“As for this wretched covering, I can only beg you pardon, se?ora,” continued Moseh. “We like to lie out in this place and recuperate after a question-and-answer session with the Inquisitor, and so we have been training the vines to grow thus, to shade us from the mid-afternoon sun.”
“Then you need to give them manure, for I can clearly see stars coming out through the gaps.”
To which the obvious response was Manure!? We get no shortage of that from the priests, and give all of it back to the Inquisitor, but before Jack could say it, Moseh silenced him with a look, and said: “Insofar as the vines cover us, we thank Lord Jesus, and insofar as they don’t, we are reminded that in the end we are all dependent on the protection of God in Heaven.”
The feast had been brought in by the prisoners’ families and laid out on a long deal table at the edge of the prison courtyard, under a makeshift awning of bougainvilleas. It was a lot of harvest-time food: particularly squashes, baked with Caribbean sugar, cinnamon from Manila, and an infinity of beans. Jack had taken a liking to mushy food since losing most of his teeth crossing the Pacific. Up in Guanajuato he’d hired an Indian to make him a new set out of gold and carven boar’s tusks, but this accessory had been mislaid, somewhere along the line, after he and Moseh had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition. He guessed that some familiar or alguacil was chewing his pork with Jack’s teeth at this very moment, probably just over the wall in the dormitories of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición.
“Consider your apologies accepted, and your flattery disregarded,” said Se?ora de Fonseca. “But a lady who attends a social function in a prison, organized by men—hereticks and infidels at that!—does not expect that the niceties will be observed. That is why every man seeks a wife, no?”
There followed a long silence, which quickly became embarrassing to those hereticks and infidels, and then stretched out to a point where it seemed likely to become fatal. Finally Jack kicked Salamón Ruiz under the table. Salamón had been rocking back and forth on his bench and muttering something. When Jack’s boot impacted on his shin he opened his eyes and shouted, “Oy!”
Then, amid sharp inhalations from all around the table, stretched it out thus: “Oigo misa!”
“You are going to Mass!?” said Diego de Fonseca, perplexed.
“Misa de matrimonio,” said Salamón, and then finally remembered to unclasp his hands and grope for the hand of his supposed novia, this evening’s nominal guest of honor, Isabel Machado, who was seated on his right. He had never seen the girl before, and for a moment Jack was afraid he was going to grab the wrong woman’s hand. “In my head, you know, I was going to Mass on my wedding day.”
“Well, keep your hands out of your lap when you’re doing it please!” Jack returned. The comment was not well received by the warden’s wife, but Moseh plastered it over by rising to his feet and hoisting his chocolate-cup into the air: “To Isabel and Sanchez,* whose betrothal we celebrate tonight, may the Inquisitor be merciful to Sanchez, may the auto da fé be of the non-violent sort, and may their marriage be long and prosperous.”
That toast led to others, which continued in chocolatey volleys until the Cathedral bells rang vespers. Then the dinner broke up as the prisoners and their guests got to their feet and began to walk in a long uneven procession around the perimeter of the courtyard.
“To walk around thus after eating is a custom up north,” Jack heard Moseh explaining to Se?ora de Fonseca.
“In Nuevo Leon? But that place was settled by Jews!”
“No, thank God, I meant the new mining country: Guanajuato, Zacatecas…”
She shuddered. “Brr, it is a land of Vagabonds and Desperadoes…”
“But pure-blooded Christians all. And after a big meal they always march around the town square seven times.”
“Why seven?”
“Five times for the Five Wounds of Christ,” Jack blurted out, “and three for the three persons of the Trinity.”
“But five and three make eight!” observed Se?or de Fonseca, now becoming interested.