Aztec - Aztec Blood Part 93

Inquisitors must develop the eyes of bats. The room where the tribunal met was as ill lit as the rest of the dungeon. Half a dozen men in secretive cowls were in the room. Their faces were lost in shadows, and their function hardly had meaning to me. My impression was that there were two inquisitors, a prosecutor, and a number of other people whose precise function escaped me, but they may have been judges. Scribes were also present, taking down the words spoken.

I was chained to the chair I was sat upon. My advocate sat away from me, as if I would give him some foul disease if he crept too close. Perhaps it was my smell. He did not look pleased with me. I suppose he is usually able to inform the tribunal that he had been successful at obtaining a confession from an accused, and my denial was demeaning to his skills as my abogado.

I heard the prosecutor read the charges, but they made no sense to me-vague allegations about heresy, being a secret Jew, blasphemy, and devil wors.h.i.+p. That I was a corrupt person who sold banned books and put on two offensive plays were the only charges they had right.

My advocate rose and informed the tribunal that he had dutifully asked me to confess the truth of the charges three times, and I had refused. "Persuasion on the rack failed to loosen his tongue. He is now in the hands of G.o.d."

"I don't see G.o.d in this room," I said. "I see men who believe they serve G.o.d but do the Lord an injustice."

My statements were not greeted with the applause of a well-received comedia but a frown from one of the judges.

"If the prisoner speaks without permission again, give him the mordaza," he told the constable. A mordaza was a gag. I shut my mouth.

The chain of evidence against me began with testimony from inquisitors who had questioned me verbally about the Church, G.o.d, Christ, Jews, Satan, witches, and only heaven knows what else. The questions sounded like those that Fray Antonio had described as the Witches Hammer, in which there were no real answers and every response could be twisted.

"He was asked how many horns Satan has," the fray testified at the Inquisition hearing. "He replied that he didn't know. As we all know, Satan has two horns."

"Had I said two horns, he would have accused me of having personally seen Satan!" I shouted.

"The mordaza," the constable was told.

"I meant no offense, Monsenor. Please, I promise to keep my lips sealed."

Once more I avoided being gagged.

The first witness was called. She was masked, but I could tell from her voice it was a servant from Don Julio's house. She was a crazy old woman who was always seeing devils and demons everywhere she looked. We all knew she was harmless, but she had the queer sort of insanity that Inquisitors fed upon.

"I saw them dancing," she told the tribunal, "that one," meaning me, "the don, his sister, and his niece. They each took turns dancing with the devil."

The judges asked her questions about Jewish customs in the house, whether we observed the Sabbath on Sat.u.r.days, ate meat on Fridays; the old woman confirmed that we ate meat on Fridays, a lie, but in response to other questions she kept telling them about different acts with the devil. She was obviously crazy, babbling on about demonic things when asked about Jewish rites.

I don't think even these judges were impressed with her tales, other than specifically noting the violation of the proscription on eating meat on Fridays.

Poor Juana could not have danced with her weak legs if the devil had propped her up, but I kept my mouth shut.

The next witness was another masked woman, this one well dressed. I knew her ident.i.ty immediately.

Isabella had come to help nail down my coffin lid. From her well-kept appearance, she had not tasted the Inquisition's dungeon, but I had expected no less.

I cringed as I listened to her testimony because there was some truth to it.

"You call this metal tube a 'starscope'?" a judge asked.

"That is what Don Julio called it. I knew nothing of such things, of course. My belief is that this blackguard," she indicated me, "had brought the foul instrument from Spain, smuggling it by the officials of the Holy Office who inspect for such blasphemies."

"And you say that the purpose of the instrument was to spy on heaven?"

"Yes, that and many other evil things that I have no knowledge of."

No knowledge but she could testify to them? Like the birth of our Savior, was this Immaculate knowledge? I could tell from the testimony that the inquisitors had not found the instrument. I suspected that Don Julio, fearful that he could encounter problems in the city over the tunnel, had hidden his banned books and the starscope on the hacienda.

She was asked questions about Jewish practices, and she denied them for good reason-such practices would incriminate her, too. But she got a blow in against Don Julio in another way.

"He forced me to lay with him during times when I was with my monthly blood."

Engaging in coitus during a woman's monthly disablement was a sacrilege because conception could not be had at that time. It was generally believed that Jews and Moors conducted themselves in this manner to keep from fathering children that would necessarily be raised as Christians.

"You have no children, senora?" a judge asked.

"That is true. But it is not my fault. My husband was a brutal man with a terrible temper. I lived in constant fear of him."

I had to fight myself to keep from leaping out of my chair and going for her throat. If there ever was a man who walked with angels in his relations.h.i.+p with his family and friends, it was the don.

A book was shown to her.

"This book is one that you turned over to the familiars, is that correct?"

"Yes. I never saw the book before; but after my husband was taken into custody, I noticed it in the library. He had kept it in a secret place."

"The book sets forth the rites of the practice of Judaism," the judge said.

"I know nothing of that. I am a good Christian. The book belonged to my husband. I am certain it must be the book he used when he and his family, including this one"-I could feel her glare through the mask-"practiced their dark rites."

This time I leaped from my chair.

"That's a lie. The book does not belong to the don, and I can prove it." I pointed at it. "The don brands his books with his initials along the edge, as is the custom among book owners. There is no brand. The book is false evidence!"

They gagged me.

Isabella was deliberately incriminating Don Julio and me with false evidence. The woman was motivated in life only by money and vanity. The Holy Office seized the property of those found guilty. It took no imagination to conclude that an arrangement had been made by which Isabella received property back in exchange for her testimony. Or Ramon de Alva could be behind her, getting rid of his lover's husband and the threat of exposure on the tunnel project at the same time.

The third witness was a man who I could not identify. He stated he worked for Don Julio on the tunnel project and that he had observed Don Julio and me scoff when he said that we should dedicate the tunnel to San Pablo. That he had later seen us carry an object into the tunnel, a six-pointed star. The object had no significance to him at the time; but now that a fray had enlightened him, he realized that what we carried was a mystic Jewish symbol, the s.h.i.+eld of David, that Jews attributed magical properties to.

I had never been to the tunnel, had never seen this six-pointed star-s.h.i.+eld, but I would not have taken exception even if my mouth wasn't sealed. The matter of my guilt, and that of Don Julio, was predetermined. Nothing I could do or say, no appeal to reason, would suffice.

My advocate never asked a question of any witness.

My gag was removed and a judge asked if I wished to speak about the charges.

"The charges are nonsense," I said. "This trial has the same validity as the trial of another Jew a long time ago."

"Then you admit you are a Jew," the judge said.

"The Jew I referred to is our Savior, Jesus Christ, whose name was chosen for me to bear. I now see why I bear his name. I am to be martyred by false witnesses as He once was."

The tribunal was not pleased with my response. I was returned to the blackness of my cell. I was only in the cell for the night. My door opened and I was escorted out to be burned at a stake, I was certain. But instead I was taken to a large, ground-level cell that held five prisoners, including one I knew well.