THE COMMOTION SUCCEEDED in wakening Señora Eloisa.
We heard her coming from her room to open the door into the corridor.
I slipped behind the bedroom door as soldiers entered the apartment, and I hid as they arrested her: Zarita, daughter of the magistrate, Don Vicente Alonso de Carbazón.
She maintained her bearing as the captain of the soldiers unfurled a parchment, announced her name and made the declaration of her arrest. And then, as they came for her, she took a tiny step forward and opened her bedroom door to its full extent so that I was better concealed behind it. She chose not to reveal that a person who had vowed to kill her was lurking there. There was a gap between the door hinges and the wall, and I saw the scene as it happened. Zarita was calm but her hands were shaking.
‘This is a mistake!’ Señora Eloisa’s voice was shrill.
‘No mistake,’ said the man who was in charge. He showed her the warrant. ‘The woman known as Zarita, of Las Conchas, is to come with us, tonight, and at once.’
Señora Eloisa begged them to give Zarita time to dress, but they refused, so she took off her own long dressing gown and threw it over Zarita’s shoulders. The soldiers seemed to treat Zarita with some respect as they laid hands on her, but everyone in all Spain knew that as soon as the doors of the Inquisition dungeon closed behind the arrested person, a different set of rules applied.
‘I will petition the queen! I will send for your aunt! I will, I will.’ Señora Eloisa collapsed in a chair, weeping.
Just before they led her off, in a voice of great command Zarita said, ‘I have something I wish to tell you.’
Ah, now! Her true character is revealed! I gripped my knife, expecting her to cry out and tell them where I was hidden. I thought: She’s had a chance to think on the situation and, as she herself is in no immediate danger of death, it might stand in her favour if she betrayed a would-be assassin to the authorities. It will be her way of ensuring I am punished for causing the death of her father.
I heard Zarita speak up in a loud voice.
‘It may be that I am not afforded the opportunity to make a statement. I wish to say that any ill I ever did to God, or man, or woman, was not by cruel intention; rather it was by thoughtless foolishness. I ask forgiveness of those I have wronged, and I freely forgive those who may have caused me offence.’
The soldier in charge made a click of impatience in his throat. It wasn’t an odd thing for a prisoner to say. He’d probably heard similar declarations as he dragged protesting prisoners away to be tortured. But I knew for whom it was meant.
It was for me.