The Sisterhood (23 page)

“OK, I hope I find something that’ll bring in some money. I can see they need it. The nuns’ clothes are practically rags, and did you know Sor Teresa is blind?” Menina asked. “She needs to see a doctor; she may need a cataract operation or have glaucoma. And Sor Clara is just…old. One minute she’s fine and the next she’s confused. And they say they’re the younger ones. I haven’t met any of the others, but I think some older nuns are bedridden. There are lots of broken windows, so it must be freezing in winter. You can’t just leave a bunch of helpless old ladies to starve and freeze. And old people can have bad falls. What if one of them breaks a hip; how can Sor Teresa pick her up?” Menina was feeling indignant by now.

Captain Fernández Galán sighed. “I know. Is a big problem. In the village we try to help. We bring them food and in the winter
they have the fireplaces and braziers—you know what is a brazier? People bring them wood, charcoal, and…”

“Wood and charcoal won’t heat a place as big as this! Besides, braziers are a fire hazard and charcoal fumes can kill you. Or a forgetful old nun will start a fire and the bedridden ones will burn up, starve to death, or die of hypothermia.”

“Yes, I know these things but the nuns are stubborn and will not leave,” he protested. “It is the life they chose. Is a matter of honor, a test of their faith to keep their vow to God to die here. In the old days there were always girls coming to be nuns or just to live in the convent and work, lay sisters they were called—didn’t take the vows or wear the habits, but lived like nuns. There was an infirmary for the old ones, and lay sisters to care for them. But no more nuns, no lay sisters even, for many years. And even people who bring food and wood and things they need, these people are growing old, too. The young ones, like my brothers and sisters, they come back for the holidays sometimes but don’t want to live in a village. They want city life, nice flats and cars, nice jobs and cinemas and holidays. Old nuns are not their responsibility.” He sighed.

“Is that why you still live here?” she asked. “To look after the nuns?”

“Sor Teresa was my mother’s favorite aunt. She saved my mother’s life once. Now my father is dead and my brothers have gone away, is just a few old nuns, many are my mother’s cousins. I am the only man from the family here, so yes, they are my responsibility. I have promised my father.” Just as Sor Teresa had said.

For a minute Menina was touched. Then she reminded herself that might sound nice now, but he had been extremely unpleasant and rude to her. Though, OK, she had to admit, he had rescued her from those workmen who were looking at her like a piece of meat. But she didn’t have to like him.

“I’ll keep looking. I’d like to help the nuns, too, and anyway, it’s kind of interesting. But don’t forget the bread—first thing tomorrow, OK? I have to use a lot and I don’t think the nuns have enough to eat as it is, so I don’t like to take theirs.”

“No problem. Is always leftover bread in the village, does not go to waste because they feed it to the pigs and chickens. I will bring it. See you then.”

No, don’t see me, just bring the bread, Menina longed to say. But didn’t.

By the time Menina ate her lunch of bread and cheese and some kind of cold tomato soup it was late afternoon, and Sor Clara had said it was her turn in the chapel, so they would finish for the day. They would look in the
sala grande
tomorrow.

Menina checked the underwear she had washed the previous evening. It was still wet. It needed to dry in the open air. She gathered it up and went to hang it in the pilgrims’ garden. She draped her clothes on a warm rock and filled her plastic bottle with water. Back in her room she picked up her notebook and wandered along the cramped little corridors Sor Teresa had said were the oldest part of the building. With the shutters to the garden stuck open, there was enough light to see what looked like two woodcuts, and between them a small portrait of a tonsured monk.

Peering closely, she saw the monk had a crooked nose, and wore a plain habit with a hood. Piggy little eyes squinted off into the distance, and a tight unsmiling mouth was pursed. Was the artist trying to show him as shortsighted? Or focused on something otherworldly or spiritual? She lifted it down to get more of the light on it. The longer she looked, the more she sensed he was looking at something that gave him a smug satisfaction. The longer she looked, the less she liked the monk. “Fr. Ramon Jimenez” it said over his head, and she was just able to make out the words “
Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion
.”

She hung it back up and turned her attention to the woodcuts which were in the line of his gaze. There was a jolly feel to the first one, a fiesta or something. Excited people pointing and holding up their children, soldiers, the dais draped in some kind of banner, people in plain tunics holding tapers.

The companion woodcut was less jolly. It showed the crowd of people in tunics tied together with ropes on a bonfire and a girl with long hair on her knees, raising her hands in supplication to a woman on the dais. The fiesta was taking place around people being burned alive. And on the dais, the same monk from the Inquisition was watching.

The woodcuts, with their strange combination of innocent joy at the spectacle of horrible suffering, were powerfully disturbing. Reeling from their impact, Menina backed away and fled to the garden, into fresh air and the long rays of the setting sun. She sank down on the marble bench and put her head in her hands. She hadn’t been expecting mere pictures to be so terrible. She knew what it was, the Inquisition burning heretics at the stake. It was a picture from a long time ago. The world was different now. Wasn’t it? Why did it feel like it was happening before her very eyes?

Menina sat there while the sun set, then went in and felt her way back along the corridor, averting her eyes from the horrible woodcuts and the evil monk. In her room the candle in the lamp had been lit and the covered tray was on the table. She ate, changed into her robe, tried to read another part of the guidebook, and fell asleep wishing she had a paperback romance or a magazine or anything that was part of her clean, ordered American world. She fell into an uneasy sleep and began to dream.

She was in a crowd pushing forward to see some spectacle in the plaza ahead. “Look,” said a man who turned out to be the fat bus driver. “See the spectacle, eh?” He pointed. At the end of the plaza was a great platform, full of priests and dignitaries, and some
sort of festival seemed to be in progress. A religious procession filed past to assemble before the dignitaries on the dais. They were followed by another slower, drabber procession—barefoot men, women, and children, dressed identically in penitents’ gowns and holding tapers. The crowd waved and called out to them, jeering, shouting. A beautiful girl about Menina’s age looked at them, terror in her eyes. Names were solemnly read out and the people with the tapers began to cry out and weep. The girl Menina’s age fell on her knees before the dais, pleading to a woman wearing a crown. She was a Jewess because she had never known another faith, but she was a loyal Spaniard, about to be married, have mercy…

“Heretics!” cried the bus driver. “Burn them!” He licked his lips as the soldiers began to prod the procession toward the center of the plaza.

“Now comes the fun,” the bus driver exclaimed. There was a silence, then a roll of the drums and the fire was everywhere…her face hot from the fire, Menina woke to her own shriek of terror, twisting against the rope that bound her, desperate to escape the flames at her feet. She sat up in the narrow bed, trembling and rubbing her eyes to banish the nightmare. Just a dream, she told herself over and over, but to avoid it returning she lay awake, fighting off sleep the rest of the night.

From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, Las Golondrinas Convent, Andalusia, Autumn 1548

Deo gratias
, at last I have an assistant in the scriptorium. Not one of the novices, but an eighteen-year-old girl who collapsed at our gate before the autumn storms began. She wore a rough boy’s attire, was crawling with lice, ill, and very nearly unconscious. Her companion, a mountain girl named Maria, must have dragged her bodily up the olive terraces. Maria said the girl’s name was Esperanza, that she was in danger and begged the ladies of the swallows to help her. Maria herself would not wait to eat or rest. She was in a hurry to be gone, saying she hoped to be married soon.

Esperanza spent many weeks in the infirmary before she could tell us more. She was emaciated and weak, and then delirious with a fever brought on by exposure to the cold. She rambled about a secret that frightened her. I took my turn sitting by her side, trying to soothe and comfort her, and assure her steadily that she was safe. By the time Esperanza was well enough to rise from her bed, I had grown fond of her. Somehow she has filled the empty space in my heart left by Salome.

Esperanza went to the Abbess and produced a pouch of
reales
, saying she could pay for her keep if she might be allowed to stay
until summer came. Meanwhile, she would willingly do any work, in the kitchens or laundry or anywhere at all that we might wish.

“My dear, you may stay as long as necessary. Our order is sworn to protect women, and I gathered that you carry a terrible fear of something—though even at your most delirious you would not say what,” said the Abbess. “As to the matter of your work here…” The Abbess took Esperanza’s hands in hers and, examining them, said that it was plain she had never scrubbed pots or clothes, and she doubted Esperanza would be any use at menial work. I quickly asked if Esperanza might act as my assistant in the scriptorium. I had spent enough time with her as she was recovering to learn that she was not only intelligent but well educated. I had her copy a letter or two out for me and her writing was exquisite.

“It is unusual for anyone not admitted to our order to have knowledge of our affairs…but Esperanza, you seem to have kept your counsel regarding your own secrets. Can I trust you to keep it regarding ours?”

Esperanza nodded. “I give you my word, Abbess.”

“Very well.” Then the Abbess reproached Esperanza for forgetting Maria, who had saved her. “Why not send some of your
reales
to her as a marriage gift?” Esperanza blushed and exclaimed, “Of course!”

When I showed her our library and scriptorium, Esperanza looked around her, sighed with pleasure, and began to make herself useful at once, paying close attention to every instruction I gave. What a pity she will not join the order; she would make an excellent scribe when I am gone! But she made a deathbed promise to her father to marry and is determined to keep her promises. She has recovered her spirits and passes the part of the day not spent in the holy offices, prayer, or meals working by my side, sometimes so lost in a volume that I must recall her sharply to the present. Increasingly I entrust the writing to her, and in particular the
infirmary sisters praise her quickness in locating information from our medical texts.

Once Esperanza was settled into her duties, the Abbess was determined to discover what dangerous secret Esperanza had. If we were to protect her, it was necessary to know why. Esperanza finally agreed to tell her story, and after hearing a little, the Abbess insisted she write it in the Chronicle.

Esperanza was the only child of an advisor to the king. Her mother had died at her birth, and she led a lonely existence in Seville, in a somber house full of paintings, tapestries, books, and shadows. Esperanza was left in the care of a nurse, a girl in love with a soldier stationed in Seville, who seized every chance to attend services at the cathedral where her soldier stood guard duty nearby.

One day as her nurse brought Esperanza from Mass, there was a carnival atmosphere in the streets and trumpets and drums in the distance. A noisy crowd pushed and jostled and pressed forward to see some spectacle or other in the plaza ahead. “Master is away, we needn’t hurry,” said the nurse. “Let’s have a little fun, poppet, eh?” She dragged Esperanza to the guardsman, who lifted the child onto his shoulder so she could see.

At the end of the plaza, a platform was crowded with priests and dignitaries, and as the drums grew closer a line of hooded friars entered the plaza, followed by another, slower procession—barefoot, dressed identically in plain gowns and this time under guard, men first, then women and children holding tapers. Among the children Esperanza caught the eye of a little girl her own age, holding the hand of a woman at the edge of the crowd, and waved. The woman and the little girl looked at her with frightened eyes and didn’t wave back. Names were solemnly read out and the people with the tapers began to cry out and weep.

Cheeks flushed and eyes dancing, the nurse pointed. “Those are heretics, enemies of the church. False Christians who returned to their evil Muslim and Jewish ways!” She licked her lips as the soldiers prodded the procession to a great pile of faggots and straw in the middle of the plaza. A few of the people shuffling toward the great mound were pulled aside. Swiftly, soldiers looped a cord round their necks and pulled. The figures slumped to the ground and were lifted, and their limp bodies were tossed onto the pyre. There was a rumble of disapproval from the crowd.