Casca 10: The Conquistador

by Barry Sadler

Torquemada jerked back, breaking contact with Casca's eyes. He did not doubt that the man, if he was a man, was speaking the absolute truth. He had seen things in his eyes, shadows of things dark and secret. For a moment, he thought he even saw the Blessed Lamb on the cross and the spear being thrust upward into the side of the Son of God. Torquemada, with Frey Francisco beside him, began to pray for the strength to defeat this thing of evil who mocked Him and His holy way.

  Casca knew that he had just let his mouth overload his ass, as it had more than once in the past. Now he had no choice but to play it through. He could see the superstitious fear on the faces of the two priests and the jailer. If he was to have any chance, it would be to play on that fear. He gathered all his strength into his voice, the words thundering throughout the dungeons and torture chambers.

  "Priests, this I swear to you by all things foul and evil. Burn me and you will set loose with my ashes such as you have not dreamed of. Open my veins and my blood will bring damnation to you. Put me on the rack and I promise you such horror as will shrivel your very soul into a thing of pity and disgust, forever condemned to the deepest pits of hell."

  Torquemada touched his crucifix to his lips at the blasphemy and hate being poured out at him. Frey Francisco was in a state of near panic. Of all the thousands they had put to the Question, never had they come close to anything such as this.

  Casca knew that he was close. "You want proof, then watch!"

  He put his forearm in his mouth and began to chew, biting deeply into his own flesh, twisting and tearing till blood ran freely down his mouth into the hairs of his chest over the scars and filth. A deep, ragged tear was opened in his arm. He held it up in front of the priests for them to see.

  Torquemada nearly fainted as he watched the blood cease to flow and the wound before his eyes begin to close. Slowly but surely the wound was healing itself as he watched. Casca smiled evilly. "If you need further proof, touch my blood to your lips and know hell. In the blood of Jesus is life; in mine is death. Prove it to yourself.”

  Torquemada was no coward; he knew that he had to see if the thing was speaking the truth, but he would not touch the man's blood himself and he could not have Francisco do it. What other choices did he have? His eyes lit on the back of the jailer, who, feeling them, turned in terror as he read the passing thought in Torquemada's mind. He fell to his knees, begging him not to do it. In the name of Jesus, he pleaded not to have to touch the demon or his blood. Torquemada felt a little guilty at the thought, which he dismissed a bit regretfully, but there had to be another way. The scurrying of a rat broke into his thoughts. That was the answer.

  He ordered the jailer, "Bring me one of those! That will be how we shall test his threats."

  Eagerly, the jailer ran off to do his bidding. He knew that the rats were nearly as tame as cats, for here they were always well fed and none were able to hurt them. It didn't take long before he returned with a sack that wriggled and jumped.

  "I have found you a good one, Father. He is fat and healthy, and he nearly bit my nose off."

  Torquemada couldn't bring himself to touch the filthy animal, and so he ordered the jailer to take the thing and put its mouth on the man's chest where the blood had clotted.

  He did as he was commanded. Putting his hand into the sack, he cursed as the rat bit at him. He caught his finger before he managed to grasp the disgusting animal firmly by the back of its neck and withdraw it from the sack. It weighed nearly a pound and was black and gray, with red eyes that flashed hate at the thing holding him. It twisted and squirmed, trying to sink its teeth into any piece of flesh it could reach. The jailer pushed the animal's face to the chest of Casca. Without taking time to sniff its new target, the rodent sank its front incisors right into a patch of already dried and clotted blood and into the flesh of the man's chest.

  Torquemada motioned to the jailer, and the rat was withdrawn. Even before they held it to the light, the rat went into spasms, its bowels opening, letting loose excrement. Its mouth opened spastically, its jaws snapping. Tiny legs vibrating, its body gave one great jerk, and then it died.

  All three men went into a frenzy of crossing themselves and overlapping Hail Marys.

  Shaking, Torquemada attempted to regain control of himself. "I believe you, demon. You will not be burned at the stake; neither shall your blood be spilled. But I cannot let you loose upon the world. Your case will have to be referred to the Holy Father in Rome. Until that time, you will remain here. "No one, save this man," he said, indicating the frightened jailer, "who has already witnessed your evil, will be permitted to see or speak to you on pain of death and certain excommunication. Those who disobey me shall never see their souls in heaven.

  "You will not leave this cell until I have been instructed as to the best manner of disposing of you, and I assure you that the power of the Church will find a way."

  CHAPTER TWO

  As the cell door slammed, leaving him alone, Casca thought for a moment that he might have overdone it. He had saved himself a repeat bout with the thumbscrew and probably the rack, but he was still chained and locked up. He was a little surprised when the food slot on his door opened the next day and he was fed. He had to promise the jailer that he wouldn't hurt him or cast any evil spells so that the man would give him some slack in his chains, allowing him at least to eat and stand to exercise a bit. That was a start. Food and water had been his greatest concern; at least they weren't going to try to starve him to death. This wasn't the first time he had been locked up in a dungeon and probably wouldn't be the last.

  Carefully, he examined every stone and crevice, testing the mortar and seams, feeling beneath the layers of rotting straw under which crawled beetles and other vermin by the thousands. One time those beetles had been his only source of nourishment for over two years.

  He could find no weak spots in the stone; therefore, it had to be the chains. The iron was not of the best quality, although the links were large and well forged. If he had time, he could get through them. After thinning out his options, he kept going back to the pile of crystalline urine in the corner of his cell. In the other cells, the chains would be oiled occasionally to keep them from rusting. If he could keep them from doing that to his, there might be a way to speed the process. If he could just get one of his arms free, he had no doubt about being able to get the other loose.

  Whenever he used his bladder, it was on the chains. When he was still or sleeping, he set the links in the pile of crystallized uric acid he had moved over from the corner. Each day the chains rusted a millimeter more, and each time he would rub the tiny flakes away against the stones of the cell wall.

  It was several weeks before Torquemada received a reply from Rome. In essence, it told him to handle things as he saw fit. The Holy Father had more important things on his mind than the disposition of a single possessed soul. Torquemada was troubled by the memory of what he had witnessed in the demon's cell. It haunted his dreams. He was afraid to sentence the thing to the auto-da-fé or spill its blood. (He didn't like to refer to the prisoner in human terms.) At last he decided that it could do no harm as long as it was locked up. That was the answer: Keep it locked up forever if need be or until it died of whatever natural cause presented itself.

  In order to protect the world a bit further, he performed a high mass at the door of the cell, sprinkling the outside with holy water and placing a small silver cross, one blessed by the Pope himself, permanently on the door. Perhaps that would help to keep the evil contained. To do much more was too tiring; it drained him of energy, and he knew that he was growing weaker with each passing day. There was yet much to do to cleanse the world of heretics.

  The months passed into years. Casca didn't know that during his confinement Columbus had gone to the New World and returned. After this, it didn't take the Spaniards long to begin establishing colonies in the New World, seeking fresh lands to exploit. All this took place in only a few short years after Columbus's return.

  Torqu
emada died quietly in his sleep, only slightly troubled by the thought that he had left something undone. Father Francisco preceded him by two years, dying of dysentery. The chief jailer had become the guest of his own prison. Torquemada had not wanted him spreading stories about their strange guest; it would have upset the people. He used the well-known fact that the jailer had sexually abused several of the female prisoners as his reason for ordering the man's arrest. The jailer had beaten his brains out against the walls of his cell rather than face the same kind of treatment he had given to others for the last ten years.

  The prisoner in the dungeons of Sevilla was now no more than another of the thousands who languished in cells, forgotten by the outside world, whose jailers didn't even know the reason they were being held, assuming only that their superiors knew what was right and would decide who should be set free. They did as they always had; they followed orders and fed and watered their guest without ever knowing the reason why he was there. Nor did they care.

  It took Casca eighteen months to work through the first thick link of his chains and another three for the other, but at last he had his hands free. Now he had to wait and be patient. Sooner or later an opportunity would present itself and he would have a chance to get away.

  Casca did not know it would be many years before such an opportunity would arise. But, then again, he had all the time in the world. Using his freedom of movement, he did his best to keep some muscle tone, exercising as much as his strength permitted, always waiting for the door to open. He heard the jailers outside his door speak of Torquemada's death and wondered if that was why nothing more had been done to him.

  For days he would lie by his door listening, trying to catch any word spoken between the guards that could give him information. Nothing! They came only at regular intervals to bring food and water, opening the small grill to insert his bowl after looking in to see whether he was where he was supposed to be. After they closed the grill, he could move to take his food. If he wasn't up against the wall, he wasn't fed. But they never entered the cell. All exchanges were made through the small grill.

  Several times he attempted to trick the guards by groaning, howling, and scratching against the door. He even cried out that he was ready to tell them everything. But the door never opened, and the years went by. His skin turned the color of a fish's belly beneath his coating of grime and filth, and, even as it had at Helsfjord, his hair and beard grew into tangled masses that served as home for a collection of insects and vermin.

  Desperation forced his mind into fantastic schemes of escape, and sadly he damned the name of He who had placed the curse of life upon him. He had greater fears by far than death and had met most of them in his centuries. Time and again he had tried to die, and always the words of Jesus mocked him at the crucial moment when he pleaded for death:

  Soldier, you are content with what you are, and that you shall remain until we meet again.

  So were the words of Jesus by which he condemned Casca to walk the earth until the Second Coming, a coming for which Casca prayed most earnestly, one that would bring an end to his wandering. To rest in the long sleep of eternity was his greatest wish. But he lived. Although swords and spears had struck blows that should have killed, death was denied him. Even when he tried to commit suicide, it was to no avail; he was condemned to live. Suicide. The thought kept returning, taking form slowly. Perhaps that was his way out. If he was dead, they would have to take the body. It didn't take long for him to come to a decision once he accepted the idea.

  The next morning, when the jailers opened the grill, instead of seeing the prisoner seated with his back against the wall, they saw him hanging, his chains wrapped around his neck, the thick links cutting deeply into the flesh of his throat. His feet reached to the ground, but the legs were bent. It was his own body weight that had done the deed. They watched for a couple of minutes. Seeing no sign of life, they called for slaves to come and remove the corpse.

  Two Moriscos, kept by the prison for such a purpose, unwrapped the thick links from around the neck under the scrutiny of one of the guards, who noted the swollen and discolored face, the purple lips, and the twisted angle of the prisoner's head. He was most definitely dead. The Moriscos, looking more like beggars from the streets of Baghdad than the rich merchants they once had been, grunted under the load of their cargo, though by now Casca weighed a third less than when he'd been brought to the dungeons. Dragging him by the heels, they pulled him from his cell to the two-wheeled carrion cart.

  Escorted by the guard, the slaves rolled their load down over the stones of the dungeon hallway to a barred door leading to the outside world. If Casca's eyes had been able to see the brightness of the early morning, they would have been blinded for some time. The Moriscos talked softly in a mixture of Spanish and Arabic till the escort gave them a look that silenced their lips for the rest of the trip. They headed for a place outside the city walls that was reserved for dungeon guests who had expired.

  Casca wasn't the only one to be tossed into the pit recently. He didn't feel the shovels of earth covering his face and body. Beneath him lay the decaying remains of others who had made the trip from their cells to this spot. The dirt was shoveled loosely over the victims, leaving room for those who would surely come, if not tomorrow, then the next day. Rather than digging separate graves each day, it saved time and ground space to dig just one large pit and fill it with layers of bodies. There was only enough soil shoveled in to keep the worst of the stench from seeping out.

  Townsmen and travelers avoided the graveyard of the dungeon as if it bore the plague. Perhaps they felt that the odds of their becoming residents also made it uncomfortable to be very close to it.

  Casca couldn't know that on this same day, October 6, 1516, a man in the colony at the island of Cuba was planning a great adventure, one that would return him to his distant past.

  As he lay in his grave, clouds began to gather. Racing in from the sea, riding the winds, they rose and fell and fought to pull together, but they were always burned away by the sun. They tried once more in the afternoon, this time staying a bit longer before the sun seared them away with easy contempt. Near Zaragosa, the clouds managed to let loose some rain, but it never reached the earth. The heat of the ground and air burned it off, sending it back up into the heavens to be blown away and reabsorbed. Once more, when darkness came, the clouds gathered their forces and attempted another assault. Far out to sea they rallied their numbers, throwing their masses together, joining with companies and battalions of lesser clouds into a heaving dark horde that rode high and fast in great circles above the earth. They waited for the winds; then, when the time was right, they charged again over the oceans, their armies sweeping onto the coasts of Spain. Dark and rumbling, they rode rivers of wind, beating back the heat of the air left behind by the sun. They would win their battle this night and let loose the rains to soothe the burned plains and wash the streets of Sevilla clean for a time.

  Under the loosely packed earth he waited, his neck twisted at an odd angle, his mouth filled with dirt. The first fat drops of rain fell, patting the earth singly and then in groups as the clouds joined their strength together and crashed into one another, creating waves of thunder to roll over the plains. Lightning broke the night into splintered fragments of eye-piercing brightness that shattered trees and burst stones where it struck.

  The rain began to gather in pools, seeking the lowest point. Several broke out to run together, forming small streams flowing into gutters and ditches. One of these found its way into the burial pit. The loose earth thirstily sucked up the first attempt of the rain to fill the pit, but at last the earth was sated and could hold no more. The water went deep down into the loose soil, saturating it. With nowhere else to go, it began to fill the pit slowly.

  The rain turned the dirt on Casca's body into a slimy quagmire. The moisture eased through the grains of earth into his mouth and over his eyes, bringing a coolness with it. Dissolving the loose earth, t
he rain washed away the foot of dirt over him, exposing his face to the storm. Lightning crashed again from the heavens, a bolt landing near the pit, the smell of ozone conflicting with that of decay.

  The life-giving waters soaked into his exposed pores. The rain gathered in intensity and pounded at his body, each drop a tiny hammer that vibrated against his chest. He began to rise, limbs floating limp and loose as the water rose in the pit.

  Others rose with him. Those who had been buried before him also began to rise and float. The pit became an obscene thing where rotting corpses bobbed and moved and individual limbs rose and fell on their own. Decaying heads of men and women appeared, teeth exposed in perpetual leers, some with eyes, some without, others with no arms where they had rotted or been eaten off.

  Muddy water seeped down between the muscles of his throat, reaching into his stomach. As the rain beat at him, a hand twitched, the fingers opening slightly and then closing.

  Tremors began to run along his legs as his chest heaved, forcing his lungs to expand and then contract, sucking in air. He was coming back to life one more time.

  A merchant from Segovia and his two Moorish slaves were trying to find their way to the shelter of an inn near the walls of Sevilla. Because of the dark and the blinding rain, they had missed their turn. They came instead to the brink of the pit. The merchant slipped, falling into the dark, rain-frothed water. When one of his slaves extended an arm to aid his master, he pulled out instead the corpse of a woman whose hand came loose at the wrist, leaving the claw in the terrified hand of the Moor, who got a good look at what he was holding during a burst of lightning. In spite of knowing that it meant death if he was heard, he cried out, "Allah!" Then he and his companion turned, fleeing from this place of djinns and demons, leaving their master and his mules to the care of the succubi who swam in the muddy waters.

  If they had stayed to see what occurred next, they both might have died of heart attacks, as their master did when he attempted to pull himself from the pool and found that he was being held on to by the hand of a cadaver. He managed to drag himself out, but the damnable thing wouldn't let go of his leg. It kept clawing at him, and it was gaining strength. The merchant screamed, but no one could have heard him over the din of the storm. Even if they had, no one would have ventured out to see if he could help. This was not a time when men went readily to another's aid.