A Divided Inheritance

by Deborah Swift

  ‘Señor Alvarez did not know about that when he made me the bequest,’ Elspet said, picking up the parchment and holding it out to him. ‘He thought we were kin, and simply saw a way to show his regard for us both. You heard him say over and over that tradition is important, that the school must not die, and you are the best of all of us, everyone knows it.’

  ‘Perhaps it might sound sentimental, but we are all brothers here, those that trained with the señor,’ Alexander said. ‘You know it is so.’

  Zachary was staggered. He could only open and close his mouth, no words would come.

  She placed the document in his hand, and her hand over his, and said gently, ‘I’m telling you that between us we own both my father’s lace business and this school. We can decide between us as a brother and sister might, where best our respective skills might be employed.’ She paused, her face flushed with emotion.

  He took hold of the paper.

  ‘That is, if you are willing,’ she said. ‘I’m not saying it will be easy.’ She walked to the window and he saw her look out. The winter sun just tinged the curls of her hair in a silvery light. ‘I’m not sure where my future lies now,’ she said. ‘The lace business might be too small for me now I have seen Spain. I enjoyed the fencing more than a woman should. And I have a yearning to see more of the world, to visit the cathedral cities of France, the Vatican in Rome, and oh – so much more.’

  ‘A Grand Tour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope it is longer than mine, then.’

  She laughed.

  Zachary said, ‘I will be happy to share with you, Elspet, if it is what you want, but it is far, far more than I deserve.’

  ‘I want to make up for lost time. I have no other family except my sister Joan and she’s a nun. You have all been my family. And I didn’t really try to know you as a brother before, I was jealous of you, and resented you taking Father’s attention. But I think it would please him to see both our names on one document.’

  ‘I’m hardly the kind of brother a girl might have wanted. And I have a past I cannot change. But I will try to be the sort of son your father could be proud of.’

  ‘Oh Zack, you risked your life for a six-year-old boy. Anyone would be proud.’

  ‘Whatever you do, it is important the school remains,’ Alexander said, ‘so that you can pass on what you know. And so that when the dust settles, those who love you know where you are to be found.’

  Zachary could not speak. The memory of Luisa’s face filled his vision.

  Señor Alvarez’s apprentice poked his head into the room. ‘Excuse me, Mistress Leviston, but three men are in the yard asking after you.’

  ‘Then I suppose we’d better go down,’ Elspet said.

  And Zachary looked back at her and held out his arm.

  The swallow swooped low over the coastline of Morocco; the sand unravelling beneath her like a cloth of gold. On the beach a boat was unloading; the people a line of ants carrying their burdens ashore. The swallow did not stop to watch the people inch their way across the landscape. She flew onwards – onwards to where the pools in the reed beds reflected the blue of the sky, and the feathered plumes of the reeds released their seeds to float on the wind.

  Afterword

  After Felipe III of Spain signed an edict in 1609, the entire Muslim population, along with anyone who had converted from Islam to Christianity, was ordered to leave Spain on threat of death. By 1613, it is estimated that 400,000 people had been forcibly removed in this mass expulsion from Spanish territory.

  Girard Thibault won first prize in a fencing Tournament in Rotterdam in 1611. His book, Academy of the Sword – The Mystery of the Spanish Circle in Swordsmanship and Esoteric Arts, was published in 1630 and is still available today in a translation by John Michael Greer, complete with Thibault’s original engravings of the practice of La Verdadera Destreza.

  Brief Historical Background

  England

  England in 1609 was ruled by the Protestant James I, who was James VI of Scotland. In 1603, he succeeded Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, who died without an heir. James continued to reign over all three kingdoms for twenty-two years, a period known as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625.

  During James’s reign, Catholics were forbidden to practise their faith openly. This stemmed from a series of Catholic uprisings during the reign of his predecessor, Elizabeth. Those who refused to attend Anglican services were called ‘recusants’ from the Latin recusare – to refuse – and were pronounced guilty of high treason. The recusancy laws were in force from the reigns of Elizabeth I to that of George III, though they were not always enforced with equal intensity.

  After the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Catholics, led by Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes, attempted to assassinate the King by blowing up the House of Lords, James I sanctioned even harsher measures against recusants. Parliament passed the Popish Recusants Act in which the recusant was to be fined £60, or to forfeit two-thirds of his land, if he did not receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion) at least once a year in his Church of England parish church. The Act could also require any citizen to take an Oath of Allegiance which denied the Pope and the Catholic faith and swore allegiance only to the King.

  In Catholic homes, for fear of persecution, Masses were said secretly. Priests, often Jesuits, struggled to keep their presence hidden from the authorities. Catholic worship often took place in secluded parts of the house, perhaps in the cellar or roof space, and nearby there would be a hiding place to provide a space where missals, vestments, sacred vessels, and altar furniture could be stored at a moment’s notice. These spaces were also used as bolt-holes for the officiating priests in the event of an emergency.

  Many such ‘priest-holes’ are attributed to a Jesuit lay brother, Nicholas Owen, who devoted the greater part of his life to constructing them. They were sometimes built as an offshoot from a chimney, as at East Riddlesden Hall, or set behind panelling as in Ripley Castle in Yorkshire. I like to think that someone like Nicholas Owen would have constructed the priest-hole at West View House.

  Catholics were not the only religious faith to which James I found he was in opposition. On his accession, the Puritan clergy, intent on a more rigorous service, demanded the abolition of wedding rings and the term ‘priest’, and also asked that the wearing of cap and surplice should become optional. However, the King was strict in advocating conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans as well as Catholics.

  As a result of these religious divisions, the King commissioned a new translation of approved books of the Bible to resolve difficulties with all the different versions then being used. The Authorised King James Version, as it came to be known, was completed in 1611 and is considered a masterpiece of Jacobean prose. And of course it is still in widespread use today.

  Spain

  Whereas in England Catholicism was repressed, in Spain Catholics were the ruling majority. To understand the climate of oppression for religious minorities in Spain in 1609, one must look back a few centuries to 1248, when Seville, formerly a Moorish city, fell to Christian armies.

  For the following centuries after conquest Christians were determined to expand their dominion over Spain, and on 2 January 1492 Muslim Granada fell – a momentous day for Christian Europe, a day of rejoicing, but for the Maghreb it became a day of eternal sorrow. Just as the day is marked by celebrations in Spain, in Morocco black flags are hung out to indicate loss and mourning. Some descendants of those expelled still retain the original fifteenth-century keys of their Andalusian homes as a symbol of their lost culture.

  After the conquest of Granada by Christians the Jewish population was driven out, whilst tolerance was promised to its Moorish citizens. So by the seventeenth century the Moors had become indelibly Spanish. Some were genuine Christian converts, and many, like Sancho Panza’s neighbour Ricote (in Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote), and Luisa in my
novel, thought of themselves as ‘más cristiano que moro’.

  The Spanish Inquisition is associated with the persecution of the Jews but it is not common knowledge that Muslims were also tried and tortured by this institution and that they too were the victims of a raging anti-Semitic ideology. During my research trip to Seville, I visited the remains of the San Jorge Castle and saw chilling evidence of this persecution, which the Inquisition applied not only to rival faiths to Catholicism but also to mystics of their own faith.

  A short period of relatively peaceful co-existence was shattered when the Archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, was replaced by the fanatic Cardinal Cisneros, and Muslim religious leaders were persuaded to hand over more than five thousand priceless books with ornamental bindings, which were then consigned to bonfires. Only a few books on medicine were spared the flames. Unsurprisingly, this event led to an armed response from Muslims in the First Rebellion of the Alpujarras in 1499. By 1502, the monarchy had rescinded the treaty of tolerance and Muslims in Andalusia were forced to convert or leave. Those who converted were called Moriscos, which means ‘little Moors’.

  Many Moriscos professed their allegiance to Christianity while practising Islam in secret. Every aspect of the Islamic way of life, including the Arabic language, dress and social customs, was condemned as uncivilized and pagan. A person who refused to drink wine or eat pork, or who cooked meat on a Friday might be denounced as a Muslim to the Inquisition. Even practices such as buying couscous, using henna, throwing sweets at a wedding or dancing to the sound of Berber music were un-Christian activities for which a person might be reported to the Inquisition by his neighbour, and obliged to do penance.

  Further repression of the Moriscos resulted in a second Rebellion. Fearing the rebels were conspiring with the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, the uprising was brutally suppressed by Don John of Austria. In a spate of atrocities the town of Galera, to the east of Granada, was razed to the ground and sprinkled with salt, after the slaughter of 2,500 people including 400 women and children. Some 80,000 Moriscos in Granada were forcibly dispersed to other parts of Spain, including Seville. Christians from northern Spain were settled on their empty lands. Ayamena and Nicolao in my novel were displaced from Granada before settling in Seville.

  As early as the sixteenth century, the Council of State proposed expulsion as a solution to the on-going Morisco problem, for which the previous exile of the Jews provided a legal precedent. However, the action was delayed because of Spain’s pressing political concerns abroad and because of the drawbacks of losing so many skilled Muslim labourers from the Spanish working population.

  Juan de Ribera, the ageing Archbishop of Valencia, who had initially been a firm believer in missionary work, and the conversion of the Moorish population to Christianity, became in his declining years the chief partisan of expulsion. In a sermon preached on 27 September 1609, he said that Spanish land would never become fertile again until these heretics (the Moriscos) were expelled. The Duke of Lerma, the corrupt chief minister, agreed with him. The new king, Felipe III, known as Philip the Pious for his religious zeal, finally acquiesced to their political pressure and the expulsions began. The embarkation order was read out in Seville on 10 January 1610.

  Further Reading

  Amberger, Christophe J., The Secret History of the Sword, Multi-Media Books, Canada, 1999.

  Carr, Matthew, Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, New Press, New York, 2009.

  Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote, Penguin, 2003.

  Cohen, Richard, By the Sword, Macmillan, 2002.

  Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, Oxford University Press, 1997.

  Edwards, Gwynne and Haas, Ken, Flamenco, Thames & Hudson, 2000.

  Fraser, Antonia, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996.

  Green, Toby, Inquisition, Pan Macmillan, 2007.

  Hutton, Alfred, The Sword and the Centuries, Wren’s Park Publishing, 2003.

  Loades, Mike, Swords and Swordsmen, Pen and Sword Military, 2010.

  Perry, Mary Elizabeth, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, Princeton University Press, 1990.

  Perry, Mary Elizabeth, The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain, Princeton University Press, 2005.

  Pike, Ruth, Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century, Cornell University Press, 1972 (and the Library of Iberian Resources online).

  Worden, Blair, Stuart England, Phaidon Press, 1986.

  Destreza Translation Project: www.destreza.us

  Martinez Academy of Arms: www.martinez-destreza.com

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank in particular Mary and Puck Curtis of the Destreza Translation and Research Project, who answered my questions and supplied me with many leads and suggestions from which to research Carranza and La Destreza. Those interested in the Spanish Art of Defence can find a valuable resource – both practical and theoretical – on their website www.destreza.us.

  Finally, thanks to my agent Annette Green, my editor Jenny Geras, Natasha Harding and all at Pan Macmillan.

  Praise for Deborah Swift

  ‘Deborah Swift’s captivating writing makes you feel as if you’re in Restoration London alongside the two lead characters of this excellent historical novel. Highly recommended’

  Bookbag.co.uk

  ‘Her characters are so real that they linger in the mind long after the book is back on the shelf’

  Historical Novel Review blog

  ‘Rich and haunting’

  Reading the Past blog

  ‘Swift, who understands the power of details, shows a side of London that is rarely seen in historical fiction . . . a compelling and often heartbreaking story’

  Ann Weisgarber, Orange shortlisted author of The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

  ‘Complex and engaging’

  Bookgeeks.co.uk

  ‘Top Pick!’

  RT Book Reviews

  ‘A beautifully written blend of fast pace and atmospheric historical detail’

  Gabrielle Kimm, author of His Last Duchess

  ‘Swift creates complex characters whose difficult lives and complicated motivations create compelling drama’

  Booklist

  ‘Great read for fans of sweeping historical novels’

  Night Owl Reviews.com

  ‘Beautifully written and meticulously researched, the novel drew me straight into the teeming streets of Restoration London. An addictive, page-turning read’

  Mary Sharratt, author of The Daughters of Witching Hill

  ‘Utterly captivating’

  Karen Maitland, author of The Owl Killers

  ‘A gripping tale by a gifted writer with an almost lyrical style’

  Freda Lightfoot

  A Divided Inheritance

  Deborah Swift used to work in the theatre and at the BBC as a set and costume designer, before studying for an MA in Creative Writing in 2007. She lives in a beautiful area of Lancashire near the Lake District National Park.

  Contact Deborah on her website www.deborahswift.co.uk or on Twitter @swiftstory

  Also by Deborah Swift

  The Lady’s Slipper

  The Gilded Lily

  First published 2013 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

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  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3129-5

  Copyright © Deborah Swift 2013

  Illustration of swallow by Hemesh Alles

  The right of Deborah Swift to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

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