Read The Last Jew for Free Online

had been summoned to the Priory of the Assumption, he decided to go to Padre Sebastián that afternoon. He would tell the priest what little he had been able to learn, and that would be the end of his involvement in this matter.
    His last patient of the day was an old man who was having difficulty breathing, although for a change the air was cool and fresh, a freak day of comfort in the midst of the season of heat. The thin body before the physician was depleted and worn, and there was more troubling it than the state of the weather. The skin of the chest was like thin leather; within, it was filled and clogged. When Espina put his ear to the chest he could hear a ragged rattling. He was reasonably certain the old man was dying but would take his time about it; and he was searching his pharmacopoeia for an infusion that would make the last days merciful when two slovenly armed men walked into his dispensary as if they were its new owners.
    They identified themselves as soldiers of the alguacil, the bailiff of Toledo.
    One of the men was short and barrel-chested and wore an officious air. 'Bernardo Espina, you will come with us now.'
    'What is it you wish of me, señor?'
    'The Office of the Inquisition requires your presence.'
    'The Inquisition?' Espina sought to remain calm. 'Very well. Please to wait outside. I shall be finished with this señor in a very short time.'
    'No, you will come at once,' the taller man said quietly, but with more authority.
    Espina knew that Joan Pablo, his man of all work, was chatting with the old man's son in the shade of the dispensary shed. He went to the door and called to him. 'Go to the house and tell the señora I wish refreshment brought for these visitors. Bread with oil and honey, and cool wine.'
    The bailiff's men looked at one another. The shorter soldier nodded. His companion's face remained without expression, but he made no objection.
    Espina placed the old man's infusion into a small earthen jar and drove home the plug. He was finishing his instructions to the patient's son when Estrella hurried to him, followed by a servant woman bearing the bread and the wine.                
    His wife's features seemed to freeze when he told her. 'What can the Inquisition want with you, my dear Bernardo?'
    'No doubt they have need of a physician,' he said, and the thought calmed both of them. While the men ate and drank, Joan Pablo saddled Espina's horse.
    His children were at a neighbor's home, at which a monk weekly catechised a group of the young. He was comforted they weren't there to watch as he rode away flanked by the horses of the two men.
     
    Clerics in black robes moved through the corridor where Espina sat on a wooden bench and waited. Others waited also. From time to time a white-faced man or woman was brought in under guard and was seated, or someone was escorted from the corridor and swallowed up by the building. None of the people who left the benches returned to them.
    Espina was kept waiting until torches were lit against the encroaching dusk.
    There was a guard seated behind a small table. Bernardo went to him and asked who it was he was waiting to see, but the man gave him a flat stare and motioned him back to the bench.
    After a time, though, another guard came and asked the one behind the table about some of the people who were waiting. Espina saw them looking at him.
    'That one is for Fray Bonestruca,' Bernardo heard the man behind the table say.
     
    Toledo was becoming populous, but Espina was born there and had lived there all his life, and -- as Prior Sebastián had pointed out -- as a physician he had a good working knowledge of both the lay population and the members of the clerical communities.
    But he had no memory of a friar named Bonestruca.
    At long last a guard came for him and took him from the corridor. They climbed a stone stairway and traversed several ill-lighted corridors similar to the one in which he had waited, and finally he was brought