Purity of Blood

But let us return to the bonfire. Preparations for the fiesta, in which, to my misfortune, I had a reserved place, began a day or two before the event. There was great activity by carpenters and other workmen in the Plaza Mayor, where they were constructing a high platform fifty feet long facing an amphitheater of stair-stepped benches, draperies, tapestries, and damasks. Not even for the wedding of Their Majesties had such industry and facilities been on display. All the streets into the plaza were blocked so that coaches and horses would not clog free movement, and for the royal family, a canopy had been rigged on Los Mercaderes, as that location offered the most shade. Since the auto was a long ceremony, taking the whole day, there were stands, protected from the sun by a canvas, where one could get a cool drink and something to eat. It was decided that for the convenience of the august persons of the king and queen, they would enter their loge from the palace of the Conde de Barajas, using an elevated passageway over Cava San Miguel that communicated with the count’s houses on the plaza.

Expectations resulting from this level of preparation were so high that vying for tickets to a seat at a balconied window often deteriorated into a battle royal. Many people of influence paid good ducats to the Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty’s household to obtain the best locations, including ambassadors, grandees, the king’s courtiers, council presidents, and even His Holiness the Papal Nuncio, who never missed a bullfight, a tournament of tilting, or an outdoor roasting, not even for a fumata blanca in Rome.

On a day like this, meant to be memorable, the Holy Office wanted to kill several partridges with a single shot. Resolved to undermine the Conde de Olivares’s policy of rapprochement with the Jewish Portuguese bankers, the most radical inquisitors of the Supreme Council had planned a spectacular auto-da-fé that would strike fear into the heart of any who were not secure in the purity of their blood. The message was clear. However much of Olivares’s money and favor they might have, Portuguese of Hebrew blood would never be safe in Spain. The Inquisition, relentlessly appealing to the religious conscience of our lord and king—as irresolute and easily influenced as a young man as he was when old, pleasant by nature but lacking character—preferred a ruined nation to one whose faith was threatened. And that preference, which in the long run had its effect—predictably, a most disastrous effect—upon Olivares’s economic plans, was the principal reason why the trial was being hastened: to serve as an efficacious example to the public. What ordinarily would take months, even years, of assiduous instruction was completed in a few weeks’ time.

Because of the haste, details of complex protocol were greatly simplified. Sentences were usually read to the penitents the night prior to the dreaded day, following a solemn procession of officials carrying the green cross destined for the plaza and the white one that would be raised above the stake. This time they were left to be made public on the day of the auto-da-fé, when everyone was already present for the festivities. Prisoners destined for the auto had arrived from the dungeons of Toledo the day before. They—we—were about twenty, and were housed in cells the Holy Office maintained on Calle de los Premostenses, darkly referred to as Calle de la Inquisición, very near the Santo Domingo plaza.

I was brought there on a Saturday night, having communicated with no one since I was taken from my cell and placed in a coach with closed curtains and a heavy guard. I never left the coach until I descended by torchlight in Madrid among the armed civilian familiares of the Inquisition. They led me down to a cell, where I was given a tolerable dinner, a blanket, and a straw mattress. I anticipated a restless night as I listened to footsteps and the noise of locks and bolts outside my door, voices coming and going, a lot of scurrying about, and objects being rolled and dragged. With which I began to fear that I could look forward to a very difficult day on the morrow.

I racked my brain, searching through dangerous moments I had witnessed in the playhouses of the comedias, hoping that, as always happened there, I would find a way out. At that point, I was certain that whatever my crime, I would not be burned because of my age. But the prospect of beatings and imprisonment, perhaps for life, were strong possibilities, and I was not certain which seemed worse. Nevertheless, the resilience of youth, the terrible times I had survived, and the exhaustion of the journey, soon took their natural course, and after a period of wakefulness in which I asked myself over and over how I had come to that sad fate, I sank into a merciful and restorative sleep that eased the restlessness of thought.