Bishop Calvo Ibanez was a thin, frail-looking man with a cloud of white hair swirling around his head. He peered at the two men through his pince-nez spectacles.
‘Buenas tardes.’
Colonel Acoca felt the bile rise in his throat. The very sight of clergymen made him ill. They were Judas goats leading their stupid lambs to slaughter.
The bishop stood there, waiting for an invitation to sit down. It did not come. Nor was he introduced to the Colonel. It was a deliberate slight.
The Prime Minister looked to Acoca for direction.
Acoca said curtly, ‘Some disturbing news has been brought to our attention. Basque rebels are reported to be holding meetings in Catholic monasteries. It has also been reported that the Church is allowing monasteries and convents to store arms for the rebels.’ There was steel in his voice. ‘When you help the enemies of Spain, you become an enemy of Spain.’
Bishop Ibanez stared at him for a moment, then turned to Leopoldo Martinez. ‘Your Excellency, with due respect, we are all children of Spain. The Basques are not your enemy. All they ask is the freedom to –’
‘They don’t ask,’ Acoca roared. ‘They demand! They go around the country pillaging, robbing banks and killing policemen, and you dare to say they are not our enemies?’
‘I admit that there have been inexcusable excesses. But sometimes in fighting for what one believes –’
‘They don’t believe in anything but themselves. They care nothing about Spain. It is as one of our great writers said, “No one in Spain is concerned about the common good. Each group is concerned only with itself. The Church, the Basques, the Catalans. Each one says fuck the others.”’
The bishop was aware that Colonel Acoca had misquoted Ortega y Gasset. The full quote had included the army and the government; but he wisely said nothing. He turned to the Prime Minister again, hoping for a more rational discussion.
‘Your Excellency, the Catholic Church –’
The Prime Minister felt that Acoca had pushed far enough. ‘Don’t misunderstand us, Bishop. In principle, of course, this government is behind the Catholic Church one hundred per cent.’
Colonel Acoca spoke up again. ‘But we cannot permit your churches and monasteries and convents to be used against us. If you continue to allow the Basques to store arms in them and to hold meetings, you will have to take the consequences.’
‘I am sure that the reports that you have received are erroneous,’ the bishop said smoothly. ‘However, I shall certainly investigate at once.’
The Prime Minister murmured, ‘Thank you, Bishop. That will be all.’
Prime Minister Martinez and Colonel Acoca watched him depart.
‘What do you think?’ Martinez asked.
‘He knows what’s going on.’
The Prime Minister sighed. I have enough problems right now without stirring up trouble with the Church.
‘If the Church is for the Basques, then it is against us.’ Colonel Acoca’s voice hardened, ‘I would like your permission to teach the bishop a lesson.’
The Prime Minister was stopped by the look of fanaticism in the man’s eyes. He became cautious. ‘Have you really had reports that the churches are aiding the rebels?’
‘Of course, Excellency.’
There was no way of determining if the man was telling the truth. The Prime Minister knew how much Acoca hated the Church. But it might be good to let the Church have a taste of the whip, providing Colonel Acoca did not go too far. Prime Minister Martinez stood there thoughtfully.
It was Acoca who broke the silence. ‘If the churches are sheltering terrorists, then the churches must be punished.’
Reluctantly, the Prime Minister nodded. ‘Where will you start?’
‘Jaime Miró and his men were seen in Ávila yesterday. They are probably hiding at the convent there.’
The Prime Minister made up his mind. ‘Search it,’ he said.
That decision set off a chain of events that was to rock all of Spain and shock the world.
Ávila
The silence was like a gentle snowfall, soft and hushed, as soothing as the whisper of a summer wind, as quiet as the passage of stars. The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance lay outside the walled town of Ávila, the highest city in Spain, 112 kilometres north-west of Madrid. The convent had been built for silence. The rules had been adopted in 1601 and remained unchanged through the centuries: liturgy, spiritual exercise, strict enclosure, penance and silence. Always the silence.
The convent was a simple, four-sided group of rough stone buildings around a cloister dominated by the church. Around the central court the open arches allowed the light to pour in on the broad flagstones of the floor where the nuns glided noiselessly by. There were forty nuns at the convent, praying in the church and living in the cloister. The convent at Ávila was one of seven left in Spain, a survivor out of hundreds that had been destroyed by the Civil War in one of the periodic anti-Church movements that took place in Spain over the centuries.
The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance was devoted solely to a life of prayer. It was a place without seasons or time and those who entered were forever removed from the outside world. The Cistercian life was contemplative and penitential; the divine office was recited daily and enclosure was complete and permanent.
All the sisters dressed identically, and their clothing, like everything else in the convent, was touched by the symbolism of centuries. The capucha, the cloak and hood, symbolized innocence and simplicity, the linen tunic the renouncement of the works of the world, and mortification, the scapular, the small squares of woollen cloth worn over the shoulders, the willingness to labour. A wimple, a covering of linen laid in plaits over the head and around the chin, sides of the face and neck, completed the habit.
Inside the walls of the convent was a system of internal passageways and staircases linking the dining room, community room, the cells and the chapel, and everywhere there was an atmosphere of cold, clean spaciousness. Thick-paned latticed windows overlooked a high-walled garden. Every window was covered with iron bars and was above the line of vision, so that there would be no outside distractions. The refectory, the dining hall, was long and austere, its windows shuttered and curtained. The candles in the ancient candlesticks cast evocative shadows on the ceilings and walls.
In four hundred years nothing inside the walls of the convent had changed, except the faces. The sisters had no personal possessions, for they desired to be poor, emulating the poverty of Christ. The church itself was bare of ornaments, save for a priceless solid gold cross that had been a long-ago gift from a wealthy postulant. Because it was so out of keeping with the austerity of the order, it was kept hidden away in a cabinet in the refectory. A plain, wooden cross hung at the altar of the church.
The women who shared their lives with the Lord lived together, worked together, ate together and prayed together, yet they never touched and never spoke. The only exception permitted was when they heard mass or when the Reverend Mother Prioress Betina addressed them in the privacy of her office. Even then, an ancient sign language was used as much as possible.
The Reverend Mother was a religieuse in her seventies, a bright-faced robin of a woman, cheerful and energetic, who gloried in the peace and joy of convent life, and of a life devoted to God. Fiercely protective of her nuns, she felt more pain