The Inquisition's prisons were called secret for a reason: prisoners were not told the charges or who had made them, and their families heard nothing of them. But there were cracks.
Gabriel Cortés wrote every week to his wife, Juana Cortés, and his son Francisco. The letters traveled inside the dirty laundry he handed to the jailer, Jayme Mas, or his assistants, to be washed at home. The family read the prisoner's news while washing his clothes.
The jailer himself was part of the trade. Several prisoners had paid him to deliver notes to relatives asking them to plead for mercy. The prices in the files are staggering: one hundred and fifty pesos for a letter and its reply, two hundred and fifty silver «pieces of eight» to carry a message and bring back the answer.
Despair had a price list. And the man who held the keys was also the postman, the confidant and, according to other testimony, the one who warned prisoners before inspections.
