By then, Gabriel had released his hold on me, and I sank down to sit upon the cold sand, unable to think, unwilling to feel. I should have rushed to my father’s side when he emerged from the river shivering violently, unable to walk unaided or to speak, only to moan unintelligibly, but I couldn’t bear to look at his pain. I ignored Gabriel’s proffered hands and leaned forward to bury my own in the sand and caught the coarse grains in my fists again and again, each time feeling them slip easily from between my fingers.
A part of myself went cold as the water and watched events unfold like a disinterested observer. I wept and stormed and lunged again at the river, only to be caught again by Gabriel; at the same time, I watched myself do these things and felt nothing at all. I saw the infinite horror in my father’s eyes and noted my conflicting desires to comfort him, to kill him, and was touched by none of these things.
What had just happened was too great and too awful for my mind or heart to comprehend; it was the sort of thing that happens to strangers in cautionary tales, but never to anyone familiar. Crouching there on the riverbank, I knew that the shock and numbness would wear off too soon to leave behind an agony of grief—and that there would be countless bleak days ahead before that grief would ease.
Six
Of the terrible journey home that night, I remember only one image: that of Máriam out in the street in front of our house, the corners of her mouth drawn back in a grimace of pure pain as she let go a ululating wail at the sight of our faces as we returned. In Máriam’s dark hand was a small sheet of fine paper—my mother’s stationery, the wax seal broken. My shivering father, wrapped in his cloak, saw it and, had he had enough strength to lift his arms, would have taken it from her—but despite my limp, I staggered to her first and snatched it to read:
My name is Magdalena García. I am the wife of Diego García, Seville councilman, and the mother of Marisol García.
As a child, I was orphaned. I remember little of my life before that time. The nuns at the Convent of the Incarnation raised me to be a good Christian.
Because of my physical appearance, I am suspected of having Jewish blood. But my husband is an Old Christian, and in our household, we have always worshipped Christ and the Virgin Mary as the church instructs. I am not a crypto-Jew, and you will not find any more loyal to the Christian faith than my husband and daughter.
There are those in the Inquisition who would disgrace my husband for purely political reasons, and they seek to use me against him. To them I say: My blood is on your hands. I know that they will use torture to make me invent lies to harm those I love. Let my death serve as my testimony to my family’s innocence, and let the Inquisition’s suspicion begin and end with me.
May God have mercy on your souls.
I couldn’t stand but sank down to embrace the street, the piece of paper slipping through my fingers, only dimly aware in the next moment that my sobbing father was huddled beside me, the letter now in his hands.
When he could speak, he gasped into my ear: “Forgive me. Forgive me! I’ve killed her!”
It would have been easy to blame him—to believe that my mother had killed herself because my father had failed to hear her desperation, to take steps to reassure her, or even, possibly, to fail to realize that she had been right all along. But I knew that I was the one who truly could have stopped her by agreeing to go with her.
I caught his shoulders. “It was me,” I whispered back. “Oh, Papá, it was me and not you at all.”
We clung to each other in our guilt.
Later, in private, I explained to him that Magdalena had killed herself because I wouldn’t escape with her. For my sake, she had been willing to live without my father … but not without me.
* * *
Magdalena’s body was never found; we held a small memorial service for her in the olive orchard where Antonio and I used to meet. We never spoke of her suicide but told everyone it was an accidental drowning—although our servants and Gabriel, who was there, surely knew better. My father burned my mother’s letter so there could be no proof.
Remarkably, my mother had managed to finish painting almost every single piece sent her by the potter; when I could finally bring myself to check her studio, I found it empty of work save for the large Santiago. Her brushes had been freshly cleaned, her paints all carefully stored away.
I waited for Gabriel Hojeda to tell his brother or fellow Inquisitors about my mother’s last prayer and the fact that her death was a suicide; I expected the Inquisition to come next for my father, or at least to search my mother’s quarters. But to my infinite surprise, Gabriel held his tongue. And when he came to our house with Fray Hojeda, it was only to share his condolences.
Or so I thought at the time. Dazed by sorrow and shock, I never thought to question why Gabriel had been watching our house the night of my mother’s death, or why he had followed us in silence to the riverbank, or why—long after his brother Fray Hojeda had paid his condolences and left our house—he remained behind to privately converse at length with my father.
* * *
Four days after Magdalena died, my father emerged from his solitary mourning in his room to encounter me in mine. When I opened the door, I saw a man I barely recognized: My father’s cheeks glistened with stubble, and his light brown hair stuck straight up in places where it had met the pillow. His entire face and body sagged beneath such self-loathing and misery that I couldn’t bear to look at him for long without glancing away.
“We need to speak,” don Diego told me. His voice was hoarse and very soft, but his words were clipped and his manner oddly cold.
I gestured him inside; when I moved to kiss him, he turned his face away. I swallowed my hurt and we sat in my little foyer while my father looked grimly down at his hands. Despite his composure, I sensed that he was on the verge of breaking down; his face and upper body were perfectly still, but his feet were tapping with the effort to hold back deep emotion—not just his grief over his wife, but fresher pain from a newer wound.
“What is it?” I asked. “Papá, what’s wrong?”
He wouldn’t look up at me. He spoke in a low monotone, with words that were clearly rehearsed.
“Gabriel Hojeda has asked for your hand,” he answered, “and I’ve given it.”
I gaped at him. “This is a cruel joke,” I exclaimed, “and not funny at a cruel time!”
Don Diego shifted in his chair, but his gaze never strayed from the folded hands in his lap. “It’s not a joke. The wedding will be this Saturday.”
I jerked myself to my feet. “It will not!” Despite my effort to remain composed, I began to cry out of pure anger as I realized he was serious. “You can’t do this to me, Papá! How can you give me to one of your enemies? To Gabriel Hojeda, of all men! And why now? Now, when things are horrible enough?!”
He rose, too—slowly, sadly—and when he finally looked down at me, the skin around his narrowed eyes was twitching with a dark, desperate emotion I couldn’t interpret. He seemed on the verge of breaking down, of releasing a torrent of words, but he held them back with a hitching breath, and his features relaxed again into an emotionless mask.
“You’ll marry Gabriel on Saturday,” he repeated. “I’ve given my word. I have only one thing left to say.”
“How can you do this to me? How can you do this now?” My voice shook with hurt and rage; I flung my arms into the air, gesturing wildly. “Are you mad, Papá? Are you mad?”
He reached out quickly and slapped my cheek.
His attack was less than halfhearted; the blow stung only a little, and I never wobbled. But the damage to my feelings was devastating: He’d never struck me before.
“Don’t ever speak to me so again,” he said huskily, and his slightly wild, empty gaze dropped to the floor. “Don’t ever speak to me at all. I’m no longer your father, do you understand, Marisol? And you’re no longer my daughter. This is the end of it. You’re an Hojeda now. Forget that I ever existed.”
“What?” I gasped at the impact of his words and reached for him. “Papá, how can you say such a thing to me? You know I love you! You’re not yourself. Please, you’re upset over Mamá!”
He lowered his head so that I couldn’t read his eyes; his shoulders sagged, and he began to shout with an odd rage, one that left his voice ragged and tearful.
“You’ll leave this house and never come back! Do you understand? Never come back! I won’t have it! I won’t—! You’re not mine anymore! You have to get out, do you hear? You have to get out!”
He broke into wrenching sobs and hurried out my door.
I sank to the floor and sobbed without restraint, hearing the silent jeers of the boys out in the street on the day the Jew had wandered into our neighborhood: Marrana! Marrana! Marrana!
And I imagined I heard my Old Christian father’s voice among theirs. I understood all too well what he hadn’t had the courage to admit directly: Shaken by his wife’s death, don Diego was marrying me off to Gabriel Hojeda to be rid of me and the danger presented by my tainted blood.
Seven
Standing now in the bedroom where Gabriel Hojeda’s mother had died, I stared down at Máriam, who knelt beside me in front of the quieting hearth, her oily brown-black face gleaming. As much as I had always adored and trusted her, I understood why my father had dismissed her and why he harbored doubts.
“So,” I asked softly, without emotion, “were there any clues that my mother was planning to kill herself?”
Máriam turned her head sharply to stare up over her shoulder at me. Her great brown eyes were narrowed, the dark, velvety skin beneath them twitching. We had never spoken honestly about how my mother had died.
“Doña Magdalena never said any such thing to me,” she whispered harshly, and turned just as quickly back to the fire; she thrust at the white-edged logs mindlessly, provoking as much flame as she discouraged.
“Didn’t you ask her,” I persisted gently, “why she was making you promise to look after me?”
Her full lower lip thrust forward as she scowled at the flames. “She made me promise that many times when she was close to death after losing a child.”
For a moment we remained silent while I struggled to repress all the questions that had tormented me over the past two weeks: How did she dress without your help? Without waking you? How could you not have noticed when she walked past you out the door? Máriam was easily awakened, far more so than my mother; I’d never seen her in bed or asleep.
Some painful thought pricked her. She dropped the poker and jerked back toward me, still on her knees.
“Do you really think, doña Marisol, that I would ever have wanted any harm to come to your mother? That I didn’t love her as I love myself?” With the word love, a tear spilled from each of her eyes, and she didn’t stop to wipe them away. “She lied to me. She said—” Her face contorted violently, and she turned back to the fire to compose herself. When she spoke again, staring steadily into the fire, it was in a whisper. “I have no one to care for now, except you.”
I sank to my knees and hugged her sinewy arms and bony shoulders, an impulsive gesture that startled her: I hadn’t embraced her since I was a child and was still unaware that servants weren’t family. Máriam turned her face away, unable to relax into the embrace, and I slowly unwound my arms and rose again.
“I know how you loved her,” I said huskily, then turned away myself toward the eastern wall.
A tall, very narrow dresser made of pale creamy olive wood was pushed against the wall. Save for the handsome pattern of burls in the wood, the dresser wasn’t notable, but the statue sitting on it was: my mother’s Madonna, veiled in blue, her solar halo gilded, her cherry ceramic lips smiling down at the chalk-white child in her arms. Her clumsy grin seemed smug, even mocking.
“Take this away.” Even I was surprised at the bitterness in my tone. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”
Máriam stood, poker in hand, her composure returned. “But it was your mother’s, doña!”
“And what good did it do her?” The blasphemous words were out of my mouth before I could weigh them.
Máriam remained firm. “It was very dear to your mother. She wanted you to have it. She asked…” A breath of weakness crept into her tone, but she steeled herself. “Every time she asked me to look after you, she told me to be sure you had the Madonna.” She lowered her voice to an apologetic murmur, knowing that her lesser status made her wishes of no import. “We prayed together in front of it every day.”
I turned my back to it, still wounded. I would have insisted then that she put it somewhere else, where I wouldn’t have to glimpse it so often, but Blanca’s knock interrupted; she had come to take me to the wedding supper; I was too nervous to ask whether Fray Hojeda had left.
I followed her back across the long courtyard, past Santiago’s fountain; the cold and a faint drizzle kept us moving at a fast pace, until we made it to the opposite wing, which housed the dining chamber, kitchen, and public reception areas.
I’ve always prided myself on being fearless, but by the time Blanca opened the doors to the dining chamber, my legs were so wobbly from fright that I worried they’d give out at any moment.
Just as I’d dreaded, Fray Hojeda was standing inside, a goblet in his hand. My husband paced in front of the fireplace, not far from a near-empty flagon of wine set on a century-old table built to accommodate some forty diners; only a dozen high-backed chairs remained now, all of them set at one edge of the table, above whose center rested a gap in the ceiling covered by planks, suggesting that a large chandelier had been removed. Gabriel’s usually pale nose was red as a cherry, indicating that the flagon had been full not long before; he gripped the stem of his goblet as if it were a lifeline. For once, the friar was not quite scowling, though it was clear that not doing so strained him.
“Doña Marisol,” he said, in his commanding bass. Doña, he called me—the polite title of address for a married woman—and though his tone could not be called welcoming, it was civil. While he was not completely drunk, there was a slight slur to his speech; it had apparently taken more than just Gabriel’s words to soothe him. “I apologize for my earlier show of temper. Don Gabriel has something he wishes to give you.”
Startled, I looked to Gabriel, who was trying his best not to seem too pleased at his victory over his older brother. He nodded at my right hand, and when I lifted it, he held it and, smiling faintly, slipped the thin gold band back on my finger. Fray Hojeda could not bear to watch; he averted his eyes, his lips twitching with the effort to suppress his outrage.
“I wish to welcome you to the family,” Fray Hojeda said woodenly as he set his goblet on the table. “I see now that I was wrong to treat you as I have.” He paused, and his tone grew adamant. “I will not have the marriage annulled—on one condition: that you do not indulge in marital relations for at least one month. This marriage was made in far too great a haste to be consummated immediately; let the month serve, if you wish, as a period of betrothal. Gabriel has already vowed to maintain celibacy for the time. I must insist on the same from you.”
“Of course,” I said, perhaps too eagerly; I hoped my voice didn’t betray the infinite relief I felt. “I vow the same.”
“Good.” Fray Hojeda finally looked me in the eye. “Then I would ask one more thing from you, doña Marisol: that you let it be known that Gabriel and I have shown you great kindness and have taken you under our roof to protect you from those who are not as … tolerant as we are, who might do you harm because you are a conversa.” He lowered his voice. “There is no need, of course, to mention the vow of celibacy to anyone.”
His words about protection made no sense to me. Still, I was grateful for his change of heart, although I couldn’t imagine what Gabriel had said that could have caused it.
“I must return to the monastery,” Hojeda said, “so I will leave you two to your supper. I wish you both goodnight.” With that, he strode from the dining
room without a further glance at Gabriel or me.
I turned to Gabriel in disbelief. “What did you say to him?”
I asked the question uneasily. For my entire life, I’d lived across the street from the man who was now my husband, but my only personal exchange with him had occurred years earlier, when he’d attacked the elderly Jew.
Gabriel smiled with a hint of timidity, although he was clearly pleased with himself. “You mustn’t blame him, doña Marisol. He has his prejudices—we all do—but if he is to succeed, he must learn the difference between a converso and a crypto-Jew.”
I stared at Gabriel in disbelief; had his beliefs truly changed so much over the years?
With his goblet, he gestured me toward the table, where a small silver candelabrum sat between two place settings near one end of the table. Save for the small area lit by the candles and fireplace, the room was dark, the bulk of its interior hidden from scrutiny, but given the echo of Gabriel’s steps off the walls, it was clearly vast and mostly empty.
I was grateful that the place settings were at the end of the table closest to the hearth, where a recently lit fire struggled to catch hold; the room was still so chilly I could just see my breath in the gloom and rued the fact that I’d left my shawl back in my apartment. I moved toward the hearth and fought to repress a shiver as I rubbed my upper arms.
“Poor doña Marisol, you’re freezing,” Gabriel said, and hurried to set down his goblet. He’d had enough sense to throw a wool cape over his tunic, and he undid the clasp, removed the cape from his shoulders, and draped it around mine. His body had heated it, and I gathered it around me, grateful for the warmth.
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