have confessed when he had the chance. Then they’d have given him the mercy of the garrotte before they burned him.’
She scraped five sardines smoking and blackened from the griddle on to my father’s pewter plate, and set it down with such a heavy thump in front of him on the table that the candle flame trembled. I shivered, pulling my shawl tighter around me. The sun had not yet risen, and the tiny room was icy, as if the heat from the charcoal stove was being pushed back by the chill of the room.
‘What was the point of holding out? All that needless pain. It was his own fault he suffered. You tell me, what was the point of it?’ It was the only question she had asked since Father had told her about our neighbour Jorge, and she just kept repeating it, as if the answer held the key to all the mysteries of the world.
‘You can’t simply confess,’ my father told her. ‘They won’t believe you have repented, unless you give them the names of others.’
‘Not when he was already sentenced to death. Once he’d been handed over to the king, they couldn’t do anything. He could have recanted on the pyre. Then it would have been over in a trice. But no, he wouldn’t do it, would he, the stubborn old fool.’
I shuddered. We had returned from Lisbon only yesterday evening, a full three days after the burning, but I could still smell the stench of that bonfire.
Mother banged another plate down in front of me, causing the three salt-crusted sardines on it to leap as if in a bid for freedom.
‘Jorge was a good man, a brave man,’ Father said quietly. ‘To endure the flames rather than betray anyone else, that takes the courage of a saint.’
Mother snorted her contempt. ‘A saint! Is that what you think? He was a heretic, a Christ killer. It was the Devil in him who stopped him confessing his sin, that’s what it was. To even think of comparing a man as evil as him with a saint who died for the true faith is … is … is obscene!’
‘He was our neighbour. Don’t you remember how kind he was to little Isabela when she was a child? She loved him like a grandfather.’
‘And how many times did I warn you not to let her go round there? Filling her head with his silly stories and goodness knows what else. I warned you not to let her go mixing with Marranos, and now I’ve been proved right. They pretend to be good Catholics, but all the time they are practising their devilish rites in secret and plotting to murder us all in our own beds.’ Mother rounded on me. ‘You stay away from the lot of them, do you hear? Isn’t it bad enough your father can’t provide a decent dowry for you? How do you think you are ever going to get a good, respectable husband, if anyone finds out you are mixing with these converts? And now you have seen for yourself how dangerous it is to make friends of these pigs.’
‘But, Mother, Jorge was a good man, a great physician. You used to take me to him yourself when I was sick, and don’t you remember that time when you –’
‘Enough, Isabela.’ Father shook his head, warning me not to continue.
‘Who reported him, that’s what I want to know!’ I burst out angrily. ‘Who would even think of doing so, betraying a harmless old man?’
‘Harmless!’ Mother snapped. ‘He was a heretic, and you heard what Father Tomàs said in Mass. Anyone who does not fight against heresy is himself guilty of betraying our Blessed Lord. It’s our duty to God and the king to report these people. Our duty, do you hear?’
‘But who –’
‘Please, Isabela.’ Father’s tired eyes begged me to let the matter drop. ‘Jorge is dead. All the words in the world cannot change that. Let us speak of something else.’
I glared at him, torn between wanting to punish my mother for her contempt of that poor old man and not wanting to hurt my father. But in the end I said nothing and vented my anger by stabbing furiously at the belly of the little charred fish. There was much which was never spoken of in our household for fear of upsetting my mother. It was the eleventh commandment in our family.
Mother crossed to the small shrine in the corner of the room