THE HOLY OFFICE
/It/ would seem that all had been settled and predetermined by Frey
Luis with the representatives of the Holy Office in Santander that
morning before he returned to the Demoiselle to make his arrest. For
at the mole, when they landed from the barge, the prisoners found
horses and a mule-litter waiting in the charge of a small company of
javelin-men. Here no time was lost. Under the eyes of a considerable
gaping concourse of people of all conditions, attracted thither by the
presence of the apparitors of the Inquisition, the Lady Margaret was
consigned to the litter; Don Pedro was set on horseback between two
mounted alguaziles; the friar tucked up his gown to bestride a mule;
the remainder of the company, numbering in all a full score, got to
horse; and so they departed.
It had been determined that, because the seat of the Asturian nobleman
Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna was in the neighbourhood of Oviedo, to
Oviedo he should be sent, together with the woman who was accused of
having practised magic against him. The resources of the country were
at the disposal of the Holy Office. Frequent relays of horses, such as
no other power in the kingdom, save the royal authority itself, could
have commanded, were available to the apparitors. They travelled
swiftly along the coast, with the ocean on their right and the
mountains on their left. They left Santander in the early morning of
Thursday, the 5th of October, setting foot ashore at almost the very
hour in which at Greenwich Sir Gervase Crosby and Sir Oliver
Tressilian were stepping aboard the Rose of the World to give chase.
Such good speed did those horsemen make that by the afternoon of
Sunday, dusty, jaded, and saddle-worn, it is true, they brought up at
the portals of the Holy House in Oviedo, having covered over a hundred
miles in less than three days.
To the Lady Margaret, tossed and jolted in the litter, without
knowledge of whither she was being taken or to what purpose, the
journey was but a continuation of the nightmare begun upon the deck of
the Demoiselle on Thursday morning. She afterwards confessed that for
most of the time she was in a state of stupor, her reason numbed, her
wits befogged. The only thing that she clearly perceived was that Don
Pedro was caught with her in a snare for which his own presumptuous
folly was responsible. Whatever her present danger, at least it had
removed her from all that Don Pedro had intended.
But in escaping the rock of Scylla she had been sucked into the
whirlpool of Charybdis.
She would have questioned Frey Luis during those days of travel. But
Frey Luis rigorously and studiously refrained from approaching her,
even when they paused for food or rest or change of horses.
Don Pedro, now delivered of his gag and no longer pinioned, rode
between his guards with hell in his soul, as may well be imagined. His
frame of mind needs no explaining. It could be one thing only; what it
was.
Oviedo, however, did not prove the journey’s end, as was supposed. One
night only was spent there, and this to the Lady Margaret in
conditions of discomfort such as she had never known. Don Pedro de
Mendoza y Luna was the first among Asturian noblemen, and in the
province of Oviedo, which contained his vast estates, he was accounted
second in importance only to the King himself. To proceed against him
in the very heart of a province in which he was of such weight and
consequence would be a serious step, entailing grave responsibilities
and provoking perhaps even graver consequences. It was a
responsibility which the inquisitors of Oviedo desired in common
prudence to avoid, if to avoid it were not inconsistent with their
duty to the Holy Office. Nor was his temporal consequence the only
consideration; Don Pedro commanded also spiritual and even
inquisitorial influence by the fact that the Inquisitor-General Don
Gaspar de Quiroga, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, was his uncle.
This rendered doubly grave the responsibility of dealing with his
case. A brief consideration revealed not only the prudent, but
actually the proper course to the inquisitors of Oviedo.
Don Pedro and the woman responsible for his implication in the
terrible charge which was levelled against her by Frey Luis Salcedo
should be sent for trial to Toledo where he would be under the eye of
the Inquisitor-General, his uncle. The reason for this decision, duly
registered by the notary of tribunal at Oviedo, was to be discovered
in his rank and in the particular nature of the offence.
Frey Luis, perceiving their motives and accounting them pusillanimous,
sought to combat them, and to insist that, in defiance of all perils
and worldly considerations, the matter should be dealt with here. But
his arguments were swept aside, and on the morrow he was constrained
to set out again with his prisoners upon the long journey south to
Toledo.
Upon that journey a week was spent. They quitted the Asturias by the
defiles of the Cantabrian Mountains, emerging upon the plains of Old
Castile, going by way of Valladolid and Segovia, then crossing the
Sierra of Guadarrama and descending to the fertile valley of the
Tagus. It was a journey that well might have afforded interest to an
English lady had that English lady’s interest not been already
unpleasantly preoccupied by the pains and perils of her own situation
and the gravest doubts of the future. Yet a hope she nourished based
upon her English nationality. At Oviedo she had not been brought
before any person of authority with whom she could lodge her claim for
protection at the hands of the Ambassador of France in the absence of
any ambassador of England just then at the Escurial. But when formal
action against her came to be taken, as she supposed to be the
intention, of necessity she must be brought before some court, and
then would be her opportunity.
This opportunity presented itself at Toledo on the day after her
arrival there.
The prisoners were lodged in the Holy House, as the palace-prison of
the Holy Office was always styled. A long, low, two-storied building
in a narrow street near Santo Domingo el Antiguo, it did not
materially differ in appearance from any other palace in Toledo, if we
except the splendid Alcazar crowning the granite heights of the great
city. It was almost windowless on the side of the street, as a result
of the Moorish influence, as dominant in architecture as in every
other factor of life in this city, where until less than ten years ago
Arabic was as freely spoken in the streets as Spanish, and ceased to
be spoken freely then only in obedience to the interdict against the
use of the language.
The long, low white building, then, presented to the world a
countenance almost as blank and inscrutable as that of the inquisitors
who behind its portals laboured so zealously to maintain the purity of
the Faith. Admission was gained by a wide Gothic doorway, closed by
massive double gates of timber studded with great iron bosses. Above
the doorway was hung a shield upon which was figured the green cross
of the Holy Office, a cross of two rudely hewn, rudely trimmed boughs,
from which some burgeoning twigs still sprouted; under this was to be
read the motto, _Exsurge Domine et judica causam Tuam_. In one of the
wings of the great door a smaller door or postern was practised. In
the other, at a man’s height, there was a Judas grille with its little
shutter. Through this Gothic doorway you entered a vast stone hall,
whence on your immediate right a wooden staircase ascended to the
floor above; at the inner end on the same side, a stone-flagged
corridor, like a tunnel, led away into the unknown; from this, on the
left soon after entering it, stone steps led down into cellars,
dungeons, and other underground places. From the cool gloom of the
great hall there was a view, through farther gates stoutly latticed in
their upper halves, of the sunlit quadrangle about which the building
stood; of green shrubs, of flowers, of vines carried upon a trellis of
black beams that were supported by rough-hewn granite pillars; of a
fig tree shading a brick wall, with its windlass above; and beyond all
this the fine Moorish tracery of the cloisters where black-and-white
Dominicans paced slowly in couples reciting the office of the day. A
place of infinite peace and rest it seemed, faintly pervaded by an
odour of incense and of wax from the distant chapel.
Many an unfortunate Judaizer, relapsed Morisco, or suspected heretic,
coming in terror of the apparitors who haled him thither, must upon
entering the palace have felt some of his terror melting from him in
the instinctive assurance that in such a place no evil could befall
him, an impression to be confirmed presently by the benignity of his
examiners.
By this benignity the Lady Margaret was agreeably surprised on the
morning after her arrival there, when she was fetched from the
wretched cell with its straw pallet, wooden table and chair, where she
had spent so miserable a night of sleeplessness and resentment.
Two familiars, lay brothers of Saint Dominic, conducted her to the
small room where her examiners awaited her. It was on the right of the
long corridor on the ground floor. Its windows opened upon the garden,
but they were set so high that, whilst admitting abundant light and
air, no outlook was to be obtained from them.
In this austere room with its whitewashed walls sat the ecclesiastical
court that was to make inquisition into her ladyship’s case. At an
oblong table of square deal, upon which there was a crucifix between
two tall candles and a vellum-bound copy of the Gospels, sat three
cowled figures: the presiding inquisitor, Frey Juan Arrenzuelo, with
the Diocesan Ordinary on his right and the Fiscal Advocate on his
left. At right angles with these, at the table’s end, on their left,
sat another Dominican, proclaimed, by his quills, his tablets, and the
inkstand of orange-root before him, the notary of the tribunal.
Beside the notary, on his left, sat one who did not rightly belong to
the court, and whose place in the proceedings would normally have
excluded him from open participation in them. This was the delator,
Frey Luis Salcedo, admitted here partly because of the peculiar
character of the case which would have rendered futile the concealment
of his identity, partly because his excellent knowledge of the
language of the accused rendered his presence as desirable to her as
to the court itself.
A wooden bench ranged against the wall at the back and a stool set
before the table completed the furniture of that bleak chamber.
The Lady Margaret introduced by her guarding familiars was a
startlingly different figure from the cringing, panic-stricken
prisoners whom the tribunal was accustomed to behold. Her demeanour
was proud to the point of haughtiness. Her step was firm, she carried
her head high, and between her fine brows there was a frown of
impatience, of displeasure, almost of menace. Thus might a great lady
frown upon impertinent underlings who obstructed her.
Her beauty, too, and the particular quality of it, was in itself a
disturbing factor to these austere men. She still wore that gown of
dark red velvet in which she had been carried off, with a farthingale
so narrow as to be no more than a suggestion of a farthingale,
entirely failing to dissemble the supple slimness of her body. The
corsage was cut low and square revealing the snowy whiteness of her
throat. Her exquisitely featured face was pale, it is true; the
delicate tints had faded from it under weariness and stress. But from
its pallor she seemed to gather an increased air of purity and
virginity. If the lines of her mouth were resolute, they were of a
resoluteness in dignity and good; if the glance of her blue eyes was
steady, it was a steadiness derived from a clear conscience and a
proper pride.
The inquisitors considered her in silence for some seconds as she
advanced. Then the cowled heads were lowered. It may be that her
stateliness, her calm, her beauty, and the aura of purity and worth in
which she seemed to move made them tremble lest the contemplation of
these outward and so often deceptive signs should cause them to weaken
in the stern duty that lay before them. Only Frey Luis, his cowl
thrown back from his tonsured head, continued steadily to regard her,
a sombre wonder in his deep-set eyes. He was marvelling anew, no
doubt, as he was presently to express it to the tribunal, that Satan
should be permitted so admirably and deceptively to empanoply his
servants.
The familiars halted her before the table. Frey Juan uttered three
words rapidly in Spanish, whereupon one of her guards stooped to
thrust forward the stool, and made a sign to her to be seated. She
looked questioningly at the inquisitor, who bowed his head, whereupon
composedly she sat down, folding her hands in her lap, and waited.
The familiars fell back at a sign from Frey Juan, who then leaned
forward a little, and considered her anew. Reflected light from those
whitewashed walls dispelled the shadows cast about his face by the
cowl. It was a lean, pallid face with solemn eyes and a wistful,
sensitive mouth; a gentle, pitiful face; a face to command confidence
and even affection. He spoke, and his voice was low and level, gentle
and persuasive. It went with his face, and, like it, possessed a rare
quality of attractiveness. It was impossible to mistrust or fear a man
with such a voice, at moments almost womanly in its tenderness, though
always masculine in tone. The Diocesan Ordinary beside him was a
shorter man, rubicund of countenance, with twinkling eyes and a
humorous mouth. The Fiscal was stern-faced, with deep lines in his
cheeks, which sagged below the line of his jaw giving him an almost
doglike appearance.
The inquisitor addressed her in English, which he spoke haltingly but
without other difficulty. His knowledge of the language had led to his
appointment to deal with the case. He began by asking her if she spoke
Spanish or French, and, when she had answered in the negative, he
sighed.
‘Then I do what I can in your own tongue. Frey Luis Salcedo will help
me if it is needful.’
He might have been a physician whom she had come to consult about her
health, or a Morisco merchant hoping to persuade her to make some
purchases from among his Moorish wares. He proceeded, as the forms
prescribed, to inquire her name, her age, and her place of abode. Her
replies were swiftly written down by the notary, spelled out to him by
Frey Luis.
The inquisitor passed on. ‘The informations we are given are that you
have by misfortune been reared in the Lutheran heresy. Do you confess
this?’
She smiled a little, which startled them all. It was not usual for an
accused to smile in that place, especially when asked an incriminating
question.
‘Whether I confess it or not, sir, does not seem to me to be your
concern.’
It was a moment before Frey Juan recovered. Very gently then he
addressed her:
‘It is our concern to safeguard the purity of the Faith and to
suppress all that may imperil it.’
‘In Spain,’ she said. ‘But I am not in Spain from choice or of my own
will. I have been brought here by force. I am here because of an
outrage committed by a Spanish gentlemen. The only concern with me of
Spanish laws, whether civil or ecclesiastical, if administered with
any pretence of justice, should be to right the wrong I have suffered,
and to enable me to return home with the least delay. I cannot imagine
myself before any Spanish court, civil or ecclesiastical, in any
quality but that of an accuser and plaintiff suing for justice.’
Frey Juan translated the sum of this to his fellow inquisitors.
Amazement overspread their countenances in the moment of silence that
followed before Frey Luis broke in:
‘Is more needed to establish my accusation? She stands upon forms of
law, arguing with diabolical skill, like an experienced advocate.
Heard any ever of a woman with the wit to do that? Observe her calm;
her air of insolent contempt. Has any woman ever so confronted you?
Can you doubt whence she derives her strength and whence her ready
arguments?’
Frey Juan waved him into silence. ‘You are here as a witness, Frey
Luis; not as an advocate for or against the accused. You shall speak,
if you please, only to those matters upon which you may be questioned,
only to the facts within your knowledge. Inferences from those facts,
like judgment upon them, are for us.’
Frey Luis bowed his head under the mildly delivered rebuke, and the
inquisitor passed on to answer her ladyship.
‘Courts, secular and ecclesiastical, have their forms of law upon
which it is lawful and proper to insist. Theirs it is to judge only of
torts between man and man. But this Holy Tribunal is above and apart,
since its function is to judge of the torts man does to God. Here the
ordinary forms of law do not weigh at all. We have our own forms, and
we proceed, under God’s guidance and by God’s grace, as seems best to
his holy service.’ He paused, then added, in his gentle voice, ‘I tell
you this, my sister, so that you may dismiss any hope of sheltering
yourself behind anything which may have only an accidental connection
with your case.’
Still there was no sign of dismay in those clear eyes. The frown of
impatience between them grew more marked. ‘However contemptuous you
may be of forms, and whatever the accusations you may hold against me,
there yet remains a proper form of procedure, and this must compel you
first to hear the accusation which I have to lodge, since the offence
committed against me occurred before any offence for which it can be
shown I am answerable. When you have heard this accusation, to the
truth of which Frey Luis Salcedo there is a witness, and when you have
redressed the wrong, whether or not you punish the offender, you will
find that in redressing it all occasion for any charges against me
will have disappeared. This because, as I understand you, my only
offence lies in that being a Lutheran I am in Spain. I repeat that I
did not come to Spain of my own will, and the righting of the wrong of
which I complain will itself remove me from Spain, so that I shall
cease to contaminate its saintly soil.’
Frey Juan frowned and slowly shook his head. ‘Sister, you mock!’ he
sadly reproved her.
‘Sometimes it is only by mockery that the truth may be rendered
apparent.’ Then she raised her voice, and admonished them almost
sternly. ‘Sirs, you are wasting time and abusing your powers. I am not
a subject of the King of Spain, and I am not within his dominions of
my own choice. England has no envoy at present in Madrid. But the
Envoy of France will serve my case, and I desire to appeal to him and
to place myself under his protection. You cannot deny me this. You
know it.’
‘Place yourself under God’s protection, my sister. For there is no
other protection can avail you now.’ Frey Juan grew more and more
pitiful in manner, and sincerely, for he was profoundly touched to see
this misguided creature using such vain pleas to battle against the
holy toils in which she was taken. It was like watching the futile
struggles of a netted bird, a thing to touch the heart of any
compassionate man.
He conferred with his fellows; told them of her obduracy and
perversity. The Fiscal Advocate thereafter spoke at length. The
Ordinary added a word or two of approbation. Frey Juan inclined his
head, and turned to her once more. The notary wrote briskly meanwhile.
‘We are of opinion that to cut short and end all argument, we should
take you upon your own ground. Your Lutheranism you have now admitted.
Of this we may take a merciful view, since it is an error in which you
were reared. We may also, since mercy is our norm and guide, take a
merciful view of your other errors, since they are the more or less
natural fruits of the first. But if you desire at our hands the mercy
we are so ready to dispense, it is necessary that you earn it by a
contrite spirit, and a full and frank confession of the sins of which
you are accused.’
She would have interrupted him here; but his fine hand suddenly raised
gave her pause. It would save time perhaps if she let him have his way
and heard him out.
‘The plea that you are not in Spain of your own free will cannot avail
you. You are in Spain as a result of the practices of which you are
accused. So that the responsibility for your presence here lies as
much with you as if of your own free will you had journeyed hither.’
This moved her scorn and disgust. ‘I have heard my father say that
there is no distortion of facts beyond the power of casuistical
argument. I begin to perceive how shrewdly that was said.’
‘You do not ask of what you are accused?’
‘Of carrying off Don Pedro de Mendoza, I suppose,’ she mocked him.
His countenance remained gently impassive. ‘It comes to that; it might
be so expressed.’
Her eyes grew round as she stared at him. Frey Luis was whispering
swift interpretations to the notary, whose quill scratched briskly.
For some moments it was the only sound. Then Frey Juan resumed:
‘You are accused of having exercised the damnable arts of sorcery
against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, of having bewitched him, so that
false to the Faith of which he has ever been a valiant champion, false
to his honour and his God, he proposed to take a heretic to wife. You
are also accused of blasphemy, which is to be sought in the case of
one who has abandoned herself to these diabolical practices. Do you
confess your guilt?’
‘Do I confess? Confess to being a witch?’ It was too much for her
fortitude even. She pressed her hand to her brow. ‘Lord! I begin to
think myself in Bedlam!’
‘What is that? Bedlam?’ Frey Juan looked from her to Frey Luis, who
explained the allusion.
Frey Juan shrugged, and continued as if she had not spoken. ‘So that,
if the accusation is true, your plea that you are here because a
gentleman of Spain has offended against you must fail. Your claim to
appeal to the secular courts through the Envoy of France or another
must also fail. You are here because of an offence committed by you
against a Spanish noble, entailing an infinitely greater offence
against the Faith and the majesty of God which brings you within the
jurisdiction of this Holy Tribunal. You will understand now how vain
was your plea, since before any secular tribunal may hear your
accusation against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, it will be necessary
that you clear yourself of the accusation against yourself.’
She answered promptly, having by now recovered her self-command. ‘That
should not be difficult, provided that there is any common-sense in
Spain. Who is my accuser? Is it Don Pedro? Does he shelter himself
behind this grotesque falsehood to escape the consequences of his
evil? Is it not clear to you that the testimony of such a man in such
a case is not to be believed, that it would not be admissible before
any tribunal having the flimsiest sense of justice?’
The inquisitor did not answer until again he had interpreted her
question, and taken the feeling of his coadjutors, and also, in this
instance, of Frey Luis.
‘All that,’ he said then, ‘is as clear to us as to you, and Don Pedro
is not your accuser. The accusation rests upon independent testimony,
and that of a man well qualified by his learning to draw conclusions.’
He paused a moment. ‘It is not the custom of this tribunal to disclose
delators to an accused. But we depart from our rule, lest you should
feel that you are receiving less than justice. Your accuser is Frey
Luis Salcedo.’
She turned her golden head to look at the friar, where he sat beside
the notary. Their glances met, and the stern, glowing eyes of the
Dominican firmly bore the scorn of her clear regard. Slowly her glance
returned to the wistful, compassionate face of Frey Juan.
‘It was to Frey Luis that I appealed for protection at a time when I
perceived myself to lie in the worst danger that may threaten a
virtuous woman. Is that his evidence that I have practised
witchcraft?’
The inquisitor asked a question of his coadjutors. They bowed, the
Fiscal rapping out a dozen words in his harsh voice, and turning as he
did so to the notary. From among his papers, the notary selected a
document which he handed to the Fiscal. The Fiscal glanced at it, and
passed it on to Frey Juan.
‘You shall hear the actual terms of the accusation,’ said the
inquisitor. ‘We show you every patience and consideration.’ He began
to read.
And now her ladyship learnt how, on the evening of her first being
carried aboard the Demoiselle, Frey Luis had listened at the cabin
door whilst Don Pedro had talked to her, and afterwards had written
down what he had overheard, a deal of it in the actual words that Don
Pedro had employed. The reading of the document revived her memories
of that interview; what Frey Luis had set down corresponded with those
memories. It was an accurate, a scrupulously accurate report.
Amongst other of Don Pedro’s sayings on that occasion to which her
attention was now drawn, the following was particularly stressed by
the beautifully modulated voice of the inquisitor: ‘I did not ask to
love you. I did not even desire it of my own volition. The desire was
planted in me. It came I know not whence, a behest which there was no
disobeying, compelling, overmastering.’
That quotation closed the lengthy charge, seeming to supply the
crowning proof and confirmation of the arguments by which Frey Luis
proceeded with his accusation. In its beginnings the accusation almost
appeared to be levelled at Don Pedro. It stated how he had boarded the
ship which had gone to fetch him from England, bearing with him a
woman whom it subsequently transpired he was abducting. Frey Luis
alluded to Don Pedro’s antecedents; the virtuous, honourable ways of
his life; the piety that had ever marked his actions and led him to
enrol himself as a lay tertiary of the Order of Saint Dominic, a
member of the Militia Christi; the clean, untainted blood that flowed
in his veins. He pointed out his difficulty in believing that such a
man should be spontaneously guilty of the offence which he found him
in the act of committing. His relief to discover that Don Pedro
included marriage in his intentions towards this woman was changed to
stark horror when he discovered her to be a heretic. If it was
difficult to believe that Don Pedro should have gone to such lengths
of violence for the gratification of carnal lusts, it was impossible
to believe that he should contemplate with equanimity the infinitely
greater sin which was now disclosed. His replies to the remonstrances
of Frey Luis showed that he had not given the matter a proper
consideration, or even ascertained what were the religious beliefs of
the woman he was proposing to make his wife. This in itself betrayed
a culpable negligence amounting in all the circumstances to a sin. He
recognized it to the extent of permitting Frey Luis to proceed to
preach conversion to this woman. But it appeared to Frey Luis that the
permission was given, not out of such zeal for the Faith as men would
have looked for in such a noble as Don Pedro, but merely out of
expediency.
Followed in great detail an account of the friar’s efforts at
conversion, of their failure, of the blasphemous pleasantries and
demoniacal arguments with which his endeavours were met by this
heretical Englishwoman, who quoted Scripture freely and perverted it
to her own ends as glibly as Satan was notoriously in the habit of
doing.
It was then that he perceived the hellish source of her inspiration,
and first conceived the true explanation of Don Pedro’s conduct to lie
in the fact that he was bewitched. This was now abundantly confirmed.
There were Don Pedro’s sacrilegious threats to himself in utter
disregard of his sacred office and the habit which he wore; there was
his violent resistance to the officers of the Inquisition at Santander
and the sacrilegious shedding of blood before he was taken; but
chiefly, and entirely conclusive, there was the admission of Don Pedro
himself--in the words quoted--that in the matter of his unholy love
for the prisoner he was driven, against his own will and desires, by a
force outside of himself, whose source he did not know, whose impulse
he had not the strength to resist.
What, asked Frey Luis in conclusion, could this force be, when all the
circumstances were considered, but the agency of Satan, exercised by a
woman who had abandoned herself to the exercise of these unholy arts?
What purpose was here to be served but to introduce the corrupting
poison of heresy into Spain through the bewitched person of Don Pedro
and the offspring of this terrible union which he contemplated?
The reading ceased. The inquisitor set down the last sheet before him,
and his piteous eyes were levelled on her ladyship across the
intervening table.
‘You know now both your accuser and the precise terms of the
accusation. Do you deny anything that is here set down?’
She was very still and white; there was no longer any challenge in her
eyes or any shadow of smile upon her lips. She began to perceive
something of the terrible toils which prejudice, superstition, and
fanatical reasoning had woven for her. But she made nevertheless a
brave effort to defend herself.
‘I deny none of the facts set down,’ she answered steadily. ‘They have
been recorded with a scrupulous accuracy, such as I should have
expected in a man of truth and honour. In fact they are as true as the
reasoning from them is untrue and as the deductions from them are
false and fantastic.’
Frey Luis translated, and the notary recorded her reply. Then Frey
Juan took up the matter with her.
‘To what force, other than the force here assumed, could Don Pedro
possibly have been alluding in his words to you?’
‘How should I know that? Don Pedro spoke in imagery, I think, seeking
in fanciful terms to palliate his monstrous offence. His explanation
was false, as false as are your inferences from it. It is all
falsehood built on falsehood. Unreason growing from unreason. God of
Mercy, it is all a nightmare! Maddening!’
Distress lent her a momentary vehemence of tone and even of gesture.
Still the inquisitor showed only a saintly patience.
‘But unless you had practised some such arts upon him, how are we to
explain Don Pedro’s betrayal of his honour, of his piety, of his duty,
and of all those things which birth and rearing are known to have
rendered sacred to him? You may not know the history of the great
House of Mendoza, a house unfailingly devoted to the service of God
and the King, or you would understand how impossible all this would be
to one of its members who had not gone mad.’
On that she answered swiftly: ‘I do not say that he has not gone mad.
Indeed, it seems the only explanation of his conduct. I have heard
that men go mad for love. Perhaps…’
But the inquisitor gently interrupted her. He was smiling wistfully.
‘You are quick to make a point.’
‘Satan lends her all his subtlety,’ growled Frey Luis by way of
interjection.
‘You are quick to make a point,’ Frey Juan repeated, ‘and to seize on
an explanation that will serve instead of the correct one. But…’ He
sighed and shook his head. ‘It is to waste time, my sister.’ He
changed his tone. He leaned forward, setting his elbows on the table,
and spoke with quiet, persuasive earnestness.
‘We who are to judge you,’ he said, ‘are also to help and serve you;
and this is the greater of our functions towards you. The expiation of
your offence is worthless unless it is sincere. And it cannot be
sincere unless it is accompanied by an abjuration of the abominable
arts to which the Devil has seduced you. For the Lutheran heresy which
you practise we must pity rather than blame you, since this is the
result of the error of your teachers. For the rest, we must also pity
you, since but for the heretical teaching behind it, this would not
have been possible to you. But if we are to render effective our pity,
and employ it as is our duty to rescue your mind from error and your
soul from the terrible peril of damnation, you, my sister, must
coöperate with us by a full and frank confession of the offence with
which you are charged.’
‘Confess?’ she cried. ‘Confess to this abominable nonsense, to these
false inferences?’ She laughed short and mirthlessly. ‘I am to confess
that the Lady Margaret Trevanion practises witchcraft? God help me,
and God help you! You’ll need more evidence, I think, than this before
you can establish so grotesque a charge.’
It was the Fiscal who, being informed of her words, delivered the
reply that became his office, requesting Frey Luis to interpret it to
her.
‘The further evidence that we may need for your conviction we look to
you to furnish us, and we conjure you to do it, so that your soul may
be saved from everlasting hell. If contrition itself, if a sincere
repentance of your faults will not suffice to draw confession from
you, the Holy Office has means at its command that will lead the most
recalcitrant to avow the truth.’
She went cold with horror at those words so coldly uttered by Frey
Luis. For a moment they robbed her of the power of speech. She was
conscious of those three cowled forms immediately facing her, and the
pitiful face of Frey Juan Arrenzuelo out of which two eyes regarded
her with a compassion almost divine in its apparent limitlessness.
He raised a hand in dismissal of her. One of the familiars touched her
shoulder. The audience was at an end--suspended, in the inquisitorial
term.
Mechanically she rose, and, knowing fear at last in fullest measure,
she suffered herself to be led back along the chill dark corridor to
her cell.