I pulled away from her. “Everyone knows the queen will protect us; King Fernando himself is a converso. What you’re saying is mad, Mamá. You should hear yourself! Papá said that you’re beyond reason now that the Inquisition has come. They’re here only to get the Judaizers.” Her words had frightened me enough to make me angry, and I cast about for words to hurt her. “And good riddance!”
She gaped at me in silence for a few long seconds; an expression of growing horror crept into her eyes.
Wounded, my mother turned her face from me and shook her head. “I’m not beyond reason, Marisol,” she whispered sadly. “I’m quite rational. It’s everyone else who has gone insane.”
* * *
I never told my father about my mother’s plan to leave, because I couldn’t believe that she meant it; even if she had, I felt that her keenness to escape would soon pass. I knew that she could never leave my father and me behind. And I refused to think about whether I should turn my mother and Máriam in to the Inquisition, because I knew I was incapable. It was far easier to believe my father’s reassurances that the Inquisition would leave us all alone.
The next weeks brought cool but sunny weather, and my mother began to paint in her studio constantly, producing more ceramics than she ever had. The potter’s wagon started arriving at our house almost every day to pick up the pieces she’d finished and deliver new ones—one of which was a massive Saint Santiago. Brother to John the Apostle, Santiago preached the Gospel in ancient Iberia before returning to the Holy Land to be martyred. When Christian fighters returned to Spain to reclaim it from the Moors, they called upon Santiago, who miraculously appeared in the middle of a battle with horse, sword, and shield, and brought the Christians a decisive victory.
This particular Santiago was three times the size of my mother’s usual pieces, as large as the Santiago in the Hojedas’ courtyard. But this Santiago was a gorgeous work: This Saint James’s expression was fierce, his chiseled beard and long hair stirred by an imaginary wind, his muscular steed in mid-gallop, his sword lifted high to rally the troops against the infidel. Beneath his horse’s hoof, the crushed Muslim warrior’s face reflected the full agony of his death throes. As with certain other grand pieces scheduled for grand fates, my mother would not let me near this Santiago; I respected her artistic eccentricity and never laid a hand on it.
If my mother saw any contradiction between her secret life and her avocation, she never spoke of it to me. If anything, she looked on the Santiago statue with peculiar zeal, eager to start work upon it since she’d not been given much time to finish it, but reluctantly forced to finish her work on other statues first. I remember her looking on it longingly one day and saying to me as we worked, “Promise me, Marisol, that if anything happens to me, you’ll finish him.” I scoffed at her, saying that such a thought was completely ridiculous, that nothing would happen to her. But I wondered why she would ask me to finish it, since she clearly thought it worthy of her hand alone.
During this time, Magdalena never spoke to me again of abandoning Seville, although, when I came to help her in the studio one day, she caught my hand and said with heartfelt remorse, “I never meant to ruin your life. You should have been married by now, with children.”
I scolded her for saying such a ridiculous thing. “It has everything to do with Antonio Vargas and nothing to do with you, Mamá.”
Her expression was profoundly serious. “I hope so,” she answered. “And Marisol…” Her tone grew confidential. “Don’t give up hope. Antonio loves you and will come for you. Only wait.”
Before I could answer that such hope was enormously foolish, she squeezed my hand. “But why worry about things, when there’s so much work to be done?”
And she picked up her brush again with an odd, forced cheer.
Perhaps this was only a new phase of her lunacy. Even so, I was happy that her work kept her occupied—and sad for my father, whose closest friend on the city council, Jorge de Susán, a converso, had disappeared along with his wife and children the previous night, leaving virtually all of his possessions behind.
* * *
Although I still resented my father for striking my mother, I accompanied him to the bonfires held on the twenty-first of December, to mark the shortest day of winter and the beginning of the Christmas season. It was a crisp, clear evening, with no winds—the perfect weather for building fires—and as the sun set, the air filled with the scent of burning hardwood.
Flanked by four men-at-arms on horseback, don Diego and I rode in a carriage the few blocks to the great Plaza de San Francisco, the largest public square in all Seville, and the massive whitewashed Gothic structures that housed the church, two chapels, the convent, two hospitals, and a library, all run by the Franciscan monks. In the square’s center a vast bonfire—the height of two men and the width of a dozen—burned while a brown flock of monks stoked it. This was flanked on either side by smaller fires, which all the male parishioners leapt over in order to win good health for themselves and their families in the coming year. All but the smallest boys and oldest men could easily make the jump, and my agile-footed father was one of the best leapers. He cleared the bonfire handily, which brought offers of wine and sherry from the other men; he refused none, but proceeded to get unusually drunk and sing Christmas carols with a discernable slur. His guards drank with him, although every converso in town was well aware of the fact that, like the other leapers, the Old Christian men at the nearby Church of San Pablo were imbibing heavily and therefore posed a danger. Even so, Diego and his guards had dispensed with caution, and within an hour they stood swaying, cheeks pressed together as they harmonized in the fire’s glow, arms flung around one another’s shoulders as if they were old friends and not business acquaintances.
I kept company with the women and forced myself to sing along with them. After the carols stopped and the priest emerged to bless the crowd and send us home, my father didn’t want to stop celebrating, but stopped by a half dozen smaller street celebrations to demonstrate his nimbleness—which, as he consumed more sherry, began to suffer.
I’d never seen my father so drunk. By the time I got him home—with little help from the swaying guards—and sat him down at the supper table, he could no longer keep his head lifted and came dangerously close to falling face-first into his soup bowl. I spooned what I could into him and tried to help him to his bed, but he grew belligerent, and I was obliged to leave him slumped in a chair in the second-floor sitting room with a flagon of sherry. Exhausted and furious at my father for behaving so childishly, I went to bed and fell into a heavy sleep.
Four hours before dawn on the morning of the twenty-second of December, I woke to a peculiar state of alertness. Some subtle noise had wakened me—a door opening in the distance or light footsteps, perhaps from a fading dream—and I sat up, aware of my fast-beating heart. I threw on my dressing gown and hurried out to the loggia; at its southern end, beneath the lantern over the stairs, I spied a blur of movement, of night-faded color, just before it slipped down out of sight.
I followed silently, at a safe distance, and crept downstairs. At the open double doors to the sitting room, I paused to find that my father was still slumped in his padded chair, his chin resting upon his chest, his lips puffing outward as he expelled air. The half-consumed flagon of sherry rested on the little table beside him, next to an oil lamp with a dying blue flame.
My mother was leaning over him. She was completely awake and wearing not her nightgown nor her usual black, but the heavy blue-green velvet dress with the hoops of the verdugado. Her hair was braided, wound at the nape of her neck, and covered by her best black lace veil; she looked down at my father adoringly as she put a gentle hand upon the inner crook of his elbow.
“Diego,” she said gently. “Diego, my love, come to bed.”
My father snorted and opened his vacant, bloodshot eyes. “Who is it?” he growled. He blinked at her and gave a start. “Lena? Is it really you?”
&nb
sp; She smiled down at him and stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers. “It is. Let me help you to bed, don Diego.”
She helped him stand—he was very unsteady—and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
I should have helped her get him to bed. If I’d done that one little thing, perhaps everything would be different now. But I understood nothing, and I was reluctant to interrupt such a tender moment between my parents.
My father turned his head and kissed her on the lips, then grinned at her. “How beautiful you are … you’ve grown young again.”
She laughed softly and slipped beneath his arm to support him. I hid out in the corridor, behind the open door as they passed by, and waited for their heavy footfalls to fade upon the stairs before following. My father’s bedchamber was one floor up, in the same south wing of the house; I got to the landing midway up the stairs and lingered there, listening to the sound of his chamber door opening and closing. I expected my mother to emerge shortly and cross the covered loggia to her room in the north wing, next to mine.
Rather than fade, however, my mother’s footsteps grew louder; she was headed back down the stairs. I hurried out of her line of sight, careful to be as quiet as possible, and went back to my hiding place behind the open door of the sitting room to peer through the crack as she neared. For an instant she drew so close—close enough to hear my breath, which I promptly held—that I expected her to fling back the door and expose me.
Instead, she stopped in the corridor a few arms’ lengths away, and from a pool of shadow on the floor retrieved a black wool cloak and slipped it on. Accustomed to the lack of light, I watched as a spasm of grief briefly contorted her features, then transformed into an expression of determination. She turned her back to me, raised the hood of her cloak, and melted into the darkness. Gulping in air, I waited behind the door as her rapid steps faded down the corridor and headed—not up the stairs and back to her chamber, as I expected—down toward the kitchen. I gave her a full flight’s head start so that I would not be seen and then followed her. Even then I had convinced myself that her winter cloak was coincidental, that she was only going down to the kitchen because she was hungry, that she was not making a foolish attempt to leave. Even if she was, I kept silent; I didn’t want anyone to hear us, because I didn’t want my father to punish her again.
By the time I made it downstairs and into the kitchen, however, I could no longer tell myself lies: My mother had run silently out onto the patio, unbolted and swung open the front gate, and slipped out into the street. The faint clang of the iron latch alarmed me so that I forgot to lift my skirts as I passed from the kitchen onto the patio, and my slippered foot caught the hem of my dressing gown. My right knee and hands struck the cobblestones with such force that I let go a muffled yelp; yet my mother didn’t return, nor did the night guards come to investigate. I pushed myself up on stinging palms to discover that the skirt of my gown had ripped beneath the injured knee, which was throbbing and felt as if the suddenly tight skin would burst. I was hobbled but still unwilling to call for my father and cause another unpleasant scene. Besides, I knew his watchmen outside would never let my mother go running off into the city unescorted, especially at this hour, and so I paused and gingerly eased my weight onto my right leg.
I’ll never forgive myself that moment of hesitation.
The pain forced a gasp from me. Straightening the leg made my eyes tear, but I was so troubled by the silence in the street beyond the iron gate—why hadn’t one of the guards challenged my mother?—that I forced myself to move, keeping my swollen knee bent and allowing any weight to strike only the ball of my right foot. Teetering and clenching my teeth, I limped as fast as I could over the patio and through the gate, onto the street. Smoke from dead or dying bonfires filled the air, stinging my eyes and throat and veiling the world in an acrid, dreamlike haze.
In the shadow of the hulking Hojeda house, a pair of my father’s watchmen sat in the center of the cobblestone cul-de-sac in front of what had once been a blazing bonfire, reduced now to a large pile of smoldering white ash and angry embers. Their bodies were pressed shoulder to shoulder against the cold, their heads bowed—not in prayer, but slumber.
I panicked and squinted through the filmy air, searching for my mother; had it not been for the near-full moon hanging beyond the curtain of smoke, brightening the black sky to indigo, I would never have glimpsed her slight form at the south end of our street, turning west onto the broad thoroughfare of San Pablo Street.
I took in a large breath to call out to the sleeping guards, and choked on the smoky air instead. The men didn’t stir at my coughing; I managed to draw in enough air to shout hoarsely: “Wake up, wake up!”
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 he
r, 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.