By Fire, By Water

  The sight of Arbués, defenseless and irredeemable, appalled the chancellor. His throat constricted. A cold sweat coursed his spine. He clutched a bench to steady himself. The expression on the expiring canon’s face, a look that combined ice and embers, yearning and revulsion, defiance and resignation, shook Santángel to the depths of his soul. Even as the canon’s regard grew vacant, Luis de Santángel knew he would never forget that ardent gaze, that foreboding of measureless despair.

  Although he had never before penetrated into the cathedral’s entrails, Santángel knew where he was going. He had studied Father Cáceres’s sketches. He had lain awake imagining every detail of his path: the wrought-iron candleholders clutching the walls like great insects terrified of the dark, the walnut door of Pedro de Arbués’s chambers, his elevated bed clothed in purple velour and ocher damask. If a sleepless cleric appeared, the chancellor would have to flee or, worse, murder him. Such a circumstance, he reminded himself, was unlikely.

  Once inside the canon’s chambers, he glanced quickly around to ensure he was alone and locked the door. A small entrance adjoined the canon’s messy, musty sleeping quarters. A few thick candles burned in the iron chandelier. The carved walnut trunk gaped open. A stained, ivory-colored silken chasuble lay on the floor. Papers and a pewter bowl of leftover stew littered Arbués’s writing table. And there, set in the wall four feet above the stone floor, were the leaded-glass windows that Santángel was prepared to smash, if necessary, in order to flee.

  His gaze stopped at the bookshelves, filled with leather-bound journals. Santángel took a candle, placed it on the desk, and carefully, almost reverently, removed the first volume.

  At least two people had heard Felipe’s confessions. The first lay dead on the marble tiles of La Seo. The other was the scribe who had recorded every utterance of the canon and his confessor. The name of that scribe, Santángel hoped, would appear at the opening of the volume he sought.

  He studied the handwritten Latin text. It recorded financial transactions and directives from hierarchs. He pulled out the second volume, an account of ecclesiastical proceedings of various sorts.

  As he turned pages, his heart rapping against the walls of his chest like a moth trapped in a box, he listened for sounds from the cathedral. Had some sleepless monk discovered the corpse? The only noise was the hiss of wind under the doors of the church and through the interstices of its windows.

  The third tome, at last, recorded witnesses’ testimonies and a penitent’s confessions. He searched for Felipe de Almazón’s name, in its Latin form, but found it nowhere. A fourth tome of endless, precisely transcribed dialogues. A fifth. Surely, Felipe’s confessions were here. Otherwise, this assassination and all the wrath it would surely engender were for naught.

  The night was hot and damp, the air tangy with scents of wild mint, sage, open sewers, fried lard, and warm ale. Santángel passed through alleys where drunks, minstrels, and harlots loitered. Beggars solicited alms. A door creaked somewhere. Santángel’s mind was still in the nave of La Seo and the canon’s sleeping quarters.

  Just the day before, a palace employee had reported that Felipe de Almazón’s wife, Catalina, had been seen in this neighborhood of taverns and beggars. Santángel had not believed him. Now he found her, sitting on the ground across the way.

  In the glow of candlelight from a nearby house, he saw she was thinner. Her loose umber hair seemed too wild and full for her slender face. Her embroidered dress was soiled.

  “Catalina?”

  “Chancellor.”

  Despite the nearness of a gutter that reeked of filth, he sat down beside her. “Why are you sitting here, alone in the dark? Your house. Your lands.”

  A dog barked somewhere. A man cursed and slammed his window shutters.

  She looked not at him, but past him, as if afraid to show the sadness in her eyes. “They took it all.”

  That was how Pedro de Arbués conducted his business, the chancellor told himself. The inquisitor’s purpose was not merely to seek out heretics, but to collect funds from them so others could be found. The Inquisition was not an achievement, but a process. It had to be self-sustaining.

  “And your children?”

  “They took them, too,” she replied, her voice breaking. “I … I understand they’re well.”

  Santángel’s eyes sought hers. She swallowed.

  Her children were alive. For this, Santángel inwardly thanked God. The Church, with its vast resources, was caring for them. The offspring of convicted heretics often rose through the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The monks and nuns seemed to make a point of not blaming them for their parents’ errors.

  “Where do you live, now?”

  She simply smiled.

  “Have you no family?”

  “No family that wants me.”

  “I understand.” To associate with the widow of a heretic, or of a suspected heretic, especially if she was one’s relative, was to contaminate one’s soul, or worse, arouse suspicion. “Are you hungry?”

  “Nearly always.”

  “Please, come. We cannot linger here.” He would not leave her exposed to the elements and brutality of the street. He wished he could risk telling her that the man responsible for her husband’s death, and for her present circumstances, was now dead himself, and that he, Luis de Santángel, had sponsored the deed.

  “You are the chancellor of Aragon. You can’t be seen with a wretch like me. Give me a piece of silver, if you will, and go on your way.”

  He rose and held out his hand. She ignored it at first, but finally allowed him to help her to her feet.

  In the chancellor’s courtyard, Catalina rinsed herself at the well. Santángel proceeded inside. Dismayed to discover blood on the soles of his boots, he shoved them into the fireplace and kindled a flame.

  Catalina entered. She still looked gaunt and untidy, but showed off her clean hands and scrubbed face with a sweet smile. It was not the clear, ingenuous smile Santángel had seen before her husband’s arrest. He knew he would never see that face again.

  She glanced at his stockinged feet and at the smoky hearth. He led her through the kitchen to a small rotunda where no one would overhear them and offered stuffed olives, a garlic sausage, a handful of bread, a cup of Rioja wine. “My majordomo’s sister, in Sevilla,” said Santángel, “has come down with the plague. He went home to care for her, and ended up ill, himself.”

  Her chewing slowed as she searched his face.

  “The queen has called me to Cordoba. I need someone to watch the house, the servants. Someone I trust.”

  “You want me to stay here, in your home? To replace your majordomo? Is that what you’re asking, Chancellor?”

  “No,” replied Santángel, embarrassed. “That wouldn’t be consistent with your station. Your husband served the king well. You’re no maidservant. You could be like a visiting relative, if you will.”

  “And they say you’re cynical and sly.”

  “People say many things, especially about those they envy.”

  “I’ll gladly keep an eye on your home, if you, in turn, will do one thing for me.”

  He was surprised to hear her haggling about terms. The wine, he imagined, had gone to her head. “And what is that?”

  “I would politely request,” she said, correcting her tone, “that you not address me as an equal. We never were equals. I would be honored to serve you as your maidservant. Nothing more.”

  Luis de Santángel laughed. Her blend of pluck, humility, and wisdom amused him. Naturally, no one could care for his home and remain his equal. “As you like.”

  “And from this moment, I’ll cease to be Catalina de Almazón. That name could only bring you trouble. Call me Leonor. She was a childhood friend.”

  “Good night, then, Leonor. You’ll find an empty room at the end of the hallway. Consider it yours. In the morning, I’ll be gone.”

  “Good night, my lord.”

  He rose and left. Leonor finished her
simple meal by the flickering light of one small candle.

  Shortly before dawn, Luis de Santángel entered his son’s bedroom. “Remember my promise? I’m leaving soon. And you, my valorous knight, are traveling with me.”

  Gabriel squinted. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m taking you to Valencia. Your uncle’s house. I’ll be continuing south from there to meet with the queen. We don’t have much time.”

  “Why so early?” Gabriel rubbed his eyes.

  “Get ready.”

  Gabriel drew himself out of bed and began dressing. Sleepily he pulled on a laced tunic, embroidered at the neck and hems and belted at the waist, black woolen leggings, and his striped jerkin, oxblood and blue, with silver buttons.

  Beside the road to Daroca sat a small inn, alone and neglected but not abandoned. The weathered sign showed a cut-off bull’s head bellowing in agony.

  In the kitchen, Conchita Gutiérrez leaned over a table tearing the ends off white bean pods, dropping their seeds into a wooden bowl. A lanky woman with limp black hair, spindly fingers, and sunken eyes, she looked older than her thirty-three years.

  Little light sifted through the soiled wool sheet that covered the room’s single, glassless window. A crucifix hung on the wall. Beside it, a crude painting on a rough board depicted the Virgin mourning her not-yet-resurrected son. From her blue tears, daffodils sprouted.

  Conchita heard her husband’s feet clump against the floor upstairs. Bits of red and green paint flaked from the low beams. A fruit beetle flew up from the pile of unshelled husks on the table. She brushed it away. Lying on the floor, the mule Juanita, faded brown, with patches of hair missing, let out a throbbing breath and shook her ears.

  “Even Juanita is awake before my husband,” the innkeeper’s wife complained, louder than if she had been talking to herself. Her husband was thumping down the narrow stairway.

  Miguel Gutiérrez appeared at the base of the stairs wearing a brown blanket with a hole for his head and a cord for a belt. A corpulent, clumsy man with an unkempt beard, he glanced at the mule. “When Juanita is awake, she looks like she’s sleeping. It’s easy to be awake, when that is how it is.”

  He kicked Juanita lightly. The mule snorted and shook her head. Miguel leaned his full weight over the beast and pulled her up by the neck. His wife had shelled fourteen beans by the time he succeeded. The innkeeper pulled the door open and led the mule outside.

  While her husband was tying Juanita to a post and throwing oats and barley onto the ground under her nose, Señora Gutiérrez heard hoof beats in the distance, at first faint, then more distinct.

  The horse slowed and came to a stop before the Bull’s Head. “How may I help you, my lord?” she heard her husband call out. “If a bowl of hot soup is what you long for, or a glass of warm ale, you have indeed come to the right house.” It was his standard greeting, from which any semblance of enthusiasm had long ago drained like wine from a worn-out pig’s bladder.

  Conchita heard the stranger dismount. “Three ales, then,” answered the rider. “I’ll be joined by two others. And a bowl of broth for my son.” A cultivated voice, tinged with smugness and contempt, Conchita thought. The voice of a wealthy man.

  She lifted the soiled sheet and looked out the window. The visitor wore simple clothes, a black shirt with laced-up sleeves, knee-length black pants, stockings, and riding boots. None of this fooled her. His bearing and voice were anything but common.

  Another man arrived in a simple gray cloak. Miguel Gutiérrez showed the two travelers inside. The boy remained outside, tethering their horses and then, seated on the ground, whittling a stick.

  Santángel pulled out a chair before the fireplace. Cáceres sat across from him.

  “Well, it’s done.”

  “Yes, I know. Did you find the log?”

  “I found a number of logs. But Felipe’s testimony … Nowhere. I’ve been summoned to the king’s camp, outside Cordoba.”

  The priest frowned. “Go, then. I shall continue our search.”

  While they conversed, the horseman stepped in. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he muttered, hanging his hat on a peg.

  Miguel Gutiérrez, balancing a jug and three earthen cups, approached from the kitchen. He slammed the pitcher down, causing some of the frothy beverage to spill. More carefully, he placed the bowl of broth on the table. Santángel handed it back to him. “My son is outside.”

  “As you like, my lord.”

  Gutiérrez brought the soup to Gabriel.

  “Put it on the ground,” the boy commanded him without looking up from his whittling.

  The innkeeper wondered why he was so grumpy. “Is there anything else you’d like?”

  “That will be all.”

  When Gutiérrez returned to the kitchen, he crossed himself, muttering.

  “Maybe the men need something else. What kind of host are you?” The innkeeper’s wife did not bother looking up from her bowl of white beans. Since her husband had begun fooling around with that young bawd from the village, she had lost respect for him. She made sure he felt her resentment at every occasion.

  “They want to be left alone,” Miguel whispered. “These aren’t the kind of men who come back.”

  Señora Gutiérrez glanced at her husband’s sad blanket, shaking her head at his ineptitude, pitying herself for ever having crawled into bed with him.

  Miguel Gutiérrez opened the kitchen door a crack and peeked out.

  The chancellor and Cáceres each handed a purse to the horseman, who untied the string of one and looked inside. He opened his jacket and attached the purses to a cord.

  “If I can be of further service—” he began again.

  “The best you can do, now,” Luis cut him off, “would be to leave Zaragoza as quickly as possible.”

  “I will,” agreed the horseman, securing his jacket over his reward.

  “Then our work here is settled,” observed Luis de Santángel. “There’s no need to linger. Let us pray this is all over.”

  All three raised their glasses and drank deeply.

  “Let us pray we have saved lives,” offered Cáceres.

  Santángel closed his eyes to meditate upon such a prayer.

  The horseman left. Santángel placed a silver coin on the table and went out with Father Cáceres. Miguel Gutiérrez was untying Father Cáceres’s horse when it reared and the innkeeper fell to the ground, losing his grip. The horse galloped into the surrounding fields. While the innkeeper sputtered excuses and apologies, Luis de Santángel climbed onto Gabriel’s horse, Ynés, and gave Cáceres’s horse chase. He failed to capture it.

  “If he is in this valley, I shall find him, señor,” stammered the innkeeper. He untethered his mule.

  “I doubt it,” said Santángel. “Take my horse,” he told Cáceres. “Leave her at my home, in the care of my maidservant. I’ll ride with Gabriel.”

  Father Cáceres mounted Béatriz. Gabriel climbed onto Ynés, behind his father. The two horses and their riders rode off in opposite directions.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TOMÁS DE TORQUEMADA, Inquisitor General of Castile and Aragon, sat at his desk in the monastery of Santa Cruz, examining plans for a new Dominican abbey. He wore a brown habit, the hood lowered on his back. A thin circle of hair surrounded the shaved dome of his head. His eye sockets and cheeks appeared hollow.

  One of Torquemada’s penitents had recently died, leaving enough wealth to build a spiritual refuge in Avila, specifying in his will that the prior of Santa Cruz was to supervise its design. Additional funds would come from the Inquisition itself, money pried from the clutches of heretics. Although alchemy was associated with doctrinal divergence, and unquestionably evil, this sort of reverse alchemy, beating ill-gotten gold into the stones of an edifice dedicated to the service of the Lord, was a pursuit worthy of the monk’s most diligent efforts.

  Indeed, Torquemada preferred architecture to all other arts. So much was unstable and transitory in this world. To
serve as midwife in the birth of something both functional and durable was to help import a measure of the Eternal into mankind’s ephemeral life. Just as God was the greatest architect, so it behooved man to follow His example.

  The inquisitor general loved the sharp, rough, solid feel of skillfully hewn stones, joined together with or without mortar. They yielded to the will of man only with difficulty, but once shaped, did not budge. They stayed where one placed them. They performed their humble tasks without grumbling or questioning, holding up a building, providing shelter through storms, giving townsfolk a place to gather and pray. Of course, they were not alive, but they were part of God’s creation, and thus worthy of man’s respect. Aye, of man’s wonderment.

  The widow of the deceased penitent was one of Queen Ysabel’s preferred ladies-in-waiting. Eight years ago, she and her husband had recommended Torquemada as confessor to the queen. The monk and the headstrong, vigorous sovereign had discovered they shared a vision for Castile. The New Inquisition and this little monastery at Avila were among the first fruits of that friendship. The monastery was therefore doubly worthy of Torquemada’s earnest attentions.

  Outside, a horse’s hooves thumped to the gate and stopped. The guard exchanged words with a visitor. Any disturbance so late at night was not only unusual, but also frowned upon, as the monks rose early for matinal prayers.

  The visitor ran to the door of the prior’s office and rapped. “Fray Tomás, a frightful thing has happened!”

  Torquemada crossed the small room and unlatched the door. He recognized the tall man with a scar on his forehead under a shock of persimmon-colored hair, who stood there panting. “You were Fray Gaspar Juglar’s aide, were you not?”

  The man caught his breath. “Yes, I was. But now I’m a constable of the Inquisition.” He reminded Torquemada of his name: “Juan Rodríguez.”

  “Yes, yes. Rodríguez. And before you began with Fray Juglar?” Torquemada had heard rumors about this man.