These three men awaited a messenger who was to bring them momentous intelligence from a city far away.
Little was said, though it was supper-time, and wines and meat had been placed on the table. The two Fathers of the Holy Office ate sparingly, as became men whose eyes had seen their fellows endure many hours of torment that day, in order that their hearts and minds might be purified from heresy, and their money chink in the coffers of Holy Church. Only Mariana ate and drank heartily. For was it not his business to go about the world with soft compressive palm and a cheerful smile on his rosy face, a complete refutation of the idea that a Jesuit must of necessity be a dark and cunning plotter, or an inquisitor, merely an ecclesiastical executioner?
The Chief Surintendant Teruel was a grim Aragonese, a peasant brought up hardly, the humanity ground out of him by long years of noviciate, till now he knew no pity, no kindness, no faltering, while he carried out the will of God as interpreted to him by his hierarchical superiors.
Little Frey Tullio, on the contrary, was a Neapolitan, who had been sent over from Rome on purpose to familiarise himself with the best Spanish methods. For nowhere did the Holy Office thrive so congenially and root itself so deeply as in Catholic Spain. Frey Tullio did his work conscientiously, but without the stern joy of his Aragonese superior, and certainly wholly without the supple, subtle wit and smiling finesse of Mariana, the famous "outcast" of the Company of the Gesù.
"A man is waiting below," said a black-robed acolyte, who had handled certain confession-producing ropes and cords that day, and was now also resting from his labours. The prisoners who had been saved for the next auto de fé (except those who, being delicate, had succumbed to the Lesser and Greater Question) rested equally from theirs—in the cellars below, the blood stiffening in their unwashed wounds, and their rack-tormented bones setting into place a little so as to be ready for ten of the clock on the morrow.
"A man waiting below?" repeated the Chief Inquisitor; "what does he want?"
"To see the Fathers of the Holy Office," said the servitor, wondering if he had sufficiently wiped the wine from his mouth ere he came in—the Surintendant was regarding him so sternly.
"He looks like a shepherd of the hills," said the acolyte; "indeed, I have seen him before—at Collioure. He is a servant, so he says, of Don Raphael Llorient!"
"Ah," said Mariana quickly, "then I think I can guess his message. I have already spoken of it with Don Raphael."
"Bid three stout familiars of the Office stand unseen behind the curtain there, weapons in hand," commanded Surintendant Teruel; "then show the man up!"