In the exact center of the room hung a rope.
On one side of it stood a soldier holding a musket erect beside him, and he must be the most uncomfortable person present, because he wore a thickly-padded blue doublet, black breeches, and a polished wide-brimmed helmet, and was burdened with sword, ramrod, slow match, powder horn, shot bag, and the other paraphernalia of the professional military. He looked utterly miserable, as if this was one of the worst days of his life, and perhaps more than the heat was responsible for that.
On the other side of the rope stood Toby, stinking of his jail cell. He was trying to hold up his head with a show of courage he did not feel while he glared stubbornly at the friar in the center, the one in charge, the inquisitor.
His name was Father Vespianaso. He was a frail-seeming, elderly man, with a thin white tonsure, thick black eyebrows, and a close-trimmed, piebald beard. His eyes were red-rimmed and droopy, full of such sadness that they must have viewed all the sorrows of the world. A sagging blister of flesh under each of them was the only padding on his face, which otherwise was only a skull wrapped in skin so dry that it seemed ready to crack and flake away completely.
He looked up from the document he had been reading for the last ten minutes.
"Is the accused now ready to disavow his demon and reveal its name so that it may be cast out?"
Toby understood most of the proceedings and knew that particular question by heart, but the Inquisition had its rules, and the presence of an interpreter during the examination of foreigners was one of them. He waited until the soldier translated.
"The inquisitor asks if the accused is now ready to disavow his demon and reveal its name so that it may be cast out." His English was not much easier to understand than the original Castilian. His vivid blue eyes stared fixedly ahead, as if trying to see through the prisoner's chest.
"Tell him I do not have a demon."
The friar had heard that familiar protest many times during the last four days. "Tobias, Tobias!" He shook his head sadly. "If the accused will not confess, he must be put to the Question."
Toby understood that only too well. Examination of a suspect went through clearly defined stages. They had begun three days ago in a cheerful, airy room upstairs. The questioning had grown steadily harsher and more menacing until, at the end of yesterday's session, they had brought him down to this cellar and shown him the whips and branding irons, the pulleys in the ceiling, the funnels for water torture, and the ladder-like grid to which the victim would be tied during their use. Today they had brought him straight to this chamber, where the fire was already lit and the three tormentors waited. That had been at least two hours ago. So far the tormentors had done nothing more than stoke the fire.
What was the question this time? Didn't matter.
"I do not have a demon. If I did, how could I possibly cast it out? Does he think I would voluntarily harbor a demon? Does he think such a demon would tell me its name? I do not have a demon!"
No demon, no name. Of course the hob would count as a demon in the inquisitors' eyes—at times Toby himself found the distinction fuzzy.
There was no way out of this trap. They had explained it to him many times, being patient, aggressive, understanding, and menacing by turns. A demon could only be controlled by its name, so the accused must reveal it. If he refused, he must be forced to comply. If he still would not talk or did not know the demon's name, then the demon must be driven out of him by making it suffer. That, unfortunately, meant making the accused suffer, but suffering was better than possession, wasn't it? Supposedly an incarnate would keep its husk alive, or at least operational, indefinitely. The only way a man could prove that he was not possessed was to die.
Another question.
Same answer: "I do not have a demon!" He must keep to the same answer. How much did they know? How sure were they? Demons could detect the hob in him, so was the inquisitor himself possessed? A demon looking for employment would find nothing more congenial to its tastes than being an officer of the Inquisition. But it didn't matter whether they were guessing or certain or had just chosen him at random. Once they started asking questions, they could never admit they had picked on the wrong man. There was no escape.
The inquisitor held out a paper.
Carrying his musket, the soldier marched three paces to the table to take it, then brought it back and held it up in front of the prisoner. "The inquisitor asks if the accused recognizes this notice."
The accused did, and his sweat turned cold in the heat. The paper was a smudged and tattered poster dated October 1519. The woodcut it bore was a crude drawing of himself as a youth, but a good likeness considering that it had been done from memory. The inscription in both Scots and Gaelic outlined the Parliamentary act of attainder that declared him to be possessed by a demon. It also proclaimed a reward of five thousand marks for anyone who brought in his corpse with a blade through the heart.
How had they gotten ahold of that? They had not produced that poster before, or even mentioned it. He found his voice, although it sounded strange to him.
"It lies."
The inquisitor did not wait for the translation. "But the accused does recognize it?"
The soldier translated the question and Toby's reply: "I have never seen it before. I was told about it. It lies. Whoever wrote it was lying."
Other people had been lying also, members of the pilgrim band, but he had not been told which. They had all been interrogated at the roadblock—questioned separately, most of them several times. Whatever slanders might have been spoken could be only their word against his, but that poster was damning. Who could argue against an act of Parliament? The one person who might have passed that paper to the Inquisition was Baron Oreste, because he had been responsible for it in the first place.
The interpreter returned the paper to the table and came back to thump the butt of his musket on the floor beside the prisoner and deliver the next translation.
"The inquisitor says that the evidence is strong enough to force a confession. This is the accused's last chance to repent. If the accused does not name his demon, he will now be put to the Question."
The soldier still did not meet Toby's eyes. He might be a decent enough fellow when off-duty, perhaps popular with his mates, a good singer, or skilled with women, homesick for England, planning to buy a freehold with his loot, if he ever laid his hands on any, if the war would ever end... any or all of those things. But now he was very much on duty and would do what he was told to do whether he liked it or not. He had no choice; this was not his fault. If he disobeyed an order he would be hanged or whipped to shreds, or his fate might be worse than either of those, because to argue with the Inquisition was itself evidence of possession.
Sweat streamed down Toby's face and ribs although there was a huge icy rock in his belly. "Tell him I do not have a demon. He is making a terrible mistake. He is going to torture an innocent man."
Even as the soldier was translating the prisoner's answer into a Castilian little better than Toby's own, the inquisitor beckoned to the three black-hooded tormentors who had been standing silently under the windows with brawny arms folded, waiting out the interminable preliminaries. The prospect of action at last must seem welcome to them, because they strode forward eagerly, crowding in close around the accused. He struggled to relax, to enjoy these last few moments without pain, but he knew he had passed up one faint chance. He should have run to the far end and grabbed up a branding iron or something and tried to break out. He would not have succeeded, but perhaps a misjudged blow would have broken his neck. Now he was hemmed in, and it was too late.