“Where are you going?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh! to the palace to meet the Marquis of Morella and a friend of his, a relation indeed. Look you here. I have had an offer of pardon for my part in that marriage if I can prove that a certain base priest knew that he was perpetrating a fraud. Well, I can prove it—you may remember that you wrote me a note—and, if I do, what happens to such a priest who chances to have incurred the hatred of a grandee of Spain and of his noble relation?”
“I am an officer of the Holy Inquisition; no one dare touch me,” he gasped.
“Oh! I think that there are some who would take the risk. For instance—the king.”
Fray Henriques sank back in his chair. Now he understood whom Inez meant by the noble relative of Morella, understood also that he had been trapped. “On Sunday morning,” he began in a hollow whisper, “the procession will be formed, and wind through the streets of the city to the theatre, where the sermon will be preached before those who are relaxed proceed to the Quemadero. About eight o’clock it turns on to the quay for a little way only, and here will be but few spectators, since the view of the pageant is bad, nor is the road guarded there. Now, if a dozen determined men were waiting disguised as peasants with a boat at hand, perhaps they might——” and he paused.
Then Peter, who had been watching and listening to all this play, spoke for the first time, asking:
“In such an event, reverend Sir, how would those determined men know which was the victim that they sought?”
“The heretic John Castell,” he answered, “will be seated on an ass, clad in a zamarra of sheepskin painted with fiends and a likeness of his own head burning—very well done, for I, who can draw, had a hand in it. Also, he alone will have a rope round his neck, by which he may be known.”
“Why will he be seated on an ass?” asked Peter savagely. “Because you have tortured him so that he cannot walk?”
“Not so—not so,” said the Dominican, shrinking from those fierce eyes. “He has never been questioned at all, not a single turn of the mancuerda, I swear to you, Sir Knight. What was the use, since he openly avows himself an accursed Jew?”