THE NEXT MORNING I was awoken by a scream.
I came fully awake in an instant, thinking it was a bad dream where I was reaching out across a stormy sea to my mother, only to watch the boat she was in capsize and sink.
Another scream.
This time I knew it wasn’t part of my nightmare.
The scream came from the direction of our barn at the far end of the paddock. I sat up. My eyes opened wide as I heard another high-pitched cry, then another, and another, and after that a long moaning noise. It sounded like an animal in its death throes. I sprang from my bed, threw on a long wrap and went out of my room onto the upper landing.
Below me in the lower hall Lorena was arguing with Papa.
‘I want to go to my father’s house!’
‘Father Besian has given instructions in the name of the Inquisition,’ Papa told her. ‘No one must leave the town without his express permission.’
‘We’re not really part of the town.’ Lorena waved her arms in the air. ‘This house is almost outside the town. The grounds are part of the countryside. We cannot be included in the order governing the township.’
‘Father Besian has indicated that he holds the occupants of this house under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.’
‘As magistrate, surely you have more power, more rights, than the ordinary people!’
I began to descend the stairs.
Lorena voice became shrill. ‘I must get away from here!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Papa spoke to her more gently. ‘You cannot leave.’
‘I will say I am pregnant.’
‘Would that you were,’ Papa replied with a tinge of bitterness in his voice.
Lorena’s mouth twisted down, but he didn’t notice.
‘You can say that I fainted and we feared for the life of the child, so I went into the hills to my father’s house where it’s cooler.’
‘No,’ Papa said. ‘It will not do.’
Lorena struck out with her fists against his chest. He stepped back under the onslaught and tried to grasp her hands. She pushed away from him and rushed to mount the stairs, screeching for her maid as she did so. She almost knocked me over in her haste.
Papa looked up after her and saw me standing there.
‘Zarita! Perhaps you should go to the convent for today and stay there with your aunt Beatriz. It might be . . . safer.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I replied. ‘Father Besian doesn’t approve of my aunt’s community of sisters.’ I looked towards the outside door. ‘I heard screaming, as though one of the horses were suffering. Is there something wrong?’
Papa bent his head to avoid my gaze. ‘I must go back to the barn and see what’s happening. Stay here until I return.’ And he left me there and hurried from the house.
I went to the dining room. Breakfast was not yet set out so I made my way to the kitchen. It was early, but not so early that the staff shouldn’t be astir and preparing food. There was no one there.
The kitchen door was ajar. I walked over and looked out. Serafina and Ardelia stood by the vegetable garden, looking towards the barn. They were holding onto each other in a fearful manner.
‘What’s going on?’ I called to them. ‘Is one of the horses ill?’
As they didn’t reply, I continued, ‘Where’s Garci? Is he with my father?’
They turned their faces to me. Serafina’s eyes were red and her cheeks were blotched. Ardelia too was crying. Another scream sounded out.
‘Bartolomé!’ Serafina fell to her knees, stretching her hands to Heaven and crying out, ‘Blessed Mary, intercede for him!’
The truth slammed into me so violently that I doubled up with the force. I gasped and put my hands to my stomach.
The sounds I’d assumed came from an animal in pain were uttered by the boy, Bartolomé.
I straightened up, gathered my wrap about me and ran out of the house, past the stable block and down through the paddock towards the barn. Behind me I heard Ardelia calling me to come back.
The door was wide open. A rope had been put over the beam and two soldiers held one end. The other end was attached to Bartolomé’s wrists, which were tied behind him, and he was being hoisted up into the air. Outside the barn was a brazier of glowing coals. A poker, its tip white-hot, rested on the metal struts. The boy’s shirt was open and there were scorch marks on his skin. Father Besian, Papa, Garci and the other soldiers stood in a group by the door.
I took all of this in within an instant, and then I was in the barn screaming at the top my voice, ‘Release him! Let him down from there! Now!’
Father Besian nodded. The soldiers holding the rope let go. Bartolomé crashed onto the floor of the barn.
‘Zarita!’
I ignored my father’s shout and ran to where poor Bartolomé lay on the ground. I tore at his bonds with my fingernails but I couldn’t loosen them. He was sobbing like an inconsolable baby. I lifted his head and cradled it on my lap. My wrap was open: the onlookers could plainly see me in my night shift.
‘Zarita!’ My papa was shocked beyond speaking.
I looked up at him in scorn. ‘You might be able to stand and watch this injustice but I cannot!’
‘Cover yourself, child.’ He started forward.
Father Besian laid his hand upon his arm. ‘I will take my men from here and leave you with your daughter and your servants.’
I saw his face when he said this, and there was a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.
Garci came and took Bartolomé away from me. ‘I’ll take care of him,’ he said.
Papa pulled me to my feet. He took off his jacket, wrapped it around me and hurried me back to the house.
I expected his anger: I had made a spectacle of myself, behaved in a disgraceful manner. But it was as though the spirit had gone from him. He stood by the kitchen door watching Garci clean Bartolomé’s wounds at the water trough, helped by Ardelia and Serafina. He spoke only one sentence:
‘Now the flood gates will open.’
I could get no more out of my father, so I dressed and went to see my aunt to tell her what was happening.
She was furious. I’d never before seen Aunt Beatriz lose control of her emotions.
‘Does this insane man think God’s purpose is served by torturing a witless boy!’
I recalled what my papa had been saying to Father Besian when I’d entered his study the previous evening. ‘Papa said that Father Besian is using Bartolomé as his pawn.’
‘Ah!’ My aunt paused in her rant. ‘Ah. I see that cunning priest’s intention. So far the townspeople have stood firm against him. He means to slide a wedge of fear between their closed ranks.’
The questioning under torture of Bartolomé was like a tidal wave cascading through our streets. The reaction was immediate, and began within my own home.
‘I have heard,’ Lorena said at dinner that very night, ‘that there is a Jewish doctor in the town who attends the slum dwellers.’ She paused to glance at Father Besian. ‘He might have information that would be of use to you.’ Her hand wavered as she raised her wine glass to her lips.
My heart fluttered. Did she mean the doctor who had helped the beggar’s wife? Papa opened his mouth as if to speak but said nothing.
Father Besian looked at Lorena in approval. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, Jews who have never converted are tolerated in Spain. Although . . . that may change. In any case I am aware of this so-called doctor. Someone has already spoken of him to me.’
Father Besian knew about the Jewish doctor! Anxiety caused my stomach to heave. Who had told him? Could it have been Garci, trading information in an attempt to protect Bartolomé? Garci and his wife, Serafina, had no children of their own and had taken the boy in when Serafina’s sister died. They loved him as the son they never had, and perhaps Garci would not remain silent if he could help him in any way.
But what effect would this have on me? Thoughts frantically chased one after the other in my mind. I didn’t want Father Besian pursuing the doctor who had attended the beggar’s wife. He would find out that I had asked for his help. I could be suspected as a heretic for consorting with Jews! Maybe there was another guilty person he could occupy himself with? I stumbled over my words as I spoke. ‘There’s a place near the dockside where it’s said that women of low character consort.’
‘Why, thank you, Zarita.’ The priest smiled and nodded. I smiled in return, relief flooding through me.
Lorena flashed me a look of dislike. My father’s shoulders sagged, and he bent his head to his plate of food.
The next day the denouncements started in earnest.
Pieces of paper, some with only a name roughly written upon them, were slid under the gates of our compound or nailed to the wood outside. Others were tied to rocks and thrown over the wall. These were brought to Father Besian, who studied them. He had the manner of a cat crouching outside a mouse hole. ‘At last,’ he purred. ‘The truth pushes its way up through the mire.’
Then the arrests began.
Our barn was used for general interrogations while the more serious wrong-doers were taken to the town gaol. I was no longer allowed anywhere near the paddock. I missed talking to the horses, grooming and stroking their coats and plaiting their manes. Garci turned them into some meadows to graze. I heard him tell my father that they were disturbed by the goings-on in the barn.
We never again heard such screams as had come from Bartolomé that morning. The barn door was kept shut, and Father Besian used the period when the household was at mass for his most rigorous questioning of his suspects. My aunt had been correct. It had been a deliberate ploy to allow Bartolomé’s screams to wake everyone that first morning in order to strike terror into our hearts and make us more malleable. Father Besian had known that the story would run through the town like a fever: all he had to do was sit back and wait for the expected results.
The trials came to an end. Half a dozen or so people had been found guilty of a number of transgressions. An old man who’d converted to Christianity a while ago had, as his years progressed, returned to the rites of his Jewish religion. There was to be a series of public punishments. Those guilty of minor offences would confess in church on Sunday and be given prayers to say or works of charity to perform. More serious sinners, like Bartolomé, were to be publicly scourged. The man found guilty of heresy was to be burned alive.
It was after nine one evening when we heard this news. Father Besian was at the town gaol. Despite the lateness of the hour Papa went to speak to him.
I waited up until Papa returned. When he came into the house, I poured him some wine – not the heavy, sickly type that we had been consuming since Lorena had taken charge of our kitchen staff, but a glass from a bottle of plain country wine that we’d drunk when Mama was alive.
Papa took the glass from my hand and sipped from it. Then he set it down upon the sideboard.
‘You’ve not been able to obtain a pardon for this man?’ I said.
‘Not a complete pardon, no.’ He sat down heavily in a nearby chair.
I went and knelt before him. My face was on a level with his own. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring beyond me to some inner private place where I had no access.
‘Would money help?’ I asked him. ‘You can have everything I own. The necklace Mama left me. Anything.’
He smiled and touched my face as if seeing me properly for the first time in almost a year. ‘Sweet Zarita,’ he said. ‘Kind, like your mama; but impulsive, too impulsive for your own good.’
‘Will they not grant this old man mercy?’ I asked.
He waited for a moment before replying. ‘I have obtained for him’ – he rubbed his forehead with his hand – ‘a mercy of sorts.’
‘They will not burn him then?’
‘They will burn him,’ my father replied grimly. ‘It’s just that he’ll not be alive when they do it.’