The Poetry of Secrets

by Cambria Gordon

  Isabel released Abuela’s and Mamá’s hands. The soft-spoken plea of Padre Morillo turned out to be nothing. Just a formality. No one answered. No one would show mercy. The Inquisitors, with their self-satisfied expressions, could now tell themselves they had done all they could. Isabel forced herself to look at the two prisoners and give them the respect they deserved. She would not look at Don Sancho.

  “You two men will be reconciled to the church,” came Don Sancho’s familiar voice. “For six Fridays, you will walk in procession through Trujillo, unshod, bareheaded, and barebacked. You will discipline your body with hemp cord. You will never again hold public office. You cannot become a money changer, shopkeeper, or grocer. You are forbidden to wear silk or scarlet or colored cloth of any kind. No gold, silver, coral, or pearls will adorn your body. You cannot stand as witness in a court of law. Your sanbenitos will hang on the walls of the church in perpetuity so everyone will know your family name and the shame you brought down upon them. If you fall into the same error again, the penalty will be death by burning at the stake.”

  The crowd cheered their hurrahs.

  “Fernando Lopez, please stand,” said Don Sancho.

  He was the one in the black gown and the hat. Isabel’s heart thumped inside in her chest. What were they going to do to him?

  “You are sentenced to death by burning. This is your final chance. Do you wish to be reconciled with God and receive mercy from the fire by strangulation first?”

  What sort of bargain was that? It was a devil’s choice.

  Silence fell over the plaza. A stork squawked from the top of a tower. Someone to the left of her coughed. A woman’s skirt rustled nearby.

  Isabel kept her eyes on Fernando Lopez. She could tell he had been a handsome man once. Now his gray beard was long and matted. Flies swarmed around him. She hoped his wife was far away from here and his son, who had been sick enough to need a blessing, had recovered, and that they had found happiness as a family for a short while.

  Underneath Fernando Lopez’s gown, urine pooled on the ground between his legs. He opened his mouth to answer. A whisper came out.

  “Please repeat that,” said Don Sancho.

  “I confess to Judaizing,” he said, slightly louder.

  Isabel reviled Don Sancho so much she thought she might scream.

  “Gloria a Dios,” said the six friars.

  “Gloria a Dios,” echoed the crowd.

  “You will die by noose,” said Don Sancho. “Then you will be burned.”

  At this, Isabel gasped and felt faint herself. She slumped against Papá, yet his powerful torso prevented her from falling sideways.

  Fernando Lopez was strapped tightly to the back of a mule. He would not be escaping from those ties. Another mule was roped to the first animal, with the corpse of Maria de Chaues strapped to it. Both beasts were led out of the plaza.

  The quemadero was located just upriver, outside the city walls. Isabel, Beatriz, and Papá joined the crowd following the procession, but Mamá stayed behind with Abuela. Papá felt that they had done their duty by being seen at the sentencing and that Abuela’s collapse would provide ample cover. Isabel walked blindly, in a kind of dazed, superstitious thinking. Perhaps if she didn’t get to the burning place, it would not happen. At least the crowd was somber during the fifteen-minute processional. No one gossiped or cried out.

  When they arrived, two tall wooden stakes were waiting there, wood chips piled high in a circle around their bases. Some rough-looking men were stringing up the rope where Fernando Lopez would be hanged.

  Isabel felt an urge to turn her head, not to avoid watching Lopez die, but because she felt a presence, almost like eyes on her back. She spun around.

  And gasped.

  Diego stood a few meters away. Her eyes met his. There were at least thirty people between them. An inexplicable longing tightened her throat. She took a step closer. He gave a small movement of his head, nearly imperceptible. No. She could not go to him. Nor he to her. Not with Don Sancho so close and Beatriz and Papá at her side. She stood still. His gaze held hers, keeping her in place. They remained like that until Beatriz shook Isabel’s arm. “Look. Your betrothed has the striker.”

  “Before we commence with the burning, allow me to introduce a special guest,” announced Don Sancho.

  Don Sancho walked over to an exquisitely dressed woman, resplendent in red velvet, even in this heat. A jeweled crown rested atop her head. “Her Eminency, Princess Joanna of Aragon, House of Trastámara, queen consort of Naples.”

  “That’s King Ferdinand’s sister,” said Beatriz, impressed.

  Don Sancho continued. “As the sole relative of the Spanish crown, you grace us with your presence. Thank you for traveling all the way from Italy.” He then handed the princess a thin piece of wood, about one meter long, enveloped in green ribbons.

  The combination of Princess Joanna’s attire and the beribboned stick put in Isabel’s mind a line from a poem she had read once: In death, there is beauty. She had not understood its significance until now. The poetess had been lamenting her lover’s death and how his face shone like the moon, even in repose. But the way the Christians tried to cover up the blackness of the auto de fe with color, this was the irony the poet was trying to convey.

  While the crowd was watching the princess, Fernando Lopez’s body was being strung up on the noose. Now one of the men tightened the rope. Lopez twitched wildly. Isabel’s belly quivered, threatening to expel her morning biscuit. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, Lopez’s body had already been lowered and tied to one of the stakes. Next to him, Maria de Chaues was tied to the other stake. Her head hung down, awkwardly, as they had not strapped it. They were both naked, stripped of their sanbenitos.

  Don Sancho used the striker to light the fire. He turned to the princess. “Please add your stick to the blaze.”

  Princess Joanna threw in the piece of wood. A flash of green, then orange flames. Back in the village, the church bells tolled. Here at the quemadero, the friars chanted and the drummers beat a dirge. The air took on the heavy, sweet, sickly odor of burning flesh. The greasy smoke drifted upward toward Heaven.

  Isabel wondered if there even was one.

  Diego pushed the haunting memories of the quemadero out of his mind and concentrated on Isabel’s face. How he had wanted to reach for her when he saw her in the crowd yesterday, to protect her from the evils of that place. She looked so vulnerable, her beauty accentuated by her fear.

  He would paint her portrait so he could always gaze at her, in the morning when he rose, and in the evening when he lay down. Her skin, the color of an unripe peach, must be perfect on the canvas or it would not do her likeness justice. He riffled through his pigments. He had a few bright colors in his supply box from before he left for Lisbon, but none of those would work for rendering flesh. At university, he had learned about the three different sources of color—minerals, plants, and insects. The only materials he was able to bring home with him when he so abruptly left school were the minerals of green earth. Now he removed some prason and stirred in gum arabic, the sap from an acacia tree. All pigments needed a binding medium to make them wet and soft enough to go on a brush and, ultimately, a canvas.

  He brushed a stroke of paint onto a paperboard. It wasn’t right. Damn. He supposed he could wait until he visited Berruguete’s studio, maybe borrow some powders there. Their first meeting was scheduled for four days from now. But Diego was impatient. Inspiration had struck and he wanted to get Isabel’s image down now. He couldn’t think what to do.

  The breakfast bell rang downstairs. Frustrated, he made his way to the dining room. It would just be his mother and him this morning, as his father was at court in Toledo and not due back until tomorrow. He snapped open the napkin on his lap and waited for the countess.

  “Sorry to keep you, m’hijo,” said his mother, sweeping into the room. “I spent longer than I thought at my morning devotionals.” Even this early in the mornin
g, she was dressed formally, in a crimson silk gown and matching veil. She lifted her face covering and regarded him. Her face was covered in heavy powder. Two circles of rouge blotted her cheeks. Her eyebrows were drawn in darkly and her lips were stained red. Diego wondered if Jesús appreciated all the effort his mother put into making up her face for Him.

  “Did you have a pleasant sleep?” she inquired.

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to join me once in a while for morning prayers,” she responded, slicing him a piece of quince pie.

  He had never relished spending time in their family chapel. Or doing anything more than what was required of him by his parents on Sundays. At university, they did not mandate worship and Diego went to the campus chapel as little as possible, preferring to spend his free time in the art studio or debating one of his professors.

  “It’s not as if you have to travel all the way into town,” she continued. “You merely have to walk down a flight of stairs.”

  He ignored her and ate his pie.

  His mother wiped her red lips on the white napkin, and he caught a glimpse of the smear. Crimson on white. And he thought, pigments! If he were a gambling man, he would bet his mother had a powder in her cosmetic drawer that he could mix with his green earth. It wasn’t out of the ordinary at all. Everyone knew finely ground king’s yellow, for example, was used to color a woman’s face both on the canvas and in the flesh. He might be able to find a match for Isabel’s skin after all.

  Diego took a sip of tea. “Mother. Could I take a peek in your cosmetic drawer? I’m looking for a specific pigment for a painting and I don’t have the right color in my supplies.”

  She laughed. “You want to draw with my eyebrow paint?”

  He endured her teasing so he could get what he wanted. “It’s the powders I’m after, not your eyebrow tools.”

  “You know your father doesn’t like it when I indulge you and your little painting hobby.” She put down her napkin. “But seeing as he’s not here, I don’t see the harm.”

  The red velvet curtains were still drawn when they entered his mother’s bedchamber. A thin opening down the middle let in a ray of sunlight that bisected the four-poster bed. Sumptuous paisley coverings lay across it in a jumble. A thick tapestry of a hunting scene hung on the far wall.

  The countess drew open the curtains. “Honestly, I must have a word with Concha about her laziness. She has not yet been in here to do her tasks this morning.”

  Diego walked to the boudoir, a small room adjacent to the chamber. It held a chair and vanity table, a polished ebony desk with a looking glass attached. Various powders, creams, eyeliners, lip stains, and rouges lay stacked atop the table in shiny silver jars. Two wig stands flanked either side of the glass. One held a curly-styled wig, the other a straighter hairstyle, pulled up on top into a twist. Mantillas and veils poured out of open boxes strewn on the floor.

  “You, alone, must be keeping Madrid in business with your weekly orders,” said Diego pleasantly. He could dig at her just as easily as she at him.

  He opened one of the silver jars, dipping in his pinky finger and brushing a line on the back of his hand to see how the color looked against his own flesh. He was darker than Isabel and his mother, so most powders stood out on his skin. It wasn’t right. He tried the next jar and the next jar and the next. Until he had opened everything.

  “Is that it, Mother?” he asked testily.

  “I suppose so.”

  He looked at all the open jars, the boxes from Madrid, the excess. “How is it that you have a veil in every color of the rainbow, and I can’t even find the right pigment to paint with!” He swept his arm across the vanity, sending the jars flying. Powder flew into the air. Glass broke on the polished stone floor. Silver tops went rolling.

  “Diego!” yelled his mother. “What’s come over you?”

  He said nothing, fuming silently.

  “Is this really about a paint color? Or is it something else?” Her mouth parted slyly. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”

  She saw through him, as always. “You’re wrong,” he told her. “I’m merely frustrated that you and Father do not make it easy for me to pursue my passion. Verrocchio doesn’t have to ferret through his mother’s powders to find the right colors, I can assure you.” He knelt down and began to sweep up the powder with his hand.

  “Don’t. There’s glass down there. Concha will get a broom.”

  “I can at least pick up the lids.” He reached farther across the floor for a few of the silver jar tops. One was facing upward, still rocking on its rounded edge. There appeared to be something etched into the underside. A name? “Reina Benveniste,” he read out loud.

  “What did you say?” came his mother’s voice from across the room.

  The door opened and in ran Concha on her short, sturdy legs. “Are you hurt, m’lady? I heard crashing.”

  “Everything’s fine, Concha,” said the countess. “You can leave us.”

  “But you just said she should sweep the glass,” said Diego. And before that, you were complaining about her laziness, he thought.

  “It’s all right. I can wipe it up,” his mother insisted, kneeling.

  Concha stood still, torn between obeying her mistress and wanting to do her job and clean.

  “That will be all, Concha,” she said sternly. “Gracias.”

  When Concha left the room, the countess stood and told Diego to leave as well. “I shouldn’t have let you come in here in the first place. Go!”

  He left the room, perplexed. His mother was acting strangely. He was also angry at himself for losing his temper. It was about Isabel. He was in love with her and his parents would not allow the match. He had to play this carefully.

  He spent the day in his room with a charcoal and parchment. If he couldn’t paint her, he would sketch her. He disliked charcoal because it smeared too much, but it would do for now. He made a few attempts. They weren’t poor likenesses; they just didn’t do Isabel’s comeliness justice. While he drew, he kept thinking about the name he had seen carved into the silver lid. Reina Benveniste. Had his mother stolen that jar from someone named Reina? If so, then what other items in this house were ill-gotten? Could it be that their fortune wasn’t theirs at all? He had to know the truth about his family. Before his father returned home.

  He found his mother in the pantry discussing a meat order with the cook.

  “Mother, may I speak to you a moment?”

  “I’m in the middle of something,” she answered.

  He waited in the hallway, staring at one of their many doors decorated with the ten circles of the Altamirano family shield. Was their good name all a farce?

  His mother came out of the pantry. “I don’t appreciate you interrupting me in front of the servants. Especially after your childish display earlier this morning at my vanity table.”

  He wasted no time. “Mother, is the Altamirano money legitimate?”

  She scoffed. “What, pray tell, are you talking about?”

  “You stole that cosmetic jar, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t be foolish. I’d never steal anything.”

  “Then how did you come to have a jar with someone else’s name? I demand to know.”

  Her right cheek gave a twitch.

  “Mother?”

  She glanced down the hallway in both directions. “Come into the chapel where we can speak freely.”

  Diego followed her inside. A leaded-glass window with ten circles stood regally above the altar. Small statues of the Virgin Mary and the Lord Jesús perched on pedestals. There were two pews and a velvet cushion for kneeling.

  She took a seat in the pew, patting the spot to her left. “Join me.”

  When he had settled next to her, she inhaled as if to gird herself. “Reina Benveniste is my real name.” She paused dramatically. “I was born Jewish, in Hervas.”

  Diego’s mouth fell open. This couldn’t be. His mother’s name was Graciela. Her
surname Guzman before she married the count. The Guzmans were wealthy sheep farmers, part of the Mesta guild for centuries.

  “It’s a shock, I know.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I was about three years old when we converted,” she explained. “My father’s silver shop had been looted one too many times. My parents saw their New Christian friends prospering, some in government, some marrying hidalgos and receiving the respect they sought, even if they were the lowest of the aristocracy. A Dominican priest rode through town, rounding up Jews for conversion. He preached that if they took the baptismal waters, their businesses would not be destroyed. I don’t know whether my parents debated that evening or not. But the next morning, they gathered with other Jewish families in St. Mary’s Parish and were dipped in the font.

  “I don’t remember any of my life before that time. My religious memories are of going to church every week and celebrating our Savior’s rising. Thirteen years later, when my parents died of the pox, I went into a convent.”

  Diego thought that maybe she was making this entire story up. But her expression was dead serious.

  “During the time I took the veil,” she continued, “your father came to socialize with the young ladies. Many eligible men did at that time, preferring to choose their own wives rather than succumb to arranged marriages by their families. He became a Galán de Monjas.” A courtier of nuns. “One night, he played the lute under my window. It was the most tender melody I’d ever heard, and I confess, that’s what made me fall in love with him. When he learned of my bloodline, he had papers drawn up with a different parentage.”

  “He falsified documents about your lineage?”

  She nodded. “The Altamiranos would never allow a converso to taint their bloodline. And you know how obdurate your father is. He was determined to have me. So I became the daughter of a long line of wealthy members of the Mesta guild.”

  Diego was stunned, momentarily speechless. “Do … do you ever think about it? Your history. Your beliefs. Moses even.”

  “Never. I loved being a Christian. It was all I ever knew. But at the age of sixteen, I was all alone. I owe your father my life.” She lifted her head, her nostrils flaring in pride. “I am Countess Graciela Guzman Altamirano.”