The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (10 page)

I replied, ‘Dear father, I assure you that I would not have felt even the slightest twinge of fear.'

This reply seemed to satisfy my father and he was very jolly for the rest of the evening.

So we spent our days with nothing to change their pattern except that in summer we sat down not around the fireplace but on the seats in front of the castle door. Six years passed in such sweet tranquillity. They seem to me now like so many weeks.

When I had completed my seventeenth year my father decided to enter me in the Walloon Guards and wrote on this matter to his trustworthy old comrades. Those worthy and respectable officers together exerted on my behalf all the influence they possessed and managed to obtain for me a captain's commission. When my father learned of this, he suffered a seizure so severe that his life was thought to be in danger. But he soon recovered and turned his mind to preparing for my departure. He wanted me to go by sea so that I might enter Spain by way of Cadiz and present myself to Don Enrique de Sa, the commandant of the Walloons, who was the person who had contributed most to my preferment.

Even as the post-chaise was waiting drawn up and ready to leave in the courtyard of the castle, my father led me away to his bedroom and having closed the door behind us said, ‘My dear Alphonse, I am going to confide in you a secret which came down to me from my father and which you must pass on to your son, but only if he shows himself worthy of it.'

As I was sure it was about some hidden treasure I replied that I had never looked on gold except as a means of helping the poor and needy.

But my father said, ‘No, dear Alphonse, it is not about gold or silver. I want to teach you a secret pass in which by counter-parrying
and following with a flaconade you are sure to disarm your adversary.'

He then took up two foils, showed me the pass, gave me his blessing and led me to my waiting carriage. I kissed my mother's hand again and departed.

I travelled by post-chaise to Flushing, where I found a vessel to take me to Cadiz. Don Enrique de Sa received me as though I were his own son. He set me up with a horse and recommended two men to serve me, one called Lopez and the other Mosquito. From Cadiz I went to Seville, from Seville to Córdoba and then I went on to Andújar, where I took the road to the Sierra Morena. I suffered the misfortune of being separated from my servants near the drinking trough at Los Alcornoques. Yet I went on to the Venta Quemada the same day and yesterday evening reached your hermitage.

‘Father,' I replied to the anchorite, ‘I have thought long and hard about the story of Señor Pacheco. Although he is possessed, he is none the less a gentleman and hence incapable of failing in his duty to tell the truth. But Iñigo Vélez, our castle chaplain, told me that although there were cases of possession in the first centuries of the Christian era there are no more nowadays, and I take his testimony to be all the more worthy of belief as my father commanded me to believe what Iñigo said on all matters concerning religion.'

‘But,' said the hermit, ‘did not you see for yourself the ghastly face of the possessed man and how demons had blinded him in one eye?'

‘Father,' I replied, ‘Señor Pacheco could well have lost his eye in another way. Besides, I defer on such matters as these to those who know more about them than I. It is enough for me to show no fear of
ghosts or vampires. However, if you would like to give me some holy relic as a protection against their snares I undertake to wear it faithfully and reverently.'

I thought the hermit smiled at my naivety. Then he said to me, ‘I can see, my son, that you still have faith, but I fear that you may lose it. The Gomelez family from which you are descended on your mother's side are all recent converts. It is even said that some are still Muslims at heart. If they offered you a vast fortune to change religion would you accept it?'

‘Certainly not!' I replied. ‘It seems to me that to renounce one's religion is as dishonourable as to desert one's colours.'

At this the hermit smiled again and said, ‘I am sorry to see that your virtues are based on an exaggerated sense of honour. I warn you that you will not find Madrid as swashbuckling as in your father's time. Virtues also can have more secure foundations. But I do not want to hold you up any longer for you have a hard day's travelling ahead before you reach the Venta del Peñon, or the inn of the rock. The innkeeper is still there in spite of robbers because he relies on the protection of a band of gypsies who are encamped close by. The day after tomorrow you will reach the Venta de Cárdenas and you will have passed through the Sierra Morena. I have put some provisions in your saddle-bags.'

After these words the hermit embraced me affectionately. But he did not give me a relic to ward off demons. I did not like to mention it again so I got on my horse.

As I rode along I began to think about the precepts I had just heard, but I could not imagine any sounder basis for virtue than a sense of honour, which seemed to me in itself to contain all the virtues.

I was ruminating on these matters when a horseman suddenly shot out from behind a rock, cut me off and said, ‘Is your name Alphonse van Worden?'

I replied that it was.

‘In that case,' said the horseman, ‘I arrest you in the name of the king and the Holy Inquisition. Give me your sword.'

I obeyed without a word. Then the horseman whistled and I saw armed men bearing down on me from all sides. They tied my hands
behind my back and we set off into the mountains up a side track which led after about an hour to a heavily fortified castle. The drawbridge was lowered and we went in. While we were still under the shadow of the keep, a little side door was opened and I was thrown into a cell, without anyone bothering to untie me.

It was pitch-black in the cell and, not having my hands free to feel my way forward, I would have found it difficult to walk about without banging my nose on the walls. So I sat down where I was and, as one may well imagine, began to wonder what could have caused me to be imprisoned. My first and only thought was that the Inquisition had captured my beautiful cousins and that their black servants had reported everything that had happened at the Venta Quemada. Supposing that I was going to be interrogated about the two African girls, I was faced with the alternative of either betraying them and thus breaking my solemn word of honour, or of denying that I knew them, which would embark me on a series of shameful lies. After some thought as to how I should behave, I decided to maintain absolute silence and I firmly resolved to say nothing in reply to any interrogation.

Once I had settled these doubts in my mind I began to ponder the events of the previous two days. I did not doubt that my cousins were creatures of flesh and blood. I was convinced of this by an intuition stronger than all that I have been told about the powers of demons, and, as for the trick of transporting me to lie under the gallows, I was extremely indignant about it.

Meanwhile the hours passed by. I began to feel hungry, and as I had heard that cells are sometimes supplied with bread and a jug of water I set about looking for something of the sort by feeling about with my legs and feet. And indeed I soon felt an object of some kind, which turned out to be a loaf. My problem was how to raise it to my mouth. I lay down beside the loaf and tried to seize it between my teeth, but it slipped away from me since there was nothing there to push against. I pushed it so far in the end that it came up against the wall. I was then able to eat it as the loaf was cut down the middle. If it had been whole I would not have been able to bite into it. I found the jug of water too but was not able to drink from it. No sooner had I sipped a little than the jug tipped over and the water ran away.
I explored further and found some straw in a corner on which I could lie down. My hands were tied together in a very clever way, that is, tightly but not painfully, so that I had no difficulty in falling asleep.

The inquisitor had a chair brought for him, sat down beside me and in a gentle and wheedling tone spoke to me in more or less these words:

‘My dear child, my sweet child, thank heaven for having brought you to this dungeon. But tell me, why are you here? What sins have you committed? Confess. Pour out your tears on my breast. What? No reply? Alas, my child, you are wrong. We do not practise interrogation, that is not our method. We allow the guilty party to accuse himself. Such a confession, if somewhat forced, is not without value, especially if the guilty party denounces his accomplices. What? No reply? So much the worse for you! We will have to set you on the right path. Do you know two princesses from Tunis or rather two infamous witches, two execrable vampires, two demons incarnate? You still remain silent. Have the two infantas of Lucifer's court brought in.'

At this point my two cousins were led in. They, like me, had their hands tied behind their backs.

Then the inquisitor continued as follows: ‘Do you recognize them, my son? Still no reply! My dear child, do not be alarmed by what I am going to tell you. We are going to hurt you a little. You see these
two boards. Your legs will be placed between them and they will be tied tightly with ropes. Then we will drive these wedges, which you see here, between your legs and they will be hammered into place. At first your feet will swell up, then blood will spurt from your toes and all your toe-nails will drop off. Then the soles of your feet will split open and from them will issue thick gouts of fat and mangled flesh. That will hurt you a great deal. Still you say nothing. But I am only talking of the standard torture so far. All this will make you faint. Here we have bottles filled with various spirits to bring you round again. When you have regained your senses the wedges will be taken away and these bigger ones will be put in their place. At the first hammer blow your knees and calves will break. At the second your legs will split open all the way up and a mixture of marrow and blood will flow out on to the straw. You will not speak? Well then, apply the thumbscrews.'

The torturers grabbed hold of my legs and fastened them between the boards.

‘Still no reply? Drive in the wedge! Still no reply? Hammers at the ready!'

At that very moment a gunshot was heard and Emina cried, ‘Oh Muhammad, we are saved! Zoto has come to rescue us!'

And Zoto and his band did indeed burst in, chased off the torturers and chained the inquisitor up to a ring on one of the walls of the dungeon. The Moorish princesses and I were then untied. The first use they made of their arms when they were freed was to throw themselves into mine. We were prised apart. Zoto told me to mount and ride ahead of the rest and reassured me that he would follow shortly with the two ladies.

The advance party with which I left consisted of four horsemen. At daybreak we arrived in a very deserted spot, where we found fresh horses. Then we rode up into the high mountains along snow-covered ridges.

Towards four o'clock in the afternoon we reached some hollows in the rock where we were to pass the night. I was very glad to have got there before nightfall because the view was truly remarkable, especially to someone like myself who had only ever seen the Ardennes and Zeeland. At my feet stretched out the beautiful plain of Granada,
which its inhabitants ironically call ‘la nuestra vegilla'.
¹
I saw all of it, with its six towns, its forty villages, the tortuous course of the river Genil, its torrents which tumbled down from the Alpujarras mountains, its groves and shady thickets, its buildings, its gardens and its many
quintas
, or farms. I gave myself up to rapt contemplation of so many fine objects which my eyes could embrace all at once, and felt myself falling in love with nature itself. I forgot about my cousins, but they soon arrived on litters borne by horses.

They sat down on the flagstones in the cave, and when they had rested a little I said to them, ‘Ladies, I have no complaint about the night I spent at the Venta Quemada but I must tell you that it ended in a way which I found most displeasing.'

Emina replied, ‘Dear Alphonse, blame us only for the nice part of your dreams. In any case, why complain? Did you not have an opportunity to show superhuman courage?'

‘What?' I replied. ‘Is there someone who doubts my courage? If I knew where to find him I would fight him: on a cloak or with a handkerchief stuffed in my mouth if he wanted.'

Emina replied, ‘I have no idea what you mean with your cloak and your handkerchief. There are things I am not able to tell you and others which I do not know myself. I act only on the orders of the head of my family, the successor of Sheikh Massoud, who knows all the secrets of Cassar Gomelez. All I can tell you is that you are our very close relative. The
oidor
of Granada, your mother's father, had a son who was found worthy of being initiated. He embraced the Muslim faith and married the four daughters of the reigning Dey of Tunis. Only the youngest had any children. She is our mother. Soon after the birth of Zubeida, our father and his three other wives died of the plague which at that time was ravaging the whole Barbary coast. But let us no longer speak of such things, things you will perhaps yourself know one day. Let us speak of you, of our gratitude to you or rather our admiration for your courage. How steadfastly you gazed upon the instruments of torture! How faithfully you kept your
word! Dear Alphonse, you are greater than all the heroes of our race and we now belong to you.'

Zubeida, who was willing to let her sister speak when the subject of conversation was serious, reclaimed her rights when it took a sentimental turn. In short, I was flattered, caressed and pleased with myself and others. The negresses appeared, and supper was served by Zoto himself, who showed us every mark of respect. Then the negresses made a tolerable bed for my cousins in a sort of grotto. I went to sleep in another grotto and we all enjoyed the rest we needed.