And then, over the stench of shit and blood and burning tar, comes Ruth herself, the fragrance of her hair, her skin, the music of her laughter scattering like dew over the screaming.
The inquisitor, seeing that Detlef’s spirit has begun to withdraw, looses the screw at his temple. Panicking he leans over him, spittle flying.
‘Listen to me, you cannot leave now! I am so close to destroying the last of the Navarros, of holding within my grasp Sara herself, that witch! Detlef von Tennen! Are you listening? You cannot die now!’
But Detlef, his cold flesh twisting with the acrid smoke, no longer hears him.
My pain. My lover. My wife. The taste of her, the love of her I fought for, the life within her I gave.
Carlos, watching Detlef’s eyes roll back into his head, grabs a bucket of water and throws it over the prostrate figure.
‘Wait! You must tell me where she is! For your faith alone!’
But Detlef has already left to be with his family.
There they are in the kitchen, he thinks, seeing them clearly in his mind’s eye. I am standing beside the linen cabinet. I can see Jacob, he is on the ground by the stove playing with his tin soldiers. She has her back to me, she has not seen me yet. I gesture to Jacob to be quiet. ‘We are playing a trick on your mother,’ I whisper then I step up behind her and put my hands over her eyes.
At a signal from Carlos, the man in the black hood tightens the iron band. Detlef’s eyeballs bulge like reddened hen’s eggs then burst out of his head.
‘This is your last chance. All you need do is whisper the name of the village, and then freedom!’ Carlos, out of his mind with frustration, shouts into the dying man’s ear.
I turn her face towards me, she is smiling that mysterious crooked smile of hers. I kiss her, and as she softens in my arms I realise that this is the moment I have been living for. Contentment. In trust. In joy. In peace. For I have come home.
My Lord, I have not failed you in this moment of darkness and you have not failed me. For in love I surrender my life, and in love I am everything and nothing. For ever and ever. Amen.
His body starts to shake violently as it goes into its final throes.
‘No! No! You cannot do this to me. Give me the witch! Give me Sara!’
Carlos thuds his fists onto Detlef’s shuddering chest over and over until the body stops twitching. Only then does the inquisitor come to his senses, staring at his hands which are covered with the dead man’s blood.
He swings around to the guard. ‘Get a priest! Now! Don’t you understand? He needs the last rites!’
‘But Monsignor, you are a priest!’
‘No. Not me, you idiot! It cannot be me!’
The guard glances at the contorted body on the rack, the prisoner is obviously dead. Confused, he looks back at the inquisitor.
‘Go! You fool! Now!’
Carlos pushes the guard towards the door but Heinrich, flanked by two clerics, stands blocking the entrance.
‘What have you done? He was cousin to a prince! A Wittelsbach!’
‘He was a heretic!’
‘Heretic or no, I made a promise. He did not deserve this death!’
‘The Grand Inquisitional Council—’
‘Out! Out of my sight!’
After the inquisitor has gone, Heinrich tenderly lays the two feet together. Taking Detlef’s broken hands into his own, he strokes them, muttering softly as if to a child, and crosses them over the bruised and bloody chest. To the amazement of the guards, the archbishop takes off his own purple cloak and covers the body with it carefully, meticulously tucking the folds around the lifeless flesh. Then and only then, on his knees in his pale undergarments, his face close to Detlef’s battered features, does Heinrich perform the last rites, his silent tears falling onto the torn flesh.
Behind the kneeling archbishop there is a sudden splash from the dunking vat. Unable to suppress his curiosity, a guard tiptoes over. He looks in, then jerks his head back in horror as three huge eels writhe up out of the water.
The old woman carefully presses the gold coin into the eye socket. The eyes have gone, but now that she has sponged the blood and broken flesh from the face she can see that this was once a handsome man, grace still visible in the creased flesh. He looks familiar but she knows better than to search her memory, for she is the corpse-dresser brought in to put to rest the secretly murdered, the tortured, those the authorities wish to forget.