At last Agnes was produced. She was half dragged into the room by two more heavy-set brothers. She was wearing a grimy, colourless shift, stained brown with old blood, and her hair was matted and filthy. The size of the two soldiers with her was absurd, Geoffrey thought; either of them could have broken her with a single blow. She looked dimly around, at Ferron and his colleagues, and at the crucified Christ. There was a smell of decay about her, of shit and piss and blood. But her shrunken face had an odd, unearthly beauty about it.
And then she turned and looked directly at Geoffrey, and her eyes widened.
Geoffrey forced himself to smile at her, and made a blessing with two fingers. How she must blame him for prising her out of her anchoress's seclusion!
She dropped her head.
Ferron watched this coldly. Then he nodded to the brothers. 'Release her.'
The brothers let go of the girl's arms. She slumped to her hands and knees, and Geoffrey saw her back for the first time. Bloody stripes were clearly visible through the thin cloth of her shift.
Geoffrey found himself on his feet. 'This is an outrage. She has been whipped!'
Ferron turned that stern glare on him. 'All due and lawful process has been followed. The girl was given thirty days' grace in which to make her full and voluntary confession. When the thirty days expired, she was encouraged further to speak.'
'You call this encouragement?'
'And when she still failed to speak, she has been brought before the court. Perhaps she will speak here. But you, friar, will keep your silence, or you will be ejected.'
Geoffrey sat, fuming.
Ferron fixed the girl with his cold judgemental stare. 'Agnes Wooler. You are guilty of wanton destruction. You have damaged an ancient project with holy and pious purposes: you have blunted the swords of our new crusade. And, further, you took many lives in the process.'
Geoffrey put in, 'No. No lives were lost. She gave the friars in that manufactory sufficient warning. Whatever you think of her actions against the engines, she's not guilty of murder.'
Ferron ignored him again. 'Further I put it to you, Agnes Wooler, that you have been complicit in the corruption of a supplicant at the court of Fernando and Isabel, whom God has chosen as His emissaries on earth in this dark time. I mean Cristobal Colon, the navigator.' And Ferron spoke evenly about the 'Chinese' body discovered on the shore at Palos. Colon had believed this to be a relic washed east from Asia. But the body had been examined by a physician, who argued from blood-pooling that its tattoos had been applied after death. Its strange eye-folds were artificial too, the result of a bit of surgery, again performed after death. 'The body was a fake, designed to baffle Cristobal Colon and to thwart the holy purpose of the monarchs.'
Ferron produced other bits of evidence, selected bits of scholarship fed to Colon. 'There's really quite a conspiracy, it seems, to pour this nonsense of westward voyages into Colon's head. And it can't be a coincidence that your destruction of God's engines happened to occur on the very day that Colon's brother Bartolomeo was there to see it.'
Geoffrey was depressed at how much Ferron knew. Piously cruel he might be, but Ferron was evidently no fool. He tried to protest. 'What on earth can this wretched English girl have to do with the goings-on at the royal court of Spain? She's spent most of her adult life in York, locked up in the cell of an anchoress!'
Ferron said smoothly, 'That's what we're here to find out. Now you are put to the question, Agnes Wooler. Unburden your soul. I want you to tell me first the names of your co-conspirators. And when you are cleansed of that, we can move on to the detail of your further sins.'
Agnes, shaking, raised her upper body so she was kneeling before Ferron. She would not reply.
One of Ferron's aides whispered in his ear. Ferron nodded. 'That's enough time.' But before he proceeded, he hesitated. He said to Geoffrey, 'We are not monsters, Geoffrey Cotesford, whatever you English think of us. Hardened by the war against the Muslims we may be, but we are civilised, and pious in all things. And there is a process I must now follow, laid down by the Grand Inquisitor and sanctioned by the monarchs: a process tested in the law and the eyes of God. A process of five steps, at any of which a penitent may turn back to God and spare herself further suffering.'
Geoffrey said nothing.
Ferron turned to Agnes. 'You refuse to speak, Agnes Wooler. You understand that if you do not cooperate, further proceedings will follow.' After waiting for Agnes to respond Ferron nodded to a clerk, who made a cross in a book. Evidently that warning was the first step of the process.
Ferron stood. 'Bring her,' he snapped to the brothers, and he led the way out of the room. The brothers took Agnes's arms, hauled her to her feet, and dragged her after the others.
The room was suddenly empty, save for Geoffrey. He stood, his heart hammering, and he hurried out of the room after the rest.
They walked along a short corridor, lined with little offices inside which more churchmen laboured at mounds of paperwork. Geoffrey was reminded again that the Inquisition was a marvel of bureaucracy as well as cruelty. None of the clerks looked up from their work as the English girl was dragged past.
They came to a spiral staircase, its steps worn stone slabs, and down it they went, down into the deeper dark. At the foot of the stair they came to another room, bigger but no more brightly lit than the court office above. There was no furniture here, but the room was dominated by two pieces of equipment: a table fitted with leather straps and a kind of winch, and an odd arrangement like a ladder tilted up on trestles, around which stood buckets of water.
Geoffrey noticed mundane details. Channels cut in the floor, leading to drains. A thick oaken door that looked impervious to noise. He felt very cold.
Agnes was made to stand before the table device. A soldier's gloved hand under her chin ensured she saw it.
'Step two,' Ferron said. 'Agnes Wooler, you are being shown these instruments of God's mercy. Do you understand what they are? Repent now and spare yourself this righteous pain.'
Agnes stared dully, but said nothing.
The clerk made another cross in his book, and Ferron said, 'Step three.'
One of the brothers closed his huge fist at the neck of Agnes's shift, and pulled. The filthy cloth ripped easily, and she was left naked, surrounded by men, in the middle of the cold room. She hunched her shoulders against the cold, but did not try to cover herself. Geoffrey knew she was nearly thirty years old, but she was so emaciated she looked like a child, her ribs showing, her legs like saplings. The flesh between her legs was stained with piss, shit and blood, and her back was marked with bloody weals. The brothers leered at her shrivelled dugs, the patch of auburn hair between her legs.
Again Ferron asked her to confess. When she did not speak, Ferron said, 'The fourth step.'
The brothers grabbed her and pushed her onto the table. They took hold of her wrists and ankles, pulled them back so her arms and legs were stretched, and fixed her in place with tight bonds of metal and leather. Agnes did not resist. One brother went to the winch at the top of the table. He tugged it experimentally; the table creaked, and the mechanism under it, a mesh of gears and levers, shuddered as if eager.
Agnes lay passively, her body a white strip of fragile flesh laid over wood and iron.
Ferron stood over her. 'Have pity on yourself, child,' he said. 'You were an anchoress. You don't deserve this. Just tell me the truth.'