Toledo, Spain (AP) - I was assigned to cover the French army, under LaSalle,
in its attempt to suppress the brutal Spanish Inquisition in late September
of 1794; we sailed from the port of Nantes, France, in early October.  An icy
frost hardened the ground the night we landed in Lisbon, Portugal, and began
our month-long push toward Toledo, which contained the headquarters of the
Inquisition. Light rain barely impeded our progress as we made our way across
Portugal, but we sensed a dramatic shift the moment we crossed into Spain.
The steady drizzle was falling on the western side of the border, but on the
eastern side not a single drop fell from the parched skies. No precipitation
descended at all during the entire month of our march through Spain, and the
ground was cracked from years without rain. We moved as quickly as we could,
attracting as little attention as possible.
        When we came to Toledo at last, we found little resistance in taking
the city proper. In fact, once we came within sight of the city, the people
came to us in droves, their hands waving in surrender. "See the work of the
Inquisition!" General LaSalle said as we noted the conditions in the city.
People were starving and freezing to death, despite the prosperity of the
Inquisition.  Their gaunt frames verified the tales of horror that had leaked
through the countryside and over the border into France.  We alleviated their
suffering as much as possible before we challenged the menacing fortress at
the center of the city.
        The black, forbidding stronghold of the Inquisition loomed ominously
over the city of Toledo. Its insurmountable gates did not open for us, and
its sheer outer wall was so high that it was impossible to see what horrors
awaited us. General LaSalle himself led a detachment of the French army
against those menacing portals with a battering ram. The men worked tirelessly
for several hours and finally broke through the wall. I accompanied the
general, and a company of two hundred men, through the meager breach.
        The fortress grounds were silent, and it looked as though no one had
taken care of them for several years. The effects of the drought had taken
their toll on the landscaped lawn. The unnatural peace of the overgrown yard
heightened my senses, and unnerved me even more than the covenant curses, the
broken people, and the dark curtain of a wall which shrouded the Inquisition's
infamous deeds.
        We made a circuit of the barns, storehouses, and sheds scattered
throughout the fortress, and in each we were ambushed. Men jumped from the
unkempt trees, and whatever other cover there was, howling and shattering the
eerie silence.  Nonetheless, we overcame them with ease each time. That very
ease heightened our fear - fear of the unnatural men behind the atrocities
we had heard rumors of and were sure we would see in the dungeons. We finished
off the last group of ambushers and entered the modest keep, an administrative
building. General LaSalle only took thirty of his men with him. In most other
castles, the keep is the tallest part, but "the Inquisition has repeatedly
rejected the normalcies of society," he said.
        The keep had only one floor above ground; extensive dungeons went down
from there. The earthen walls curbed most sounds. I jumped at every mouse
chittering, and every change in the flickering of our torchlight. We all began
to gag, and some of us actually vomited at the putrid, nauseating stink of
death. The only light besides that of our meager torches came from glowing
slime on the walls and ceilings. Its luminescence hinted at the evil nature
of the dungeon and its designers. The thickening air made my head spin, and
it was only with difficulty that I remained in control of my senses as we
ventured further. The skeletons shackled to the walls, bones rotting but
gleaming off-white, added to the strain upon my mind. I thought I might go
mad if the silence and tension were not soon relieved.
        As we went on, we found that the rooms were ever more cluttered with
torture devices of all kinds.  Pale, foul-smelling fires in grottoes, drawing
their fuel from some unseen source, lit the rooms a little, giving no heat
and  less light than our torches. Racks, irons, iron maidens, thumbscrews,
and other devices too grotesque to even be described littered the rooms; some
that we recognized had names too foul to print. All of them were such that
their victims would have died slowly and agonizingly. The French recognized
few of the devices; there was not a single guillotine. Water dripped from the
barely worked dirt and stone walls, which leaned inward as if they might fall.
        Finally, we reached the last dungeon.  Of all of the rooms, it was the
only one made of worked stone.  The blocks were fitted together with only
hairlines showing the seams. Screams,  and the rank smell of blood and spiced
meat assailed our nostrils and ears as we entered the dungeon. An oblong iron
chamber, larger than the largest coach I had ever seen, was in the center of
a cavern about five times as large as the iron chamber in every dimension.
The iron chamber was compressing, and steam rose from within it. General
LaSalle detailed some of his strongest men to push on the elongating ends.
The chamber became square immediately, and the general himself entered through
a door that became visible in the square. When he emerged, he was supporting
a shaking man. I asked the man for his name, but he could not even remember
it; I did not press him further. He was tall, and his clothes hung loosely
around his bony, emaciated frame. His hair was long, and it fell around his
haggard face in complete disarray. As I studied his appearance, out of the
corner of my eye I saw rats issuing forth from the iron chamber. 
        Suddenly, a host of men came pouring out of the walls of the cavern.
Yet more men leaped down from the ceiling and came up through trap doors in
the floor. As the Frenchmen moved to engage them, the enemy fought like the
damned, muttering curses, prayers, and gibberish; it was recognizably Spanish,
but otherwise it was incomprehensible. Fully one half of the thirty or so men
in LaSalle's party died in the fierce fighting. I sustained a slight wound
to the leg, but stayed by General LaSalle, defending myself to the best of
my ability; I was not trained as a soldier. As we finished off the last of
the Spanish host, we noticed that the door we had entered through was shut,
yet another one opened. We made for it, but more rats and men emerged. We
resisted them as we retreated to the open door. As we reached it, men emerged
on the other side. They all fought like cornered hell-hounds, and eight more
Frenchmen died as we battled for our lives. The man we had rescued acquitted
himself well with his borrowed sword that General LaSalle had given him; he
saved the general's life and mine fully ten times. He anticipated where the
enemy's strokes would come each time, and struck perfectly. We retreated up
a narrow staircase, holding off the Spaniards, and across a stone bridge over
a seemingly bottomless chasm. The mightiest Frenchman held the bridge against
the Spaniards as the rest of us bolted for the light of day above us. The
Spanish finally broke through and came after us, but we were able to reach
the French army awaiting us outside the keep. They turned the tide in our
favor. The enemy was fierce, but we prevailed, and Toledo was soon entirely,
unquestionably, in the hands of the French, and the Inquisition was deposed,
as was our objective. As I rode toward the ship which would take me home, a
steady shower beat down upon me, bringing an end to the merciless drought.

1 responses total.

This is a piece that I wrote for my English class in response to Edgar Allen
Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum." I am thinking about submitting it to a
magazine, but I would like some help making it better.

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