The Inquisitor's Wife

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  Singing with Antonio was as magical as the sight of Isabel, only more so. I fell into the same blissful space I’d found earlier that day, where there was no queen, no friars, no audience to judge us. There was no past where Antonio had shattered me, where my mother had died and my father disowned me, where the Inquisition hung over us like the sword of Damocles. There was only Antonio, my friend, whom—unhappily—I realized that I still loved, despite my fury at him, and we were together, singing. I sensed that there would be little happiness left for me in life beyond this moment, so I let myself pretend with all my heart that I lived in a simpler world where Antonio loved me, where we were not forced to be apart.

  I turned my body toward him. I met his gaze and tried not to melt when Antonio reflected my attitude back to me, his expression adoring, his dark blue eyes glistening with heartfelt emotion as we came to the chorus.

  “Sevilla, mi alma

  Sevilla, corazón

  Con tus brisas suaves

  Dolores calmados son.

  ‘Seville, my soul

  Seville, my heart

  Your gentle breezes

  Ease all pain.’”

  The queen stood off to one side of the entrance, no longer brilliantly lit, but visible enough so that I could tell she was clapping and grinning broadly. Her subjects immediately began to clap with her, and some softly joined in on the chorus; I think Isabel would have sung, too, had she known the words.

  After several verses, the citizens were all patriotically roused, and Antonio played a slower love ballad. I sang the woman’s verses and Antonio, the man’s, and we harmonized on the chorus. Meanwhile, the queen gradually made her way around the perimeter of the courtyard, greeting guests. We sang four more songs after that but scratched the tune about the innkeeper’s wife and her sausages, judging it to be a bit too scandalous given Isabel’s sedate but stirring speech.

  Just as we finished the fifth song, doña Berta stepped up to us and caught my hand. She was beaming.

  “Congratulations, my dear!” she said, and squeezed my hand with an enthusiasm that took me aback. “Her Majesty was charmed by your performance! She’s asked that you visit her in a little while in the Salon of the Ambassadors for a more private reception. It’s quite an honor to be invited. I’ll find you when it’s time.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see the queen moving our way. “Oh!” Berta hissed at us. “Here she comes!” She immediately turned around and took her place beside me. As the queen approached, Berta curtsied far lower than I could manage.

  “Doña Marisol,” Isabel called as she made her way toward us along the empty walkway between the reflecting pool and the sunken gardens. She was followed by the women dressed in spring colors; they in turn were braced by a quartet of soldiers in dress uniform with sheathed swords. “You have the voice of an angel.”

  The crowd surrounding us on the loggias was silent out of respect. Isabel’s words carried easily on the night air, and I felt myself blushing.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” I murmured, my hot face turned toward the smooth flagstone.

  “Up, up!” The queen gestured with jovial impatience for the three of us to rise. “I should like to see who I’m talking to!”

  My cheeks must have been violet, but I rose with the others and faced the queen, hoping my expression didn’t reveal my nervousness.

  Even if it did, Isabel smiled kindly at me. “You have pleased us, doña Marisol, and we are disposed to treat you kindly. If ever you have need of anything, only ask me.”

  I’d suffered so many catastrophes in the past year that I couldn’t believe something this wonderful was happening. I stared at Isabel in disbelief until doña Berta’s discreet elbow found my ribs.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. You’re too kind,” I breathed, and—uncertain what to do next in the face of such royal generosity—curtsied again.

  If it was a breach of protocol, no one seemed to notice. “And you, Antonio Vargas,” Isabel said, “you’ve pleased us as well. We hope to see you later this evening.”

  “I am honored, Your Majesty,” Antonio said with marvelous composure, and bowed as the queen moved off with her entourage.

  He and I both turned and watched as she approached the elderly don Francisco, who had come out onto the patio with his middle-aged son and two of his bodyguards. Isabel grinned broadly at the old man and held out her hand to him. He genuflected with real grace for such an old man, and kissed the proffered hand. The queen responded by pulling him to his feet and linking her arm in his.

  “Don Francisco, my friend! How long since we two met in the flesh?”

  The head of the Sánchez clan smiled, apparently at perfect ease in the royal presence. “A few years, doña Isabel. Yet you’ve aged not a day.”

  Doña Isabel, he called her. Not Your Majesty, doña Isabel, as might have been proper for a queen’s familiar. But doña Isabel, which only King Fernando had the right to do. And Isabel’s gap-toothed smile never wavered, which meant that she’d insisted at some point that he dispense with her title, which was extraordinary.

  “Come, my friend.” Isabel patted Francisco’s hand, now in the crook of her elbow, and drew him away from his son and his disgruntled guards. “We have much to catch up on.…”

  The noise on the patio soon drowned out her words, as the two headed away from us, toward a side entrance to the palace, leaving the queen’s pretty, colorful maidens to entertain the guests on the patio. Before she and don Francisco disappeared inside, Isabel cast a quick glance over her shoulder. I followed her gaze to the now-half-dimmed chandelier, beneath which she’d addressed her guests. If don Francisco noticed her lapse in attention, he was too polite to turn his head to see who she was looking at.

  Fray Tomás de Torquemada—an unlikely guest for such a festive event—stood beneath the loggia in the exact spot where Isabel had spoken, dressed in his white Dominican habit and worn black cape. I’d forgotten how homely he was, with his squashed thick nose and mottled skin. He looked completely out of place among the seductively dressed young ladies and wealthy guests; his stiff posture, coupled with the judgment in his gaze, showed his contempt for all present save the queen. I couldn’t imagine why Her Majesty’s confessor would be at a party this time of night and not in his cell, praying.

  Her smile vanishing, Isabel shared a swift, subtle glance with him. He replied with a slow, barely perceptible nod; the coldness in his tiny eyes stole my breath. Isabel turned back to don Francisco, her grin carefully back in place.

  To my dread, the friar Torquemada headed directly toward us, taking care not to notice the pretty young women or acknowledge anyone else on the patio. I caught the edge of Antonio’s long sleeve, trying to get his attention so that we could escape. To my frustration, Antonio wouldn’t move but met Torquemada’s gaze and acknowledged him with a faint half smile. As the monk stepped up to him, he bowed.

  “Fray Tomás,” Antonio said pleasantly. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  Torquemada returned neither the gesture nor the greeting. “Don Antonio, I wonder whether I might have a word with you in private.”

  “Of course, sir,” Antonio said, slinging his lute over his shoulder and, after bowing to me, walked off with the Dominican into the palace.

  Twelve

  After Antonio abandoned me, I was in no mood to socialize. Because of their connection to my father, I knew some of the guests here—mostly city officials, including the mayor. But I had no desire to answer questions about how my father was faring after my mother’s death, or why he had failed to escort his only daughter to the palace to hear her sing for the queen.

  Instead, I wandered back the way doña Berta had brought me, into the front halls of King Pedro’s Palace, empty of all but a scattering of soldiers. They stood motionless, eyeing me as I moved slowly through the vast rooms, admiring the walls and their amazing tiles. The stonework over the archways was unlike anything I’d seen before. Light and frothy, more air than ear
th, it resembled nothing more than a honeycomb sculpted by an artist instead of bees, each comb an ornate repeating design. It was impossible not to touch the cool stone with my fingers to be sure it was real; fortunately, no guard challenged me.

  Away from the press of bodies, it was cool and quiet, save for the sound of music and conversation drifting in from the patio. As I studied the centuries-old palace walls, I tried unsuccessfully to forget Antonio’s association with the Inquisition and Torquemada, to quash the question that ate at me: What had happened to him to make him join forces with the Dominicans after all these years?

  When the question threatened to shatter my pretense of calm, I forced myself to remember the happier fact that the queen had said she owed me a favor. My first instinct was to ask Isabel to tell the Inquisition to leave my father alone. Yet if I did so, was I then drawing unwanted attention to my father and the fact of my mother’s suicide? Would I be endangering him more?

  I wandered for almost an hour. Now that the royal performance was behind me, the wine’s effects were more noticeable. I’d been too nervous to realize that I was still a bit drunk and ravenous. Remembering the delicious-smelling sausage I’d rejected earlier, I slowly made my way back out across the crowded Patio of the Maidens toward the reception hall and food. Just as I was walking through the open archway into the reception hall, I heard a voice calling my name.

  “Marisol! Doña Marisol!”

  I turned. Doña Berta stood behind me, looking a bit wilted but no less in charge. She gracefully wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of a bejeweled hand and smiled toothily at me.

  “And now comes your reward,” Berta murmured into my ear. “Trust me, you don’t want to fill yourself up here. Come, eat and drink at Her Majesty’s private table.”

  My eyes must have grown huge at the thought, because Berta laughed aloud at my reaction before catching my elbow and steering me back onto the Patio of the Maidens. I noticed suddenly that one of the archways leading back into the palace had been closed off by two thick wooden doors inlaid with Kufic script. Six soldiers in crimson and gold barred the door.

  Berta didn’t approach them but led me through an open archway, down corridors that looked very familiar. Soon I could no longer hear the pipers in the reception hall; their reedy wail was replaced by the sound of lutes playing a vigorous dance tune.

  This time, when we approached the three arches resting on slender black marble columns, half a dozen soldiers stood guard. They never stirred as we approached nor acknowledged Berta’s little nod as they made way to let us pass by them beneath the horseshoe arches.

  “Who would have thought you’d have the opportunity to see the Salon of the Ambassadors again?” doña Berta asked gaily. She had to raise her voice in order to be heard over the music and laughter.

  As the doors to the outside were now closed, the film of smoke had thickened. Bedazzled once more, I followed doña Berta into the room and breathed in the scent of hot candle wax and overpowering orange blossom. The air itself had been perfumed, perhaps to mask the base note of perspiration. Berta and I wormed our way through the close press of bodies along the room’s perimeter—greeting the mayor of Seville, councillors, judges, and their wives in their best finery along the way—and arrived at a table heaped with food and drink near the massive wooden doors shutting out the Patio of the Maidens. The crowd was so thick and I so short that I couldn’t see the front or center of the room.

  “Eat,” Berta half shouted into my ear in order to be heard over the music and conversation. “All of my charges are usually starving after the performance. And you must try this wine; you’ve never had anything like it in your life. Drink it while you may, my dear.”

  I had no desire for more wine, but Berta sailed easily to the front of the line, where thirsty revelers were waiting, and gracefully extended her arm across the table until her hand, with its flashing rings, rested palm up in front of the servant pouring wine.

  “The wine from Champagne,” she called, loud enough so that her voice carried above all the others. “A goblet, please.”

  A few seconds later, she handed me a cold silver goblet filled to the brim.

  “Taste it,” Berta said into my ear as she led me toward the food. “Go ahead. And don’t waste a drop. This is what the queen prefers to serve her most honored guests. It’s His Majesty don Fernando’s favorite, and your reward for a fine performance.” It was public knowledge that Isabel never touched alcohol, considering it an unseemly indulgence for Christian women.

  I looked into my glass and was surprised. The liquid was neither white nor red as I expected, but pale pink—a color of wine I’d never seen before, much less drunk, although I’d heard of it. I lowered my face to it and drew in the fragrance of raspberries and roses; I drank and tasted the same, along with yeast and a bright, slightly fizzy astringency that tickled my tongue and nose.

  It was so delicious that I immediately took another sip while doña Berta watched, smiling at my delight. She then managed to charm the man first in line at the table full of food so that he allowed me to cut in front of him. I stared at the king’s feast in front of me. Local delicacies from the River Guadalquivir included small delicate crayfish in their boiled-red shells, mussels sautéed in garlicky olive oil, whole baked fish with saffron, and roasted ducklings. There were snails with butter sauce, peacocks reassembled with their bright, uncooked feathers and stuffed with rice and pine nuts, and my favorite, ortiguillas, briny little anemones fried in oil. There was an array of pastries, some of which looked like the jeweled, gilded walls of the salon. My stomach was still uncertain despite my hunger, but I requested a small portion of mussels and one of the pastries, a small almond sponge wedding cake. Unlike the dusty polvorón I’d eaten under Gabriel’s roof, this cake was moist, soaked in syrup fortified with brandy and intensely flavored with almonds. Like the wine, it was one of the most delicious things ever to touch my tongue. When combined with a sip of wine, the cake’s flavor grew more intense, producing yet a third taste in my mouth that left me craving more. Before I even tried the mussels, I went back for a second helping of cake.

  The second piece of cake required me to drink more wine in order to enjoy the mix of flavors that lingered on my tongue, which led quickly to my being far more inebriated than I’d ever been. Soon the garlicky smell of the untouched mussels made me a bit queasy. I handed my plate to a passing servant and wandered alone toward the front of the stuffy room in search of fresher air, leaving doña Berta to chat with another guest near the tables.

  At the front of the crowd in the room’s center, three pairs of young courtiers danced. Two of the couples consisted solely of the queen’s fair flowers, the pretty young maidens dressed in scandalously diaphanous gowns in spring colors. The third featured another maiden paired with a handsome young man with short blond curls in a tight-fitting doublet and leggings that showed off the sculpted muscles in his chest and legs, not to mention his well-packed codpiece—an immodest Italian style no native of Seville would dare sport on city streets. The two were performing a stately court dance, one that required a slow procession about the dance floor followed by exaggerated bowing to one’s partner.

  Several strides beyond them, at the wall opposite where guests were being served, stood a podium covered entirely in red velvet. A single high-backed padded chair rested atop it, covered in the same red velvet, and on that chair sat Isabel of Castile.

  Her black gown and veil were gone, replaced by a deep blue brocade gown heavily embroidered with bright thread of gold. A small golden crown rested atop her veil of sheer dark blue silk, light as air and threaded with gold ribbon. The colors couldn’t have suited her auburn hair and eyes better; naturally blue-green, her eyes reflected only the hue she wore, making them look almost as startlingly dark blue as Antonio’s. Her square collar now revealed a bit of her white décolletage, although it was not as scandalous as her dancers’ or even doña Berta’s.

  What caught my eye m
ost was her jewelry. Around her neck hung a king’s ransom: at least a dozen heavy gold necklaces, one laden with sapphires and diamonds, another strung with rubies, yet a third sporting large perfect pearls. A cascade of diamonds and sapphires spilled from her ears. Like doña Berta, the queen wore a ring on every finger save her thumbs: emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls were set in the brightest, purest gold I’d ever seen. The simple little crucifix she’d worn at the Inquisitors’ offices and earlier that evening was gone.

  “Hear, hear!” Isabel called to the lutists, who immediately stopped playing. “Enough formality. This good city has endured enough suffering. Play something lighthearted. Something … rustic, a country dance.” She winked at one of the lutists. “Giovanni, my darling, you know what your queen likes to hear!”

  Giovanni, the head lutist, nodded and picked out the first few notes of a tune. His fellow musicians quickly joined in, and many in the crowd roared happily as they recognized a popular Andalusian drinking song. Most started clapping and joined in the singing; I stood swaying and grinning drunkenly at the dancers, who organized themselves into a circle and began clapping their hands in time to the music. Other male courtiers magically appeared, most of them dressed in the Italian style, in tight doublets and in leggings with the codpieces scandalously exposed. This was a far cry from Spanish custom, where older men wore tunics hemmed below the knee and complained about the young men who dared wear tunics that fell mid-thigh.

  Still clapping their hands, the dancers began to move around the perimeter of the imaginary circle, each man paired with one of the lovely flower women, whose layers of sheer skirts partially revealed the shape of their comely legs. I wasn’t as familiar with drinking songs and didn’t know all the words, although I was inebriated enough to try to sing along. The lyrics were at least as scandalous as the tune we’d sung in Antonio’s office, focusing on the fine white breasts of a fisherman’s lover and how he far prefers them and her company to that of his boat and the sea.