Читать книгу Inquisitor Dreams - Phyllis Ann Karr - Страница 15

Chapter 9

The Holy Child of Daroca

In the year of grace 1483, on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, after a search of almost two days, little Estevan del Quivir was found at last, dead, in one of the small caves near Daroca.

He had been covered with half a sheet of torn linen, and below it he wore only one soiled strip bound round his waist and upper legs to cover his shame. His feet and the palms of both hands were crushed and broken as if nails had been pounded clumsily into them and yanked out again with desperate brutality. Deep rope burns circled each small wrist. The crown of his head showed lesser wounds, as if from thorns.

Many of those who spread the report spoke of the look of unutterable peace upon his face, the scent of otherworldly perfume that filled his cave, the golden aureole surrounding his slim young body. At six years of age, Estevan del Quivir instantly became the martyred Holy Child of Daroca.

To many of Old Christian blood it seemed obvious at once who had authored this martyrdom. Who were widely known, everywhere in Europe throughout these Christian centuries, to have used little Christian children in their sacrificial rites? thus joining themselves to the guilt of their fathers who had murdered God’s Holy Son. Did not their Passover fall at this same season? (It had in fact fallen two weeks earlier that year, but Old Christians paid little attention to the actual date, and New Christians said nothing to betray any knowledge of their former creed.)

And had not poor little Estevan often gone with one or both of his older brothers in their rash expeditions to the Jewish quarter of Daroca, especially to the shop of Nathaniel Ben Solomon, the silversmith?

Estevan had attended the long Good Friday service in the cathedral. Both his brothers, Juan and Luis, testified to that, as did their good friend Pedro Choved, and many others—more came forward hourly—who remembered seeing the lad already marked with his holy smile, if not yet with the clear golden aureole of sainthood. Being the best of Catholics, Don Martin del Quivir’s household made their fast complete on Good Friday, and retired silently and supperless to their bedchambers immediately on returning from church. Next morning, Estevan had been gone from the bed he shared with his older brothers.

Nothing—not the disappearance of King Fernando himself, which God forbid!—could have been permitted to stop the sacred ceremonies of the holiest triduum in the year. Processions, blessings, the great Easter Masses, all went on as usual; but many among the servants, relatives, and friends of Don Martin del Quivir’s family, even to the missing boy’s father and one of his brothers—the oldest boy, Juan—would have nonattendance to confess before their next Communion. Estevan’s mother, good Doña Sancha, knelt trembling and pale, one hand upon the shoulder of her son Luis, throughout all the Easter Masses, obviously throwing her entire strength into prayers for her missing boy.

The discovery of Estevan’s mangled body made it clear, to those good and pious Old Christians who knew so well the falsehood and wickedness of all creeds not their own, especially the Jewish, that Hebrew sorcerers, calling on Satan to keep the older boys fast asleep, must have spirited the child out of his bed in the dead of Good Friday night. This increased the city’s terrified outrage.

Gubbio brought the latest news to the bishop’s household as they sat at supper in the evening of Easter Sunday. “My reverend masters, a crowd is gathering at the gates of the Jewish quarter. They say that Doña Sancha has cast the silver brooch her sons bought for her from Nathaniel the Silversmith into the fire.”

Don Felipe found that he had started to his feet at his servant’s words.

The bishop looked ponderously from servant to master. “You, my son Felipe?” he asked, the calm of a lifetime’s experience in his voice. “Would you wish to put yourself in the way of the mob?”

For a moment, their eyes met. Trapped between self-preservation and old friendship, Don Felipe replied, “No, your Reverence, no more than Jeremiah wished to serve the Lord as prophet.” Pleased at the steadiness of his own voice, he added, “Nevertheless, Justice imposes certain demands on us.”

His Reverence nodded. “Then go. But remember, my son, that you speak for us, and that it is as grave a matter to be overhasty in judging innocence as in judging guilt.”

Don Felipe made his bow to the bishop, signaled his servant to follow, and took his departure, Gubbio at his heels. Not until they were in the street did the Italian produce a boiled egg and crack it.

“From the bishop’s table?” Don Felipe inquired with a glance.

“I saw plenty there,” Gubbio responded, “and a belly needs fuel in times like these.”

“Indeed. What else did you take for your own needs, out of the plenty that you saw there?”

“A hand-loaf and a fig or two.” Having eaten the egg in two bites, Gubbio reached again into his pocket. “What great difference, master, whether I take my share of the table scraps now, when I feel the need, or later? A fig for you?”

“Argued like a true philosopher,” Don Felipe observed dryly, pretending not to see Gubbio’s wink. “But is this a time for pleasantries? Has the alcalde been summoned?”

“How could he remain unaware of what is happening?”

“How can many things come to pass? Go and make sure that he has been summoned.”

Swallowing his mouthful of fig, Gubbio imitated his master’s bow to the bishop and turned in the direction of the alcalde’s house. To do him justice, he ran at his utmost speed, and he was fleet.

Somewhat restraining his own steps, as befit the dignity of bishop’s Ordinary, and to avoid arriving out of breath, Don Felipe hastened toward the Jewish quarter.

Although it was but twilight, torches already flowered above the heads of the crowd around the gates. Mere half-completed piles of masonry, doorless as yet, the great posts rose like pretended but nonexistent fortifications in some nightmare of invasion. With his grandparents’ tales pounding through his head—those great massacres they had heard of in their youth, fifty thousand killed in the terrible year of 1391 alone, when so many cities of Castile, Valencia, Catalonia, all those Christian kingdoms to Karnattah’s north, drenched in the misdirected piety of overzealous preachers—Don Felipe suddenly saw Daroca’s new gates as serving less for the isolation of her Hebrew inhabitants than for their protection, and regretted that the workers had been too long in finishing their task.

At any moment, the mob might burst over that intangible barrier and set to work with fire, steel, and stone. What mystery held them in check thus far? Ah—the good alguazil Manrique de Dios—Don Felipe glimpsed him now, standing wide-legged and watchful, holding his wand of office in one hand and his drawn sword in the other. So his Honor the alcalde had been notified, and Gubbio sent on a superfluous errand. But it needed only one single soul more zealous than the rest to step forward shouting about God’s honor and glory, and the entire mob would surge across the line to take holy vengeance for Estevan del Quivir and save their remaining children from similar fates.

Every instinct of self-preservation ordered Felipe de Alhama de Granada to hang back, avoid notice, slip away and denounce this thing from a safe distance. Yet he was ordained priest and bishop’s Ordinary. Who would be safe from a religiously motivated mob, if not he? Who else could hope to turn them back from their purpose, if not a man armed with ecclesiastical authority? Bitterly regretting that he had not Gubbio at his side to perform the office for him, Don Felipe cleared his throat and proclaimed his own “Make way!”

To his gratification, the alguazil caught sight of him and took over the cry, even as the outer fringe of the throng began to obey it. The Ordinary pushed through the crowd relatively unhindered, save by the stenches of fear and garlic.

Reaching the front, he spied a fair-sized stone waiting for the masons to fit it into the gatepost, and signified with a gesture that he wished it placed as his platform from which to address the crowd. Two or three men at the front understood his desire and hurried to obey, thus heartening him further. Stepping up onto the hewn stone, he spread his hands and cried,

“My people! In the voice of your bishop, I command you: Go to your homes—or to your churches—fall upon your knees, and pray! Do not mar the young saint’s entrance into Heaven with your own violence!”

“Justice!” shrieked a woman’s voice from the back of the crowd, and a man’s took it up: “We want justice!”

“Justice shall be had!” Don Felipe shouted back. “As your bishop’s Ordinary, I promise you that the Holy Inquisition—”

“What, old Fray Potbelly?” shrilled the voice of a second woman, earning a little ragged laughter.

Manrique de Dios stepped forward and raised his wand of office, shouting: “I tell you again, even now my companions are arresting the foreign Jew and his host!”

“They are all murderers! All of them!” screamed a voice so hoarse it might have been either man’s or woman’s, and another added, “Will you jail every Jew in Daroca?”

The alguazil answered, “They will all be held fast in their own quarter until this matter is sifted through.”

“And then burned!” “Burned or hanged!” “To Hell with them all now at once!” Three shouts, coming almost simultaneously, raising many more shouts and a general loud mutter, like heavy seas on rocky shores.

“Hear me!” Don Felipe shouted above it. “Hear the voice of your bishop!” As they fell grumblingly silent, he hurried on, “You have lived side by side with these people for many years! Have they ever been known to do such a deed among you? Why now—”

One of the anonymous voices cut in, “That foreign Jew!”

“Stop!” The Ordinary raised his hands higher. “We, your priests, have studied their faith more deeply than is permitted to any of you! For we must know in order to combat. A false faith, yes, and riddled with many errors, but—mark this and mark it well!—nowhere does it allow the sacrifice of children! Indeed, from the days of Abraham down to our own, all Jews everywhere have ever and always been most strictly forbidden to harm or kill any human child!”

This speech, at least, they heard through; but as he paused for breath, someone shouted, “What of God’s own Son?” At the same time, a clod of earth sailed out of the mob and struck Don Felipe on the shoulder.

Catching his resolution with difficulty, he pointed a slightly trembling finger in the direction from which he thought the clod had come, and shouted, “In striking me, you strike your bishop! In striking any ordained priest, you strike at God Himself!”

“Does God defend murdering Jews?” came the response from somewhere in the crowd.

Thank God and our Lady, thought the priest, that all these cries came from several different throats. Had it been always the same voice, the mob would have had its leader, its spearhead. “In striking out at God,” he told them, “at God as represented by the lawful authority He has appointed over you, you make yourselves worse than the boy’s murderer—than the boy’s as yet unknown murderer! You place yourselves on a level with the damned archrebel Satan!”

That seemed to cow them a little. Or perhaps—he saw by glancing round—it was the appearance of Gamaliel Ben Joseph and his host Nathaniel the Silversmith, in chains and surrounded by four of the alcalde’s soldiers, that caused the breathless silence.

It lasted for only seconds before the muttering started again, with waving of torches and movements as of gathering missiles.

Brandishing both wand and sword, the alguazil shouted: “Clear our way!”

“Justice!” shrilled the woman near the back.

“Justice?” Don Felipe shouted back. “You shall have justice! Yes, you shall all have justice indeed! You have heard of the new Inquisition your king and his Castilian queen have brought, under the pope’s own authority, into her realms to the south! By your own actions, you shall bring it here as well—down upon your own heads! No more old Fra Guillaume, whom you should shudder to insult, as you should shudder to insult any of God’s anointed servants—but harsh strong men, stern and fierce in their righteous calling, men who will know well how to ferret out each and every one of you who raises hand or voice against your bishop’s authority here tonight, men who will have less mercy on the baptized Christian than on the unconverted Jew—for to whom much is given, from him much more will be expected!”

That held them back…long enough, at least, for the soldiers to get their prisoners through. Don Felipe could not help looking at Gamito, who never turned his head, never met his glance. The Jew was more prudent than the Christian, in refusing to betray their old friendship by even the slightest sign to the sharp, suspicious eyes of the mob. Nathaniel Ben Solomon, however, turned his frightened face toward the priest once or twice before the group of prisoners and guards rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

It required another half hour, and the arrival of more soldiers to guard the Jewish quarter, before the last of the crowd finally dispersed, ending the immediate danger of riot and massacre.

* * * *

Don Felipe sought out Fra Guillaume that same night, to find him dozing over books and wine in his study closet. The single candle, although of wax, cast too little light for the younger man’s eyes, let alone old “Fray Potbelly’s,” to have scanned the letters of tiny print swimming over the quarto pages. Don Felipe guessed that the open books were for show…though for whose benefit? That of the angels?

“We must—You must demand authority in this case, my brother!” the Ordinary began after minimal formalities of greeting.

“How can I, friend? They are unbaptized Jews, are they not?”

“And for that very reason, the secular arm will make short work of them, hoping to stave off general riot.”

“Well?” Fra Guillaume hiccuped softly. “Would that not be better than to see all our poor Jews slain in a body?”

“But they are innocent, my brother! Is it not acting the part of Annas and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, this allowing of two men to be slain even to save the multitude?”

“Young priest, young priest.” Sighing heavily, Fra Guillaume shook his head and swallowed more wine. “Even admitting your argument, we can do nothing. We must leave this thing to the secular arm. I know—most of the city knows, and it is hardly to your credit—that this Gamaliel Ben Joseph is your friend. But he remains unbaptized, for all that he is your friend and you his. Over the unbaptized, neither the Holy Inquisition nor the bishops’ courts can claim any jurisdiction, unless there is some question of proselytism, and there can be no such question here. This is murder, pure and simple. Ritual or not, and even if it is some false ritual, it is theirs alone, as long as they were never baptized. We can do nothing.”

Dismayed to hear even Fra Guillaume seemingly ready to consider the thought that Jews might have done it, Don Felipe suggested, “We could find two or three New Christians, and arrest them. That would make it apostasy, giving us the right to investigate, and allowing Gamaliel Ben Joseph and Nathaniel Ben Solomon to be released.”

Again Fra Guillaume shook his head. “Quiet your young blood, my friend. Not only would such a trick be more unjust than allowing your friend and his host to suffer, it would never cause the secular arm to release them. We would simply widen the net, make new victims to join them. And do you accuse me of playing the part of Annas and Caiaphas?”

“But you could hold them for a year or two, then quietly release them…”

“Do you truly think that this furor over our new little Holy Child will die away as quickly as that?” The Dominican gave a great belch and rubbed his middle as if it pained him. “Or that old Fray Potbelly is likely to outlive it? Our Lord alone knows who is likely to replace me here! No, friend, leave them to the secular arm and let us not make an evil matter still more evil.”

“But…”

“Moreover…I grieve to point this out to you, my friend…but can you truly be sure of the innocence of this Gamaliel Ben Joseph?”

Finding his breath, Felipe protested, “Never once, brother—never once, in all my boyhood years in Alhama de Karnattah, where we lived side by side, Christian and Jew and Moslem mingled together—never once did the Jews ever do such a deed! If not there, why here?”

Fra Guillaume rubbed his tonsure. “It may mean nothing save that the Moors, in their own realm, could keep their Jews under tighter rein. Go home, my friend, and leave it in God’s hands and the alcalde’s. We can do nothing.”

Don Felipe rose shakily to his feet. “I can appeal to the Justicia!”

The inquisitor shrugged. “As you will, provided only that you attempt no further demands of poor old Fray Potbelly. You may, perhaps, even find the Justicia willing to hear your friend’s case. I would not, however, do anything more to remind either him or the people that Gamaliel Ben Joseph is your friend. A word to the wise… Now go, Felipe, and leave me in peace. This is, after all, a holy night.”

* * * *

Holy night or none, it was far from peaceful for the bishop’s Ordinary. Sporadically he would succeed in calming his soul, reach the jumping-off place into sleep…only to have the prickle of some flea startle him awake with thoughts of how much worse the bed vermin must be where Gamito lay this night. In some secret cell of the alcalde’s, surely; for Rodrigo de la Paz, being a reasonably just magistrate, would not risk two Hebrew prisoners in the common jail, among Christian cutthroats, now when mob feeling ran so high.

Don Felipe reached the dawn of Easter Monday haggard and heavy with vague guilt for suffering in luxury while others suffered in hunger and filth…his guilt all the heavier in that he would not willingly have traded his luxury for their squalor and discomfort. He made an unaccustomed attempt to read his Divine Office, but laid it down when the words danced meaningless and dry between his eyes and his brain. He heard the day’s first Mass, and it woke no devotion, but rather parched the desert of his soul still drier. He sat to break his fast, and might as well have still eaten the hardest of Lenten fare, for all that he took double the sauce.

As he rose from table, thinking to seek out the alcalde himself in the time remaining before High Mass, his servant brought him word that someone waited to see him.

“Who is it, Gubbio?”

“One Fray Bartomeu, the priest of Santa Maria near the north gate. Franciscan, by his habit. You may remember his face, master. As for his name, I had to ask it myself. He begs to see you in private.”

Don Felipe sighed. “Cannot it wait?”

“Master! Do you ask a simple layman to judge on the urgency of priestly matters? I suspect, by the set of his round old shoulders, that he may want you to hear his Confession.”

“A Franciscan? Confess to a secular?”

Eying the table, Gubbio made one of his Italian shrugs. “Yes, that is strange to me, also. Why come so far, and then stop short of the bishop himself? Well, I may be mistaken.”

“I will see him at once,” Don Felipe decided. “In my closet.” Pretending not to observe his servant pocketing a sausage, the young priest passed into the little room, smaller even than Fra Guillaume’s, that served him for study and rare private audiences.

Fray Bartomeu arrived without loss of time—an elderly monastic, creased of face and comfortable of waistline. God grant, thought Don Felipe, that he has not come seeking to draw the bishop’s office still deeper into their everlasting Franciscan squabbles between Conventuals and Observants! Not at this time… Aloud, he courteously requested his visitor to be seated.

The Franciscan sat, appeared to ponder for the length of an Ave, and said at last: “I would make my Confession.”

Thinking that once again Gubbio had guessed shrewdly, Don Felipe asked, “Shall we go into church?”

Fray Bartomeu shook his head. “Not at this time. Not with the hour of High Mass fast approaching, and the place crowded.”

“As you will.”

“Shall I begin?”

Felipe thought, Yes! old man—begin and end and let us be done with all this! Aloud, he said courteously, “Whenever you are prepared, brother.”

“I last confessed on this Saturday morning just past, to prepare myself for the holy feast. On Saturday afternoon…” Fray Bartomeu’s voice fell still lower… “Pedro Choved came to make his Confession to me, insisting that we go far apart. Little thinking that so young a lad could have any sin on his soul but what any man would only smile to overhear by accident—in my religious duties, I had not yet heard of his little friend’s disappearance… My lord, young Pedro confessed, weeping, that he had helped his friends Juan and Luis del Quivir to murder their brother Estevan!”

“Wait.” It is not easy to shock a father confessor—but this… “Why? How could Satan move them to such a deed?”

“It began innocently enough, by Pedro’s account. They thought only, in youthful piety, to re-enact our Lord’s Crucifixion, and make a shroud, such as they had heard of from pilgrims. They nerved themselves to inflict that grievous pain by meditating on the piety of their intentions. They did not expect Estevan to die. Even when they uncovered him, the first time, and found him cold beneath the cloth, his brothers could not believe it. He would rise, they still insisted, between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, as our Lord rose, and this time he also would imprint his little shroud.”

“My God!”

“Pedro himself seemed half convinced, even making his Confession, that the miracle would yet come to pass. He saw their sin, but still expected the miracle.”

“I…see… What penance did you give him?”

“I told him there could be no spiritual absolution in such case until he had confessed to the secular arm as well. As far as I have heard, he has not done so. He protested at once to me that it was not his sin alone, that he could not put his friends in danger of law along with himself. I insisted that his absolution was dependent upon his confession of the crime to the alcalde, although he might choose to accuse only himself, as if he had acted alone. Still, he seems to prefer keeping the whole, unpardoned burden of his guilt, rather than bare it to the secular arm.”

“But…when did they do it?” Don Felipe asked, remembering in bafflement that the family had gone directly from church to bed on Good Friday, and missed their youngest son already upon rising before dawn on Holy Saturday.

“They did it on Good Friday afternoon, thinking it as holy a ritual as that enacted in every church. My lord, does this not add heresy to murder?”

“It does,” Don Felipe replied abstractedly. “But…but all these witnesses who have come forward with their tales of seeing Estevan and his brothers in church on Good Friday afternoon?”

“The children themselves—Luis, Juan, and Pedro—began that tale, saying they had been there together, although apart from their families, and Estevan with them. They meant to avert any doubt or suspicion that must have risen out of their absence, but Pedro himself seemed filled with wonder that others should have seen them, too. I think he believed it to be a sign that in some spiritual sense they were indeed all present in church, and that the miracle would indeed come to pass. Even now that Estevan has been found still dead, his killers may think it a sign that his sainthood lessens their guilt.”

“It remains mysterious,” said Don Felipe. Somewhere, deep within his head, a strange, brusque voice—a woman’s?—seemed to say: Never trust your eyewitnesses. Tell people what you think they should have seen, and their memories change to order.

Neither recognizing this voice nor understanding its message, he ignored it and more or less accepted the apparitions as some miracle resembling that of bilocation. Was not the child still a holy saint, even though martyred by fellow Catholic Christians? The Ordinary went on, searching every aspect, “They thought to make a shroud, you say? A holy relic, like that of our Lord?”

“Their cloth was at first too large for the child. Half of it served to cover him. When they found him dead beneath it half an hour after they had laid him out, they tore away the part that was all bloody from his wounds, and left the clean second half over him, thinking to have their shroud more clearly imprinted when the miracle should come to pass on Holy Saturday night.”

For some moments the two men sat silent, Don Felipe’s mind groping through a maze of terrible images in search of further questions. At last he told his penitent, “I can find nothing in your actions to condemn, my son.”

“Should I not have given the boy our Lord’s forgiveness without condition?”

“No. In such a matter, the condition you attached was right and commendable.”

Several more reassurances, a few peccadillos of the Franciscan’s own to justify penance and absolution, and Fray Bartomeu finally took his departure, leaving his young father confessor to grapple alone with the revelation.

If only it had come to him in any other way! The initial horror of this thing—four Christian boys playing piously at crucifixion until the chosen one died—had at first banished thoughts of Gamito and Daroca’s other Jews, their danger and what this truth would do in their behalf…if only it could be made public!

And that it could not. Told in sacramental Confession, it was knowledge imparted by the conscience-ridden soul directly to the Lord Ihesu. Only within another Confession could it be shared, as the Franciscan had shared it. Outside this sacramental conference, both Fray Bartomeu and Don Felipe were strictly forbidden any claim to possess this knowledge in their own persons. The secret belonged to God and Pedro Choved. Young Pedro alone, as the original penitent, had the right to reveal it…the duty to reveal it, if he obeyed God’s voice as transmitted through Fray Bartomeu. And if the boy had gone to another confessor, gained absolution without Fray Bartomeu’s condition? Or if fear for his body outweighed fear for his soul? In any case, if he had not come forward yet, it seemed unlikely that he ever would. That left it to God, Who might reveal it through miracle… And why would God so bestir Himself now, when He had not done so to save or revive little Estevan?

Lives hung upon this secret. Innocent lives, lives unjustly maligned. Among them, the life of one of Felipe’s earliest friends, his last remaining link with boyhood, one who had survived the horrors of Alhama’s capture and hardships of the journey north from Karnattah, one whose family and whose people looked to him for support and comfort. And Felipe de Alhama de Karnattah must forget as man what he had learned as priest: the knowledge that could save Gamito, might yet prove essential to save all the Jews of Daroca.

Ah! sweet Mother of God! if only I had stayed in Italy!

After a long time he rose. Like one stunned, he understood that High Mass would be almost over. He had missed it. No matter. Possibly men and women had seen him there, as they had seen the Holy Child and his companions on Good Friday. As though half drowning in dense fog, he made his way alone to the tribunal and sat waiting for Fra Guillaume’s return from church.

The Dominican reached his small lodging aglow with a tranquility that would have been natural after High Mass during this holiest triduum of any other year, but today seemed out of keeping with the city’s mood. “Felipe, my friend!” he greeted the Ordinary in mild surprise. “Do you not dine with his Reverence the bishop?”

“I have had information, brother,” Don Felipe replied, now on his feet. Somehow, in the fog that had choked him, mind and soul, since Fray Bartomeu’s Confession, he found that his decision had been formed. “Secret information, from an anonymous source, concerning a case of suspected heresy.”

The old inquisitor heaved a sigh. “On this, of all days! Well, dine with me, and we will speak of it after our midday sleep.”

“It is a matter of some urgency. I believe that it concerns this matter which has inflamed the city against our Jewish brethren.”

Fra Guillaume seemed to ponder for the space of a Gloria, then smiled and shook his head. “My friend, my young friend. You have yet to learn that there is no matter so urgent that it cannot wait until after dinner and digestion. Does not the Apostle himself instruct us to take a little wine, for our stomachs’ sake? We will, however, cut our rest a little short, so as to look into this, whatever it is, without too much delay. Until then, as you value your health and mine, not another word.”

There was no help for it. Not for our Lord Himself in Person, Don Felipe thought, would Fra Guillaume have broken his iron rule of allowing no serious talk over meals, nor would he have omitted his nap afterwards. As for the younger man, he ate and drank only as much as necessary to escape comment, and felt even that small amount knot his stomach like a chain of lead as he waited, in forced idleness, for the Dominican to have his fill of dozing.

He turned the pages of a small volume, pretending to read; but his conscience thrust itself between his eyes and the print as if every serif were a thorn, and if ever he were aware what author it was whose work he gazed at, he immediately forgot it.

And yet, he kept repeating to his conscience, how does God work, in the daily course, if not through human beings? How can I know but that God, Whose secret this is to keep or to reveal, chooses to reveal it, not through miracle, but through my weakness—that I have been predestined, like Judas Iscariot, to commit grievous sin that greater good may come of it?

At last Fra Guillaume snorted, woke, and gently shook himself. “Now!” said he. “Let us go where we may more fittingly examine this information that you bring.”

They went into the audience chamber, which served Fra Guillaume’s tribunal also as council room. Toeing aside one soft lump of dust, Don Felipe mused briefly upon an audience chamber in stark black and white, awesome in its unfrayed cleanliness, where no flocks of dust lambkins grazed the floor; and a council room completely separate, with warm hangings on its walls and cushions on its chairs.

Feeling less like a bishop’s Ordinary than an unfortunate under investigation, Don Felipe moved his chair opposite that of the inquisitor, sat some moments hesitant to broach the matter he had been fretting to speak of since making his decision, and finally, beneath Fra Guillaume’s mildly expectant gaze, began:

“My witness—who claims the strict rule of secrecy—saw three young lads heretically re-enacting our Lord’s Crucifixion upon a fourth boy, this Good Friday just past, near the cave where Estevan del Quivir’s body was found.”

It gave him some satisfaction to see that even an experienced and sleepy inquisitor could still on rare occasion be shocked. Fra Guillaume’s eyes first widened, then blinked. His hands, clasped before him on the table, tightened until the knuckles turned pale.

At length the Dominican asked, “Did your witness recognize these lads?”

“One definitely: Pedro Choved.”

“And the others? Were they truly Estevan del Quivir and his elder brothers?”

“So my witness thought.”

The old man drew a long breath and splayed his fingers over the dusty wood of a table left always in place. His nails whitened as he pressed down, holding his hands steady. “This…would change the aspect of the case. Holy Mother! I am not sure that Estevan even merits the title of martyr, if this can be proved.”

“How willing or unwilling was the victim’s involvement, who can say?” Guessing at Fra Guillaume’s thoughts, Don Felipe shook his head. “No, brother, in my humble opinion, we need not worry ourselves over the cultus that will inevitably grow up around our Holy Child. Whoever actually killed him, they who reverence him as martyr surely do so in all orthodox good faith. But must we not investigate this case of his brothers and their friend?”

“Certainly, certainly.” The heaviest of sighs. “The witness came to you, my friend. Let the bishop’s court investigate this case.”

No! thought Don Felipe. I cannot act alone—I am known to be Gamito’s friend. And to perjure my soul yet again, in repeating, as if I had the right to repeat it, what came to me under the Seal of Confession…

Aloud, he argued, “Think, Fra Guillaume! If you should fail to represent the true Inquisition in examining such a notorious case as this, will we not give them one more pretext for forcing their new Castilian Inquisition into our diocese…into Aragon?”

The old inquisitor pondered slowly, sighed again, and nodded. “You are right. It was, perhaps, for this very hour that our Lord put me in this place. But…you will act with me?”

“To do otherwise, would be to turn my back upon God.” Uttering these words, Don Felipe half expected God to strike him dead for compounding sacrilege with hypocrisy. But no—had He not left Judas to hang himself?

“Well!” Fra Guillaume leaned on the table for support as he got to his feet. “If we are to look into it, we must do so quickly. Let us go at once.”

* * * *

The merchant who owned the house wherein Fra Guillaume kept his tribunal had among his servants a former soldier, one Luis Albogado, still strong and sturdy in his sixtieth year. This former soldier the merchant had placed at Fra Guillaume’s disposal whenever the Holy Inquisition should need a man at arms in Daroca, which had not happened for many years. Attended only by Luis Albogado, inquisitor and Ordinary made their way to the house of Don Enrique Choved’s widow. No more than a Gloria after Albogado’s announcement of “A matter of Faith!” accompanied by his three firm raps, the door was opened by a young maidservant, wide-eyed, pale, and breathless, who immediately shrank back like a frightened fawn out of their way. Poor creature, thought Don Felipe, our errand cannot touch you…except as it touches this entire household.

The widow of Don Enrique stood midway down the stairs. “Fra Guillaume,” she acknowledged, inclining her head to the inquisitor. “Don… Forgive me, my memory does not hold many names. Who in this sad house has sinned against our Holy Faith?” Her glance went in the direction of the poor maidservant, as much as to say, “If one of my servants…my servant no longer!”

Don Felipe took it upon himself to step forward and answer the widow as gently as possible in so stern a matter. “Doña Beatriz, we have cause to suspect your son, and him alone in this house.”

“My son Enrique is in Granada, fighting his king’s holy war against the infidel Moors.”

“It is your younger son, Pedro, whom we have cause to suspect.”

Pressing her lips together before speaking again, she answered at last, “If guilty of sinning against our Faith, he is no longer his father’s son, nor mine.”

“He is still God’s son, Doña,” Fra Guillaume told her, in a voice between mercy and sternness, “and he has still a soul, which must be saved at any cost.”

She descended the stairs and stood to one side. “Save it, then. He is on the floor above us.”

They went up, Luis Albogado leading and Don Felipe, as the younger priest, next. Pretense it might be, as if a bodyguard were needed against a ten-year-old boy; and yet this ten-year-old boy was under grave suspicion of having taken part in the heretical murder of a friend.

They found Pedro sitting on the floor between bed and window, staring up at the intruders, a bowl of nutmeats, pile of whole nuts, and two or three heaps of broken nutshells surrounding him like toy fortifications.

Luis repeated the dread words: “A matter of Faith!”

The boy leaped to his feet, dropping his knife and the nut he had been holding, as if his guilt consisted of shelling nuts on Easter Monday. Knife and nut fell with a clatter, the nut rolling across the floorboards to catch in a knothole near Don Felipe’s toe.

“Remember, Pedro Choved,” Fra Guillaume intoned, “that our first concern is for your immortal soul, and that He Whom you must fear is not us, but God, and God alone, Who sees all. Bear ever in your mind that it is worse than useless to lie to the Lord our God, and answer the questions of your bishop’s Ordinary as if you were already answering God Himself upon the Day of Judgment.”

Wondering when it had been decided that he should be the one to do the questioning, Don Felipe began, “Well, Pedro, is this your room, where you sleep?”

The child nodded.

Don Felipe said to the former soldier: “Search it thoroughly. I will question the suspect in the courtyard.”

“Yes, my lord. What should I search for?”

Exchanging a glance with the inquisitor, the Ordinary replied, “Perhaps Fra Guillaume will deign to oversee your findings.”

“If you fail to discover anything here,” Fra Guillaume added, with—Felipe thought—some relief, “we must see the rest of the house searched as well.”

Nodding, Luis laid one hand heavily upon Pedro’s shoulder and delivered him to Don Felipe, who received him with a hand upon the other shoulder and conducted him downstairs, past his mother’s frown, to the courtyard below.

Here they stood in silence, facing the fountain, while Don Felipe repeated two Paternosters in his mind. At last he said, “Look at that water, Pedro. It ought to remind you of your holy Baptism.”

The boy said nothing.

“Not that you can remember the actual event,” the man went on, “but you know, by virtue of having been taught, what an indelible mark of grace was bestowed on you that day.”

A slight tremor seemed to pass through the little body. That was all.

“Are you not deeply ashamed to have so blotted out and disgraced the holy purity you received that day, as God’s sacred gift to you?”

Still Pedro said nothing.

“Speak, boy!” Felipe exclaimed in exasperation and bafflement, shaking him by the shoulder.

“Sir,” the boy answered dully, “what do you want me to say?”

“It is for you to confess! But know this: your sin did not pass unseen.”

“Who saw us?” He must finally have panicked, to blurt it out like that.

“The One Whose displeasure you ought to fear above that of any earthly court. God, Who sees all things!” (Even as He sees my own sin at this moment, the priest thought heavily, His Holy Mother help me!) He finished aloud, “This is not to say that you went unseen by mortal eyes, as well.”

“No!”

Don Felipe drew a deep breath. What was one more lie in comparison with the sin already on his soul? “Your accomplices have already confessed.”

“No! They would not! Never!”

“Confess, Pedro Choved, or it will come to the torture.”

“No! Not here! Not in Aragon! Our fueros—”

“The fueros of proud Aragon mean nothing before the sacred duty of the Holy Inquisition!” Don Felipe said with mock assurance. “Do you know what torture is, boy? Do you know what it is to cause another human creature cruel and deliberate—”

“No!” Breaking away from his grip, Pedro fled across the courtyard—to come face to face with his mother, who had just entered on that side. Hands tight on the silver cross she wore round her neck, she frowned down upon him without speaking. Turning at bay like some hunted animal, he cried, “We were all in church! Together! Everyone saw us!”

“Do you know what it is to hear screams brought forth by the work of your hands?” Don Felipe continued, seeing his advantage and—hardening his heart for Gamito’s sake—relentlessly pursuing it. “Do you know what it is to see the face writhe up beneath your ministrations? To feel the warm blood—”

“No! No! No!”

Heavy footsteps interrupted them. The inquisitor’s bodyguard appeared, followed by Fra Guillaume. In his left hand, Luis Albogado held before him half of a linen sheet, thickly stained with blood.

* * * *

“I do not understand,” Gamito remarked, some weeks later and some distance beyond the town, “why he kept the bloodstained sheet.”

“They still hoped, I believe,” Felipe replied, stroking the neck of his mule, “that the Holy Child’s blood would form into his image. In any case, whether or not they hoped for a miraculous shroud, they had the true relic of a martyr.”

The two friends were effectively in private, as they had not been since before Passover. Having chosen Zaragoza as his destination, Gamaliel Ben Joseph, the “foreign Jew,” had ridden forth from Daroca alone except for Don Felipe, who brought only Gubbio and Luis Albogado to attend him. The Italian, for once showing some deep sense of delicacy, was hanging behind, engaging the former soldier in a conversation of their own, near enough to guard their master but not to overhear him talking.

Gamito rode another moment in silence before adding, “But why hide it so carelessly?”

“Ah, my friend! For Estevan’s brothers to have kept it, knowing that their house would surely be searched as matter of course even while the boy was still merely missing—that would have been to hide it carelessly. As for keeping it in the bottom of Pedro’s chest, how could they expect blame to fall anywhere else than upon your people?” Don Felipe spoke with a heart made all the heavier by the secret knowledge that, had it not been for his own actions taken upon information given, received, and given again under the strict Seal of Confession, the boys would have been safe in their expectation. “Even those children themselves,” he went on bitterly, “knowing their own guilt, saw nothing wrong in allowing the blame to fall on Jews! This is not the world as we knew it under the infidel Moors of Karnattah, old friend.”

“I fear,” said Gamito, “that it will grow worse yet. We may live to see more such massacres as those of our grandparents’ days.”

“And you, Gamito? Would it not be better for you to join your brother and his wife in Rome?”

The Jew shook his head. “I will not abandon my people as long as need remains here.”

“There are still those who cling to their belief that you caused the Holy Child’s death, who refuse to believe in the guilt of his brothers and their playfellow. Rumor may point you out even in Zaragoza.”

Gamito shook his head. “It is a large enough city, I hope, for me to live quietly in its Jewish quarter, unseen by any save my own kind.”

“And if our monarchs force Aragon to accept their new Inquisition?”

“Old friend,” said Gamaliel Ben Joseph, “I no longer so greatly fear the Inquisition. Is it not thanks to your Inquisition that I am free? No, it is the mob that I most fear now, and not the Inquisition that holds it somewhat in check.”

Far back though his servant and the former soldier were, Felipe lowered his voice. “Then never allow yourself to be baptized, Gamito—not, at least, without feeling true conversion in your heart,” he added, prudent even in their privacy. “And never, even if asked, speak a word concerning your beliefs to any Christian, for that might be called proselytizing. Avoid these things, and you should remain safe even from this new Inquisition.”

Gamito nodded, and they rode on.

Not that the investigation of local inquisitor and bishop’s Ordinary had been enough, Don Felipe thought with some anger. No, it had been necessary after all to appeal to the Justicia on behalf of Gamaliel Ben Joseph and Nathaniel Ben Solomon. The Justicia was a man able to weigh evidence, and pardons for both Jews had come, along with a document ordering the Christians of Daroca to keep the peace and withhold hasty judgment as regarded their Hebrew neighbors. Alas, not even this had crushed out the earliest opinions concerning the death of Estevan del Quivir. Nathaniel the Silversmith had already traded his house for mules and taken his family across the mountains to France. Certain others of Daroca’s Jews, even though never accused by name of this crime, had followed his example.

Another half hour, and Gamito said, “There is the inn where two of my brethren from Zaragoza are to meet me. Farewell, old friend. Peace be with you. I shall not risk either of us by writing letters.”

Swallowing hard, Felipe brought himself to say, “Except in need, Gamito. If need should press you, let me know of it.”

Because of the servants behind, they ventured nothing more, save that halfway to the inn, the Jew turned back briefly and gave the Christian a single wave of one hand.

Felipe returned it, then sat and watched until Gamito reached the inn. His friend would never know how much he had sacrificed—the peace of his own conscience, perhaps the very salvation of his soul—for the sake of friendship and justice.

Gubbio and Luis eventually came up to him and sat in silence, awaiting his pleasure and meanwhile leaving him to his own thoughts, which had turned back to the three boys: victims, in some sense, of his own sin. Especially was Pedro Choved his victim. Merely pointing to a door and naming it as that of the torture chamber—an irregularity which shamed Fra Guillaume’s with the Moorish lad Mehmoud Aben Fazoud into insignificance—had sufficed to bring from young Pedro, already broken in spirit as he was, a tearful admission at last, complete with the names of Estevan’s older brothers. Neither of them, however, had confessed to anything. Seeing his friends’ resolve, Pedro had refused to ratify his admission. Without public confession, there could be little use in so much as offering the young killers to the law’s secular arm. Nor, to Felipe’s secret relief, would Fra Guillaume even hear of holding a consultation on resorting to any degree in more regular fashion, let alone of attempting to find a laborer for the manual work attendant on exercising the long-disused inquisitorial privilege here in Aragon.

The ecclesiastical arm still had power to judge guilt and assign some penalty, even without confession. All three boys had been sentenced to make the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the last mile on their knees, as soon as they should either find sponsors to accompany them, or be old enough to go by themselves. In addition, Pedro Choved’s mother had disowned and turned him out by her own act. Don Felipe hoped that their souls, at least, might be saved.

Blinking tears from his eyes, the Ordinary turned Castaña—his favorite little mule of the bishop’s stables—motioned to his attendants, and started back toward Daroca.