Copyright Information
Copyright © 2012 by Phyllis Ann Karr.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
Opening Quotation
“There can, indeed, be no doubt that, amid much greed and callous indifference to justice, there were men engaged in the service who deemed themselves to be doing the work of God and that their methods were merciful…the individuals were not necessarily as vicious as the system…”
—Henry Charles Lea,
A History of the Inquisition of Spain,
v. II, bk. VI, ch. 2; v. III, bk. VI, ch. 8
Author’s Foreword
When I began this book, I thought it would be easy for me to understand its Catholic viewpoint, since I had grown to college age before Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council. I quickly learned that a Polish ethnic version of Midwest American Catholicism on the eve of Vatican II was a very different thing indeed from Southern European Catholicism in the decades preceding the Council of Trent! Whoever calls the Roman Catholic Church monolithic speaks from gross misinformation.
There are things in this novel, both religious and secular, which I myself would probably have thought erroneous before doing my research. To cite four examples: (1). Priests were not automatically called “Father.” That title was reserved to bishops, abbots, and—by pentitents—to their own personal confessors (the use which presumably led to its present “universal” application, at least in the English-speaking world). Thus, in these pages priests belonging to monastic and itinerant orders are “Brother” (“Fra” or “Fray”) like their fellow but non-ordained monks or friars, while secular priests are “Don” (“Sir”). (2). Confessions were heard in the open, often before an altar; St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) is credited with inventing the confessional box. (3). Wives did not automatically receive their husbands’ surnames. Even in Don Quixote, written almost a century after my Felipe’s time, Sancho’s wife is surnamed Gutiérrez and Panza alternately, and, in the later case, Cervantes deemed it necessary to explain that that was a custom in La Mancha. (4). It seems highly unlikely that Don Felipe would have known the Sanskrit term “swastika,” but he would have known the very ancient, widespread, and—until Hitler got hold of it—good symbol, probably as a “gamma-cross.”
Outside of the dream sequences, in which I have purposely mixed up fact and symbolism, I have tried to be as meticulously accurate as possible. Where I have erred through forgetfulness, misplaced dramatic license, or failing to find the best reference work, the fault is my own; for the rest, I insist on pleading that no historical fictioneer can possibly be better than the research sources available.
As with the characters, so with the places: some, like Alhama, are authentic; others, like Agapida, completely fictional. The real places, though not the recorded facts of their history, have been somewhat fictionalized. A footnote in one of Lea’s volumes mentions a perplexing reference to “the bishop of Daroca” in an old document, and I took this—almost certainly a scribal error—as my excuse for creating a fictional bishopric seated in that city.
This foreword would not be complete without acknowledging Gregory Remington, who made my acquaintance after I critiqued one of his stories rather harshly in print. Some of his as-yet-unpublished tales feature a Spanish inquisitor named Don Felipe. While discontent with Greg’s acknowledged shallow level of research, I liked the character and traded Greg free use of some of my own characters and worlds for the chance of doing something further with Felipe.
Special Acknowledgment
With thanks and love to my husband, Clifton A. Hoyt, who saved this book when I might have abandoned or even destroyed it in despair after being denied a grant to help me finish it as originally envisioned.
—P.A.K.
Part I
Saint Patrick’s Purgatory
Chapter 1
The Dream of the Fall of Alhama
He stood among mountains, feeling a wind whip through his vestments. He was vested to say Mass, but could find no chalice. Watching the chasuble’s red brocade crease over his elbow, he searched for the holy vessel, moving rock after rock. Curls of ash blew past him in the wind.
“Great-great-grandfather,” said a woman’s voice.
He looked up. The tall woman who wore trousers and a homely face stood before him.
“Is it you?” he said.
“Me. Rosemary.”
“But, I tell you yet again, you meant to address me as ‘granduncle.’ I am vowed to celibacy,” he reminded her.
“That didn’t slow down priests like your patron Alexander the Sixth.”
“Who?”
She looked thoughtful. “Right. We’re in February, 1482. Borja isn’t pope yet. Well, let’s go.” She turned and set off upslope as if expecting Don Felipe to follow her lead.
He took half a step and caught himself, calling after her: “Wait!”
Already so far distant that she looked little taller than a dog, she paused and looked back.
“Who are you, Doña Rosemary,” he demanded, as he should have demanded on earlier occasions, “that I should render you obedience? Some descendant of mine in a collateral line, perhaps, but that is rather reason that you should obey my authority than I yours, even were I not both priest and—”
“Shut up, grandfather. I’m an unchristened policewoman.”
“Unchristened?” In his shock, he found himself within arm’s reach of her. Scooping a palmful of water from the stream that ran at their feet, he leaned toward her. “Ego te baptizo in nomine—”
She caught his wrist and turned it, shedding its water over the mountain herbs. “Never try that again.”
“That any offshoot of my family should remain unbaptized—”
“Like quite a few of your ancestors. Well, understand ‘policewoman’?”
“No.”
She sighed. “An officer of the secular arm of the law.”
“Pardon me, Doña. I have heard of women who go to war and women who avenge their kin with the sword. But, no matter how virile the lady, I have never heard of a female alcalde.”
“Times change. Maybe in your time a mere member of the civil branch doesn’t have any authority over a churchman, but neither does an inquisitor have any authority over an unbaptized soul.”
“An inquisitor?” he said somewhat coldly. “You mistake me for Fra Guillaume.”
“No, I don’t. I’m just a few years ahead of you. All right, we’ll call ourselves equals. Now come on and let’s see what we’ve got to watch this time.”
Glancing
