The Inquisitor's Wife (23 page)

Doña Berta leaned out of the window and whistled at the guards in order to be heard over the clatter of hooves; the gesture was so at odds with her formal manner that I grinned before I could stop myself. Doña Berta caught the gesture and flashed a row of small gray teeth at me.

One of the guards heard the whistle and saw the royal crest on our door; he motioned for the other carriages to pull aside so that ours could roll through the gate. The long driveway beyond was of the same smooth, polished stone, this time flanked by trimmed, stately junipers surrounded by boxwood hedges. At its end, we passed beneath another archway of fine
mudéjar
fretwork; it opened out onto a courtyard the size of a small town square.

“And this is the Patio de la Montería,” doña Berta recited, as if she’d said it a thousand times before, “where the hunting party meets.”

There were no signs of a hunt now, only carriages emptying of passengers or exiting toward the stables.

I huddled in the carriage doorway as the driver helped doña Berta out. The patio was enclosed on three sides by the two-story palace. The red, white, and gold banner of Castile and León hung from every second-floor window, next to sconces lit above every slender colonnade. It was warm for a January night, with just enough of a breeze to keep the impossibly tall palms undulating, and the sound of music, crashing fountains, and conversation floated out into the courtyard. There were bright white, red, and gold paper lanterns and more lit sconces than I’d ever seen in one place; the play of the torchlight cast intricate patterns from the delicate stonework onto people’s faces.

Once the driver helped me down, I paused so long to take everything in that doña Berta chuckled with glee.

“So, my darling,” she said. “This must be your first visit to the castle. We have time for a little tour. Would you like to see some of the rooms few others get to see?”

I didn’t need her narration to recognize the bleached red-brown stone facade directly in front of us, or the glittering white marble threshold. I still remembered how my father, on describing his first visit inside, had spoken of the reverence he felt as he stepped on the white marble at the entrance to old King Pedro’s Palace.

Pedro the Cruel, they call him now—but my father said they hated Pedro because he protected the Jews and was too tolerant of Muslims. I craned my neck back and looked up at the whitewashed third-floor tower perched atop Pedro’s palace. Beneath the white tower was a thick stone cornice, and beneath the cornice was a frieze. The outer edges of the frieze had Gothic words carved into the stone; the center consisted of shiny dark blue tiles arranged in Kufic script, a stylized written form of Arabic.

I blinked my eyes at the sight, remembering how my father had relayed the experience with relish and how my mother and I had sighed with envy. As Berta beckoned me along and my feet touched the white marble threshold, I felt a wave of grief, wishing that I could share this experience with my parents.

We passed by more soldiers still as statues, their backs pressed to the walls as if they supported them, their armor so assiduously polished that I had to look away or be dazzled. Doña Berta led me past another archway into a huge high-ceilinged reception room, where more soldiers lined the walls, which sported bright blue, green, and yellow azulejo tiles arranged so that they created elaborate medallion designs; even the steps leading up into the room were trimmed in colorful tiles. Servants liveried in red, white, and gold served wine and food to the guests, who made their way to long tables covered in red linens. A group of pipers played in one corner, softly to allow conversation; the center of the room was open for dancing and for mingling. The earliest guests were already sitting in sparse groups at the tables with food and drink.

Antonio was standing and chatting at one of the tables with a seated elderly man, a well-known noble in town. At the sight of me, Antonio excused himself from the conversation and hurried over. Like me, he was dressed all in dark blue—a fact that embarrassed me, as it made us look as though we had planned it. But the color made his lapis eyes even more striking and brought his red-gold hair to life. Even with his lute hung by a strap over his shoulder, he managed to bow gracefully to the middle-aged doña Berta, who giggled as he solemnly took her plump, bejeweled hand and kissed it. He was resoundingly handsome and as poised as a courtier, despite the fact that he had nicked his chin shaving.

“My lady,” he said with a flourish. It was the proper term of address for a marquesa, and doña Berta didn’t fail to be flattered. “I am Antonio, the lutist for doña Marisol.”

Doña Berta put her kissed hand to her heart and grinned at Antonio with senile lust. I, on the other hand, could scarcely bear to look up at him. It had been hard enough earlier that day to be in the same room with him. When I failed to greet him or smile, doña Berta lifted a thin plucked brow.

“So,” she said, with childlike eagerness. “Have you visited the palace before, don Antonio?”

“I have,” he replied.

Berta sighed with disappointment. “Well, at least follow me to where you’ll perform,” she said, crooking her finger flirtatiously at Antonio, and took off at full stride.

We followed her through another archway out into a different courtyard. A long, narrow reflecting pool ran through its center, flanked on either side by flagstone walkways. The walkways were in turn flanked by sunken gardens—that is, long strips of grass planted with miniature orange trees in full bloom. Nearby, water spilled from a flower-shaped fountain, thrumming like rain as it splashed into the basin, filling the air with a cooling mist. Berta led us to a nearby cluster of potted palms at one end of the reflecting pool. The shaded loggia surrounding the patio’s perimeter boasted walls covered in bright glittering tiles, broken by a continuous ring of arches and slender colonnades, each archway leading back to another arch inside the palace, which in turn led to another distant archway, giving a sense of infinity.

“The Patio of the Maidens,” Berta announced proudly, as if she’d had a hand in its creation. “When I tell you, come right here to this spot”—she pointed at her feet, and arranged herself in the position we should face—“and when I signal, begin to play.”

I’d heard of the Patio of the Maidens. Everyone knew the old legend that the Muslim rulers supposedly claimed a hundred virgins from the kingdom of Iberia every year and that they were brought here for inspection. A few like the Hojedas said the women were sacrificed to the Devil, while most believed that the women were forced into the royal harem. Others, like my parents, were more skeptical. “History is written by the victors,” my father would say, and shake his head.

“How soon will we play?” I asked. “A few minutes? An hour?”

Doña Berta grinned frankly at the question.

“The queen will be ready when the queen is ready,” she answered lightly. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you when the time is right and let you know when to begin. You have at least an hour, maybe two. In the meantime, you and I will continue our little tour.”

She led Antonio back to the reception hall, saying he should be sure to remain there and not wander off.

“And now, my darling doña Marisol, let me show you a few rooms you might not have the chance to see tonight.”

She led me through a maze of corridors, each grander than the last. We wandered over floors of white marble, then black-and-white tile, through rooms connected by an apparently infinite series of archways. At last we came upon a chamber connected to the others on either side by three arches supported by slender black marble columns. I thought I had already taken in all the glories the palace had to offer in the front room of King Pedro’s Palace; I was mistaken.

“The Salon of the Ambassadors,” Doña Berta said with smug pride. “Her Majesty reserves this room for her most important guests.”

I took one step through the archway and could go no farther; the sheer glory of the room stopped me cold. It was lit not by a hearth or sconces, but by several massive gold candelabra, taller than I, placed along the walls and corners. A faint film of smoke hung in the air, conspiring with the dim light to soften all edges; what lay exposed in the candle glow seemed unearthly, unreal. This was not a room but a piece of jewelry, a work of art that had taken many
mudéjar
craftsmen many years of demanding labor.

Beneath a high ceiling, the lower quarter of the four walls consisted of glazed white tiles covered in interlinking blue-and-green geometric patterns: hexagrams, triskelions, circles, and bars. The tile, which ended just above my shoulders, was impressive enough, but what lay on the walls above it made me gasp.

Every bit of space was adorned with delicate raised plasterwork that looked like carved stone, formed in a riotous collection of intricate designs: medallions, curves, scrolling vines, arches—all geometric patterns, as the Muslim rulers who built the palace believed that representing the human form was forbidden. The raised plaster was stark white, its every curving edge gilded so that the wall glittered like a gem. Bits of pale blue and green paint had been sparingly applied in spots to give a hint of color. In the flickering half-light, the patterns shimmered and seemed to shift. There was no place for the eye to rest save the polished marble floor, no spot that failed to catch the light and gleam.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Berta crooned. “You’re lucky to have laid eyes upon it; most Sevillians are born and die without ever seeing it or knowing it’s here.”

I would have remained several minutes longer, but Berta was mindful of the time and hurried me along. “One more place that you would
never
see otherwise,” she said. She took me down another long corridor—this one going farther back, toward what I assumed was the private royal part of the palace—to a narrow staircase of dark wood. Berta lifted her skirts high so that she wouldn’t stumble, and I followed suit, suddenly worried that we might be caught in the queen’s private rooms.

The worn, shallow steps led up to a small choir loft overlooking an altar in a grotto next to walls that rose to cathedral height. Impossibly high chandeliers burned above dark wooden pews and above the altar, dominated by a massive, magnificent portrait of the Virgin, the infant Christ in her arms, as she was being crowned by a pair of cherubs.

For a long moment, we admired her—and the gold appointments on the altar, which gleamed bright against the dark wood. Finally, Berta said, “Time to go.”

She returned me to the reception hall where she had left Antonio. By then, the crowd had swelled, and half of the seats had been taken; the volume of conversation now matched that of the pipers, who were playing a spirited tune. Once Berta had gone, Antonio took my cloak—it was warm now that the room was full of people—and delivered it to a servant for safekeeping. He then led the way to a chair, which happened to be next to the elderly gentleman he’d been speaking with earlier.

I had no desire to kill time by making small talk with Antonio, but I was too flustered to do anything other than follow him; I didn’t feel like sitting alone among strangers or those city luminaries who knew my father and would ask awkward questions. The elderly man jumped to his feet at once and pulled the chair out for me. It was at the very head of a long table, at an end occupied by a small group accompanying the old man.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing from the shoulders.

“Don Francisco Sánchez at your service,” he replied, bowing himself. Don Francisco was small, stooped, and skeletally thin. I pegged him as seventy, although his voice and movements were those of a younger, vigorous man. He wore no beard, but his full white moustache was neatly trimmed at the lip, if long and curling at the ends; his thin white hair was oiled and brushed straight back, candidly revealing a large bald patch at the front. His eyes were large and dark brown, set above deep pockets of flesh framed by purplish half circles; his flesh was dark olive, the real mark of a
converso,
and browned by the sun. His thick, mostly black eyebrows and his large fleshy nose were his most prominent features. Sitting next to him was a middle-aged man I assumed to be his son or nephew, and two finely dressed women, who were too engrossed in their own conversation to take note of me. Men-at-arms, dressed in black and clearly not part of Isabel’s guard, hovered nearby to keep an eye on their master.

Don Francisco’s introduction wasn’t necessary; I’d already encountered him a few times. He attended the Franciscan church, and we occasionally saw him there, surrounded by his family and bodyguards. He always greeted my family warmly, especially my mother, but he never had cause to address me by name, nor I him. Even though my mother had always smiled back, and my father seemed to want to be friendly, something held him back, as though some ancient disagreement had made it impossible for them to be friends.

Even though my father never invited the old man to his frequent parties, he never spoke ill of him. And it was impossible to grow up in Seville and not speak of the well-respected Sánchez clan, whose members had converted from Judaism during the pogroms of the previous century. Despite the taint of
converso
blood, the Sánchez family had become the richest and most influential in Seville, and don Francisco was now the largest landholder.
Sitting on a hidden mountain of gold,
our servants used to say, claiming the old man had a royal fortune in gold coins buried on one of his many properties. Yet they said it without resentment, because don Francisco was famous for his incredible generosity to the poor and the sick. Many of the churches and almost all of the hospitals—including those run by the Dominicans—relied on his donations; not even Fray Hojeda dared bring up the man’s name during his anti-
converso
sermons, lest he anger his listeners.

I let Antonio make the introduction. It was fitting, since Antonio’s family had socialized with the Sánchezes and he was at ease with don Francisco. “And this is Marisol García, my neighbor.”