The Sisterhood

Chapter 20


From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, by the pen of Esperanza, July 1552



At Sea




Impossible though it seems even after the weeks of traveling to Seville, Marisol, Pia, Sanchia, and I have left the convent with Sor Emmanuela. We are on the open sea, bound for Spanish America and the convent known as Las Golondrinas de Los Andes. I am charged with discovering whether it was founded by a mission party of nuns of Las Sors Santas de Jesus many years ago. Sor Beatriz and the Abbess gave me a list of questions, the names of the mission party, and so on, and I must be satisfied by the answers before I part with the Chronicle and Sor Emmanuela parts with the medal. It is a great responsibility.

Sor Beatriz has told me about her daughter, Salome, who will either be a nun there or they will know of her death. Sor Beatriz believes this will be the test to confirm it is indeed the right place. But finding the convent is only part of our task. The other is to find husbands. I do not know which is the harder.

The Abbess and Sor Beatriz also wish me to keep a record of our journey. It began this way:


Late one night Sor Emmanuela came to the cell where Marisol, Pia, and I were sleeping and said we must come to the Abbess at once. We dressed quickly and hurried to her parlor as Sor Emmanuela went to fetch Sanchia from the children’s dormitory. The Abbess, Sor Beatriz, and several other nuns stood by the fire, examining papers on the table bearing the Inquisition stamp. Pia gasped and silently gripped my hand. “They are coming!” cried Marisol.

“So,” I whispered, “we are trapped! They will question us horribly and when they discover who we are the nuns will suffer for hiding us!”

“No, you girls will leave the convent at once,” said the Abbess, “before they find you.”

“Leave?” asked Pia faintly. “If you send us away, we will be hunted down. We may as well throw ourselves from the cliffs tonight!”

The Abbess said briskly, “Fortunately, Pia, we have made a better plan. You will leave tonight for Seville, and from there sail for Spanish America. One of the village men has gone ahead to arrange your passage on the first available ship, and two more are waiting to take you to Seville. You must be gone as soon as you are ready, and Sor Emmanuela will go as your chaperone. A convent in Spanish America was founded by missionaries from our order years ago. Las Golondrinas de Los Andes will give you shelter until you marry and I am sure will help find you husbands. The colonists are in great need of Spanish wives, and therefore less likely to look deeply into your families than men in Spain. We are providing dowries for each of you.”

“But what of you, what of Sor Beatriz? And all the others?”

“That will be as God wills. I am not without hope that someone at court can influence the Inquisition inquiry, even at this late date. We have just sent the queen an urgent message begging her to help, hoping that Luz’s beautiful gift will prove a reminder. But we are bound by our vows and will do our duty, whatever happens. And you must prepare to go.”

“Sanchia is only ten—surely she cannot be married.”

“Help each other as much as you can. The first to marry must take her into your home as a sister and find a husband for her when the time comes. Now make haste to pack…ah, here is Sanchia.”

Sanchia came in rubbing her eyes, her curly hair unbrushed and her dress unfastened. Normally she bounced and bobbed restlessly, but in the middle of the night even she was too sleepy. “Child, wake up and pay attention. You are going on a journey with Marisol and Esperanza and Pia.” Sanchia’s eyes grew wide with fear. “Are there soldiers?” she quavered. “Will they tie us up?”

“No, my dear. There will be a ship with sails like a bird’s wings, and the great sea and you will have an adventure.”

We were all stunned at the sudden news, and I was overcome with sadness to think I must leave dear Sor Beatriz and the sanctuary of the convent. I loved our calm days in the scriptorium, with new books to discover, correspondence to be copied, or best of all, finding information required by the infirmary sisters. I had often regretted promising my father to marry, thinking how pleasant, how useful and fulfilling, it would be to stay and embrace a nun’s life here. Had my mother felt the same when she entered Regina Coeli?

But there was little time for such reflections, and the Abbess sent us off to dress for the journey and gather our belongings. Sor Beatriz drew me away to the scriptorium where this Chronicle lay open on her desk. She told me that I was to take the Chronicle with us and aside from keeping an account of the journey I must read it all, including the order’s Gospel in Latin, in the middle pages. Then I would understand why I must guard it with my life and be sure that it was delivered safely into the right hands. I swore to do so, then she told me to go and pack; she wished to make a farewell entry.

I saw Sor Beatriz one last time in the scriptorium when she laid the parcel with this Chronicle in my arms with as much sorrow and tenderness as if I had been her child. By then the convent had been alerted to the fact the tribunal had arrived suddenly in the darkness. With their horses and mules and carriages and wagons and servants causing an uproar, the bell rang incessantly, frightened beatas and novices and servants ran about, and all was suddenly noise and confusion.

The Abbess said the artist Tristan Mendoza had been dosed with powerful medicine and was in a deathlike sleep, bandaged from head to toe for good measure and hidden beneath the lepers’ cell in the infirmary together with his painting materials. Still wet, the unfinished portrait of the five of us had been hung on a dark wall in the oldest wing. Perhaps in leaving the portrait, we leave a little of ourselves—that is a comfort.

I hope the Inquisition does not find it.

Having gathered the four of us girls in her parlor once more, the Abbess took the medal of her office from her neck and put it around the neck of Sor Emmanuela. The Abbess clearly expects the worst or she would not part with it. The sisters embraced, and then the Abbess hastily kissed each of us and gave us her blessing before opening a small door hidden behind a tapestry.

A narrow dark passageway, steep and all but invisible, led from the privy there down to the cellars where the wine casks are kept, then below them to the sewers. We stepped carefully down the stairs of the narrow passage, until we finally squeezed through a small window at the base of the convent, donned heavy cloaks, and hurried to a wagon that was waiting. Darkness was our friend. The village men had already loaded our trunks and muffled the wagon’s wheels. They helped us in and we pulled silently away.

My heart ached for Luz. I had no time to say good-bye. What will she do without us? Without me? And the Abbess is pinning all her hopes of a reprieve from the tribunal on Luz’s gift to the queen. I cannot bear to think of what will happen to them all! Huddled in the wagon we all wept, sniffling under our cloaks until the sky turned pink with the dawn and we slept.

We woke with a jolt as the wagon stopped and we feared the worst, but the drivers said we must get down and walk. A full wagon is hard going for the mules. Their orders were to shun the main road, and I could see we were on a faint track marked with white stones at intervals leading into the forest.

Our escorts took care to avoid villages, and if they spotted shepherds they would veer off to keep out of their sight. We slept in the open wrapped in our cloaks, surviving on dried fruit and mutton, almonds, and cheese, drinking from the mountain springs. Finally drawing close to Seville we were glad to be able to ride again, and to buy bread and oil and a little wine. Marisol looked eagerly at everything, saying how interesting the world was beyond the convent.

I was uneasy. To me, the familiar streets and cathedral towers of Seville meant only danger. Remembering how Maria and I had escaped, giddy with relief and daring, I wondered whether my guardian had appropriated all my fortune to himself or whether the Inquisition had clawed it from him. Every day I thought of Don Jaime with love and gratitude for engineering my escape, and said a prayer for his safety.

The city overwhelmed us with its noise and bustle. The convent sounds were bells and prayers and birdsong, the murmur of the schoolroom, the hush of the library by day and the mountain wind by night. At the docks, sailors shouted and swore and called orders, soldiers and priests and friars hurried in twos and threes, mules brayed, whips cracked, cargoes were loaded, sails snapped in the breeze, men drank and sang, and prostitutes called shrilly from the shadows. The other girls and even Sor Emmanuela exclaimed with excitement at the sight of so many great-masted ships towering into the sky.

“Look!” cried Marisol. “The Torre del Oro!” We craned our necks to see the great watchtower that guarded the docks, an astonishing sight, dazzling gold in the afternoon sunshine. Marisol said it was called the “Tower of Gold” because a lady with golden hair had been imprisoned there by King Pedro the Cruel when she would not love him. Sor Emmanuela said nonsense—it was called the tower of gold because its yellow tiles reflected the light. Behind her back, Marisol made a face.

Sor Emmanuela shooed us up the gangplank between the sailors so quickly that Marisol stumbled and nearly slipped into the river. She muttered an oath. Down below, where it was very hot, we saw the captain had curtained off a section of the dark hold for us, with five small bunks that someone had attempted to make comfortable with cushions. The bunks were only a plank in width and the cushions left no room for our persons. Sanchia scrambled onto the highest one and giggled as she tumbled off. Soon we were all laughing, even Sor Emmanuela, pondering the best way to step over and around each other in such a small quarters and lamenting the lack of space for a chamber pot.

Then the porters brought our trunks and bundles. It appeared impossible that space could be found anywhere for our small trunks. But finally they were wedged in and we piled our bundles containing a change of linen for the voyage and our prayer books on top. Sor Emmanuela hung a crucifix on a nail protruding from the wall. On deck above our heads we heard the sailors shouting, then footsteps, and a great thump that Sor Emmanuela said was the gangplank. We could feel the ship begin moving down the river. We were away! And very hot, though a little fresh air comes from the open hatch. Marisol was longing to go up on deck, but Sor Emmanuela forbids it. Marisol is sulking.

We have said our evening prayers together, eaten some hard bread and dried meat, and shifted about to find enough space to lie down. But excitement keeps us all awake. That and the suffocating heat.


In the hot, light evenings at sea, I took the Chronicle from its wrapping of oiled wool and read the Latin Gospel. Now I have a new burden of dangerous knowledge that, considered logically, undoes any justification for Christian persecution of Jews and Muslims, and testifies to what we believe in common. And I cannot unknow it. It burns in my brain like the fire the Inquisition would throw me into, the fire I watched consume those poor people long ago.

The ship has begun to move continually with the swell of the sea, and Sor Emmanuela and Pia are violently ill. The hold smells of vomit, and water has leaked into the corners to make it damp as well as smelly. Sor Emmanuela was too sick to forbid Marisol to go on deck, and Sanchia and I followed her, desperate for fresh air. The salt breeze revived us and the endless sea is a marvelous sight, a world made of water. Stretching to the sky! It seems impossible that land lies beyond it.

At first the sailors eyed us warily, but grew friendlier as the days passed. They promised it would be an easy passage, and described the place we were bound. They said it was crossed by all the peoples of the world; Levantine and Genoese merchants, turbaned men with skins black as night, silk-clad Chinese, and grandees in cloaks worked with gold. In the markets we would find strange fruit, silks, spices, and fish with rainbow scales. We would know the grandees’ ladies because they went veiled in black, attended by unveiled mestiza servants in bright clothes.

The sea air agreed with Marisol. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were pink, and she unbraided her hair to let it blow in the wind. The sailors vied with each other to make her laugh. After a few days Sor Emmanuela came to sit on deck, too, to let the sun ease a bad cough and a chill caught from lying in the damp hold. Pia sat silently by her side, ignoring the sailors who gazed stupefied at her moonlight hair.

The floor of our quarters grew wetter and the bottoms of our trunks were soaked, but on deck the air was delightful, and the warm wind filled the sails. We spent as little time below as possible, saying our prayers and eating our meals on deck. Our hard bread, baked from salted flour, was dipped in a little olive oil to soften it, and we had olives and dried figs and sour wine from the barrels on board. The seagulls swooped and cried overhead and the world was an endless vista of water and light. How I wished my father could have seen it.


We were enjoying our meal on deck as usual one day, watching the horizon rise and fall, trying to imagine what sort of husbands we would find, when Sanchia cried, “Look.” She pointed to the sky where little puffy clouds on the horizon were spreading across the sky with great speed. At first a thin haze dimmed the sun, and then became a dark canopy of cloud. The wind suddenly blew harder and colder. The sails snapped over our heads and the sea turned from blue green to black and the waves grew rougher. We watched this transformation anxiously, as did the sailors. The captain snapped orders that the men moved very quickly to obey. A sailor shoved us unceremoniously through the open hatch and down the ladder back into the hold as more orders were shouted and other sailors rushed about pulling in the sails and tightening ropes.

We could never have imagined anything so terrible as the storm that struck like a blow from the hand of the Almighty. Soon our ship was rocking, then heaving and plunging up and down through great waves and a half light through which nothing could be seen. A cold wave washed over the deck and poured down into our hold. The sailors cried out that we must not be afraid, and slammed the hatch shut.

The storm seemed to grow worse and worse. We were frightened and in the hours and days that followed, lost track of time as we clung together in the dark, bruised, dizzy, and sick with the pitching of the ship, unable to keep down dry biscuits or the brackish water, praying continually, sleeping fitfully to wake again to fear and cold…

Water sloshed ankle-deep around us. Our habits were soaked through and Sor Emmanuela could not stop coughing and complained of pain in her chest. A day or two later she was feverish. We took it in turns to sit by her side as we tossed, bracing ourselves upright to support her and sponging her hot face as best we could. Marisol managed to unpack some medicine, but it did Sor Emmanuela no good and she began gasping, saying she could not breathe. She grew worse, unable to talk, until finally, with great racking breaths, poor Sor Emmanuela died. On our knees, shivering and clutching each other for support in the rolling and shuddering hold, we commended her soul to God. We folded her rosary around her stiffening fingers and, having no winding sheet, wrapped her body in her beata’s cloak. I managed to retrieve the Abbess’s medal and for safety put it around my own neck.

Marisol crawled to the curtain that separates our quarters from the rest of the ship and called that it had pleased God to take Sor Emmanuela. Two sailors, whose turn it was to snatch a few moments of rest, struggled from their hammocks and, bracing themselves against the motion of the ship, swung the body up between them and staggered out. We knew Sor Emmanuela would be dropped into the sea. “We shall soon follow!” exclaimed Marisol through chattering teeth.

We all strained to hear the splash the body made when it went overboard. Just when we thought it must have done so, the wind howled ferociously and a great wave struck the ship so hard that it went onto its side, slamming us against the wall. Then we felt it carried up and up to a terrifying height and, as we clutched each other, plunged sickeningly down with such force it threw us apart and must surely have broken the ship in pieces. Sanchia screamed for her mother. I saw my father’s face, and Pia and Marisol had buried their faces in each other’s shoulders. Above the wind there was shouting on the deck above and a great crack and screams. There was a cry of “man overboard.” We said a prayer for him and for ourselves, and Sanchia began reciting in Hebrew the same phrase over and over again. We looked at each other and whispered “farewell,” as death approached in every groan, in every creak of the ship’s straining, weakening timbers.

“They say drowning is quick,” whispered Pia. Marisol whimpered.

Then there was another presence in the room.

“Can you see her?” gasped Sanchia and pointed.

Pia opened her eyes with an effort. “Yes!”

Marisol stared, past speech for once.

I thought it an apparition of the sea, like the half-woman half-fish creatures that lure sailors to their death on the rocks. But it was a lady in a cloak, just as the Chronicle described her, and I knew—as the others did not—who it was. The Foundress had come to succor us in the hour of our deaths, to speak words of comfort as I joined my father and mother in paradise.

I was mistaken. The Foundress spoke sharply, saying that in our present condition we would make poor sport for the fish, and that we would not drown. The storm had nearly blown itself out; we must trust in God and all would be well. Then she bent over me and said that the medal I had saved was a precious thing, a gift from her brother long ago. I tried to answer that I knew, but she held a finger to my lips and told me firmly to have courage, and someday the medal and the Chronicle would have a role to play in bringing peace in a time of trouble when Christians, Jews, and Muslims were at war with one another again. Then she was gone.

“They say that drowning people see strange sights in the moment before they die,” said Pia faintly. This was not the time for explanations about what we had seen. Instead I said with as much force as I could muster, “She said we will not drown yet. Have courage, we must only have courage.”

That evening, the storm abated and we could feel the sea grow calmer. The winds subsided, and the captain shouted through our curtain, “The sky is clearing and the lookout has spotted a flock of birds in the distance. That means land ahead. Land! God is great!”

“Deo gratias,” we answered him automatically, and fell into an exhausted sleep in each other’s arms.

Stumbling onto the deck next morning, we saw a thin line on the horizon, and as we drew closer we saw the outline of masts against the sky, then finally the port itself. Around us the sailors hurried about their tasks, laughing and slapping each other on the backs, talking of rum and women. Natives rowed out to us in long narrow boats, bringing strange yellow fruits that tasted sweet as honey, and fresh water that was sweeter still. We looked at each other, pale and thin, blinking in the daylight like underground creatures. “We must look like sea witches,” said Marisol, tugging futilely at her soiled and crumpled gown. “These were hideous enough when clean. We’ll never find husbands like this!”

My relief that we were not dead at the bottom of the sea became anxiety about more practical matters. What we would do once ashore? I climbed down to our cabin and calculated our resources. In Sor Emmanuela’s trunk were our dowries, four pouches of reales. There was also a purse of coins for our expenses. I was counting them when the others called me to come; the gangplank was nearly down. I cannot write again until we are a little settled. Somewhere.