House of Torment

"After three whole years which he had been in jail, and several examinations, and the discovery of the crimes to him of which he was accused, in order to his confession and his constant denial of them, he was, at length, carried out of his jail and through several turnings and brought to the place of torture. This was towards evening.

"It was a large, underground room, arched, and the walls covered with black hangings. The candlesticks were fastened to the wall, and the whole room enlightened with candles placed in them. At one end of it there was an enclosed place like a closet, where the Inquisitor and notary sat at a table – that notary, Señor, was my brother. The place seemed to Orobio as the very mansion of death, everything appearing so terrible and awful. Here the Inquisitor again admonished him to confess the truth before his torment began.

"When he answered he had told the truth, the Inquisitor gravely protested that since he was so obstinate as to suffer the torture, the Holy Office would be innocent if he should shed his blood, or even expire in his torments. When he had said this, they put a linen garment over Orobio's body, and drew it so very close on each side as almost to squeeze him to death. When he was almost dying, they slackened, at once, the sides of the garment, and after he began to breathe again, the sudden alteration put him to most grievous anguish and pain. When he had overcome this torture, the same admonition was repeated, that he would confess the truth in order to prevent further torment.

"And as he persisted in his denial, they tied his thumbs so very tightly with small cords as made the extremities of them greatly swell, and caused the blood to spurt out from under his nails. After this, he was placed with his back against the wall and fixed upon a little bench. Into the wall were fastened little iron pulleys, through which there were ropes drawn and tied round his body in several places, and especially his arms and legs. The executioner drawing these ropes with great violence, fastened his body with them to the wall, so that his hands and feet, and especially his fingers and toes, being bound so straitly with them, put him to the most exquisite pain, and seemed to him just as though he had been dissolving in flames. In the midst of these torments, the torturer of a sudden drew the bench from under him, so that the miserable wretch hung by the cords without anything to support him, and by the weight of his body drew the knots yet much closer.

"After this a new kind of torture succeeded. There was an instrument like a small ladder, made of two upright pieces of wood and five cross ones, sharpened before. This the torturer placed over against him, and by a certain proper motion struck it with great violence against both his shins, so that he received upon each of them, at once, five violent strokes, which put him to such intolerable anguish that he fainted away. After he came to himself they inflicted on him the last torture.

"The torturer tied ropes round Orobio's wrists, and then put those ropes about his own back, which was covered with leather to prevent his hurting himself. Then, falling backwards, and putting his feet up against the wall, he drew them with all his might till they cut through Orobio's flesh, even to the very bones; and this torture was repeated thrice, the ropes being tied about his arms, about the distance of two fingers' breadth from his former wound, and drawn with the same violence.

"But it happened to poor Orobio that as the ropes were drawing the second time they slid into the first wound, which caused so great an effusion of blood that he seemed to be dying. Upon this, the physician and surgeon, who are always ready, were sent for out of a neighbouring apartment, to ask their advice, whether the torture could be continued without danger of death, lest the ecclesiastical judges should be guilty of an irregularity if the criminal should die in his torments.

"Now they, Señor, who were very far from being enemies to Orobio, answered that he had strength enough to endure the rest of the torture. And by doing this they preserved him from having the torture he had already endured repeated on him, because his sentence was that he should suffer them all at one time, one after another, so that if at any time they are forced to leave off, through fear of death, the tortures, even those already suffered, must be successively inflicted to satisfy the sentence. Upon this the torture was repeated the third time, and then was ended. After this Orobio was bound up in his own clothes and carried back to his prison, and was scarce healed of his wounds in seventy days, and inasmuch as he made no confession under his torture, he was condemned, not as one convicted, but suspected of Judaism, to wear for two whole years the infamous habit called the sanbenito, and it was further decreed that after that term he should suffer perpetual banishment from the kingdom of Seville."

The Frenchwoman, who had been listening with strained attention, broke in suddenly. "Nom de Dieu!" she cried; "to be banished from there would surely be like entering into paradise!"

Perez went on. He took a morbid pleasure in the telling of these hideous truths. It was obvious that he had long suffered mentally under the obsession that some day some such horrors might happen to himself. Connected with it all by family ties, absolutely unable to say a word for many years, now, under the sweet skies of heaven, in the calm and splendid night, he was disemburdening himself of that which had been pent within him for so long.

He seemed impatient of interruption, anxious to say more…

"Ah," he whispered, "but the Tormento di Toca, that is the worst, that would frighten me more than all – that, the Chafing-dish, and the Water-Cure. The Tormento di Toca is that the torturer – that fellow down there with the sailors has doubtless performed it full many a time – the torturer throws over the victim's mouth and nostrils a thin cloth, so that he is scarce able to breathe through it, and in the meanwhile a small stream of water, like a thread, not drop by drop, falls from on high upon the mouth of the person lying in this miserable condition, and so easily sinks down the thin cloth to the bottom of his throat, so that there is no possibility of breathing, the mouth being stopped with water, and his nostrils with the cloth, so that the poor wretch is in the same agony as persons ready to die, and breathing out their last. When the cloth is drawn out of his throat, as it often is, that he may answer to the questions, it is all wet with water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels through his mouth."

"What is the Chafing-dish?" Madame La Motte asked thinly.

"They order a large iron chafing-dish full of lighted charcoal to be brought in and held close to the soles of the tortured person's feet, greased over with lard, so that the heat of the fire may more quickly pierce through them. And as for the Water-Cure, it was done to William Lithgow, an Englishman, Señor, upon whom my brother saw it performed. He was taken up as a spy in Malaga, and was exposed to most cruel torments as an heretic. He was condemned in the beginning of Lent to suffer the night following eleven most cruel torments, and after Easter to be carried privately to Granada, there to be burned at midnight, and his ashes to be scattered into the air. When night came on his fetters were taken off. Then he was stripped naked, put upon his knees, and his head lifted up by force, after which, opening his mouth with iron instruments, they filled his belly with water till it came out of his jaws. Then they tied a rope hard about his neck, and in this condition rolled him seven times the whole length of the room, till he almost quite strangled. After this they tied a small cord about both his great toes, and hung him up thereby with his head down, letting him remain in this condition till the water discharged out of his mouth, so that he was laid on the ground as just dead, and had his irons put on him again."

"Is this true, Señor?" Commendone asked in a low voice; but even while he asked it he knew how true it was – had he not seen Dr. Taylor beaten to the stake?

"True, Señor?" the little man said. "You do not doubt my word? I see you do not. It was but a natural expression. You are fortunate to be a citizen of England – a citizen of no mean country – but still, as I have heard, now that His Most Catholic Majesty is wedded to your kingdom there are many burnings."

"At any rate," Johnnie answered hotly, "we have no Holy Office."

"Aye, but you will, Señor, you will! if the Queen Maria liveth long enough, for they tell me she is sickly, and not like to make a goodly age. But still, to come from England is most deadly unwise, and I cannot think why a caballero should care to do so."

Johnnie did not answer him for a moment. He knew very well why he had cared, or dared, to do so. He looked at Madame La Motte with a grim little smile.

The woman took him on the instant.

"A chevalier, such as Monsieur here, hath his own reasons for where he goes and what he does," she said. "Take not upon you, Monsieur Perez, to enquire too much…"

Johnnie stopped her with a sudden exclamation.

"But touching the Holy Office, Señor," he said, "what you have told me is all very well. I am a good Catholic, I trust and hope; but surely these circumstances are very occasional. You describe things which have doubtless happened, but not things which happen every day. It is impossible to believe that this is a system."

"Think you so?" said the little man. "Then I will very soon disabuse you of any such idea. I have papers in my mails, papers of my brother's, which – why, who comes here?"

His voice died away into silence, as round the other side of the wooden tower of the forecastle – with which all big merchantmen were provided in those days for defence against the enterprise of pirates – a black shadow, followed by a short, thick-set form, came into their view.

Johnnie recognised Hull.

"I thought you had been asleep," he said, "but thou art very welcome. We are talking of grave matters dealing with the foreign parts to which we go, and the Señor Don here hath been telling us much. Still, thou wouldst not have understood hadst thou been with us, for Don Perez speaks naught but the Spanish and the French."

The little Spaniard, standing up against the bulwarks, looked uneasily towards Commendone and his servant, comprehending nothing of what was said.

"This man is safe?" he asked in a trembling voice.

"Safe!" Johnnie answered. "This is my faithful servant, who would die for me and the lady who is sleeping below."

A freakish humour possessed him, a bitter, freakish humour, in this fantastic, brilliant moonlight, this ironic comedy upon the southern-growing seas.

"Take him by the hand, Señor," he said in Spanish, "take him by his great, strong right hand, for I'll wager you will not easily shake a hand so honest in the dominions of the King of Spain to which we sail."

The little man looked round him as if in fear. There was an obvious suggestion in his eyes and face that he was somehow trapped.

"Hold out thy hand, John Hull, and shake that of this honest gentleman," Johnnie said.

The big brown hand of the Englishman went out, the little yellow fingers of the Spaniard advanced tentatively towards it.

They shook hands.

Johnnie watched it with amusement. These dreadful stories of unthinkable cruelty had stirred up something within him. He was not cruel, but very tender-hearted, yet this little play upon the doubting Spaniard was welcome and fitted in with his mood.

Then he saw an astonishing thing, and one which he could not explain.

The two men, the huge, squat John Hull of Suffolk, the little weazened gentleman from Lisbon, shook hands, looked at each other earnestly in the face, and then, wonder of wonders, linked arms, turned their backs upon Johnnie and the sleepy old Frenchwoman by the carronade, and spoke earnestly to each other for a moment.

Their forms were silhouetted against the silver sea. There was an inexplicable motion of arms, a word whispered and a word exchanged, and then Don Perez wheeled round.

In the moonlight and the glimmer from the lantern on the forecastle, Johnnie saw that his face, which had been twitching with anxiety, was now absolutely at rest. It was radiant even, excited, pleased – it wore the aspect of one alone among enemies who had found a friend.

"'Tis all right, Señor," Perez said. "I will go and fetch you the papers of which I spoke. You may command me in any way now. You are not yourself – by any chance…"

John Hull shook his head violently, and the little Spaniard skipped away with a chuckle.

"What is this?" John Commendone asked. "How have you made quick friends with the Don? What is't – art magic, or what?"

"'Tis nothing, sir," Hull answered, with some embarrassment, "'tis but the Craft."

"The Craft?" Johnnie asked. "And what may that be?"

"We're brethren, this man and I," Hull answered; "we're of the Freemasons, and that is why, master."

Johnnie nodded. He said no more. The whole thing was inexplicable to him. He knew, of course, of the Freemasons, that such a society existed, but no evidence of it had ever come to his knowledge before this night. The persecution of Freemasonry which was to ensue in Queen Elizabeth's reign was not yet, and the Brethren were a very hidden people in 1555.

There was a patter of feet upon the ladder leading up to the forecastle-deck. Perez appeared again with a bundle of papers in his hand.

"Now, then, Señor," he said, "you shall see if this of which I have told you is a system or is not. These are documents, forms, belonging to my brother's business as Notary of the Holy Office. Thus thou wilt see."