THE TRUTH IS, I NEVER LOVED MY MOTHER. I KNOW I SHOULD HAVE LOVED her, but she was such a sour, angry woman. Was it my fault my father died young and left us without a penny, or that I was plain and therefore unlovable? Was it my fault I was smart enough to learn to read? Tía Cati was a kinder, more motherly woman, and she had a sense of humor. So I have to admit it: I loved Tía Cati, but I never loved my mother.
Why, then, was I so devastated when she died? When I saw her stretched out in our estrado, a white coif on her head and a rose-petal rosary in her fingers, I nearly collapsed. I felt wounded, as though all the oozing gashes in Jesus’s body were my own. She had belittled me. She had thwacked me on the ear. But she was my mother, and the only images that came to mind at that moment were happy ones: the three of us—Mother, Tía Cati, and I—in the estrado, laughing and sewing and telling stories. Now the estrado was silent.
According to my aunt, my mother had just keeled over and died. “I don’t know what happened,” said Tía Cati. “A moan, a groan, and she collapsed.”
I looked at her.
“Well,” she said, “you know how your mother was. She wasn’t shy about complaining. But the only thing she said was that her chest was bothering her a bit. She thought it was indigestion and asked me to prepare her an infusion of peppermint water.”
The funeral was simple. Tía Cati’s daughters, Catalina and Irene, came from Madrid with their husbands and children. The women from the estrado and their families attended. Teresa was there. Don Alonso didn’t come, but he supplied refreshments—almond cakes and fruit juices. Later, we ate a meal prepared by Tía Cati’s sewing friends. I thought my cousins would stay awhile, but as soon as it was over, they left for Madrid.
God forgive me, but the only thing I could think of was what would become of me? I shouldn’t have been thinking of myself at a time like that, but I was young and self-centered. I hadn’t lived for decades in a convent, where you have to put everyone else before yourself. I tossed different ideas around in my mind. Should I return to Encarnación? Should I stay with Tía Cati? She was alone now, and if I got married, perhaps she would allow me to stay in the house with my husband. It was a nice house, much nicer than Anselmo the cartwright’s. If she arranged a marriage to another boy from the same sort of family, perhaps he would just as soon live with my aunt as with his parents. And if we were occupying the house, I might stand to inherit it, and then I could stay there forever. I know these were sinful thoughts. God forgive me.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry. Within three months of my mother’s death, Tía Cati took to bed with a terrible cough. I brought in a curandera, a healer, to prescribe a potion and a barber to bleed her, but nothing worked. One night she was overcome by a fit of wheezing. She hacked and rasped, as though her chest were full of demons she was struggling to expel. Then, all of a sudden, she was quiet. She was quiet because she was dead.
Both my mother and my aunt, dead within three months of each other. God have mercy.
Well, I thought, I can just stay here. I have work. I have skills. I can make enough money to live. Besides, I have my dowry. I’ll ask Don Alonso to negotiate a marriage for me. After all, he’d given me the dowry. Why couldn’t he find the husband as well?
But, as I always say, you never know when you get up in the morning what the dusk will bring. As it turned out, Catalina and Irene lost no time in informing me that their mother’s house was not mine to keep. No sooner did they have the alguacil serve notice on me to vacate than their husbands sued each other for possession of the property. They contested everything, not only the house but also the furniture, the rugs, the loom, the pots and pans, even the pins and thimbles. Then, to complicate things further, the widows of Celso and Felipe made claims on Tía Cati’s belongings on behalf of her male criollo grandchildren, now sailing back from Peru with their mothers on the swiftest caravels available. Who would wind up with the house? One thing was clear: it wouldn’t be me. I needed a place to live, so I packed my belongings and trekked back to Encarnación. The only thing I took from Tía Cati’s was the discolored green cushion I’d used since childhood to sit by the brazier and sew and my dowry money.
They let me in right away, but Teresa didn’t come to the vestibule to greet me, even though I asked for her quite a few times. I didn’t know what to do. I’d spent three months at Encarnación and knew several of the nuns, but I’d been allowed in as a boarder only because Teresa claimed me as a friend. Now, standing there in my faded grey dress, my head covered with a black coif like a widow’s, I felt like a leftover scrap of cloth. Nuns scurried by, some holding hands and chattering, but they looked right through me. Had I become invisible?
I asked to speak with Madre Francisca, and an elderly nun led me through a long corridor, up some stairs, and into a kind of waiting room. Madre Francisca’s amanuensis, a woman with enormous hands and thin, tight lips, told me to wait and instantly forgot about me. I hadn’t seen this sister before. She was one of the convent’s many recorders—chroniclers, bookkeepers, registrars, and the like—a no-nonsense type for whom a vow of silence wasn’t necessary. She was copying figures into a large book, perhaps a ledger.
“Excuse me, Sister,” I said after a while. “Do you know Teresa de Ahumada?”
“Who is Teresa de Ahumada?” She put down the magnifying glass she was using to read the numbers and looked at me as though I had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. She blinked a few times, as if wondering how I could possibly have gotten into the room.
“She’s a sister in this convent.”
“Oh,” she said, going back to her work. Then, after a pause, she added. “With two hundred women living at Encarnación, I can’t know everyone.” She picked up another book—a hefty tome bound in cream-colored kid—and leafed through it. It appeared to be a registry of all the convent’s inhabitants since its founding. “She’s not here,” she said finally. “What I mean is, yes, she’s a sister in this convent, but she’s not here now. We sent her home a few days ago.”
Mischievous Teresa, I thought. What had she done? Fart in chapel or shoot peas at the prioress from the balcony. “Why?” I asked. “What did she do?”
“She didn’t do anything. She had a bad fever, so we sent her home to her father.”
“She’s ill?” I said stupidly. I remembered that overheated look Teresa often had. I’d thought it was passion, excitement, exhilaration, but no, it was a run-of-the-mill fever. She wasn’t aflame with the love of God. She just had an ongoing cold.
At last, Madre Francisca called me in. I explained my situation—my mother’s death, my aunt’s death, the litigation concerning the house.
“And you want to continue boarding here until a marriage can be arranged?”
Yes, I thought. That’s what I want. Which is why I couldn’t believe my own ears when I heard myself say, “No, Mother, I want to profess.”
Mother Francisca raised her eyebrows. “Wait a while,” she said. “Don’t rush into anything. You should never make a decision while you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset,” I said, biting my lip.
“Well, you should never make a decision after something … how shall I say it? … after something distressing happens. It’s better to wait until you can think more clearly.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“You can stay here, of course. Teresa will be back in a few days. Her father says she’s feeling better. Wait awhile. Talk it over with her. Then decide.”
Panic gripped me. Basilio’s rejection had demolished my confidence. What if nobody wanted to marry me? And if I did marry some cobbler or chandler, would he forbid me to read? Would I have to go through life pretending not to know what I’d struggled so painstakingly to learn? I imagined myself wrinkled and haggard, surrounded by squalling children, my mind blank as fresh parchment.
“I wouldn’t be a charity case. I wouldn’t have to sew to earn my keep. I have a dowry.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Don Alonso de Cepeda gave me a marriage dowry. I could use it for the convent.”
Doña Francisca sighed and concentrated hard, as though she were doing sums in her head. “All the same,” she said finally, “wait awhile. Taking the habit is a lifelong commitment. It means you want to devote your entire life to God. You have to be sure.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said. But my mind was made up. If they wouldn’t take me in this convent, I’d find another. Basilio had snubbed me. I wouldn’t give some other bumpkin the chance to do the same.
Teresa returned in a day or two. She looked pale, but her eyes no longer blazed with fever. I told her I had decided to take vows.
“Do you think they’ll accept me here?” I asked breathlessly.
“Are you thinking of becoming …” She paused, as if looking for the most delicate way to say something difficult. “The thing is, Pancracia, Mother Francisca is taking in very few lay sisters. The convent is so full that we just can’t afford to …”
“I understand. I have a dowry.”
I didn’t want to enter as a tertiary, a white-veiled nun. The black-veiled nuns—the dowered sisters—looked down on white-veiled nuns, the charity cases. Some of these were kitchen nuns who shelled peas and washed pots. Some were laborer nuns who did carpentry or took care of the chickens or pigs. Then, there were the women who were poor but had special talents: the master seamstresses who sewed habits and chasubles or designed gowns for the plaster saints in the sanctuary; talented singers or composers who enriched the house’s musical activity; artists who produced paintings for the chapel. The other sisters held them in contempt. I’d experienced the hierarchy at Nuestra Señora de la Gracia, and I didn’t want to be a second-class nun.
“I have the dowry Don Alonso gave me,” I said again. The look of surprise on Teresa’s face made it obvious she didn’t know her father had supplied my marriage offering.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Pancracia?” she said finally. “If you have money, you could get yourself a husband easily enough. Just because it didn’t work out with Basilio …”
“I don’t want to go through that again. And I don’t want to pretend to be stupid and ignorant so some pigherd can lord it over me.”
She looked at me a long time. Then a smile blossomed on her lips. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Good girl,” she whispered.
We embraced. Now we were truly going to be sisters. Real sisters, at last.
Well, for once everything turned out right. Mother Francisca accepted me as a novice almost right away, and I took my vows on a cold, autumn morning when the leaves had almost all fallen, blanketing the convent garden with splotches of red, orange, brown, and gold. They crackled under my feet as I processed into the chapel toward the altar. The only person to come see me was Don Alonso, looking less stiff and grim than during Teresa’s profession. I asked to take a new name, and so, on that morning, Pancracia Soto died and Sister Angélica was born.
At Encarnación I felt for the first time that I belonged somewhere. I’d grown up in my aunt’s house, and, although Tía Cati made us welcome, my mother always insisted we were just poor relatives, that we had a roof over our heads thanks only to the grace of God and the benevolence of her sister. At Nuestra Señora de la Gracia, I had lived in Teresa’s room and only enjoyed the benefits of the place thanks to her. Now I had my own cell in a convent that was really a home. I had sisters and a Mother Superior. I had entered with a dowry—a gift from Don Alonso, it was true, but a gift belongs to the recipient. With that money, I had paid my own way, and now I was a full-fledged Carmelite, a black-veiled nun, just like Teresa.
Now, after all these years, I ask myself why I really took the habit. Certainly, the immediate reason was Basilio’s rejection. It stung terribly. But why else? Because I was lonely? Because I was frightened? Because I wanted to be near Teresa? Of one thing I’m sure: It wasn’t out of the desire to serve Jesus. To be honest, serving Jesus never entered my mind. That came later.
I loved the convent from the very beginning, mostly because it gave me the chance to study. As a novice, I spent long hours pouring over books that told about the history of our order. I wasn’t allowed to read books of chivalry like Amadís de Gaula. (I had hidden away Teresa’s copy, which she had given me before her profession.) But these stories were even better. They were full of adventures. There were devout monks and hermits, to be sure, but also bloody battles, daring heroes, and wicked women. Take, for example, the prophet Elijah, considered the founder of the Carmelite order even though he lived before the coming of Our Savior. Elijah saved God’s people from the wicked Jezebel, conquering the idolaters at Mount Carmel in a ferocious battle just like the ones in Amadís. Later, in the 1200s, lay hermits formed a community on one of the slopes of Mount Carmel and built an oratory to the Virgin on the very spot where Elijah had fought. That was the beginning of the order.
Encarnación wasn’t the strictest convent in the world, but it wasn’t the laxest. We celebrated the Divine Office with great magnificence and solemnity. We sang psalms at each of the Divine Hours and the Te Deum at Matins on feast days. I have to admit I enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons. I loved the harmonies, the voices raised in exaltation, not because they made me feel one with God, but simply because they were beautiful. But who knows, maybe that was God’s way of calling me to Him. He made me love music. And because I loved music, I sang. And because I sang, I prayed. And praying, I felt His presence.
The convent parlor was our window to the world. Originally, it was supposed to be just for family members, but by the time I got to Encarnación, priests, gentlemen, musicians, even courtesans gathered there to socialize and do business. The sisters stayed behind the grille observing, gossiping with visitors, passing notes to friends and admirers. Even though we were stuck behind closed doors most of the time, we knew what was going on because the salon was an endless source of information. Teresa had chosen Encarnación because one of her favorite cousins, Juana Isabel Suárez, had already professed there. Juana Isabel had convinced her that Encarnación, with its relaxed rules and active social life, offered a more pleasant environment than the stricter Augustinian house where she had been before. It was, I thought, a good choice.
One day a zahorí wandered into the parlor and demanded permission to search the convent grounds. He was a bizarre-looking fellow dressed in gypsy garb, with a brightly embroidered shirt, voluminous red trousers fastened at the ankle, a black sash around his waist, a bandanna on his head, and countless chains and baubles dangling from his neck. When he moved, his trinkets tinkled like fairies laughing. All the rich ladies who had come to visit gathered around him, and they tittered as he eyed them suggestively. He was extraordinarily handsome, with intense black eyes and a robust mustache. Zahorís are able to locate underground springs, sometimes with a divining rod, sometimes with a pendulum. Some can find hidden treasure or even tell where the corpse of a murder victim is buried. A few can see into the future.
Mother Francisca tried to shoo the man out, but he kept insisting that a great treasure was buried somewhere on the convent grounds.
“I must walk in your gardens,” he told her. “I must walk until I feel the vibration of the riches hidden beneath the topsoil. Then I must dig.”
“What you must do is leave!” commanded the prioress.
“I must dig!”
“You must leave!”
The man took a step backward. He looked up and rolled his eyes, as though he were listening to celestial music. His countenance became serene, then rapturous. “I hear something,” he whispered. “I have received a message from God.”
“Bullshit,” muttered Mother Francisca under her breath. “Someone get him out of here.”
“From this blessed house,” he said, as though in a trance, “a great santa will emerge.” Santa was what we called holy woman who was a nun. Laywomen could be holy, too, but they were called beatas.
The visitors hushed. A charged silence filled the parlor. All eyes were on the zahorí.
“Her name is …” He paused dramatically. “Her name is Teresa.” Everyone gasped.
“Teresa?” one said to the other. “Teresa de Ahumada?”
“Go!” commanded Mother Francisca. “Get out of here. That’s all I need, some gypsy sowing discord, predicting one of my nuns will be a great santa. The minute one of these girls thinks she’s holier than the rest, she becomes impossible.” She pushed the zahorí out the door.
Immediately, arguments erupted. “She already thinks she’s the last chunk of mutton in the stewpot. Now she’s going to walk around pretending to be Santa Justina.”
For a while there was great anger. Great yelling and snorting. Who was this stupid zahorí? people asked. Where did he come from? How did he come off predicting that Teresa de Ahumada would be a santa? But then it died down. The townsfolk went back to gossiping in the parlor and the gallants to flirting with the prettiest sisters, ladies on pedestals just like in the novels: beautiful, virginal, and inaccessible.
Most of the young men flirted unabashedly with the several novices at a time, addressing a piropo first to one, then another. “Such pretty flowers in the convent garden,” they’d say. “I’d like to tend them all!” Some of the visitors brought bouquets for the refectory; some brought sweets. One young Portuguese always brought brinquillos, a delicious candy from his native country, or mantequillas, a pastry made from sugar, butter, and eggs. The novices and young nuns sat by the grille chatting and giggling, savoring their youth, gazing into the eyes of men who were not their lovers. Some surely hungered for the touch of a masculine hand, for the warmth of a mustachioed lip. Some dreamed of sumptuous weddings and humid beds that would never be. I had no admirers. Sunday after Sunday, I sat by the grille and waited for visitors that did not come. As I embroidered, images of Basilio insinuated themselves into my thoughts. Broad shoulders. Wavy hair. I pushed them away. “I’m better off without him,” I told myself. And still, there were times when I had to bite my lip and sniff back tears.
A young man named Don Lope caught my eye. No, I don’t mean he caught my eye in that way. What I mean is, I noticed him because he was devoted to just one girl. He was unusual in that way. He didn’t flirt indiscriminately. In fact, he didn’t flirt at all. He came every Sunday evening just after Vespers and asked for the novice Rosa. Always Rosa. They sat at the farthest side of the grille and lost themselves in conversation. They whispered and twittered until Sister Escolástica came out and chased all the visitors away, and then they took leave of each other with long, languid gazes, sighs and tears that made me think of Amadís and his beloved Oriana. How could the other sisters fail to notice that something was going on between these two? It was just a matter of time, I thought, before someone reported Rosa to Mother Francisca, who would certainly punish the girl. What could I do? I had to warn her.
“You’ll be caught,” I told her earnestly. “This has got to stop. I’m telling you for your own good.” She must have been about fifteen or sixteen years old. She was aptly named, because her skin was as delicate and creamy as the petal of a pale, pink rose. She had thick, flaxen hair, so luminous that the thought of her tonsure made me wince, and eyes like emeralds. She was the sixth daughter in a family of eight girls, and her parents had put her and her two younger sisters in Encarnación when they were no taller than lambs.
“But why?” she said. “What are we doing that’s wrong?”
“You’re going to be a consecrated virgin, Rosa. You’re going to be a spouse of God. You can’t be moaning and drooling over some lovesick cub.”
“I don’t want to be a consecrated virgin. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be a nun.”
“Well, we don’t get to choose our lot in life.”
I expected her to react with defiance. I expected her to say something like, “Well, I’m going to choose mine.” But she didn’t. She just looked at me as Isaac must have looked at Abraham as he raised his knife. She was right, I thought. Nobody had asked her if she wanted to be a consecrated virgin. How could she be a good nun if she was taking the habit against her will? What sense did it make for a girl like Rosa to profess? And yet, what choice did she have?
“You’re going to be a nun,” I said gently. “You have to tell him to go away. He’s overstepping the bounds of decorum.”
“I love him.”
“You can’t love him,” I said. “You can talk to him, but you can’t love him. He can bring you cakes and trinkets, and you can accept them, but you can’t love him.”
“I want to get out of here,” she said matter-of-factly. Her voice was inflectionless. It was as though she had said, “I want to spin awhile,” or “I want to walk in the garden.”
“Do you think your father will take you back? You’ve been here for ten years.”
“I don’t want to go back to my father’s house. I want to be with Don Lope.”
“But you’d have to go home so your father could make marriage arrangements.”
“I don’t need for him to make arrangements. Don Lope and I are already married.”
“What?”
“We’ve made vows to each other. That’s all that matters.”
“Don’t be silly.”
But then I thought, perhaps they really are already married, and if they are, what’s to be done? Let me write down for the sake of clarity that this all happened before the great council, I mean the Council of Trent. In the old days, before the council, all a man and woman had to do to be married was make vows to each other. You didn’t need a priest. You didn’t need a ceremony. You didn’t even need to tell your parents. Of course, most people had weddings, but a wedding wasn’t absolutely essential. If a man and a woman promised themselves to each other, that was it. They were married. They could do all those things that married people do. What I mean is, they could lie together. They could have children together.
After the council, things were different. Too many men were promising to marry girls just in order to enjoy them. And what happened after they’d had their fill? They abandoned them, of course. Then what did those poor girls do? They entered convents—that is, if their fathers didn’t do away with them. To solve the problem, the council declared that in order for a couple to be really married, they had to make their vows in public, in front of a priest and witnesses. Private vows didn’t count anymore. So when Rosa told me she and Don Lope were already married, I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? The Council of Trent hadn’t happened yet. Still, there was one thing—one major thing—that didn’t ring true: the marriage couldn’t possibly have been consummated.
“You aren’t married, Rosa,” I said. “You’re still a virgin.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you haven’t … you haven’t lain with Don Lope.”
“I don’t understand. I love him.”
How was I going to explain to her what I meant? This child had spent her entire life in a convent, but she didn’t even understand what was virginal about the Virgin Mary.
“Do you know how babies are made, Rosa?”
“No.”
“A man has to lie with a woman. It’s what makes people married. I mean, really married. They sleep in the same bed.”
“Then I really have to get out of here. They’ll never let Don Lope into my cell so he can sleep with me on my cot. Are you sure that’s necessary?”
I knew it was my duty to go to Madre Francisca, but those emerald eyes were so entreating. What should I do? It occurred to me to ask Teresa, but then I decided against it. I didn’t know if I could trust her with a secret like this. Teresa was beginning to change. She spent long hours in the chapel praying, and she’d taken to flagellating herself at night. She was making a fetish of being submissive. She had started fawning over Mother Francisca. “Yes, Mother. Of course, Mother. Can I help you with anything, Mother?” She was playing the saint again, just as she had at Nuestra Señora de la Gracia. How could I trust her with Rosa’s secret?
“Look,” I said to Rosa. “Sisters leave the convent all the time to visit their families. All you have to do is ask for permission to go home for a few days.”
The convent was so overcrowded, it was too expensive to feed everyone. In addition to nuns, there were boarders, servants, orphans, and lay sisters—women who lived at Encarnación without actually professing. Some wealthy sisters moved in with their own maids and slaves. Women of means provided their own food, but those without a regular income had to eat whatever there was in the refectory, and there usually wasn’t much. The solution was to let nuns take meals at home.
“Just tell Mother Francisca you want to visit your family.”
“She’ll never believe me.”
“Why not?”
“I never visit my family. When was the last time they sent for me or my sisters? They’ve forgotten about us.”
It was true. Rosa never went out, nor did any relative come to visit her.
“Look,” I said. “What if you got a letter saying they needed you at home for a few days?”
“No one has ever written to me. Who’s going to write a letter like that?”
“Me.”
She looked at me blankly. “This child really is dumb,” I said to myself.
“Look, Rosa, I’ll write a letter. We’ll pretend it’s from your mother. What’s her name?”
“Eulalia Eustacia Martínez de Santa Cruz.”
“I’ll write a letter and sign her name. I’ll say you’re needed at home for a few days. Then you can have your tryst with Lope. Once you’re really married, no one can force you to stay in this convent.”
Suddenly Rosa flung her arms around my neck and covered my cheeks with kisses. “Lope and I can escape and live somewhere far away. We can lie together, just like you said!”
I felt queasy. Was I doing the right thing? I have to admit that in a way, I wished I were Rosa, in love with someone who was in love with me. I wished I were the one escaping with a handsome young man who would take me in his arms and kiss me. Someone like Basilio, but without Basilio’s stupid prejudices. But then, I put the thought out of my mind. I had cast my lot with God. Now I had to concentrate on helping this child. I had to write the letter. If Mother Francisca found out, she’d certainly throw me out of the convent. Then where would I go? I was risking my own future to help this silly little cabbage-head. But she was crying for joy, hiccoughing and hopping up and down. How could I go back on my word?
“Rosa,” I said. “You must promise me one thing. If you’re caught, you must never tell who wrote the letter.”
“Never!”
I walked back to my cell and lay down. They were ringing the bell for Vespers. I didn’t want to go, but I was afraid that if I was absent, it would rouse suspicion.
The next morning, while the others were spinning, I sharpened my quill and wrote:
To Mother Francisca, Prioress of the Convent of the Encarnación:
I am writing you because I am very ill, and I need Rosa to come home at once. Please allow her to leave the convent this afternoon.
Your unworthy servant,
Eulalia Eustacia Martínez de Santa Cruz
Wasting paper is a sin, but I tore that one up. Then I wadded the pieces into a ball and threw it into the fire. Who was going to believe a letter like that? In the first place, why would Doña Eulalia call for Rosa and not for her two younger sisters? And why wouldn’t she send a coach for her, or at least a servant? No mother would expect the prioress simply to open the gate and send a postulant gallivanting through the streets on her own. Mother Francisca was sure to send a messenger to Doña Eulalia’s house to check the authenticity of the note.
“This is not going to work,” I told Rosa. “We’ll have to think of something else.”
The child began to pout. “You promised!” she whined.
“Look,” I said. “If I manage to sneak you out of here, could you get a message to Lope to wait for you by the convent wall?”
“All I have to do is ask him when he comes.”
“You’ll have to be very careful. If anyone hears you …”
“How will you sneak me out?”
I thought a moment. I’d have to outsmart the extern—the nun who held the key to the convent and manned the turn through which we received packages and messages. “Listen, Rosa,” I said, “I know where the extern leaves the key. When they march the postulants into the chapel to pray the Office, tell the novice mistress that you don’t feel well and have to lie down. When you exit, wait for me in the vestibule. I’ll meet you there, grab the key and let you out. Tell Lope to be waiting with a change of clothes.” I was the assistant head of the sewing room now, as well as an apprentice apothecary. In the morning, I oversaw the sewing. When the others left for chapel, I could stay behind, pretending to straighten up.
I felt as though I were participating in a great adventure. I was uniting Amadís with Oriana. I was serving the cause of true love. I was a fairy godmother! What I was doing wasn’t sinful, it was heroic! I yearned to tell Teresa, but I was afraid. In the old days, when she was still naughty and fun, she might have helped me, but now, who knew how she might react.
“I’ll tell Lope on Sunday, when he comes,” said Rosa. “We’ll work it out then.”
Well, as they say, El hombre propone, pero Dios dispone. Man proposes, but God disposes. In other words, nothing ever turns out the way you expect.
On Friday I spent my free time scouting out hiding places near the vestibule. After Rosa left the chapel, she’d need a place to wait for me, or, if I got there first, I’d be the one to hide. I also had to figure out how to sneak back into the chapel after letting her out. I was nervous all morning. I pricked my finger while stitching an ornate altarpiece. I pressed a tiny remnant against the wound and watched the blood weave paths among the threads. It spread in all directions, reminding me of a spider with outstretched legs. A red spider. A bad omen. In the early afternoon, Teresa’s cousin Juana Isabel came to find me in the infirmary, where Sister Josefa was teaching me to make pastilles for rheumatism. “It’s Teresa,” she said. “She’s sick again.”
“Bring her in,” said Sister Josefa. She was a feline-faced nun in her forties, lean and nimble, with slanted, panther-like eyes and pointed, menacing teeth. In spite of her intimidating appearance, she was witty and good natured, the kind of woman whose deadpan humor always caught you off-guard. A demanding but patient teacher, she had already taught me the rudiments of chemistry. Thanks to her, before long I would be mixing potions on my own.
“She’s fainted three times already today, Sister,” said Juana Isabel. “Maybe we should send her home. I think she needs a doctor.”
“She should have been a Dominican,” said Josefa. “They’re richer and eat better. They don’t get sick as often.” She brushed her hand against her lip, like a panther cleaning its whiskers. “I’ll go see her. You stay here and tend the poison,” she said to me.
“It’s all that flagellating and fasting,” I said. “She was already fragile, and now she’s completely ruined her health.”
“Flagellating and fasting? God have mercy.”
“Father Benedicto recommended mortifications.”
“I’ll mortify him, that bastard,” said Sister Josefa, gathering concoctions into her apothecary bag. “On second thought, you come with me, Angélica. You know her better than anyone. You’ll be able to advise me.”
Teresa had a terrible fever. Josefa, Juana Isabel, and I sat with her all through the night, but couldn’t get it to break. The next morning Mother Francisca summoned Don Alonso to come and fetch Teresa. Juana Isabel and I carried her out to the vestibule. Don Alonso turned ashen when he saw her. His beloved daughter. She looked as though she were about to die. Her skin was clammy, her eyes were glazed and unfocused, and her lips were parched. Her arms dangled like a rag doll’s … I shuddered and looked away.
We lifted her into the coach gently, gently.
Don Alonso turned to me. “Please, come with us, Sister Angélica,” he said pleadingly.
“Of course,” I said. I had forgotten all about Rosa.
Angélica del Sagrado Corazón
Toledo, 2 July 1576