by Carla Kelly
“I will never understand,” Engracia managed to gasp, before another contraction battered her.
Hanneke gave Juana a measuring look, then left the room, angry with the servant, angry with herself, frightened. She wanted to go into Santiago’s room and bolt the door. Instead, she walked down the stairs in time for Luis to start up the stairs and tell her that the gates were closing. They were locked in.
The snow had turned to sleet, then back into snow. Mindful of her footing, she crossed to the kitchen and ate bread and cheese that the cook bullied her to take.
She sat close to the fire and listened to Cook rage on about the inconvenience of war. A one-legged man, he pounded the bread dough with his fists as though it were the Almohades, then slammed it in pans to rise.
“Cook, how far away is this plain Santiago spoke of?”
“A morning’s hard ride.” Cook sat down. He looked at his wooden leg. “I used to be a soldier.” He gazed past her into that distance she could not see. “They have met the enemy by now.”
She tried not to appear frightened. At least she kept her mouth closed so she did not speak and remove all doubt. Cook smiled at her, exposing missing teeth. “Now we wait, dama.”
“I need something to do,” she said simply.
“Take this bread and cheese to those on the parapet,” he said, and handed her a cloth bag. “You can climb ladders better than me.”
Bag slung about her neck, draping her skirt over her arm, she clambered up the ladder, thankful that there were no heads on spikes, not after that awful morning of the shepherds’ heads. One-armed Luis took the sack, setting it down as he continued to stare south.
“He told me to make sure you did not climb up here,” he said, moving over to make room.
“Santiago?”
“Antonio. But here you are. I am honored.”
She smiled at his incongruous courtliness, a Castilian trait she found endearing. “Tell me…Luis, is it? What do you see now?”
“Look for yourself.”
He pointed south, where their valley funneled into another pass. She squinted, then rubbed her eyes. She leaned closer. “Two riders? That’s all?”
“They will be a while,” Luis said. Go back down. I will call you.”
“No.”
The armorer sighed. “He said you were stubborn.”
“Antonio?”
“Santiago.”
Luis called down for a blanket and a woman threw one up to him. He draped it around Hanneke’s shoulders and the two of them leaned on the parapet’s ledge. No conversationalist, Luis watched her out of the corner of his eye, as if measuring her. Everyone at Las Claves did that, so she paid no mind.
“Not our men,” he said much later. “God damn.” The wind seemed to blow colder at his words.
Silence again, until the two figures appeared at the edge of the now-deserted village of Las Claves. Luis grunted and spit over the parapet. “Jewish peddlers. God smite them.”
Hanneke inched her way along the ice ledge back to the ladder. “They must be allowed to enter,” she said to Luis as she started down.
“No!”
“What do you mean?”
He came closer with such a light in his eyes that she wondered if he was going to throw her from the ladder. “Santiago told us not to open the gates to anyone. You heard him. They could be spies. You cannot trust a Jew.”
“They might have something to tell us. Suppose Santiago could not spare anyone with a message?” She continued down the ladder, fired up, angry. “Listen to me.” She snapped off each word, liking the staccato of Castilian as never before. “He left me in charge and I am opening the gate.”
“The consequence is on your head.”
“It was from the moment everyone rode away this morning.”
Hanneke stood by the gate when two peddlers rode in. “Welcome to Las Claves, señores,” she said, extending her hands, then putting them together, petitioning them. “What can you tell us?”
The older man dismounted with a groan, as if he had not left the saddle for hours. “We did not expect the gates to open for us. We hoped, though. Jews always hope. “Moises Abravanal greets you, and my son Baruch.”
“Come inside. If the gates don’t shut quickly, that one-armed man on the parapet will spit on us.”
Moises stepped forward quickly, belying his age. He looked around at the crowded courtyard. “We will not stay long.” He gave her a look containing equal measures of sympathy and paternal advice. “You should not stay long either.”
Hanneke knew she was cold. His words made her shiver in her heart. Then the worst has happened, she thought. But I am the mistress of Las Claves now, as well as small things. “Tell me all in the kitchen. Someone please grain these horses.”
She dismissed the cook and handed the peddlers more bread and cheese. Moises shook his head at the sausage, but took a boiled egg. With impatience barely contained, she let them take the edge off their hunger, then sat down.
“I am Hanneke Gonzalez,” she began, “Santiago’s wife from the Netherlands.”
“We have heard of you,” Moises said. “All good, from Raquel Levi of Toledo.”
Toledo seemed so calm, so safe. For one moment, Hanneke wanted to beg them to take her to Raquel.
Instead, she watched their eyes, certain they did not want to tell her what they knew. “We have to know, señor, so we can plan.”
Moises did not hesitate. “We saw the armies from a distance around midday, señora. We dared not go closer to the fighting.”
Hanneke let out her breath. “Did you…did you stay long enough to see…” She looked down at her hands. “I fear to ask you.”
Moises Abravanal touched her hand lightly. “We did not see how they could win. They are vastly outnumbered.”
She felt a sudden lift to her heart, relieved to know something, anything, proud of her brave men. “They knew that when they rode out before dawn.”
“I am sorry, señora.”
“Do you think…will my husband be here soon?”
Moises stood up and nodded to his son, who rose also, pulling on his cloak. “Those who are alive, if they can make it. I wish I bore good news.”
She walked with them in silence to the open gate, standing close as the old peddler mounted. She looked toward the pass to the north, and suddenly knew what to ask.
“Señor Abravanal, please do this: get a message to Don Ruy Díaz of the Knights of Calatrava. Tell him we have dire need of him.”
“I will. Farewell, and God keep you all.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Hanneke longed to run after the peddlers, begging them to take her along. “Help me,” she whispered into the closed gate.
What kind of warrior would you say I am, Santiago – or you, Antonio – if you could see me now? she asked herself. She looked around at the animals and people in the courtyard, every one of them looking to her for guidance. They were her responsibility.
“When he gets back, you should slap your husband’s head.”
She looked around, startled, to see the old woman who had told her to spread straw and hay in the great hall. “I believe I will,” she said, and felt better.
She knew she should go to Engracia, but her sister-in-law was only one person, and the courtyard contained many. Better to attempt to look like someone mature and reliable, even if she was far less capable than these hardy settlers along the frontera between Christian Spain and disaster.
Someone – perhaps it was the old woman – handed her a wonderful scrap of blanket, or perhaps a cloak that had seen better days. She wrapped it around her and climbed to the parapet again, where Luis stood. He pointed. She gasped to see the distant passage dark with the passage of horses and men.
“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.
“I don’t know if they are ours or El Ghalib’s.” He shrugged. “If it is El Ghalib, it is already too late.”
What could she say to that?
“Dama, even if it is Santiago, I will wait a moment more to see if they are being followed.”
Dark began to settle over the land, the early dark of December, that wonderful time of year when no one in the Low Countries had anyone more on the brain than the coming of Christ’s Mass, and feasting with banketstaff, pastry stuffed with almond paste, and bischopswijn, dark red wine, hot and flavored with oranges. There would be venison roasting and potatoes. She tried to remember when she had last eaten.
Here she was on the Castilian frontier, trying to see into the dark if anyone was alive from the little party that rode out this morning. She shivered in her scrap of a cloak, more from fear than cold. Luis might think she was brave; she knew she wasn’t.
“No one is following them,” Luis said finally, his voice full of relief. “Open the gates,” he called down, then nodded to Hanneke. “Let us go down and see how bad things are.”
“Should some of us ride out to meet them?” she asked.
“He said you would try to do that,” Luis told her.
“Santiago?”
“Both of them,” Luis said. “I promised them you would not.”
Luis’s promise didn’t extend to her waiting beside the open gates as weary and wounded men rode slowly through them, some of them – the lucky ones lightly wounded – taken forcibly from their saddles by wives and mothers, scolded and led away. Other silent soldiers were wept over and taken, covered, to a quiet corner of the courtyard. Others, more dead than alive, were reached for gently, and taken into the great hall.
She saw the men of the shadows, the nearly spectral soldiers who had followed her husband into Las Claves only days ago. She had feared them then; now she saw them as they were, young soldiers with wide-eyed stares and gaping wounds that almost made her turn away.
One of them held out his hand to her and she grasped it, wondering why she had been afraid of them. Why did I not notice how young you are? she asked herself. With one-armed Luis’s assistance, she helped him from his horse, then handed him over to a stout woman who half-dragged him toward the great hall.
But where… “Ana? Ana?”
She sighed with relief to hear Santiago, but it wasn’t Santiago. She peered closer, reached up to clutch Santiago’s gauntleted hand, but saw Manolo in front of her husband, his head sagging forward.
“Gross got, is he dead?” she asked. “Please no.”
“He is wounded. Nearly everyone is wounded. Luis, is that you?”
“Sí, señor, a su servicio.”
“Get another to help me with Manolo. Find a horse and ride back to the pass. Tell Antonio and the others to stay as long as they dare, then ride fast.”
“Master, may I stay there, too?”
“Please.”
With a grunt of satisfaction, the one-armed man grabbed a slightly wounded soldier. The two of them managed to get Manolo from Santiago, who dismounted, then carried his brother toward the great hall. Santiago fell to his knees once, and others rushed to help.
She leaned close to her husband, wanting to tell him something – that she loved him, how worried she was, that Engracia was in labor – but unsure what to say. She looked deep into tired eyes and saw defeat. “Oh, Santiago,” she whispered.
“Help me in the hall, then … no. Engracia should not see him.” He looked over her shoulder. “First help Luis mount.”
She turned at his command, but Luis was already in the saddle. She wanted to remind Luis that he only had one arm, and to be careful. He will think you silly, she thought, then said it anyway, because they were stalwarts on the parapet who had watched together.
“Don’t do anything rash,” she concluded, which made him laugh. “I mean it! I would ride with you if I could,” she added.
“They both said that about you,” he told her, as he nodded to her and spurred his horse into darkness and death.
“Go with God,” she whispered.
She stood a moment in the courtyard, watching as less-wounded soldiers took their dead comrades to the bath house, where they could be stripped, washed and shrouded for the long sleep. She turned at the sound of the gates closing. There would be no time to tend to the dead, not with El Ghalib out there.
All around her she saw need. She also saw women and older children helping the wounded inside, bringing food, finding blankets, pleading for Father Bendicio because it was nearly too late. The priest walked among them, his hand making the sign of the cross over and over.
The wounded in the great hall were strangely silent. Hanneke breathed in the terrible odor of blood, unwashed bodies, bowels, and something else that must be fear. Santiago laid Manolo down close to the fireplace and sat beside him.
“Husband, can you not take him to his room?” she begged.
He shook his head. “Ana, he is dying. I don’t know what to tell Engracia.”
“We daren’t say anything,” Hanneke said. “She‘s in labor.”
He did something then that shocked her and delighted her heart. Amid the noise, the odors, the groans, he pulled her down and held her on his lap. A look and a word, and one of his soldiers drew Santiago’s cape around them both. For a few blessed moments, silence enveloped them.
With a sigh of her own, Hanneke burrowed close to her husband. He told her quickly of the battle. “We wounded many of them and began a careful retreat. Here we are. Whether they come after us, I do not know.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she whispered back, not wanting to leave their dark cocoon, that space for the two of them. “We’re together and I like this.”
He chuckled. “I have turned you into a woman of low expectations,” he said. “Alas, we must move.” Neither of them stirred. “I mean it.” Still nothing. “Would anyone miss us if we just stayed like this?” he asked her finally.
“Eventually.”
She heard Manolo stir, and groan, calling for his brother, and the idyll ended. The cloak came off, and Santiago leaned close to speak in Manolo’s ear. “Ana tells me that Engracia is in labor.”
“She doesn’t need to see me this way.”
His voice was barely a whisper. Poor, poor Manolo, Hanneke thought. Why couldn’t you have stayed here?
“Santiago, forgive me,” Manolo was saying. “I wanted to fight this once.”
“You did, my brother, most valiantly. Let me send Ana upstairs to see if your baby is born.”
“Yes, yes, before…”
…it’s too late, she finished in her heart. She stood up. “I will bring your baby to you, dear brother.”
“Lie. Tell Engracia I am busy,” Manolo managed to say. “Don’t tell her…”
…you are busy dying. She started for the stairs, picking her way among the wounded. She stopped at the foot of the stairs where Carlos sat, holding his hand to a great wound on his face. The blood had frozen on his face, and the patch was gone from his missing eye. She shuddered but did not look away, because Carlos was good to her.
“Carlos, have you a woman to help you?”
He shook his head. “Claudia is long gone. Who else would help this ugly man?”
“I would, but I am married,” she teased gently, which made him try to smile, a ghastly endeavor. “Lie down. I will return.”
She looked back as Manolo cried out when Santiago removed his brother’s doublet, the leather front coming away with a great sucking sound. Father Bendicio ran over and stared down, aghast at what he saw. She hurried up the stairs, praying that Engracia had delivered the baby.
She stopped at the top of the stairs, then looked down at the misery below, an army defeated. Ringing through her mind were King Alfonso’s words to her of a great winnowing that was no respecter of persons, i
ndiscriminate in whom it harvested, as they attempted to reconquer Spain from an enemy entrenched for five hundred years.
“Are we all being winnowed here?” she asked no one.
She opened the door, relieved to hear a baby’s cry. She thought of her own recent misadventure and touched her great emptiness. She had been the only one to cry then. This was better; Manolo’s child lived.
Engracia lay curled around a little one with light hair still wet from birth. Juana and another woman clucked around her, tidying and soothing. Juana looked up and her face hardened. She took Hanneke by the arm and led her to a corner, giving her a shake for good measure.
“The army is back? Can you tear Manolo away from his precious brother and the soldiers to come here and meet his son?”
“Manolo is dying. The army was defeated,” Hanneke said as calmly as she could, when she wanted to slap Juana.
The servant paled. ”Then you must tell Engracia. I cannot.”
“Manolo told me to lie to her and take the baby downstairs so he can see his son before he dies,” Hanneke said, never taking her eyes from Juana. “Say nothing.”
She brushed past the servant and sat on the edge of Engracia’s bed, leaning forward to admire the tiny morsel in his mother’s arms. “Engracia, he is wonderful.”
“Where is Manolo? I want him here.”
“Dearest, the army is back, and all did not go precisely well,” Hanneke said, amazed at her own duplicity. “Manolo would come, but they are so concerned about the wounded – you know, there are always a few of them.” She held out her arms. “Let me take your little one to Manolo. He wants to see you, too, but there is much to do at present. He will come as soon as he can.”
Engracia nodded. “Very well. When I feel a little better, perhaps I can go downstairs to him and we can discuss names. I know the stairs are hard for him.”
“Bless you, Engracia.” Hanneke kissed her sister-in-law. God forgive me for my lies. “I’ll bring him right back. I promise.”
Juana’s helper wrapped the infant – asleep now– in the blanket Hanneke embroidered in earlier, better days. She forced herself to walk slowly and carefully from the room, when she really wanted to dash down the stairs and hope she was in time for a dying father to see his child and heir to Las Claves.
