THE AUTO DE FÉ
/Having/ been driven by the spiritually minatory persuasions of his
confessor into that consumption of his monstrous pride, King Philip,
in prey to a reaction common enough in such cases, displayed a
feverish, anxious haste to perform in the eleventh hour what three
days ago might have been done in dignified leisure.
An hour or so before noon on that Wednesday, Sir Gervase Crosby was
haled from the underground stone chamber of the Escurial in which he
had been imprisoned. Such had been his angry distress at his failure
to save Margaret that it is to be doubted if through those
interminable days of maddeningly impotent conjecture he had given a
thought to the fate in store for himself.
He was brought now, not before the King, who could not bear the
humiliation of announcing his surrender to this man whose bones he had
hoped to have broken in the torture chamber of the Inquisition, but
before the little hirsute gentleman he had seen at work in the royal
closet on the occasion of his audience. This was the secretary
Rodriguez, who himself had penned at the King’s dictation the letter
to the Inquisitor-General of Castile, which His Majesty had signed and
sealed, the letter which the secretary now proffered to Sir Gervase.
In curt terms and with great dignity of manner, the little man
informed Sir Gervase of the situation in a formal speech which sounded
like a lesson learnt by heart.
‘His Majesty the King of Spain, having further considered the matter
of the letter from the Queen of England, has decided to comply with
the request contained in it. He has reached this decision in spite of
the gross terms employed by Her Majesty, and unintimidated by threats
which he is persuaded that she would not dare in any case to execute.
He has been moved solely by a justice inclining to clemency, having
ascertained that a wrong has been done by a subject of his own which
for the honour of Spain it behoves him to right.’
It was at this stage that he displayed the sealed package which he
held.
‘The woman, whose surrender is demanded, is a prisoner of the Holy
Office, charged not only with heresy, but with witchcraft exercised
against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, whereby he was so far seduced
from his duty to his God and his own honour that he carried her off
and brought her here to Spain. She lies at present in the prison of
the Holy House at Toledo, having been in the hands of the Inquisitors
of the Faith from the moment that she landed on Spanish soil. So far,
as we believe, no harm or hurt has come to her beyond the
inconvenience of detention. But she is under sentence to suffer in the
Auto de Fé which is to be held to-morrow in Toledo, wherefore you are
enjoined by His Majesty to make all speed in bearing this letter to
Don Gaspar de Quiroga, Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo and
Inquisitor-General of the Faith. This letter commands him to deliver
into your hands the person of the Lady Margaret Trevanion, and you are
further accorded by His Majesty’s gracious clemency fourteen days in
which to leave Spain, taking this woman with you. Should you still be
within His Majesty’s dominions after the expiry of that term, the
consequences will be of the utmost gravity.’
Sir Gervase took the proffered letter in a hand that trembled. Relief
was blending with a fresh dreadful anxiety to unman him. He knew the
distance to Toledo, perceived how short was the time and how the
slightest mischance, even now that this miracle had happened, might
render him too late.
But the King was now as anxious as he was that there should be no
mischance. He was further informed by the secretary Rodriguez that a
suitable escort would be provided for him as far as Toledo, and that
the relays of horses maintained by the royal post would be at his
disposal. Finally he was handed a brief document, also bearing the
royal arms and signature, commanding all dutiful subjects of the King
of Spain to assist him and his companions in his journey from Toledo
to Santander and warning them that who hindered him did so at his
peril. Upon that the secretary dismissed him with an enjoinder to set
out at once, and not to delay.
He was conducted to the courtyard by the officer who had fetched him
from his prison. Here he was delivered into the care of another
officer, who waited there with six mounted men and a spare horse. His
weapons were restored to him, and, riding beside the officer at the
head of that little escort, he quitted the gloomy palace of the
Escurial, and galloped away from the granite mass of the Guadarrama
Mountains towards Villalba. Here, turning south, they rode at speed
down the narrow valley through which the river Guadarrama winds its
way to the mighty Tagus. But the road was rough, often no better than
a mule-track, and delays were frequent and inevitable, with the result
that it was nightfall before they reached Brunete, where fresh horses
would be available.
Still forty miles from Toledo, and informed that the Auto would be
held in the forenoon, Sir Gervase was racked by a desperate anxiety,
which would not permit him to take here even the hour’s rest which the
officer had advised as they approached the place. The fellow, a slim
youngster of about Sir Gervase’s own age, showed himself courteous and
considerate, but he was a Catalan and spoke with an accent that
rendered him almost incomprehensible to the Englishman whose imperfect
knowledge of Spanish was confined to pure Castilian.
At Brunete, however, a setback awaited them. Three fresh horses only
were available. Normally a dozen were stabled there. But a courier
from the Inquisitor-General to the Council of State in Madrid had
passed that way at noon, travelling with an escort, and had made a
heavy draught upon the royal post.
The young officer, whose name was Nuno Lopez, a man of a New-Christian
family, in whose blood there was a Moorish taint, accepted the
situation with the placid Saracen fatalism of his forbears. He
shrugged.
‘No hay que hacer,’ he announced. ‘There is nothing to be done.’
You conceive Sir Gervase’s exasperation at this calm finality.
‘Nothing to be done?’ he cried. ‘Something is to be done to get me to
Toledo by sunrise.’
‘That is impossible.’ Don Nuno was imperturbable. Perhaps he was glad
to have so good a reason for not spending a night in the saddle. ‘In
six hours’ time--by midnight, perhaps--the cattle left here by the
Grand-Inquisitor’s courier may be in case to travel. But they will
hardly travel fast.’
Sir Gervase sensed rather than understood Don Nuno’s meaning. He
answered very slowly and emphatically so that Don Nuno might have no
difficulty in understanding him.
‘There are three fresh horses here: enough for you and me and one of
your men. Let us take these at once, and go.’
Standing in the yellow light that streamed from the open door of the
post-house to mingle with the fading October daylight, Don Nuno smiled
tolerantly as he shook his head.
‘It would not be safe. There are brigands in these hills.’
But to this Sir Gervase had a ready answer. ‘Oh, if you’re afraid of
brigands, saddle me one of the fresh horses, and I’ll ride on alone.’
The officer no longer smiled. He had drawn himself up stiffly, and
above his tightened mouth his moustaches appeared to bristle. For a
moment Sir Gervase thought the fellow was going to strike him. Then
the Catalan span round on his heel, and to his men, dismounted and
standing in line at their horses’ head, he spat out in a rasping,
angry voice orders which to Sir Gervase were utterly incomprehensible.
Within five minutes the three fresh horses were waiting and one of Don
Nuno’s troopers with them. Meanwhile Don Nuno had provided himself
with supper, consisting of a piece of bread and an onion. He washed
this down with a draught of rough Andalusian wine, and climbed into
the saddle.
‘Vamos!’ he peremptorily commanded.
Sir Gervase mounted, and the three men trotted out of the village and
resumed their journey.
As they rode, the officer found it necessary to ease his mind.
Addressing his companion uncompromisingly as ‘Sir English Dog--Señor
perro de inglez’--he informed him that he had said something which
hurt his honour, and which must be corrected between them as soon as
occasion served.
Sir Gervase had no desire to find himself with a quarrel on his hands.
Nightmare enough was provided already by this ride through the dark
against time and to a destination bristling with unknown difficulties.
He swallowed his vexation, ignored the insult in the form of address,
and apologized for any offence he might have given.
‘It will not serve,’ said the Catalan. ‘You have placed me under the
necessity of proving my courage.’
‘You are proving it now,’ Sir Gervase reassured him. ‘This was all the
proof I desired of you. I knew you would afford it, which was why I
demanded it. Forgive the subterfuge which would have been wasted on
any but a brave man.’
The Catalan made out with difficulty his meaning, and was mollified.
‘Well, well,’ he grumbled. ‘For the present we will leave it there.
But later on a little more may be necessary.’
‘As you please. Meanwhile, in God’s name, let us remain friends.’
They rode amain through that lonely valley, where an almost full moon
was casting inky fantastic shadows and turning the gurgling stream
whose course they followed into a ribbon of rippling silver. It grew
very cold. The wind came icily from the Sierra to the north, and Don
Nuno and his man wrapped themselves tightly in their cloaks for
protection. Sir Gervase had no cloak, not even a jerkin over his
velvet doublet. But he was insensible to the cold as to any other
physical sensation. He was conscious of nothing beyond the sense of a
lump in his throat cast up there it seemed by the anxiety consuming
his soul.
An hour or so after midnight his horse put its foot in a hole in the
road, and came down heavily. It was a moment before Sir Gervase could
raise himself from where he had been flung. Beyond some bruises, he
had suffered no hurt, but he was still half-stunned, as in the
moonlight he watched Don Nuno running his hand over the fetlock of the
quivering beast which had meanwhile also risen.
The officer announced in a voice of relief that there was no harm
done. But a moment or two later it was found that the horse was lame,
and could not be ridden farther.
They were, Don Nuno announced, near the village of Chozas de Can. It
could not be more than a couple of miles away. The trooper surrendered
his mount to Sir Gervase, and, taking the reins of the lamed horse,
trudged along beside it whilst the other two moved with him at that
slow walking pace, Sir Gervase’s giddiness from his fall dispelled by
mounting anxiety at the loss of time involved in this snail’s crawl.
It took them an hour to reach Chozas de Can. They knocked up a tavern
in the village ‘in the King’s name.’ But horses there were none to be
had. So the trooper was left there, and Sir Gervase and Nuno Lopez now
pushed on alone.
They were within twenty-five miles of Toledo, and only some twelve or
thirteen miles from Villamiel, where fresh horses awaited them for the
last swift stage of the journey. But however swift might be that last
stage when they came to it, the present one was little swifter than
had been the progress since the laming of Sir Gervase’s horse. The
moon had set, and in that narrow valley road the darkness was almost
palpable. They advanced at little more than a walking pace, until the
autumn dawn enabled them to move more briskly, and thus came at last
to Villamiel just after seven o’clock, with still fifteen miles to go.
The officer emphatically announced himself hungry, and as emphatically
asserted that he would go no farther until his fast was broken. Sir
Gervase asked him at what hour exactly the Auto was held.
‘The procession from the Holy House usually sets out between eight and
nine.’
It was an answer that turned Sir Gervase’s anxiety to frenzy. He would
not wait an instant beyond the time necessary for the saddling of a
fresh horse. Don Nuno, hungry and weary, having been in the saddle now
for over eighteen hours with little food and no sleep, was out of
temper. The Englishman’s demands appeared to him unreasonable in that
mood. An altercation arose between them. It might have been protracted
but for the sudden coming of the fresh horse which Sir Gervase had so
peremptorily commanded.
Sir Gervase flung away from the angry officer and vaulted into the
saddle.
‘Follow me at your leisure, sir, when you have broken your fast,’ he
shouted to him as he rode off.
Nor did he look behind him for all the din that he could hear the
Spaniard making in calling to him. He rode now at a breakneck pace
through an empty village--for almost every inhabitant had left it to
attend the show in Toledo--swung to the left over the narrow old
bridge across the river, and then turned south again towards his
destination.
Afterwards he could remember nothing of that ride. Jaded by nights of
broken slumber culminating in this last night spent in the saddle,
racked by maddening fears that even now he might arrive too late, he
was conscious of nothing until suddenly at about nine o’clock he
beheld before him and a little below him the great city of Toledo,
contained within its circle of Moorish fortifications. Above the
burnt-red tiles of the roofs surged the vast grey mass of the
Cathedral of this Spanish Rome, and dominating all from its eminence
above the city on the far eastward side stood the noble palace of the
Alcazar, aglow in the morning sunlight.
At breakneck speed Gervase rode down the hill from whose summit he
obtained his first glimpse of that terrible city of his goal, then up
again to the heights of that great rampart of granite upon which the
city stood, a rampart encircled on three sides of its precipitous base
by the broad deep swirling water of the pellucid Tagus.
As he advanced now, he overtook straggling groups of country-folk on
foot, on horseback, on mules and donkeys, and even in ox-wains, all
making for the city, and all of them very obviously dressed in their
best. As he approached the Visagra Gate, the stragglers had become a
multitude, with all the shouting and confusion resulting from their
being detained there by the guard which would admit only those on
foot. It was then that Sir Gervase understood the meaning of this
concourse. The Auto de Fé was the attraction drawing the people of
the surrounding countryside to Toledo, and these were the late-comers
meeting the fate of late-comers.
He thrust impatiently through them, trusting to his safe-conduct to
ensure him exception to the delaying rule. He announced himself as a
royal messenger to the officer of the gate, who eyed him
mistrustfully. He displayed his letter to the Inquisitor-General with
its royal seals and thrust his safe-conduct under the man’s nose.
The officer was impressed and became courteous. But he was not to be
shaken in the matter of the horse. He gave reasons, rapidly, why it
could not enter. Gervase, not understanding these, insisted that there
was not a moment to lose, since the orders he carried were concerned
with the Auto de Fé which was already being held.
The officer stared impatiently; but, perceiving that he had to deal
with a foreigner, explained himself now very slowly and clearly.
‘You would lose more time if you attempted to take your horse into the
city. You would not ride a mile in an hour. The streets are choked
with people from here to the Zocodover. Leave your horse with us. It
will be waiting for you when you return.’
Gervase dismounted, understanding at last that there was nothing else
to be done. He inquired of the officer the shortest way to the
Archiepiscopal Palace. The man directed him to the Cathedral, advising
him to inquire again when he had got as far as that.
He passed under the barrel vaulting and the portcullis of that great
Arab gate, and so entered the city. At first progress was easy, and he
fancied that the guard with the officiousness of his kind had made
difficulties where none existed. But presently in a measure, as he
advanced through those narrow, crooked streets, still stamped with the
character of their Saracen builders, he found the wayfarers increasing
to the proportions of a crowd. Soon, as he continued to advance, the
crowd became an almost solid press in which presently he found himself
wedged, and compelled to move with it as relentlessly as if he were
being swept along by a torrent. Desperately he protested, and
attempted to clear himself a way, announcing himself a royal
messenger. The general noise drowned his puny voice, leaving it
audible only to those immediately about him in that noisome, reeking
press. These eyed him with mistrust. His foreign accent and unkempt
appearance earned him only contempt and derision. If his clothes were
those of a gentleman, they were now so travel-stained that their
nature was no longer to be discerned, whilst his countenance on which
the dust had caked, with its stubble of auburn beard and its haggard,
red-rimmed, blood-injected eyes, was by no means in case to inspire
confidence. The human stream swept him along the narrow street and
into a broader one at a point where this entered a vast open space. In
the middle of this he beheld an enormous scaffold, enclosed on three
sides and flanked on two of these by tiers of benches.
The stream swept him to the left, and thrust him against a wall. For a
moment he was content to remain there that he might draw breath. He
began to be conscious of a terrible and alarming lassitude, the
natural result of sleeplessness, lack of food, anxiety and exertion
almost transcending the limits of human endurance. His left knee was
pressed hard against a projection in the wall. Heaving a little space
about him, he saw that he had brought up against what he supposed to
be a mounting-block some two feet high. Instinctively, to gain ease
and air, he climbed upon it, and found himself now raised clear above
that sea of human heads and so placed that none could press upon him,
breathe in his face, or thrust their elbows into his flanks. In prey
to that increasing lassitude, he was content to remain there a moment,
snatching a brief rest from battling with that human tide.
The street at the corner of which he had come to rest was packed with
people, save in the middle where a space was kept clear by a barricade
of wood, guarded at intervals by men-at-arms in black, wearing
corselet and steel cap and leaning upon their short halberts. This
barricade was continued across the square to the wide steps of the
great scaffold, which he now considered more attentively. On the left
stood a pulpit, and immediately facing it in the middle of the
scaffold a cage of wood and iron within which there was a seat. At the
scaffold’s far end, midway between the tiers, an altar had been
raised. It was draped in purple and surmounted by a veiled cross
between tall gilded candlesticks. To the left of this there was a
miniature pavilion surmounted by a gilded dome, from which
curtain-like draperies of purple fringed with gold descended to the
ground. On the dais within this was placed a great gilded throne-like
chair flanked by a lesser one on either side. Above at the
meeting-point of the draperies two escutcheons were affixed, one
bearing the green cross of the Inquisition, the other the arms of
Spain.
About that vast scaffold the people seethed and writhed in perpetual
movement, resembling some monstrous ant-heap, sending up a rolling
murmur that was like the sound of waves upon a shore, into which was
blended intermittently the note of a bell that was being tolled
funereally.
Of the houses overlooking the square, and of those in the street, as
far as his glance could carry, Gervase saw that every window was
thronged, as indeed was every roof. The balconies were all draped in
black, and black he observed were the garments of every person of
consideration, man or woman, in all that concourse.
A moment thus, to become conscious of all this, and then the meaning
of it recurred to startle him into action. That dreadful bell was
tolling for his Margaret amongst others; this droning heap of
pestilential human insects was assembled here for the spectacle of her
martyrdom, which had begun already and which would certainly be
consummated unless he bestirred himself.
He made a vigorous attempt to descend from that mounting-block, sought
to thrust back those who stood immediately before it, so as to clear a
way for himself. But they being so wedged by others that they could
not stir answered him with fiercely virulent Spanish vituperations,
and threats of how they would deal with him if he persisted in
incommoding them. What did he want? Was he not better placed, and had
he not a better view than they? Let him be content with that and not
seek to thrust himself nearer to the front or it would be the worse
for him.
The noise they made, the shrill voice of a woman in particular, drew
the attention among others of four black alguaziles who stood on the
steps of a house close by. But as there was nothing unusual in the
character of the altercation, those apparitors of the Holy Office who
were there to preserve order where possible, and perhaps to spy for
sympathizers with the penanced when they should appear, would hardly
have bestirred themselves had it not been for one comparatively
trivial detail. Scanning the man responsible for that turmoil, one of
them observed that he was armed; sword and dagger hung from the
carriages of his belt. Now the bearing of arms in the street during
the holding of an Auto de Fé was a flagrant offence against the laws
of the Holy Office, punishable by a term of rigorous imprisonment. The
apparitors conferred a moment, and accounted it their duty to take
action.
They called for room, and by a miracle room was made for them. The awe
in which men stood of the liveries of the Holy Office was enough to
make them prefer the risk of being crushed to death rather than remain
indifferent before such a demand. Two by two the sturdy black figures
advanced until they stood before Sir Gervase. Using their staves with
a brutal callousness, such as no secular soldiers would have dared
employ in so dense a throng, they cleared a little space before the
mounting-block. Their action provoked not so much as a murmur from any
of the sufferers. They were empanoplied as much against reproof as
against resistance by the spiritual armor of their office.
Sir Gervase found himself contemptuously challenged by one who
appeared their leader, a burly, swarthy fellow whose cheeks were blue
from the razor. In an accent which made the rascal stare, Sir Gervase
informed him that he was the bearer of a letter from the King of Spain
to the Inquisitor-General, which it was the utmost urgency he should
deliver without a moment’s delay.
The man grinned contemptuously, in which his fellows followed his
example.
‘By my faith, you look like a royal messenger!’ he sneered.
The grins became laughs in which several bystanders joined. When a man
in authority condescends to jest, however poorly, every clown within
hearing will flatter him by a guffaw.
Sir Gervase thrust sealed package and safe-conduct under the mocker’s
eyes. He mocked no more. He even overlooked the serious matter of the
weapons Sir Gervase was wearing. He thrust back his hat to scratch his
head and so presumably stimulate the brain within it to activity. He
half-turned and looked across the press of people. He took counsel
with his three companions, finally he made up his mind.
‘The procession to the Auto started half an hour ago from the Holy
House,’ he informed Sir Gervase. ‘His Eminence is with the procession.
Impossible to approach him now. You must wait in any case until he
returns to the palace. Then we will escort you to him.’
Distraught, Sir Gervase flung back at him that the matter could not
wait. The letter was concerned with this Auto. The apparitor became
stolid, as men do to defend themselves from hopeless unreason. He
conveyed that he was a very clever fellow, but not quite omnipotent;
and nothing less than omnipotence would enable anyone to approach His
Eminence at present or until the Auto was over. As he finished, a cry
went up from the multitude, and a sudden heave ran through it,
stirring its surface as when a ripple runs over water.
The apparitor looked down the long street, Sir Gervase looked with
him, and caught in the clear sunlight a distant glint of arms. The cry
all about him was: ‘They come! They come!’ and by this he knew that
what he beheld was the head of the vanguard of the dread procession.
He plagued the apparitor now with anxious questions, touching this
scaffold and the various parts of it. When he betrayed the fact that
he supposed the condemned would suffer there, he provoked a smile and
a question as to his origin which had left him so ignorant in matters
of universal knowledge. But he also elicited the information that the
place of execution was outside the walls of the city. This scaffold
was for the announcement of the offences, the Mass, and the sermon of
the Faith. How should he suppose it a place of execution, seeing that
the Holy Office shed no blood.
This was news to Sir Gervase. He ventured to question its accuracy.
The alguazil afforded him the enlightenment of which an outlandish
barbarian appeared to stand in need. Here the Holy Office publicly
penanced those who were guilty of pardonable offences against the
Faith, and publicly cast out from the Church those who refused to be
reconciled or who, by relapsing into an infidelity from which they had
formerly been rescued, placed themselves beyond the reach of pardon.
In casting them out, the Holy Office abandoned them to the secular
arm, whose duty to the Faith involved the obligation of putting them
to death. But it was not, he repeated, the Holy Office which did this,
as Sir Gervase had so foolishly supposed, for the Holy Office, he
further repeated, could shed no blood.
It was a nice distinction over which at a remote distance of space or
time a man might smile. But in the grim theatre of the event no smile
was possible.
The procession drew nearer. Sir Gervase looked about him in his
distraction, to right, to left, ahead, and up at the balconies of the
houses under which he stood, as if seeking somewhere a way of escape,
a way of reaching the Inquisitor-General. As he looked upwards, his
eyes met those of a girl leaning from an iron balcony, from which was
hung a cloth of black velvet edged with silver. She was one of a
half-dozen women who stood there to behold the show, a slight wisp of
a creature, olive-skinned, with brilliant lips, and eyes like two
black jewels. She had been considering, it must be supposed, with
approval the Englishman’s stalwart inches and bared auburn head. The
disfiguring grime and stubble she could hardly discern at that
distance. The attitude towards him of the apparitors may further have
marked him for a person of consequence.
As their eyes met in that momentary flash, she let fall, as if by
accident, a rose. It brushed his cheek in falling, but, to the
beauty’s deep chagrin, went entirely unheeded by him in his
preoccupation of spirit.
Slowly and solemnly the procession was entering the square. At its
head marched the soldiers of the Faith: a regiment of javelin-men in
funereal livery, relieved by the gleam of their morions and the flash
of the partizans they shouldered. Gravely, looking neither to right
nor to left, they passed towards the scaffold about the base of which
they were to range themselves.
Next came a dozen surpliced choristers intoning the Miserere as they
slowly advanced into the square. They were followed after a little
pause by a Dominican bearing the sable banner of the Inquisition,
charged with the green cross between an olive branch and a naked
sword, the emblems of mercy and of justice. On his left walked the
Provincial of the Dominicans, on his right the Prior of Our Lady of
Alcantara, each attended by three monks. Then came a body of lay
tertiaries of the Order of Saint Dominic, members of the Confraternity
of Saint Peter the Martyr, walking two by two, with the cross of Saint
Dominic embroidered in silver upon their mantles. After them, on
horseback, also two by two, came some fifty nobles of Castile to give
worldly pomp to the procession. Their horses were caparisoned in sable
velvet; they themselves were all in black, though it was a black
relieved by the gleam of gold chains and the sparkle of jewels. So
solemnly and slowly did they pass, sitting their horses in such rigid
immobility, that they presented the appearance of a troop of funereal
equestrian statues.
The crowd had fallen into an awe-stricken silence, in which the beat
of iron-shod hooves rang out, in rhythm as it seemed, with the
doleful, receding chaunt of the choristers. Over all went still the
tolling of that passing-bell from the Cathedral.
The Andalusian sunshine beat down from a sky as clear as blue enamel.
It was reflected vividly from the white walls of the houses that
served as background for this black phantasmagoria. To Gervase there
was a moment in which it all became, not merely incredible, but
unreal. It did not exist. Nothing existed, not even his own limp,
weary body leaning there against the wall. He was simply a mind into
which he had brought absurd conceptions of a world of independent
beings of imagined shape and attributes and habits. None of these
things about him had any concrete existence; they were simply ideas
with which he had peopled a dream.
The moment of detachment passed. He was aroused from it by a sudden
rustle and movement in the throng, which was behaving as a field of
corn behaves when a sudden gust of wind sweeps rippling over it. Men
and women were falling on their knees in a continuous movement
proceeding from the right. So odd was this continuity that it almost
seemed as if each unit of that throng in kneeling touched his
neighbour and so drove him down whilst he, in his turn, did the like
by the person next to him.
An imposing scarlet figure advanced upon a milk-white mule whose
scarlet trappings fringed with gold trailed along the dusty ground.
Coming abruptly thus after the black gloom of the long lines of
figures that had preceded him, he seemed of a startling vividness.
Save for the violet amice of the Inquisitor, which he wore, he was all
flame from the point of his velvet shoes to the crown of his
broad-brimmed hat. A cloud of pages and halberdiers attended him. He
rode very stiff and straight and stern, his right hand raised, its
thumb and two fingers erect to bless the people.
Thus, at comparatively close quarters, Gervase beheld the man to whom
his letter was addressed, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, the Pope
of Spain, the President of the Supreme Council and Inquisitor-General
of Castile.
He passed, and with a reversing of the movement that had heralded his
approach, the crowd came gradually erect again. Informed of his
identity, Gervase importuned the alguazil to make a way for him, so
that he might at once deliver his letter.
‘Patience!’ he was admonished. ‘While the procession passes that will
be impossible. Afterwards, we shall see.’
Uproar broke out now, shouts, execrations, epithets of infamy. The
noise came rolling up the street to infect those in the square as the
foremost victims came into view. They were flanked on each side by
guarding pikemen, and each was accompanied by a Dominican, crucifix in
hand. There were some fifty of them, bareheaded, barefoot, and almost
naked under the zamarra, the penitential sack of coarse yellow serge,
streaked by a single arm of a Saint Andrew’s cross. In his hand each
carried an unlighted taper of yellow wax, to be lighted presently at
the altar when the patient’s reconciliation should have been
pronounced. There were tottering old men and feeble old women,
stalwart lads and weeping girls, and all of them staggered onwards in
their cassocks of infamy with lowered heads and eyes upon the ground,
crushed under their load of shame, terrified by the execrations hurled
at them as they passed.
The haggard eyes of Sir Gervase scanned their ranks. Knowing nothing
of the distinctions made and indicated by the signs upon the zamarra,
he did not realize that these were penitents who, guilty of
comparatively light offences, went to be reconciled and pardoned with
the imposition of penances of varying severity. Suddenly his eyes
alighted upon a countenance he knew: a narrow, handsome face with a
peaked black beard and fine eyes which, looking straight before him,
reflected now something of the agony within his soul.
Sir Gervase sucked in his breath. The scene before him was momentarily
blotted out. In its place he beheld an arbour set above a rose-garden,
and seated there a very elegant, mocking gentleman with a lute in his
lap, a lute which Sir Gervase dashed to the ground. He heard again the
level, mocking voice:
‘You do not like music, eh, Sir Gervase?’
Then the scene melted into another: A sweep of lawn shaded by a
quickset hedge, by which a golden-headed girl was standing. This same
gentleman bowing to him with a false urbanity, and proffering him the
hilt of a sword. Again that same pleasant voice: ‘Enough for to-day.
To-morrow I will show you how the estramaçon is to be met and
turned.’
He was back again in the Zocodover at Toledo. The figure which had
raised these visions was abreast of him. He craned to look, and caught
something of the agony in the man’s face, conceived something of what
it must cost him to be thus paraded, was taken even with pity for him,
imagining that he went to his death.
The penitents passed, and in their wake stalked another posse of
soldiers of the Faith.
Then, borne aloft, dangling from long green poles, their limbs jerked
hither and thither as in the movements of some idiotic dance, or as if
with the spasmodic twitchings of the hanged, came a half-dozen
full-sized effigies in grotesque caricature of life. These figures of
straw were arrayed in yellow zamarras smeared with tongues of fire and
with horrid images of devils and dragons, and they were crowned by the
coroza, the yellow mitre of the condemned. On their faces of waxed
linen were figured bituminous eyes and scarlet, idiotic lips.
Grotesque and horrible they passed. They were the effigies of
contumaciously absent offenders which were to be burnt, pending the
capture of the originals, and of others who after death had been
discovered guilty of heresy: of these followed now the poor earthly
remains. Porters came staggering under the exhumed coffins which were
to be given to the flames jointly with the effigies.
The baying of the mob, which had died down after the passing of the
penitents, now rose again with an increased ferocity. Gervase saw
women crossing themselves and men craning forward with an interest
grown overwhelming.
‘Los relapsos!’ was the cry, meaningless to him.
On they came, those poor wretches who had relapsed and for whom there
was no reconciliation, and those who were in the same case because
obstinate in their heresy. There were but six of them; but all six
were doomed to the fire. They advanced singly, each one between two
Dominicans, who were still exhorting them to repent and win at least
the mercy of strangulation before being burnt in fires which otherwise
must be but a prelude to eternal flames.
But the crowd, less pitiful, entirely pitiless, indeed, in its
perfervid devotion to the most pitiful of all religions, roared foul
abuse, demoniac mockery, ordures of insult at those anguished
unfortunates who were passing to the flames.
The first of them was a stalwart aged Jew; a misguided fellow, who
perhaps for the sake of temporal profit, so as to overcome the
barriers so calculatedly erected against the worldly advancement of
the Israelite, so as to earn the right to continue in the land in
which his forefathers had been established for centuries before the
crucifixion, had accepted baptism and embraced Christianity. Later,
his conscience stirring against this apostasy from the Mosaic Law, he
had secretly relapsed into Judaism, to be discovered, haled before the
dread tribunal of the Faith, tortured into confession, and then
condemned. He dragged himself painfully along in his hideous livery of
infamy, his yellow zamarra and coroza bedaubed with flames and devils.
A band of iron passed about his neck held a wooden apple in his mouth
to gag him. But his eyes remained eloquent of his scorn as he flashed
them upon the howling bestial Christian mob.
He was followed by one even more pitiful. A young Morisco girl of
ravishing beauty stepped along with light and tripping movements of
her graceful limbs; she seemed almost to be treading a measure as she
came. Her long black hair, escaped from her yellow mitre, hung about
her shoulders like a mantle. And as she went, she paused ever and
anon, and, leaning a hand upon the shoulder of the gaunt Dominican
beside her, she would throw back her body and laugh with the wild
abandoned joy of a drunken woman. Her mind had given way.
Next came a terror-stricken youth who was half-carried along by his
guards, a dazed woman half-swooning, and two men in middle life so
broken by torture that they could hardly crawl.
After these followed another double file of monks, and after them
again a military rearguard akin to that which had headed the
procession. But the details now entirely escaped Gervase. He had
suddenly realized that Margaret was not among the condemned. Relief at
this and renewed anxiety, springing from his ignorance of her real
condition, shut out the scene around him.
Anon he remembered a glimpse of the great scaffold, the
Inquisitor-General in the tribune; the condemned ranged on the tiers
to the right, the effigies dangling above the topmost places; the
nobles and clergy on the benches opposite; a Dominican preaching from
the pulpit facing the condemned.
The remainder of the Auto was afterwards a confused dream-memory: the
ritual of the Mass, the chanting of choristers, and the clouds of
incense rising above the altar surmounted by its great green cross;
then the figure of the notary standing to read from a long scroll, his
voice inaudible at the distance at which Gervase was placed; the
movement of the apparitors, bringing the condemned from their benches
and surrendering them to the Corregidor and his men--the
representatives of the secular arm--who waited at the foot of the
great scaffold to mount them on donkeys, and so hurry them away under
guard, each with a Dominican in attendance; the howls of execration
from the mob; and lastly, the stately return of that procession by the
way it had come.
As it passed, the human torrent broke the dam that had so long
confined it; the barricades, no longer guarded, yielding to pressure,
were broken down and swept away, and the crowd swirled in on both
sides and filled the street.
The alguazil touched Sir Gervase on the arm. ‘Come,’ he said.