Daughters of Spain (38 page)

There was no longer hope of delay. The day had come. She was to begin the journey to Corunna and there embark for England.

She would embrace her mother for the last time, for although the Queen talked continually of their reunion Catalina felt that there was something final about this parting.

The Queen was pale; she looked as though she had slept little.

Is life to be all such bitter partings for those of us who wear the badge of royalty? Isabella asked herself.

One last look back at the red towers, the rosy walls.

'Farewell, my beloved home,' whispered Catalina. 'Farewell for ever.' Then she turned her face resolutely away, and the journey had begun ... to Corunna ... to England.

Chapter XIV

M
iguel was dead and Catalina had gone to England. The Queen roused herself from her sorrow. There was a duty to perform and it was a duty which should be a pleasure.

'Now that Miguel is dead,' she said to Ferdinand, 'we should lose no time in calling Juana and Philip to Spain. Juana is now our heir. She must come here to be accepted as such.'

'I have already sent to her telling her she must come,' Ferdinand answered. 'I had thought to hear news by now that they would have set out on their journey.'

'Philip is ambitious. He will come soon.'

'He is also pleasure-loving.'

Isabella was clearly anxious, and Ferdinand, mindful of her sufferings over her recent losses, remembered to be tender towards her.

My poor Isabella, he thought, she is growing frail. She would seem to be more than a year older than myself. She has brooded too much on the deaths in our family; they have aged her.

He said gently: 'I'll swear you are longing to see your grandson.'

'Little Charles,' she mused; but somehow his very name seemed foreign to her. The child of wild Juana and selfish Philip. What manner of man would he grow up to be?

'When I see him,' she replied, 'I know I shall love him.'

'It might be,' said Ferdinand, 'that we could persuade them to leave Charles here with us to be brought up. After all he will be the heir to our dominions.'

Isabella allowed herself to be comforted, but she bore in mind that Philip and Juana were not like Isabella and Emanuel; and she did not believe that Charles could ever mean as much to her as Miguel had.

Still she looked forward to the visit of her daughter and son-in-law; yet there was no news of their coming, and the months were passing.

In his apartments in the Alhambra Ximenes, while working zealously for the Christianisation of Granada, was suddenly smitten with a fever. With his usual stoicism he ignored his weakness and sought to cast it aside, but it persisted.

The Queen sent her doctors to Granada that they might attend her Archbishop. She had now persuaded herself that what Ximenes was doing in Granada should have been started at the time when the city had been taken from the Moors. She told Ferdinand that they should never have agreed to the arrangement with Boabdil for the sake of peaceful surrender. Now she was firmly behind Ximenes in all that he was doing.

She was disturbed to hear that Ximenes was not recovering, that his fever was accompanied by a languor which confined him to his bed; she ordered that he should take up his residence in that summer Palace, the Generalife, where he would only
be a stone's throw from the Alhambra, but in quieter surroundings.

Ximenes availed himself of this offer, but his health did not improve and the fever and the languor continued.

He lay in his apartment in that most delicately beautiful of summer palaces. From his window he looked out on the terraced gardens in which the myrtles and cypresses grew; he longed to leave his bed that he might wander through the tiny courtyards and meditate beside the sparkling fountains.

But even the peace of the Generalife did not bring a return to good health; and he thought often of Tomas de Torquemada who had lain thus in the Monastery of Avila and waited for the end.

Torquemada had lived his life; Ximenes had the feeling that he had only just begun. He had not completed his work in Granada, and that he believed to be only a beginning. He admitted now that he had seen himself as the power behind the throne, as head of this great country, with Ferdinand and Isabella in leading strings.

The Queen's health was failing. He had been aware of that when he had last seen her. If she were to die and Ferdinand were left, he would need a strong guiding hand. The fact that Ferdinand did not like him and would always be resentful of him, did not disturb him. He knew Ferdinand well - an ambitious man, an avaricious man - one who needed the guiding hand of a man of God.

I must not die, Ximenes told himself. My work is not yet completed.

Yet each day he felt weaker.

One day as he lay in his bed, a Moorish servant of the Generalife came to his bedside and stood watching him.

For a moment he thought she had come to do him some injury, and he remembered that day when his brother Bernardin had tried to suffocate him by holding a pillow over his face. He had not seen Bernardin since that day.

These Moors might feel the need for vengeance on one who had disrupted the peace of their lives. He knew many of them had accepted baptism because they preferred it to the exile which was to be imposed on those who did not come into the Christian Faith. They were not such an emotional people as the Jews. He believed many of them had said to each other: 'Be a Mussulman in private and a Christian in public. Why not, if that is the only way to live in Granada?'

There would be the Inquisition, of course, to deal with those who were guilty of such perfidy. The Inquisitors would have to watch these people with the utmost care. They would have to be taught what would happen to them if they thought to mock baptism and the Christian Faith.

All these thoughts passed through Ximenes's mind as the woman stood by his bedside.

'What is it, woman?' he asked.

'Oh, lord Archbishop, you are sick unto death. I have seen this fever and the languor often. It has a meaning. With the passing of each day and night the fever burns more hot, the languor grows.'

'Then,' said Ximenes, 'if that is so, it is the will of God and I shall rejoice in it.'

'Oh, lord Archbishop, a voice has whispered to me to come to you; to tell you that I know of one who could cure your sickness.'

'One of your people?'

The woman nodded. 'A woman, oh lord. She is a very old woman. Eighty years she has lived in Granada. Often I have
seen her cure those of whom the learned doctors despaired. She has herbs and medicines known only to our people.'

'Why do you wish to save me? There are many of your people who would rejoice to see me die.'

'I have served you, oh lord. I know you for a good man, a man who believes that all he does is in the service of God.'

'You are a Christian?'

A glazed look came into the woman's eyes. 'I have received baptism, oh lord.'

Ximenes thought: Ay, and practise Mohammedanism in private doubtless. But he did not voice these thoughts. He was a little excited. He wanted to live. He knew now that he wanted it desperately. A little while before he had prayed for a miracle. Was this God's answer? God often worked in a mysterious way. Was he going to cure Ximenes through the Moors whom he had worked so hard to bring to God?

The Moors were skilled in medicine. Ximenes himself had preserved their medical books when he had committed the rest of their literature to the flames.

'Do you propose bringing this wise woman to me?' asked Ximenes.

'I do, oh lord. But she could only come at midnight and in secret.'

'Why so?'

'Because, my lord, there are some of my people who would wish you dead for all that has happened since you came to Granada, and they would not be pleased with this wise woman who will cure you.'

'I understand,' said Ximenes. 'And what does this woman want for her reward should she cure me?'

'She cures for the love of the cure, oh lord. You are sick unto
death, she says, and the Queen's own doctors cannot cure you. She would like to show you that we Moors have a medicine which excels yours. That is all.'

Ximenes was silent for a few seconds. It might be that this woman would attempt to avenge her people. It might be that she had some poison to offer him.

He thought again of Bernardin, his own brother, who had hated him so much that he had attempted to murder him.

There were many people in the world who hated a righteous man.

He made a quick decision. His condition was growing daily weaker. He would die in any case unless some miracle were performed. He would trust in God, and if it were God's will that he should live to govern Spain - by means of the Sovereigns - he would rejoice. If he must die he would accept death with resignation.

He believed that this was an answer to his prayers.

'I will see your woman,' he said.

She came to him at midnight, smuggled into the apartment, an old Moorish woman whose black eyes were scarcely visible through the folds of flesh which encircled them.

She laid her hands on him and felt his fever; she examined his tongue and his eyes and his starved body.

'I can cure you in eight days,' she told him. 'Do you believe me?'

'Yes,' answered Ximenes, 'I do.'

'Then you will live. But you must tell none that I am treating you, and you must take only the medicines I shall give you. None must know that I come to you. I shall come in stealth at
midnight eight times. At the end of that time your fever will have left you. You will begin to be well. You must then abandon your rigorous diet until you are recovered. You must eat rich meat and broths. If you will do this I can cure you.'