House of Torment Part 30

They had pa.s.sed Cape de St. Vincent, and, under a huge copper-coloured moon which flooded the sea with light and seemed like a chased buckler of old Rome, were slipping along towards Faro, southwards and eastwards to Cadiz.

The night was fair, sweet, and golden. The airs which filled the sails of the square-rigged s.h.i.+p were soft and warm. The "lap, lap" of the small waves upon the cut.w.a.ter was soothing and in harmony with the hour.

Elizabeth had been sleeping in the cabin long since, but Commendone, old Madame La Motte, and the little weazened Don Perez were sitting on the forecastle deck together, among the six bra.s.s carronades which were mounted there, ready loaded, in case of an attack by the pirates of Tangier.

"You were going to tell us, Senor," Johnnie said, "something of the Holy Office, and why, when you leave Seville, you leave Spain for ever."

Don Perez nodded. He rose to his feet and peered round the wooden tower of the forecastle, which nearly filled the bow-deck.

"There is n.o.body there," he said, with a little sigh of relief. "That fellow we took aboard at Lisbon is down in the waist with the mariners."

"But why do you fear him?" Johnnie answered in surprise.

The little yellow man plucked at his pointed black beard, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.

"Have you noticed his hands, Senor?" he asked.

"Since you say so," Johnnie replied, with wonder in his voice, "I have noticed them. He is a proper young man of his inches, strong and an athlete, though I like not his face. But his hands are out of all proportion. They are too large, and the thumbs too broad--indeed, I have never seen thumbs like them upon a hand before."

Don Pedro Perez nodded significantly. "_Ciertamenta_," he answered dryly. "It is hereditary; it comes of his cla.s.s. He is a sworn torturer of the Holy Office."

Johnnie shuddered. They had been speaking in Spanish. Now he exclaimed in his own tongue. "Good G.o.d!" he said, "how horrible!"

Perez grinned sadly and cynically as the moonlight fell upon his yellow face. "You may well start, Senor," he said, "but you know little of the land to which you are going yet."

There came a sudden, rapid exclamation in French. Madame La Motte, speaking in that slow, frightened voice which had been hers throughout the voyage, was interposing.

"I don't understand," she said, "but I want to hear what the gentleman has to say. He speaks French; let us therefore use that language."

Don Perez bowed. "I am quite agreeable," he said; "but I doubt, Madame, that you will care to hear all I was going to tell the Senor here."

"Phut!" said the Frenchwoman. "I know more evil things than you or Don Commendone have ever dreamed of. Say what you will."

Don Perez drew a little nearer to the others, squatting down, with his head against the bow-men's tower.

"You have asked me about the Inquisition, Monsieur and Madame," he said in a low voice, "and as ye are going to Seville, I will tell you, for you have been courteous and kind to me since I left Lisbon, and you may as well be warned. I am peculiarly fitted to tell you, because my brother--G.o.d and Our Lady rest his blood-stained soul!--was a notary of the Holy Office at Seville. We are, originally, Lisbon people, and my brother was paying a visit to his family, being on leave from his duties. He caught fever and died, and I am bearing back his papers with me to Seville, from which city I shall depart as soon as may be. It is only care for my own skin that makes me act thus as executor to my brother, Garcia Perez. Did I not, they would seek me out wherever I might be."

"You go in fear, then?" Johnnie asked curiously.

"All Spaniards go in fear," Perez answered, "under this reign. It is the horror of the Inquisition that while any one may be haled before it on a complaint which is anonymous, hardly any one ever escapes certain penalties. Senor," his voice trembled, and a deep note of feeling came into it, "if the fate of that wretch is heavy who, being innocent of heresy, will not confess his guilt, and is therefore tortured until he confesses imaginary guilt, and is then burned to death, hardly less is the misery of the victim who recants or repenteth and is freed from the penalty of death."

"_Tiens!_" said La Motte, shuddering. "I have heard somewhat of this in Paris; but continue, Monsieur, continue."

"No one knows," the little man answered, "how the Holy Office is striking at the root of all national life in my country. And no one has a better knowledge of it all at second hand--for, thank Our Lady, I have never yet been suspected or arraigned--than I myself, for my brother being for long notary and secretary to the Grand Inquisitor of Seville, I have heard much. Now I must tell you, that the place of torture is generally an underground and very dark room, to which one enters through several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it, where the Inquisitor, Inspector, and Secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured is brought in, the executioner, who is waiting for him, makes an astonis.h.i.+ng and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with black linen garments down to his feet and tied close to his body. His head and face are all hidden with a long black cowl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see through. All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and body, when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who thus looks like the very Devil."

Johnnie moved uneasily in his seat and struck the breech of a carronade with his open hand. "Phew! Devil's tricks indeed," he said.

"Whilst," Don Perez went on, "whilst the officers are getting things ready for the torture, the Bishop and Inquisitor by themselves, and other men zealous for the faith, endeavour to persuade the person to be tortured freely to confess the truth, and if he will not, they order the officers to strip him, who do it in an instant.

"Whilst the person to be tortured is stripping, he is persuaded to confess the truth. If he refuses it, he is taken aside by certain men and urged to confess, and told by them that if he confesses he will not be put to death, but only be made to swear that he will not return to the heresy he hath abjured. If he is persuaded neither by threatenings nor promises to confess his crime, he is tortured either more lightly or grievously according as his crime requires, and frequently interrogated during the torture upon those articles for which he is put to it, beginning with the lesser ones, because they think he would sooner confess the lesser matters than the greater."

"Criminals are racked in England," Johnnie said, "and are flogged most grievously, as well they deserve, I do not doubt."

Perez chuckled. "Aye," he said, "that I well know; but you have nothing in England like the Holy Office. But let me tell you more as to the law of it, for, as I have said, my brother was one of them."

He went on in a low regular voice, almost as if he were repeating something learned by rote....

"What think you of this? The Inquisitors themselves must interrogate the criminals during their torture, nor can they commit this business to others unless they are engaged in other important affairs, in which case they may depute certain skilful men for the purpose.

"Although in other nations criminals are publicly tortured, yet in Spain it is forbidden by the Royal Law for any to be present whilst they are torturing, besides the judges, secretaries, and torturers. The Inquisitors must also choose proper torturers, born of ancient Christians, who must be bound by oath by no means to discover their secrets, nor to report anything that is said.

"The judges also shall protest that if the criminal should happen to die under his torture, or by reason of it, or should suffer the loss of any of his limbs, it is not to be imputed to them, but to the criminal himself, who will not plainly confess the truth before he is tortured.

"A heretic may not only be interrogated concerning himself, but in general also concerning his companions and accomplices in his crime, his teachers and his disciples, for he ought to discover them, though he be not interrogated; but when he is interrogated concerning them, he is much more obliged to discover them than his accomplices in any other the most grievous crimes.

"A person also suspected of heresy and fully convicted may be tortured upon another account, that is, to discover his companions and accomplices in the crime. This must be done when he hesitates, or it is half fully proved, at least, that he was actually present with them, or he hath such companions and accomplices in his crime; for in this case he is not tortured as a criminal, but as a witness.

"But he who makes full confession of himself is not tortured upon a different account; whereas if he be a negative he may be tortured upon another account, to discover his accomplices and other heretics though he be full convicted himself, and it be half fully proved that he hath such accomplices.

"The reason of the difference in these cases is this, because he who confesses against himself would certainly much rather confess against other heretics if he knew them. But it is otherwise when the criminal is a negative.

"While these things are doing, the notary writes everything down in the process, as what tortures were inflicted, concerning what matters the prisoner was interrogated, and what he answered.

"If by these tortures they cannot draw from him a confession, they show him other kind of tortures, and tell him he must undergo all of them, unless he confesses the truth.

"If neither by these means they can extort the truth, they may, to terrify him and engage him to confess, a.s.sign the second or third day to continue, not to repeat, the torture, till he hath undergone all those kinds of them to which he is condemned."

"It is bitter cruel," Madame La Motte said, "bitter cruel. It is not honest torture such as we have in Paris."

Commendone shuddered. "Honest torture!" he said. "There is no torture which is honest, nor could be liked by Christ our Lord. I saw a saint burned to his death a few weeks agone. It taught me a lesson."

The little Spaniard t.i.ttered. "It must be! It must be!" he said; "and who are you and I, Senor, to flout the decrees of Holy Church? The burning doth not last for long. I have seen a many burned upon the Quemadero, and twenty minutes is the limit of their suffering. It is not so in the dungeons of the Holy Office."

"What then do they do?" Madame La Motte asked eagerly, though she trembled as she asked it--morbid excitement alone being able to thrill her vicious, degenerate blood.

"The degrees of torture are five, which are inflicted in turn," Perez answered briskly. "First, the being threatened to be tortured; secondly, being carried to the place of torture; thirdly, by stripping and binding; fourthly, the being hoisted on the rack; fifthly, squa.s.sation.

"The stripping is performed without any regard to humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women and virgins, though the most virtuous and chaste, of whom they have sometimes many in their prison at Seville. For they cause them to be stripped even to their very s.h.i.+fts, which they afterwards take off, forgive the expression, and then put on them straight linen drawers, and then make their arms naked quite up to their shoulders.--You ask me what is squa.s.sation?"

n.o.body had asked him, but he went on:

"It is thus performed: The prisoner hath his hands bound behind his back and weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on high till his head reaches the very pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let down with a jerk by slacking the rope, but kept from coming quite to the ground, by the which terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of the fall, and the weight at his feet, stretching his whole body more intently and cruelly."

Johnnie jumped up from the deck and stretched his arms. "What fiends be these!" he cried. "Is there no justice nor true legal process in Spain?"

"Holy Church! Holy Church, Senor!" the Don replied. "But sit you down again. Sith you are going to Seville, as I understand you to say, let me tell you what happened to a n.o.ble lady of that city, Joan Bohorquia, the wife of Francis Varquius, a very eminent man and lord of Highuera, and daughter of Peter Garcia Xeresius, a most wealthy citizen. All this I tell you of my personal knowledge, in that my brother was acquainted with it all and part of the machinery of the Holy Office. And this is a most sad and pitiful story, which, Senor Englishman, you would think a story of the doings of devils from h.e.l.l! But no! 'Twas all done by the priests of Jesus our Lord; and so now to my story.