Now the prisoners were brought forward one by one and their crimes read out. I could not hear the sentences, but one of the four women prisoners and five of the thirteen men were condemned to death; the others went to the galleys, to imp prisonment or to be scourged. A fight broke out in the crowd near by us: a woman with a man had looked at another man, and knives were out; people surged and pushed; we were trampled and moved five or six yards before the pressure eased.
Mass was celebrated in the growing dark; then people settled to eat again. Litter and dirt were everywhere, and even though the chill was returning it did not take away the smell. Bags of wine were passed.round, and I drank deeply. The scene was like the Day of judgment, the flambeaux smoking, the Inquisitor on his dais. The King had not gone in; it seemed he could wait to dine until the ceremony was over. Already it had lasted more than twelve hours.
I was tired now and ready to go. My legs were tired with standing, and there was nothing but stale warm air to breathe. Rodez muttered something and I said: “What is it?”
“Four of them and that includes the woman have said they prefer to die in the Christian faith. That leaves two to face the fire alive. Ah, well, it’s not an ordeal I would relish myself, even for a seat in Heaven; and for them, who merely make more certain their descent into Hell …”
The crowd surged forward and we with it as the prisoners were bound to stakes in the middle of the square. Faggots and charcoal were piled around them by blackcoated burners and priests of the Holy Office. Heads bobbed in my way; someone was coughing and spitting; two women in front of me were arguing about the price of wool. Columns of charcoal men with lighted torches were in procession to make obeisance to the King.
Now the flag with the white cross was leading them back to the six pyres. One of the prisoners was shouting at the top of his voice; in a quiet that had fallen it was easy to hear the words, but they were in a strange tongue: German or Dutch perhaps. It looked as if a priest were counselling each of the prisoners, advising them; but the shouting man would have none of it.
“He has gone off his head,” said Rodez. “I see they are to be merciful to him.”
A man was trying to get his little boy of eight through to see more clearly. Most were willing to move aside, but a woman complained angrily that the boy was standing on her dress; a torrent of angry argument broke out; in the arena charcoal men were passing cords round the necks of four prisoners who had recanted; the one was still shouting, another was reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. A long brass trumpet reared its mouth and a shrill blast was blown; it silenced the quarrellers beside me as the charcoal men pulled on the cords and the cursing and praying of the prisoners ended in a strangled coughing. Soon ad were dead.
The people sighed; a monk’s high voice intoned a prayer.
The trumpet blew again, torches were raised where I could see them clearly, and then plunged. People pushed me forward against the people in front, straining to see, an wanting to see the two living victims as the flames licked round their feet. It seemed that they were not yet to be deserted by the monks of the Holy Office, who risked burns in order to hear any recantations that might fall from their lips. One of the prisoners was dressed in tattered black slops, and as these caught fire he began to scream in a high-pitched almost whistling voice like a horse I had once heard being clumsily slaughtered. The other made no sound, but as the flames licked up him blisters rose and burst quickly on his skin like bubbles in a boiling pot. Then as they burst, so blood poured from them, and also from his nose.
As life left them, their bodies twisted and crouched against the wire thongs as if they were wrestlers in some game. The four who had been strangled before burning had taken on the same contorted attitude of defiance.
The screams of the last living man came to an end, and then the only thing was the hissing as blood and fat ran down into the flames.
Pressure slowly eased; breath came back; people stretched and yawned; there was room and time to feel one’s aching feet; but it was nine or after before the last prayers were said and we were free to go. Noisily, sweatily, untidily, like people coming from a cockpit or a bear-baiting we made our way out. At one of the entrances to the square there was a great crush as more tried to pass through than there was room for; women screamed, blows were struck. Rodez and I were like sticks in a current, one minute idly moving, the next caught tight in a log jam, inching forward a half step at a time. I thought, if anyone should block this crowd at the other end there would be no need of the judgment of the Holy Office for me or for a hundred others.
Suddenly we were through and walking back towards the Puerta del Sol in a laughing, talking, jostling company.
CHAPTER THREE
When we got back Andres Prada was at home and with him was the old soldier with the withered hand who had at last insinuated himself into the house. Father Rafael was there also, and the three men were sitting at a table in the largest of the living-rooms drinking wine. After the hot day the night had turned sharply cold and a brasero bowl was under the table warming their legs and feet. The soldier had a rough duffel cloak thrown around his shoulders.
“Well,” laid Señor Prada to us, “so it is over? I confess I find the ceremony tedious these days. How His Majesty a man suffering from gout and ulcers can endure the long day I know not.”
He was speaking in Spanish as Rodez and I took seats on cushions on the floor and were given wine to drink by one of the servants.
“For my part,” said the old soldier, who was called Miguel, “I have never seen one through. I witnessed a part of one in Seville when two English soldiers were to perish for their heresy, but to melt a man slowly away like a candle lit at the wrong end has always seemed to me a poor testimony of Christian charity, so I came away before the flames were lit.”
“This boy is English,” said Prada.
“Ah … Yes, he looks it. Yet twas my colouring when I was young: fair haired; and he’s not unlike I was, thin and lively and strong, with wide awake eyes not short of a glint of mischief. You remember me as I was then, Andrew?
“It is a long time since.”
“And you were ever a dark-skinned boy for contrast. And prone to sickness. The years have advanced you and retarded me … This English boy, now why do you keep him here?”
“He was brought in by two sea-rovers who kidnapped him as proof of a raid they made on the English coast. But it so happens that they have laid hold of the base son of this man who guards a key fortress on the coast of England…”
“Have a care, sir,” said Rodez, “he follows Spanish now.”
“He’s much as I was then,” mused Miguel, plucking at a hole in his slops, “but scarcely as I am now after a lifetime of soldiery and five years a slave to the Turks. My hand shot through at Lepanto; a prey to feverish agues that rack the bones I have left. Thirty years of honourable service for my country. It is no employment for such a one to hawk cloth from door to door or to write doggerel for broadsides. That is why I petition you and through you His Majesty for some honourable commission “
“You have had them in the past “
“Pittances, Andres, pittances of the most degrading kind, illpaid and often unpaid, as you must know. A Naval Commissary is expected to live off his peculations and I will not do that, Andres. I still believe in the ideals of patriotism and honesty, however much in this age they have become empty words.”
The door opened and Sebora Prada came in. When she saw the company she seemed likely to turn and go away again at once.