Chapter 23 The Hounds of God by Rafael Sabatini
THE AUTO DE FÉ
Having been driven by the spiritually minatory persuasions of his confessor into that immolation of his monstrous pride, King Philip, in prey to a reaction common enough in such cases, displayed a feverish, anxious haste to perform in the eleventh hour what three days ago might have been done in dignified leisure.
An hour or so before noon on that Wednesday, Sir Gervase Crosby was hailed from the underground stone chamber of the Escurial in which he had been imprisoned. Such had been his angry distress at his failure to save Margaret, that it is to be doubted if through those interminable days of maddeningly impotent conjecture, he had given a thought to the fate in store for himself.
He was brought now, not before the King, who could not bear the humiliation of announcing his surrender to this man, whose bones he had hoped to have broken in the torture-chamber of the Inquisition, but before the little hirsute gentleman he had seen at work in the royal closet on the occasion of his audience. This was the secretary Rodriguez, who, himself, had penned at the King's dictation the letter to the Inquisitor General of Castile, which His Majesty had signed and sealed, the letter which the secretary now proffered to Sir Gervase.
In curt terms and with great dignity of manner, the little man informed Sir Gervase of the situation in a formal speech which sounded like a lesson learnt by heart.
"His Majesty the King of Spain, having further considered the matter of the letter from the Queen of England, has decided to comply with the request contained in it. He has reached this decision in spite of the gross terms employed by Her Majesty, and unintimidated by threats which he is persuaded that she would not dare in any case to execute. He has been moved solely by a justice inclining to clemency, having ascertained that a wrong has been done by a subject of his own which for the honour of Spain it behoves him to right."
It was at this stage that he displayed the sealed package which he held.
"The woman, whose surrender is demanded, is a prisoner of the Holy Office, charged not only with heresy, but with witchcraft exercised against Don Pedro de Mendoza y Luna, whereby he was so far seduced from his duty to his God and his own honour, that he carried her off and brought her here to Spain. She lies at present in the prison of the Holy House at Toledo, having been in the hands of the Inquisitors of the Faith from the moment that she landed on Spanish soil. So far, as we believe, no harm or hurt has come to her beyond the inconvenience of detention. But she is under sentence to suffer in the Auto de Fé which is to be held to-morrow in Toledo, wherefore you are enjoined by His Majesty to make all speed in bearing this letter to Don Gaspar de Quiroga, Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo and Inquisitor General of the Faith. This letter commands him to deliver into your hands the person of the Lady Margaret Trevanion, and you are further accorded, by His Majesty's gracious clemency, fourteen days in which to leave Spain taking this woman with you. Should you still be within His Majesty's dominions after the expiry of that term, the consequences will be of the utmost gravity."
Sir Gervase took the proffered letter in a hand that trembled. Relief was blending with a fresh dreadful anxiety to unman him. He knew the distance to Toledo, perceived how short was time and how the slightest mischance even now that this miracle had happened might render him too late.
But the King was now as anxious as he was that there should be no mischance. He was further informed by the Secretary Rodriguez that a suitable escort would be provided for him as far as Toledo, and that the relays of horses maintained by the royal post would be at his disposal. Finally, he was handed a brief document, also bearing the royal arms and signature, commanding all dutiful subjects of the King of Spain to assist him and his companions in his journey from Toledo to Santander and warning them that who hindered him did so at his peril. Upon that the secretary dismissed him with an enjoinder to set out at once, and not to delay.
He was conducted to the courtyard by the officer who had fetched him from his prison. Here he was delivered into the care of another officer, who waited there with six mounted men and a spare horse. His weapons were restored to him, and riding beside the officer at the head of that little escort, he quitted the gloomy palace of the Escurial, and galloped away from the granite mass of the Guadarrama Mountains towards Villalba. Here, turning south, they rode at speed down the narrow valley through which the River Guadarrama winds its way to the mighty Tagus. But the road was rough, often no better than a mule-track, and delays were frequent and inevitable, with the result that it was nightfall before they reached Brunete, where fresh horses would be available.
Still forty miles from Toledo, and informed that the Auto de Fé would be held in the forenoon, Sir Gervase was racked by a desperate anxiety, which would not permit him to take here even the hour's rest which the officer had advised as they approached the place. The fellow, a slim youngster of about Sir Gervase's own age, showed himself courteous and considerate, but he was a Catalan and spoke with an accent that rendered him almost incomprehensible to the Englishman whose imperfect knowledge of Spanish was confined to pure Castilian.
At Brunete, however, a set-back awaited them. Three fresh horses only were available. Normally a dozen were stabled there. But a courier from the Inquisitor General to the Council of State in Madrid had passed that way at noon, travelling with an escort, and had made a heavy draught upon the royal post.
The young officer, whose name was Nuno Lopez, a man of a New-Christian family, in whose blood there was a Moorish taint, accepted the situation with the placid Saracen fatalism of his forbears. He shrugged.
"No hay que hacer," he announced. "There is nothing to be done."
You conceive Sir Gervase's exasperation at this calm finality. "Nothing to be done?" he cried. "Something is to be done to get me to Toledo by sunrise."
"That is impossible." Don Nuno was imperturbable. Perhaps he was glad to have so good a reason for not spending a night in the saddle. "In six hours time—by midnight perhaps—the cattle left here by the Grand Inquisitor's courier may be in case to travel. But they will hardly travel fast."
Sir Gervase sensed rather than understood Don Nuno's meaning. He answered very slowly and emphatically so that Don Nuno might have no difficulty in understanding him.
"There are three fresh horses here; enough for you and me and one of your men. Let us take these at once, and go."
Standing in the yellow light that streamed from the open door of the post-house to mingle with the fading October daylight, Don Nuno smiled tolerantly as he shook his head.
"It would not be safe. There are brigands in these hills."
But to this Sir Gervase had a ready answer. "Oh, if you're afraid of brigands, saddle me one of the fresh horses, and I'll ride on alone."
The officer no longer smiled. He had drawn himself up stiffly, and above his tightened mouth his moustachios appeared to bristle. For a moment Sir Gervase thought the fellow was going to strike him. Then the Catalan spun round on his heel, and to his men, dismounted and standing in line at their horses' head, he spat out in a rasping, angry voice orders which to Sir Gervase were utterly incomprehensible.
Within five minutes the three fresh horses were waiting and one of Don Nuno's troopers with them. Meanwhile Don Nuno had provided himself with supper, consisting of a piece of bread and an onion. He washed this down with a draught of rough Andalusian wine, and climbed into the saddle.
"Vamos!" he peremptorily commanded.
Sir Gervase mounted, and the three men trotted out of the village and resumed their journey.
As they rode, the officer found it necessary to ease his mind. Addressing his companion uncompromisingly as "Sir English Dog"—Senor perro de inglez—he informed him that he had said something which hurt his honour, and which must be corrected between them as soon as occasion served.
Sir Gervase had no desire to find himself with a quarrel on his hands. Nightmare enough was provided already by this ride through the dark against time and to a destination bristling with unknown difficulties. He swallowed his vexation, ignored the insult in the form of address, and apologised for any offence he might have given.
"It will not serve," said the Catalan. "You have placed me under the necessity of proving my courage."
"You are proving it now," Sir Gervase reassured him. "This was all the proof I desired of you. I knew you would afford it, which was why I demanded it. Forgive the subterfuge which would have been wasted on any but a brave man."
The Catalan made out with difficulty his meaning, and was mollified.
"Well, well," he grumbled. "For the present we will leave it there. But later on a little more may be necessary."
"As you please. Meanwhile, in God's name, let us remain friends."
They rode amain through that lonely valley, where an almost full moon was casting inky fantastic shadows and turning the gurgling stream whose course they followed into a ribbon of rippling silver. It grew very cold. The wind came icily from the Sierra to the north, and Don Nuno and his man wrapped themselves tightly in their cloaks for protection. Sir Gervase had no cloak, not even a jerkin over his velvet doublet. But he was insensible to the cold as to any other physical sensation. He was conscious of nothing beyond a lump in his throat cast up there it seemed by the anxiety consuming his soul.
An hour or so after midnight, his horse put its foot in a hole in the road and came down heavily. It was a moment before Sir Gervase could raise himself from where he had been flung. Beyond some bruises, he had suffered no hurt, but he was still half stunned, as in the moonlight he watched Don Nuno running his hand over the fetlock of the quivering beast which had meanwhile also risen.
The officer announced in a voice of relief that there was no harm done. But a moment or two later it was found that the horse was lame, and could not be ridden further.
They were, Don Nuno announced, near the village of Chozas de Can. It could not be more than a couple of miles away. The trooper surrendered his mount to Sir Gervase, and taking the reins of the lamed horse, trudged along beside it whilst the other two moved with him at that slow walking pace, Sir Gervase's giddiness from his fall dispelled by mounting anxiety at the loss of time involved in this snail's crawl.
It took them an hour to reach Chozas de Can. They knocked up a tavern in the village "in the King's name." But horses there were none to be had. So the trooper was left there, and Sir Gervase and Nuno Lopez now pushed on alone.
They were within twenty-five miles of Toledo, and only some twelve or thirteen miles from Villamiel, where fresh horses awaited them for the last swift stage of the journey. But, however swift might be that last stage when they came to it, the present one was little swifter than had been the progress since the laming of Sir Gervase's horse. The moon had set, and in that narrow valley-road the darkness was almost palpable. They advanced at little more than a walking pace, until the autumn dawn enabled them to move more briskly, and thus came at last to Villamiel, just after seven o'clock, with still fifteen miles to go.
The officer emphatically announced himself hungry, and as emphatically asserted that he would go no farther until his fast was broken. Sir Gervase asked him at what hour exactly the Auto was held.
"The procession from the Holy House usually sets out between eight and nine."
It was an answer that turned Sir Gervase's anxiety to frenzy. He would not wait an instant beyond the time necessary for the saddling of a fresh horse. Don Nuno, hungry and weary, having been in the saddle now for over eighteen hours with little food and no sleep, was out of temper. The Englishman's demands appeared to him unreasonable in that mood. An altercation arose between them. It might have been protracted but for the sudden coming of the fresh horse which Sir Gervase had so peremptorily commanded.
Sir Gervase flung away from the angry officer, and vaulted into the saddle.
"Follow me at your leisure, sir, when you have broken your fast," he shouted to him as he rode off.
Nor did he look behind him for all the din that he could hear the Spaniard making in calling to him. He rode now at a breakneck pace through an empty village—for almost every inhabitant had left it to attend the show in Toledo—swung to the left over the narrow old bridge across the river, and then turned south again towards his destination.
Afterwards he could remember nothing of that ride. Jaded by nights of broken slumber culminating in this last night spent in the saddle, racked by maddening fears that even now he might arrive too late, he was conscious of nothing until suddenly at about nine o'clock he beheld before him and a little below him the great city of Toledo, contained within its circle of Moorish fortifications. Above the burnt-red tiles of the roofs surged the vast grey mass of the Cathedral of this Spanish Rome, and dominating all from its eminence above the city on the far eastward side stood the noble palace of the Alcazar, aglow in the morning sunlight.
At breakneck speed Gervase rode down the hill from whose summit he obtained his first glimpse of that terrible city of his goal, then up again to the heights of that great rampart of granite upon which the city stood, a rampart encircled on three sides of its precipitous base by the broad, deep, swirling water of the pellucid Tagus.
As he advanced now he overtook straggling groups of country folk on foot, on horseback, on mules and donkeys, and even in ox-wains, all making for the city, and all of them very obviously dressed in their best. As he approached the Visagra Gate, the stragglers had become a multitude, with all the shouting and confusion resulting from their being detained there by the guard which would admit only those on foot. It was then that Sir Gervase understood the meaning of this concourse. The Auto de Fé was the attraction drawing the people of the surrounding countryside to Toledo, and these were the late-comers, meeting the fate of late-comers.
He thrust impatiently through them, trusting to his safe-conduct to ensure him exception to the delaying rule. He announced himself as a royal messenger to the officer of the gate, who eyed him mistrustfully. He displayed his letter to the Inquisitor General with its royal seals and thrust his safe-conduct under the man's nose.
The officer was impressed and became courteous. But he was not to be shaken in the matter of the horse. He gave reasons, rapidly, why it could not enter. Gervase, not understanding these, insisted that there was not a moment to lose, since the orders he carried were concerned with the Auto de Fé which was already being held.
The officer stared impatiently; but perceiving that he had to deal with a foreigner, explained himself now very slowly and clearly.
"You would lose more time if you attempted to take your horse into the city. You would not ride a mile in an hour. The streets are choked with people from here to the Zocodover. Leave your horse with us. It will be waiting for you when you return."
Gervase dismounted, understanding at last that there was nothing else to be done. He inquired of the officer the shortest way to the Archiepiscopal Palace. The man directed him to the Cathedral, advising him to inquire again when he had got as far as that.
He passed under the barrel vaulting and the portcullis of that great Arab gate, and so entered the city. At first progress was easy, and he fancied that the guard with the officiousness of his kind had made difficulties where none existed. But presently, in a measure, as he advanced through those narrow, crooked streets, still stamped with the character of their Saracen builders, he found the wayfarers increasing to the proportions of a crowd. Soon, as he continued to advance, the crowd became an almost solid press in which presently he found himself wedged, and compelled to move with it as relentlessly as if he were being swept along by a torrent. Desperately he protested, and attempted to clear himself a way, announcing himself a royal messenger. The general noise drowned his puny voice, leaving it audible only to those immediately about him in that noisome, reeking press. These eyed him with mistrust. His foreign accent and unkempt appearance earned him only contempt and derision. If his clothes were those of a gentleman, they were now so travel-stained that their nature was no longer to be discerned, whilst his countenance, on which the dust had caked, with its stubble of auburn beard and its haggard, red-rimmed, blood-injected eyes, was by no means in case to inspire confidence. The human stream swept him along the narrow street, into a broader one, and on, to a point where this entered a vast open space. In the middle of this space he beheld an enormous scaffold, enclosed on three sides, and flanked on two of these by tiers of benches.
The stream swept him to the left, and thrust him against a wall. For a moment he was content to remain there that he might draw breath. He began to be conscious of a terrible and alarming lassitude, the natural result of sleeplessness, lack of food, anxiety and exertion almost transcending the limits of human endurance. His left knee was pressed hard against a projection in the wall. Heaving a little space about him, he saw that he had brought up against what he supposed to be a mounting-block some two feet high. Instinctively, to gain ease and air, he climbed upon it, and found himself now raised clear above that sea of human heads, and so placed that none could press upon him, breathe in his face or thrust elbows into his flanks. In prey to his increasing lassitude, he was content to remain there a moment, and snatch a brief rest from battling with that human tide.
The street at the corner of which he had come to rest was packed with people, save in the middle where a space was kept clear by a barricade of wood, guarded at intervals by men-at-arms in black, wearing corselet and steel cap and leaning upon their short halberts. This barricade was continued across the square to the wide steps of the great scaffold, which Gervase now considered more attentively.
On the left stood a pulpit, and immediately facing it in the middle of the scaffold, a cage of wood and iron within which there was a seat. At the scaffold's far end, midway between the tiers, an altar had been raised. It was draped in purple and surmounted by a veiled cross between tall gilded candlesticks. To the left of this there was a miniature pavilion surmounted by a gilded dome, from which curtain-like draperies of purple, fringed with gold, descended to the ground. On the dais within this was placed a great gilded throne-like chair flanked by a lesser one on either side. Above, at the meeting-point of the draperies, two escutcheons were affixed, one bearing the green cross of the Inquisition, the other the arms of Spain.
About that vast scaffold the people seethed and writhed in perpetual movement, resembling some monstrous ant-heap, sending up a rolling murmur that was like the sound of waves upon a shore, into which was blended intermittently the note of a bell that was being tolled funereally.
Of the houses overlooking the square, and of those in the street, as far as his glance could carry, Gervase saw that every window was thronged, as indeed was every roof. The balconies were all draped in black, and black he observed were the garments of every person of consideration, man or woman, in all that concourse.
A moment thus, to become conscious of all this, and then the meaning of it recurred to startle him into action. That dreadful bell was tolling for his Margaret, amongst others; this droning heap of pestilential human insects was assembled here for the spectacle of her martyrdom, which had begun already and which would certainly be consummated unless he bestirred himself.
He made a vigorous attempt to descend from that mounting-block, sought to thrust back those who stood immediately before it, so as to clear a way for himself. But they, being so wedged by others that they could not stir, answered him with fiercely virulent Spanish vituperations, and threats of how they would deal with him if he persisted in incommoding them. What did he want? Was he not better placed, and had he not a better view than they? Let him be content with that and not seek to thrust himself nearer to the front or it would be the worse for him.
The noise they made, the shrill voice of a woman in particular, drew the attention among others of four black alguaziles who stood on the steps of a house close by. But as there was nothing unusual in the character of the altercation, those apparitors of the Holy Office who were there to preserve order where possible, and perhaps to spy for sympathisers with the penanced when they should appear, would hardly have bestirred themselves had it not been for one comparatively trivial detail. Scanning the man responsible for that turmoil, one of them observed that he was armed; sword and dagger hung from the carriages of his belt. Now the bearing of arms in the street during the holding of an Auto de Fé was a flagrant offence against the laws of the Holy Office, punishable by a term of rigorous imprisonment. The apparitors conferred a moment, and accounted it their duty to take action.
They called for room, and by a miracle room was made for them, The awe in which men stood of the liveries of the Holy Office was enough to make them accept the risk of being crushed to death rather than remain indifferent before such a demand. Two by two the sturdy black figures advanced until they stood before Sir Gervase. Using their staves with a brutal callousness, such as no secular soldiers would have dared employ in so dense' a throng, they cleared a little space before the mounting-block. Their action provoked not so much as a murmur from any of the sufferers. They were empanoplied as much against reproof as against resistance by the spiritual armour of their office.
Sir Gervase found himself contemptuously challenged by one who appeared their leader, a burly, swarthy fellow, whose cheeks were blue from the razor. In an accent which made the rascal stare, Sir Gervase informed him that he was the bearer of a letter from the King of Spain to the Inquisitor General, which it was the utmost urgency he should deliver without a moment's delay.
The man grinned contemptuously, in which his fellows followed his example.
"By my faith, you look like a royal messenger!" he sneered.
The grins became laughs, in which several bystanders joined. When a man in authority condescends to jest, however poorly, every clown within hearing will flatter him by a guffaw.
Sir Gervase thrust sealed package and safe-conduct under the mocker's eyes. The fellow mocked no more. He even overlooked the serious matter of the weapons Sir Gervase was wearing. He thrust back his hat to scratch his head, and so presumably stimulate the brain within it to activity. He half-turned and looked across the press of people. He took counsel with his three companions; finally he made up his mind.
"The procession to the Auto started half an hour ago from the Holy House," he informed Sir Gervase. "His Eminence is with the procession. Impossible to approach him now. You must wait in any case until he returns to the palace. Then we will escort you to him."
Distraught, Sir Gervase flung back at him that the matter could not wait. The letter was concerned with this very Auto. The apparitor became stolid, as men do to defend themselves from hopeless unreason. He conveyed that he was a very clever fellow, but not quite omnipotent; and nothing less than omnipotence would enable anyone to approach His Eminence at present or until the Auto was over. As he finished a cry went up from the multitude, and a sudden heave ran through it, stirring its surface as when a ripple runs over water.
The apparitor looked down the long street, Sir Gervase looked with him, and caught in the clear sunlight a distant glint of arms. The cry all about him was: "They come! They come!" and by this he knew that what he beheld was the head of the vanguard of the dread procession.
He plagued the apparitor now with anxious questions, touching this scaffold and the various parts of it. When he betrayed the fact that he supposed the condemned would suffer there, he provoked a smile and a question as to his origin which had left him so ignorant in matters of universal knowledge. But he also elicited the information that the place of execution was outside the walls of the city. This scaffold was for the announcement of the offences, for the Mass and the sermon of the Faith. How should he suppose it a place of execution, seeing that the Holy Office shed no blood.
This was news to Sir Gervase. He ventured to question its accuracy. The alguazil afforded him the enlightenment of which an outlandish barbarian appeared to stand in need. Here the Holy Office publicly penanced those who were guilty of pardonable offences against the Faith, and publicly cast out from the Church those who refused to be reconciled or who, by relapsing into an infidelity from which they had formerly been rescued, placed themselves beyond the reach of pardon. In casting them out the Holy Office abandoned them to the Secular arm, whose duty to the Faith involved the obligation of putting them to death. But it was not, he repeated, the Holy Office which did this, as Sir Gervase had so foolishly supposed, for the Holy Office, he further repeated, could shed no blood.
It was a nice distinction over which at a remote distance of space or time a man might smile But in the grim theatre of the event no smile was possible.
The procession drew nearer. Sir Gervase looked about him in his distraction, to right, to left, ahead and up at the balconies of the houses under which he stood, as if seeking somewhere a way of escape, a way of reaching the Inquisitor-General. As he looked upwards his eyes met those of a girl leaning from an iron balcony, from which was hung a cloth of black velvet, edged with silver. She was one of a half-dozen women who stood there to behold the show, a slight wisp of a creature, olive-skinned, with brilliant lips, and eyes like two black jewels. She had been considering, it must be supposed with approval, the Englishman's stalwart inches and bared auburn head. The disfiguring grime and stubble she could hardly discern at that distance. The attitude towards him of the apparitors may further have marked him for a person of consequence.
As their eyes met in that momentary flash, she let fall, as if by accident, a rose. It brushed his cheek in falling, but to the beauty's deep chagrin, went entirely unheeded by him in his preoccupation of spirit.
Slowly and solemnly the procession was entering the square. At its head marched the soldiers of the Faith; a regiment of javelin-men in funereal livery, relieved by the gleam of their morions and the flash of the partisans they shouldered. Gravely looking neither to right nor to left, they passed towards the scaffold about the base of which they were to range themselves.
Next came a dozen surpliced choristers intoning the Miserere as they slowly advanced into the square. They were followed after a little pause by a Dominican bearing the sable banner of the Inquisition, charged with the green cross between an olive branch and a naked sword, the emblems of mercy and of justice. On his left walked the Provincial of the Dominicans, on his right the Prior of Our Lady of Alcantara, each attended by three monks. Then came a body of lay tertiaries of the Order of St. Dominic, members of the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr, walking two by two, with the cross of St. Dominic embroidered in silver upon their mantles. After them, on horseback, also two by two, came some fifty nobles of Castile to give worldly pomp to the procession. Their horses were caparisoned in sable velvet; they, themselves, were all in black, though it was a black relieved by the gleam of gold chains and the sparkle of jewels. So solemnly and slowly did they pass, sitting on their horses in such rigid immobility, that they presented the appearance of a troop of funereal equestrian statues.
The crowd had fallen into an awe-stricken silence, in which the beat of iron-shod hoofs rang out in rhythm, as it seemed, with the doleful receding chant of the choristers. Over all went still the tolling of that passing-bell from the Cathedral.
The Andalusian sunshine beat down from a sky as clear as blue enamel. It was reflected vividly from the white walls of the houses that served as background for this black phantasmagoria. To Gervase there was a moment in which it all became not merely incredible, but unreal. It did not exist. Nothing existed, not even his own limp weary body leaning there against the wall. He was simply a mind into which he had brought absurd conceptions of a world of independent beings of imagined shape and attributes and habits. None of these things about him had any concrete existence, they were simply ideas with which he had peopled a dream.
The moment of detachment passed. He was aroused from it by a sudden rustle and movement in the throng, which was behaving as a field of corn behaves when a sudden gust of wind sweeps over it. Men and women were falling on their knees in a continuous movement proceeding from the right. So odd was this continuity that it almost seemed as if each unit of that throng in kneeling touched his neighbour and so drove him down whilst he, in his turn, did the like by the person next to him.
An imposing scarlet figure advanced upon a milk-white mule, whose scarlet trappings, fringed with gold, trailed along the dusty ground. Coming abruptly thus after the black gloom of the long lines of figures that had preceded him, he seemed of a startling vividness. Save for the violet amice of the Inquisitor, which he wore, he was all flame from the point of his velvet shoes to the crown of his broad-brimmed hat. A cloud of pages and halberdiers attended him. He rode very stiff and straight and stern, his right hand raised, its thumb and two fingers erect to bless the people.
Thus, at comparatively close quarters, Gervase beheld the man to whom his letter was addressed, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, the Pope of Spain, the President of the Supreme Council and Inquisitor General of Castile. He passed, and with a reversing of the movement that had heralded his approach, the crowd came gradually erect again. Informed of his identity, Gervase importuned the alguazil to make a way for him, so that he might at once deliver his letter.
"Patience!" he was admonished. "While the procession passes that will be impossible. Afterwards, we shall see."
Uproar broke out now, shouts, execrations, epithets of infamy. The noise came rolling up the street to infect those in the square as the foremost victims came into view. They were flanked on each side by guarding pikemen, and each was accompanied by a Dominican, crucifix in hand. There were some fifty of them, bareheaded, barefoot, and almost naked under the zamarra, the penitential sack of coarse yellow serge, streaked by a single arm of a St. Andrew's cross. In his hand each carried an unlighted taper of yellow wax, to be lighted presently at the altar when the penitent's reconciliation should have been pronounced. There were tottering old men and' feeble old women, stalwart lads and weeping girls, and all of them staggered onwards in their cassocks of infamy with lowered heads, their eyes upon the ground, crushed under their load of shame, terrified by the execrations hurled at them as they passed.
The haggard eyes of Sir Gervase scanned their ranks. Knowing nothing of the distinctions made and indicated by the signs upon the zamarra, he did not realise that these were penitents who, guilty of comparatively light offences, went to be reconciled and pardoned with the imposition of penances of varying severity. Suddenly his glance alighted upon a countenance he knew; a narrow handsome face with a peaked black beard and fine eyes which, looking straight before him, reflected now something of the agony within his soul.
Sir Gervase sucked in his breath. The scene before him was momentarily blotted out. In its place he beheld an arbour set above a rose-garden, and seated there a very elegant, mocking gentleman, with a lute in his lap, a lute which Sir Gervase dashed to the ground. He heard again the level, mocking voice:
"You do not like music, eh, Sir Gervase?"
Then the scene melted into another: A sweep of lawn shaded by a quick-set hedge, by which a golden-headed girl was standing. This same gentleman bowing to him with a false urbanity, and proffering him the hilt of a sword. Again that same pleasant voice: "Enough for to-day. To-morrow I will show you how the estramaçon is to be met and turned."
He was back again in the Zocodover at Toledo. The figure which had raised these visions was abreast of him. He craned to look, and caught something of the agony in the man's face, conceived something of what it must cost him to be thus paraded, was taken even with pity for him, imagining that he went to his death.
The penitents passed, and in their wake stalked another posse of soldiers of the Faith.
Then, borne aloft, dangling from long green poles, their limbs jerked hither and thither as in the movements of some idiotic dance, or as if with the spasmodic twitchings of the hanged, came a half-dozen full-sized effigies in grotesque caricature of life. These figures of straw were arrayed in yellow zamarras smeared with tongues of fire and with horrid images of devils and dragons, and they were crowned by the coroza, the yellow mitre of the condemned. On their faces of waxed linen were figured bituminous eyes and scarlet idiotic lips. Grotesque and horrible, they passed. They were the effigies of contumaciously absent offenders which were to be burnt, pending the capture of the originals, and of others who, after death, had been discovered guilty of heresy; of these followed now the poor earthly remains. Porters came staggering under the exhumed coffins which were to be given to the flames jointly with the effigies.
The baying of the mob, which had died down after the passing of the penitents, now rose again with an increased ferocity. Gervase saw women crossing themselves and men craning forward with an interest grown overwhelming.
"Los relapsos!" was the cry, meaningless to him.
On they came, those poor wretches who had relapsed and for whom there was no reconciliation, and those who were in the same case because obstinate in their heresy. There were but six of them; but all six were doomed to the fire. They advanced singly, each one between two Dominicans, who were still exhorting these unfortunates to repent and win at least the mercy of strangulation before being burnt in fires which otherwise must be but a prelude to eternal flames.
But the crowd, less pitiful, entirely pitiless indeed, in its perfervid devotion to the most pitiful of all religions, roared foul abuse, demoniac mockery, ordures of insult at those anguished wretches who were passing to the flames.
The first of them was a stalwart aged Jew; a misguided fellow who, perhaps for the sake of temporal profit—so as to overcome the barriers so calculatedly erected against the worldly advancement of the Israelite, so as to earn the right to continue in the land in which his forefathers had been established for centuries before the crucifixion—had accepted baptism and embraced Christianity. Later, his conscience stirring against this apostasy from the Mosaic Law, he had secretly relapsed into Judaism, to be discovered, hailed before the dread tribunal of the Faith, tortured into confession and then condemned. He dragged himself painfully along in his hideous livery of infamy, his yellow zamarra and coroza bedaubed with flames and devils. A band of iron, passed about his neck, held a wooden apple in his mouth to gag him. But his eyes remained eloquent of scorn as he flashed them upon the howling bestial Christian mob.
He was followed by one even more pitiful. A young Morisco girl of ravishing beauty stepped along with light and tripping movements of her graceful limbs; she seemed almost to be treading a measure as she came. Her long black hair, escaped from her yellow mitre, hung about her shoulders like a mantle. And as she went, she paused ever and anon, and leaning a hand upon the shoulder of the gaunt Dominican beside her, she would throw back her body and laugh with the wild abandoned joy of a drunken woman. Her mind had given way.
Next came a terror-stricken youth who was half-carried along by his guards, a dazed half-swooning woman, and two men in middle life so broken by torture that they could hardly crawl.
After these, followed another double file of monks, and after them again a military rearguard akin to that which had headed the procession. But the details now entirely escaped Gervase. He had suddenly realised that Margaret was not among the condemned. Relief at this and renewed anxiety springing from his ignorance of her real condition, shut out the scene around him.
Anon he remembered a glimpse of the great scaffold, the Inquisitor General in the tribune; the condemned ranged on the tiers to the right, the effigies dangling above the topmost places; the nobles and clergy on the benches opposite; a Dominican preaching from the pulpit facing the condemned.
The remainder of the Auto was afterwards a confused dream-memory: the ritual of the Mass, the chanting of choristers, and the clouds of incense rising above the altar surmounted by its great green cross; then the figure of the Notary standing to read from a long scroll, his voice inaudible at the distance at which Gervase was placed; the movement of the apparitors, bringing the condemned from their benches and surrendering them to the corregidor and his men—the representatives of the secular arm—who waited at the foot of the great scaffold to mount them on donkeys, and so hurry them away under guard, each with a Dominican in attendance; the howls of execration from the mob; and, lastly, the stately return of that procession by the way it had come.
As it passed, the human torrent broke the dam that had so long confined it; the barricades, no longer guarded, yielding to pressure, were broken down and swept away, and the crowd swirled in on both sides and filled the street.
The alguazil touched Sir Gervase on the arm. "Come," he said.