I saw the color rise in Constanzas cheeks — the flush of her natural modesty embarrassed by the richness of her Fathers love.
“Of course there was a great outcry in the town, even letters from saddlers all over the realm protesting such an outrage. But in the end we were left alone, for my Fathers determination to employ me and his reputation for the finest saddlery anywhere proved greater than all the small minds and ridiculous uproar. I worked for five years … until I married. Come, Señor, I need some air. Let us walk.”
As we strolled slowly round her Fathers compound Constanza continued to talk, and it seemed as tho twas the first telling of her life to another soul. All of her opened to me like a flower under the warm sun, revealing the delicate parts which, when closely observed, are so fantastical. So beautiful.
“My husband was a traditional man, and he demanded I stop my work when the children came. At first I objected.” She smiled again. “Then I understood the little ones were my finest creations, and for several years I devoted my self to them. What longings I felt for my art I pushed aside. Besides, there was no one to whom I could talk of it, nothing to be done. I was a woman and that was the end of it.”
We had walked to the field where the horses grazed, and she was quiet. There was so much I wanted to ask, but I could not bear to break the silence which seemed somehow sacred — the telling of her life a gift she was conferring in pieces, all in good time. Finally she spoke.
“My husband died very suddenly.”
The statement took my breath away. Constanzas husband was not fighting for Spain in the Netherlands as I had assumed. She was a widow. I found it difficult to control my elation, forced my self to remember she was a Spaniard, mi enemiga.
“I had loved my husband, and together with the children we had been something very strong, very complete. I mourned, perhaps too deeply and for too long, refused to remarry. Grew very thin. Finally I lost the will to live. People were appalled — What kind of woman was I? Did I not still have my children? What more should I need? Ah, Señor Reggio, I was ashamed that motherhood alone could not lift me from my grief. Then my Father came to me one day last year and invited us to live in his house. He said he was lonely too, and we could assuage each others sadness. I agreed. When I walked for the first time into my bedchamber, there mounted on a block near the window was a raw leather saddle and a set of carving tools … I took one look and wept like a babe, then I sat down and began to work. Time disappeared like magick. I paused only to light the candles and never bothered to eat or sleep, feeling like a traveller too long in the desert, finally stumbling upon an oasis, taking the first cool drink. You see, the work was what I lacked. What I needed. My children, my Father, my art. I felt happy again.”
Suddenly Constanza flushed a high pink. “Good God, I have told a complete stranger the story of my life!”
I reached out and in an impetuous gesture took her hand. “You know very well I am no stranger, Constanza,” I said, regretting in my bones that I could never likewise share the true story of my life with her. Our eyes locked and held, and the smoldering gaze was broken only by Mirage insistently nudging my shoulder with her nose. Constanza and I laughed, and for my horse and me twas a sweet reunion, made sweeter by this lovely womans presence. Yet I was torn, for the Fates had played an unhappy trick on me, and for the first time in my life I began to question destiny.
In the days that followed, chaos ruled the kingdom of my mind. I had found my love, yet she was forbidden to me. I thought that she returned my passion, but she believed I was someone that I was not. I was under commission from my Father and England her self, and time was racing from me, the Cadiz intelligence lying undelivered in my saddlebags. But I was as yet unhealed of my injury, so that the mere fulfilling of my bounden duties might kill me. And if my efforts prevailed I would betray my kind hosts, to whom I owed my very life.
I hardly slept. My days were spent exercising my leg, then packing it in mud for the swelling. I worked patiently, translating the Cadiz information into cyphers as best as I could, and wished more than once to have Partridge here when I needed him. The cooler regions of my mind were occupied with my duty and loyalty to England. Other parts of myself knew only Constanza. I visited her daily in the shop, she never minding my company as she worked. Sometimes the children, Lolita and Marco, came in to see their Mother and we spent the time most pleasantly. Marco wished always to hear of my exploits on horseback and begged me to take him riding with me when I was well. Little Lolita was a black haired, black eyed Angel who gazed so adoringly at me we were finally moved to laughter. Don Ramón, too, was so warm and welcoming that each mealtime was a delightful confection of food, wine and lively conversation. He and Constanza were both historians of horse and saddle, and we would sit for endless hours exchanging stories.
I was awed at the extent of Constanzas education. She read Greek — and so knew Xenophon. She was even then studying the Arabic language, slowly translating pieces of the Koran. Don Ramón was a collector of antique horse accoutrements. He took great pleasure in pulling me aside to display the contents of his many domed chests — 13th century armor fashioned from scales sliced from horses hooves and sewn onto a tunic, a heavily armored glove used by a knights groom to lead an unpredictable stallion thro the battlefield, a pair of high widetopped boots he claimed belonged to a King, one boot of blue moroccan leather lined with green, the other of green leather lined with blue.
Constanza added bits of lore from the nomadic Huns who had lived on horseback, to my Great Grandfather King Henry VII, who would starve his horse before state occasions to promote its docility, as he was a poor rider.
There was little opportunity or time to be with Constanza alone. But even the briefest of walks from casa to shop after the afternoon siesta, or sitting up for hours at her table after Don Ramón had gone off to bed, seemed to my lovesick mind overbrimming with fully requited romance, made even more passionate by its restraint. Of course I was desperately torn, for the deeper in love I fell with Constanza, the harder it was to think of leaving her.
My good Mirage could not have made my first ride any gentler. Yet, even with the easiest of gaits, it felt as tho hot pincers had been applied to the leg, and the wounds very seams threatened to rupture. Constanza and her Father, concerned for my safety, devised a clever contraption of padding under and round the thigh, and a special stirrup which held the leg at a comfortable angle. This familys genuine sweetness and caring daily turned on its head my conception of the haughty Spanish character.
But in those days of my recuperation, too, I observed at the Lorca farm what I thought to be more than a saddle factorys share of comings and goings of urgent messengers. I wondered if Don Ramón was providing the King of Spain with saddles for the invasion, and thought perhaps I could use the services of one of these couriers — heavily bribed — for my own purposes. Twas risky to place the letter in a strangers hands, but here on a finca in the southernmost reaches of Spain, the intelligence was utterly wasted. I completed the encyphering of the information as best as I could and devised a seemingly innocent destination for it in Genoa, knowing that Walsinghams agent there would send it on to John Dee in Prague, and he to my Father, still commanding the troops in the Netherlands.
The messenger I chose to approach one afternoon as the family were withdrawing for their siesta, was a young man with the rudest saddle and most threadbare clothing of all the couriers I had observed. We had seen each other several times in the previous weeks, and I assumed he knew I was an honored guest of the Lorcas. As he saddled up to leave the compound I walked over, exaggerating my limp for sympathys sake. The boy — for he was hardly yet a man — was deformed by a hare lip, tho otherwise quite a handsome lad. He was shy as the afflicted often are, and I spoke to him kindly, admiring his horsemanship a la gineta. He was Enrique, he told me, and he fairly glowed with pride at the compliment. We spoke for a time about the mount he was riding — not his own. He was too poor to own his own horse.
This belonged to his employer.
Judging that this might be my best and only chance, I let slip that I had an urgent letter needing delivery to Genoa and asked if Enrique knew of anyone who would be up to the job, sorry that he could not do it, as he was so closely employed by Don Ramón. His face lit up instantly, and he said that in fact he was just now off to Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast, and that numerous ships departed from that port to Italy every day. I shook my head, saying that the message must have one deliverer only, but that the payment, half on departure and half on return with the signature of Signor Bellini, would be five ducats — which I knew would be more than enough to buy a horse. I could see the boys eyes darting every which way as he conceived of a plan by which he could manage the job himself, at which time I bid him adios, wished him a good journey and turned to go.
“Senor, I can deliver the message! When I reach Barcelona I will take ship for Genoa and put the letter into Signor Bellini’s very hands my self.”
“Are you not expected back here by Don Ramón?” I inquired mildly.
“Oh, he has many couriers, Señor. I will claim illness and someone else will take my place until I return.”
So with that the deal was struck. With a prayer to God that I was a good judge of character, and that the message would find its way only into friendly hands, I gave it into the boys safekeeping. He rode off and with the sun scorching in the cloudless sky, I retired to the casa, where everything in the household had ground to a halt, except for the maids sprinkling cool water on the flagstone floors.
On the balcony near my room I found myself face to face with Constanza just leaving the nursery, having put the children down for siesta. She glowed with a slight flush to the cheeks. Damp hair clung to her neck, flutters from her black lace fan cooling her not at all. She smiled when she saw me, an intimate smile, one which I believed in my heart was an invitation. I felt the last of my restraint slipping away and so without speaking took her into my arms and kissed her. Far from resisting she drank deeply from my mouth, our bodies melting together in the heat of the afternoon. Groping with my hand I opened my bedroom door and we sought its cool secret refuge with equal ardor.
Once inside I was startled by her passion which I never expected to equal mine. The bed seemed too far a distance to travel, so we stood clinging together back against a wall, she murmuring “mi amor, mi amor” as she lifted her skirts and helped guide me into the sweet warmth of her.
As the moment of her supreme satisfaction came upon her Constanza began to cry out and I covered her mouth with my own, but the violent pulsation at the core of her triggered my own explosive release and I buried my face in her shoulder to silence my ecstatic moaning.
Altogether spent and weak kneed, we could barely stand. I tried to lead her to the bed, but she shook her head, straightened her skirts and kissed me once before disappearing out my door. I laid my self down, disheveled but fully clothed and slept, adrift on a sea of unimaginably lovely dreams.
When I awoke it was nearly dark, and so I quickly dressed and descended to the dining room. The events of the day were crowding my mind — satisfaction that I had finally dispatched the Cadiz intelligence, worry that it would somehow go astray, or that with the delay caused by my illness the news would come too late to be of any use. And finally the thrill of having Constanza return not only my friendship but my passion. I was therefore lost in contemplation as I reached the closed doors of the dining room, and found myself confused by what I was hearing. Twas indeed Constanzas voice, but a language unknown to me. There was something ancient in its guttural and mysterious tones. I stood very still, listening. What I was hearing, I finally understood, was Hebrew. I remembered John Dee telling me that thro the sacred Hebrew language could be tapped supercelestial powers. Had I stumbled onto a family of Hermeticists?
“Baruch atah Adoni eluhainu melach haalum …”
I opened the door.
Constanza stood surrounded by her family, a short lace veil covering her head and face, lighting candles which, I thought with a shock, had to be Sabbath candles. It was a Friday night. They were Jews.
When she had finished the prayer Constanza exchanged kisses with her Father and children, then looked up and smiled at me entirely unalarmed. “Come in, Señor Reggio,” said Don Ramón. “And you should close your mouth, Sir. You are gaping.” I shut the door behind me and at once servants began serving the Sabbath meal. Entirely speechless, I took my place at the table as the Lorcas did the same. Only Don Ramón sat in a chair, with Constanza and the children lowering themselves onto high cushions after the Moorish fashion. I waited for them to speak, illuminate the strange circumstances, as I could not for the life of me conceive what to ask.
“Did you know,” began Don Ramón, “that in the same year that our illustrious monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella backed the first expedition of Christopher Columbus to the New World, they forced exodus on every Jew in Spain? Our own ancestors were among those miserable refugees who could not fathom why such a fate had befallen them. They had, after all, been among the great conquerors and settlers of this land. Their culture, with that of the Moors and the original Iberians, had combined over the centuries into the delicious flavor that was Spain. The early Jews had been fierce warriors and extraordinary horsemen. Over the centuries they had counselled Kings, built mercantile empires, produced architects, artisans, intellectuals.” He sighed heavily. “For this they were rewarded with the Inquisition. Hounded, tortured, burnt alive by the thousands. Many fled across the sea, or across the border to Portugal, our family amongst them. Other Spanish Jews converted to Christianity, preferring not to struggle against overwhelming adversity. These New Christians were called ‘marranos’ — swine. They were widely despised and regularly terrorized, tho many were, I think, strengthened by the knowledge that they were adhering to their principles. For amongst those who outwardly accepted Catholicism, a goodly number yet maintained the religion of their birth. These were secret Jews and their lot,” he laughed mirthlessly, “their lot is the hardest by far. We are secret Jews, Señor, as I am sure you have by now guessed.”
“But,” I said, “I thought your family had moved to Portugal.”
“They had, but they were ill contented there and soon the Lorcas masterfully embraced subterfuge and deceit along with the Catholic sacraments, for we longed to return to our homeland. We have been covering our tracks for more than sixty years now, concealing the roots of our family tree. We are everywhere in Spain, involved in every trade and every level of government, and we keep in close contact thro a network of messengers. We have been extraordinarily successful, even if our religious practices have suffered. Without the luxury of praying together in a synagogue, some rituals have been lost or forgotten, others bastardized. But we do our best.”
Don Ramón took a sip of wine and gently placed his hand on Constanzas arm. “But times are changing, Señor. King Philip has endowed the Inquisition with a frightening new intensity. He has no patience with heretics or infidels or Jews. He knows we exist in his country and he wishes us all to burn. He is a madman. An animal! Unworthy of the Spanish crown. He has whipped the Christians into a frenzy with this ridiculous notion of ‘limpia sangre’ — for no one in this land today can say they have truly pure blood. We are all of the same blood and it is mixed blood! And with the country on the verge of a second bankruptcy, citizens are starving, desperate for money, and paid informers are everywhere reporting their friends and neighbors as clandestine Jews. We have been lucky so far, and of course we are very, very careful, but I do not know how long we will be safe. For me, the agony of the flames would be nothing compared to the knowledge that my family might suffer.”
I looked imploringly at Constanza then for some guidance, for despite her Fathers eloquent explanation, I was still at a complete loss. Why had they told me — a stranger — and, as far as they knew, a Catholic — such things?
She smiled then, indulgently, as a Mother would to a young child.
“You are wondering, are you not Señor, why we have revealed such a dangerous secret to you?” These were the first words Constanza had spoken to me since that afternoons astonishing tryst. I thought her unbelievably calm. No one could have guessed at what had passed tween us hours before. “The truth is,” she said, looking deep into my eyes, “we know quite well that you are not our enemy. You are a spy, Inglés, and wish for the downfall of the same enemy as ourselves.”
“You know!” I blurted, feeling an utter fool.
“In your delirium you cried out in your native language,” Constanza said unemotionally. “So I searched your saddlebags.”
I laughed, horrified, outraged, amused. “You have known all along!”
Constanza and her Father exchanged a conspiratorial smile. Then she looked back at me. “My husband, in fact, was a Catholic, and he died never knowing that he had married a Jewess, nor that his children by their Mothers blood were both Jews. I know you will forgive us our deceit as we have forgiven you yours. We understand you must deceive to survive, and we are a family of survivors.”
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