An elderly woman, dressed in the yellow “San Benito” of the Inquisition, with ragged gray locks hanging about a countenance distorted by suffering and shrunk by famine. Painfully, as one unaccustomed to the light, she peered and blinked round her. Her fallen lip gave her a half-idiotic expression; and yet there was an uneasy twinkle in the eye, as of boundless terror and suspicion. She lifted up her fettered wrist to shade her face; and as she did so, disclosed a line of fearful scars upon her skinny arm.
“Look there, sirs!” said Yeo, pointing to them with a stern smile. “Here's some of these Popish gentry's handiwork. I know well enough how those marks came;” and he pointed to the similar scars on his own wrist.
The commandant, as well as the Englishmen, recoiled with horror.
“Holy Virgin! what wretch is this on board my ship? Bishop, is this the prisoner whom you sent on board?”
The bishop, who had been slowly recovering his senses, looked at her a moment; and then thrusting his chair back, crossed himself, and almost screamed, “Malefica! Malefica! Who brought her here? Turn her away, gentlemen; turn her eye away; she will bewitch, fascinate”—and he began muttering prayers.
Amyas seized him by the shoulder, and shook him on to his legs.
“Swine! who is this? Wake up, coward, and tell me, or I will cut you piecemeal!”
But ere the bishop could answer, the woman uttered a wild shriek, and pointing to the taller of the two monks, cowered behind Yeo.
“He here?” cried she, in broken Spanish. “Take me away! I will tell you no more. I have told you all, and lies enough beside. Oh! why is he come again? Did they not say that I should have no more torments?”
The monk turned pale: but like a wild beast at bay, glared firmly round on the whole company; and then, fixing his dark eyes full on the woman, he bade her be silent so sternly, that she shrank down like a beaten hound.