House of Torment

"But touching the Holy Office, Señor," he said, "what you have told me is all very well. I am a good Catholic, I trust and hope; but surely these circumstances are very occasional. You describe things which have doubtless happened, but not things which happen every day. It is impossible to believe that this is a system."

"Think you so?" said the little man. "Then I will very soon disabuse you of any such idea. I have papers in my mails, papers of my brother's, which – why, who comes here?"

His voice died away into silence, as round the other side of the wooden tower of the forecastle – with which all big merchantmen were provided in those days for defence against the enterprise of pirates – a black shadow, followed by a short, thick-set form, came into their view.

Johnnie recognised Hull.

"I thought you had been asleep," he said, "but thou art very welcome. We are talking of grave matters dealing with the foreign parts to which we go, and the Señor Don here hath been telling us much. Still, thou wouldst not have understood hadst thou been with us, for Don Perez speaks naught but the Spanish and the French."

The little Spaniard, standing up against the bulwarks, looked uneasily towards Commendone and his servant, comprehending nothing of what was said.

"This man is safe?" he asked in a trembling voice.

"Safe!" Johnnie answered. "This is my faithful servant, who would die for me and the lady who is sleeping below."

A freakish humour possessed him, a bitter, freakish humour, in this fantastic, brilliant moonlight, this ironic comedy upon the southern-growing seas.

"Take him by the hand, Señor," he said in Spanish, "take him by his great, strong right hand, for I'll wager you will not easily shake a hand so honest in the dominions of the King of Spain to which we sail."

The little man looked round him as if in fear. There was an obvious suggestion in his eyes and face that he was somehow trapped.

"Hold out thy hand, John Hull, and shake that of this honest gentleman," Johnnie said.

The big brown hand of the Englishman went out, the little yellow fingers of the Spaniard advanced tentatively towards it.

They shook hands.

Johnnie watched it with amusement. These dreadful stories of unthinkable cruelty had stirred up something within him. He was not cruel, but very tender-hearted, yet this little play upon the doubting Spaniard was welcome and fitted in with his mood.

Then he saw an astonishing thing, and one which he could not explain.

The two men, the huge, squat John Hull of Suffolk, the little weazened gentleman from Lisbon, shook hands, looked at each other earnestly in the face, and then, wonder of wonders, linked arms, turned their backs upon Johnnie and the sleepy old Frenchwoman by the carronade, and spoke earnestly to each other for a moment.

Their forms were silhouetted against the silver sea. There was an inexplicable motion of arms, a word whispered and a word exchanged, and then Don Perez wheeled round.

In the moonlight and the glimmer from the lantern on the forecastle, Johnnie saw that his face, which had been twitching with anxiety, was now absolutely at rest. It was radiant even, excited, pleased – it wore the aspect of one alone among enemies who had found a friend.

"'Tis all right, Señor," Perez said. "I will go and fetch you the papers of which I spoke. You may command me in any way now. You are not yourself – by any chance…"

John Hull shook his head violently, and the little Spaniard skipped away with a chuckle.

"What is this?" John Commendone asked. "How have you made quick friends with the Don? What is't – art magic, or what?"

"'Tis nothing, sir," Hull answered, with some embarrassment, "'tis but the Craft."

"The Craft?" Johnnie asked. "And what may that be?"

"We're brethren, this man and I," Hull answered; "we're of the Freemasons, and that is why, master."

Johnnie nodded. He said no more. The whole thing was inexplicable to him. He knew, of course, of the Freemasons, that such a society existed, but no evidence of it had ever come to his knowledge before this night. The persecution of Freemasonry which was to ensue in Queen Elizabeth's reign was not yet, and the Brethren were a very hidden people in 1555.

There was a patter of feet upon the ladder leading up to the forecastle-deck. Perez appeared again with a bundle of papers in his hand.

"Now, then, Señor," he said, "you shall see if this of which I have told you is a system or is not. These are documents, forms, belonging to my brother's business as Notary of the Holy Office. Thus thou wilt see."

He handed a piece of parchment, printed parchment, to Commendone.

Johnnie held it up under the light of the lantern, and read it, with a chilling of the blood.

It was "The Proper Form of Torture for Women," and it was one of many forms left blank for convenience to record the various steps.

As he glanced through it, his lips grew dry, his eyes, straining in the half-sufficient light, seemed to burn.

There was something peculiarly terrible in the very omission of a special name, and the consequent thought of the number of wretches whose vain words and torments had been recorded upon forms like this – and were yet to be recorded – froze the young man into a still figure of horror and of silence.

And this is what he read:

"She was told to tell the truth, or orders would be given to strip her. She said, etc. She was commanded to be stripped naked.

"She was told to tell the truth, or orders would be given to cut off her hair. She said, etc.

"Orders were given to cut of her hair; and when it was taken off she was examined by the doctor and surgeon, who said there was not any objection to her being put to the torture.

"She was told to tell the truth or she would be commanded to mount the rack. She said, etc.

"She was commanded to mount, and she said, etc.

"She was told to tell the truth, or her body would be bound. She said, etc. She was ordered to be bound.

"She was told to tell the truth, or, if not, they would order her right foot to be made fast for the trampazo. She said, etc. They commanded it to be made fast.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would command her left foot to be made fast for the trampazo. She said, etc. They commanded it to be made fast. She said, etc. It was ordered to be done.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the binding of the right arm to be stretched. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done. And the same with the left arm. It was ordered to be executed.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the fleshy part of her right arm to be made fast for the garrote. She said, etc. It was ordered to be made fast.

"And by the said lord inquisitor, it was repeated to her many times, that she should tell the truth, and not let herself be brought into so great torment; and the physician and surgeon were called in, who said, etc. And the criminal, etc. And orders were given to make it fast.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the first turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would command the garrote to be applied again to the right arm. She said, etc. It was ordered to be done.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the second turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the garrote to be applied again to the left arm. She said, etc. It was ordered to be done.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the third turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

"She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the trampazo to be laid on the right foot. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

"For women you do not go beyond this."

Johnnie finished his reading. Then he tore it up into four pieces and flung it out upon the starboard bow.

The yellow parchment fluttered over Madame La Motte's head like great moonlit moths.

Then he turned and stared at Don Pedro, almost as if he would have sprung at him.

"'Tis nothing of mine, Señor," the little man said. "You asked me to tell you, and that I have done. I am no enemy of yours, so look not at me in that way. Here" – he put his hand out and touched John Hull – "here I have a very worthy brother, eke a Master of mine, who will answer for me in all that I do."

The old Frenchwoman began to gather her vast bulk together to descend into the cabin for sleep.

Johnnie helped her to her feet, and as he did so a sweet tenor voice shivered out beneath the bellying sails, and there was the thrid of a lute accompanying it:

"I sail, I sail the Spanish seas,Hey ho, in the sun and the cloudTo bring fair ladiesWool to Cadiz,To deck their bodies that are so proud,In the ship of St. James a mariner I"…

Suddenly the voice of the singer ceased, shut off into silence.

There was a half-frightened shout, a flapping of the sails as the square-rigged ship fell out of the night wind for a moment, and then a clamour of loud voices.

"Over the side! Over the side! The man from Lisbon's gone."

Johnnie had jumped to the port taffrail at the noise, and he saw what had happened. He saw the whole of it quite distinctly. A long, lithe figure had been balancing itself upon the bulwarks, giving its body to the gentle motion of the ship.

Suddenly it fell backwards, there was a resounding splash in the quiet sea, and something black was struggling and threshing in a pool of silver water. From the sea came a loud cry – "Socorro! Socorro!"

From the time the splash was heard and the cry came up to the forecastle the ship had slipped a hundred yards through the still waters.

Johnnie jumped up upon the bulwarks, held his hands above his head for a moment, judged his distance – ships were not high out of the water in that day – and dived into the phosphorescent sea.

He was lightly clad, and he swam strongly, with the long left-arm overhand stroke – conquering an element with joy in the doing of it – glad to be in wild and furious action, happy to throw off the oppression of the dreadful things which the little Spaniard had droned upon the deck. He got up to the man easily enough, circled round him, as he rose splashing for the third time, and caught him under the arm-pits, lying on his back with the other above him.

The man began to struggle, trying to turn and grip.

Johnnie raised his head a little from the water, sinking as he did so, and pulling down the other also, and shouted a Spanish curse into his ear.

"Be quiet," he said; "lie still! If you don't I'll drown you!"

Commendone was a good swimmer. He had swam and dived in the lake at Commendone since he was a boy. He knew now exactly what to do, and his voice, though half-strangled with the salt water, and his grip of the drowning man's arm-pits had their effect.

There was a half-choked, "Si, Señor," and in twenty to thirty seconds Johnnie lay back in the warm water of the Atlantic, knowing that for a few minutes, at any rate, he could support the man he had come to save.

It was curious that at this moment he felt no fear or alarm whatever. His whole mind was directed towards one thing – that the man he had dived to rescue would keep still. His mouth and nose were just out of the water, when suddenly there came into his mind the catch of an old song.

He heard again the high, delicate notes of the Queen's lute – "Time hath to siluer turn'd…"

Hardly knowing what he did, he even laughed with pleasure at the memory.

As that was heard, a strong, lusty voice came to him.

"I'm here, master, I'm here! We shall not be long now. Ah – ah-h-h!"

Hull, blowing like a grampus, had swam up to them.

"I'll take him, master," he said; "do you rest for a moment. They'll have us out of this 'fore long."

There were no life-belts invented in those days, and to lower a boat from the ship was long in doing. But the St. Iago was brought up with all sails standing, the boat at the stern was let down most gingerly into the sea, and four mariners rowed towards the swimming men. It was near twenty minutes before Hull and Commendone heard the chunk of the oars in the rowlocks. But they heard it at last. The tub-like galley shadowed them, there was a loud cry of welcome and relief, and then the two men, still grasping the inert figure of him who had fallen overboard, caught hold of the stern of the boat. Willing hands hauled the half-drowned man into the boat. Johnnie and Hull clambered over the broad stern, sat down amid-ships, and shook themselves.

The moonlight was still extraordinarily powerful, and gave a fallen day to this southern world.

As Commendone shot the water out of his ears, he looked upon the limp, prone figure of the man he had rescued.

"Dame!" he cried; "it is the torturer that we've been overboard for. Pity we didn't let him drown."

John Hull had turned the figure of the Spaniard upon its stomach and was working vigorously at the arms, using them like pump-handles, as the sailors got their oars into the rowlocks again, and pulled back towards the shivering, silver ship near quarter of a mile away.

"I'll bring the life back to him, master," said John Hull. "He's warm now – there! He's vomited a pint or more of sea-water as I speak."

"I doubt he was worth saving," Johnnie said in a low voice to his servant's ear. "Still, he is saved, and I suppose a man like this hath a soul?"

Hull looked at Commendone in surprise. He knew nothing about the man they had rescued; he could not understand why his master spoke in this way.

But with his usual dog-like fidelity he nodded an assent, though he did not cease the pumping motion of the half-drowned man's arms.

"Perhaps he hath no soul, master," Hull said, "you know better than I. At any rate, we have got him out of this here sea, and so praise God Who hath given us the sturdiness to do it."

Commendone looked at his henchman and then at the slowly reviving Spaniard.

"Amen," he said.

CHAPTER X

THE SILENT MEN IN BLACK

"Sing to us, Johnnie."

"Mais oui, chantez, Monsieur," said Madame La Motte.

Johnnie took up a chitarrone, the archlute, a large, double-necked Spanish instrument, which lay upon a marble table by his side in the courtyard.

He looked up into the sky, the painted sunset sky of Spain, as if to find some inspiration there.

The hum of Seville came to them in an almost organ-like harmony. Bells were tolling from the cathedral and the innumerable churches; pigeons were wheeling round the domes and spires; occasionally a faint burst of music reached them where they sat.

The young man looked gravely at the two women. His face at this moment was singularly tranquil and refined. He was dressed with scrupulous care – the long journey over, his natural habits resumed. He had all the air and grace of a gallant in a Court.

He bowed to Madame La Motte and to his sweetheart, smiling gently at them.

"By your patience, ladies," he said, "I will make endeavour to improvise for you upon a theme. We have spent this day in seeing beauties such as sure I never thought to see with my mortal eyes. We are in the land of colour, of sweet odours; the balmy smells of nard and cassia are flung about the cedarn alleys where we walk. We have sucked the liquid air in a veritable garden of the Hesperides, and, indeed, I looked to see the three fair daughters of Hesperus along those crispèd shades and bowers. And we have seen also" – his voice was almost dreaming as he spoke – "the greatest church e'er built to God's glory by the hand of man. 'Tis indeed a mountain scooped out, a valley turned upsides. The towers of the Abbey Church at Westminster might walk erect in the middle nave; there are pillars with the girth of towers, and which appear so slender that they make one shudder as they rise from out the ground or depend them from the gloomy roof like stalactites in the cave of a giant."

Madame La Motte nodded, purred, and murmured to herself. The whimsical and studied Court language did not now fall upon her ears for the first time. In the fashion of that age all men of culture and position learnt to talk in this fashion upon occasion, with classic allusion and in graceful prose.

But to sweet Elizabeth it was all new and beautiful, and as she gazed at her lover her eyes were liquid with caressing wonder, her lips curved into a bow of pride at such dear eloquence.

Johnnie plucked the strings of the chitarrone once or twice, and then, his eyes half closed, began a simple improvisation in a minor key, the while he lifted his voice and began to sing his ballad of evening colours:

See! limner Phœbus paints the skyVermilion and goldAnd doth with purple tapestryThe waning day enfold.– The royal, lucent, Tyrian dyeKing Philip wore in Thessaly.The Lord of Morning now doth keepHerald for Lady Night,Whose robes of black and silver sweepBefore his tabard bright.– All silver-soft and sable-deep,As when she brought Endymion sleep!Now honey-coloured Luna sheHath lit her lamp on high;And paleth in her MajestieThe twin Dioscuri.– Set in gold-powdered samite, she —Queen of the Night! Queen of the Sea!

His voice faded away into silence; the mellow tenor ceasing in an imperceptible diminuendo of sound.

There was a silence, and then Lizzie's hand stole out and touched her lover's. "Oh, Johnnie," she said, "how gracious! And did those lovely words come into thy head as thou sangst them?"

"In truth they did, fairest lady of evening," he answered, bending low over her hand. "And sure 'twas thy dear presence that sent them to me, the musick of thy voice hath breathed a soul into this lute."

… They had arrived safely in Seville the night before, spending three days upon the journey from Cadiz, but travelling in very pleasant and easy fashion.

Mr. Mew, the mate of the St. Iago, had business in the city, and while the vessel was discharging its cargo at Cadiz he went up to Seville and took the four travellers with him on board an alijador– a long barge with quarters for passengers, and a hold for cargo, which was propelled partly by oars in the narrower reaches of the river, but principally by a large lug sail.

Don Perez had remained in Cadiz, but the tall and sinister young fellow whom Hull and Johnnie had rescued from the Atlantic came in the barge also. The fugitives from England had little to say to him, knowing what he was. Alonso – which was the man's name – had been profuse in his gratitude. His profuseness, however, had been mingled with a continuous astonishment, a brutish wonder which was quite inexplicable to Elizabeth.

"He seemeth," she said once to her esquire, "to think as if such a deed of daring as thou didst in thy kindness for a fellow-creature in peril hath never been known in the world before!"

Madame La Motte and Commendone, however, had said nothing. They knew very well why this poor wretch, who gained his food by such a hideous calling, was amazed at his rescue. They said nothing to the girl, however, dreading that she should ever have an inkling of what the man was.

On the voyage to Seville, a happy, lazy time under the bright sun, Johnnie could not quite understand an obvious friendship and liking which seemed to have sprung up between Alonso and Mr. Mew, who spoke Spanish very adequately.

"I cannot understand," he said upon one occasion to the sturdy man from the Isle of Wight, "I cannot understand, sir, how you that are an English mariner can talk and consort with this tool of hell."

Mr. Mew looked at him with a dry smile. "And yet, master," he said in the true Hampshire idiom and drawl, "bless your heart, you jumped overboard for this same man!"

"The case is different," Johnnie said; "'twas a fellow-creature, and I did as behoved me. But that is no reason to be friendly with such a wretch."

"Look you, Master Commendone," said Mr. Mew, "every man to his trade. I would burn both hands, myself, before I'd live by sworn torturing. But, then, 'tis not my trade. This man's father and his brother have been doing of it almost since birth, and they do it – and sure, a good Catholic like yourself," here he smiled dryly, "cannot but remember that 'tis done under the shield and order of Holy Church! The damned old Pope hath ordered it."

Johnnie crossed himself. "The sovereign Pontiff," he said, "hath established the Holy Office for punishment of heretics. But the punishment is light and without harshness in the states of His Holiness. In Spain 'tis a matter very different. It was under the Holy Father Innocent IV that this tribunal was created, and the Holy Office in Spain differed in no wise from the comparatively innocuous – "

"What is that, master? That word?"

"It meaneth 'harmless,' Master Mew. What was I saying? Oh, that it differed nothing at all in Spain from the harmless Council which was to detect heresy and reprove it. But during the reign of our good King Edward IV the Holy Office was changed in Spain. The Ebrews were plotting, or said to be plotting, against the realm, and they had come to much wealth and power. Pope Sixtus made many protests, but the right of appointing inquisitors and directing the operation of the Holy Office in Spain was reserved to the Spanish Crown. And from this date, Master Mew, Holy Church at any rate hath disclaimed to be responsible for it. That was then and is now the true feeling of Rome. 'Tis true that in Spain the Church tolerates the Inquisition, but its blood-stained acts are from the Crown and such priests as are ministers of the Crown."

Father Chilches had taught Johnnie his history, truly enough. But it seemed to make very little impression upon the mate.

"Art a gentleman," he said, "and know doubtless more than I, but such peddling with words and splicing of facts are not to my mind. The damned old Pope say I, and always shall, when it's safe to speak! But the pith of our talk, Master Commendone, was that you would not have me give comradeship with this Alonso. I see not your point of view. He is of his time and must do his duty."

The mate snapped a tarry thumb and finger with a tolerant smile. "You've saved him, so that he may go on with his torturin'," he said, "and I like to talk with him because I find him a good fellow, and that is all about it, Master Commendone."

Johnnie had not got much small change from his conference with the mate, but when they arrived at Seville, he saw him and the man called Alonso no more, and his mind was directed upon very other things.

They arrived at the city late at night, and their mails were taken to the great inn of Seville known as the Posada de las Muñecas, or house of puppets, so called from the fact that in days gone by, at the great annual Seville fair, a famous performance of marionettes had taken place in front of it.

The Posada was an old Moorish palace, as beautiful under the sunlight as an Oriental song, and when they rose in the morning and Johnnie had despatched a serving-man to find if Don José Senebria was in residence, he and his companions wakened to the realisation of a loveliness of which they had never dreamed.

The sky was like a great hollow turquoise; the sun beat down upon the Pearl of Andalusia with limpid glory, and played perpetually upon the white and painted walls. The orange trees, only introduced into Spain some five-and-twenty years before from Asia, were globed with their golden fruit among the dark, jade-like leaves of polished green; feathery palms with their mailed trunks rose up to cut the blue, and on every side buildings which glowed like immense jewels were set to greet the unaccustomed northern eye. The Posada was a blaze of colour, half Moorish, half Gothic, fantastic and alluring as a rare dream.

Johnnie heard early in the morning that Don José would be away for two days, having travelled to his vineyards beyond the old Roman village of Sancios. The day therefore, and the morrow also, was left to them for sight-seeing. Both he and Elizabeth had in part forgotten the cloud of distress under which they had left their native land. The child often talked to him of her father, making many half-shy confidences about her happy life at Hadley, telling him constantly of that brave and stalwart gentleman. But she now accepted all that had happened with the perfect innocence and trustfulness of youth. Upon her white and stainless mind what she had undergone had left but little trace. Even now she only half realised her ravishment to the house with the red door, and that Madame La Motte was not a pattern of kindness, discretion, and fine feeling would never have entered Lizzie's simple mind. She was going to be married to Johnnie! – it was to be arranged almost at once – and then she knew that there need be no more trouble, no weariness, no further searchings of heart. She and Johnnie would be together for ever and ever, and that was all that mattered!