I remember so clearly the determined
circles of my reed brush as I reached into the corner of the worn stones with a
timing perfected by years of practice. I remember the scent of damp reeds mixed
with incense. I remember hearing the convent bells tolling matin and the hushed
rustle of habits and sandals threading their way through the stone hallway
towards the chapel.
"Sister Lucia, the bell tolls."
I
had turned and nodded as I levered myself up off my knees, being especially
careful to keep my hands well hidden in the folds of my habit.
"I have finished here, Sister Susana. I have only to put away the brush
and bucket."
From the shadows Sister Susana had smiled at me as she always did, the
complacent smile of a mother for her well-behaved child, even though I was no
longer a child. It was because I took pleasure in being her well
behaved child that I had hidden my hands until Sister Susana left so she would
not see what I had done. Many weeks ago I had secretly taken some strips of
discarded deerhide from outside the kitchen and wrapped them around my hands to
protect my fingers from the ravages of my scrubbing chores. . . . .
The real Lucia, who dwelt somewhere within me and was not as well behaved as
the outward Lucia, did not feel guilty about the vanity of wrapping her hands
to keep them slim and white. Nor did I feel guilty about not wanting to discuss
it, for discussions were rare in the convent where I had grown up. Except for
Mother Superior, who must carry on the business of the convent, and Sister
Susana, who had been charged with my care and instruction, all the other nuns
in the sisterhood of our convent, upon becoming brides of Christ, had taken a
vow of silence.
Consequently,
there were no discussions, except mine with Sister Susana and Mother Superior's
with whomever she needed to correct, chastise, or, in the case of tradesmen,
negotiate. I did not know whether any of the nuns even wanted to discuss
anything. There was no way of knowing. If any of the other sisters had a less
disciplined self living within her, the rules of silence kept it out of sight.
In
fact, except for soft footsteps and rustling habits, there was little human
noise. The stones of our convent walls might echo secret sighs in solitary
cells, or gasps in the chapel as Father Artemio related yet another atrocity of
heathens against Christians in the Holy Land, or little hums of admiration to
hear him praise the triumph of Castile's hero, The Cid, who several decades ago
had confounded the heathens in our land. Once a year, there were even rare
ripples of laughter when the shepherds in the Christmas miracle play were
portrayed as stumbling bumpkins. The unaccustomed sound of laughter, including
my own, rang strangely in my ear. . . . . . .
Our convent
was in Castile on the outskirts of a small village not too distant from a
town named Logroño. But the noisy world beyond our convent walls was only a
welter of bright shadows, barely glimpsed and never discussed. For some reason
that I never thought to question, I was not allowed to exit even the small door
in the back wall to tend the vegetables and vineyards.
Through the slit window of my cell, when prompted by the curiosity of the Lucia
within me, I could see a small, distant part of the village. Tradesmen with
donkeys and oxen carts came to our convent to sell to Mother Superior whatever
we could not make for ourselves and could not do without. Very important
persons occasionally came to speak of mysterious matters with Mother Superior.
Columns of armored men, with standards raised high and lances gleaming, dust
clouding out from the hooves of their horses, occasionally halted to speak to
Mother Superior before galloping off again to protect Castile from the
heathens, those Moslem servants of Satan who dwelled just beyond our southern
horizon.
Seville, Toledo, Zaragoza, Valencia, Murcia, Jaen, Malaga, Granada, and
the unholy empire of Cordoba were all seats of Satan's power beyond that horizon. Every
Sunday Father Artemio of the hollow eyes and halting gait came to say Mass in
our chapel. With quavering voice he led us in prayers for the destruction of
Satan's servants and the triumph of God's warriors. We prayed that we might
have some day another Cid who had died trying to recapture Valencia.
That
morning, after morning prayers, Lucia had gone to her next task of putting fresh
rushes on the chapel floor.
Suddenly an
explosion of noise unlike anything I had ever heard burst through our convent
door and flooded the halls. Our silent stones groaned and echoed under the
onslaught of so much sound. A young woman shrieked with great, gulping sobs
loud enough to drown out even Mother Superior's commanding voice.
"Inez! Inez! Control yourself! This is a holy place."
"This is hell!" shrieked the voice.
Automatically, I crossed myself.
The chapel doors
were flung open and the shrieks struck my ears like lightning bolts. The rushes
dropped from my hand. Unable to resist, crouched over my rushes, I forced
myself to turn my head to see what manner of fiendish creature belched forth
such awful sounds.
Sister Susana and the stalwart Sister Soledad, with considerable disruption of
my neatly laid checkerboard of rushes, came down the chapel aisle, dragging not
a fiend from hell but a young noblewoman between them.
She had to be the Inez who shrieked and called our convent hell. She was, if
not fiendish, truly an alien being. Nothing about her had any place within our
well- ordered, unassuming stone walls. Her face had more color on it than
Nature had intended. Her long dark hair had snarled in disarray from
fighting her captors. Her body was wrapped in a blaze of vivid green velvet
that scooped low around her neck to show the first rise of her breasts. As if
that bright rich green were not blinding enough, the bodice and the skirt
glittered with gold and emeralds such as I thought were intended only for
statues of the saints and the Holy Mother.
"I love him!" she shrieked. "I shall always love
him!"
"Let your love turn to Jesus Christ Our Lord. Let Him solace and comfort
you."
That was Sister Susana, for Sister Soledad was vowed to silence.
"Then let Him return me to Sancho!"
They tugged
her further down the aisle and wrestled her into a kneeling pew. Because
holding the struggling Inez required their full attention, the good sisters did
not even notice me staring at this extraordinary event. The screams from Inez
clashed against the voice of Sister Susana, a storm from some distant world
beyond my understanding.
"Pray, young Inez," Sister Susana insisted, "pray for patience
and acceptance of your father's will and the will of Our Father Who art in His
heaven."
"My father be damned!"
Hastily both sisters crossed themselves. Of course, to do so, they each needed
to use one of their hands that held the prisoner. When they did, Inez almost
freed herself of them. But the two nuns had made a hasty persignation, thanks
to years of practice. Soon all four hands were again engaged in pinning her
down.
"Child,
child, do not blaspheme in God's house! Do not defy His will!"
Inez fell to her knees, clasped her hands and raised her face heavenward.
"Saaanchooo!"
That shriek filled the chapel with such force that I expected it to call forth
some dreadful, satanic apparition named Sancho who would materialize before me
and consume us for the violence done to the young woman who loved him.
I must have
squeaked with dread, for Sister Soledad looked over at me and then back to
Sister Susana. They both turned to me and jerked their heads towards the chapel
door. Obediently I stood up and with my empty flat basket crept up the aisle
past the sisters and their prisoner whose eyes gushed with tears. I shut the
doors of the chapel as I left and thankfully scurried to the familiar shadowed
walls of my cell.
Not too long afterwards, Mother
Superior comes for Lucia and takes her to the visitor's room where nuns are
rarely allowed.
"Why is
she wearing a habit? You haven't shorn her hair!" exclaimed a man's voice.
He
stood in the far corner, observing me, a tall, ferociously red-bearded man
wearing a breastplate of metal and holding a helmet in his arm.
"Of course not," said Mother Superior. "She has been educated.
She has been guarded within. Just as you instructed, nothing more." Mother
Superior turned to me. "Remove your wimple, Sister Lucia."
Puzzled but obedient, I did as she commanded. Released from confinement, my
hair fell around my face and down my back.
The bearded man smiled. "Good! She has the auburn hair of Castilian
nobility, if not the pedigree."
"Don Alvar, you will not speak of such matters in my convent!"
The man chuckled, a contemptuous kind of chuckle. "Just pay you the gold?
Might enough gold purchase my salvation?" . . .
Mother
Superior rustled quietly to where I stood and put her hands on my shoulders.
"You are leaving us, Sister Lucia."
I
must have smiled as I put my wimple back on and pushed my hair up under it. The
idea was absurd.
"I cannot leave," I said quietly to Mother Superior, my head bowed.
"I am to be a bride of Christ."
The man overheard. "Christ?" he guffawed. He jammed his helmet down
on his head. "It grows late."
Mother Superior tightened her grip on my shoulders. "You must, Sister
Lucia. It is Don Alvar's will. . . . . He is your father."
Speechless, I stared at the man. I had a father?
Lucia, riding alone in a carriage her father drives himself, is
plunged into a world of sight and sounds she has never experienced.
Finally she falls asleep, but before she does, she finds, fallen behind the
carriage seat, and beautiful bracelet of gold and emeralds. At dawn they
arrive at her father's castle and he takes her through a maze of hallways and
up some tower stairs to a room which to her seems rather grand, with a bed, a
wardrobe of gowns, and an elderly, timid servant named Suspiros. She
sleeps well, and decides that this bewildering change has a purpose Her
father wishes to test her true vocation before she takes the final orders as a
nun. She is quite determined to pass every test. One of the first
is to fill her days which, unlike life in the convent, are suddenly empty.
She is forbidden to go downstairs, but she may go further up the tower to
the library. So she does.
I picked up
several of the scrolls and read them. Most were in Latin, a few in vernacular,
and two written with squiggly lines that made no sense at all. It didn't
matter. The scrolls dealt only with land area demarcation and men-at-arms and
taxes due and agreements made and accusations of agreements broken. It would
take a great deal of study to make any sense of them.
The large wall tapestry, on the other hand, was better than a book. From one
side to the other fair-faced Christian knights killed black-faced Arabs. Swords
slashed, horses fell, arrows flew, all without a single red thread of blood
showing. To the far right and the far left the respective commanders sat on
their mounts, the Christian commander with a great plume on his helmet, the
Arab commander with a great plume on his turban. The Christians carried shields
with lions and eagles and snakes and griffins. The Arabs carried shields with
only patterns like pretty tile mosaics. I wondered if that was why the
Christians were winning.
"You like my tapestry?"
I
spun around. I had not heard him come in. He was an old man, dried up and
slightly bent like Father Artemio, but his voice was merry and warm. Father
Artemio's hollow, haunted eyes searched out souls doomed to hell. This old
man's eyes twinkled.
"Who are you?" I didn't intend to sound so rude, but he had startled
me.
He
smiled. "I am Severiano, Lord Alvar's scribe, scholar and historian. Every
great lord must have a historian to preserve his great feats and explain away
hisgreat follies. Who are you that you roam about my library?"
"I roam my father's library," I replied.
Severiano twinkled more and nodded. "The Sicilian."
"I am Castilian."
"I spoke of your mother. She was Sicilian."
I
could hear the eagerness in my own voice. "You knew her?"
Severiano hesitated. "I know only scrolls."
"Do you know why I am here, sir?"
"I write down deeds past, young Lucia. I have no gift of foretelling..
.. . . .
She
finds Severiano a fount of information and returns the next day.
"I would learn more of weapons, Severiano."
He hopped
off the stool. "Do you plan to become a knight?"
"I think that in a castle knightly matters are important to
understand."
"So what would you understand, young Lucia? How to wield
them?"
"Only how others wield them. These curved swords, the scimitars, are they
ever used by Christians?"
"Only if they have lost their own sword on the battlefield," answered
a deep voice with a strange accent.
I
almost shrieked and managed to confine it to a squeak. Standing at the door not
a pebble's toss from me, as if he had materialized right off the tapestry, loomed
a terrifying figure in black robes and a black turban. Even his skin was black.
And he was so tall. a dwarf next to him.
"Young Lucia, allow me to present to you Lord Tarliq, emissary of the
Caliph of Zaragoza. Lord Tarliq, this is Don
Alvar's daughter."
Lord Tarliq smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes. "I am to believe
that his daughter finds occupation in a scrollery?"
What an unexpected and arduous test this was! But I would meet it head on. I
refused to let fear of a Moslem infidel defeat me or plunge me into silence.
"I do not
find much occupation in it, sir. I prefer books to scrolls."
"You
know how to read?"
I
could not decide whether it was disbelief or surprise in his voice, but I
recognized something familiar in his unsmiling dark eyes. I saw the same shrewd
coldness that I had seen in my father's eyes. Father Artemio had never been
clear about the look of infidels. Lord Tarliq's eyes were dark, like those of a
human man. That was comforting. Real demons had red eyes
Lord
Tarliq was the first hint of her father's real plans for her, but thinking she
is to return to the convent under his protection, she leaves her father's
castle.
I had just
decided I might as well settle back on my many fine pillows and finish my
grapes when a terrible clashing erupted behind me, followed by a heavy thud, a
screaming horse, and a second thud. My grapes completely forgotten, I clutched
at my pillows. I could hear a horse stamping restlessly behind my cart.
I
could hear booted footsteps approaching. The hinged fingers of a metal gauntlet
wrapped themselves around one of my silken curtains and tore it aside.
I was face
to face with a Christian knight.
"Inez! I told you I'd come!"
Inez' agonized shriek in our convent chapel echoed again in my mind. I
remembered my fear that such an awful shriek might call forth some dreadful,
satanic apparition named Sancho who would materialize before me and consume us
all for the violence done to the young woman who loved him.
It had,
just not in our convent. This knight had to be Sancho, but he was not a demon
at all. True, he wore armor. Fresh blood spattered his breastplate. He had just
toppled my two guards. Yet his was a handsome face. There was a boyishness to
it and a luster to his dark eyes that made it as appealing as a statue of a
young saint.
When he first tore aside the curtain, his face had a grin as wide as the
horizon. The sight of me crushed it like parchment crumpled in a
fist.
"Where's Inez?" he demanded.
With Sancho is his cousin, who realizes a mistake has been
made and comes over as well.
"A thousand
pardons, milady. As you see, my cousin's passions blind his reason. Go with
God, Lucia, whoever you are."
Then he remounted his horse, wheeled around, and both knights rode off at full
gallop across the fields.
I
watched them until they vanished from my view. Then I took many deep breaths
and methodically straightened the silk curtains to settle my heart that still
raced within me. Surely he had affected me so intensely because I had been
raised in a world without men.
But I did begin to understand that a woman might be pleased to allow a man to
beget children with her if the man stirred her heart as easily as Rodrigo had
stirred mine. Surely women, if their hearts were set to racing as even my
inexperienced heart had raced, might even allow such passion to blind them just
as Sancho's passion blinded him.
These were sinful thoughts where lust could lurk. I knew I must not dwell on
them nor savor their memory. Of all the tests I might endure, surely Rodrigo,
the look of him as he strode towards me, the fire in his eyes, the pleasing
look of that warrior face so close to mine, was the most upsetting and
dangerous test of any.
Not until they
have almost arrived at the Moslem kingdom
of Zaragoza does Lucia
begin to understand that sending her back to the convent was not her father's
plan at all.
