To the Indies (20 page)

They were at the summit of the beach now, with the town before them — a hundred or so of brown huts built of timber and leaves.

“Where are all the people?” asked the Admiral.

“They are awaiting Your Excellency.”

Someone in the
Adelantado’s
following had run on ahead, up one of the straight narrow lanes between the houses. They could see him wave his arm as he reached the farther corner, and they followed him. Pigs and fowls were rooting among the filth underfoot, but no human creature was to be seen. Now they emerged from the lane into a wide open space. The houses were on three sides, on the fourth was the forest. Two trumpets brayed in the heated air; there was a long roll of drums.

It took the sun-dazzled eye some time to note all the details. The three sides of the square, other than the one in the middle of which they stood, were lined with naked Indians, packed in dense masses; there must have been thousands of them, five or six thousand. At intervals before and behind the crowd stood Spaniards, conspicuous in their armor, all at the salute while the trumpets blew and while the Admiral returned the compliment.

“There is a pavilion for Your Excellency,” said the
Adelantado
— close beside where they had emerged was a flat-roofed, open-fronted shed of leaves, in which stood a row of chairs, and beside which the colors of Spain and of the Admiral drooped in the heat. But that was not all which the eye slowly took in. Standing in the square were a whole series of lofty stakes, on which hung chains. And round the foot of every stake was a pile of wood. Rich counted them; there were sixteen stakes, each with its chains and faggots. He felt a little chill, for he had an irrational dislike of burnings — he had witnessed very few. The Indian woman was trembling, he could see. There was appeal in her eyes as they met his.

“The ceremony will begin now,” said the
Adelantado
, ushering his brother to the central chair with the utmost formality.”Have I Your Excellency’s permission to sit?”

“I don’t like this business, Bartholomew,” said the Admiral, “I used to think them very harmless people. Must it go on?”

“They are relapsed heretics,” said the Dominican, “It is God’s law that they should burn.”

“I’ve kept five thousand Indians herded here all day,” said the
Adelantado
, “expressly to see this. What would be the effect if I let them go?”

“But if it were I who pardoned them . . .” said the Admiral. “What have they done? Is their guilt certain?”

“They are blasphemers as well as relapsed heretics,” explained the Dominican. “After they had accepted baptism they not merely relapsed into idolatry. They burned down a chapel, and they broke the holy vessels and images to pieces.”

“Did they know what they were doing?”

“Having listened once to our teaching they must have known. But even if they did not, it makes no difference to their guilt.”

“But why?” asked the Admiral. “Why did they do it?”

“The devil prompted them,” said the Dominican. “They were in rebellion over the gold quota,” said Bartholomew behind his hand.

“They are like children,” said the Admiral. “Trying to do the wickedest thing they can think of.”

“And they succeeded,” said the Dominican. “Children can be guilty of heresy and relapse.”

That was perfectly true, as Rich knew well. With his training in Roman law he found it hard to hear of condemnation for a crime committed without guilty intent — this was one of the points over which Roman law and Church law disagreed — but at the same time it was heresy to question the principles of the Church, and he had no intention of being guilty of heresy himself. He simply could not argue on this point, and he resolutely kept his eyes from meeting the pleading glance of the Indian woman’s.

“It is a golden opportunity,” said the
Adelantado
, “of teaching these people a real lesson. I have given instructions that the heretics are not to be strangled at the stake. Perhaps then those that see them die will learn what it means to incur our wrath.”

“You misunderstand the intentions of the Church, Don Bartholomew,” said the Dominican, sternly. “This is not intended as a punishment; it is to save these poor people’s souls that they must pass through the fire.”

“It coincides all the same with the needs of government,” said the
Adelantado
, complacently.

“We are saving sixteen souls today,” returned the Dominican. “We are not trying to make the collection of the gold quota easier.”

A drum was beating in a measured tone up at the citadel. The victims were about to be brought down; Rich realized that any intervention in his power must be made at once.

“There are sixteen souls to be saved,” he said, “but as a matter of pure expediency in God’s cause, Reverend Sir, might it not be better to risk the loss of these sixteen in the hope of winning many more?”

“How do you mean?” asked the Dominican; his black brows approached each other, and his eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze on Rich.

“Perhaps if the lives of these sixteen were spared the rejoicing would be so great that many more souls would be won to God.”

“Perhaps — and perhaps there would be many doomed to hell. These thousands who witness this act of faith will take care in future to keep heretical thoughts out of their minds. They will pay closer attention to the teaching of the Church. They will have a glimpse of what hell is like. No, sir, there is no substance in your argument. And it is an evil thing to gamble in human salvation.”

“Don’t you think there is something in what the learned Doctor says?” asked the Admiral.

“No, Your Excellency. A thousand times no. They burn, so that their souls may be saved and so that a thousand other souls may not be imperiled.”

The procession was filing into the square. A friar bore a crucifix at the head of it, and following him a dozen Spaniards herded the victims along, pricking them with their swords’ points to force them to walk. The resources of the island had been sufficient to provide yellow fools’ coats, gaudily daubed with red symbols, for the victims, whose hands were tied behind them. One of them screamed at the sight of the stakes; two of them collapsed into the dust of the square, writhing there until the escort kicked them to their feet again. The Indian woman beside Rich screamed too. She ran round between the Admiral and his deputy and flung herself on the earth before them, one hand on the knee of each of them, frantically jabbering the while.

“What does she say?” asked the Admiral.

“She wants us to spare these people,” explained his brother. “Anacaona, don’t be a fool.”

Anacaona lifted a face slobbered with tears, her beautiful mouth all distorted. She was trying to talk Spanish, but Indian words tumbled from her lips as well.

“She says some of these men are her brothers,” went on Bartholomew. “She means cousins by that — it is the same word to them. But every Indian is everyone else’s cousin, thanks to their mothers’ habits.”

Anacaona bowed her head in the dust before them, her shoulders shaking under the blue velvet, before she lifted face and hands again to beg for mercy. There was a low moaning from all round the square, through which could be heard the rattle of chains as one man after another was fastened to the stakes.

“Can we not commute the punishment, as an act of grace, by virtue of the powers I hold from Their Highnesses?” said the Admiral. “The dungeons, or the quarries? Would not that be sufficient?”

“Does not your heart tell you it would not, Your Excellency?” retorted the Dominican. “And I must remind you that not even Their Highnesses can interfere with an act of faith.”

“Stop that noise, Anacaona,” said Bartholomew. “Here, you two, here. Take this woman to my house and keep her there.”

Two Spaniards of the guard beside the pavilion dragged Anacaona away. To every stake now a victim was chained, fourteen men and two women. Already the torch was being borne from pile to pile; the man who had screamed was still screaming — they could hear his chains rattle as he strove against them.

“
Laetabitur justus cum viderit vindictam
,” said the Dominican solemnly. “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance.”

That quotation from the Psalms had been given its full weight by Saint Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of Dominicans. But Rich thought that Saint Thomas must have given it too much weight — or else he himself was not of the just who could rejoice. Smoke was issuing from the piles of wood now; in one or two of them the sticks were already crackling and banging with the flames. Rich, looking against his will, saw one of the women try to move her feet away from the heat that burned them. He tore his glance away, staring up at the blue evening sky as he stood behind the Admiral’s chair. But he could not shut his nostrils to the stench that drifted to them, nor close his ears to the horrible sounds that filled the square. He felt faint and ill and oppressed with guilt. Saint Bernardino of Sienna had pointed out that just as harmonious singing demands deep voices as well as high, so God’s harmony demands the bellowings of the damned to complete it. But these bellowings and screams caused him no pleasure, and even did very much the reverse. He feared lest his faith were shaken, lest his Christianity were unsound, and this weakness of his might be a proof of it.

He tried to tell himself of Saint Gregory’s comment upon a text of Saint Ambrose’s, pointing out that as Saint Peter cut off a man’s ear, which Christ restored, so must the Church smite off the ears of those who will not hear, for Christ to restore them. But his fiercest concentration upon his authorities did not relieve his senses of the assaults made upon them, did not give strength to his weak legs or solidity to his watery bowels. He feared for his soul.