The Sisterhood

Chapter 13


From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, Las Golondrinas Convent, Andalusia, Spring 1549





At first we did not see the child with the adult’s head and face on the footstool at the Abbess’s feet. Luz does not speak, and can sit so quietly for hours that she is almost invisible. To see a dwarf child dressed in a ragged shift and broken shoes was surprising. The great households prize their dwarves, dress them in fine clothes, and keep them like pet dogs for amusement, as if they were not human beings with souls. It is a wicked custom and Esperanza whispered hotly in my ear, “I would never have thought the Abbess kept a dwarf! For shame!”

The Abbess snapped, “Do not stare at me with such disapproval, Esperanza! This girl was left at the gate this morning.”

Esperanza flushed. Leaning over to the dwarf child, the Abbess put her hand under her chin and raised her face into the light. The child flinched, and reason for the Abbess’s barely suppressed fury was plain. There were traces of bruising around the child’s nose, and what looked at first like a harelip was a ragged scar that must have been caused by a blow that split her upper lip. Her eyes were big and terrified in a dirty face, looking from one of us to the other, and her hair was matted and verminous. The Abbess’s expression changed and she said gently, “Child, you are safe here. No one will beat you. But can you not tell us your name and how old you are?”

The child said nothing.

“Who brought you?” The dwarf girl reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a folded paper and handed it to the Abbess, then hung her head like an animal waiting to be kicked.

The Abbess unfolded it and read it out loud:

Esteemed Sisters, I have traveled a long way to leave my granddaughter Luz to your mercy and care. There is no one else I can turn to. I am dying and can no longer protect her. The child has been sadly wronged by the circumstances of her birth. It has long been a custom in our family for cousins to marry to preserve the family’s fortune and estates, and my only child, my daughter, was married to a cousin who loved her since childhood. She was the darling of her husband’s eye, a blameless wife, and a kind mistress to all the household servants—including her husband’s mischievous dwarf, known for his lusty ways with the kitchen girls. Then she gave birth to their first child, who is as you see her. The moment the poor baby was born, my daughter’s happiness was destroyed. When my son-in-law saw poor Luz he flew into a rage, convinced my girl had cuckolded him with his dwarf. My daughter protested her innocence, but was dragged by her hair from the birthing bed and locked away as an adulteress, allowed only a priest to make her confession, then left to die.

When I heard what had happened, I hurried to my son-in-law, to tell him that although it was never spoken of, women in our family had given birth to dwarves on other occasions; there had been instances in almost every generation, and the children were kept hidden from sight. He shut his ears and would not allow me to see my daughter. The poor girl died alone in her locked chamber in a pool of blood, according to the servants who found her. The unfortunate dwarf was never seen again.

I petitioned those in authority I knew to investigate the deaths of two innocent people, but all washed their hands of the matter, saying a man may regulate his family as he sees fit, and if he has behaved wrongly to his wife, that is a matter for his conscience; he should confess and do penance.

A woman is dust beneath men’s feet, there is no justice for my daughter! I begged my son-in-law to let me take the child, but he is deranged by the supposed deceit and vowed he would see the creature suffer. He allowed me to remain in the household to witness it. I stayed, in the hope of protecting the poor baby from her father. I only sometimes succeeded. The man grew worse with time and has treated her like a dog—beatings and kickings and taunts, not taught so much as her prayers, sleeping in the straw by the fire, fed on slops. Yet according to family custom, as firstborn Luz will inherit the bulk of his fortune. He does not dare kill her, because he intends to marry her off to another orphaned cousin, and secure their joint fortunes to himself.

When my son-in-law left for a hunting party of several weeks, I took Luz and fled. I had heard that at the Convent of the Swallows, desperate women might find help and protection denied them elsewhere. For the love of God and the Virgin, have pity on Luz and give her shelter, and I will pray for you for the remainder of my life on earth and afterward before the throne of the Almighty.

The Abbess refolded the paper. “Terrible. Of course we will take the poor child in. We would take the grandmother, too, if only she could be found. But I have sent for you, Esperanza, as well as Sor Beatriz, because I wish you to record every word in the Chronicle, to bear witness to the inhumanity and cruelty that women suffer. But I am curious. You have told us you and your father read forbidden texts. The Moors were observant of the natural world and learned in the natural sciences. And so many of their works have been burned by the church.” Book burning irritates the Abbess beyond measure.

“Yes,” Esperanza said cautiously. “My father had many medical books he read to me and I studied those I could read for myself…”

“The infirmary sisters say that you…can you recall anything that considers the matter of dwarves?”

Esperanza thought for a minute. Then she said a Greek text about the breeding of animals had pointed to the result of inbreeding weak livestock, and the feeble calves or goats with three legs that resulted, and from that the writer deduced that inbreeding among small groups of people might produce weaklings and addled wits. He had then applied his observations about breeding animals to instances where human interbreeding had produced a similar result.

Pure heresy now. The church taught that observations of animal behavior had no application to humans who had been created in God’s image. Esperanza’s father, however, had agreed with the author of the treatise that it was the order of nature, and nature was a manifestation of God’s laws. And the text had mentioned that a family that produced a dwarf or children with weak spines should avoid marrying any blood relation, no matter how distant. Esperanza added bitterly that the treatise had been burned along with the rest of her father’s library. The Abbess screwed up her face and muttered an imprecation against ignorant fools who concealed knowledge and increased the sorrows of the world, causing innocent children like Luz immeasurable suffering.

“Thank you, Esperanza.” Then she turned to Luz and said, “Child, your name means light, the beautiful light that shines in your soul and will now shine in safety. Go with Esperanza, who will see that you have a bath and fresh clothes. Then there will be a little bed for you. You must be hungry—ask the kitchen sister for some soup, Esperanza; tell them to strengthen it with an egg and to give Luz a little honey bread if any is left. Tell the sisters in charge of the children to find salve for those bruises. If Luz will not speak, we must have patience; it is not from obstinacy.”

It is impossible to know Luz’s age. The Abbess guesses between eight and ten or eleven. She cannot read or write, and is too frightened by everything to learn anything but sewing. But that she does very well indeed. While many girls fidget during the long hours of the sewing lesson, Luz hangs onto the sewing mistress’s every word. She is delighted to possess her very own workbasket, with colored silk thread, a needle case, tiny silver scissors, and a thimble. She keeps it all in the neatest order and has mastered every stitch. She sits quietly at her work for hours on her stool, made low enough so her feet reach the floor, until called to prayers or meals or to walk in the cloister. Her stitches are beautiful, neat and almost invisible—unlike Esperanza’s needlework. Esperanza, for all her cleverness, can scarcely sew a line that is not crooked and uneven. Luz is praised and held up as an example to the other girls, and this has done wonders. Little by little she has grown plump. Her bruises healed and she even smiles sometimes. She never speaks, however, and a sharp word or a loud noise sends her running to a corner in tears.

Esperanza has been made much happier by having Luz to look after, and brings her to sew in the scriptorium while the other girls are having lessons. “She’s very quiet and good, aren’t you, Luz? And look, Sor Beatriz,” said Esperanza to me one day. She took a folded handkerchief from her pocket and spread it out, delicate as a moth’s wing. “Luz worked this for me. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Luz glowed with pleasure as I admired the handkerchief. It was very lovely, trimmed in lace around the edge and embroidered with a bird. “A golondrina!” Esperanza pointed out. “I showed her how they made their nests everywhere in the convent to sing to her because she feeds them crumbs. Isn’t she a good, clever girl!” Luz blushed with pleasure and Esperanza gave her a hug.

The sewing mistress has now set Luz to work mending linen for the convent chapel. Normally she permits no one to touch it but herself. Meanwhile, the Abbess has received a letter on behalf of our patroness the queen, requesting prayers for the Christian conversion of the natives in Spanish America.

The Abbess told the sewing mistress to set a new task for Luz, an altar cloth for the queen’s personal chapel, embroidered with religious symbols entwined with little golondrinas, the emblem of our convent. It will be sent with a respectful letter promising to pray as the queen commands, to assure her of our obedience to her wishes, the purity of our faith, and our respectful gratitude.

“We must take every opportunity to remind the queen that we look to her as our protectress,” murmured the Abbess.