Free The Fan-Maker's Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet

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    The fish appeared to swell a little. However, there was progress. As the stench, more and more palpable, informed every particle of air, the letters, elusive yet seemingly infused with life, stuttered across the bright scales with greater precision until Landa was able to read:
    “Tophet!”
    “Tophet?” Melchor was as perplexed as he was astonished. “Tophet?” Had he heard the word before? He thought not .
    “Such as Isaiah’s Tophet: broad and deep. A pyre, Melchor. A fiery trench. This is what the fish, and our Lord, say we must prepare.”
    “But not to roast the fish!” Melchor cried in dismay. He did not wish to eat the fish, rotting as it was before his eyes. A number of birds, all black, had settled on the window ledge to gaze attentively at the corpse .
    “To roast heretics, what else? To roast pagans, stubborn as mules, mocking mysteries, worshiping stones, fornicating in the manner of hares, Visigoths, and Turks. For buggering their wives, as Mahomet did; for having no laws against bestiality; for going at it like Templars.”
    “Templars?”
    “In other words, for coupling in the manner of Cathars.”
    “Like snakes!”
    “Until now I melted them down in humble fires in twos and threes and fours. But an exemplary Tophet is in store: This is what the fish means.” A flock of birds, black as ink, as irrefutable as friars, carpeted the window ledge and the balcony .
    “Torment!” Melchor exclaimed, suddenly excited. “I believe the fish says ‘Torment.’ “Indeed, the letters, spilling this way and that, had shifted; shuddering like beaten metal, the body was strangely animate. “I fear,” Melchor whispered in awe, “that having spoken so eloquently, the fish is about to explode.”
    Landa made the sign of the cross with all five fingers before swaddling it well in its cloth .
    “Or is it my own heart,” Melchor whispered, just loud enough for Landa to hear, “that is wanting to explode?”
    “A thing said to happen to hearts bewitched…” Landa gazed at Melchor thoughtfully .
    And Melchor, letting out a cry and falling to his knees—knees already bruised and bloody from praying—took up the hem of Landa’s gown, weeping: “I must confess!”
    Hearing this, Landa scowled. Then, with exaggerated delicacy, he rested his fingertips on the top of Melchor’s shaved and greasy head .
    Barely audible, Melchor continued: “There is a woman…one of their small females…to tell the truth, not much bigger than a dwarf. But lovely. She has come each day this week to the gate with a gift of flowers. Yesterday, I approached to see if she is as bewitching from near as from far, and to see if she is real, not one of their sorcerous illusions. Never have I smelled anything as sweet as the flowers she carried—”
    “Tixzula,” Landa spat. “A seductive fragrance.”
    “Small as she is, she is wondrously comely—”
    “Smoke!” Landa pulled away from Melchor’s grasp. “Smoke vomited from the mouth of a snake!”
    “She is a dream, then!”
    “The whore is Kukum’s wife—or, rather, his widow. She thinks her husband is alive. She hopes the fragrance of the tixzula will soften my heart.”
    “She is marvelous fair,” Melchor wept. “I am mad with longing. This I say with shame!”
    “Fool! Do you fancy I am ignorant of your desires?”
    “Do not think I have not scourged myself,” Melchor cried, his knees oozing blood. “For the past week I have eaten green fruit and drunk brackish water! I do not sleep but each night work on a vast illuminated map of the Holy Land for the instruction of the many orphans in our care. And I am painting the procession to Calvary around the border as you asked—”
    “Good.”
    “—as well as the comprehensive map of the Yucatán, which, as we speak, becomes ever closer to the truth. Yet, although I exhaust myself and feel I am about to collapse beneath the weight of my humiliation, I—”
    “You cannot keep yourself from following