The Sisterhood (18 page)

Winter 1510

It is a hard winter. Snow has fallen continuously in the mountains. Yet in the pilgrims’ garden, by some miracle, the spring does not freeze.

Salome joins the other girls in the schoolroom and learns her prayers in Latin and her numbers. She plays at “writing” at a makeshift table of wooden planks. She wishes to copy me in everything and sits with her adorable face twisted in concentration, practicing her letters. Then Salome looks up at me and a smile lights her face—the way it once lit her father’s when I entered the schoolroom each morning.

There have been wonderful occurrences. The sky was filled with shooting stars at Epiphany, three nights in succession. Despite the cold, an almond tree has blossomed out of season and local people report seeing a fiery dragon in the sky. There is much hunger in the villages, and the Abbess and the sister
in charge of stores are eking out our supplies of grain, oil, and dried fruit to make sure all have something. The nuns, of course, fast as much as possible—faith is a great sustainer of life—but the children in the orphanage and the patients in our infirmary must eat. We fight a constant battle to protect the food stocks from the rats. May God preserve us all until summer and the new crops.

Spring 1512

A sudden spring thaw during Lent brought disaster to the village last week. As the snows melted, a landslide buried a lower slope where the village’s goats and sheep were grazing. The animals were swept away and five men herding them have been brought to the infirmary, badly injured. The infirmary sisters struggle to save four of them, but the fifth will certainly die; he has a pregnant wife and many children who depend on him and whom we must help.

Our stores are nearly bare at this time of year and the Abbess has used the last of our hoarded sugar and flour to make
polvorónes
. The dying man’s brother has volunteered to take them to sell in the city via the ancient but steeper mule track through the trees. At Easter our
polvorónes
are in great demand in the rich households, and the brother can buy as much food as they can spare in the Valley of the Swallows to share out among the hungry villagers. In the convent we are reduced to a thin gruel, but nuns can survive on prayer. Salome has most of my share. She is too thin and her skin has a translucent look.

Summer 1514

News reaches us that the Spanish governors of the island of Hispaniola are criticized for their treatment of the natives there, and in Seville many are dead of the plague. We pray for the priests who have condemned the violent treatment of the Indians and say novenas for an end to the pestilence, for the dead and dying. The Holy Office sent another letter emphasizing the faithful are required to report any suspected of being false Christians. The Abbess was bad tempered for the rest of the day.

The slope below the convent has been terraced, and the apple trees and new olive trees are thriving. Our chickens increase and peck among them, though we must be careful all are shooed into their enclosure at nightfall, on account of the foxes. We will have special Masses said for a good harvest this year.

Spring 1518

Two visiting friars sought permission from the Abbess to speak to me at the
locutio
in the scriptorium on a medical matter. They were seeking a remedy for the bite of a mad dog. They whispered through the grille in the scriptorium that they had heard there was an infidel remedy that was infallible, and they were desperate for their bitten brother. I ceased my work and went to find the treatise by Avicenna but their furtive urging made me suspect they were
Inquisition informers. Since Avicenna was a Muslim doctor, I told them that the remedy I copied out for them was given to us two centuries ago by a Christian hermit who had lived in a mountain cave nearby. Perhaps they had heard of the book written by his acolyte? A very holy man. The remedy had been revealed to him by San Hieronimo. I cautioned them, the remedy would only be efficacious if applied with a pure heart while special prayers to the Virgin and St. Anthony were recited.

The friars cannot read.

September 1520

Late this summer two royal princesses followed in the late queen’s footsteps and paid a visit, accompanied by many noble ladies. Their entourage made a great spectacle. Their coaches were drawn by pure-white mules, and they were accompanied by outriders with colorful banners, a large mounted guard in livery, and many Jesuits. The princesses had a requiem Mass said in the chapel for their grandparents, Isabella and Ferdinand, and their widowed mother, Queen Juana who is confined to a convent in Tordesillas. The gossip among the ladies-in-waiting was that ever since being widowed many years ago, she keeps her husband’s preserved corpse in her cell for company and is greatly disturbed in the mind. Others said that the story of her husband’s corpse is a fabrication, that she is sound of mind and kept prisoner against her will. Poor lady, a woman is powerless against the might of the church and secular authorities who will declare her mad or weak or both to justify their disposal of her.

The princesses stayed for three days, taking part in the daily life of the convent at Mass, prayers, and meals, and even donning straw hats to pick vegetables in our garden. The orphanage children sang an anthem for them, quite beautifully we thought, and afterward they gave each child a gold coin, including Salome whom they assumed was one of the orphanage girls. The princesses renewed their grandmother’s promise of patronage and made a generous gift to the convent before departing. The Abbess was quite exhausted afterward.

Salome sits by my side half the day. She finishes her lessons before the other girls, and grows restless. She is quick with her Latin and Greek and can read Italian and a little French. I require her to sit still and practice her writing, stressing the importance of a neat, even, and legible hand, with no ink blots—despite her tearful protests that this is impossible. She stamps her foot when I oblige her to recopy mistakes, but she is learning to write with a beautiful, even hand.

The Abbess assigns Salome small scribe’s tasks, sharpening quills or preparing the ink, and since Salome is conscientious and always washes her hands before she touches a book, the Abbess allows her to look at our beautiful illuminated missals. Some very fine ones were donated by our royal patronesses, with gold lettering enclosing holy pictures in the most beautiful detail of saints and angels and the Virgin, castles and knights, animals so finely drawn that even their little whiskers are discernible, fields and forests, sun and moon and stars, a glowing glimpse of a heavenly world. Salome loves them as much as the Abbess and I do, and has developed a fine sensitivity to the paintings in the convent, too.

She dislikes many of those donated by the pilgrims—compared to our beautiful manuscript they are often quite badly drawn, a triumph of faith over skill, but the Abbess insists we must hang
all such gifts. The dark corridor we pass through on our way to the
sala de las niñas
each morning is full of the worst ones.

But finer paintings occasionally come to us with an orphan’s dowry, and Salome helps the Abbess choose which to hang in the
sala de las niñas
. There are paintings of the Virgin and infant Christ and of child saints, showing the gentle influence of the Italian school with lovely rich colors, sensitive faces, and exquisite perfect landscapes in the background exuding the warmth of divine grace. They make the
sala de las niñas
a kindly room for the orphanage children.

At fifteen Salome is tall for her age, with her father’s dark-blue eyes and my gold hair, before it was shorn. She does not see why she may not have a novice’s habit yet. I tell her all in good time, though my heart is in turmoil for her future. Although I have found peace and contentment as a nun, because I was in love once I perceive that my daughter has an equal capacity for passion. I would not like her to be obliged to take the veil like the orphanage children, yet I do not see how she is to experience life outside the convent, or marry. And of course I would not send her away alone. When I ponder what is best for Salome, I imagine Alejandro and I had managed our escape to Portugal. We would now be discussing the future of Salome and our other children by the fire of a long winter’s night. But it is ungrateful to repine. Salome’s life will be as God wills.

Summer 1521

Salome is sixteen and has finally acquired the novice’s habit she longed for. She thinks it is a promotion from the schoolroom, and that it makes her the equal of the other girls who enter the novitiate at sixteen. She is lively and affectionate and full of mischief.