At the instant the youth walked by us, barely two arms’ lengths away, Lauro leaned forward, ignoring the scattered mounted soldiers that policed the edges of the parade, and spat at him.
The wad of mucus struck the young man’s cheek and clung, glistening, on the coarse dark hairs of his sparse beard. His eyebrows rushed together as it struck; outrage rippled across his features, but instead of turning to look at his attacker, he shut his eyes. When they opened again, they were blank and fixed firmly on the road ahead of him. Unwilling to acknowledge his tormentors, he didn’t wipe the spittle away, but trudged onward.
One of the queen’s soldiers monitoring the perimeters of the procession saw the incident and cantered up behind the youth; his hand on the hilt of his sword, the soldier gazed fiercely down at Lauro.
“Someone tell this idiot there’s to be no violence!” he called, and rode off.
The second he was gone, Lauro and the men-at-arms began to shout at the next wagon, so laden with personal belongings that the owner led the pair of horses by the reins. He too looked to neither side of the street—now lined on both sides with onlookers—but kept watching those directly in front of him.
A beautiful young Jewess flanked the wagon on our side of the roadway. Dressed and veiled in deep blue cloth shiny from wear, she bore herself elegantly, proudly, despite the swaddled infant in her arms. A crease of stark determination had formed between her black brows, and although she had carefully fastened her eyes on the horizon, her dark, intelligent eyes were narrowed with hate, her delicate mouth a taut line that tugged downward at each corner.
I couldn’t help but stare. Though small of build, she was voluptuous and full breasted, with features so like my mother’s that grief caught me unexpectedly.
“Don’t ever come back!” Lauro screamed beside us, so loudly that I grabbed Máriam’s hand out of fright.
Beside him, one of Gabriel’s men-at-arms hooked his little fingers in his mouth and let go a piercing, derisive whistle at the sight of her.
It was noisy, given the crowds, the rumbling wheels, the clattering horses, and her young husband, walking ahead of her, didn’t hear. But the Jewess did.
She lifted her handsome chin and looked on the whistler with such defiance and scorn that I drew in a breath, terrified for her safety. But our guards only laughed raucously, pleased to have gotten her attention. As she shifted her attention from them, her gaze caught mine and lingered there. The fury faded immediately from her expression; disbelief took its place, followed by astonishment, then pity.
Pity at the sight of me—at my dark, unruly Semitic hair and features, at my dark eyes. As if she knew that she had already lost everything of value but was managing to escape Seville alive to go to a place where she would be free; as if she knew that her misery was almost over, but mine, a
conversa
’s, had yet to really begin. My sheltered sense of reality crumbled. I, a heretofore insistent Christian, could no longer deny that there was no difference between us, no right or wrong religion, no good or evil save that found within the human soul.
The Jewess averted her eyes and moved on. I suddenly remembered my mother’s hopeful story about Sepharad. The last lines repeated themselves in my head:
Can the Lord God move through a woman?
Surely He moved through Queen Esther. And perhaps He can do so with Queen Isabel, who made us weep with joy when she wrote the Jews of Seville, saying: “I take you under my protection and forbid anyone to harm you.”
… We look to our Visigoth queen with hope and pray for her success and the time when we can raise our voices again in the streets of Seville.
I looked again at the soldiers’ shields and the images of the lion and the castle tower. Surely Isabel, the most pious ruler in all Christendom, was simply unaware that her orders were bringing about such suffering; surely she would have wept had she learned of my mother’s unnecessary death, and would weep now to see the pain in her Jewish subjects’ eyes.
I swallowed hard at the abrupt, unwanted welling of tears, knowing they would make me an outcast among the Old Christian hecklers. Behind the young Jewess, the parade of human suffering stretched to the horizon; in it, I saw the enormity of my cruelty toward my own mother and broke.
* * *
The next afternoon, Fray Hojeda arrived at the mansion, his stern visage bright with anticipation. Gabriel conferred privately with him in the sitting room for a few hours, during which time I was obligated to remain in my quarters. Supper was served late as a result. When I came down, Gabriel informed me that I would need to be ready to go with him the following morning for what he described, with a furtive smile, as a “surprise.” His little smile seemed ingenuous enough, but Máriam and I trusted him not at all.
The next morning, I had Máriam lace me into the nicest of my mourning gowns and together with her went downstairs to meet my husband with feigned enthusiasm. His grin, as he wished me a good morning, was as forced as my own.
“Are you ready for your surprise?” he asked in a strangely playful tone.
I could only nod, wide-eyed and solemn.
Ever since the Edict of Grace had been read in the city square, Gabriel rode in the carriage surrounded by men-at-arms each time he went out. That morning was no different, and when our carriage turned west toward the river, I tensed; Gabriel’s preoccupied silence during the ride did little to ease my dread. By the time we slowed in front of the Church of San Pablo, I felt a cold thrill, and when we passed behind the walls surrounding San Pablo’s monastery, I clasped my hands in my lap to still their trembling. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Máriam, who was surely just as terrified. Was Gabriel taking us to be questioned by the Inquisition?
Our carriage rolled past a vast brick dormitory three stories tall, one that was rumored to serve as a prison for those arrested on suspicion of heresy, although only those who had been inside knew for certain. Its windows were shuttered, its delicate turrets unrevealing; built centuries earlier under Islamic rule, its once-smooth stone exterior was pitted with age. The lower floors featured rows of slender archways with beveled stone edges, mullioned windows, and a half dozen armed guards standing watch at each entrance; the upper floors featured lacy wrought-iron balconies covered in rust, and three-dimensional spirals of tiny bricks that bloomed in magical bas-relief from the stone walls. It was warm that day, and the breeze through our open carriage window carried the stench of overstressed latrines.
I put a discreet hand to my nose to block the smell as the carriage came to a stop in front of a nearby outbuilding, a small, one-story rectangle of wood and plain, whitewashed stucco that had probably once served the Dominicans as a storage facility. Gabriel instructed the driver to take us around to a back entrance, one hidden from the larger building’s view. Once we rolled to a stop, he turned to me.
“Are you ready?” he asked. His manner and voice were pleasant, but his eyes held strong emotion; anger, I thought at first, but it was something more complex.
“For what?” I asked, almost too shaken to speak at all.
“Your lesson,” he admonished, as if it had been obvious. “With the lute, of course. Remember?”
“Oh.” I gaped at him an instant. When he seemed irritated by my hesitation, I quickly added in a more cheerful tone, “Oh! What a wonderful surprise, don Gabriel!”
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” he answered tersely, in a tone that said he was not. “Stay in the carriage; I’ll be back in a moment. There are monks and priests inside who would be unsettled by a woman. I’ll make sure the way is clear.” He moved, stooping, as the driver opened the carriage door; as Gabriel’s hand caught the edge, he looked back over his shoulder at me.
“Remember, my brother and I have been kind to you: I offered my house and protection to you, to save you from Old Christians who are not as fair-minded as I am.”
“Of course, I’ll remember,” I said, confused.
“Lower your veil. There are monks inside,” he said.
Gabriel lingered in the doorway, watching until I covered my face.
My world grew darkly filmed, visible only through gaps in the black lace cutwork. I could make out only one of Gabriel’s pale eyes and part of his sunburned nose; I listened to his stern voice as his invisible mouth said, “Stay here until I come for you.”
I obeyed. Máriam and I were too tense to utter a word until Gabriel returned a few minutes later and led us into the small building. The smell of refuse and urine grew stronger as I climbed from the carriage; I held my breath as I glanced at the prison windows, unrevealing in daylight. Once we stepped over the threshold of the smaller edifice, I took in the smell of fresh whitewash and sawdust.
Happily, the hallway was empty and very narrow; to my right, unpainted wooden walls had been hastily erected to create small, separate rooms in what had once been a large open area. Gabriel led us to the closed door of the room nearest the back entry, knocked, and motioned for us to enter ahead of him. I stepped inside, with Máriam close behind.
And there was Antonio.
He stood alone at a reading pedestal, staring down intently at a sheaf of notes. Beside him, stacks of papers rested on a brand-new desk equipped with wooden compartments for holding files. The office was small, with one tiny window overlooking the kitchen gardens filled with parsley, bright green from the rains. Although the wooden interior walls were new, the exterior ones were old, with dust-covered spiderwebs veiling the corners of the ceiling.
Antonio glanced up as we three entered. Once again, his deep-set eyes stole my breath; they were the dark, impossible blue of lapis, startling against the contrast of his pale skin and generous red-gold brows. His lips remained tightly pressed together; they didn’t part in astonishment, as mine did beneath my veil. He scarcely glanced at me but instead exchanged curt nods with Gabriel.
We hadn’t seen each other in almost two years, but it may as well have been a decade: Antonio was only twenty years old, but his dark, solemn air made him seem far older, as if his father’s death and other sorrows of life had aged him too soon. The light streaming through the open window caught the first lines in the pale, delicate skin at the corners of his eyes, where they crinkled when he smiled. But Antonio wasn’t smiling now. His expression was sad and darkly serious; whatever he was reading made him sadder. His tunic and leggings were black, as if he were in mourning or a priest or monk; the color was too harsh for his coloring and made his skin look chalkier than it was.
I stared at him—at his broad turned-up nose, his generous lips, and oval clean-shaven face, all conspiring to make him neither too pretty nor too plain, but pleasant to regard. He wore his golden red hair brushed straight back now, revealing his fair forehead and a widow’s peak; thick waves fell against his long neck to just below his collar and curled around the backs of his ears.
At once I was swallowed by the memory of the kiss we’d shared the day of his father’s burial. He’d seemed so childlike then, so lost, although he fought to master his grief. At the funeral, he had wept openly, his arm around his frail mother’s shoulders. Later that afternoon, he and I met alone beneath the huge olive tree in my father’s yard. His eyelids were swollen, the rims red, but by then he had spent his tears and was dry-eyed, if dazed.
I had put my hand on his shoulder and let him talk. He didn’t look at me, but instead stared out toward the river, at the distant horizon.
“I failed him.”
His voice was naturally musical and soft, and that day, it was even softer, almost a whisper.
“I was gone too long without visiting.…”
“You were at university,”
I said, caressing his shoulder.
“You were doing what your father wanted you to do.”
“You don’t understand.”
His lips stretched thin and then began to twitch; a grimace passed over his features as he struggled to contain himself.
“My father suffered. He suffered greatly for a long time, and I wasn’t there. And by the time I came to him, I couldn’t help. There was nothing I could do.…”
His voice trailed; he lowered his head and closed his eyes.
“I wanted only to ease his pain.”
A tear spilled onto the sunbaked earth.
“Oh, Antonio.”
I slipped my hands beneath his arms and embraced him, pulling him toward me, and nestled my head in the hollow of his chest.
To my surprise, he gently lifted my chin with his finger.
“Life goes on,”
he murmured.
“I know only one thing, Marisol: that I want to spend it with you.”
He lowered his lips slowly to mine.
A muscle tugged involuntarily between my legs, igniting a fire that traveled upward through my spine, past the pit of my stomach, and up to my breasts. The hairs on my arms lifted, as if lightning had just scorched the air. I put a hand behind Antonio’s head and pushed him closer until I felt the hard outline of his teeth beneath the flesh, until our breath steamed the gaps between our faces. I peered through the faint dark tracery of my lashes to see his eyes open a slit, like the crescent moon, the sunlight reflecting off irises as dark blue as water.
Just as quickly as it had come, the memory of the kiss evaporated, but as I stood staring at Antonio in his tiny office in the Dominican outbuilding, the fire and lightning lingered. Antonio observed decorum and addressed Gabriel first, his manner one of scrupulous propriety, his startled gaze careful not to light on an unfamiliar young woman.
“
This
is the cousin you mentioned, Gabriel? I was expecting a young man.…”
Antonio failed to use the word
don,
an honorific reserved for nobility and those well established and respected in the community, even though his household servants had taken to calling him don Antonio years earlier. Undoubtedly he used Gabriel’s given name in an effort to be neighborly, but Gabriel chose to be sullen.