The Sisterhood

by Helen Bryan

  “Will you come to me tonight?” begged Alejandro in a whisper.

  There was no time for Isabella to do anything but whisper “Yes!”

  Isabella’s duenna slept soundly in an alcove in her room, but in case she woke, Isabella took care to mound her pillows to look like her sleeping form. She donned an embroidered nightdress, scented herself with essence of roses from a little vial, then slipped soundlessly through an anteroom and quietly down the stairs through a servants’ entrance to the courtyard where Alejandro swept her into his arms, as if it was where she belonged.

  They were young and passionate lovers, meeting every night sheltered behind the great pots of flowers in the corners of the courtyard or in Alejandro’s cell, where they huddled together on his narrow bed. Isabella’s gold hair cascaded over her naked shoulders as Alejandro recited Dante’s sonnets between kisses. But Dante’s love for Beatrice was nothing compared to theirs.

  “Dante and Beatrice had barely spoken to one another, then she married another and died leaving Dante with nothing but her shade to mourn. What is the good of such love?” Isabella murmured into Alejandro’s shoulder, loving its warmth and strength, and pitying Beatrice.

  Alejandro kissed the top of her head. “It begat a great work of literature.” He sighed. “But I do not want to write a great work of literature. I want only never to be parted from you.”

  They risked everything for these moments of precarious happiness when nothing existed beyond the two of them, dreading the time when Alejandro would be obliged to return to the seminary and take his final vows, and Isabella’s fate would be decided, one way or the other. Isabella knew that her father was considering several offers made for her hand, but she suspected that the priest would not easily abandon his machinations to have her enter a convent. Whatever the outcome, a future without the warmth of Alejandro’s love seemed bleak and cold as death itself.

  Then Isabella began to feel sick in the mornings, and one day in her bedroom she swooned while dressing for Mass. When she came to her senses she vomited weakly into her handkerchief. She sent her maid to fetch her a dish of lemons, sliced thin, which she suddenly longed for beyond all reason. Her maid brought them and said slyly that when she washed Isabella’s underclothes there had been no sign of her monthly blood for some time; perhaps soon it would be necessary to let out the seams in her gowns. When Isabella looked surprised the maid shook her head and muttered something about how interesting this discovery would be for Isabella’s future husband. Isabella remembered her mother’s violent sickness when pregnant and her fondness, too, for lemons at that time. A terrible possibility presented itself.

  The maid rattled on, saying that was Muslim conversos for you, anxious only to get under the skirts of Christian girls. “Fr. Alejandro, such a handsome young man for a priest…So diligent with your lessons,” she simpered, and then mentioned that her uncle was a familiar of the Inquisition. The maid aspired to be one, too, and her uncle had set her a test, saying she must keep her eyes and ears open for anything to report and promised to have a word on her behalf. Only last week, the maid said dreamily, she had revealed to her uncle that the cook was a secret Jew and in league with the devil to kill the countess’s baby when it was born, so it could be used in cannibalistic Jewish rites. The cook had been taken away, weeping with terror and protesting her innocence. A new cook had been hired. The old one was not expected to return.

  Any day, the maid expected to receive her reward for this information. But how much greater the reward would be for the information that a Morisco’s bastard would stain the honor of an Old Christian family! What a pretty bracelet Isabella was wearing. Silently Isabella unclasped it and gave it to her tormentor, then turned her head away.

  When Isabella told Alejandro, he put his hand on her stomach and exclaimed in wonder, “A child! Now we must be married! Our decision is made for us. God is great!”

  But Isabella could think of nothing except what would happen when her condition became known. She would be handed to the Inquisition examiners who would spare her nothing to extract a damning confession and evidence to condemn Alejandro. Then she would be walled up alive while Alejandro would be turned over to the Inquisition until a full confession was tortured out of him, and he was burned at the stake as an apostate like the unfortunate Muslims on his family’s estate.

  Alejandro said he had a plan. They would flee to his cousins in Portugal, before the maid tired of bribes and Isabella’s condition became obvious. “But how?” a tearful Isabella asked. “And when?”

  “Hush, beloved! Soon, when your mother gives birth and the household is occupied with the christening.”

  But it was the countess’s death that provided the perfect opportunity. The requiem Mass would be one of the few occasions Isabella could leave the palace, in the company of her duenna of course, but the old woman was a small hindrance. Alejandro would wear a workman’s clothes under his habit and Isabella would dress plainly under her cloak. Their plan was to slip away after the requiem Mass, to melt into the crowd when the family left for the internment in their private crypt. The crypt was a confined space and neither Isabella nor Alejandro was important enough to be present, and the count’s palace was full of people on account of the funeral. It would be many hours before Isabella and Alejandro were missed from the throng. Alejandro’s wealthy father had provided a purse of gold pieces for expenses at the seminary, and with it Alejandro had made the necessary arrangements. A farmer’s humble covered cart, mules, and provisions for the journey would be waiting in a side street near St. Nicholas de los Servitas.

  There was just one final detail—the place where they were to meet at the church the next day in case they were separated in the crowd. Alejandro had told her to meet him in the far corner of the courtyard at midnight; he had prepared a small plan of the church marked with their meeting place in one of the chapels, he knew of a small service door behind a tapestry. That door led into an alley. Alejandro would be waiting when she came out.

  Isabella worried about meeting him with so many priests and friars in the house, but Alejandro assured her that after several long nights’ vigils, all would be trying to snatch a few hours’ sleep before the next day’s funeral.

  So while Isabella knelt by her mother’s bier and prayed for the souls of her mother and baby brother, she also made guilty supplications for the success of their plan.

  When at last she fled the hall and its smells, Isabella sent her maid away and undid her too-tight bodice with relief. How swollen her breasts felt. She reminded herself that she only needed to be patient until tomorrow. She waited until it was time to meet Alejandro, then wrapped a woolen cloak over her nightdress, and managed to negotiate the servants’ steep narrow back staircase, clinging to the banister for support and hearing snores in the darkness coming from the great hall.

  She waited, barefooted and chilled to the bone, fearing Alejandro had fallen asleep, too. At last she heard soft footsteps crossing the tiles. She hurried to meet him and threw herself into the arms of the hooded figure. “Oh Alejandro, warm me in your arms. It is so cold,” she whispered.

  But instead of embracing her, the hooded figure stiffened and drew back with a sharp exclamation of surprise. Shoving her roughly away he lowered his hood and Isabella saw not Alejandro but—the priest! Then another figure came from the shadows whispering urgently, “Isabella, we must be quick! The priest is awake but I was afraid you would take cold waiting…”

  The priest shouted, “You would seduce the count’s daughter? Villain, infidel, to insult the honor of this Christian house! Apostate! Devil! False Christian!”

  Servants and friars appeared, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. “Seize him!” the priest roared.

  Isabella fell at the priest’s feet to protest it was her fault, but it was too late. There was an uproar and Alejandro was dragged away struggling in the grips of four men, crying out the fault was his, not Isabella’s.

  The count was informed immedia
tely, and at first refused to believe that his daughter had been beguiled into a clandestine meeting with a lowly converso friar. Had he suspected how far the relationship had gone, he would have drawn his sword and killed Isabella and Alejandro on the spot. As it was, he had Isabella whipped unconscious, then locked in her chamber.

  The next day he broke off all betrothal negotiations.

  Her maid brought bread and water once a day and Isabella passed her time in pain and silence. A month went by and Easter approached. The welts on her back healed. She stopped feeling sick and her waist grew thicker. The sly maid whispered that since the winter had been mild, an epidemic of fever was spreading through the poor quarters of the city. She told Isabella that a great bribe from Alejandro’s family had spared his life, but he had been sent to work in the infirmary for the poor, where the pestilence raged. With great relish the maid described the hell of filth, suffering, and death into which Alejandro had been cast, until Isabella covered her ears and gave the maid a brooch to go away.

  The mirror told Isabella she had changed. Her soft cheeks had hollows; there were shadows under her eyes and her dark gold hair was dull and thin. She felt suffocated by a noxious pervasive smell as the weather grew warmer. The pestilence? Her maid hinted there were ways not to have a baby; there were potions and spells and old women who could “see to it.” Isabella turned a deaf ear. She wanted nothing to do with spells and witchcraft and poisons that would conjure the baby from her body. She remembered the look of joy on Alejandro’s face when she told him, and felt such an intense love for the baby it nearly choked her. The maid helped herself to Isabella’s things with impunity—trinkets and clothing, gloves, a shawl, ribbons. Isabella scarcely noticed. She could think of only one thing—how to save the baby.

  Alejandro managed to send Isabella a letter calling her his dearest Beatrice, his light in hell. She must forget him and think only of herself and their child; if she could find her way to the Valley of the Swallows, she might throw herself on the mercy of his family. Isabella kissed the paper and felt a glimmer of hope. Alejandro was alive. Perhaps they might yet escape to Portugal…The baby kicked, to encourage her. Could the greedy maid be bribed to help them escape? Isabella discovered cunning. She reminded the maid that the Inquisition had never paid her for her betrayal of the cook, while she would be well rewarded for aiding her and Alejandro’s escape. The maid admitted this was true and agreed to carry letters between the lovers so they could work out what would be necessary—mules, food, and bribes for those who guarded Alejandro.

  Then the maid returned with news that Alejandro was dead. He had succumbed to the pestilence, and his body had been thrown into a common grave in a lime pit behind the infirmary along with the corpses of the poor. Isabella betrayed no emotion, too bereft to weep. Had he died with her name on his lips? She longed for death, too, but she must live, at least until the baby was born. She knew she must find a way to escape the palace before she gave birth, and make her way to the Abenzucars. The sly and dishonest maid was her only hope. Then even that frail link was severed. A new serving girl who was deaf and dumb brought Isabella’s food and Isabella never saw her former maid again.

  Hoping for a reward, the maid had reported to the count that Isabella and the Morisco still corresponded and planned to run away. The count did not believe her and had her locked in the cellars without food or drink to prevent such a vile story spreading. There, with rats scrabbling in the dark for company, the maid knew that her only revenge was that the count’s precious family line would be polluted with the blood of heretics! She perished miserably trying to suck moisture from the walls.

  Isabella, equally trapped in the palace, only knew her situation grew more dangerous with each day that passed. Then, incredibly, it was the priest’s intervention that opened the door for her escape. Despite the count’s efforts to suppress it, rumors of Isabella’s attempted seduction by an infidel had spread among Old Christian families. The priest advised the count that the best that could be done in the circumstances was to place Isabella in a convent far from Madrid, preferably among an insignificant order of nuns. Let the girl and the scandal she had caused die in obscurity.

  When the count informed his disgraced daughter of her fate, Isabella heard him with downcast eyes and a submissive expression, masking the spark of hope his words raised in her heart. On her knees, she begged her father as penance that he allow her three days in his library, to choose a convent such as he intended. Her father, having no better plan, agreed and dismissed her curtly, taking little notice of the fact that her wide hooped skirts sat higher than before. Isabella’s disability had always given her an awkward shape.

  In the count’s library Isabella hunted desperately for the book that mentioned the convent of the swallows above the valley where the Abenzucars lived. She finally found what she was looking for, a disintegrating volume with mildewed pages that made her sneeze. It had been written by a Christian hermit’s acolyte during the time of the Moors. The young acolyte had joined the hermit in his cave in the Andalusian mountains, intending to share his master’s privations and preserve his teachings for posterity. But the hermit kept such long spells of fasting and silence that the acolyte went in search of food and conversation with the mountain folk. Among them was a community of religious women living in what the Moors called the House of the Swallows, and Christians called Las Golondrinas Convent.

  Isabella had never heard of the order, Sors Santas de Jesus—Holy Sisters of Jesus. According to the acolyte, local people believed the order had occupied the site before the Moors and even the Visigoths before them, possibly since the Roman occupation of Hispania. The order was skilled with medicines, and the convent was known for charity to the poor of the mountain villages, regardless of their religion. Mountain people believed the nuns had special powers given by God. They said the swallows that returned to the convent each year from their migration and gave the place its name were the souls of dead nuns, and the convent was haunted by a tall woman in a billowing cloak. The main thing was that it would satisfy her father’s wish to hide her away.

  Isabella cared only for the convent’s proximity to the Abenzucars in the valley below. For the moment she had no plan beyond reaching that valley. What to say to Alejandro’s family, whether they would take her in—she would worry about that on the journey. Could she manage so long a journey, concealing her condition? She must. Fortunately she was slender, and the swell of her stomach could be disguised by exaggerating her limp to make her skirts sway, or bending to lean on her walking stick.

  The count had never heard of the order, but made his own inquiries. What he learned gave him a grim satisfaction. The convent had Old Christian associations, and was far from Madrid in the mountains, at the end of an old Roman route from the coast. He sent for his notaries to prepare the nun’s dowry Isabella was to have. As soon as that matter was settled they left Madrid, Isabella concealed behind the leather curtains of the carriage. But her plan to go to the Abenzucars was now impossible. Her father was accompanying her on horseback.

  Day after day, they traveled with agonizing slowness, Isabella willing the carriage to hurry, bracing herself against the cushions, counting over and over on her fingers the number of months. She thought they would reach the convent in time, unless the baby came too quickly. Her mother’s troubled experiences of childbirth had been the subject of whispered discussions among the maids and nurses of the household, and Isabella had acquired more knowledge of pregnancy and childbirth than most unmarried girls. She knew there was not much time left. A mule grew lame. A wheel did not turn properly. They halted for salve and then repairs. Isabella questioned the coachman impatiently. How much farther? The coachman did not know.

  The road into the mountains grew steeper. Fresh mules were hitched to the carriage and new drivers took over, local men. When she asked, they pointed to the mountain ahead of them and finally gave her the welcome news they would reach Las Golondrinas Convent the next day. Inside the car
riage Isabella stroked her belly to calm the baby as it kicked. By the time the carriage stopped for the night at a mountain refugio, a dull pain had begun tightening across her abdomen and back. Throughout a long night it came and went, came and went. Isabella lay sleepless on her straw pallet, perspiring with fear.

  CHAPTER 7

  Las Golondrinas Convent, Summer 1505

  The next day the mules panted and strained to haul the carriage up the last steep gradient before finally pulling to a stop. Nauseous from the twisting road, Isabella leaned out the window and took great desperate gulps of air that was clean and cool after the scorching heat of the plains. Gold and ruby earrings flashed in the sun as she turned her head for the view of Alejandro’s childhood home. Below her spread well-tended terraces of olive trees and vegetable gardens and she could hear goats’ bells and the distant calls of shepherd boys. In the distance, small white villages clung to the mountains.

  Relief at reaching her destination and the scent of sun-warmed herbs and pine soothed her nerves and stomach. She craned her neck to look up at the convent gates and walls with their barred windows and flocks of swallows whirling and dipping around the bell tower. She squinted against the bright sunlight. Save for the cross on top of the bell tower it could have been another empty Moorish fortress standing with its back to the rock face of the mountain. They had passed many such fortresses and castles the Moors had built, then abandoned in the Reconquista. Yes, there, just as the book had described, the statue with her hand out to the stone swallows carved around her feet, carved so realistically they looked about to take flight. Isabella closed her eyes, and for a moment it was not the mountain breeze but Alejandro’s breath on her cheek, and she was comforted.