Mexico

by James A. Michener

  “Well, they are. Five were caught relapsing after previous conversions, and two Jews reject all overtures of the Church and say they will die in their own religion.”

  “Where do you hear such things?” the marquis asked.

  “Father Tomás told me,” she explained.

  “You go in and see about dinner,” the general suggested, and the somewhat hesitant manner in which he spoke indicated clearly that he was not at all sure that Leticia would obey, but this time she did, passing close to the young priest and whispering, “You’ll see I was right.”

  The two men walked up and down the lush garden, breathing in the powerful fragrance, and Antonio was fascinated by the Moorish tower that could be glimpsed through one of the archways in the wall. For some time they said nothing, but finally the marquis observed tentatively, “Very distressing … what happens tomorrow.”

  He obviously felt constrained from speaking freely, so the young priest said cautiously, “You know, sir, I’m a Franciscan.”

  “I forgot,” the general said, exhaling audibly. “May I speak freely?”

  “About the heretics?”

  “Are you apprehensive, too?” the soldier asked.

  “It hasn’t reached Salamanca yet … the burning, that is,” Antonio replied with extreme caution.

  “It’s necessary, you understand,” Guadalquivir said, supporting the official line. “We’ve got to weed out the Jews.” “And the professing Muslims.”

  “And the followers of Luther.”

  “And all obvious enemies of the Church.”

  “This we admit,” Guadalquivir said. “But when the burning started, it was not intended—”

  “Whom are you speaking of now?” Antonio asked guardedly.

  The general picked up a switch and struck his leg with it. “I’m just as willing as the next man to burn Jews,” he announced firmly. “But …”

  It was obvious that he had not the courage to finish the remark. While Father Antonio was considering how to divert the discussion to a new track, he noticed through the archway that a flock of swallows, perhaps three hundred or more, had started to descend on the Moorish tower, and he was captivated by the marvelous way in which they dipped and turned and seemed to ignore the tower until unpredictably they darted into their nests. He watched the birds for some minutes, and then observed abruptly, “You know, sir, that the job of rooting out heretics was given to the Dominicans, and it was intended that they restrict themselves to Jews and Moors. But in the last dozen years they’ve become much bolder.” There was a painful silence, during which the last of the swallows flew home and night fell over Seville. In the darkness the priest added, “And when our church itself was about to ask the Holy Father to restrain the Dominicans, this new difficulty broke out with Martin Luther, and now the Dominicans have become more arrogant than ever.”

  Without looking at the priest, but with caution lest someone had entered the garden while they were talking, the marquis observed, “Tomorrow, for the first time, they will burn Spaniards … like you and me.”

  “How do you know?” Antonio asked.

  “Messengers came to Córdoba. Two men that I know will burn. One fought with me in Granada.”

  “Can you do nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Guadalquivir said simply. “The judgment was to have been executed last week. I tried to escape by delaying my return. But the Dominicans demanded my presence—to give the thing public sanction—so they delayed.”

  “This time there are no Jews and Moors?” Antonio asked.

  “Only Spaniards,” the marquis replied. What later happened was to prove him wrong.

  “Hallooo!” Leticia called from the interior of the house. Bearing a candle whose flickering light heightened her natural beauty, she came into the garden and announced, “The evening meal is ready, Father.” But it was apparent that she was speaking not to her father but to the priest, for it was to him that she went with her candle, arousing in him a most unpriestly thought: She moves among those Roman pillars as if she were one of the vestal virgins I’ve read about. She’s like those silvery swallows seeking her nightfall nest. This unfortunate imagery of Roman villas, virgins and her sleeping quarters became so powerful that night when he went to bed he could not sleep; he continued to see her, with her soft dress flowing behind her, and the night passed in a torment that was as strange as it was intense.

  At four in the morning, his eyes heavy with sleeplessness, he rose as was his custom to offer his Sunday prayers, and from the third floor of the Moorish palace he looked down on the wooden platform in the plaza, where workmen were busy arranging tall-backed chairs, each emblazoned with the seal of the Holy Inquisition, the colors somber in the light of flickering torches. Because of the gravity of this day, Antonio stayed at his prayers for nearly an hour and was found in that position by the servant who came at five to waken him.

  In the next hurried hour the young priest dressed in his finest robes, was forced into eating a large breakfast because, as the marquis warned, “Today there will be no food till nightfall,” greeted Doña Leticia, who was apparently going to attend the ceremonies, and watched in the courtyard as the marquis mounted an Arabian horse and rode out in the predawn shadows to join the other nobles of the countryside, whose presence was required to lend authority to the day’s events.

  At half past five the new bronze bells in the Moorish tower began tolling slowly, their reverberations summoning the thousands of spectators who would attend, each assured of forty days’ plenary indulgence if he or she watched with care as the Church cleansed itself of heresy. At sunrise the huge plaza was jammed with families, most of whom had brought their children, who were encouraged to run back and forth to tire themselves out, so that during the blazing heat of midday they would sleep.

  At six a small cannon was fired; the clanging bells increased their tempo; and from the huge wooden gates of the Alcazar, the Moorish fortress that stood not far from the cathedral, appeared the doleful procession of the forty-one who had been caught in one dereliction or another and had been found guilty by the judges of the Inquisition, against whose decision there was no appeal, neither to the king in Toledo nor to the pope in Rome. The first to appear in the march to the plaza of judgment were not the condemned but a group of city and church officials, accompanied by a troop of soldiers and four clerks of the Inquisition, who bore silver caskets covered with velvet and containing the list of offenses committed by the condemned. These were followed by eight Dominican friars, whose effect upon the public was electric, for each carried a long oak stave topped by a cluster of silver rings that jangled furiously when the friars hammered the staves against the cobbles, and it was this terrifying sound that prepared the way for the condemned.

  The forty-one miserable prisoners had already been in solitary cells for periods of up to three years, awaiting trial, so that their complexions were pale and ghostly. Some, who had clung desperately to forbidden religions, were very old and walked with such infirmity that whatever worldly punishment they were to receive could be of little consequence to them, but of great agony and significance to their children. Each prisoner carried four badges of dishonor: an unlit wax taper, which signified that the light of the Church had gone out in the sinner’s soul; a rope around the neck, each of whose gnarled knots indicated that the wearer would receive one hundred lashes as part of his or her punishment; a tall, conical dunce’s cap whose tip danced back and forth as the wearer stumbled in fear; and, worst of all, a bright yellow sackcloth robe with a high collar and a train that trailed in the dust. The last was decorated in front with a flaming red cross, and for more than fifty years after the final judgment of this day, it would hang in churches throughout Spain, clearly labeled with the name of the heretic who had worn it, thus proclaiming forever the holy sin of that family, so that the descendants of the condemned could never hold office in Spain, or become priests, or serve as officers in the army, or collect taxes, or travel overseas, or do anyth
ing but expiate in poverty and despair the sins of their ancestor.

  At the rear of the procession came seven who were accorded special attention, for their dunce’s caps were taller than the rest and decorated with twisting red flames fed by embroidered devils, and although the crowds had been pressing forward to stare at the guilty, when these seven passed, even the most curious fell back. Each was attended by two Dominican friars who consoled those who had at the last minute abjured their error so that they might die in the bosom of the Church, and expostulated with those who had refused.

  Behind the condemned rode the marquis of Guadalquivir, his handsome old face a mask, and following him on spirited horses came six other nobles of the region, after whom the lesser priests of the various congregations of Seville appeared. Marching with the Franciscans was Antonio Palafox, whose lips were already dry; as he entered the area of the plaza he saw that one of the best seats on the platform was taken by Leticia.

  The Holy Inquisition made these Sunday judgments as impressive as possible, for by this means heresy could be controlled, and now, with the multitude assembled, a minor priest conducted Mass and asked blessing upon what was to follow, whereupon the Grand Inquisitor rose and, addressing the condemned as they stood in their bright robes of shame, preached to them for two and a half hours on the disgrace they had brought upon themselves and the grief they had caused the Church.

  When he finished, the two senior secretaries of the tribunal marched solemnly to two facing pulpits decorated in black velvet, from which they intoned alternately the dread accusations against the condemned. Since it required many minutes to recite the evil these forty-one had accomplished, the day dragged on.

  The guilty were divided into three major categories. There were some who had committed serious but not crucial offenses against the church—such as stealing religious funds or committing open adultery—and these were sentenced to two or three hundred lashes and a year or two in jail. With intense joy most of these learned that their yellow robes would not be hung in the churches, which meant that they could at some future date rejoin the community without fatal prejudice to their children. Of the forty-one, nineteen received this indulgence. When this decision was announced their tapers were relit, signifying that they had again been received into the Church.

  Fifteen of the condemned, and their families, heard a more dreadful judgment. These had committed major offenses against the Church; some had once been Jews and had publicly converted to Christianity, only to backslide in secret, and their neighbors had reported them to the Inquisition; others had been Muhammadans and had done the same; still others, and they received the most crushing sentences, had listened to the allurements of the crazy monk Martin Luther; and two had written mystical poetry that could not clearly be identified as subversive but that the judges felt certain had to be. These fifteen were stripped of all possessions, were given from sixty to a hundred lashings each, were condemned to perpetual solitary imprisonment, and were advised that their robes would hang forever in their local churches: “And when the robe you are wearing shall disintegrate with time,” the clerk read, “another shall be made on your behalf and hung in its place so that as long as the church lasts your infamy will be known.” But their tapers were relighted.

  The clerks now came to the cases of the seven who were still being prayed over by the untiring priests, and with real sorrow the officials of the Inquisition turned to inform the civil government that these seven had been so persistent in their error that the Church could no longer hope for their regeneration. In the curious phrase of the time, the clerks read, “And so we relax the prisoner Domingo Tablada to the civil authorities.” This circumlocution meant simply that the irreconcilable one had no further relation to the Church and would be burned to death by civil authority. During the entire course of the Inquisition in Spain, that institution never executed a single criminal.

  It was late in the afternoon when the mayor of Seville notified the marquis of Guadalquivir that his attendance would also be required at the burning, which was to take place this time on a broad field outside the city and near the banks of the river Guadalquivir. Hiding his repugnance, the old general summoned his horse and asked that one be found for his confessor, Father Antonio, and the two men rode to the execution ground, but as they did so they passed a string of carriages in which fashionable families were hurrying to the fires, and from the window of one Leticia waved to her father and the priest from Salamanca. The old marquis affected not to see her, but the priest waved back, feeling in his stomach that it was odd for such a girl to be engaged in such a mission.

  At the edge of the river Guadalquivir, near a grove of olive trees, seven stakes had been driven into the ground and surrounded with piles of wood, over which rough steps had been built leading to small platforms on which the condemned and the priests could stand. To these seven stakes the heretics were led.

  At five of the stakes a ceremony occurred that had a profound effect upon the multitude gathered in the dusty field, for prior to the lighting of the fires, priests won last-minute recantations. When the clergy indicated that this man or that woman had been saved, a joyous cry arose, whereupon an official of the Inquisition hurried up the wooden steps bearing a lighted torch from which he relit the prisoner’s cold wax taper, signifying that the condemned was about to die in the arms of the Church. More important to the crowd, and perhaps to the condemned, was the fact that at this moment two burly executioners reached around from behind the stake and with powerful hands garroted the prisoner, thus saving him from the agonies of being burned while still alive. When the strangling was accomplished, the executioners leaped nimbly down, ignited the pyres and immolated the already dead bodies of the reconciled heretics.

  But at the last two pyres, one containing a Jewish woman, the other a Christian friend of the marquis, no reconciliation was possible. The four priests involved with these two obdurate souls prayed and wept and implored to no avail. The Jewish woman cried loudly, “I am going to die. Let me die in my own faith.”

  “Look at those terrible fires,” a young priest pleaded, tears streaming down his face.

  “Let me die,” the resolute woman repeated.

  “No! No!” the priest begged.

  When it was obvious that his pleas would be fruitless, the executioners moved up the steps to remove the two clergymen, and one went peacefully, but the other, determined to save the woman from the terrible ordeal that faced her, refused to be dragged away. Clinging to the woman’s yellow robe, he cried in anguish, “Abjure! Abjure!” but she refused, and he was dragged down the improvised steps as the executioners prepared to set fire to the wood.

  Even then the young priest would not surrender, but flung himself onto the pyre and, staring up at the Jewish woman, begged her to recant, and as the flames crept closer to his fingers he was at last dragged away.

  For more than ten minutes the Jewish woman was immobile and silent, but when the faggots burst into full flame and burned away her dunce’s cap and her hair and the smoke began to strangle her, in her last extremity she uttered an appalling shriek, which seemed to knock the young priest to the ground, where he groveled in agony, praying.

  An official of the Inquisition, watching his disgraceful performance, muttered to an assistant, “That one will bear watching.”

  “We won’t have him attend any more of the condemned,” the assistant assured his superior.

  “Who is he?” the official asked.

  “A Franciscan,” the assistant replied, with some disgust. The senior official shook his head and directed his attention to the seventh stake, where the marquis of Guadalquivir had ascended the platform to speak with the condemned.

  “Esteban, recant,” the marquis pleaded. “Martin Luther is a fraud. He offers no salvation.”

  “I am like the Jewess,” the doomed man replied. “I have my own religion.”

  “Save yourself this agony,” the soldier begged.

  “I have lived
the worst of my agony, and now you must live yours,” the prisoner replied.

  “As your former general, I command you to recant.”

  “I defy you, and I defy him,” the condemned man replied, indicating the priest.

  The executioner, hearing this new blasphemy, clapped his hand over the man’s mouth while the marquis and the two priests were led away. The fire was lit, and the man to be burned watched the flames falter and flicker along the edge of the pyre. It seemed they would not fully catch the first time and he laughed. The old general looked at his friend and wondered what potent evil had taken possession of the man. Then a burst of flame intervened between them and the last the marquis saw of the man at the stake was a pair of eyes calmly watching the flames as they approached his face. From this pyre there was no last-minute outcry.

  The official of the Inquisition, watching the behavior of the marquis at the seventh stake, observed to his assistant, “There’s another we might well watch.”

  “He’s the hero of Granada,” the assistant warned.

  The official turned coldly as the hot flames writhed nearby and observed, “No one is too powerful or too mighty.”

  * * *

  It is a matter of record in my family that on the spring day in 1524 when my ancestor Fray Antonio Palafox was watching the seven heretics burned in Seville, another ancestor, the Altomec Indian Lady Gray Eyes, was secretly explaining to her granddaughter in City-of-the-Pyramid the mystery of the new gods who would shortly rescue Mexico from barbarism. “This is a Mother who loves,” Lady Gray Eyes repeated, pointing to her treasured image, “and this is her Son, who has come in gentleness to save us.”

  The child Stranger could not comprehend, for she had never known a god of mercy, so Lady Gray Eyes explained once more. “Here we suffer under evil gods, and men are constantly killed. But soon these gentle gods of the newcomers will occupy our temples, and injustice will end.” She could say no more, but as she clutched the emblazoned parchment to her cheek she felt her tears drifting across it. How long must we wait for the gods of mercy? she prayed silently.