Link Arms with Toads! (13 page)

He had anticipated his betrayal and his preparations for escape were elaborate, but it was essential to curb his impatience until the time was right. It was best to remain in this sanctuary for several hours, for the immediate aftermath of a plummet into the pit was the one time the hooded tormentors cared to examine its interior in any detail. Already the walls were being drawn back. The grating of the huge winding mechanism came to him through the ponderous walls like the decelerated laughter of some unimaginable chthonic beast entombed in the stone. Then he heard a faint spitting. The coals that provided heat to the metal plates and sculpted figures that adorned them were being extinguished with pails of water. Sooty, smoky work! When the dungeon was back to its original dimensions and the walls cooled to darkness, a trapdoor in the ceiling opened and a lantern was lowered on a cord.

Without flinching, his judges inspected the empty dungeon and noted the remains of the pitcher of water and wooden frame positioned directly beneath the pendulum, both crushed to charred dust. But still not wholly satisfied, they caused the lantern to descend further, toward the mouth of the pit, but not so far that any of its lateral beams were blocked, for a bright pit in a gloomy dungeon was too perverse a notion even for their depraved minds. In fact, when the lantern was still several feet above the circular chasm, they held it steady and took turns to peer into the forbidden depths. This rare treat lasted no more than a minute, for even the most fevered of religious imaginations can find little extra heresy in slimy walls and rippling water and the matted backs of diseased rats. They are secular abominations. Time to reel the lantern in and abandon the dungeon to forgetfulness, an easy task to accomplish, for it is a nullity rather than an object, an absence in the bowels of Toledo, and only when its sides are clamped together, the carved figures grinding in private embraces, perhaps seeking to melt and fuse together, may it be said to have true substance.

But the architect remained in his sanctuary, for it was possible the lantern would be lowered again by an Inquisitor more suspicious than his fellows. There is always one. Only when the excitement following the execution had started to become the smooth blandness of a seldom-shared anecdote might it be safe for the prisoner to attempt his escape. Until then he took up the quill, dipped it in the ink and opened the book of blank pages. For the eyes of those who came after, he told his story, explaining how he designed this dungeon for his masters and then became its first victim, but not before secretly adding a way out. He wrote with careful strokes; and by the time he had finished, the long candles had burned to half their length. He blew them out, pulled back the curtain and fumbled his way across the base of the pit. The net was above him. He passed under it, avoiding the bells. On the far side, there was a shallow groove in the wall of the pit, wide and deep enough to accommodate his starved body. Reaching out, he grasped the first iron rung.

Taking a deep breath to steady his trembling arms and legs, he began climbing, slowly and painfully but with a rising joy, passing the net and feeling the thick cord of its edge rubbing against his back, setting the bells swaying but too gently to make them chime. Every fifth or sixth rung he paused for a rest. Then he reached the level of the mirror and eased himself into the mouth of the tunnel, crawling faster and faster toward freedom. If an Inquisitor now chanced to open the trapdoor and lower a lantern, he would be convinced the architect was not just a heretic but a sorcerer, for it would appear the man was crawling vertically
down
the inside of the pit, head first but not quite like a fly, for it was his elbows and knees which adhered impossibly to the stone. This shocking vision would persist until the architect reached the end of the tunnel and passed through the surface of the water and vanished without a bubble. But the Inquisitors were all in bed and saw nothing and their nightmares were insignificant.

What next happened to the architect must be envisaged with less precision, for now he found himself among vaults of peculiar shape and ventilation shafts that wormed through the earth in such convoluted figures that the breath which they issued in horrible gasps and sighs was at least one week stale. These vaults led to others or to passages and stairways until a labyrinth was born through the simple act of stumbling onward. Many of these routes led to dooms or frustrations and all were completely dark. Nor would it have been helpful to take the candles with him, for inflammable gas had leaked down from sewers and the deep coal bunkers and settled in pockets; and a naked flame was likely to ignite them and collapse the roof fatally on his bid for freedom.

First the vaults would be empty, but in time the occasional object might appear to stumble against, a lonely barrel or wheelbarrow, then items at more frequent intervals and doors between the connecting chambers, and a general feeling of moving closer to the level of real life, a slackening of oppression, a lessening of imagined weight. Then the first faint glimmer of natural light, painful to eyes nourished for so long on shadows, and the first taste of fresh air in the nostrils, still clogged with dried blood, and cobwebs in corners and footprints in the thick dust, ancient but human. Now coffins on strong shelves of stone and the ornate sculpture of a crypt for the wealthy. Shreds of rotting tapestry and more vaults beyond. This channel: a crack through the sundry worlds of the underground city.

Numerous wine cellars, dull bottles full of untasted, strange sediments nestled in mouldy racks from floor to ceiling. After these, a room with glass walls containing dead plants in terracotta pots, but choked on the outside by gigantic weeds; a long forgotten hothouse which has subsided into the earth. Then flooded rooms and stairs which sag with every step, the light growing brighter and brighter. Finally the ground floor of an abandoned house near the edge of the city; and out into the streets and the dawn. But whether the architect departed Toledo or remained, survived and flourished, or was destroyed by bad luck or arrogance, perhaps stabbed by a robber before the sun fully rose, is unknown. The Inquisition was not responsible for his demise: that is all we may safely conclude.

How many other victims followed his full destiny is also a mystery. There might have been a dozen or twice that. The dungeon with the pit was used once a decade on average, for such was the frequency of special heretics in Toledo during those vile centuries. As for the lesser heretics, they were still merely crisped at the stake in a public square at the rate of one a week. A swallowing by the abominable hole, whether by stumble or closing walls, was always an experience reserved for an elite of spiritual villains; and yet there must have been
some
. The net came as no surprise to the architect but to them it was probably the most astonishing event of their lives. Yet they did not panic. They found the arch and the candles and the book and read the story within. They followed its instructions and climbed the ladder and crawled down that other tunnel and passed into the labyrinth of vaults. Many probably chose the wrong route here and perished in ways beyond conjecture, but a few surely made it to the surface again.

Then came a dark age over Toledo, but it was the kind that is welcome to ordinary men and women, for it was a temporary lull in the power of the Inquisition, an eclipse of darkness, a veiling of horror, which though not as wholesome as the creation of light is yet a relief to threatened hearts and brains. The Inquisition did not lose authority or influence, nor was there a lack of funds or recruits, nor a reduction in political support from ambitious merchants and cardinals. It was a stifling of
will
, as if a black cloak was cast over a black flame. The Inquisitors grew decadent, interested in material pleasures, men of the flesh. They turned corpulent, indolent. They cared less about punishing blasphemy and more about consuming food and wine. The torture implements were employed infrequently; burnings became rare. And the dungeon for special heretics with its pit, pendulum and trickery was forgotten. It lay neglected beneath the other cells, the narrow passage which twisted down to it blocked by an enormous scarlet clock, a gift from a corrupt prince or duke.

The centuries passed and the horror was diminished, if not extinguished, and the lowest dungeon, always unknown to most, became unguessed by all, though some dim memory was passed on as whispered rumour among the highest levels of the order, but doubted to the point of disbelief. Then there was political upheaval in a foreign land. Europe was shaken by one man and a vast army was baptised in the blood of revolution. The old regimes were threatened and the Inquisition feared for its existence. First nervous about the future, then deeply insecure, finally hysterical, it clung to life by reawakening its traditions. Burnings suddenly increased, albeit in private courtyards rather than public squares; and the renewed demand for victims was almost insatiable. Rust was scraped off the implements, the boots and screws and claws, and the red mist of blood boiled into steam by pokers drifted up the alleyways at nights and condensed on misshapen windows.

How it was that the passage to the lowest dungeon was rediscovered and the pendulum polished and sharpened, and the clockwork mechanism wound tight, and the braziers loaded with coal, has not been documented. Nor was it revealed to me at my trial. I was condemned for voicing my belief that all men are equal, the doctrine of the enemy power. I could not protest, for I was guilty. At political meetings I wore the cockade, the badge of dissent or treason, depending on your perspective; but I defied my judges to the last. I cried out that even the angels of heaven should be overthrown, for they too were aristocrats! My tormentors in their musty robes, no longer white but stained dark grey by soot and sweat, trembled visibly at this outburst. Yes, they labelled me a special heretic. So I was carried past the toppled red clock and into the subworld of grander and more horrible cogs and springs and slow motions to measure moments.

There is no need to detail my sufferings. They were the same as yours. I avoided the pit, escaped the pendulum and finally endured the closing, stifling walls. Into the pit I plunged. I did not shriek: I was beyond expression. I was no longer Juan Segismundo Rubín, if indeed I had ever been, but a limp puppet liberated from a cruel play by a twist of vicious mischief. I fell with the ruddy glow above me, anticipating a long drop. Then I passed the mirror and landed on the net. Because I am quick of brain I guessed much at once. I realised this was not another ruse of the Inquisitors but something opposed to them. The bells on the circumference of the net had been cunningly tuned to mimic the sound of splashing water. I did not lie there for long but jumped to the floor of the pit. I discovered the arch, the sanctuary, curtain, desk, candles and book. I read and understood all. I waited for the lowering of the lantern and its withdrawal. Then I groped my way to the bottom of the ladder.

But now my hope was taken away again, for my fingers touched only the stubs of the lowest iron rung. The secret ladder was gone! It had turned to rust and flaked away over the damp centuries. My only route to freedom now existed as powder around my feet. I gnashed my teeth and wailed. I shook the bells violently in my frustration and the lantern came down a second time. This brought me to my senses and I crouched very still and waited with shallow breath. A full hour passed before the light was drawn back up. I inched my aching body across the floor to the sanctuary. Here I collapsed on the chair and wept quietly. Then I began laughing, for I was not insensitive to the irony of the situation. Eventually I exhausted myself with these exertions of despair and fell asleep.

Strangely I awoke refreshed and determined to survive. I remembered that a few lumps of mouldy bread and meat had also been caught by the net, like deformed insects on a giant spider’s web. The previous prisoners of the dungeon above had been fed by their captors and clearly some of these morsels always found their way into the pit, perhaps hurled there in disgust by the victim, for the bread was extremely poor quality and the meat was heavily seasoned almost to the point of inedibility, doubtless to inspire a raging thirst as part of the torture; or else they had been kicked accidentally into the hole by the prisoner while he roamed free in the darkness at the beginning of his incarceration. But this food was my own, for I had no immediate predecessors, and the closing walls had pushed it into the pit, cooking the meat and charring the bread to toast in the process. I crept back out, retrieved these leftovers and treated myself to a loathsome feast.

Driven to extremes by my situation I reserved a few crumbs of food as bait for the rats. They came and I caught one. I hesitate to confess how I consumed it. Raw meat is not a delicacy in my culture. I reserved a fragment of this supper to entice yet more rats, and so on. By pressing my tongue to the inner walls of the pit I drank more than enough water to satisfy my needs. My health was by no means perfect and I developed a fungal infection that irritated my skin with excessive intensity, but I welcomed this as a distraction from the monotony of my furtive existence. Whole days were passed in scratching myself from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head, though there were always regions beyond my reach. As if by instinct I saved the candles and dwelled in thick gloom. Probably I feared to inspect what lay under my fingernails.

I now believe I dwelled in this abominable but somehow heroic manner for a few weeks at most, though at the time it seemed a span closer to years, before I was given the opportunity to play the host to an unexpected guest. I heard a demented screaming from above and it was familiar because an identical sound had once issued from my own lips. A secret door opened in the walls of the dungeon and a new prisoner was cast inside. The door closed with a groan. I wanted to call up to this latest victim but it was very risky to reveal my presence too early. Ears may be pressed to peepholes as well as eyes. The fellow wandered about and avoided falling into the pit. When he fell asleep they came again with drugged food. He awoke and consumed this and fell into a stupor. When he recovered he discovered himself strapped directly below the pendulum. This he also avoided and so they closed the walls together. The familiar pattern.