“Your sons?”
“When the alguaciles came for me and Moseh, they were on a trip to Cabo Corrientes to dig up some of that buried quicksilver. No doubt they are drinking mezcal in some mining-town saloon about now.”
“And you, Moseh?”
“They can see perfectly well I’m half Indian, so they’ve pegged me as a mestizo spawned by one of those crypto-Jews who went up to Nuevo Leon a hundred years ago.”
“But that lot was exterminated in the autos da fé of 1673.”
“Ridding a country of Jews is easier than purging every last phant’sy and suspicion from an Inquisitor’s mind,” Moseh returned. “He supposes every Indian between San Miguel de Allende and New York has a Torah concealed in his breech-clout.”
“He wants to find that you are a heretick,” said Edmund de Ath.
“And hereticks burn,” Moseh added.
“Only if they are unrepentant,” said Edmund de Ath, and his eyes followed the lines of Moseh’s tunic until they found the rosary. “So you have made the decision to pass as a Christian, and avoid the stake. As soon as you are set free you’ll go far away and become a Jew again. That is exactly what the Inquisitor suspects.”
“Go on.”
“He has been asking me questions about you. He would like for me to testify that you are a sham Christian and an unrepentant Jew. That is all he needs to burn you over a crackling mesquite fire…your only choice then would be to accept Christ as they were tying you to the stake…”
“In which event they’d charitably strangle me as the flames were rising—or, I could live for a few minutes longer as a devout Jew.”
“Albeit an uncomfortable one,” Jack concluded.
“Jack, he would also like for me to testify that you and Moseh prayed together in Hebrew, and observed Yom Kippur aboard Minerva.”
“Go ahead, it just confirms I’m an infidel.”
“But now that you are pretending to be a Catholic you’ve burned that excuse—any lapses make you a heretick.”
Jack now became mildly irked. “What is your point? That you could, with a few words, send me and Moseh to the stake? We already knew that.”
“There must be something more,” Moseh said. “A witness they would not torture. Edmund has been accused of something by someone.”
“Under normal circumstances there would be no guessing who my accuser was,” said de Ath, “since the Inquisition keeps such matters a secret. But here in New Spain, no one knows me except for those who disembarked from Minerva in Acapulco. Obviously you two did not denounce me to the Inquisition.” De Ath said this deliberately, and looked Jack and then Moseh in the eye, examining each for signs of a guilty conscience. Jack had been subjected to this treatment countless times in his life, first by Puritans in English Vagabond-camps and subsequently by diverse Papists eager to hear him confess all his colorful sins. He met the gaze of de Ath directly, and Moseh looked back at the Belgian with a sorrowful look that showed no trace of guilt or nervousness. “Very well,” said de Ath, with a faint, apologetic smile. “That leaves only—”
“Elizabeth de Obregon!” Moseh exclaimed, if a whisper could be an exclamation.
“But she was your disciple,” Jack said.
“Judas was a disciple, too,” de Ath said quietly. “Disciples can be dangerous—especially when they are not right in the head to begin with. When Elizabeth returned to awareness in that cabin on Minerva, mine was the first face she saw. I believe now that my face must somehow haunt her nightmares, and that she seeks to exorcise it in flames.”
“But we thought—”