Neither Cross Nor Crown

Hope

Cathal woke as if from a bad dream. 

His head throbbed. His throat was parched. His neck ached. And as his mind slowly began swimming back to consciousness, he realized he had absolutely no idea what was happening. Or where he was. He could hear voices speaking but they were faint, as if he was hearing the sound from another room.

He opened his mouth to cry out a hello, to at least reassure himself that he wasn't dead. Or alone. 

"Eagh" he managed, nearly gagging. His tongue felt like a strip of leather. He couldn't even summon enough moisture to spit. His eyes had water plenty though, he blinked away tears as he began to take in his surroundings.

"Give him water" a voice curtly ordered in German. A dark figure stepped out from the shadows cast by the flickering torchlight, offering a worn looking canteen. Cathal gratefully accepted it, taking it with both hands. The water was brackish and warm, but right now he wouldnt have traded it for anything.

"Go raibh maith agat" he murmured, receiving a puzzled look from the guard in response. "Sorry, I don't speak German very well" Cathal said haltingly, his eyes had adapted to the low lighting enough to make out another man sitting behind the table he was across from. 

The man grimaced, wiping at his face with his hand "Bella premunt hostilia" he murmured wearily. "Da robur, fer auxilium" Cathal answered easily. The man's head shot up like a dart. "You speak Latin?!" he demanded in the tongue. Cathal managed a small grin as he answered, "This isn't my first time in a cell, I was in a seminary for two years."

A ghost of a smile flashed for a second on the man's face. "Wonders will never cease" he said dryly, his eyes dropping to the papers in front of him, moving a small candle closer so he could read better. "This is a temporary reprieve from the noose my friend so if you need your neck stretched further, by all means, please oblige yourself by attempting to lie".

The mark on his neck was still red and raw, he could feel it still. Cathal didn't speak, he just nodded mutely. 

The man dipped his quill in the inkwell and cleared his throat. "My name is Maximilian Ritter. I am agent of the Church, more precisely that of the Holy See's Inquisition. I carry a writ from the Pontiff's own hand enpowering me to investigate heresy, sedition, witchcraft and acts of a diabolic nature wherever my work takes me. I take it you don't require much more enlightenment as to my role?"

Images flashed in his head. Witch-burnings. Men with crooked fingers trembling as they read aloud confessions that their broken hands couldn't have written. The chaos that wreaked Europe and the whispers of even darker deeds from the west, across the sea, in the New World. No, Cathal would not require illumination on the subject.

Again Cathal didn't speak aloud, he just moved his head, this time for an emphatic no. He tried to speak but his throat seemed to have closed up. With an effort he managed to rasp out "I'm not a heretic." Max blotted at an inkstain before looking up "I assure you, if I thought you were, we wouldn't be chatting so civilised, so please, do try to loosen up a little, I've no intention of having you flayed till you're singing the Rosary." Cathal wasn't sure if he was meant to feel reassured or not.

 Max shuffled the papers and squinted as he read one. "Now, your name is...unpronounceable, was the scribe an illiterate or is that really how it's written?"

"Can I?"

"Of course" Max passed over the sheet, Cathal scanned the hand and nodded. "That's me, it's got a hard sound, Cathal. Like K-hal but draw it out a bit more"

"Fascinating" Cathal wasn't sure if the man was being sarcastic or not. "Well at least it's in the Roman script, my colleagues in the Mediterranean nightly pray for illumination regarding that Mussulman fashion of it. And I hear further east in Cathay, they write different again. But I think we can dispense with discussions of orthography for now.  As to nationality, Scottish?"