“Your sons?”
“When the alguaciles came for me and Moseh, they were on a trip to Cabo Corrientes to dig up some of that buried quicksilver. No doubt they are drinking mezcal in some mining-town saloon about now.”
“And you, Moseh?”
“They can see perfectly well I’m half Indian, so they’ve pegged me as a mestizo spawned by one of those crypto-Jews who went up to Nuevo Leon a hundred years ago.”
“But that lot was exterminated in the autos da fe of 1673.”
“Ridding a country of Jews is easier than purging every last phant’sy and suspicion from an Inquisitor’s mind,” Moseh returned. “He supposes every Indian between San Miguel de Allende and New York has a Torah concealed in his breech-clout.”
“He wants to find that you are a heretick,” said Edmund de Ath.
“And hereticks burn,” Moseh added.
“Only if they are unrepentant,” said Edmund de Ath, and his eyes followed the lines of Moseh’s tunic until they found the rosary. “So you have made the decision to pass as a Christian, and avoid the stake. As soon as you are set free you’ll go far away and become a Jew again. That is exactly what the Inquisitor suspects.”
“Go on.”
“He has been asking me questions about you. He would like for me to testify that you are a sham Christian and an unrepentant Jew. That is all he needs to burn you over a crackling mesquite fire…your only choice then would be to accept Christ as they were tying you to the stake…”
“In which event they’d charitably strangle me as the flames were rising-or, I could live for a few minutes longer as a devout Jew.”
“Albeit an uncomfortable one,” Jack concluded.
“Jack, he would also like for me to testify that you and Moseh prayed together in Hebrew, and observed Yom Kippur aboard Minerva.”
“Go ahead, it just confirms I’m an infidel.”
“But now that you are pretending to be a Catholic you’ve burned that excuse-any lapses make you a heretick.”
Jack now became mildly irked. “What is your point? That you could, with a few words, send me and Moseh to the stake? We already knew that.”
“There must be something more,” Moseh said. “A witness they would not torture. Edmund has been accused of something by someone.”
“Under normal circumstances there would be no guessing who my accuser was,” said de Ath, “since the Inquisition keeps such matters a secret. But here in New Spain, no one knows me except for those who disembarked from Minerva in Acapulco. Obviously you two did not denounce me to the Inquisition.” De Ath said this deliberately, and looked Jack and then Moseh in the eye, examining each for signs of a guilty conscience. Jack had been subjected to this treatment countless times in his life, first by Puritans in English Vagabond-camps and subsequently by diverse Papists eager to hear him confess all his colorful sins. He met the gaze of de Ath directly, and Moseh looked back at the Belgian with a sorrowful look that showed no trace of guilt or nervousness. “Very well,” said de Ath, with a faint, apologetic smile. “That leaves only-”
“Elizabeth de Obregon!” Moseh exclaimed, if a whisper could be an exclamation.
“But she was your disciple,” Jack said.
“Judas was a disciple, too,” de Ath said quietly. “Disciples can be dangerous-especially when they are not right in the head to begin with. When Elizabeth returned to awareness in that cabin on Minerva, mine was the first face she saw. I believe now that my face must somehow haunt her nightmares, and that she seeks to exorcise it in flames.”
“But we thought-”
“You imagined I was exerting some sinister influence on a susceptible mind-I know you did,” said de Ath. “In fact, I was ministering to one who was not right in mind or body. Ever since that disastrous expedition to the Islands of Solomon she had been a little daft-confined to a nunnery in Manila. Finally her family in Spain arranged for her to come home, which is how she ended up on the Manila Galleon. To outward appearances she was entirely sane. But the fire on the Galleon burned away what was left of her good sense. By treating her with tincture of opium, and staying by her side at all times, I was able to keep her madness in hand as long as we remained aboard Minerva. But when I became the cargador for your enterprise, my responsibilities took me down to Lima. Elizabeth came here to Mexico City. I am afraid she has fallen under the influence of certain Phanatiqual Jesuits and Dominicans. Churchmen of that stripe loathe such as me, because I keep a civil tongue in my head when talking to Protestants. I fear that they have preyed upon Elizabeth’s mind and that in her madness she has said things about me that have made their way to the stupendous and omniscient annals of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion. The Inquisitor wants to make me, and by extension every other Jansenist, out to be a heretick. Along the way he would like for me to utter words that would send both of you to the stake.”
Jack sighed. “Now I’m glad we did not invite you to the feast-you are so depressing to talk to.”
Edmund de Ath attempted to shrug, but this hurt a lot, and all the muscles on his skull stood out for a few moments, making him look like a woodcut in an anatomy book that Jack had once seen flying through the air in Leipzig. When he could speak again he said, “It is just as well-my faith would not allow me to participate in your Sukkoth even though you cleverly disguised it as a betrothal-feast.”
Moseh laced his fingers together and stretched his arms, which was a noisy procedure. “I am going to bed,” he said. “If they are looking for reasons to burn you, Edmund, and if you are not giving them any, it follows that Jack and I will soon be dangling from the ceiling of the torture-chamber while clerks stand below us with dipped quills. We’ll need our rest.”
“If any one of us breaks, all three of us burn,” said de Ath. “If all three of us can stand our ground, then I believe they will let us go.”
“Sooner or later one of us will break,” Jack said wearily. “This Inquisition is as patient as Death. Nothing can stop it.”
“Nothing,” said de Ath, “except for the Enlightenment.”
“And what is that?” Moseh asked.
“It sounds like one of those daft Catholicisms: The Annunciation, the Epiphany, and now the Enlightenment,” Jack said.
“It is nothing of the sort. If my arms worked, I’d read you some of those letters,” said de Ath, turning his head a fraction of a degree towards some scrawled pages on the end of this table, weighed down by a Bible. “They are from brothers of mine in Europe. They tell a story-albeit in a fragmentary and patchwork way-of a sea-change that is spreading across Christendom, in large part because of men like Leibniz, Newton, and Descartes. It is a change in the way men think, and it is the doom of the Inquisition.”
“Very good! Well, then, all we must needs do is hold out against the strappado, the bastinado, the water-torture, and the thongs for another two hundred years or so, which ought to be plenty of time for this new way of thinking to penetrate Mexico City,” said Jack.
“Mexico City is run out of Madrid, and the Enlightenment has already stormed Madrid and taken it,” de Ath said. “The new King of Spain is a Bourbon, the grand-son of King Louis XIV of France.”
“Feh!” said Moseh.
“Eeew, him again!” said Jack. “Don’t tell me I’m to peg my hopes of freedom on Leroy!”
“Many Englishmen share your feelings, which is why a war has been started to settle the issue, but for now Philip wears the crown,” said Edmund de Ath. “Not long after his coronation he was invited to the Inquisition’s auto da fe in Madrid, and sent his regrets.”
“The King of Spain failed to turn up for an auto da fe!?” Moseh exclaimed.
“It has shaken the Holy Office to its bones. The Inquisitor of Mexico will probe us once or twice more, but beyond that he’ll not press his luck. Scoff all you like at the Enlightenment. It is already here, in this very cell, and we shall owe our survival to it.”