TWO:
A CAUSE TO DIE FOR
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
Psalm 91:7, NIV
1515
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I SAW A MAN DIE.
The doomed man struggled as he was dragged forward by my master’s acolytes. They lashed him to a stake. The jeering crowd pulsed around him. Ungraceful in defeat, his blasphemies assailed our ears.
This village was no different to any other, little but a meagre scattering of residences. Most wooden, some hay, the occasionally brick structure, just like any other settlement for miles and beyond. Nothing special, least to deserve such a drastic spectacle as a public burning. But such is the policy of the Spanish Inquisition; such is the fate of the unrepentant. Location had nothing to do with it.
His cries took an earthly, sickeningly satisfying note. The flames brought light to the darkest corners of his mind and body. What says it of man that his body cannot stand such intensity?
My master bowed his head and crossed himself, first two fingers and thumb pushed together as they traced the sign of the crucifix, starting at his forehead, then breast, then right and left shoulder. He murmured, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen."
I dutifully shadowed his actions and words, lifting my head perhaps too hastily to again observe the pandemonium around the pyre. I sniffed in the evening cold, almost gagging on the bitter smoke. I hoped it was the wood-smoke I smelt, fearing pinewood was not the source of that pungent stench. “What do we do now, master?”
His grizzled countenance – like the cliff face of an ancient mountain and cast in shadow by a low-drawn black hat – swung down to drill hard eyes into my own in an unbreakable gaze. No matter how many more years I was to spend with him, his eyes would always unsettle me. Nothing escaped those two dark orbs; they laid bare the very essence of a man, his feints and masquerades swept aside as dust under a broom. His merest glance could make me feel unclean, my routine penance all the more brutal. Not that Inquisitor Hernando would ever glance; such casual mannerisms mere foothills to his lofty peaks.
“We shall repeat to the townsfolk the Edicts of Grace, least any make to follow the example of this depraved heretic.”
His back was as straight as his sword, and his stride as pointed. His robes were cream-coloured bats’ wings in the ember-speckled breeze. Waist-bound red silk ribbons that matched my own writhed like snakes in the wind.
Silent and head again bowed, I reflected upon the heresies.
Impurities of body or mind. I thought nothing, nothing at all. My mind had gone blank at its very mention. Starting, I hastened to check myself for any faltering in virtue. Heedless of my inner reprimand, my master continued his practiced monologue of righteousness.
Judaism, deviance from Catholicism. I shuddered. The very thought… almost enough to make me reach for the chain whip, the Discipline, presently hung over my shoulders.
Disobedience, failing to aid the Inquisition. Even if being an apprentice of Hernando was not easy, it was with pride that I carried my sacred burden. I tightened the red linen belt around my ceremonial white robes, further veiling my everyday attire of black underneath.
Sacrilege, failure to honour Him. My daily prayers went straight to Him, my every thought laid bear for His decree. Maybe one day, when the years of dogmatic faith finally amounted to something of worth, I would be blessed with a sign, an acknowledgment. However, such vanity was not what fuelled me. My motivation was the eternal debt I owed Hernando for seeing in me a higher purpose when no one else could, and raising me to attain it. It could be said Hernando was more a father to me than the one with whose blood I shared. Hernando played a lead instrument in the orchestra of His will, and I strove my very hardest just to be included in the chorus.
The outlining complete, Hernando moved on to the second, more sinister, part of the edicts.
“Now is there anyone, any amongst you, who finds themselves at fault?”
His sweeping gestures seemed to summon a wave of silence. The crowd swayed, as a restless sea.
It was here the tact of the Inquisition’s methods came into its own. Any who confessed could instantly then denounce their “associates” to lessen the burden on both their conscience and – literally – their neck. Human spite and petty disagreements often lead to unfounded denouncements, and we wasted much time on such inconsequential matters. But in serious cases of, say, two heretics working together, their bond would be tested by the knowledge that the denouncer would suffer a fate all the lighter than the denounced. It torn at their kinship, turning them against each other. Sometimes I wondered if this was over-zealous, manipulating human nature so, but Jeremiah would always rebut me the same way.
“They would use any weapon at hand to destroy you, why not you to destroy them?”
For want not to seem sanctimonious, I always seemed to end up conceding to the sagely Acolyte.
And as always, like a creeping plague, the voice would begin. Tumbling over each other, only the merest snatches of each indeterminable speaker being heard. The whisper of this loitering servant, the rumour of that alchemist from out of town, that strange noise the wind’s been making at night. Most all of it nothing but senile superstition, pure nonsense, and delusional misinformation.
Obviously hearing little of interest amongst the gathered peasants, my master returned to his flock of followers. I bowed my head respectfully as he approached, the gesture thankfully allowing me to tactfully break contact with those oh-so imposing eyes. Several of the darkly robed acolytes, of whom all but Vito were at least a dozen summers older than I, regarded me coldly, and as if from a distance such that I would not notice their sneers. Some of their glares felt sufficiently to freeze over the Mediterranean.
Vito caught my eye and smiled briefly. I drew a little strength from that, reminded that not everyone detested my presence.
One of them stepped forward. His name was Leocard, eyes like ice and the hem of his black robes stained with dirt. His wispy black hair fell, veiling his insect eyes as he bowed before Hernando, it seemed almost mocking. He spoke, however, with the expected formal humility. “It is done.”
Hernando replied with more manner than the acolyte deserved. “My congratulations. God have mercy upon this most misguided of souls…”
“God have mercy,” we echoed.
Hernando motioned for us to follow him, dispatching several acolytes to deal to the pyre. Leocard quickly latched himself to the Inquisitor’s side, the leach.
“Sir, we must discuss…” He looked around, glaring when his gaze crossed mine, as swords do in duelling. “We must discuss the heretic’s lasts words. In private, if you allow.”
Marrano, I thought, cursing the Acolyte.
Even in thought, the insult shocked me. Hate was a sin, the obvious reciprocation mine faced regardless. I didn’t often rise to the acolytes’ bitter bait, but Leocard was one for whom my hate – there really was no other word for it – was almost given leave. But no, not this time. I give myself an inch and think it, I’d end up taking a mile…
“Be it troubling?” Hernando asked, heedless to my inner turmoil. Leocard almost appeared to wince under the cold stare, like a sinner before the gates of heaven. Hernando’s tone wasn’t hostile, but it was always one that required little baiting to become so. Actually, most disturbing to myself was how sincere his tone sounded.
“Most,” he managed to choke.
The pair – loath as I might such grouping Leocard and Hernando – stalked off, deep in hushed conversation. For all anyone else knew, they could be discussing the weather, so matter-of-fact their air.
A rolling cluster of travel-worn bodies, we half-stumbled down the muddy dirt road. I walked betwixt Sequiel and Odalis. Sequiel was the surgeon of our group, tending to the wounds of body and mind we suffered. Despite his doctor’s “healing hands”, his intimate knowledge of the delicacies of human flesh often guided Hernando’s excruciation of heretics. He had a statuesque figure, as if sculpted by masterful hands – but, of course, aren’t we all? – And his every movement was perfectly choreographed.
Conversely, Odalis was an awkward and withdrawn little man, literally lingering in the shadows of the retinue. He was our scribe, his bags stuffed full of quills and rolled sheets of paper. He shrewdly examined the world through spectacles so thick, I have heard jokes that he physically couldn’t remove them from the bridge of his ever so slightly crooked nose. Other than to pry for information, he was a silent figure, always lurking in the background. His seldom-heard voice sounded out of practice whenever he choose to speak, and his tongue-tied, stuttering pronunciation would never cease to irk me, with my surgically precise tutorage.
I sighed nasally, worn down from the chaos of the day. For no respite loomed near, and the celebrations of the night encroached, as unavoidable and intolerable as the plague. The lengths men will go to enjoy themselves! The stupors they suffer and the living faux pas they become, all for a night of hedonism.
So I lingered, silently separating myself from the retinue. I had no pleasure at the inn to rush to. I wandered back to the pyre, feeling a cold nothingness, like a hollow tree in the dead of winter. A man was dead. His family – what of them? I had learnt, as early as walking, that all were equal before god, yet what equality had this man to those who had stood by? To them, his death had been but something to spectate. And now the event was past, it was reduced further to but a topic of gossip. Sometimes I felt as if I could do nothing but cling to the example of my betters, and pray for mankind.
And as the red sun set, and darkness loomed over Terra, I knelt by the smouldering pyre and did just that.
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