SISTER MADDALENA LAID the cutting shears close to my ear.
The grating sound of metal on metal.
My hair, the shining locks of burnished black that Mama had brushed each evening and my papa had plaited before I went riding with him each morning, tumbled onto the cold tiled floor.
Tears trickled down my cheeks. People had always admired my hair. Many said it was what made me distinctive. From when I was the tiniest child Ardelia, my nurse, had told me the story of the princess who’d been rescued from a tower by a prince using her hair as a rope to climb up to reach her. Ardelia declared that one day a rich and handsome prince would ride up to our house, fall deeply in love with me, and I would become his bride – all because of the length and lustre of my beautiful hair.
Sister Maddalena fetched a broom and gave it to me to sweep up. ‘A woman’s hair can be her bondage,’ she said briskly. ‘Think on it, Sister Zarita de Marzena.’
In my aunt’s order of nuns a woman could keep her given name. I would still be Zarita, and I’d decided to adopt Mama’s family name rather than use Papa’s name any more, as, in my view, my father had abandoned me. Not long after the terrible day when he’d told me what was to become of me, we’d learned that Lorena was expecting a child. I realized that Papa would soon be taken up with his new family and then there would no longer be a place for me in his house. I was left with no option but to enter the convent.
My aunt was very quiet on this matter. She wouldn’t speak against Papa. I wasn’t sure if this was to do with one of the vows of her order: to be charitable in all things. Surely she wasn’t supporting Papa’s point of view? Once, when I’d been railing against him, she’d murmured, ‘Sometimes people do what they think is for the best, and their intentions are misinterpreted.’
I’d put my hands over my ears. ‘I won’t listen to any justification of his actions. As he has cast me off, thus will I do to him.’
And so it was as Zarita de Marzena that I began my new life as a novice in the convent of the Sisters of Compassion.
Summer cooled into autumn, and autumn became winter, but to my surprise the greyness of the skies was not reflected in my spirits. There was a happiness present in the enclosed community of women that I hadn’t expected. The nuns took joy from their work and prayer. They laughed when they ate and sewed together, and delighted in both playing and singing music for Evensong each night.
Removed from the tension of my home and the constant bickering with Lorena, I found calmness seeping into my mind and I began to acquire a peace and perspective that had been absent in my life. My aunt ensured that her nuns continued their education, and encouraged discussions on history, philosophy, politics and science. Many of the texts she used were from scrolls by Jewish scholars and books she’d translated from the Arabic language. Through letters from relatives and friends the enclosed community was kept well informed of events in the outside world.
And so we learned of the culmination of the inquiry by the Inquisition into the case of the holy child of La Guardia. In November 1491 an auto-da-fé was held where three people of Jewish origin, accused of capturing, torturing and crucifying a Christian boy child, were burned to death.
‘Despite no family reporting a child missing during the time the boy was supposed to have disappeared.’ Sister Maddalena shook her head. ‘And despite no body being found; stories were told and denouncements made. It’s likely that the officers of the Inquisition employed the same tactics as they used here to get people to betray one another.’
It was December before this news reached us. I was with my aunt and Sister Maddalena in the sewing room, engaged in embroidering a new altar cloth for our chapel in preparation for Christmas.
‘This is what happens when fear and suspicion are let loose,’ my aunt Beatriz observed. ‘It requires a great deal of self-discipline to rein in one’s emotions and act in a thoughtful way.’
I began to cry.
The two nuns looked at me and then at each other. Neither of them rose to place their arm around my shoulder or to pat my hand. ‘Sister Zarita,’ my aunt said calmly, ‘tell us why you are distressed.’
‘I’m a foolish girl,’ I sobbed. ‘I did as those you speak of did. I was one of the betrayers of this town when it was inspected by the Inquisition. When I heard the screams of Bartolomé on the morning they began to question him; when I saw what they had done to him; when’ – I gulped, tears and tension causing my throat to block and my voice to tremble – ‘when I knew that they planned more atrocities for him, I would have said anything, anything, to make them stop.’ I shuddered. ‘They had prepared red-hot pokers and pincers, and . . . and . . .’ The memory of that day in the barn rose up in my mind as a vision and I couldn’t continue.
My aunt said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘It’s only to be expected that you would react in a certain way upon seeing another human being that you love suffering torture.’
‘An innocent human being,’ Sister Maddalena interjected.
‘Yes, indeed, Sister Maddalena,’ my aunt went on. ‘An innocent human being in great pain. Naturally one would take steps to try to prevent it continuing. I wouldn’t blame myself too much over that incident.’
I swallowed my tears and tried to compose myself. If I was to recognize my guilt, then I must do it properly and not in an emotional outburst under the guise of concern for the welfare of another. ‘I don’t even have that excuse. When I spoke out it was because someone else had named the doctor who lives in the Jewish quarter of the town.’
‘Then you named someone to protect another,’ Sister Maddalena said loyally.
‘No,’ I said. ‘When I spoke out to avert Father Besian’s attention from the doctor, it was only partly to protect him . . . It was mainly to protect myself.’ There, I had said it. I had owned up to my cowardice. I hung my head in shame for my actions, but nonetheless felt an enormous relief wash through me. ‘I thought that if Father Besian quizzed the doctor, then he might say that I’d consulted him and then they would question me.’
‘You consulted the Jewish doctor, Zarita!’ Sister Maddalena exclaimed.
I nodded. ‘I went to the Jewish doctor’s house to enquire if he knew of a sick woman in the area. It was he who brought me to the beggar’s wife and told me she was dying.’
Sister Maddalena glanced at my aunt. ‘We didn’t realize things had happened in quite that way. When you came to us with the dying woman we thought you’d sought her out yourself and realized that she needed hospital care.’
‘Who else knows about this?’ my aunt said sharply.
‘No one, only us. And Garci,’ I added.
‘You are sure?’
‘Yes, why do you ask?’
‘In a small town everyone can learn each other’s business. Or’ – she reflected for a moment – ‘members of a household can find out things about each other.’
I looked from one to the other in anxiety. ‘Have I brought trouble to your door? I had no idea—’
My aunt smiled reassuringly. ‘Let’s not dwell on this matter. Father Besian is gone away, we hope never to return. We are little fish compared to the huge catch they hope to make when they finally take Granada.’
There was a silence in the room and then Sister Maddalena asked, ‘Whom did you denounce?’
‘I spoke against the women who seduce the sailors at the docks. And I feel responsible that two of them were taken to be stripped and scourged. Although they are bad women,’ I observed.
‘Are they?’ my aunt said quietly. ‘Would it surprise you to know that we treat some of them within these walls, discreetly and free of charge?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘For in the months I’ve been here I know you practise true mercy and compassion to everyone without question.’
‘And would it shock you to learn that they have clients other than the sailors and packmen who pass through the docks?’
I stared at my aunt. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I mean that respectable men of this town visit these places in the hours of darkness. Men of all classes and affluence. They use and abuse these women. If a pregnancy occurs, they usually abandon them, sometimes even exhorting them to kill the baby, and try to have the women punished if they don’t do this.’
‘Yet,’ I demurred, ‘don’t they bring this treatment on themselves by their wanton behaviour? Why would any decent woman resort to living in such a manner?’
My aunt leaned forward and looked into my face. ‘How would you live, Zarita, cast out by your father, if you didn’t have a kindly aunt to take you in?’
I put my head in my hands. ‘I am so weak,’ I whispered.
‘You are young,’ said Sister Maddalena. ‘The getting of wisdom is not easy.’
‘I should not have denounced them. I am guilty of a sin against charity.’
‘We are all guilty in some way or other,’ my aunt replied. ‘I too have regrets over how I acted at the time of our Inquisition. I shouldn’t have spoken to the priest, Father Besian, in the manner I did. I almost taunted him. I said that he would be ridiculed if he used a nun drinking mint and a simple-minded boy as examples of heresy. Also, it was pride that led me to show him the script from Queen Isabella granting me the land and her approval for my order. I could have acted more humbly and remained silent when he chastized me. But I didn’t. I do believe that our interview annoyed him to such a degree that when he saw he could not catch me out, he decided that he would abuse poor Bartolomé instead. Remember, I had spoken up for Bartolomé earlier outside the church after the service.’
I shivered. I too had tried to intercede for Bartolomé.
‘It is not wise to cross so vengeful a man,’ my aunt said. ‘Father Besian is the type to bear a grudge, to wait and wait until he can be revenged on the person he thinks has offended him.’