When the cheering eased, Isabel cried out, “But for tonight, leave your cares behind and enjoy my hospitality!” She spread out a long arm, her fingers as artfully arranged as a gypsy dancer’s, and made a flourish in our direction.
At Antonio and me.
At the same time, the servant who had carefully lit the chandelier appeared with a long candlesnuffer and put out several of the tapers above Her Majesty, causing the area around her to dim. Near me, another torch caught and flared audibly, casting Antonio’s and my sharp shadows onto the flagstones in front of our feet. Panicked, I looked around for doña Berta in the shadowy crowd and couldn’t see her.
Antonio apparently did, for he strummed his lute dramatically, drawing the attention of the crowd, and stamped his heel in time. And then he began to pick out the initial strains of the first duet we had chosen to perform. Immediately, I saw the brilliance of his choice.
I became suddenly senseless to all save the music, a song about a foreign trader sailing on a great ship upon the Guadalquivir, returning to Seville after a long absence, during which he met and lost his true love. I sang of the strong sun and clear sky, of the curving river widening at the port, of the famed towers of silver and gold along the banks, of the high palms swaying in breezes off the river or the dustier southern winds from Africa. The man speaks of his grief, which is eased by the sight of Seville, the city that has stolen his heart.
Singing with Antonio was as magical as the sight of Isabel, only more so. I fell into the same blissful space I’d found earlier that day, where there was no queen, no friars, no audience to judge us. There was no past where Antonio had shattered me, where my mother had died and my father disowned me, where the Inquisition hung over us like the sword of Damocles. There was only Antonio, my friend, whom—unhappily—I realized that I still loved, despite my fury at him, and we were together, singing. I sensed that there would be little happiness left for me in life beyond this moment, so I let myself pretend with all my heart that I lived in a simpler world where Antonio loved me, where we were not forced to be apart.
I turned my body toward him. I met his gaze and tried not to melt when Antonio reflected my attitude back to me, his expression adoring, his dark blue eyes glistening with heartfelt emotion as we came to the chorus.
“
Sevilla, mi alma
Sevilla, corazón
Con tus brisas suaves
Dolores calmados son.
‘Seville, my soul
Seville, my heart
Your gentle breezes
Ease all pain.’”
The queen stood off to one side of the entrance, no longer brilliantly lit, but visible enough so that I could tell she was clapping and grinning broadly. Her subjects immediately began to clap with her, and some softly joined in on the chorus; I think Isabel would have sung, too, had she known the words.
After several verses, the citizens were all patriotically roused, and Antonio played a slower love ballad. I sang the woman’s verses and Antonio, the man’s, and we harmonized on the chorus. Meanwhile, the queen gradually made her way around the perimeter of the courtyard, greeting guests. We sang four more songs after that but scratched the tune about the innkeeper’s wife and her sausages, judging it to be a bit too scandalous given Isabel’s sedate but stirring speech.
Just as we finished the fifth song, doña Berta stepped up to us and caught my hand. She was beaming.
“Congratulations, my dear!” she said, and squeezed my hand with an enthusiasm that took me aback. “Her Majesty was charmed by your performance! She’s asked that you visit her in a little while in the Salon of the Ambassadors for a more private reception. It’s quite an honor to be invited. I’ll find you when it’s time.”
She glanced over her shoulder to see the queen moving our way. “Oh!” Berta hissed at us. “Here she comes!” She immediately turned around and took her place beside me. As the queen approached, Berta curtsied far lower than I could manage.
“Doña Marisol,” Isabel called as she made her way toward us along the empty walkway between the reflecting pool and the sunken gardens. She was followed by the women dressed in spring colors; they in turn were braced by a quartet of soldiers in dress uniform with sheathed swords. “You have the voice of an angel.”
The crowd surrounding us on the loggias was silent out of respect. Isabel’s words carried easily on the night air, and I felt myself blushing.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I murmured, my hot face turned toward the smooth flagstone.
“Up, up!” The queen gestured with jovial impatience for the three of us to rise. “I should like to see who I’m talking to!”
My cheeks must have been violet, but I rose with the others and faced the queen, hoping my expression didn’t reveal my nervousness.
Even if it did, Isabel smiled kindly at me. “You have pleased us, doña Marisol, and we are disposed to treat you kindly. If ever you have need of anything, only ask me.”
I’d suffered so many catastrophes in the past year that I couldn’t believe something this wonderful was happening. I stared at Isabel in disbelief until doña Berta’s discreet elbow found my ribs.
“Thank you, Your Majesty. You’re too kind,” I breathed, and—uncertain what to do next in the face of such royal generosity—curtsied again.
If it was a breach of protocol, no one seemed to notice. “And you, Antonio Vargas,” Isabel said, “you’ve pleased us as well. We hope to see you later this evening.”
“I am honored, Your Majesty,” Antonio said with marvelous composure, and bowed as the queen moved off with her entourage.
He and I both turned and watched as she approached the elderly don Francisco, who had come out onto the patio with his middle-aged son and two of his bodyguards. Isabel grinned broadly at the old man and held out her hand to him. He genuflected with real grace for such an old man, and kissed the proffered hand. The queen responded by pulling him to his feet and linking her arm in his.
“Don Francisco, my friend! How long since we two met in the flesh?”
The head of the Sánchez clan smiled, apparently at perfect ease in the royal presence. “A few years, doña Isabel. Yet you’ve aged not a day.”
Doña Isabel,
he called her. Not
Your Majesty, doña Isabel,
as might have been proper for a queen’s familiar. But
doña Isabel,
which only King Fernando had the right to do. And Isabel’s gap-toothed smile never wavered, which meant that she’d insisted at some point that he dispense with her title, which was extraordinary.
“Come, my friend.” Isabel patted Francisco’s hand, now in the crook of her elbow, and drew him away from his son and his disgruntled guards. “We have much to catch up on.…”
The noise on the patio soon drowned out her words, as the two headed away from us, toward a side entrance to the palace, leaving the queen’s pretty, colorful maidens to entertain the guests on the patio. Before she and don Francisco disappeared inside, Isabel cast a quick glance over her shoulder. I followed her gaze to the now-half-dimmed chandelier, beneath which she’d addressed her guests. If don Francisco noticed her lapse in attention, he was too polite to turn his head to see who she was looking at.
Fray Tomás de Torquemada—an unlikely guest for such a festive event—stood beneath the loggia in the exact spot where Isabel had spoken, dressed in his white Dominican habit and worn black cape. I’d forgotten how homely he was, with his squashed thick nose and mottled skin. He looked completely out of place among the seductively dressed young ladies and wealthy guests; his stiff posture, coupled with the judgment in his gaze, showed his contempt for all present save the queen. I couldn’t imagine why Her Majesty’s confessor would be at a party this time of night and not in his cell, praying.
Her smile vanishing, Isabel shared a swift, subtle glance with him. He replied with a slow, barely perceptible nod; the coldness in his tiny eyes stole my breath. Isabel turned back to don Francisco, her grin carefully back in place.
To my dread, the friar Torquemada headed directly toward us, taking care not to notice the pretty young women or acknowledge anyone else on the patio. I caught the edge of Antonio’s long sleeve, trying to get his attention so that we could escape. To my frustration, Antonio wouldn’t move but met Torquemada’s gaze and acknowledged him with a faint half smile. As the monk stepped up to him, he bowed.
“Fray Tomás,” Antonio said pleasantly. “A pleasure to see you again.”
Torquemada returned neither the gesture nor the greeting. “Don Antonio, I wonder whether I might have a word with you in private.”
“Of course, sir,” Antonio said, slinging his lute over his shoulder and, after bowing to me, walked off with the Dominican into the palace.
Twelve
After Antonio abandoned me, I was in no mood to socialize. Because of their connection to my father, I knew some of the guests here—mostly city officials, including the mayor. But I had no desire to answer questions about how my father was faring after my mother’s death, or why he had failed to escort his only daughter to the palace to hear her sing for the queen.
Instead, I wandered back the way doña Berta had brought me, into the front halls of King Pedro’s Palace, empty of all but a scattering of soldiers. They stood motionless, eyeing me as I moved slowly through the vast rooms, admiring the walls and their amazing tiles. The stonework over the archways was unlike anything I’d seen before. Light and frothy, more air than earth, it resembled nothing more than a honeycomb sculpted by an artist instead of bees, each comb an ornate repeating design. It was impossible not to touch the cool stone with my fingers to be sure it was real; fortunately, no guard challenged me.
Away from the press of bodies, it was cool and quiet, save for the sound of music and conversation drifting in from the patio. As I studied the centuries-old palace walls, I tried unsuccessfully to forget Antonio’s association with the Inquisition and Torquemada, to quash the question that ate at me: What had happened to him to make him join forces with the Dominicans after all these years?
When the question threatened to shatter my pretense of calm, I forced myself to remember the happier fact that the queen had said she owed me a favor. My first instinct was to ask Isabel to tell the Inquisition to leave my father alone. Yet if I did so, was I then drawing unwanted attention to my father and the fact of my mother’s suicide? Would I be endangering him more?
I wandered for almost an hour. Now that the royal performance was behind me, the wine’s effects were more noticeable. I’d been too nervous to realize that I was still a bit drunk and ravenous. Remembering the delicious-smelling sausage I’d rejected earlier, I slowly made my way back out across the crowded Patio of the Maidens toward the reception hall and food. Just as I was walking through the open archway into the reception hall, I heard a voice calling my name.
“Marisol! Doña Marisol!”
I turned. Doña Berta stood behind me, looking a bit wilted but no less in charge. She gracefully wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of a bejeweled hand and smiled toothily at me.
“And now comes your reward,” Berta murmured into my ear. “Trust me, you don’t want to fill yourself up here. Come, eat and drink at Her Majesty’s private table.”
My eyes must have grown huge at the thought, because Berta laughed aloud at my reaction before catching my elbow and steering me back onto the Patio of the Maidens. I noticed suddenly that one of the archways leading back into the palace had been closed off by two thick wooden doors inlaid with Kufic script. Six soldiers in crimson and gold barred the door.
Berta didn’t approach them but led me through an open archway, down corridors that looked very familiar. Soon I could no longer hear the pipers in the reception hall; their reedy wail was replaced by the sound of lutes playing a vigorous dance tune.
This time, when we approached the three arches resting on slender black marble columns, half a dozen soldiers stood guard. They never stirred as we approached nor acknowledged Berta’s little nod as they made way to let us pass by them beneath the horseshoe arches.
“Who would have thought you’d have the opportunity to see the Salon of the Ambassadors again?” doña Berta asked gaily. She had to raise her voice in order to be heard over the music and laughter.
As the doors to the outside were now closed, the film of smoke had thickened. Bedazzled once more, I followed doña Berta into the room and breathed in the scent of hot candle wax and overpowering orange blossom. The air itself had been perfumed, perhaps to mask the base note of perspiration. Berta and I wormed our way through the close press of bodies along the room’s perimeter—greeting the mayor of Seville, councillors, judges, and their wives in their best finery along the way—and arrived at a table heaped with food and drink near the massive wooden doors shutting out the Patio of the Maidens. The crowd was so thick and I so short that I couldn’t see the front or center of the room.
“Eat,” Berta half shouted into my ear in order to be heard over the music and conversation. “All of my charges are usually starving after the performance. And you
must
try
this
wine; you’ve never had anything like it in your life. Drink it while you may, my dear.”
I had no desire for more wine, but Berta sailed easily to the front of the line, where thirsty revelers were waiting, and gracefully extended her arm across the table until her hand, with its flashing rings, rested palm up in front of the servant pouring wine.
“The wine from Champagne,” she called, loud enough so that her voice carried above all the others. “A goblet, please.”
A few seconds later, she handed me a cold silver goblet filled to the brim.
“Taste it,” Berta said into my ear as she led me toward the food. “Go ahead. And don’t waste a drop. This is what the queen prefers to serve her most honored guests. It’s His Majesty don Fernando’s favorite, and your reward for a fine performance.” It was public knowledge that Isabel never touched alcohol, considering it an unseemly indulgence for Christian women.