The Inquisitor's Wife

  “Stop it!” I shouted.

  The ghost of a grin played at the corners of Hojeda’s plump lips. “You can make it stop by confessing the truth: that you and your father are crypto-Jews. You can make it stop by denouncing Antonio Vargas and admitting that you have had an affair with him, that he is no longer fit to serve the Holy Office.”

  “But we’re not crypto-Jews,” I protested. “And I have never wanted anything to do with Antonio Vargas. He’s one of your own, working for the Inquisition.”

  “He’s always been good friends with your family,” Hojeda insisted. “We all know he was going to marry you.” He paused. “I’ve heard you were consorting with don Francisco.”

  I straightened and asked, sounding nervous to my own ears, “When?”

  “At the palace, when you sang for the queen,” Hojeda said. “If you were to denounce him as a crypto-Jew, I would release your father today.”

  My father groaned. “Marisol … don’t believe him. Your ‘dowry’—I agreed to denounce myself to Gabriel … to protect you from the Inquisition.”

  Enraged, Hojeda instantly signaled the torturer, who applied full force to the lever, his muscles straining, the dull look in his eyes grown ghoulish. I covered my ears at the sound of a deep, terrible crunch inside my father’s body, at the sound of his scream.

  Hojeda sensed my weakness and leaned forward to whisper in my ear; his breath was putrid.

  “Decide now, Marisol … or face watching your father suffer more now, and die at the stake tomorrow.”

  “Let me die, Marisol,” my father said. “Make me proud.”

  It was the one thing he could have said to give me strength. This time, when the torturer applied his full body weight to the lever, I did not cover my ears, but composed myself.

  And when Hojeda asked, “Will you confess?” I did not look away but shook my head and stared straight ahead.

  “Tomorrow will be too late,” Hojeda threatened again, but I countered him with an announcement of my own.

  “I am leaving now. I have nothing more to say.”

  “Walk away if you wish,” Hojeda said. “Only bear in mind that this”—he nodded at my father upon the rack—“doesn’t stop when you leave. Every moment you breathe, walk, or enjoy a meal—at that moment, your father is suffering horribly because you will not stop it.”

  But I left, head held high, the way my father wanted me to, the way he wanted to remember me.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the day unable to rest as I began to mourn for my father. He would spend a long, anguish-filled night—a sleepless one, not only because of pain but because of the all-night vigil and procession around the prison that the Dominicans had planned.

  I stayed in my room until well after sundown and the supper hour, until Blanca came to announce that the master was coming to see me—and he did not want Máriam in attendance. Máriam left reluctantly, and I sat waiting in one of the small chairs in my antechamber.

  Minutes after, Gabriel entered, his cloak still bearing the chill of evening, his body and tunic faintly reeking of the prison. His expression wasn’t stern but complicitous, even abashed.

  “I had to speak to you alone,” he said urgently. “You realize that if there is no intervention, your father will be found guilty and executed tomorrow?”

  I looked away, in the direction where the now-broken ugly Madonna had once stood. “My father’s life was my dowry. You always meant to destroy him—to secure your position with the Inquisition.”

  Gabriel took no offense but pressed with a strange gentleness: “If there was something that could be done to save him, would you not do it?”

  I slowly turned my gaze on him and lifted a brow.

  “I am not as cruel or controlled by my brother as you might think,” he said. “While the head of the Inquisition, Fray Morillo, despises my brother, he is more kindly disposed toward me. And I have influence with Judge Diego de Merlo, who will be handing down the sentences given by the Inquisitors and seeing that they are implemented.

  “Judge de Merlo is easily bribed. For a reasonable sum, your father could be rehabilitated by the church instead. It would spare him death at the stake.”

  He trailed off, and we looked at each other for a long moment, my gaze penetrating, his, oddly self-conscious.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I demanded. “Why would you suddenly tell me to go bribe Judge de Merlo after keeping my father’s arrest secret from me, after forcing my father to suffer what he did today?”

  He blushed. “I am not suggesting you bribe the judge. Being who you are, he would spurn or even report you. But he has accepted ‘gifts’ from me in the past readily enough. Once de Merlo has publicly announced your father’s innocence, there is little my brother or Morillo could do to hurt your father.”

  Incredulous, I stared at him. “You would do this for my father now?”

  “For you, Marisol,” he said, with sudden heat. “Forgive me; my brother forced me to arrest your father. I did not want to, and I am sorry for it now. I truly care for you.”

  I hid my revulsion. “And the price for my father’s life?”

  He brightened; his pale eyes widened with hope.

  “One encounter,” he whispered. “Only one. And we would keep it secret—both the bribe and the … encounter—from my brother. He would seek revenge on your father if he knew we’d broken our promise of chastity.”

  His breathing quickened as he spoke. By the time he fell silent, he was trembling, but not with fear.

  I maintained a neutral expression. “How certain are you of success?”

  “Completely certain.” Gabriel didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch under my scrutiny.

  “You swear upon your father’s soul?” I demanded.

  “I swear upon my father’s soul,” he parroted, but it was not good enough for me.

  “May his soul be damned to hell for eternity if you are lying,” I pressed.

  Gabriel was expressionless. “May his soul be damned to hell for eternity if I am lying.”

  He said it with such conviction that, for love of my father, I felt my self-respect slip all too easily from me, like silk from my shoulders.

  “Come,” Gabriel said, holding out his large hand.

  God forgive me, I took it—took it and let him lead me out of my quarters and down the loggia to his closed chamber door. He opened the latter onto gloomy quarters, more Spartan, if possible, than the rest of the crumbling estate. Black curtains were pulled shut over two different sets of windows, closing out the stars and moon, leaving the corners of the room swallowed by darkness.

  An oil lamp—the only source of light—burned on a narrow ledge beside the surprisingly small straw bed, with no linens save a worn blanket. There was no night table, but instead, upon the wall, a hook from which hung a small multilashed whip. Above the hook and whip rested a large shelf, which held, in separate gabled shrines, fine ceramic statues that looked to have been painted by my mother. One was of the Virgin Mary exposing a crown of thorns encircling her heart, another a bold Santiago, perhaps one-third of the size of the one I’d painted, with his dark hair and his horse’s white mane stirred by an imaginary wind.

  These—along with a small wardrobe—were all that stood in the room. There was no mirror, no chair, no table, not even a carpet on the cold stone floor. The hearth was unlit, adding to the chill and gloom.

  The light glinted off the Virgin and Santiago as Gabriel took off his cloak, set it beside him on the bed, and sat down.

  Thinking he had set the cloak down for me, I moved to sit down upon it.

  “No,” Gabriel said. His voice quavered, but this time not from timidity. An arc of light from the lamp captured his face—lips parted, eyes wide and focused intently on me, just the way they had looked on me when I’d tried to stop him from beating the child Antonio.

  “No, Marisol. Come stand here.”

  Still sitting, he leaned forward and caught my arms gently
but firmly and pulled me into the arc of yellow light.

  “Take off your clothing.”

  I tried not to shudder. “I can’t without help,” I said bluntly. “My bodice laces in back.”

  Without reply, he got to his feet and guided me to stand sideways, then fumbled with the back laces until they were finally undone.

  “Now,” he said, sitting back down on the edge of the bed, “undress yourself.”

  I saw no choice but to obey, for my father’s sake, and I prayed for God and Antonio to forgive me.

  My bodice hung loose, but I let the weight of my overdress hold it in place. First I slowly unlaced each heavy sleeve; when I let the first one slip to the floor, Gabriel gasped aloud at the sight of my bare arm.

  “So beautiful,” he said. “So white.”

  I doubted that my olive-colored arms, though long shielded from the sun, could ever be as pale as Gabriel’s skin and hair, now colored a garish yellow by the oil lamp.

  Another sleeve hit the floor, and another gasp came from Gabriel. Soon I struggled to pull my black overdress over my head, then the unlaced kirtle, until I stood in front of him in my chemise, my arms and décolletage revealed. As it was winter, I wore not sheer white lawn but opaque ivory silk. The silk clung to the outline of my body—and since the room’s chill was pervasive, the tip of my breasts could clearly be seen.

  Gabriel watched, still fully clothed in his black tunic and leggings; seated with a wide-legged stance on the edge of the bed, he lifted the tunic’s edge and began to run his hand over his swollen codpiece. As I slipped first one shoulder, then another, from my chemise, he fumbled madly with the codpiece laces and freed himself. I had never seen a man erect at such close distance and decided that Gabriel’s genitals must have been homelier than most: His penis was pinkish white, bent to the right, with a purplish foreskin gathered in tight folds beneath what appeared to be the cap of a rosy mushroom.

  I wavered, holding the chemise over my breasts, bile rising in my throat.

  “Drop it,” Gabriel commanded, his voice suddenly harsh. The strange light in his eyes was blazing now.

  I let go of the slip; it fell with a sigh, and I stood perfectly naked before him.

  He groaned again, this time louder. He was breathing hard, his mouth gaping, his brow furrowed in an intent scowl as he took in the sight of me. For a long moment, there was no sound save that of his labored breathing, and then he said:

  “Come here.”

  I took a step closer so that my legs were between his, pressed against the prickly straw of the bed. Entranced, he touched my breasts, cupping them clumsily at first, then pressed his palms flat against them, then examined the erect nipples with his fingers.

  “You tremble,” he breathed.

  I dared not open my mouth, lest I show my disgust. Gabriel was trembling, too, though not for the same reason as I.

  “Touch it,” he whispered.

  Forgive me, I thought to everyone I loved, and reached for his genitals. The shaft of his penis was hard as oak.

  He pulled me by the shoulders to him. “Sit,” he breathed into my ear, and tried to push me down. My shadow fell sharp over him, covering his face in darkness.

  He pulled his knees together, and I half sat, clutching his penis between my thighs tightly, so that he almost, but could not quite, penetrate me; fooled, he thrust against my legs with bruising force, groaning with pleasure while I struggled to keep him from taking my virginity. Just when I thought I could hold him back no more, he roared the name of God. Hot liquid spurted on my legs as Gabriel bucked away from me, his eyes rolled back into his head.

  I leapt off him quickly and used my chemise to wipe his seed from my thighs, then wadded up the chemise and slipped back into my kirtle and overdress as best I could, though the unlaced bodice hung loose.

  Gabriel lay on his back upon his bed, gasping; when his breath slowed a bit and his eyes finally opened, I stood over him and said, “May your father’s soul be damned to hell for eternity if you are lying.”

  With that, I hurried off to find Máriam and the basin.

  Nineteen

  I did not sleep that night. Gabriel’s brother had sent a coach for him hours before dawn, leaving the carriage for me and Máriam; my husband was insistent that I attend the auto-de-fé.

  As Máriam dressed me, she begged: “Please, doña! It’s not necessary to force yourself to go through with this.”

  I dismissed her. “This will be the only chance I have to set eyes on my father again.”

  She pressed, clasping her hands as if praying to me. “Marisol, of all days, this is the safest one for you to escape. Do you see?”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I countered sadly. “If there’s any hope—if there’s any chance my father might be spared—I have to know. Even if there’s not, I can’t desert him.

  “Then I will go with you,” Máriam said. “But we should return before your husband and the guards do.” She looked about carefully, then peered through the chink in the wall that looked into Blanca’s bedroom. Satisfied, she said, “Antonio will have the Santiago and the wagon waiting for us. Today is the day we must leave everything behind. Are you ready?”

  I nodded, reluctant.

  * * *

  The driver pulled us to the front of the crowd near the podium where Fray Morillo had first read the papal bull announcing the Inquisition, and Máriam and I climbed to the top of the carriage in order to get a better view.

  After the encounter the night before with Gabriel, I had dared nurse some hope; now, as I watched the sun rise over the distant spires of the great cathedral, lightening the gray sky to rose and then blue, I grew more frightened. Those in the crowd were somber and spoke in hushed voices. Even those who earlier would have jeered at conversos and applauded their mistreatment held their tongues, silenced by the solemn atmosphere.

  The procession from San Pablo Prison approached from a distance. The armed guards came first, cloaked in black, their long swords drawn to make the crowd give way. Behind them followed the civil magistrate, Judge de Merlo, and the civil prosecutors, including Gabriel and the mayor—a converso himself and friend of my father. This group was flanked by more guards. Then came the Dominicans: Fray Morillo and Fray Hojeda and a flock of black-caped monks in white habits.

  Behind them came the prisoners—nine in all, including three females. They were shackled at the ankles, making their progress even more tedious combined with their invisible wounds. Each one’s broken body was covered by a garment known as the sambenito. For three of them, the loose tunic was bright yellow with red crosses and an appliqué of upside-down flames. The rest wore black sambenitos with regular flames and serpents, also red. All the accused wore the same pointed, conical hats and bore lighted candles; each was flanked by a guard, as if the prisoner had the strength to break free of the shackles and present a physical danger to the crowd.

  My father was among those wearing black. Pain and despair showed in his hobbled movements, in the slump of his shoulders and cast-down face, just as they showed in every prisoner in the gruesome parade. Two guards supported him entirely, dragging his feet on the ground.

  The magistrate and the Dominican Inquisitors took their places upon the platform, in a specially constructed box near a podium. Behind the podium, on a pedestal high enough to be seen by all in the crowd, stood a wooden cross the size of a man, painted bright green and draped with a black cloth.

  The guards clustered around the platform’s base, facing the crowd and the prisoners, who were obliged to stand clutching their burning candles.

  Most remarkable was the silence as the procession took place, such that the clanking of the shackles could be heard. As the last prisoner and last guard took their places, every eye in the crowd fell, expectant, on the podium.

  Fray Hojeda, his step slow but his manner ebullient, if weary, lumbered to the podium, he so massive and tall that the structure looked undersized. He grasped its sides with his huge han
ds and beamed at the crowd.

  “Fellow Christians,” he announced, his tone giddy with victory yet uncharacteristically weak, “this is a day of great rejoicing! For the Devil has been defeated, and those who have done his bidding will be purged from our flock. Thanks to our wise and pious monarchs, Her Majesty Queen Isabel and His Majesty King Fernando, the Holy Office of the Inquisition has ferreted out the heretics among us. Let all those who would betray the sacred tenets of our faith heed and take warning!”

  And he grinned broadly, pausing to look out at his listeners to judge the effect of his words.

  Immediately, a woman screamed with terror in the middle of his audience; her cries were instantly echoed by others nearby. A section of the crowd parted, leaving a widening circular gap. I stood up atop the carriage to get a better view and spied a child’s motionless body lying on the cobblestones at the circle’s center. A rumbling began and soon carried over to the place where I stood.

  “Plague! It’s plague … from the Dominican monastery!”

  “Here now,” Fray Hojeda ordered. “Silence! Get control of yourselves!” His voice cracked with the strain; he wiped his forehead wearily, and the sunlight caught his face, revealing its sheen of sweat.

  The rumbling did not stop but grew louder and more hysterical until his voice was drowned out. Hojeda was forced to hold his tongue until the child—who appeared to be lifeless—was removed from the plaza by wagon. So great was the fear provoked by this incident that a third of those in attendance forced their way out of the square, causing a tide of bodies to swell out into the streets. Their flight caused wild disruption, impossible for Hojeda to contain. Máriam and I were forced to sit and hold tight to our carriage, which swayed as frantic pedestrians rushed past us.

  After several minutes, the now-smaller crowd was silent once more, and Hojeda resumed his preaching, his mirth undimmed.

  “Such is the power of God,” he cried out, “that He has struck down an evildoer who managed to escape our grasp. Do not be fooled: This is not Satan trying to disrupt us; he has no power here in this godly place! Rather it is the hand of a vengeful God showing us His might!