Spain for the Sovereigns

by Виктория Холт

  This caused discontent among these nobles, but they dared not protest; and thus these large sums, which they had been squandering, helped to support the Santa Hermandad; and the effect of Isabella’s stern rule soon began to be noticed throughout the land.

  She was confident that in a few years’ time she would transform the anarchical kingdom, which Castile had been when she had become its Queen, into a well-ordered state; she believed that the empty coffers of the treasury would be filled.

  And once she had set her own house in order she would look farther afield.

  Her eyes were on the Kingdom of Granada, and Ferdinand was beside her in this. He yearned to go into battle against the Moors, but she, the wiser one, restrained him for a while.

  When they went into battle there should be victory for them. But they would not engage in war until there was peace and prosperity at home.

  In spite of her preoccupation with state affairs, Isabella tried not to forget that she was a wife and mother. She deplored her own lack of education. Often she thought of those years at Arevalo, where she lived with her mother and her brother Alfonso, and where she was taught that one day she might be Queen, but little Latin, Greek or any other language which would have been useful to her. Her children should not suffer similarly; they should have the best of tutors. Most important of all was their religious instruction. That should certainly not be neglected.

  There were occasions when she liked to escape to the nursery to forget the magnitude of the task of governing a kingdom which until recently had been on the verge of decay.

  She liked to sit and sew with a few of her women as though she were a simple noblewoman, and talk of matters other than those concerned with the state. There was little time for this, and greatly she treasured those brief hours when she could indulge in it.

  It was on one of these occasions, when her women were chattering together, that one of them who had recently come from Aragon talked of a ceremony she had seen there.

  Isabella listened idly to the conversation. ‘. . . such a ceremony! The churchmen, brilliant in their vestments. And the one who attracted most attention was, of course, the Archbishop of Saragossa. An Archbishop only ten years old . . . certainly little more. Such a handsome little fellow . . . with all the dignity required of his rank.’

  ‘An Archbishop, ten years old?’ said Isabella.

  ‘Why yes, Highness, the Archbishop of Saragossa. He cannot be much more.’

  ‘He is very young to have attained such a post. The Archbishop of Saragossa must be a remarkable person indeed.’

  Isabella changed the subject, but she kept in mind the young Archbishop of Saragossa.

  * * *

  Isabella was discussing that ever-present problem with Ferdinand – the state of the treasury; and she said: ‘I am determined to divert the wealth of the great Military and Religious Orders to the royal coffers.’

  ‘What?’ cried Ferdinand. ‘You will never do that.’

  ‘I think I shall.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘By having you elected Grand Master of each of them when those offices fall vacant.’

  Ferdinand’s eyes took on that glazed look which the contemplation of large sums of money always brought to them.

  ‘Calatrava, Alcantara, Santiago . . .’ he murmured.

  ‘All shall fall gradually into our hands,’ said Isabella. ‘When I contemplate the wealth in the possession of these Orders – the armies, the fortresses – it is inconceivable that they should exist to threaten the crown. We should be able to rely on the loyalty of these Orders without question, to use their arms and their wealth as we need it. Therefore they should be the property of the crown. And when you are Grand Master that will be achieved.’

  ‘It is a brilliant idea,’ agreed Ferdinand gleefully, and he gave his wife a glance of admiration. At such times he did not resent her determination to stand supreme as ruler of Castile.

  ‘You shall see it achieved,’ she told him. ‘But it will be when the time is ripe.’

  ‘I believe,’ said Ferdinand, ‘that our struggles are behind us. A glorious future will be ours, Isabella, if we stand together.’

  ‘And so we shall stand. It was what I always intended.’

  He embraced her, and she drew back from his arms to smile at him.

  ‘Castile and Aragon are ours! We have three healthy children,’ she said.

  Ferdinand caught her hands and laughed.’ We are young yet,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Our little Isabella will be Queen of Portugal. We must arrange grand marriages for the others.’

  ‘Never fear. There will be many who will wish to marry with the children of Ferdinand and Isabella.’

  ‘Ferdinand, I am glad they are young yet. I shall suffer when they are forced to go from us.’

  ‘But they are still children as yet. Why, our little Isabella is but eleven years old.’

  ‘Eleven years old,’ mused Isabella. ‘But perhaps that is not so young. I hear you have an Archbishop in Saragossa of that age.’

  Ferdinand’s face grew a little pale and then flushed. His eyes had become alert and suspicious.

  ‘An Archbishop . . .’ he murmured.

  ‘You must have had your reasons for sanctioning the appointment,’ she said with a smile. ‘I wondered what great qualifications one so young could have.’

  She was unprepared for Ferdinand’s reaction. He said: ‘You have made the affairs of Castile yours. I pray you leave to me those of Aragon.’

  It was Isabella’s turn to grow pale. ‘Why, Ferdinand . . .’ she began.

  But Ferdinand had bowed and left her.

  Why, she asked herself, should he have been so angry? What had she done but ask a simple question?

  She stared after him and then sat down heavily. Understanding had come to her.

  To have made a boy of that age an Archbishop, Ferdinand must have a very special reason for favouring him. What reason could Ferdinand have?

  She refused to accept the explanation which was inevitably forcing itself into her mind.

  He would have been born about the same time as their . . . first-born, little Isabella.

  ‘No!’ cried Isabella.

  She, who had been so faithful to him in every way, could not tolerate this suspicion. But it was fast becoming no longer a suspicion. She now knew that Ferdinand was the lover of other women, that they had given him children – children whom he must love dearly to have risked exposure by making one of them Archbishop of Saragossa.

  There was nothing that could have hurt her more. And this discovery had come to her at a time when all that she had hoped for seemed to be coming her way.

  Her marriage was to have been perfect. She had known that he was jealous of her authority, but that she had understood. This was different.

  She felt numb with the pain of this discovery. She felt a longing to give way to some weakness, to find Ferdinand, to rail against him, to throw herself onto her bed and give way to tears – to rage, to storm, to ease in some way the bitterness of this knowledge which wounded her more deeply than anything had ever done before.

  Her women were coming to her.

  She set her face in a quiet smile. None would have guessed that the smiling face masked such turbulent emotions and jealous humiliation.

  Chapter V

  TOMÁS DE TORQUEMADA

  In a cell in the Monastery of Santa Cruz in the town of Segovia, a gaunt man, dressed in the rough garb of the Dominican Order, was on his knees.

  He had remained thus for several hours, and this was not unusual for it was his custom to meditate and pray alternately for hours at a time.

  He prayed now that he might be purged of all evil and given the power to bring others to the same state of exaltation which he felt that he himself – with minor lapses – enjoyed.

  ‘Holy Mother,’ he murmured, ‘listen to this humble supplicant . . .’

  He believed fervently in his humility and, if it had been po
inted out to him that this great quality had its roots in a fierce pride, he would have been astonished. Tomás de Torquemada saw himself as the elect of Heaven.

  Beneath the drab robe of rough serge he wore the hair shirt which was a continual torment to his delicate skin. He revelled in the discomfort it caused; yet after years of confinement in this hideous garment he had grown a little accustomed to it and he fancied that it was less of a burden than it had once been. The thought disturbed him, for he wanted to suffer the utmost discomfort. He slept on a plank of wood without a pillow. Soft beds were not for him. In the early days of his austerity he had scarcely slept at all; now he found that he needed very little sleep and, when he lay on his plank, he fell almost immediately into unconsciousness. Thus another avenue of self-torture was closed to him.

  He ate only enough to keep him alive; he travelled barefoot wherever he went and took care to choose the stony paths. The sight of his cracked and bleeding feet gave him a similar pleasure to that which fine garments gave to other men and women.

  He gloried in austerity with a fierce and fanatical pride – as other men delighted in worldly glitter.

  It was almost sixty years ago that he had been born in the little town of Torquemada (which took its name from the Latin turre cremata – burnt tower) not far from Valla-dolid in North Castile.

  From Tomás’s early days he had shown great piety. His uncle, Juan de Torquemada, had been the Cardinal of San Sisto, a very distinguished theologian and writer on religious subjects.

  Tomás had known that his father, Pero Fernandez de Torquemada, hoped that he would make the care of the family estates his life work, as he was an only son, and Pero was eager for Tomás to marry early and beget sons that this branch of the family might not become extinct.

  Tomás had inherited a certain pride in his family, and this may have been one of the reasons why he decided so firmly that the life he had been called upon to lead, by a higher authority than that of Pero, should be one which demanded absolute celibacy.

  At a very early age Tomás became a Dominican. With what joy he cast aside the fine raiment of a prosperous nobleman! With what pleasure he donned the rough serge habit, even at that age refusing to wear linen so that the coarse stuff could irritate his skin! It was very soon afterwards that he took to wearing the hair shirt, until he discovered that he must not wear it continually for fear that he should grow accustomed to it and the torment of it grow less.

  He had become Prior of Santa Cruz of Segovia, but the news of his austere habits had reached the Court, and King Henry IV had chosen him as confessor to his sister Isabella.

  He had refused at first; he wanted no soft life at Court. But then he had realised that there might be devils to tempt him at Court who could never penetrate the sanctity of Santa Cruz; and there would be more spiritual joy in resisting temptation than never encountering it.

  The young Isabella had been a willing pupil. There could rarely have been a young princess so eager to share her confessor’s spirituality, so earnestly desirous of leading a rigidly religious life.

  She had been pleased with her confessor, and he with her.

  He had told her of his great desire to see an all-Christian Spain and, in an access of fervour, had asked that she kneel with him and swear that, if ever it were in her power to convert to Christianity the realm over which she might one day rule, she would seize the opportunity to do so.

  The young girl, her eyes glowing with a fervour to match that of her confessor, had accordingly sworn.

  It often occurred to Tomás de Torquemada that the opportunity must soon arise.

  Torquemada had kept the esteem of the Queen. She admired his piety; she respected his motives; in a Court where she was surrounded by men who sought temporal power, this ascetic monk stood out as a man of deep sincerity.

  As Torquemada prayed there was a thought at the back of his mind: now that Castile had ceased to be tormented by civil war, the time had come when the religious life of the country should be examined, and to him it seemed that the best way of doing this was to reintroduce the Inquisition into Castile, a new form of the Inquisition which he himself would be prepared to organise, an Inquisition which should be supervised by men like himself – monks of great piety, of the Dominican and Franciscan orders.

  But another little matter had intruded into Torquemada’s schemes, and he had been diverted. It was because of this that he now prayed so earnestly. He had allowed himself to indulge in pleasure rather than duty.

  A certain Hernan Nuñez Arnalt had recently died, and his will had disclosed that he had named Tomás de Torquemada as its executor. Arnalt had been a very rich man, and had left a considerable sum for the purpose of building a monastery at Avila which should be called the Monastery of Saint Thomas.

  To Tomás de Torquemada had fallen the task of carrying out his wishes and he found great joy in this duty. He spent much time with architects and discovered a great love of building; but so great was this pleasure that he began to be doubtful about it. Anything that made a man as happy as the studying of plans for this great work made him, must surely have an element of sin in it. He was suspicious of happiness; and as he looked back to that day when he had first heard of the proposed endowment, and that he had been entrusted to see the work carried out, he was alarmed.

  He had neglected his duties at Santa Cruz; he had thought only occasionally of the need to force Christianity on every inhabitant of Castile; he had ceased to consider the numbers who, while calling themselves Christians, were reverting to the Jewish religion in secret. These sinners called for the greatest punishment that could be devised by the human mind; and he, the chosen servant of God and all his saints, had been occupying himself by supervising the piling of stone on stone, by deciding on the exquisite line of the cloisters, by taking sensuous enjoyment in planning with sculptors the designs for the chapel.

  Torquemada beat his hands on his breast and cried: ‘Holy Mother of God, intercede for this miserable sinner.’

  He must devise some penance. But long austerity had made him careless of what his body suffered. ‘Yet,’ he said, ‘the Monastery will be dedicated to the glory of God. Is it such a sin to erect a building where men will live as recluses, a spiritual life, in great simplicity and austerity, and so come close to the Divine presence? Is that sin?’

  The answer came from within. ‘It is sin to indulge in any earthly desire. It is sin to take pleasure. And you, Tomás de Torquemada, have exulted over these plans; you have made images of stone, works of exquisite sculpture; and you have lusted for these earthly baubles as some men lust for women.’

  ‘Holy Mother, scourge me,’ he prayed. ‘Guide me. Show me how I can expiate my sin. Shall I cut myself off from the work on the monastery? But it is for the glory of God that the monastery will be built. Is it such a sin to find joy in building a house of God?’

  He would not visit the site of Avila for three weeks; he would look at no more plans. He would say: ‘My work at Santa Cruz demands all my energy. Castile is an unholy land, and I must do all in my power to bring sinners back to the Church.’

  He rose from his knees. He had decided on the penance. He would shut his beautiful monastery from his mind for three weeks. He would live on nothing but dry bread and water; and he would increase his hours of prayer.

  As he left his cell a monk came to him to tell him that two Dominicans from Seville had arrived at Santa Cruz, and they had come to speak with the Sacred Prior, Tomás de Torquemada.

  * * *

  Torquemada received the visitors in a cell which was bare of all furniture except a wooden table and three stools. On a wall hung a crucifix.

  ‘My brothers,’ said Torquemada in greeting, ‘welcome to Santa Cruz.’

  ‘Most holy Prior,’ said the first of the monks, ‘you know that I am Alonso de Ojeda, Prior of the monastery of Saint Paul. I would present our fellow Dominican, Diego de Merlo.’

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ said Torquemada.

&
nbsp; ‘We are disturbed by events in Seville and, knowing of your great piety and influence with the Queen, we have come to ask your advice and help.’

  ‘I shall be glad to give it, if it should be in my power,’ was the answer.

  ‘Evil is practised in Seville,’ said Ojeda.

  ‘What evil is this, brother?’

  ‘The evil of those who work against the Holy Catholic Church. I speak of the Marrams.’

  Torquemada’s face lost its deathlike pallor for an instant, and his blood showed pale pink beneath his skin; his eyes flashed momentarily with rage and hatred.

  ‘These Marrams,’ cried Diego de Merlo, ‘they abound in Seville . . . in Cordova . . . in every fair city of Castile. They are the rich men of Castile. Jews! Jews who feign to be Christians. They are Conversos. They are of the true faith; so they would imply. And in secret they practise their foul rites.’

  Torquemada clenched his fists tightly and, although his face was bloodless once more, his eyes continued to gleam with fanatical hatred.

  Ojeda began to speak rapidly. ‘Alonso de Spina warned us some years ago. They are here among us. They jeer at all that is sacred . . . in secret, of course. Jeer! If that were all! They are the enemies of Christians. In secret they practise their hideous rites. They spit upon holy images. You remember what Spina wrote of them?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Torquemada quietly.

  But Ojeda went on as though Torquemada had not spoken: ‘They cook their food in oils, and they stink of rancid food. They eat kosher food. You can tell a Jew by his stink. Should we have these people among us? Only if they renounce their beliefs. Only if they are purified by their genuine acceptance of the Christian faith. But they cheat, I tell you.’