I was surprised. My mother had had three chambermaids in addition to Máriam, and when I was younger, I had two nurses to watch after me. I had expected many more servants, given such a great house. “Next door will be fine. You can leave now. Come for me when don Gabriel says it’s time for supper.”
Still owl-eyed, Blanca nodded and made a small curtsy before leaving us. By then, Máriam had pulled the glass-paned door leading to the balcony halfway shut and had discouraged the fire so that it threw off less heat. I walked over to where she crouched poker in hand in front of the hearth. She didn’t look up but continued to push logs together to smother most of the flames.
“Máriam,” I said softly, as if there were someone nearby who might overhear. “Why did you come?”
I was thinking about the mystery of my dowry—what my father had paid or promised Gabriel—and hoping my father had said something to Máriam that might help me solve it. Nothing in our household ever escaped Máriam’s attention—except for one terrible thing.
A long silence followed as Máriam stared hard into the fire, her skin stretched taut over the bones of her cheek and jaw. I looked down at her dark eyes, reflecting tiny golden flames, and was astonished to see them filmed with tears. I’d never seen Máriam weep, and she didn’t break down now or let her tears fall but swallowed several times until she was able to speak.
I fought the impulse to kneel beside her and embrace her; Máriam resisted physical shows of affection. Instead, I waited until she finally said, her low, husky voice a whisper: “Your father tried to dismiss me. But I promised your mother I wouldn’t leave you.”
* * *
Some eighteen months ago, my father brought us the first news of an Inquisition. I remember the day well: Queen Isabel and King Fernando were staying in the Royal Palace—the Real Alcázar in Seville—and all of us were keenly excited for news of the monarchs. It was summer, and I was downstairs in the kitchen discussing the upcoming supper with the cook. Afterward, drowsy from the heat, I went upstairs to the large shaded loggia where my father liked to entertain guests, and sat fanning myself as I watched for my father’s return from work.
Our house faced east, and the setting sun had slipped behind it, casting long sharp shadows and coloring the street and the pale walls of the Hojeda’s palace across the street a vibrant orange. I recall catching sight of my father as he walked down the dry, dusty street toward home: He was facing north, so that the intense rays struck him from the side, leaving half of him eclipsed by darkness. He was too distant and the glare too great for me to see his expression, but I knew at first glimpse that something was wrong. He had always been a vigorous, energetic man, with forcefully upright posture, but that day, his head was bowed, his face inclined toward the street; his normally square shoulders sagged.
At the sight of him, I stood up in alarm, convinced that someone had died, and hurried downstairs to hear the bad news. But by then, my father had regained his composure. Though his air and voice were sad, he assured me that he was merely tired. But instead of eating in the dining room, he asked the servants to bring a supper up to the loggia for my mother, him, and me, and then dismissed them all, so that the three of us had complete privacy.
Only then did he begin to speak, in a low, carefully controlled monotone. The truth of the monarchs’ visit had been made clear to him, he said. All of us had hoped that Queen Isabel had come in response to letters from several of Seville’s most respected
conversos
—the mayor, my father, and several of his fellow city councillors included—asking for military assistance against unprovoked, violent attacks in the streets by Old Christians, especially devotees of the preaching of Fray Alonso Hojeda, the Dominican abbot of San Pablo Monastery.
But this was not the case, my father told us sadly. In fact, Queen Isabel had come to meet with Fray Hojeda not to discourage his preaching but to hear his argument in favor of an Inquisition that would persecute any
converso
found to be a “Judaizer.”
“But we’re good Christians,”
I countered blithely. Over the years, I’d never caught my mother lighting another Sabbath candle, and it had been easiest to believe that she had kept her promise to be a perfect Christian. At that very moment, her studio downstairs was full of a few dozen glazed white statues, including some large pieces for local churches: Saint Annes, numerous Marys, Jameses, Josephs, and cherubs. She’d been busier than ever with her painting—so much so that I had been working alongside her almost every day.
“We have nothing to hide.”
“What are you saying, Diego?”
my mother demanded of my father.
“What would such an Inquisition do to us if it comes?”
He turned to me, his large blue eyes guarded and strangely apologetic.
“Marisol,”
he said gently.
“I’d like to speak to your mother alone.”
I wasn’t quite sixteen then and thought that my father was treating me like a child. I rose sullenly, leaving my dinner half-eaten, and went to my room. Within a quarter hour, I heard my parents shouting at each other. Rapid footsteps followed, punctuated by the unequivocal slam of my mother’s chamber door.
They didn’t bring up the subject again in my presence. Over the next several months, I took to questioning one of the chambermaids, Rosalina, whose brother waited on the councillors at the city hall. The news wasn’t good: Queen Isabel had petitioned Pope Sixtus IV for permission to begin an Inquisition in Spain, and the Holy Father had granted it. Yet for a year, there was no more word; the many powerful
conversos
in town felt tentative relief.
And then, this past September, word came that the Inquisitors had arrived among us, gathering evidence in hopes of making many arrests. By October, they no longer hid their presence, but on Sundays made grim religious processions through the streets of Seville, preceded by three altar boys bearing crosses and followed by a small choir from San Pablo chanting psalms of penitence. I watched them from my mother’s balcony as they passed by on the main thoroughfare. The Old Christians watched reverently;
conversos,
however, greeted them with hisses. I watched in uncertainty and silent shame.
By then, wagons heaped with belongings had become a common sight on the streets, and even at night, I sometimes heard the rattle and creak of wheels as
conversos
—many of them from wealthy, well-connected families who had lived in Seville for a thousand years—left their homes behind to flee to Portugal, Africa, or nearer sanctuaries in Spain offered by the Marquis of Cádiz and the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the latter of whom had taken a
conversa
for a wife. Men my father had worked with for decades, fellow parishioners at the Church of San Francisco, even servants who worked in our household, disappeared overnight, leaving behind empty, shuttered homes and abandoned properties. We wanted to believe that all of them escaped safely—that the rumors that many of them had been arrested in the night by the Inquisition and sequestered from the public eye were false. Regardless of the reason for their disappearance, the Inquisition’s receivers came to claim the properties until the owners could be located or proven innocent.
My father insisted that we were safe; the queen’s consort, Fernando, was a
converso,
as were almost all of her closest advisors. We were far too important for her to let any harm come to us. It was only a show put on by the Dominicans, my father said, meant to put a fright into us, and only cowards would run from it. The
conversos
in Seville controlled most of the government and were far too powerful, anyway. I believed him.
My father courageously invited large groups of Seville’s prominent
conversos
to his table. I waited on the men alongside the servants, hoping I might learn more about the situation—but always, my father dismissed the servants and me before the real discussion began. Still, I remained close enough to listen to the cadence of the conversation and hear the anger and panic rising in their muted voices. I heard just enough to know that these men—the mayor, the councillors, lawyers, physicians, landowners, and priests, even the
major domo
of Seville’s great cathedral—were anxious.
The chambermaid Rosalina, herself a
conversa,
told me that denunciations had already begun, that neighbor was spying upon neighbor and reporting any suspiciously Jewish behavior to the Inquisitors. Priests were compelled to report any questionable information obtained in the confessional, and arrests would come with the new year.
I knew that my father and mother were good Christians, and Rosalina confirmed that we were like all other Catholic families, save for my mother’s obvious ancestors. And so I decided that we had nothing to fear, even though there were rumors that the new Spanish Inquisition might be as bloody as the one that had terrorized the south of France a century earlier.
That autumn was tense, and although the street violence against
conversos
and the few remaining Jews in town had lessened, my father hired more men-at-arms to watch the house and accompany him to and from his work downtown; instead of walking, he took to riding a horse. And he announced to me that he had begun to consider suitors looking for my hand—Old Christians only, the better to protect me.
Meanwhile, my mother stopped going to church altogether, making her prayers to the Madonna on the east wall of her bedchamber—the same painted ceramic Madonna that had been the contents of the mysterious bundle she’d been struggling to open on the day that Gabriel had beaten Antonio and the Jew. She was especially fond of the statue, which mystified me because it had been painted by someone much less talented: This Virgin Mary’s lips were a gaudy, sloppily applied cherry, her blue eyes unfocused, the black pupils slightly crossed as she gazed down at the chubby white infant in her arms. Her head was crowned by an Andalusian halo—a huge, gilded, many-rayed sunburst. My mother had a wooden shelf built for the statue and began to spend more time praying to it and less time speaking to my father. More and more often, I would go to her room only to find the door bolted shut and her and Máriam whispering inside.
Yet when my mother did admit me to her chamber, I saw the change in her. She’d always been sweetly obedient to my father’s every wish, but independence stirred in her and grew stronger as October and November passed and December came. She began to avoid us and began to take her meals upstairs or in her studio as she painted; I realize now she shunned us because it was easier to hide her pain.
On a cold, dry evening in mid-December, my mother unexpectedly came downstairs to dine with my father and me for the first time in months. Per our custom, I’d waited in the entrance hall to greet him on his arrival home and walk with him to the dining chamber. He had been spending longer hours at work, leaving earlier and coming home a bit later; he’d also lost weight, leaving his cheeks a bit sunken.
When my father stepped inside the foyer that night, I kissed his cheeks; his tanned skin was cold, but his embrace was warm and unexpectedly emotional. As he held me and returned the kisses, his lips cool, he stilled suddenly and inclined his face upward.
I turned to follow his gaze. It rested on my mother, who was coming down the stairs toward us. Magdalena wore a dark blue-green velvet gown with the
verdugado
—what the English called a farthingale—a series of casings that ringed the skirt. These were filled with reeds to make hoops that held the skirt out stiffly from the body. Since the
verdugado
was uncomfortable and made sitting difficult, my mother avoided wearing it except on special occasions. Her bodice was trimmed with indigo lace, and her sleeves were of long, fashionably flaring gossamer silk, resembling butterflies’ wings. Her hair was not in its usual braid, but put up with pearl-edged combs and covered with a sheer dark blue veil. Most striking was not her appearance, but something far less tangible—the cant of her head and shoulders, perhaps, or the determination in her eyes.
“Don Diego,”
she said, pausing halfway down the stairs.
“May I join you for supper?”
Even her voice had changed. It was no longer soft and whispery, but confident and unapologetic. I remember thinking that this gorgeous creature was not the mother I had known, but someone younger, stronger and far less sad.
Entranced, my father parted his lips and stared at her and slowly nodded.
“It would be my pleasure, doña Magdalena.”
When she reached the bottom of the steps, my father took her hand and kissed it passionately; they shared a look that held adoration and torment. I followed as they walked to the dining chamber, still gripping each other’s hand.
My father sat at the head of the table, with my mother on his left and me on his right, facing her; the serving girl was obliged to run to the kitchen to fetch an extra place setting for my mother. When all was settled and the first course—spinach sautéed with chickpeas—was brought, my father dismissed the servants as usual. The room grew very silent. Normally, my father would direct the conversation at this point, but that night, he seemed at a loss for words.
My mother was first to speak.
“Marisol,”
she said, with poorly feigned casualness as she moved her spoon through the chickpeas,
“has don Diego told you that I am under investigation by the Inquisition?”
Dropping my own spoon, I gasped aloud and looked to my father for verification.
My father too let go a gasp. He stared at my mother with blazing indignation, as if she had just slapped him.