He stuck the point of his knife under my chin. “Have you anything more of value, pilgrim?”
“No, I have nothing,” I squeaked out a lie.
“Search her cloak,” he told someone. “Nothing, indeed! Why, it’s a spyglass. I’ve always wanted one.”
I nearly cried. “My father gave that to me.”
“It’s mine now.” He withdrew his knife.
“Are you … are you done robbing me?”
“What impertinence! I will rob you of something else.”
Clutching my arms, he kissed me roughly. The shock of it made me stumble backwards when he released me, such that I landed on my backside. A woman nearby said that the bandit had stolen my virtue with that ugly kiss. “Lechuza! What decent man would want to marry her now?” she asked. Someone else branded me a jilted lover.
Candelas was quiet. Where did he go?
A bell rang out. Scrambling to my feet, I tore off the blindfold, only to find that I had been deceived; they were leaving without me. Candelas stood on the back of the galera, along with the escopeteros, roaring with laughter. “A good joke!” and they congratulated him.
Too late my anger burst forth at what had been done to me. Stamping my foot with indignation, I shouted, “Demonio-o-o!” and, wearing an ugly snarl, I hurled a good-sized rock at him. Candelas batted it away with my portmanteau. The man was charmed; nothing could hurt him.
“What a howl! Go back home to Madrid, little princess, where you belong.” He flung my habit and boots and other belongings at my feet.
A small crowd had gathered to see him off. They cheered him, the people’s hero, who stole from the rich to help the poor. They cared not how abominable he could be. They cared not that he stole from the rich to help himself first and always.
“Good-bye, countrymen. Be happy!” He waved and smiled at them, his white teeth gleaming in the sunlight.
The mayoral cracked his whip, the mules galloped off, and in the gathering clouds of finely-powdered dust, the bandit Candelas vanished.
The sinner and ruined girl, being me, stood in the middle of the road, indecently attired in a torn shift. Muttering in Portuguese to myself, I struggled into my habit and then I pulled on my walking-boots, not bothering to lace them up. Instinctively, I felt under my chin where Candelas had threatened to put his knife to me. Staining my fingertips were three bright drops of blood. I bawled out in frustration, “That ogre!”
My father’s voice popped into my head to say, “Stop whining and get off the road.” A small train of donkeys was nearing; the spritely tinkling of bells said so. Muttering again in my mother tongue, I dragged my plundered belongings to the side of the road, where I crouched, elbows to knees, my mind in a deep sulk.
“Pobrecita, where are you going?” A friar of the Order of Mercy approached me, riding his lead donkey. His white-flannel robes, heavily soiled, and a worn wooden rosary hanging from his rope-girdle, bespoke his itinerant way of life.
Rising to my feet, I grumbled out, “I’m on a pilgrimage to the Aljafería.”
“De veras? Are you in earnest?” He tilted back the brim of his russet hat to get a good look at me.
At a loss for words, I kicked a pebble.
“My dear child, you are a boiling pot of anger and resentment.”
“You would be as well,” I snapped at him, “if you had been beguiled by the bandit Luis Candelas, who held you hostage for days and made you steal.”
The friar said, “A wise man once said that a traveler without observation is a bird without wings. The same goes for pilgrims. A pilgrim without reflection is a bird without wings.”
I cared not a straw about it.
He continued on, “Consider this idea: though we may travel alone, we are not alone on our journey. What have you learned from this bandit?”
“Why, I learned nothing except how to be cruel and deceitful. That scoundrel stole everything. Look!”
Having turned my alforja upside-down, I gave it a good shake. A pouch of jingling coins, along with my passports and knife and spyglass, dropped to the ground. Dumbfounded, I picked them up. It appeared that Candelas hadn’t stolen a thing from me except for a kiss. Had he been pretending to be a merciless bandit to frighten me into going home? Had he turned me into a fellow thief to teach me a lesson because of my morally superior attitude?
Then came my halting admissions. “I believed Candelas … was just another despicable soul, another bandit who ought to be hanged. And … by misjudging him, I committed a mortal sin, thinking only of myself—to save myself from harm.”
He nodded in sympathetic agreement. “I am Fray Nicolás de Santa María. You are welcome to join me and to place your things on a donkey.”
“De veras?” Could I trust him or any other human being again?
“It’s a six-hour walk to Zaragoza. Let us journey together.”
His generous offer renewed my faith in humanity, in all that is good in Spain—that hospitable people do exist in such an inhospitable climate, that travelers should and do help one another.
The good friar lent me a frayed straw hat and hemp sandals to wear. When I protested that I preferred my walking-boots, he said a pilgrimage entails hardship. Only through discomfort, which I must adjust to, could I open my heart.
“A pilgrim is not a tourist,” he advised me.
Very soon, though, I grew weary of tramping in the brutal heat. My feet blistered and bled. Not a minute went by when I didn’t feel the throbbing pain. How I wished more than anything to have thrown myself upon a donkey! I would have gladly given up my coins for a quadruped. Was I really such a lazy, spoiled, pampered rich-girl? Candelas had said so.
Mile after mile, as I pondered my defects, I finally admitted to myself how selfish I had been. I finally understood that we each have our own journey. Yet I had wanted my journey to take precedence over others’ and I despaired and became desperate when I didn’t get my way. My former contemptible self would have asked, “Why did Mr. Munro choose his home and family over me?”
On the approach to Zaragoza, I began to float above the rutted chalky road. It felt like death in a way, or at least how I imagined death would be, surprisingly light and lovely, and not unsettling in the least. My feet no longer hurt. My heart was calm, my mind clear. The things that attached me to the world, I had left behind for now.
In this half-conscious drifting state, I came upon the Aljafería, the ancient fortified palace of the Moorish kings, where Santa Isabel had been born centuries ago. Crossing a bridge over a dry moat, I approached a keyhole-shaped entrance that was flanked by two towers. Directly inside stood an array of columns and graceful white-lace arches and, beyond that, a garden patio framed by arcades, where I found a child, the young Isabel, praying. Did the girl know she would become such an exceptional queen, one who took an interest in political affairs and who could stop wars, one who healed people and who would build a hospital, a convent and so much more?
And I realized in that moment, observing the young Isabel, how fortunate I was to have survived my journey thus far. Because there was the possibility of hope, the trust of things to come—what I might become and my place in the world. Feeling blessed, I sank upon the grass in quiet gratitude.
9. Ci-ci
Somewhere in Aragón, I became a hopeful fatalist. Spanish travelers accept the fact that they will reach their destination or not. They might be plagued by illness. They might be robbed of everything. They might be shot. Even so, nothing stops them from being resigned to their fate, aware of the dangers of the road and the need to take chances. I was thinking this, of taking my next chance, when Fray Nicolás offered a solution.
At the stable of our posada, where we had spent the night with a million fleas, he handed me a letter of introduction. My mission was to return a donkey to Padre Miguel in Biescas, a small village high up in the Pyrenees. The padre had named the donkey Raya, or Stripe, because of his distinctive shoulder stripe, part of the shadow of the cross on his back t
hat every donkey bears. He was a handsome beast, soft light brown with a dark cross. The friar warned, however, that the donkey had an independent mind.
“Raya will decide, in his good time, when he wants to see his master, and when he does, he’ll gallop off without stopping. He’s a singular donkey, very intelligent—perhaps too intelligent.”
“Will he know the way?”
He patted the beast affectionately. “Donkeys have an excellent memory. But—cuidado—this one will stray off the main road in search of food and water and amor.”
Having taken my leave of the good friar, to whom I gave a thousand thanks and a generous donation, I set out on Raya, sitting sideways on a blanket-saddle. “Take me to Our Lady of the Pillar,” I told him. There, I paid for a Mass to be said for my deceased father, after which, I viewed The Adoration of the Name of God, the fresco by Francisco de Goya.
Fray Nicolás had said that if I looked closely at the ceiling of the cupola, I could see him in his youth, standing atop a heaped-up cloud, and surrounded by musicians and a choir of angels. Perhaps he was funning me. But it certainly did resemble him, so young, so robust, with angel wings. He swung a thurible, scattering puffs of incense that swirled towards the triangle—the Trinity inscribed with the Holy Name in Hebrew. Had Fray Nicolás been an angel once upon a time?
If only I could sprout wings, I could fly home. As it was, my habit wouldn’t serve the purpose. Just then, a gypsy clothes-peddler sang out, “Ropa vieja-a-a!” I trotted towards him and his band of gypsies. His wife, a peinadora—a woman who combs and dresses hair—arranged my hair for half a real.
No longer a pilgrim, I exchanged my habit for some old clothes—a patchy short shift with sleeves, a thrice-turned red petticoat and a closely-fitted black bodice that laced in front. On a whim, I purchased a black-velvet sugar-loaf hat with upturned brim and round tassels of black silk. The gypsy clothes-peddler adorned it with rosemary for me, to ward against witches and mischances on the road. I thought myself dashing in it. So what if others thought me peculiar for wearing a man’s hat?
No one seemed to care about it as I rode about the city. Whenever Raya and I reached a crossroad, the wind whispered to me that each road leads somewhere. So I let the donkey decide which road to take. Hadn’t Don Quixote trusted his nag Rocinante to do the same? Well, I would trust my Raya—he was a good boy. In this zigzag manner, I happened upon the strangest sight—a leaning tower that hadn’t tumbled down for the last two centuries. This is what the city-folk told me about the Torre Nueva when I purchased bread in the market. The tower, which creaked and groaned, grumbled at passers-by, “I’m old and bent, but I defy anyone to destroy me.”
I had not gone far after that, trotting on Calle de Santa Isabel, when I came upon an older woman, about forty, bearing embroidered badges of honor on her sleeve. She wore military dress with a petticoat, and a sabre at her left side. A man, most likely her husband, accompanied her. Everyone saluted her. Children thronged round her. “La Capitana Agustina!” they cried out joyfully. She stopped short to stare at my hat that I had set at a rakish tilt.
“Where are you going in that hat?” she demanded to know.
“I’m bound for Biescas.”
“You’re going the wrong way,” was her decided crisp reply.
“Oh, no, my donkey will guide me.”
Her brow furrowed. “Never trust a donkey and the French.”
She strode off amidst an adulating crowd. I wondered: could she have been Agustina, the heroic Woman of Zaragoza, who, after climbing over the slain defenders, fought off Napoleon’s forces by firing a six-and-twenty-pounder to rally her fleeing countrymen? Everyone knew the story of how, after blasting the enemy on her own, she leapt upon the gun and vowed never to quit it alive during the siege. She hated the oppressors of her country. Later on, as Wellington’s sole female officer, she promised to deliver up their throats to the knife. My father once said of her military audacity, “she is of the right sort.”
She must have thought me the wrong sort, an utter fool for trusting my donkey. Then, it occurred to me that seeing Agustina portended good fortune for my journey. An intrepid woman amongst men, she had a stout heart. So it was, believing myself all-powerful from my encounter with the great Agustina, I sallied forth to Biescas.
Raya settled upon the direction of Villamayor de Gállego, eight miles eastward. Eventually we arrived at a hermitage that stood high on a hill. Raya sat on his haunches like a dog, waiting patiently, until the devotees of the Virgen del Pueyo fed him barley mixed with straw. The cunning boy had been here before.
We set off once more, I riding astride now. Beyond the fertile plain of the river Ebro, the landscape became altogether changed, so very devoid of trees. Dull-grey scraggy brush marred the vast desert. Stark flat-top mountains rose on one side. Chalky-hued sand-hills served for roads on the parched plains. At one point, a flock of sheep wandered onto the salty-white mounds in search of thin grass amongst the bordering shrubs. The sheep scattered before long.
We had gone another two miles when the donkey came to a halt on a rising sand-hill. He cocked forward one long ear, and cocked back the other, curious about something.
“Raya, my boy, what is it?”
He refused to move. Twisting his lips, he made the most bizarre sounds, like that of a tin-penny whistle—fwree, fwree-fwree, fwrr-r-ree!—and in the key of D major.
My whistling donkey went off in a wild gallop, and then, of all things, he skidded, with head lowered, to a quick stop, the force of which made me sail off him. The mischievous Raya had pitched me! And I, having foolishly trusted him, had been taken in by his trick. My father would never have allowed a donkey to lead him by the nose. Yes, yes, I’m an idiot! I scrambled onto my feet to give chase.
Raya trotted away single-mindedly. He descended into a ravine at the bottom of which several goats drank from a shallow pool of brownish water. Nearby grazed a little white donkey with coquettish eyes and a whisk-broom tail that swished. Had she heard his tin-penny-whistle mating call? Raya helped himself to some grass and then he helped himself to her. “Oh dear, oh dear,” I muttered to myself, hoping that their “donkey dance” would end soon, which is how my father once explained the amorous goings-on of donkeys to me.
A very browned woman with black-pepper eyes rushed upon the dance partners. “Picaro!” she bellowed out, striking Raya the Rascal with a stick. She then turned on me, accusing me of thievery. Eager to make amends, I paid her a cuarto, but this didn’t appease her. “Vete!” she cried out, wanting us gone. She whacked me three times on the legs. Raya took flight, and I swore I heard his raffish laugh. “Raya-a-a! Wait for me!” Having clambered up the gully, I ran after him for what seemed a good half mile.
Hot white clouds of dust kicked up by Raya nearly smothered me. I fell backwards onto the ground, not caring at the moment whether I lived or not. Above me, the vast blue cared not either, because the impassive sky would be blue the next day and the day after that. I closed my eyes and willed myself to open my mouth, to swallow some of its airy blueness. ’Twould be my last act of defiance on earth.
A nudge brought me to my senses. The miscreant Raya had wandered back to toot his conquest.
“Haw-hee-haw! What a riot that was.”
I gaped at him, for he sounded just like my poor departed father, and the sorrow of it tied up my heart with saudades, that rush of deep bittersweet memories in my forbidden language whenever I longed to be with my father or remembered something we did in the past.
“Well, Raya, I hope you prove constant to her after what you’ve done.” I sniffled away my tears.
“Constant!” He stuck out his tongue. “I have a string of novias.”
A groan rumbled out of me. Raya was a rogue when it came to the quadruped female heart. Rising to my feet, I gave him a good scolding.
“You’re a libertine, a Don Juan Donkey, because you know you’re handsome. I’m certain you’ve whistled the same song to your other novias.”
He gave me an arch look. “Are we really speaking of me?”
“Of course, we are.” Of course, I wasn’t.
Raya broke into my lonely thoughts about Mr. Munro.
“Human! Do you often parley with donkeys?”
“I am not Sofía la Loca,” which I said twice over.
“I think you already are.”
“Yo sé quién soy—I know who I am.”
“Haw! That’s what Don Quixote the madman said.”
“Oh, hang Don Quixote! Let’s get on, Raya,” and I leapt upon him.
We walked until the blazing sun nearly shook our brains. An abandoned homestead in ruins provided temporary shelter, but the torrid heat there suffocated us, and swarms of flies attacked without end. Stung to madness, we argued.
“Let us leave this wretched place.”
“Mañana por la mañana,” Raya drawled out.
“Whatever does that mean?”
“Tomorrow morning is a good time.” He yawned.
“Why, you’re the laziest beast I’ve ever known.”
Raya snorted. “You’re the sauciest biped I’ve ever carried.”
We fought on for some time, in our battle of superlatives. Raya gave up.
“Let me alone, human! I need my post-prandial siesta,” and he shut his eyes and began to snore.
But I got my way after he had siesta’d—well, he let me think I did—and we trotted forth under a hot evening sun. Surely, with the aid of luck, we would discover a sleepy nameless hamlet, one with a happy well and cool fresh water. My dust-incrusted tongue required it.
“Can you not quicken your pace?”
Raya tossed his head. “Human! I must needs be watered.”
Finally, fortune smiled upon us, with an ancient well. At least, one could hope for clean water at this hamlet, despite the tumble-down mud-brick huts and scraggy goats and dirty children. Raya came to a dead halt.
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