I knew that I would have to go into the poorer areas of the town, and for that I must have an escort. I did not ask Ramón Salazar. I didn’t think he would agree. In any case his visits to my home lately often coincided with those of Lorena de Braganza when his attention was distracted by her conversation and witty remarks and there was no opportunity for me to speak to him privately for any length of time.
I decided to ask help from Garci, our farm manager. I was confident that he would assist me: from when I was small, he could refuse me nothing. He and his wife, Serafina, had never been blessed with children of their own, and they doted on me, so I could beg him for anything and he complied with my wishes. Therefore I was taken aback when I outlined my proposal to him and he shook his head,
‘No, Zarita. I won’t go with you into the slums of the town. We cannot have another incident where your father has to deliver quick justice to control thieving and violence.’
‘Justice!’ I exclaimed. ‘That wasn’t justice, Garci. You cannot mean you condone what my papa did in hanging the beggar without trial!’
‘I wasn’t there,’ Garci replied slowly. ‘As you know, I was at the horse fair in Barqua.’ He looked at me severely. ‘And that’s the main reason why you were able to leave this house accompanied only by Ramón Salazar. Had I been here, I wouldn’t have opened the compound gate for you to go to the streets of the old port without more of an armed escort, and a female companion.’
I shifted uncomfortably. Garci had guessed that I’d taken advantage of the turmoil in the house that day: my papa and Ardelia and Serafina, our housekeeper, had been occupied with Mama, and I’d managed to slip out with only Ramón as escort.
‘So, as I didn’t witness the situation myself,’ he went on, ‘I will not judge your father’s actions. He is a rigorous man.’ He paused. ‘And now that your mother has passed away, who is there to remind him that mercy is a God-given virtue?’
Garci had mentioned my mother and I saw his weak spot. ‘Mama would have wished this,’ I told him. ‘She would have been horrified by the beggar’s death and would have made sure that his wife was cared for.’
A few moments elapsed before Garci replied. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘Your mama would have done as you say. I will go with you and look for this poor woman.’
Garci understood that Papa was not to know of our expedition, so we waited until one afternoon when he was absent from home visiting the Countess Lorena’s father’s house in the nearby hills. I had the sense to dress very plainly, wearing neither fine clothes nor jewels and covering my hair and face completely. Yet before we even reached the outer barriadas of the town Garci wished to turn back. ‘These slums are no place for any decent person,’ he told me.
‘Yet there must be good people who live here,’ I said. ‘Or do you think poverty makes one indecent?’
This was one of my mama’s sayings: she would defend her almsgiving to my papa when he declared that, in his opinion, the poor brought misfortune upon themselves. Garci didn’t reply; just made a clicking noise with his tongue to show his disapproval.
‘I am performing an act of charity,’ I added in order to appease him, and then I reminded him, ‘My mama would have approved.’
‘Ah, your mama,’ Garci said. ‘She was the kindest of women.’ He sighed, and I knew that there were tears in his eyes.
After this he became more amenable to knocking on doors to enquire the whereabouts of any ill woman who might be on her own now, but had previously had a husband and a boy looking after her. However, we could find no trace of the woman. A great number of doors remained shut against us, and the people who did open up were hostile and suspicious. Finally Garci stopped in the middle of the street.
‘It’s hopeless,’ he said. ‘The beggar’s wife could be in any room in this warren of buildings, too sick to rise up to answer our knock.’
There was an old woman sitting on a doorstep. I went over and knelt in front of her. ‘Mother,’ I said.
She looked at me with the milky white eyes of the very old. ‘I have no daughter,’ she replied. ‘I had three fine sons, but they went to war and I never saw them again.’
‘I call you Mother because I have none of my own,’ I told her softly. The old woman reached out a gnarled hand and touched mine. I asked her if she knew of anyone who might be the woman we were looking for.
‘I know of no such person,’ she said.
In despair I sat back on my heels. Then I felt in my purse and took out a coin and gave it to her. She hid it in a fold of her clothes, and I wondered how many days’ bread that would give her.
As I stood up, the old woman raised her head and said, ‘There may be one who will help you. There is a man, a doctor, who lives in the house at the far end of the street. He goes to those who are sick but have no money.’
I walked quickly to the house she’d indicated. But when we drew near to the door, Garci hung back.
‘This is the house of a Jew,’ he said, and he blessed himself.
‘It is the house of a doctor who might be able to help us,’ I replied.
A man opened the front door and stood in the entrance. ‘Why do you stand in the street staring at my home?’
Garci put his hand on my arm to guide me away. The man seemed amused by this and made to go back inside. I spoke up briskly. ‘I’m looking for a woman, a particular sick woman.’ I described all I knew of the beggar’s wife.
‘I may know this person,’ he said. ‘Some days ago I was called by a neighbour to attend to a woman whom she’d heard was gravely ill. The neighbour told me that the woman’s husband had been executed and her son had disappeared and not returned home, so she had no one to look after her.’
I pulled out my purse and thrust it at him. ‘You can have any money you need to buy her medicine and pay for your time in curing her.’
He tilted his head on one side and surveyed me. ‘Is this an act of mercy, or of a guilty conscience?’ he asked quietly.
Behind my veil my face flushed in shame and I could not reply. Had he heard the story of how the beggar had died? Did he recognize me as the daughter of the magistrate?
‘No matter’ – he seemed to come to a decision – ‘I will take you to her.’
The woman lay on a pallet of straw in a room on an upper floor of a house two streets away. When we entered, something scuttled away in the far corner, and she stirred and cried out.
The doctor bent over her and spoke to her rapidly in a language unknown to me. By the door Garci blessed himself again.
The doctor raised her up and helped her drink some liquid from a bottle he’d brought with him. Then she sank back down on the makeshift bed, her body not much more than a bundle of bones.
‘Does she know you?’ the doctor asked me.
I shook my head.
‘It wouldn’t make any difference,’ he said. ‘She’s too far gone to recognize anyone.’ He pulled the blanket about her and then ushered us outside.
Again I offered him my purse.
‘The woman is dying,’ he said. ‘I cannot cure her. No one can. The good neighbour brings her some thin soup and water each day for she can eat nothing else, and I come every evening and give her enough opiate to ease her pain for the night.’ He raised his eyes and stared at my own behind my veil. ‘Keep your money and spend it where it might help the living.’ He glanced up and down the street. His implication was obvious.
When he left us, I turned and spoke to Garci. ‘We must take her out of here, away from the vermin in this building.’
‘If you move her she will die,’ Garci said.
‘She will die anyway. Let us help her die in better conditions than this.’
‘We cannot bring her to your house!’ Garci was aghast.
I knew this. My papa wouldn’t suffer such an intrusion.
‘No,’ I said, ‘we’ll take her to a peaceful place where she will be cared for with love.’
So it was in the convent hospital of my aunt B
eatriz that I helped nurse the beggar’s wife during the last weeks of her life.
Chapter Ten
Zarita
AT ONE TIME I might have been able to wheedle my papa into allowing the dying woman to be brought to our house – if only to the servants’ quarters above the stables – for I’d often coaxed him into agreeing to something he’d initially forbidden. But my influence was waning as the Countess Lorena de Braganza became an almost constant presence in my home.
I was so preoccupied with my visits to the convent hospital to nurse the beggar’s wife that it was a month or so before I realized the extent of Lorena’s power over Papa. One day I came home to find that our black mourning curtains had been taken down from the windows. I went to speak to Serafina and found her packing them away in boxes. Her face showed no emotion when I asked her why she had done this. ‘It’s only the middle of December,’ I said. ‘Not yet six months since my mother died.’
‘Not my idea,’ she replied. ‘Your papa ordered me to do it.’ Then she added, ‘I believe the Countess Lorena de Braganza might have suggested it to him. She thinks the house needs cheering up for Christmastide.’
Then, to my fury, I discovered that Lorena had been giving Papa advice about me – saying that I was not capable of running such an important household as his; that I was a foolish girl and had shown myself to be such by going out without a chaperone; that the incident in the church had sullied my reputation; and that I should be sent to a convent or married off quickly to anyone who’d have me. I also noticed that she cultivated Ramón Salazar, talking to him at length, pretending to solicit his opinion on the most trivial matters. I wasn’t overly concerned, because Ramón had always been besotted by me and only me. For over a year he’d pursued me and sought out my company, so much that he’d become like a family member. I believed it was only a matter of weeks before he spoke to Papa, and our families came to an arrangement for us to be betrothed. I thought that Papa would approve the match. He wanted me to be happy but he also had aspirations to nobility, and Ramón Salazar was of noble blood. My father was conscious of his status in society, and his daughter’s engagement to Ramón Salazar would further enhance his own reputation.
In the spring of the following year a wedding did take place. But it wasn’t for my marriage to Ramón that awnings were erected in the compound of our farm, arches of flower garlands strung over the doorways of the house, long tables laid with white linen cloth and sparkling glass, and a priest summoned to perform the ceremony.
It was for my father.
My father and his new wife, the Countess Lorena de Braganza.
I’d disliked her from the moment I saw her; this countess with her glittering eyes and tiny tongue that darted between small teeth. A tongue as sharp as a pin and eyes that poked and pried. A tongue that was never still for long, and occupied itself with spiteful remarks and sly suggestions. Eyes that roved over our ornaments and silverware, assessing their value, and calculated the price of all they saw.
The gowns she wore were cut low to expose the swell of her bosom, and she leaned forward and laughed when men in her company spoke, even if their remarks were not in the least amusing. For my part I sat and glared at her, for she made the silliest conversation I’d ever heard.
I didn’t want her to marry my father. I didn’t want her in my home. On the evening when their engagement was announced, she came to my room to speak to me and I saw that she was wearing my mother’s coral necklace. The necklace my mother had promised I should have on my sixteenth birthday.
‘That’s mine!’ I snatched it from her neck. The catch broke and the beads flew off, spilling and rolling onto the floor.
She screamed, and her maidservant and my father came running.
‘Help me,’ she whined, holding her throat. ‘Zarita took some kind of fit and scratched me.’ She took her hands away to reveal a bright red weal across her neck.
I gasped. She had pressed her own nails into her neck to make the mark!
‘I didn’t do that,’ I told my papa.
‘Zarita, you must apologize at once,’ said Papa.
I stood in sullen silence.
‘At once!’ Papa repeated. ‘Or I will lock you in your room until you do.’
I muttered an apology, but when my father left, I said to Lorena, ‘You made that mark yourself.’
To my surprise Lorena did not deny my accusation. She waved her maid away and said, ‘You can hardly complain when you employ the same methods yourself to get attention.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Of course you do.’ She looked at me intently. ‘I saw you when you came from the church the day the beggar was supposed to have assaulted you.’
‘He did touch me.’ I spoke in a low voice, for that day was one I preferred to forget.
‘Oh, I know he did. You were heard to say so.’ Lorena smiled, and it was not a friendly smile. ‘He touched me.’ She imitated my voice. ‘This man actually touched me.’
I recoiled from her. How did she know what I had said inside the church of Our Lady of Sorrows?
‘Everyone believes the beggar attacked you,’ Lorena went on, ‘yet your bodice was not torn nor your gown damaged in any way. What was the poor man trying to do? Get a penny from your purse or snatch your money from your hand before you put it into the coffers of the priests? Good luck to him, I say. I’ve spoken to the fop who was supposed to be your protector, Ramón Salazar, and found out what took place. I expect Ramón was happy to play along with the pretence of an assault – it made him look more of a man to leap to your defence. But it was you’ – Lorena came near and hissed into my face – ‘you, in your spoiled petulance, who caused a man to go to the gallows because he brushed against your hand.’
I fell back under her onslaught, the truth of her words stripping my soul and leaving me naked.
‘So don’t put on airs with me, my dear sanctimonious miss. You must live with your own deceit and the consequences of your actions.’ Lorena lifted her skirts to leave. ‘An innocent man is dead. And his son too, most likely.’
Chapter Eleven
Saulo
BUT I WAS not dead, though for many days and nights after I left Las Conchas I wished that I were.
The soldiers soon dispersed the crowd gathered outside the compound of Don Vicente Alonso Carbazón. Then the lieutenant yanked the end of the rope and hauled me out through the gate and off down the road. His soldiers came after, cuffing and kicking me all the way to the dockside until they found the ship on which they’d booked passage.
‘I’m minded not to have the bother of finding a galley boat to take him as their slave,’ the lieutenant commented when I tripped and fell as we mounted the gangplank. ‘I don’t want this piece of scum still with me when we join up with the armies of the king and queen.’
‘We can throw him overboard with the rubbish when we quit the harbour,’ one of his soldiers suggested.
The lieutenant grunted. ‘Mayhap his corpse would float ashore and reveal what I’d done. I’ll not risk the anger of that magistrate if he finds out I’ve killed the boy when he decided his life should be spared.’
The ship’s captain, who’d been listening to the discussion, said, ‘If we don’t meet a galley boat between now and next landfall we’ll tie him to the anchor as we drop it down.’ He winked. ‘We can say he got caught up in the rope and was dragged over the side.’
He grabbed me by the hair of my head, ran me across the deck and flung me into one of the open holds. I hurtled downwards, banging arms, legs and head against bales and boxes of cargo until I ended up on the solid wooden floor. I’d scarcely recovered my breath when the opening was battened down and the light extinguished. This was a new terror for me. I’d not experienced extreme darkness before; blood surged behind my eyes as I groped wildly with outstretched arms to find something to hold on to. The ship shuddered as the sailors made ready to leave. Suddenly the world moved under my feet and the whole universe sli
d away. My mind was seized by a fit, for I’d never been on a boat. The sails cracked out and we began to make headway from port. As the wind lifted, the swell took us, and the spine of the ship arched against the sea. Terrified by the primeval power of the elements, I lurched about, screaming in the blackness, while the ship rose and fell, borne up and brought down by the hand of an unknown gigantic creature. I vomited, heaving up again and again, until dry retching cramped my stomach with excruciating pain, and I fell down, exhausted, and lay there whimpering.
There was no way of knowing daylight from darkness. Deprived of sight, the noises I heard sounded loud in my head – the scuttling of rats and the groans and creaks of the wooden hull as it forced its way through the water. I thought the planks would split asunder and I would be cast into the Deep, so I cried out piteously for my mother and my dead father.
And within the ferment of my mind I saw them again: my mother left alone, sick and dying, and my father, his body swinging at the end of rope.
The weather worsened, the ship pitched and rolled, and the huge boxes and bales of the cargo began to shift. I feared I should be crushed. I crawled about until I found a space among the struts, where I wedged myself along the ribs of the ship. There I clung, while outside the waves battered and crashed, seeking a way in to overwhelm me. I remained without moving for what seemed like days, until I became so weak I could hardly lift my head.
It was the red-haired soldier, the one who’d shown my father mercy by pulling on his legs to cut short his last agony, who finally opened the hatch. A rope came tumbling in and he swung down to take a look at me. Then he bawled to whoever stood at the top waiting for his report, ‘He lives!’
He returned a few minutes later with a jug of water. ‘Twice now you have cheated Death,’ he said as he forced open my mouth and poured the water down my throat, ‘for, by rights, you should have expired here for lack of water.’ He went aloft again, coming back with a hunk of bread and a wineskin full of rough red wine. Breaking the bread into pieces, he moistened it with the wine and watched as I managed to swallow. He grunted as he helped me stand up. ‘Perhaps you were born under a special star.’
Prisoner of the Inquisition Page 3
