IT MUST HAVE BEEN OCTOBER, BECAUSE I REMEMBER THE AIR WAS CHILLED and crisp, the way it is before the snows begin. The winds were just beginning to whoosh over the sierra. Some of the peaks of the Guadarrama were already dusted with white. Still, my aunt resisted lighting the brazier. Coal was expensive, and she was thrifty by nature.
“It’s winter already!” urged my mother. “Light the fire!”
You know what they say about Ávila: Nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno. Nine months of winter and three of hell. By that reckoning, it was certainly time to haul in some coal.
“What will we do in December if we light the brazier in October?” protested Tía Cati.
I was only eleven, and I didn’t see the logic of her argument. I was peeking out behind the burlap my mother had hung on the windows to keep out the nip. An icy sun hung low in the sky. Shadows crept along the road like prowlers, hugging the houses. Dusk came earlier every day. The mountains loomed enormous against the darkening heavens.
It was getting too dim to sew, but my mother and Tía Cati were still sitting on their cushions and drawing their needles in and out of fabric. They were edging the muffs—decorated sleeves—of the dress that Teresa de Ahumada would wear to the palace of the Count of Mollén.
“Get away from the window, Pancracia,” snapped my mother. “Come finish your work.”
I had learned to embroider as soon as I could hold a needle. The child and niece of seamstresses, I knew the difference between satin and taffeta, baize and flannel, frieze and cotton. I loved the feel of gossamer on my fingertips. I dreamed of grosgrain ribbons. I had stitched side by side with grown women practically since babyhood. Now I was supposed to be detailing the jubón, or camisole, Teresa would wear under her gown.
“Pancracia!” my mother called again. “This outfit has to be ready by tomorrow!”
I remained motionless, mesmerized by the scene unfolding before me. A girl, lithe and quick, had darted out from an alley. She wore a dark-colored dress, burgundy or russet, trimmed in lace and partially concealed by a cape. Her steps were so dainty that she seemed to glide over the dirt road, like the statue of Our Lady that flies along on wheels during the Holy Week procession. Her face was invisible behind a mantilla, but there was something about the movement of her hands, about her quick, nervous gestures … Her delicate fingers quivered like the feathers of a dove. “Doña Teresa!” I whispered.
I wondered what she was doing in our part of town. The Cepeda Ahumada family had a mansion in the affluent old Jewish neighborhood. Now my mother and aunt were standing behind me. “Pancracia, come away from the window!”
I tugged on the burlap. It came flapping down to the floor. I turned to look at my mother and tensed. Clumsily, I struggled to lift the cloth and reposition it on the window.
“Pancracia, sit down this instant!” barked my mother. She raised her hand to smack me, but Tía Cati quieted her with just a touch on the shoulder.
A male figure appeared from behind the chandler’s shop, his cape flapping loosely on his shoulders. His long, tapered, gloved hands showed that he was a person of position. Aside from his white gloves and the stiff, fluted ruff at his throat, he was dressed all in black. The rules of fashion allowed young men to wear colors, but in Ávila, that most conservative of towns, most wore black. His tight, padded doublet tapered into an elegant squeezed waist, then flared out into a skirt over trunk hose and stylish boots.
Teresa flew to him. It happened many years ago, but as I recreate the scene in my mind, I can see her shoulders quivering with emotion. For a moment they stood face to face, she looking up at him, he lightly touching her arm. Then he leaned forward and it seems to me, although I can’t be sure, that he kissed her.
He took her hand and they vanished into a passageway. I felt my heart flutter. What had I just witnessed? What was he going to do to her now? Would he touch her bodice? Would he press her against him? I caught my breath. We all knew who he was: her cousin Javier. The whole town knew they loved each other, but to meet in the open like that, to kiss in the street … Even as a child, I knew that Teresa was flirting with danger.
Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was a heartbreaker. When she walked to church, head covered modestly but eyes flashing, armies of young men appeared out of nowhere and formed brigades on either side of the path. Those who caught her dart-like glance swooned and fell to the ground, some never to recover. People said Teresa caused more fatalities than the king’s militia.
“Too pretty for her own good,” said the women who gathered in my aunt’s estrado. In hushed voices they would talk of the scandalous way in which Teresa flirted at the fair or the bullfights, which she attended with her cousins.
The estrado was the most important room in my aunt’s house, the room where I lived my childhood, lost in dreams of blue-eyed dukes on white horses. At one side, in an alcove hidden by a heavy curtain, was my aunt’s bed, which she had shared with Tío Celso when he was alive. The estrado was a sort of ladies’ haven where we gathered to embroider, spin, or sew. It was the place we received guests, other women from the neighborhood, most of them as poor as we but from respectable families that had once had a bit of money. Widows of successful artisans—weavers or beer makers—who tried to carry on the family business, but barely made ends meet.
On chilly mornings we’d gather around the brazier to work and gossip and warm ourselves. My aunt, Catalina Fuentes de Rojas, had carpeted the cork platform where the coal-filled receptacle sat in order to protect it from the flames. Each of us had her own cushion. Mine was covered in a faded green remnant Teresa’s father had given me. My mother, Inés Fuentes de Soto—she of the sad eyes and sharp tongue—sat on a cushion the color of withered red geraniums. Tía Cati’s was the most elegant, far too elegant for a woman of her station. It was deep blue velvet with bits of tinted glass sewn into the fabric. Tío Celso, a successful tailor, had designed suits for titled gentlemen, and one delighted customer had rewarded him with a remnant of velvet large enough to make a cushion for his wife. Other cushions were strewn over the platform, none of them remarkable. These were meant for my aunt’s friends, women who came to gab and embroider. Needlework is always more pleasant when done in the company of others.
My aunt regretted only that her own daughters weren’t among us. The two eldest, Catalina and Irene, lived in Madrid with their husbands, a gilder and a musician. Bernarda had sailed for the Americas on one of those ships that take poor Spanish women to soldiers and colonists in need of wives. Doña Cati’s two sons, Celso and Felipe, had themselves gone to the Americas and picked out brides from among the white-skinned virgins considerately supplied by the Spanish crown. Well, to be honest, not all of them were virgins. Some had agreed to the hazardous voyage precisely because they weren’t. For those damaged flowers, it was either the high seas or the convent. There was no other choice. Anyway, both boys died abroad, Celso of fevers and Felipe in a skirmish with Indians. Tío Celso, heartbroken beyond recovery, joined them in heaven within a year of Felipe’s death. God keep them all in His boundless embrace.
Around the platform Tía Cati had placed short-legged chairs and stools, where my grandmother, also named Catalina, and her sister Beatriz had sat sewing when they were alive. Now these stools were often occupied by neighbor women, sometimes as many as eight or ten of them. Since Tío Celso had died with no male heirs, my aunt was allowed to keep the house and its furnishings, including a chest, a wall tapestry, and a large, mahogany-framed mirror. Her father—my grandfather—was dead, and she had no brothers. Otherwise, she would have had to go to live with a male relative like other widows, but as it was, she was free to live with just my mother and me, the two women eking out a living as seamstresses. My aunt didn’t consider herself poor. She had a house, furniture, and a few luxury items. The house, she knew, was a bit too grand, but it was hers and that was that. She didn’t complain. Why should she? My mother, on the other hand, had nothing. All the material goods she enjoyed belonged to Tía Cati. She named me after Saint Pancracio, patron of job-seekers, because she was terrified of being without work.
“She runs wild since her mother died. Don Alonso should see to her marriage,” growled my mother, who had had caught a glimpse of Teresa though the window. “She and her cousin Javier played together as children, but it’s unseemly that …” And she and Tía Cati lowered their voices so that I wouldn’t hear gossip that might contaminate my purity.
Although I was just eleven, I would soon be taking an interest in men, and all the moralists said that if you plant the seeds of licentiousness in a little girl’s mind, by the time she’s a señorita, they’ll have grown into gargantuan weeds.
“Don Alonso should have kept them apart from the beginning,” murmured my mother. “Father Evaristo always says you have to separate little girls from little boys. If you don’t, they begin to think it’s natural to keep company with the opposite sex.”
I only remember snippets of conversation: “lover … cousin … honor … murder …”
Murder? What could it all mean? I was too young to understand the law of honor, which dictated that any indiscretion by a woman was punishable by death. According to Father Evaristo, the neighbors, and everyone else, women were weak, terribly weak, and that’s what made them easy prey for Satan. Women yielded easily to temptation. Like Eve.
“Daughters of the First Sinner!” thundered Father Evaristo from the pulpit. “Thanks to her, mankind fell from grace, redeemed only through the sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ!”
“Lord Jesus, keep us free from sin!” pleaded the congregation.
Because women were likely to go astray, men had to rein them in, watch them like hawks. According to the laws of honor, if a woman transgressed—or was even suspected of transgressing—the men responsible for her had the right, the duty even, to take vengeance. That meant murder. A dishonored husband, father, or brother was expected to kill not only the seducer who had sullied the family’s reputation, but also the errant woman. And if she was innocent? No matter. Suspicion alone was enough to justify a bloodbath. After all, if gossips were dragging a family’s name through the mud, it was incumbent on the males of the household to cleanse it. Only blood could remove the stains from a man’s honor.
“If your right hand offends you, cut it off!” roared Father Evaristo.
Plenty of men took his words to heart, but Teresa’s father was different from most men. Everybody knew it, and everybody knew why.
Alonso Cepeda had been born in Toledo, a city throbbing with conversos, many of which had made fortunes as moneylenders. People turned up their noses at the New Christians, but those same people ran to Moisés the usurero or Solomón the prestamista when they needed a loan. Even the king of Spain wasn’t above taking cash from a former Jew to finance his wars.
Teresa’s grandfather, Juan Sánchez of Toledo, had obtained a letter of nobility in 1500. I know the date because it was the same year my aunt Cati was married, and she always said that the Sánchez family had become titled the same year she was “yoked.” Tía Cati liked the Sánchez family, and she understood why Juan needed those documents. A letter of nobility was supposed to prove that you had sangre limpia, “clean blood,” that is, that you were an Old Christian, with no taint of Jewish or Moorish ancestry. Of course, everyone knew such papers could be had for money, even if your ancestors were rabbis.
Nobody was really sure why Don Juan had come to Ávila, but people tried to guess. Some brushed aside the obvious, insisting it was because there were business opportunities for an ambitious young man in our city. The laws of primogeniture stipulated that only the eldest son could inherit, and Don Juan, not being his father’s first-born male child, had to make his own way. At the time, Ávila was growing rapidly, with people flooding through our gates every day. Woolens and silks were big business, and an industrious younger son could make a go of it.
Others spoke openly of the Sánchezes’ Jewish origins. My mother was one of them.
“He’s as Jewish as Herod,” she once said.
“Or as Jesus,” retorted Tía Cati.
“What a sacrilege! Jesus wasn’t Jewish!”
“He most certainly was,” insisted my aunt.
But my mother stood firm, sure that such an idea would send us all straight to Hell. To protect me from the curse she thought my aunt had unleashed, she made me say fifty times a day for a week, “Jesus wasn’t Jewish. Jesus wasn’t Jewish.”
Things had gotten bad for Jews in Toledo toward the end of the last century, and many of them sought refuge in Ávila, where Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in relative harmony. But then, things got bad even here. Harsh new laws forbade Jews to wear ornaments of gold or silver and clothing of silk, brocade, or velvet. Worse yet, they couldn’t lend money for interest, which turned out to be bad not only for the Jews, but for everyone. We were at war with Portugal at the time, and how were we going to fund battles without the Jewish moneylenders? The nobility complained, and the legislators changed the law. Then they ordered the Jews to cough up the necessary maravedís to beat the Portuguese. When the time came to repay these loans, though, the authorities suddenly remembered the decrees against usury and defaulted.
All this happened before I was born, but sewing by the brazier in my aunt’s estrado, the women of our household talked about these things endlessly, always in hushed voices.
I was a child then. I didn’t understand things. But I did grasp this: Teresa’s family was still in danger. The authorities were ever on the lookout for converso backsliders.
The Santo Niño de la Guardia brought it all to a head. This was a famous case that people are still talking about, even now, eighty years later: Toledan Jews were accused of kidnapping a child from the village of La Guardia and crucifying him, then using his heart in demonic rituals. They were guilty, of course. They confessed under torture. If you’re innocent, you don’t confess, no matter how horrible the pain, because God gives you strength. If you’re really innocent, you can bear anything … I suppose.
They were burned at the stake in the Mercado Grande, outside the city walls, and that sent the crowds into a frenzy. Suddenly, people who had Jewish friends, bought cloth from Jewish merchants, or sold candles to Jewish households had an abrupt change of heart. The incident unleashed an anti-Jewish rampage. If you owed a Jew money and he was badgering you for it, now was the time to run him through with a knife and set his house on fire. If you were mad at a Jew because he’d snubbed you in the street, you could knock him senseless with a plank and leave him to bleed to death. If you had your eye on a pretty Jewish girl, you could rape her with impunity. And if you were nursing a grudge against a Christian neighbor, you could claim he was really a Jew and throw him down a well. Carnage erupted in every part of Ávila. Thugs roamed the streets from the cathedral to the shrine of San Esteban bashing in the workshops of Jewish artisans, setting fire to their stables, peeing on their cadavers, and stealing their goods.
Well, I understand the Jews killed Our Lord Jesus, but still, I don’t see how setting fire to a cottage and murdering innocent children—potential Catholics, after all—is doing the will of God. It doesn’t make sense. Of course, I’m just an ignorant woman. But I guess those ruffians knew what they were doing because our holy Catholic monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, validated their acts by passing an important law: Jews would either have to convert or leave the kingdoms of Castile and Aragón.
In Ávila, most Jews converted. They became conversos. But the question was this: Could you trust them? Were their conversions sincere, or were they secretly practicing their old religion? Every person known to be a converso was suspect. For New Christians like Don Juan Sánchez and his sons, the safest road was assimilation. They had to wipe out their Jewish past. They had to prove they had no tainted blood. That’s why they needed patents of nobility.
Well, the facts are the facts, and you can’t change them. And the fact is that Ávila was full of conversos. They controlled the textile trade and they stuck together, one helping the other. So maybe, as some folks said, that’s the real reason Don Juan came to Ávila. He had contacts here. He had a chance to make money. He could start a new life, hiding behind his patent of nobility. Who would know what he had been in Toledo?
My grandmother Catalina knew. She had been in Toledo on June 22, 1485, the day of the penitential procession, and in the years before she died, I heard her describe that horrible event more than once. “The penitential procession.” When she said those words, she closed her eyes and her features became pinched, as though she were squeezing some terrible memory out of her mind. She took deep, uneven breaths. Her voice became scratchy, like rusty hinges. I was very young, but I remember.
“It was an exquisite day,” she told us one afternoon as we patched and stitched. “One of those days when you think nothing bad can happen. The sky was as translucent as an aquamarine. Cloudless, perfect. One of those days when you’re sure God is smiling.
“They divided them into two groups. They clothed those in the first group in sambenitos and those in the second group in sambenitillos.”
She didn’t have to explain what these were. We all knew. Even I, a child. The sambenito was a full-length, yellow cloak decorated with flames and bright red devils. The sambenitillo was a shorter version, knee-length and decorated with black crosses. The term “San Benito” was a corruption of saco bendito, holy sack, the name of the costume penitents wore.
“Juan Sánchez and two of his sons, twelve-year-old Álvaro and ten-year-old Alonso, were told to put on sambenitillos.”
“Dear Jesus,” whispered my aunt, but my mother hushed her.
“Along the road,” continued my grandmother, “stood neighbors. Decent people. Shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, cartwrights, fletchers, washerwomen, weavers … all kinds of people, each with a pocket or an apron full of stones. Children carried stones in their fists. They were all there to show their support for the Catholic Church. They went as an act of faith.
“Juan Sánchez and his sons, along with the others dressed in short, yellow cloaks, were to parade down the road, stopping at every church in Toledo and finishing at the cathedral. They were to carry out the same ritual on seven successive Fridays, always wearing the sambenitillo. This was the first day of a seven-week torment.
“The inquisitors lined up the penitents in single file. Juan and his sons did not walk together. The holy fathers placed the boys at the end of the line, out of kindness. By the time the children moved into the street, most pockets would be empty.
“When the inquisitor in charge gave the signal, the procession began. As the first penitent moved forward, the neighbors began to spew curses: ‘Jewish pig!’ ‘Son of a Jewish whore!’ ‘Christ-killer!’ ‘Devil! Fiend! Beast!’ Then came the rain of spit and stones.
“A pebble hit Juan on the upper cheek, almost knocking out his eye. A rotting mass of deep red—a beet, maybe—splattered on Alonso’s head. He struggled not to cry. All of them were dripping with spittle.”
My grandmother’s eyes were watery and she looked as though she were going to gag.
“Oh God,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and imagined the beautiful Doña Teresa wearing a sambenitillo, spittle oozing from her ear. These things were still going on.
No one asked what was going to happen to those wearing the long, yellow cloak that was a parody of a monk’s robe. That group was going to make a different pilgrimage. Those poor souls would be marched to the stakes, their lines interspersed with rotting corpses of exhumed heretics and effigies of fugitives, all clad in sambenitos and mock bishop’s miters. The living, the dead, and the hideous figurines, all dressed alike. When they reached their destination, they would be mounted on posts. Then, a distinguished guest would light the torch.
My grandmother Catalina had lived in Toledo with her first husband, and she had sewn for Doña Leonor, the wife of the cloth merchant Juan Sánchez. He was a wealthy man who had married into a prestigious family, that of the financier Simón de Fonseca Pina.
“They lived like princes,” my grandmother said. “But they weren’t haughty. Don Juan always had a kind word for everyone, and Doña Leonor never sent me away without a bit of mutton or a pail of tripe for my children.”
In the beginning it seemed to my grandmother that the stars were smiling on Sánchez. He had everything, and everyone loved him. But the stars are treacherous. After the birth of their second child, Doña Leonor died, and Juan Sánchez took a second wife. Inés López was from a less distinguished family, but her father, a merchant from Tordesillas, was a respectable man.
Around this time the municipal authorities called the city’s rabbis to a secret meeting outside the gates of Ávila. They promised them immunity from persecution if they would reveal which of their people were still practicing Jewish rites. Then they leaked this information, making sure everyone in the Jewish community knew the rabbis were spying for the church. Finally, heralds circulated among the most affluent neighborhoods, announcing that any Jew who confessed his false faith and repented publicly would receive light punishment.
I guess Juan Sánchez weighed his options. He was a businessman, a practical man. He must have thought it would be better to give himself up than to be turned in by an underhanded rabbi and dragged to the picket. I’m sure he had no desire to wear the long, yellow cloak, and even less desire to see it on his three boys. According to the law, any male child older than ten—the age at which boys started learning Hebrew—was obligated either to repent or suffer the consequences. As it turned out, only the younger two, Álvaro and Alonso, marched in the procession. Don Juan’s oldest son, Hernando, took off for Salamanca, where he became a Christian and changed his name.
“I’m not sure Don Juan took his conversion all that seriously,” whispered my grandmother. “It was just something that had to be done. The same with Hernando.” My grandmother pursed her lips. Her eyes were sad. I felt the air turn suddenly heavy.
“That’s sinful!” gasped my mother. “That’s wicked!”
But neither Tía Cati nor my grandmother opened their mouths to condemn Juan Sánchez. A thought started to gnaw at me: Doña Teresa, the most beautiful young woman in Ávila, was from a converso family. Was she really a clandestine Jew? For a long while, no one spoke.
The brazier crackled and warmed our fingers. How could such things as penitential processions and public executions exist in a world where women gathered to stitch and gossip in the pleasant glow of the fire? It didn’t make sense to me as a child, and now, after all these years, it still doesn’t make sense.
“And Don Juan?” asked Tía Cati finally. “Is that when he came to Ávila?”
“Not right away,” said my grandmother. “He left the two younger boys with his sister and took off with his wife for Ciudad Real. The inquisitors had been there before Toledo, so he figured they wouldn’t return for a while. The first thing he did was change his name to Cepeda.”
“Why Cepeda?” asked Tía Cati.
“His wife had Cepedas in her family, and it was a fine Old Christian name. Soon he had made enough money selling cloth to bring Álvaro and Alonso to Cuidad Real. But he was still vulnerable, so he took the bull by the horns. He figured out a way to secure his position and at the same time make a pile of money. He became a tax collector.”
“A tax collector?” echoed Tía Cati.
“Of course. In order to be a tax collector, you have to have a patent of nobility, and with his connections, he bought one. Now he could prove he was an Old Christian.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“No, of course he wasn’t. But he was rich, and his sons became rich as well, especially Alonso, Teresa’s father. When they were old enough, the boys bought their own patents of nobility. Now, everyone calls them Don, as though they were aristocrats.”
“Well,” said my aunt, “Don Alonso has always been good to us. Whatever Juan Sánchez was, his son has always shown us kindness.”
“Everyone loved Doña Beatriz,” added my mother. “Beggars never came away from her door wanting.”
She was referring to Beatriz de Ahumada, Don Alonso’s second wife. She had been an Old Christian, of course. New Christian men always took Old Christian brides. That’s the way they cleansed their lineage. Their children would be only half converso and their children would be only one quarter converso and so on. Don Alonso’s first wife, Doña Catalina del Peso y Henao, also an Old Christian, had brought him a very nice dowry—about one hundred thousand maravedís, according to my aunt, who always knew everybody’s business—but she had died young. His second bride was a lovely girl of about fourteen, who, like her predecessor, brought substantial wealth. Before the year was out, she bore a son, Fernando. Then came another, Rodrigo. On March 28, 1515, Teresa was born. She was baptized on April 4, with two neighbors standing for her as godparents, in the thirteenth-century Church of San Juan, by the Mercado Chico. After Teresa was born God sent Doña Beatriz six more children—Lorenzo, Antonio, Pedro, Jerónimo, Agustín, and Juana—after which He in his infinite mercy saw fit to take her from this world. She died in childbed with Juana.
As is the custom here, some of Don Alonso’s eleven children took their father’s surname, while others took their mother’s. Teresa took Doña Beatriz’s, so that even though her full name was Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, she went by Teresa de Ahumada. It was a fitting choice. She was, like Doña Beatriz, beautiful and fun-loving, curious and tough. Besides, they were both avid readers, especially of books of chivalry, those sumptuous tales of handsome knights who risked their lives for beauteous ladies—novels preachers like Father Evaristo said should be kept away from women lest they fill our fragile brains with naughty ideas.
As a little girl, what I knew about Teresa was that she was beautiful, mischievous, and headed for trouble. The neighbor women were obsessed with her. They all had an opinion.
“She runs around with those scatterbrained cousins of hers, Ana and Inés. Those two have the Devil in their farthingales.”
“She’s a lonely little thing. That’s why she seeks company.”
“What kind of company is that? Don Alonso had better open his eyes before it’s too late. The girl’s a flirt—¡Una coqueta!—giddy and vain. She cares for her hands as though they were pampered pets, always massaging them with almond paste or bacon fat.”
“Ever since her mother died, he can’t do a thing with her. The whole town knows she and Javier are lovers.”
“María tries to keep a tight reign on her, but an older sister is not a mother. Besides, María will be married herself before long.”
“Why doesn’t Javier just ask Don Alonso for Teresa’s hand?”
“Don Alonso has to get María married first. One thing at a time, Cati.”
The evening I saw Teresa and Javier meet in the shadows, my mother, aunt, and I were alone in the estrado. The neighbors had gone home, but we still had hours of work ahead of us. Mother and Tía Cati stitched and sewed, slaving away at a deep blue-green party dress for the very girl they were gossiping about. My mother’s needle moved in and out, her fingers quivering like butterflies as she tacked the lace trim along the hem of the overskirt.
The next afternoon we hurried down a crowded street in the old Jewish quarter, the dress carefully wrapped in clean straw. A maid showed us into the pantry. Teresa had gone out with her cousins and their dueña. As soon as we heard them trot up, I ran outside. All three ladies rode fine, sturdy mules. Teresa was an excellent mount, and she rode a dapple as pert as its rider. Her laughter rose above that of the others, high-pitched and sharp, like shattering crystal. The ladies came inside and threw off their capes, which the dueña gathered over her arm. “The dressmaker is here, señora,” said the maid.
In Teresa’s estrado we unpacked the dress. I stood there gaping at the town beauty. Suddenly, she looked down at me and winked. “Little Pancracia,” she said. “How lovely you are.”
I wasn’t lovely at all, and I couldn’t imagine what made her say such a thing. I looked down at my shabby sandals.
Teresa let out a prickly little squeal when she saw the dress. “It’s wonderful! Did you help sew it too, Pancracita?”
Teresa shared spacious quarters consisting of a sleeping alcove, a dressing area, and an estrado with her sisters María and Juana, the latter just three years old. Mother helped her put on the dress so that Tía Cati could make last-minute adjustments. “It’s beautiful! It’s flawless!” she breathed. My mother and Tía Cati turned to leave.
“Leave Pancracita here with me!” begged Teresa. “She can help me get ready!”
My mother looked stern. The Ahumada girl used cosmetics and reputedly bathed in lavender water. My mother had no desire that such upper-class depravity rub off on me. After all, it was going to be hard enough to marry off a child like me, an ugly orphan with no dowry.
“Let her stay,” commanded my aunt unexpectedly.
My mother’s face turned the color of grenadine. Tía Cati gave her a knowing look and asked Teresa to excuse them a moment. Dragging me in tow, the two women ducked into a storage alcove. “It’s an opportunity for her!” whispered by aunt. “If the Cepedas like her, maybe they’ll take her into their service!”
I expected my mother to say, “And what then? How will I ever get her married to a cobbler’s son after she lives a while with the likes of Doña Teresita?” I imagined her saying “Doña Teresita” as though she were spitting. But that’s not what she said. What she did say was this: “How can you even think of such a thing! They’re Jews!”
That should have been the end of it. After all, how could you rebut such an argument? But that wasn’t the end of it.
“Don Alonso is as pious as a monk,” countered Tía Cati.
“That’s not saying much.” My mother crossed her arms resolutely. “The point is, I don’t want trouble with the authorities. They see you coming to a house like this a few times, they think you’re one of them.” She glanced around to make sure there was no one within earshot. “I’m afraid for Pancracita,” she said. “I’m afraid for us all.”
My aunt thought about it awhile. My mother added, “She paints her lips and darkens her eyes!” She had reverted to her old arguments. It was a sign the battle was over.
“It’s expected of girls of her class,” snapped Tía Cati. She went back to the estrado to thank Teresa and accept her invitation.
It was true that Teresa bathed in lavender. I bathed her myself. While I rubbed her hair with olive oil, she chewed anise seeds to sweeten her breath. Then the dueña perfumed her with more lavender water, holding it in her mouth and spewing it onto her chemise-covered body. Afterward, the maid did her hair in a knot and bound it in a silk hairnet. I applied powder to her neck and shoulders, while her cousin Inés swathed her face in a foundation of solimán. Finally, her cousin Ana applied pink to her cheeks, vermillion to her mouth, and charcoal to her eyes. At last she was ready to don her jubón, her corset, her ropa baxa, her horsehair farthingale, and her lovely new dress, over which she slipped the gold-embroidered taffeta girdle that had belonged to her mother. The dueña brought in a pair of gold chains, an emerald ring, three gold bracelets, and jeweled earrings also inherited from her mother. Teresa smiled and kissed my cheek.
“Thank you, Pancracia,” she said. She slipped me a bit of lace. I looked at it, trying to decide whether I would sew it to my cushion or hide it in my tunic.
That night, as I lay next to my mother, I thought of Teresa at her party. Was Javier caressing those dove-like hands? Was he covering her delicate lips, as crimson as carnations, with his own, or nibbling those earlobes, pink as rosebuds and studded with gold and jewels?
The next day we returned to Don Alonso’s house to collect payment, and once again Teresa asked my mother to allow me to stay awhile with her. “Please, Pancracita is such a sweet little friend! I love having her with me.”
Friend! She had called me friend! The prettiest, most popular girl in Ávila had called me friend! My mother was holding several gold coins in her hand. Now was not the time to argue. I accompanied Teresa, Ana, and Inés to Teresa’s quarters, where they picked up their needlework. I hadn’t brought my embroidery, but I made myself useful teaching the young ladies new stitches. I was younger than they, but much handier with a needle. Soon they were gossiping and giggling, their sewing forgotten. All of a sudden, a small dog ran into the room, all fluffy and clean. I’d never seen such an animal. He looked like a wad of starched organdy.
“You silly creature!” laughed Teresa. “What are you doing here?”
I laughed nervously when he came near me. The only dogs I had seen were large, wolf-like farm dogs, with alert ears and sharp eyes to guard against predators.
“Mus! Mus! Take him to Silvia,” said Teresa, looking at me and signaling toward the other room, where I assumed the maid was dusting or sweeping.
“Pick him up?”
“Yes, pick him up before he soils something.”
I picked him up by the middle and went to look for Silvia. She was gathering ropa blanca for the laundress. When she saw me, she put down her basket, took the animal and disappeared.
Don Alonso was in his library talking to another man whose voice I didn’t recognize and whose face I couldn’t see. The door was only partially open, but I could see Don Alonso’s jaw tighten as he looked down at his fingernails, then up at his interlocutor. I didn’t mean to overhear them, I swear I didn’t, but they were talking about Teresa, my new friend. I guessed from the exchange that the man I didn’t know was one of Don Alonso’s brothers or maybe a cousin.
“You have to do something about this, Alonso,” he was saying. “The whole town is talking. Either marry her to Javier or put her in a convent! You can’t take care of her—a man alone with a passel of kids! She’s too much for you.”
“Teresa doesn’t want to get married yet. I asked her.”
“You asked her? What’s the matter with you, Alonso? Decide what you want her to do, and make her do it.”
“A girl should have something to say about who she marries.”
“A girl should have nothing to say about anything! Get her married before she covers us all with shame.”
Don Alonso was silent. I saw him bite his lip and cross his arms, not the way children do when they’re showing defiance, but the way a beggar in the plaza might to keep himself warm.
“The family honor cannot be dragged through the mud! Do something, or else I will.”
“What do you expect me to do? Put a knife to her throat like those barbarians who show a daughter less compassion than a suckling pig?”
“You can’t let this go on. People already look at us as though we had horns.” He lowered his voice. “‘The Jews,’ they’ll say. ‘Of course they care nothing about losing their honor! They have no honor to lose!’ Put her in a convent, Alonso!”
“No! I will not bury my Teresita in a convent!”
“Hombre, be reasonable! It will only be for a while! Just until this gossip about her and Javier blows over. In the meantime, she can be serving Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“To Hell with Our Lord Jesus Christ!”
Suddenly Don Alonso turned. He was staring right at me. He knew I had heard him. I felt my quivering limbs stiffen. Our eyes locked. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. What would he do to keep me quiet? I had his life in my hands. I could accuse him of heresy, but before I got the chance he could slit my throat and throw me down a well. He could say he had caught me stealing and that I was so ashamed I ran to the well and hurled myself in. I imagined them hauling up my body. I was just a seamstress’s daughter. What would it matter to anybody if I died?
Don Alonso stood staring at me, his eyes like dead ashes. I looked down at the floor, then up again, right into his eyes. I didn’t see anger or fear. What I did see was a terrible weariness. He knew, I think, that I wouldn’t tell. Without speaking, we had reached a kind of agreement.
But then, in a few days, when Don Alonso sent for my mother and me, the fear came back. I started to cry. “No!” I whimpered. “I won’t go!”
“What’s the matter with you, child?” snapped my mother. She grabbed me by the arm and squeezed hard.
“Please don’t make me go back there!” I pleaded. “I don’t want to go back there!”
She looked at my aunt. “It was your idea to let her stay with that vixen! They must have done something to her!”
I just stood there and howled. “No! No! I won’t go back to that house.”
“Don’t be silly.” Tía Cati was a kind woman, but, like the other women who gathered in the estrado, she had no use for moody children. For them, children were like pieces of furniture. You put them down where they’d be most useful and didn’t think about them again. She took me firmly by the hand and pulled me whimpering toward the door. I strained to get away.
Before I knew it we were standing in Don Alonso’s study. To one side was the library, to the other, a chapel with an image of Our Lady in a blue robe, a small gold crown on her head and the infant Jesus in her arms. I shuddered. Don Alonso, in black from head to toe except for a small white ruff, stood looking at me. His eyes were kind, but I thought it was a trick. I was cowering behind my aunt, trembling.
“Buenos días, Catalina,” he said. Teresa came in. She curtsied and kissed his hand.
“Señor,” she whispered. She looked very different from the day we had brought her the new, forest green gown. She wore no cosmetics and her eyes were puffy and red. Her drab, grey-black dress made her skin look sallow.
Don Alonso got right to the point. “Doña Teresa is going into the convent,” he said. “It’s a temporary arrangement.” I peeked out at Teresa from behind Tía Cati’s skirts. She looked miserable. “She will need a servant and has asked that Pancracia accompany her.”
For a moment, no one said anything. I stepped away from Tía Cati and almost swooned. Teresa smiled at me. Even with those sad eyes, she looked beautiful.
“Doña Teresa is very fond of the child,” he said. “She enjoys her company.” He took a little pouch out of a drawer in his writing table. He opened it and poured out a thick silver chain, then put it back into the pouch and handed it to my aunt.
“Please!” begged Teresa. “I’ll be able to bear it better if I can hear Pancracita’s sweet laughter every day.”
Don Alonso looked at me beseechingly. I was overwhelmed by the thought that Doña Teresa and her father actually seemed to need me. The decision, however, was not mine to make. The idea of accompanying Teresa to the convent for a few months was attractive. The beautiful Teresa! I’d be in charge of taking care of her—bringing her food, perfuming her bathwater with rose petals … emptying her bedpan! Could a creature as lovely as Teresa shit?
“For how long would it be?” asked Tía Cati.
“I don’t know,” said Don Alonso. “Five or six months. It will be worth your while,” he added, looking at the pouch. “We can work out an arrangement advantageous to us both.”
“I’ll have to ask her mother.”
“Ask her.”
I wondered if Don Alonso was just trying to get his hands on me in order to slit me open and tear out my heart for one of his Jewish rituals? “It won’t be so bad if I can hear Pancracia’s sweet laughter every day,” Teresa had said. Did she mean it, or was this just part of her father’s evil scheme?
I don’t know what Tía Cati told my mother, but she must have mentioned the chain. Well, I thought, at least I’m saleable. Anyway, before the week was up, Teresa and I were climbing into the carriage that would take us to Nuestra Señora de la Gracia, the Augustinian convent where Teresa was to be a boarder and I was to be her maid.
Teresa, in a subdued, brown dress and cape, lifted her dainty foot onto the stepladder that was used to get in and out of the carriage. As she did so, she exposed an ankle discreetly sheathed in a black, woolen stocking. A young cavalier blew her a kiss from the street.
“All the roses in the garden are flush with jealousy, for they can never compare with the exquisite Teresa,” he said, bowing and tipping his hat with a flourish.
“Well, take a good look,” she called back merrily, “because I’m going into the convent and you may never see me again.” “Shht!” scolded María. “Don’t make a scene.” Teresa’s sister was going to accompany us to the Augustinian sisters to settle Teresa in.
Once we were inside the carriage, Teresa’s mood changed. Her face became pinched and her lips quivered. A teardrop clung to her thick, fringelike eyelashes. She stared blankly at the curtained window, then sighed, bit her lip, and squinted as though trying to shut out the light.
I was too young to concern myself with what she was feeling. All I felt was excitement. I thought: We’re going, we’re really going. This isn’t part of some diabolical scheme concocted by Don Alonso to kidnap me! This is an adventure! We’re going to Nuestra Señora de la Gracia, and I shall have Doña Teresita all to myself!
But Teresa just sat there, her eyes unseeing, her face wan.
The carriage—an elegant, metal-framed covered wagon—slid along the street. María adjusted the curtain so that no one could see inside. It was strange. It was October, but in the fresh, cold morning air I could smell roses. Ever since, I’ve associated that fragrance with Teresa.
Sister Angélica del Sagrado Corazón
Toledo, 16 June 1576