“It is not…If it were sinful to write visions of…of…”
“Boy,” the inquisitor said harshly, “have you any conception of how it would feel in reality, to be tied to the ladder, made to swallow whole jugsful of water, dipped in boiling pitch, and so forth? Have you any idea what a single real beating with rods would be, in comparison with all these agonies when simply put in a story?”
Mehmoud seemed to shrink into himself. Face writhing as if he already felt the blows, he protested, “I put my name to it! What…what else…?”
“Confess your crime,” Fra Guillaume repeated.
“Mehmoud Aben Fazoud, then! Is that what you want? Not Juan de Calamocha, but Mehmoud Aben Fazoud de Calamocha! It is mine, I wrote it, I do not hide that I wrote it, I have never hidden that I wrote it!”
“Holy Church will rejoice on the day she can welcome you as another Juan in baptized truth,” said Fra Guillaume, “but today search your conscience further.”
“Is it…because I used ‘San’? Is that it, my lords? I should not have called myself ‘San’—I renounce ‘San’!”
“Good.” The Dominican nodded. “It is not for any of us to sanctify ourselves in this earthly life, but only for Holy Mother Church to bestow that title, upon those whom she finds worthy of it, after their earthly deaths. But is this all that you can find it in your heart to confess this day?”
“What else? Ah, God! Is there still something else?”
Fra Guillaume sat and gazed somberly at the boy, beating one gnarled old hand against the other with regular if seemingly unthinking strokes. Don Felipe found his brain repeating the Gloria Patri. It had scarcely reached “et Spiritui Sancto” when Mehmoud asked again, in a desperate voice, “Can there still be something else?”
The young priest could stand no more. Dangerous though it was even to hint at the exact nature of any accusation in the hearing of accused parties, lest in their eagerness they fall into the sin of bearing false witness against themselves, he guessed that this boy sincerely did not understand wherein lay the one crime for which the Inquisition could rightfully try him. Turning to Fra Guillaume, Don Felipe said carefully, “Perhaps we should turn our attention to the person actually found in possession of the book.”
“No!” Mehmoud half wailed, falling from his stool to kneel before them. “My lords, it was my fault—all mine! I gave it to her! She cannot even read yet—she only liked the pictures!”
To Don Felipe’s eyes—though he doubted young Mehmoud would notice it, head down and weeping as he was—Fra Guillaume’s whole being relaxed. Later, inquisitor might take Ordinary to task for his words; but not in front of the boy. Indeed, Felipe suspected, Fra Guillaume was secretly much relieved to have had the hint dropped, but not by himself. For now, he said only, “The sinner has made full confession at last. Some hours we will need for consultation as to his sentence and penance; but I think, with his Reverence the bishop’s blessing, we might finish this process tomorrow. Meanwhile,” he added to his lay brother, with a gentle nod toward the prisoner, “let him be returned to his cell, and see that he has broth, good bread, and I think, a little good wine.”
After the lay brother had led Mehmoud away, not unkindly, Fra Guillaume turned his gaze full on Don Felipe and said, “With all respect, my honored friend, do you understand what it was that you did just now?”
“With deepest regrets, good brother, I do. And I pray that God and our Lady may preserve me from ever falling into such error again.”
“Good. Then we need say no more on that subject.” Nodding, the old Dominican put his hands upon the table as if to push himself up to his feet.
“What of the other child?” Don Felipe asked. “Béatrix Cabaza, was it not?”
“I hardly think we need worry about her,” Fra Guillaume answered like a man who had already weighed the matter to a satisfactory conclusion in his own mind. “That her parents brought the book to its author’s father shows their concern for their daughter’s spiritual welfare. Moreover, by the boy’s own testimony, young Béatrix cannot yet read, and I think that the pictures alone could do her soul no injury. Without reading their names, she could not even know who King Herod and the others are meant to be.”
Unless, Don Felipe thought, Mehmoud had told her his story. Close on that thought came another: that the boy had not actually named Béatrix Cabaza; that he might have made more copies than one, and passed them around to more playfellows than one.
Nevertheless, if the Inquisition itself, in the person of its experienced servant, chose not to pursue the question of how many youthful disciples or even accomplices Mehmoud’s infant heresy might have gained in his town of Calamocha, who was a very young Ordinary to teach him his venerable business? Truth to tell, if Fra Guillaume preferred dozing in the sun with a spiritual book to rooting out possible juvenile heretics, so did Don Felipe.
They returned to Fra Guillaume’s study and settled Mehmoud’s penance over one or two glasses of sherry. Or, more accurately, the inquisitor imparted what he had already decided, and the Ordinary approved it: a reprimand and warning, to be administered privately tomorrow morning in the audience chamber; burning the book in the author’s sight—both churchmen regretted this necessity, but Fra Guillaume believed that, with the permission of the house’s owner, it could be accomplished on a brazier in the courtyard; and requiring the boy to abstain from all meat for a period of two months. Since Mehmoud was unbaptized, Fra Guillaume judged that such penances as prayers and pilgrimages could hardly be imposed. He had, however, an old manuscript volume of the Tractatus de purgatoria Sancti Patricii, which he would loan to Juan Maria Delgado de Calamocha on condition that Mehmoud make two illustrated copies, one to keep and one to return along with the parent volume.
“The Purgatory of Saint Patrick,” Don Felipe mused aloud, turning its pages. “I think I have heard somewhat of this place. In Ireland, is it not?”
Fra Guillaume nodded. “At the very edge of the world. Had our Lord seen fit to put it in some less outlandish place, with fewer wild natives and discomforts of the journey, it is a pilgrimage I might have wished one day to undertake for myself.”
Chapter 8
The Dream of the Death of Raymonde
He was Fra Hugon, a Dominican of older days, and he sat behind a shiny black table, polished to mirror finish, in a long black room, hidden away from sun and daylight, lit only by seven, or three, or nine beeswax tapers—he could not quite determine their number—in a silver candlestick.
On the other side of the table stood Raymonde, whiter than the candles. She, and they, and the silver in which they rested were the only white things in all that black chamber; the orange candle flames and Fra Hugon’s hands on the table the only spots of color. Though Dominican, his habit was entirely black.
They were alone, he and she. Some part of him was aware of the irregularity. Even when there was but one inquisitor, he should have other men present to validate the proceedings: scribe, advocate, consultor, Ordinary… Yet the larger part of him recognized the delicacy that had left him completely alone with her in this most sensitive of cases.
“You have claimed,” he began, “to be my progenitrix.”
She inclined her head. Part of it might have seemed grotesquely missing, so black was her hair. But a glowing aureole, much the same color and intensity as the candle flames, outlined it against her black surroundings.
“And the Pagan Rosemary—do you call her your descendant through me?”
Again Raymonde bowed her head in affirmation.
“Even knowing this to be impossible, sworn as I am to eternal celibacy?”
“Anna, Elizabeth, Sarah—had not each