Your loving uncle,
Francisco
P.S. It is imperative, for your safety and ours, that you burn this letter at once.
Seventeen
I knelt on the floor, cradling the letter and the mezuzah in my lap, all my anger evaporated. In its place was a very deep love and sorrow that caused me to lower my face into my hands.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Luz—don Francisco’s beautiful and pregnant granddaughter—saying of my mother:
She is a hero.
I understood now. My mother had chosen to die rather than risk exposing don Francisco’s family and its operation to the Inquisitors. I could only pray that she had kept it secret from my father as well as she’d hidden it from me.
I remembered too the very day the Madonna had come into our house a decade earlier—the day the aged Jew had delivered the bundle, only to suffer a beating from Gabriel. Antonio alone had fought to rescue him. I remembered the sting when old don Jerónimo had called me
marrana,
that ugly word for
converso
that meant “swine,” and how the pain intensified when the other children in the street took up the cruel singsong:
Marrana! Marrana!
It was the same day I had rejected my own mother—and my own heritage—for being the same. Because I was a coward.
Honor your mother by finishing her work,
my great-uncle had said. I was needed to finish the Santiago statue. But I knew that if I did so, I was exposing my father and myself to even greater danger.
Herein is hidden a treasure, one salvaged from the rubble by your mother’s good and true friend, who is now yours.
I looked up at Máriam. “My mother’s good and true friend,” I whispered, “who is now mine.”
At that, Máriam went to her knees, sat beside me, and wrapped her lean, strong arms around me.
“Always,” she said.
“You saved the mezuzah and gave it to don Francisco.”
She pulled away from me grinning, showing white, evenly spaced teeth, minus a canine. “As a laundress, I had many clients.”
“But you’re a Muslim,” I breathed. “Why would you risk your life to save Jews?”
Her grin softened to become an enigmatic smile. “There is only one God, but a thousand different ways to find Him. The love is the most important thing. You know in your heart, Marisol, what love wants you to do.”
I looked down at the letter in my lap. “I must become a hero, just as my mother was.”
* * *
I hid the mezuzah in the deepest corner of my trunk but fed don Francisco’s letter to the flames in the hearth. Máriam said my mother was adamant about saving it.
“She had a premonition that this day would come … that she would be gone and you would need to see it.” She paused. “So what will you tell don Francisco?”
I drew a deep breath. “I need to see him now. Right away. To tell him I’ll help him, that I’ll paint the Santiago, now that I know what it’s for.”
“And your father?” Máriam prompted softly.
I pressed a hand to one temple, as if trying to blot out the thought of what I might be tempted to do or say if I saw my father tortured. “Don Francisco told me he’d try to take care of him, to save him. I believe him. Besides…”—my voice thickened with emotion—“… even if I told don Francisco no and gave Torquemada everything he wanted…” I let the devastating thought linger unspoken.
“Then I’ll go now,” Máriam said, with sudden brisk authority. “Because as you said, there isn’t much time. I’ll be half an hour, and then a wagon will come for us.”
The instant I opened my mouth to pepper her with questions, she lifted a long, slender finger to silence me. “Hush. I know that you are my mistress, doña Marisol, and that I am your lowly servant. But in this case, it’s wisest to let me lead.”
* * *
Máriam waited until well after the bells of San Pablo and San Francisco had struck the hour of Compline, night prayers, knowing that both Gabriel and Blanca would retire to bed immediately after. She slipped out silently in her bare feet despite the cool weather, and true to her word, reappeared after half an hour.
“Now we wait,” she said, and stood near the cracked-open window, listening, until she heard the town crier announce half past midnight.
By then, she’d outfitted us both in hooded black cloaks, instructed me to carry my boots despite the weather, and refused to listen to my pleas for a lantern.
“There’s a moon out, and your eyes will get used to the darkness soon enough,” she insisted. The urgency of her manner convinced me to fall silent and do as I was told.
I followed her silently off the Hojeda estate into the unlit street. A handful of men-at-arms guarded the front of the house; we avoided them by heading around the back, walking close to the rear wall encircling the estate. We made our way through a long-abandoned olive grove, where the land was uneven; I stumbled a few times and had to grab onto Máriam for support.
At last we made our way out of a narrow alleyway onto San Pablo Street. Rather than head west toward the monastery and prison, Máriam made her way east, toward the intersection with the great boulevard that led to the public square in front of the Church of San Francisco. I was grateful to encounter no traffic—most of the drunken sailors and brigands congregated behind us, in the western quarter near the river—but I soon heard the clap of horse hooves against cobblestone.
A solitary driver, cowled and cloaked like us in black, drove a single-horse flatbed wagon. A plague wagon. There had been rumors that plague had been found in the wealthy southern neighborhood near the Real Alcázar; I turned away at once, thinking to flee.
But Máriam held my upper arm with an iron grip and dragged me in the direction of the wagon, which gradually slowed its pace until it came to a stop in front of us.
I couldn’t see the driver’s face, but he and Máriam nodded at each other like old acquaintances. I was vaguely annoyed that the driver wasn’t gentlemanly enough to help us up into the wagon, but Máriam managed to push me up into it before climbing in herself.
“Lie down,” she instructed tersely, and I obeyed, looking up at the near-f moon and the stars. Soon the spires of churches disappeared from my view. I suspected we were headed northeast, away from the river and into hilly country, but the wagon took so many turns that I lost my sense of direction.
The rhythmical rocking had lulled me into a drowsy near-dreaming state, which was interrupted when the wagon lurched, then rolled to a complete stop. Máriam and I scrambled to our knees to discover the driver half fallen out of his seat. Thinking he was drunk, I grew angry.
Máriam had an altogether different reaction. “Dear God!” she hissed, and jumped out of the wagon; I followed.
Together we lifted the barely conscious driver into the wagon bed. Máriam unfastened his cloak and pulled it off him, revealing a blood-soaked bandage on top of his shoulder.
I, however, was too busy staring at his face: the skin frightening pale, the red-gold hair now a bright shade of gray in the darkness and damp with sweat, the eyes open a slit, their focus uncertain.
“Antonio!” I cried. Máriam hissed at me, a warning.
“Fool,” she muttered at Antonio. “What were you thinking, not telling me that it was this bad?”
I dropped my voice to a whisper and put a hand to his cool brow. “Can you hear me? What happened?”
He murmured an unintelligible reply, one that left me doubting he’d heard me.
“Don’t waste his breath or yours,” Máriam ordered, as she tore a strip of cotton from her chemise. I cradled Antonio’s head and shoulder in my lap while Máriam quickly rebandaged his wound—a deep, plunging one.
“Here,” Máriam said kneeling. She pressed a hand forcefully against the cotton-wrapped wound, the edges of which were starting to turn crimson. “Keep your hand against it hard, like this. If it soaks through again, tear a bandage from your clothes and replace the old one.” She looked up to gauge whether I understood the seriousness of the matter. “Otherwise, he could bleed to death.”
I pressed my hand to the wound with all my might. “We need to get him to a place of safety, to a midwife or barber.…”
Máriam was through with explanations. Before I’d even finished speaking, she crawled into the driver’s seat, and we took off again.
I half reclined in the wagon, Antonio in my lap like the dead Christ in a pietà. Máriam drove the wagon at fever pitch, and each time the wheels found rocks or holes in the dirt road, Antonio groaned.
After one particularly deep pothole, he blinked up at me, then closed his eyes. “Marisol?” he whispered. “Am I dead or in prison?”
“Neither,” I told him. “You’re here in the wagon with me.”
“Then I’m in heaven,” he sighed, and closed his eyes.
As the old wagon rattled on, I sat beneath the stars and realized, to my amazement, that for the first time since my mother had died, I felt something resembling happiness. Blessedly, Antonio hadn’t bled through Máriam’s makeshift bandage, and best of all, he was alive and in my arms. Being next to him brought me such bliss that it no longer mattered whether he had deserted me or joined with the Inquisitors; the simple fact was that being this close to him brought me joy.
The wagon hit a great bump. Antonio groaned again.
“Marisol? I’m sorry I failed you. Sorry I failed your father.…”
“It’s all right, Antonio. Everything is all right now.”
* * *
We didn’t head, as I expected, toward the Sánchez estate; instead, Máriam guided the horse surely into the untilled countryside. When we arrived at the edge of a mature orange grove, she brought the wagon to a stop. The trees were tall with age, each so full that its leaves touched its neighbors, making a thicket impossible for the wagon to navigate through.
Máriam climbed from the driver’s seat and turned to look at Antonio and me. “How is he?” she asked, her tone hushed.
“Better I think,” I answered, and Antonio opened his eyes. “The bleeding’s stopped.”
Máriam gave an approving nod. “Don’t move. I’ll be back.” And she disappeared into the foliage between the trees.
“Why did you marry Gabriel?” Antonio whispered up at me.
I pushed the damp hair from his brow. “My father insisted. He meant to protect me from the Inquisition.”
“It won’t help you. They mean to use you as a pawn,” he murmured. “If only you hadn’t married him … The sight of you two together hurts me.… I always thought that I would be the one.…”
I blushed. “We’re not really married. Not
that
way.”
Despite his weakness, his eyes widened slightly. “Tell me that means what I think it does.”
I smiled. “It does. I’ve never been with him.”
“Thank God,” he sighed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Marisol. It’s true I sent you letters and never got yours.”
“Gabriel?” I suggested. “Do you think he intercepted them?”
“Most likely. I didn’t give up trying to contact you until my fourth year—after I’d met don Isaac Abravanel. I traveled to Portugal, learned he was your mother’s kin … and accidentally realized that he and doña Magdalena were working together to bring the extended family and its sacred objects to Portugal, where they’re free to worship. I wanted to help. To save him so that he could join your…” His voice trailed as he closed his eyes, exhausted.
“Hush,” I said, and leaned down suddenly to kiss him, his head cradled sideways in my lap. His lips were cool and damp; he smelled sharply of sweat and blood. None of it was unappealing, because it was of Antonio, and because I had waited years for this moment, however desperate the circumstances.
Best of all, he raised his uninjured arm and held the back of my head, pressing me closer to him.
We held the kiss until his hand trembled violently and he had to lower it; even then, I kept my face low, close to his.
“The marriage can easily be annulled,” I said.
Antonio’s reply was interrupted by the sound of crashing in the foliage. Two strange men and Máriam, bearing a lantern in her hand, appeared. The taller of the men—with curly pale hair, a wiry beard, and a barrel-shaped midsection—easily hoisted Antonio up beneath his arms. The other, smaller, dark-haired man caught Antonio’s legs. The two managed to climb out of the wagon with him, Antonio muttering a weak protest, saying he could walk; fortunately, both men ignored him.
Máriam led the way with her flickering lantern through the thicket of leaves for a few minutes, at which point, a large, unpainted old barn appeared in a clearing. Although the door was closed and the windows all shuttered, a dim light shone through the cracks.
Máriam set down the lantern to pull open the sliding door. Inside, the vast interior lay hidden by darkness, save for the small yellow arc of light cast by a single lamp on a crude table. The only inhabitant was a hunchbacked elderly man sitting upon a stool in the arc of light; shadows obscured his face so that, with his gnarled limbs, he looked like a sort of monster—until he stood up and revealed himself to be don Francisco.
“What news? Is don Diego with you?” he called out to the men—the tone of his first question eager, the tone of his second, dismayed at the sight of Antonio.
“Here, here…” don Francisco directed the two men with their burden to a pile of clean straw bedding.
“Wine and water,” the curly haired giant demanded, as he and his partner settled Antonio down on the straw. Máriam carefully set the lantern down nearby. “Needle and thread, if the wound is deep, and clean bandaging.”
A flagon of wine, pitcher of water, and a goblet rested on the rickety table, along with the tools of surgery: a knife, a skein of thread, a roll of bandages, and a hooked needle that looked designed for catching fish, not sewing human flesh. While Máriam fetched the latter, don Francisco hurried to mix the water and wine in the goblet, then handed it to Antonio and settled next to the injured man.