Jack would never have accused himself of being a wise man, but he prided himself on cunning. Wisdom or cunning or both told him that he’d best ignore de Ath’s ravings about the Enlightenment and keep his attention fixed on nearer and more practical matters. The crypto-Jews who occupied the cells of this prison were an odd lot, but they knew quite a lot about the workings of the Mexican Inquisition—as how could they not . It was the rule in most Inquisition prisons to keep every prisoner in solitary confinement, for years at a time if need be, in the hope that he or she would finally break down and confess to some heresy that the Inquisitor had not even suspected, or even dreamed of—supposedly whole new categories of Sin had been discovered, or invented, in this way. But the only rule that Diego de Fonseca enforced in his prison was that the inmates were not supposed to leave, and he’d even bend that rule for a few hours or a night, if you promised to come back.