Aztec Blood - Jennings Gary (книги онлайн бесплатно серия .txt) 📗
My attorney sighed. "You wish to tell me about Don Julio and the Jewish rites he practices?"
I do not remember what my reply was, but it angered him and delighted my torturers. No torturer likes an easy victim because it keeps them from demonstrating their skills. I do not even remember all that was done to me—at some point I was lying flat as if in a bed, my mouth was propped open with a piece of wood, and a linen cloth was put down my throat. Water was slowly poured onto the cloth and it drained into my stomach. I could breathe only with difficulty, and I was certain my stomach was going to burst. When vomito erupted, it gushed out my mouth and nose and choked me. To my regret, my advocate sidestepped the flow I directed at him.
No more words flowed from me, either in confession or condemnation, and they worked on me until they tired. When they finished, I was too weak and dizzy to walk to my cell, and they chained me to a rack until I could regain my feet.
I could have told them that they were wasting their time torturing me. They had drained me of all human feeling by the time they began pounding me with questions. I merely drooled and laughed insanely at their questions because I was too weak and in agony to formulate answers or insults.
The walls separating my torture chamber from the adjoining one were full of wide cracks. I heard the whimper of a female voice, and I strained to maneuver into a position where I could see into the chamber. When I did, I gasped from what I saw.
Juana was strapped naked to a rack. The poor soul's skinny, little body showed all of its bones. Two frays were examining her, and I could see that they had spread her legs and were using an instrument to see if she was a virgin. I remembered what Fray Antonio told me: If an unmarried girl's hymen was broken, they would accuse her of having had intercourse with the devil. And if it was intact, she still was accused of having the intercourse—they claimed the devil had repaired it with his black magic.
Fire from somewhere deep in my soul exploded, and life erupted in me again. I screamed obscenities at the frays and resisted the gag they tried to put on my mouth. I did not shut up until I was beaten into unconsciousness.
But, of course, as my advocate had so thoughtfully apprised me in our first interview, it was not the frays inflicting the pain by swinging the clubs, it was the clubs themselves.
NINETY-SIX
More darkness. Dripdripdripdrip from the ceiling.
More torture. Questions that went unanswered. I was so weak they now had to drag me out of my cell and down the passageway to where the rack awaited.
My body now anticipated the tortures so well that I screamed before they inflicted pain. I don't know exactly all that flew off of my tongue; but since the torture continued, they must not have liked my answers. I had picked up an extensive vocabulary of gutter expressions on the streets of Veracruz, comments about one's wife, daughters, sons, mother, and father. I applied these liberally to my lawyer and the priests.
I confessed many things. Each day I confessed more and more, screaming my sins to them, demanding that they burn me at the stake so I would not be cold anymore. But my confessions did not please them because I never implicated the don or his family.
Then it stopped—no more dragging me from my cell, no more screaming. I no longer had any sense at all of the passage of time or if it even passed. But life goes on even in the most dire of situations, and soon I had enough sense back to realize how many places I hurt. I had sores on my body from unhealed wounds and the constant dampness.
But then one day I saw him again, the man who claimed to be my advocate. He came after a food serving that I knew was breakfast only because there was no tortilla.
"You appear before the tribunal today for trial. They will bring you up in a few minutes. Do you have any witnesses in your favor?"
It was a long time before I answered him. Not because my mouth worked slowly, but because I wanted to form the words correctly. When I spoke, it was calmly and quietly.
"How can I know what witnesses to call if I am not told the charges? How can I call witnesses if I cannot leave my cell to speak to them? How can I call witnesses if you tell me the trial is about to start? How can I put on a defense if my advocate is a whore in the pay of the devil?"
I don't know how long I spoke to the closed food door. I believe my advocate left after my first sentence, but I continued to talk logically and reasonably to the door. It did not answer me back.
Inquisitors must develop the eyes of bats. The room where the tribunal met was as ill lit as the rest of the dungeon. Half a dozen men in secretive cowls were in the room. Their faces were lost in shadows, and their function hardly had meaning to me. My impression was that there were two inquisitors, a prosecutor, and a number of other people whose precise function escaped me, but they may have been judges. Scribes were also present, taking down the words spoken.
I was chained to the chair I was sat upon. My advocate sat away from me, as if I would give him some foul disease if he crept too close. Perhaps it was my smell. He did not look pleased with me. I suppose he is usually able to inform the tribunal that he had been successful at obtaining a confession from an accused, and my denial was demeaning to his skills as my abogado.
I heard the prosecutor read the charges, but they made no sense to me—vague allegations about heresy, being a secret Jew, blasphemy, and devil worship. That I was a corrupt person who sold banned books and put on two offensive plays were the only charges they had right.
My advocate rose and informed the tribunal that he had dutifully asked me to confess the truth of the charges three times, and I had refused. "Persuasion on the rack failed to loosen his tongue. He is now in the hands of God."
"I don't see God in this room," I said. "I see men who believe they serve God but do the Lord an injustice."
My statements were not greeted with the applause of a well-received comedia but a frown from one of the judges.
"If the prisoner speaks without permission again, give him the mordaza," he told the constable. A mordaza was a gag. I shut my mouth.
The chain of evidence against me began with testimony from inquisitors who had questioned me verbally about the Church, God, Christ, Jews, Satan, witches, and only heaven knows what else. The questions sounded like those that Fray Antonio had described as the Witches Hammer, in which there were no real answers and every response could be twisted.
"He was asked how many horns Satan has," the fray testified at the Inquisition hearing. "He replied that he didn't know. As we all know, Satan has two horns."
"Had I said two horns, he would have accused me of having personally seen Satan!" I shouted.
"The mordaza," the constable was told.
"I meant no offense, Monsenor. Please, I promise to keep my lips sealed."
Once more I avoided being gagged.
The first witness was called. She was masked, but I could tell from her voice it was a servant from Don Julio's house. She was a crazy old woman who was always seeing devils and demons everywhere she looked. We all knew she was harmless, but she had the queer sort of insanity that Inquisitors fed upon.
"I saw them dancing," she told the tribunal, "that one," meaning me, "the don, his sister, and his niece. They each took turns dancing with the devil."
The judges asked her questions about Jewish customs in the house, whether we observed the Sabbath on Saturdays, ate meat on Fridays; the old woman confirmed that we ate meat on Fridays, a lie, but in response to other questions she kept telling them about different acts with the devil. She was obviously crazy, babbling on about demonic things when asked about Jewish rites.
