by Jennifer Loring

“I say that…he does not speak the truth.”

“You dare call a man of God a liar?”

Her shoulders tensed. She was so radiant in the aureate light of morning, so flawless despite the red welts and blackish contusions disfiguring her back, that it seemed she would sprout wings and fly back to Heaven. He envisioned her shoulder blades breaking the skin to reveal feathers of white and gold, the incomprehensible beauty of an angel taking flight. The priest smiled, but caught himself before anyone else noticed.

“Yes, he is a liar,” she said, and she was still but a human girl.

“To the courthouse with her! We must put her to the question at once.”

Her tears had dried, her face calm and composed once more as they thrust her back into the cart. The crowd jeered and shouted curses at her.

He accompanied the Inquisitor to the courthouse in the latter’s carriage.

“I was watching you,” he said. “You mustn’t let one’s youth or beauty soften your heart, for the devil uses it to charm the strongest of men.”

“I have no tenderness for evil,” Father Radcliff replied, looking straight ahead. “She was a faithful parishioner. I merely regret that she strayed.”

“Best to dispense with regret. We must have no sympathy for the devil.”

“For he has no sympathy for us,” murmured the priest, and nothing more.

#

She survived the first torture. Most did, without confession. The Inquisitor allowed her twenty-four hours in which to recover, and to speak to the priest.

“You could end the torture now,” he pleaded with her. “Only tell them what they want to hear!”

“And then I would truly be damned as a liar. They will burn me anyway, for things they say I should not feel.”

He hung his head. “My heart breaks,” he whispered. “God Himself has sent you to test me, and I have failed. I have failed us both. I do not deserve your mercy, or His.”

“You mustn’t let them see you like this. Be of good cheer, Father, for we will meet in Heaven again one day.”

He looked up at her dirt-smudged face, bruised but more beautiful than any of God’s wondrous creations. “May that day arrive sooner than later.”

She smiled and kissed his brow through the bars.

#

Most women, after the second torture, confessed. She repudiated the Inquisitor yet again. He invited Father Radcliff, who knew his every reaction would be carefully gauged, into the chamber for the third and final torture. The priest was certain he could not brave for long the sight of her disrobed and bound to the rack.

“In the name of God, confess!”

“No.”

A thumbscrew pinched her finger. She whimpered, bit down on her lower lip until it bled, but remained ever obstinate.

“Did you not poison your neighbor, Goodwife Oldham? Did you not try to poison this holy man while he walked in the woods?”

Her eyes glimmered with tears. “No.”

A fingernail, and the tiny bones beneath it, crunched and shattered, ripping from her a shriek so horrifying that forever onward, even in waking hours, he often heard it echo in his mind.

“Rebecca, confess!” he cried, hands over his ears. “Please confess to me!”

“No!” she screamed.

Father Radcliff ran up the staircase. He did not care what the Inquisitor or the archdeacon thought of him. More than one person broke beneath the weight of Rebecca’s torment, and he could attend it no longer. “He is very young,” he heard one of the torturers say as he fled for the church.

Then they released the thumbscrews and imprisoned her, with her ruined digits, to her final slumber before death.

#

Father Radcliff often walked the woods in the early spring evenings, after his church duties had been fulfilled. There was much to learn, as his elders were grooming him to be an inquisitor himself. One night he happened upon a small fire and a group of young women gathered around it, sharing news of births and deaths and all the things women were wont to speak of together. But at his approach they scattered in the natural fear that, should he identify them, the next stake erected in the Town Square would be theirs.

Only Rebecca stayed. She never missed a church service, and was recognized in the community as an expert in the healing arts. Lately there was talk that she had studied with a midwife, allegations whispered about town but not yet brought to the archdeacon’s attention. An only child, she’d been orphaned some years ago and inherited her father’s land. It was enough to make a literate and well-spoken woman the envy of her less fortunate peers. That and her extraordinary beauty, though she scarcely seemed aware of it. It had not, however, gone unnoticed by the young priest, who often found himself making any excuse to spend a few moments in her company. Too many moments, perhaps, stolen from others in need of his services.

“Hello, Father,” she said, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear.

“I’ve frightened your friends away.”

Her face blanched in the firelight. “It was a harmless gathering.”

“I am not questioning that. May I sit with you?”

“Of course, Father.” She shifted a little to her left, and he sat down beside her on the grass. The air smelled of wildflowers and new leaves, and wood smoke. “Father…it has happened.”

“What has?”

Rebecca placed her hands over her belly. He needed no further explanation.

“It is a sin in the eyes of God.”

“But is it a sin in yours?”

He looked away from her, to the blades of grass he grasped in his fist.

“I know they are turning against me, Father. I give them medicines, and birth their children, and yet the archdeacon demands they name me a witch. I see how Goody Oldham watches me from her window. I see her staring at me in church. She will accuse me, and spare herself.”

He nodded. “It has happened in every village to women like you.”

“Father…are you happy with the life you chose?”

He gazed into the flames as though they would give him the answer if only he looked hard enough. He had been the man of his household since his father’s death six years ago. The priesthood seemed his only escape from the rigorous life of a peasant. “My family is poor. What other life is there for me but this?”

“The one we might have had together. With our child.”

Father Radcliff tossed the grass into the fire. Not a day passed that he didn’t imagine such a life with Rebecca, raising a family and learning some trade with which to provide for them. A true father, not a fool who merely pretended to offer guidance and direction for those that depended upon him. How God must abhor him to dangle his dreams within his grasp, to give him a child he must deny.

“No,” he said, hoping to set his heart against her. Or to make her hate him, to make her purge the child so that nothing of him remained in her.

She patted his hand but did not speak another word as she rose to leave. He watched her, and all that could have been, walk away into the gathering darkness.

***END***