Daughters of Spain Read Free

why she was now determined that the Franciscan Ximenes should be Primate of Spain, no matter how the appointment displeased Ferdinand.
    She rose from the table and went to the door of the apartment.
    'Highness!' Several of the attendants who had been waiting outside sprang to attention.
    'Go and discover whether Fray Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros is in the Palace. If he is, tell him that it is my wish that he present himself to me without delay.'

    Fray Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros was praying silently as he approached the Palace. Beneath the rough serge of his habit the hair shirt irritated his skin. He took a fierce delight in this. He had eaten nothing but a few herbs and berries during his journey to Madrid from Ocana, but he was accustomed to long abstinence from food.
    His nephew, Francisco Ruiz, whom he loved as dearly as he could love anyone, and who was closer to him than his own brothers, glanced anxiously at him.
    'What,' he asked, 'do you think is the meaning of the Queen's summons?'
    'My dear Francisco, as I shall shortly know, let us not waste our breath in conjecture.'
    But Francisco Ruiz was excited. It had so happened that the great Cardinal Mendoza, who had occupied the highest post in Spain - that of the Archbishop of Toledo - had recently died and the office was vacant. Was it possible that such an honour was about to be bestowed on his uncle? Ximenes might declare himself uninterested in great honours, but there were some honours which would tempt the most devout of men.
    And why not? Ruiz demanded of himself. The Queen thinks highly of her confessor - and rightly so. She can never have had such a worthy adviser since Torquemada himself heard her confessions. And she loves such men, men who are not afraid to speak their minds, men who are clearly indifferent to worldly riches.
    Torquemada, suffering acutely from the gout, was now an old man with clearly very little time left to him. He was almost entirely confined to the monastery of Avila. Ximenes on the other hand was at the height of his mental powers.
    Ruiz was certain that it was to bestow this great honour on his uncle that they were being thus recalled to Madrid.
    As for Ximenes, try as he might, he could not thrust the thought from his mind.
    Archbishop of Toledo! Primate of Spain! He could not understand this strange feeling which rose within him. There was so much about himself which he could not understand. He longed to suffer the greatest bodily torture, as Christ had suffered on the cross. And even as his body cried out for this treatment, a voice within him asked: 'Why, Ximenes, is it because you cannot endure that any should be greater than yourself? None must bear pain more stoically. None must bemore devout. Who are you, Ximenes? Are you a man? Are you a God?
    'Archbishop of Toledo,' the voice gloated within him. 'The power will be yours. You will be greater than any man under the Sovereigns. And the Sovereigns may be swayed by your influence. Have you not had charge of the Queen's conscience; and is not the Queen the real ruler of Spain?
    'It is for your own vanity, Ximenes. You long to be the most powerful man in Spain; more powerful than Ferdinand whose great desire is to fill his coffers and extend his Kingdom. Greater than Torquemada who has set the holy fires scorching the limbs of heretics throughout the land. More powerful than any. Ximenes, Primate of Spain, the Queen's right hand. Ruler of Spain?'
    I shall not take this post if it is offered to me, he told himself.
    He closed his eyes and began to pray for strength to refuse it, but it was as though the Devil spread the kingdoms of the Earth at his feet.
    He swayed slightly. There was little nourishment in berries, and when he travelled he never took food or money with him. He relied on what he could find growing by the wayside, or the help from the people he met.
    'My Master did not carry bread and wine,' he would say, 'and though the birds had their nests and the foxes their