"I do not deny that I was there, or that the men died. But I am not possessed of a demon."
"In that case," inquired the inquisitor with heavy sarcasm, "I assume Captain Diaz is here to enlist you?"
"Tobias," the incarnation said, "you quibble about the nature of the sprite. Do you seriously expect us to release you so that you may continue your bloody course?"
He wiped his eyes. "Brother Bernat instructed me in how to control this sprite you mention."
"Did you control it at Tortosa, or did it act without your guidance?"
That fast one-two left him no defense. He had admitted that he bore the hob. Which of them was master did not matter. "I had not yet had time to master it," he mumbled. "It is behaving itself now."
"That is only because we have subdued it. Do you regret what happened?"
Both Oreste and the Inquisition had underestimated the hob in the past, but Montserrat had centuries of experience and far greater wisdom than either of them, so perhaps the hob was truly incapacitated this time...
He shrugged. There was no way to deceive a spirit. "Yes, in the sense that I wish they had just left me alone. I do not enjoy killing. But put me in the same circumstances again, and I would still not submit to violence. The reverend friar reversed the truth. I am not possessed, and yet I have been hunted and hounded across all Europe. For three years I have lived in dread of being stabbed through the heart by any stranger I met, and what the Inquisition planned for me was a great deal worse than that. I have the right to defend myself, do I not?" The best method of defense, he recalled, was attack: "And who are you to judge me? You slaughtered as many or more here tonight."
"That was not our doing."
"This is your domain. You let it happen."
"They came to loot and rape and so deserved the death they met. We intervened only to save innocent lives."
"You absolve yourself very glibly!" He wished the spirit would lose its temper and shout back at him, but immortals did not do that. The icy girlish voice was slaughtering him. "I was saving innocent lives at Tortosa—my own and other people's. I don't see that my actions are any different from yours."
"We are not on trial here, Tobias. You are." Punch!
"Sauce for the gander is not sauce for the goose?"
Hamish thumped his arm with a warning growl. "Be respectful, you big oaf!"
"Why should I be respectful? If this is a trial, then the judge should be in the dock with the accused. I was being threatened with the most humiliating and painful death imaginable. Does an immortal deny a mortal the right to defend his life?"
"We do if he is deserving of death," the spirit said. "The men you slaughtered were doing their duty, legally and morally."
"You call torture moral?"
"Would you have submitted had the penalty been beheading?"
Punch! Feeling as if all the breath had been knocked out of him, Toby again wiped his face with a sodden sleeve. He could never win a battle of wits against one of the wisest tutelaries in all Europe. If this went on long enough he would freeze to death.
"It wasn't!" he shouted. "It was torture. You argue in circles. I deserve death because I defend myself from being put to death for defending myself?"
"And what were you defending yourself from at Mezquiriz?" the spirit persisted in the same calm tones. "What threat to you were the sailors on the Maid of Arran? Or the women who died in Bordeaux? Or the soldiers at Limoges..."
Punch, punch, punch! He would not survive much more of this. Perhaps the tutelary was dragging all the details from his own memory. The incarnation's eyes were still closed, but the nuns attending her and the monks with torches all stared at him in wide-eyed horror.
He found his voice; it sounded strange to him. "You know that the hob is not a demon."
"Tell that to the dead in Mezquiriz. Tell them in Tortosa. You may not think of the sprite as a demon, but who else can agree with you?"
"Brother Bernat did!"
"We are not bound by his conclusions," the spirit said. "He was fallible."
"And you are not? The hob's motives—"
"The hob's motives do not matter, only its actions. Your promises to make it behave in future are not credible. You show no repentance. We judge you to be possessed."
Now he was on the ropes!
For a moment no one spoke. He caught Hamish's eye and answered the horror in it with a shrug. There was certainly some truth in what the tutelary said—the hob could be very demonic at times. If he were just given time to learn the techniques Brother Bernat had taught him... but he might never succeed, and every failure would risk more innocent lives. Toby Longdirk was not guilty of anything except wanting to go on living, and the hob would not have let him kill himself anyway. Could it rescue him from the Inquisition again? This time, after Tortosa, the inquisitors would be very careful.
"So you will hand the creature over to us, Holiness?" Father Vespianaso inquired, rubbing his skeletal hands. He looked pleased.
"Unless the man asks us to exorcize the demon, or sprite, or hob, or whatever he chooses to call it."
Hope pealed like thunder. Toby came out with fists flailing. "Is that possible, Holiness? I have been wanting that for years!"
"It is possible," said the incarnation. "You had time to become acquainted with Jacques?"
Oh, bloody demons! Knockout!
CHAPTER SIX
Jacques! Toby had completely forgotten the inexplicable messenger and had not seen him since the ambush, but he was inexplicable no longer, and neither was his message. This was the worst blow yet. He stared in revulsion as the gardener-cleaner-porter came shuffling in through the misty rain with a bemused smile on his empty face. Horror, horror!
"He is broken," Pepita had said.
"No, Jacques, do not kneel," said the spirit. "You are no less worthy than any of these men. Tobias, make your choice."
Desperately fighting for time to think, Toby shouted, "No! I don't understand."
"You do understand, but we will spell it out for you. We can exorcize the sprite, the hob, but much of you will come with it."
"That? You will turn me into that?"
"Something like him."
"He was possessed by a hob too?"
"An elemental. Dejamiento does not always work. Jacques was a very fine man in his way, but he lacked the patience and self-denial needed to become a true alumbrado. He succumbed to carnal temptations and the spirit ran amok, just as your hob did at Mezquiriz. When it was exorcized, much of Jacques was lost. The same will happen in your case, although perhaps not as severely, for he had been invested since childhood. You may not be as badly damaged as he is, but you will certainly lose something. You will do no more harm to others. You will be happy as he is happy and remain here, being well cared for, but you will not be the person you are now."
"You would turn him into a rabbit?" Hamish shouted. "This is barbaric!"
"Possession is worse," said the spirit. "Choose, Tobias."
In his vision of cutting off Hamish's head, he had been free of the hob. And he had been a slobbering moron. A demon had enforced his obedience to the baron, but the demon had not made him into that cringing idiot, that butt of the court's humor, that bumbling sycophant who would shamelessly take women to bed at his master's orders or cut off his friends' heads without a care.
To become a moron or be tortured to death? A long life of useless idiocy or a short one of unspeakable agony? It would not seem short. He wanted to ask Hamish to advise him, but that would be grossly unkind, for no man should be expected to make such a decision—not for himself nor for anyone else.