Ignacio de Silva
November, 1411. It is sunny but cold. Arctic winds are sweeping down the coast of the Iberian Peninsula heralding the arrival of winter’s brutality in Spain. The season is welcomed by starvation, disease, and intolerance. Icy gusts howl through the weathered boards of San Loretta, the ramshackle hospital in back of the church. It is quiet in the deficient infirmary; there are no visitors for the disease-ravaged bodies that will soon meet their end of life.
In the room next to the administrator’s office, Ignacio de Silva is delirious. A cyclical fever has left him emaciated in a pool of his stinky sweat. He is hallucinating, reliving a mixture of memories, fears, and fantasies. The soldier turns in his sickbed with only one thought on his mind, revenge.
Being here near death, but on the wrong side, was a result of an idiot farm boy thinking he was saving his sister from assault. As a result of a series of drunken, bizarre mishaps, Ignacio found his own knife sticking out his abdomen. He has vowed the bitterness of the end of life for that strumpet of a wash-girl and her warbling little brother. His mind goes to vengeance like a tongue pushing at the tender hole of a missing tooth.
For the young Ignacio de Silva, whose future lies as a captain in the Guard of Aragon, fifteenth century home life was, thanks to dad, an awful place, and a wonderful place, thanks to mom. He was one of a variety of brothers, sisters, cousins and a few uncles, and one infant great–aunt, that all lived communally with six or seven adults on a farm not far from Seville on the Atlantic coast of Spain.
Ignacio was not liked. There was something in his face when he spoke that most people found repellant, a nervous tick which curled his lip up on one side. Slight of build with narrow black eyes that maintained a furtive demeanor, he suffered a long time as a youthful victim, the first in line to receive the abuse of bullies. He quickly embraced their cruelty, as childhood requires, for, after all, who isn’t a survivor from the wreck of childhood? The taunts and the beatings he received from the older children, he inflicted on those smaller, with severe reverence, churchlike. And so, he became feared.
No one took his side. He was less raised and more hammered into shape. But in the struggle to survive, he discovered that he could say, ‘Yes, I am smarter than you, and everyone else.’ And when he was alone, his most distinct feeling was of disappearing.
Ignacio’s father often provided a particular physical education and was never, ever, kind to his son. One night, when Ignacio was ten, his father and uncle, both drunk, got into a terrible fight. Screaming curses and threats, the snarling man chased Ignacio into the cold January night. It was around the time when his cousin, Leon, died. Ignacio knew the terror and the beating he was about to suffer, and so he ran and did not return for three days. For two nights, using a goat head shaped charm that he had stolen from a dead body, he educated himself on the internal organs of frogs and those of a small rat. The bauble had an unusually sharp edge that Ignacio used to eviscerate specimens, some not yet quite dispatched. At dawn, he spoke lovingly to the birds that had come to feed on the entrails. Thanks Dad.
For some inexplicable reason, as unknowable as trying to answer the question, ‘why does a person dream’, Ignacio’s mother, Alma Maria, adored Ignacio. There was nothing smart about that for her. She didn’t admire anything about him, she never believed he did anything of merit, she even thought he had an ugly, cur-like face. However, she simply had an overwhelming sense of well-being when in his presence. She actually felt alive. And so she doted on him and assuaged his wounded psyche. No one could figure it out, least of all Ignacio.
The soldier turns in his sickbed, sparking an intense shooting pain which highlights the single thought on his mind - revenge. As he savors plans of future cruelty, he remembers his childhood.
One Sunday, when Ignacio was five, in town with his mother after the market, they walked to the back of the church. A large group of people had gathered around a wooden platform near a stone wall. The yard filled, and as was her wont, Alma Maria cajoled and muscled her way to the front, pushing the boy ahead, “Here, let the lad have a good look.” Now Ignacio could better witness the coming blessings.
On the large, cross-shaped platform was a stake anchored in a pile of stones, heaped with dry wood and bales of straw. At that moment, several men dragged a girl up the stairs, onto the platform and over to the stake.
The remainder of the day was seared into Ignacio’s memory. When he returned to the farm he told his younger cousin, Leon, what he saw.
Ignacio relived the day as if in a trance:
“…on to the platform this girl, well I guess it was a girl, maybe it was a lady. They tied her up to the post with chains. The man next to me said it was because they didn’t want to waste good rope burning it. Mother pointed stuff out by turning my face with her hand, so she didn’t have to bend down. Everybody was bumping and shoving and whistling and jumping up and down. It was really scary.
Then the monks come up to her and said something about Jesus and power things. They waved a few wands and magic stuff and then got off. The big stick she was chained to had wood and straw all around, really piled high, bigger than this,” and Ignacio stands tall with his arms raised. “And some old lady brings her own stupid little stick and puts it on the pile and everyone cheers. Mother laughed and said, ‘Let’s hope its wet’. We had a good view. Then it stopped raining, and everyone cheered again.
All of a sudden, a line of at least a hundred monks closed in from all sides, and they’re all chanting together, real low, magic words in Latin, and ‘You will die’. And they’re holding candles and crosses and swinging the smoke pot.” Leon says to himself, ‘censer’.Ignacio continues,“The monk with the big hat goes up to the girl and shouts something at her, telling her she’s a witch. And then behind him a big man with his cowl up, and you could only see his eyes, and he’s got a torch really burning. And then the monk with the hat turns and tells the crowd, “Its her own fault,” and walks off.
The torch man goes up to the girl, and I could see her, she was pretty, and the man raises his arms real high, turns in a circle, and laughs. He laughs real loud and long and then he starts walking around the straw and wood and putting it on fire with the torch. The people are laughing too, and shouting stuff for him to do. Pretty soon he’s done and he gets off too.”
Little Leon sitting cross-leg on a large stone, rubs his hands on his thighs and adjusts his body. He had heard about this from the older children, but never like this. Now he is being let in on the secrets.
Ignacio continues, “Then the smoke makes everybody crazy cause they know it’s lit, and then there’s crackling as the hay burns, and the fire kicks up, and they’re screaming and pushing up on us to get closer. And then they can’t see through the smoke and they start coughing and choking and everybody is still screaming, calling her a whore, saying they could smell her. I couldn’t smell her, but I held my breath anyway so I didn’t get her inside me. That’s when my mother tells me to watch close cause her blood is going to boil and explode out her body. She saw that happen before. And it did. Pwoosh, blood all over the place.
The girl screamed a long time. People were pretending that they were her, twisting and swooping, and dance-dying. The fire was really big, and hot. We were too close. Then it was over, the girl was just gone, and we went home.”
Leon is thinking how glad he is that he wasn’t there.
The pain has heightened and Ignacio is hallucinating, reliving a mixture of memories, fears, and fantasies from his childhood. He sees himself playing by a creek with his cousin, Leon. He is catching frogs that burst in his hands, their exploding blood and organs blanketing him, as Leon laughs. His delusion morphs into a murder of blackbirds, flapping in a crackling crescendo of wings and caws, which in turn devolves into the scene most hated in his life - his father in a maniacal laughing rage as he beats and rapes his younger sister.
Ignacio wakes from the macabre visions, his tunic soaked in his stinking sweat, his mouth gagged with bile. The wound in his abdomen has closed and the bacteria normal to infection has been defeated, victims of Ignacio’s inner wrath. Although he has received ‘last rites’ from Father Baragio twice, Ignacio’s tenacity, cultivated in his rancid childhood, has saved his life.
Ignacio has grown tall, still with those lifeless, shark’s eyes, and the nervous tick which curls his lip when he speaks. His thirty-year-old bones are infused with prejudice and sanctimoniousness, and he is careful not to make enemies, or at least, to choose his enemies among the defenseless. Yes, there was something about this man, something built up in a thick black clump, barely held in check, something that clattered and crackled within him, as if at any moment there might be an explosion.
Ignacio starts his search for the despised brother and sister at their farm.True to his cunning nature, he avoids a false trail they had set, and he heads south, to the port, and seeks the person most likely to have the information he wants, the gravedigger.
Ignacio creeps through the port like a big spider. “I am back,” he thinks. His eyes shine a satanic light. As he tramps through the muddy streets. He knows where best he might find Juan Abreu, the gravedigger, a geek-like man with a grizzly face and stick-out ears. His three wined-stained front teeth, are broken at different angles, so that when he speaks, his high pitched, scratchy voice, whistles.
Ignacio sees him alone on the pier, and appearing friendly, approaches. He walks with a slide in his step, one arm tucked in close to guard the wound in his side, watching Juan Abreu through heavy lids.The grave digger stiffens as Ignacio’s gaze circles and absorbs his shape, and to Juan, the captain seems to be stepping back when coming forward, as if wary that something might get behind him. Abreu, has heard of the captain’s recovery, and knew that this day was coming. Although Juan’s chief source of extra money was to sell information, he has already reasoned that Captain Ignacio de Silva was no man to shake down for a few maravillas. All who grew up near the port knew a story or two about Ignacio, tales always told in whispers.
The captain is excited with life, anxious to thrill again. Hailing Abreu with a wave, sounding like an old friend, he shouts, “What can you tell me, gravedigger? Where have my little birds flown?”
Juan Abreu’s voice whistles out through his broken teeth, “Whys I can stell you swhat I know, sir Captains. Everythings I know.”
“Good Juan, and what would that be?”
“Those stwo murdering devils smanaged sto get on a boat that very snight they cowardlys struck you down, sir.”
“And what boat was that, my friend?”
“Whys it was a Migelito boat, sir, the Valcarsal. Ones of the sthree that left the snext day for the voyage to the Magrhib for slaves. The brothers’ sboats. Do ya know em?”
“Yes, Juan. I know them.” De Silva’s eyes narrow, his voice deepens and he speaks as if his hands are drilling into Abreu’s throat, searching for the answer. “Where did they go, gravedigger?”
“The Canaries, sirs. The Canary Islands off Afrik was their sport of calls. So helps me, that’s where they swent, that’s all I know.”
A condescending smirk crosses de Siva’s face, the smirk of a man who derives pure pleasure from wickedness, and he says, “Well, that’s fine, Juan. I appreciate your help.” And he reaches into his half vest and says; “Here, I have something for you.”
Abreu relaxes, certain he has made a good choice not to try and barter information. Juan has always thought it was fruitful for a wise man to seem foolish, and so he had thoughtfully traded his hope of compensation for the safety of the Captain’s good graces. When he sees something shiny come from the vest of Ignacio, he is doubly encouraged, that a small gold piece will be his reward after all.
The goat head charm Ignacio carries in an inner pocket had been his keepsake since childhood. It has been used on many occasions since its first service in biological research. It fits snuggly into his palm, extending through the middle fingers of his fist, so that its keen edge protrudes a few inches beyond his knuckles.
The flash excites Abreu and his eyes widen. ‘Gold.’ Then they widen again, larger still, as the charm slips into the soft tissue at the side of his neck where it finds his carotid artery. He smiles, and reaches up to grab de Silva’s wrist, readily surrendered since its work is finished. Then the gravedigger feels a crush of misery as a geyser of his blood spouts in a diminishing arch over Ignacio’s shoulder, like a liquid farewell wave, and then the thickset fluid gurgles out his body and he hemorrhages into oblivion. The end of life.
Somewhere at the bottom of Ignacio’s soul is a fathomless resentment, a raw wound, and a hatred of life itself. The strike, the stab into a living body, the sanguine liquid smell, for him this is the best. No lust of woman can equal the surge of delight as the blade strikes in, and the blood spurts out.
There were many lessons provided Ignacio each day in 15th century Spain, and being smart, Ignacio applied himself. He learned how to be truly cruel and inflict great pain both physically and psychologically; how to be a tyrant, remaining aloof to any pleas for mercy; how to be in command when the mob rules; how to abuse women; how to betray at the right moment; how any object might be used for torture; how to be religiously devout and self-righteously holy; how never to offend someone of higher rank; how to sleep while covered in blood; how to introduce someone to the end of their life.
Now Ignacio could plan. A ship, several trusted guardsmen, letters of transit, perhaps a commission from Friar Tomas, the Inquisition Council’s secretary. Oh, life was going to be fun again, and there were some glorious days of reckoning coming. And soon.