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Authors: Alex Archer
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phone line, not if the kidnappers were as tech-savvy as she feared.
“Don’t tell me where you’re going,” she said. “Don’t tell me what you’re planning to do next.”
“You think we’ve got unwanted ears listening in?”
“It’s not worth the risk.”
She pictured him nodding. “Look after yourself, kiddo.”
“I always do,” she said, hanging up.
She already had an idea fermenting inside her brain.
The curator back in Ávila had said that Torquemada had founded a church here in Valladolid. That had to be her next port of call.
Annja crossed the city to find the church. Without a map it wasn’t easy, as Valladolid was a city seemingly constructed on the foundations of faith, with spires every few streets denoting yet another place of worship. It was like looking for a particularly sanctified needle in an already consecrated haystack. But after fifteen minutes of driving around and several stuttering conversations with helpful locals, she found herself standing outside the incredible building, wondering how she could possibly have taken so long to find it. The great Gothic frontage was imposing. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how the people of Valladolid would have reacted to its construction at the time: with awe. The church was built to the glory of God.
She was glad she hadn’t come straight here, even though it was a more logical starting point for her search. She wouldn’t have discovered the key if she had, and there was no way of telling how important that key might turn out to be before the day had run its course.
Annja retrieved the flashlight from her panniers. She wasn’t going to pass up the chance to take a look at what lay beneath this church if the opportunity arose.
There were more than a dozen people milling around inside, most of whom appeared to be tourists rather than worshippers. Beside a box inviting donations, several piles of leaflets provided information for visitors in a variety of languages. Annja skimmed the English one. It was crammed with tiny print and facts about the church and other religious buildings in the area. As she pocketed it, her attention was captured by an information board that gave a brief history of the church.
The first line sent a shiver up her spine.
She was wasting her time.
The San Pablo church had indeed been commissioned by Torquemada, but not
Tomás
. She could have screamed in frustration. This church was founded by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor’s uncle.
She was already looking in the wrong place.
She felt like banging her head against a brick wall.
But she didn’t stop reading. Hoping. She didn’t want to give up. She closed her fist around the key. The information board went on to explain how the facade, the final element of the church, hadn’t been completed until the year 1500, even though the cardinal had died in 1468.
It seemed like an easy mistake for someone unfamiliar with the two men to make, but the curator must have known better, surely? He wouldn’t have simply assumed the familial name meant the same man was behind the construction. Annja stared at the information, absorbing it, thinking, and made a connection; the building was completed two years after the Inquisitor’s death.
The same year that his tomb had been broken into for the first time.
Perhaps there
was
a connection, after all.
Just not the obvious one.
When she read that the church had been built on the ruins of a Moorish palace, abandoned and destroyed after the town had been taken from the Moors, it was hard not to see parallels with the Moorish sarcophagus hidden beneath what had once been a Christian convent. A church on top of a Moorish palace. A convent on top of a Moorish sarcophagus. One thing on top of another, or one thing hiding beneath another, depending on how you looked at it.
Other than that, the display offered little more than a floor plan of the church.
There was nothing to indicate where the entrance to
“Don’t tell me where you’re going,” she said. “Don’t tell me what you’re planning to do next.”
“You think we’ve got unwanted ears listening in?”
“It’s not worth the risk.”
She pictured him nodding. “Look after yourself, kiddo.”
“I always do,” she said, hanging up.
She already had an idea fermenting inside her brain.
The curator back in Ávila had said that Torquemada had founded a church here in Valladolid. That had to be her next port of call.
Annja crossed the city to find the church. Without a map it wasn’t easy, as Valladolid was a city seemingly constructed on the foundations of faith, with spires every few streets denoting yet another place of worship. It was like looking for a particularly sanctified needle in an already consecrated haystack. But after fifteen minutes of driving around and several stuttering conversations with helpful locals, she found herself standing outside the incredible building, wondering how she could possibly have taken so long to find it. The great Gothic frontage was imposing. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how the people of Valladolid would have reacted to its construction at the time: with awe. The church was built to the glory of God.
She was glad she hadn’t come straight here, even though it was a more logical starting point for her search. She wouldn’t have discovered the key if she had, and there was no way of telling how important that key might turn out to be before the day had run its course.
Annja retrieved the flashlight from her panniers. She wasn’t going to pass up the chance to take a look at what lay beneath this church if the opportunity arose.
There were more than a dozen people milling around inside, most of whom appeared to be tourists rather than worshippers. Beside a box inviting donations, several piles of leaflets provided information for visitors in a variety of languages. Annja skimmed the English one. It was crammed with tiny print and facts about the church and other religious buildings in the area. As she pocketed it, her attention was captured by an information board that gave a brief history of the church.
The first line sent a shiver up her spine.
She was wasting her time.
The San Pablo church had indeed been commissioned by Torquemada, but not
Tomás
. She could have screamed in frustration. This church was founded by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor’s uncle.
She was already looking in the wrong place.
She felt like banging her head against a brick wall.
But she didn’t stop reading. Hoping. She didn’t want to give up. She closed her fist around the key. The information board went on to explain how the facade, the final element of the church, hadn’t been completed until the year 1500, even though the cardinal had died in 1468.
It seemed like an easy mistake for someone unfamiliar with the two men to make, but the curator must have known better, surely? He wouldn’t have simply assumed the familial name meant the same man was behind the construction. Annja stared at the information, absorbing it, thinking, and made a connection; the building was completed two years after the Inquisitor’s death.
The same year that his tomb had been broken into for the first time.
Perhaps there
was
a connection, after all.
Just not the obvious one.
When she read that the church had been built on the ruins of a Moorish palace, abandoned and destroyed after the town had been taken from the Moors, it was hard not to see parallels with the Moorish sarcophagus hidden beneath what had once been a Christian convent. A church on top of a Moorish palace. A convent on top of a Moorish sarcophagus. One thing on top of another, or one thing hiding beneath another, depending on how you looked at it.
Other than that, the display offered little more than a floor plan of the church.
There was nothing to indicate where the entrance to
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