"MISERICORDIA ET JUSTITIA"
(_The ironic motto of the Spanish Inquisition_)
They had passed Cape de St. Vincent, and, under a huge copper-coloured
moon which flooded the sea with light and seemed like a chased buckler
of old Rome, were slipping along towards Faro, southwards and eastwards
to Cadiz.
The night was fair, sweet, and golden. The airs which filled the sails
of the square-rigged ship were soft and warm. The "lap, lap" of the
small waves upon the cutwater was soothing and in harmony with the hour.
Elizabeth had been sleeping in the cabin long since, but Commendone, old
Madame La Motte, and the little weazened Don Perez were sitting on the
forecastle deck together, among the six brass carronades which were
mounted there, ready loaded, in case of an attack by the pirates of
Tangier.
"You were going to tell us, Senor," Johnnie said, "something of the Holy
Office, and why, when you leave Seville, you leave Spain for ever."
Don Perez nodded. He rose to his feet and peered round the wooden tower
of the forecastle, which nearly filled the bow-deck.
"There is nobody there," he said, with a little sigh of relief. "That
fellow we took aboard at Lisbon is down in the waist with the mariners."
"But why do you fear him?" Johnnie answered in surprise.
The little yellow man plucked at his pointed black beard, hesitated for
a moment, and then spoke.
"Have you noticed his hands, Senor?" he asked.
"Since you say so," Johnnie replied, with wonder in his voice, "I have
noticed them. He is a proper young man of his inches, strong and an
athlete, though I like not his face. But his hands are out of all
proportion. They are too large, and the thumbs too broad--indeed, I have
never seen thumbs like them upon a hand before."
Don Pedro Perez nodded significantly. "_Ciertamenta_," he answered
dryly. "It is hereditary; it comes of his class. He is a sworn torturer
of the Holy Office."
Johnnie shuddered. They had been speaking in Spanish. Now he exclaimed
in his own tongue. "Good God!" he said, "how horrible!"
Perez grinned sadly and cynically as the moonlight fell upon his yellow
face. "You may well start, Senor," he said, "but you know little of the
land to which you are going yet."
There came a sudden, rapid exclamation in French. Madame La Motte,
speaking in that slow, frightened voice which had been hers throughout
the voyage, was interposing.
"I don't understand," she said, "but I want to hear what the gentleman
has to say. He speaks French; let us therefore use that language."
Don Perez bowed. "I am quite agreeable," he said; "but I doubt, Madame,
that you will care to hear all I was going to tell the Senor here."
"Phut!" said the Frenchwoman. "I know more evil things than you or Don
Commendone have ever dreamed of. Say what you will."
Don Perez drew a little nearer to the others, squatting down, with his
head against the bow-men's tower.
"You have asked me about the Inquisition, Monsieur and Madame," he said
in a low voice, "and as ye are going to Seville, I will tell you, for
you have been courteous and kind to me since I left Lisbon, and you may
as well be warned. I am peculiarly fitted to tell you, because my
brother--God and Our Lady rest his blood-stained soul!--was a notary of
the Holy Office at Seville. We are, originally, Lisbon people, and my
brother was paying a visit to his family, being on leave from his
duties. He caught fever and died, and I am bearing back his papers with
me to Seville, from which city I shall depart as soon as may be. It is
only care for my own skin that makes me act thus as executor to my
brother, Garcia Perez. Did I not, they would seek me out wherever I
might be."
"You go in fear, then?" Johnnie asked curiously.
"All Spaniards go in fear," Perez answered, "under this reign. It is the
horror of the Inquisition that while any one may be haled before it on a
complaint which is anonymous, hardly any one ever escapes certain
penalties. Senor," his voice trembled, and a deep note of feeling came
into it, "if the fate of that wretch is heavy who, being innocent of
heresy, will not confess his guilt, and is therefore tortured until he
confesses imaginary guilt, and is then burned to death, hardly less is
the misery of the victim who recants or repenteth and is freed from the
penalty of death."
"_Tiens!_" said La Motte, shuddering. "I have heard somewhat of this in
Paris; but continue, Monsieur, continue."
"No one knows," the little man answered, "how the Holy Office is
striking at the root of all national life in my country. And no one has
a better knowledge of it all at second hand--for, thank Our Lady, I have
never yet been suspected or arraigned--than I myself, for my brother
being for long notary and secretary to the Grand Inquisitor of Seville,
I have heard much. Now I must tell you, that the place of torture is
generally an underground and very dark room, to which one enters through
several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it, where the Inquisitor,
Inspector, and Secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the
person to be tortured is brought in, the executioner, who is waiting
for him, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all
over with black linen garments down to his feet and tied close to his
body. His head and face are all hidden with a long black cowl, only two
little holes being left in it for him to see through. All this is
intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and
body, when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who
thus looks like the very Devil."
Johnnie moved uneasily in his seat and struck the breech of a carronade
with his open hand. "Phew! Devil's tricks indeed," he said.
"Whilst," Don Perez went on, "whilst the officers are getting things
ready for the torture, the Bishop and Inquisitor by themselves, and
other men zealous for the faith, endeavour to persuade the person to be
tortured freely to confess the truth, and if he will not, they order the
officers to strip him, who do it in an instant.
"Whilst the person to be tortured is stripping, he is persuaded to
confess the truth. If he refuses it, he is taken aside by certain men
and urged to confess, and told by them that if he confesses he will not
be put to death, but only be made to swear that he will not return to
the heresy he hath abjured. If he is persuaded neither by threatenings
nor promises to confess his crime, he is tortured either more lightly or
grievously according as his crime requires, and frequently interrogated
during the torture upon those articles for which he is put to it,
beginning with the lesser ones, because they think he would sooner
confess the lesser matters than the greater."
"Criminals are racked in England," Johnnie said, "and are flogged most
grievously, as well they deserve, I do not doubt."
Perez chuckled. "Aye," he said, "that I well know; but you have nothing
in England like the Holy Office. But let me tell you more as to the law
of it, for, as I have said, my brother was one of them."
He went on in a low regular voice, almost as if he were repeating
something learned by rote....
"What think you of this? The Inquisitors themselves must interrogate the
criminals during their torture, nor can they commit this business to
others unless they are engaged in other important affairs, in which case
they may depute certain skilful men for the purpose.
"Although in other nations criminals are publicly tortured, yet in Spain
it is forbidden by the Royal Law for any to be present whilst they are
torturing, besides the judges, secretaries, and torturers. The
Inquisitors must also choose proper torturers, born of ancient
Christians, who must be bound by oath by no means to discover their
secrets, nor to report anything that is said.
"The judges also shall protest that if the criminal should happen to die
under his torture, or by reason of it, or should suffer the loss of any
of his limbs, it is not to be imputed to them, but to the criminal
himself, who will not plainly confess the truth before he is tortured.
"A heretic may not only be interrogated concerning himself, but in
general also concerning his companions and accomplices in his crime, his
teachers and his disciples, for he ought to discover them, though he be
not interrogated; but when he is interrogated concerning them, he is
much more obliged to discover them than his accomplices in any other the
most grievous crimes.
"A person also suspected of heresy and fully convicted may be tortured
upon another account, that is, to discover his companions and
accomplices in the crime. This must be done when he hesitates, or it is
half fully proved, at least, that he was actually present with them, or
he hath such companions and accomplices in his crime; for in this case
he is not tortured as a criminal, but as a witness.
"But he who makes full confession of himself is not tortured upon a
different account; whereas if he be a negative he may be tortured upon
another account, to discover his accomplices and other heretics though
he be full convicted himself, and it be half fully proved that he hath
such accomplices.
"The reason of the difference in these cases is this, because he who
confesses against himself would certainly much rather confess against
other heretics if he knew them. But it is otherwise when the criminal is
a negative.
"While these things are doing, the notary writes everything down in the
process, as what tortures were inflicted, concerning what matters the
prisoner was interrogated, and what he answered.
"If by these tortures they cannot draw from him a confession, they show
him other kind of tortures, and tell him he must undergo all of them,
unless he confesses the truth.
"If neither by these means they can extort the truth, they may, to
terrify him and engage him to confess, assign the second or third day to
continue, not to repeat, the torture, till he hath undergone all those
kinds of them to which he is condemned."
"It is bitter cruel," Madame La Motte said, "bitter cruel. It is not
honest torture such as we have in Paris."
Commendone shuddered. "Honest torture!" he said. "There is no torture
which is honest, nor could be liked by Christ our Lord. I saw a saint
burned to his death a few weeks agone. It taught me a lesson."
The little Spaniard tittered. "It must be! It must be!" he said; "and
who are you and I, Senor, to flout the decrees of Holy Church? The
burning doth not last for long. I have seen a many burned upon the
Quemadero, and twenty minutes is the limit of their suffering. It is not
so in the dungeons of the Holy Office."
"What then do they do?" Madame La Motte asked eagerly, though she
trembled as she asked it--morbid excitement alone being able to thrill
her vicious, degenerate blood.
"The degrees of torture are five, which are inflicted in turn," Perez
answered briskly. "First, the being threatened to be tortured; secondly,
being carried to the place of torture; thirdly, by stripping and
binding; fourthly, the being hoisted on the rack; fifthly, squassation.
"The stripping is performed without any regard to humanity or honour,
not only to men, but to women and virgins, though the most virtuous and
chaste, of whom they have sometimes many in their prison at Seville. For
they cause them to be stripped even to their very shifts, which they
afterwards take off, forgive the expression, and then put on them
straight linen drawers, and then make their arms naked quite up to their
shoulders.--You ask me what is squassation?"
Nobody had asked him, but he went on:
"It is thus performed: The prisoner hath his hands bound behind his back
and weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on high till his
head reaches the very pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some
time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his
joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let
down with a jerk by slacking the rope, but kept from coming quite to the
ground, by the which terrible shake his arms and legs are all
disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock
which he receives by the sudden stop of the fall, and the weight at his
feet, stretching his whole body more intently and cruelly."
Johnnie jumped up from the deck and stretched his arms. "What fiends be
these!" he cried. "Is there no justice nor true legal process in Spain?"
"Holy Church! Holy Church, Senor!" the Don replied. "But sit you down
again. Sith you are going to Seville, as I understand you to say, let me
tell you what happened to a noble lady of that city, Joan Bohorquia, the
wife of Francis Varquius, a very eminent man and lord of Highuera, and
daughter of Peter Garcia Xeresius, a most wealthy citizen. All this I
tell you of my personal knowledge, in that my brother was acquainted
with it all and part of the machinery of the Holy Office. And this is a
most sad and pitiful story, which, Senor Englishman, you would think a
story of the doings of devils from hell! But no! 'Twas all done by the
priests of Jesus our Lord; and so now to my story.
"Eight days after her delivery they took the child from her, and on the
fifteenth shut her close up, and made her undergo the fate of the other
prisoners, and began to manage her with their usual arts and rigour. In
so dreadful a calamity she had only this comfort, that a certain pious
young woman, who was afterwards burned for her religion by the
Inquisitors, was allowed her for her companion.
"This young creature was, on a certain day, carried out to her torture,
and being returned from it into her jail, she was so shaken, and had all
her limbs so miserably disjointed, that when she laid upon her bed of
rushes it rather increased her misery than gave her rest, so that she
could not turn herself without most excessive pain.
"In this condition, as Bohorquia had it not in her power to show her any
or but very little outward kindness, she endeavoured to comfort her mind
with great tenderness.
"The girl had scarce begun to recover from her torture, when Bohorquia
was carried out to the same exercise, and was tortured with such
diabolical cruelty upon the rack, that the rope pierced and cut into the
very bones in several places, and in this manner she was brought back to
prison, just ready to expire, the blood immediately running out of her
mouth in great plenty. Undoubtedly they had burst her bowels, insomuch
that the eighth day after her torture she died.
"And when, after all, they could not procure sufficient evidence to
condemn her, though sought after and procured by all their inquisitorial
arts, yet as the accused person was born in that place, where they were
obliged to give some account of the affair to the people, and, indeed,
could not by any means dissemble it, in the first act of triumph
appointed her death, they commanded her sentence to be pronounced in
these words: 'Because this lady died in prison (without doubt
suppressing the causes of it), and was found to be innocent upon
inspecting and diligently examining her cause, therefore the holy
tribunal pronounces her free from all charges brought against her by the
fiscal, and absolving her from any further process, doth restore her
both as to her innocence and reputation, and commands all her effects,
which had been confiscated, to be restored to those to whom they of
right belonged, etc.' And thus, after they had murdered her by torture
with savage cruelty, they pronounced her innocent!"
"I will not go to Spain! They'll have me; they're bound to have me! I
dare not go!" La Motte spluttered.
"Hush, Madame!" said Perez. "Even here on the high seas you do not know
who hears you--there is that man...."
Again Johnnie leapt to his feet; he paced up and down the little portion
of the deck between the forecastle and bowsprit.
Elizabeth was sleeping quietly down below. He had seen her father die.
His mind whirled. "Jesus!" he said in a low voice, "and is this indeed
Thy world, when men who love Thee must die for a shadow of belief in
their worship! Surely some savage pagan god would not exact this from
his votaries."
He swung round to Perez, still sitting upon the deck.
"And may not we love God and His Mother in Spain?" he asked, "without
definitions and little tiny rules? Then, if this is so, God indeed
hides His face from Christian countries."
"_Chiton!_" the Spaniard said. "Hush! if you said that, Senor, or
anything like it, where you are going, you would not be twelve hours out
of the prisons of the Holy Office. If that hang-faced dog who is down
below with the mariners had heard you, you might well look to your
landing in the dominions of his Most Catholic Majesty."
He laughed, a bitter and cynical laugh. "Well," he said, "for my part, I
shall soon be done with it. Hitherto I have been protected by my
brother, who, as I have told you, is but lately dead; but, knowing what
I know, I dare no longer remain in Spain. 'Tis a wonder to me, indeed,
that men can go about their business under the sun in the fashion that
they do. But I am not strong enough to endure the strain, and also I
know more than the ordinary--I know too much. So when I have delivered
the papers that I carry of my brother's to the authorities in Seville, I
sail away. I have enough money to live in ease for the rest of my life,
and in some little vineyard of the Apeninnes I shall watch my grapes
ripen, live a simple life, and meditate upon the ferocity of men.--But
you have not heard all yet, Senor."
Johnnie leant against the forecastle, tall and silent in the moonlight.
"Then tell me more, Senor," he said; "it is well to know all. But"--he
looked at Madame La Motte.
"_Continuez_," the old creature answered in a cracked voice; "I also
would hear it all, if, indeed, there is worse than this."
"Worse!" Perez answered. "Let me tell you of the fate of a man I knew
well, and liked withal. He was a Jew, Senor, but nevertheless I liked
him well. We had dealings together, and I found him more honest in his
walking than many a Christian man. Orobio was his name--Isaac Orobio,
doctor of physic, who was accused to the Inquisition as a Jew by a
certain Moor, his servant, who had, by his order, before this been
whipped for thieving. Orobio conformed to religion, but the Moor accused
him, and four years after this he was again accused by an enemy of his,
for another fact which would have proved him a Jew. But Orobio
obstinately denied that he was one."
"I like not Jews," Commendone said, with a little shudder, voicing the
popular hatred of the day.
"Art young, Senor," the Spaniard replied, "and doubtless thou hast not
known nor been friends with members of that oppressed race. I have known
many, and have had sweet friends among them; and among the Ebrews are to
be found salt of the earth. But I will give you the story of Orobio's
torture as I had it from his own mouth.
"After three whole years which he had been in jail, and several
examinations, and the discovery of the crimes to him of which he was
accused, in order to his confession and his constant denial of them, he
was, at length, carried out of his jail and through several turnings and
brought to the place of torture. This was towards evening.
"It was a large, underground room, arched, and the walls covered with
black hangings. The candlesticks were fastened to the wall, and the
whole room enlightened with candles placed in them. At one end of it
there was an enclosed place like a closet, where the Inquisitor and
notary sat at a table--that notary, Senor, was my brother. The place
seemed to Orobio as the very mansion of death, everything appearing so
terrible and awful. Here the Inquisitor again admonished him to confess
the truth before his torment began.
"When he answered he had told the truth, the Inquisitor gravely
protested that since he was so obstinate as to suffer the torture, the
Holy Office would be innocent if he should shed his blood, or even
expire in his torments. When he had said this, they put a linen garment
over Orobio's body, and drew it so very close on each side as almost to
squeeze him to death. When he was almost dying, they slackened, at once,
the sides of the garment, and after he began to breathe again, the
sudden alteration put him to most grievous anguish and pain. When he had
overcome this torture, the same admonition was repeated, that he would
confess the truth in order to prevent further torment.
"And as he persisted in his denial, they tied his thumbs so very tightly
with small cords as made the extremities of them greatly swell, and
caused the blood to spurt out from under his nails. After this, he was
placed with his back against the wall and fixed upon a little bench.
Into the wall were fastened little iron pulleys, through which there
were ropes drawn and tied round his body in several places, and
especially his arms and legs. The executioner drawing these ropes with
great violence, fastened his body with them to the wall, so that his
hands and feet, and especially his fingers and toes, being bound so
straitly with them, put him to the most exquisite pain, and seemed to
him just as though he had been dissolving in flames. In the midst of
these torments, the torturer of a sudden drew the bench from under him,
so that the miserable wretch hung by the cords without anything to
support him, and by the weight of his body drew the knots yet much
closer.
"After this a new kind of torture succeeded. There was an instrument
like a small ladder, made of two upright pieces of wood and five cross
ones, sharpened before. This the torturer placed over against him, and
by a certain proper motion struck it with great violence against both
his shins, so that he received upon each of them, at once, five violent
strokes, which put him to such intolerable anguish that he fainted away.
After he came to himself they inflicted on him the last torture.
"The torturer tied ropes round Orobio's wrists, and then put those ropes
about his own back, which was covered with leather to prevent his
hurting himself. Then, falling backwards, and putting his feet up
against the wall, he drew them with all his might till they cut through
Orobio's flesh, even to the very bones; and this torture was repeated
thrice, the ropes being tied about his arms, about the distance of two
fingers' breadth from his former wound, and drawn with the same
violence.
"But it happened to poor Orobio that as the ropes were drawing the
second time they slid into the first wound, which caused so great an
effusion of blood that he seemed to be dying. Upon this, the physician
and surgeon, who are always ready, were sent for out of a neighbouring
apartment, to ask their advice, whether the torture could be continued
without danger of death, lest the ecclesiastical judges should be guilty
of an irregularity if the criminal should die in his torments.
"Now they, Senor, who were very far from being enemies to Orobio,
answered that he had strength enough to endure the rest of the torture.
And by doing this they preserved him from having the torture he had
already endured repeated on him, because his sentence was that he should
suffer them all at one time, one after another, so that if at any time
they are forced to leave off, through fear of death, the tortures, even
those already suffered, must be successively inflicted to satisfy the
sentence. Upon this the torture was repeated the third time, and then
was ended. After this Orobio was bound up in his own clothes and carried
back to his prison, and was scarce healed of his wounds in seventy
days, and inasmuch as he made no confession under his torture, he was
condemned, not as one convicted, but suspected of Judaism, to wear for
two whole years the infamous habit called the _sanbenito_, and it was
further decreed that after that term he should suffer perpetual
banishment from the kingdom of Seville."
The Frenchwoman, who had been listening with strained attention, broke
in suddenly. "_Nom de Dieu!_" she cried; "to be banished from there
would surely be like entering into paradise!"
Perez went on. He took a morbid pleasure in the telling of these hideous
truths. It was obvious that he had long suffered mentally under the
obsession that some day some such horrors might happen to himself.
Connected with it all by family ties, absolutely unable to say a word
for many years, now, under the sweet skies of heaven, in the calm and
splendid night, he was disemburdening himself of that which had been
pent within him for so long.
He seemed impatient of interruption, anxious to say more....
"Ah," he whispered, "but the _Tormento di Toca_, that is the worst, that
would frighten me more than all--that, the _Chafing-dish_, and the
_Water-Cure_. The _Tormento di Toca_ is that the torturer--that fellow
down there with the sailors has doubtless performed it full many a
time--the torturer throws over the victim's mouth and nostrils a thin
cloth, so that he is scarce able to breathe through it, and in the
meanwhile a small stream of water, like a thread, not drop by drop,
falls from on high upon the mouth of the person lying in this miserable
condition, and so easily sinks down the thin cloth to the bottom of his
throat, so that there is no possibility of breathing, the mouth being
stopped with water, and his nostrils with the cloth, so that the poor
wretch is in the same agony as persons ready to die, and breathing out
their last. When the cloth is drawn out of his throat, as it often is,
that he may answer to the questions, it is all wet with water and blood,
and is like pulling his bowels through his mouth."
"What is the _Chafing-dish_?" Madame La Motte asked thinly.
"They order a large iron chafing-dish full of lighted charcoal to be
brought in and held close to the soles of the tortured person's feet,
greased over with lard, so that the heat of the fire may more quickly
pierce through them. And as for the _Water-Cure_, it was done to William
Lithgow, an Englishman, Senor, upon whom my brother saw it performed. He
was taken up as a spy in Malaga, and was exposed to most cruel torments
as an heretic. He was condemned in the beginning of Lent to suffer the
night following eleven most cruel torments, and after Easter to be
carried privately to Granada, there to be burned at midnight, and his
ashes to be scattered into the air. When night came on his fetters were
taken off. Then he was stripped naked, put upon his knees, and his head
lifted up by force, after which, opening his mouth with iron
instruments, they filled his belly with water till it came out of his
jaws. Then they tied a rope hard about his neck, and in this condition
rolled him seven times the whole length of the room, till he almost
quite strangled. After this they tied a small cord about both his great
toes, and hung him up thereby with his head down, letting him remain in
this condition till the water discharged out of his mouth, so that he
was laid on the ground as just dead, and had his irons put on him
again."
"Is this true, Senor?" Commendone asked in a low voice; but even while
he asked it he knew how true it was--had he not seen Dr. Taylor beaten
to the stake?
"True, Senor?" the little man said. "You do not doubt my word? I see you
do not. It was but a natural expression. You are fortunate to be a
citizen of England--a citizen of no mean country--but still, as I have
heard, now that His Most Catholic Majesty is wedded to your kingdom
there are many burnings."
"At any rate," Johnnie answered hotly, "we have no Holy Office."
"Aye, but you will, Senor, you _will_! if the Queen Maria liveth long
enough, for they tell me she is sickly, and not like to make a goodly
age. But still, to come from England is most deadly unwise, and I cannot
think why a _caballero_ should care to do so."
Johnnie did not answer him for a moment. He knew very well why he had
cared, or dared, to do so. He looked at Madame La Motte with a grim
little smile.
The woman took him on the instant.
"A chevalier, such as Monsieur here, hath his own reasons for where he
goes and what he does," she said. "Take not upon you, Monsieur Perez, to
enquire too much...."
Johnnie stopped her with a sudden exclamation.
"But touching the Holy Office, Senor," he said, "what you have told me
is all very well. I am a good Catholic, I trust and hope; but surely
these circumstances are very occasional. You describe things which have
doubtless happened, but not things which happen every day. It is
impossible to believe that this is a system."
"Think you so?" said the little man. "Then I will very soon disabuse you
of any such idea. I have papers in my mails, papers of my brother's,
which--why, who comes here?"
His voice died away into silence, as round the other side of the wooden
tower of the forecastle--with which all big merchantmen were provided in
those days for defence against the enterprise of pirates--a black
shadow, followed by a short, thick-set form, came into their view.
Johnnie recognised Hull.
"I thought you had been asleep," he said, "but thou art very welcome. We
are talking of grave matters dealing with the foreign parts to which we
go, and the Senor Don here hath been telling us much. Still, thou
wouldst not have understood hadst thou been with us, for Don Perez
speaks naught but the Spanish and the French."
The little Spaniard, standing up against the bulwarks, looked uneasily
towards Commendone and his servant, comprehending nothing of what was
said.
"This man is safe?" he asked in a trembling voice.
"Safe!" Johnnie answered. "This is my faithful servant, who would die
for me and the lady who is sleeping below."
A freakish humour possessed him, a bitter, freakish humour, in this
fantastic, brilliant moonlight, this ironic comedy upon the
southern-growing seas.
"Take him by the hand, Senor," he said in Spanish, "take him by his
great, strong right hand, for I'll wager you will not easily shake a
hand so honest in the dominions of the King of Spain to which we sail."
The little man looked round him as if in fear. There was an obvious
suggestion in his eyes and face that he was somehow trapped.
"Hold out thy hand, John Hull, and shake that of this honest gentleman,"
Johnnie said.
The big brown hand of the Englishman went out, the little yellow fingers
of the Spaniard advanced tentatively towards it.
They shook hands.
Johnnie watched it with amusement. These dreadful stories of unthinkable
cruelty had stirred up something within him. He was not cruel, but very
tender-hearted, yet this little play upon the doubting Spaniard was
welcome and fitted in with his mood.
Then he saw an astonishing thing, and one which he could not explain.
The two men, the huge, squat John Hull of Suffolk, the little weazened
gentleman from Lisbon, shook hands, looked at each other earnestly in
the face, and then, wonder of wonders, linked arms, turned their backs
upon Johnnie and the sleepy old Frenchwoman by the carronade, and spoke
earnestly to each other for a moment.
Their forms were silhouetted against the silver sea. There was an
inexplicable motion of arms, a word whispered and a word exchanged, and
then Don Perez wheeled round.
In the moonlight and the glimmer from the lantern on the forecastle,
Johnnie saw that his face, which had been twitching with anxiety, was
now absolutely at rest. It was radiant even, excited, pleased--it wore
the aspect of one alone among enemies who had found a friend.
"'Tis all right, Senor," Perez said. "I will go and fetch you the papers
of which I spoke. You may command me in any way now. You are not
yourself--by any chance...."
John Hull shook his head violently, and the little Spaniard skipped away
with a chuckle.
"What is this?" John Commendone asked. "How have you made quick friends
with the Don? What is't--art magic, or what?"
"'Tis nothing, sir," Hull answered, with some embarrassment, "'tis but
the Craft."
"The Craft?" Johnnie asked. "And what may that be?"
"We're brethren, this man and I," Hull answered; "we're of the
Freemasons, and that is why, master."
Johnnie nodded. He said no more. The whole thing was inexplicable to
him. He knew, of course, of the Freemasons, that such a society existed,
but no evidence of it had ever come to his knowledge before this night.
The persecution of Freemasonry which was to ensue in Queen Elizabeth's
reign was not yet, and the Brethren were a very hidden people in 1555.
There was a patter of feet upon the ladder leading up to the
forecastle-deck. Perez appeared again with a bundle of papers in his
hand.
"Now, then, Senor," he said, "you shall see if this of which I have told
you is a _system_ or is not. These are documents, forms, belonging to my
brother's business as Notary of the Holy Office. Thus thou wilt see."
He handed a piece of parchment, printed parchment, to Commendone.
Johnnie held it up under the light of the lantern, and read it, with a
chilling of the blood.
It was "The Proper Form of Torture for Women," and it was one of many
forms left blank for convenience to record the various steps.
As he glanced through it, his lips grew dry, his eyes, straining in the
half-sufficient light, seemed to burn.
There was something peculiarly terrible in the very omission of a
special name, and the consequent thought of the number of wretches whose
vain words and torments had been recorded upon forms like this--and were
yet to be recorded--froze the young man into a still figure of horror
and of silence.
And this is what he read:
"_She was told to tell the truth, or orders would be given to
strip her. She said, etc. She was commanded to be stripped
naked._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or orders would be given to
cut off her hair. She said, etc._
"_Orders were given to cut of her hair; and when it was taken
off she was examined by the doctor and surgeon, who said there
was not any objection to her being put to the torture._
"_She was told to tell the truth or she would be commanded to
mount the rack. She said, etc._
"_She was commanded to mount, and she said, etc._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or her body would be bound.
She said, etc. She was ordered to be bound._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or, if not, they would order
her right foot to be made fast for the trampazo. She said, etc.
They commanded it to be made fast._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would command her
left foot to be made fast for the trampazo. She said, etc. They
commanded it to be made fast. She said, etc. It was ordered to
be done._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the
binding of the right arm to be stretched. She said, etc. It was
commanded to be done. And the same with the left arm. It was
ordered to be executed._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the
fleshy part of her right arm to be made fast for the garrote.
She said, etc. It was ordered to be made fast._
"_And by the said lord inquisitor, it was repeated to her many
times, that she should tell the truth, and not let herself be
brought into so great torment; and the physician and surgeon
were called in, who said, etc. And the criminal, etc. And
orders were given to make it fast._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the first
turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would command the
garrote to be applied again to the right arm. She said, etc. It
was ordered to be done._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the
second turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be
done._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the
garrote to be applied again to the left arm. She said, etc. It
was ordered to be done._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the third
turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done._
"_She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the
trampazo to be laid on the right foot. She said, etc. It was
commanded to be done._
"_For women you do not go beyond this._"
Johnnie finished his reading. Then he tore it up into four pieces and
flung it out upon the starboard bow.
The yellow parchment fluttered over Madame La Motte's head like great
moonlit moths.
Then he turned and stared at Don Pedro, almost as if he would have
sprung at him.
"'Tis nothing of mine, Senor," the little man said. "You asked me to
tell you, and that I have done. I am no enemy of yours, so look not at
me in that way. Here"--he put his hand out and touched John Hull--"here
I have a very worthy brother, eke a Master of mine, who will answer for
me in all that I do."
The old Frenchwoman began to gather her vast bulk together to descend
into the cabin for sleep.
Johnnie helped her to her feet, and as he did so a sweet tenor voice
shivered out beneath the bellying sails, and there was the thrid of a
lute accompanying it:
"_I sail, I sail the Spanish seas,
Hey ho, in the sun and the cloud
To bring fair ladies
Wool to Cadiz,
To deck their bodies that are so proud,
In the ship of St. James a mariner I_"....
Suddenly the voice of the singer ceased, shut off into silence.
There was a half-frightened shout, a flapping of the sails as the
square-rigged ship fell out of the night wind for a moment, and then a
clamour of loud voices.
"Over the side! Over the side! The man from Lisbon's gone."
Johnnie had jumped to the port taffrail at the noise, and he saw what
had happened. He saw the whole of it quite distinctly. A long, lithe
figure had been balancing itself upon the bulwarks, giving its body to
the gentle motion of the ship.
Suddenly it fell backwards, there was a resounding splash in the quiet
sea, and something black was struggling and threshing in a pool of
silver water. From the sea came a loud cry--"_Socorro! Socorro!_"
From the time the splash was heard and the cry came up to the forecastle
the ship had slipped a hundred yards through the still waters.
Johnnie jumped up upon the bulwarks, held his hands above his head for a
moment, judged his distance--ships were not high out of the water in
that day--and dived into the phosphorescent sea.
He was lightly clad, and he swam strongly, with the long left-arm
overhand stroke--conquering an element with joy in the doing of it--glad
to be in wild and furious action, happy to throw off the oppression of
the dreadful things which the little Spaniard had droned upon the deck.
He got up to the man easily enough, circled round him, as he rose
splashing for the third time, and caught him under the arm-pits, lying
on his back with the other above him.
The man began to struggle, trying to turn and grip.
Johnnie raised his head a little from the water, sinking as he did so,
and pulling down the other also, and shouted a Spanish curse into his
ear.
"Be quiet," he said; "lie still! If you don't I'll drown you!"
Commendone was a good swimmer. He had swam and dived in the lake at
Commendone since he was a boy. He knew now exactly what to do, and his
voice, though half-strangled with the salt water, and his grip of the
drowning man's arm-pits had their effect.
There was a half-choked, "_Si, Senor_," and in twenty to thirty seconds
Johnnie lay back in the warm water of the Atlantic, knowing that for a
few minutes, at any rate, he could support the man he had come to save.
It was curious that at this moment he felt no fear or alarm whatever.
His whole mind was directed towards one thing--that the man he had dived
to rescue would keep still. His mouth and nose were just out of the
water, when suddenly there came into his mind the catch of an old song.
He heard again the high, delicate notes of the Queen's lute--"_Time hath
to siluer turn'd_...."
Hardly knowing what he did, he even laughed with pleasure at the memory.
As that was heard, a strong, lusty voice came to him.
"I'm here, master, I'm here! We shall not be long now. Ah--ah-h-h!"
Hull, blowing like a grampus, had swam up to them.
"I'll take him, master," he said; "do you rest for a moment. They'll
have us out of this 'fore long."
There were no life-belts invented in those days, and to lower a boat
from the ship was long in doing. But the _St. Iago_ was brought up with
all sails standing, the boat at the stern was let down most gingerly
into the sea, and four mariners rowed towards the swimming men. It was
near twenty minutes before Hull and Commendone heard the chunk of the
oars in the rowlocks. But they heard it at last. The tub-like galley
shadowed them, there was a loud cry of welcome and relief, and then the
two men, still grasping the inert figure of him who had fallen
overboard, caught hold of the stern of the boat. Willing hands hauled
the half-drowned man into the boat. Johnnie and Hull clambered over the
broad stern, sat down amid-ships, and shook themselves.
The moonlight was still extraordinarily powerful, and gave a fallen day
to this southern world.
As Commendone shot the water out of his ears, he looked upon the limp,
prone figure of the man he had rescued.
"_Dame!_" he cried; "it is the torturer that we've been overboard for.
Pity we didn't let him drown."
John Hull had turned the figure of the Spaniard upon its stomach and was
working vigorously at the arms, using them like pump-handles, as the
sailors got their oars into the rowlocks again, and pulled back towards
the shivering, silver ship near quarter of a mile away.
"I'll bring the life back to him, master," said John Hull. "He's warm
now--there! He's vomited a pint or more of sea-water as I speak."
"I doubt he was worth saving," Johnnie said in a low voice to his
servant's ear. "Still, he is saved, and I suppose a man like this hath a
soul?"
Hull looked at Commendone in surprise. He knew nothing about the man
they had rescued; he could not understand why his master spoke in this
way.
But with his usual dog-like fidelity he nodded an assent, though he did
not cease the pumping motion of the half-drowned man's arms.
"Perhaps he hath no soul, master," Hull said, "you know better than I.
At any rate, we have got him out of this here sea, and so praise God Who
hath given us the sturdiness to do it."
Commendone looked at his henchman and then at the slowly reviving
Spaniard.
"Amen," he said.