The Trial - Chapter Two

“You are an evil, spiteful creature.” The head of her tribunal spat just as a viper would spit venom.

She regarded him for a moment before speaking. He was a fat little man, bloated with noxious gases and self-worth.

“Sir, if it were possible for you to remove my heart and examine it, you would find within it no amount of malice.”

“My dear girl, please.” Another of her judges spoke in a voice meant to lull and calm. “This will go much easier for you if you admit your guilt and repent of your sins.” He was thinner than the first, younger, but much more dangerous in his false kindness. Her confession would be their triumph, but it wouldn’t save her from her fate.

“I have nothing to confess. All I have done, I have done to achieve God’s will.”

“She is mad,” the final examiner declared with a shake of his head. He was not so fat as the first man, but not as thin as the second, and clean shaven. Just as his appearance appeared halfway between the other two judges, so too did his demeanor. He exuded neither great rage nor false care, but instead appeared almost indifferent to her plight. She took him to be the most honest of the three, unconcerned with impressing the witnesses around them, or trapping her in a web of deception and twisted words.

“She is possessed,” the first judge countered. “The Devil himself resides within her.  She is his instrument.”

“She is a woman.” The second judge nodded in agreement. “Her whole sex is far more delicate in constitution, and so much more susceptible to the powers of Hell.”

Isabel stood silent, waiting as the three men bickered back and forth about her state of being. They were like children who had been caught in mischief, and were making excuses for their behavior, convincing their own selves of the truth of their words.

Let them bicker. Let them believe her possessed, or weak because of her sex. In the eyes of God, there was neither man nor woman. God did not limit grace to one over the other. God had chosen her, as God had chosen so many men before her.

When the three continued in their bickering, Isabel fought back a sigh of frustration. Could they not get this over with?

“What proof have you of the crimes I am accused of committing?” she demanded to know, interrupting them.

All three turned to stare at her, no doubt shocked by her authoritative tone. She spoke to them as she imagined the great Queen Isabella might, with strength and confidence. A greater authority than these men possessed stood at her side, guiding her way and clearing her path. They would continue to hurt her, there was no doubt of that. Kill her, even. But they would never break her.

Only one person had ever come close to accomplishing that.

…

“But, mama, why can I not?”

Isabel’s mother let out a deep breath of frustration, pausing in her work tending their small garden to glance over her shoulder at her daughter.

“It is not allowed,” she answered in a firm tone. “Tis blasphemy to even speak such a thought, but you are a child and cannot be blamed for your ignorance.”

A warm spring breeze played with a tendril of her dark hair, but Isabel swiped at it, annoyed and unsatisfied by her mother’s response. “I am not a child! I am thirteen years this summer, and know my own mind and my call. It is God’s will…”

“Enough of this!” her mother snapped. She stood from her crouch over the soil and turned fully to face Isabel. Her expression was severe, tightening her weathered face, which had once held such beauty before life had imprinted its hardships on her. Her bright dark gaze was tinged with worry and impatience, her full lips thinned into a tight line. “You are just a girl now, but you must learn to mind your tongue and not speak of such things. God’s will for you is to someday marry and bear your husband children. He would not call you to a station so impossibly out of your reach, contradicting the teachings of His Own Church. This is a foolish fantasy, and you must put it aside and face reality.”

But it was not a foolish fantasy. Isabel was certain of that. When she had first been graced with God’s call to her, she had been so young, and oblivious to the difficulties that lay before her in answering that call.

She had told her mother and father about her path that same day it'd been opened to her. They had dismissed it as childish fancy.

When she continued speaking of it, their dismissal evolved. For her mother, it had turned into a fear that she tried to temper with maternal affection. For Isabel’s father, it had turned to anger.

She suspected, though, that his anger was also rooted in fear. It was a fear she had never understood. If God had shown her the path of her life with such vividness, what had she to fear by following it?

“Mama, I…”

Her mother shook her head sharply. “I said no more. One more word, and your father will hear of it by day’s end.”

That did make Isabel pause. Not with doubt, but from fear of a lashing. She dropped her chin and stared at the ground, fighting to keep the tears that threatened to fall from spilling.

“Yes, mama,” she murmured.

There was a pause, and then her mother drew close, her hand coming to rest on Isabel’s shoulder. Gazing up, she met her mother’s saddened eyes and soft smile.

“You are a good girl, Isabel.” Her tone was gentle and soothing, but layered with unmistakable sorrow. “Strong, and faithful…and I have no doubt you truly believe what you say God has called you to. You must understand, my sweet, that it is simply not possible. To even attempt to pursue that life would mean your death.” She wrapped both arms around the girl in a sudden and desperate embrace. She smelled of freshly turned earth and sunshine, the comforting scents at odds with her pleading whisper. “Please, put it from your mind. For my sake, if not for your own. I could not bear it if I lost you.”

At a loss for words, Isabel encircled her mother’s waist with her arms and returned her embrace. Could obeying God in this matter truly lead to her death? The idea had never occurred to Isabel before.

And if her call was meant to bring joy…why was it causing her mama such pain?

As she stood surrounded by the warmth and safety of her mother, Isabel felt the first tendrils of doubt begin to unfurl within her.

The Trial - Chapter One

“Heretic…”

The word seemed to echo around her.

“Heretic…”

It echoed because the witnessing crowd chanted it, slapping her with the word as if to brand it onto her.

“Heretic…heretic…heretic…”

The horde fell silent when another voice, brimming with hatred and authority, spoke.

“Isabel Andreu, you stand before this tribunal charged with heresy…”

She knew that. They’d told her as much when they’d dragged her from her cell the first time. They’d wanted her confession. She’d given them none.

They’d hurt her for her silence.

“You are accused of heretical propositions, having blasphemed on multiple occasions against our Holy Mother Church…”

She’d never spoken against the Church. It was her love of the Church, the true Church, that had driven her throughout her life.

“…as well as the desecration of the Holy Sacrament through your actions.”

She’d done God’s will, though the men before her would never admit that fact.

“What say you in response to these accusations?”

At length, she raised her head to find three pairs of dark eyes glaring down at her from their lofty seats of judgement. The finery of the men’s garments did little to hide the malice of their souls as they regarded her with open hostility. She could see her fate in their stares, the condemnation that would befall her no matter the defense she offered.

No matter the truth of her words.

Her body ached. Her arms hung shackled before her, the weight of the chains an agony on her torn muscles. Her legs shook as they fought to keep her standing. She had been given no stool to sit on, no platform to even rest against to relieve her distress.

They’d made sure she’d be able to stay upright, though the pain would be enormous. It was yet another form of torture, subtler and crueler than the rack; to force her to stand throughout a sham of a trial, when all her body desired was the bliss of unconscious oblivion. To give in, though, was to prove that she had been broken. That she was weak, when she must be strong. God had set her on the path to let the Almighty’s will be known, and she could not falter in her task. Though it cost her much to even speak, her words rang out strong and true.

“My lords, I deny these accusations against me with the utmost vehemence. I have spoken no blasphemy, committed no heresy. I have simply done what God has willed of me, and nothing more.”

They stared at her, their expressions ones of mingled disbelief and fury. She could only imagine the thoughts that must be racing through their minds. There she stood, a girl broken of body, but fortified of mind and spirit, challenging their power in front of a mass of witnesses thirsting for her blood.

Who was she to speak against them? Who was she to speak against a thousand years of teachings and tradition?

She was nobody.

She had no power. No wealth. No title. She’d been born into nothing, and would leave this earthly plane with nothing.

Yet, despite her apparent lack, she knew she possessed something far more valuable than gold or prestige. It was something the men before her would never know, would never find for themselves.

Purpose.

Blinded as they were by their own greed and ambition, they would never be able to see their true paths laid out before them. They would never know the true purpose of their lives.

She knew hers. God had show her what she was meant for long ago. She was assured of God's will for her, and no amount of pain or humiliation would make her doubt it.

As Isabel met the gazes of the men who sought her ultimate destruction, she remembered the day a nobody little girl first felt the life-altering, guiding hand of God.  

…

Isabel was shown her purpose in life for the first time when she was nine-years-old. 

Her mother and father had taken her, and her brothers and sisters, to the Catedral de Ávila to offer praise and thanksgiving for yet another victory by their illustrious warrior Queen and most holy Catholic King. Though they worshiped and celebrated, the battles of their sovereigns felt distant and foreign to young Isabel. She knew only the safety and peace of her home, the beauty of her family’s love, and the security of her faith. The dangers of the world could never breach the sturdiness of her city’s walls. Of this, she was sure.

Her family didn’t often go to the Catedral. It was only the most special of occasions that drew them away from their smaller parish to the more imposing fortress. Yet, this day they went and knelt with the countless others who had come to pray and receive Christ’s flesh.

Isabel was too young yet to understand the full majesty of her faith and the complexities of her Church. She knew that God was mighty, and was willing to punish as quickly as to bless. She knew that Jesus was God’s Son, but also somehow God. That part remained confusing for her. She knew that Mary, his mother, had been a Virgin and that she was made special above all the other saints. She knew her faith protected her from damnation, that she must be sorry for her sins and seek God’s forgiveness, but she did not yet know what either of those things, damnation and sin, were.

Above all, though, she knew that she must listen to the priest, for through his direction she could come to know God.

Perhaps it had been the setting of the Catedral. Perhaps it was that at nine, she was so much more aware of the deference she must show at Mass than she had been in years past. Perhaps it was simply that God appointed that moment to reveal Godself to her. Whatever the reason, that day, at that Mass, as the priest prayed over the bread and the wine, Isabel found she could not look away. She was riveted by the site of the ritual, captured like she had never been before by the motions and the recitation of the proper words. As she knelt with her family in the middle of the cavernous cathedral, the priest raised the host above his head and Isabel felt her breath leave her. A warmth engulfed her, and it was as if a light shone down on the priest and the host, illuminating its transformation from mere bread into the body of the living Christ right before her eyes.

Isabel stared in awe, and a realization struck her like a physical blow. The path of her life opened before her, and it was as if God spoke directly to her. She recognized God’s will for her. It was her vocation to bring that light to the world. That grace. To deliver God’s holy sacrament to the faithful and beyond.

She understood, in that moment, what God’s purpose for her would be…though she was still too young to understand the trials she would be forced to face.