Inquisitor Dreams

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  I have grown up with printing from a press, he mused, and old with it. Is this not part of the dulling and cheapening—the coarsening—of our age? When thoughts are shot as if from guns upon paper, page after identical page, what becomes of the soul behind those thoughts? (Ah, Juan, poor Maestre Juan El Santon! But let me not remember you on this tranquil day.) Once, readers treasured each precious volume. When books become cheap, who will read them with awe or even attention, who will absorb the meaning of their words? Will people not come to read books as rapidly and mechanically as they print them? And, as the next step of logic, to write them with equal speed and inattention? Is this not, indeed, already taking place? What will become of literacy itself, when nothing remains worth reading?

  In my parents’ age, a reader took time to linger over a book, to hold it in a cloth, to turn each leaf with care, and, when finished for the nonce, to lay the volume tenderly away in its proper place. Then, books were worthy of such treatment.

  He had begun to wax nostalgic, not so much for his own past, as for that of his parents, as he imagined it to have been. But the things Raymonde had shown him allowed him to imagine only so far before they rent the rosy veil his reverie threw over the far past. The thoughts of those days might have been less hurried, the study more intense, the pace of life less cluttered; but no murder or massacre could ever have been less terrible by mere virtue of taking place in some more graceful age. War had always been war, blood and fire had always been blood and fire, and those who instigated them had always stained their own souls, no matter what cause they believed themselves to be championing.

  In many ways, he regretted the memories that had never long left him again, after flooding his wakeful mind that day of his last Act of Faith, five years ago. Before that, when between dream and dream he had recollected nothing of them, he had at least been able to play his active part in the world, to believe that his times and his role in them were of some value. No, more: he had come at last to look upon his era as God’s crowning accomplishment and the cornerstone upon which he, Felipe de Granada, was helping to build all that would follow in glory. Now, with the dreams ever before him to remind him that horrors were equally real in all ages, even to reveal heretical practices of one generation as papally approved traditions of another…all this, and he still could not judge with certitude whether the dreams of his lifetime were visions from God, delusions from the Devil, or mere freaks of his own troubled brain. Why should God allow Albigensian Raymonde to appear as a martyred saint, or permit Pagan Rosemary to lie concerning her supposed descent from Don Felipe’s own loins? Even that vision of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory could have been false or diabolical as easily as true, and so the dark man’s occasional appearance with Raymonde and Rosemary neither validated nor invalidated their revelations.

  And yet some of them had clearly proven true—that terrible dream of Alhama, and the occasion shortly after his last Act of Faith when Rosemary showed him the coming sack of Rome in time for him to warn Gamito so that the Jewish family escaped the city before the Spanish and German armies reached it.

  He knew it behooved him to share all this with his spiritual director, for even those priests who served in such capacity themselves might prove incapable of weighing their own experiences. But where to find a spiritual director not only of sufficient wisdom, but of safe discretion, and who would not laugh such wild visions as old Don Felipe’s out of court half heard?

  Meanwhile, and in spite of all, he could not give his ladies up lightly or ungratefully, for had they not brought him from active life into contemplative, from Martha’s part into Mary’s? Could this result from any work of Satan?

  Returning to the book in hand, he considered filling in its blank initials himself. His fingers were still steady. He could send Gubbio for colors and a few fine brushes. Though on half pay from the Holy Office, he had still his savings with the bankers, both here in Aragon and there in Rome. A good share of these funds, along with all the monies due him from Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Agapida, he had been returning to good Fray Giuliano for his new Franciscan houses, where Masses and prayers were continually offered for Pilar and her people; but he nevertheless had a few coins to spare, especially now that his diet had become frugal as any monk’s, and his household reduced to manservant, secretary, cook, and one or two dayservants.

  Turning the duodecimo’s pages, however, he shook his head to the notion of coloring in its capitals. It would not be the same: it would no longer be one mortal creature offering small bouquets to another, but merely one man indulging his own vanity. Perhaps, had this text been worthy enough that he could think of passing it along to someone else…

  But enough, for now, of reading…in so far as he had done any reading. Devotions as insipid as those of the colorless duodecimo, he could pen for himself, even as he had penned them during his years of imprisonment. Lifting his lap desk into place, he prepared pen and ink, brought out an old leaf of paper, and began filling it with meditations that not even Fray Tomás de Torquemada could have faulted… Pity that Spain was hardly safe even to think of committing to paper The Apocalypse of Don Felipe de Granada.

  After perhaps ten minutes, dipping his pen while idly pondering whether or not to insert some pious adjective, for no conscious reason he flicked the leaf over and found, instead of virgin blankness, writing on the other side.

  He needed a moment to know it for his own writing. Time had changed his manuscript style. Time indeed…was it half a century? All those years had changed more than his handwriting, more than Felipe himself: they had changed the world around him. Yet this leaf rested in his hand almost as fresh as when it had come from the papermaker’s drying line, and the words he read upon it brought his youth back so vividly that it seemed he should have been able to step into it again as easily as walking from this side of his garden to the other.

  It was the romance he had barely begun, in an idle moment at the outset of his churchly career, as secretary to the bishop of Daroca. It was the knightly tale of Florindo, survivor of Roncesvalles, and the fair Zorinda. He thought that he could almost remember how he had meant it to continue. Zorinda, of course, had been modeled upon his lost Morayma, Hamet’s sister, the lady ideal of his first youth. Where were they now? With Gamito he had managed to keep up communication over the years, but of the Moorish family neither the Christian friend nor the Jewish one had ever learned another word.

  Well, God—or Allah, if the lady preferred, though the canny old inquisitor would never have whispered such words aloud, even in privacy—God, however named, grant that Morayma, her brother, her husband, and all whom they loved had somehow achieved long and happy life in spite of the age and the Spaniards’ betrayals. Meanwhile… Florindo, Don Felipe supposed, must have been meant as an idealized portrait of himself, the young knight who would win on paper the Moorish maiden whom the young student had been forbidden in life. He found little resemblance now. From the few lines before him, Don Florindo the knight had been a perfect mirror of all chivalric honor, virtue, and courage. Don Felipe the priest had sinned against the holy sacrament of Confession, betrayed his first love by taking another to wife (although that he could never regret), and preferred prudence to bravado along every step of his path. Yet Age could look with tranquil and faintly amused tolerance upon Youth.

  To eyes washed with a foreglimpse of Eternity, all earthly things were straw, even those efforts most aspiring to touch divinity. In these days, with even Erasmus denounced and forbidden—at least here in Spain, where once his books and others had flowed freely—perhaps approved devotions had even more chaff about them than did simple, silly romances. Dipping his pen again, Don Felipe set himself to finish the sentence left so long half complete.

  Words came with surprising rapidity, though shaping themselves into a more whimsical episode than whatever adventure the very young priest had no doubt contemplated; and Don Felipe was nearing the bottom of the page when Gubbio came in with the announcement, “Mast
er, you are wanted.”

  “Old friend,” Felipe answered, chuckling as he laid down his pen, “I cannot readily believe that, especially at this hour of the day.”

  The Italian clucked his tongue. “A few thin years out of the world, and already your Serenity forgets that for most poor, worldly souls this is as good an hour for business as any.”

  “As you, my man,” the priest returned mildly, “appear to forget that these days prayer and private meditations are my business, which it behooves you never to interrupt save in most dire emergency.” More amused than angered or embarrassed, Don Felipe cast an unblushing glance at the tale of Florindo and went on, “Who, in what emergency, could want the assistance of an aged and jubilated inquisitor, long retired from the world?”

  Gubbio grunted. “Not as aged as that, my master. I am your senior by a year and more, and I can still swing a stout enough staff when I so desire. As to what the lad’s business might be, that you must ask him yourself. I can keep him till dinner if your Tranquility demands it, but he is a sullen young lump and in half an hour I may like it better to accompany you to High Mass, than stay here with him bumping around underfoot.”

  “Do you raise my curiosity in this manner, you rascal, and then offer to leave it to bedevil my meditation for the rest of the morning? I will see him in…I believe that I will see him here.”

  Gubbio’s eyebrows rose like shaggy white flags. “In your private garden?”

  “Is this some wild beast, to trample everything underfoot?”

  “As your Eminence wishes.” The old servant shrugged, bowed, and departed.

  Don Felipe replaced his paper—not quite as if hiding it—returned his lap desk to the flagstones at his feet, folded his hands upon his lap, and waited. The sun warmed his bones; the water plashed pleasantly in the fountain; and the flowers, though little more to his tired old eyes than blurs of color, had never shone more bright.

  In a few moments Gubbio was back with the visitor, a shortish, not overly scrawny lad of perhaps fourteen or fifteen, wearing travel-stained clothes and a travel-stained face.

  “Don Felipe de Granada?” the lad began in a voice that, even while seeming not yet entirely deepened, held no tone whatever of awe and only the scantest of respect. “Also known as Don Felipe de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Agapida?”

  “I am he. And you are…”

  “Juan.”

  “Juan.” With a nod, the old priest accepted the single name, at least for the present. “Well, Juan, I was led to believe that you came seeking me out on a matter of some urgency.”

  For the first time, the boy’s stiffness showed a crack. Lips trembling, he said, “One whom you once…perhaps…held dear, is held captive by bandits. They demand ransom.”

  Felipe’s heart lurched. “Who?”

  “You do not know,” Juan replied accusingly. “You cannot so much as guess.”

  “Is it so difficult to conceive that an inquisitor may count more dear friends than one in his life?”

  “And more dear loves than one?”

  Don Felipe found the crucifix round his neck digging deeply into his right palm. All who had ever known of his boyish worship for Morayma must either be long dead or far from Aragon, and he had thought his secret marriage with Pilar well wrapped in layers of discretion. But he had never been Morayma’s lover in more than aspiration, and the name he whispered was that of Pilar.

  “So you remember,” said the youth. “Or have the gift of guessing. Or both.”

  “Young man, never was I one of your damnable licentious clerics! In all my years, she was the only one. Though how you know of something held private among her, myself, and her own people so many years before your birth… But no matter now! What ransom do they demand?”

  “Wait one moment,” Gubbio interrupted. “Our young friend here named no names. Your Reverence did. Before haggling over terms of ransom, how can we know, first, that they really hold the lady you think—or, for that matter, anyone at all—and, second, that this rapscallion is not one of them?”

  Don Felipe sat back shakily. “Old friend, you speak bald reason. Where his own heart is concerned, even an experienced inquisitor may lose his head. Lad—Juan—what proofs can you show us?”

  For answer, the youth took a small bag from around his neck and half flung it down in the churchman’s lap.

  Opening it with trembling fingers, Don Felipe drew out a packet sealed with horsehair and unstamped wax. He broke the seal and unwrapped the paper. A stone tumbled out—a carnelian the breadth of his little fingernail, carved with the head of Juno. He caught his breath and read what had been written on the paper with a scratchy pen and sooty ink:

  “My own, three of us have returned alive from over there beyond the mountains. One you do not yet know, and my unhappy uncle is crazed with grief and age. Our captors ask 3,000 sueldos. Your ring does not leave my finger, the stone only will I part with.”

  Gathering himself with a deep breath, the old inquisitor returned his gaze to the boy before him. “You are the one whom I do not yet know?”

  Juan nodded.

  “And the name of her uncle”

  “You say you loved her, and you do not remember? He was once a great man among us, a count by gadje reckoning, when our number was greater.”

  “I remember names well enough, and I have one particular uncle in mind whom I guess to be the one she mentions. I know, however, how reluctant your people have always been to call their dead by name, and I fear to break that custom by choosing the wrong name.” Don Felipe paused, the fact sinking in:

  Dead. All dead. The Calé he had known in Agapida, those clean and honest souls, and all but one of the children born to them since the vengeful young Don Gaspar drove them away…

  Calixta Aranse…wife to Pilar’s brother…Calixta and a babe of hers… So that evil dream had also been among the true ones?

  Tears pressed into his eyes. Forcing them back, he went on, “Do you know his name, Juan?”

  The boy scowled and muttered, “Uncle Sagesse.”

  “Sagesse. Don Sagesse Labaa.” Feeling one tear slip out despite his efforts, Don Felipe nodded and squeezed the carnelian more tightly in his hand. “How do we know, Juan, that they are still alive—she and Don Sagesse?”

  “Would they have left the ring on her finger if she were not? Would I have uttered their names if they were not?”

  “Alive and wearing my ring she may have been when you left the bandits. How can we be sure that is still the case?”

  “If they had wanted the ring more than the ransom, would they have let the stone come away with me?”

  Gubbio barked a dry laugh. “Best either rack the lad or recruit him, my Don.”

  Juan transferred his glowering stare momentarily to the servant. “She would not thank you for treating one of her people worse than the bandits have treated us.”

  Although Juan’s gaze had returned almost at once to Don Felipe, it was Gubbio who answered the boy. “Do you call it worse, then, to be tortured than murdered?”

  “I call it worst of all to be tortured and murdered.”

  “Have done with this!” Don Felipe exclaimed. “Will they accept the sum in jewelry and merchandise?”

  “Yes, if there are no tricks.”

  “Master!” cried Gubbio. “You do not consider paying?”

  “I do not consider it, Gubbio. I mean to do it.”

  “At least take this business to the alcalde—”

  “If they see any soldiers,” Juan cut in, “they will hide. You will never see them then, not unless they attack by ambush. And no doubt they will kill her and Uncle Sagesse both.”

  “How many of them are there, boy?” demanded the inquisitor.

  “Seven that I saw, with their old chief to make eight, and I do not count their miserable women. There could be as many again that I did not see.”

  Gubbio said, “The alcalde must know of such a swarm.”

  “Perhaps he does,” Don Felip
e replied. “Perhaps his men have tried and failed so far to track them. Be that as it may, I will give them all that they ask.”

  “And trust this… this ‘Juan’ to guide us?”

  “And trust Juan to guide us.” Although, as a matter of principle, Don Felipe chose not to assure Gubbio in the boy’s presence that they could report the bandits to the alcalde as soon as they had Pilar safe. Pilar and Don Sagesse, whose mind might have been crazed, but whose native nobility of soul could not have been destroyed by whatever tragedy had struck his people.

  * * * *

  Gathering the ransom—jewels, wines, fine cloth goods that Felipe had been saving for garments to be made whenever he found a worthy tailor, three hundred odd dineros and a hundred or so Castilian maravedís in coin, even (despite Gubbio’s grumbles, but with every assistance from that good and loyal cook Diego Sos) their entire store of spices—was the work of two hours, interrupted only by a hurried meal. Taken all together, it might, as Gubbio complained, have been sold for considerably more than the amount demanded. Don Felipe cared nothing for that, as long as it brought his wife back to him after all these years apart.

  They packed and saddled the animals without delay. Don Felipe would not even pause to hear High Mass at midday in the church of San Martin, as was his usual practice. He did, however, celebrate a dry Mass that evening in the common room of the adequate hostelry where they stopped for the night. Gubbio held the book, while the innkeeper, his wife, their Morisco servant, and a pair of merchants also stopping at the inn stood looking properly honored to hear Latin prayers recited by a former inquisitor. Juan stood farthest back, making no sound, his face deep in shadows.

  The Morisco came to table remarkably clean for a man whose daily labor included seeing to the stables, and one of the merchants declined his bowl of pork tripe on the plea that he had taken a temporary vow of abstinence from all meat. These things would have provided evidence enough, even without certain other small things Don Felipe’s trained eye noticed, for Fray Junípero and others among his former fellow guardians of the purity of the Faith to commence investigations. As for Felipe, his mind again moved back to his boyhood—as if seeking refuge from present anxieties—and found there only harmony in the three religions living side by side. The people about him had heard the Missa sicca with every outward token of piety. It was all that he himself, in his prime, would have required. Possibly the fault lay with his earliest inquisitorial instruction, from mild old Fra Guillaume. Which manner of instruction… had he himself not tried to pass it along, in his turn, to his own successors?