He is dismissed upon that with an injunction from Dr. Villada—which may have been backed by a promise or a threat—to reflect and to confess all that he knows to be the business of the Holy Office concerning himself or any others.
CHAPTER XXII
THE TRIAL OF YUCÉ FRANCO (Continued)
It is not difficult to conjecture with what fresh energies the court—armed with such information as it now possessed—proceeded to re-examine the other seven prisoners accused of complicity in the crime of La Guardia, pressing each with the particular share he was himself alleged to have borne in the affair, and continuing to play off one accused against another.
It is regrettable that the records of these proceedings should not at present be available, so that all conjecture might be dispensed with in reconstructing step by step this extraordinary case. And it is to be hoped that M. Fidel Fita’s expectations that these records will ultimately be brought to light may come to be realized.
A week later, on July 28, Yucé is again brought into the audience-chamber for further examination. But he has nothing more to add on the subject of the actual crime. All that he has contrived to remember in the interval are scraps of conversation that took place when the culprits assembled—on that later occasion—for the purpose of sending the consecrated wafer to Abenamias. Nevertheless, what he says is, from the point of view of the inquisitors, as damaging to those who uttered the things which he repeats as their actual participation in the crucifixion of the boy, and it is hardly less damaging to Yucé himself, since it shows him to have been a fautor, or abettor of heretics—a circumstance which he may very well entirely have failed to appreciate.
He depones that Alonso Franco had said that the letter they were dispatching to Abenamias was better than the letters and bulls [of indulgence] that came from Rome and were offered for sale. Ocaña agreed by launching an imprecation upon all who should spend money on such bulls, denouncing such things as sheer humbug (todo es burla), and protesting that there is no saviour other than God. But Garcia Franco reproved him with the reminder that it was good policy to buy one now and then, as it gave them the appearance of being good Catholics.
On this same subject of appearances, Alonso grumbled at the trouble to which they were put by the fact of their being married to Old-Christian women who would not even permit the circumcision of their children.
Three days later Yucé has remembered that it was Benito who crowned the child with thorns. He is again questioned as to what he knows about the boy, and he admits having heard Tazarte say that the child was obtained “from a place whence it would never be missed.”