After I complete my early morning work for Pacheco, I pack some sweets and nuts in a bag and go to call on the Mercedarians. I ring a bell at the front gate and wait, assuming that the apprentice of the devout Pacheco will be welcomed with immediate trust. An orderly arrives, asks me my business, then admits me to the vestibule where paintings of previous Mercedarian leaders line the walls. I pretend to admire these ghastly pictures while the orderly goes to find Luis.
It’s more than a year since I’ve seen him and he’s much taller and even a little plump. Gone are his street clothes and bare urchin feet. He’s wearing a white cassock and brown leather sandals. When I give him the sweets and nuts, he smiles broadly and asks me, very directly, if I’m here to make some more drawings of him. His attitude is less recalcitrant than in the past; it’s almost as if he wouldn’t mind sitting for me.
‘You’re happy in here?’
Luis thinks about it, then shakes his head. ‘They force us to eat pork. They even make us drink wine. We must sing Gregorian chants three times a day!’
Luis was allowed to stay in Spain because of his lovely singing voice.
‘How many Morisco boys are in here with you?’ I inquire.
‘Um. There’s Benito, Remi and Camilo.’
‘The others, have they been here long?’
Luis nods. ‘They were really little when they came.’
‘How do you find school?’
‘Okay, I guess.’
Luis looks at me glumly. ‘I’ve heard nothing about my mother and sister,’ he pauses and, when I don’t comment, he continues, ‘Where would they have settled do you think? They say our people are welcome in Tunis, but meet death elsewhere. In Algiers and Morocco they call us Christian infidel. Remi’s father was murdered by bandits on the road to Fez. And you know what? The priests waited three years to tell him.’
‘I’ve heard similar stories,’ I say.
‘Can you help us escape?’
I’m taken aback by his naive trust. ‘Do you really wish to join your mother in the Mohammedan lands?’
My question has puzzled him.
‘None of us really wants to go to the Barbary States,’ Luis continues, ‘We’re Sevillians, aren’t we? We’ve been baptised in the name of the Holy Ghost, just like you. We want to go back to eating couscous in our old homes, but that isn’t possible, is it?’
I shake my head.
As an eleven-year-old I looked on while thousands of Moors were driven from our city, weighed down by their heavy bags. The river of people was passing by for ages it seemed, and when it ceased I remember seeing lots of baggage left lying on the road. The Moors couldn’t carry all their belongings with the crowds moving so fast, so they dropped it as they went. A day later and all the forsaken bags and furniture had been scavenged. But the exiled Moors left curses on their abodes in West San Marcos and Adarjevo. Walls collapsed on unsuspecting new residents, and one poor family ate from a garden of poisoned vegetables and three of them died. The barrios where the Moors lived have become ghost towns since then. Horses refuse to take their riders into these suburbs, but children play round the fringes, trespassing inside for thrills and dares.
Luis and I need a change of scene. At my request a priest is happy to guide us around the chapter house. Paintings by my master Pacheco are prominently displayed and appear to be in excellent condition. As soon as the priest leaves, Luis relaxes. He sits down, his back resting against a wall, and plays absentmindedly with the buckles and straps on his sandals. I continue my inspection of the paintings and pretend to take notes, but the main reason for my visit never leaves my mind. I make sure we slip outside onto the first floor gallery and are in the vicinity of the round tower just before noon when the choirboys are due to be released from morning school. While Luis tries to peer in the windows of the tower at his friends, I call him back. Trying to sound casual, I ask him a number of questions about the circular building, but Luis seems to have lost interest in conversing with me.
It is our schoolhouse, he replies with effort. Yes, it was going to be a watchtower, and taller than the gold tower on the river, but the money ran out because the new chapel cost so much, he explains begrudgingly. But the tower’s still growing, he adds with a twinge of irony. It hasn’t reached its full height yet, he assures me with a sly look. I assume he’s pulling my leg so my inquiries cease.
The sun is directly overhead and I know that the bells will ring at any moment. In the distance I can see the top portion of the Giralda rising above the other Sevillian buildings but I’m too far away to tell if there are faces looking down from the minaret where Pacheco and I were standing two days ago. What if my master has gone up there with his new telescope and I’m found out? Would he value my daring, or punish me for it?
I notice we’re not alone on the first-floor gallery. Down the other end is an artisan whitewashing walls. He keeps looking around at me and this makes me nervous. If he turns out to be Zamorana’s spy what an odd situation, for then I would be spying on the spy. And the spy would be spying on me. I tell myself that I’ve broken no law as yet. There’s no need to worry about being here under false pretences.
The bells chime the sixth hour of prayer and shortly afterwards a door is flung open and schoolboys come volleying out. They catch hold of Luis as they gambol past. Some of these choristers try to take Luis with them, but he resists, fending off their clutching hands, smiling charmingly as he does. Luis is in my care and he doesn’t have to join the others. And to be singled out seems to please him.
The boys’ chattering fades as they disappear down the stairs at the end of the landing. Shortly afterwards the adult pageantry that I’ve been waiting for begins and my heart starts beating faster. Coming onto the landing is Father Rastro accompanied by Paula Sánchez. Behind them, the monk leading the horse. All is unfolding as Pacheco bespoke it in the Giralda. When I see these larger-than-life figures heading towards me I want to run and hide behind the round tower. But it’s too late to do anything conspicuous, so I stay where I am. The procession comes to a halt. Paula has recognised me and a tremor runs down my spine. At the sight of Paula’s red dress, I’m transported back two years in time.
I don’t know Paula very well, but I do know her red dress. I was thirteen when I found that very dress (or an earlier version of it) hanging in Pacheco’s studio. She’d been modelling for my master and had left it behind. Late at night I removed the dress from its hanger and made my first entry into the Garden of Eden. I recall as though it were yesterday, the feel of Paula’s velvet skin, smooth against my own, the rub and weave of it, the dress alone, and how close the fabric came to tearing as I stretched it across my reclining body. My fear of tearing the fabric won out over the temptation to tear it, to puncture her velvety contours. I learnt the shape of Paula’s body from the shape of her dress as I wrapped the cloth, her bodily shape, around my own skinny torso. My erotic pulse was awakening; I fought with the dress as though it were a wild animal. And now, staring at Paula in her familiar tactile costume, I’m looking at the skin of a wild animal that has come back to haunt me. The animal has been skinned and sewn up for a woman to wear. Paula’s dress reminds me of stealth, of taking the dress from the hanger in Pacheco’s studio and of my thirteen-year-old terror of being caught out. Today, the sight of red swirls, the cut and tuck of embroidered sleeves and the curve of the gown below Paula’s neck brings back the smell of her under-arm sweat and a familiar odour of musk, vanilla and rising yeast that wasn’t just Paula’s, but my own mother’s, retained from an earlier childish intimacy. At night, in secret, I wore and wore Paula’s dress. I crushed it between my thighs and frayed it thin. Then each morning, at dawn, I hung it up in Pacheco’s studio for Paula to wear when she next came to sit for him.
And, as far as I know, I’ve never been found out.
Paula is beckoning me over. I wave self-consciously and walk towards the party suspected of infamy. Luis lags behind me. Paula introduces Father Rastro who’s holding a crown-of-thorns in the crook of his arm. On closer inspection I can see it’s a bird’s nest. Full of featherless chicks. It’s an odd thing for him to be carrying, for sure.
‘Pacheco’s apprentice? How much time do you have?’ Father Rastro invites me into the round tower. He directs Luis back to where the boys in white frocks have gone. Luis waves at me with a resigned expression. I tell him in parting I will come and say goodbye before I leave. He seems satisfied with this and off he bounds.
I’m about to enter the suspect building with the equestrian party, but just before I go inside, I glance around the gallery and I can’t help noticing a look of envy on the face of the artisan whitewashing the walls. How that man would love to be wearing my shoes. Inquisitor Zamorana is a fool, I think, and his spy is wasting his time, for if a young man of excellent reputation, such as myself, is being invited into the round tower, whatever’s going on inside can hardly be heretical or even terribly sinful.
We’re standing in a schoolroom among numerous desks and slates. The close smell of children’s bodies lingers in the air. The monk makes for a stairwell on the left. He guides the horse up the stairs. The animal follows obediently, but it’s a slow, awkward ascent. Then Rastro, with his prickly nest, and Paula and I follow.
The windows on the upper level are covered with drapes and the room is dark. Paula crosses the floor to tie back a curtain and open a window. Incoming light reveals hay in the corner and a trough of water for the horse. I breathe in a penetrating odour of vinegar and linseed oil, receiving my first clue as to what’s going on up here. Everything makes sense when I see the huge stretched canvas looming on the other side of the room.
A large painting of a penitent Magdalen presides. It looks very close to completion. There are two persons in the foreground of the painting and, to their right, the horse. Paula is kneeling before a Cross and the figure kneeling behind her is Father Rastro. He’s wiping her feet with a pearl-coloured cloth. The Mercedarian leader is kneeling side-on, as is Paula, though she has more of her back to the viewer. You only can see the right side of her face. A mussel-blue veil is draped over her hair, the artist giving an underwater look to the dark undulations of the fabric. Paula clings to the barren Crucifix, her velvet dress gathered up around her knees, exposing her bare calves. I’m thinking the calves of a woman shouldn’t be revealed before a Cross. Nor should a penitent be giving her redeemer a seductive eye. This will make my master Pacheco fret, it will.
The young monk accompanying us is also in the painting. He’s standing in the recesses, behind the horse. For confirmation that the two monks match, I look at the real monk who is lifting the real Cross from the floor and resting it up against the imitation altar. This young man looks Arabic. He’s possibly a fully-Christianised Moor. After eight centuries of interbreeding, there’s no shortage of Arab blood swimming in Andalusían veins. I too might be partly Moor, I reflect, then dismiss this as improbable given what I know of my ancestors. The monk is returning my stare, so I avert my eyes, looking at the painting again.
The painted monk’s head and shoulders are rising above the horse’s shaggy mane. The monk is holding the bridle casually, in anticipation of a movement forward in time. Or has he just arrived at the altar with the horse? A painting is not just about the immediate moment, Pacheco likes to say; it refers to what has just happened and to what is about to happen in the next scene. Guess what will happen next, Pacheco loves to ask his apprentices.
It looks as if the horse is waiting to carry the Magdalen figure away, after the stain has been sanctimoniously removed from her soul. That’s the answer I’d give Pacheco if my master were standing beside me now.
My eye is captivated by the real Paula who has taken off her shoes, and is in the process of removing her stockings. She does this discreetly, keeping her legs concealed. While I’m watching her, the monk decides to lead the horse to the water. He stops to adjust the rope halter, blocking my vision.
I look at the painting again. Does the artist intend putting a fourth figure to the left of the kneeling Rastro? There is a discolouration in this place, assuming vaguely human contours. A shadow looms—perhaps the beginnings of a soon-to-be-painted figure. The left side of the canvas could well do with another person to balance the bulk of horseflesh on the right. Indeed the magnified horse’s rump takes up nearly a quarter of the canvas, an unseemly intrusion in a healing ritual administered by a figure who is apparently the most worthy forgiver of sins. Father Rastro playing Christ at the Magdalen’s heels could well be sacrilegious. It’s permissible for the biblical Saints, such as Saint Matthew and Paul, to look like the models playing them, but there should be no variation on images of Jesus. So says the Council of Trent.
Father Rastro breaks my trance, ‘Do you approve, Diego Velázquez?’
‘Er…yes,’ I mutter, then pause before adding, ‘But I’m not sure everyone will.’ Who’s the buyer, I’m wondering. It’s unlikely Father Rastro would have commissioned this work. It’s not in the orthodox Mercedarian style.
‘It’s enviable, but uhm…I’m surprised Father, that you…‘ I’d like to know why he’s sitting for the painting, but I can’t afford to be presumptuous.
‘Why I have sanctioned this painting and assumed the role of anointer?’
‘With a penitent Magdalen?’ I inquire.
‘With a penitent woman,’ he corrects me. ‘But we are certainly indebted to the tradition of the biblical sinner.’
‘And the artist?’
‘A gentleman from Antwerp, Harmen Weddesteeg,’ Rastro replies.
I’ve never heard of a painter called by this name. I probably should know who he is, so I nod and change the topic.
‘What will become of the dark impression to the left of the altar?’ I ask, pointing to the shadow.
‘It’s the artist’s signatory mark,’ Rastro explains.
‘An impression of himself?’ I inquire with much interest.
‘A woman he loved, supposedly.’
‘A dead woman? A ghost?’ I pester.
‘He calls it a human cavity. It appears in all his paintings when they’re nearing completion. But you can ask him yourself. He’ll be down presently,’ Father Rastro gestures towards an open manhole in the corner of the ceiling that leads up to the attic. ‘Weddesteeg’s residing upstairs,’ he informs me.
A short time later the pleasing face of a man does indeed appear above our heads like a moon sliding out from between a gap in the clouds. The man waves at us in a friendly fashion. One Harmen Weddesteeg from Antwerp presumably, who swivels himself around onto a stepladder, and makes a spirited descent.
Arriving in our midst, Weddesteeg immediately begins some outrageous flirting with Paula Sánchez. (One-sided flirting, mind you.) Father Rastro seems tolerant of the painter’s familiarity with Paula. I notice that the model herself doesn’t seem to mind.
The monk hurries forward to give Weddesteeg his palette and brushes. The painter acknowledges me for the first time and Father Rastro makes a belated introduction. Weddesteeg nods acceptingly when I tell him how remarkable I find his penitent woman. ‘You’re a painter too? Oh, in that case…‘ And he takes a much greater interest in my compliments.
The figures are taking up their positions for the dramatic narrative—Rastro lifts the cloth to Paula’s soiled feet, Paula inclines her face, and the painting begins without delay. They’re keeping to a regular schedule it seems.
I stand behind Weddesteeg, feeling a bit out of place. I haven’t had a chance to ask him about the human cavity and, more importantly, a question of technical interest, about how he’s made the light shine so radiantly on the three figures, and on the horse with its majestic, springy tail.
The shrieking chicks are proving tiresome. What possessed Father Rastro to bring the nest up here? Perhaps Weddesteeg wants them in his painting. Good humouredly, I tell Weddesteeg about my goldfinch, and how I like to paint to its musical accompaniment. When I forget to take the cage to work, I don’t paint so well.
Weddesteeg listens respectfully then blurts out: ‘Oh, drown the pathetic things and be done with it!’
Rastro, a little flustered, gets up from his genuflection. Retrieves the nest from the table and brings it over to me, holding it out like it’s the Eucharist. I open my mouth to protest, but I needn’t have worried.
‘Diego Velázquez, you can help us out. Find Luis de Pareja. He’ll be in the refectory. Get the resident boys digging up worms. Tell them to shake a water can over the birds’ beaks.’
This suits me, as I’d intended spending more time with the Morisco boy. Departing the round tower with the nest under my wing, I head down to the refectory. Luis looks surprised to see me carrying the nest. He introduces me to his friends, Benito, Remi and Camilo. These three Moriscos are a good deal shorter and younger than Luis, and they appear to look up to him. Well Remi and Benito obviously do. Camilo seems to exist in a world of his own. He’s reading a book as he comes out of the refectory, and he continues to read as we go about our business, holding the words up close to his eyes, as elderly scholars do. A priest has given the boys over into my care and we head for the courtyard to search for grubs in the flowerbeds. After we’ve fed and watered the chicks as best we can, we lie on the grass beneath some foliage and look up at the sky for a while, (this will pass for siesta, the boys tell me). Little Remi falls asleep in the heat and I cover his face with my handkerchief to protect it from the sun. While we’re waiting for him to wake, Benito, Luis and I play knucklebones with the backbones of small animals in a shady cloister. I used to love playing this game with my younger brothers. I forget about the bells, I forget about the painting in the round tower, I forget I ever had another reason for being in the convento than visiting Luis. Camilo continues to read Virgil but he’s listening to us with one ear. I know, because he smiles weakly when we laugh. An amazing little chap, Camilo. Later on we discuss The Aeneid together as I might do with boys my own age in Latin school.
Luis has come up with what I think is a good idea and, when Remi wakes, the five of us head off in the direction of the orchard. (The boys are supposed to be fruit picking this afternoon.) I carry the nest and Luis and his friends carry two tin pails each. Camilo continues to read as we traipse through the vegetable gardens, surrounded by a flock of white butterflies. Long-legged Luis clambers up an apricot tree with the nest in his arms, securing it beside another nest he’s been keeping an eye on. He’s hoping against wisdom that the mother will attend to two broods at once. But the hatchlings aren’t even the same breed! I tell Luis to climb down from the tree quickly, and not to disturb the workings of nature. The boys all seem to think Luis’s matchmaking will work out well for the swallow chicks.
When Luis says I may eat as much fruit as I please, I notice how hungry and thirsty I am, and I don’t stop eating soft fruit till my stomach complains. Late in the day, with many pounds of ripe fruit picked and neatly stored in the refectory pantry, I drink a pint of water and take my leave of the Morisco boys. My guilt about Luis is partially relieved for if he sees me as a friend he’ll realise I had nothing to do with his incarceration.
After visiting the latrines, I return to the round tower in the hope of asking the painter Weddesteeg those questions that have been intriguing me. I make my way up to the first-floor studio, but only the monk and the horse remain in the room. The painting stands drying, aired by a breeze drifting through an open window. The shadow on the left of the canvas is unaltered. (So it is to be part of the scene then, the human cavity.)
The monk has his back to me when I enter. He’s wearing a painting smock so I guess he must be acting as Weddesteeg’s apprentice while the Fleming is resident in the convento. Harmen’s brushes have been cleaned and the paint jars sealed. I don’t imagine the painter would have done these chores himself. The monk is squatting down in front of the painting, writing something on a piece of parchment. He hasn’t heard me come in. Standing and raising his arms to the canvas, he stretches a piece of white thread across the length of the horse. He’s taking the horse’s measurements, I suppose. I’ve done this kind of thing myself, with Pacheco’s paintings, when I’ve had to make copies of them.
The monk, wiry and supple, stoops down to the floor again. I decide to leave, but the monk hears my departing footsteps and I’m forced to explain my presence.
‘I have a couple of questions for Señor Weddesteeg.’
The monk shakes his head but says considerately. ‘He’s gone into town. He doesn’t take his meals in the refectory.’
‘I’ll come back another day,’ I nod, moving back a few paces, still transfixed by the painting.
‘Of course. But don’t come tomorrow. Father Rastro has invited the Castle inspectors to view the painting, and they might arrive any time.’
Colour floods my cheeks. Father Rastro’s one step ahead of Carlos Zamorana and his invidious spy then. He must have organised the Castle inspection some time back, if it’s an official visit.
‘Father Rastro’s taking every precaution. He knows the painting may prove contentious,’ says the monk gravely.
Part of me wants to rush away, and part of me wants to stay and find out more.
‘About the buyer…‘ I begin uncertainly.
‘Doña Fillide. A long-time friend of Father Rastro’s. And recently a patron of our Order.’
A private buyer, as I imagined. And a foreigner. I’m only surprised that it’s a woman.
But then I’m not. Rastro must be attached to Doña Fillide. That’s why he’s putting himself through this risky charade.
I’m not sure if I can ask the thing I now want to ask. But if the monk’s just a Morisco, I can perhaps afford to speak candidly. He seems obliging enough.
‘Father Rastro’s doing all this for her then?’
The monk doesn’t blink. He smiles, and gestures to the painting. ‘For that one, he is.’
So it’s to be with Paula. She has made fools of us all.
‘A wonderful painting,’ I say, in parting, feeling I should give it my own stamp of approval.
The monk nods, and says ‘I know,’ with such confidence (for a minion) that I find it a little disconcerting.