Conquistadora (4 page)

Four mornings a week the twins walked to an office over a warehouse by the wharf and were usually back for the midday meal followed
by a siesta, awakened by the sweet airs of harp music as doña Leonor practiced her instrument.

“They don’t work very hard,” Ana told Elena.

“They’re gentlemen; they shouldn’t be at an office all day long.”

“But how can they run a business if they’re just there a couple of hours a day?”

“Clerks and managers and people like that take care of the details. Ramón and Inocente check on what the employees do.”

It occurred to Ana that none of the Argosos had any idea of the intricacies of commerce. Neither did she, if it came down to it, but her practical nature guessed that a business needed the active engagement of its owners, not just the appearance of ownership.

At dusk, Ramón and Inocente joined other young people on promenade around the Plaza de la Catedral or Plaza de San Antonio. They went out every evening, and Ana heard them stumbling over the furniture in the early hours.

One day the brothers hired a carriage and drove Ana and Elena to the beach. Once they settled the girls, Ramón and Inocente ran back and forth, laughing, lifting a kite into the air, their childlike joy enhanced by Ana’s and Elena’s enthusiastic applause.

Their mother, doña Leonor, like doña Jesusa, visited and was visited by friends and neighbors to share the local gossip. Ana and Elena smiled demurely as doña Leonor and her friends discussed who was engaged to whom, which officer was promoted, and who failed to impress their superiors. The girls sat straitlaced during these visits, their hands on their laps, their eyes modestly lowered, knowing that they must make a good impression on the
dueñas
, who would, in turn, talk about them the minute they left the sitting rooms.

Several evenings, doña Leonor and don Eugenio escorted Ana and Elena to high-ceilinged, mirrored halls where military orchestras played into the wee hours. The girls danced with dapper officers in full regalia and with civilians who wore crisp cravats, silk waistbands, ribbons around their knee breeches, and shiny kid shoes.

The Argosos had no guest room, so Ana and Elena shared a bed and slept wrapped in each other’s arms. Elena always heard the maid coming in the morning to draw the drapes open. She pushed Ana to her side and they settled back-to-back with plenty of space between them. It was the loneliest moment of Ana’s day.

Doña Leonor was hospitable and polite, but she looked worried
as Ramón and Inocente increasingly turned to Ana for amusement and conversation. She appeared befuddled about which of the twins was wooing Ana, and Ana added to her perplexity by being equally agreeable to both men. She liked their attention, and enjoyed the envious looks of other
señoritas
whose fluttering lashes and powdered bosoms vibrated at the approach of the two handsome young men. Ana was elated as the denied
señoritas
and their
dueñas
practically collapsed when Ramón and Inocente went past them, toward her.

Next to the other girls, and especially beside the willowy Elena, Ana was at a disadvantage. She was petite, just barely five feet tall, but with none of the vulnerability expected from a small woman. She was healthy, tanned and freckled from exposure to the outdoors. Neither dance masters, nuns, nor Jesusa’s lessons in deportment could refine her brisk, efficient movements into grace. Ana’s own scrutiny showed that she was pretty enough but no beauty. She thought her black eyes were just a little too close together and her lips not full enough. She had the habit of staring at something or someone who interested her with too much intensity, according to the nuns and
dueñas
. She was awkward in society. In spite of her prodigious reading, or because of it, she avoided chitchat. It was an act of will to pretend to be interested in gossip, fashion, and home decor. She disliked little dogs and ignored children. She learned the artifices of the salon but disdained its constraints and pettiness. Women sensed her snobbishness and shunned her. Other than Elena, she had no friends.

Ana knew, however, that whether or not she fulfilled the expectations of her equals, her family names and ancestry held an important place in Spain’s vertical society. To people like the Argosos, wealthier but lower down the slope, her pedigree made her more attractive than the coiffed, accomplished, fan-flickering
señoritas
paraded before every bachelor with more money but less dazzling lineage. She also noticed that don Eugenio encouraged Ramón’s attentions toward her. She and Elena congratulated each other that their plan might work.

Ana liked Ramón enough to enjoy his company. But when he told her that the Argosos owned land in Puerto Rico, she decided to marry him.

———

Don Eugenio was the younger brother of two in a family of merchants and military men. Two months before Ana’s visit, a message arrived in Cádiz to let him know that his childless, widowed brother, Rodrigo, had died in Puerto Rico. Eugenio, who’d spent his adult life in the cavalry, was now the main shareholder in a huge—and hugely profitable—shipping business with offices in St. Thomas, San Juan, Cádiz, and Madrid. In addition to his share of the business, Marítima Argoso Marín, he now owned a house in San Juan, a farm in the outskirts, and a two-hundred
-cuerda
sugar hacienda with twenty-five slaves on the southwestern side of the island.

He had little knowledge of Rodrigo’s businesses. Twice a year Eugenio received a statement and a notice that his share of profits and interest had been transferred into his bank account in Cádiz. The amounts differed from year to year, depending on the vagaries of trade and harvests, taxes, duties, insurance payments, investments in materials and labor, rents, docking, wharfage, losses, and loans. Eugenio trusted his brother implicitly and was grateful for the income that Rodrigo’s investments made possible. From their birth, and on each subsequent birthday, Rodrigo gifted Ramón and Inocente shares in Marítima Argoso Marín, so after their twentieth year the brothers received incomes of their own.

Unlike his brother, Eugenio didn’t have a good head for commerce, but the military had trained him to delegate, motivate, and make others accountable. He knew his sons were as unenthusiastic as he was about trade, but still, after Rodrigo’s death, he pushed his sons toward the managers and clerks of Marítima Argoso Marín, hoping that more involvement in the operations might excite and inspire Ramón and Inocente.

After discussions with his sons and with Leonor, Eugenio decided to keep his shares of the shipping business but planned to sell the house, farm, land, and slaves in Puerto Rico. It was a slow process, however. He could do nothing until a complete audit of Rodrigo’s estate was filed and taxed by the Crown. He expected that he and his sons would manage the shipping business, but once the house and land were sold, he’d buy a
finca
where he could spend the last years of his life breeding race horses and fighting bulls. He was still relatively young at fifty-two, and Leonor was a sprightly forty-seven. After decades of soldiering, living in tents and rented houses like the one in Cádiz, Eugenio could finally give Leonor a real home.
But the day before Ana was to return to Sevilla, Ramón approached Eugenio.

“Papá, I respectfully request your permission to make an offer of marriage to
señorita
Larragoity Cubillas.”

Eugenio thought that Ramón, almost twenty-four, should be settling down to start a family and he thought Ana was a splendid choice for his older son. She was from a good family, well educated, smart, and not silly, like the girls flitting around his good-looking sons. He knew that because don Gustavo lacked a male heir his wealth would go to Ana’s uncle, but he guessed that she might come with a handsome dowry and gifts of cash from the Cubillas side.

Eugenio gave his blessing before consulting his wife.

“They hardly know each other,” she complained.

“They’ve spent many hours together in the month since she arrived.”

“We know nothing about her.”

“We know she’s from an illustrious, wealthy family.…”

“There’s something about her …,” Leonor said. “I have a bad feeling.”

Eugenio and Leonor had been married for twenty-nine years, and he was used to her fancies and premonitions, but nothing ever came of her forebodings. She argued that it was because they paid attention to her warnings that Ramón and Inocente suffered only the typical misadventures of active boys and spirited young men.

“He’s made his choice,
mi amor
, and I believe he’s chosen well,” Eugenio said. “I encouraged the courtship, but perhaps there’s something I missed. Do you have a specific concern about her?”

“No, it’s a feeling.”

“You’re a mother seeing your boy falling in love with another woman.”

“I’m not jealous,” she snapped. “I think they should be settling down, and yes, I want grandchildren. But why her?”

Ana’s parents were not at all pleased with the match either. First there was Leonor. She was a Mendoza and a Sánchez, from families of conversos whose Jewish ancestors had accepted the Catholic faith over two hundred years earlier. Eight generations, however, weren’t enough to erase the stigma of having been Jewish in Spain, especially
to a family of conservative Catholics. They were also ill disposed toward Eugenio because of his political views.

Before his death in 1833 with no male heir, King Fernando VII convinced the Spanish Cortes to amend the laws defining succession only through the male line to allow his eldest daughter, Isabel, still a child, to inherit the throne. His brother, don Carlos, was favored by conservative elements, chief among them, the Catholic Church. After Fernando’s death, Carlos challenged the then three-year-old Infanta’s claim and civil war ensued. For six long years the two factions fought for control, until, in 1839, with support from England, France, and Portugal, Isabeline forces were victorious.

Eugenio had distinguished himself on the side of the Isabelinos. But the Larragoity Cubillas families were staunch Carlists loyal to Isabel’s uncle don Carlos.

Eugenio traveled from Cádiz to Sevilla to present his son’s proposal. Gustavo listened politely, but firmly rejected the request for his daughter’s hand. Jesusa then reminded Ana that her impetuous nature sometimes caused her to make hasty decisions.

“Remember when you wanted to be a nun because you so admired your teacher Sor Magdalena? Two weeks later you changed your mind.…”

“I was ten, Mamá. What ten-year-old doesn’t want to be a nun?”

“You’re insolent to your mother,” her father said. He threatened to exile Ana to a Carmelite convent in Extremadura if she didn’t give up her foolish obsession.

Neither reminders of close calls nor threats of a fate she considered for herself (albeit briefly) succeeded in changing Ana’s mind. This was the man she wanted to marry. And now.

A well-raised
señorita
in mid-nineteenth-century Spain didn’t challenge her parents. Ana was a good daughter, even if willful and stubborn. She knew it was impudent to argue with Mamá and Papá, so she did what young women of her place and station did when they couldn’t get their way: she developed a debilitating and mysterious illness that no physician could diagnose or cure. Chills so severe that her bed shook followed high fevers. Shallow breathing that kept her from sleep on consecutive nights evolved into slumber from which she couldn’t be roused. A poor appetite caused such rapid weight loss that Jesusa feared Ana would waste away.

The alternating symptoms kept Ana in bed for nearly two months. During her illness, Ramón (at least that’s who Jesusa thought it was) visited to inquire after Ana’s health, begging to be allowed to speak to her. The distance between Sevilla and Cádiz was over one hundred kilometers, and the still unstable political situation made travel unsafe. Even Gustavo was impressed with Ramón’s devotion and willingness to endanger his own life in order to woo his daughter.

While Ana’s dowry seemed generous to Eugenio, it was to be half what Gustavo had received upon marrying Jesusa, not including jewelry she inherited from her grandmothers. Gustavo looked at his daughter critically. At seventeen, she appeared older and—in spite of fashionable clothes, colorful shawls, and hairdressing—common.

Gustavo had studied her in society, where her tart tongue caused other women, and some men, to turn away. Sevilla was a big city, but Gustavo and Jesusa knew everyone worth knowing. No other young man of their acquaintance was interested in Ana. If she never married, she’d be dependent on him the rest of his life and, after his death, on her uncle’s charity. Ana lacked altruism and Gustavo couldn’t imagine her as the soft-voiced, sickbed auntie in his brother’s rambunctious household, or as one of the charitable spinsters who ministered to the poor, or as a companion to the elderly and infirm. She was an intelligent girl, and he was sure that she, too, had considered the same scenarios.

Gustavo ordered his lawyers to inquire discreetly into Marítima Argoso Marín. Reports were encouraging. The company was healthy and the colonel’s experience leading men might translate into business acumen. Gustavo was less impressed with Ramón. He was a popinjay, and Gustavo imagined his plain daughter thought she was lucky to have caught such a peacock. She, at least, had some sense, and he imagined Ana would peck Ramón into submission as soon as they were married.

So, eight months after Ana declared who her husband was to be, her father agreed to the engagement.

Ana’s recovery was swift once Ramón was allowed to visit. He stayed a few minutes, chaperoned by the tight-faced Jesusa. His good humor and gentle manners, however, won her approval. Over the next month his visits became longer until they stretched into mealtimes, when Jesusa and Gustavo elicited information about the
Argoso and Mendoza families that they could later use to justify their daughter’s marriage to a liberal with Jewish ancestors. As soon as Ana could sit upright without exertion, a date was fixed for days after her eighteenth birthday.

The Larragoity Cubillas home in Plaza de Pilatos was impressive if one was dazzled by portraits of men with starched ruffs and shapely calves and women encased in lace and velvet trimmed with ermine. Swords, harquebuses, and daggers were displayed along the walls as if to remind the viewer that the Larragoity men were not to be trifled with. At the bottom of the stairs was a knight’s suit of armor, complete with a shield emblazoned with a heraldic emblem featuring an enormous cross capped with a halo of thorns. According to Gustavo, he was a direct descendant of the knight who wore that particular chain mail and plate in the Crusades. But Ana suspected that, like so much of the Larragoity and Cubillas family lore, this was an exaggeration. She didn’t believe that either side of her family had risen above village life until centuries later, when the
conquista
made it possible for penniless boys to go to sea in search of fortune. She noticed, however, that Gustavo’s and Jesusa’s stories impressed the twins.