Mexico (55 page)

At the edge of the river Guadalquivir, near a grove of olive trees, seven stakes had been driven into the ground and surrounded with piles of wood, over which rough steps had been built leading to small platforms on which the condemned and the priests could stand. To these seven stakes the heretics were led.

At five of the stakes a ceremony occurred that had a profound effect upon the multitude gathered in the dusty field, for prior to the lighting of the fires, priests won last-minute recantations. When the clergy indicated that this man or that woman had been saved, a joyous cry arose, whereupon an official of the Inquisition hurried up the wooden steps bearing a lighted torch from which he relit the prisoner's cold wax taper, signifying that the condemned was about to die in the arms of the Church. More important to the crowd, and perhaps to the condemned, was the fact that at this moment two burly executioners reached around from behind the stake and with powerful hands garroted the prisoner, thus saving him from the agonies of being burned while still alive. When the strangling was accomplished, the executioners leaped nimbly down, ignited the pyres and immolated the already dead bodies of the reconciled heretics.

But at the last two pyres, one containing a Jewish woman, the other a Christian friend of the marquis, no reconciliation was possible. The four priests involved with these two obdurate souls prayed and wept and implored to no avail. The Jewish woman cried loudly, "I am going to die. Let me die in my own faith."

"Look at those terrible fires," a young priest pleaded, tears streaming down his face.

"Let me die," the resolute woman repeated.

"No! No!" the priest begged.

When it was obvious that his pleas would be fruitless, the executioners moved up the steps to remove the two clergymen, and one went peacefully, but die other, determined to save the woman from die terrible ordeal that faced her, refused to be dragged away. Clinging to the woman's yellow robe, he cried in anguish, "Abjure! Abjure!" but she refused, and he was dragged down the improvised steps as the executioners prepared to set fire to the wood.

Even then the young priest would not surrender, but flung himself onto the pyre and, staring up at the Jewish woman, begged her to recant, and as the flames crept closer to his fingers he was at last dragged away.

For more than ten minutes the Jewish woman was immobile and silent, but when the faggots burst into full flame and burned away her dunce's cap and her hair and the smoke began to strangle her, in her last extremity she uttered an appalling shriek, which seemed to knock the young priest to the ground, where he groveled in agony, praying.

An official of the Inquisition, watching his disgraceful performance, muttered to an assistant, 'That one will bear watching."

"We won't have him attend any more of the condemned," the assistant assured his superior.

"Who is he?" the official asked.

"A Franciscan," the assistant replied, with some disgust. The senior official shook his head and directed his attention to the seventh stake, where the marquis of Guadalquivir had ascended the platform to speak with the condemned.

"Esteban, recant," the marquis pleaded. "Martin Luther is a fraud. He offers no salvation."

"I am like the Jewess," the doomed man replied. "I have my own religion."

"Save yourself this agony," the soldier begged.

"I have lived the worst of my agony, and now you must live yours," the prisoner replied.

"As your former general, I command you to recant."

"I defy you, and I defy him," the condemned man replied, indicating the priest.

The executioner, hearing this new blasphemy, clapped his hand over the man's mouth while the marquis and the two priests were led away. The fire was lit, and the man to be burned watched the flames falter and flicker along the edge of the pyre. It seemed they would not fully catch the first time and he laughed. The old general looked at his friend and wondered what potent evil had taken possession of the man. Then a burst of flame intervened between them and the last the marquis saw of the man at the stake was a pair of eyes calmly watching the flames as they approached his face. From this pyre there was no last-minute outcry.

The official of the Inquisition, watching the behavior of the marquis at the seventh stake, observed to his assistant, "There's another we might well watch."

"He's the hero of Granada," the assistant warned.

The official turned coldly as the hot flames writhed nearby and observed, "No one is too powerful or too mighty."

It is a matter of record in my family that on the spring day in 1524 when my ancestor Fray Antonio Palafox was watching the seven heretics burned in Seville, another ancestor, the Altomec Indian Lady Gray Eyes, was secretly explaining to her granddaughter in City-of-the-Pyramid the mystery of the new gods who would shortly rescue Mexico from barbarism. 'This is a Mother who loves," Lady Gray Eyes repeated, pointing to her treasured image, "and this is her Son, who has come in gentleness to save us."

The child Stranger could not comprehend, for she had never known a god of mercy, so Lady Gray Eyes explained once more. "Here we suffer under evil gods, and men are constantly killed. But soon these gentle gods of the newcomers will occupy our temples, and injustice will end." She could say no more, but as she clutched the emblazoned parchment to her cheek she felt her tears drifting across it. How long must we wait for the gods of mercy? she prayed silently.

That evening in Seville, while Lady Gray Eyes waited in the noontime heat of Mexico, Fray Antonio, the agency of salvation for whom she waited, rode away disconsolately from the burning plain. Ahead, in equal confusion of spirit, rode the marquis of Guadalquivir, but the crowds through which the horses moved appeared to experience no distress. They had enjoyed the burnings, which brought drama to an otherwise drab week, and their merriment as they trudged back to the city supported the contention of many authorities that a good public execution now and then did wonders for the morale of a city. Furthermore, it demonstrated the cohesiveness of Spain as it gathered strength for the salvation of the New World; Mexico might lie in remote parts of the world, but its presence was constantiy felt in Seville, where the galleons stood in the river for all to see.

Something of this excitement overtook Fray Antonio as he rode through the crowds, so that whereas he was repelled by the populace's reaction to the burnings, he was nevertheless impressed by their sense of loyalty to the Church and to the nation that buttressed it. Dire enemies like Martin Luther were abroad, and they required strict measures to keep them from polluting both the Church and the country, and he did not doubt that he would encounter the same enemies in Mexico. He hoped that he would have the courage to combat them, but even as he expressed the wish he called to mind the young priest who had tried vainly to save the soul of the Jewish woman as the fires consumed her, and he knew instinctively that it had been this young priest, and not the executioners, who had spoken for humanity and God on that burning afternoon.

It was in this confused frame of mind that Fray Antonio returned to the center of the city and followed the marquis as the latter rode past the cathedral, past the Moorish tower and across the plaza to his palace. When the two men reached the high wall that protected the residence, they saw that the brass
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studded gates were open and that Leticia's carriage was depositing her in the orange-tree courtyard. Seeing her father approach, she waited in the doorway while the carriage wheeled about the graveled circle and departed. She now ran up to him crying, "You looked handsome in the procession, Father."

"I was surprised to see you--especially at the stakes," he said reprovingly, but his words had little effect on Leticia, who led the way into the arabesque interior, saying, "I'm starved. We'll eat now."

But the marquis was still distraught from the death of his former companion and could not erase from his memory the eyes of the bewitched man as he stared back through the flames, so he told his daughter, "Arrange for us to eat a little later. Father Antonio and I will be in the garden." He led the priest into the private garden, where the Roman columns reminded him of the stakes at which the heretics had burned. When he was alone with the young priest he abandoned the caution that had marked the discussion on Saturday night and said with visible agitation, "No man can predict where this will end. Even as I was pleading with my friend to recant, the Dominicans were marking me. I could be next ... or the emperor." He strode back and forth along the garden paths for some minutes and then said with great force, "Antonio, when you get to Mexico you must prevent this evil thing from taking root."

The priest drew back. "Evil thing?"

The old marquis showed no inclination to retreat. "Yes, evil. The last twenty years have seen the evil of burning Jews and Moors."

The priest gasped and recalled, "Last evening we agreed that the Church must extirpate Jews and Moors who practice their abominations secretly."

"Isolate? Imprison? Perhaps," the marquis snapped. "Burn alive? No!"

Again the priest drew back in alarm. "I will keep your thoughts secret," he mumbled.

"Don't bother. I'm an old man and I've always been willing to fight the enemies that might destroy Spain."

"You consider the Holy Inquisition an enemy?" Antonio asked with dry lips.

"Yes," the marquis said bluntly.

"But last evening ..."

"Last evening I had not seen my friend burn to death," the old man said forcefully.

Dressed in a shimmering gown of lace and silk, drawn tighdy about the waist, Leticia appeared to announce dinner. But once more her father asked her to wait, and while she stood framed in the doorway with the light behind her, Fray Antonio was trapped in the dilemma she had devised. As a young man he wanted to enjoy the ravishing sight of the exquisite form the shadows revealed, but as a priest who had already taken holy orders he knew that he must not. His confusion was solved by the marquis, who took his arm and led him to the opposite end of the garden, where he said quietly: 'The important matter, Father Antonio, is that when you reach Mexico you must use your influence to prevent this from happening there. Promise me."

But Antonio was looking past the marquis and toward the doorway, and his thoughts were becoming so jumbled--the attack on the Inquisition was as disturbing as the presence of the girl silhouetted by the light--that he suddenly became dizzy and felt that he had to leave the garden. He went past Leticia, who did not move, so that he had to brush against her, and into the courtyard. Asking the servants to open the huge gates, he ran out into the city, calling over his shoulder, "I shall come back later."

We know from the records in our family that in profound spiritual and sexual agitation he walked along the banks of the Guadalquivir and back to the site of the burning, where townspeople had whittled away the charred stumps of the seven stakes, selling fragments as souvenirs, those from the stake where the Jewess had died bringing the highest prices. He studied this grisly business for more than an hour, then came back to the heart of the city and to that street which for more than a thousand years has enraptured the minds of all who visit Seville, the winding, narrow alley called Sierpes, its name meaning Serpent. From the town hall it creeps between shops whose upper floors are almost connected; it passes cafes where Gypsies dance; it winds through markets heavy with fruit and fish: it is the center for silversmiths and booksellers and the carvers of rosaries. It is the most extraordinary passageway in Spain.

Had Antonio Palafox been a muleteer down from Salamanca, or a student on vacation, it could have been predicted that he would seek out this renowned alleyway, but for a young priest to be there walking alone in the night occasioned some surprise. A Gypsy girl from one of the smaller cafes shrugged her shoulders and said to her companions, "Why not?"

She followed Antonio until he reached a darkened part of the Sierpes, then accosted him: "Would you like to see my room?"

He looked at her in the shadows and realized with hunger how much he would like to join her. "Yes," he said, and she quickly ducked out of the Sierpes and motioned him to follow.

With both apprehension and desire he trailed some distance behind her, and she must have feared that he would lose his courage, for she fell back and took him by the hand, the first time any girl of mature age had done so, and he became less fearful. But when they reached her room near the riverbank and he saw how miserable it was, and how wretched she was in spite of her youthful beauty, he felt a deep revulsion and fled.

He wandered through the city for three hours, tormented by the events of the day: the impassioned sermon of the Inquisition leader, the burnings, the wild attempt of the young priest to save the Jewess, the memory of Leticia in the doorway and the repugnant encounter with the Gypsy. It was after midnight when he realized how tired and hungry he was, and headed back for the marquis's palace. When he banged on the gates he was surprised at how promptiy they were opened, but then he saw that Leticia had remained waiting for him just inside the courtyard. She had at her side a silver tray of wine and cheese, which she offered to him, and as he ate he saw that she was still dressed in the silk and lace drawn tightly about the waist. When he was finished she took a candle and led him not to his room but to hers.