The Falcons of Fire and Ice - By Karen Maitland Page 0,15

could do to beat them back and stop them tearing the heretics limb from limb before they could even reach the pyre.

The condemned were hauled up one by one on top of the faggots of wood and dragged to a post, where they were chained facing the screaming mob. One of the black-hooded familiaries held up a flaming torch beside each man and woman so that those binding them could see clearly enough to fasten the locks. The Judaizers were still gagged for fear that they might cry out that they were innocent, or worse still, shout some desperate prayer to their Hebrew God.

Next to them on the pyre, the friars positioned the effigies of those who had fled rather than face capture. The wooden statues would help to burn the relatives and friends they had left behind. It was an irony not lost on the crowd, who repeated the joke loudly to one another.

Finally the boxes of bones were placed into the hands of some of the penitents spared the flames, who were driven forward to the edge of the pyre. Most carried the boxes without giving any sign that they knew what they held, either numb to any emotion now or so relieved to have escaped death they would gladly have kissed the feet of their jailers.

But one young girl began to sob so hard the sound rose even above the chattering people. Tears streamed down her face, and she clutched the box in her stick-thin arms so fiercely that the friars had to strike her with canes several times before she would set it down on top of the unlit pyre. Even then it seemed she could not pull her hands away from the box, as if her fingers were frozen to it. She clutched at it until she was dragged away.

‘That’ll be the bones of her lover or one of her family in that box,’ Dona Ofelia said with glee. ‘Now she’ll watch them burned to ashes so there can be no hope of resurrection for them, which is what all heretics deserve, don’t you agree, child?’

I smiled and nodded as vigorously as I could. Trying to look as if I couldn’t wait to see them blazing.

When all was prepared the crowd fell silent. A hush of expectation fell across the darkened square. Slowly and solemnly the Inquisitor-General stalked across the square towards his sovereign, his footsteps suddenly echoing hollowly in the darkness. The torches flickered, lengthening his shadow and sending it slithering towards the gaping crowd. As it crept close to them people stepped back, as if the mere touch of his black ghost would send the chill of death through their bones.

He bowed before King Sebastian, handing him a scroll of parchment on which were written the names of the prisoners, now released by the Inquisition into the hands of the king. For the Church could not execute anyone. The ultimate sentence of justice must be carried out by the State. The boy-king gingerly took the parchment in his hands, holding it as if he thought it would burst into flames.

A Moor with a chest as broad as an ox took up his place behind a condemned woman chained to the first post on the pyre. His features, like those of the familiaries, were concealed beneath a black hood. He was stripped to the waist and the thick corded muscles of his ebony arms gleamed with a sheen of sweat in the torchlight.

The prisoner cringed away as far as her chains would allow. She was a small, hollow-cheeked woman with long grey hair that hung in tattered shreds from beneath her hat. One of the familiaries loosened her leather gag. As soon as the gag was removed, she began to sob and scream. She was crying so hard that her words could hardly be distinguished, only the odd phrase torn from her parched throat filtered through her tears – repent … abjure … abjure … I abjure.

It was enough. Before I even realized what he was doing, the Moor had placed an iron chain around her fragile neck. Fear contorted the woman’s face as he pulled the chain tight in his great fists. She struggled desperately for breath as the chain bit deeper and deeper into her throat, then finally her head lolled sideways and her body sagged limply from the wooden post, a look of abject terror frozen for ever in her bulging eyes.

The crowd screamed and howled, half-excited by the death, but