Daughters of Spain - Plaidy Jean - Страница 15

‘Then perhaps I should not delay but continue my journey to Madrid.’

‘Let me tell him that Your Excellency is here. If he is well enough he will certainly wish to see you. Allow me to inform him of your arrival after I have shown you to an apartment where you can rest while I have refreshment sent to Your Excellency.’

Torquemada graciously agreed to this proposal and Ruiz hurried to the bedside of Ximenes who had not left his bed since that horrifying encounter with Bernardin.

He opened his eyes and looked at Ruiz as he entered. To this nephew he owed his life. Ruiz had dashed into the apartment as Bernardin had hurried out because Ruiz, who knew Bernardin well, had feared he might harm his brother. It was Ruiz who had revived his half-dead uncle and brought him back to life.

Ximenes had since been wondering what action to take. Clearly he could not have Bernardin back in his household, but justice should be done. There should be punishment for such a crime. But how could he denounce his own brother as a would-be murderer?

Ruiz came to stand by the bed.

‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘Tomas de Torquemada is with us.’

‘Torquemada! Here!’ Ximenes attempted to raise his weakened body. ‘What does he want?’

‘To have a word with you if you are well enough to see him.’

‘It must be some important business which brings him here.’

‘It must be. He is a sick man and suffering greatly from the gout.’

‘You had better bring him to me, Ruiz.’

‘If you do not feel strong enough I can explain this to him.’

‘No. I must see him. Have him brought to me.’

Torquemada entered Ximenes’s bedchamber and coming to the bed embraced the Archbishop.

They were not unalike – both had the stern look of the man who believes himself to have discovered the righteous way of life; both were ascetic in the extreme, emaciated through hardship; both were well acquainted with semi-starvation and the hair shirt – all of which they believed necessary to salvation. Both had to fight with their own particular demon, which was a pride greater than that felt by most men.

‘I am sad to see you laid low, Archbishop,’ said Torquemada.

‘And I fear you yourself are in no fit state to travel, Inquisitor.’ Inquisitor was the title Torquemada enjoyed hearing more than any other. It was a reminder that he had set up an Inquisition the like of which had never been seen in Spain before.

‘I suffer from the gout most cruelly,’ said Torquemada.

‘A strange sickness for one of your habits,’ answered Ximenes.

‘Strange indeed. And what is this latest illness of yours?’

Ximenes answered quickly: ‘A chill, I suspect.’

He was not going to tell Torquemada that he had been almost suffocated by his own brother, for if he had Torquemada would have demanded that Bernardin should be brought to trial and severely punished. Torquemada would doubtless have behaved with rigorous justice if he had been in the place of Ximenes.

Perhaps, thought Ximenes, I lack his strength. But he has had longer in which to discipline himself.

Ximenes went on: ‘But I believe you have not come here to talk of illness.’

‘No, I am on my way to Court and, because I know I shall have your support in the matter which I have decided to bring to the notice of the Sovereigns, I have called to acquaint you with my mission. It concerns the Princess Isabella, who has been a widow too long.’

‘Ah, you are thinking that with the Habsburg marriages, the eldest daughter should not be forgotten.’

‘I doubt she is forgotten. The Princess is reluctant to go again into Portugal.’

‘Such reluctance is understandable,’ said Ximenes.

‘I cannot understand it,’ Torquemada retorted coldly. ‘It is clearly her duty to make this alliance with Portugal.’

‘It has astonished me that it has not been made before,’ Ximenes put in.

‘The Queen is a mother who now and then turns her face from duty.’

They, who had both been confessors to Isabella the Queen, exchanged nods of understanding.

‘She is a woman of great goodness,’ Torquemada acceded, ‘but where her children are concerned she is apt to forget her duty in her desire to please them.’

‘I know it well.’

‘Clearly,’ Torquemada went on, ‘the young Isabella should be sent immediately into Portugal as the bride of Emanuel. But there should be one condition, and it is this which I wish to put before the Sovereigns.’

‘Condition?’

‘When I drove the Jews from Spain,’ said Torquemada, ‘many of them found refuge in Portugal.’ His face darkened suddenly; his eyes gleamed with wild fanaticism; they seemed like living things in a face that was dead. All Torquemada’s hatred for the Jewish race was in his eyes, in his voice at that moment. ‘They pollute the air of Portugal. I wish to see them driven from Portugal as I drove them from Spain.’

‘If this marriage were made we should have no power to dictate Emanuel’s policy towards the Jews,’ Ximenes pointed out.

‘No,’ cried Torquemada triumphantly, ‘but we could make it a condition of the marriage. Emanuel is eager for this match. He is more than eager. It is not merely to him a grand marriage … union with a wealthy neighbour. This young King is a weak and emotional fellow. Consider his tolerance towards the Jews. He has strange ideas. He wishes to see all races living in harmony side by side in his country following their own faiths. You see he is a fool; he is unaware of his duty to the Christian Faith. He wishes to rule with what he foolishly calls tolerance. But he is a love-sick young man.’

‘He saw the Princess when she went into Portugal to marry Alonso,’ murmured Ximenes.

‘Yes, he saw her, and from the moment she became a widow he has had one plan: to make her his wife. Well, why not? Isabella must become the Queen of Portugal, but on one condition: the expulsion of the Jews from that country as they have been expelled from our own.’

Ximenes lay back on his pillows exhausted and Torquemada rose.

‘I am tiring you,’ he said. ‘But I rely on your support, should I need it. Not that I shall.’ All the fire had come back to this old man who was midway in his seventies. ‘I shall put this to the Queen and I know I shall make her see her duty.’

When Torquemada had taken his leave of Ximenes the Archbishop lay back considering the visit.

Torquemada was a stronger man than he was. Neither of them thought human suffering important. They had sought to inflict it too often on themselves to be sorry for others who bore it.

But at this time Ximenes was more concerned with his own problem than that of Isabella and Emanuel. He had decided what he must do with Bernardin. He would send his brother back to his monastery; he would give him a small pension; but it should be on condition that he never left his monastery and never sought to see his brother again.

I am a weak man where my own are concerned, thought Ximenes. And he wondered at himself who could contemplate undisturbed the hardships which would certainly befall the Jews of Portugal if Emanuel accepted this new condition, yet must needs worry about a man who, but for chance, might have committed fratricide – and all because that man happened to be his own brother.

The Princess Isabella looked from her mother to the stern face of Torquemada.

Her throat was dry; she felt that if she had tried to protest the words would not come. Her mother had an expression of tenderness yet determination. The Princess knew that the Queen had made up her mind – or perhaps that this stern-faced man who had once been her confessor had made it up for her as he had so many times before. She felt powerless between them. They asked for her consent, but they did not need it. It would be as they wished, not as she did.