By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan
He asked Judith out to the courtyard. “Let’s not be naive. Baba Shlomo has lived a long life. I’ll prescribe an infusion of verbena and peony, which, if properly mixed and depending on astrological conditions, may cause his symptoms to subside. It’s also important that he walk or at least sit up every day. To lie down is to welcome Death. And make sure he eats meat.”
“Thank you, Isaac.”
He nodded and turned to leave.
Judith stopped him. “He wants to travel. He can’t get out of bed, but he’s talking about journeying all the way to Zaragoza. A pilgrimage, he calls it.”
Isaac smiled at the folly of it, but then said, perhaps in jest, “If it gives him a reason to rise from his bed, it might be of benefit.”
Judith watched Isaac exit her courtyard. She wondered whether the streets of Zaragoza resembled the narrow, steep alleys of Granada. Her own great-grandparents, on her mother’s side, had lived there. She wondered how far the chancellor resided from the Jewish quarter.
“Third generation,” he had said. The grandson of an apostate. He carried himself like a nobleman, with all the impassivity and smugness the highest titles can bestow. She remembered his glances, that evening, his unflinching eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A LIGHT RAIN FELL on Valencia. Returning to his brother’s home with Iancu, after an absence of almost four months, Santángel saw from a distance that the gates were closed. He rode closer and noticed the heavy chains. Slowing his horse, he tried to quiet his racing mind. He dismounted, pounded on the doors, and rattled the metal links.
“Estefan!”
Only the wind answered.
“Gabriel!” He shook the gates a second time. He leaned against them, breathing hard, his eyes darting about for clues.
A peasant hummed a simple tune as he drove his mule up the street. Santángel hailed him: “My good man. This property, do you know anything about it?”
The peasant stopped and bowed. “My lord?”
“This gate, why is it chained? Does no one live here?”
“No one lives there,” confirmed the peasant.
“Are you familiar with the goings-on in this street? Or do you rarely come this way?”
“I walk down this street every morning, and up it every evening, my lord.”
“The owner of this house,” insisted Santángel. “Do you know him?”
“Know him? Me? Oh, no, señor.” The peasant laughed, shaking his head. “But I have seen him.”
“How long has the house been empty? How long has this gate been chained?”
“Maybe a month.”
“They moved out?”
“They moved out.”
“They moved out, or they were taken out?”
“People say they took him to Zaragoza,” he said at last. “I don’t know more.” He waved a fly from his head. The peasant continued on his way.
Iancu came closer, searching the chancellor’s crumpled face. He waited, then began in a quiet voice, “On the ocean crossing, my wife. They … they insulted. They raped. They laughed. Like an old rug, they threw her overboard.” He stopped, his face twisted. “They tied us—me, Dumitru—in hold. No light. But we heard. We heard her screams. My boy. He heard his mother’s screams.” He clenched his jaw and stared beyond Santángel. “If I may.” The former captive spread his arms and hugged the chancellor tightly.
No one unrelated to Santángel had ever ventured such intimacy. Finding consolation in their shared misery, the chancellor allowed the burly foreigner to hold him.
Since relocating to Zaragoza, Tomás de Torquemada had discovered he preferred the calm of La Veruela Monastery to the noise and bustle of La Seo Cathedral. Tonight, however, all was not quiet. Waking well before matins, he heard voices and rose from bed.
“Señor Santángel,” one of the inquisitor’s guards was saying, “allow me to remind you that this edifice belongs to God. The Holy Church is obligated to protect it. We have the power to arrest noblemen, as well as servants of the court, even in Aragon.”
“No, my good man,” came the voice of Luis de Santángel. “You do not have that power.”
Torquemada was pleased that the chancellor had finally deigned to pay him a visit, but he did not approve of his sentry’s tone. Now that he had the chancellor in his territory, Torquemada saw no reason to insult him.
“And what is it,” asked the guard, “that you are seeking?”
“I’m here to speak with Father Torquemada.”
“At this hour?”
“Indeed.”
The inquisitor general, now fully clothed, pulled the door open to face the chancellor. “Light the candles in my front room,” Torquemada commanded his sentry. He turned to Santángel. “We have much to discuss.” He ushered him into his private chambers.
“Where is my son?” Santángel’s voice hardly masked his desperation and fear. “Where is my brother? Four days ago, in Valencia, I found his home empty, the gates chained. And where is my maidservant, Leonor? My home, too, is empty. Surely you haven’t seized them all.”
Torquemada smiled graciously. “I’ll try to answer your questions, Señor Santángel. We’re taking good care of your son, right here in this building. We had no plans to arrest your brother. That was his own doing. He’ll soon join us here.”
A servant lit the candles. “And my maidservant?” demanded Santángel. “What do you hope to accomplish?”
“I know nothing about your maidservant.” Torquemada sat down at the table. He gestured for the chancellor to do the same. “You’ve been traveling. I travel, too. I know how it wearies the flesh.”
“Yes, I’ve been traveling,” said Santángel, “on business for the Crown. My son, Gabriel, what have you done to him?”
“You have your expectations of this meeting, Señor Santángel. We have ours.”
The chancellor understood the friar’s expectations all too well: to entrap him, seize his wealth, and make an example of him, happily destroying his family in the process. Yet, if he did not treat Torquemada with respect, or at least restraint, he risked increasing the danger to Gabriel and Estefan.
“And what are your expectations?”
“I want to understand why Christians—conversos, in particular—are drawn to heresy, even when they know how much they have to lose, not just in this temporal world, but in the world beyond.”
“Why are conversos attracted to heresy?” asked Santángel. “I’m afraid I can’t shed any light on that.”
“Allow me to think more highly of you.”
“Where is my son?”
“I wouldn’t think of depriving Gabriel of a visit with his father. But first, let me glean what advantage I can from the honor of your visit with me.”
Santángel waited for more.
“You see,” the Dominican continued, folding his hands on the table, “I could preach to New Christians forever. The proof that Christ is the Messiah, that He came in fulfillment of the Jews’ own prophecies, is visible to all who want to see. The proof that the Jews lost favor with God when they rejected Him is no less obvious. Did Jesus not say to them, ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do’?”
“I can’t argue theology with you, Father. You would surely win.”
“So then,” the monk pursued, “one has to ask, are the Jews, and the judaizing conversos, incapable of seeing and comprehending this irrefutable proof? Are they ‘invincibly ignorant,’ to use Augustine’s term? Or do they actually know they’re wrong, but persist in their pernicious beliefs out of a perverse, sick willfulness? Did they murder our Lord in the full knowledge that he was their Messiah, as Thomas Aquinas maintains? These questions, Señor Santángel, they haunt me.”
“So I see.”
“I believe you know the answers. Your help could be invaluable.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“For example, there was a certain dinner, at the residence of Señor Felipe de Almazón.”
“Any heretical behavior, in any context, is of interest to the Church.”
The chancellor drummed his fingers on the table, then stopped himself. “A dinner with one’s aide is heresy?”
“The prayers that were uttered at that dinner. For that alone, Señor Santángel, I could have you burned at the stake.”
Santángel was not surprised that his son had betrayed him. How could a mere boy be expected to hold out against all the machinery of the Inquisition? “I didn’t utter any prayers at that dinner. But I am praying now.”
Torquemada lowered his face and looked up at him.
Santángel swallowed, a knot in his throat. “I’m praying you haven’t been torturing my son.”
“There’s also the log of Señor de Almazón’s confessions. It disappeared from the canon’s chambers the night of the murder. Hardly a coincidence, one would think.”
Santángel wondered what Torquemada expected him to say. Did he know the log had disappeared before the night of the murder? Had it ever been kept in the canon’s chambers with the other logs?
“Please, Father, allow me to see my son.”
“Be my guest.” Torquemada rose to usher the chancellor out of the room.
Gabriel occupied a private cell with a trunk, a bed, and a small window set high in the wall. Luis found him sitting at his desk, parsing the Latin words of a large book. Hearing the door open, the boy looked up and saw his father enter with the inquisitor, looking harried and undone.
Santángel inwardly thanked God that Gabriel was alive, that the Inquisition was treating him in a manner befitting a thirteen-year-old of his station. He rushed to embrace his son.
Gabriel swallowed and blinked, but did not rise. “Where were you?”
“On a mission for the Crown. You know that. Come, Gabriel, my young knight.”
Gabriel remained seated. “Every day, I prayed you’d come.”
“I am so sorry. If only I had known …” He yearned to take his son in his arms, but Gabriel turned back to his reading.
“Gabriel, show respect for your father,” said Torquemada.
“Yes, Father,” replied the boy as he rose.
“What are you reading?” Luis de Santángel sought his son’s eyes. Gabriel kept them fixed on the inquisitor. Santángel placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Gabriel shrugged it off.
“Father Torquemada wanted me to learn more about my … my grandparents’ faith.”
“And what, precisely, are you learning?”
Finally, Gabriel turned to his father. “I’ve learned how the Jews stab the flesh of Christ, the host wafer used in our Mass, until it bleeds, as part of their ritual. I found out how they poison wells to spread the plague, and why they kill Christian babies.”
“And why do the Jews kill Christian babies?”
“They need their blood for the unleavened bread they eat on Easter.”
Santángel stood and leaned over Gabriel’s desk. Fortalitium Fidei had been manufactured cheaply on a printing press, in only two colors, red and black. He flipped backward, his hands shaking, to the title page. “Who is this Alfonso de Espina?”
“An itinerant monk,” answered Torquemada. “A skilled orator, they say. The people are drawn to him, from Sevilla to Nuremberg.”
Santángel closed the book. “And what does he suggest we do about this stubborn, hateful people?”
“He proposes we eliminate them,” said Torquemada. “Them and all their descendents.” He placed a hand on the boy’s back. “I, however,” continued the inquisitor, “do not share his opinion. Those who truly repent, those who humbly prostrate themselves before the Lord to ask His forgiveness and guidance, must be welcomed into His flock.”
“But how do you know,” probed Santángel, “what someone thinks or feels in the private depths of his heart?”
“You are quite right, Chancellor,” said Torquemada. “There’s no substitute for constant vigilance. Even the most sincere will sometimes relapse.”
“Perhaps. Regardless, it’s time my son came home.”
“Why don’t we leave that decision to him?” Torquemada turned to the boy. “You may leave this monastery whenever you like, Gabriel. However, whatever you decide, as penitence for the improper thoughts to which you’ve confessed, you’ll have to participate in an auto-da-fé, to make your confession public, and to be judged.”
“When?”
“I cannot say. The investigation may take years. But however long it takes, if you stay with us, we’ll offer you peace, study, and reconciliation with God. We shall prepare you well, and the outcome will reflect your newfound faith.”
Gabriel eased himself back into his chair, looking down, and folded his arms on his chest. “I shall stay, Father.”
“Are you certain of that?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Why?” Santángel asked in a whisper.
Gabriel stared at his hands. “All those years, when I pretended to be a knight, we both knew it would never happen. My father was away and I was just a scared child waving his sword at the darkness. But now …” He raised his eyes. “Now I have a cause worth fighting for.”
The chancellor stiffened and turned back to Torquemada. “Regardless of what my son wants,” he insisted, “I still have authority over him.”
“So you do,” agreed the inquisitor. “And I have the authority to arrest and try you for judaizing. I have, however, chosen not to exercise that authority for the time being. We’re quite pleased with your son’s progress, but he still needs our support and love.”
Santángel looked at Gabriel, who was trying to find his place in the book. He took Gabriel’s head in his hands and kissed it, his lips lingering on his son’s hair.
Torquemada wondered what Juan Rodríguez had failed to tell him about his interview with the chancellor’s maidservant. With Santángel complaining about Leonor’s disappearance, Torquemada remembered the way Rodríguez had stared at her in the seminarians’ room. He recalled Rodríguez’s unspeakable act before the Holy Virgin and the rumors he had heard about Rodríguez’s criminal past. The inquisitor had prayed for his constable. He hoped that Rodríguez’s devotion to Christ and His Church was transforming him.
Although Rodríguez was not a monk himself, Torquemada found him the next morning in the crypt of La Seo, far beneath the cathedral’s nave, participating in a mortification exercise with a small congregation of Dominicans.
Rather than interrupt the religious observance of the monks downstairs, the inquisitor waited until his constable climbed out of the crypt. His tunic stained with sweat and blood, Rodríguez saw him and turned. He knelt beside Torquemada as if asking forgiveness.
“What is it, my son? What is troubling you? Raise your eyes.” He placed his palm under the constable’s chin and elevated his face.
“You know, don’t you.”
“I know what, my son?”
“I murdered her, Father. I fornicated with her, and then I killed her, although I didn’t mean to.”
“The chancellor’s maidservant?”
“I believe she was a witch.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“From the moment I saw her, my heart was filled with lust. I’ve heard that witches use spells to make you their captive, to take away your powers of reason.”
Torquemada’s voice remained calm and low. “Even so, my son, even if this woman was a disciple of Satan, that would have been for the Holy Inquisition to determine. We can’t have laymen conducting their own private inquisitions, can we? They—you—have neither the skills nor the sanction of the Church.”
“No, of course not. I have sinned, Father. Send me to the ecclesiastical jail, I beg you.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Only the two constables who were with us. They’ve sworn not to speak of it.”
“They helped me carry it into the forest and bury it.”
“How did you pay them?”
“With the money I inherited from my uncle, who raised me. He was a candle maker. I now have nothing, Father, other than what the Church provides.”
Torquemada nodded. “That will be all.”
Tentatively, Rodríguez posed one further question: “Am I forgiven?”
“No. Go to the jail, as your heart dictates. Sit among other sinners and meditate upon your failures.”
“And then, shall I be forgiven?” the constable was unable to hold back his tears.
“All who genuinely seek the Lord’s compassion,” Torquemada replied gently, “if they’re willing to pay the price, will receive it.”
The constable accepted the sentence gratefully. He had hardly dared imagine that the portals of heaven could open for him. Now God’s representative was promising that absolution was possible even for one so depraved.
He kissed the hem of the inquisitor general’s habit, then slowly stood. Torquemada did not turn to watch him leave the church but knelt in prayer. Despite Juan Rodríguez’s despicable weakness, Torquemada trusted that he knew good from evil. Rodríguez would walk to the ecclesiastical jail without an escort. His period of penance, the inquisitor general decided, should not be long.
Estefan Santángel sat in a dark, dirt-floored cell in the ecclesiastical jail of Valencia. Chained to the wall, he could hardly ignore the other prisoners’ groans and vile utterances. The guards woke him for water and bread at random hours. Sometimes they poured a jug of cold water over his head to rouse him. Other times they prodded him with a hot iron. In the unending twilight, Estefan lost his sense of time: how long he had been there, how much longer he might remain.
He conjured every detail of his drunken behavior in the tavern. “I was soused! Do they hold you to everything that comes out of your mouth, or fails to come out of your mouth, when you’re wet as a frog? What do I know about Judaism? What do I care?”