Torquemada (10 page)

THAT MORNING MARIA DECIDED TO GO TO CHURCH
and Catherine agreed to go with her. Somehow or other Maria had built up in her mind a pattern of events – events that could be negated or extinguished simply by spending the morning in church. She tried to explain to Catherine how they would confess themselves and how many candles they would light and precisely what they would say to those two priests she most favoured. Catherine listened but without enthusiasm or conviction, and when Maria put it to Alvero that he should go with them he shook his head angrily and tried to hurry them on their way.

Catherine was troubled. She said to her father, “Will you stay here? Will you remain here? Will you be here when we return?”

Alvero forced himself to smile and to reassure her.

“Mother wants me to confess,” Catherine said.

“That's an excellent notion,” Alvero agreed. “I think you should. You will feel better.”

“Don't you remember?” Catherine whispered fiercely.

“I remember nothing that troubles me in any way – and certainly nothing that should trouble you,” Alvero said. “Go to church and do as your mother wishes.”

Alvero was relieved when they were gone. What he knew would happen, he expected to happen any moment now and each minute that went by without it happening was a sort of reprieve to him. He went into his own room, his private cabinet where he kept his ledgers and his accounts and where he did his own work, and he sat down at his desk and began to write. He had proposed to himself that he would write a single letter to his wife and his daughter together. When he could not find the words to get started upon this project, he attempted to write to Maria. That too proved an impossible task. Maria had left the house only a short while before, yet he could not evoke any image of her. There had been no parting between them. She had simply turned her back on him and walked out; but such an action was quite reasonable from Maria's pointy of view. There was no reason why Maria should consider that this morning was different from any other morning.

At last Alvero settled in his own mind for a letter to Catherine and once he began to write the words flowed easily from his pen. He had finished this letter, folded it and sealed it and was at work on a second document, a sort of codicil to his will, when he heard the sound of marching men and steel against steel outside in the street. He walked over to the window and there in the burning morning sunlight he saw six Inquisition soldiers marching down the street towards the house. They were in half-armour, their big boat-shaped helms tilted back on their heads. As always they were unkempt and their arms were poorly kept and Alvero found himself thinking that if he commanded them his first action would be to turn the lot of them into the river-bed with plenty of soap. The thought was childish and he shrugged and went back to his desk and to the document he was writing. One part of him concentrated on what he was doing. Another part of him heard the soldiers hammer at the door and then heard Julio's muffled voice as he opened the door. Presently Julio was tapping on the door to his room. Alvero rose and let the servant in.

“What is it, Julio?” Alvero asked.

“You know, don't you? You must have heard them.”

“I know.”

“I would not let them in the house,” Julio said. “They are filthy and they stink. Anyway it is not fitting that such scum should enter the house of a Spanish gentleman and drag him away like a thief.”

“And did they agree to wait outside?”

Julio nodded.

“For now,” Alvero said. “Presently they will become bolder. They will stop knocking at doors and break down doors and when good people like yourself stand in their way they will kill without thinking twice about it.”

“You must go with them?” Julio asked.

“For the moment, yes. Never mind that, there are more important things.” He handed the letter he had written to Julio. “This is for my daughter, Julio. It is very important.”

“She will have it, Don Alvero.”

“Now this—” Alvero took up the second piece of paper and handed it to Julio. “This, Julio, is a codicil to my will. It says that if I should die you are entitled to the ownership of the white stallion you have always admired and also to one hundred gold pieces—”

“Please, please, Don Alvero,” Julio interrupted. “I don't want you to talk about that. Your death is far away.”

“No man's death is far away,” Alvero said impatiently. “Now you just listen to me and take this document and do what I say. I know that you cannot read, Julio, but I have explained to you what is in the document. If you lose this document, you will be entitled to nothing except the little bit in my regular will. I want you to know that in my regular will I provide for you and for the other servants, but that is a small matter. I want you to have this. Now leave me alone and go to the holy soldiers and tell them that I will be with them as soon as I have dressed myself properly.”

Alvero's shirt was stained with perspiration already. He put on a fresh shirt of white silk and over it a velvet vest. He buckled his finest ornamental dagger onto his belt, took his mirror, and combed his long hair carefully. As he walked to the door, he smiled, reflecting on the childish vanity of his own actions.

The Inquisition soldiers were waiting for him. The sergeant in charge of the small squad said to him.

“We will not put irons upon you, Don Alvero, but you must not try to escape. I know that we are dealing with a Spanish gentleman, but you will admit that these are different times.”

“I admit that, Sergeant.” Alvero nodded.

“Strange times, Don Alvero. It is not enough simply to be a Spanish gentleman or to be a sergeant like myself. All relationships have changed, don't you agree?”

“I agree.” Alvero nodded.

“So I will not put the irons upon you and you must not try to escape. Just stand among us and we will all walk together to the priory.”

Alvero nodded and took his place among the soldiers and they marched off. The church bells had stopped ringing now and the only sound was the clank of the soldiers' metal and the hard crunch of their feet. As they passed through the streets of Segovia, men and women and children paused in whatever they were doing to look at them. But no one said anything, no one laughed, no one mocked, no one spoke. Even the children were silent. There was no one in Segovia who did not know Don Alvero, but now no one had a word to say for him or a word to say against him.

That way they marched through Segovia and out of the town on the road that led to the monastery.

The morning was warmer than usual. By the time they reached the monastery, Alvero was perspiring again and he remembered how upset Maria would become when he ruined one of his very fine and expensive silk shirts with perspiration. No matter how much the peons rinsed the shirts in salt water, perspiration stains remained.

They walked on through among the monks, who went on with their work, neither watching them nor acknowledging their existence by any word or action. They went through the cloister and into the building and down the corridor to the Inquisition room. A black-robed Dominican was waiting and he nodded at the soldiers and told them to leave Alvero and to go. Then the Dominican opened the door of the Inquisition room and motioned for Alvero to enter. Alvero walked in slowly. The friar followed him, closing the door.

Now there were seven men at the long refectory table that stood in the centre of the room. In the middle was Torquemada and on each side of him there were three Inquisitors. They were all of them strangely alike, not indulgent men, not fat men or cheerful men-but all of them strangely like Torquemada, lean of face, dark of eye, brown-skinned and determined. They stared at Alvero as he entered but their stares carried no particular meaning. They neither approved nor disapproved. They simply watched him.

At this time of the morning the light from the windows behind the Inquisitors glared down in broad bands. The light lit up Alvero who stood in the midst of a great shaft of dancing dust motes. The Inquisitors however remained shadowed, strangely distant, strangely aloof.

For Alvero at this moment, there was neither fear nor anger. If he had been asked to state precisely what he felt, he would have had to reply that he felt nothing at all. He was divorced from himself and it was with real rather than feigned curiosity that he said to Torquemada.

“Why have you brought me here, Thomas?”

“Don't you know?”

“If I knew I would not ask you.”

“You see, Alvero,” Torquemada said, “we have many years of friendship behind us. I know you very well – and I think that I know something about your soul, but your mind remains closed to me. I have no powers to enter it; I have no magic or unearthly skills. I am only a poor monk who does the best he can and I think that you know that better than anyone else. So suppose you tell me why you are here.”

“I don't know.”

“Don Alvero,” Torquemada went on, “do you accept the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul?”

“I accept it.”

“Then we are here not as your enemies but as your saviours – for what is any earthly discomfort as against the eternity of immortality?”

At this point Torquemada waited. He leaned forward eagerly and the three friars on either side of him looked from his face to Alvero's face and then back to Torquemada's face. But Alvero did not reply and then Torquemada said gently.

“Confess yourself.”

“Of what?”

“Shall we decide that?”

“Tell me what I am charged with,” Alvero demanded.

“As simple as that. Most men who stand here, Don Alvero de Rafel, are filled with fear. They don't fear me. They fear God, and in me they fear only what is God's purpose. Are you not afraid?”

“No.”

“Do you fear God, Alvero?”

“I fear only what threatens me,” Alvero answered slowly. “God doesn't threaten me.”

“Do I threaten you?”

“I will not put boundaries on friendship, Thomas. There is no need for either of us to lacerate the skin or the soul of the other. Tell me what I am charged with.”

Torquemada sighed and then suddenly clenched his fist and smashed it down on the table in front of him. “The supreme heresy! Judaizing!”

“I am no Jew, I am a Christian,” Alvero said softly.

“So you are – so you are, Alvero de Rafel. Otherwise you would not stand before this Holy Inquisition. No Jew stands here – for to what purpose, to what end would they stand here? Damned as they are from the moment of their birth, they have no hope of salvation. Neither sin nor heresy is within their province – only the perpetuation of God's curse untempered by God's mercy. Such is the condition of the Jew and the holy stones of this priory will not be stained by his presence.”

Torquemada's anger went almost as if he had verbally dismissed it. His voice became gentle and understanding. His clenched fist opened and his fingers traced patterns on the table in front of him. He looked up at Alvero and his dark eyes probed searchingly as he said, “I have known you many years, Don Alvero de Rafel – yourself and your wife and your daughter. As an unbaptized infant I held your daughter in the palm of my hand and I have watched her grow. I have known you and I have loved you. Do not place your damnation as another burden upon me. I have burden enough. You said before that we were friends and if that is the case there is a necessity for understanding. Understand the burden I bear, Alvero. I plead with you – confess yourself, absolve yourself.”

Alvero considered this thought and then nodded. He felt strangely objective as he said, “So that you may lash me to a stake and burn me alive?”

Now the Inquisitor to the far right of Torquemada, an old, old man, cried out, “The mortal body is burned. Fire strengthens the soul. Only this disease we call life is burned away—”

And the man sitting next to him said, “The mortal body – which is filth, dirt and sin. Do you hear, Don Alvero?” The old man at the far right smiled. He was almost toothless, a single yellow tooth in the bottom of his jaw, two yellow fangs on top. It made him lisp as he spoke. “The mortal body goes in purification. You lose it, Don Alvero, but think of what you gain. The gain is life everlasting.”

At the other side of Torquemada an Inquisitor intoned, “Purged by fire of all sin, purged and pure. Pure and full of grace, full of grace.”

Torquemada shook his head impatiently and Alvero had the feeling that the Prior was both annoyed and embarrassed by the comments of his colleagues. “Become one with your God,” Torquemada said. “Give up your torment, Don Alvero.”

“No, Thomas,” Alvero replied. “My torment is one thing I will not surrender easily.”

Now the old man on the far left found reason to be indignant and demanded how Alvero dared to address the Grand Inquisitor in so familiar a manner.

“He despises us,” another Inquisitor said. “It is obvious that he despises us.” And then addressing himself to Alvero, “Do you despise us, sir?”

“I remembered a friend,” Alvero said. “Do I sin by calling him Thomas?” He addressed himself directly to Torquemada and asked for an answer. “Does it go with my other sins? Shall I no longer call you Thomas?”

“I too remember a friend,” Torquemada said. “Call me Thomas so long as you can, God help me – God help both of us. I speak to you as a friend, Alvero. Give up your torment and be at peace with yourself.”

“But I have found something precious in my torment.”

“Something precious? What have you found, Don Alvero?”

“Myself.”

“As a heretic? As a Jew? How have you found yourself, Alvero?”

“As a human being.”

“And what does that signify, Alvero? That you are a thing of flesh and blood? That you eat, that you sleep, that you breathe? An animal performs all those functions. An animal is flesh and blood. A Jew is flesh and blood. I was speaking before of your immortal soul.”