The Sisterhood

Chapter 12


From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, Las Golondrinas Convent, Andalusia, Autumn 1548





Deo gratias, at last I have an assistant in the scriptorium. Not one of the novices, but an eighteen-year-old girl who collapsed at our gate before the autumn storms began. She wore a rough boy’s attire, was crawling with lice, ill, and very nearly unconscious. Her companion, a mountain girl named Maria, must have dragged her bodily up the olive terraces. Maria said the girl’s name was Esperanza, that she was in danger and begged the ladies of the swallows to help her. Maria herself would not wait to eat or rest. She was in a hurry to be gone, saying she hoped to be married soon.

Esperanza spent many weeks in the infirmary before she could tell us more. She was emaciated and weak, and then delirious with a fever brought on by exposure to the cold. She rambled about a secret that frightened her. I took my turn sitting by her side, trying to soothe and comfort her, and assure her steadily that she was safe. By the time Esperanza was well enough to rise from her bed, I had grown fond of her. Somehow she has filled the empty space in my heart left by Salome.

Esperanza went to the Abbess and produced a pouch of reales, saying she could pay for her keep if she might be allowed to stay until summer came. Meanwhile, she would willingly do any work, in the kitchens or laundry or anywhere at all that we might wish.

“My dear, you may stay as long as necessary. Our order is sworn to protect women, and I gathered that you carry a terrible fear of something—though even at your most delirious you would not say what,” said the Abbess. “As to the matter of your work here…” The Abbess took Esperanza’s hands in hers and, examining them, said that it was plain she had never scrubbed pots or clothes, and she doubted Esperanza would be any use at menial work. I quickly asked if Esperanza might act as my assistant in the scriptorium. I had spent enough time with her as she was recovering to learn that she was not only intelligent but well educated. I had her copy a letter or two out for me and her writing was exquisite.

“It is unusual for anyone not admitted to our order to have knowledge of our affairs…but Esperanza, you seem to have kept your counsel regarding your own secrets. Can I trust you to keep it regarding ours?”

Esperanza nodded. “I give you my word, Abbess.”

“Very well.” Then the Abbess reproached Esperanza for forgetting Maria, who had saved her. “Why not send some of your reales to her as a marriage gift?” Esperanza blushed and exclaimed, “Of course!”

When I showed her our library and scriptorium, Esperanza looked around her, sighed with pleasure, and began to make herself useful at once, paying close attention to every instruction I gave. What a pity she will not join the order; she would make an excellent scribe when I am gone! But she made a deathbed promise to her father to marry and is determined to keep her promises. She has recovered her spirits and passes the part of the day not spent in the holy offices, prayer, or meals working by my side, sometimes so lost in a volume that I must recall her sharply to the present. Increasingly I entrust the writing to her, and in particular the infirmary sisters praise her quickness in locating information from our medical texts.

Once Esperanza was settled into her duties, the Abbess was determined to discover what dangerous secret Esperanza had. If we were to protect her, it was necessary to know why. Esperanza finally agreed to tell her story, and after hearing a little, the Abbess insisted she write it in the Chronicle.


Esperanza was the only child of an advisor to the king. Her mother had died at her birth, and she led a lonely existence in Seville, in a somber house full of paintings, tapestries, books, and shadows. Esperanza was left in the care of a nurse, a girl in love with a soldier stationed in Seville, who seized every chance to attend services at the cathedral where her soldier stood guard duty nearby.

One day as her nurse brought Esperanza from Mass, there was a carnival atmosphere in the streets and trumpets and drums in the distance. A noisy crowd pushed and jostled and pressed forward to see some spectacle or other in the plaza ahead. “Master is away, we needn’t hurry,” said the nurse. “Let’s have a little fun, poppet, eh?” She dragged Esperanza to the guardsman, who lifted the child onto his shoulder so she could see.

At the end of the plaza, a platform was crowded with priests and dignitaries, and as the drums grew closer a line of hooded friars entered the plaza, followed by another, slower procession—barefoot, dressed identically in plain gowns and this time under guard, men first, then women and children holding tapers. Among the children Esperanza caught the eye of a little girl her own age, holding the hand of a woman at the edge of the crowd, and waved. The woman and the little girl looked at her with frightened eyes and didn’t wave back. Names were solemnly read out and the people with the tapers began to cry out and weep.

Cheeks flushed and eyes dancing, the nurse pointed. “Those are heretics, enemies of the church. False Christians who returned to their evil Muslim and Jewish ways!” She licked her lips as the soldiers prodded the procession to a great pile of faggots and straw in the middle of the plaza. A few of the people shuffling toward the great mound were pulled aside. Swiftly, soldiers looped a cord round their necks and pulled. The figures slumped to the ground and were lifted, and their limp bodies were tossed onto the pyre. There was a rumble of disapproval from the crowd.

“Garroting,” said the guard, sucking air through his teeth disapprovingly, “for them as can afford it.”

“They killed our Lord—make them suffer. Long live the Inquisition!” people around them shouted. The little girl and her mother were crying and clutching each other, and the mother was pleading with the soldiers as the music began again. Friars holding torches lit them, and waited until all the penitents, including the girl Esperanza had waved to and the woman who held her hand, had been pushed and crowded and tied tightly together. “Now comes the fun,” the nurse exclaimed.

A roll of the drums drowned out the cries and prayers, and the friars bent their torches to the pyre. Smoke billowed and then flames rose around the feet and legs of the people tied together, climbing higher and higher until searing heat scorched the watching faces. The child Esperanza had waved to was engulfed in flames, and horrible sounds of torment filled the air as the people on the pyre twisted and writhed horribly, and then seemed to melt and sink down. Esperanza watched, transfixed with horror, until the wind suddenly fanned the flames and sent a cloud of thick smoke over the spectators, heavy with the stench of burning human flesh and carrying the unearthly screams of the dying. The plaza darkened with another cloud of smoke and Esperanza lost consciousness. When she woke in her own bed, the stink of roasting flesh was in her lungs, her hair, and on her skin, and she was violently, repeatedly sick.

Her father found Esperanza shivering in her own vomit, her eyebrows singed away, feverish and hysterical, and the nurse entertaining her guardsman in the kitchen. Normally the gentlest of men, Esperanza’s father pulled the nurse up by her hair, and swung her against the wall like a madman until she confessed to the escapade, gibbering that she had treated the child to a joyous spectacle. He threw her from the house with terrible oaths and curses.

A calm and steady older woman took her place, watching over Esperanza while she slept and comforting her when the nightmares came. Now when Esperanza closed her eyes she saw the face of the child in the fire and screams filled her sleep. She was frightened of everything, barely touched her food, chewed her fingernails until they bled, and grew thinner and more nervous with each passing day. Her desperate father decided the only way to banish the demons from her mind was to occupy it with study.

He hired a roster of tutors and set his daughter a daily schedule that would have daunted a university scholar—Greek, Latin, French, Italian, astronomy, philosophy, and history. She would learn drawing, painting, and poetry composition. There were religious lessons, music, embroidery, and dancing. Even tailored for a small child it was rigorous, but it had the desired effect. Esperanza regained her appetite and fell asleep at night, too tired for dreaming.

Esperanza was no longer banished to the nursery. Instead she became her father’s companion. They read and studied the stars, and over dinner he would quiz her about mathematics or philosophy. Afterward he would set up the colored pieces on the alquerque board and show her what moves would take his knights. Her father’s old friend, a musician named Don Jaime, was often with them.

When Esperanza was thirteen, her father revealed a secret, against Don Jaime’s advice—a secret inner room in the house filled with books forbidden by the church. There were the Qur’an of the Muslims and the Kabbalah and Talmud of the Jews, Moorish translations from Arabic and Greek of medical texts and natural history, the Persian Ibn Sina’s great medical text The Book of Healing, and Al Masudi’s history of a voyage to a distant land across the Sea of Fog and Darkness hundreds of years before the Reconquista. These books were works of art, bound in leather and gold, decorated in intricate patterns, with brass or silver clasps—exquisitely beautiful, and anathema to the Inquisition.

Esperanza and her father read these books together, especially the Ibn Sina, which held a special place in her father’s heart. He taught her that these books contained knowledge and wisdom given by God, who revealed himself to people in different ways with the help of the blessed prophets of many faiths. Having witnessed the terrible auto-da-fé, Esperanza must never accuse anyone of heresy. She must never mention this secret library either.

Esperanza understood her father’s views were at odds with those of her religious instructors, and that he particularly disapproved of celibacy among nuns and the clergy. She sensed this was somehow connected to her mother, but when she asked about her mother, her father only sighed and said he would tell her when she was older.

As Esperanza approached her sixteenth birthday, her father developed a racking cough and began to suffer fevers and breathlessness. Esperanza saw him pass whole days with The Book of Healing, trying one remedy after the next as he held a handkerchief to his mouth and coughed blood. She read it with him, memorizing symptoms and concocting medicines and poultices, but they helped no more than the doctors and apothecaries. When they played board games, she saw that his hands had grown thin and white and shook as he moved the pieces.

Her father reassured her he would not die yet. And sometimes he would eat and walk about and seem like himself again, and she would hope that he was indeed better. Then suddenly, he took a turn for the worse, and when she wanted to send a servant for the priest he shook his head. With his life fading, he took her hand and said it had once been a matter of regret that he had no son, but he had long since ceased to feel the loss. He gave her his blessing, told her she was the last of a distinguished family, and made her swear never to embrace a celibate religious life, but to marry and bear children that the family line might not die out.

Esperanza begged him to speak of her mother before it was too late, but her father signaled her to be still. Gasping for breath he held up three fingers to indicate he must tell her three things. One, she was heiress to all his fortune and must always remember the poor; charity was an obligation. Two, lest she be prey to fortune hunters, he had assigned her guardianship to a friend, a nobleman noted for his piety who had pledged to find her a suitable husband. Esperanza must promise to accept her guardian’s choice and not be swayed by girlish notions conceived from reading chivalrous poetry and romances. With his last, rattling breath Esperanza’s father whispered, “Three…your mother…Don Jaime…ask Don Jaime.”

After her father’s death, propriety obliged her to make her home in her guardian’s house where she realized that her father’s confidence in her guardian had been misplaced. Though a nobleman, outwardly pious, and a patron of many charitable institutions, he was both less wealthy than he appeared and less honest. Despite his obsequious condolences, Esperanza was uneasy.

She avoided him and his wife as much as possible, keeping to her rooms and immersing herself in her books, until one day a servant summoned her to her guardian’s presence. Esperanza braced herself to hear of her betrothal. But when she and her duenna entered the salon her guardian was pacing furiously. Walking directly up to her he thrust his angry face close to hers, shouting and swearing so furiously that spittle flew into her eyes as he cursed Esperanza and her father as deceiving heretics. Shocked and astonished, Esperanza cried, “Sir, what do you mean? Who accuses us?”

“Do not play the fool, your father’s secret collection of forbidden books is discovered. They accuse him and you. The infidel filth was consigned to the fire, as your father should have been and you with him.”

Esperanza covered her face with her hands, feeling her father had died again. Those beautiful volumes, her father’s treasures, all reduced to ash. By ruffians, fools, barbarous zealots! Rage flamed so hotly in her heart that she forced herself to keep her eyes down, lest it show. The rest of her guardian’s tirade she heard in silence—that the books had been the property of her grandfather, a Muslim merchant, whose forbidden books proved him a false converso, whose son impregnated an infidel whore.

Esperanza looked up at him in utter disbelief. He thrust his face close to hers again, snarling that to arrange Esperanza’s marriage, he had had to furnish proof of her limpienza sangre, only to discover she had none. Her mother had never relinquished the Muslim faith of her family, and had hidden a deceiving heretic heart beneath a nun’s habit at Regina Coeli Convent in Seville and born another converso’s bastard.

The ugly words rang in Esperanza’s ears, the floor swayed from side to side, and everything grew dark. When she regained consciousness she was lying on the cold marble floor and her duenna was holding a strong-smelling pomander under her nose, looking at her with suspicion and dislike. “Your mother was a whoring novice! You can be no better!”

“But how can this be true?” Esperanza protested, in tears. “Nuns cannot leave their convent. My father was goodness itself. He would never…a nun would not…”

The duenna would not say more.

Alone in her bedroom, Esperanza paced, unable to sit still and badly frightened. She was trapped in this house. Then she recalled her father’s last words: “Ask Don Jaime.” There was certainly no one else she could ask. As the horrible day turned into evening Esperanza scribbled a note in Latin, worded ambiguously lest it fall into the wrong hands, beseeching the counsel of the mendicant Friar Jaime to whom she wished to make her confession. Esperanza had no one to trust with it but her page, who could not read and was devoted to Esperanza. She gave her little messenger a coin and some sweetmeats and sent him off.

The page returned safely, but Esperanza passed a sleepless night. Had Don Jaime understood? But the next day she was summoned to the hall where a filthy, cowled, barefoot friar waited, scratching himself for lice. As she entered, Don Jaime’s deep voice boomed accusingly, “Repent! And make your confession to prepare your soul for what lies ahead.” Esperanza burst into tears and led him to a quiet corner. She fell to her knees with her head in her hands. No one would object to a man of God in this hypocritical household.

Under his cowl Don Jaime murmured, “Keep your head bowed and listen. You are the child of a true marriage, a Muslim marriage, and a baptized Christian as well. But your guardian’s information is partly correct. Your mother was a sweet and well-educated lady, whose parents and grandparents were forced to convert. Her family were forced conversos and an impediment to her marriage. When her parents died, your mother’s fortune opened the doors of the Regina Coeli convent. It was known for its apothecaries and nuns skilled in medical matters, and she hoped to use her skills for good there.

“But seventeen years ago, before she completed her novitiate, a strange and deadly pestilence appeared in one of the poorest, most crowded quarters of Seville, near the docks where ships from America are loaded and unloaded. Two sailors just ashore from a galleon from Hispaniola were its first victims. They were drinking in a tavern in the docks when they grew ill, burning with fever. Within a day, their bellies had swollen to bursting point, they bled from the ears, and screamed with the pain in their heads until death ended their torment. Some whores with them fell ill soon after, with the same symptoms, suffered the same agonies, and also died. Soon other men who had lain with the whores were ill as well, and the disease spread like fire in dried timber through the quarter where so many sailors lived and beyond, killing many able-bodied seamen, then shopkeepers and butchers and others, then soon servants in the homes of the rich, and the rich themselves.

“It was the busy season when ships cross to and from America ahead of autumn storms, and the loss of sailors at such a time was a catastrophe. Spain expected an attack by Muslim forces gathering in North Africa, and maintaining its defenses depended on the wealth coming from the New World.

“The dead were soon too numerous to collect from the streets, and all who could fled Seville. Your father was one of the few with medical knowledge to remain to help. And he reminded a desperate official that a novice at the Regina Coeli convent was said to be skilled in treating New World diseases.

“Sor Maria Caterina was a skilled apothecary before she entered the convent, and afterward she came to the notice of the archbishop when she successfully treated returning missionary priests suffering from ailments contracted in the New World. These priests often recovered under her care, and from them she learned much of New World illnesses and native cures. Spanish doctors envied her success and called her an infidel witch, but the archbishop would allow no steps to be taken against her.

“Sor Maria Caterina would normally have given advice from the locutio, but the problem of the pestilence was too urgent for relaying messages in and out of the convent. Maria Caterina was ordered to treat the patients in person. By the orders of the archbishop, she was hurried into a waiting carriage with her chest of medicines on a stormy night when few were about to notice.

“It was a violent summer storm, with heavy rain and winds that sent debris flying, which spooked the horses. The streets were slick and wet, and finally a great clap of thunder caused the horses to bolt. The coachman lost control and Sor Maria Catarina had a terrifying ride as the plunging horses dragged the carriage sideways along the river. Just before plunging over a precipice onto the riverbank, the carriage uncoupled from the horses. The coachmen and outriders went into the river, but a passenger was thrown out. Your father witnessed the accident. He had gone out to observe the lightning and hurried down to assist the passenger—who, to his surprise, was a woman, shaken but uninjured, and concerned only to recover the medicine chest she had been carrying, and insisting she was bound for the quarter where the fever raged. Your father insisted on escorting her and her medicines to her destination.

“They were soon deep in a discussion about the pestilence. Both recalled Ibn Sina had mentioned similar symptoms, and they considered the distinguishing aspects of this new disease. It was only when the lady impatiently threw off her cloak to better see what she was doing that your father saw that his interesting companion wore a novice’s gown.”

“How did my guardian discover this?” Esperanza demanded.

“Since he receives a bequest from your father’s estate when your marriage takes place, he wasted no time obtaining proof of your ancestry. When he could learn nothing by the usual means, your guardian offered a large reward to anyone who could provide the information. Your father’s manservant was the informant, first disclosing the hiding place of your father’s secret books, then what he had seen with his own eyes. That your father met a novice, alone and unchaperoned, that they spoke of the dark arts required to overcome the disease, how your father and Sor Maria Caterina waited to see if the protective measures the two of them had adopted would be effective. Their survival was proof that Satan protected them against the plague sent by God.

“They spent weeks caring for the sick and dying, snatching a few hours of sleep when they could. Sor Maria Caterina sent word back to the convent from time to time, but would allow no one from the convent to attend her, so as not to expose another nun, and possibly the entire convent, to the illness. It was improper, but these were difficult times.

“Finally a cold spell as Christmas approached ended the epidemic. Sor Maria Caterina knew she must return to the convent. Though she had not yet taken her perpetual vows, novices rarely obtained permission to leave. In desperation, your father conceived a bold and dangerous solution—Sor Maria Caterina would simply disappear. They would return to the Muslim faith of their ancestors, marry as Muslims in the eyes of God, and flee Spain.

“She and your father came to my house where they pronounced before me and two other Muslim witnesses, ‘I acknowledge no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.’ As two Muslims they married. Your father gave your mother, in token of the contract, a very fine ring set with diamonds and pearls. But their looks of happiness exceeded the value of all the jewels in the world.

“When Maria Caterina failed to return to the convent, the quarter where she had worked was searched, but all that was found was a single slipper and empty medicine vials. It was believed that she had succumbed to the disease and her body had been thrown with other victims into a common grave. Instead, the couple was hiding in my house. I begged them to leave Spain at once, but the arrangements in his affairs your father believed necessary delayed them, and then Maria Caterina found she was expecting a child, and was too unwell to travel. She extracted a promise from your father that if she did not survive the birth, the baby would be baptized and brought up as a Christian, as your father’s natural son or daughter.”

“And my mother?”

“She died giving birth as she had feared, and your brokenhearted father resumed his life for your sake. Neither your mother nor your father ever turned from the Muslim faith they embraced, though your father kept his promise and brought you up a Christian. Only the valet knew the truth, and for years extracted money from your father in exchange for his silence. A lesser man than your father would have had the villain murdered. Your guardian is too greedy to hand you over to the Inquisition. Your fortune would be seized by them and he means to keep that for himself.”

“And the valet…surely he remains a danger?”

“Ah, the valet…found in an alleyway with his throat slit. Thieves, no doubt hired by your guardian,” said Don Jaime dryly. “Now, my dear, your guardian’s wife is giving me suspicious looks. I will find a way to send help. Let the woman see me bless you.”

Esperanza realized there was no one around her she could trust. She began to fear poison in every mouthful of food, every cup of wine, felt evil in the gloomy shadows of her guardian’s house. Her childhood nightmares returned, and sleepless nights took their toll as they had when she was small. Her room was a prison. Unable to eat or sleep, she grew ill—at first lethargic, then feverish, first unwilling, then unable to stir from her bed. Days slid into nights. The fever worsened; her joints ached and burned. Once she looked up and the guardian’s wife hung over her with a razor, a lock of Esperanza’s hair in her hand. Esperanza tried to scream and lost consciousness.

When she finally came to her senses, a sad-faced young maid with a crooked nose was sponging her face with rose water. Esperanza’s head felt strange. Running her hand over it she realized her hair had been shorn. “Because of the fever,” the maid whispered. “But it will grow again. I am Maria, your new maid. Don Jaime sent me. He has a plan, but first you must work hard to recover.”

Astonishingly, it seemed Esperanza’s guardian and his wife were determined she should get well. They sent for a prominent doctor who prescribed strengthening cordials and food. She was fed broth with eggs in it, bread made from fine flour, and wine mixed with spices and honey, and was continually asked what she wished to eat, and begged to name what dishes appealed to her. Strangest of all, her guardian’s wife came each day to read aloud to her, from the most dismal book imaginable, Esperanza thought—a dull work on the nature of females and their path to virtue. It was a litany of women’s imperfections as daughters of Eve, who had brought sin into the world, and whose inferiority and spiritual weakness rendered them unfit for anything except subjection to their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Her guardian’s wife read out the section concerning the conduct and duties of Christian wives with emphasis and significant looks.

Finally her guardian’s wife could not resist telling Esperanza that she was betrothed through the kindness of her guardian, and a noble man prepared to overlook the stain of her birth. Suspecting something amiss, Esperanza asked the name of her husband-to-be. Don Cesar Guzman, was the tight-lipped reply.

Maria, entering with a bowl of soup, whispered, “I will ask Don Jaime.” She rolled her eyes at the door closing behind the guardian’s wife. “Drink this.”

A few days later Maria bent over Esperanza and hissed, “Don Jaime says better the Evil One for a husband than Don Cesar Guzman. He is old and has buried four young wives, all rich orphans, like you. He is cursed with a disease of his private parts, with pustules and swellings and a foul discharge, and suffers horribly in his efforts to beget a son. The need for a son has eaten his soul. He tormented his wives when they failed to conceive and within a few years, each died. Don Jaime says Don Cesar poisoned them. He believes your guardian has made a bargain, offering you to Don Cesar with a large dowry in return for asking no questions about your mother. Your guardian will keep the rest of your fortune and Don Cesar will let you live so long as you bear him children. Your guardian and Don Cesar are eager for the marriage to take place, and you must escape as soon as possible.”

“Escape? How? The doors are barred, my duenna watches me night and day, and the guard at the gate would prevent my leaving. And where would I go?”

“Don Jaime devised a plan, but you must take me with you. Your guardian’s wife is the cruelest mistress under heaven. She wears the barbed belt under her dress to mortify her body, and the pain makes her eager to mortify the flesh of others. She orders servants beaten viciously on the slightest pretense, especially the young ones, saying beatings do their souls the more good. She withholds food, then punishes us for stealing it when we grow so hungry we snatch a morsel. I long for the mountains and my mother and a boy…I promised to marry before my father sold me as a servant. I must return before he forgets me and marries another.”

“But how can we go? And where?”

“Here is the how. You and I will dress as lads and make our way to the mountains. There is a convent not far from my village—women and girls, if they are beaten or treated badly, go to the nuns. To get their women back, men must give something to the Abbess in token of their good behavior. Men are in awe of the convent and treat women of our village with more care than other men do. The nuns will hide you from Don Cesar.”

The duenna returned and heard the words “Don Cesar.” Crossing the room with an angry step, she slapped Maria for gossiping and ordered her out of the room.

Escape seemed impossible. Thinking of it, Esperanza wept hopelessly for a time, then dried her eyes with the sheet. She had promised to accept her guardian’s choice, but her father would never have wished her married to Don Cesar. In her predicament she had no choice. She must trust Don Jaime. And find some courage, or else her wedding would take place as soon as they saw she could leave her bed.

Provided her guardian’s wife or the duenna had not taken it, she had a store of gold reales hidden in a secret compartment of the carved cedar clothes chest that had accompanied her to her guardian’s house. That night when her duenna grew bored with the sickroom and left, believing she slept, Esperanza rose quietly and rummaged in her chest. The pouch of reales was there. She carried it back to bed with her. After that, each night she waited until her duenna left the room, then slipped out of bed to walk up and down the room until she heard the duenna returning, trying to regain her strength. She felt well again, but kept her recovery a secret and continued to languish by day.

One day in late spring Maria whispered, “Summer is the only time we can travel into the mountains, and we must go soon. I will bring a new chamber pot to hide under your bed. From now on, pour the sleeping draft your guardian’s wife brings into it. I will collect it from you each day and save it. The night we leave, I will mix it into your duenna’s wine when I bring up her supper. I will give drugged wine to the guard at the gate as well. He is always clutching at me, groping at my bodice! I will smile and refill his goblet, wear my bodice unlaced, and he will think I have relented. Then we will dress as boys—”

“Pages? Only my page is very small and I am…”

“No, idiot! Kitchen boys! If you give me something to pay our kitchen boy he will part with his ragged clothes—he is tall as you. I warn you, they stink, but that is all the better, and since your hair is already short all you need do is dirty your face and hands…” They both looked at her hands. White and thin, with pink nails. “Rub soot well into your hands and under your fingernails. Looking like that they would give us away in an instant, whatever our disguises,” Maria advised. “And we will need money.”

Esperanza triumphantly produced her pouch of reales, but Maria shook her head. “Country bumpkins with reales? We would be arrested as thieves!” She took one. “I never thought to hold a reale! Don Jaime will exchange it for small coins that peasants might have.”

The duenna no longer watched as Esperanza drank her sleeping drafts. For ten nights Esperanza poured them into the spare chamber pot. On the tenth day, Maria slipped in with a bundle reeking of sweat and boy. On the eleventh day it was raining heavily, but cleared toward evening. That afternoon, Maria came for the chamber pot with the sleeping medicine and mouthed, “Tonight!” As night approached, Esperanza’s teeth were chattering with fear and the duenna frowned and said she must be feverish again. The duenna’s nose wrinkled at the smell of illness—the bundle of clothing under Esperanza’s bed—and kept her distance.

The candle burned down to nothing by the time the duenna had her supper and drunk her wine and was slumped in her chair like one dead. Maria opened the door and whispered, “Hurry!”

Maria was wearing a filthy leather jerkin over a ragged linen shirt and patched trousers, and she had chopped off her braids. Esperanza dressed quickly, disgusted by the filthy garments against her skin. “Wet your hands and face from the pitcher by the bed and wipe them with ashes from the grate,” Maria ordered in a whisper. She tied the pouch of reales under the pantaloons so it bulged where Esperanza’s legs met. Esperanza said it was uncomfortable, but Maria insisted it was a necessary part of a boy’s disguise. And since Esperanza’s accent would give them away, she must let Maria do all the talking in her country dialect. They were peasant brothers, returning to their village. Maria was the sensible brother; Esperanza was a simple fellow, unable to speak since birth. Esperanza crossed her eyes and scratched her pouch and Maria stifled a giggle.

They crept past the sleeping guard, opened the door and waited until a party of drunken men lurched past, then the night watchmen. “Now! Stay in the shadows,” ordered Maria. They hurried into the night, knowing that when the guard awoke the alarm would be raised and a search for them would begin at once.

They soon found this was true. Everywhere they stopped for food or shelter, even when they begged rides on peasant carts, they heard talk of the stolen heiress and the reward offered to anyone who returned her safely to her guardian. Their closest call came at a tavern where they had been given a crust and a little stew out of charity. They were huddled in the shadows by the fire when a party of armed guards entered, asking if anyone had seen the heiress, mentioning an even greater reward than previously offered. The company fell silent and Esperanza was seized with terror that she would be handed over, especially when one of the rough fellows leaned over, guffawing and slapped Esperanza’s back, saying, “Here she is, Your Worship! The reward is mine!” Then everyone laughed at the dusty simpleton drooling over his bread, nodding and smiling at the joke while he picked a louse out of his head and killed it between his fingernails.

But mainly the journey was hard. They had quickly worn holes in their shoes, and tied them on with rags as best they could. Esperanza was limping and they begged rides on peasants’ carts when they could. But it was well into summer when they reached the foothills of the mountains, which had looked much nearer when they set out. They were two young hungry girls and their hunger at the end of the day was such that they invariably spent more than they intended on food. Their supply of coins was nearly gone, but Maria refused to let them use a reale. Now they survived on a little bread and oil and wild fruit.

Despite hunger and weariness, Maria grew more confident, pointing out the white stones that marked their way through the forest, encouraging and goading Esperanza. Higher and higher they went. The air grew thinner and cooler and there were eagles and falcons in the wide sky.

Esperanza lost track of time. Her feet were raw and she could think of nothing except putting one down after the other until the day’s end. Only the charity of people in the villages sustained them. Esperanza’s feet bled. Her fever returned. Finally she refused to go on, wanting nothing so much as to lie down at the side of the road to die. Maria left her collapsed on a rock and came back with a crust of stale bread and a half-rotted apple she had stolen from some pigs. Maria gave these to Esperanza, saying it was not much farther, Esperanza must try.

Two days later, numb from cold after a night in the open, they reached a terraced olive grove at what felt like the top of the world. Maria kicked and dragged and cajoled Esperanza up the terraces to the gates of a great stone enclosure, panting, “Here! Just a little farther! Another step or two”—then dropped her in the dust to reach for a bell rope. The last thing Esperanza heard was its clanging. She no longer cared whether she lived or died.

She awoke surrounded by nursing sisters cutting her ragged verminous clothes off. She struggled frantically to get up, crying she must escape before they married her to the Evil One. They fed her herbal broth and a calming cordial, and wrapped her in blankets warmed by hot stones, until she grew calmer. Finally she fell into an exhausted sleep so deep it seemed she had died.

“And they will kill me if they find me,” she said, when she was well enough to talk.

“I know,” said the Abbess.


Now Esperanza’s hair has grown, her gaunt face has filled out and gained a little color, and she is content in the scriptorium. I depend upon her to write for me in the Chronicle when my hand and wrist are too swollen and stiff. It is good to have a girl by my side again, especially one who undertakes her tasks so efficiently.

And so we went calmly on in the scriptorium until the day soon after the swallows had returned and were filling the convent with the cheerful sounds of their nest making, and a new child arrived. This one was not an infant with a dowry and wet nurse, but one abandoned in rags outside the gate, though it had rained hard in the night. The Abbess sent for me, and, to my surprise, Esperanza.