Prisoner of the Inquisition

by Theresa Breslin

  So I would seek her out.

  And I would kill her.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Zarita

  ‘FIRST YOU MUST wash your hands and arms.’

  Sister Maddalena snorted and glared at the Jewish doctor. ‘We know the rules of hygiene very well here.’

  The doctor looked around the room with its spotless floor and bed linen. He inclined his head. ‘I appreciate that and I compliment you on it. Nevertheless I insist that you wash once more. I may have brought infection in from outside. Therefore you must roll back your sleeves to the elbow and wash all exposed skin.’

  My aunt hesitated. It wasn’t right for a man, and worse, a non-Christian man, to see the exposed flesh of a professed nun.

  ‘Oh, do it!’ I said crossly. Lorena’s howls were agitating me beyond reason. I pushed up my sleeves as far as they would go and washed my hands and arms thoroughly. My aunt and Sister Maddalena followed my example.

  ‘Now I must examine the patient.’ The Jewish doctor approached the bed and spoke gently to Lorena, asking her to tell him her name and assuring her that he would do everything in his power to help her. His quiet authority seemed to calm her. If she realized he was a Jew, she gave no sign.

  My aunt put her hands beneath the bedcover and raised up Lorena’s nightgown. Then she folded down the top sheet to expose only her stomach. The doctor prodded with his fingers and Lorena grimaced. The doctor’s face showed no indication of what he felt. When he’d finished, he stood back. ‘There is an irregularity,’ he said. ‘I must make a further examination.’

  There was silence in the room.

  Lorena chewed on her lip. Even my liberal-minded aunt flinched.

  ‘The birth canal,’ the doctor said distinctly, so that there could be no mistaking his intention. ‘I must probe the passage itself to determine if there is a blockage preventing the baby from being expelled.’

  ‘That would be improper,’ my aunt whispered.

  ‘Let him do it!’ Lorena shouted. ‘It is I, not you, enduring the pain!’

  She kicked her legs up, tossing the sheet aside so that her buttocks and her private parts were exposed. ‘Let him look at whatever he wants!’ She shrieked in hysterical laughter. ‘More than one man has done so before him! It’s why I am in this condition now!’

  What could she mean? Everyone in the room avoided each other’s eyes.

  My aunt glanced towards the door. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ she said, trying to hush Lorena’s ranting.

  Sister Maddalena took away the blood-soaked towels from under Lorena’s hips and replaced them with fresh ones.

  ‘You must hold her legs bent up and back,’ the doctor instructed the two nuns.

  Sister Maddalena and my aunt exchanged looks. It was Maddalena who stepped forward first to obey his instructions.

  The doctor watched Lorena’s face as he probed her with his fingers. Then he addressed himself to her. ‘Your baby is lying crosswise to the opening of your womb. In that position the child cannot be born. It may be possible to turn it, but this is not without risk. You are bleeding from some unknown internal place and I doubt that I’m capable of halting the haemorrhage.’

  Lorena’s face had taken on a pink flush and her eyes glittered as if she were in a fever. As she did not reply to the doctor, my aunt asked, ‘What is the alternative?’

  ‘We may cut open her belly and try to rescue the child. She will almost certainly die and possibly the child too.’

  ‘And if we do nothing?’

  ‘Her suffering increases so much that she might go mad. Eventually she dies in agony and then the child too dies.’

  ‘Go ahead!’ Lorena spoke in a rush, as if she’d been listening but only just come to a decision. ‘Do it. Turn the child and let me be rid of it from my body.’

  The Jewish doctor faced me. ‘In this state the woman cannot give her permission. If any fatal consequence comes of this action then it would be deemed that I had assaulted her in the most vile manner. That I had taken advantage of a woman while her mind was unsound. I need someone who has wardship of her, or who is her kin, to confirm that I am allowed to do this.’

  ‘I am her – her . . .’ My tongue stumbled on the words. ‘I am her stepdaughter. I give you the permission you need.’

  Sister Maddalena hurried to write out a document for me to sign while the doctor again washed his hands and returned to the bed. He pummelled at Lorena’s belly. This time he was not gentle and took no notice of her shrieks as he struggled to turn the child so it would lie head down in the birth canal. Without ceasing his efforts he kept manipulating the baby towards the course he desired. Sweat ran down his face, glistening on his eyebrows and beard.

  Lorena was roaring. Her contractions now followed each other without respite. I wiped her brow as she thrashed in the bed and my aunt and Sister Maddalena coaxed the child from her womb. Lorena gave an almighty scream as the head crowned, and then another cry was heard in the room.

  The heart-stopping, insistent, desperate cry of the newborn.

  ‘A boy,’ my aunt announced, holding up a blood-red, raw, squirming baby.

  My heart and head spun with relief and joy.

  The doctor took him and pronounced him healthy. He then looked again at the intimate parts of Lorena’s body. He drew me and my aunt aside. ‘She will not live long,’ he told us. ‘It’s as I thought. There is a bleeding that I cannot stop.’

  ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘You might want to summon one of your priests to guide her soul into the afterlife that has been prepared by your God for his followers.’

  As the Jewish doctor packed away his instruments in a worn leather bag, it struck me how weary he looked. I thought of how it must reduce a doctor to know that someone he has treated will, despite his best efforts, die.

  ‘My belly aches,’ Lorena said in a weary voice. ‘I can feel blood seeping between my legs. Is there nothing that can be done to stop it?’

  I glanced at the doctor.

  ‘Is there?’ Lorena persisted.

  ‘No,’ he told her plainly.

  ‘Then I am doomed.’ Tears coursed down her cheeks.

  ‘Let her see the child,’ the doctor advised us. ‘It will give her fortitude and hope. If not for herself personally, then she’ll draw strength for her ordeal to come, knowing that she leaves part of herself in this world.’

  But Lorena turned her face away when the child was brought to her. ‘No,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’ll not look upon him. I’ll not let him see me. He will know another as his mother, not I.’

  Beatriz put the baby in the crib Maddalena had prepared. I went to sit by Lorena’s bed.

  She looked at me. ‘They say that when you are dying you speak the truth. I am near death, so I will confess to you the wrongs I have done. It may be my one chance to enter into Heaven. For if it is left to the virtue of the life I have lived, of my mind and my body’ – she laughed, and a sudden flash of the old Lorena, of her rash gaiety, shone through the pallor on her face – ‘then I am both doomed and damned.’

  ‘We will summon a priest,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Lorena pursed her lips. ‘No. For I would give the priest you brought such nightmares and put such wild thoughts into his head that he wouldn’t be able to cope. Then he would have to confess to another, and he in turn to yet a third, and so it would go on, and think what a fuss and consternation there would be.’

  At one time that kind of commotion would have suited Lorena very well, I thought to myself; she who loved so much to have men gazing after her and thinking all sorts about her.

  My aunt addressed herself to Sister Maddalena. ‘Please escort the good doctor to our front door and then fetch a priest to hear this woman’s confession.’

  Sister Maddalena nodded and went out with the doctor while my aunt Beatriz gave Lorena the potion he’d left. He’d told us that it might cause confusion in her mind but would give her a painless pa
ssage from this world to the next.

  Lorena opened her eyes wide to stare at me. ‘Why did you help me?’ she demanded. ‘Why, when I treated you so badly, Zarita, did you care enough to try to save my life and that of my child?’

  I could not truly express why I’d done so. Living the life of a nun meant translating the love of God into charitable action rather than merely reciting words. But it was more than that. ‘You were my father’s wife,’ I said. ‘And the baby is kin to me.’

  ‘The baby isn’t any kin of yours.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ I said. ‘Try to rest.’

  ‘I say again, Zarita, that none of your family’s blood runs within that child.’

  I assumed that the opiate was starting to take effect. As the doctor had forewarned us, Lorena was losing her mental faculties. I made to place a cloth on her brow but she pushed my hand away.

  ‘Listen to me, Zarita! Your father was anxious for a son and we didn’t seem able to make one together. I tried every folk remedy and potion, but none worked. Then I began to think that he was tiring of me and my attractions, so I decided to lie with another younger man whose seed might bear fruit in my womb.’

  My aunt looked at Lorena in alarm. ‘You are wandering in your thoughts, Lorena. Better to be quiet now.’

  ‘I’m not so confused that I don’t know the true father of my own son!’ Lorena exclaimed. ‘His name is Ramón Salazar.’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Zarita

  ‘WHAT!’

  ‘The child you worked so hard to save was not sired by your father, Zarita,’ Lorena said emphatically. ‘Believe me, I know. I managed to make your father believe that it was his, but it wasn’t. The child was conceived by my reckless plan to provide him with a son so that my own position would be secure.’

  ‘Your child’s father is Ramón Salazar?’ My voice croaked in stunned disbelief.

  ‘He is. Ramón has such an empty face with no distinguishing features that I thought the child would have mainly my looks. But I shouldn’t have done it. I ask you to forgive me.’

  I looked to my aunt Beatriz for guidance. But she was equally taken aback. I fumbled for words as I tried to absorb what I’d just heard.

  ‘This is not a sin that it’s in my power to forgive,’ I told Lorena. ‘The wrong you did there was to my father, and I am glad that he’s not here to discover that truth.’

  ‘But the son he wanted was partly for your sake!’ Lorena cried out. ‘Oh yes, your father longed for a son to carry his name, but it was also for your welfare. He thought you too young and headstrong to manage your own affairs. He worried that when he died, a devious man might come along and master you and have command of all your possessions. He wanted to father a son on me so that the boy would grow up to protect his older sister!’

  ‘Papa still had concern for my welfare?’

  ‘He loved you very much, your father, but men are such gulls when they desire a woman. It’s easy to twist their minds and their hearts. I used my position in your father’s affections and I turned him against you. I told him that you hated me insanely and lied to others about me. I reported that you’d taken some of my things; that you’d stolen my personal possessions, and contrived to leave these in your room so that he could find them there.’

  I gasped. ‘My father said nothing of this to me.’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t. He made me promise never to speak of it to anyone else. But it forced him to agree with me at last that you should be sent away, for I said you might do the new baby harm. After he saw you slap my face on the day Don Piero called to propose to you, I convinced him that you had a wildness in you. I said you’d made threats, that you hinted of bad things you might do if ever there was a new child in the house.’

  No wonder Papa believed me half mad and wanted to put me safely away.

  ‘It was I who was insane.’ Lorena’s breathing was heavier, yet she seemed to gather reserves of strength from within to carry on making her last confession. ‘I was madly jealous of his love for you. For myself, I cannot say that I loved your father. I married him to get out of my own father’s home, where there was no spare money for parties or pretty clothes. I wanted to have some fun and command my own household, and with you there it was impossible. Even when he’d banished you to the convent, he went on loving you. He spoke of you often; of how you used to read to each other at night.’

  My heart was comforted. At last I understood now why Lorena wanted me gone and I felt true and sincere sympathy for her position.

  ‘I need your forgiveness,’ said Lorena in distress. ‘I beg for it. Please say that you forgive me that I may suffer less torment in the afterlife.’

  ‘I do. I do.’ I knelt by her bed and took her hand in mine. ‘I readily forgive you, Lorena. The fault was not only yours. I should have been more welcoming. I see now that I didn’t care for my father’s happiness. I resented you for taking the black mourning curtains from the windows. But it was the right thing to do – to let some light into the house after four months of grief. I forgive you.’

  ‘But I have done a greater misdeed.’ Lorena’s eyes were dulling, her eyelids drooping down.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I assured her. ‘Be at peace.’

  ‘No, you must pay attention, Zarita. I was so envious of you. I did everything I could to be like you. I listened to his stories. I tried to read his books – his dull, dull books. But he loved you, always you. So I thought that if I could get rid of you, then I would be able to control the house and him.’

  ‘You had your way in that, Lorena. Papa sent me away.’

  ‘Yes, but as soon as you were gone he missed you. He told me how you used to ride out together each day.’

  Papa had loved me.

  I remembered the early mornings of my childhood – going to the stables as the sun was rising and a bluish pale moon hung in the sky. Papa was by my side as we cantered past the forest to the green valley, hearing the call of wild creatures, seeing the hovering kestrel and hawk. A fast gallop through the meadows of sweet green grass and then a trot home, with him telling me tales of his own childhood. I felt a great pang of loss and wished that our last times together had been more pleasant.

  ‘Your papa actually pined for you.’ Lorena’s speech was slurred, but in her desire to unburden her soul she forced herself to continue. ‘I felt rejected. And the servants who’d disliked me from the beginning now hated me. Oh, they wouldn’t have gone so far as to poison me, but they resented my being in your mother’s rooms. They gave me sullen looks and performed each task I asked them as slowly as possible. I blamed all this on you. And then I think your papa began to turn from me and become watchful. His health was giving him worries. He started to sort his papers and make arrangements for the disposal of his estate. I discovered that he’d taken a large amount of money and hidden it away somewhere. It was for you, in case anything happened to him. He was having recurring pains in his chest and believed his heart was weakening. I think he thought he might be close to death. And I knew his next step would be to disinherit me and perhaps even the child if he found out it wasn’t his. So I made plans to rid myself of you.’ She raised her head up from her pillow. ‘I decided that I would kill you!’

  ‘This is mere fancy,’ I said firmly. ‘We quarrelled, that’s true, but no real malice was intended.’

  ‘It was on my part,’ Lorena said hoarsely. ‘You must escape. Zarita, you must escape!’

  ‘It is safe here,’ I told her.

  ‘Nowhere is safe from them.’ Her eyes darted around in panic. ‘Nowhere. You must leave Spain.’

  Leave Spain! She was delirious. I took the cloth, wrung it out in cold water and bathed her forehead. Her skin looked like my mama’s had the day she’d died. She was slipping away very quickly now. I spoke to my aunt: ‘Where is the priest?’

  ‘I’ll go and find out.’ She hurried from the room.

  ‘Are we alone?’ Lorena whispered.

  ‘Yes.’ I
had to lean close to her mouth to hear.

  ‘I have betrayed you, Zarita, in the most . . . most wicked way.’

  ‘Anything you have done, I forgive.’

  ‘The letter . . .’ Now she really was drifting, her mind clouding as her spirit began to disassociate itself from her body, ready for its flight to the next world. ‘There’s no escape. The letter . . . The letter . . .’

  The door opened and my aunt entered with the priest. He set out the bowls of holy oils on the bedside table and opened his prayer book.

  ‘Zarita,’ Lorena said faintly, ‘you will burn . . . the letter . . .’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I will burn the letter.’ I had no idea what letter she meant, but I agreed with what she was saying in order to placate her in her last moments. ‘All your papers will be burned.’ This had already happened. I thought of the charred remains in the family home.

  ‘Too late,’ she murmured. ‘It is gone.’

  If the letter was gone, then why did she want me to burn it?

  Within a minute, Lorena too was gone. Her breathing rattled and then ceased. My aunt waited before drawing up the sheet to cover her face.

  ‘What ailed her at the end?’ The priest looked at me searchingly.

  ‘She was rambling,’ I said. ‘Everything was mixed up in her head.’ It was not for me to make a confession on behalf of another.

  ‘I will pray for her troubled soul,’ the priest said, and then added thoughtfully, ‘It was as if she carried a great guilt and did not want to face her Maker with it still on her conscience; something specific . . . something yet to be discovered.’

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Saulo

  ABOUT A WEEK after Christmas I rode through the outskirts of the royal encampment at Santa Fe.

  The court was making ready for the official royal entry into Granada as the city’s ruler, Sultan Boabdil, had agreed to surrender the city on the second of January. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had given orders that following this there would be a glorious triumphal procession to signify that the Reconquista was complete. The Moors were vanquished and the country was united under Spanish rule.