‘Yes,’ said the abbess, ‘there is Josefa. We received her, but she is shut out of her rightful progress here. Until the child is gone, Josefa cannot proceed to her fuller vows. She is in limbo. Sor Agnete, remind me what you spoke of some time back, in regard to the strangeness of the child . . . I told you to keep such thoughts to yourself.’
‘I had wondered, Mother, if the child was strange because she had been abandoned to the wolves or if, perhaps, she had been abandoned to the wolves because she was strange. I know that sometimes the poorest people cannot think what to do with crazed or maimed children. They cannot afford them. But Mother, I think now there is nothing wrong with Amara. I think, on the contrary, she must be fully sharp-witted, or she would not have been able to learn as much as she has.’
‘But you see, Sisters,’ said the abbess. ‘If the child had been abandoned when she was already speaking, already hearing those around her . . . then the whole experiment would be pointless. She would already have some idea of God, gained in the usual way.’
‘But Mother, the difficulty seems to be the opposite. She answered that she did not know God,’ said Sor Eulalie.
‘She said that she was not aware of something above her and around her in the mountains. And his Holiness and his companion answered that we should teach her some more and better speech. But if we could show that she had been in human society long enough before she was with the wolves, then if she understands better and her answer shows knowledge of God, it will not prove that she has that knowledge inborn, only that she has remembered fragments from her earliest life through later vicissitudes. Then there would be no point in this experiment; then we could teach her to know and love her Saviour; then we could let her depart.’
‘We did not promise not to try to discover more about her,’ said Sor Agnete.
‘No; we promised enough, but not that. We are not bound beyond our promise,’ Sor Eulalie agreed.
‘But how could one find out?’ Sor Agnete wondered. ‘She must have been abandoned either as a babe, above a dozen years ago, or as a tiny child, say ten years since. And we don’t know where. To whom could we write for intelligence? And is it likely that the perpetrator of such cruelty would readily admit to it?’
‘People do reclaim their abandoned children,’ said Sor Eulalie. ‘They don’t mean to be cruel. They leave them out in public places in hard times, for some more prosperous person to raise.’
‘Amara is not absolutely friendless,’ said the abbess. ‘We will send for Jaime. We will see what he can find out about her.’
‘It is a matter of great interest,’ Fra Murta said. ‘I thank you for letting me share in it. By and by the wolf-child will be a great and powerful example to all who hear heresy condemned. She will define the limits of good faith, beyond all possibility of doubt.’
‘You think her answer will change? I heard her say “no” to our questions.’
‘But she did not understand us. When she does, she will surely say yes; she knew her creator by brute instinct, even among the brutes.’ The path had widened out again on the final miles back towards Ciudad, and the two men were riding side by side. ‘However, that will take a long time. Meanwhile, I should declare an edict of grace. And you should deliver the atheist to me for questioning. That is what I was sent here to do.’
‘Does your work please you, Fra Murta?’ Severo enquired.
‘It pleases God,’ the man replied.
‘Some might prefer to please God in other ways,’ Severo said.
Fra Murta said, ‘I have met heresy. I know its power of evil as others, perhaps, do not.’
‘Was some friend of yours entrapped by it?’ asked Severo. He supposed he ought to try to understand the man.
‘I myself was ensnared!’ cried Fra Murta. ‘And the trap that ensnared me was my very desire to know the truth! I stood at a roadside husting, when I was but a green youth, hungry for the word of God, and an evil man poured poison into my pure heart – and what glittering poison, too! Talk of the spiritual church which had replaced a worldly one, which acknowledged no obedience and allowed foul unchastity full rein because sin could not touch the souls of the elect! Into this mire I fell full deep and was with great labour rescued and set right by the love of an inquisitor. As he did for me, so would I do for others, while I draw breath.’
Severo rode with a heavy heart. He had been entertaining a thread of hope that it might be possible to buy Fra Murta off; it was widely believed that inquisitors were avaricious, driven by greed for the fines paid by penitent heretics; but that did not sound likely in view of Fra Murta’s last effusion. Severo’s duty as a loyal son of the Church was clear. Fra Murta came to him on a mission from Rome. Severo’s power was sufficient to obstruct him but not without long and grave repercussions. Besides, even a cardinal obeys Rome. Outside that allegiance chaos lies. And, thought Severo, whatever was he thinking of, even considering foiling a servant of the Holy Inquisition? Could he be one of those contemptible people who gladly obey until the first moment obedience becomes difficult? For he was realizing that his unspoken desire to save Palinor presented the first difficulty his faith had ever occasioned him – beside which penance and celibacy and vigils and plain-living were nothing – mere bagatelles.
‘Preach an edict of grace by all means,’ he said. ‘But as to the atheist, the question of whether he falls within your competence is the very question at issue. I will meditate further on that.’
Fra Murta looked daggers at him but only bowed his assent.
In the days and weeks that followed, Severo’s watchers enabled him to follow the friar’s progress. Fra Murta went on foot from parish to parish round the island, preaching. He kept away from Ciudad at first. He declared his time of grace, inviting heretics to accuse themselves, to come forward, to accept punishment, lenient punishment, and escape the terrible fate that would fall upon those who were wicked and failed to confess. He had a golden tongue, and the people flocked to hear him. He whipped them to a frenzy of remorse and hatred of heresy. Tears flowed freely, and storms of prayers ascended. And in the quiet parishes among the olive groves and terraced fields, in the tall churches that crowned the little towns on the wide plains, every nook and cranny was searched, and here and there a heretic was found – found and forgiven with tirades of gratitude to the presiding saints.
27
It had happened everywhere. The women wept, sometimes. The men shrugged. They had had no choice. The harvest had failed, the child had been faulty – lame, blind, lacking. The little fields and the orchards belonging to so many could not support such burdens. Or the child had simply been one too many. Jaime had a friendly face; people answered his questions. Was it a brother he was seeking, or a sister? They cast back their minds, tried to remember for him. Angelina had abandoned a child, some dozen years back . . . yes, a girl. What had become of the babe? Why, Pere and Jacinta had picked her up and reared her. As a servant, of course, a playmate and handmaiden for their daughter. Jaime would find her at the house in Camino da Granja.
Everywhere he asked, he found the abandoned children. If it was a sin to abandon babes, it was not one that the Church was much agitated about; very much less sinful, one would conclude, than heresy. People often left a token with the child – a trinket, a coin, an embroidered kerchief, so that later the foundling could be identified, perhaps reclaimed. Mostly the parents would keep their mouths shut, Jaime gathered, watching from a distance and silent unless there was a risk of incest. Once or twice he was told of a quarrel between parents who wanted a child back and the foster family who had rescued and fed it. The priest had appealed to the bishop for a ruling. Once he heard a tale of a boy claimed back when his elder brother died; girls, however, once abandoned, seemed to be gone for good.
There was a way of doing this. A child would be left at dawn on the church steps, with a little salt, if it was a baptized child. Someone would see it there and take it in. Jaime heard of a woman given public penance for leaving a c
hild at dusk, in winter. By morning it was dead of cold, and there was outrage at her callousness. Had she left it in daylight none would have blamed her. But wickedly, because it was a child of shame, she had tried to leave it under cover of night.
Eventually, Jaime went home and talked to his mother. ‘It’s often done, Jaime,’ she told him. ‘If you weren’t such a dreamer you’d know these things. It isn’t cruel; not so cruel as dragging a whole family down to starvation. Often the child does well out of it – it’s a wealthier house that picks it up than the one it was set out from, you see. Do you know Leonor? She has five looms – five – going all day every day, and her women are all girls she picked up at the church door. You can hear them chattering and laughing together at the open door as you go past – and what a quantity of cloths she brings to market!’
‘But they are slaves. They can never marry.’
‘Is that such a terrible thing? You could not have married if you hadn’t found a patron.’
‘Mother, why did you rear me, then? If there wasn’t enough patrimony for me and my brothers . . .’
‘Why do you think?’ she said, crossly. ‘Do you want me to tell you I love you – a great grown lump like you with a wife of your own to coddle you?’
He smiled at her. ‘I shan’t find what I’m looking for in the plain,’ he said. ‘I must look in the mountains, where things are wilder. I might be gone some time. Help Fransoya look after the babe, won’t you?’
‘I’ll help her all she lets me, son,’ Jaime’s mother said. ‘You know yourself how little that is.’
‘It is enough. It would be more at need.’
‘Son, you know what you are looking for, don’t you? A slut of some kind, a girl with a reason not to expose the child on the church steps. A secret act. Perhaps an intention that the child would die. Most likely something you won’t get told by anyone, and you won’t get thanked for asking. You take care of yourself, son.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I shall take my leave of Fransoya and the boy and be gone in the morning, Mother.’
So Jaime walked out of Sant Jeronimo the same hour that Fra Murta walked in.
Amara had discovered a new game. ‘What you thinking, Josefa?’ she would ask.
‘Of the sea,’ Josefa might answer.
‘Sea not here,’ Amara would say triumphantly. ‘We go now?’
Every time, Josefa was pleased that Amara could ask for the sea – that she could speak of something not present before her eyes. If she was asked in her turn what she was thinking of, she usually said ‘meat’, but sometimes said ‘mountain’, or ‘snow’. Once she said, ‘Running. Running far,’ and sulked for the next hour, pacing to and fro in the haybarn. She could not be used to help Sor Blancha with the sheep or the three goats, because these creatures were terrified of her. She seemed now so little, so seldom wolflike to the nuns that it was astonishing that the sheep knew any difference between Amara and another guardian, but they did.
Josefa was slowly being driven crazy by the endless meaningless patter of handfuls of grit cast on the little drum.
The people of Sant Jeronimo packed into the square. A stand of boxes had been made halfway up the church steps, and the bell was clamouring brazenly for everyone’s attention. Fra Murta looked grave. His hands were tucked into the wide sleeves of his habit, and his head was bowed. The crowd was eager. Fra Murta was something new; and last time an itinerant preacher had come he had urged instant repentance, and there had been a fine show. All the notorious sinners had repented and come forward for forgiveness, and Juanita had caused raptures of approval from the crowd by asking loudly to be forgiven what she had done with Pablo, and Petro, and Benito, and Tomas, and . . . naming just about every respectable man in the town.
But heresy turned out to be nothing like so much fun. It was a sin which one could commit without realizing it. It could be a mistake. One could be cast into eternal fire for something from which not a twinge of pleasure had been derived! Fra Murta assured the uneasy crowd that error was more likely to entrap proud and clever people than those of simple minds, but he had surely got it wrong; everyone knew that errors were more likely in the less learned!
They had thirty days, he told them, to come forward and confess. And they were under a duty to denounce any of their neighbours who had committed any crime against the faith. ‘If any of you,’ cried Fra Murta, ‘has known or heard say that anyone, living or dead, present or absent, has done or uttered or believed any act, word or opinion, heretical or suspect, erroneous, rash, ill-sounding, scandalous or heretically blasphemous, you must come forward! You must reveal it to the tribunal within six days! Are you uncertain what deeds should be denounced? These are the crimes of heretics, my friends. They blaspheme; they keep familiar devils; they practise witchcraft; they make pacts with the devil, and by his means have fair-weather harvests and children who escape infection. They mix sacred and profane objects, and will steal the consecrated host for foul purposes; they marry in holy orders and solicit women in the confessional; they commit bigamy. They say there is no sin in simple fornication, or usury, or perjury, or that concubinage is better than marriage. They insult or maltreat crucifixes and images of holy saints; they disbelieve or doubt articles of faith, and continue in excommunication, refusing to be reconciled, they have recourse to astrology, they possess forbidden books, as for instance, works of Mohammedan sages, or those of perfidious Jews, or the Bible in a vulgar tongue. They keep friendship with other heretics, and say that those who confess to the Inquisition are innocent martyrs or confessed only through fear – my friends, such sinners are so loathsome in the sight of God that they bring misery, misfortune and disease on all who harbour them. You must cast them out! Denounce them, even if they are your mothers and sisters, your cousins, your masters, or your priest! Anyone who comes forward and confesses, provided he denounces to us all other offenders known to him, will be given mercy, will be given a light penance and restored to the bosom of the Church. But anyone who is denounced not having confessed has cause to fear! Think well then, people of Sant Jeronimo. I leave you to think; but I will return tomorrow to hear what any of you have to say to me!’
The people were sick with fear when he left them. The priest of Sant Jeronimo rang the church bells at nightfall and gathered the townspeople in the nave. He told them that anyone who confessed would not be released till they had named others, and those others would be taken up and likewise released only when they had given names.
‘We shall be engulfed all alike, sinners and believers,’ he said, ‘and so nobody must confess or name a single person to the inquisitor. If nobody speaks a single word, we shall all be safe. And you must confess your sins of heresy to me. I will punish and absolve you.’
‘But he will not be satisfied unless he has someone denounced,’ said Tomas, the cobbler, a man who could read. How could his illiterate neighbours tell if his three books were by Mohammedans or Jews?
‘We will tell him that no such crimes have ever been heard of amongst us,’ said the priest. ‘But we will tell him that we have heard that there is a heretic at Alquiera, who is using witchcraft to deform the water and to work iron without labour of human hands. He will leave us then and go after larger fish to fry.’
Jaime camped at night. He slept under a cowhide, propped on a crossbar between two low forks made of branches. He had a jar of oil to soak and soften his stale bread, some olives, some salt fish. The mountains gave forth abundant fresh water. How far might a wolf range? he had wondered, and concluded that the heights above Sant Jeronimo were the best place to look. Among the great swelling masses of the mountains, the high woods, their trees dwarfed and thinned, the lush pastures that the high valleys cradled, up there in the cool air, where water flowed freely and the land was never parched. There from the spring to the autumn the flocks and herds fattened and prospered, and the shepherds and drovers lived like hermits, cutting fleeces and making cheese. There were dozens of little encampments where they
lived the summers through. The children stayed with the women in the hot little towns below.
A shepherd told Jaime something that caught his attention. That was a tale of a stolen lamb, that had been found alive in the wolf’s lair, curled up among its cubs. The shepherd thought the wolf had taken the lamb living back to the den to feed the cubs, and then the cub scent had got on to the lamb’s wool before she killed it and confused her. Certainly the lamb, restored to the flock, had spread terror among them, and had had to be reared by hand, because its mother rejected it. But beyond this, Jaime could hear nothing that helped.
Lower down the slopes the charcoal burners worked, felling and sawing, levelling their sites, and ringing the hearth circles with stones, stacking the timber with an ancient elaborate skill. When a mound was ready, it was sealed with clay and gravel and set alight by dropping burning morsels through the smoke hole at the apex. The pitstead burned for many days, and they watched it, adding more burning tinder, or closing the air-vents between the stones. They were easy to find, though they worked in the deeps of the upland woods, because of the thin bluish columns of smoke from the burning that ascended above the treetops from their camps. And they were easier to visit; they brought their wives and children to the high woods with them, and baked bread in makeshift clay ovens, and usually had some to spare. Children ran around the workers and were scolded only for touching axe or saw, or playing too near the heat of the smouldering pitsteads. A visitor was welcome – another voice, a different face, some news from the world below.
But the carboneros were scattered all over the mountain ranges, living and working in families, maybe hundreds of tiny groups. None of them had ever heard of abandoning a child up here in the woods, instead of waiting till winter and taking it to the church door. Such a thing would be an outrage, they told Jaime. Up here in the woods anything could happen to a child left out alone. It would not be found for many days, if ever. It would die of cold, or have its eyes taken out by an eagle, or fall from a precipice, or be taken by a wolf . . .
Knowledge of Angels Page 19
