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and feet like bullets. The crown of thorns sprang away from His head like a lute string snapping. His stigmata closed, healed over, were gone. The weals of the scourge receded into His skin.
    He stepped down from the Cross, pulled His red robe around Himself, and gave me a courteous nod before striding into the darkness and disappearing. I collapsed back into my chair, overwhelmed with relief. It was short-lived.
    The door burst outward and light blinded me. My three Inquisidors stood there, dark against the light like mountains. The priest looked furious. He must have found out that I was talking to Jesus, I thought. “Are you ready to tell us the truth?” he said.
    “What?” I blinked at him. He reached in and pulled me out, twisting, by the wrist.
    “We have been gentle with you to this hour. We will soon be driven to force if you do not repent.”
    “I repent!”
    “Then tell us the truth.”
    “I did!”
    “We do not believe you. We will go down, now, to show you what will happen to you if you do not repent.” And then we went that bad way again, to the bad-smelling place. There the priest set me down and said:
    “Now, tell us the truth. Are you a secret Jew?”
    And for the first time I wondered: Could I possibly be a Jew and not even know it? Jews were liars, everybody said so. I told lies myself, now and then. Was it possible I’d fooled even myself? Was that why I felt so guilty about poor Jesus? Had I made up a story about Christian parents to conceal my crimes? I swallowed hard and said: “I might be. I think. I don’t know.”
    “I see,” said the priest, all smooth now. “And we see. We know the truth. You’re a very wicked child, to have waited so long to tell us.” But I hadn’t said positively. I stared at him in bewilderment.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You can save your mother more pain if you tell us everything.”
    I just stared. I couldn’t think up things off the top of my head, I needed time. “But we can continue later,” he said, as if reading my mind. “At another time. Until then, you can think about the things you will tell me.”
    How stupid I’d been, to try to hide anything from such a man.
    The Biscayan led me away, back, I thought, to my cell; but halfway there he stopped and put his hand flat on a place in the wall beside us. There was no latch, no subtle engine that I could see, yet a little door clicked and swung inward. “Come with me,” he said, and stepped through quickly and pulled me after him. The door closed behind us.
    We went into a brilliantly lit room where there was another man. The man wore some manner of thin white surcoat over his clothes. He talked with the Biscayan in a language I did not know. He sounded nervous. When they had spoken together, the Biscayan left. I looked up at the man in the white surcoat.
    He took away my rags and shaved my head. He had to put me in restraints to do that, and I thought the end had come. I screamed and screamed. I said I’d tell him everything. He never said a word in reply, but his face went very red. He put needles in my skin. He drew out a tube of my blood. He spent a long time examining my bare skull with calipers.
    Writing about this now, I still can’t bring myself to laugh at it much.
    In time he covered me with a blanket and went away. I was left there trembling under the glaring lights. Much later, the door opened, and the Biscayan came into the room. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside me where I lay. “Well, little Mendoza,” he said. “You’re not doing so well, are you?”
    “Are you going to burn me in the fire?” I asked him.
    “No, Mendoza, not I. I am, in fact, your greatest friend in the world right now.”
    I looked at him in deep distrust. His black eyes were kind, he was turning on the charm, but I had seen him looking on blank while the priest deviled me. “I know who my friend is,” I said. “The man in the red clothes. Not you.”
    “Well, unfortunately he isn’t here right