Yet even she, it appeared, could grieve. Perhaps she herself was only mistaken, not malicious. Wordlessly, he squeezed her shoulder in a way that would have befitted a grandfather with more “greats” than anyone should remember.
Chapter 21
Our Lady of the Pillar
So this, thought Don Felipe, is the benefice that has given me income so many years—my only income, excluding what Gubbio used of his own questionable earnings to maintain my household and myself, all that time I lay in the secret cells.
They first caught sight of Agapida from the top of a low rise, looking more across than down into an expanse of not quite fertile land, mostly pasture, with some planted fields visible around the distant huddle of stone buildings, too small a village for more than the single church, Our Lady of the Pillar, standing like an ageless guardian angel between the tiny dwellings and the still more distant castle. Don Felipe guessed that both church, castle, and the greater part of the houses had stood here unchanged since before the Synod of Toledo, an unbroken link with the Visigothic past. The whole value of this site may have been military, yet its present appearance suggested that, as a fortress, it had never really been needed. Unlike that once far more prosperous stronghold far to the south, Alhama de Karnattah, this village might never have been sacked, its people never forced to crowd inside the castle walls.
Why have I never visited my own church until this day? his thoughts continued. It brings my boyhood back to me. Why has it required my duty as inquisitor to bring me here, when my duty as incumbent of the benefice would have sufficed?
“Here they come,” Gubbio observed.
True enough, a line of dots was threading its way to the village outskirts. Already Don Felipe could hear their chant, make out the fine, blur-topped pole that would be his parish’s best processional crucifix.
He had seen all of it before, not in every place of his visitation, but in the greater number of them. The welcoming procession, planned no doubt from the hour of learning that the Holy Office would visit this town, set into motion by the arrival of the familiar sent on ahead of the inquisitor’s main party, and designed to demonstrate a holy zeal and religious fervor that might or might not mask secret failings.
“Come,” Don Felipe said. “Let us see how near to town our mounts can meet them.”
Don Enrique de la Santa Cruz rode forward, unrolling the inquisitorial banner that his merits had earned him the honor of bearing before the holy inquisitor. Both fiscal and scrivener rode a little behind Don Felipe, with him as the apex of their triangle. The remaining three familiars followed in single file, and Gubbio brought up the rear, leading the pack animals along. Don Enrique and the two Juans rode horses; Don Felipe, his fiscal, and the last familiar good mules; the little scrivener Pablo de María—who, pleading overwork in the Daroca tribunal, had followed Don Felipe into the tiny and obscure one of Ainsa when King Fernando appointed him to its solitary inquisitorship as if in pique at his refusal to accept the Córdoban post—had his little donkey Rosita; and Gubbio, the latest in his line of trusty asses. Don Enrique’s horse and Don Felipe’s Blanca were pure white, with a certain degree of fine stuff in their trappings. Even dusty and somewhat travel-worn, the inquisitor’s party made a fine short procession of its own.
They met nearer the village than the rise, for the village procession moved afoot, save for two men on horseback—in one of whom Don Felipe recognized the familiar he had sent in advance—and one man on a mule as gentle as any the inquisitor had ever seen, chosen no doubt for the rider’s age and infirmity. The younger of the two local riders proudly bore a banner showing two fiery swords crossed on a field of vair. Obviously these two were Don Alfons de Monsecore y Tequilador de la Castel de Agapida, and his son Don Gaspar. Their attire would have proclaimed their rank even had they, like their people, come forth on foot, as members of the local nobility sometimes did in such processions.
The acolytes and choir boys, of course, preceded them all, led only by their immediate shepherd, Don Felipe’s vicar, Don Fadrique Osorio. At first glance, Don Felipe was shocked to see the lean young new-made priest whom he had named to his church, after one brief interview so many years ago, grown corpulent and waddling as though unaccustomed to even the exercise of walking. In so poor a countryside, pastoring so underfed a flock, where had Don Fadrique found food to wax so luxuriously fat?
Beware, inquisitor, Don Felipe reminded himself, of seeing thine own weaknesses in others. Would you yourself not have grown equally large by now, if not for that same weak and too often delicate digestion which provided one of Fray Junípero’s charges against you? Gluttony is in itself no more heretical than abstinence.
Half a dozen men in the castellan’s colors came with the choir, bearing the church’s prize possession—the statue of its patron—on her garlanded litter. So that, thought Don Felipe, is Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Agapida. If her gilding was shabby in places; if there were chips in the carved sword she held, her hands resting on its hilt while its point bit down into the serpent at her feet; if the choristers’ white linen surplices showed considerable fraying and more holes than quite seemly—still, all these defects became visible only at close range, while their singing remained as clear and sweet as at a distance, and the incense grew sweeter, because stronger.
If the nobles were a little shabby in their attire and trappings, it was less so than their villagers and no more so than the inquisitor’s party itself, after its weeks of travel from place to place. What most struck Don Felipe was the fact that, while the two he guessed were Don Alfons and his son came mounted, their attendants walked. Usually he had found either all the people of rank coming humbly on foot, or the dons and duennas riding as well as their lords and ladies.
The nearer they came, however, the more Don Felipe read age, even illness in the older lord’s countenance and the manner in which he bore his body. Don Alfons might be too feeble to walk, and his heir perhaps too proud—or too considerate of his senior’s pride—to move afoot beside a mounted parent.
Behind the people of the castle came the villagers, affecting but not entirely achieving seemly orderliness…yet a large group at the very rear, following a strange little gap between them and the others, proceeded with a solemnity to match that of the choristers and outshine that of both castle people and commoners.
Looking more closely, the inquisitor observed that this rearmost group seemed entirely blackhaired and dark complexioned, that a few more bright colors appeared in their clothing and a little more jewelry about their persons, than was the case with the other villagers as a group.
Casting his mind back, he found an old memory, from before his time in the secret cells, of one of his vicar’s very rare reports. In it, Don Fadrique had mentioned that some of those wandering Christians of Lower Egypt, who claimed to be on penitential pilgrimage for succumbing temporarily to Muslim ways, were attempting to settle in Agapida—what, if anything, should be done about them? Don Felipe had directed him to give them all the spiritual assistance they sought, and be thankful for anyone who actually sought it, a thirst which was all too hard to find in these days of waning fervor.
He barely had time to notice the Egyptians—if that was who they were—before his attention was called back to the formal ceremonies of being welcomed and brought in honor to a feast spread in the village square.
It was not much of a square, nor much of a feast. The Agapidans had done their best, but their village clearly served as market town only for its own locals and the very immediate vicinity. Appraising it, the inquisitor privately rejoiced that Acts of Faith were no longer to be held along the visitation route, but exclusively in cities housing permanent tribunals.
Wondering whether it might not have been better for them to hold this feast in the castle, Don Felipe suddenly felt some twinge of guilt at deriving part of his own income from these people.
At length, near the end of the meal, he turned to Don Fadrique on his left and inquired, “
Where are the rooms you have cleared for us?”
A strange, stifled expression crossed the vicar’s face as he began, “Your Excellence…” and fell into an awkward pause, staring to Don Felipe’s right.
The young lord, who stood there between the inquisitor and Don Alfons, proud to serve them as cupbearer, took the word. “Let us offer you the hospitality of our castle. Your chambers have been swept and strewn with fresh flooring, you may have my father’s own hall for your courtroom, and all the resources of our own torture chamber will be available to you.”
“Oh?” Don Felipe studied the gleam of the young man’s eyes, the glint of his white teeth. “You have a torture chamber, have you?”
“An ancient one,” muttered the older lord, the eager stripling’s father. “Long disused…long shut up and forgotten…”
“Opened again!” his son protested. “I have seen to its cleaning myself, in preparation for your holy visit.”
“And the men to operate the equipment?”
“We will provide them!” Don Gaspar assured him with all the ready confidence of youth. “I will… If necessary, I would be honored to serve the Holy Inquisition in that office with my own hands.”
“I would not ask you to bloody your noble fingers with such menial work,” Don Felipe answered, making an imperfect effort to keep disgust from sounding in his voice. But for the secrecy that lent the Holy Office one of her most effective tools, he would have informed this over-zealous whelp that executioners and assistants to administer torture were not so easy to find, especially here in the northern kingdom; that, when pressed into service, they were more likely than not to prove bumbling at their task, which clumsiness had all too often resulted in heinous and unsanctioned crippling of the defendants under investigation; and that torture was never to be administered until after full and careful discussion and voting on each individual case by the Council of Faith—which certainly never, within the jurisdiction of any conscientious tribunal, took place on the site during a visitation. In any event, what of those ancient fueros of which Aragon was so justly proud? What business had any private torture facility, in no matter how ancient and noble a house, not to have been destroyed long ago beyond any chance of restoration?
Turning back to his vicar, he resumed, “We have much to do in the morning. Your people may celebrate into the night, if they will; but, as for ourselves, we will soon wish to retire. Again I must ask you, where are we to rest, where do our work?”
“But…your Excellence…” Don Fadrique protested, still looking over Don Felipe’s shoulder as if appealing to the young hidalgo, “my housekeeper, poor woman, lies sick abed. She could not serve your Excellence—she has not been able to cook nor clean the house during all this last week. Don Gaspar has offered you rooms in his father’s castle, rooms far more spacious and suitable than any I could provide.”
“The castle itself—” Don Gaspar began again.
Don Felipe cut him off with a wave of his hand. “It is too far removed from the village.”
“It rules the village,” the young lord answered stiffly.
The inquisitor replied, carefully measuring tact into his speech, “My friend, I do not for one moment question that your father and you understand the art of secular government. But neither is it for you to question my knowledge of how best to carry forth the work of the Holy Office. Experience has taught me that more souls are saved and heretics discovered when we locate ourselves closer among the people.”
Old Don Alfons made one of his rare contributions to the discussion. “Summon Don Sagesse.”
The younger man looked surly, but bowed his head and beckoned a page. Bowing in turn, the page made his way to one of the lower tables, a little apart from the others—the table of the Egyptian pilgrims, if so they were—and spoke to the lean brown man of late middle age who sat at its head. Though at some distance, Don Felipe had already observed that the table manners of these people compared favorably with those of the other locals, even of the castellan’s petty courtiers at his own table. Now he noticed the delicate care with which the Egyptian rinsed and wiped mouth, mustache, and fingers before rising to follow the page back to the head table.
After a glance to right and left, as if to reassure himself there had been no mistake, the Egyptian approached the head table and made a low, graceful bow to the inquisitor and his immediate companions.
“Your Reverence,” murmured the frail old lord, “allow me to present Don Sagesse Labaa, count of the Calé, as they call themselves.”
“Don Sagesse,” the inquisitor acknowledged, with a courteous inclination of the head. “Your Grace.”
“Your Reverence.” The man whom Don Alfons called “Don” and “count” even while seating him at the lower tables among the peasantry made another bow, so dignified as to show respect completely unmarred by either the obsequiousness or the half-hidden hatred the inquisitor met more often than he liked.
Well pleased so far with the count of the Calé, Don Felipe inquired, “Your Christian name is French, is it not?”
Don Sagesse smiled, displaying a broad expanse of slightly crooked but very white teeth. “Your Reverence, our pilgrimage has been long and difficult. I was born in French territory. Those of my people who had the good fortune to first see day on this side of the mountains are proud to have been christened with Spanish names.”
The inquisitor nodded, briefly eyed Don Alfons and his son, and cleared his throat. “Well, Don Sagesse, we were just discussing where I am to set up residence and offices for myself and my people during this visit. By my host’s choosing to present you in the middle of that same discussion, may I guess that you can offer an opinion in this matter?”
“Indeed, your Reverence,” the Calé count replied with another slow bow. “Something less than a mile to the north of the village, the nearest mountains crowd close, with many snug small caves in their folds. When first we came to this place, my people pitched their tents and began to build their houses among these caves, and found the site so pleasant that we live there still, a generation and more afterwards, partly under roofs of our own raising, partly in the fair sunlight, and partly in the cool warmth of our mother the earth. We have room and to spare, your Reverence, and upon hearing that the question had arisen, having taken council with my people, I most humbly offer accommodation in our poor quarter of Agapida, if so be that by any chance you should deign to choose it.”
The inquisitor nodded. “Your Grace, I may well do so.”
Sucking in his breath, Don Gaspar exclaimed, “Your Reverence! These Calé are vagabonds and outcasts!”
“I have seen no such evidence,” Don Felipe replied, leavening his voice with a touch of gentle reproof. “On the contrary, the face they have shown me thus far disposes me to think well of them, and to thank them for offering the hospitality which my own vicar, whose office it should be to house us, seems inclined to withhold.”
“Your Excellence…” Don Fadrique stammered, his heavy face flushing deep crimson. “If you insist…of course we must do what we can…but it would be much more seemly—your Excellence would find it so much more comfortable, more convenient, in the castle…”
“Where rooms are prepared and ready for you,” Don Gaspar repeated. “Our torture chamber—”
“We will remember that,” Don Felipe promised the young lord, “should any need for it arise. Until then, before making our final decision, we will see for ourselves what the Calé offer us so kindly and generously.”
“Kindly?” cried Don Gaspar. “Generously? Your Reverence, have we not offered our castle with greater kindness and generosity than can ever lie in the power of penniless knaves and outcasts?”
Less to spare the hotblooded son than the ailing father, Don Felipe applied a double thickness of velvet glove. “If they are penniless, that in itself makes their generosity nobler than that of the wealthy can ever be, as Christ Ihesu Himself taught us in His comment upon the widow’s mite.”
“W
hat widow?” Don Gaspar demanded, glaring about as if seeking to make his own example of any such poor widow.
Don Felipe cast a searching gaze upon his vicar, who immediately shook his head and spread his hands helplessly, as much as to say: I have taught them all of the Gospels that it befits them to know—can I be blamed if they refuse to listen?
“And if your Reverence fears that our townspeople will not come to the castle to report on heretics,” Don Gaspar went on fiercely, “be sure they will be far less likely to find their way to the camp of these filthy rascals who call themselves Christians and pilgrims! At least the castle has people of its own to bring you reports of sin and heresy.”
“I do not doubt it,” the inquisitor remarked.
“While as for these Calé, they are the very ones who should be cleansed from our land!”
The Calé count eyed him with proud anger, but remained silent and dignified.
“Remember, young man,” said Don Felipe, “that the Holy Office frowns as sternly upon false witness as upon heresy itself. If you slander these people, we will hope that you do so only in error and not in malice. If you speak truly, where better for us to find it out for ourselves than among their own dwellings?” Standing up to indicate that he would hear no further argument, Don Felipe bestowed a smile on the lord of the Calé.
Lifting his head slightly, his attitude seeming to blend relief and respect, gratitude and the offer of friendship, Don Sagesse returned the smile.
* * * *
The Calé quarter pleased Don Felipe well. That it lay half a mile from the rest of Agapida made it seem more like a neighboring village than a new section of the old one; but, if poor even for this region, it was cleaner and sweeter-smelling than most places of human habitation he had known since his boyhood.
The few houses were not entirely impressive, seeming imperfect imitations of the older Agapidan constructions. Don Sagesse himself still dwelt in a tent, pitched before a double-chambered cave that lent him and his family additional space for living and storage. Don Felipe soon selected this for his temporary tribunal. The foremost cavern would provide an excellent interview room, its atmosphere suitably somber and tinged with mystery; while the rearmost chamber could be used for any prisoners he might need to hold. The count of the Calé stated that he would be honored to give up his own bed to his reverend visitor, and Don Felipe saw no reason to question his sincerity. Gubbio would sleep, as usual, within call of his master; and the rest of the inquisitorial party would be quartered here and there with other Calé families.
Inquisitor Dreams Page 21