“You imagined I was exerting some sinister influence on a susceptible mind—I know you did,” said de Ath. “In fact, I was ministering to one who was not right in mind or body. Ever since that disastrous expedition to the Islands of Solomon she had been a little daft—confined to a nunnery in Manila. Finally her family in Spain arranged for her to come home, which is how she ended up on the Manila Galleon. To outward appearances she was entirely sane. But the fire on the Galleon burned away what was left of her good sense. By treating her with tincture of opium, and staying by her side at all times, I was able to keep her madness in hand as long as we remained aboard Minerva. But when I became the cargador for your enterprise, my responsibilities took me down to Lima. Elizabeth came here to Mexico City. I am afraid she has fallen under the influence of certain Phanatiqual Jesuits and Dominicans. Churchmen of that stripe loathe such as me, because I keep a civil tongue in my head when talking to Protestants. I fear that they have preyed upon Elizabeth’s mind and that in her madness she has said things about me that have made their way to the stupendous and omniscient annals of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición. The Inquisitor wants to make me, and by extension every other Jansenist, out to be a heretick. Along the way he would like for me to utter words that would send both of you to the stake.”
Jack sighed. “Now I’m glad we did not invite you to the feast—you are so depressing to talk to.”
Edmund de Ath attempted to shrug, but this hurt a lot, and all the muscles on his skull stood out for a few moments, making him look like a woodcut in an anatomy book that Jack had once seen flying through the air in Leipzig. When he could speak again he said, “It is just as well—my faith would not allow me to participate in your Sukkoth even though you cleverly disguised it as a betrothal-feast.”
Moseh laced his fingers together and stretched his arms, which was a noisy procedure. “I am going to bed,” he said. “If they are looking for reasons to burn you, Edmund, and if you are not giving them any, it follows that Jack and I will soon be dangling from the ceiling of the torture-chamber while clerks stand below us with dipped quills. We’ll need our rest.”
“If any one of us breaks, all three of us burn,” said de Ath. “If all three of us can stand our ground, then I believe they will let us go.”
“Sooner or later one of us will break,” Jack said wearily. “This Inquisition is as patient as Death. Nothing can stop it.”
“Nothing,” said de Ath, “except for the Enlightenment.”
“And what is that?” Moseh asked.
“It sounds like one of those daft Catholicisms: The Annunciation, the Epiphany, and now the Enlightenment,” Jack said.
“It is nothing of the sort. If my arms worked, I’d read you some of those letters,” said de Ath, turning his head a fraction of a degree towards some scrawled pages on the end of this table, weighed down by a Bible. “They are from brothers of mine in Europe. They tell a story—albeit in a fragmentary and patchwork way—of a sea-change that is spreading across Christendom, in large part because of men like Leibniz, Newton, and Descartes. It is a change in the way men think, and it is the doom of the Inquisition.”
“Very good! Well, then, all we must needs do is hold out against the strappado, the bastinado, the water-torture, and the thongs for another two hundred years or so, which ought to be plenty of time for this new way of thinking to penetrate Mexico City,” said Jack.
“Mexico City is run out of Madrid, and the Enlightenment has already stormed Madrid and taken it,” de Ath said. “The new King of Spain is a Bourbon, the grand-son of King Louis XIV of France.”
“Feh!” said Moseh.
“Eeew, him again!” said Jack. “Don’t tell me I’m to peg my hopes of freedom on Leroy!”
“Many Englishmen share your feelings, which is why a war has been started to settle the issue, but for now Philip wears the crown,” said Edmund de Ath. “Not long after his coronation he was invited to the Inquisition’s auto da fé in Madrid, and sent his regrets.”
“The King of Spain failed to turn up for an auto da fé!?” Moseh exclaimed.
“It has shaken the Holy Office to its bones. The Inquisitor of Mexico will probe us once or twice more, but beyond that he’ll not press his luck. Scoff all you like at the Enlightenment. It is already here, in this very cell, and we shall owe our survival to it.”
THE PRISON OF THE INQUISITION lay not far from the Mint where, in theory, every ounce of silver that came up out of the mines of Mexico was turned into pieces of eight. In practice, of course, somewhere between half and a quarter of Mexico’s treasure was smuggled out of the country before the King could take his fifth, but still the amount that came down into Mexico City sufficed to mint sixteen thousand pieces of eight every day. This was a large enough number to mean almost nothing to Jack. A couple of thousand an hour began to make sense to him. The booming and grinding of heavy silver-carts on the cobblestones beyond the prison walls gave a feeling of the sheer mass of metal involved.