by Carla Kelly
“Then don’t,” the nun replied.
“The dowry, what’s left of it after interest is paid, is mine now to do with as I choose. I need to speak to Don Levi in Toledo. I need to go tomorrow.”
Chapter Fifty-four
In two days Hanneke stood before the house of Don Levi, dropped off by a pious farmer near Santa Catarina who crossed himself several times before he chirruped two Christian horses past the entrance to La Judería.
After promising the old fellow not to worry, Hanneke assured him that she would find a conveyance to an inn in the Christian part of Toledo. She promised to return with him tomorrow by noon, when he finished other business transacted for Mother Abbess, his sister.
She paused on the steps, knowing what she looked like – her hair too short (in some weird way it had come in curly), her skin tanned from working in the fields at Santa Catarina, and her body not quite so thin as to frighten the Levis, but not as abundant as when she had met them a year ago. Her clothes were plain this time, not the genteel style of the dress she wore a year ago to impress the Jewish banker and get a better monetary arrangement for her husband Santiago Gonzalez.
Other things about her had changed, the things a person couldn’t see. Perhaps Don Levi would notice; perhaps he wouldn’t. Hanneke doubted she could fool Raquel Levi. She touched the leather pouch she still wore about her neck, the one containing the lines declaring her married to Antonio Baltierra now.
She took a deep breath and lifted the door knocker. A few brief words of explanation to the servant found her sitting again in Don Levi’s office. He came into the room with his wife, which eased her heart. She bent a knee to him, then to Raquel, who seemed to see right into her heart and its sorrow.
“We have heard, Señora,” Don Levi said.
“All of it?” she asked.
“All of it. Word travels. Please be seated. Raquel, will there be wine?”
“The best.” Raquel sat beside her.
The door opened with a servant bearing wine and dulces. Hanneke was almost embarrassed to reach for anything. She had forgotten how rough her hands had become, pulling weeds, and later swinging a scythe not too well, but at least in earnest.
Neither Levi seemed to notice, or at least to care. She saw that Raquel was with child, and found herself missing Liria with all her heart. A child as young as Liria doesn’t understand when her mother assures her that she will return tomorrow. Liria was also too young to know that sometimes people want to return and cannot.
Gentle questions from the banker, along with excellent wine, loosened her tongue. She told the Levis the entire story of the struggle in the snow for Las Claves, the necklace she bargained, Santiago’s death – Raquel held her hand through that harrowing memory – and her sudden marriage to Antonio Baltierra, Santiago’s dying request.
She took out the marriage lines Father Anselmo had rushed onto a scrap of parchment in the long-unused chapel of Santo Gilberto. Don Levi nodded. “What a trying time for all of you,” he said. “Please tell us the rest.”
Hanneke thought Raquel Levi had a tender spot in her own heart for Antonio and was not surprised to hear her sniff and reach for a handkerchief when Hanneke told her about Liria, and how he had gently bullied her into folding that little one to her empty heart.
“That is my tale, Señor Levi,” Hanneke concluded. “It is October, and Antonio did not return from Navas de Tolosa. I have no word of him, or of Carlos, either. I can only conclude that…that…” She closed her eyes.
The silence in the room gave her comfort because she felt the goodwill of the husband and wife. “I have survived, and I suppose what is left of the dowry is mine,” she said finally. “I have presented myself to tell you this story and ask what happens now.”
“It won’t be difficult, Señora Baltierra,” Don Levi assured her with a courtly bow from where he sat. “I have gone over the numbers and subtracted what portion is due to the House of Levi. I knew you would come to us in good time.”
He rummaged in a box on his desk and spread out the original document of marriage, beckoning her to move her chair closer. She looked at the parchment, seeing again her father’s bold signature and her smaller one, signed under duress and with tears. Her eyes followed the additional clauses that came next, the ones that so frustrated Santiago and amused King Alfonso.
“It seems so long ago,” she said. “A different person signed that document.” She looked at the little man seated across from her. “Does Spain change everyone?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I have always lived here. So has Raquel. What have you learned from all of this turmoil, chaos and war?”
“That I don’t belong in The Netherlands any longer,” she said promptly. “I have Liria, and there is this new woman who looks back at me when I pass a mirror. She is a little battered and heart sore, but she gets up every morning and cannot imagine herself anywhere else. I choose Spain.”
“You won’t regret it.” He handed her a smaller sheet with numbers in columns. “There is still a substantial sum, now in your sole charge. You can live where you choose for the rest of your life, if not in luxury, at least in definite comfort.” He smiled at Raquel. “My wife hopes you choose Toledo. So do I.”
Hanneke leaned toward Raquel until their shoulders touched. “I might do that,” she said. “I like Toledo. Right now, if I may, I would like to take out a small sum to repay the nuns for their kindness, plus a little more to use here tonight for lodging. I’ll leave the rest as it is, and return to Santa Catarina.”
“Very well.” He jangled a bell and a clerk appeared. The two conferred quietly, then the clerk left and returned with another document. Don Levi held it out to Hanneke. “For several months, I have had this ready for you to sign. I knew you would come eventually. Look it over.”
She did, seeing everything in order, pleased to know there would be money enough for her needs, and then some. She ran her hand over her Dutch name on this new document and held out the parchment to the banker. “Don Levi, please cross through Hanneke and replace it with Ana. Everyone calls me that, and I have begun to think in those terms, myself.”
There. She had put voice to what had been in her heart, probably since Antonio had left her to join the armies moving south, perhaps longer. She waited for some regret, some sadness, but there was none. She knew who she was - Ana Aardema Baltierra, widow, and as Toño would probably have added with a smile, free woman.
“Wise choice,” Don Levi said. He scratched through, added, and initialed, then handed it back for her signature. “What will you do now?”
“I will watch the road from the south until winter returns, then I will decide what to do.”
They must understand because they knew Antonio Baltierra. A person couldn’t abandon the idea of his return until all possible hope was gone.
When Don Levi leaned forward again with a document for her to sign, Ana noticed his necklace, remembered from her first visit to La Judería. Her hand went automatically to her throat, recalling her necklace, made by the same goldsmith, but bartered in a desperate place for the peace of her dying husband. Should she say something to Don Levi? She smiled inside, knowing it was another small thing; she could ask.
“Don Levi, I had necklace like yours once, given to me by Yussef el Ghalib. May I ask: How did you get yours?”
If the banker was surprised, he masked it well. He fingered the chain. “Here in Spain, many people owe us favors.” He shrugged. “Let us say, my friendship with Yussef is … complicated.”
“So is mine,” she said. “You have heard my necklace story. I am less complicated.”
When he laughed, she joined in his laughter, certain she would learn no more from him, and equally certain he did not need to know more from her. Even an uncomplicated woman needs a little mystery around her to treasure as years passed.
Her requested f
unds given to her in another leather pouch, Don Levi’s personal servant took Ana to that inn on the quiet street near the cathedral. When the driver passed the cathedral, she asked him to stop. She handed out coins to the few women who begged in near darkness, and wished she had asked for more coins from her banker.
She thought of a much younger woman riding between two warriors in the heat of summer, with no idea what was to come, as she loved one, then later, the other. I wish matters had been different, Santiago, oh how I wish it, she thought, as dusk gathered. Antonio, we never had time either, did we? Or you, Fermina? Dear God, why was everyone winnowed except me?
Ana didn’t request the same room. She shook her head over dinner, until she remembered Antonio’s firmness that she not neglect her health. She agreed to bread and soup when she returned from a last excursion. In the process of all this, she noted with some amusement that the man who ran the inn didn’t know what to make of a woman who traveled so boldly without a male escort. She wanted to assure him it wasn’t by choice, as nothing had ever been by choice. She doubted he would understand, when she barely did.
She wrapped herself against the autumn chill in one of Sister Filomena’s older cloaks and walked to the place, silent now, where a brother and his little sister had played, sang and danced for her. It was too late in the season for the pleasures of summer; no one danced.
In her mind – no, in her heart – she danced with the girl, learning the steps, feeling again all the awkwardness of an outsider. Antonio had joined her and then Santiago, the three of them dancing, freed for a moment from heavy cares and deep responsibilities. She decided to bring Liria to this magical place someday, when she thought she could bear it.
As for now, Ana stood in quiet contemplation, humbled at what difference a year could make in three lives. She blew three kisses to the wind and left Hanneke Aardema behind.
Chapter Fifty-five
Ana returned to Santa Catarina and grieved in silence, working hard at all tasks assigned her. The brightest moment came with the arrival from Toledo of Pablo and a girl she remembered as Luz, of the leper colony. They were brought by a clerk sent from Don Levi. She hugged Pablo and included Luz in her embrace.
Over bread and cheese, his story tumbled out, how Father Bendicio had sent the two of them walking to Toledo after the death of Luz’s mother. “He remembered Don Levi, and gave me a letter for him,” Pablo said.
“How did you get to Toledo?” she asked.
He grinned, her kitchen boy, her knight. “Little streams flow into big streams, and into the Rio Tajo.”
Mother Abbess welcomed them into the community, and sent Pablo to help her brother, the farmer who had braved La Judería with Ana. She found Luz a quiet place in the kitchen, watching two babies when Hernana was busy.
Ana sent the clerk on his way in the morning, with a letter of gratitude to Don Levi, and the request that ten gold pieces make their way through a reliable source to Father Bendicio. Winter was nearly here and shelters of branches would never do. With quiet satisfaction, she watched the clerk leave, confident she had fulfilled any remaining obligation to a complex priest who would never be brave in the eyes of the hard society he inhabited, but who possessed another kind of courage few could match.
A week of rain followed Pablo’s arrival, drenching the fields and pleasing farmers in a dry land. Ana joined the others in the kitchen, filling bins and barrels with provender for winter. Even with all the sisters in one room, there was no idle chatter. Mother Abbess read to them from St. Benedict’s Rule.
The morning the fields were dry enough, some returned for the light work of gleaning. No one minded, because the air was crisp with the fragrance of balsam from nearby foothills.
No matter the day or the hour, Ana found herself looking to the south, watching for soldiers who came no more. She had told the Levis she would make a decision when winter came. As the season closed in, she wondered if she would ever not turn south and watch, no matter where she was or how long she lived.
What was the harm in one more look before she went inside to help with the nooning? She looked, then looked again. “Sister Filomena, I see soldiers.”
“Child, it is farmers. We have seen them all month.”
“Soldiers. I am certain.”
The nun looked where Hanneke pointed. “Yes, soldiers. One of them carries a lance. Hopefully they do not bring news of more trouble to the south already.”
“They would come faster, I suppose.”
Ana bent to her work again, gathering the stray wisps of sheaved wheat. She meant to save some of it for herself. One of the sisters said she would show her this winter how to make Liria a summer hat out of wheat.
The soldiers passed by in the distance. Idly she looked once more, mindful this time that Sister Filomena watched her with sadness. Ana knew the nun was a tender soul. Maybe it was time to stop looking so hard for what would never happen. At least it would spare Sister Filomena.
As she watched, one of them glanced back at her.
“Dios mio,” Ana said, startled. There could not be two men with the face of Carlos. “Sister…I….I must go.” She dropped the wheat and started toward the convent gate.
Sister Filomena called after her, but Ana only picked up her pace. She saw the men admitted through the gate and walked faster. As she reached the edge of the field, one of the novices burst out of the gate, running toward her and waving her hands.
“Ana!” she called. “Mother Abbess says you are to come at once.”
Ana ran into the courtyard, calling out to Carlos, who stood beside a roan as ugly as he was, and a strange bay, not Antonio’s black stallion. She stopped, suddenly shy, until Carlos opened his arms to her. She ran to him and he held her tight.
The novice sent to fetch her from the field gaped in wide-eyed amazement. “Lady, these are rough men! Mother Abbess said….”
Ana extricated herself from Carlos’ embrace. “You don’t understand. This is Carlos and…and…”
“Lady, no tears,” Carlos said. “They unman me.”
She took one deep breath and another, until she could speak. “Where did you come from? Where have you been for the last three months?”
“We have been below the old frontera,” he said. “It is a long story.”
“We? We? Antonio, too? Please tell me yes!”
He nodded, his eyes wary.
“All this time I have been waiting….” She shook her head. “Carlos, why?”
“Antonio would not be here today, except that I forced him to come.”
Forced him? The man who saved her life, time and again? The man who told her he loved her? Her husband? Aghast at this strange turn of events, she stared at Carlos. “Wha… what game is this?”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “It is no game. You will see. Antonio is back.”
“Carlos, he… he… we parted in such accord,” she stammered. “Why would he not…”
“Go to him,” he said most tenderly, considering that this was Carlos, indestructible man, a warrior down to his toenails, someone she had feared until she knew his heart.
She looked down in dismay at her muddy dress, then put her hand to her head. She brushed at the chaff in her wildly curly hair. “Not like this. What will he think?”
He smiled for the first time. “Whatever you do will be the right thing, dama, whether you are tidy or not. Prove me right. That’s all I ask.”
She kissed his cheek and ran into the convent.
Hernana was nursing Liria when Ana burst into the kitchen, pulling off her dress and rushing naked to the water barrel, where she scrubbed herself. There was no hope for her dress, so she shook it out, scraped at the most obvious muddy spots and pulled it back on, all in the space of a few minutes while Hernana watched, open-mouthed. Even Liria turned to stare at her, distracted from Hernana’s nipple. Milk d
ripped on her cheek.
Ana looked at her baby and laughed. “Silly girl! You are so wasteful. Hernana, please tell me that you have a comb?”
“Of course I do not have a comb in the kitchen.”
Ana ran her fingers through her tangled curls. She smoothed down her dress. “How do I look?”
“Like a wild woman,” Hernana said. “Sit down. Tell me.”
“But I want to look pretty,” Ana exclaimed. “Something is wrong.” She burst into tears.
Hernana coaxed Liria back to the business at hand while Ana Baltierra sobbed in the kitchen. She cried until she felt a hand on her should, but she refused to look around.
It was Mother Abbess. “Ana, you are wanted upstairs. He told me right where you would be. If I do not return with you, I know he will come down here and see you in such a state. Dry your eyes. I do not want you to see him and weep.”
Ana wiped her eyes on her apron. “Mother, what is wrong?”
“Promise me.”
“Very well.”
Mother Abbess left. Ana sat dry-eyed, staring at Hernana, who touched her knee. “It is never as bad as you imagine. Go, Ana, and take Liria with you.”
Ana took Liria on her lap, running her hands over the familiar little body, breathing in the fragrance of her until she felt, if not serene, then at least calm.
She propped Liria on her hip and took her time on the stairs. She paused in the doorway of the audience room to draw a deep breath.
“You will not know her, Señor Baltierra,” Mother Abbess was saying. “She is strong now, and well.”
“I know her already. I saw her in the field as we rode by. Carlos wanted me to stop then, but I could not. I don’t even know why I am here.”
His back was to the door. She entered quietly for a look before he heard her and turned around. His hair was cut short as always. He sat straight in the chair as always. His was the posture of a horseman, so familiar to her, but something was different. Maybe it was the way he hunched a little to one side.
