Again they admonish him for his own sake to speak what he knows, and they even point out to him that it is his duty as a God-fearing Jew to speak the truth. Again they promise to deal mercifully with him if he will answer their questions fully and truthfully; and lastly they protest that if his blood is shed in the course of what is to follow, or should he suffer any other harm, or mutilation of limb, or even death, the blame must fall entirely upon himself and nowise upon their reverences.
Fully intimidated by this skilful accumulation of terrorizing agents, Yucé implores them to repeat their questions, which he will do his best to answer.
“Whence,” they ask him again, “was the boy who was crucified at La Guardia?”
“Juan Franco,” he replies, “brought him from Toledo.” He adds that Juan Franco announced this before them all, and told them that he had kept the child concealed in La Hos de La Guardia for a day before bringing him to the cave to be crucified.
Photo by Donald Macbeth.
SANBENITO OF PENITENT RELAPSED.
From Limborch’s ‘Historia Inquisitionis.’
What is not to be explained is why Yucé should have waited until he was strapped to the escalera before making this statement. Why did he not make it when the question was asked him at his last examination—if not in his original confession? It cannot be pretended that he was endeavouring to screen Juan Franco, because he has very amply betrayed him in other ways. Is the explanation that under fear of torture he felt the need to invent an answer likely to satisfy the inquisitors? It can hardly be that, because Juan Franco himself is to admit—as we shall see—the truth of this detail. It only remains to be supposed that the lively fear of torture had sharpened the young Jew’s memory. But that again seems hardly satisfactory as an explanation.
“Where,” they ask him next, “is La Hos?”
“It is,” he replies, “a meadow by the River Algodor,” and he goes on to explain that Juan Franco had told them all that he had taken a load of wheat to Toledo to sell, and that, having sold it, he went to an inn, and later on he found the boy in a doorway and coaxed him away with nuégados (a sweetmeat composed of flour, honey, and nuts—nougat). Thus he got him into his cart and brought him to La Guardia.