The fires were lighted. She could not look. But how could she turn away?
She heard the cries of agony. She saw the flames run up the hideous yellow; she saw her father’s face through the smoke.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘No!’
Then she slid to the ground, and knelt praying there, praying for a miracle while the smell of burning flesh filled her nostrils.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered, ‘take me . . . Let me not rise from my knees. Strike me dead, out of your mercy.’
She felt a hand on her shoulder and a pair of kindly eyes were looking into hers.
It was the Bishop of Tiberiades who had spoken to her outside the Convent of St Paul.
‘So . . .’ he said, ‘it is La Susanna. You should not have come here, my child.’
‘He is dying . . . cruelly dying,’ she moaned.
‘Hush! You must not question the sentence of the Holy Office.’
‘He was so good to me.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I shall not go back to his house.’
‘All his goods will be confiscated by the Inquisition, my child; so you would not be able to stay there long if you went.’
‘I care not what becomes of me. I pray for death.’
‘Come with me.’
She obeyed him and walked beside him through the streets of the city. She did not notice the strained faces of the people. She did not hear their frightened whispers. She was unaware that they were asking themselves whether this terrible scene, which they had witnessed this day, could become a common one in Seville.
There was nothing for La Susanna but her own misery.
They had reached the door of a building which she knew to be one of the city’s convents.
The Bishop knocked and they were admitted.
‘Take care of this woman,’ said the Bishop to the Mother Superior. ‘She is in great need of your care.’
And he left her there, left her with her remorse and the memory of her father at the stake, with the sound of his cries of anguish as the flames licked his body – all of which were engraved upon her mind for ever.
In the Convent of St Paul Ojeda planned more such spectacles. They had begun the work. The people of Seville had lost their truculence. They understood now what could happen to those who defied the Inquisition. Soon more smoke would be rising above the meadows of Tablada.
Seville should lead the way, and other towns would follow; he would show Torquemada and the Queen what a zealous Christian was Alonso de Ojeda.
He sent his Dominicans to preach against heresy in all the pulpits of the city. Information must be lodged against suspected heretics. Anyone who could be suspected of the slightest heresy must be brought before the tribunals and tortured until he involved his neighbours.
There were friars at St Paul’s whose special duty it was on the Jewish Sabbath to station themselves on the roof of the convent and watch the chimneys of the town. Anyone who did not light a fire was suspect. Those whose chimneys were smokeless would be brought before the tribunal; and if they did not confess, the torture could be applied; it was very likely that, on the rack or the hoist or subjected to a taste of the water torture, these people would be ready not only to confess their own guilt but to involve their friends.
‘Ah!’ cried Ojeda. ‘I will prove my zeal to Tomas de Torquemada. The Queen will recognise me as her very good servant.’
And, even as he spoke, one of his monks came hurrying to him to tell him that plague had struck the city.
Ojeda’s eyes flashed. ‘This is the Divine will,’ he declared. ‘This is God’s punishment for the evil-living in Seville.’
The stricken people were dying in the streets.
‘Holy Prior,’ declared the Inquisitor Morillo, ‘it is impossible to continue with our good work while the plague rages. It may be that men who are brought in for questioning will sicken and die in their cells. Soon we shall have plague in St Paul’s. There is only one thing we can do.’
‘Leave this stricken city,’ agreed Ojeda. ‘It is the Divine will that these people shall be punished for their loose living; but God would not wish that we, who do His work, should suffer with them. Yes, we must leave Seville.’
‘We might go to Aracena, and there wait until the city is clean again.’
‘Let us do that,’ agreed Ojeda. ‘I doubt not that Aracena will profit from our visit. It is certain that it contains some heretics who should not be allowed to sully its purity.’
‘We should travel with all speed,’ said Morillo.
‘Then let us leave this day.’
When he was alone Ojeda felt a strange lethargy creep over him; he felt sick and dizzy.
He said to himself: It is this talk of the plague. It is time we left Seville.
He sat down heavily and tried to think of Aracena. The edict should be read immediately on their arrival, warning all the inhabitants that it would be advisable for them to report any acts of heresy they had witnessed. Thus it should not be difficult to find victims for an auto de fe.
One of the Dominicans had come into the room; he looked at the Prior, and his startled terror showed on his face.
He made an excuse to retire quickly, and Ojeda tried to rise to his feet and follow him, but he slipped back into his chair.
Then Ojeda knew. The plague had come to St Paul’s; it embraced not only those who defied the laws of the Church but also those who set out to enforce them.
Within a few days Ojeda was dead; but the Quemadero – the Burning Place – had come to stay; and all over Castile the fires had begun to burn.
THE BIRTH OF MARIA AND THE DEATH OF CARILLO
Christmas had come and Isabella was enjoying a brief respite from her duties, with her family. It was rarely that they could all be together, and this union made the Queen very happy.
She could look back over the years of her reign with a certain pride.
There was peace in the kingdom. Alfonso of Portugal had died in the August of the previous year. He had been making preparations to resign the throne in order to go into residence at the monastery of Varatojo, and was travelling through Cintra when he was attacked by an illness which proved to be fatal. He had caused her a great deal of anxiety and she could only feel relieved that he could cause her no more.
She had punished criminals so harshly that she had considerably reduced their number; and she now proposed to punish heretics until none was left in her country.
She saw her friend Tomas de Torquemada infrequently now; he was obsessed by his work for the Holy Office. Her present confessor was Father Talavera, who was almost as zealous a worker for the Faith as Torquemada himself.
She knew she must not rest on her triumphs. Always she must remember the work that was left to be done. There was yet another great task awaiting her, for the setting up of the Inquisition, and the ridding her country of all heretics, was not all. There, she told herself, like a great abscess on the fair form of Spain, was the kingdom of Granada.
But for this Christmas she would indulge herself. She would be as an ordinary woman in the heart of her family.
She went to the nurseries to see her children.
As they stood before her and curtsied she felt a sadness touch her. She was a stranger to them, and she their mother. She suppressed a desire to take them in her arms and caress them, to weep over them, to tell them how she longed to be a gentle mother to them.
