‘ZARITA DE MARZENA, daughter of Don Vicente Alonso de Carbazón, you are accused of heresy, of performing certain heretical acts in your home in Las Conchas.’
‘This is a false accusation,’ I stated in firm voice.
‘Do you deny the charge?’
‘I do,’ I replied. ‘Bring forth the person who has accused me of this and I will deny it to them also.’
‘The denouncement is in the form of a letter.’
‘Written by whom?’
‘Your stepmother, Lorena.’
Lorena!
‘Let it be a matter of record,’ Father Besian formally told the monk acting as secretary, ‘that Lorena, wife of the magistrate of Las Conchas, one Don Vicente Alonso de Carbazón, wrote to me some months after I had conducted an Inquisition in the town.’
‘What did she write?’ I looked at the expression of gloating triumph on the face of Father Besian and my voice faded.
‘Lorena said that she was afraid for her soul and that of her unborn child because of certain practices she’d witnessed taking place within the household of her husband. I offered immunity for herself and that of her child, and complete claim on the family property and goods, if she would put in writing what she knew.’ Father Besian picked up a sheet of paper and waved it in the air. ‘This is her reply. She stated that you and your father regularly engaged in Jewish rituals.’
I managed to smile at this ludicrous statement. ‘Why on earth would we do that? Our family has no connection to the Jewish faith.’
‘Not so!’ Father Besian stood up. ‘I too was suspicious when I visited your house. It was obvious that there was a lack of devotion in your person. While your stepmother attended to her religious duties, you preferred, with your father’s approval, to study books. I took an opportunity to look at these books. They were neither religious nor devotional. Some of the texts were very suspect indeed. Then your father came and pleaded with me to be merciful to the man, the converso, found guilty of reverting to Jewish practices. This alerted me to your Jewish sympathies. Upon receiving your stepmother’s first letter, I researched your ancestry. On your father’s side there is a grandfather who turned from Judaism to Christianity. It is clear that you and your father reverted back.’
This explained why Papa had seemed anxious at the appearance of the officers of the Inquisition in our house. I recalled the words Father Besian had spoken concerning people who had things to hide, and Papa’s reaction to this statement. This was why Beatriz had advised me to have pork served for our evening meal as Jews did not eat pig meat – something I’d neglected to attend to as it had been the day of Bartolomé’s arrest. And finally I understood Papa’s intense stare in my direction as the Jew converso was burned to death. I thought of the fear that must have been churning through his mind at that time. He would have been praying for me not to cry out in a protest that might bring me to investigation and torture. My papa had tried to protect me.
But he was no longer here and I must speak up for myself.
‘What Lorena has written is not true. This letter—’ I broke off.
The letter!
It was this letter that Lorena had spoken of on her deathbed. Her final words to me . . .
Zarita, you will burn . . . the letter.
Lorena had warned me. I thought she meant me to burn some letter that was among her papers, but in fact she was trying to tell me of the letter she’d sent to the Inquisition accusing me of heresy.
Zarita, you will burn.
Lorena had meant that I would burn.
‘Go on.’
‘What?’ I looked up.
Father Besian was gazing at me intently. ‘You were about to say something?’
‘No, nothing.’ I shook my head. What could I say? I could not repeat a deathbed confession. Even if it had been proper for me to do so, who knows where that might lead? I would have to betray the circumstances in which I’d heard Lorena say it – during the birth of her baby. Then it would all come out – God forbid! – the presence of the Jewish doctor attending a Christian woman in childbirth, examining her. They could find me guilty of heresy for that offence alone. And they would arrest everyone who’d been in the room at the time – perhaps everyone working in the convent. It would please Father Besian very much to have an excuse to close down my aunt’s hospital and disperse her order of nuns. He would discover that I’d had contact with the Jewish doctor previously because I had met him when he’d attended Saulo’s mother. Dear God! Saulo! Saulo would be taken! They’d find out who he really was and he’d be sent back to the galleys or worse. And there would be others implicated: Serafina, Ardelia and Garci, who’d helped me with Lorena, and Bartolomé. I thought of poor scourged Bartolomé.
I was weeping now, not only through fear for myself but for my beloved, my family, my friends, for all mankind . . . the whole world.
The monk who was scribing the records said gently, ‘My daughter, perhaps you have strayed so far from the truth that you cannot see the devious paths down which you have gone. You should say all you know.’
‘As Lorena, the wife of the magistrate, is now dead, then we can have no more information from that source.’ Father Besian was addressing the other members of the tribunal. ‘It’s obvious that this woman has things that she chooses not to tell us. Putting her to the rack might make her consider her answers more carefully. A racked prisoner does tend to speak out more fully at the subsequent interrogation.’
His colleagues nodded in agreement.
Nausea rose from my stomach and my body went icy cold and then hot. I bent my head and held my hands to my face. There was a drumming in my ears and I saw the tiled floor rush up to meet me.