Stupefying Stories: August 2016

by Sarah Read

  AT WORK IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD

  By Edoardo Albert

  The stranger rode into Valladolid on a mule. Signs, hastily tacked to walls and posts, proclaimed the auto da fé. It had been in session for three weeks.

  The whitewashed walls of the town exhaled heat into the breathless afternoon. Beneath his cowl, sweat trickled into the man’s eyes. With its shutters and doors closed against the heat of the day, Valladolid presented an impassive face to its visitor. But behind the blank surface, the newcomer sensed fear. He saw it in the glimpsed figures, peering through shutters, he heard it in the whispers telling of his arrival, and he felt it in the heat still radiating from the pyres smouldering in the town square. The man drew in the reins and pulled the mule to a halt. Nine mounds of charred wood and ash were arranged in a semicircle around the plaza. He dismounted and, leading the mule, made his way across the wide expanse. The cobbles were gritty, and sticky with ash. They told their tale to his bare feet: many more pyres had burned here recently.

  Upon one side of the plaza were the chairs from which the auto da fé passed its judgements, raised upon a high dais. The chairs were empty now, their gilt shaded and dull beneath canopies proclaiming mercy to all who confessed and gave themselves over to the auto da fé.

  The man hobbled his mule in the shade of an orange tree and ascended to the judgement seats. He looked around the empty square, imagining it full, heaving with people, the air thick with the sickly sweet smell of burning human flesh. He sat down in the judgement seat and waited.

  He did not have to wait long. His mule had barely time to crop two mouthfuls from the tree before a bobbing little functionary approached, hat scrunched in his hands, sweat sticking the hair to his scalp.

  “Your Grace, Your Worship, Y...Your Magnificence.”

  The stranger held up his hand. “Bring me the witchfinder and Jaume de Casellas, Don de Valladolid.”

  “Wh-who shall I say sends for them?”

  The man sitting in the judgement seat slowly lowered his cowl. The face was thin and ascetic, the hair tonsured, the eyes dark.

  “Alonso de Salazar Frias, Inquisitor.”

  ¤

  Jaume de Casellas, Don de Valladolid, walked in as stately a fashion as he could manage alongside the inquisitor. The perspiring functionary, who had not been dignified with a name, scurried in Jaume’s wake holding a parasol over his master. Alonso, offered a similar service, had simply drawn his cowl back over his head. Wherever possible, Alonso preferred to experience a world as its inhabitants did, unfiltered by technology.

  “I trust that you will be more than satisfied with our arrangements, my lord,” said Jaume de Casellas, snatching a glance at the robed figure beside him before resuming his painfully measured progress.

  “I am not your lord.” The inquisitor looked at the don, his eyes dark even in the shadow beneath his hood. “I am an inquisitor of the Holy Office, an agent of the Suprema, and, of course,” a smile flashed in the depths, “a humble servant of the servants of the Lord.”

  The small group, having made its way to the far side of the square, stood outside a formidably barred and gated building.

  “This is the Municipale, but it’s where we are keeping the accused until they are brought before the auto da fé,” said Jaume. “It’s the strongest, most secure building in Valladolid. Even a witch would find it hard to get out of here.”

  As the don explained, his functionary whispered urgently through the panel on the main door.

  “It is siesta,” the functionary said helplessly, trying to fill the pause between the end of the whispering and the eventual opening of the door. Alonso, a man at the beck and call of lords so great and powerful surely only the Pope knew their names, had some sympathy for the petty official, and smiled at him, while Jaume de Casellas tapped his expensively shod foot.

  “The gatekeeper is coming,” said Alonso. And, sure enough, the door swung open, its hinges noiseless and smooth despite the great weight of wood they bore. Jaume de Casellas marched in. Alonso turned to the official.

  “Would you see to my mule, please,” he said, and followed.

  The building, like all the main structures in Valladolid, presented a largely featureless face to the outside world, the few windows narrow and barred, the stone sun beaten and weathered. But on the inside, it opened on to a central courtyard, flanked on each side by colonnaded ambulatories. It was a gracious place, with orange and lime and almond trees growing between fountains. But the fountains no longer flowed, and the trees bore strange fruit. Shackled to the trunks were people: men, women, and children. They lay without moving, making no motion even to bat away the flies that sipped from eyes and nostrils. Some lay in shade, others in sun, but those exposed to the sun made no effort to seek relief from the heat. To the inquisitor’s eye, they all bore the mark of torture, carried out by crude hands and unsubtle minds. It could be effective; it was never economical.

  Through the hush of the somnolent afternoon came the sound of feet, slapping on stone, and round the corner of the ambulatory appeared a figure, cowled and robed in black, running. As soon as he saw the don and the inquisitor, he slowed to a trot, but then speeded up again. In the haste of his approach, the man’s cowl flew back, revealing a bald head, a broad face, the biggest nose Alonso had ever seen, and a smile that threatened to break the man’s face in half.

  This was unusual. Alonso, in his many years serving the Suprema, had never yet met anybody pleased to meet the Inquisition. It appeared that was about to change.

  For the final ten yards, the man slowed down to a brisk walk, but if anything his smile grew even broader. He stopped in front of Alonso and Jaume, bowed deeply, prostrated himself, and then bounced back on to his feet, all in the space of a few seconds. With the man’s ungainly limbs and open face, the inquisitor was reminded of nothing so much as an enthusiastic puppy. The man took Alonso’s hand, kissed the inquisitorial signet ring, and held on to the hand as he stared deeply at Alonso’s face.

  “I prayed to the Lord that you would come, and now you are here, praise his Holy Name.”

  The inquisitor gently extricated his fingers. “Praise indeed,” he murmured.

  “This,” said Jaume de Casellas, “is Lope de Vega, the witchfinder of Valladolid.”

  Lope bowed again, so deeply that his nose almost brushed the ground.

  “At your service.” The witchfinder beamed with happiness at Alonso. “I have always followed your career, read your papers and articles, and in everything I do, striven to follow your example. These unholy wretches,” and here Lope flung his arm out to indicate the now faintly stirring bodies in the courtyard, “are the fruits of that devotion: witches. We have found them all here in Valladolid. But we are determined to root them out, to drain the poison from this swamp, and to make of Valladolid again a garden in the fields of the Lord.”

  “And how did you detect these witches?” asked the inquisitor.

  Lope de Vega leaned towards Alonso. “It started as a vision. The Blessed Virgin told me I had been blessed with a gift from the Lord himself.” Lope leaned even closer.

  “This,” he hissed.

  The eyes of witchfinder and inquisitor met upon the pitted slopes of Lope’s nose.

  “I see,” said Alonso de Salazar Frias.

  “I smell,” said Lope de Vega. He spun towards the courtyard. “I smelled them all out. I warned them to confess to me and spare themselves,” he continued, walking out among the prone bodies. “I warned them that one would come who would make me seem like the gentle hand of the Blessed Virgin. One whose hand I am not worthy to kiss, a true servant of the Lord. And now, he is here, he has arrived, and you will pray to be delivered to my merciful judgement in the auto da fé, you will envy those who burned, but it is too late. The great and terrible Alonso de Salazar Frias is here!” Lope, standing in the centre of the courtyard, turned to face the inquisitor, his arms spread in welcome and gift. “And he will lay your souls bare!”


  Even the flies were quiet. The accused, be they man, woman, or child, turned to look at the inquisitor. The grey, cowled figure walked slowly out into the courtyard, through the ranks of the damned. Jaume de Casellas, Don de Valladolid, followed, pointing out some of the notables now lying wretchedly in the dust.

  “I know they say witchcraft can fester among even the most noble parts of society, but I wouldn’t have believed it before. Do you see her?” Jaume pecked at Alonso’s sleeve to indicate a wasted figure sprawled in full sun, and cracking open beneath its glare. “She was the superior of the Sisters of Devotion. Turned out, they were devoted to devils. The things she confessed to! I’m sure you’ve heard the like before, but I am a simple man, inquisitor, and I have never even dreamed of such doings.”

  Alonso reached the dry fountain that marked the centre of the courtyard. Witchfinder and don fell in on either side of him.

  “How many accused have you brought before the auto da fé?”

  Jaume and Lope glanced at each other.

  “I hand them over to the secular arm once guilt is established and sentence passed,” said the witchfinder.

  Alonso turned to the don. “And how many has he handed over to you?”

  Jaume coloured. “I will check with my notary.”

  “It is more than fifty,” said Lope, proudly.

  “What sentences have you passed on them?”

  “Oh, that is the easy part,” said Lope, smiling. “Death.”

  “Not all, but most of them,” added Jaume. “Some had their hands and feet amputated. Lope believes there are many more witches yet to be found, but now that you are here, these vile creatures will start to sing and we’ll clear out this coven double quick and return Valladolid to orthodoxy.”

  Alonso de Salazar Frias, Inquisitor, agent of the Suprema, faithful servant of the Faith, looked around at the witches exposed in Valladolid. They, foul enemies that they were, did not dare to raise their eyes to his terrible and holy presence.

  “Release them.”

  ¤

  Rising from his desk, Alonso stretched, hearing the too-long contracted muscles and joints crack. Around the office he had commandeered in the Municipale lay the files of the cases already tried by the auto da fé, and those still awaiting its judgement.

  That judgement, he’d noted, had become steadily quicker in the preceding weeks. Looking at the pile of files he had yet to deal with, Alonso missed his absent staff. Instead, he must rely on the authority of the Inquisition and his own wit.

  He was rather enjoying the experience.

  Alonso stretched again, feeling the sweat trickle down the centre of his back even in this thick-walled and nominally cool room.

  He turned his head, listening. From outside, working its way through wooden shutters and stone-cut walls, came a thick, distant sound. Alonso walked over to the window, shuttered still against the heat although the sun was drawing down and the day settling into evening. He stood by the shutter. He had heard a sound like this once before, when he was a child and his father’s herd of oxen, startled unaccountably out of their habitual complacence, had stampeded through the family compound.

  It was the sound of a tide of flesh, but there were words mixed in with the overall rumbling growl. Alonso went to open the shutters, but as he did so, the door opened behind him. It took all his control not to whirl around, but at least his measured exterior movements gave him the chance to berate the lack of vigilance that allowed someone to approach unremarked.

  “Don Jaume.” The inquisitor’s tone was light and pleasant.

  “Can you hear them?” The master of Valladolid rushed past Alonso and wrenched open the unlatched shutters. The twilight flickered with hundreds of torches.

  “I can smell them.”

  Alonso looked around. Lope de Vega stood in the door, the eager puppy he had first seen now lost in the jowls of a hound.

  “They want blood.”

  Jaume de Casellas nodded, although he smiled apologetically as he did so.

  “You took fiesta from the mob, Your Excellency. They were thoroughly enjoying watching the enemies of the Lord burn and now—nothing.” He gestured out of the window at the thin line of troops drawn up across the square, protecting the Municipale.

  “So few, and they are so many.”

  “The Lord is with us,” said Alonso.

  “He is with those who kill witches,” said Lope. “He was with us but now,” he shrugged, “he has left us.”

  “And how did you know he was with you before?” asked Alonso.

  “My nose.” Lope tapped it. “A heavenly perfume, like nothing else I have ever smelled.”

  “That would be the same nose that sniffed out the witches you burned?”

  “They smelled of corruption, of the dark powers, of Satan.” Lope’s nostrils flared as he spoke. “The stench lingers, even here.”

  Alonso slammed his hand down on the files by his desk.

  “By all that is holy, a bad smell is not evidence of guilt. There is nothing—nothing—in these files to indicate these people were guilty. And the Lord avenges the innocent as surely as he punishes the wrongdoer.”

  The don glanced at Lope, but the witchfinder’s face had taken on a strangely passive sheen and he made no attempt to answer.

  “But Inquisitor,” said Jaume, “they confessed.”

  Alonso sighed. “I have had the misfortune to read these testimonies. At this point, I shall say no more than that torture cannot be relied upon as the sole source of evidence—there must be corroboration. In extremis, a man will incriminate his own mother—and I see many did.”

  “Better the innocent suffer than the witch escape,” said Lope.

  “Best that the witch is caught in the first place.” The inquisitor turned to the window and looked out on to the square where the mob swirled, angry and uncertain. “There is evidence of witchcraft here, but it is subtle, and still being worked.”

  “It is?” The don looked appalled at the news.

  “Hah, I knew it,” said Lope. “I told you there were more, Don Jaume, but you said, no, enough was enough, and the Families were complaining. Did I not say that witchcraft can infect even the First Families?”

  “In my experience, witches are more often found among the rich and the powerful,” said Alonso. “A poor witch is a trouble only to his neighbours, but a rich one can subvert a city, even a world.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Jaume.

  “It is.” Alonso put his hand to his chest and drew out, from beneath his robes, a scroll. He held it up for the two men to see.

  “This is an edict of grace, issued by the Suprema, calling upon anyone discovered to be guilty of crimes against the Faith to repent his errors in fear and trembling, and return to the straight path.

  “I wish to deliver it.”

  The room was silent. The mob outside had settled down to angry growling.

  “Wh-who to?” asked Jaume de Casellas.

  The inquisitor nodded. “You ask the right question, Don de Valladolid. But it is one I cannot answer yet. I must first see more evidence, and to that end I require your aid...”

  ¤

  The inquisitor sat nursing a glass of the excellent local Rioja and stared through half-closed eyes at the map in front of him. Marked on it were the locations of all the accidents, mutant births, strange sightings, and evil presences that had first given rise to the belief that a coven of witches was active around Valladolid: here, a twin-headed calf was born; there, a statue of a saint was defaced and desecrated. Each incident was in itself minor, but together they resolved into a pattern that he was beginning to unravel. It was as if a demonic leviathan was passing just beneath the surface scum of events, its passage far below the plane of ordinary reality, but nevertheless its presence was sufficient to set off small eruptions in the phenomenal world. Such things were not uncommon: the visible and the invisible realms met in many different places. But what disturbed the inquisitor about the pattern h
e was beginning to see was the impression it gave that the leviathan was not passing through, but circling steadily beneath the surface, gradually drawing closer and closer, until an opening had been created wide enough for it to explode through into this reality with all the shattering power of hell behind it. And all he had to stop it, should it break through, was a local militia, better suited to tackling riots than devils, and an over-enthusiastic witchfinder. Alonso thought of sending for his team, but again decided not to. Only under the most desperate circumstances could he break the covenant that held a Recension World in the Autoridad but out of it, and the situation was not desperate. At least, not yet.

  The inquisitor doodled idly as he stared at the map; and as usual the lines resolved themselves into caricatures of the men he had met: Lope de Vega of the huge nose, and Jaume, the beaten-down don.

  The pen stopped. Alonso stared at the features of the don caught in his sketch, at the downcast eyes and drooping shoulders. His hand had realised something was wrong before his head caught up. This was not the likeness of a man of power. But if the Don de Valladolid did not wield ultimate authority on Terrassa, who did?

  Alonso got up from the table and pulled a handsome, leather-bound book from the shelf. He took a moment to smell and touch the volume, appreciating the craftsmanship, then he opened it and slowly, systematically went through the tangled relationships of the First Families. Through it all, through the alliances, marriages, deaths and births, one name continually appeared at or near the top of every list.

  ¤

  Don Rodrigo de Vega walked into the state room of his grand hacienda, moving as smoothly and silently as the silk tapestries that lined the walls, shimmering with every passing mote of air. Alonso refrained from checking the time. He had been kept waiting; a most unusual experience for an inquisitor, but one that told him much about his host.