Heinrich walks Elazar to the door.
‘God bless you in all your endeavours.’ The old rabbi clasps the archbishop’s hand but declines to kiss the proffered ring.
‘And may he bless you too, Elazar ben Saul.’
Dear Benedict,
You describe yourself as the apostle of Reason, but here it is difficult to see any reason in my fellow men. You have portrayed the fear of Hell as the greatest fallacy of all—a profound lie which cripples the destinies of men and keeps them fearful of taking their lives into their own hands. Here now I see that the life we lead is Gehenna. I exist in it now; there is nothing left to me but the act of grappling with my fears and the incessant inhalation of breath, yet despite all deprivations I keep living.
Remember when you told me that you were expected to reject Reason the very same way the Inquisition forced the rabbis who excommunicated you to reject their Judaism? Now I am expected to reject my beliefs and my heritage and choose a compromised life over a truthful death. I will choose death. Is this rational?
If God is all things—Nature itself—am I not just choosing to dissolve back into nothingness, a nebulous substance that is even less than a soul without a body?
As you see, my doubts have become my demons. My frailty appals me. It is easy to theorise when one is not confronted with the rack, or worse. My guard has told me that even the Inquisition cannot stomach my persecutor’s inhuman appetites. I can but hope that when the torturer begins his hideous art, my mind and conscious body will leave me.
Pray to your reasonable God for me.
In living faith, your good friend,
‘Felix van Jos’
The corridor of the dungeon is a hellish jigsaw of long sinister shadows. Above, bats shift uneasily in their baggy leather skins. Like dazed lunatics the nesting creatures squeal as the moving torches beneath illuminate the hidden corners.
It is a sombre procession. The dignified priest leads the way, his white robes and solemn face suggesting an office of great importance. A cleric follows, an ancient tome tucked beneath his arm, the quill of the scholar hanging from his neck in a goatskin pouch. A page trails behind, struggling with a viola da gamba, its polished chestnut body glowing in the candlelight. Bringing up the rear is a very different monster, a squat muscular man wearing a rough barras jerkin covered by a barvell. His gnarled forearms are bare and scarred as if he has seen service in the Great War. Could he be a soldier? A blacksmith? Or a bondsman of some exotic guild? The leather apron suggests that he needs to protect himself from something. Fire? Hot oil? Scalding water? And why is he hooded, his eyes barely visible through the neatly stitched slits?
A mysterious procession indeed. One could almost think it funereal, except the corpse is living, a terrified human being, half-dragged, half-stumbling between two guards.
Ruth can barely feel the stones beneath her naked feet. Terror has loosened her bowels and overridden both shame and pride. To stop herself fainting she recites a prayer her father taught her as a child. It flaps around her mind like one of the prison’s maddened bats, but the sounding of the words gives her courage and keeps her from collapsing.
The guard on her right glances nervously at his comrade. He fears that the mumbled Hebrew is an incantation and he shall be struck down by a dreadful curse which will render him lame or deaf or, worst of all, blind. But his companion, older and well seasoned in the eccentricities of the condemned, seems oblivious to the Jewess’s wild-eyed dread. The lad, pressed into service by dint of poverty, straightens his back and tries to dispel his own qualms by concentrating on the authoritarian stride of the Dominican walking before him. If she has been arrested by the church, then it must be just, he thinks. And so with new confidence he supports Ruth’s impossibly narrow shoulders with his own broad frame as they frogmarch her to the torture chamber.
They arrive at a heavy door. Beyond it is a low cellar with a vaulted ceiling. Sawdust is scattered on the floor, some of it rusty with dried blood. Hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room is an iron cage with metal straps to wrap around the torso. A large wooden rack stands in a corner with a vertical wheel, a good nine feet in diameter, next to it.
The guards lower Ruth gently into a large chair in the middle of the room. She stares at the outlandish iron and wooden contraptions: dormant, they look strangely innocent, like huge deviant toys thrown carelessly into a corner by a giant two year old.
‘The flaying wheel, the torture rack, the iron maiden, the dunking bench,’ she whispers to herself in Latin, as if by naming each instrument she may strip it of its power.
Although she knows of these tools of horror, she has never seen them before. She recalls the mumbled stories she heard in the past from the broken visitors her father sometimes received in his parlour. He would stroke their maimed hands paternally while, beyond sentiment and in shock, they recounted in emotionless monotones the atrocities that had been inflicted upon their bodies. They came seeking some kind of redemption from the rabbi, in the desperate hope that with his blessing the memories would miraculously vanish from their mutilated minds. Now it is she who is faced with an interrogation that she knows will alter her for ever.
Suddenly Ruth notices that her knees are shaking violently. She rolls her fear up into a tight ball and pushes it down into the pit of her stomach, where it is sickening but somehow controllable.
The inquisitor draws up a chair very close to her face. She can feel his breath upon her skin, a revolting mixture of cloves and indigestion. He stares straight into her eyes. His long reddish nose displays the bulbous damage inflicted by syphilis, each pore visible, white hair curling out of the nostrils. His neat goatee beard is streaked with grey and a cut from a shaving blade is visible on one side of his chin. The dark red scar on his cheek is beaded with tissue and his small dark brown eyes have a curious yellow aura around the pupils. They are eyes that speak of absolutely nothing and it is this gaze that makes her feel violated, as if he is trying to penetrate her physically. She realises that he is utterly convinced of the integrity of his mission and for a reason she cannot fathom this revelation fills her with shame. Finally she turns away.
‘Do you know what this is?’ The Dominican thrusts an old leatherbound book before her.
‘Obviously a manuscript of ancient origin.’
Ruth uses sarcasm in a vain attempt to keep fear out of her voice.
‘Indeed, a most valuable manuscript: a set of instructions on how to uncover the hidden evil in the daemonissa. Written by two learned ecclesiastics—fellow Rhinelanders, I believe—the book is called Malleus Maleficarum…’
‘The Hammer of the Witches,’ Ruth automatically finishes. Her Latin, taught to her by her father and then Franciscus van den Enden, is flawless.
‘Exactly, and
it has proven most enlightening during the interrogation of your fellow prisoners. We have already extracted a confession from the Dutchman and Meister Voss is on the brink of redemption.’
‘If he had a tongue to redeem himself with,’ the hooded man adds with a guttural laugh.