Moseh now literally stepped in between Jack and the Fonsecas and continued, “All right, I did not wish to bore you with all of the details, but really the tradition is this: formerly they would go eight times around, turning always to the right. Then they would reverse direction and march around four times, one for each of the four gospels, turning to the left. Then reverse again and three additional times to the right, one for each of the crosses on Calvary. But then some Jesuit came along and pointed out that five and three, take away four, add three, make seven all together, and so why not simply go around seven times and leave it at that? Of course he was not taken seriously until they got a new priest up there, who had gout in one foot, and did not like so much walking. A letter was sent to the Vatican. Twenty years later the answer came back that the Jesuit’s arithmetick had been examined, and determined to be sound. By that time the gouty priest had died of a fever. But his replacement was in no position to argue sums with the Pope, and so the tradition was established anyway.”
Visibly exhausted, Moseh now lapsed into silence, as did the Fonsecas, who had been driven into a profound stupor. Not until several orbits of the courtyard had been tallied up did anyone speak again.
“Damn all this dust!” said Diego de Fonseca, waving a flabby hand before his face. The monks who had been sweeping earlier were now shaking their branches in the air, releasing clouds of Popocatepetl ash.
“I heard unfamiliar screaming today,” Jack remarked. “Sounded as if someone was being given the strappado, but I didn’t recognize his voice.”
“It is a Belgian priest, supposedly with heretickal leanings—they brought him up from Acapulco,” said the warden. “I believe he is a material witness in your case.”
FATHER EDMUND DE ATH was sitting in his cell staring with a kind of dull curiosity at his own arms, which were laid out on the table in front of him like lamb shanks in a butcher’s shop. They were still attached to his shoulders, but they were bloated and bluish, except around the wrists where ropes had sawn nearly to the bone. The only part of him that moved was his eyeballs, which swiveled toward the door as Jack and Moseh entered.
“You know, there was a monk in Spain who was thrown into the common jail for some petty crime, fifty or a hundred years ago,” said de Ath. He was speaking in a quiet voice. Jack and Moseh knew why: the strappado ripped all of the muscles around the ribs and spine, giving the victim every incentive to breathe shallowly for the next couple of weeks. Jack and Moseh came round to either side and bent close so that de Ath could get by with a mere whisper. “After a few days in the squalor of that jail, he called the jailer over and uttered certain heretickal oaths. Of course the jailer denounced him to the Inquisition without delay. Before the next sundown, this monk had been moved to the Prison of the Inquisition, where he had his own cell, clean and well-ventilated, with a chair and—ahh—a table.”
“A table’s a good thing to have,” Jack allowed, “when your arms have been pulled out of their sockets, and have nothing to support their weight save a few strands of gristle.”
“You are not really a heretick, are you, Father?” asked Moseh.
“Of course not.”
“So it follows that you believe in turning the other cheek, that the meek shall inherit the earth, et cetera?”
“?Como no? As the Spaniards say.”
“Good—we shall hold you to it,” said Jack, raising one foot and planting it in the middle of de Ath’s chest. He grabbed one of the priest’s hands and Moseh the other. A violent shove sent the victim toppling backwards in his chair. Just as he was about to bash his head on the stone floor, Jack and Moseh jerked as hard as they could on de Ath’s arms, yanking him back up like Enoch Root’s yo-yo. A loud pop sounded from deep in each shoulder. The scream of Edmundde Ath, like the blowing of the legendary horn of Roland, could presumably be heard several mountain ranges away. Of course it emptied his lungs, which forced him to draw a deep breath, which was so painful that he had to scream some more. But after a while this Oscillatory Phenomenon damped out and de Ath was left in the same position as before, viz. sitting bolt upright with his arms on the table. But now he was cautiously clenching and unclenching his fists, and in the light of the candles that Jack and Moseh had brought in, it seemed his flesh was becoming a pinker shade of gray.
“Pardon me while I try to come up with theologickal analogies for what you just did to me,” he said.
“You could do that until the vacas came back to the hacienda, I’m sure,” said Moseh.
“Now that we are all devout Catholics we’ll have plenty of opportunities to listen to homilies,” Jack said. “For now, only tell us what you know of the proceedings against us.”
Edmund de Ath said nothing for a long time. In Mexico, time was as plentiful as silver.
“The warden says you are a witness,” Moseh said, “but they would not torture you unless you were also a suspect.”
“That much is obvious,” agreed de Ath, “but as you know perfectly well, the Inquisition never tells a prisoner what the charges are against him, or who denounced him. They throw him in prison and tell him to confess, and leave him guessing what he’s supposed to confess to.”
“’Tisn’t hard for me to guess,” Jack said. “I’m an Englishman missing the end of his dick, which means the only question is: Jew, or Protestant?”
“I hope you’ve been wise enough to tell them you’re a Jew who was never baptized.”
“That I have. Which—assuming they believe me—marks me as an infidel. And as this Church of yours thinks it is its mission to preach to infidels rather than burn ’em, I’m likely to escape with nothing worse than having to listen to a whole lot o’ preaching.”