LITMIR.BIZ

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not tremble to liken us to them?”

      “We are what God has made us. What use to tremble before our Maker, Who knows each of us so well?”

      “I am my ancestor, not you!”

      “Great-great-grandson, we are both of us your ancestors.”

      “Heretic!” cried Fra Hugon, rising to point one forefinger at her. To his annoyance, it trembled slightly. “Blasphemer and heretic! Albigensian—believer in Dualism and disbeliever in the actuality of Ihesu’s humanity, to the stake with you!”

      Lifting her head, she looked him full in the face. “Yes,” she replied, still without raising her voice, “it is always our readiest answer, is it not?”

      They stood at the stake, the two of them alone. It was cruciform, with a great mound of fagots heaped around its base. Ankle deep in splintery wood, he caught her nearest wrist and set out to clasp it into one of the shackles that swung from the crosspiece.

      Neither resisting nor assisting, she went on quietly, “You call us ‘Cathar’ and ‘Albigensian’ as though you were naming unspeakable wickedness. We are many sects, with many beliefs, yet you make no distinction among them, as in a few years you will make no distinction among many other offshoots of Holy Church, but call them all ‘Lutheran,’ as if their creeds were identical. With fire and sword, you scrub us from the face of the Earth, and think you have cleansed it forever from the threat of our mere presence among you—as in a few more years, you will no longer be able to scrub away the ‘Lutherans,’ for your own sins will have made them far too many for even your fires.”

      The rusted iron, not her wrist, gave him trouble; but at last he clamped it tight and reached, scrabbling, for her other wrist and the shackle on the far side of the crosspiece.

      Her voice finally rose, sounding not of anger but of exultation. “And at last we are so many that it is impossible for any of us ever to destroy all those others who see the universe through different peepholes!”

      He could not clamp the second iron. Giving up the attempt, he left her to dangle by one wrist, while he half tumbled down from the fagots and caught a blazing torch from the hand of someone who stood shadowy behind its light.

      “For God is truly immense!” Raymonde sang from high atop her pyre. “Far too immense for any one creed ever to encompass! No, not though that one creed possessed all the souls in the world and all the ages of time!”

      The wood was smeared thick with pitch and tallow. Fra Hugon thrust his torch deep in among the fagots, left it there, and stood back to watch the red flower blossom forth.

      “And upon the Surface of this Great Immensity of God,” Raymonde cried in ecstasy and triumph, “we crawl, specks infinitely tiny, visible only to God and one another, and we must use many religions and creeds beyond counting if we would ever glimpse even the tiniest Atom of the Essence of God!”

      Then the red flower blew around her. Her garment blazed up in livid brilliance. She shrieked. Peeling away in shards of glowing ash, the remains of clothing revealed her naked body, scorched and blackened beyond any touch of lecherousness, with widening red cracks like fresh wounds spurting more and more blood into the fire. Unquenched, the flames closed in again. A sound of hissing and stink of charred meat filled the air. Exhausted with pain, Raymonde fell limp against the stake, her arm stretched taut in the single wrist iron. In one shocked moment, he saw that she was not weeping: rather, her eyes were melting. The strained joint of her wrist gave way. She slumped into the red flower, her hand alone—little more than bones trailing strips of burning flesh—left balanced on the shackle, first finger pointing like a candle straight up to Heaven.

      Aghast at what he had done, for he had never till now looked upon death at the stake, he turned to see who had handed him the torch. It was himself.

      Chapter 9

      The Holy Child of Daroca

      In the year of grace 1483, on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, after a search of almost two days, little Estevan del Quivir was found at last, dead, in one of the small caves near Daroca.

      He had been covered with half a sheet of torn linen, and below it he wore only one soiled strip bound round his waist and upper legs to cover his shame. His feet and the palms of both hands were crushed and broken as if nails had been pounded clumsily into them and yanked out again with desperate brutality. Deep rope burns circled each small wrist. The crown of his head showed lesser wounds, as if from thorns.

      Many of those who spread the report spoke of the look of unutterable peace upon his face, the scent of otherworldly perfume that filled his cave, the golden aureole surrounding his slim young body. At six years of age, Estevan del Quivir instantly became the martyred Holy Child of Daroca.

      To many of Old Christian blood it seemed obvious at once who had authored this martyrdom. Who were widely known, everywhere in Europe throughout these Christian centuries, to have used little Christian children in their sacrificial rites? thus joining themselves to the guilt of their fathers who had murdered God’s Holy Son. Did not their Passover fall at this same season? (It had in fact fallen two weeks earlier that year, but Old Christians paid little attention to the actual date, and New Christians said nothing to betray any knowledge of their former creed.)

      And had not poor little Estevan often gone with one or both of his older brothers in their rash expeditions to the Jewish quarter of Daroca, especially to the shop of Nathaniel Ben Solomon, the silversmith?

      Estevan had attended the long Good Friday service in the cathedral. Both his brothers, Juan and Luis, testified to that, as did their good friend Pedro Choved, and many others—more came forward hourly—who remembered seeing the lad already marked with his holy smile, if not yet with the clear golden aureole of sainthood. Being the best of Catholics, Don Martin del Quivir’s household made their fast complete on Good Friday, and retired silently and supperless to their bedchambers immediately on returning from church. Next morning, Estevan had been gone from the bed he shared with his older brothers.

      Nothing—not the disappearance of King Fernando himself, which God forbid!—could have been permitted to stop the sacred ceremonies of the holiest triduum in the year. Processions, blessings, the great Easter Masses, all went on as usual; but many among the servants, relatives, and friends of Don Martin del Quivir’s family, even to the missing boy’s father and one of his brothers—the oldest boy, Juan—would have nonattendance to confess before their next Communion. Estevan’s mother, good Doña Sancha, knelt trembling and pale, one hand upon the shoulder of her son Luis, throughout all the Easter Masses, obviously throwing her entire strength into prayers for her missing boy.

      The discovery of Estevan’s mangled body made it clear, to those good and pious Old Christians who knew so well the falsehood and wickedness of all creeds not their own, especially the Jewish, that Hebrew sorcerers, calling on Satan to keep the older boys fast asleep, must have spirited the child out of his bed in the dead of Good Friday night. This increased the city’s terrified outrage.

      Gubbio brought the latest news to the bishop’s household as they sat at supper in the evening of Easter Sunday. “My reverend masters, a crowd is gathering at the gates of the Jewish quarter. They say that Doña Sancha has cast the silver brooch her sons bought for her from Nathaniel the Silversmith into the fire.”

      Don Felipe found that he had started to his feet at his servant’s words.

      The bishop looked ponderously from servant to master. “You, my son Felipe?” he asked, the calm of a lifetime’s experience in his voice. “Would you wish to put yourself in the way of the mob?”

      For a moment, their eyes met. Trapped between self-preservation and old friendship, Don Felipe replied, “No, your Reverence, no more than Jeremiah wished to serve the Lord as prophet.” Pleased at the steadiness of his own voice, he added, “Nevertheless, Justice imposes certain demands on us.”

      His Reverence nodded. “Then go. But remember, my son, that you speak for us, and that it is as grave a matter to be overhasty in judging innocence as in judging guilt.”

      Don

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