He struck me again, harder this time, and with his fist; too hard for his purposes, because after a sickening spiral of darkness that pulled me down with it, I fell unconscious.
* * *
When I woke, I didn’t have to ask where I was: I already knew the stench of the Dominican prison. Somehow, I had never noticed the high stone walls in the cell where they had tortured my father, but surely they had been there, their whitewash long worn away, leaving behind a patchy, uneven gray, culminating in a dark beamed ceiling thick with spiderwebs.
I was lying down on my back, my feet slightly elevated above my head. I could not see the shackles binding my ankles and wrists fast to the tilted board on which I rested, but I could feel them. I tried to turn my head to see my captors—I could sense a presence in the room, perhaps more than one—but my arms were stretched so painfully tight above my head that I could not turn it far enough to see them. It was cold in the room, and I was shivering. I thought I was wearing my chemise, but I could not look down at myself to be sure I was not naked.
“Marisol García.” It was Gabriel’s voice. I sensed something tall and dark hovering in the periphery of my vision, but I could not see him. He sounded self-conscious, as if someone else in the room was watching him.
“You have been charged with conspiring to smuggle Jewish gold out of Seville, against the express decree of Her Majesty Queen Isabel. You are also charged with the heresy of crypto-Judaism. How to you plead?”
Gabriel,
I said to myself. I was still stunned by my father’s gruesome death, by Máriam’s narrow escape, by Gabriel’s hard fist. I could feel the extreme physical discomfort of being shackled to the board, but my mind and emotions were too numbed to grasp all of these as actual facts. “Am I on the rack?”
I could hear exasperation in his pause.
His tone hardened. “How do you plead, Marisol?”
“I don’t know,” I said, dazed. I wanted to ask where Antonio was, but I did not dare implicate him. If he had been captured, surely Gabriel would mention it to use it against me.
“You must plead guilty or innocent.”
“I plead innocent,” I answered.
“You’ve already confessed to me that you were guilty. Repeat that now for the scribe’s records.”
I had admitted the truth to Gabriel in private, but I had no intention of making the interrogation easy for him.
“I’m innocent,” I said.
Someone stepped forward so that I could see him. It was the auburn-haired executioner, the young one who had lit the kindling around my kneeling father. He grinned impudently at me and pushed another figure into my line of sight.
Antonio staggered forward, visible from the waist up. He was shirtless, his body covered with sweat despite the chill in the room. The wound in his upper arm, near the shoulder, was bleeding so heavily that the stiches were invisible; most likely they had come undone. His bare chest was almost completely hairless; one nipple was blackened and inverted, the skin around it red and blistered.
The smell of scorched flesh was sickening. Antonio’s expression was stern; he looked at me as though he did not recognize me, as if I weren’t present at all—just as my father had.
“One more time, Marisol,” Gabriel’s voice said. “Admit your guilt.”
I remained silent.
As I did, the grinning executioner produced a large black kerchief. He unfurled it over my face, blotting out the sight of Antonio, of the walls and ceiling.
“Now repeat the question,” a third voice said softly—to Gabriel, not me. Fray Morillo was in the room, watching.
Gabriel spoke again. “Are you certain of your plea?”
“As certain as I am of the fact that my father agreed to denounce himself if you would protect me,” I said clearly.
I heard Morillo draw in a breath of surprise; I imagined Gabriel flushing brightly at the accusation.
“Is this true?” Morillo asked softly.
“A filthy lie,” Gabriel answered. “Just like everything else she is saying.” He addressed me. “You and your cohort will pay for this, Marisol.”
Morillo said nothing more.
There was a long hesitation. I waited to feel my bones being pulled from their sockets, to hear the grind of the turning wheel, the clanking of chains, but instead heard water sloshing from a bucket.
Suddenly, the black cloth covering my face was soaked, and there was water pouring down my nose. I opened my mouth to scream, and the water rushed in, reducing my shrieks to a strangled, gurgling noise. Antonio’s shouts were distant, muffled.
The water kept coming until my throat and chest were burning, until I knew I was drowning. And then it abruptly stopped. I drew a gasping breath, sucking in the drenched cloth. My ears were full of liquid; I tried to shake my head to clear them, to hear what Antonio was yelling, but I could not move and water from the cloth slowly trickled into them. The cloth plastered my eyes shut.
I drew another wheezing breath.
This time, I was uncertain whether the voice was Gabriel’s or Fray Morillo’s.
“Will you confess to the crimes of smuggling and heresy?”
“No,” I gasped.
“Will you confess to conspiring with don Francisco Sánchez and Antonio Vargas?”
“No,” I said.
They allowed me a full breath, then another.
The flood came again. The rushing water caught me in mid-breath, and I choked, inhaling some of it into my lungs, swallowing the rest—and still it would not stop coming. I was gagging, spewing, mindless with desperation.
The water stopped.
“Will you confess?”
I thought of don Francisco and Máriam, and wondered whether they and the treasure were safe. Antonio’s breath was ragged; I felt guilt that he was forced to watch, knowing that the sight of someone else’s suffering was more painful to him than his own.
“No,” I answered Gabriel.
This time when the water came, I tried to swallow it. Impossible; it streamed down my throat, filling my mouth and nose until I was forced to breathe it in and gag. My body spasmed uncontrollably. Somewhere in the violent struggle, my mind grew separate and calm. In a dreamlike vision, my mother appeared in the Guadalquivir, and the moon shone, its light silver on the rippling waters.
The flood stopped. My body took one long, hitching gasp of air, then two.
“Will you confess?”
My mother sank into the river, the water lifting her blue-green skirts with the hoops of the
verdugado
around her waist, then her shoulders. She opened her mouth and chanted, her voice low and sweet, and I chanted with her.
“Shema Yisrael,”
I gasped,
“Adonai Eloheinu.”
“You admit to being a crypto-Jew, then, in front of these witnesses!”
“Adonai Echad,”
I finished.
I never uttered another word. The water streamed down my throat and nose. I fought to hold my breath, but it was useless: The water flooded into my gut, my lungs, and my body responded reflexively by retching. Once again, my mind detached: Beautiful Magdalena was standing in the river, praying in the light of the moon.
The water came again and again and again. I vomited it up and fainted, but the auburn-haired man forced me awake again to choke on water and my own bile, my lungs burning. On the dark gray inside of my closed eyelids, my mother and Antonio were smiling and waving from the Triana shore on the opposite side of the river.
Abruptly, I was yanked up into a sitting position, resting against Gabriel’s sturdy arm; I could not see his face, but I recognized his smell. Unseen hands pulled the black cloth from my face. Antonio now sat shackled to a chair, wearing only his leggings. From behind me came the smoky scent of a lit hearth, the sound of scraping. Soon the auburn-haired executioner emerged into my field of vision bearing what looked at first like a poker, but they were pincers, glowing white-hot at the tips.
I wanted to close my eyes, yet as with my father, I felt compelled to watch. The red-haired man waved the pincers teasingly in front of Antonio’s chest. Antonio paid no attention to either the pincers or the torturer but stared defiantly at a point just beyond me—at Gabriel’s eyes.
Gabriel spoke into my ear. “Marisol, do you confess to conspiring with don Francisco?”
“Why don’t you ask me?” Antonio demanded. “You were always a coward, Gabriel. Always picking on someone smaller than yourself.”
Against my back, Gabriel’s arm tensed. He repeated, with barely controlled fury: “Marisol, do you confess to conspiring with don Francisco?”
“No,” I said.
I felt rather than saw Gabriel nod to the auburn-haired man.
The torturer opened the pincers, applied them to Antonio’s unharmed nipple, and twisted savagely. Flesh sizzled, giving off the smell of roasting pork. Despite Antonio’s bucking, the torturer held the pincers fast until the skin began to blacken, then pulled away a bit of charred meat.
Antonio screamed but focused his pain on attacking Gabriel. “Fucking coward! Great big fucking coward!” He gritted his teeth and lowered his head as the auburn-haired man displayed the smoking, bubbling bit of skin in the air like a trophy.
I retched, but nothing came up.
The torturer grinned with delight.
Gabriel asked me the same question about don Francisco, while the red-haired man went to reheat the pincers in the hearth. I refused to answer.
The torturer once again went over to Antonio, who strained against his shackles painfully; the former, still smiling, waved the pincers menacingly over the bare skin of Antonio’s torso and looked to Gabriel.
I felt Gabriel’s gaze on me; I closed my eyes and drew my lips tightly shut. I heard another sizzle and opened my eyes.
The torturer had seized another piece of flesh, this one from Antonio’s rib cage, where a blackened, still smoking wound the size of a coin had appeared; the skin around it was red and blistering. Antonio bowed, gasping with the pain. “Fucking idiot!” he screamed at Gabriel. “Fucking great brute of an idiot!”
Behind me, the muscles in Gabriel’s arm grew increasingly rigid. “Pull his leggings down,” he coldly ordered.
I looked away, to spare Antonio’s dignity. The leggings couldn’t come all the way off, of course, since his ankles were shackled to the chair. But when the torturer returned this time from reheating his weapon, I couldn’t keep from watching where the pincers were headed next.
Between Antonio’s legs.
“Don’t—”
I began, my voice high-pitched with fear. I forced myself to break off.
A pause ensued while I wrestled with myself.
“What is that?” Gabriel asked behind me, his voice rising with glee.
“Don’t,” I repeated, my tone flat, disappointed. I looked at Antonio and he looked back at me sharply, questioningly.
“Do you confess?” Gabriel asked, as the pincers loomed perilously close to Antonio’s unprotected genitalia. The heat was singeing the hair on his naked thighs.
Antonio held my gaze solemnly, intensely; his eyes held the haunted look of a man surrendering. “The river docks, Marisol,” he said.
If trouble befalls you,
don Francisco had said,
go to the river docks near San Pablo Street … Let Antonio tell you when the time draws nearer.…
“Don’t tell them anything,” I said, regretting my weakness. But Antonio would not remain silent anymore; he looked away from me as if ashamed.
“The river docks,” he said. “The Guadalquivir, near San Pablo Street. Take us there, and they will come for us.”
* * *
If trouble befalls you, go to the river.
The late afternoon had turned cold, and the sinking sun stirred a breeze, causing the last coral rays to glitter like fire off the rippling waters. The larger ships—the great trading vessels from foreign lands—were beginning to weigh anchor and furl their sails, leaving their masts bared like spines at the docks near the brick armory. Its sulfur stink carried on the wind, along with that of fish, mixed with the sweeter fragrance of cedar from the lumberyard. Smaller ships were still afloat: skiffs and fishing boats and scows.
Antonio and I stood upon the dock nearest my house, I shivering in my soaked chemise, he shuddering with pain at the feel of a rough burlap tunic against his burns. My left hand was shackled to his right, but the manacle was small so that those watching from a distance would not see it.
We were not far from a trading vessel anchored at a dock perpendicular to ours, or from the patch of golden sand where my mother Magdalena had entered the water. Near the spot where Gabriel had held me back from diving into the river after her, a single guard in pedestrian clothing stood watching. Gabriel and Fray Morillo were not far off, accompanied by more guards, hidden out of sight behind the trading vessel. A pair of young boys fishing off the far end of the pier had each been paid a silver coin to intervene if anyone came onto the dock to rescue us. To make certain no one could, another guard, posing as a fisherman, was posted where the dock met the shore.
We were bait; while the Inquisitors believed nothing else we told them, they were willing to gamble that some
converso
would come to rescue us. This despite the fact that I was half naked and clearly the worse for wear, my hair damp and bedraggled.
I gazed out at the maritime scenery. Gulls flew overhead, their cries shrill and raucous; the occasional rat skittered across the dock and entered the water with a light splash.
The waters beneath me were clouded gray-green, as opaque as Fray Hojeda’s eyes. I contemplated the water; I could not believe I would be saved, any more than my mother was on the night of her death. Antonio had pretended to confess while in the prison, revealing a secret escape plan, and showed great shame while I feigned anger at him. Once we were out on the dock, he became silent, his gaze calm. He was looking down at the river with a fatalistic expression, and I thought I understood: It would be impossible, exposed as we were, with so many guards watching, for any of don Francisco’s men to rescue us. Perhaps don Francisco’s advice was the course my mother had taken: to dive into the waters, to take her own life before she yielded to the Inquisition.