by K. T. Tomb
“Gentlemen, the Virgin herself has been talking to my wife.”
Loud gasps went around the table, and all eyes turned toward the queen. As for Isabella, she looked straight ahead, clutching the rosary in her hand.
“Yes, it is true.” Ferdinand quieted them down. “She has brought a matter of great importance to my attention and consequently to yours. Earlier, after my wife interrupted our conference, she told me that the Virgin is sad and hurt to have our land plagued by those not of our faith.”
“The Moors.” Someone stated.
“The Jews.” Came another voice.
“Yes, the Moors and the Jews. They live in our country; they eat our food; they sleep in beds they make from our money and yet do not respect our culture, traditions and God. How can we allow this to go on, Gentlemen? How? How many years before they swallow us whole and consume us with their false rituals and mindless mumbles which they call prayers? Therefore, we need to act, and in light of this revelation, my wife and I have come to a decision.”
Ferdinand called for the servant behind him, the only one of his stature privy to such an important gathering. While the boy handed him some papers, the table went rife with subdued rage and possible courses of action.
Isabella took the papers from Ferdinand, and stood. Immediately, the table fell silent. She began to speak. “Gentlemen, my husband, your king, and I have decided on a course of action which we think is best. Here are the drafts for the constitution of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Effective immediately, all Jews and Muslims in our land are to be asked to convert to Christianity or leave. Should they choose to accept our faith, they will have a home here. Should they not, they should leave within the dead of night and no one will stop them.
“This document describes the hierarchy of the Inquisition. According to what we have devised, we will appoint a Grand Inquisitor, who will head the council of the Supreme and the General Inquisitors, made up of six members. There will be a total of 21 tribunals in the empire who shall begin their work as soon as we announce the deed. Now, are there any questions?”
The table remained silent.
***
The days, months and years which followed could very easily be termed as some of the darkest for Spain. What had started out as a means to protect Jews and Muslims in the country who would convert or give them free passage to leave if they did not, had turned into a terror organization. Isabella was crazed with herself and her rosary. The Virgin Mary came to her on a nightly basis, but was still not happy, no matter what she did.
The next order was to burn non-believers or heretics at stake. There were to be no questions asked and inquiries into a matter were or for the examination of a person accused by the office of the Grand Inquisitor were entirely one-sided in nature.
Terror spread like a wildfire. The air became rife with the cries and wails of the innocents who were subjected to melting skin and burning bones because of gods, who did not agree with the one directing the visions of the rosary.
As for Isabella, she shut herself in with her rosary. She knew she was following the word of God, which often required sacrifice. Her God and the Virgin were, once again, happy with her and would bring prosperity to her nation. Her rosary, her only friend, would protect her always. It was a magical, blessed thing, and Isabella knew she would guard it with her life for as long as she lived.
Chapter Six
RSS feed. Lana Ambrose, 2014
The Crown: At the age of 18, Isabella took wedding matters into her own hands when she fell in love with Prince Fernando of Aragon. Enrique did not find him suitable and Juana was determined to marry Isabella to her brother, paving the way for her daughter to become Queen of Castile. However, Isabella and Fernando were married in Valladolid without Enrique’s approval on October 19, 1469.
For six days and nights, Fernando and Isabella and their guests celebrated the royal wedding. However, when King Enrique received word of the marriage, he was furious. One by one he tore Isabel’s few possessions, towns from which she received taxes, from her. Fernando and Isabella were without money and Fernando was away from his wife for many months at a time fighting wars in Sicily or Aragon, family possessions. On October 2, 1470, a daughter named Isabella was born to the couple. A daughter was not worth as much as a son, and King Enrique was delighted, who had changed the succession to Juana ‘la Beltraneja’. Four years later, King Enrique became seriously ill and died on December 11, 1474. His councilors urged him to name his heir, but Enrique remained silent. When Isabella heard the news, she grieved for the loss, but there was not a moment to spare if she was to claim the throne. Fernando, who was fighting in Zaragoza, could not be summoned in time. On December 13, 1474, Isabella was crowned Queen of Castile in Segovia’s Plaza Mayor by her counselor, Archbishop Carrillo. Fernando returned from Zaragoza not soon after and found himself ‘king consort’ to Isabel. Although somewhat upset, he and his wife forged a loving partnership.
Chyna had shaken off the effects of travel weariness and Valium only after she the regathered team entered the city limits of Cordoba. Even the modernity of the booming hub of southern Spanish life was effervescently coated with the past, down to the partially constructed towers, abandoned when the money provided by bankers halfway across the globe, had suddenly dried up some years before.
She looked out of the rear seat window, a seat she rarely took when the team traveled, at the sights of Cordoba. It was so much more beautiful than she had originally thought; a pleasant change from the staid, aristocratic architecture of Geneva, not to say that the Swiss city wasn’t truly beautiful, but Cordoba brimmed with the energetic creation of humanity in a way that was free of the reserved, self-consciousness of most western and northern European cities. The Spanish sun shown brightly in the sky, and Chyna rolled down the windows to let the rays play on her face. She leaned out of the window a little, letting the wind flow through her hair. She felt as if she had been transported to a new world, light years away from a cathedral in Germany, at the altar which had housed a praying Jesus Christ, and under a roof that had seen destruction and rebirth.
The sun disappeared behind rooftops as they entered the crowded streets and it was the first brush Chyna had with the real Spain since she and her team had arrived at Malaga airport, and began fighting the bustling crowds of pasty holiday makers, forging their migratory paths to the playas. There were cafes offering Spanish food and traditionally dressed local dancers moving their hips to joyful, flamboyant music. Even though the majority of the local people were dressed in casual wear, the tourists seemed to be in full Spanish mode with large hats and dresses. There was an electric feel in the air, as if the city was announcing its existence to the world and proudly holding up the Spanish flag for everyone to see.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” Mark whispered to her as both he and Chyna took in the passing sights.
“Mm-hmm.” She could only nod.
They wandered around for a few more minutes, memorizing the landmarks before locating their hotel. All of them were famished by that point, especially Chyna, but no one wanted to eat in a hotel restaurant when they had the choice of having real, rural Spanish food in one of the many little places which dotted the cityscape. Oscar suggested that they get started with some work over lunch, and for once, since rejoining her team, Chyna agreed with him.
They stopped just outside a small café a few blocks away from the hotel and settled down for lunch. Chyna watched with an open mouth as Sirita helped out an Italian tourist looking for the way to a souvenir shop, then offered directions to the same hotel where they were staying to a Chinese man, and finally, she rattled off her order in the restaurant in fluent, flawless Spanish.
“What the hell?” Chyna said, after the waiter went away with their order, once again conducted in flawless native dialect. “I’ve just realized that I’ve never asked you how many languages you actually speak?”
“That’s for me to speak and you to find out.�
� Sirita smiled slyly.
Chyna narrowed her eyes playfully. “Cliché.” Then she giggled.
“Touché,” Sirita countered.
For lunch, the atmosphere was light. The place felt charged with energy and renewal, and Chyna didn’t interrupt the banter going on at the table. It had been a long time since she had felt those feelings of belonging to some place and not being suspended in the dimensions of space and time, wandering aimlessly and hopelessly about. The feeling was grounded, happy and safe. Chyna realized that wherever the people around her went, she would gladly go. For just a fleeting moment, her eyes met Mark’s over the table, and she was pleased to see herself reflected in his irises. So, she let it go on, whatever it was.
The rest, however, was brought to a halt halfway through lunch when Sirita came back from the restroom with a worried expression upon her face.
“Hey, listen, I have news,” she announced before she even sat down.
“What is it?” Oscar leaned in to hear. The family sitting behind him was loud, and he had been straining to hear over their din throughout their time in the café.
“I just heard some locals talking, and they were talking about something... unusual. It reminded me of that story you told us, Chyna, and I thought it might be significant to our case.” She raised her eyebrows in emphasis.
“What is it?” Mark urged her on.
“Wait, can you get those locals whom you saw talking?” Lana said. If they were the ones talking, they would be the best source of information.
Sirita looked around the place, mumbling to herself about not being so sure, but then spotted a pair of ladies walking through and dashed off after them. She came back with two obviously Spanish women, judging by their fluent Spanish and their heavily laced English accent.
Sirita introduced them to the team, increasing their party’s number to seven and mumbling ‘Hola’ to everyone. Sirita asked them something in Spanish, and they seemed pleased to have a foreigner speak to them so fluently in their own tongue. There was a short conversation, and then Sirita turned to the team.
“They’re talking about a place here, popularly known as the Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba. They say that there have been strange rumors coming from the site. Stories similar to what Lana inferred from all those news articles. These people, or victims, or whatever you would like to call them, have been experiencing religious visions and have begun preaching the word of God or something, they say,” she explained.
“Ask them what the doctors say. Do they know that?” Mark piped up.
Sirita translated the question for the women. “They say that the doctors are baffled and have no explanation. Though they are not confused by the symptoms, but, instead, by the frequency of the occurrences. They’re beginning to think it’s a mental epidemic of sorts. All the victims have thus far displayed similar symptoms.”
Chyna asked the next question. “Ask them whether they have heard anything about Isabella yet.”
No sooner had Sirita asked the question than the women jumped in surprise. Clearly, the rosary had not been mentioned anywhere in the papers, but judging by their reaction and the rapid-fire responses they were giving Sirita, Chyna thought they might be getting somewhere.
“They say that there has been no mention in the papers, but now that they think of it, it makes more sense. But they’ve added that the rosary of Isabella has been lost for centuries. No one knows where it is.”
After that, Sirita bid the women a polite goodbye as the team shared a look of deep contemplation. Their plan was already set without much discussion; as was their destination.
***
The Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba was one of the strangest buildings which Chyna had ever seen, and also one of the most symbolic. For two religions who had been locked in war during the Crusades at one point in time, to come together in one place to pray, the finer interpretations of God’s will being a fundamental cause of the bloodshed in the first place, was an enigma which had captured every avenue of Chyna’s immense interest in history and culture.
As the name went, the structure had a cathedral in the center, but a mosque enclosed it on all four sides, dwarfing the Christian constructions on every scale. The Islamic Spanish of Cordoba and of greater Spain had been petitioning to pray in the inside cathedral for quite some time, but their requests had been denied by both the Vatican and the Spanish authorities. How man had divided this world Chyna failed to understand.
She would have loved to dwell in the place for a long period of time, trying to find answers to questions which had long been ignored, but as the team got out of their car, their attention was captured by a large throng of people who had gathered in the center of the square directly in front of the Mezquita.
The team looked at each other and approached the group with caution. It wasn’t immediately clear what the subject captivating the attention was, but Chyna could hear raised voices from the center. People surrounding the subjects were looking around in amazement, anger, confusion and fear; a panoply of human experience.
As Chyna reached the throng, she pushed through the lines, using her elbows and arms as resistance and clearing people out of the way. Mark and the others followed suit and they were soon inner ring of the ten deep circle of bodies. So, Chyna thought, this was what the Spanish ladies in the café and the news reports had been talking about.
Three people, dressed in shabby and muddy white and gray clothes were sitting in a circle in the middle of the square, holding hands and swinging their heads about in a wild motion. Their fingers gripped each other to the point of making their dark knuckles pale and providing roots for their moving bodies, but not to their babbling lips. Chyna listened for some distinct roots in the language being spoken, but couldn’t find any. She looked over to Sirita, whose face was writ with concentration; head cocked to one side, listening.
“What language is that?” She had to lean in and speak directly into her ear for Sirita to hear her, as the voices from trio in the middle of the circle rose in octaves and the crowd truculently refused to lower their voices in response. Spanish insults and cat calls flew heavily through the air.
“I don’t know! I’ve never heard anything like it! There aren’t any words that I can identify!” she shouted back, covering her ears to block out the din.
Chyna nodded and turned to bear witness to the scene once more. She knew she needed to talk to those three, and fast.
“O ye!” Someone yelled from the back, and before they knew it, people started rushing about. Suddenly, the debacle in the middle of the square was forgotten. The crowd began to part rapidly, and it was only when Chyna strained to see toward the back of the group that she groaned internally. She had lost her opportunity to talk to them. There were many things she wanted to do, but engaging in a heated discussion with the local police in order to interview the three crazed Spaniards was not one of them.
“Damn it, they have come to arrest these three,” Mark muttered from next to her, trying to hold on to his case while shuffling along with the crowd. They watched the four officers struggling to break up the trio, but were having little luck. Exasperated, they picked them up by the arms, escorting all of them away and into the back of a van. It happened faster than anyone could blink, and within a few minutes, life in the Mezquita had returned to normal again. Well, as normal as it could get in the wake of such a heretical display.
“That’s too bad. We could have gotten some valuable information,” Sirita said, bemoaning the loss of the strange people as one would a broken heel on a favorite shoe.
“Excuse me?” A voice called out to the five of them in English as they stood watching the spot where the police van had been parked only moments before. “Excuse me!”
Chyna turned to see a short man running toward her, about five feet six and stout, he was wearing black rimmed wayfarers, and his olive skin was capped by black hair which seemed like it had not been cut in months. A look at his clothes told her he was overdressed for
the place. He was wearing dress pants, a shirt and a waistcoat that was missing a button. All the other tourists were in casual attire. She was immediately on her guard and considered him a threat.
“Are you Chyna Stone?” he panted as he reached her. Chyna picked up a strong Spanish accent in his tone.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we have met,” she replied politely. “Who is asking?”
“Yo soy Tacho Villanueva.” He patted his hand on his heaving chest as he spoke, not having fully caught his breath. “I am... el periodista... journalist. I am investigating this extrañeza of the Mezquita and the madness.”
“Hi.” Chyna was still cautious as she extended her hand toward him. “How do you know me?”
“Oh, I read about your papers and adventures. I have done features on some of the pieces you have discovered all around Europe. I recognized you from the hair, though I had my doubts.”
Chyna felt a little more relaxed, but having been recently burned in the worst possible way, she was tempted to blow on plain, cool water before she drank it. She glanced around to see if the chance meeting was being monitored by some observer. Seeing no obvious signs, she decided to make use of whatever the man might offer them. “Oh, thanks, I guess. You are investigating this case?”
“Si. I have information you might need. Can we talk somewhere?” Tacho nodded, and even though she knew she was taking an enormous chance, it was a risk she had to take.
Chapter Seven
RSS feed. Lana Ambrose, 2014
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter”
