Guessing that this was some client who had not heard of Fonseca's death I was about to order that she should be dismissed, then bethought me that I might be of service to her or at the least forget some of my own trouble in listening to hers. So I bade him bring her in. Presently she came, a tall woman wrapped in a dark cloak that hid her face. I bowed and motioned to her to be seated, when suddenly she started and spoke.

'I asked to see Don Andres de Fonseca,' she said in a low quick voice.

'You are not he, senor.'

'Andres de Fonseca was buried to-day,' I answered. 'I was his a.s.sistant in his business and am his heir. If I can serve you in any way I am at your disposal.'

'You are young--very young,' she murmured confusedly, 'and the matter is terrible and urgent. How can I trust you?'

'It is for you to judge, senora.'

She thought a while, then drew off her cloak, displaying the robes of a nun.

'Listen,' she said. 'I must do many a penance for this night's work, and very hardly have I won leave to come hither upon an errand of mercy. Now I cannot go back empty-handed, so I must trust you. But first swear by thine blessed Mother of G.o.d that you will not betray me.'

'I give you my word,' I answered; 'if that is not enough, let us end this talk.'

'Do not be angry with me,' she pleaded; 'I have not left my convent walls for many years and I am distraught with grief. I seek a poison of the deadliest. I will pay well for it.'

'I am not the tool of murderers,' I answered. 'For what purpose do you wish the poison?'

'Oh! I must tell you--yet how can I? In our convent there dies to-night a woman young and fair, almost a girl indeed, who has broken the vows she took. She dies to-night with her babe--thus, oh G.o.d, thus! by being built alive into the foundations of the house she has disgraced. It is the judgment that has been pa.s.sed upon her, judgment without forgiveness or reprieve. I am the abbess of this convent--ask not its name or mine--and I love this sinner as though she were my daughter. I have obtained this much of mercy for her because of my faithful services to the church and by secret influence, that when I give her the cup of water before the work is done, I may mix poison with it and touch the lips of the babe with poison, so that their end is swift. I may do this and yet have no sin upon my soul. I have my pardon under seal. Help me then to be an innocent murderess, and to save this sinner from her last agonies on earth.'

I cannot set down the feelings with which I listened to this tale of horror, for words could not carry them. I stood aghast seeking an answer, and a dreadful thought entered my mind.

'Is this woman named Isabella de Siguenza?' I asked.

'That name was hers in the world,' she answered, 'though how you know it I cannot guess.'

'We know many things in this house, mother. Say now, can this Isabella be saved by money or by interest?'

'It is impossible; her sentence has been confirmed by the Tribunal of Mercy. She must die and within two hours. Will you not give the poison?'

'I cannot give it unless I know its purpose, mother. This may be a barren tale, and the medicine might be used in such a fashion that I should fall beneath the law. At one price only can I give it, and it is that I am there to see it used.'

She thought a while and answered: 'It may be done, for as it chances the wording of my absolution will cover it. But you must come cowled as a priest, that those who carry out the sentence may know nothing. Still others will know and I warn you that should you speak of the matter you yourself will meet with misfortune. The Church avenges itself on those who betray its secrets, senor.'

'As one day its secrets will avenge themselves upon the Church,' I answered bitterly. 'And now let me seek a fitting drug--one that is swift, yet not too swift, lest your hounds should see themselves baffled of the prey before all their devilry is done. Here is something that will do the work,' and I held up a phial that I drew from a case of such medicines. 'Come, veil yourself, mother, and let us be gone upon this "errand of mercy."'

She obeyed, and presently we left the house and walked away swiftly through the crowded streets till we came to the ancient part of the city along the river's edge. Here the woman led me to a wharf where a boat was in waiting for her. We entered it, and were rowed for a mile or more up the stream till the boat halted at a landing-place beneath a high wall. Leaving it, we came to a door in the wall on which my companion knocked thrice. Presently a shutter in the woodwork was drawn, and a white face peeped through the grating and spoke. My companion answered in a low voice, and after some delay the door was opened, and I found myself in a large walled garden planted with orange trees. Then the abbess spoke to me.

'I have led you to our house,' she said. 'If you know where you are, and what its name may be, for your own sake I pray you forget it when you leave these doors.'

I made no answer, but looked round the dim and dewy garden.

Here it was doubtless that de Garcia had met that unfortunate who must die this night. A walk of a hundred paces brought us to another door in the wall of a long low building of Moorish style. Here the knocking and the questioning were repeated at more length. Then the door was opened, and I found myself in a pa.s.sage, ill lighted, long and narrow, in the depths of which I could see the figures of nuns flitting to and fro like bats in a tomb. The abbess walked down the pa.s.sage till she came to a door on the right which she opened. It led into a cell, and here she left me in the dark. For ten minutes or more I stayed there, a prey to thoughts that I had rather forget. At length the door opened again, and she came in, followed by a tall priest whose face I could not see, for he was dressed in the white robe and hood of the Dominicans that left nothing visible except his eyes.

'Greeting, my son,' he said, when he had scanned me for a while. 'The abbess mother has told me of your errand. You are full young for such a task.'

'Were I old I should not love it better, father. You know the case. I am asked to provide a deadly drug for a certain merciful purpose. I have provided that drug, but I must be there to see that it is put to proper use.'

'You are very cautious, my son. The Church is no murderess. This woman must die because her sin is flagrant, and of late such wickedness has become common. Therefore, after much thought and prayer, and many searchings to find a means of mercy, she is condemned to death by those whose names are too high to be spoken. I, alas, am here to see the sentence carried out with a certain mitigation which has been allowed by the mercy of her chief judge. It seems that your presence is needful to this act of love, therefore I suffer it. The mother abbess has warned you that evil dogs the feet of those who reveal the secrets of the Church. For your own sake I pray you to lay that warning to heart.'

'I am no babbler, father, so the caution is not needed. One word more.

This visit should be well feed, the medicine is costly.'

'Fear not, physician,' the monk answered with a note of scorn in his voice; 'name your sum, it shall be paid to you.'

'I ask no money, father. Indeed I would pay much to be far away to-night. I ask only that I may be allowed to speak with this girl before she dies.'

'What!' he said, starting, 'surely you are not that wicked man? If so, you are bold indeed to risk the sharing of her fate.'

'No, father, I am not that man. I never saw Isabella de Siguenza except once, and I have never spoken to her. I am not the man who tricked her but I know him; he is named Juan de Garcia.'

'Ah!' he said quickly, 'she would never tell his real name, even under threat of torture. Poor erring soul, she could be faithful in her unfaith. Of what would you speak to her?'

'I wish to ask her whither this man has gone. He is my enemy, and I would follow him as I have already followed him far. He has done worse by me and mine than by this poor girl even. Grant my request, father, that I may be able to work my vengeance on him, and with mine the Church's also.'

'"Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord; "I will repay." Yet it may be, son, that the Lord will choose you as the instrument of his wrath.

An opportunity shall be given you to speak with her. Now put on this dress'--and he handed me a white Dominican hood and robe--'and follow me.'

'First,' I said, 'let me give this medicine to the abbess, for I will have no hand in its administering. Take it, mother, and when the time comes, pour the contents of the phial into a cup of water. Then, having touched the mouth and tongue of the babe with the fluid, give it to the mother to drink and be sure that she does drink it. Before the bricks are built up about them both will sleep sound, never to wake again.'

'I will do it,' murmured the abbess; 'having absolution I will be bold, and do it for love and mercy's sake!'

'Your heart is too soft, sister. Justice is mercy,' said the monk with a sigh. 'Alas for the frailty of the flesh that wars against the spirit!'

Then I clothed myself in the ghastly looking dress, and they took lamps and motioned to me to follow them.

CHAPTER X

THE Pa.s.sING OF ISABELLA DE SIGUENZA

Silently we went down the long pa.s.sage, and as we went I saw the eyes of the dwellers in this living tomb watch us pa.s.s through the gratings of their cell doors. Little wonder that the woman about to die had striven to escape from such a home back to the world of life and love! Yet for that crime she must perish. Surely G.o.d will remember the doings of such men as these priests, and the nation that fosters them. And, in deed, He does remember, for where is the splendour of Spain to-day, and where are the cruel rites she gloried in? Here in England their fetters are broken for ever, and in striving to bind them fast upon us free Englishmen she is broken also--never to be whole again.

At the far end of the pa.s.sage we found a stair down which we pa.s.sed. At its foot was an iron-bound door that the monk unlocked and locked again upon the further side. Then came another pa.s.sage hollowed in the thickness of the wall, and a second door, and we were in the place of death.

It was a vault low and damp, and the waters of the river washed its outer wall, for I could hear their murmuring in the silence. Perhaps the place may have measured ten paces in length by eight broad. For the rest its roof was supported by ma.s.sive columns, and on one side there was a second door that led to a prison cell. At the further end of this gloomy den, that was dimly lighted by torches and lamps, two men with hooded heads, and draped in coa.r.s.e black gowns, were at work, silently mixing lime that sent up a hot steam upon the stagnant air. By their sides were squares of dressed stone ranged neatly against the end of the vault, and before them was a niche cut in the thickness of the wall itself, shaped like a large coffin set upon its smaller end. In front of this niche was placed a ma.s.sive chair of chestnut wood. I noticed also that two other such coffin-shaped niches had been cut in this same wall, and filled in with similar blocks of whitish stone. On the face of each was a date graved in deep letters. One had been sealed up some thirty years before, and one hard upon a hundred.

These two men were the only occupants of the vault when we entered it, but presently a sound of soft and solemn singing stole down the second pa.s.sage. Then the door was opened, the mason monks ceased labouring at the heap of lime, and the sound of singing grew louder so that I could catch the refrain. It was that of a Latin hymn for the dying. Next through the open door came the choir, eight veiled nuns walking two by two, and ranging themselves on either side of the vault they ceased their singing. After them followed the doomed woman, guarded by two more nuns, and last of all a priest bearing a crucifix. This man wore a black robe, and his thin half-frenzied face was uncovered. All these and other things I noticed and remembered, yet at the time it seemed to me that I saw nothing except the figure of the victim. I knew her again, although I had seen her but once in the moonlight. She was changed indeed, her lovely face was fuller and the great tormented eyes shone like stars against its waxen pallor, relieved by the carmine of her lips alone.

Still it was the same face that some eight months before I had seen lifted in entreaty to her false lover. Now her tall shape was wrapped about with grave clothes over which her black hair streamed, and in her arms she bore a sleeping babe that from time to time she pressed convulsively to her breast.

On the threshold of her tomb Isabella de Siguenza paused and looked round wildly as though for help, scanning each of the silent watchers to find a friend among them. Then her eye fell upon the niche and the heap of smoking lime and the men who guarded it, and she shuddered and would have fallen had not those who attended her led her to the chair and placed her in it--a living corpse.

Now the dreadful rites began. The Dominican father stood before her and recited her offence, and the sentence that had been pa.s.sed upon her, which doomed her, 'to be left alone with G.o.d and the child of your sin, that He may deal with you as He sees fit.'* To all of this she seemed to pay no heed, nor to the exhortation that followed. At length he ceased with a sigh, and turning to me said:

'Draw near to this sinner, brother, and speak with her before it is too late.'