By Fire, By Water (40 page)

“Of course not.”

“Ah, but what if this knight’s enemy were more subtle, more crafty than that. Knowing that you would never place your esteemed friend in harm’s way, suppose he hid his murderous intent. And suppose that by rendering great and important services to Your Highness, he ingratiated himself with your court and procured an invitation to this meal?”

“I should hope, Father, that we would not be so foolish as to fall for such a ruse.”

“Were this Evil One any ordinary mortal, surely Your Highness would not. But suppose he was exceedingly gifted in the art of deceiving even such perspicacious individuals as yourselves? And suppose further that he managed to trick not only you, but even the pages and squires of the good knight, your guest, so that they became, despite themselves, his accomplices in that man’s murder?”

“If we were utterly fooled, Father, I suppose we could do nothing about it, unless someone brought the matter to our attention.”

Torquemada paused, his hands folded on the table. “You have been utterly fooled, Your Highness, you and the rest of Christendom. But it is not too late.”

“Please, Father, explain to us the meaning of this parable.”

“That castle is Your Highness’s domain, Castile and Aragon, all of it. Your esteemed guest is our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

“And the ignoble creature that would kill Him?”

“That people which has already done so, repeatedly, since the day He walked this earth.”

Ysabel knew which people he meant. The Jews’ murder of Christ, as Torquemada had previously explained to her, was not an isolated occurrence, but a
pan-historical
event, an occurrence that took place at all times throughout history. In every generation, indeed, at every moment, Christ was dying on the holy cross for the sins of mankind, redeeming those who accepted the validity of His suffering, and condemning those who rejected Him.

Ysabel clutched the silver crucifix Luis de Santángel had offered her, searching Torquemada’s eyes.

“I have in my possession a parchment that makes it all clear.”

“Makes what clear?” asked the queen.

“How this evil enters our land. Why we’ve been unable to eliminate it. This parchment was used to provide instruction in secret meetings.”

“What sort of secret meetings?”

“They involved a Jew and a highly esteemed
converso
in the court of Aragon.”

“And what does this parchment say?”

From under his habit, Torquemada produced the parchment Cristóbal Colón had forced upon Luis de Santángel. Abram Serero had plastered it into the wall of his synagogue before fleeing. He unfurled it on the table and stared down at its twisted, blemished characters.

“It claims to be a lost gospel from the time of Jesus, or a fragment of a lost gospel. But it is not a gospel of the Lord. It is a gospel of the Jews, which they’ve kept hidden from Christian eyes.”

The queen saw magic in those dancing letters, as Luis de Santángel had before her. But this magic was not seductive or alluring. This magic was a dreadful, horrifying demonry.

“What does it say?”

“I dare not even repeat, or give thought to its filthy pretensions, except to say that it makes a mockery of our holy faith and our Lord’s mission. But I’ve taken the liberty of having the translation delivered to your quarters. After you read it, you will know what to do.”

“Judica me, Deus,”
she murmured,
“et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta.”
Judge me, O God, and separate my cause from an unholy people.

“Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus,”
Torquemada answered,
“et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam.”
May almighty God have mercy on you, and having forgiven your sins, bring you to life everlasting.

“Amen.”

The monk’s expression softened into a smile. “Amen,” he repeated.

The queen strode across the stone-paved courtyard, past arabesques in plaster, ornate tile work, a fountain supported by stone lions, and hurried up a narrow staircase to her private rooms. On a table she found Torquemada’s papers, sealed with the stamp of the Inquisition. She sat down on a window ledge, covered her lap and legs with a fox blanket, and began reading:

In the year 3671, in the days of King Jannaeus, a great misfortune befell Israel, when there arose a certain disreputable man of the tribe of Judah, whose name was Joseph Pandera. He lived at Bethlehem, in Judah. Near his house dwelt a widow and her lovely and chaste daughter named Miriam. Miriam was promised to Yohanan, of the royal house of David, a man learned in the Torah and God-fearing
.

In the border, a monk-translator had scrawled, “Miriam, that is Mary, Mother of God.”

At the close of a certain Sabbath, Joseph Pandera, as handsome as a warrior, having gazed lustfully upon Miriam, knocked upon the door of her room and betrayed her by pretending that he was the man to whom she had been promised, Yohanan. She was amazed at this improper conduct and submitted only against her will
.

Miriam gave birth to a son and named him Yeshu
.

“Yeshu, that is Jesus, Our Lord,” the monk-translator had noted.

On the eighth day he was circumcised. When he was old enough, the child was taken by Miriam to the house of study to be instructed in the Jewish tradition
.

The queen looked up from the page, attempting to make sense of what she had just read. Jesus, the Lord Incarnate, the bastard issue of the Virgin Mary’s rape? Jesus, God Himself, trained in the Jewish tradition? The queen knew that none of the Gospels even entertained the possibility that Jesus had received a Jewish education. On the contrary, the only mention of any event in the Lord’s life, between his birth and his baptism at thirty, was found in Luke, who recounted that at the age of twelve, Jesus wandered into the Temple and—far from
receiving
the Jews’ corrupt instruction—
offered
instruction to the elders there, who were flabbergasted to discover such depths of learning in a young child.

In the Temple was to be found the Foundation Stone. On it, the letters of God’s Ineffable Name were engraved. Whoever learned the secret of the Name and its use would be able to do whatever he wished. However, there were two lions of brass, bound to the pillars at the place of burnt offerings. Should anyone enter and learn the Name, when he left the lions would roar at him. Immediately, the valuable secret would be forgotten
.

Yeshu came and learned the letters of the Name. He wrote them upon a parchment that he placed in an open cut on his thigh. Then he drew the flesh over the parchment. As he left, the lions roared and he forgot the secret. But when he came to his house, he reopened the cut in his flesh with a knife and lifted out the writing. Then he remembered and obtained the use of the letters
.

Yeshu proclaimed, “I am the Messiah! Concerning me Isaiah prophesied and said, ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call him Immanuel.’
”

They brought to him a lame man, who had never walked. Yeshu spoke over the man the letters of the Ineffable Name, and the man was healed. Thereupon, they worshipped him as the Messiah, Son of the Highest
.

When Yeshu was summoned before the queen, he said, “It is spoken of me, ‘He shall ascend into heaven.’” He lifted his arms like the wings of an eagle and flew between heaven and earth, to the amazement of everyone
.

The sages of Israel then decided that one of them, Yehuda Iskarioto, should learn the Ineffable Name, so as to rival Yeshu in signs and wonders
.

“Iskarioto,” read the monk’s annotation, “that is, the traitor Judas Iscariot.”

Iskarioto flew toward heaven. He attempted to force Yeshu down to earth but neither could prevail against the other, for both had the use of the Ineffable Name. However, Iskarioto defiled Yeshu, so that they both lost their power and fell to earth, and in their condition of defilement the letters of the Ineffable Name escaped from them. On the head of Yeshu, the people set a crown of thorns
.

Below her window, dignitaries were gathering in the spacious courtyard of the Alhambra, expecting to meet Ysabel and celebrate her victory. She turned her eyes back to the page in her hands, appalled but also spellbound.

Yeshu was put to death at the sixth hour on the eve of the Passover and of the Sabbath. His bold followers came to Queen Helene with the report that he who was slain was truly the Messiah and that he was not in his grave. He had ascended to heaven as he prophesied. A diligent search was made and he was not found in the grave where he had been buried. A farmer had taken him from the grave, brought him into his field, and buried him there
.

The erring followers of Yeshu said, “You have slain the Messiah of the Lord.” And the other Israelites answered, “You have believed in a false prophet.” There was endless strife and discord for thirty years
.

The sages desired to separate from Israel those who continued to claim Yeshu as the Messiah, and they called upon a greatly learned man, Simeon Kepha, for help
.

“Simeon Kepha,” the monk had scrawled in the margin, “that is, Saint Paul.”

Simeon went to Antioch and proclaimed, “I am the disciple of Yeshu. He has sent me to show you the way.” He added that Yeshu desired that they separate themselves from the Jews and no longer follow their practices. They were to ignore the ritual of circumcision and the dietary laws
.

This text, the queen understood at once, claimed that Saint Paul was nothing but a secret Jew, a
converso
working for the Pharisees, preaching to the Nazarenes to deceive them and separate them from the Jews, so that the faith of the Jews might remain pure and untainted by the deceptions of this “Yeshu.”

Further, this monstrous document appeared to claim that Judas Iscariot, the venal, devious apostle who sold the Lord for thirty pieces of silver, was Jesus’s equal. She attempted to puzzle through the distortions of history and revelation that this reinvention of Paul and the Gospels represented, until she stopped herself, wondering whether she was being drawn into a devious and perverse path of reasoning.

To give any credence, any thought at all, to the outrageous propositions in this—what was it called again? this
Toledoth Yeshu
—was to expose her mind, her heart, her eternal soul to heresy and blasphemy. She did not know whether to thank Tomás de Torquemada or curse him.

How could anyone, she asked herself, believe such filth? Did not the evidence of history prove beyond a doubt that God hated those who denied His Word? Did not the fate of the Jews speak for itself? Did not her own defeat of the Muslims, hers and her husband’s, here and now, on this soil of Andalusia, prove that God was on the side of the Christians?

If this ignominious parody was the secret teaching of the Jews, and she had seen proof of that, in unmistakable Hebrew characters on an ancient parchment—if this was indeed what they taught New Christians, and possibly old Christians, too, in their secret meetings—then, just as Father Torquemada had predicted, she knew precisely what she had to do.

She stood and, with quivering hands, replaced the translated text in her trunk. Her heart and mind in turmoil, she slowly brought her crucifix to her lips and kissed it. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. Wiping them, she hurried downstairs to meet her husband and some three hundred courtiers for a sumptuous, celebratory meal. Her thoughts, however, were elsewhere, already planning her next battle, the greatest and holiest battle of her life.

    
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

U
NAWARE OF THE DISCOVERY
of the
Toledoth Yeshu
, Luis de Santángel rode again to Granada to meet with the king and queen. There, he attempted to sleep in one of the numerous homes the Christian victors had seized from their Moorish enemies. A party of noisy, giddy soldiers downstairs, and the knowledge that he lay within blocks of the Jewish quarter and Judith Migdal’s home, kept him awake.