Link Arms with Toads! (14 page)

He plunged into the pit, struck the net and settled there. I emerged from my sanctuary, reached up and pressed the palm of my hand over his mouth. Then I helped him down and led him into the extra chamber. The tinkling of the bells finally ceased and it sounded as if a pool of agitated water was calm again. While we waited for the dungeon to be expanded back to its maximum size and for the lantern to descend, I shared the secrets of the architect with my new friend. I explained the design of the pit. Its true depth was fifty feet but its apparent depth was closer to three hundred. Just under one third of the distance from the lip to its base, fifteen feet down, lay the mirror and the mouth of the horizontal tunnel, the passage unknown to the Inquisitors. It was the length of
this
tunnel that gave the impression of a dizzying vertical distance to any observer from above, because they were really looking into the mirror, which reflected the interior of the supplementary passage at right angles. The arrangement of the peepholes in the ceiling was not absolutely symmetrical. The one above the mouth of the pit was slightly offset. Thus while it appeared to any Inquisitor that his line of sight was perpendicular to the shaft, he was actually able to stare only into the mirror, and that in relative darkness; and this optical trick was sufficient to satisfy the entire order that the pit was absolutely lethal.

We remained together in the sanctuary, eating rats and scratching each other, in an intimate but chaste fashion, until we were joined by a third victim. Because of the political situation in the upper world, the Inquisition was growing frantic. It was more eager than ever to blame its troubles on men with ideas. There was a glut of special heretics. Again the secret door in the dungeon was opened. Stumble, pendulum, hot walls. He was a big fellow and I thought the bells on the net might jingle themselves longer and louder than any water could. But the lantern was lowered and raised in short order. Our new companion was strong and his intake of rats was enormous. Feeling the power in his shoulders I began to toy with an astounding notion. I shared this idea reluctantly, fearing it would be greeted with derision, but it was received with cautious enthusiasm. It was an authentic chance. We had hope again.

There are certain fiestas in this land of Spain, which is a kingdom of performers and acrobats, which involve men making towers and pyramids with their bodies. They stand on each other’s shoulders. There is skill and stamina and determination to succeed; and these displays take place in town squares or in wide courtyards. Never in a pit. But there is no rule to prohibit prisoners from balancing in a like manner until the highest man may reach up and grip the lip of the horizontal tunnel and pull himself into it. And even if such a rule existed, who better to break it than a troupe of special heretics, acrobats of the intellect? I had already contemplated taking down the net and turning it into a rope, but what was there to cast at? The mirror would not support my weight and the mouth of the escape tunnel was free from projections. The rope could not catch on anything. No, the only way was to send up a man first and have him lower it down for the others. The lightest would be first; and as more joined him in the tunnel, so more arms might be employed to pull up the heavier men.

This plan became the guiding principle of our lives. The distance from the base of the pit to the mouth of the tunnel, as may be calculated from the measurements I quoted earlier, was approximately thirty-five feet. Seven men were enough to reach that height. We had three; soon we were four. We prayed for others. The rate of executions increased. Special heretics almost became common. Not every prisoner cast into this dungeon took his place as one of our number. Several did not escape the swinging blade. Then we pitied the pendulum less, because it wept tears for itself, saving us the bother, and these tears were of blood; or so we supposed. The hunks of bisected torso were reclaimed by the Inquisition and the crescent of steel was hastily blessed, then drawn up. We remained profoundly silent at these times, though not once did anyone peer over the edge of the pit, or even approach it within a dozen steps.

We continued to dine exclusively on rats, but some of us deliberately ate less than others. We wanted a gradation of strength in our human tower. The fellow at the bottom would be expected to bear an enormous amount of weight without buckling. He gorged himself while the rest of us ate in relative moderation or starved ourselves to varying degrees. A fifth and then sixth recruit was added to our company. This last was an inhabitant of Corsica who brought us news of the situation in Europe. The man who was rampaging across the continent, overthrowing regimes and looting museums, was one of his countrymen. Even Toledo was threatened with invasion. We rejoiced at the thought of the destruction of the Inquisition and also at the realisation that one more prisoner was all we required to make good our escape.

When he came, we would lose no time. Turning a net into a rope is easy. So too the rest of the plan. The strongest man lifts the next strongest onto his shoulders, while the third climbs up them and takes his own position, ready to receive the fourth, who has higher to climb to reach
his
shoulders and wait for the fifth. The sixth was myself. The newcomer, rope looped about his shoulder, persuaded of the excellence of our scheme and wishing to contribute to our fiesta of liberation, climbs up all of us, one at a time, his fingers jabbing our uncomplaining throats and mouths, to my shoulders. Here, stretching up, the lip of the tunnel is just within his reach. With a mighty effort he pulls himself up and enters the mouth of the passage, then turns and lowers the rope to me. Joining him I help anchor the rope for the next man down, and he helps for the next, and so on, until all seven of us are inside the tunnel.

Along it we must crawl to the circular blue curtain that gives the appearance of being a pool of water from a distance, especially when it ripples in a breeze from one of the ventilation shafts behind it. As we pass under it we may discern that the cloth is really double; that there is a second curtain which might briefly reveal itself if the first parts in too strong a current of air, and that on this other drapery is painted, with formidable skill, a few broken spars and bursting bubbles. Beyond this the labyrinth of vaults and passages and stairways, and if luck is with us, emergence in the ruined house and the clean air of Toledo, on the Paseo de la Ronda, at the edge of the city, beyond the smokes, and a short walk across the bridge of Saint Martin over the River Tajo, and freedom and open country and wayside inns and wine and music and señoritas, all the best things we have missed, and sunlight and the stars and friendship and the celebration of natural and simple pleasures.

Yes, we waited for the man who would make all this possible. We waited; and then you arrived. You were the seventh, our saviour. You were silent when they deposited you in the dungeon. Clearly you had swooned during your trial, perhaps as the sentence was uttered. Your body was carried down the obscure passage and abandoned in this miniature hell. The robes of the Inquisitors were no longer white. Too much exposure to coal dust, soot, blood and sulphur had stained them the colour of a cesspit. With the wars raging around the city, the hysteria of the order had reached its peak. Like a fever it was due to break, but in the meantime the sheer number of heretics to be dealt with, both normal and special, left no time to clean their garments. When you awoke you wandered about. What else might you do?

First you completed two circuits of the dungeon, going one way and then the other. I suspect you felt a strange relief you were not within a
tomb
. Next you lurched directly across the middle of the chamber. We reasoned this from your footsteps and prayed for you to fall into the pit, but you stumbled just before the edge and discovered it. We dared not call up. Then you did something that nobody before you had ever attempted. You dislodged a piece of masonry from the inside of the pit and let it drop. The stone bounced and rattled between the walls, making the hole sound deeper than it was. It struck the net and set in motion the bells that chime like water. A trapdoor opened in the ceiling and the beam of a lantern flashed down. The Inquisition wanted to check if you had fallen. You had not. The trapdoor was closed.

Convulsed with horror, you crawled back to the relative safety of the wall. After a time you fell into an exhausted sleep. Then we heard them enter through the secret door and leave the drugged food and water that is one of their most tasteless tricks. You consumed it and under the effect of the unknown substances you did not feel them return and manipulate your body. They strapped you to a frame and lowered the pendulum ever so slowly over you. Not once did you scream; not once did we cry out any words of encouragement. We heard the slide of the blade through stale air, more delicate and relaxing than it ought to be. But you were not relaxed. At this time we knew nothing about your character. Would you escape the blade or would you be cleaved in twain? We hoped for the former but we had seriously depleted the number of rats in the preceding weeks. And they were the only way out of the bindings that held the victim to the wooden frame. Sharp little teeth.

But you were as resourceful as us and there
were
enough rats. You smeared the remnants of your food over the bandages, as had we, and the rodents gnawed you free just in time. Now came the final stage of your imprisonment and a considerable amplification of our hopes, for no man had ever eluded what was to happen next. The pendulum was drawn up by unseen hands in conjectured disgust. The coal bunkers were plundered and the braziers loaded with fuel. A flame was puffed into a blaze with bellows. The heat was transmitted along the bolts to the metal panels on the inside of the dungeon. Gradually these grew brighter and your place of incarceration became visible to you. Then you noticed the small gap running along the base of each wall and you guessed that this was to enable them to move together without jamming on the stone floor. For despite the slime, the clockwork mechanism was not powerful enough to overcome
that
amount of friction.

Here we must mention the fact that the Inquisitors regularly dusted the sculpted figures on the metal plates with sulphur. Thus they glowed in a more hellish fashion than they might otherwise have done, serving as a prediction of that realm where the souls of the prisoners were shortly to find themselves for eternity. One consequence of this that the Inquisition had not anticipated was the fumes that rose up from the walls and passed through the peepholes and swirled among the torturers above. Sulphur fumes are toxic and doubtlessly contributed in a small way to the dulling and disordering of their wits, so that they were just a little less capable of guessing the existence of survivors in the pit itself. And yet in no way did this mean we might reduce our precautions and call out to you not to be frightened.

As the walls moved closer, you lurched around in a dreadful panic. The heat seared your flesh and eyes. You endured this pain for as long as you imagined yourself capable. Then you decided to sacrifice yourself to the cool waters of the pit. You tottered on the rim and looked down. Our hearts rejoiced! You were coming to us! The last section of our tower was ready to jump into our hands. But something else happened. Our plans were spoiled. A freak accident and a misunderstanding was the ruin of us. The stone you dislodged earlier and let fall had shattered the mirror. The real base of the pit was visible to you. This should have filled you with joy. You should have greeted our presence with silent jubilation and leapt in willingly. But we made a mistake. You recoiled in terror.

We were frustrated by this circumstance but we shrugged it off. You would have to come to us one way or another, for when the dungeon was completely closed there was no place to stand. We knew this. You did everything within your limited power to postpone this moment as long as possible. A few minutes ago, you had been willing to throw yourself into the pit of your own free will; but now only the unstoppable pressure of scalding metal would ever accomplish what we desired. You shrieked but the walls did not pause. Our hearts swelled with ecstasy. One more step and you would be ours! The missing piece of the tower would belong to us. With the rope in your hands you would climb up to the hidden tunnel and help us to also reach that level. Together we would test our further luck in the labyrinth, where we might perish by taking a wrong turn, quickly or slowly, depending on what doom we encountered, or else pass through safely to freedom and happiness and life,
the most protracted doom of all
. But this irony troubled us not.

Now there was no space on which your feet might balance. The closing walls had passed over every inch of solid floor. There was only the pit left. You were in the very process of beginning to fall. Gravity had claimed you. It remained only for your body to gather velocity in a downward direction. Although you had not yet started to move, the balance of forces working on you had changed. One blink of an eye and you would be committed to us. Surely it was too late for our hopes to be denied? How could such an inconceivable thing happen? But it did. There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught your own as you fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was the arm of General Lasalle, or to give his full name, Antoine Chevalier Louis Colbert. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

All very well for you, but for us a disaster! They carried you out and took care of you. But they did not hear our cries. They sealed the entrance to the dungeon with explosives. We hoped you might alert your new friends to our plight but clearly you did not. Nobody came to rescue us. We are still here. Possibly you were too traumatised to ever speak again. Or else you do not believe we are men. Yes, this second option is more likely. When you voluntarily approached the pit to hurl yourself in and looked down, what did you see? What was it that drove you away, screeching? We were impatient for you to join us. We had already taken down the net and converted it into a rope. To save you from breaking your neck, to ensure you a landing no less soft than if it was still in place, we clustered together, all six of us, and held up our arms to catch you.
That
is what you saw when you gazed over the rim. With the mirror broken, you observed the pit as it really was; but this shattering of one illusion merely created another.