The Sisterhood

The Sisterhood - By Helen Bryan



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





No matter how difficult, rewarding, frustrating, enjoyable, compulsive, or exhausting the process of producing a manuscript, writing is essentially a singular occupation for the author. Turning that manuscript into a polished book, however, requires a huge collective effort on the part of others. I am grateful to so many people who have had a hand in getting The Sisterhood onto the bookshelf. One and all, they have given the book and its author the benefit of their unstinting attention and professional expertise.

First of all I would like to thank my agent, Jane Dystel at Dystel & Goderich, who has been a constant source of support, generous with her time and input, and whose experience and professionalism have smoothed the manuscript-transformation process for everyone concerned. And given my rashly optimistic approach to deadlines, it was particularly helpful that Jane had a better view than I did of the time it takes, realistically, to deliver a manuscript. I am grateful to Jane and to her partner, Miriam Goderich, for the time they spent on the manuscript and their thoughtful editorial advice. I have to say, they were generally right.

A gifted editor will often understand a book even better than its author and have a sixth sense how editing will produce the best possible version. That was certainly the case with developmental editor Charlotte Herscher. Aside from the fact that it was a pleasure to work with Charlotte, her focus, sure professional touch, and clarity worked wonders on a long and complex manuscript. From her first perceptive comments, I knew I could rely on her advice. Editing The Sisterhood was a big project for both of us, and I am grateful for the way she transformed the book.

Author-centric Amazon Publishing was, as ever, a joy to work with. From an author’s perspective, everything at Amazon Publishing runs on well-oiled tracks with never a glitch. Senior editor Terry Goodman employed his considerable author-charming skills by e-mail, kept the publishing schedule on target, and made sure that what was supposed to happen, happened. Jessica Poore and Nikki Sprinkle of the Amazon author team couldn’t be more helpful and are always available in case of queries. And thanks are due to copy editor Katie Parker, who expertly smoothed the final version and tied up loose ends.

Finally, I am grateful to my wonderfully supportive family: Roger, Cass, Michelle, Niels, Bo, and Poppy, who, rightly or wrongly, profess themselves amazed by all my efforts. Above all, thanks are due to my husband, Roger Low, who understands my need, when writing, for a degree of quiet and privacy that, according to him, is not so much Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own” as it is “lockdown.” In our household this is only achievable because in addition to everything else he does, Roger can hold the fort through any known domestic crisis. Best of all, when writing is done for the day, I can leave my imagined world with its fictional inhabitants for my lively and loving real one.





PROLOGUE


From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, Las Golondrinas Convent, Andalusia, Spain, June 1552





It is midnight, but only the orphanage children sleep. At sunset a messenger came from the valley to warn the Abbess. Like wolves slinking toward the sheepfold, the Inquisition tribunal are drawing closer and will soon be upon us. All in the order, from the youngest novice to elderly bedridden Sor Augustina, are awake, praying the queen will intervene, and for courage if she does not. We must remember the example of our beloved Foundress in her hour of trial.

I, Sor Beatriz of the Holy Sisters of Jesus, servant of God and scribe of the convent of Las Golondrinas, make my last entry in this Chronicle I have kept for over forty years. Tonight this Chronicle and our Foundress’s medal, our order’s two most precious possessions, must leave the convent to be out of the Inquisition’s reach and to keep her spiritual legacy alive. Our Foundress’s plan, revealed to us over the years, is to send them to Spanish America, and we pray that our obedience to her wishes will allow them to be rediscovered one day.

Since the earliest days of Christianity our order has born witness to a female tradition of spirituality that men of the church have suppressed and replaced with doctrines that refashioned God and religion in their own image. Centuries ago, the Emperor Constantine called disputing bishops to the Council of Nicea to agree on church doctrine. By consensus, and one curious result, Mary the mother of Jesus was declared the ever-virgin mother of God—despite the fact that Jesus never claimed divinity for himself, and our Foundress was living proof to the contrary regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity.

These man-made doctrines swept all before them, drowning out the voice of women, indeed the voice of reason and experience. Resistance became heresy, regardless of the truth. Deaconesses, so active in the early church, saw their authority curtailed, then extinguished. Before long, men of the church were debating whether women, like animals, were incapable of having souls. Secure in their spiritual supremacy, men of the church easily believe women’s enforced submission is genuine.

Outwardly compliant to the church, our order has continued to bear witness to the truth. We have preserved the evidence of it in our Gospel and our Foundress’s medal, evidence that is more important than ever now.

Since the Reconquista, the Inquisition has unleashed a wave of religious terror to strengthen the Christian monarchs’ hold on Spain. A growing network of Inquisition familiars watch, whisper, and denounce—setting neighbor to spy on neighbor and servants to watch their masters and mistresses; reporting who closes the curtains of their house on Friday, who will not touch pork or shellfish or mix meat and milk, who hides a nine-branched candlestick, who prays toward Mecca, who fasts for the month of Ramadan, who celebrates the Passover Seder. People are accused of hideous crimes invented by fevered imaginations, and dragged away to the torturers, the rack, and the stake. All are suspect. All live in fear of accusation.

Now a Franciscan zealot, Fr. Ramon Sanchez, claims the Blessed Virgin appeared to him, weeping because secret Jews and Muslims masquerade as nuns, profaning convents by their presence and plotting the overthrow of our Christian monarchs. He swears the Virgin bids all who love her to seek out and destroy this abomination without mercy, to purge convents of heretics and unbelievers for the glory of God. Alas, so much evil done in a woman’s name! By a lunatic perhaps, but with the willing help of men none would call mad.

And they say Fr. Ramon is both ignorant and mad, a dangerous combination. He cannot read or write, has fits, fasts continually, and his habit is streaked with filth and blood from a cilice round his waist. He screams in his sleep, tormented by demons who would have him loosen it. Yet he exercises a strange power over those who come into contact with him, and mobs are swayed to violence by his sermons, and they roar in approval when he speaks of “purifying” convents. The Abbess believes the tide of favor must turn against him soon—the Jesuits of the Holy Office will not be led by a crude peasant forever. But until this happens he is as dangerous as an adder in spring.

Last year the Holy Office of the Inquisition notified the Abbess it would begin an investigation to discover whether there was merit in Fr. Ramon’s claims. Their tribunals would visit each convent in Spain, a work that would take many years to accomplish. At each convent the tribunal would require a list of possible heretics to be drawn up for examination.

For the Abbess and for all of us, death is preferable to such betrayal. The first rule of our order was laid down by our Foundress, and requires we protect girls and women from the violence of men. From the earliest days of our community, when the first sisters lived in caves, women of the mountain villages found a refuge with us when their men beat and abused them. Our first Abbess decided men must be required to give something of value to us as pledge for their future good behavior before their women would return. Since the men of these mountains have always regarded the women of this place as having special powers, whether of healing or supernatural forces, it has proved an effective tactic.

The obscurity of our order and its distant location have been advantages in our work. For centuries the church scarcely acknowledged our existence save for supplying us from time to time with an elderly priest to say Mass and live out his declining years under our care. After the Reconquista, Queen Isabella made a special pilgrimage here, to honor a Christian convent sustained under Moorish rule. She particularly approved of our seclusion from the world, believing it a safeguard of our spirituality and virtue. For that reason she favored us with her patronage.

The sinful world, however, sought us for the selfsame reasons of distance and obscurity. Courtiers who attended the queen on her visit endowed an orphanage within our walls for purposes of their own. And this has had the curious effect of shielding us from the Inquisition, even as the Inquisition has grown in power and influence.

The rigid Catholic morals at court have created new victims, the endangered escondidas, the “hidden girls”: illegitimate daughters of courtiers and their mistresses, often aristocratic ladies. There are also offspring from lusts of the vilest kind—fathers and brothers and uncles who have gotten children on their own daughters, sisters, and nieces. Grandees must conceal the fruit of such lusts or jeopardize their positions at court.

The girls are spirited away to us in secrecy, usually when they are weaned. They say that someone prominently placed at court arranges their removal through a chain of middlemen who do not know the mothers’ identities. The mothers never know where their daughters are bound, only that it is to a convent far away. Save for the courtiers who endowed the orphanage, few others could trace the children to Las Golondrinas.

The hidden girls bring religious dowries, the price of their parents’ guilt. The children never know any life outside the convent, and in due course all become nuns. The pious justification is that giving these girls to God expiates the parents’ sin. The truth is darker, and the reason we agreed to the orphanage. It is frequently the only means of saving the lives of these children. Inconvenient infants are helpless victims, quickly smothered or drowned like kittens.

But while the orphanage girls are a sensitive matter, what endangers us with the Inquisition are the five older girls who found their way here to be hidden in the convent—Esperanza, Pia, Sanchia, Marisol, and Luz. Preparations are nearly complete for four of them to leave tonight, to seek refuge and husbands in Spanish America. If the Inquisition finds them, they will be subjected to hideous interrogations that would quickly yield three “heretics,” one girl hunted like a white doe because her existence threatens the throne itself, and the poor little heiress Luz who must be protected from her father at all costs. Luz, so gifted with her needle, who worked the beautiful altar cloth sent as a gift to the queen, must stay behind. She would endanger the others on the journey. As she cannot speak, perhaps they will have mercy on her.

Perhaps.

The Abbess’s widowed sister, the beata Sor Emmanuela, will accompany the four girls as chaperone. As a lay sister, Sor Emmanuela is not bound by the church’s rules on enclosure that confine nuns to the convent and prevent their going abroad without special letters of permission.

The Abbess believes the safest plan is to divide the responsibility for the medal and the Chronicle between Sor Emmanuela and the eldest girl, my assistant Esperanza. Sor Emmanuela will wear the medal, but the key to its meaning is hidden in our Gospel, copied into our Chronicle. Esperanza will take charge of the Chronicle. The Abbess has charged her with keeping a record of the journey, just as I would have done, and I have showed her our Gospel, written in Latin and concealed in its middle pages. She reads Latin easily, but more importantly she will understand how it points to those shared beliefs between Jews and early Christians, and later Muslims, that should be a basis of peace, not persecution, between the different faiths. If some mishap befalls the Chronicle on the journey, Esperanza’s memory is as excellent as her understanding, and she has sworn to memorize and rewrite if necessary.

Even as we wait, the Abbess prays for deliverance, that the queen will be moved by Luz’s gift to protect us and stay the Inquisition’s hand. But we cannot wait longer for miracles or influence. A beata has come, weeping with fright. There are arrivals at the gate, despite the early hour of morning. Surprise is one of the Inquisition’s weapons.

Farewell to the Chronicle. May it and our Foundress’s medal find a safe haven and one day, God willing, be returned to this holy place. Let those who read this pray for those who take our treasures to exile and safety, for those who remain, for those who may return in the future, and for the soul of the scribe Sor Beatriz.

Peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessing.

Deo gratias. God is great.