by T. C. Rypel
“Gonji-san,” he went on, spilling his inmost terrors, “I suffer from grave misgivings these days. I fear our own zealousness—indeed, our viciousness!—briefly allowed evil to sit on the papal dais itself! God forgive me.”
He felt Gonji’s piercing gaze. “You have your problems. I have mine.”
De la Cenza was stung. He had somehow oddly fostered the hope of a kinship between them in this grim business. He sadly called for the warden to see him out of the dungeon block.
“Wait,” Gonji said. “I’ll tell you anything else that occurs to me that might help you. I know you’re doing what you can to aid my cause. I do have a pressing need, though, Martin-san. Can you send me more paper?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the prelate replied, holding back before finishing his thought.
He had not told the samurai of the council’s resolve of that very day. There seemed no sense in disturbing his sleep any further with the gravity of his situation. But they had decided to prosecute him for witchcraft without waiting any longer for the expected counsel of Rome or Madrid.
His trial was set for the day after the harvest moon. Two nights hence.
* * * *
Gonji was stripped of his breechcloth, his hachi-maki and shortened robe were taken away to be burned, and he was made to don a new unrepentant’s sanbenito. He gave no resistance, for he was loath to lose his chance at the once monthly enjoyment of the sensations of the real world, the world of the living.
He was led to the battlements of the Alcazar and lashed between his familiar embrasures. The usual crowd of full-moon taunters began to gather in the streets outside the walls. But tonight there were far more bloodthirsty gawkers in the great square of the Zocodover. The sprawling promenade was the site of a popular event Gonji would be witnessing for the first time—an auto-da-fe, the public burning of condemned criminals.
The crimes of the three were read by cowled monks: usury, murder, and witchcraft, respectively. Gonji watched in rapt fascination as the throng fell silent and the Inquisitors pursued a benediction, shot through with the frenzied cursing of the one prisoner who still wore the black sanbenito of the unrepentant—he who had been convicted of witchcraft. The other two, bedecked in the yellow garment of submission, merely hung their heads and sobbed.
Gonji found the dishonorable posturings of the three ignoble and distasteful, and he gave thought to how he would comport himself should he be served up to the same fate.
The prisoners were led to the stakes, fixed high on raised platforms, and the army now took over the execution of their sentences.
Gonji experienced a wild sensation of wrath and defiance as the three madly struggling forms flared alight, the crowd cheering and proffering drinks and foodstuffs to one another. Bright-colored clothing gamboled in the streets below, as courtly gentlemen and ladies in mantillas danced the seguidilla out of rhythm to the musical cacophony that rose to Gonji’s ears.
He tried to make the antic merriment, the lively sights and sounds, the scent of burning wood, exotic perfume, and rich food and drink fit the memories he cherished of years gone by. But it all seemed alien to him now.
Spain had lost its zest for him. It was merely decadent, as was most of Europe.
And then instinct told him he was in danger. When he peered over his shoulder to see who stood there, leering with unholy delight, he knew that the meaning of the event had all come together. It was complete now.
The Burning Court was a foretaste of the Hell these Europeans feared.
“Balaerik,” Gonji ground out as if purging his tongue of a foul taste.
“You know my name,” the evil donado replied. “I’m flattered.”
“And I know your meaning, evil priest.”
“Evil?” Balaerik said in mocking confusion, eyebrows arching. “But what is evil? Surely from your standpoint all who represent the Church can be regarded as evil.”
“They’re merely misguided,” Gonji said, feeling the sweat trickle down from his brow in the rising heat waves. “You can’t cloud my thinking the way you can with zealots.”
Balaerik strode with hands clasped behind him, a figure exuding smug confidence and self-satisfaction.
“So you think you stand outside the moral universe,” he said. “Larger, more important, capable of judging others as you see fit?”
“Do I?” Gonji parried.
“Oh, yes indeed—and you’re right. You do. As do I, and others like us. Power over the weak is all that matters in the cosmic scheme. You know that. That’s why you’ve become a concern for us. Even in your youth in Dai Nihon.”
Gonji felt an electrifying chill whose source lay beyond the first breeze of autumn. Defiance and helplessness wrestled inside him. He was suddenly quite involved in the affairs of men—and of tyrants—again. He wanted to lash out, to shout at the priests below, to feel his swords in his grasp. To strike at the powers of evil he had too long simply abided.
He saw clearly now: Pride and pomposity had caused him to abandon the ever-present battle against evil. It was not the Spaniards who had brought him low. It was his own indifference. He was part of this land now, and Domingo had been right—he had to choose sides. For however the steps of good staggered in their efforts, evil trod quite surely.
And evil trampled all before it.
“You can’t win, you know,” Gonji declared boldly. “You haven’t even convinced them to do away with me.”
“Oh, but I have. You’ll see. Have you had no premonition of your own destruction? I maintain complete power over you. I know that you care nothing of your own death. So you say. Yet you stubbornly refuse to die, though you’ve had ample opportunities! Could it be that you wish to join the leading edge, perhaps?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, you son-of-a-bitch. What could you possibly offer me?”
“Power. Position. You understand those things. All you need do is deliver to me the Beast.”
“Simon?” Gonji said, smiling coyly.
“Yes—Simon.” Balaerik breathed the name as though it were an unattainable object of fiery passion. “His father wants him back.”
Gonji bit back his fury time and again, restraining his mother’s temperamental legacy, knowing that he must think clearly to deal with this nemesis. Yet all the while he fairly thought he would explode, for Balaerik likely held the answers to myriad questions Gonji had accumulated during his lifetime of tilting with the powers of chaos.
Iye, he reasoned at last, ask no questions that will admit of your own weakness. Poor tactics.
Buy time.
“Perhaps he’s only waiting for the right moment to appear, neh?” Gonji tossed off the words with affected unconcern. Now—improve your lot by gradual stages. “Or maybe he simply hasn’t caught my scent yet, with the filth I’m immersed in.”
Balaerik seemed to give it some thought. Then his dark eyes brightened, and he reached out over the embrasure as if in the grip of a seizure.
“Listen,” he said reverently. “Listen to their bones cracking in the fire. The spirit remains even when the consciousness is gone. Imagine what that must feel like, samurai. Imagine the glory that must bring to the stout samurai spirit.”
When Gonji removed his concentration from the spectacle below, Balaerik was gone. In that moment he fancied that he heard a distant howling.
A wolf baying at the moon.
* * * *
Weary from his full-moon ordeal, Gonji found that sleep still eluded him as he lay in his cell the next morning. He was taking notice of how his physical health was improving, by stages. His body was healing, despite the circumstances, as if in response to his new determination and resolve.
One of Padilla’s subordinates brought him his morning meal, and it seemed the day shift was in a playful mood once again: The pla
te bore a ragged chunk of raw, bloody meat; and although his throat was parched, he would not drink the water, for he suspected they had urinated in it.
Gonji sat with arms and legs crossed on the floor in the center of his cell. He eschewed his morning regimen less out of fatigue than out of the enjoyment he extracted from casting looks of cold, defiant hostility at the insulting warden, through the grate on his door. Padilla soon lost interest in taunting him when it became clear that Gonji would not give him the satisfaction of a retort.
He let the glare in his eyes speak the violent thoughts that would have been less than futile to voice.
The interim Grand Inquisitor, Bishop Izquierdo, came to him that morning, not long after he’d exchanged greetings with Valentina.
The harlot purred at the dour bishop in the manner she had reserved only for him, though Gonji had warned her against it many times. Izquierdo pronounced his threat of hellfire over her, then came back to Gonji’s window grating, still flushed with rage.
Trembling with pre-volcanic emotion, he fairly stammered as his words spewed forth. “May God consign you to your evil master for all the ills you’ve brought His Church. May you burn in the deepest pit of Hell!”
“And who is your master, priest?” Gonji shot back. “Balaerik? He is your enemy, not I. Don’t you see that? Are you so blind that you can’t see the truth?”
“Silence, you heathen swine!” Padilla shouted from the bishop’s side.
And then Valentina was railing at them with words Gonji couldn’t focus on in his own anger. She was shouting from the back of her cell rather than the grating, and when they turned to deal with her insolence, what they saw caused the Grand Inquisitor to hiss in shock and turn away out of outraged modesty.
“No, Val—” Gonji was shouting now, uncertain what she had done but knowing there would be grave consequences. “Val—let them be—”
Soldiers opened her cell and dragged her, kicking and screaming, down the corridor. Then Izquierdo directed other guards to Gonji’s dank chamber.
“Remove him to another cell,” the bishop was commanding. “Eradicate those pagan symbols.” He pointed to the wall scrawled with Japanese ideograms. A soldier began pounding the etchings with an axe, the wall exploding in crumbling shards.
“Burn these,” Izquierdo further ordered, indicating the samurai’s sheaf of poetry, reflections, and memoirs.
Gonji was thrown into the cell adjacent to Valentina’s. For a time he took out his frustration on the walls of his new prison. Then, when his hands were bloody and his feet swollen, he recovered control. With a long, ragged sigh, he sat on the damp straw mat, gathering his thoughts and energies. Eyes aflame with hatred, he yearned to vent his hostility. He wrestled with the fatalistic resolve to kill the next fatuous Spaniard who entered his cell.
But though several looked in at him over the ensuing hours, none dared challenge him.
* * * *
“Tina-chan—did they hurt you badly?” Gonji called gently from the edge of the grating. He had waited awhile before trying to engage her. She’d been sobbing since her return from the torture chambers.
There was a rustling in her cell and a long silence before her unsteady voice came in reply.
“Not so badly.” Her voice seemed to waft to him from far off. She was on the floor of her cell. “Dios, Gonji—I didn’t know—all those times they lashed you—I didn’t know the pain became worse after they were done—I thought they whipped you—and it was over.”
He felt a deep pang of sympathy but said nothing. He knew that there was no comfort after the lash until the oblivion of sleep came at long last.
“I don’t think…” she began again. “I don’t think I’ll be with you—much longer. They were talking, you know.”
He understood. Her trial impended. He thought to ask of the wygyll’s artifact but decided against it. It had begun to seem unimportant.
* * * *
The next morning a squad of stern-faced troopers awoke Gonji and removed him from his cell, weapons angled meaningfully. For an instant he toyed with the notion of attacking them, for he’d had a bellyful of the torture chamber. But then common sense and stoical acceptance took over. If Neriah was right, if there was a movement afoot to see him released from the dungeons, then he would be a fool to sacrifice himself meaninglessly now.
He could not allow Balaerik to win so easily. There must be an accounting, and he would have to be patient. More questions than ever vied for answers. But of one thing he was sure: It must be true that he was somehow a stumbling block to forces of tyrannical power, of evil and injustice. And even in his present wretched state, he must somehow threaten those reins of power.
His curiosity was stoked to an internal craving not unlike the sweating palms of avarice.
It ramped to a still higher level, now, when he was led past the familiar bleak torture wing of the dungeons and out through an adjoining corridor, heavily guarded and fortified, and then up to a block of gloomy chambers on the next floor.
The escort seemed especially edgy today, regarding him with a certain respect he hadn’t appreciated in a long time, despite their heavy armament. But his suspicious musings were abruptly dashed. With wide-eyed wonder and a flooding of unabashed relief, he realized by gradual stages that this was indeed his destination.
He was in a room with enormous vats, billowing steam, and a variety of scrubbing utensils.
The baths!
With scarcely a thought as to the reason for it, he plunged zestfully into the cleanliness ritual that was as important to the samurai as his meditations.
Somber guards stood about as he pursued his business, heedless of them but for the occasional amiable remark he would toss their way, neither expecting nor receiving any reply.
He began to wonder whether this was not an indication of a small triumph over Balaerik. And the more he pondered it, the more convinced he became. His ploy concerning Simon’s winnowing his scent out of all the others may have been behind this.
He had to believe so. Had to dress any minor satisfaction in the garb of victory.
Gonji luxuriated in the extreme heat of the vat’s soapy water, scrubbing rapturously and repeatedly at every inch of his body. Freed of the stench and flies and lice and slime of his tiny sliver of Hell, he even began to imagine that thinking, itself, had become clearer. He worked the hardest at his hair and beard and privates, laughing inside at the guards’ discomfiture over his shameless delight.
Weapons were leveled again when the barber-surgeon arrived with his razors. The guards watched intently as the samurai was shaven without complaint, but an argument ensued when the barber announced his intent to shave Gonji’s head as well.
The guards were about to seize him and force the issue, when Father Martin de la Cenza arrived. He ordered them to back off.
“I thought there might be trouble about this. It’s routine treatment, you know, Gonji-san. Surely you wish to—”
“So sorry, Martin-san,” Gonji interrupted, “but it is a great insult for a samurai to shave his head. It’s the mark of dishonor to surrender one’s topknot.”
“But the lice—”
“I think you will find that I have done the job myself.”
They debated it awhile and arrived at a compromise that Gonji found acceptable: He would submit to a severe trimming, provided his queue would not be cut too short, after first submerging in the bath for another session of scrubbing with still stronger soap. This Gonji counted as another personal triumph.
De la Cenza ordered the guards out into the corridor, and they complied after a brief demurral. The priest waxed deeply concerned.
“You know, of course, why you’ve been brought here.”
Gonji nodded gravely as the barber worked but didn’t voice his suspicions.
&nb
sp; “They’ve decided not to wait for further sanction. Your auto-da-fe is scheduled for tonight.”
Gonji eyed him narrowly. “At last, eh?” He exuded calm and confidence, though deep inside there was a nagging doubt. He had hoped not to be brought to trial at all since the encouraging visit by Jacob Neriah. Now, if something were to prevent it, it would have to happen soon.
“You don’t seem worried,” Father Martin said. “I should be, if I were you.” He moved closer, his aspect earnest, but he seemed to hold something back, something that strove to be said.
The priest instead turned to small talk about Gonji’s condition, apologies over the loss of his writing materials, until the barber-surgeon had finished and gone.
“Wait,” the priest fairly begged of the guards, staying them from returning the samurai to his cell. “Gonji-san, listen—there’s been a series of murders, vicious slayings in the full of the moon. Soldiers murdered as if by some wild beast…” He let his words trail off, allowing Gonji’s thoughts to fill in the rest. “Is it Simon?”
“How would I know?” Gonji responded airily. “They don’t exactly allow me to stroll out of my cell whenever—”
“But you were atop the battlements that night,” the priest whispered harshly. “Did you order him here to perpetrate this savagery?”
“Savagery,” Gonji echoed wanly. “That’s a word you Inquisitors should consider carefully before using it of someone else. You still don’t understand, do you? Balaerik is your enemy. He is Satan’s delegate to this—stupid controversy. Or at least what you would call Satan. And we’re all to blame. I, as well as you and your petrified Grand Inquisitor. Balaerik—” he repeated with sincere emphasis, “—he is your enemy, the enemy of all of us.”
De la Cenza seemed tormented. “Do you realize what you’re asking me to believe? You want me to side with a murdering monster rather than an agent sanctioned by the Church? And yet—and yet I do believe you’re sincere. But I don’t know what I can do about it. I am so sorry.”
