By Fire, By Water (31 page)

As dawn broke, he pushed the chess pieces off the board, found a feather pen and paper, and began writing a heartfelt missive to the king:

My Liege
,

…

A terrible scourge has befallen our land. It is a pestilence born not of poison, nor from Divine wrath, but from suspicion, envy, and counterfeit righteousness. Its victims—dare I pen my inmost certitudes?—include not only our most evil, but some of our most
noble and more than a few of our most innocent citizens. I know this well, for my own son, whom Your Highness may recall holding in his arms when he was but a newborn, must unfortunately be counted among them, as well as my very brother
…

Santángel carefully folded the letter, sealed it with wax, and carried it down to the great room, where he found his majordomo building the morning fire.

“Iancu, see this gets to the king as soon as possible. I want his signature on the delivery log.”

“My lord.” Iancu took the letter, leaving Santángel alone in the vast, empty hall, trying to warm his hands at the small fire.

The chancellor attended High Mass in the cathedral. He had not set foot in La Seo since the night of the murder. The gothic demons and horsemen seemed to snarl at him from the arches of the doorways. The very stones of the walls accused him.

As he took his place in the pews, he noticed a small, familiar statue in a dedicated niche, surrounded by candles. Jacob, wrestling with his mirror-image angel. Under torture, Felipe must have mentioned the coffin of angels buried in his courtyard. Soldiers of the Inquisition, in their quest to retrieve the evidence, would immediately have dug it up. Recognizing the beauty of Felipe’s sculpture, the care and passion with which he had fashioned it, and fearing Felipe’s supposedly heretical intent, they must then have rededicated the statue to the service of Jesus Christ. Tears in his eyes, Santángel turned away from Jacob and the angel.

Monsignor Pedro de Monterubio led the Mass. His adjutant, Raimundo Díaz de Cáceres, administered the Eucharist.

Santángel knelt to receive the wafer of Christ’s flesh into his mouth. He and the priest avoided looking at each other.

“We must talk,” whispered Cáceres after uttering the benediction in Latin.

“Come tonight,” Santángel whispered back.

Santángel found Cáceres waiting outside his manor.

“I have it.” The priest turned his back to the street and removed a large book, similar to the volumes on Pedro de Arbués’s bookshelves, from under his cape. He handed it to the chancellor.

“How? Where?”

“We’re not alone. We have helpers.”

“Have you read it?”

“Not yet.”

“Thank you.” Santángel clutched it to his chest. “Do we know who took this down?”

“No.”

Pedro de Arbués, that cagey realist, had omitted the name of the scribe. “One other thing. My brother. Has he been transferred to the ecclesiastical jail, here in Zaragoza?”

“I shall find out.”

“Please. And if so, let me know what bribe I can use to gain admittance.”

The chancellor spent the night deciphering the sometimes clumsy Latin hand of the late canon’s scribe. In the halting, back-and-forth manner of forced confessions, it told of a man who had learned as a child that Jews were not human. They were dogs.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
From whom did you learn this?

ALMAZÓNUS:
From you, Father. In La Seo. You preached…

FATHER ARBUÉS:
“Beware the dogs, the evil workers, the mutilation.”

ALMAZÓNUS:
Yes
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Saint Paul, Philippians three two. Beware the circumcision
.

ALMAZÓNUS:
Yes
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Do you recall the rest?

ALMAZÓNUS:
The rest?

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Of that sermon
.

ALMAZÓNUS:
Not sure
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Saint John Chrysostom?

ALMAZÓNUS:
No. No, I don’t
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
“Although these beasts, these Jew-dogs, are unfit for nourishment or work, they are fit for killing.”

The interrogation continued along these lines, Arbués probing Felipe de Almazón’s understanding of the underlying issues, for several pages. In a later session, the inquisitor took a different tack.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
When did you first learn that you belonged to the species of Jew dogs? When did you …

ALMAZÓNUS:
My cousin’s domain. Outside Madrid

FATHER ARBUÉS:
His name?

ALMAZÓNUS:
Antón María Méndez y Flores, the Marquis of Tarazona
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
How did this happen?

ALMAZÓNUS:
We jousted, then swam. When he removed his clothes, I saw
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
You saw?

ALMAZÓNUS:
His mutilation
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
He was circumcised? How old were you?

ALMAZÓNUS:
Seventeen. I remember because … because his father died that year
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Before this event, or after? His father’s death
.

ALMAZÓNUS:
A few months before. And then … Antón learned. He learned … about his secret past
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
He mutilated himself, this cousin of yours? Or did someone else …

ALMAZÓNUS:
Yes. Himself
.

At this point, Pedro de Arbués’s questions veered away from Felipe de Almazón’s narrative into a lengthy effort to catalog every relative of the subject, living and dead, to determine whether each may have secretly met with Antón’s father, been exposed to the family secret, espoused heretical doctrines, or otherwise shown signs of deviance. Luis de Santángel thumbed rapidly through these pages, then stopped again.

After he returned from his shattering visit with his cousin, Felipe had attempted to banish any thought that his blood might be impure. He attended Mass more regularly, read the Gospel nightly, meditated with the rosary, confessed his sins.

One afternoon, while rehearsing his lance technique, he fell from his horse and seriously injured his shoulder. The doctor who treated him, Isaac Buendía, an Israelite, prescribed balms and rest. In the privacy of his closed bedroom, during one of this doctor’s visits, Felipe related what he had learned from his cousin.

This particular confession took place in Felipe’s cell, rather than in the torture room:

FATHER ARBUÉS:
This was when, precisely?

ALMAZÓNUS:
I met my wife at that time, so it was
…

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Eight years ago
.

ALMAZÓNUS:
Yes
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
What did this physician tell you?

ALMAZÓNUS:
Nothing, at first
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
And then?

ALMAZÓNUS:
I asked many questions
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
What did you ask him?

ALMAZÓNUS:
Is Jewishness a matter of blood, or faith? Do
Jews believe in salvation? Who gets saved? What about Christ’s miracles?

FATHER ARBUÉS:
What did Dr. Buendía tell you?

ALMAZÓNUS:
He finally answered some of my questions
.

FATHER ARBUÉS:
Which ones?

As dawn approached, the chancellor neared the part of the story he already knew. Under torture, Felipe de Almazón spoke of meetings he had attended, some in the homes of high-ranking functionaries including the chancellor himself. To believe his testimony, the court of King Fernando was as surcharged with covert judaizers as a knight’s wounded leg with maggots applied by a skilled surgeon. Their fraternity had all the attributes of a classic cabal: a secret language, the promise of special proximity to God, a small number of people deemed worthy of trust.

Felipe also mentioned an ancient parchment. He described Serero’s refusal to translate or discuss it: “the Christians” had massacred Jews because of the story it told. This detail, Santángel knew, would have piqued Tomás de Torquemada’s curiosity more than any other words in Felipe’s story.

Sunrise was breaking in the east. Luis de Santángel could not fall asleep with the inquisitorial log in his arms, or even in his house. He carried it downstairs to the fireplace. He stood watching the flames as they crawled across the pages.

    
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN