‘Hounds that you are!—would you murder in cold blood an unarmed and manacled man?’
There was dead silence for near a minute. ‘Alcaide of Carthagena,’ continued my defender, ‘look well to yourself—what I have done, was that the ends of justice might be served, and I will answer for my acts. I can do no more—I leave this man in your hands—you shall be answerable for your treatment of him. Make way there, and permit me to go forth.’
Again the mob yielded a passage. ‘He speaks like a king,’ said one fellow. ‘Truly, he hath the bearing of an emperor,’ murmured another. And so, still holding his unsheathed rapier in his hand, his features being calm and composed, save that there was on his forehead a slight flush, and a hot sparkle gleaming in his eye, he passed through the yielding crowd, who instinctively fell back before him—walking with the port of a conqueror, who enters a fallen city—this man—a banished libertine—but still a grandee in whose veins ran the haughty blood of Old Castile!
As Don José disappeared, I felt that it was all over with me. His advocacy failing, I stood in a position much worse than before. I was the cause that a friendship, or at least an intimacy, had turned to a bitter enmity, and that the alcaide had been publicly insulted on the judgment-seat. Therefore, I tried to compose my mind, so as to withdraw it from things of the world, which already began to seem like matters in which others might have an interest, but which possessed none for me—like things, indeed, which were but dreamings, wherein, to him who stands upon the last step of life, is nought, save only deceitfulness and vanity. I was roused from this fit of musing by the harsh voice of the alcaide, who, having now recovered his composure, thought proper, perhaps, to smooth down somewhat of his last oration.
‘Despite,’ quoth he, ‘despite the ill-advised attempt of a noble person, now gone forth, to bar the proceedings of this court, the prisoner may depend upon it he shall receive just judgment at our hands.’
The clerk grinned to himself, and bowed to his master, who called upon him to read a decree of the court which it seems had just been written. It was to this effect:—
‘The accused, a Scots mariner, by name Leonard Lindsay, a buccaneer, or pirate of the sort called Brethren of the Coast, unlawfully in arms against his Most Christian Majesty, having refused to answer certain interrogatories put to him in open court, it is decreed that his examination be continued in private.’
By the hum which arose, and the broken words I could catch uttered around me, when this decree was read, I was presently aware of its real meaning. It signified interrogatory by torture. I clenched my teeth, and made a great effort to show no sign—not even by the tremor of a finger—of flinching. The turnkeys touched me on the shoulder, and I walked mechanically out between them. We passed through divers corridors, I taking but little notice, however, where we went, until we arrived in a bare chamber; here there was a heavy table of plain wood and one or two benches, but most part of the room was occupied with some machines or apparatus, the nature of which I guessed, but the forms whereof were concealed by a coarse linen cloth flung over them. This cloth was stained with patches of blood. Beside the table stood two men; one of them, a thin, mean-looking personage, poorly dressed in a worn doublet, with a cold passionless face and stony eyes. The other was portly and pleasant-looking, and seeing me advance, eyed me from head to foot, saying at the same time, ‘Hum! a goodly patient.’
‘El medico,’ whispered one of my conductors. He had no cause to tell me of the profession of the doctor’s companion. Close behind me came the alcaide, his clerk, and the ruffianly captain. The naval gentleman was not there, and on the ferret-eyed man asking for him, an attendant said that senor, the lieutenant, had been sent for in haste from the harbour. Our group was now ranged in a circle, I being opposite to the alcaide, the executioner standing on one side of me, and the doctor on the other. The clerk carried an open book for writing in, and a turnkey beside him held the ink-bottle.
‘Accused,’ said the alcaide, ‘do you still refuse to reply to the questions put to you in open court, and which shall now be rehearsed by the clerk?’