it with his own eyes and not merely heard at second hand from Gamito’s lips how it had been this same brigand and his band who sacked his family’s home, none of its occupants ever being seen or heard of again.

  Drawing another deep breath, for the remembrance of his murdered family had shaken him even after all these years, he said, “Who can blame the villagers of Axtilan for wishing to rid themselves, by any means, of this scourge in their midst? Yet if in order to do so they have indeed manufactured heresies to put in his mouth, then the crimes of which he is truly guilty are not the crimes which it lies within our own sphere to judge.”

  How simple, in God’s mercy, it had suddenly become! I, too, am Manuel Urtigo’s personal enemy. Therefore, by the very rules of the Holy Office I serve, I am forced to judge him innocent of heresy!

  “And what of Enrico Carranza’s testimony?” cried Fray Junípero.

  “’Et tu, Brute?’” Don Felipe quoted as if to prove his education. “How do we know but that Enrico Carranza is the trusted viper whom this man has been cherishing, unsuspected, in his bosom?”

  “You cite profane authors,” Junípero hurled back, “wisely fearing to cite holy ones!”

  “True!” Felipe cried, his own voice rising. “I will not call Enrico Carranza Judas or even Ganelon, for Manuel Urtigo is certainly neither Ihesu nor even Roland! But neither can we judge him a heretic, by the very mass and uniformity of the charges against him.”

  Hands on the table, Fray Junípero rose. “No more can we allow such notorious and blasphemous heresy to go unchecked and unpunished! Brothers, we dare not fail to judge this man as the heretic he so notoriously is! We dare not fail to relax him to the secular arm!”

  To see the flames leap up around this man, curl his blackened flesh away layer by bloody layer, melt the fat from his scorching bones—and if for some reason—to prove his courage?—he stayed stubborn to the last, refusing the mercy of strangulation before the fire was lit… Don Felipe had never attended the place of burning, never witnessed these executions with his own eyes; but, to see Manuel Urtigo suffer, he would gratefully make an exception. Half praying that in the case of his family’s murderer Fray Junípero would prevail, Felipe rose to face the senior inquisitor and argue: “If this man’s guilt were beyond question, I would agree. I, too, would call it both infamous and destructive of public morals to permit such heresy to go unchecked. But the very circumstances of the case call his guilt into question!”

  Beetroot red, Junípero argued, “It is better to prune away the yellowing leaf than to lose the entire plant to the blight!”

  “Our Lord Himself commanded that the weeds be allowed to grow alongside the good wheat until the harvest!” Don Felipe replied. “My brothers! Can the Holy Inquisition afford to lose its name for justice by pursuing a man unjustly accused? Dare we make the Holy Office a laughingstock by allowing a conspiracy of false charges to prevail?”

  “Enrico Carranza’s testimony ratifies all!” Junípero insisted, seizing the documents and shaking them in Felipe’s face. “Do not again argue as you argued in the case of the woman Francesca Cascajo!”

  Fray Roberto coughed and said, “At the least, this man must be given the chance to purge the evidence against him.”

  In the breathing space that the jurist’s words provided them, first Don Felipe and then, more reluctantly, Fray Junípero resumed their seats.

  Don Guillen said, “If it were not for the testimony of his own lieutenant, I would say, on behalf of his excellency the bishop, that Manuel Urtigo should be quietly released and his case dismissed. As it is, I agree that he must be allowed the opportunity to purge the evidence against him and, since it seems highly unlikely that he could gather enough witnesses for a compurgation, it must be the torture.”

  To pay him back, at least so far, for Serafina’s pain and the others, Felipe thought, I would work the pulleys and pour the water myself! Yet he swallowed his heart down and said sarcastically, “And must we condemn the inquisitors to sully their own hands with this work, for lack of any other men both willing and able to do it?”

  “In conspectu tormentorum, then,” Fray Roberto suggested.

  There was further heated discussion, but at last it came to the vote.

  “In conspectu tormentorum,” Fray Juan said, belching, “and relaxation when he confesses.”

  “In conspectu tormentorum,” Fray Clemente echoed. “But no farther.”

  Fray Roberto nodded. “In conspectu tormentorum, and let that be enough to purge the evidence of the single witness he has failed so far to identify.”

  The merely consultative
votes being cast, those that weighed began with Don Guillen, who said cheerfully, “In conspectu tormentorum.”

  And so it came to the younger of the two inquisitors.

  If I were to reveal how grievous is my own personal enmity to this murderer, thought Don Felipe, I might win abstention from the vote. Junípero will surely cast his voice for torture to the highest degree, or even immediate relaxation, and the vote would be split. Thus, it would go to the Suprema, and, for worse or better, Manuel Urtigo’s fate would be out of my hands. And my fellow inquisitor, who already has innumerable grievances of his own against me, would at least lack this additional one. Yet can I without adding to my guilt in the eyes of Heaven trust Manuel Urtigo’s fate to the Suprema? How if I were to vote for immediate dismissal of the charges? The vote would split three ways, the case would still await the Suprema’s decision, and Fray Junípero would harbor an even deeper grievance against me. But can I without open blemish to my honor reveal at this stage what Manuel Urtigo has done to my family, after breathing no word of it until now?

  He could no longer postpone his decision. With a deep breath, he said, “In conspectu tormentorum, and no farther, and let his own silence or confession seal it.”

  Glowering at his junior, Fray Junípero said: “It will be his silence, then. Can any of you truly think that the mere threat will loose the tongue of a man who in Castile would say even in the unchecked torture chambers of the secular courts, ‘It is as easy to be silent as to sing’? I honor my own conscience and my duty to God by voting for immediate relaxation!”

  But Don Felipe’s vote added to that of the ordinary had already defeated the senior inquisitor. Fray Junípero did not stop scowling all the rest of that day.

  * * * *

  When brought in and told that he was to be taken to the place of torture, Mehmoud Aben Fazoud fell on his knees and confessed that he had never received Baptism. “It is all that I ask, my lords!” he went on, half babbling. “To be baptized and instructed in the Holy Faith of Ihesu!”

  “Had you no chances before now?” Fray Junípero demanded in cold sarcasm.

  “To be baptized, your reverence, many! But to be both baptized and instructed in the true Faith—no! Your reverence—reverences—I did not wish to besmear the Holy Faith in ignorance, not knowing what I did!”

  “That much,” Don Felipe murmured to his fellow inquisitor, “considering the state of Church and clergy today, could well be true.”

  Fray Junípero frowned, but nodded and agreed, however reluctantly, that the threat had already served its purpose with no need to proceed further.

  Manuel Urtigo, however, listened with knees as unbent and frown as fixed as if he had been chiseled from stone. His scowl, indeed, matched Fray Junípero’s own for depth and ferocity, so that, looking at them, Don Felipe privately thought they could have served one of Italy’s sculptors as models for Satan and Lucifer. And, as the senior inquisitor had predicted, the brigand’s stony resolve showed not the slightest crack when the effort reached the utmost allowed by in conspectu tormentorum, though he moved his gaze between Junipero and Felipe, scowling equally at both.

  At the next Council of Faith, it was voted, despite Fray Junípero’s grumbling, to have Mehmoud Aben Fazoud baptized wth proper sponsorship and placed six months in a monastery for instruction and penance. The great argument was the choice of monastery; but, with Don Guillen’s acquiescence, Felipe brought the decision to Fray Clemente’s house of Benedictines.

  As for Manuel Urtigo, it was finally decided—Junípero determined to make him a spectacle in the one way remaining, and Felipe conquering his own secret distaste with great effort—that, in order to prove the justice of the Holy Inquisition and warn all persons against seeking to rid themselves of their enemies through the sin of false witness, he should be shown off at the coming Act of Faith as one exonerated and cleared of all charges, a true and loyal son, for all his merely mortal failings, of Holy Mother Church.

  Chapter 14

  The Dream of the Manticore

  Mountains, gray and brown beneath the brightness of the day. Between two buttress-like folds of mountainside, a cleft of black shadow; and, standing just within that shadow, yet still where sunlight limned her clear as a candle, a white-robed woman bearing a wax taper in her uplifted left hand and a martyr’s palm in the crook of her left arm. Raymonde.

  She smiled and extended her right hand. Becoming aware of himself, he caught hold of it.

  Gently, she drew him after her into the shadow, which he now saw to be the mouth of a deep cavern. The rock beneath their feet vanished from sight: it was as though they trod on nothingness, their lower legs paddling air while their bodies from the knees up floated in a bubble of candlelight, downward, ever downward along a broad, slow spiral. For a great time, black nothingness closed them in, held back only by the flame of Raymonde’s taper. Then, for the first time, the flame flickered, and Felipe started as some huge shape, like a strange, bony fish, loomed and lunged past the very edge of the light.

  “Take no alarm,” said Raymonde. “They are dead these forty thousand years. They are but pictures now.”

  The cave wall closed in upon their left, and, with it, a long row of further shapes—some recognizable as horses, bulls, and deer; others like nothing ever glimpsed outside whimsical illuminations and outlandish bestiaries.

  “Dead before the world’s creation?” Felipe whispered. “Whose eyes could glimpse, whose hands picture them?”

  “Before this our world ever came to be,” his ancestress murmured in reply, “amen I say to you, it already was.”

  She lowered her candle. As its light moved down the wall, a hand came into view…the shadow of a hand, dark against an outlining cloud of whitish paint. A maimed hand: the thumb and three fingers showed clear, but the middle finger had been lopped off clean at the knuckle.

  “What is this?” Don Felipe inquired.

  “The scholars who find and study these,” she replied, “will offer many theories.”

  They proceeded downward. More and ever more shadow-hands appeared on the wall, some few whole but most lacking one or even two fingers. In the candlelight, they waved back and forth… No, it was not the wavering light that made them merely appear to wave, they were waving in fact, the hands of a vast mob, cheering and jeering like storms in the mountains or waves against rocks.

  It was the pious mob of yesterday’s Act of Faith. For here, coming toward Don Felipe and his guide, was the procession, penitents and their sponsors—no one, by God’s grace, for the stake—that far had they prevailed against Fray Junípero—although Ximèn Ximenès already rode his donkey, stripped to the waist and with the gag in his mouth, bearing his two hundred lashes.

  And here, almost face to face with Don Felipe, Juan Delgado de Calamocha, who had been Mehmoud Aben Fazoud, in his penitent’s sanbenito, with Lopé Cabezo beside him as sponsor, bearing the lighted candle.

  But what was this? Juan’s sanbenito painted with flames, and on his head the miter of one marked for relaxation to the secular arm?

  “No!” Don Felipe observed to his ancestress. “Great-grandmother, I have caught you out in a flagrant lie!”

  “Not all truth lies in mere accuracy,” she replied, “nor is the strictest accuracy always truth.”

  He glanced at her sharply, for although the words were Raymonde’s, the tone had sounded like that of Rosemary. But no, it was still the Albigensian who stood tranquilly at his side.

  “Stop!” cried Juan Calamocha.

  Staring into his face, Felipe beheld the stake reflected in his eyes. The inquisitor turned to look for it, and saw only the painted cavern wall on one side, the festively bedecked square of Daroca on the other. He turned back, to find the condemned man kneeling before him, arms upstretched in supplication.

  “I am unbaptized!” El Santon went on in his ringing voice. “I have never been baptized!”

  “Why, then, have you awaited this moment to reveal the true state of
your soul?” the inquisitor asked him.

  Without rising from his knees or lowering his arms, Mehmoud winked and dropped his voice from the declamatory to the merely conversational level. “It must be seen how I am forced to accept that which I have always desired. Otherwise, I lose the mantle of Moorish santon.”

  Felipe sighed. “You play a dangerous game, my friend. Beware lest the many brands you strive to juggle fall at the end into a pyre about your feet.”

  “I will take that chance,” El Santon replied, crossing his arms over his chest and bowing his head so that the damning miter tumbled off.

  Lopé Cabezo had disappeared: Don Felipe now held the lighted candle in his left hand, a cruse of holy water in his right. Nevertheless, he made one last attempt. “Mehmoud Aben Fazoud, Holy Mother Church does not demand that you put yourself within her discipline.”

  “My reverend lord, it is what I myself desire.”

  Shutting the eyes of his soul to his own unworthiness as priest, Don Felipe poured the water and spoke the words that transformed Mehmoud Aben Fazoud into Juan Delgado the younger in truth, then gave him the candle and bade him begone from the procession.

  Grinning broadly, Juan stripped off the condemned penitent’s sanbenito and left it lying empty on the path while he leaped naked from the ledge and disappeared among the people thronging the crowded square below. The rest of the procession, which had bottled up patiently behind him, burst back into its reverent upward shuffle. Raymonde again took hold of her descendant’s hand and guided him downward, holding him steady against the tide of the procession until it was past and the two of them walked alone on the path.

  But now when he looked at her, she was indeed Rosemary.

  He tried to draw back. She gripped his fingers more tightly and said, “Great-great-grandfather, come on.”