law writ known as habeas corpus. It dates back centuries, to the day the barons tempered King John's powers with the Magna Carta. Ever since it has served to preserve individual liberty by testing the legality of detentions. If she had not been removed from England, Agnes Wooler would be protected by such traditions, such laws. But not here, not here! Not in this country poisoned by war, and by the fear of the other.'
Abdul laid a calming hand on his arm. 'I'm afraid you can be sure that the Inquisition will extract everything she knows from poor Agnes before they are done. As for us, your name will surely be protected, but mine may not. And if I am implicated, I won't be able to help you further with the matter of Colon.'
'You must think of yourself, then,' Geoffrey said.
Abdul shook his head. 'No. We serve a greater cause, you and I.'
'Yes, we do, by God – by Allah! Thank you, my friend. But it comes to something when my most robust ally, here in this most ardently Christian of cities, is a Moor!'
The morning was advancing, and Abdul suggested they descend and return to the city for lunch. Geoffrey glanced once more over the cathedral's sprawling bulk. Far below he glimpsed a patio with orange trees, a relic of the Moorish origins of this huge church, where a boy sat on a low wall plucking at a guitar, and a girl danced before him, her arms raised, her feet clattering on the ground, her movements sensuous despite the February cold. The music drifted up to him through the rustle of the wind, a liquid sound. But the boy's song sounded almost like a muezzin's wail. In this city the Moorish face was only ever poorly disguised by the Christian mask, Geoffrey thought.
He followed Abdul down the ramps, where once the hooves of horses had clattered.
XXI
The courtroom was a cold stone room in the bowels of the Triana, windowless, its walls smeared with lamp black. Guards stood by the door and at the back of the room. They were beefy soldiers of the Holy Brotherhood, the religious police of Fernando and Isabel.
The panel of inquisitors was led by Diego Ferron himself. Two more clerics sat at either side of him. A pile of papers and books of procedure cluttered the desk before them, and a clerk made continual notes. The Inquisition was nothing if not orderly.
The only observer here was Geoffrey Cotesford, who sat as bravely as he could on a hard wooden chair. The chair had been brought into the room especially for him; Diego Ferron had made it clear that he was not welcome here.
An immense and detailed crucifix hung from one wall. Geoffrey reluctantly studied the image of Christ, whose wounds gaped. He supposed that he was the only one in the room who was aware of the irony of that gruesome sculpture of a victim of torture, suspended in such a place as this.
At last Agnes was produced. She was half dragged into the room by two more heavy-set brothers. She was wearing a grimy, colourless shift, stained brown with old blood, and her hair was matted and filthy. The size of the two soldiers with her was absurd, Geoffrey thought; either of them could have broken her with a single blow. She looked dimly around, at Ferron and his colleagues, and at the crucified Christ. There was a smell of decay about her, of shit and piss and blood. But her shrunken face had an odd, unearthly beauty about it.
And then she turned and looked directly at Geoffrey, and her eyes widened.
Geoffrey forced himself to smile at her, and made a blessing with two fingers. How she must blame him for prising her out of her anchoress's seclusion!
She dropped her head.
Ferron watched this coldly. Then he nodded to the brothers. 'Release her.'
The brothers let go of the girl's arms. She slumped to her hands and knees, and Geoffrey saw her back for the first time. Bloody stripes were clearly visible through the thin cloth of her shift.
Geoffrey found himself on his feet. 'This is an outrage. She has been whipped!'
Ferron turned that stern glare on him. 'All due and lawful process has been followed. The girl was given thirty days' grace in which to make her full and voluntary confession. When the thirty days expired, she was encouraged further to speak.'
'You call this encouragement?'
'And when she still failed to speak, she has been brought before the court. Perhaps she will speak here. But you, friar, will keep your silence, or you will be ejected.'
Geoffrey sat, fuming.
Ferron fixed the girl with his cold judgemental stare. 'Agnes Wooler. You are guilty of wanton destruction. You have damaged an ancient project with holy and pious purposes: you have blunted the swords of our new crusade. And, further, you took many lives in the process.'
Geoffrey put in, 'No. No lives were lost. She gave the friars in that manufactory sufficient warning. Whatever you think of her actions against the engines, she's not guilty of murder.'
Ferron ignored him again. 'Further I put it to you, Agnes Wooler, that you have been complicit in the corruption of a supplicant at the court of Fernando and Isabel, whom God has chosen as His emissaries on earth in this dark time. I mean Cristobal Colon, the navigator.' And Ferron spoke evenly about the 'Chinese' body discovered on the shore at Palos. Colon had believed this to be a relic washed east from Asia. But the body had been examined by a physician, who argued from blood-pooling that its tattoos had been applied after death. Its strange eye-folds were artificial too, the result of a bit of surgery, again performed after death. 'The body was a fake, designed to baffle Cristobal Colon and to thwart the holy purpose of the monarchs.'
Ferron produced other bits of evidence, selected bits of scholarship fed to Colon. 'There's really quite a conspiracy, it seems, to pour this nonsense of westward voyages into Colon's head. And it can't be a coincidence that your destruction of God's engines happened to occur on the very day that Colon's brother Bartolomeo was there to see it.'
Geoffrey was depressed at how much Ferron knew. Piously cruel he might be, but Ferron was evidently no fool. He tried to protest. 'What on earth can this wretched English girl have to do with the goings-on at the royal court of Spain? She's spent most of her adult life in York, locked up in the cell of an anchoress!'
Ferron said smoothly, 'That's what we're here to find out. Now you are put to the question, Agnes Wooler. Unburden your soul. I want you to tell me first the names of your co-conspirators. And when you are cleansed of that, we can move on to the detail of your further sins.'
Agnes, shaking, raised her upper body so she was kneeling before Ferron. She would not reply.
One of Ferron's aides whispered in his ear. Ferron nodded. 'That's enough time.' But before he proceeded, he hesitated. He said to Geoffrey, 'We are not monsters, Geoffrey Cotesford, whatever you English think of us. Hardened by the war against the Muslims we may be, but we are civilised, and pious in all things. And there is a process I must now follow, laid down by the Grand Inquisitor and sanctioned by the monarchs: a process tested in the law and the eyes of God. A process of five steps, at any of which a penitent may turn back to God and spare herself further suffering.'
Geoffrey said nothing.
Ferron turned to Agnes. 'You refuse to speak, Agnes Wooler. You understand that if you do not cooperate, further proceedings will follow.' After waiting for Agnes to respond Ferron nodded to a clerk, who made a cross in a book. Evidently that warning was the first step of the process.
Ferron stood. 'Bring her,' he snapped to the brothers, and he led the way out of the room. The brothers took Agnes's arms, hauled her to her feet, and dragged her after the others.
The room was suddenly empty, save for Geoffrey. He stood, his heart hammering, and he hurried out of the room after the rest.
They walked along a short corridor, lined with little offices inside which more churchmen laboured at mounds of paperwork. Geoffrey was reminded again that the Inquisition was a marvel of bureaucracy as well as cruelty. None of the clerks looked up from their work as the English girl was dragged past.
They came to a spiral staircase, its steps worn stone slabs, and down it they went, down into the deeper dark. At the foot of the stair they came to another room, bigger but no more brightly lit than the court office above. There was no furniture here, but the room was dominated by two pieces of equipment: a table fitted with leather
