‘You shall see it achieved,’ she told him. ‘But it will be when the time is ripe.’

‘I believe,’ said Ferdinand, ‘that our struggles are behind us. A glorious future will be ours, Isabella, if we stand together.’

‘And so we shall stand. It was what I always intended.’

He embraced her, and she drew back from his arms to smile at him.

‘Castile and Aragon are ours! We have three healthy children,’ she said.

Ferdinand caught her hands and laughed.’ We are young yet,’ he reminded her.

‘Our little Isabella will be Queen of Portugal. We must arrange grand marriages for the others.’

‘Never fear. There will be many who will wish to marry with the children of Ferdinand and Isabella.’

‘Ferdinand, I am glad they are young yet. I shall suffer when they are forced to go from us.’

‘But they are still children as yet. Why, our little Isabella is but eleven years old.’

‘Eleven years old,’ mused Isabella. ‘But perhaps that is not so young. I hear you have an Archbishop in Saragossa of that age.’

Ferdinand’s face grew a little pale and then flushed. His eyes had become alert and suspicious.

‘An Archbishop . . .’ he murmured.

‘You must have had your reasons for sanctioning the appointment,’ she said with a smile. ‘I wondered what great qualifications one so young could have.’

She was unprepared for Ferdinand’s reaction. He said: ‘You have made the affairs of Castile yours. I pray you leave to me those of Aragon.’

It was Isabella’s turn to grow pale. ‘Why, Ferdinand . . .’ she began.

But Ferdinand had bowed and left her.

Why, she asked herself, should he have been so angry? What had she done but ask a simple question?

She stared after him and then sat down heavily. Understanding had come to her.

To have made a boy of that age an Archbishop, Ferdinand must have a very special reason for favouring him. What reason could Ferdinand have?

She refused to accept the explanation which was inevitably forcing itself into her mind.

He would have been born about the same time as their . . . first-born, little Isabella.

‘No!’ cried Isabella.

She, who had been so faithful to him in every way, could not tolerate this suspicion. But it was fast becoming no longer a suspicion. She now knew that Ferdinand was the lover of other women, that they had given him children – children whom he must love dearly to have risked exposure by making one of them Archbishop of Saragossa.

There was nothing that could have hurt her more. And this discovery had come to her at a time when all that she had hoped for seemed to be coming her way.

Her marriage was to have been perfect. She had known that he was jealous of her authority, but that she had understood. This was different.

She felt numb with the pain of this discovery. She felt a longing to give way to some weakness, to find Ferdinand, to rail against him, to throw herself onto her bed and give way to tears – to rage, to storm, to ease in some way the bitterness of this knowledge which wounded her more deeply than anything had ever done before.

Her women were coming to her.

She set her face in a quiet smile. None would have guessed that the smiling face masked such turbulent emotions and jealous humiliation.

Chapter V

TOMAS DE TORQUEMADA

In a cell in the Monastery of Santa Cruz in the town of Segovia, a gaunt man, dressed in the rough garb of the Dominican Order, was on his knees.

He had remained thus for several hours, and this was not unusual for it was his custom to meditate and pray alternately for hours at a time.

He prayed now that he might be purged of all evil and given the power to bring others to the same state of exaltation which he felt that he himself – with minor lapses – enjoyed.

‘Holy Mother,’ he murmured, ‘listen to this humble supplicant . . .’

He believed fervently in his humility and, if it had been pointed out to him that this great quality had its roots in a fierce pride, he would have been astonished. Tomas de Torquemada saw himself as the elect of Heaven.

Beneath the drab robe of rough serge he wore the hair shirt which was a continual torment to his delicate skin. He revelled in the discomfort it caused; yet after years of confinement in this hideous garment he had grown a little accustomed to it and he fancied that it was less of a burden than it had once been. The thought disturbed him, for he wanted to suffer the utmost discomfort. He slept on a plank of wood without a pillow. Soft beds were not for him. In the early days of his austerity he had scarcely slept at all; now he found that he needed very little sleep and, when he lay on his plank, he fell almost immediately into unconsciousness. Thus another avenue of self-torture was closed to him.

He ate only enough to keep him alive; he travelled barefoot wherever he went and took care to choose the stony paths. The sight of his cracked and bleeding feet gave him a similar pleasure to that which fine garments gave to other men and women.

He gloried in austerity with a fierce and fanatical pride – as other men delighted in worldly glitter.

It was almost sixty years ago that he had been born in the little town of Torquemada (which took its name from the Latin turre cremata – burnt tower) not far from Valla-dolid in North Castile.

From Tomas’s early days he had shown great piety. His uncle, Juan de Torquemada, had been the Cardinal of San Sisto, a very distinguished theologian and writer on religious subjects.

Tomas had known that his father, Pero Fernandez de Torquemada, hoped that he would make the care of the family estates his life work, as he was an only son, and Pero was eager for Tomas to marry early and beget sons that this branch of the family might not become extinct.

Tomas had inherited a certain pride in his family, and this may have been one of the reasons why he decided so firmly that the life he had been called upon to lead, by a higher authority than that of Pero, should be one which demanded absolute celibacy.

At a very early age Tomas became a Dominican. With what joy he cast aside the fine raiment of a prosperous nobleman! With what pleasure he donned the rough serge habit, even at that age refusing to wear linen so that the coarse stuff could irritate his skin! It was very soon afterwards that he took to wearing the hair shirt, until he discovered that he must not wear it continually for fear that he should grow accustomed to it and the torment of it grow less.

He had become Prior of Santa Cruz of Segovia, but the news of his austere habits had reached the Court, and King Henry IV had chosen him as confessor to his sister Isabella.

He had refused at first; he wanted no soft life at Court. But then he had realised that there might be devils to tempt him at Court who could never penetrate the sanctity of Santa Cruz; and there would be more spiritual joy in resisting temptation than never encountering it.

The young Isabella had been a willing pupil. There could rarely have been a young princess so eager to share her confessor’s spirituality, so earnestly desirous of leading a rigidly religious life.

She had been pleased with her confessor, and he with her.

He had told her of his great desire to see an all-Christian Spain and, in an access of fervour, had asked that she kneel with him and swear that, if ever it were in her power to convert to Christianity the realm over which she might one day rule, she would seize the opportunity to do so.

The young girl, her eyes glowing with a fervour to match that of her confessor, had accordingly sworn.