One of them was roused and started guiltily at the sight of me. When he scrambled, clumsy from drink to his feet, I called out:
“Get a horse and follow me! Tell the stable master to wake my father! Doña Magdalena is in danger!”
Ignoring his protests about
my
safety in the darkened city, I turned and broke into a staggering canter after my mother.
I recall only fragments of the chase. I don’t remember the cold or the pain in my knee, though both must have been severe, but I recall my frustration over calling out to my mother, running at full tilt two blocks ahead of me, and being unheard, then losing my voice entirely to the smoke. I recall smoldering piles of bonfires on either side of the street and faint catcalls from some of the men lying beside them, too drunk to make good on their amorous threats. I looked through a haze at the back of my mother’s wool cloak swinging as she ran down the center of the brick street, past the massive still-flickering bonfire built in the great plaza in front of the Dominican Church of San Pablo, where exhausted monks glanced up with weary curiosity, their faces smudged and golden in the fire’s glow. My slippers were coated with horse dung, dust, and ash by the time the street widened markedly as we drew closer to the Guadalquivir River. We passed the entrances of disreputable inns, where shadows of sailors and prostitutes copulated; the square brick armory, stinking of sulphur; lumberyards fragrant with cedar and oak, patrolled by barking curs; and the rope maker’s yard, piled high with pale shredded flax.
The moon hung high in the western sky above the river, and its glow limned the harbor and the silhouettes of great sailing ships on the south side of the bridge, their sails furled, their naked masts pointed upward like dozens of black lances. My mother ran straight toward the docks, as if she planned to board one of the boats. By then, I was convinced that she had made arrangements with one of the sea captains to help her escape.
But she veered suddenly away from the harbor—where black rats scrabbled over the worn planks of the docks to and from the ships—and ran onto the golden sand along the riverbank, where the poor bathed and fished and drew their drinking water, near the great pontoon bridge connecting Seville proper with Triana. It was a place neither of us had ever gone before, as some believed plague lurked on these shores, brought here by the foreigners in their big sailing vessels.
With me in breathless, hobbled pursuit, more than a full minute away, my mother turned her back to the moon, the hood of her cloak still covering her hair, her face hidden in darkness. I watched dumbfounded as she raised her arms toward the east, then prostrated her body reverently on the sand. She rose and chanted quickly:
“Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad…”
I slowed my limping pace slightly, fascinated and terrified at once, straining to hear over the lapping of water against the bridge pontoons and the hulls of great ships. My mother’s voice was beautiful and strong.
Perhaps she heard me or saw me in the shadows near the docks, loping unevenly toward the shore. She broke off, her prayer incomplete, and, turning back toward the moon, lifted her skirts and waded quickly out into the river, not even pausing at the stinging cold water.
I screamed at her. Although my throat was hoarse, my voice rasping, horror gave it strength; I knew my mother couldn’t swim. I think she heard me, for as I called out to her, she paused for a single breath to stand very still, her skirts and the hem of her cloak floating at knee level upon the water. Rather than turn back to me, though, she squared her shoulders and continued on, the hoops of her skirts rising up around her, floating on the water; soon the water grew too deep for her to maintain her footing, and she paddled farther out. Disturbed, the water around her body caught the lunar light and pushed it outward in undulating, silvered ripples. Her shoulders disappeared beneath the surface, and her chin, and in an instant, her head had vanished, leaving the skirts floating.
I ran across the shore, the pain in my knee no less fierce but entirely forgotten, like the cold, and was about to step into the river when a strong, thick pair of arms clutched me from behind and held me fast.
“Let me go, let me go!”
I shrieked, and squirmed around to pound my tall, solid attacker with my fists. I expected to see an inebriated sailor from one of the boats.
Instead, Gabriel stared down at me with pity and veiled longing, his pale eyes round, his milky hair a disheveled halo.
“I’m sorry,”
he whispered.
I struggled frantically in his grip; it enraged me that he spoke as if doña Magdalena were already gone, and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t rushing to save her.
“My mother! Stop her! Hurry!”
Behind us came the clatter of horses’ hooves and the sound of my father shouting to one of his guards. Held fast by Gabriel, I surrendered and turned to look back at the river, gesticulating at the spot I had last seen my mother. There was nothing to see now save for the empty velvet skirts, gray against the dark water.
I watched as my father and two guards dashed onto the shore; all three stripped down to their leggings, casting cloaks and tunics on the sand. My father was first to plunge into the water, but by the time he swam out to where my mother’s clothes were still floating, shouting her name, he found them empty; there was no sign of her body. He caught his breath and dove several times, each time deeper; this went on for anguished, interminable minutes, until he finally grew so exhausted and chilled that he could no longer keep himself afloat. Even then, he struggled weakly to break free from the two guards, who pulled him back to shore when it was clear that my mother was gone, lost to the unfathomable depths of the Guadalquivir.
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?”