4

Silence has taught me something of its power.

Mary comes to me to ask my forgiveness, and while I had intended to make her suffer a bit longer, the combination of her repentance and the golden beams of sunset turning the very air of my room into a jeweled paradise dispel every ounce of ill will I held toward her.

Fernando and his brother, Manuel, have come, further lifting my mood. Fernando is delighted to see me in bloom, and presents me with a bellflower that I know I will paint. Then he sits at the piano and, after experimenting with various chords, begins to play a melody as pure and sweet as a dove’s song, bringing as much pleasure to us in the room as the bird did to the children. We gather around him, and I think that music must be a way to enter holy conversation with one another and with God. When the piece ends, various groups of Morrells and neighbors draw together in quiet conversation, and Fernando approaches me at the piazza doors. I know I make a pretty scene for him, with the gentle night breeze stirring my lilac satin gown. It is the first of the dresses promised to me from Madame Morrell, and I have never worn so becoming a frock. I hold the bellflower and inhale its fragrance.

“¿Te gusta la noche?” Fernando says, while pointing out at the night.

“Sí,” I say.

“¿Cabalgas conmigo?” He makes a riding motion with his hands.

“Tonight?” I have never ridden in the night, and I think there has never been such a magical suggestion. I scan the room for Eduardo, and motion for him to join us.

“May we ride, Eduardo? Under the moon and the stars?”

He hurries to ask his father, who agrees with a nod of the head. Madame Morrell looks as if she would rather we did not, but Manuel and Louisa have heard, and will join us. It will be a night-riding party! I encourage Mary to come, and to my surprise she agrees. Within a half hour, we are galloping down the avenue toward the mountains. The ladies here do not wear bonnets, and my ringlets have fallen by the time we reach the border of La Recompensa, but I pay no heed. I feel as if I have no cares. Oh, to ride in the night; I am restored! I lean in to embrace the neck of Rosillo, and squeeze my eyes shut, inhaling the scent of his exertion mingled with the garden’s intoxicating fragrance.

“Miss Sophia, look!” calls Eduardo, pointing up to the sky that seems to pass us as if the world were turning at double speed. “Beautiful!” he says, pronouncing each syllable, and making us all laugh. Fernando and Manuel echo him, to our delight, and we begin calling out the English names for the celestial bodies while they imitate us. Mary smiles as never before. She is so much more at ease when her native tongue is being spoken.

We continue on, following our eager guide, Eduardo, and end up at the base of a cataract, gleaming in the night. By day the spray of this waterfall sparkles with the brilliance of jewels, but in the darkness the drops are not discernible; the water is one fluid, silvery being, pouring forth in a deluge. I drink in great gulps of air, inhaling its freshness, and entering communion with divinity itself.

There is heat at my side in the cool of the night, and it is Fernando. He allows his leg to rest against mine and leans in to me.

“You draw me again,” he says.

“I draw you. Mañana.”

“Sí,” he whispers, so close to my ear that if I tilted toward him, his lips would be on it. I am about to do just such a thing when he withdraws from me into the shadows. I breathe in to quiet my throbbing heart, and spot a night-blooming cereus opening in the moon’s light. Once she is in full splendor, I detach her from her vine with apologies to the stalk, and press her in the bosom of my bodice. As we ride back to La Recompensa, I feel her petals on my skin.

I am no woman of letters, but I did once write a poem. It is called “To the Unknown Yet Known,” and addresses the lover I imagine waiting for me. Every once in a while, I am stirred by the shadowy form of a man who I feel was made for me, and I for him. It would terrify Mother to hear such a thing—for she more than any other perpetuates the idea that as a holy artist I must remain alone—but the vision is so strong and seems to come from outside my mind, rather than from within, that I feel I am being told some sacred truth. The lines I penned were born in this vision, and give ode to the artist who awaits me, and whose sweet music will accompany my painting in an artists’ marriage of the highest order. It concludes with my heart’s knowledge that all good I do is for him, and his for me, though we may never meet on this earth.

As the night ride concludes, I allow myself to ask my soul whether Don Fernando is the man I prophesied. I face this question that I have been suppressing because of outward circumstances, but I receive no answer or certainty. It is true I imagined a writer or fellow painter with whom I could live in blissful cocreation, but is not Fernando an artist with music? Does he not make melodies as striking as any collection of words on a page, and naturally, because he was not formally trained?

This thought troubles me, because I could never assimilate myself to plantation life. On the other hand, I cannot deny my love and my destiny. Doing so would deny the very will of God. Perhaps I am here with Mary to change these planters. Fernando is a willing man. He does not suppress his own hatred of the slave system, though he is chained to it by family connection. Perhaps I can help him break away from his own form of enslavement.

As we dismount our horses, I see Dr. and Madame Morrell framed in the light from the salon where they sit on the piazza. She leans her head on his shoulder, and his cheek rests against her hair. Their arms are interwoven, and I see her laugh at something he has whispered to her. While I watch them, I feel a hollow longing, and wonder whether I will ever rest my head on the shoulder of a holy, earthly companion. For the first time perhaps ever, I begin to covet such a union more than I do my artistic solitude.