Torquemada by Howard Fast

life.”
    â€œOf course because I saved your life. This makes me your slave, doesn’t it? Your willing servant. Unwittingly and unknowingly I saved the life of one Jew – and now I must save the lives of a thousand Jews or of a synagogue or of anything else your fancy directs you to—”
    â€œOnly give me leave to go, Don Alvero,” the rabbi begged him.
    Alvero grabbed the rabbi’s arm and swung him around to face him. Close to him, Alvero said, “Why me? Out of all Segovia, why me? Not because I saved your life. There is another reason.”
    â€œMust you have another reason?”
    â€œI must,” Alvero whispered.
    â€œVery well, then” – Mendoza nodded, his voice soft, so soft that Alvero had to strain towards him to hear it – “I will give you the reason. In Barcelona I knew your father. I knew who he was and what he was. I loved him and I trusted him and I said that what he was must live on in his son.”

6
    AFTER MENDOZA LEFT , ALVERO CHANGED HIS CLOTHES , put on riding boots and his sword, and sent word to the stables for his horse to be saddled. As he came down from his room, having seen nothing of his wife, Maria, since Mendoza’s departure, he found Catherine waiting for him. She asked where he was going and he parried her questions. She took his arm and walked with him and Alvero said to her.
    â€œYou grow more beautiful each day.”
    â€œAnd you become more handsome each day,” she countered. “Shall we go on praising each other? I would rather we didn’t have to. It hurts when you quarrel with my mother.”
    â€œWe had no quarrel,” Alvero said, shortly.
    â€œWhy does she hate Jews?” Catherine wanted to know.
    â€œMany people hate Jews.”
    â€œI don’t hate them. Are they so very evil?”
    â€œLike all people” – Alvero shrugged – “some are good and some are bad.”
    â€œAnd this man, this rabbi, Mendoza, that was his name, wasn’t it? Tell me, is he good or bad?”
    â€œDo you want me to judge men? I saw him once on the road when I helped him and again today at the house. We spoke for a little while together. That is not long enough to know whether a man is good or bad. A lifetime is not long enough to know that.”
    â€œWhat is a rabbi? Is he a priest?”
    â€œNot exactly.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, not exactly? Don’t you know what a rabbi is?”
    â€œYes, I know.”
    â€œThen why won’t you tell me?”
    â€œI am not trying to conceal things from you. I suppose he is like a priest or like a teacher, something of that sort—” He turned, almost abruptly, from his daughter and strode over to where Julio held the reins of his horse. As Alvero mounted, Catherine went to him. “I’ll be back this evening,” he said. She stood there, staring at him.
    â€œWhat are you looking at?” Alvero demanded.
    Catherine smiled suddenly. “You are a very handsome man, Don Alvero. Now why didn’t that ever occur to me before? You are old but very handsome.”
    Alvero reared his horse around and spurred it away. He rode toward the outskirts of the town at a hard gallop, conscious that his daughter was watching him; but when he was out of sight of the house, he slowed the horse to a trot and then to a walk. Van Sitten, from whom he had parted some hours before, must have stopped at an inn in Segovia, because now Alvero saw him riding up ahead in the distance and he shouted to him and spurred his horse. Van Sitten reined up, recognized Alvero and waited until Alvero joined him. On the edge of town now, the road ran through an alleyway of old olive trees. In the distance peasants were working in the fields under the afternoon sun and there was a clear, steel-blue sky overhead. Van Sitten mopped his brow and said to Alvero.
    â€œYou know we dream of the sunshine, we Hollanders, but I think that after a few