The Confusion

Consequently Jack, while lying in the sun of the courtyard recovering from various torture-sessions, had already had plenty of opportunities to listen to his fellow-inmates holding forth on the dark glories of the Inquisition. At the drop of a hat they’d tell the tale of the auto da fe of 1673 or of 1695, how many were burnt and how many merely humiliated. Even allowing for routine exaggeration, there was no avoiding the conclusion that an auto da fe was a colossal event, something that happened only once or twice in an average person’s lifetime, and a spectacle that peons would travel for days just to witness.

None of which was exactly comforting-until it was learned, a week or two after the arrival of Edmund de Ath, that the Inquisitor had scheduled an auto da fe for two months hence, which put it shortly before Christmas. Obviously such an enormous pageant could not be re-scheduled once a date had been set, and so if the three Minerva prisoners could only hold out until mid-December they would probably be punished and set free. But in the meantime the Inquisitor had every incentive to break them.

A single gifted torturer acting free of bureaucratic restrictions probably could have gotten Jack, Moseh, and Edmund to say anything he wanted them to in a few minutes’ work. But Inquisition torture was ponderous and rule-bound. A large staff of doctors, clerks, bailiffs, advocates, and Inquisitors had to be present, and by the looks of things it was no easy task finding openings on so many important men’s schedules. Torture-sessions would be arranged a week in advance and then cancelled at the last minute because some important participant had come down with a fever or even died.

In spite of these difficulties, during the month of November, men rammed a length of gauze down Jack’s throat into his stomach and then poured water down it until his abdomen swelled up, and it felt as if gunpowder were burning inside of him, filling his guts with smoke and fire. Edmund de Ath was tied to a table and thongs tightened round various parts of his body until the skin burst under the pressure.

But Moseh went into the torture-chamber and came out half an hour later looking rather all right-fine, in fact-so unruffled, really, that it made Jack want to share some pain with him, when he sauntered over and joined Jack and Edmund de Ath under the patchy shade of the vines. “I confessed,” he announced.

“To being a heretick!?”

“To having money,” Moseh said.

“I didn’t know that you’d been accused of that.”

“But when you are in the hands of the Holy Office you never know. You just have to figure it out, through silent meditation, and give them the confession that they want. I’ve been ever so slow. But finally it came to me the other day-”

“Through silent meditation?”

“No, I’m afraid it was a bit more mundane. Diego de Fonseca came to my cell and asked me for a loan.”

“Hmmm-I knew he was meagerly compensated, but that he is begging from his own prisoners comes as news to me,” said Edmund de Ath.

“The alguaciles brought you straight to this prison from Acapulco-you never had to buy anything in Mexico City,” Jack said. “We came here once or twice selling quicksilver to the owners of mines. Food is cheap enough, which explains why there are so many Vagabonds in the suburbs. But the scarcity of all other goods, and the over-supply of silver, make this an expensive place to be respectable.”

Moseh nodded. “I talked to many old Jews in New Amsterdam and Curacao who told me that in the old days the Inquisition supported itself by confiscating goods from Jews. But here in Mexico they did their job so well that they’ve run out of Jews-they’ve been reduced to stealing the occasional burro from some mestizo who took the Lord’s name in vain. So finally I had what you might call a little Enlightenment of my own, and I understood what the Inquisitor really wanted. I confessed to nothing except having a lot of silver, and offered to make due penance for this crime on the morning of the auto da fe. With that my ordeal-our ordeal-was over and done with.”

Mexico City DECEMBER 1701