By Fire, By Water (38 page)

Santángel took the chair in his hands, lifted it over his head, and brought it crashing down upon the table. Heavy and solidly constructed, the chair made a cracking sound but did not break. He hurled it toward the crucifix on the wall. The chair clattered and fell, taking the cross with it. As the ivory Christ hit the floor, it splintered.

Leaning forward, Santángel pressed his hands upon the marred table. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly, as if to expel his rage, his powerlessness. When he looked up again, his eyes met those of Iancu, who stood at the threshold of the dining room.

“You may … you may retire to your quarters, Iancu.” Santángel’s voice was broken.

“As you wish, my lord.”

Luis de Santángel pulled out another chair, fell into it, and rested his head on the table.

Late that night, the chancellor was half-asleep at the table, his head on his arms, when a hooded form entered the room. Santángel awoke with a start and was about to cry out, when the intruder spoke.

“Hush.” The man covered the chancellor’s mouth with his gloved hand.

As Santángel’s eyes adjusted, the trespasser slowly removed his hand and pulled back the hood over his bald head. The chancellor recognized Raimundo de Cáceres.

“I can only imagine how it must feel to be you, Señor de Santángel.”

Still groggy, Santángel blinked.

“And that is why, after all this, I hesitate.”

What additional evil could be forthcoming?

“Everything is known.”

“Everything … Please, Father …”

“Torquemada is making preparations. He has asked my master, the monsignor, for help. People will be arrested. Up to the highest echelons of government, they say. It is imminent.”

“That cannot be,” Santángel whispered. “I found the log. I watched it burn.”

“The scribe. The scribe who took down Felipe’s confessions.”

Santángel had feared this possibility. “That would put you in danger, as well,” he told the priest.

“I’m leaving tonight. It isn’t likely we’ll see each other again.”

Santángel stood and held the priest by his shoulders. “Where will you go?”

“North. Past the Pyrenees. An old, quiet monastery in a secluded valley. He can’t reach me there. And you?”

“There’s only one place for me to go. Granada, where the king is handily winning a war, which I financed.”

“No one ever accused you of lacking courage,” whispered Cáceres after a moment. “But what do you have to gain?”

“Nothing, except to deny Torquemada the satisfaction of exiling me. Of destroying what little I have left.”

“That is, indeed, what we’ve been attempting from the first. But I fear we’ve failed.”

“We have, in many ways. What of Abram Serero?”

“It is he who betrayed Felipe de Almazón.”

The chirping of crickets filled the pause. “It cannot be.”

“They threatened him,” Cáceres explained. “They threatened his entire family. Arbués wanted to make an example of him. He was to be a warning to any Jew who dared teach the
conversos
in Zaragoza.”

Santángel thought of all Serero had done for him. The secret meetings. The visit to Estefan’s cell, at the risk of his life. “Someone lied to you, Father.”

“He had to give names,” Cáceres added. “He decided to sacrifice only one of us. He chose Felipe. Felipe wasn’t just talking, he was practicing Jewish ritual. That put us all in jeopardy.”

“Serero gave up the only one of us who practiced his faith? How do you know this?”

“Please, Chancellor.”

Santángel remembered Serero’s words to Felipe. “Your life is holy. Created in the image of God. I wouldn’t want to feel responsible if you lost it.” The scribe’s solicitude now took on another meaning.

“Where is he?”

“He, his wife, his children, all of them have fled. It was part of the arrangement.”

Torquemada did not arrest Luis de Santángel that night. Time, he felt, was on his side. The chancellor’s demise was inevitable. All that was required now was to accumulate testimony and evidence, piece by piece, until the weight of proof was irrefutable. The king of Aragon would finally offer his support. The arrest of the chancellor would free Torquemada to carry out the last element in his plan for the theological unification and spiritual redemption of the Iberian Peninsula.

He did, however, order the arrests of many, including Raimundo de Cáceres. It grieved him more than anything else, when a man who had taken vows turned his back on God. Felipe de Almazón’s memory, as transmitted through Pedro de Arbués’s inquisitorial scribe, clearly indicated that the monsignor’s highest-ranking aide had done just that.

Ever since the night Pedro de Arbués had appeared to Torquemada, bloody and imperious in the nave of La Seo, the inquisitor had been meditating upon his words: “Those who have turned toward the Light, and now wish to crawl back into the shadows, must be helped.” Clearly, the canon had been speaking of the
conversos
, retreating from the Light of Christianity into the shadows of Judaism. Torquemada understood the deceased canon’s message, but he was at a loss to understand exactly what God expected him to do.

“Eliminate the darkness from their world.” Was Arbués asking him to erase all vestiges of the ancient Hebraic rite? The inquisitor wondered how this could be accomplished. Even when seeking out traitors within the Church, he encountered resistance. How was he to extend the reach of the Inquisition beyond its native community?

But if the Jews were conspiring to lure
conversos
back to their former, erroneous faith—if the Jews, represented in Felipe’s testimony not only by the Hebrew scribe Serero but also by the physician, Buendía, who had treated Felipe’s wounded javelin arm—were actively recruiting powerful
conversos
in Aragon and Castile, then action would have to be taken against them. Against their entire community.

Santa Hermandad soldiers searched the judería for the evidence mentioned in Felipe’s confessions. They emptied the synagogue of its Hebrew texts. They carted them to the rectory of La Seo for Torquemada to inspect with the help of three visiting scholars.

Most of the recovered documents were already familiar to the Church and Torquemada: fragments of the Talmud, that maddening compendium of lies and calumny; the Hebrew Bible; the writings of Maimonides, Rashi, and other scholars. Torquemada instructed his monks not to waste time on these tracts, but to search for other documents, secret texts the Jews had managed to hide from the Church through the centuries. Documents that would demonstrate their hatred of Christianity and their devil-inspired schemes to overturn its dominion.

    
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
HROUGH FOUR BLEAK
and grueling winters, the Christian sword hacked its way toward the center of the Islamic emirate. The hooves of King Fernando’s horses pummeled the wide
vega
, raising vast clouds of dust. Velez-Malaga, Malaga, Almeria, Guadix, and Baza fell.

A sense of helplessness descended upon Granada. Soldiers bolted and chained the gates of the city. Everyone knew that while the citizens’ provisions might last a few weeks, the Castilians’ assault could continue forever.

A call to arms rose from minarets and battlements. A clamor of metal and horses’ hooves violated the peaceful, clear afternoon as troops assembled throughout the capital. They waited.

The Christian king, confident that only haste, now, could defeat him, decided not to launch a frontal attack against the greatest soldiers of the Moors’ precious stronghold. Instead, he would starve Granada.

He ordered his soldiers to burn and despoil all the towns and fields within fifty miles. For the Christian fighters, the battle of Granada was a great free-for-all. Gold, silk, spices, precious objects, beautiful women, handsome Moors—they seized them, spent them, discarded them, and impaled them at whim. A spectacular, thrilling conclusion to a long series of grueling battles.

Behind the walls of Granada, the Alhambra rationed the citizens’ food. Horse-mounted soldiers patrolled the streets day and night. Even the mosques and the synagogue, vital institutions to most, ceased to provide regular services.

Judith Migdal’s response, once again, was to immerse herself in her work. She and her workers continued production as if there were no war, as if the enemy were not about to plunder their town. No one, other than she and Levi, knew what she did with the bangles and Torah handles they manufactured. No one knew how Judith procured a seemingly endless supply of silver ore and food for herself and her workers.

The answer lay under the walls of the city, where the river Darro flowed through a tunnel, carrying out effluvia. There, once a month, late at night, Judith and her nephew conveyed a crate of silver goods out of the municipality. They came back with a box of food, raw metal, and coin. As arranged, Cristóbal Colón’s courier, Dumitru, acted as their exporter and supplier.

In the underground passage, Judith and Levi often met strangers. Most of them, in fear of imminent catastrophe, were fleeing the city, carrying but a few meager possessions. Others, like Judith, smuggled goods. Judith feared nothing from these fellow lawbreakers. All people, she told herself—Jews and Muslims, thieves and honest citizens—when faced with a shared threat, learn to trust one another.