In the Garden of Iden Read online

  Also there, in the enormous cathedral, the Infanta Katherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, is supposed to have stopped to hear Mass on her way to marry the Prince of England. Now, in this cathedral was a silver censer, big as a cauldron, that swung in stately arcs at the end of a chain; and during the Infanta's Mass the chain broke and this censer hurtled out of the church through a window and exploded like a bomb on the paving stones outside. Some people would have taken this as an omen, but not the Infanta. She went resolutely on to England and wound up marrying King Henry the Eighth. This shows that one ought to pay attention to omens.

  Anyway, we lived near there. My parents were thin and desperately poor, but racially pure, as they constantly assured us; and that is about all I remember of them. Racially pure meant a lot in Spain in those days, you see. Presumably to extend the line of Old White Christians, my parents had half a dozen little children, which they soon regretted because our house only had one room.

  This is where the story begins.

  One day in 1541 (all dates approximate) my mother was sitting by the door, gloomily watching her little White Christians as they rolled in a screaming knot in the dust of the yard. Along the road came some people on horseback. They were very well dressed and looked as white as we did, nothing like Jews or Moriscos, though of course you could never tell nowadays. They reined in beside the gate and sat watching us for a moment.

  "Good morning, gentle sirs and ladies," said my mother.

  "Good morning, goodwife," said a tall lady with red hair. "What pretty children you have."

  "Thank you, gentle lady," said my mother.

  "And so many of them," said the lady.

  "Yes, gentle lady," said my mother ruefully. (At least, they said something like this, but in sixteenth-century Galician Spanish, all right?)

  We children had meanwhile stopped fighting and were staring at the people openmouthed. They really did look wealthy. I recall the women had those things on their heads like the queens on playing cards wear. You know.

  "Perhaps," said the fine lady, "you have more little ones here than you can provide for? You would perhaps entertain the idea of, say, hiring one out?"

  Now my mother's eyes went narrow with suspicion. She didn't know who these people were. They could be Jews, and everybody knew that Jews bought and ate Christian children. Or they could be agents of the Church, sent to see if they could confiscate her property because she was the kind of woman who sold her children to Jews. They could be anybody.

  "Gentle lady, please," she said. "Have consideration for a mother's feelings. How should I sell my own flesh and blood, which is very old Christian blood, you should know."

  "That is very obvious," said the lady soothingly.

  "In fact, we are descended from the Goths," added my mother.

  "Of course," said the lady. "Actually, this was an entirely honorable proposition I had in mind. You see, my husband, Don Miguel de Mendes y Mendoza, was wrecked on the rocks at La Coruña, and I am traveling around the country until I have performed one hundred acts of charity for the repose of his soul. I thought I'd take one of your children into my house as a servant. The child would have food and clothing, a virtuous Catholic upbringing, and a suitable marriage portion arranged when she comes of age. What do you think of this idea?"

  Boy, my mamacita was in a quandary. Just what every Poor but Honest Mother prayed would happen! One less mouth to feed without the expense of a funeral! Still… I can just see her racing mentally down the list of One Hundred Ways to Recognize a Secret Jew, posted by the Holy Inquisition in every village square.

  "I would have to have some kind of surety," she said slowly.

  Beaming, the lady held out a purse, heavy and all clinquant, as the man says, with gold.

  My mother swallowed hard and said: "Please excuse me, gentle lady, but you will surely understand my hesitation." She wasn't going to come right out and say, Would you care to stay for dinner, we're having pork?

  The lady understood perfectly. Spaniards were as famed for paranoia as for courtesy in those days. She pulled out a little silver case that hung about her neck on a chain.

  "I swear by the finger of Holy Saint Catherine of Alexandria that I am neither Judaizer nor Morisco," she declared. She leaned over and put the purse into my mother's hands, and my mother opened it and looked inside. Then my mother looked at all of us, with our gaping little mouths, and she sighed and shrugged.

  "Honest employment is a good thing for a child," she said. "So. Which one would you like to hire?"

  The lady looked us over carefully, like a litter of small cats, and said: "What about the one with the red hair?"

  That was me. That was the first moment I can remember being aware of being me, myself alone. My mother came and got me and led me to the gate. The lady smiled down at me from the height of her horse.

  "What about it, little girl?" she said. "Would you like to come live in a fine house, and have fine clothes to wear, and plenty of food to eat?"

  "Yes," I said like a shot. "And my own bed to sleep in, too?"

  Whereupon my mother slapped me, but all the fine folk laughed. "Yes," said the lady, "I'll take that one." So I was taken indoors to have my face washed while the strangers waited, and my mother stripped off my filthy shift and pulled a clean one on over my head. Then she leaned close to give me her last piece of advice before sending me out into the world.

  "If those people turn out to have been lying, hija, you go straight to the Holy Inquisition and inform on them."

  "Yes, Mama," I said.

  Then we went out and I was lifted up in front of one of the men: he smelled of leather and musk perfume. We waved goodbye and rode slowly away into the golden morning. Goodbye Mama, Papa, Babies, Little Stone House!

  I didn't cry. I was only four or five, but I knew I was going off on a splendid adventure. Food and clothing and my very own bed!

  Though before we had ridden many miles, the lady carefully explained to me that what she had told my mother wasn't exactly true: I was not to be a servant.

  "In fact, little girl, we are going to do you a very great honor," she said. "We are going to betroth you to be married to a mighty lord. This will be much to your advantage, for then you will no longer be a little pauper: You will be a noblewoman."

  It sounded fine to me, except: "I'm only a little girl. Big girls get married, not little ones," I observed.

  "Oh, gentlefolk marry off their little children all the time," said the lady serenely. "Little princes, little princesses, two and three years old they hitch them up. So you see there's no problem."

  We rode along for a while, past castles and crags, while I mulled this over.

  "But I'm not a princess," I said at last.

  "You will be," I was assured by the man who held me. He wore riding gauntlets with the cuffs embroidered in gold wire. I can see the pattern to this day. "As soon as he marries you, you see."

  "Oh," I said, seeing nothing at all. But they all smiled at one another. What a slender, elegant lot they were, with their smiles and secrets. I considered my cotton shift and my grubby sandals, and felt as strange as red wheat in a vase of lilies.

  "Why is this lord going to marry me?" I wanted to know.

  "I told you, I'm arranging it as an act of charity," said the lady.

  "But—"

  "He loves little girls," laughed one of them, a very young man, his face still downy over the lip. The others all glared at him, and the lady rode between us and said:

  "He too is a very charitable man. And life will be splendid for you from now on! You'll wear gowns of fine velvet and shoes lined with lamb's fleece. You'll have a bed all to yourself with sheets of the whitest lawn, the counterpane embroidered with ruby pomegranates and golden lilies. You'll have a servant to lift you into it each night. The pillow will be filled with whitest down from the wild geese that fly to England in the spring."

  I stared at her. "What land is he lord of, this lord?" I asked finally.


  "The summer land," said the lady. "Beyond Zaragoza." I didn't know where that was. "Shall I tell you about the palace where you'll live? The most beautiful palace of Argentoro, which is not least among the palaces of the world, being made of blocks of pure white marble veined with gold. The park around it is seven by seventy leagues to a side and filled with pleasant streams and walks; there are orange groves and pools where swim gold and silver fish. There are Indians and monkeys from the New World; there are rose gardens. Everything a little girl could want."

  "Oh," I said again.

  And again they all smiled at one another over my head.

  Well, that had me floating on air. Except, in all the stories I'd ever heard, little princesses had big troubles. It was true that handsome princes usually came and rescued them, but the troubles came first and sometimes they lasted a hundred years.

  Anyway, we rode on through green mountains, I asking questions and they laughing at me. By nightfall we reached a big old house set far back from the road, darkly shadowed by oak trees, and there wasn't a castle or an orange grove in sight.

  They took me inside this dark house, and I must admit I had the biggest meal of bacon and onions I'd ever seen, all to myself. But when I asked them where the great lord was, they told me he'd be there soon; he was riding from a far country and it would take him days yet to arrive. Then they put me to bed alone in a room, all to myself—another promise kept—and for all my doubt I slept soundly.

  I lived with those people in that house for maybe a week. I knew there was something odd about the household but, being a peasant child, didn't know that it was unusual for gentlefolk to live in a remote house with nearly no furniture, no servants, and no visible means of support—in that century, anyway. They had plenty of food of the finest quality (in my opinion), and their clothes were not threadbare. These weren't impoverished nobility; their purses were heavy with gold that never diminished.

  They made no attempt to train me in any kind of work. In fact, I was left to myself to wander through the empty rooms of the house all day, while they came and went on mysterious errands. They were more and more evasive in answering my questions. Sometimes they gave conflicting answers, or fanciful ones a baby wouldn't have believed.

  By sitting quietly where they didn't think I could hear, I gathered that the house was only a temporary place and we wouldn't be staying there long. The red-haired lady seemed to be their mistress; they all deferred to her. There was to be some kind of party soon, at a place called The Rocks, where other persons would be waiting for us.

  The ring was turning my finger green, as the saying goes.

  Then, one day, I was alone with the youngest man of the party. He was the only one who would play with me; he talked so much, the others were always cautioning him to silence. Watching from my cupboard window, I had seen the lady and her friends ride away that morning. I climbed out of bed and padded down the creaking stairs.

  The young man was sitting on the empty kitchen floor. He had just opened a bottle of wine and raised it in a toast when he saw me peering around the doorway.

  "Greetings, little one," he said, and drank deep. I stared at him. His doublet had small white birds and red hearts embroidered all over it. The hearts were silk and looked shiny-wet, like candies.

  "I'm hungry," I told him.

  "So eat." He pushed a tray across the flagstones with his boot. It had bread and cheese and radishes on it. I picked up a loaf of bread.

  "It's too big." I pulled vainly at the crust.

  He sent his dagger clattering across the floor toward me. I took it in surprise. Didn't he know that little children weren't supposed to play with knives? Suppose I planned to rob him? But I managed to slice some bread without taking off a finger as well and sat there chewing, staring at him thoughtfully. He kept on drinking the wine. By the time I had eaten most of the bread and cheese, his eyelids were drooping and his mouth was silly. I decided to try asking about my future one more time.

  "What about this husband I'm supposed to have, señor?" I prodded.

  He looked blank. Then he giggled and laid a finger beside his nose, which was the sixteenth-century body language equivalent of a broad wink.

  "Well," he said. "Little lady, I'll tell you a great secret. He arrived here in the night."

  "He did?" Oh, how my heart leaped up. "Where is he?"

  "Ssh. Ssh. He's asleep. If you wake him, he'll be angry! He'll come down and strike you with a thunderbolt! Eh? So don't bother him. Anyway, you'll see him soon enough."

  "When?" I wanted to know.

  "Tonight." His smile got sillier. "At moonrise." And he took another long pull at his bottle. I sat there and fumed. Thunderbolts! Who did he think he was fooling?

  He chuckled to himself for a while and finally took a long slow slide down the wall. When he arrived on the floor, he arranged his hat for a pillow and went unconcernedly to sleep. I headed for the staircase at once. I had to have a look at this great lord. Up the high bare creaking flight narrow as a ladder, I went; round and round to the top of the house.

  At the end of the passageway was a shut door. I ran and pulled it open.

  No lord there, with riding boots and sword propped beside his bed; no fine aristocrat pale against the bed linen. No. Only, leaning in the corner, the figure of a man all braided together out of sheaves of wheat. He was large as life and decked with colored ribbons, bright and frivolous as festival time.

  Writing this down, I can still feel the howl of disappointment rising in me. I tiptoed into the room—God knows why I tiptoed, I could never wake him—and looked very closely to be sure.

  A big straw dolly was all he was, like the play figures folk put up to decorate their houses at harvest time and burned later. I remembered seeing them. I remembered the priest scowling and telling us these were things of the Devil.

  I had been crying quietly but clapped my hands over my mouth as Light Dawned on me.

  Crash of cymbals for dramatic emphasis here. Actually, there had to have been quite a lot of crashing and other commotion going on downstairs at this point, but all I heard was my own heart pounding. These people were witches. The Devil gave them powers and that was where all the gold came from and of course all witches dressed in splendid clothes. No, wait, wasn't that secret Jews? Was it Jews who sacrificed little children to idols and witches who ate them, or the other way around? Whichever, I had to find the Holy Inquisition as fast as I could.

  I turned and scurried down the stairs, arriving at the bottom landing to behold the hallway full of big men, booted and spurred. Two of them were dragging the young man out of the kitchen. He had puked all over his doublet in terror, and hung limp between them. A grim-looking fellow leaned down and said:

  "Señor, the Holy Inquisition is waiting for you. It seems they wish to discuss a matter of faith."

  "Are you Inquisidors?" I inquired, peering through the stair railings. All their heads swung up in astonishment.

  "Yes," said the grim man.

  With a cry of relief I ran down and hugged him around the legs. He stared at me in shock. I can't imagine he got that kind of reaction from people very often.

  "Thank you, Holy Inquisidor!" I babbled. "These people are witches and they were going to kill me and there's a big scary devil-thing upstairs, I saw it, and I didn't know how to find you but here you are! Please save me, señor!"

  There was a moment's silence before he turned to his men and said:

  "Seize this child also. And search the house."

  Well, I didn't think anything was wrong, even when they hauled me out and set me on a horse and bound my hands to the pommel. After all, everyone knew the Holy Office played a little rough. I was so grateful to be saved, I didn't mind in the least. All I had to do (I thought) was explain everything to the Inquisidors and they would understand the danger I had been in. All would be well. Of course.

  They brought out the young man—he was crying now—and tied him to a horse too. They brought
out a big bundle containing everything they had found in the house; I could see the trailing ribbons of the wheat man.

  "See, señor?" I pointed as well as I could with my hands bound. "There's the bad devil-thing. Are you going to burn this bad man, señor? Are you going to tell my mama and papa?"

  But they wouldn't answer me. They all mounted; a man vaulted up behind me, and away we rode at a gallop. Just as before, my heart was bright and light. I was rescued! I was safe! Goodbye, dark house under the oak trees!

  Well.

  We came to the great city of Santiago in broad morning, by country lanes and by narrow city streets where not a soul moved, even in the light of day. I remember a city white with dust and blazing in all its stone ways: no people, I suppose because of the heat, but also because the Holy Office was secretive and came and went on near-deserted streets. The streets glared all the brighter for their emptiness. It hurt my eyes to look.

  But soon enough we went under a big archway, the horses' hooves echoing back, and down steep stairs into darkness. And that was the last I had to worry about the sun hurting my eyes for a long time.

  I was locked in a tiny dark room. There was a sort of wooden tray on the floor, filled with straw, to lie down in; there was a crockery pot to do something else in. No other thing in that room at all; no windows. The only light came from the grated window in the door.

  So there I was, in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

  CHAPTER THREE

  « ^ »

  It really wasn't so bad at first. I was full of optimism; I sat there in the straw rehearsing all the things I would say to the Inquisidors when they sent for me—any minute now, I was sure—with a particularly dramatic rendering of how I found the wheat man at the top of the stairs. And at least I still had a bed to myself, though this one had a moldy smell.