Inquisitor Dreams

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  It was a comfortable, but not a pretentious dwelling. The stairs led directly into a single room large enough for three beds and, on the opposite wall where it could receive the best light from the windows, a study table reasonably cluttered with bound volumes and a few scrolls.

  Gamaliel Ben Joseph stood beside the table, apparently having risen and turned to face the stairs at the sound of the newcomer’s footfalls.

  For a moment, the two men stood gazing at each other. Felipe felt torn between joy at beholding a friend feared dead, and pain at seeing that friend clothed in homespun so coarse that its weave was clearly visible across the length of half a room, with a yellow patch blazing on the chest and new Jewlocks framing a black beard of some half a year’s growth. It did not occur to him until afterward that Gamaliel’s hesitation might have been that of any Jew faced with the presence of any Christian priest—even a secular wearing little of the sacerdotal—especially one known to be associated in any way with the Inquisition, whether the ancient one of Aragon or the new one of Castile.

  Felipe broke the pause, throwing wide his arms and softly crying, “Gamito!”

  In the middle of the room, they met and embraced. Their friendship was, after all, as old as themselves, and each of them already a year or two past the quarter-century mark.

  “Old friend, old friend,” Gamito began, when he could speak. “Will you still touch me, when you have heard…”

  “My family?” Felipe’s grip tightened on his friend’s arms. “Gamito, what can you tell me of them?”

  “Little that is certain.” Falling back half a pace, Gamaliel shook his head. “To have been there is not to know everything, but…we fear the worst. We know that they were all in the city—your good father and mother, both your brothers, the wife and child of your older brother, and your beloved sister, the gentle Serafina—when the Castilians came. Since the day Isabel’s army breached our walls…since that day, old friend, we have seen none of your family, not one. Nor have I found anyone who has. We heard that your father’s house was among those burned to the ground, but I could never return there and see for myself.”

  “But…” It was natural to fear the worst for those caught in a city struck by war, yet to have the fears confirmed—to know that the home of one’s memories was no longer anything but blackened ashes, to find oneself alone and familyless in a single blow—and did not the Catholic monarchs pride themselves on the righteousness of their war? “But we were Catholic Christians!”

  “Some Christians attempted to side with the invaders—although not, by all that I could learn, until after the wall was breached and the Castilians actually in our streets. Some may have saved themselves in that manner. Abou Aben Hassim spoke of glimpsing one of the Nuñez Calatravo brothers drinking with the conquerors during the days when our own men of Karnattah besieged the city, trying to relieve us, and the Castilians allowed water to their horses and soldiers alone, and none to us their prisoners. But among those Christians made prisoner were a few who dared complain of having offered to join the conquerors and been refused. Many other Christians fought with us for Alhama. Or so they claimed when held prisoner with the rest of us in the desecrated mosques, and I believe that most or all of them spoke truly. Almost all of those whom I met had lost family and loved ones. In the end, I fear that it had less to do with their religion than with whichever soldiers pillaged their houses. We heard that it was Manuel Urtigo and his men who sacked your father’s house.” Venturing to step forward again, Gamito renewed his grip on Felipe’s arm. “This Manuel Urtigo is said to be a mercenary, almost a bandit, though fighting that campaign with Isabel’s army. Old friend, I am sorry. I grieve with you. They were a second family to me.”

  “Manuel?” The name seemed to strike a flash of some grotesque half-memory—Serafina naked and screaming beneath a bloodstained ruffian, while another man shouted, “Bravissimo, Manuel!” Where the image had come from, Felipe could not think. Perhaps some shard of fear-born fantasy engendered by the earliest news, this past Lent, of the Catholic monarchs wresting his native Alhama de Karnattah from Moorish rule. He had been schooled in the caution necessary when dealing with visions and fancied visions, whether they came from God, Satan, or the fevered human brain; yet this impossible glimpse of his sister lying in her own blood, once remembered, was a sword to his soul. “Manuel,” he repeated. “Manuel Urtigo. Urtigo. Manuel Urtigo. I will remember the name.”

  * * * *

  After some moments, Gamaliel poured Felipe a cup of wine. Accepting it from his friend’s hand, the priest found a chair and sat. “But you, Gamito?” he asked. “Your family?”

  A spasm passed through Gamito’s face, but when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “My married sister must have died with her husband and children in the sacking of their house. I saw its ruins as I was led with other prisoners through the streets. The house of my father had the blessed fortune to be taken by Pedro Alçon de Córdoba, an honorable captain who forbade his men to harm their prisoners, or even to pluck from their persons anything except gold, silver, and jewels. But later, when the men of Karnattah tried to retake the city, they stopped up most of its springs outside the wall. That was when the Castilians hoarded whatever water they could get for their horses and fighting men, and many of us prisoners died of thirst. Among them Yousef Ben Yeshu, my father. Later still, more Castilians came to drive away our would-be rescuers and destroy all hope that the Moors might recapture Alhama. Yet this proved a blessing to the surviving members of my family, for Pedro Alçon de Córdoba permitted our cousins in the city of Karnattah to ransom us. My mother is with them still, and my unmarried sister to help nurse her. My brother took his wife and fled to Rome. I came here.”

  “To bring me the news? Old friend, I thank you.” Don Felipe laid one hand on Gamito’s shoulder. “And I grieve for your own losses, and rejoice that they were not even worse. As mine to you, yours was a second family to me.”

  Gamaliel covered Felipe’s hand with his own. For a moment, one man seated, the other standing, both heads slightly bowed, they remained in silence.

  At length, Don Felipe spoke again. “But your clothes, Gamito? Has the ransom left your family so impoverished? Your beard? The sidelocks? And…the hated yellow badge? Was all this necessary?”

  After refilling his guest’s cup and pouring wine for himself, Gamaliel drew up another chair and sat.

  “Afoot or on shipboard, I call it safer to travel through these most Catholic realms as the unbaptized Jew I am than to risk being mistaken for a relapsed converso. Better to be spat upon than court the flames. They say there have already been burnings in Castile.”

  Don Felipe nodded. “At Seville, after the Act of Faith a year ago this February just past. But, by our information, the conspiracy there had been actual, my friend. Not the mere bag of wind and empty rumors that most such plots dissolve into at a sufficiently forceful touch. Unfortunately, it has enabled the people to find new conspiracies in every shadow.”

  “Is it true that plague struck the day after the burnings?”

  “I have heard that the first cases appeared before the Act, but who, now, can say for sure? Certainly plague struck at about the same time, and the people saw it as God’s judgment on the conspirators. Even though one of the inquisitors was among its earliest victims,” Don Felipe added wryly, “which some graceless wits might have seen as divine judgment on the other party, had the general wrath burned less fiercely against the victims of the stake.”

  “How is it that you have such clear news of these matters?”

  Felipe almost winked. “Is it not in my interest to know as much as possible about this new, half-legal Inquisition their Majesties are trying to plant? Do you suppose I am eager to see Fernando bring it here to Aragon? where folk have done very well with the true old Inquisition since the days of the Albigensians. Do you think that I, as secular priest and bishop’s Ordinary, care for the thought of these hot new hounds of Torquemada’s replacing our s
leepy old Fra Guillaume? who regards me as invigorating new blood!”

  “Old friend, old friend,” Gamaliel replied, shaking his head, “their Majesties may succeed. All my way here, I heard the sailors talk as if they panted for Queen Isabel’s Inquisition as we prisoners in the mosques of Alhama had panted for water and food.”

  “Perhaps. But what is true of Castile may not hold true of Aragon. I have found that the people here take fierce pride in their own will, their own ancient fueros, privileges, and liberties. Each Aragonese noble holds himself fully equal with his king, whom he serves of his own free will, only as long as it pleases himself to do so—and when it does not, he appeals to the Justicia of Aragon and his court! As long as your people guard themselves in prudence and avoid following the example of Seville, I think you may find our Old Christians of Aragon your strongest allies in keeping this new Inquisition out of Fernando’s kingdom. But as for you yourself, Gamito…I hope and believe that we shall preserve Aragon relatively safe, but…” Don Felipe thought of the new law restricting the children of Israel to their own quarters of the cities. “…were I you, I should join your brother’s family in Rome, and bring your mother there from Karnattah as soon as she can bear the journey, along with your sister and cousins.”

  “Do you think that I have not thought of all this? Every step of the way to port, every rise and fall of the ship, as I saw, and felt in my own person, how the Castilians treat us, not only in siege and war, but… But no, my friend.” Gamaliel shook his head. “I believe that the Lord calls me to remain here and do everything in my power to help my people in the times that lie ahead.”

  “I know you were studying to be a rabbi.”

  “It is a longer study, perhaps, for us than for you,” Gamaliel replied with a smile that touched soft irony. “But I have also been schooled in the trials of Alhama de Karnattah.”

  “And so you plan to remain here with us?” Felipe raised his cup in salute to his boyhood companion. “It cheers me already to have you near.”

  For a time they sipped in silence, as if all the new things had been said and it was as yet too painful to reminisce about the old. Eventually, however, his wine three-quarters drunk, Felipe asked, “And Hamet and his family? Are they still in the city of Karnattah, where they went…was it in ’70?”

  “In 1471. Yes. I saw them twice, the time I spent in that city after we were ransomed. They have done well, as well as possible in these days.” After a pause, Gamito added, “He told me that his sister Morayma is happy with her Moorish husband.”

  The priest replied with a fatalistic nod and the comment, “It is enough.”

  Why, after all, should she not be happy in her marriage?

  Chapter 3

  Morayma

  The Moors were freer about allowing infidels than fellow Islamites into the company of their women, so that Felipe and Gamito had twice seen their friend Hamet’s younger sister. Those two visions of Morayma, coupled with her brother’s accounts of her, had been enough. After his second glimpse, the boy Felipe had begged his father to approach her father with the proposal of an alliance between their houses.

  In wealth, the two families were equal. In social standing, comparable: if Morayma’s family was Moorish in a Moorish kingdom, Felipe’s was descended on both sides from some of the noblest blood of Old Spain—on one side, as family tradition maintained, from El Cid himself. It might have been argued forever which family lowered itself to the other. But the barrier of religion, although in the old ways of the kingdom of Karnattah preventing neither friendship nor good business relations, held both fathers back when it came to arranging a union between their offspring while still little more than children.

  Felipe was then fourteen, and his father lost little time before shipping him off to Italy, to complete his education in that completely Catholic country. Two years later, in Rome, he received a letter from his mother which included the news that Hamet’s father had wedded Morayma to a rich Moor of the city of Karnattah, where the whole family had moved. Morayma would have been fourteen at the time of her marriage.

  As though sensing Felipe’s emotions, in the same packet with that news his mother had sent him her own golden betrothal ring, set with a carnelian bearing the carven likeness of Juno’s head, in hopes that when the time came he would set it upon the finger of his bride to be.

  Not that he would ever find one to take the place of Morayma in his heart! No, nothing was left for young Felipe save to worship her as a knight his sovereign lady—the devotion that neither time nor distance could ever dim, for it depended upon the excellence of the lady rather than the fleshly hope of the knight.

  Not that actual knighthood was a vocation which held great allure for young Felipe de Bivar y Aguilar, even despite his proud family name. While not sickly, he had no exceptional strength nor stamina. Neither did he feel any burning desire to dress in iron for the purpose of battering and being battered by a fellow mortal similarly armed and clad. Such sports were all very well for leather-coated boys at play with wooden staves; but Felipe had been thwacked twice or thrice with such a mock weapon wielded over-forcefully, and he saw little honor and less usefulness in putting his excellent brain at the mercy of a true sword or mace.

  Therefore, he decided upon the Church. Was not a priest in some sense a knight of God? As well as a man in the way to considerable success even in the worldly sense.

  He would take orders, but not enter an Order. Being the child of a cloth merchant, he appreciated fine clothing. Being the child of a wealthy family of Karnattah, he possessed a finely developed if somewhat delicate palate, and misliked the thought of coarse diet as much as he misliked that of sleeping with any other discomfort than the inevitable mouse or bedbug. True, religious houses that actually kept their ancient rules and austerities were fewer than those that did not. But in any wild and luxurious cloister, his virtuous devotion to the lost Morayma would doubtless be put to sorer tests than he desired enduring. As a secular he could keep his independence—even, wealth allowing, his own household—along with freedom to hold himself forever pure and innocent of fleshly love, in honor of his lady.

  He would be a true knight-errant of Morayma and God: that is, a secular priest.

  Chapter 4

  The Dream of the Martyrs of Baal

  It was on the eve of his ordination that Felipe dreamed his earliest dream of the two women.

  He stood in a parched land: desert behind him, and before, and on his right hand. To his left, distant mountains. Remembering no other goal, he turned and began trudging toward them. His forward foot sank ankle deep in pale sand at every step. His thirst was great.

  As the hind longs for running waters …

  A hind shimmered between him and the mountains—a pure white hind framed by dry golden dust, azure sky, and the deceptive cloudlike blue of the mountains.

  No, not a hind, a woman. A woman clad all in loose and flowing white, like one in mourning, or some sainted virgin. Indeed, the martyr’s palm lay green in an upright line between her left arm and breast, its end resting lightly, even carelessly, in her light brown hand; and while her hair fell long and black to her waist, the sun seemed to strike a pale golden aureole from its crown.

  “Felipe,” she said, holding her right hand out to him. “Grandson.”

  “Señora,” he answered, taking it, aware only vaguely that in order to do so he must have covered several paces in a single stride, this time without sinking to the ankle. “Who are you?”

  “I am numbered among your distant great-grandmothers, and in life I wore the name Raymonde.” Her voice was gentle and musical, yet penetrating.

  “Which would you prefer that I call you: Raymonde or grandmother?”

  “Either or both, great-grandson, as you will.” Still holding his hand, she turned, and he found that they were already in the foothills.

  The hills were almost as dry as the desert. One tiny stream trickled its way through a bed far too wide for it, where a
few herbs struggled to stay green. Everywhere else, the dry brown grasses crackled underfoot like the shells of tiny beetles.

  “This land has lain long under drought,” Felipe observed.

  “Too long. Its people have grown too desperate.” Raymonde pointed upslope.

  Felipe became aware of a crowd populating the mountainside, milling about like dusty sheep a little below two high points. For a moment, it seemed to him that all of them stood upon the body of a vast, reclining giantess: himself and Raymonde on one of her knees, the bulk of the crowd girdling her like a broad sash about the waist, with the two high points being her nipples, the ridge beyond and between them her chin. The belt of humanity wound up to cover one of her breasts. The other rose denuded except at the very top.

  Then he saw that her nipples were a pair of stone altars, one with a mass of priests surrounding it, the other attended by a single man.

  A chant rose from the priests encircling the left-hand altar. The sound swelled and intensified until Felipe felt it as a rumbling in the soles of his feet. The solitary attendant of the right-hand altar began to shout, but Felipe could not make out his words.

  “Is it safe to draw nearer?” he asked of Raymonde.

  “It is safe for us,” she replied.

  The multitude of priests were brandishing blades of various sizes, slashing their own bared arms and chests, shaking their blood upon the bloody altar offering. They might have been pelicans opening their breasts to give life to their young. Their chant had grown into a wail. Yet the offering was a mangle of dead and skinless flesh that could almost as well have been human remains as butcher’s meat.

  “Shout louder,” the solitary man at the right-hand altar called across to them. “Your Lord is a God, and He might be sleeping, or eating, or shitting!”