Виктория Холт - Spain for the Sovereigns

There was nothing for La Susanna but her own misery.

They had reached the door of a building which she knew to be one of the city’s convents.

The Bishop knocked and they were admitted.

‘Take care of this woman,’ said the Bishop to the Mother Superior. ‘She is in great need of your care.’

And he left her there, left her with her remorse and the memory of her father at the stake, with the sound of his cries of anguish as the flames licked his body – all of which were engraved upon her mind for ever.

* * *

In the Convent of St Paul Ojeda planned more such spectacles. They had begun the work. The people of Seville had lost their truculence. They understood now what could happen to those who defied the Inquisition. Soon more smoke would be rising above the meadows of Tablada.

Seville should lead the way, and other towns would follow; he would show Torquemada and the Queen what a zealous Christian was Alonso de Ojeda.

He sent his Dominicans to preach against heresy in all the pulpits of the city. Information must be lodged against suspected heretics. Anyone who could be suspected of the slightest heresy must be brought before the tribunals and tortured until he involved his neighbours.

There were friars at St Paul’s whose special duty it was on the Jewish Sabbath to station themselves on the roof of the convent and watch the chimneys of the town. Anyone who did not light a fire was suspect. Those whose chimneys were smokeless would be brought before the tribunal; and if they did not confess, the torture could be applied; it was very likely that, on the rack or the hoist or subjected to a taste of the water torture, these people would be ready not only to confess their own guilt but to involve their friends.

‘Ah!’ cried Ojeda. ‘I will prove my zeal to Tomás de Torquemada. The Queen will recognise me as her very good servant.’

And, even as he spoke, one of his monks came hurrying to him to tell him that plague had struck the city.

Ojeda’s eyes flashed. ‘This is the Divine will,’ he declared. ‘This is God’s punishment for the evil-living in Seville.’

* * *

The stricken people were dying in the streets.

‘Holy Prior,’ declared the Inquisitor Morillo, ‘it is impossible to continue with our good work while the plague rages. It may be that men who are brought in for questioning will sicken and die in their cells. Soon we shall have plague in St Paul’s. There is only one thing we can do.’

‘Leave this stricken city,’ agreed Ojeda. ‘It is the Divine will that these people shall be punished for their loose living; but God would not wish that we, who do His work, should suffer with them. Yes, we must leave Seville.’

‘We might go to Aracena, and there wait until the city is clean again.’

‘Let us do that,’ agreed Ojeda. ‘I doubt not that Aracena will profit from our visit. It is certain that it contains some heretics who should not be allowed to sully its purity.’

‘We should travel with all speed,’ said Morillo.

‘Then let us leave this day.’

When he was alone Ojeda felt a strange lethargy creep over him; he felt sick and dizzy.

He said to himself: It is this talk of the plague. It is time we left Seville.

He sat down heavily and tried to think of Aracena. The edict should be read immediately on their arrival, warning all the inhabitants that it would be advisable for them to report any acts of heresy they had witnessed. Thus it should not be difficult to find victims for an auto de fe.

One of the Dominicans had come into the room; he looked at the Prior, and his startled terror showed on his face.

He made an excuse to retire quickly, and Ojeda tried to rise to his feet and follow him, but he slipped back into his chair.

Then Ojeda knew. The plague had come to St Paul’s; it embraced not only those who defied the laws of the Church but also those who set out to enforce them.

Within a few days Ojeda was dead; but the Quemadero – the Burning Place – had come to stay; and all over Castile the fires had begun to burn.

Christmas had come and Isabella was enjoying a brief respite from her duties, with her family. It was rarely that they could all be together, and this union made the Queen very happy.

She could look back over the years of her reign with a certain pride.

There was peace in the kingdom. Alfonso of Portugal had died in the August of the previous year. He had been making preparations to resign the throne in order to go into residence at the monastery of Varatojo, and was travelling through Cintra when he was attacked by an illness which proved to be fatal. He had caused her a great deal of anxiety and she could only feel relieved that he could cause her no more.

She had punished criminals so harshly that she had considerably reduced their number; and she now proposed to punish heretics until none was left in her country.

She saw her friend Tomás de Torquemada infrequently now; he was obsessed by his work for the Holy Office. Her present confessor was Father Talavera, who was almost as zealous a worker for the Faith as Torquemada himself.

She knew she must not rest on her triumphs. Always she must remember the work that was left to be done. There was yet another great task awaiting her, for the setting up of the Inquisition, and the ridding her country of all heretics, was not all. There, she told herself, like a great abscess on the fair form of Spain, was the kingdom of Granada.

But for this Christmas she would indulge herself. She would be as an ordinary woman in the heart of her family.

She went to the nurseries to see her children.

As they stood before her and curtsied she felt a sadness touch her. She was a stranger to them, and she their mother. She suppressed a desire to take them in her arms and caress them, to weep over them, to tell them how she longed to be a gentle mother to them.

That would be unwise. These children must never forget that, although she was their mother, she was also their Queen.

‘And how are my children this day?’ she asked them.

Isabella, who was eleven years old, naturally spoke for the others. ‘They are all well, Highness; and they hope they see Your Highness in like state.’

A faint smile curved Isabella’s lips. What a formal answer to a mother’s question! But it was the correct answer of course.

Her eyes dwelt on her son – her little three-year-old Juan. How could she help his being her favourite? Ferdinand had wanted a boy, because he had felt it was fitting that there should be a male heir to the throne; and for Ferdinand’s sake she was glad.

And there was little Juana, a charming two-year-old, with a sparkle in her eyes.

‘I am very happy, my dears,’ said Isabella, ‘because now your father and I can spare a little time from our duties to spend with our family.’

‘What duties, Highness?’ asked young Juana.

The Infanta Isabella gave her sister a stern look, but the Queen said: ‘Nay, let her speak.’

She sat down and lifted her youngest daughter onto her knee. ‘You would know what the duties of a king and queen are, my child?’

Juana nodded.

The Infanta Isabella nudged her. ‘You must not nod when the Queen speaks to you. You must answer.’

Juana smiled enchantingly. ‘What must I say?’

‘Oh, Highness,’ said the Infanta Isabella, ‘she is but two, you know.’

‘I know full well,’ said Isabella. ‘And now we are in our close family circle we need not observe too strictly the etiquette which it is necessary to maintain on all other occasions. But of course you must remember that it is only at such times as this that we can relax.’

‘Oh, yes, Highness,’ the young Isabella and Juan replied together.

Then the Queen told her children of the duties of king and queen, how they must travel from place to place; how it was necessary to call a Cortes to govern the country, how it was necessary to set up courts to judge evil doers – those who broke the civic law and the laws of God. The children listened gravely.

‘One day,’ said Isabella, ‘Juan will be a King, and I think it very possible that you, my daughters, may be Queens.’

‘Queens?’ asked young Isabella. ‘But Juan will be King, so how can we be Queens?’

‘Not of Castile and Aragon, of course. But you will marry, and your husbands may be Kings; you will reign with them. You must always remember this and prepare yourselves.’

Isabella stopped suddenly. She had had a vivid reminder of the past. She remembered those days at Arevalo where she and her young brother Alfonso had spent their childhood. She remembered her mother’s hysteria and how the theme of her conversation was always: You could be King – or Queen – of Castile.

But this is different, she hastened to assure herself. These children will ascend thrones without trouble. It is not wild hysteria which makes me bid them prepare.

But she changed the subject abruptly and wished to know how they were progressing with their lessons. She would see their books and hear them read.

Then young Isabella read and, while she was doing so, the child began to cough.

‘Do you cough often?’ the Queen asked,

‘Now and then, Mother.’

‘She is always coughing,’ Juan told his mother.

‘Not always,’ Isabella contradicted. ‘At night sometimes, Mother. Then I am given a soothing syrup, and that makes me go to sleep.’