The Sisterhood

Chapter 6


Madrid, Winter 1504





The household of the Defensor del Santo Sepulchro family was in mourning. In the center of its great hall stood an elaborate bier draped in black and gold and surrounded by thick beeswax candles. On it lay the body of a woman in her thirties, her waxy face just visible under a shroud of black Brussels lace. A rosary of large black pearls with a diamond-and-gold crucifix was wound in her fingers. The countess had died a week after her stillborn son, and his tiny coffin with a lamb on its lid lay by her side. The bodies had lain in state for nearly three days, surrounded by the family and a host of nuns, friars, and priests who maintained a continuous vigil, praying for the souls of the departed. The next day there would be a procession to the Church of Saint Nicholas de los Servitas for a requiem Mass, followed by internment in the family vault.

The only daughter of the family, fifteen-year-old Isabella, knelt alone on one side of her mother’s bier, her father, six brothers, and the priest on the other. If her clothes indicated wealth and her posture piety, it was her face that made her interesting—attractive rather than beautiful, intelligent and alert, with regular features and dark-blue eyes beneath heavy brows. In the flickering light shed by the tapers and candles, melancholy shadows devoured Isabella’s black mourning dress, throwing her pale face and stiff white ruff into relief. The pearls dangling from her ears glowed softly in the light, as did her dark-gold hair beneath the mantilla covering her bent head. Once or twice her gaze flicked up and she saw the priest watching her narrowly. She dropped her eyes again to her clasped hands, her heart and mind racing.

She knew that her father and the priest were locked in a battle of wills over her future. Her family was an ancient one, and her pedigree outweighed even the huge dowry she would bring to a convent or a husband. Isabella was a vessel of limpieza de sangre, a pure Catholic bloodline untainted by intermarriage with Moors or Spanish Jews throughout the hundreds of years Muslims had ruled Spain. Since the Reconquista, Cristianos Viejos, Old Christians like the count’s family, had risen to even greater wealth and prominence. Their name meant “Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.” For centuries the family had secretly channeled money under the noses of their Moorish rulers to reclaim Jerusalem from the infidels. When their Catholic Majesties Isabella and Ferdinand swore to return the country to God and the Catholic Church, their plan to purge the country of unbelievers—Moors, Jews, and heretics—was a cause already dear to the count, whose pride in his bloodline was equaled only by his devotion to the church.

Three of his sons, none very robust, were destined for the church and already at the seminary at Valladolid. The other three were betrothed to the daughters of other Old Christian families. Only Isabella’s future still hung in the balance. She was lame from birth, and the priest had repeatedly urged the count to install her in one of the elite convents in Madrid, reminding him of the advantages to the family of having a daughter placed among nuns who had royal blood and close connections to the court.

This was true, and yet…the count suspected the priest’s rise in the church rested on his ability to steer human prizes of wealth and breeding into its arms. But the matter of the bloodline had made the count hesitate. The family’s ancient noble title could be inherited by female descendants. Should his sons die without issue, the title would pass to Isabella and through her to her children.

Shortly before being brought to bed with her last child, the countess had urged that Isabella’s marriage would be an extra safeguard for the family name, and the count had begun negotiating for her betrothal with several families. Now as he knelt beside his wife’s bier he vowed to conclude negotiations quickly. As soon as his choice was made, the marriage would take place without waiting for the end of the mourning period. The priest’s machinations were beginning to tire him.

Isabella swayed on her knees, feeling faint. The bodies had lain in state for two days and she was sure she could detect a whiff of decomposition. Her sense of smell was keen these days and her stomach heaved. She quickly put her handkerchief to her mouth to stifle a retch and fumbled for the pomander attached by a gold chain to her waist. Holding it to her nose, she breathed in the scent of dried orange peel, cloves, and anise. But now that she had noticed it, the smell of death seemed to enfold her in its cloying embrace. She had to get away or she would be sick in front of everyone…She began to lever herself up from the velvet cushion on which she had been kneeling. Allowances were made for her disability and no one would censure her for withdrawing.

She shook her head at the servant who came forward to help her. She crossed herself again and turned toward the door, holding herself upright with an effort, demonstrating that she could manage without help, that she was stronger than she appeared. She knew that Alejandro was watching. From his place among the friars chanting in the shadows, she felt his eyes following her with love and concern though the hood was pulled low on his forehead. By this time tomorrow they would be gone. Together.

That the daughter of the proud Defensor del Santo Sepulchro family would link her fate to that of a tutor in the household was something that no one would have thought possible. That was why the two young people were able to fall passionately in love beneath the eyes of everyone.

With the countess too ill with her pregnancies to attend to her daughter’s education, from an early age Isabella was sent to the schoolroom with her brothers. Their tutors were elderly scholars from a nearby monastery who tut-tutted at the presence of a little girl. What need had females for education? But the count was powerful enough to have his way in most things, and Isabella, hungry for attention and praise, proved the most conscientious student of the siblings and gradually won over the tutors by her studious application. They even forgot she was a girl.

Then, just before Isabella’s fourteenth birthday, a new tutor joined the family.

Fr. Alejandro Abenzucar was a seminary student at Valladolid, a young man of twenty-four who had demonstrated a brilliant grasp of mathematics, and Greek and Latin philosophy. His reputation as a promising Catholic scholar had reached the ears of the count, who insisted on the best for his sons and prevailed upon the young man’s superiors to postpone his final vows so that he might spend a year or two teaching the count’s sons. The seminary’s superiors felt nothing would be gained by revealing that the Abenzucar clan had been a Moorish family of influence and wealth with a large valley fiefdom in Andalusia, who had converted—most of them—to Christianity after the Reconquista, and that their youngest son had entered the church as proof their conversion was genuine.

Fr. Alejandro’s superiors failed to take into account that the converso scholar was a handsome young man blessed with the rare combination of good looks and a kind heart, nor had they any notion how much he detested the idea of the priesthood and inwardly rebelled at his family’s humiliating forced conversion. He was also desperately lonely. Few of the other seminary students went out of their ways to befriend a converso, prodigy or not.

As for Isabella, no one paused to reflect that she was no longer a child, but of marriageable age and, save for her limp, a lovely girl starved of affection a daughter had never merited in a family of boys. And no one asked themselves what use Fr. Alejandro’s mathematics and logic would be to a fourteen-year-old girl. Isabella’s presence in the schoolroom had long been taken for granted, and like any well-born girl, she was always chaperoned. Her duenna, a stern elderly woman, sat by Isabella’s side and sewed or told her beads during lessons. Only Isabella knew the old woman had grown deaf as a post and often fell asleep bolt upright in her chair or on her knees. Isabella helped conceal her frailties. She nudged the old woman awake when it was necessary for her to appear alert, and in the cold months slipped a shawl over her shoulders when she slept.

Alejandro was disconcerted to find a girl in the schoolroom, but was quickly reconciled to her presence by the same qualities that had appealed to her other tutors—her quickness of mind and her careful and considered answers to the questions he posed, her attention, and thoughtful application of what she learned. Gradually he began to notice Isabella’s small graces—her neat ways, her beautifully legible hand, her modest demeanor, and the kind attentions to the old lady by her side. Above all, he noticed the expression on her face when he addressed her, the blush of pleasure when he praised some piece of work, and the way she lowered her eyes bashfully, long lashes sweeping her cheeks.

He realized her presence illuminated the schoolroom each morning. He did not care that she had a limp. In fact, he had scarcely noticed it. Having no contact with young women in the seminary, he dreamed of girls constantly. Then he began to dream only of Isabella and her beautiful eyes.

To a shy girl who knew no men outside her family, Alejandro was as dazzling as Apollo in a fiery chariot, and Isabella was disconcerted when he spoke to her. Previously, she had never looked in the mirror longer than necessary to see that her hair was tidy, but she began to study her reflection more closely to see how she appeared to him. She began to dress carefully, deciding whether this or that color was becoming, completing her toilette with a few jewels, scenting her hair. Then she suffered agonies of nerves in his presence, in case he noticed her efforts.

Lodged in the tutor’s room next to the family chapel, Alejandro spent less and less time there, crossing back and forth across the courtyard to and from the count’s library, where he prepared his lessons. The courtyard was where Isabella liked to sit at her needlework each afternoon. As the duenna mumbled over her beads, they exchanged simple everyday pleasantries. Alejandro looked into Isabella’s eyes, tried to think of something interesting to say, and stuttered, “The weather is very fine today,” or “How loud the church bells sound.” To the despair of the gardener, he distractedly plucked the best blossoms from the carefully cultivated plants in the courtyard to present to Isabella. “The color of your embroidery thread,” he would say as his hand brushed hers.

Isabella would nod, accepting it, and give him a smile. It was sweet to be given a flower. Alejandro finally asked if he might read to her while she sewed—a devotional work of course. His choice was The Divine Comedy. “It is about love! An allegory of holy love,” he exclaimed enthusiastically.

Love! Isabella blushed, staring hard at her sewing as if she had never seen anything so interesting in her life as blue silk thread. “As you think best,” she murmured. “I have not read it. My Italian is insufficient.”

“Ah, exactly! Then you will benefit doubly—in addition to its instructive discourse, it will improve your Italian.” But its instructive discourse was of love and adoration. And discussing these interesting topics did indeed give them a chance to practice their Italian, which the duenna did not speak. But had her hearing been as sharp as it once was, she would have had no need of Italian to notice the passion with which they compared courtly love, which looked for nothing beyond adoration of its object, and profane earthly love, which looked for a good deal more. In fact, so much was said on the topic of love and its ecstasy with Alejandro close by her side that Isabella found it difficult to confine her mind to love’s subliminal nature. Alejandro’s presence by her side made the air sweet and bright, and the sound of his voice threw her into a turmoil of emotion, made her heart pound and her trembling fingers snare her needlework into a hopeless tangle.

“La gloriosa donna della mia mente”—“the glorious lady of my mind”—as Dante had called Beatrice, rang in Isabella’s ears as she remembered how intently he had looked into her eyes when he said it. At night in her bed she whispered it over and over, at the same time reminding herself severely that Beatrice was pure and unattainable, and the phrase had to be understood chastely.

Then one afternoon in the middle of a highly charged discussion of the intensity of spiritual passion, the duenna went off to answer one of her frequent calls of nature and Alejandro exclaimed, “I must tell you or die!” He knelt at her feet and clutched her hands. “You are my angel and truly, the flower, the glorious lady of my heart. I will place my life, my soul, in your power and no longer conceal the truth from you. I am no Christian with celibacy in his heart but a Moor with blood in his veins. And I am not Dante, to live forever without Beatrice. I would prefer death to parting from you.”

“An infidel!” Isabella exclaimed in horror. Alejandro rushed on bravely. A Muslim’s love for a Christian was not dishonorable. Until the Reconquista, the Abenzucar family had intermarried with Christian and Jewish neighbors, and had enjoyed a long friendship with a Christian convent—the Convent of the Swallows, Las Golondrinas, that stood above the valley where the Abenzucars had their estates. The Abenzucar women would travel up the mountain to visit the nuns with gifts of dried fruit, spices, and almonds for the Christian feast days, while the nuns offered prayers when the Abenzucars suffered illness or the women gave birth, and shared the medicines they made with great skill.

Though she could not imagine such cordial relations between nuns and the infidels, Isabella’s scandalized expression wavered.

“If you do not believe me, in your own father’s library is a book that proves the truth of what I say. It is the recollections of a venerable Christian hermit, a true Old Christian like your family, who lived in the mountains hundreds of years ago and who praised the nuns of the Convent of the Swallows for their learning and peaceable relations with their neighbors.”

“But you converted, and that changes everything,” Isabella said sadly.

Alejandro’s expression altered as he explained he had done so unwillingly. After the Reconquista, formerly powerful Muslim families like the Abenzucars were offered a stark choice—baptism, or exile and confiscation of their lands and wealth. But his elderly father had decreed some must go and some must stay. Several families of younger cousins fled to Portugal, but Alejandro’s parents, brothers, sisters, and their families had to become Christians and stay to preserve their estate. Baptism was only a formality. The Abenzucars would remain Muslims in secret and hope for better times.

A mass baptism of the family and all their servants and peasants had been held at his parents’ estate. A distressing matter of necessity, his father had thought, but one to which they need not give the slightest credence. How could they seriously embrace the blasphemous practice of worshipping three gods instead of Allah, the one God?

But the Abenzucars had not anticipated the way in which the church authorities would seal their conversion. Alejandro’s eyes filled with tears and his voice faltered. After the ceremony, a large group of people from the valley, their friends and neighbors, men, women, children, and old people were herded together to a vast pile of wood and brush. Their crime was read out. They were apostates, baptized but practicing as Muslims in secret. The Abenzucars had been forced to watch the auto-da-fé that followed as the accused heretics were burned alive before them. Their screams and cries and pleas to Alejandro’s powerless father were a warning of what awaited false Christians. And to remind them that those enemies of the church would pay the penalty as enemies of Spain. And so, Alejandro had entered the church to allay suspicion of the Abenzucars’ conversion.

What was Isabella to do now? Alejandro should be the mortal enemy of any Christian Spaniard. But her heart overrode what her religion had drummed into her, and above all, Alejandro’s story inspired pity for him and the poor victims.

“God is great! I love you. Betray me if you must. My life is yours to do what you will,” Alejandro took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. Isabella thought she would faint.

The duenna returned muttering about her bowels and Alejando let go of Isabella’s hand. “Your secret is safe. I will never betray you,” Isabella whispered behind the duenna’s back, longing for the touch of Alejandro’s lips again.

In the schoolroom they hardly dared look at one another now, each felt so keenly the presence of the other. Alejandro found it more and more necessary to lean over Isabella’s shoulder to point out a passage in a book. Isabella would murmur, “Is this the one? Or this?” pointing to she-hardly-knew-where on the page to keep him close as long as possible.

Then one day when they were alone in the schoolroom save for the duenna snoring in the corner, Alejandro kissed her bent neck. She shivered, her lips parting, and looked up. Then before the two young people knew it, their lips met. Isabella broke away first, whispering they had sinned. Alejandro whispered that he did not care and kissed her again, so firmly that this time Isabella, transported, did not protest. The duenna stirred and they leaped apart.

“Will you come to me tonight?” begged Alejandro in a whisper.

There was no time for Isabella to do anything but whisper “Yes!”

Isabella’s duenna slept soundly in an alcove in her room, but in case she woke, Isabella took care to mound her pillows to look like her sleeping form. She donned an embroidered nightdress, scented herself with essence of roses from a little vial, then slipped soundlessly through an anteroom and quietly down the stairs through a servants’ entrance to the courtyard where Alejandro swept her into his arms, as if it was where she belonged.

They were young and passionate lovers, meeting every night sheltered behind the great pots of flowers in the corners of the courtyard or in Alejandro’s cell, where they huddled together on his narrow bed. Isabella’s gold hair cascaded over her naked shoulders as Alejandro recited Dante’s sonnets between kisses. But Dante’s love for Beatrice was nothing compared to theirs.

“Dante and Beatrice had barely spoken to one another, then she married another and died leaving Dante with nothing but her shade to mourn. What is the good of such love?” Isabella murmured into Alejandro’s shoulder, loving its warmth and strength, and pitying Beatrice.

Alejandro kissed the top of her head. “It begat a great work of literature.” He sighed. “But I do not want to write a great work of literature. I want only never to be parted from you.”

They risked everything for these moments of precarious happiness when nothing existed beyond the two of them, dreading the time when Alejandro would be obliged to return to the seminary and take his final vows, and Isabella’s fate would be decided, one way or the other. Isabella knew that her father was considering several offers made for her hand, but she suspected that the priest would not easily abandon his machinations to have her enter a convent. Whatever the outcome, a future without the warmth of Alejandro’s love seemed bleak and cold as death itself.

Then Isabella began to feel sick in the mornings, and one day in her bedroom she swooned while dressing for Mass. When she came to her senses she vomited weakly into her handkerchief. She sent her maid to fetch her a dish of lemons, sliced thin, which she suddenly longed for beyond all reason. Her maid brought them and said slyly that when she washed Isabella’s underclothes there had been no sign of her monthly blood for some time; perhaps soon it would be necessary to let out the seams in her gowns. When Isabella looked surprised the maid shook her head and muttered something about how interesting this discovery would be for Isabella’s future husband. Isabella remembered her mother’s violent sickness when pregnant and her fondness, too, for lemons at that time. A terrible possibility presented itself.

The maid rattled on, saying that was Muslim conversos for you, anxious only to get under the skirts of Christian girls. “Fr. Alejandro, such a handsome young man for a priest…So diligent with your lessons,” she simpered, and then mentioned that her uncle was a familiar of the Inquisition. The maid aspired to be one, too, and her uncle had set her a test, saying she must keep her eyes and ears open for anything to report and promised to have a word on her behalf. Only last week, the maid said dreamily, she had revealed to her uncle that the cook was a secret Jew and in league with the devil to kill the countess’s baby when it was born, so it could be used in cannibalistic Jewish rites. The cook had been taken away, weeping with terror and protesting her innocence. A new cook had been hired. The old one was not expected to return.

Any day, the maid expected to receive her reward for this information. But how much greater the reward would be for the information that a Morisco’s bastard would stain the honor of an Old Christian family! What a pretty bracelet Isabella was wearing. Silently Isabella unclasped it and gave it to her tormentor, then turned her head away.

When Isabella told Alejandro, he put his hand on her stomach and exclaimed in wonder, “A child! Now we must be married! Our decision is made for us. God is great!”

But Isabella could think of nothing except what would happen when her condition became known. She would be handed to the Inquisition examiners who would spare her nothing to extract a damning confession and evidence to condemn Alejandro. Then she would be walled up alive while Alejandro would be turned over to the Inquisition until a full confession was tortured out of him, and he was burned at the stake as an apostate like the unfortunate Muslims on his family’s estate.

Alejandro said he had a plan. They would flee to his cousins in Portugal, before the maid tired of bribes and Isabella’s condition became obvious. “But how?” a tearful Isabella asked. “And when?”

“Hush, beloved! Soon, when your mother gives birth and the household is occupied with the christening.”

But it was the countess’s death that provided the perfect opportunity. The requiem Mass would be one of the few occasions Isabella could leave the palace, in the company of her duenna of course, but the old woman was a small hindrance. Alejandro would wear a workman’s clothes under his habit and Isabella would dress plainly under her cloak. Their plan was to slip away after the requiem Mass, to melt into the crowd when the family left for the internment in their private crypt. The crypt was a confined space and neither Isabella nor Alejandro was important enough to be present, and the count’s palace was full of people on account of the funeral. It would be many hours before Isabella and Alejandro were missed from the throng. Alejandro’s wealthy father had provided a purse of gold pieces for expenses at the seminary, and with it Alejandro had made the necessary arrangements. A farmer’s humble covered cart, mules, and provisions for the journey would be waiting in a side street near St. Nicholas de los Servitas.

There was just one final detail—the place where they were to meet at the church the next day in case they were separated in the crowd. Alejandro had told her to meet him in the far corner of the courtyard at midnight; he had prepared a small plan of the church marked with their meeting place in one of the chapels, he knew of a small service door behind a tapestry. That door led into an alley. Alejandro would be waiting when she came out.

Isabella worried about meeting him with so many priests and friars in the house, but Alejandro assured her that after several long nights’ vigils, all would be trying to snatch a few hours’ sleep before the next day’s funeral.

So while Isabella knelt by her mother’s bier and prayed for the souls of her mother and baby brother, she also made guilty supplications for the success of their plan.

When at last she fled the hall and its smells, Isabella sent her maid away and undid her too-tight bodice with relief. How swollen her breasts felt. She reminded herself that she only needed to be patient until tomorrow. She waited until it was time to meet Alejandro, then wrapped a woolen cloak over her nightdress, and managed to negotiate the servants’ steep narrow back staircase, clinging to the banister for support and hearing snores in the darkness coming from the great hall.

She waited, barefooted and chilled to the bone, fearing Alejandro had fallen asleep, too. At last she heard soft footsteps crossing the tiles. She hurried to meet him and threw herself into the arms of the hooded figure. “Oh Alejandro, warm me in your arms. It is so cold,” she whispered.

But instead of embracing her, the hooded figure stiffened and drew back with a sharp exclamation of surprise. Shoving her roughly away he lowered his hood and Isabella saw not Alejandro but—the priest! Then another figure came from the shadows whispering urgently, “Isabella, we must be quick! The priest is awake but I was afraid you would take cold waiting…”

The priest shouted, “You would seduce the count’s daughter? Villain, infidel, to insult the honor of this Christian house! Apostate! Devil! False Christian!”

Servants and friars appeared, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. “Seize him!” the priest roared.

Isabella fell at the priest’s feet to protest it was her fault, but it was too late. There was an uproar and Alejandro was dragged away struggling in the grips of four men, crying out the fault was his, not Isabella’s.

The count was informed immediately, and at first refused to believe that his daughter had been beguiled into a clandestine meeting with a lowly converso friar. Had he suspected how far the relationship had gone, he would have drawn his sword and killed Isabella and Alejandro on the spot. As it was, he had Isabella whipped unconscious, then locked in her chamber.

The next day he broke off all betrothal negotiations.

Her maid brought bread and water once a day and Isabella passed her time in pain and silence. A month went by and Easter approached. The welts on her back healed. She stopped feeling sick and her waist grew thicker. The sly maid whispered that since the winter had been mild, an epidemic of fever was spreading through the poor quarters of the city. She told Isabella that a great bribe from Alejandro’s family had spared his life, but he had been sent to work in the infirmary for the poor, where the pestilence raged. With great relish the maid described the hell of filth, suffering, and death into which Alejandro had been cast, until Isabella covered her ears and gave the maid a brooch to go away.

The mirror told Isabella she had changed. Her soft cheeks had hollows; there were shadows under her eyes and her dark gold hair was dull and thin. She felt suffocated by a noxious pervasive smell as the weather grew warmer. The pestilence? Her maid hinted there were ways not to have a baby; there were potions and spells and old women who could “see to it.” Isabella turned a deaf ear. She wanted nothing to do with spells and witchcraft and poisons that would conjure the baby from her body. She remembered the look of joy on Alejandro’s face when she told him, and felt such an intense love for the baby it nearly choked her. The maid helped herself to Isabella’s things with impunity—trinkets and clothing, gloves, a shawl, ribbons. Isabella scarcely noticed. She could think of only one thing—how to save the baby.

Alejandro managed to send Isabella a letter calling her his dearest Beatrice, his light in hell. She must forget him and think only of herself and their child; if she could find her way to the Valley of the Swallows, she might throw herself on the mercy of his family. Isabella kissed the paper and felt a glimmer of hope. Alejandro was alive. Perhaps they might yet escape to Portugal…The baby kicked, to encourage her. Could the greedy maid be bribed to help them escape? Isabella discovered cunning. She reminded the maid that the Inquisition had never paid her for her betrayal of the cook, while she would be well rewarded for aiding her and Alejandro’s escape. The maid admitted this was true and agreed to carry letters between the lovers so they could work out what would be necessary—mules, food, and bribes for those who guarded Alejandro.

Then the maid returned with news that Alejandro was dead. He had succumbed to the pestilence, and his body had been thrown into a common grave in a lime pit behind the infirmary along with the corpses of the poor. Isabella betrayed no emotion, too bereft to weep. Had he died with her name on his lips? She longed for death, too, but she must live, at least until the baby was born. She knew she must find a way to escape the palace before she gave birth, and make her way to the Abenzucars. The sly and dishonest maid was her only hope. Then even that frail link was severed. A new serving girl who was deaf and dumb brought Isabella’s food and Isabella never saw her former maid again.

Hoping for a reward, the maid had reported to the count that Isabella and the Morisco still corresponded and planned to run away. The count did not believe her and had her locked in the cellars without food or drink to prevent such a vile story spreading. There, with rats scrabbling in the dark for company, the maid knew that her only revenge was that the count’s precious family line would be polluted with the blood of heretics! She perished miserably trying to suck moisture from the walls.

Isabella, equally trapped in the palace, only knew her situation grew more dangerous with each day that passed. Then, incredibly, it was the priest’s intervention that opened the door for her escape. Despite the count’s efforts to suppress it, rumors of Isabella’s attempted seduction by an infidel had spread among Old Christian families. The priest advised the count that the best that could be done in the circumstances was to place Isabella in a convent far from Madrid, preferably among an insignificant order of nuns. Let the girl and the scandal she had caused die in obscurity.

When the count informed his disgraced daughter of her fate, Isabella heard him with downcast eyes and a submissive expression, masking the spark of hope his words raised in her heart. On her knees, she begged her father as penance that he allow her three days in his library, to choose a convent such as he intended. Her father, having no better plan, agreed and dismissed her curtly, taking little notice of the fact that her wide hooped skirts sat higher than before. Isabella’s disability had always given her an awkward shape.

In the count’s library Isabella hunted desperately for the book that mentioned the convent of the swallows above the valley where the Abenzucars lived. She finally found what she was looking for, a disintegrating volume with mildewed pages that made her sneeze. It had been written by a Christian hermit’s acolyte during the time of the Moors. The young acolyte had joined the hermit in his cave in the Andalusian mountains, intending to share his master’s privations and preserve his teachings for posterity. But the hermit kept such long spells of fasting and silence that the acolyte went in search of food and conversation with the mountain folk. Among them was a community of religious women living in what the Moors called the House of the Swallows, and Christians called Las Golondrinas Convent.

Isabella had never heard of the order, Sors Santas de Jesus—Holy Sisters of Jesus. According to the acolyte, local people believed the order had occupied the site before the Moors and even the Visigoths before them, possibly since the Roman occupation of Hispania. The order was skilled with medicines, and the convent was known for charity to the poor of the mountain villages, regardless of their religion. Mountain people believed the nuns had special powers given by God. They said the swallows that returned to the convent each year from their migration and gave the place its name were the souls of dead nuns, and the convent was haunted by a tall woman in a billowing cloak. The main thing was that it would satisfy her father’s wish to hide her away.

Isabella cared only for the convent’s proximity to the Abenzucars in the valley below. For the moment she had no plan beyond reaching that valley. What to say to Alejandro’s family, whether they would take her in—she would worry about that on the journey. Could she manage so long a journey, concealing her condition? She must. Fortunately she was slender, and the swell of her stomach could be disguised by exaggerating her limp to make her skirts sway, or bending to lean on her walking stick.

The count had never heard of the order, but made his own inquiries. What he learned gave him a grim satisfaction. The convent had Old Christian associations, and was far from Madrid in the mountains, at the end of an old Roman route from the coast. He sent for his notaries to prepare the nun’s dowry Isabella was to have. As soon as that matter was settled they left Madrid, Isabella concealed behind the leather curtains of the carriage. But her plan to go to the Abenzucars was now impossible. Her father was accompanying her on horseback.

Day after day, they traveled with agonizing slowness, Isabella willing the carriage to hurry, bracing herself against the cushions, counting over and over on her fingers the number of months. She thought they would reach the convent in time, unless the baby came too quickly. Her mother’s troubled experiences of childbirth had been the subject of whispered discussions among the maids and nurses of the household, and Isabella had acquired more knowledge of pregnancy and childbirth than most unmarried girls. She knew there was not much time left. A mule grew lame. A wheel did not turn properly. They halted for salve and then repairs. Isabella questioned the coachman impatiently. How much farther? The coachman did not know.

The road into the mountains grew steeper. Fresh mules were hitched to the carriage and new drivers took over, local men. When she asked, they pointed to the mountain ahead of them and finally gave her the welcome news they would reach Las Golondrinas Convent the next day. Inside the carriage Isabella stroked her belly to calm the baby as it kicked. By the time the carriage stopped for the night at a mountain refugio, a dull pain had begun tightening across her abdomen and back. Throughout a long night it came and went, came and went. Isabella lay sleepless on her straw pallet, perspiring with fear.