My Mortal Enemy
1576
Luis
All things change and we change with them. It was hard to believe that the tender affection I felt for Miguel during our school days in Madrid had turned to animosity. Our Redeemer’s message is to forgive those who injure us, but my heart blackened and seethed with hatred and I couldn’t stop its petrifaction. I did not recognize myself anymore. If I examined my features in a mirror, I looked exactly the same, but my soul was no longer that of the gentleman and Christian I professed to be. There was no light in my eyes. My best friend’s betrayal revealed to me that hatred, like love, is an uncontrollable emotion, one that lived and grew in me like a heaving, insatiable incubus I could not exorcise. Hatred, I discovered, could outlast love.
I was relieved when Miguel wrote me from Rome. I had won. What the eyes cannot see, the heart cannot feel. There was truth to that. He was far enough away not to represent an immediate threat to my happiness with Mercedes. The epistles he sent me during the time he worked for the cardinal went unanswered. They were full of anecdotes about the colorful—and important—people he met in Rome, his excited comments about the Italian poets he read in Dante’s language, his swooning descriptions of the great works of art in the churches, basilicas, and private homes. Yet after a while there was a lull in his letter writing. Perhaps he came to realize I was not going to answer him.
Two years went by. Then, one evening at my grandparents’ home after dinner, Mercedes and I went for a stroll in the flowering orchard. We meandered in silence until Mercedes sat down on a stone bench in an arbor. I sat next to her. It was April, the air was redolent of fragrant blossoms. The birds that hid in the thickets during the hot hours of the day had begun to emerge in search of insects and had commenced their evening twitters. Mercedes seemed enraptured by the sweetness of the moment. I said, “I’ve been thinking, my love, why wait three more years for the start of our happiness?”
Mercedes looked away, her gaze lost in a shadowy corner of the orchard. Though physically she remained by my side, her mind was somewhere else. After graduation I hoped my family would intercede to find me work in His Majesty’s court. My dream was to settle with Mercedes in Madrid, to raise a family, and to devote my free hours to poetry. I had been taught that modesty is a quality every true gentleman must have. So I had no grand dreams; big dreams were for adventurers and soldiers of fortune. My aspirations were those of most men of my station.
“Why the sudden change in plans?” She looked puzzled. “Why not wait until you graduate, as we discussed? Marriage could distract you from your studies, Luis.”
I was not one of those men who thought that a woman was by nature a defective creature. Despite my obfuscated state I could see that her objection was perfectly legitimate. Mercedes was discreet, the embodiment of immaculate virtue, of purity itself. Her reputation was above all suspicion and blemish. I was sure there was no other woman in Spain as chaste as she was. However, this was the first time she had said no to me, and the beast of jealousy roared inside me. What reason could she have for delaying my wedding proposal, other than secretly loving Miguel and hoping he would return?
“I’ve consulted with my parents and our grandparents, and they have raised no objection. Besides,” I added, knowing she loved living in Toledo with our grandparents, “if you like, you can live here until I finish school. I will come visit at every possible opportunity.”
“I cannot give you an answer today, Luis.” Mercedes sighed, then took my hands in hers and held them against her cheek. The warmth of her hands made me want to kiss her on the lips and ravish her. When her long hair and her eyelashes brushed my skin, I had to still the trembling I felt overcoming me. She spoke, remaining in the same position, and her breath stroked the skin of my hands. “This is a complete surprise. I need more time to think about it before I agree to the change in our plans.”
At that moment I regretted not having punctured Miguel’s heart with my sword the day I found him in Mercedes’s chamber. I pulled my hands away from hers, got up, and walked back to the house alone.
* * *
The joyous news came to Alcalá that our forces had defeated the Turks at Lepanto. As was the case after major battles fought in foreign lands, it took months before the names of the survivors were printed on the broadsheets that were glued on the walls of the government buildings. The day I heard from a visitor to my house that the broadsheets were posted, I rushed out to read with rapt attention the names of the survivors. Rodrigo Cervantes’s name appeared as a survivor, but there was no mention of Miguel. The Turks had taken no prisoners. Could it be that he was dead?
A few days later in Toledo, my grandmother, who went to early Mass every day, asked during supper, “Luis, is Rodrigo Cervantes a relative of your friend Miguel?” It was the first time since Miguel had fled Madrid that his name had been mentioned in my presence. “I read his name on a broadsheet outside the church this morning.”
“I read the list of survivors that was published in Alcalá,” I acknowledged. “Miguel’s name was not on it.” I kept my head low, staring at the roast leg of lamb in front of me. The meat on my plate suddenly nauseated me. I dared not look in the direction of Mercedes. I took the silence around the table to mean that I was expected to say more. “Abuela, I’ve been very sad, as you can imagine. He was my dearest friend in the years before I went to Alcalá. I’d never had a friend like that before.” I should have ended it there. Instead, I heard myself saying, “I wanted to spare all of you. But I might as well tell you that one of my classmates ran into Miguel’s father in Madrid. Don Rodrigo informed him that Miguel’s body has not been found. The last time he was seen during the battle, he was fatally wounded. Don Rodrigo fears that Miguel’s corpse sank to the bottom of the Bay of Corinth.” It was the biggest lie I had ever told, a lie so grievous I wondered whether it was a mortal sin to wish the death of someone I knew—anyone’s death, for that matter. It was too late now. I could not go back in time to erase my words.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” my grandfather responded. “I know he was like a brother to you. May God keep him in His Glory.” He crossed himself.
My grandmother also crossed herself. “I will have a Mass said for his soul,” she said.
I looked in Mercedes’s direction: her eyes were closed, and a gleaming tear slid down her cheek.
* * *
A few months after the scene in the garden, I heard from Miguel. The wretch was still alive. This time his letters were filled with a woeful tale of the wounds he received fighting the Turks, making it sound as if his heroics alone were responsible for crushing the Ottoman navy. When he was not boasting, Miguel complained about his slow recovery in the Italian hospitals, and the loss of the use of his left hand. I felt a burst of joy when I heard he was crippled. In the same breath, I hated myself for rejoicing in the misery of another human being, especially someone I had once loved without reservation. I knew it was a sin and unchristian to feel that way, even about my enemy, but my hatred was stronger than my faith.
In his letter, Miguel pleaded with me to intercede in the king’s courts with high officials I knew through my family, to expedite the back payment of his wages and to grant him the pension due to invalid soldiers. I burned his letters.
Praemonitus pramunitus, my father used to say. Why leave it to chance? As unlikely as it seemed, what if Miguel somehow managed to return to Spain? I was aware that the wheel of Fortune took unpredictable turns. Was my fear justified or irrational? I would never let Miguel take Mercedes away from me. Still, I had to take decisive action.
* * *
Mercedes married me in a private ceremony in Toledo attended only by our family. That day, which should have been one of the happiest of my life, was marred by the circumstances under which Mercedes had changed her mind. Had she been hoping that Miguel would return to Spain?
My jealousy notwithstanding, I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful or considerate or gentle wife. Our harmonious domesticity seemed to indicate that we would be as happy in our marriage as my parents were in theirs. As for Miguel, Mercedes was now my wife. Even if he managed to return to Castile, he could never take her away from me.
Mercedes remained with our grandparents until I finished my studies at Alcalá. Not long after our wedding, she became gravid with child. The news filled me with the greatest joy I’ve ever known. If it pleased God, I hoped there would be many more children to come. Though her health had always been good, from the very beginning her pregnancy was fraught with complications. Diego was born in the seventh month, and Mercedes bled so much during the birth that the doctors feared for her life for the first forty-eight hours afterward.
The joy of fatherhood was diminished by Diego’s sickly constitution. He would often refuse the teats of the wet nurses we brought to the house, and Mercedes’s breasts produced but a few opaque drops of milk. My son’s growth was almost imperceptible. A year after his birth, Diego was so skinny and frail I feared crushing one of his ribs when I lifted him in my arms. He was as pale as a white lily, as if no blood ran in his veins. Without an apparent reason, he would cry for hours, sometimes for days, not with the anger of infants, but as if he mourned an inconsolable loss. No matter where I was in the house, or how far I tried to get away from his wailing, I could still hear him. Even when I was leagues away in my residence in Alcalá, after I said my prayers at night and snuffed the candle, I could hear him crying in the darkness, as clearly as if his cradle were next to my bed.
Diego’s frailty was our greatest worry, and Mercedes became his shadow. Her precautions bordered on the unhealthy: she insisted on first tasting everything he ate; she made sure that he never stepped on the floor barefoot; that he was not exposed to the sun during the hottest hours of the day; that he was not ever caught in the rain; that he avoided the evening’s dew; that he was never in the proximity of anyone with a cold, or a cough, or recovering from a fever or any kind of illness; that he was swaddled in heavy fur wraps at night; that after his baths, he sat by a fire, sipping a hot cup of chocolate, until his entire body was dry.
Diego seemed to accept all the excessive concern with forbearance. Mercedes’s devotion to our son was so complete that she began neglecting her appearance. Yet despite her lack of vanity, motherhood had endowed her with a ripeness and softness that made her lovelier than ever. My desire for her grew. She would never again be as beautiful as she was after the birth of Diego. But I became invisible to her, an acquaintance living in the same house. She forgot her wifely duties to me, and slept on a cot by Diego’s bedside.
* * *
Was God punishing me for my unfounded jealousy about Mercedes? For my hatred of Miguel? Hatred was, I knew, a slap to God’s face. Obviously I was not a good Christian. In my youth, as a student in Madrid, poetry had been my religion. Yes, I was a dutiful Catholic: I fasted when I was supposed to fast; I went to Mass on Sundays; I confessed and received Holy Communion every week; I observed the religious holidays. I did everything that was expected of me, but I did not live for God: I wanted the earthly rewards. I worked harder to attain those than to earn my place in heaven, which I believed was virtually guaranteed me by the apposite life I led. I began to go to Mass at dawn daily; when that proved insufficient to quell the disquiet in my soul, I started to pray for a few hours every day, like Grandfather Lara did. I prayed for the health of my son; that he would grow stronger and become a man; above all, that the sins of the father would not be visited on the son.
As a graduation present, my parents gave us a large and handsome house near our ancestral home. I hoped the move to Madrid would signal a new start for our marriage, and that Madrid’s distractions would bring some gaiety into our lives. Perhaps furnishing the house would provide a pleasant diversion for Mercedes. As befitted our station, our home was one of Madrid’s elegant residences. Momentarily, the old spark in Mercedes’s eyes came back. But as the months passed, and we settled into our new life, she became once more solely concerned with Diego’s well-being. Leonela had come to live with us as Mercedes’s maid-in-waiting. She supervised the servants, arranged the furniture, hung the portraits of our ancestors, oversaw the work of the gardener, planned our meals with the cook.
Through my family’s influence, I was secured a position as an officer in the Department of Collections of the Guardas of Castile. My office was in charge of collecting everywhere in the kingdom the taxes that financed the king’s army, navy, and public works. My work required that I travel throughout Spain to supervise the books kept by our auditors. I enjoyed seeing all of Spain and visiting its remotest corners. Yet I always looked forward to returning home, where Diego would receive me with his sweet smile, kisses, and hugs. My son hadn’t stopped crying, but now he wept silently, and only while he slept. Some nights I would sit by his bed and watch his fitful crying, tears falling out of his eyes so copiously that his pillow would be wet by morning. The most eminent doctors in Madrid came to visit Diego and proclaimed him small for his age; otherwise, he was in good health. One day, when he was old enough to understand, I asked him, “Tell me, my son, are you in pain at night? Show me where it hurts.”
“It doesn’t hurt, Papá, but it’s sad here,” he answered sweetly, as he placed his little hand on his chest, on top of his heart.
I kept this conversation to myself. I became convinced my son’s crying was a sign from God. Could Diego be one of His saints? Had he come into the world to shed tears for the sins of humanity? For my sins?
Mercedes and I had no choice but to accept Diego’s chronic crying as no more than an idiosyncrasy. It was in our interest not to allow the situation to be known all over Madrid. If the Holy Office found out about it, how would they interpret my son’s crying? How would they react? Would he have to appear in front of them?
Mercedes became more distant, yet there was little discord between us. It was apparent to me, and perhaps even to my parents, that I loved her more than she loved me. The intimacy of our youth was gone, and this saddened me. It was hard to pinpoint at what exact moment we had begun to live separate lives. Was it after Diego’s birth? Had my unvoiced suspicions created a distance between us? She spent most of her time with Diego and Leonela. I tried to reignite the old bond: I brought Mercedes lavish presents from my trips; I inquired about her life when I was not around. Her usual reply was a litany: “Diego’s health requires my constant attention, Luis. He’s not like other children. I have no other life. I want no other life. If my son is not well, I am not well.”
* * *
There was so much corruption among the officials in government that I wanted to do my work with exemplary probity. My assiduousness caught the eye of my superiors and, before long, His Catholic Majesty rewarded my vigilance with an important position in the Guardas. I would be based in Madrid, in a building that belonged to Las Cortes.
It could not be good for Diego to spend all his time surrounded by women. Despite the doctors’ pronouncements, no friends were allowed to visit him, for fear of the illnesses of childhood. Diego was bright, full of questions, and loved to hear stories read to him. My dreams of becoming a poet had been derailed by the path fortune had laid out for me. I had little time to read and savor poetry, let alone write it. But when I noticed Diego’s interest in stories, I began to hope he would grow up to become the poet I knew I’d never be. My work and the education of my son became the center of my life.
Mercedes’s remoteness was now a permanent state. I thought that if she became less anxious about Diego’s health, she might return to being the Mercedes I had known all my life.
Then word reached Madrid that the passengers on the vessel El Sol, including Miguel and his brother Rodrigo, had been captured on their way to Spain by Algerian corsairs. Why had I been cursed with Miguel’s shadow? What would I have to do to never hear about him again?
One night soon after I heard the news, I was dining in my chamber alone, as had become my habit since we moved to Madrid, when there was a knock on my door. My attendant opened it and Mercedes came in, apparently upset. Something important must have happened: it had been awhile since she had visited my chambers. “I’ll ring for you when I’ve finished my supper,” I said to my servant and waved my hand in the direction of the door. Mercedes sat at the table across from me. I moved my dinner plate aside and took a sip of wine. By the light of the candle, she looked spectral, as if she hadn’t slept in a long time. The gleam in her eyes perturbed me. “Has anything happen to Diego?” I asked.
“No, Diego is well, thank God. He’s already asleep.” She went on, “Leonela came home with the news about Miguel de Cervantes and his brother. Why did you lie to me, Luis? Why did you tell me he had died at Lepanto?”
That she could be interested in Miguel after so many years hurt me, and it made me want to hurt her back. So I had not been imagining things—there was a basis for my suspicions. I said, “I didn’t think you’d care whether he lived or died. As I got to know him better, I realized he was no friend of mine, but someone who wanted to harm me. I didn’t want to hear his name mentioned again in my home. As far as I’m concerned, he’s dead.”
“From the time we were children, Luis,” she began, her voice quivering with anger, “I admired your rectitude, your sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. Unlike me, unlike most people, I thought you were incapable of lying. You represented the best of Spanish manhood; I was sure I would never meet a better man than you. That’s why I grew up loving you, not the way one loves a cousin, but the way a husband is loved; that’s why I accepted the idea that one day we would get married. I didn’t know what romantic love was—except for the way it was talked about in the novels of chivalry—so I confused the admiration you inspired in me for love.”
I should have asked her to say no more and leave my chamber. Better, I should have left it myself. I knew that the longer she went on, the more irreparable would be the damage done to our marriage. Instead, I hung my head and kept silent, though I wanted to scream, If I became a liar, Mercedes, it was because Miguel de Cervantes forced me to do so. Unlike him, I was not born an impostor!
Mercedes’s features became distorted; her pallor intensified. She got up from her chair and paced in front of me, with her fists clenched against her breasts.
“While my feelings for you were genuine and pure,” she continued, “I knew I didn’t love you the way a wife is supposed to love her husband. I thought that because of your wonderful qualities, and with the passage of time, I would come to love you the way I ought to. But from the moment I saw Miguel de Cervantes, something that had lain dormant in my heart was stirred.” Her eyes teared, and her open hands, which she rested on her cheeks, trembled in tiny spasms. Mercedes seemed incapable of measuring her words, or of comprehending the effect they had on me. “Miguel brought laughter into my secluded world. He awakened my fantasy; he made me dream. He represented the world from which I had been sheltered. How often I had thought of those unfortunate women who dressed as men to go out in the world—to see all the things that are impossible to examine with your own eyes when you are a woman forced to spend most of your life behind the walls of your familial home. When Miguel came through our front door it was as if the world—that part of the world that I could only intuit—had been brought to me. He represented a knowledge of things I didn’t know and for which I was hungry.”
The reasons for her betrayal were untenable. If she had confided in me how much she longed to see the outside world, I would have shown her what lay beyond the walls of our grandparents’ home. Yet, despite the jabbing pain I felt in my heart, a part of me was relieved. My suspicions were not unfounded after all: I had not maligned Mercedes; I did not have to ask her forgiveness; she was not the pure example of womanhood I had taken her for. It was as if in an instant my life, everything I had loved and believed in, had been sullied. At that moment I wanted to die. I would have run out of that room and killed myself, if I didn’t know that suicide is the worst offense to God. I will live for Diego. I will live for my son. And then I thought, I will not rest until Miguel de Cervantes is dead.
Mercedes had more to say: “Believe me when I tell you that I fought my feelings for him.” She shook her head with violence and let out a sharp sob of a wounded beast that made me shudder. “But my passion was stronger than me. I have loved Miguel all these years, and always will.” There was hatred in her gaze; I felt faint when I realized that it was aimed at me. “I agreed to marry you, Luis, because I believed you when you told us at the dinner table that Miguel had died in battle.” She paused. There was absolute silence in my chamber, but a chorus of voices clamored in my head. The volume of her voice reached a crescendo. “Why did you lie to me? If you hadn’t, perhaps in time I might have forgotten Miguel and come to love you as my husband. Now I can never forgive you for your lie, Luis. Never. Never.”
“I did it because I loved you,” I blurted out pathetically, not wanting to believe that my Mercedes was bent upon humiliating me. “I did it because I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want to see you dishonored by a man unworthy of you.”
The horrible words she said next have festered in my brain and heart from that night: “Do you remember that scene in my bedchamber, when Miguel professed his love for me and I turned him away? We staged that, so you would not suspect us anymore and we could continue seeing each other. It was hard for me not to laugh knowing you were behind the curtain. But I didn’t want to harm you; I just couldn’t live without Miguel’s caresses.”
The way she said “we” made me feel as if she had sliced me into hundreds of pieces and then sprinkled them with salt. “Basta!” I screamed, rising from my chair and rushing out of my chamber before I strangled her to death. From that moment on, the tranquility in which I had spent most of my days vanished, never to return.
For a true Castilian, honor is everything. My honor, my surname, and my blood were one. Mercedes’s dishonorable behavior dishonored my family and me. And a man despoiled of his honor was better off dead. If her reputation was stained in my eyes, my whole life was a fraud. Still, I wanted to find something good in my wife. How was it possible that I had been so mistaken about her? If the woman I thought I had known from the time I was a child was a complete stranger to me, if I had been mistaken about Mercedes, what could I believe in? If I had been so obtuse about her true nature, what kind of oblivious life had I led? If I could not tell the truth from a lie, who was I? Had I played any role in her dishonesty? If she was a villainess, perhaps I was not blameless. If she had been corrupted by her proximity to Miguel, was I not just as guilty for having brought him into her life?
My wife, the only woman I had loved, the woman I had continued to love despite the joylessness of our marriage, the woman who had been my paradise on earth, the mother of my only son, in an instant had become my torturer. And I, who thought of myself as one of the luckiest men, because unlike so many others I had heard of, I would never have to place my wife in a house guarded by iron rails to safeguard her chastity, I now knew that I could never again trust Mercedes. Without trust there could be no true love. And I, who had dreamed that our marriage would be the perfect union of two souls, two different people becoming one flesh, one blood, now saw my wife cast in a lewd light. I had been cruelly deceived. Was the Mercedes who had appeared to me in the guise of one of God’s angels really Satan in female guise?
Anyone who met Mercedes was immediately struck by her exquisite diamondlike perfection. But that diamond had cracked, and an excremental vein had ruptured its crystalline pool of light, rendering it worthless. That day, and for many days afterward, I wanted to strangle Mercedes and watch life ebb out of her as her eyes went dark.
Over the past several years, my loathing of Miguel had, if anything, abated. But after Mercedes’s confession I wanted desperately to do violence not just to her, but above all to him. From that night on, the tenacious weed of hatred found in my soul fertile ground and shot out roots that choked everything alive inside me. The very ground I stood on felt barren and scorched, as if it had been razed by hell’s flames. The measures I had taken to prevent Miguel from returning to Spain were not enough. My fantasies of the ways in which he would die grew more elaborate: I would have him poisoned; I would send a paid murderer to Algiers to kill him; but first, I would have his brother’s head hacked off, while Miguel watched, before he himself was decapitated.
* * *
I no longer had anything that deserved to be called a life. My dreams reenacted Miguel’s and Mercedes’s betrayal, and I could not control the nightmares of fire-breathing, winged gargoyles that howled demonic tirades into my ears. I would wake up covered in sweat, feverish, gasping for breath, my head throbbing, my fists clenched, my jaws locked, my limbs aching, as if the ceiling of my bedchamber had crumbled on top of me. I dreaded going to sleep. Often I would stay awake all night, praying. I had the sensation I went through life sleepwalking.
My feelings were unchristian, I knew. I despised who I had become; my self-loathing was unbearable. I was convinced that God would punish me horribly if I continued to stew in hatred. My own shadow frightened me. My own reflection made me shudder: the flames of hell flickered in my eyes.
“Say the Rosary every night, or as many times as you need, until the voices in your head quiet down,” my confessor, Father Timoteo, advised. “Only the Holy Mother of Christ can restore you to your former humanity. Pray to her, my son, dedicate your life to her, and to Jesus Christ, because only they can deliver you from Satan’s clutches. Don’t act on your wrath,” he added, “and the door to God will remain open to you, Luis. You must purify yourself, my son; you must wash your sinful thoughts with holy water. Only your total devotion to the divine mercy of Jesus will save you.”
I found a measure of relief from the burning hatred for Miguel and for Mercedes only when I said the Holy Rosary. All my life I had heard it prayed in churches and in my own house, daily. I always was a good Catholic, but not a particularly pious one. Occasionally, I had joined my family and said it too. I said it respectfully, dutifully, but without the fervor of my elders, or of most of the parishioners I saw in Spain’s churches. I needed to pray to the Virgin Mary with all my heart. I would pray until, convinced of my sincere remorse, she would reveal to me the face of Christ when I touched the depths of His immense love for us sinners.
“If you believe with purity of heart,” Father Timoteo promised me, “you will be showered with Graces that the Mother of Christ herself will place in the palms of your hands.”
Of the three Mysteries of the Rosary, it was the contemplation of the Mystery of Joy that brought me the fullest consolation. Christ’s mystery, I realized, was the joy He spread, the happiness He brought us and which delivered the world from darkness each day. I would not know Our Redeemer’s love until His loving joy washed away my sins and I felt cleansed. That would be the sign that He had forgiven me. Only then would my soul be reborn by the Holy Spirit. Holding the Rosary in my hands, counting the beads, pausing to reflect on the Mysteries, I was aware of the sweet chain that bound me to God. But I needed a constant heart to get close to Him. Unless I let Christ’s loving joy into my heart, I would live in torment for the rest of my days. If Christ had become a servant of man, and forgave those who had wronged him, I had to devote my life not to hatred, but to forgiveness and to helping others, in order to follow His example. Only then would I become worthy of understanding the Mystery of Mary’s immaculate conception. It was her complete purity and goodness that had made her worthy to be the mother of the Son of God. I had to practice goodness in all my acts, if I was going to be rewarded with the precious vision that would deliver me: to see the Virgin dressed by the sun, standing on a full moon, and wearing a crown of twelve stars. Only then would I know that Christ had forgiven me for my pride, my arrogance, the lovelessness that dwelled in my barren heart.
Most nights, on my knees, alone in my chamber, I recited the Holy Rosary until dawn. Then I lashed myself ten times and wore a hair shirt to go to sleep for a few hours. My back was always swollen and painful, and sweated blood as if I bore the stigmata. Only my faithful servant Juan, who helped me bathe, who helped me dress, who washed out the blood from my garments, and ironed them, and who applied ointments to my tortured flesh, knew of it.
My love of Christ would be shown through my good deeds. Under the guidance of Father Timoteo, I began to give alms to the poor—to feed the hungry who knocked on our door, to clothe the naked and shoeless who lived in Madrid’s filthy alleys and who died from exposure in the cold months. I opened my coffers to the city orphanages. I gave generously to the Dominican missionaries who traveled to the Indies to convert the heathens. Through these actions I was blessed with grains of peace.
* * *
Time passed. I was named a magistrate of the king’s Royal Council, a position of high rank. Diego was still small for his age and prone to childhood illnesses, but his gentle nature provided me with the warmth and affection that otherwise remained absent from my life. Mercedes and I attended family functions together, but we were really strangers dwelling under the same house made of ice. My former love for her had withered. I hadn’t quite forgiven her, but I felt no hatred for her, either. I thanked God for the precious joys in my life, for His blessings and His Grace. I couldn’t say I was happy, but I found a measure of solace in beginning to accept my grievous fate.
One day, an envelope made of expensive paper arrived on my desk. There was no forwarding address. It was not the usual kind of official mail I received at work. I tarried before opening it. Then, curiosity tempted me. I broke the seal and pulled out a sheet of scented rose paper that read:
Your Excellency,
My name is Andrea Cervantes, the younger sister of Miguel. I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t remember me. It has been many years since the last time I saw you at my parents’ home. It is my most fervent wish that this letter finds you and your loved ones enjoying good health and God’s blessings.
After much hesitation, knowing how busy you must be and the important affairs you must attend to, God gave me enough courage to ask, on my knees, for an audience with Your Excellency. You must have heard, Don Luis, about the dire circumstances under which my brothers are held in Algiers . . .
Although my memories of Andrea filled me with revulsion, later that day—after much debating with myself—I made up my mind to pay her a visit. Miguel’s sister’s home was located in the respectable vicinity of the Convent of the Descalzas Reales, on a street too narrow for coaches. I alighted and told my carriers not to wait for me. The bells of the churches had just tolled four times, and my plan was to make my visit brief, so that I could walk home while there was still daylight.
Unhealthy curiosity was always one of my gravest defects. I knew it was better to let sleeping dogs lie; that poison-filled, angry scorpions crawled out from under stones when you began digging in the remains of the past. And yet, I wanted to hear from the lips of Andrea Cervantes about the miserable life Miguel was living as a slave in Algiers. I was standing before her door, the iron knocker in my hand, when suddenly it opened and Andrea Cervantes herself greeted me with, “Don Luis, please excuse my appearance, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.” She was breathless and rushed her words. “I happened to be looking out the window,” she pointed to the second floor of her home, “when I saw you arrive. Thank you so much for coming to visit me so promptly, Your Grace. God has listened to my prayers. Please come in.” She stepped aside.
She was wearing a black housedress that left her throat and arms exposed. With nervous hands she brushed back her midnight-black hair. Andrea had aged since the last time I saw her, but she had grown in allure. The sparkling onyx of her eyes reminded me of Miguel—she had the smiling Andalusian eyes of the Cervantes brood.
Andrea led me up the stairs to a sitting room in the Moorish style. She pointed to a low divan and offered me a glass of sherry. “No, thank you. I’m afraid I cannot stay very long,” I said. “My wife is expecting me.”
Andrea nodded to indicate she understood. She sat across from me on a large scarlet cushion. She wore black satin slippers, embroidered in red. Her feet were very small, the size of my hand. From the patio floated the laughter of a girl and the voice of an older woman.
Andrea explained, “It’s my daughter, playing with the maid in the garden. The last time Don Luis saw her she was still an infant.”
A warm flush spread all over my face. I squirmed on my divan.
“I will get straight to the point, Don Luis,” she said, noticing my discomfort. “My poor mother’s suffering breaks my heart. We don’t have the means to pay for the ransom of my brothers. The Trinitarian friars who negotiate the liberation of captives in that port of Moors and idol worshippers have informed us that they do not have sufficient funds to rescue both of my brothers, even though Rodrigo’s ransom is much lower than Miguel’s. You may have heard Miguel lost the use of his left hand fighting the Turks. To leave him in Algiers indefinitely amounts to a death sentence. You were Miguel’s best friend.” Tears moistened her eyes.
I didn’t know what to say. Andrea continued, “As you know, the king has established a fund to loan money to needy widows of good families. Don Luis may not be aware that my mother comes from landed gentry. She can put a vineyard her parents left her as a guarantee that she will repay the debt and the interests. She would like to borrow enough money to acquire a license to export Spanish goods to Algiers. If everything goes well, she should be able to save enough money to pay the debt within two years.”
Doña Leonor’s widowhood was news to me. “I’m very sorry to hear about your father’s passing, Señora Andrea. I didn’t know.”
She crossed herself. “Thank heavens, my father is still alive, Don Luis. But we know people who can, for a fee, produce the necessary documents to make it look as if my father were deceased. I pray the good Lord will forgive us for this deception because our motives are pure: to free our brothers from that land of infidels, where their Christian souls are in grave danger.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said. “How can I help you in this matter?”
“You see, Don Luis, my father would go to Andalusia to stay with our relatives up in the mountains, and hide for as long as it’s necessary. We would tell people he had died while he was away visiting relatives. Later, when he reappears, we’ll say we were misinformed.”
Clearly, she had been hatching this deception for a while. The luscious temptress was asking me to be complicit in breaking the law. “I’m afraid you forget I am an officer of the king,” I said. “I could never knowingly do something that would jeopardize my honesty or my family’s honor, even for the noble cause of helping a friend.”
“I understand, Don Luis. But you are our last hope.” She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing.
Being in Andrea’s proximity felt as dangerous as playing with an asp. Once more, my unhealthy curiosity won the best of me. I remained glued to the divan.
She stopped sobbing with a series of short hiccups, then dabbed her cheeks with a handkerchief she pulled from a pocket in her dress. “Don Luis, my husband, Don Diego Obando, had to leave for New Spain on urgent business to claim the title to a property a relative of his left him in his will. He’s been gone longer than we had anticipated. If he were here, my family would have no need of my desperate rescue plan.”
(The next day, I learned that the man she called her husband was a married man who had abandoned her and left for the New World. As reparations to her honor, Don Diego gave her the handsome house with all its furnishings.)
“If you can help us, I don’t know how I can ever repay you for your goodness of heart. But you will certainly have my eternal gratitude and you will constantly be in my prayers. You can always count on me as your most loyal servant.” She was talking now in the breathy voice I remembered from our first meeting, when Miguel and I were students at Estudio de la Villa in Madrid and she had told me the bizarre story of her child and the child’s father. Every word she uttered was draped in gossamer. A breeze that wafted in from the garden cooled the sitting room, yet perspiration dewed the swale between her breasts.
My hands were sweating; I felt light-headed, disoriented. I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time; I could no longer go to Mercedes to satisfy my manly desires, but I was not the kind of man who would engage with prostitutes. Was Andrea insinuating something indecent? Was it the devil making me see something that was not there? Or was this further proof—as if I needed any more—that the Cervanteses were immoral people?
I could have denounced Andrea to the authorities for trying to bribe an officer of the court. If I helped her, I became her accomplice. Then an insidious thought crossed my mind. I could help Andrea to obtain the loan and then denounce the living Don Rodrigo to the authorities. I didn’t care about his punishment, and knew that hers and her mother’s would be severe. After all, Miguel had destroyed my marriage. He had soiled what I held most pure and sacred. I would repay him in kind, making sure he spent the rest of his days as a slave along the Barbary Coast. Aeternum vale, Miguel, I thought. I’ll never see you again. You’ll never get another chance to come near my family and harm me.
* * *
After I left Andrea’s house, I felt impure. I needed to go to the cathedral to pray, to confess my grave sin. But as I kneeled in our family pew, my face sunk in the palms of my hands, I realized I could not confess to Father Timoteo what I was about to do to Miguel and his family. He would dissuade me from it. He would never again see me as a good Christian. The clarity with which my hatred made me see myself was excruciating.
The murmurs of the devout praying in the cathedral reverberated in my head like a swarm of furious bees. Were they praying for me? The din rose, and I wanted to get out of the cathedral and then run, run until I disappeared into the oncoming night. The prayers became more ominous-sounding—like a flock of garrulous blackbirds clustered together in a pine tree to protect themselves from the winter cold. Were the birds chattering in Latin? I looked around me, and the flickering lights of the votive candles made me think of the searing flames of hell. No priest could help me now. No human being, even if he was God’s most devoted servant, could deliver me from my poisoned heart. I would beg to our Celestial Father directly for His forgiveness and then, as penance, devote my life unequivocally to Him. I would become a monk, leave my family, and spend the rest of my life fasting and praying. Better yet, I would become a hermit, and live in a remote cave where only wild beasts could find me. But I knew my flesh was too weak to withstand such rigors. I didn’t know what it was to be hungry or cold, or to sleep on the bare ground, or to spend my nights in darkness. Was God speaking to me? Was this heresy? Who was I to deserve such a miracle? I, who was so far from being Christlike. As long as I keep this revelation to myself, I’ll be saved. God wants me to stay in Madrid and do His work in this city of sinners and apostates. He’s calling me to be a soldier in His army of Divine Light.
At that moment I was at peace. God’s Grace had touched me, and I knew happiness.