‘It is so, Excellency. But all have not your strength.’
Torquemada dismissed the man.
It was true. Few men on Earth possessed the strength of will to discipline themselves as he had done. But he had great hopes of Ximenes de Cisneros. There was one who, it would seem, might be worthy to tread in his, Torquemada’s, footsteps.
‘If I were but a younger man,’ sighed Torquemada. ‘If I might throw off this accursed sickness, this feebleness of my body! My mind is as clear as it ever was. Then I would still rule Spain.’
But when the body failed a man, however great he was, his end was near. Even Torquemada could not subdue his flesh so completely that he could ignore it.
He lay back complacently. It was possible that his death would probably be the next one which would be talked of in the towns and villages of Spain. There was death in the air.
But people were constantly dying. He himself had fed thousands of them to the flames. He had done right, he assured himself. It was only in his helplessness that he was afraid.
‘Not,’ he said aloud, ‘of the pain I might suffer, not of death – for what fear should I have of facing my Maker? – but of the loss to the world which my passing must mean.
‘Oh, Holy Mother of God,’ he prayed, ‘give this man Ximenes the power to take my place. Give Ximenes strength to guide the Sovereigns as I have done. Then I shall die happy.’
The faggots in the quemaderos all over the country were well alight. In the dungeons of the Inquisition men, women and children awaited trial through ordeal. In the gloomy chambers of the damned the torturers were busy.
‘I trust, O Lord,’ murmured Torquemada, ‘that I have done my work well and shall find favour in Your sight. I trust You have noted the number of souls I have brought to You, the numbers I have saved, as well as those I have sent from this world to hell by means of the fiery death. Remember, O Lord, the zeal of Your servant, Tomás de Torquemada. Remember his love of the Faith.’
When he thought over his past life he had no qualms about death. He was certain that he would be received into Heaven with great glory.
His sub-prior came to him, as he lay there, with news from Rome.
He read the dispatch, and his anger burned so fiercely that it set his swollen limbs throbbing.
He and Alexander were two men who were born to be enemies. The Borgia had schemed to become Pope not through love of the Faith but because it was the highest office in the Church. His greatest desire was to shower honours on his sons and daughter, whom, as a man of the Church, he had no right to have begotten. This Borgia, it seemed, could be a merry man, a flouter of conventions. There were evil rumours about his incestuous relationship with his own daughter, Lucrezia, and it was well known that he exercised nepotism and that his sons, Cesare and Giovanni, swaggered through the towns of Italy boasting of their relationship to the Holy Father.
What could a man such as Torquemada – whose life had been spent in subduing the flesh – have in common with such as Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI? Very little.
Alexander knew this and, because he was a mischievous man, he had continually obstructed Torquemada in his endeavours.
Torquemada remembered early conflicts.
As far back as four years ago he had received a letter from the Pope; he could remember the words clearly now.
Alexander cherished him in ‘the very bowels of affection for his great labours in raising the glory of the Faith’. But Alexander was concerned because from the Vatican he considered the many tasks which Torquemada had taken upon himself, and he remembered the great age of Torquemada and he was not going to allow him to put too great a strain upon himself. Therefore he, Alexander, out of love for Torquemada, was going to appoint four assistants to be at his side in this mighty work of establishing and maintaining the Inquisition throughout Spain.
There could not have been a greater blow to his power. The new Inquisitors, appointed by the Pope, shared the power of Torquemada and the title Inquisitor General lost its significance.
There was no doubt that Alexander in the Vatican was the enemy of Torquemada in the monastery of Avila. It may have been that the Pope considered the Inquisitor General wielded too much power; but Torquemada suspected that the enmity between them grew from their differences – the desire of a man of great carnal appetites, which he made no effort to subdue, to denigrate one who had lived his life in the utmost abstention from all worldly pursuits.
And now, when Torquemada was near to death, Alexander had yet another snub to offer.
The Pope had held an auto de fe in the square before St Peter’s, and at this had appeared many of those Jews who had been expelled from Spain. If the Pope had wished to do the smallest honour to Torquemada he would have sent those Jews to the flames or inflicted some other severe punishment.
But Alexander was laughing down his nose at the monk of Avila. Sometimes Torquemada wondered whether he was laughing at the Church itself which he used so shamefully to his advantage.
Alexander had ordered that a service should be read in the square, and the one hundred and eighty Judaizers, and fugitives from Torquemada’s wrath were dismissed. No penalties. No wearing of the sanbenito. No imprisonment. No confiscation of property.
Alexander dismissed them all to go about their business like good citizens of Rome.
Torquemada clenched his fists tightly together as he thought of it. It was a direct insult, not only to himself but to the Spanish Inquisition; and he believed that the Pope was fully aware of this and it was his main reason for acting as he had.
‘And here I lie,’ he mused, ‘in this my seventy-eighth year of life, my body crippled, unable to protest.’
His heart began to beat violently, shaking his spare frame. The walls of the cell seemed to close in upon him.
‘My life’s work is done,’ he whispered and sent for his sub-prior.
‘I feel my end is near,’ he told the man. ‘Nay, do not look concerned. I have had a long life and in it I think I have served God well. I would not have you bury me with pomp. Put me to rest in the common burial ground among the friars of my monastery. There I would lie happiest.’
The sub-prior said quickly: ‘You are old in years, Excellency, but your spirit is strong. There are years ahead of you.’
‘Leave me,’ Torquemada commanded; ‘I would make my peace with God.’
He waved the man away, but he did not believe it was necessary to make his peace with God. He believed that there would be a place in Heaven for him as there had been on Earth.
He lay quietly on his pallet while the strength slowly ebbed from him.
He thought continually of his past life, and as the days went on his condition grew weaker.
It was known throughout the monastery that Torquemada was dying.
On the 16th of September, one month after the death of the Queen of Portugal, Torquemada opened his eyes and was not sure where he lay.
He dreamed he was ascending into Heaven to the sound of music – music which was composed of the cries of heretics as the flames licked their limbs, the murmurs of a band of exiles who trudged wearily, from the land which had been their home for centuries, to what grim horrors they could not know but only fear.
‘All this in Thy name …’ murmured Torquemada and, because he was too weak to control his feelings, a smile of assurance and satisfaction touched his lips.
The sub-prior came to him a little later, and he knew that it was time for the last rites to be administered.
Isabella roused herself from her bed of sickness and grief. She had her duty to perform.
The little Prince Miguel must be shown to the citizens and accepted by the Cortes as heir to the throne. So the processions began.