Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  And this … this man had been circumcised.

  Pasquale drew his dagger, stepped up to the table and used the point delicately to lift the abomination. No mistake. No accident. He was entire … except for his foreskin. And he was no Moor because his skin was too pale.

  Pasquale shuddered, put his dagger away.

  ‘Jesus Christ also was circumcised, as I am.’ Anriques was lying in the remnants of his spasms, still bleeding from the nose and mouth. His voice was down to a croak – one of the disadvantages of the use of the jugs, since subjects could often only whisper afterwards.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  The half-shut eyes stretched in a bruised smile. ‘Jesus was circumcised. Says so. In the Bible. Because he was a Jew.’

  Pasquale lost control of himself. Pure rage caused him to lift his fist, punch the filthy creature in the face. It was inexcusable, even in the circumstances.

  He put his dagger away, wiped his hand with a napkin hanging on a rail under the table, stepped away.

  When he was sure his voice would not shake, he said, ‘You spoke English while you were unconscious. I know that you are an English heretic, trading illegally.’

  The Jew’s mouth was bleeding badly, breath caught raggedly in a swollen throat. ‘So?’

  ‘And you are … a Jew.’ Pasquale was still upset, he was dabbing his napkin on his split knuckles. He should have known better. The devil’s spawn had sharp teeth.

  The devil’s spawn lifted itself up on its elbow, looked down at itself, spat out one of its teeth. ‘Yes, I am. Since you ask,’ it whispered. ‘I have always been a Jew. I was circumcised, like Christ, at eight days old. At fourteen, like Christ, I had my Bar Mitzvah. You asked…’ He paused to cough again, spat some more blood, ‘… when and where I was christened. I was not christened. I have never been christened. I was born in London just before Passover in 1553, and in all my life I have never been a Christian. I have observed, to the best of my poor abilities, the Jewish faith.’

  This new horror had not occurred to Pasquale. Surely even heretics took the trouble to ensure some orthodoxy? Certainly they did against the True Religion. Surely they did not tolerate the filth of Judaism in England?

  ‘Are you surprised, Señor?’ asked the Jew. ‘The Queen of England has granted dispensation. To all of us.’

  This interview had gone wrong. Somehow Pasquale had lost the initiative, worse, he had lost his natural and normal ascendancy over a Killer of Christ. His assistants, one of whom was trained in law, stared at him in alarm. The abominable whispering went on.

  ‘Señor, you cannot accuse me of Judaising or apostasy. I have never been a Christian so I cannot have returned to the religion I never … ptah … left. I am simply a merchant. If you had not arrested me, I would have been gone from this country, in accordance with the old sentence of exile.’ The pale brown eyes watered with more violent coughing. ‘I have committed no crime against the law here and you have no legal hold on me. I demand that you release me and return my ship to me.’

  Pasquale rammed the gag back in the creature’s mouth and retired to his desk to think, while the devil’s spawn sat naked on the table, cross-legged, comfortable despite the right wrist still bound to a corner. It coughed in paroxysms through the O of the gag, trying to clear the water from its lungs. Pasquale went to the prie-dieu in the corner and prayed briefly for guidance.

  At last, he regained enough control to speak calmly to his assistants. ‘Clean it. Give it something to cover itself. Take it back to the cells.’

  He had to wash his hands over and over until the jug was empty, to get the feeling of pollution off. Then he went to the nearby church of St Simeon, where he lit a candle and prayed fervently for guidance. For what the Christ-Killer had said was true. He had absolutely no legal hold on it.

  * * *

  Afterwards, Pasquale tried to write his report while his assistants cleaned and scrubbed the table. Pasquale was always careful in his reports. He used the shorthand account his clerk took of the dialogue and he made sure he separated his opinions from the facts of what the accused might have said.

  There was, however, no way of covering up the lamentable fact that the Jew had legality on his side. The letter of the law was on the Jew’s side, but of course the spirit of it clearly could not be. Pasquale went into some detail as he explained exactly why he felt that the only correct action was immediate relaxation of the Jew to the secular arm, followed by burning at the next auto de fe.

  But he could not concentrate. It took him a long time to write, was not as polished as he would have wished. In the end he left his draft to be fair-copied for tomorrow by his clerk, who might be able to clear up some of the trailing ends of thoughts that had intruded as he worked. He scanned the draft to be sure there were no traces of sin. For sin seemed to surround him like a miasma again, strong and pungent from his rage at the Jew.

  Pasquale left to have his dinner. He often went home to keep his mother company while she sucked and dribbled on the carefully mashed foods her woman prepared for her, but Pasquale felt he was not up to the strain of making one-sided conversation for appearance’s sake. He went to a tavern instead, asked for the ordinary of the day and then when it came, a novelty dish of pork in a sauce of New Spanish fruit, sat there looking at it, his stomach churning and his head full of fragmented pictures.

  He was often unsettled in this way after an interrogation, even if it had gone well. He was similar to a physician in many ways, a doctor of the State. Just as a physician who was brave enough to treat plague or smallpox ran the risk of catching the disease himself, so Pasquale’s proximity to sin often infected him with it. For a long time he had been able to keep succubi and sinful thoughts at bay by praying and fasting. But there had been the suspected Jewess last year, the woman who would not eat pork. He had interrogated her and after she broke and admitted everything, he had been so full of heat and the devilish exudations from her, that he had …

  The memory broke out again, what he had done. He had only been trying to avoid sin … No, if he was honest, he had not. He had sought out sin because he had come to such a pitch that he felt the mortal sin of fornication would be less bad than the constant nagging of images in his head that made him abstracted and unable to concentrate, unable to sleep.

  Was that what he needed this time? Did he need to visit the little house in the old Moorish quarter? With the metal grills and the veiled women who took charge of him? It would mean a great penance when he confessed, of course, but it would be worth it if he could think straight and function afterwards.

  Suddenly decisive, he left money for his uneaten meal, and swept off, walking swiftly through the blazing sun, through almost empty streets, black robe flapping behind him as he took a deliberately twisty, doubling-back route through the little white streets, down the steps, across the tiny courtyard almost filled by the orange tree.

  The heavy door was locked, as always. He knocked, waited, knocked again. They would be looking at him from one of the forbidden upstairs rooms, from behind a screen.

  He had heard of the address from one of his assistants, overheard it really since the man had been laughing at a cousin of his who made regular visits. The address had burned in his head for a month. At last he had stumbled to the place, drunk one night after a man had died while he was being interrogated. They had wanted a recommendation, a password: it was like visiting a nunnery, arguing back and forth through the grill in the door. He had passed two gold pieces through the wires and at last the door had opened. They had insisted on blindfolding him, that first time, which had somehow served only to increase his heat. To trust such people, probably poor New Christians who could earn their bread no other way, to consign himself helpless into their care … It had made his heart thunder and his loins swell, he had been hotter and more aching with the miserable pressure of sin than ever before. And the women there had soothed him, gently commanded him, eased his dreadful stress, reassured him of his right
ness. They had sung to him, done what he desired and not laughed when he wept helplessly under his blindfold.

  In time they had come to trust him and allowed him to enter the long, low, ornately screened room without a blindfold. He didn’t really see why it had been necessary because he never saw any of their faces. Even when they were dancing oiled and naked for him, they kept a Moorish veil across the lower part of their faces and no matter how he begged, not one of them would reveal herself. Sometimes he was alone, but more often there were others there, tactfully hidden by curtains and screens, revealed only by moans and occasional sharp noises beyond the clouds of Moroccan incense. It was like the Paradise of the Moors, a place of ecstasy and guilt. He went as often as he could afford it for months, happily fasting as his confessor ordered so that he could save the money. Then once his first frenzy was calmed, he went when he needed to and they welcomed him.

  It was strange how badly he needed women, and yet he had no desire to marry. Of course at the moment, it would hardly be very suitable. But he had never fallen in love with any of the girls who had sat demure and formal in the garden of his mother’s house.

  The black door opened and the woman who opened it had only her eyes showing under her veil, in the Moorish way. He knew her by her eyes alone, which were large and almond shaped. She was the one with broad, lush hips and heavy breasts, soft as butter and about the same colour. When he smiled at her humbly, she gripped his hand and led him into the long, dim room, screened by marble, filled with cushions and curtains and little hookahs of tobacco and incense mixed. There were the familiar heavy scents in the air, jasmine and musk and women, that strangely rounded, tip-tilted smell of woman. He gave the doorwoman his money and when she had put it in the bound carved box, the two other women, also veiled, came to him and laughing at him, humming at him, took his robe and doublet off for him. They led him, trembling already, to one of the curtained alcoves and then bound his hands with silk scarves to the screen, gagged him with another scarf so he could not shame himself by pleading or crying out. He was utterly in their hands, at their mercy, helpless … And then, as he felt his body melting and boiling, softening and hardening, they delicately forced him into the wickedness of fornication that he so desperately needed and desired.

  Every time he always felt he might die from the pleasure of it, from that heart-pounding dagger of joy. The first time he had been terrified that the wetness he felt was his blood. Now he knew better. But every time it was as sharp, as unendurable as before. If he had not been restrained, he would not have been able to allow it, so wild did it make him.

  Afterwards, when they had taken the scarf from between his teeth, he lay and panted and they fanned him and cleaned him, untied his hands and massaged them, wiped his face with orange flower water. As his heart slowed from a gallop to a canter to a trot, he always promised that this would be the last time he sought out sin. Always he promised it, always meaning it.

  He dozed away the siesta hour until the women tapped him and told him in their soft voices that he must go. He languorously put on his clothes again, while one of the women knelt to do his laces at the back. And then she firmly led him to the door and out again. As always, hearing the door shut and lock on Paradise behind him, he felt like a sleeper awakening.

  Then as always, he went straight to confession, walking as fast as he could, terrified that he might suddenly be struck down by some footpad or an attack of plague and go to hell because he had not had time to be shriven.

  He alternated between four different churches for his confession, so as not to shock the priest, and found that each had his favourite penance for fornication: a couple of rosaries in one, a donation to church funds in another, a hairshirt to be worn for a week or nightly use of the discipline at another and the fourth would normally recommend a month of abstaining from meat, except once in Lent when he had ordered a week-long fast. That had been very difficult, but Pasquale had performed it diligently, welcoming the night sweats and the dizzy weakness during the day because at least he felt no need to sin while he was thinking of food all the time. He tried conscientiously not to sin again before he had paid off the penance for the last time.

  It was the fourth church’s turn today. He slipped into the dark booth, saw the shadow of the priest’s face behind the grill, and began as soon as the priest had closed his book. He gabbled his prayers, anxious to be absolved and waited expectantly.

  ‘My son,’ said the priest with a sigh, ‘I have heard this tale from you before. Last month, in fact. And the month before.’

  Pasquale flushed although the priest couldn’t see him through the grill. ‘Father?’

  ‘This sin of fornication is regular, is it, my son?’

  Pasquale coughed, stuttered. The priest sighed again.

  ‘Are you in holy orders?’

  ‘Minor orders, only, Father.’

  ‘Well then, my son, have you considered the holy state of matrimony?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Consider it. As St Paul says, it is better to marry than to burn. In the meantime I would like you to refrain from meat for the rest of this month and if you cannot marry, may I suggest an adventure.’

  ‘A … what?’

  ‘An adventure. If you have no pressing familial ties, go on a voyage, enter the service of His Majesty the King, become a soldier. Something that will take you away from the occasion of your sin.’

  Pasquale was shocked to the point of gobbling as he tried to think of reasons why it was impossible. Except that it wasn’t, of course, apart from his mother.

  So he refrained from meat, knowing that it would make him easily tired but also that his humours would be less hot as a result which would be a good thing. And the suggestion of the priest at the church he no longer visited stayed in his mind like a stone in his shoe.

  * * *

  In due course, the Jew came to trial. Pasquale worked at his case in the week leading up to the trial, was up all that night with a flux born of pure nerves. He prayed before he went in front of the judge, did his very best – and found that the judge was clearly insane.

  After the judgement, Señor Pasquale was outraged, unable to believe his ears. He went back to the judge to make his representations, wondering if he should approach the Cortes for a retrial. The judge received him in his chamber and listened courteously to three hours of Pasquale’s arguments that all Christ-Killers should die and in particular one as insolent as Anriques.

  ‘Certainly he is insolent, certainly,’ agreed the judge, ‘and if this were a normal time, I would be in agreement with you, Señor. However…’ He passed over a piece of official paper, properly watermarked and signed by the King himself.

  Pasquale read the King’s appeal to all judges that in any cases where there was the slightest shadow of doubt, they should sentence to the galleys instead of to death. There was a desperate call for men of all sizes to row the oars of the four new galleases being delivered from Naples for the Enterprise of England.

  ‘I understand from my contacts that they have eighteen oars on each side and that because of the high freeboard, the sweeps are very long and require seven men each,’ explained the judge. Señor Pasquale’s lips moved as he tried to calculate how many fresh galley slaves this required. ‘Of course, there must be at least two hundred and fifty-two slaves in each galleas, one thousand and eight all told, plus fifty or so in the hold to replace wastage. In fact we have been told to find two thousand of them, to allow for losses.’

  ‘Excellency, what is a galleas?’

  ‘I believe it is a new invention of His Grace, Lord Admiral Santa Cruz, a cross between a galleon and a galley. It has three masts and it carries a great weight of ordnance. This is all I know. It is intended for a special purpose, which is a secret, in the Holy Enterprise of England. Now tell me, Señor, which is more important? To burn one Jew or to help save the souls of all the poor heretics lost in the toils of the Witch-Queen of England?’

  Señor Pasquale b
owed and withdrew all his objections.

  Along with the priest’s suggestion of a few weeks before, the King’s appeal stirred his blood. He prayed about it as he returned to his mother’s house that evening, partly to avoid looking at the noble ladies who took the air.

  When he entered his mother’s chamber to say goodnight, he found the old lady well tucked up, her lace-trimmed nightcap tied a little too tight about her chin. She had been terribly afflicted by a syncope the year before and could only move one arm a little and speak hardly at all. Sometimes she wept with rage as she told the amethyst beads of her rosary, but sometimes she was calm, as she was today. She had withered in the past year, her skin become flaccid and baggy and pale. Only her eyes still made her beautiful, wide, almond-shaped, liquid and brown, her black brows still winged above them, and the frown lines between making the body of the bird. The whites had become a little yellow but the pupils were so large and velvet, it hardly mattered. Many, many times as a child, Josef had heard his reverend father praise his mother’s eyes. Once he had teased her, saying that only among the Moors and the marranos were there women with such beautiful eyes and his mother had flashed lightning under her brows and sworn angrily at her husband, saying that she came of an excellent Old Christian family and never forget it. They had made up the quarrel in bed, while Josef hid his head under a pillow and tried not to listen. When his father died at Lepanto, his mother had taken to wearing mourning always, and become thinner and less curved – but still her eyes were where her soul lived. Now they were the only part of her that could speak clearly and they rested on Josef, full of love? Perhaps. He prayed to the Virgin every day that he could be a good son to her in her need.