“Be more gentle in your talk, friend,” broke in Inez, with her familiar tap upon the shoulder. “There are those here who do not think so ill of Jews as you do in your Holy House, but who understand how to apply the mancuerda, and can make a very serviceable rack out of a plank and a pulley or two such as lie in the next room. Cultivate courtesy, most learned priest, lest before you leave this place you should add a cubit to your stature.”
“Go on,” growled Peter.
“Moreover,” added Fray Henriques shakily, “orders came that it was not to be done. The Inquisitors thought otherwise, as they believed —doubtless in error—that he might have accomplices whose names he would give up; but the orders said that as he had lived so long in England, and only recently travelled to Spain, he could have none. Therefore he is sound—sound as a bell; never before, I am told, has an impenitent Jew gone to the stake in such good case, however worthy and worshipful he might be.”
“So much the better for you, if you do not lie,” answered Peter. “Continue!”
“There is nothing more to say, except that I shall be walking near to him with the two guards, and, of course, if he were snatched away from us, and there were no boats handy in which to pursue, we could not help it, could we? Indeed, we priests, who are men of peace, might even fly at the sight of cruel violence.”
“I should advise you to fly fast and far,” said Peter. “But, Inez, what hold have you on this friend of yours? He will trick everybody.”
“A thousand doubloons—a thousand doubloons!” muttered old Israel like a sleepy parrot.
“He may think to screw more than that out of the carcases of some of us, old man. Come, Inez, you are quick at this game. How can we best hold him to his word?”
“Dead, I think,” broke in Bernaldez, who knew his danger as the partner and relative of Castell, and the nominal owner of the ship Margaret in which it was purposed that he should escape. “We know all that he can tell, and if we let him go he will betray us soon or late. Kill him out of the way, I say, and burn his body in the oven.”
Now Henriques fell upon his knees, and with groans and tears began to implore mercy.