House of Torment

Indeed, under these bright skies, among the gay, good-humoured, and heedless people of Seville, it would have been very difficult for much older and more world-weary people than this young man and maid to be sad or apprehensive.

It had all been a feast, a never-ending feast for eye and ear. They had stood before pictures which were world-famous – they had seen that marvellous allegory in pigment, where "a hand holds a pair of scales, in which the sins of the world – set forth by bats, peacocks, serpents, and other emblems – are weighed against the emblems of the Passion of Christ our Lord; and eke in the same frame, which is thought to be the finer composition, Death, with a coffin under one arm, is about to extinguish a taper, which lighteth a table besprent with crowns, jewels, and all the gewgaws of this earthly pomp. 'In Ictu Oculi' are the words which circle the taper's gleaming light, while set upon the ground resteth a coffin open, the corpse within being dimly revealed."

They had walked through the long colonnade in the palace of the Alcazar, to the baths of Maria de Padilla, the lovely mistress of Pedro the Cruel, "at the Court of whom it was esteemed a mark of gallantry and loyalty to drink the waters of the bath after that Maria had performed her ablutions. Upon a day observing that one of his knights refrained from this act of homage, the King questioned him, and elicited the reply, 'I dare not drink of the water, Sire, lest, having tasted the sauce, I should covet the partridge.'"

All these things they had done together in their love and youth, forgetting all else but the incomparable beauties of art and nature which surrounded them, the music and splendour of Love within their hearts.

… A serving-man came through the patio.

"Puedo cenar?" Johnnie asked. "A qué hora es el cenar?"

The man told him that supper was ready then, and together with the ladies Johnnie left the courtyard and entered the long comedor, or dining-hall, a narrow room with good tapestries upon the walls, and a ceiling decorated with heads of warriors and ladies in carved and painted stucco.

It was lit by candle, and supper was spread for the three in the middle of one great table, an oasis of fruit, lights, and flowers.

"Este es un vino bueno," said the waiter who stood there.

"It is all good wine in Spain," Johnnie answered, with a smile, as the man poured out borgoña, and another brought them a dish of grilled salmon.

They lifted their glasses to each other, and fell to with a good appetite. Suddenly Johnnie stopped eating. "Where is John Hull?" he said. "God forgive me, I have not thought of him for hours."

"He will be safe enough," Madame La Motte answered, her mouth full of salmón asado. "Mon Dieu! but this fish is good! Fear not, Monsieur, thy serving-man can very well take care of himself."

"I suppose so," Johnnie replied, though with a little uneasiness.

"But, Johnnie," Elizabeth said, "Hull told me that he was to be with Master Mew, the mate of our late ship, to see the town with him, so all will be well."

Johnnie lifted his goblet of wine; he had never felt more free, careless, and happy in his life.

"Here," he said, "is to this sweet and hospitable land of Spain, whither we have come through long toils and dangers. 'Tis our Latium, for as the grandest of all poets, Vergil yclept, hath it, 'Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum, tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas ostendunt.'"

"And what may that mean, Monsieur?" asked Madame La Motte, pulling the botella towards her. "My Credo, my Paternoster, and my Ave are all my Latin."

"It means, Madame," Johnnie answered, "that we have gone through many troubles and trials, through all sorts of changes in affairs, but we approach towards Latium, which the poet meaneth for Imperial Rome, where the fates will let us live in peace."

"In peace!" Elizabeth whispered.

"Aye, sweetheart mine," the young man answered; "we have won to peace at last. Thou and I together!"

For a moment or two they were all silent, and then the door of the comedor was suddenly opened, not quietly, as for the entrance of a serving-man, but flung open widely and with noise.

They all turned and looked towards the archway of the door.

In a moment more six or seven people pressed into the room – people dressed in black, people whose feet made no noise upon the floor.

Ere ever any of them at the table realised what was happening, they found themselves gripped by strong, firm hands, though there was never a word spoken.

Before he could reach the dagger in his belt – for he was not wearing his sword – Johnnie's arms were bound to his side, and he was held fast.

It was all done with strange deftness and silence, Elizabeth and the Frenchwoman being held also, each by two men, though their arms were not bound.

Johnnie burst out in indignant English, then, remembering where he was, changed to Spanish. "In God's name," he cried, "what means this outrage upon peaceable and quiet folk?"

His voice was loud and angry, but there was fear in it as he cried out. The answer came from a tall figure which came noiselessly through the door, a figure in a cassock, with a large gold cross hung upon its breast, and followed by two others in the dress of priests.

"Ah, Mr. Commendone, we meet again," came in excellent English, as the man removed his broad-brimmed felt hat.

"You have come a long way from England, Mr. Commendone, you and your – friends. But the arm of the King, the hand of the Church, which are as the arm of God Himself, can stretch swiftly and very far."

Johnnie's face grew dead white as he heard the well-remembered voice of Father Diego Deza. In a flash he remembered that King Philip's confessor and confidential adviser had told him that he was to leave England for Spain on the morning of the very day when he had rescued Elizabeth from shame.

His voice rattled in his throat and came hoarsely through parched lips. He made one effort, though he felt that it was hopeless.

"Don Diego," he said, "I am very glad to see you in Spain" – the other gave a nasty little laugh. "Don Diego," Johnnie continued, "I have offended nothing against the laws of England. What means this capture and durance of myself and my companions?"

"You are not in England now, Mr. Commendone," the priest replied; "but you are in the dominion of His Most Catholic Majesty; you are not accused of any crime against the civil law of England or of this country, but I, in my authority as Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office in Seville – to do which duty I have now come to Spain – arrest you and your companions on charges which will be afterwards disclosed to you.

"Take them away," he said in Spanish to his officers.

There was a horrid wail, echoing and re-echoing through the long room and beating upon the ear-drums of all who were there…

Madame La Motte had heard all that the priest had said in English. She shrieked and shrieked again.

"Ah-h-h! C'est vrai alors! L'inquisition! qui lance la mort!"

With extraordinary and sudden strength she twisted herself away from the two sombre figures which held her. She bent forward over the table, snatched up a long knife, gripped the handle firmly with two fat white hands, and plunged it into her breast to the hilt.

For quite three seconds she stood upright. Her face of horror changed into a wonder, as if she was surprised at what she had done. Then she smiled foolishly, like a child who realises that it has made a silly mistake, coughed loudly like a man, and fell in heavy death upon the floor.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE BOX

"Devant l'Inquisition, quand on vient à jubé,Si l'on ne soit rôti, l'on soit au moins flambé."

It was not light that pressed upon the retina of the eye. There was no vibration to the sensitive lenses. It was a sudden vision not of the eye, but in the memory-cells of the brain which now and then filled the dreadful blackness with a fierce radiance, filled it for an infinitesimal fraction of a second.

And then all was dark again.

It was not dark with the darkness that ordinary men know. At no time, in all probability, has any man or woman escaped a long sleepless night in a darkened room. The candle is out; the silence begins to nibble at the nerves; there is no sound but the uneasy tossing upon the bed. It seems, one would rather say, that there is no sound save only that made by the sufferer. At such hours comes a dread weariness of life, a restlessness which is but the physical embroidery upon despair. The body itself is at the lowest pitch of its vitality. Through the haunted chambers of the mind fantastic thoughts chase each other, and evil things – evil personalities it almost seems – uncoil themselves and erect their heads.

But it is not really darkness, not really despair, as people know when the night has gone and dawn begins. Nor is it really silence. The ear becomes attuned to its environment; a little wind moans round the house. There is the soft patter of falling rain – the distant moaning of the sea.

Furniture creaks as the temperature changes; there are rustlings, whispers, unexplained noises – the night is indeed full of sound.

Nor is it really darkness, as the mind discovers towards the end of the sick and restless vigil. The eye also is attuned to that which limits and surrounds its potentialities. The blinds are drawn, but still some faint mysterious greyness creeps between them and the window. The room, then, is a real room still! Over there is the long mirror which will presently begin to stir and reflect the birth-pangs of light. That squat, black monster, which crouches in the corner of the dark, will grow larger, and become only the wardrobe after all. And soon the air of the chamber will take on a subtle and indefinable change. It will have a new savour, it will tell that far down in the under world the sun is moaning and muttering in the last throes of sleep. The blackness will go. Dim, inchoate nothingness will change to wan dove-coloured light, and with the first chirpings of half-awakened birds the casement will show "a slowly glimmering square," and the tortured brain will sink to rest.

Day has come! There is no longer any need for fear. The nervous pain, more terrible than all, has gone. The heart is calmed, the brain is soothed, utter prostration and despair appears, mercifully, a thing of long ago.

Some such experience as this all modern men have endured. To John Commendone, in the prison of the Inquisition where he had been put, no such alleviation came.

For him there was no blessed morning; for him the darkness was that awful negation of light – of physical light – and of hope, which is without remedy.

He did not know how long it had been since he was caught up suddenly out of the rich room where he was dining with his love – dining among the scent of flowers, with the echo of music in his ears, his whole heart suffused with thankfulness and peace.

He did not know how long it had been; he only remembered the hurried progress in a closed carriage from the hotel to the fortress of the Triana in the suburbs, which was the prison and assize of the Holy Office.

In all Europe in this era prisons were dark, damp holes. They were real graves, full of mould, animal filth, the pest-breeding smells. It was the boast of the Inquisition, and even Llorente speaks of it, that the prisons were "well-arched, light and dry rooms where the prisoners could make some movement."

This was generally true, and Commendone had heard of it from Don Perez.

It was not true in his case. He had been taken hurriedly into the prison as night fell, marched silently through interminable courtyards and passage-ways – corridors which slanted downwards, ever downwards – until in a dark stone passage, illuminated only by the torches which were carried by those who conducted him, he had come to a low door, heavily studded with iron.

This had been opened with a key. The wards of the lock had shot back with a well-oiled and gentle click. He had bent his head a little as they pushed him into the living tomb – a box of stone five feet square exactly. He was nearly six feet in height; he could not stand erect; he could not stretch himself at full length. The thing was a refinement of the dreadful "little-ease" of the Tower of London and many other secular prisons where wretches were tortured for a week before their execution. He had heard of places like them, but he realised that it was not the design of those who had him fast to kill him yet. He knew that he must undergo an infinity of mental and bodily torture ere ever the scarred and trembling soul would be allowed to wing its way from the still, broken body.

He was in absolute, complete darkness, buried in a box of stone.

The rayless gloom was without any relief whatever; it was the enclosing sable of death itself; a pitchy oblivion that lay upon him like a solid weight, a thing obscene and hopeless. And the silence was a real silence, an utter stillness such as no modern man ever knows – save only the few demoniac prisoners in the cachot noir of the French convict prisons of Noumea.

Once every two days – if there indeed were such things as days and hours in this still hell – the door of the cell was noiselessly opened. There was a dim red glow in the stone corridor without, a pitcher of water, some black bread, and every now and then a few ripe figs, were pushed into the box.

Then a clang, the oily swish of the bolts, and another eternity of silence.

The man's brain did not go. It was too soon for that. He lay a fortnight – ten thousand years it seemed to him – in this box of horror.

He was not to die yet. He was not even to lose his mind; of that he was perfectly aware. He was no ordinary prisoner. No usual fate was in store for him; that also he knew. A charge of heresy in his case was absurd. No witnesses could be brought who, speaking truth, could condemn him for heresy. But what Don Perez had told him was now easily understood. He was in a place where there was no appeal, a situation with no egress.

There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that a dreadful vengeance was to be taken upon him for his treatment of the King of Spain. The Holy Office was a royal court provided with ecclesiastical weapons. Its familiars had got him in their grip; he was to die the death.

As he lay motionless day after day, night after night, in the silence – the hideous silence without light – the walls so close, pressing on him, forbidding him free movement, at every moment seeming as if they would rush together and crush him in this night of Erebus, he began to have visitors.

Sometimes a sulphurous radiance would fill the place. He would see the bowing, mocking figure of King Philip, the long yellow face looking down upon him with a malign smile. He would hear a great hoarse voice, and a little woman with a shrivelled face and covered with jewels, would squeak and gibber at him. Then, with a clank of armour, and a sudden fresh smell of the fields, Sir Henry Commendone would stand there, with a "How like you this life of the pit, Johnnie?" … "How like you this blackness, my son?"

Then he would put up his hands and press these grisly phantoms out of the dark. He would press them away with one great effort of the will.

They would go, and he remained trembling in the chill, damp negation of light, which was so far more than darkness. He would grope for the pieces of his miserable food, and search the earthen pitcher for water.

And all this, these tortures beyond belief, beyond understanding of the ordinary man, were but as soft couches to one who is weary, food to one hungered, water to lips parched in a desert – compared with the deepest, unutterable descent of all.

The cold and stinking blackness which held him tight as a fossil in a bed of clay was not the worst. His eyes that saw nothing, his limbs that were shot with cramping pain, his nostrils and stomach that could not endure this uncleaned cage, were a torture beyond thinking.

Many a time he thought of the mercy of Bishop Bonner and Queen Mary – the mercy that let a gentleman ride under the pleasant skies of England to a twenty minutes' death – God! these were pleasant tortures! His own present hopelessness, all that he endured in body – why, dear God! these were but pleasant tortures too, things to bite upon and endure, compared with the Satanic horror, the icy dread, the bitter, hopeless tears, when he thought of Elizabeth.

He had long since ceased praying for himself. It mattered little or nothing what happened to him. That he should be taken out to torture would be a relief, a happiness. He would lie in the rack laughing. They could fill his belly with water, or strain the greasy hempen ropes into his flesh, and still he would laugh and forgive them – Dr. Taylor had forgiven less than they would do to him, he would forgive more than all for the sake of Christ and His Maid-Mother. How easy that would be! To be given something to endure, to prove himself a man and a Christian!

But to forgive them for what they might be doing, they might have done, to his dear lady – how could he forgive that to these blood-stained men?

Through all the icy hours he thought of one thing, until his own pains vanished to nothingness.

Perchance, and the dreadful uncertainty in his utter impotence and silence swung like a bell in his brain, and cut through his soul like the swinging pendola which they said the familiars of the Holy Office used, Elizabeth had already suffered unspeakable things.

He saw again a pair of hands – cruel hands – hands with thick thumbs. Had hands like these grasped and twisted the white limbs of the girl he loved? Divorced from him, helpless, away from any comfort, any kind voice, was it not true —was it true? – that already his sweetheart had been tortured to her death?

He had tried over and over again to pray for Elizabeth, to call to the seat where God was, that He might save the dear child from these torments unspeakable.

But there was always the silence, the dead physical blackness and silence. He beat his hands upon the stone wall; he bruised his head upon the roof of darkness which would not let him stand upright, and he knew – as it is appointed to some chosen men to know – that unutterable, unthinkable despair of travail which made Our Lord Himself call out in the last hour of His passion, [Greek: Êli, Êli lamà sabachthaní].

There was no response to his prayers. Into his heart came no answering message of hope.

And then the mind of this man, which had borne so much, and suffered so greatly, began to become powerless to feel. A bottle can only hold a certain amount of water, the strings of an instrument be plucked to a certain measure of sound, the brain of a man can endure up to a certain strain, and then it snaps entirely, or is drowsed with misery.

Physically, the young man was in perfect health when they had taken him to his prison. He had lived always a cleanly and athletic life. No sensual ease had ever dimmed his faculties. And therefore, though he knew it not, the frightful mental agony he had undergone had but drawn upon the reserve of his physical forces, and had hardly injured his body at all. The food they gave him, at any rate for the time of his disappearance from the world of sentient beings, was enough to support life. And while he lay in dreadful hopelessness, while his limbs were racked with pain, and it seemed to him that he stood upon the very threshold of death, he was in reality physically competent, and a few hours of relief would bring his body back to its pristine strength.

There came a time when he lay upon his stone floor perfectly motionless. The merciful anodyne that comes to all tortured people when either the brain or body can bear no more, had come to him now.

It seemed but a short moment – in reality it was several hours – since his jailors, those masked still-moving figures, had brought him a renewal of his food. He could not eat the bread, but two figs upon the platter were grateful and cooling to his throat, though he was unconscious of any physical gratification. He knew, sometime after, that sustenance had been brought to him, and that he had a great thirst. He stretched out his hand mechanically for the pitcher, rising from the floor and pressing the brim to his lips.

He drank deeply, and as he drank became suddenly aware that this was not the lukewarm water of the past darkness, but something that ran through his veins, that swiftly ran through them, and as the blood mounted to his brain gave him courage, awoke him, fed the starved nerves. It was wine he was drinking! wine that perhaps would be red in the light; wine that once more filled him with endeavour, and a desperate desire which was not hope but the last protest against his fate.

He lay back once more, by no means the same man he had been some little time agone, and as he reclined in a happy physical stupor – the while his brain was alive again and began to work – he said many times to himself the name of Jesus.

"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" – it was all he could say; it was all he could think of, it was his last prayer. Just the name alone.

And very speedily the prayer was answered. Out of the depths he cried – "De profundis clamavit" – and the door opened, as it opened to the Apostle Paul, and the place where he was was filled with red light.

For a moment he was unable to realise it. He passed one wasted and dirty hand before his eyes. "Jesus!" he said again, in a dreamy, wondering voice.

He felt himself lifted up from where he lay. Two strong hands were under his arms; he was taken out of the stinking oubliette into the corridor beyond.

He stood upright. He stretched out his arms. He breathed another air. It was a damp, fœtid, underground air, but it seemed to him that it came from the gardens of the Hesperides.

Then he became conscious of a voice speaking quietly, quickly, and with great insistence.

The voice in his ear!

… "Señor, we have had to wait. You have had to lie in this dungeon, and I could do nothing for you – for you that saved my life. It hath taken many days to think out a plan to save you and the Señorita. But 'tis done now, 'tis cut and dried, and neither you nor she shall go to the death designed for you both. It hath been designed by the Assessor and the Procurator Fiscal, acting under orders of the Grand Inquisitor, that you shall be tortured to death, or near to it, and that to the Señorita shall be done the same. Then you are to be taken to the Quemadero – that great altar of stone supported by figures of the Holy Apostles – and there burnt to death at the forthcoming auto da fé."

"Then what," – Johnnie's voice came from him in a hollow whisper.

"Hush, hush," the other voice answered him; "'tis all arranged. 'Tis all settled, but still it dependeth upon you, Señor. Will you save your lady love, and go free with her from here, and with your servant also, or will you die and let her die too?"

"Then she hath not been tortured?"

"Not yet; it is for to-night. You come afterwards. But you do not know me, Señor; you do not realise who I am."

At this Johnnie looked into the face of the man who supported him.

"Ah," he said, in a dreamy voice, "Alonso! – I took you from the sea, did not I?"

Everything was circling round him, he wanted to fall, to lie down and sleep in this new air…

The torturer saw it – he had a dreadful knowledge of those who were about to faint. He caught hold of Johnnie somewhere at the back of the neck. There was a sudden scientific pressure of the flat thumb upon a nerve, and the sinking senses of the captive came back to him in a flood of painful consciousness.

"Ah!" he cried, "but I feel better now! Go on, go on, tell me, what is all this?.."

One big thumb was pressed gently at the back of Johnnie's head. "It is this," said the voice, "and now, Señor, listen to me as if you had never listened to any other voice in this whole world. In the first place, you have much money; you have much money to be employed for you, in the hands of your servant, and from him I hear that you are noble and wealthy in England. I myself am a young man, but lately introduced to do the work I do. I am in debt, Señor, and neither my father nor my brother will help me. There is a family feud between us. Now my father is the head sworn-torturer of the Holy Office; my brother is his assistant, and I am the assistant to my brother. The three of us do rack and put to pain those who come before us. But I myself am tired of this business, and would away to a country where I can earn a more honest and kindly living. Therefore if thou wilt help me to do this, all will be well. There is a carrack sailing for the port of Rome this very night, and we can all be aboard of it, and save ourselves, if thou wilt do what we have made a plan of."