by Carla Kelly
She noticed he had neatly sidestepped her comment about leisure time, but chose to ignore it. “I suppose there are.”
Antonio took the bag of food and stood a moment looking down at her. “Trust your instincts, Ana,” he said. “Manolo can’t really help and Carlos is busy.”
Without a word, he kissed her forehead and left her there.
“I will, friend,” she said to the empty room. “My instincts are all I have.”
Chapter Twenty-four
El Ghalib’s raid on Las Claves began in the quiet hour before sunset, when villagers were returning from their fields after preparing them for winter. All was silence, until that unforgettable sound, once heard never forgotten.
Hanneke sat back on her heels and dropped her pruning shears as the sound grew louder. She recognized it, and felt her breath come faster.
“Go inside, Engracia. Hurry,” she ordered.
Then Engracia heard the war cry, too. She dropped her needlework and ran awkwardly for the great hall, holding onto her belly. Hanneke picked up the embroidery hoop, her first thoughts of Antonio. Pray God nothing had happened to him. She stopped and looked skyward. Santiago, we need you here.
She ran through the great hall and out the main door in time to watch the gates swing open and villagers pour inside, urged along by the guard left behind, which suddenly looked too small.
The villagers, some of whom she recognized by now, came carrying bundles hastily thrown together, dragging crying children, tugging animals’ halters, coaxing donkeys and slow-moving cows that brayed and bawled. Through the gates she saw one of the distant huts burst into flames. One woman wailed and threw her apron over her head. Her lament was taken up by others, small babies joining in.
The war cries grew louder and the villagers moved faster, as Carlos roared to them that he was going to close the gates. Unsure of herself, wanting to help but not knowing how, Hanneke turned toward the entrance to the great hall. Maybe Manolo would agree to let some of his tenants with small children come inside.
The insistent braying of a mule stopped her. Hanneke watched as the animal, sitting on its haunches, protested at the top of its lungs as a woman and two little ones tugged at it. There they were, half in and half out of the gate, with Carlos breathing fire.
“I can help,” Hanneke shouted. She grabbed the halter and tugged.
“Bite his ear, lady,” one of the soldiers told her.
“Yes, my lady,” urged the woman, who yanked her children away from the mule. “Yes! If the gates swing shut with us on the inside and the mule outside, my husband will beat me!”
Hanneke grabbed the closest ear and bit hard. The mule stopped in the middle of his own lament and leaped up, knocking Hanneke to the ground. She hurried to her feet and hung onto the rope as the animal flailed about, slamming her against the gate over and over, then crowding against her. She groaned as the metal bar dug into her back, but hung on.
“Let go, lady!”
She saw Carlos on horseback, his one eye full of worry, but sounding so far away. She dropped the rope and ducked as the irate mule swung around, then crawled away from the animal, only to have a dog trip over her and start growling. She put up her hands as Carlos kicked the dog and grabbed her. She clung to him, sobbing, as he carried her inside the great hall.
With tenderness she never could have imagined, the ugly man set her down next to Manolo and brushed the mud off her dress, then turned her head to look at the bruise near her ear. He shook his head as he would over a small child found dirty on the road.
“Dama, Antonio warned me about you. He told me you would save the world if you could. He will be angry with me!”
She touched his arm, grateful for his care, unhappy with herself for distracting him from more important duties. “It’s not your fault, Carlos. I had to help that woman, don’t you see? She had those little children.” She touched her back where the mule had thrown her into the gate.
“I must return to my duty,” Carlos said. “I have no choice.”
“Go, and thank you,” Hanneke told him. “Antonio will hear only a good report from me, sir knight.”
He smiled at that, and touched his hand to his forehead.
“Is there anything else we should prepare?” Manolo asked. “What would Santiago do?”
“Just what we are doing,” Carlos replied. Hanneke heard all the pride. “The gates are closed. El Ghalib will burn a few more houses.” His voice trailed off. “The only thing is…”
“Tell me,” Manolo demanded.
“We have never been attacked this late in the year. I will be glad to hear what Antonio has to tell us when he returns.” Carlos rubbed his arm. “Getting cold too soon.”
Manolo called for Pablo from the kitchen, and he helped her upstairs. By the time she assured him she was fine, and that he should see what good he could do in the courtyard, her whole body ached. She lay down with her shoes on. She dragged a blanket over her, and put her pillow over her head.
She woke up because the ache had concentrated itself in her belly. She wanted to drag herself to the door and call for help, but the pain was too great. She drew herself into a ball. I will feel better in the morning, she thought. Won’t I?
She lay there as the pain came in cresting waves, minutes apart and then closer. She tried to rub her back, but any motion made her gasp. I must get help, she thought, at a loss because she could not stand. Maybe someone would miss her.
After what seemed like hours of agony, someone knocked. “Please help me,” Hanneke called out in her loudest voice. Couldn’t anyone hear her? Was everyone at Las Claves deaf? Or was her shout really only a whisper?
Engracia stood there, her eyes wide. “Ana, what is the matter?”
“Everything. Please get Juana. She…she doesn’t like me, but I need someone,” Hanneke pleaded. Someone useful and not you, she had the good sense not to say. “I think it’s the baby.”
She closed her eyes as Engracia hurried from Santiago’s room – gruss got, where was he? – crying her way down the hall.
In mercifully few minutes, Juana stood beside her, her hand on her forehead. “You are sweating in this cold room.”
Juana, don’t scold me. I need help. “Never mind that,” she managed to say. “Something is wrong.”
She heard Juana’s intake of breath. The servant rested her hand on Hanneke’s belly. “There is trouble inside,” Juana said. For a change, she didn’t sound unkind.
“Please not that,” she whispered. “A baby is all I want.”
Time dragged by, but at least she was in her warmest nightgown with a blanket-covered iron pig at her feet. She could hear Manolo in the room, with his odd hitch as he walked. Engracia cried, until he said something soft to her and she left. In itself, that was a relief.
When he mentioned Santiago, she opened her eyes. “Santiago? You’re here? I need you.”
“No, child.” She recognized Father Bendicio’s voice. “We know where he is and Manolo is writing to him. He will come soon.”
He didn’t come. Not that night and not the next day. The cramps grew more insistent, rising and falling like breakers on a distantly remembered beach. Her body was a skiff, bobbing up and down, blown by the wind. Sweat poured from her, even as her teeth chattered with cold so deep she wondered why no one lit a fire. But there it was, glowing not that far away. Her misery grew as the pain increased and the tiny one twisted inside her.
As the room darkened to dusk, she heard the door open, bringing cold air with it. “Santiago?” she whispered. “Please be Santiago.”
“I wish I were.”
She was too weak to cry. Eyes closed, she felt warm hands cradle her face. “Antonio.”
“Yes.” He raised her sweaty head and put a towel under it. “I won’t leave you.”
“Promise?”
He
couldn’t have heard her. She hardly heard herself. She felt his lips nearly touching her ear. “Promise.”
Comforted, she slept, crying out only when the pain was too great. During one of those awful moments, Antonio rubbed her back, then leaned across her and placed an orange where she could see it.
“It will taste so good soon, Ana. I have more of them.”
Strange things happened to her body, forces over which she had no control. She heard a low-voiced but fierce argument, and the final words spoken so calmly. “She was left in my care. I won’t leave her.”
The bed creaked and someone sat behind her, pulling her onto his lap. She felt a rush of cold air as the blanket was lifted off her body and her nightshift raised to her waist. She gasped and tried not to scream as her body broke in two and a baby poured out in a gush of fluid. She struggled to touch her baby, then remembered nothing else.
When she woke hours later, she kept her eyes closed, not wanting to see the tiny, bloodied thing between her legs. The image brought a wail of grief she did not try to stifle. She heard the bed creak as Antonio settled himself next to her, holding her as she sobbed.
She woke much later. Antonio sat in the chair again, dressed in a black tunic. Too tired to speak, she nodded to him, and earned a smile. He picked up the orange lying on her bed and peeled it. He popped a section in her mouth. To chew and swallow was bliss. She ate the orange and looked around for more.
“You’ll get another one tomorrow, after you eat some mush and eggs. Oh, don’t look daggers! You’re a ferocious woman, dama.” He sighed. “And a brave one.”
Better ask. Better get it over with. “My baby?”
He held out one cupped hand. “She was this small. So tiny, Ana, so perfect.”
“What did you…” I don’t want to know, but if I do not know I will die.
“Manolo found a carved box. Engracia lined it with velvet. Bendicio baptized her, and I buried her.”
“A name? Please?”
“Claro que si. I named her Fermina, after my mother.”
“Fermina. Thank you.” She wanted to say more. Perhaps it was best she hadn’t the strength.
Chapter Twenty-five
In the days that turned into weeks following the death of her daughter, she was aware of the smallest things – the crackling of a fire in the brazier that someone pushed close to the bed; the oranges; the wind howling around the patio.
She was more aware of Antonio Baltierra. He usually sat in the chair by the bed, busy sewing harness or fletching arrows. He would look up when she woke from the light sleep that was her closest companion. Whether it was the sleep of recuperation, as the body marshaled its forces, or the sleep of forgetfulness, she couldn’t have said.
Others visited her, but Antonio was always there, especially during the longer nights. She tried not to cry – after all, women miscarried often enough – but when darkness closed in, she could not help herself. She would hear the scrape of Antonio’s chair and his comforting presence as he bent over her to wipe her tears, or pull the blanket higher on her shoulders.
Her appetite gradually returned. She suspected a conspiracy between Pablo and the cook, who plotted to see what delicacies would tempt her. She could have told them that salt herring had the most appeal, but never bothered, because there was none. She tried their sweets and savories and shared them with Antonio.
Food made the quiet man more expansive. “You know, Ana, when I was a child, I never imagined such delights,” he said, gesturing with his spoon at the burnt sugar and cream concoction she handed him, after a few bites.
“It’s flan, and it’s simple,” she said.
“I never ate it before coming to Las Claves,” he said. “My mother – Fermina – swept the tavern floor in our village.” He paused to finish the flan. “She gleaned the scraps of food that fell there and made us a stew.”
Hanneke stared at him. “How could you grow tall on such leavings?”
“It was a mystery to my mother.” He leaned back in his chair, regarding her. “I was hungry all the time. Once I even bled the cow of my mother’s master and drank that.” He smiled at the distressed look on her face. “No frowns, Ana! Obviously it didn’t kill me.”
It didn’t kill me. She thought about that as she half-dozed and rested. After a week or more of listening for Santiago’s footsteps, listening so hard that she could almost think he was close by, but chose not to intrude on her mourning, she took Antonio’s comment to heart. She had wanted Santiago, but he hadn’t come and she was still alive. She faced the matter and survived it.
Her conviction in her own courage deepened one morning when she heard Antonio and Manolo outside her door.
“I wish you had not written to Santiago,” Antonio said.
“Surely he needed to know,” Manolo replied.
“Manuel, now he will know there is no need to return immediately, because there is nothing he could have done.”
She listened for Manolo’s response and sorrowed to hear it. “He would not be so hard of heart.”
What do you say to that, Antonio, she thought. His reply was honest and perhaps what she needed to hear. “Manuel, I tell you, it has nothing to do with the heart. It has only to do with an army. He sees nothing else.”
“Unkind. Unkind.”
“So be it, señor. We are not standing in his boots. I for one am grateful not to be Santiago Gonzales. The price is high.”
“I am grateful, too,” she said quietly. “Poor man.”
Then the day came when she was bored of lying in Santiago’s bed, wondering about matters she could not change. The room whirled around as she stood up, but she remained on her feet, grasping the back of Antonio’s chair until her head cleared. She pulled on her robe, and padded quietly into the corridor, happy to be upright.
The shutters of the balcony were closed. Winter had come. She opened one shutter and looked out on a garden at rest, bare branches clacking at each other, the fountain dry. The grass was green in places and brown in others. Moving slowly, she went down the stairs, and let herself out into Engracia’s rose garden.
The cold grass felt good under her bare feet. How glad I am to be alive, she thought, wiggling her toes. She touched her belly where her daughter had been and felt brief sadness, sorrow like a sigh instead of a wound this time.
She was sitting on the bench when Antonio found her. He went inside and returned with her slippers. He knelt to put them on her feet.
“Ay de mi, Ana. Engracia and Juana are calling for you.”
“Ignore them. Don’t scold.”
“I wasn’t going to. Engracia thinks I am going to carry you inside. Do you want to go?” Antonio sat down next to her.
“Later. I‘m thinking.” She hesitated, wondering how to put tender thoughts into words. “If Fermina had lived, I would have brought her here next summer to sleep while I weeded the garden.”
“I can see that.”
“Fermina would have been beautiful.”
“So was the woman I named her after,” he said simply. “Let’s both sit here and think.”
When she finally rose to walk upstairs under her own power, she knew her healing had begun.
November passed into December with no grace and little comfort, everyone complaining about icy sleet coating the ground. Hanneke even found herself wishing for the hot breath of late summer that had heralded her arrival at Las Claves. She thought of the quiet Hanneke of August: hopeful, fearful, wishful, possibly almost in love. She knew the Hanneke of early December was still quiet, but there was more. Great sorrow had buffeted her, but with it had come acceptance and the understanding that she was still the mistress of small things. Not for her the grand emotions, apparently. Her life would be a quiet one.
There had been moments in early fall when she had yearned for the Netherlands. No more, not with her bab
y in Spanish soil. A part of her belonged to Spain. How much, she wasn’t certain. Perhaps time would tell.
Engracia did not venture outdoors, even to attend Mass, fearful of slipping. There were others fears that Manolo cautioned them against mentioning to Engracia. No need for her to fear when Carlos and Antonio rode together, seeing nothing, but listening to the brave souls, shepherds mainly, who still lingered in pastures south of Las Claves, in that dangerous space between the Spaniards and the Almohades.
One day, two days of absence. Hanneke found it hard not to walk to the courtyard and stare at gates kept closed on Antonio’s command. She knew it would be a good time for Santiago to return. She also knew better than to expect him.
Sometimes she visited Pablo in the armory. Manolo had put him to work sharpening knives and swords, but he never minded honing smaller items. This time she brought him her cloak pin, which he sharpened on a bit of pumice stone.
“You are now a master of many trades,” she said, which made him beam.
“Mostly I am your true knight,” he reminded her.
Engracia spent her time in bed, letting Juana bring her treats and give her back rubs. She demanded Manolo’s presence, which he gave freely. Hanneke wondered at his supreme patience, not a trait she had noticed in his brother.
Tidying it as best she could, she happened to be in the great hall on the afternoon when everything changed. She had consigned weapons and chain mail to the armory, located a Turkish rug and cajoled the carpenter into making two benches close to the fire. No stretch of the imagination could call it homelike – with Moorish, Almoravide and Almohad flags captured in battle hanging from the rafters and two great swords crossed over the fireplace – but at least it comforted her.
She heard voices outside and the door opened on Carlos and Antonio. Carlos nodded to her and left for the soldiers’ hall while Antonio removed his cloak. She smiled to herself as he looked around for a place to toss his cloak as he had in years past, considering the disheveled state of the great hall.
“I have become the martinet of Las Claves,” she said. “You may hang your cloak on one of those iron hooks the smith so obligingly made for me while you were gone.”