Chapter 17 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
THE HOLY OFFICE
It would seem that all had been settled and pre-determined by Frey Luis with the representatives of the Holy Office in Santander that morning before he returned to the Demoiselle to make his arrest. For at the mole, when they landed from the barge, the prisoners found horses and a mule-litter waiting in the charge of a small company of javelin-men. Here no time was lost. Under the eyes of a considerable gaping concourse of people of all conditions attracted thither by the presence of the apparitors of the Inquisition, the Lady Margaret was consigned to the litter; Don Pedro was set on horseback between two mounted alguaziles; the friar tucked up his gown to bestride a mule; the remainder of the company, numbering in all a full score, got to horse; and so they departed.
It had been determined that because the seat of the Asturian nobleman, Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, was in the neighbourhood of Oviedo, to Oviedo he should be sent together with the woman who was accused of having practiced magic against him. The resources of the country were at the disposal of the Holy Office. Frequent relays of horses such as no other power in the kingdom, save the royal authority itself, could have commanded were available to the apparitors. They travelled swiftly along the coast, with the ocean on their right and the mountains on their left. They left Santander in the early morning of Thursday, the 5th of October, setting foot ashore at almost the very hour in which at Greenwich Sir Gervase Crosby and Sir Oliver Tressilian were stepping aboard the Rose of the World to give chase. Such good speed did those horsemen make that by the afternoon of Sunday, dusty, jaded and saddle-worn, it is true, they brought up at the portals of the Holy House in Oviedo, having covered over a hundred miles in less than three days.
To the Lady Margaret, tossed and jolted in the litter, without knowledge of whither she was being taken or to what purpose, the journey was but a continuation of the nightmare begun upon the deck of the Demoiselle on Thursday morning. She afterwards confessed that for most of the time she was in a state of stupor, her reason numbed, her wits befogged. The only thing that she clearly perceived was that Don Pedro was caught with her in a snare for which his own presumptuous folly was responsible. Whatever her present danger, at least it had removed her from all that Don Pedro had intended.
But in escaping the rock of Scylla she had been sucked into the whirlpool of Charybdis.
She would have questioned Frey Luis during those days of travel. But Frey Luis rigorously and studiously refrained from approaching her, even when they paused for food or rest or change of horses.
Don Pedro, now delivered of his gag and no longer pinioned, rode between his guards with Hell in his soul, as may well be imagined. His frame of mind needs no explaining. It could be one thing only; what it was.
Oviedo, however, did not prove the journey's end, as was supposed. One night only was spent there, and this to the Lady Margaret in conditions of discomfort such as she had never known. Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna was the first among Asturian noblemen, and in the province of Oviedo, which contained his vast estates, he was accounted second in importance only to the king himself. To proceed against him in the very heart of a province in which he was of such weight and consequence would be a serious step, entailing grave responsibilities and provoking perhaps even graver consequences. It was a responsibility which the inquisitors of Oviedo desired in common prudence to avoid, if to avoid it were not inconsistent with their duty to the Holy Office. Nor was his temporal consequence the only consideration; Don Pedro commanded also spiritual and even inquisitorial influence by the fact that the Inquisitor, General Don Gaspar de Quiroga, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, was his uncle. This rendered doubly grave the responsibility of dealing with his case. A brief consideration revealed not only the prudent, but actually the proper course to the inquisitors of Oviedo.
Don Pedro and the woman responsible for his implication in the terrible charge which was levelled against her by Frey Luis Salcedo, should be sent for trial to Toledo where he would be under the eye of the Inquisitor-General, his uncle. The reason for this decision, duly registered by the notary of tribunal at Oviedo, was to be discovered in his rank and in the particular nature of the offence.
Frey Luis, perceiving their motives and accounting them pusillanimous, sought to combat them, and to insist that in defiance of all perils and worldly considerations, the matter should be dealt with here. But his arguments were swept aside, and on the morrow he was constrained to set out again with his prisoners upon the long journey south to Toledo.
Upon that journey a week was spent. They quitted the Asturias by the defiles of the Cantabrian Mountains, emerging upon the plains of old Castile, going by way of Valladolid and Segovia, then crossing the Sierra of Guadarrama and descending to the fertile valley of the Tagus. It was a journey that well might have afforded interest to an English lady had that English lady's interest not been already unpleasantly preoccupied by the pains and perils of her own situation and the gravest doubts of the future. Yet a hope she nourished based upon her English nationality. At Oviedo she had not been brought before any person of authority with whom she could lodge her claim for protection at the hands of the ambassador of France in the absence of any ambassador of England just then at the Escurial. But when formal action against her came to be taken, as she supposed to be the intention, of necessity she must be brought before some court, and then would be her opportunity.
This opportunity presented itself at Toledo on the day after her arrival there.
The prisoners were lodged in the Holy House, as the palace-prison of the Holy Office was always styled. A long, low, two-storied building in a narrow street near Santo Domingo el Antiguo, it did not materially differ in appearance from any other palace in Toledo, if we except the splendid Alcazar crowning the granite heights of the great city. It was almost windowless on the side of the street, as a result of the Moorish influence as dominant in architecture as in every other factor of life' in this city, where until less than ten years ago Arabic was as freely spoken in the streets as Spanish, and ceased to be spoken freely then only in obedience to the interdict against the use of the language.
The long, low white building presented to the world a countenance almost as blank and inscrutable as that of the inquisitors who, behind its portals, laboured so zealously to maintain the purity of the Faith. Admission was gained by a wide gothic doorway, closed by massive double gates of timber studded with great iron bosses. Above the doorway was hung a shield upon which was figured the green cross of the Holy Office, a cross of two rudely-hewn, rudely-trimmed boughs, from which some burgeoning twigs still sprouted; under this was to be read the motto Exsurge Domine et judica causam Tuam. In one of the wings of the great door a smaller door or postern was practised. In the other, at a man's height, there was a Judas grille with its little shutter. Through this gothic doorway you entered a vast stone hall, whence, on your immediate right, a wooden staircase ascended to the floor above; at the inner end and on the same side a stone-flagged corridor, like a tunnel led away into the unknown; from this, on the left soon after entering it, stone steps led down into cellars, dungeons and other underground places. From the cool gloom of the great hall there was a view, through farther gates stoutly latticed in their upper halves of the sunlit quadrangle about which the building stood, of green shrubs, of flowers, of vines carried upon a trellis of black beams that were supported by rough-hewn granite pillars, of a fig-tree shading a brick wall, with its windlass above, and', beyond all this the fine Moorish tracery of the cloisters, where black-and-white Dominicans paced slowly in couples reciting the office of the day. A place of infinite peace and rest it seemed, faintly pervaded by an odour of incense and of wax from the distant chapel.
Many an unfortunate Judaizer, relapsed Morisco or suspected heretic coming in terror of the apparitors who haled him thither, must upon entering the palace have felt some of his terror melting from him in the instinctive assurance that in such a place no evil could befall him, an impression to be confirmed presently by the benignity of his examiners.
By this benignity the Lady Margaret was agreeably surprised on the morning after her arrival there, when she was fetched from the wretched cell with its straw pallet, wooden table and chair, where she had spent so miserable a night of sleeplessness and resentment.
Two familiars, lay brothers of St. Dominic, conducted her to the small room where her examiners awaited her. It was on the right of the long corridor on the ground floor. Its windows opened upon the garden, but they were set so high that whilst admitting abundant light and air, no outlook was to be obtained from them.
In this austere room with its whitewashed walls sat the ecclesiastical court that was to make inquisition into her ladyship's case. At an oblong table of square deal upon which there was a crucifix between two tall candles and a vellum-bound copy of the Gospels, sat three cowled figures: the presiding inquisitor, Frey Juan Arrenzuelo, with the Diocesan Ordinary on his right and the Fiscal Advocate on his left. At right angles with these, at the table's end, on their left, sat another Dominican, proclaimed, by his quills, his tablets and the inkstand of orange-root before him, the notary of the tribunal.
Beside the notary, on his left, sat one who did not rightly belong to the court, and whose place in the proceedings would normally have excluded him from open participation in them. This was the delator, Frey Luis Salcedo, admitted here partly because of the peculiar character of the case which would have rendered futile the concealment of his identity, partly because his excellent knowledge of the language of the accused rendered his presence as desirable to her as to the court itself.
A wooden bench ranged against the wall at the back and a stool set before the table, completed the furniture of that bleak chamber.
The Lady Margaret introduced by her guarding familiars was a startlingly different figure from the cringing, panic-stricken prisoners whom the tribunal was accustomed to behold. Her demeanour was proud to the point of haughtiness. Her step was firm, she carried her head high, and between her fine brows there was a frown of impatience, of displeasure, almost of menace. Thus might a great lady frown upon impertinent underlings who obstructed her.
Her beauty, too, and the particular quality of it, was in itself a disturbing factor to these austere men. She still wore that gown of dark red velvet in which she had been carried off, with a farthingale, so narrow as to be no more than a suggestion of a farthingale, entirely failing to dissemble the supple slimness of her body. The corsage was cut low and square revealing the snowy whiteness of her throat. Her exquisitely-featured face was pale, it is true; the delicate tints had faded from it under weariness and stress. But from its pallor she seemed to gather an increased air of purity and virginity. If the lines of her mouth were resolute, they were of a resoluteness in dignity and good; if the glance of her blue eyes was steady it was a steadiness derived from a clear conscience and a proper pride.
The inquisitors considered her in silence for some seconds as she advanced. Then the cowled heads were lowered. It may be that her stateliness, her calm, her beauty and the aura of purity and worth in which she seemed to move made them tremble lest the contemplation of these outward and so often deceptive signs should cause them to weaken in the stern duty that lay before them. Only Frey Luis, his cowl thrown back from his tonsured head, continued steadily to regard her, a sombre wonder in his deep-set eyes. He was marvelling anew, no doubt, as he was presently to express it to the tribunal, that Satan should be permitted so admirably and deceptively to empanoply his servants.
The familiars halted her before the table. Frey Juan uttered three words rapidly in Spanish, whereupon one of her guards stooped to thrust forward the stool, and made a sign to her to be seated. She looked questioningly at the Inquisitor, who bowed his head, whereupon composedly she sat down, folding her hands in her lap, and waited.
The familiars fell back at a sign from Frey Juan, who then leaned forward a little, and considered her anew. Reflected light from those whitewashed walls dispelled the shadows cast about his face by the cowl. It was a lean, pallid face with solemn eyes and a wistful sensitive mouth; a gentle, pitiful face; a face to command confidence and even affection. When he spoke his voice was low and level, gentle and persuasive. It went with his face, and, like it, possessed a rare quality of attractiveness. It was impossible to mistrust or fear a man with such a voice, at moments almost womanly in its tenderness though always masculine in tone. The Diocesan Ordinary beside him was a shorter man, rubicund of countenance with twinkling eyes and a humorous mouth. The Fiscal was stern-faced with deep lines in cheeks that sagged below the line of his jaw, giving him an almost dog-like appearance.
The Inquisitor addressed her in English, which he spoke haltingly but without other difficulty. His knowledge of the language had led to his appointment to deal with the case. He began by asking her if she spoke Spanish or French, and when she had answered in the negative, he sighed.
"Then I do what I can in your own tongue. Frey Luis Salcedo will help me if it is needful."
He might have been a physician whom she had come to consult about her health, or a Morisco merchant hoping to persuade her to make some purchases from among his Moorish wares. He proceeded, as the forms prescribed, to inquire her name, her age and her place of abode. Her replies were swiftly written down by the notary, spelled out to him by Frey Luis.
The inquisitor passed on. "The informations we are given are that you have by misfortune been reared in the Lutheran heresy. Do you confess this?"
She smiled a little, which startled them all. It was not usual for an accused to smile in that place, especially when asked an incriminating question.
"Whether I confess it or not, sir, does not seem to me to be your concern."
It was a moment before Frey Juan recovered. Very gently then he addressed her:
"It is our concern to safeguard the purity of the Faith and to suppress all that may imperil it."
"In Spain," she said. "But I am not in Spain from choice or of my own will. I have been brought here by force. I am here because of an outrage committed by a Spanish gentleman. The only concern with me of Spanish laws, whether civil or ecclesiastical, if administered with any pretence of justice, should be to right the wrong I have suffered, and to enable me to return home with the least delay. I cannot imagine myself before any Spanish court, civil or ecclesiastical, in any quality but that of an accuser and plaintiff suing for justice."
Frey Juan translated the sum of this to his fellow inquisitors. Amazement overspread their countenances in the moment of silence that followed before Frey Luis broke in:
"Is more needed to establish my accusation? She stands upon forms of law, arguing with diabolical skill, like an experienced advocate. Heard any ever of a woman with the wit to do that? Observe her calm; her air of insolent contempt. Has any woman ever so confronted you? Can you doubt whence she derives her strength and whence her ready arguments?"
Frey Juan waved him into silence. "You are here as a witness, Frey Luis, not as an advocate for or against the accused. You shall speak, if you please, only to those matters upon which you may be questioned, only to the facts within your knowledge. Inferences from those facts, like judgment upon them, are for us."
Frey Luis bowed his head under the mildly delivered rebuke, and the inquisitor passed on to answer her ladyship.
"Courts, secular and ecclesiastical, have their forms of law upon which it is lawful and proper to insist. Theirs it is to judge only of torts between man and man. But this Holy tribunal is above and apart, since its function is to judge of the torts man does to God. Here the' ordinary forms of law do not weigh. We have our own forms, and we proceed, under God's guidance and by God's grace, as seems best to his Holy service." He paused, then added, in his gentle voice—"I tell you this, my sister, so that you may dismiss any hope of sheltering yourself behind anything which may have only an accidental connection with your case."
Still there was no sign of dismay in those clear eyes. The frown of impatience between them grew more marked. "However contemptuous you may be of forms, and whatever the accusations you may hold against me, there yet remains a proper order of procedure, and this must compel you first to hear the accusation which I have to lodge, since the offence committed against me occurred before any offence for which it can be shown I am answerable. When you have heard this accusation, to the truth of which Frey Luis Salcedo there is a witness, and when you have redressed the wrong, whether or not you punish the offender, you will find that in redressing it all occasion for any charges against me will have disappeared. This because, as I understand you, my only offence lies in that being a Lutheran I am in Spain. I repeat that I did not come to Spain of my own will, and the righting of the wrong of which I complain will itself remove me from Spain, so that I shall cease to contaminate its saintly soil."
Frey Juan frowned and slowly shook his head. "Sister, you mock!" he sadly reproved her.
"Sometimes it is only by mockery that the truth may be rendered apparent." Then she raised her voice, and admonished them almost sternly. "Sirs, you are wasting time and abusing your powers. I am not a subject of the King of Spain, and I am not within his dominions of my own choice. England has no envoy at present in Madrid. But the envoy of France will serve my case, and I desire to appeal to him and to place myself under his protection. You cannot deny me this. You know it."
"Place yourself under God's protection, my sister. For there is no other protection can avail you now." Frey Juan grew more and more pitiful in manner, and sincerely, for he was profoundly touched to see this misguided creature using such vain pleas to battle against the holy toils in which she was taken. It was like watching the futile struggles of a netted bird, a thing to touch the heart of any compassionate man.
He conferred with his fellows; told them of her obduracy and perversity. The Fiscal Advocate thereafter spoke at length. The Ordinary added a word or two of approbation. Frey Juan inclined his head, and turned to her once more. The notary wrote briskly meanwhile.
"We are of opinion that to cut short and end all argument, we should take you upon your own ground. Your Lutheranism you have now admitted. Of this we may take a merciful view since it is an error in which you were reared. We may also, since mercy is our norm and guide, take a merciful view of your other errors, since they are the more or less natural fruits of the first. But if you desire at our hands the mercy we are so ready to dispense, it is necessary that you earn it by a contrite spirit, and a full and frank confession of the sins of which you are accused."
She would have interrupted here; but his fine hand suddenly raised gave her pause. It would save time perhaps if she let him have his way and heard him out.
"The plea that you are not in Spain of your free will cannot avail you. You are in Spain as a result of the practises of which you are accused. So that the responsibility for your presence here lies as much with you as if of your own free will you had journeyed hither."
This moved her scorn and disgust. "I have heard my father say that there is no distortion of facts beyond the power of casuistical argument. I begin to perceive how shrewdly that was said."
"You do not ask of what you are accused?"
"Of carrying off Don Pedro de Mendoza, I suppose," she mocked him.
His countenance remained gently impassive. "It comes to that; it might be so expressed."
Her eyes grew round as she stared at him. Frey Luis was whispering swift interpretations to the notary, whose quill scratched briskly. For some moments it was the only sound. Then Frey Juan resumed:
"You are accused of having exercised the damnable arts of sorcery against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, of having bewitched him, so that false to the faith of which he has ever been a valiant champion, false to his honour and his God, he proposed to take a heretic to wife. You are also accused of blasphemy, which is to be sought in the case of one who has abandoned herself to these diabolical practices. Do you confess your guilt?"
"Do I confess? Confess to being a witch?" It was too much for her fortitude even. She pressed her hand to her brow. "Lord! I begin to think myself in Bedlam!"
"What is that? Bedlam?" Frey Juan looked from her to Frey Luis, who explained the allusion.
Frey Juan shrugged, and continued as if she had not spoken. "So that if the accusation is true your plea that you are here because a gentleman of Spain has offended against you must fail. Your claim to appeal to the secular courts through the envoy of France or another must also fail. You are here because of an offence committed by you against a Spanish noble, entailing an infinitely greater offence against the Faith and the majesty of God which brings you within the jurisdiction of this holy tribunal. You will understand now how vain was your plea, since before any secular tribunal may hear your accusation against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, it will be necessary that you clear yourself of the accusation against yourself."
She answered promptly, having by now recovered her self-command. "That should not be difficult, provided that there is any common sense in Spain. Who is my accuser? Is it Don Pedro? Does he shelter himself behind this grotesque falsehood to escape the consequences of his evil? Is it not clear to you that the testimony of such a man in such a case is not to be believed, that it would not be admissible before any tribunal having the flimsiest sense of justice?"
The inquisitor did not answer until again he had interpreted her question, and taken the feeling of his coadjutors, and also, in this instance, of Frey Luis.
"All that," he said then, "is as clear to us as to you, and Don Pedro is not your accuser. The accusation rests upon independent testimony, and that of a man well qualified by his learning to draw conclusions." He paused a moment. "It is not the custom of this tribunal to disclose delators to an accused. But we depart from our rule, lest you should feel that you are receiving less than justice. Your accuser is Frey Luis Salcedo."
She turned her golden head to look at the friar where he sat beside the notary. Their glances met, and the stern, glowing eyes of the Dominican firmly bore the scorn of her clear regard. Slowly her glance returned to the wistful, compassionate face of Frey Juan.
"It was to Frey Luis that I appealed for protection at a time when I perceived myself to lie in the worst danger that may threaten a virtuous woman. Is that his evidence that I have practised witchcraft?"
The Inquisitor asked a question of his coadjutors. They bowed, the Fiscal rapping out a dozen words in his harsh voice, and turning as he did so to, the notary.
From among his papers, the notary selected a document which he handed to the Fiscal. The Fiscal glanced at it, and passed it on to Frey Juan.
"You shall hear the actual terms of the accusation," said the Inquisitor. "We show you every patience and consideration." He began to read.
And now her ladyship learnt how on the evening of her first being carried aboard the Demoiselle, Frey Luis had listened at the cabin door whilst Don Pedro had talked to her, and afterwards had written down what he had overheard, a deal of it in the actual words that Don Pedro had employed. The reading of the document revived her memories of that interview; what Frey Luis had set down corresponded with those memories. It was an accurate, a scrupulously accurate report.
Amongst other of Don Pedro's sayings on that occasion to which her attention was now drawn, the following was particularly stressed by the beautifully modulated voice of the Inquisitor: "I did not ask to love you. I did not even desire it of my own volition. The desire was planted in me. It came I know not whence, a behest which there was no disobeying, compelling, overmastering."
That quotation closed the lengthy charge, seeming to supply the crowning proof and confirmation of the arguments by which Frey Luis proceeded with his accusation. In its beginnings this accusation almost appeared to be levelled at Don Pedro. It stated how he had boarded the ship which had gone to fetch him from England, bearing with him a woman whom it subsequently transpired he was abducting. Frey Luis alluded to Don Pedro's antecedents; the virtuous, honourable ways of his life; the piety which had ever marked his actions and led him to enrol himself as a lay tertiary of the Order of St. Dominic, a member of the Militia Christi; the clean untainted blood that flowed in his veins. He pointed out his difficulty in believing that such a man should be spontaneously guilty of the offence which he found him in the act of committing. His relief to discover that Don Pedro included marriage in his intentions towards this woman, was changed to stark horror when he discovered her to be a heretic. If it was difficult to believe that Don Pedro should have gone to such lengths of violence for the gratification of carnal lusts, it was impossible to believe that he should contemplate with equanimity the infinitely greater sin which was now disclosed. His replies to the remonstrances of Frey Luis showed that he had not given the matter a proper consideration or even ascertained what were the religious beliefs of the woman he was proposing to make his wife. This in itself betrayed a culpable negligence amounting in all the circumstances to a sin. He recognised it to the extent of permitting Frey Luis to proceed to preach conversion to this woman. But it appeared to Frey Luis that the permission was given, not out of such zeal for the Faith as men would have looked for in such a noble as Don Pedro, but merely out of expediency.
Followed in great detail an account of the friar's efforts at conversion, of their failure, of the blasphemous pleasantries and demoniacal arguments with which his endeavours were met by this heretical Englishwoman, who quoted Scripture freely and perverted it to her own ends as glibly as Satan was notoriously in the habit of doing.
It was then that he perceived the hellish source of her inspiration, and first conceived the true explanation of Don Pedro's conduct to lie in the fact that he was bewitched. This was now abundantly confirmed. There were Don Pedro's sacrilegious threats to himself in utter disregard of his sacred office and the habit which he wore; there was his violent resistance to the officers of the Inquisition at Santander and the sacrilegious shedding of blood before he was taken; but chiefly, and entirely conclusive, there was the admission of Don Pedro himself—in the words quoted—that in the matter of his unholy love for the prisoner he was driven, against his own will and desires, by a force outside of himself, whose source he did not know, whose impulse he had not the strength to resist.
What, asked Frey Luis in conclusion, could this force be, when all the circumstances were considered, but the agency of Satan, exercised by a woman who had abandoned herself to the exercise of those unholy arts? 'What purpose was here to be served but to introduce the corrupting poison of heresy into Spain through the bewitched person of Don Pedro and the offspring of this terrible union which he contemplated?
The reading ceased. The Inquisitor set down the last sheet before him, and his piteous eyes were levelled on her ladyship across the intervening table.
"You know now both your accuser and the precise terms of the accusation. Do you deny anything that is here set down?"
She was very still and white; there was no longer any challenge in her eyes or any shadow of smile upon her lips. She began to perceive something of the terrible toils which prejudice, superstition and fanatical reasoning had woven for her. But she made nevertheless a brave effort to defend herself.
"I deny none of the facts set down," she answered steadily. "They have been recorded with a scrupulous accuracy, such as I should have expected in a man of truth and honour. In fact they are as true as the reasoning from them is untrue and as the deductions from them are false and fantastic."
Frey Luis translated, and the notary recorded her reply. Then Frey Juan took up the matter with her.
"To what force, other than the force here assumed, could Don Pedro possibly have been alluding in his words to you?"
"How should I know that? Don Pedro spoke in imagery, I think, seeking in fanciful terms to palliate his monstrous offence. His explanation was false, as false as are your inferences from it. It is all falsehood built on falsehood. Unreason growing from unreason. God of Mercy, it is all a nightmare! Maddening!"
Distress lent her a momentary vehemence of tone and even of gesture.
Still the Inquisitor showed only a saintly patience.
"But unless you had practised some such arts upon him, how are we to explain Don Pedro's betrayal of his honour, of his piety, of his duty and of all those things which birth and rearing are known to have rendered sacred to him? You may not know the history of the great house of Mendoza, a house unfailingly devoted to the service of God and the King, or you would understand how impossible all this would be to one of its members who had not gone mad."
On that she answered swiftly: "I do not say that he has not gone mad. Indeed, it seems, the only explanation of his conduct. I have heard that men go mad for love. Perhaps..."
But the Inquisitor gently interrupted her. He was smiling wistfully.
"You are quick to make a point."
"Satan lends her all his subtlety," growled Frey Luis by way of interjection.
"You are quick to make a point," Frey Juan repeated, "and to seize on an explanation that will serve instead of the correct one. But..." He sighed and shook his head. "It is to waste time, my sister." He changed his tone. He leaned forward, setting his elbows on the table, and spoke with quiet persuasive earnestness.
"We who are to judge you," he said, "are also to help and serve you; and this is the greater of our functions towards you. The expiation of your offence is worthless unless it is sincere. And it cannot be sincere unless it is accompanied by an abjuration of the abominable arts to which the Devil has seduced you. For the Lutheran heresy which you practise we must pity rather than blame you, since this is the result of the error of your teachers. For the rest, we must also pity you, since but for the heretical teaching behind it, that would not have been possible to you. But if we are to render effective our pity, and employ it, as is our duty, to rescue your mind from error and your soul from the terrible peril of damnation, you, my sister, must co-operate with us by a full and frank confession of the offence with which you are charged."
"Confess?" she cried. "Confess to this abominable nonsense, to these false inferences?" She laughed short and mirthlessly. "I am to confess that the Lady Margaret Trevanion practices witchcraft? God help me, and God help you! You'll need more evidence I think than this before you can establish so grotesque a charge."
It was the Fiscal who, being informed of her words, delivered the reply that became his office, requesting Frey Luis to interpret it to her.
"The further evidence that we may need for your conviction we look to you to furnish us, and we conjure you to do it, so that your soul may be saved from everlasting hell. If contrition itself, if a sincere repentance of your faults will not suffice to draw confession from you, the Holy Office has means at its command that will lead the most recalcitrant to avow the truth."
She went cold with horror at those words so coldly uttered by Frey Luis. For a moment they robbed her of the power of speech. She was conscious of those three cowled forms immediately facing her, and the pitiful face of Frey Juan Arrenzuelo out of which two eyes regarded her with a compassion almost divine in its apparent limitlessness.
He raised a hand in dismissal of her. One of the familiars touched her shoulder. The audience was at an end—suspended, in the inquisitorial term.
Mechanically she rose, and knowing fear at last in fullest measure, she suffered herself to be led back along the chill dark corridor to her cell.