Fray Juan quickly muttered a prayer and crossed himself.

"What I'm saying, Chico b.a.s.t.a.r.do, is that what Osorio found and reported as Satan's sign, a witch's teat, is G.o.d-given, something every woman possesses."

"It must have been terrible for the poor woman," I said.

"It was worse than terrible," Fray Antonio said. "When she did not confess, Osorio tortured her to death."

"Por Dios!" I said. "What was his punishment?"

"Punishment? There is none. G.o.d knows His own, they say. The woman is officially absolved, and she goes to heaven."

We walked in silence.

"Antonio," Fray Juan finally said, shaking his head, "your heretical opinions will one day bring the Inquisition down on the boy as well as yourself."

Fray Antonio shrugged. "All right, explain it to him in your own way."

Fray Juan said, "When our glorious monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, a.s.sumed the United Crown of Spain and captured the last Moorish strongholds on the peninsula, the land was heavily populated by Jews and Infidels. They threatened the foundation of our society. Our Most Catholic Monarchs created the Holy Office of the Inquisition to counter their demonic influence. Ultimately, it was decreed that Jews had to convert to the Christian faith or leave the country. At almost the same time that Cristobal Colon-the great discoverer of the New World-was sailing from Spain to discover the New World, tens of thousands of Jews were forced out of the country and into the Islamic lands of North Africa."

"Torquemada, our Inquisitor General, introduced torture and confiscation of the victim's wealth as the means of conversion," Fray Antonio pointed out. "In other words, tens of thousands of Jews lost everything to Church and Crown, whether they converted or not."

Fray Juan shot Antonio a dark look and continued. "Muhammad's followers were also forced to convert or leave Spain."

"Violating the terms of their surrender," Fray Antonio said. "In any event, their property was likewise confiscated."

"From this time on," Juan persisted, "a new threat arose, the problem of false conversos-Jews who falsely subscribed to Christian beliefs, the ones we call marranos, and Moors who swear false allegiance to Christ, people we call moriscos."

I recognized the word as meaning "little Moors."

"To stop these false conversos from spreading their evil ideas and Satanic rites, the the Church ordered the Holy Office to find the wrongdoers-"

"-through torture-"

"-and punish them."

"Burning them at the stake in front of the entire city," Fray Antonio said.

"Cristo, my son," Fray Juan said with weary patience, "auto-da-fe means 'act of faith,' and that is what it is. For those who repent and confess their guilt, the punishment is almost painless."

Fray Antonio snorted. "The victims are tied to the stake and wood piled around them. If they repent, they are garroted before they are burned."

I, too, had never understood the auto-da-fe. I had read the Gospels many times in the hospice and never saw suggestions that we burn people alive.

"The Inquisition, which is run entirely by men who have never slept with a woman, or who at least are forbidden to, is conducting a holy war against women," Fray Antonio said. He waved away the objections of Juan. "They accomplish this through what they call controlling devil worship among witches. Dominican monks have made pa.s.sionate sermons in villages and towns, describing the demonic practices of witches, sowing a belief in the black arts. Because of these sermons, ignorant people see Satan's hand in everything. They report their neighbors, sometimes their own family members, to the Inquisition for the most trivial reasons.

"Once a woman is arrested, the inquisitors take as their Bible a book called The Hammer of Witches, which professes to teach one to recognize witches. They take the women to their dungeons, strip and search them for Satanic signs, even to the point of cutting off their hair.

"The inquisitors begin with simple questions from The Hammer of Witches. However, there are no correct answers, so the prisoners can never talk their way out of an accusation, even with the truth. A woman might be asked, "Do you believe in witches?" If she says yes, she has knowledge of witchcraft and is thus a witch herself. And if she says no, she is lying for the devil and is also tortured.

"A young girl's virginity they attack mercilessly. If she's chaste, they claim Satan protected his s.l.u.t. If she isn't intact... she's been bedding Beelzebub.

"Young or old, they are tortured hard, even if they admit fornicating with Satan. Then they must describe how the fiend enters them, where he touches them, and where they touch their Dark Master, how it feels."

When the Inquisition runs out of Jews, Moors, and witches, the fray told me, it censors books and tyrannizes people s.e.xually-accusing people of polygamy, casting spells, blasphemy, sodomy.

"One woman, who smiled at the mere mention of the Holy Virgin, was denounced," Fray Antonio complained.

"They do G.o.d's work," Fray Juan said-but without much conviction.

"They are devils," Fray Antonio said to me. "Their obsession with Jews is unrelenting. Torquemada himself was from a family of conversos, and when King Felipe II made war on the pope, the pope reminded him that Spanish kings were also descendants of conversos."

Poor Fray Juan-he made the sign of the cross and prayed loudly to G.o.d for forgiveness.

The three of us traveled in silence, each closeted with our own thoughts. I contemplated what it would be like being burned alive or for a woman to be s.e.xually a.s.saulted by demented monks. Both horrors were unimaginable.

Fray Antonio started another story of the Inquisition.

"There was a young priest who, despite the fact that he was criollo born, was headed for a brilliant career in the Church. Having an inquisitive mind, however, he asked too many controversial questions and read too many controversial authors-particularly the great Carranza, the Archbishop of Toledo, who believed that the common people should be given Spanish Bibles so that they might read and understand the word of G.o.d themselves rather than having a priest recite verses in Latin, a language they did not understand.

"The priest fought for Carranza's position even after the archbishop had been arrested by the Holy Office. Like Carranza, the young priest found the Inquisition at his door. Locked in a cell, he was left for days without food or water. Then the questioning and accusations began. Then the torture."

His face racked by emotion, he said, "The young priest was lucky. He came out of it with a few pains, some warnings, and banishment to a village church on a remote hacienda. But he never forgot. And he never forgave.'"

As I listened to the story, I realized that the young priest was Fray Antonio. At that time, still in the innocent blush of youth, I was surprised that the fray had felt the hand of the Inquisition. But as I sit in a dank dungeon, a man who has had his flesh shredded by the blazing pinchers and maggots thrust in the wounds, I know that any person of conviction and compa.s.sion is their likely prey.

TWENTY-THREE.

When we arrived at the Jalapa fair, the sun was at its zenith. Sprawled over a wide area, the merchandise of two worlds was vertiginously stacked under open sky or sailcloth canopies. Magicians, acrobats, and charlatans vied for loose change alongside book stalls touting religious tomes and honor plays; tool sellers bragged about the strength of their hammers and saws; merchants peddling seed and farm tools debated prices with the majordomos of haciendas; clothiers purveying rare raiments of exquisite silk and fine lace, claimed that kings and queens throughout Europe accoutred themselves in identical finery. Religious vendors everywhere flogged crosses, paintings, statues, effigies, and icons of every description.

Stalls filled with honey and sugar treats competed with charms guaranteed to capture a person's love and "crucifixes blessed by Santa Lucy, on my word, a holy shield against infections of the eyes..." "Blessed by San Anthony of Padua, will vanquish diabolic possession and brain fevers..."

I felt like I had stumbled into the world of Scheherazade and the Arabian Nights.

Of course, the Inquisition was there in force. The familiars, its lay police, roamed the shops, perusing their list of libros proibidos and checking the authenticity of religious items. There were also the king's black-clad publicans, computing and collecting taxes for the Crown. Nor could I fail to note how much money changed hands beneath the table between booksellers and the familiars, the tax collectors and merchants; the inevitable una mordida that so ubiquitously underpinned New Spain's economy was universally condoned as an indispensable cost of doing business. With some truth. The tax collector purchased his office from the king. He was compensated not by merit, bonus, fee, or salary, but by legally sanctioned extortion. The same was true for most public offices. The jailer, who purchased his job, rented prisoners to the deadly sugar mills, the obrajas sweat shops, and the northern mines... dividing the dinero with the constable who arrested the prisoner and the judge who p.r.o.nounced their guilt. Mordida, "the bite," a payment to a public official for him to do his duty-or ignore it-was the way of the world in New Spain.

"Face it," the fray told me while in his cups, "our public offices are sold at extortionate prices to raise money for our wars in Europe."

But for the moment I was entranced. I even forgot the old matron and the wicked Ramon. I roamed the fair, my eyes wide open, my mouth agape. I'd seen Veracruz packed with people celebrating festivals and the arrival of the treasure fleet. I'd witnessed the fervid excitement of the archbishop's arrival, but the fair's affluence and ostentation was nonpareil. Even I, a veteran of everything Veracruz had to offer, who had seen so many bales and bundles trundled to and from the treasure fleet, was awed. It was different to see these uncrated items spread out individually-everything from gaudy silken garments to glittering swords, their jeweled handles and hafts sparkling in the sun-not hauled en ma.s.se out of a ship's bleak hold but invitingly displayed, waiting to be fondled, examined, closely inspected. Everything was so much more intimate here than on the waterfront docks: Spanish merchants haggling toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with their customers; strolling pitchmen prating about their delicacies; acrobats doing back flips for tips; singers serenading pa.s.sersby with impa.s.sioned ballads; indios scrutinizing the exotic goods and personages with the same wide-eyed wonder their ancestors had no doubt felt when they mistook Cortez and his horse-borne conquistadors, riding into Tenocht.i.tlan, for gargantuan G.o.ds.

Fray Antonio intercepted me to offer a word of caution. "I don't believe there is any threat here. Veracruz is consumed with the new archbishop's arrival, and Don Ramon and the widow should be busy for some time to come. Still we must be careful."

"I don't understand-"

"Good. Knowledge at this point can only get you killed. Ignorance is your sole ally." Then he left me stammering in confusion.

Heading for the book stalls, he began examining some newly arrived works of Plato and Virgil, while Father Juan was leafing through the romantic adventures of knights-errant and delectable damsels in search of G.o.d and Grail, some of these works banned, some not banned; but even those free of the censors, he dared not purchase and carry back.