Purity of Blood

Not another word from Gualterio Malatesta. A beam of sunlight shone on his somber face. And then I did see an expression I could not doubt, a quick flash of rage and spite. It lasted only a second, and then it was gone, hidden behind the cruel grimace, the dangerous, bloodthirsty smile that twisted his pale, cold lips. But my heart leaped with joy, for I knew, with every bone in my body, that Diego Alatriste had eluded the ambush.

Malatesta slammed the carriage door, and I was again in darkness. I heard shouted orders, a horse galloping away, and then the coachman’s whip. The mules started off, and the carriage began to roll toward a place where not even God would be on my side.

The hopelessness of being in the hands of an all-powerful apparatus devoid of emotion, and thereby of pity, struck me the moment I emerged from the coach into a dismal inner courtyard that dusk made even more somber. After my shackles were removed, I was led to an underground room by four constables of the Holy Office and the two Dominicans I had seen at the post house.

I will spare Your Mercies the details, but after I was stripped and thoroughly searched, I was subjected to a preliminary interrogation by a scribe who demanded to know my name, age, the names of my father and mother, those of my four grandparents and eight great-grandparents, my current dwelling, and my place of origin. Then, in a routine tone, the scribe tested me on elementary Christian knowledge by making me recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ave Maria. Finally, he asked me the names of any persons who might be connected with my situation.

I asked what my situation was, but he did not tell me. I asked why I was there, and he did not answer that either. When he persisted in asking for names, I did not answer, pretending to be confused and afraid—although if I am to be frank, I didn’t need to pretend. When my questioner persisted, I burst into tears, and that seemed to be enough for the moment, for he put his quill into the inkwell, scattered powder over the page, and put away his sheets of paper. On the strength of that experience, I resolved to resort to weeping any time I found myself in a tight spot, although I feared that weeping would not require any great effort on my part. If there was one thing I would not lack for, I surmised in my misery, it would be reason for shedding tears.

After that, believing the interview was over, I found it had been only a proem, a prologue: the first act had not yet begun. This I learned when I was taken into a square room without windows or embrasures, lit by a large candelabrum. The only furnishings were a large table, another smaller one holding writing materials, and a few benches. The two priests I’d seen at the post house were seated at the large table, along with a third individual wearing a large gold cross around his neck. With his dark beard and black robe he looked convincingly like an officer of the court, or a judge. At the smaller table was a scribe very different from the one who had conducted the preliminary questioning, a crowlike man who put down the smallest detail of what was said, and, to my growing fear, probably things I had not said. Two constables, one tall and strong-looking and the other redheaded and thin, were my guards. On the wall hung an enormous crucifix, the occupant of which had undoubtedly passed through the hands of this very tribunal.

As I learned from that point on, the most fearsome thing about being a prisoner in the secret dungeons of the Inquisition was that no one told you what your crime had been, or what proof or witnesses they had against you—nothing about anything. The inquisitors limited themselves to posing question after question, and the scribe to noting it all down, while you addled your brain trying to decide whether what you were saying weighed on the side of your release or of your condemnation. It was possible to spend weeks, months, even years there without knowing the exact reasons, with the added aggravation that if your answers were not satisfactory, they would resort to torture in order to facilitate your confession and obtain the proofs they needed. And when you were tortured, you would begin to answer willy-nilly, not knowing what you should be saying. Everything led to desperation, to the conscious or unconscious betrayal of friends, of you yourself, and at times to madness and death. That was one way of dying other than being led in your white robe and conical hat to the scaffold, with a garotte around your neck, a pyre of dry kindling beneath your feet, and your neighbors and former friends shouting their approval, enchanted with the spectacle.

I did at least know why I was there, though there was little consolation in the knowledge. And because I knew that, after the first questions, I soon found myself in serious straits. Especially when the younger priest, the one who had glanced at me with such indifference, asked for the names of my accomplices.