The Sisterhood

Chapter 17


From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, Las Golondrinas Convent, Andalusia, Late Summer 1550





Pia was not the last! The Abbess received a curious message that the urgent removal of a “hidden girl” would require the personal help of one of the nuns, a strong and forceful one, as the girl was not an infant. There was little time, as the road would soon be impassable in winter, so Sor Arsinoe was dispatched in a great hurry, and returned with Marisol in a cold autumn hailstorm that slicked the mountain road and soaked them both. Marisol looked like a drowned rat, hair dripping down either side of her face, and large brown eyes darting this way and that. She is only thirteen, but even half dead with cold and terror, Marisol radiates something we rarely see in the convent—defiance. “My mother may have sent me here, but you will never make me into a nun! I will escape!” She hissed between clenched teeth, as she was led away to be dressed in a dry novice’s gown.

According to Sor Arsinoe’s information, the girl is in danger from the authorities and the court painter Tristan Mendoza is somehow involved. Sor Arsinoe believes the mother was dying in childbirth when she took the girl away from court. The girl’s full name is Maria Isabella Vilar d’Ascencion, but she insists on being called Marisol and scorned the idea that Tristan Mendoza is her father, insisting she is the daughter of Don Diego Vilar d’Ascencion, the commander of fleets to the New World. The Abbess said reasonably that if this was true, in justice to her father we should hear her story. Marisol is quick to argue but cannot withstand the Abbess’s calm reasoning.


My mother and my father were descended from Old Christian families. My grandmother died when my mother was born, and Josefa, an orphaned sixteen-year-old cousin too poor to have a dowry, took over my mother’s care and later accompanied her to convent school. When my grandfather died, his only living child—my mother—was heiress to his fortune. With no relatives to act as her guardian, she became a royal ward. At fourteen she left the convent where she had been educated and came to court, and lived with Josefa in apartments close to those of the queen.

Don Diego Vilar d’Ascencion was thirty years older than my mother when he saw her at court soon after her arrival. She was beautiful, well born, and rich, and he sought the king’s permission to marry her. The king consented—Don Diego had commanded fleets to the New World many times and returned with riches. But when not at sea, Don Diego was a connoisseur of paintings and beautiful women, and he ordered my mother’s betrothal portrait to be painted by Tristan Mendoza.

Josefa was scandalized. Tristan Mendoza’s portraits of women were said to have some magic hold over men that drew men’s eyes and excited their fantasies. Josefa told me Don Diego laughed away her protests, saying Josefa must guard my mother from anything improper.

Josefa would tell me proudly that Tristan Mendoza was irritated by her hovering and her refusal of his money when he tried to bribe her to leave him alone with my mother. My mother was always amused when she said this, insisting that the artist told her stories and made her laugh, so that sitting for the portrait was not tedious.

When the portrait was finished, Josefa said that Don Diego was delighted. It hung in my mother’s bedchamber and my sister and I thought it very beautiful. My mother was far more splendidly dressed in the portrait than she was at home, occupied with a family and domestic matters. In the portrait, light danced up and down the folds of her silk gown with its wide skirt and her stiff white ruff. Her hair was caught up to frame her face with pearls and ribbons, her sleeves had lace, and the beads of her rosary were looped in her hand. Her dark eyes were wide, and though she looked shy, they seemed to smile just as she did in real life. Josefa said that before the wedding the portrait was displayed in one of the public rooms at court, to great acclaim, until it took the fancy of the crown prince, Don Balthazar.

At this point in the story Josefa would shake her head. She would murmur that perhaps an evil spell had been cast over him at birth. He had a harsh laugh that echoed down the palace corridors, and fits often robbed him of reason and he would howl and foam at the mouth, and wrestle imaginary foes, thrashing and lashing out at all around him until he had to be chained like a dog. Though he was heir to the throne of Spain, negotiations for Don Balthazar’s marriage had come to nothing. My mother would tell Josefa to find a topic more suitable for young ears than court scandal about the poor prince. Josefa would frown darkly and say, “I know what I know!” but say no more.

After the wedding, my father took my mother and her portrait to his castle, an old Moorish stronghold high in the hills south of Madrid. One of my earliest memories is of sitting with Josefa in one of its windy towers, waving good-bye as my father left for a voyage to Spanish America.

My mother had five children to occupy her time—my three older brothers, a sister Consuela, then me. We lived quietly, beginning each day with Mass, then lessons. After dinner the boys disappeared with their hawks, saddles, and hunting dogs, while Consuela and I had our music and embroidery, practiced our dance steps, or played checkers. Consuela was three years year older than I, and by the time she was thirteen she resembled our mother. Josefa said I was like my father.

When we saw him in intervals between voyages, my father was kind. Consuela and I would sing for him, he would quiz my brothers on their lessons, and then give us marvelous gifts—jewels and soft shawls, gilded workboxes, and finely made boy-sized swords. He and my mother would retire early. After a few weeks he would be gone again.

The boys slept in one of the towers with their tutors, and Consuela, Josefa, and I slept in a small alcove at the far end of the apartment from my mother’s bedchamber. Consuela slept soundly, but I was a light sleeper and small noises—the snap of dying embers in the fireplace, the hunting cry of a night bird on the plain, or Josefa’s snoring—would rouse me. One night, a month after my father had paid us an autumn visit and departed, I heard the sound of horses’ hooves clattering into the courtyard. There was an urgent command to “Open in the name of the king!” and then the sound of heavy feet and the servants being ordered away. My mother called sharply to Josefa to stay with the children. I said she sounded frightened, but Josefa shushed me in a way that meant she was frightened, too.

Many hours later, horses clattered away again. I asked Josefa who the mysterious visitors were. Josefa shook her head and said nothing.

The next morning I crept to my mother’s bedchamber. My mother had dark circles under her eyes and a bruise on her cheek, and Josefa had an arm around her shaking shoulders. I heard her say, “But what could you have done that would not make it worse? He is the prince, and can order his way into the castle of any nobleman in the country. You say he had strongmen with him…”

“He is strong enough for ten and mad.” My mother wept. “Obsessed…he had a copy made of my portrait! If he fathers a child, he insists the king will restore him as heir. And if he does not, that they plot to kill him. He was ranting, says my image in the portrait speaks to him, it promised to make him a…normal man! Now he believes it has! When he…was done he put his dagger to my throat and ordered me to say nothing, but to wait and see if I am with child! If I warn Don Diego, the prince will say I lured him to my bed and my husband will condemn me for destroying the honor of his name. If I do not warn him, I fear for my husband’s life. Josefa, we are lost! Lost! My poor children!”

Then they both saw me, and Josefa shooed me away and later told me that if I loved my mother to forget what I had heard. But fear had entered our lives.

Not long after that incident, my mother received a letter from my father, with the signature of his secretary, ordering that my brothers be sent to school, to the Franciscans near Zaragoza at once. My mother did not like it, but of course she obeyed. The boys’ chests were quickly packed and their valets prepared to accompany them. The boys were in high spirits as they kissed us good-bye, excited by this new adventure. Consuela and I waved our handkerchiefs from the tower until they were tiny specks on the plain below. My mother’s eyes were red, and she looked worried.

A new serving maid joined the servants. It was she who now lit our candles and brought meals to our chamber. She had slanted eyes that looked in different directions at once, which I thought gave her an evil countenance.

As winter gave way to spring, both my mother and Consuela suffered from sickness of the stomach. Josefa and my mother seemed to share an unhappy secret concerning my mother’s need to rest in the mornings and her desire for honey, while Consuela grew pale and thin and lethargic, with no interest in her lessons. Her eyes grew larger and larger as her face became drawn. She no longer wanted to sing or play checkers. “Nearly fourteen,” murmured my mother anxiously, “perhaps she is beginning her monthlies—it often makes girls tired.”

But Consuela grew too weak to leave her bed, and my mother would remain by her side all the day, coaxing her to sip a little broth when she was awake, and praying when Consuela slept. I hovered anxiously, wishing Consuela would wake in good health and join me in our lessons and games. Instead, Consuela’s beautiful hair began to fall out, and her eyes sank into her head. My mother was ill herself with worry.

“Come,” said Josefa loudly, pulling me from the sickroom one day as my mother and the slant-eyed maid were busy tending my sister. “You need fresh air and you shan’t get out of helping me with the mending this time!” I hated mending, but it was a fine spring day after the cold of winter and I was glad to leave the sickroom. We took our sewing—Josefa her large mending basket and I the pretty painted workbox my father had given me to hold my thimbles, embroidery silks, and scissors—to the east tower where Moorish defenders had once rained arrows on the Catholic army below. Josefa had placed thick cushions in the window embrasure that made a wide stone seat.

Josefa fussed about threading my needle for me and pinning things unnecessarily, then taking the pins out again, clearing her throat as if to speak, then saying nothing. Finally she nudged me and said, “Look, the swallows are back from Africa.” Above our heads the swallows were coming and going with bits of straw, and amid the chirping of the older birds there was a cheerful peep-peep of babies just hatching. For the next few days the weather stayed fine and we watched the parent birds fly tirelessly back and forth with insects in their beaks for their babies. Josefa watched more than she sewed.

“See,” she said sharply one day. “A new male bird is flying around the nest above your head. Watch what happens now.” The new male bird went into the nest and emerged with one of the babies in his beak. He then flew off and we saw a tiny speck fall from his beak to the earth. One by one, to my horror, he took the babies, flew a little way off, and dropped them.

“To attract the mother to be his mate, he kills the babies of her first husband,” whispered Josefa, looking over her shoulder. Days later a messenger arrived on a lathered horse. There had been an accident at the Franciscan monastery where my brothers were at school. They had been seen sitting on the rim of a well in the cloister in their recreation hour. When a bell summoned them back to their lessons my brothers did not appear. Angry at their disobedience, a monk went to fetch them, but they were nowhere to be found. The entire monastery searched for them high and low, and finally a lay brother who went to draw water made a horrible discovery—all three at the bottom of the well, drowned. If they had cried out for help, no one had heard them. It must have happened very fast, one of them toppling in by accident, the others trying to help him and drowning, too.

My mother fainted.

A week later, as the summer heat rose from the plain below the castle, Consuela died, too.

My mother tore her hair and wept. Then she received a terrible letter from my father. He repudiated her utterly. My mother spent more and more time on her knees in front of her private altar. Josefa never left my side, and would allow me to eat nothing that she had not prepared with her own hands. The slant-eyed serving maid fell down the stone stairs to the kitchens, breaking her leg and cracking her head so badly that she could no longer walk steadily or serve at table. From her corner in the kitchen she mumbled she had been pushed, but the other servants, like Josefa, did not like her and she was ignored.

Uneasy months passed and my mother’s waist had thickened. Another messenger came. My father had been lost at sea a week after leaving Seville. A freak wave, they believed, for all his experience it had taken him by surprise one night as he walked on deck. Masses would be said at court for his soul. The queen, who had always been kind, sent word that my mother should remove to the court for her lying in. Josefa said refusal was not possible, that we must take protection where it could be found. We began the slow hot journey across the plains to Madrid. When we arrived, the court was in mourning. The crown prince was dead. Rumors flew.

We were assigned rooms in the palace, but when autumn came they were drafty and cold despite fires and the braziers. My mother moved heavily from room to room, and then took to her bed. There were dark hollows under her eyes when she looked at me, and when she lifted her hand from the bedclothes to stroke my cheek her fingers were puffy. I was allowed to sit quietly beside her on the bed and play with the rings she could no longer wear that lay in a heap on the chest next to her bed. As the nights drew in, her bedroom was lit by two thick tapers, one on either side of her bed, which lit up an ebony crucifix on the wall above. Drafts made the candles flicker and the long shadow of the crucifix shifted as if Christ writhed in pain. My mother’s rings glittered in the light of the candles like dragons’ eyes—red and green. The rest of the room was deep in shadow. I imagined something was waiting there, holding its breath.

Each night when Josefa brought her supper my mother would ask, “Is there an answer yet?” Josefa would insist that first my mother must eat until, finally, she obeyed from tiredness and took a few spoons of soup, then a few sips from a goblet of Venetian glass holding sweet wine that smelled of almonds. Josefa would pat her mouth gently with a linen napkin. Then, night after night she gave the same response. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

“Send him word again, Josefa! They say he alone knows how to go about it, to send the children. He is my only hope now.”

Josefa told me to pray to help my mother get better. I took my beads and closed my eyes against tears, praying as hard as I could. My prayers had done Consuela no good. But Josefa at least came into the room with a happier expression one evening and bent over my mother to whisper something. I crept closer and caught the words, “He has set the matter in motion, sent for…” I could not hear the rest.

One gloomy night at the end of the month the rain fell heavily and the wind blew hard. Above my mother’s bed, the head with its crown of thorns seemed to turn this way and that as the tortured body writhed in agony. I was startled to hear a strange cry from my mother’s bed, like that made by the bird of many colors my father had brought home from his travels. The servants hated that bird, saying it shrieked with the voices of the damned, and it was left behind when we came to Madrid.

The cup of wine in Josefa’s hand fell to the floor and smashed. A servant was sent running for the midwife, and soon after for the doctors and an apothecary who entered, tearing off wet cloaks. My mother made the noise again and again and I put my hands over my ears. A priest hurried past, accompanied by a sleepy boy bearing the Eucharist. A page tugged Josefa’s arm to say someone was waiting.

She turned from the bed, pulled me from my knees, and dragged me toward the door. I pleaded to stay but Josefa shook me hard, and in a fierce whisper told me that I must be a brave girl; my mother’s prayer for my safety had been answered. A tall nun was there, silent and still as a statue with a cloak over one arm. She unfolded it. “I am Sor Arsinoe,” she whispered. “Make no sound and put this on.”

I pulled away, but Josefa snatched the cloak and wrapped it around me so tightly I could not move. “Go with Sor Arsinoe!” Josefa ordered as I struggled and kicked. “If you love your mother, go at once! Go!” I was led down the darkened corridor and a back staircase that led to the kitchens and pantries, then through a small door used when tradesmen brought supplies. A carriage with the curtains down waited in the rain. The nun pushed me inside and here I am. Josefa and my mother turned against me and sent me here. I will never forgive them.