“What about you? Did you allow him to do that?” Joan asked her. “Did you enjoy it?”
The girl burst into tears.
“Did it give you pleasure?” Joan insisted.
“We were hungry,” she sobbed, holding up her baby.
The scribe wrote down her name. Joan stared at her. “What did he give you?” he thought. “A crust of dry bread? Is that all your honor is worth?”
“Confess!” he shouted, pointing a finger at her.
Two more people denounced their neighbors, claiming they were heretics.
“Some nights I hear strange noises and see lights in their house,” one of them said. “They are Devil worshippers.”
“What could your neighbor have done for you to denounce him like this?” wondered Joan to himself. “You know he will never find out who betrayed him. What do you stand to gain if I condemn him? A strip of land perhaps?”
“What is your neighbor’s name?”
“Anton the baker.”
The scribe copied out the name.
By the time Joan had finished the interrogations, night was falling. He called the captain in, and the scribe read out the names of all those who were to present themselves to the Inquisition at first light the next day.
THEN AGAIN IT was the silence of the night, the cold, the flickering flame... and his memories. Joan got up once more.
A blasphemous woman, a lecherous man, and a Devil worshipper. “At dawn I shall have you,” he muttered. Could it be true about the Devil worshipper? He had heard similar accusations, but only one had borne fruit. Could it be true this time? How was he going to prove it?
He felt weary, and returned to the pallet to close his eyes. A Devil worshipper...
“Do YOU SWEAR on the four Gospels?” Joan asked as the light of dawn began to filter through the window on the ground floor of the house.
The man nodded.
“I know you have sinned,” said Joan.
Flanked by two tall soldiers, the man who had bought a moment’s pleasure from the young widow turned pale. Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.
“What is your name?”
“Gaspar.”
“I know you have sinned, Gaspar,” said Joan.
The man stammered: “I ... I ...”
“Confess!” said Joan, raising his voice.
“I...”
“Flog him until he confesses!” shouted Joan, thumping the table with both fists.
One of the soldiers moved his hand to his belt, where a leather whip was hanging. The man fell to his knees in front of the table where Joan and the scribe were sitting.
“No. I beg you. Don’t flog me.”
“Confess.”
With the whip still rolled up in his hand, the soldier pushed him in the back.
“Confess!” cried Joan.
“It ... it isn’t my fault. It’s that woman. She has bewitched me,” the man said in a sudden rush. “Her husband no longer possesses her.” Joan did not react. “She seeks me out; she pursues me. We have done it only a few times, but... but I will never do it again. I will never see her again. I swear it.”
“Have you fornicated with her?”
“Ye ... yes.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know ...”
“Four times? Five? Ten?”
“Four. Yes. That’s right. Four times.”
“What is the name of this woman?”
The scribe wrote it down.
“What other sins have you committed?”
“No ... nothing more, I swear.”
“Do not swear oaths in vain,” said Joan with slow emphasis. “Whip him.”
After ten lashes, the man confessed to fornicating with the woman and with several prostitutes when he went to market at Puigcerdà. He also confessed to having blasphemed, lied, and committed an endless number of minor sins. After a further five lashes he remembered the young widow.
“I have your confession,” Joan declared. “Tomorrow you are to be in the square to hear my sermo generalis, when I will tell you what your punishment is to be.”
The man did not even have time to protest before he was dragged out of the room on his knees by the soldiers.
Marta, Peregrina’s sister-in-law, confessed without any need to threaten her further. Joan ordered her to appear in the square the next day, then urged the scribe to move on to the next case.
“Bring in Anton Sinom,” the scribe told the captain, reading from his list.
As soon as he saw the Devil worshipper enter the room, Joan sat upright in his hard wooden chair. The man’s hooked nose, his high forehead, those dark eyes of his...
He wanted to hear his voice.
“Do you swear on the four Gospels?”
“I do.”
“What is your name?” asked Joan, even before the man was standing in front of him.
“Anton Sinom.”
The small, slightly stooped man answered his question flanked by two soldiers who towered over him. Joan was quick to catch the note of resignation in his voice.
“Has that always been your name?”
Anton Sinom hesitated. Joan waited.
“People here have always known me by that name,” Sinom said finally.
“And elsewhere?”
“Elsewhere I had another name.”
Joan and Anton stared at each other. The little man did not lower his eyes.
“Was it a Christian one?”
Anton shook his head. Joan suppressed a smile. How should he start? By saying that he knew the man had sinned? This converted Jew would not fall for that. No one in the village had discovered his secret; if they had, there would have been more than one accusation against him. Converted Jews were often a target. This Sinom must be clever. Joan regarded him for a few moments while he thought about it: What could this man be hiding? Why did he keep a light on at night in his house?
Joan stood up and went outside; neither the scribe nor the soldiers made a move to follow him. As he shut the door behind him, the curious onlookers who had gathered outside the building froze. Joan ignored them and spoke to the guard captain: “Is the family of the man inside here?”
The captain pointed to a woman and two children who were staring in their direction. There was something ...
“What does this man do for a living? What is his house like? What did he do when you told him to appear before the tribunal?”
“He’s a baker,” replied the soldier. “He has his shop on the ground floor of his house. What’s that like? It’s normal enough, it’s clean. But we didn’t see him to tell him to appear. We talked to his wife.”
“Wasn’t he in the bakery?”
“No.”
“Did you go at first light as I ordered?”
“Yes, Brother Joan.”
“Some nights he wakes me up ... ,” his neighbor had said. “He wakes me up.” A baker ... a baker has to get up before dawn. “Don’t you sleep, Sinom? If you have to get up before dawn ...” Joan thought. Joan looked across again at the convert’s family, who were standing slightly apart from the others. He walked round in circles for a moment or two, then plunged back inside the house. The scribe, soldiers, and Sinom had not moved from where he had left them.
“Take his clothes off,” he ordered the soldiers.
“I am circumcised. I’ve already admitted—”
“Take his clothes off!”
The soldiers turned to Sinom, but before they even laid their hands on him, the look the converted Jew gave Joan convinced him he was right.
“Now,” said Joan once Sinom was completely naked, “what do you have to say to me?”
The convert tried as best he could to maintain his composure.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“I mean,” said Joan, lowering his voice and emphasizing each word as he said it, “that your face and neck are dirty, but from the chest down, your skin is white. I mean that your hands and wrists are dirty, but your forearms are spotless. I mean that your feet and ankles are dirty, but your legs are clean.”