Bridge of Fire, page 10
“I must admit that next to Luis, Don Ruy seems a prince.”
“You are not saying this just to please me?”
“No, Papá. Let me think on it a day or two.”
At the end of two days Francisca came to her father in the library, where he sat in his favorite chair reading a book.
“Papá, I have arrived at a decision.” She sat down on a low stool at his feet. “I would welcome Don Ruy as a husband.”
“You are certain?” he questioned. “Good, then. I think you are wise.”
Pedro did not ask Francisca if she loved Don Ruy or even if she could love him. Her father had said from the very beginning that love had little to do with marriage. She could see that now. Love is a hoax, Francisca thought bitterly, illusory, a will-o’-the-wisp that can be blown away at the first puff of an adverse wind. Perhaps it was best that I did tell Miguel the truth, even though it was a great risk. If he had discovered it later, say after the child was born, then his hate for me would be all the harder to bear.
One afternoon, ten days after the conversation with her father and two weeks before the wedding, Francisca was awakened from her siesta by the sound of voices. Don Pedro, Mariana, Leonor, and Beatriz had gone to Tezcuco to visit acquaintances, and (with the exception of the servants) she was alone in the house with Aunt Juliana. As far as she could make out, Juliana was talking to a man, for she could hear Juliana’s high, rather treble voice and the low tenor of a man’s.
Francisca, mildly puzzled, turned over on her pillow and was settling into a doze when she thought she heard her name spoken in anger by Juliana. She sat up, curious now as to who Juliana’s visitor might be. Throwing a wrapper about her shoulders, she tiptoed barefoot to the door, opened it a crack, and peeked out. They were in the patio, under the gallery.
“Of course, I have no intention of discussing this meeting,” Aunt Juliana said, “and I trust you will do the same.”
The man murmured some words Francisca could not make out.
She stole to the railing and leaned over, but all she could see of the man was a brown velvet-clad shoulder and arm. For one heart-stopping moment she thought it might be Miguel. She tried to get a closer look, bending forward at a perilous angle, and in so doing, dislodged a hanging flowerpot, which went crashing into the patio below.
Francisca immediately sprang back, ashamed to be caught eavesdropping.
“Is that you, Francisca?” Aunt Juliana called.
A guilty flush spread over Francisca’s features. “Yes, Auntie,” she answered, coming forward. “I was looking for Pepé.”
“I haven’t seen him.” Juliana stood, hands on hips, ostensibly waiting for Francisca to return to her room.
Francisca, left with no alternative, went back inside, shutting the door.
A little miffed and still curious, Francisca cornered Juliana after supper that evening. “Who was your visitor?” she asked point-blank.
“My, my, you are meddlesome.”
“No more than you. Who was he? A lover?”
Juliana laughed. “At my age? You flatter me. If you must know, busybody, I was arranging to buy a wedding gift. It is to be a surprise, and you will not get what it is out of me.”
“For a few moments I thought it might be…” She broke off, reluctant to name Miguel.
“Who? You thought it might be who?”
“Never mind.”
Foolish to think of Miguel, she told herself, miles and miles away by now.
Francisca would have been content with a simple wedding. But Don Pedro was a rich man, and his standing in the community demanded a ceremony with all the extravagant trappings, followed by a lavish feast. The real marriage, the Hebraic one, would be held in their storeroom, the shul. That marriage rite, half improvisation, half dimly recalled liturgy, would take place under the prescribed canopy the next day.
Francisca had seen Don Ruy only once between the time she had agreed to marry him and the wedding date. Their meeting, taking place at the signing of the contract, had been a brief one. They had exchanged only a few polite words, but Ruy’s sweet smile and his gentle manner reassured her that married life with him, though uneventful, would not be unpleasant. She could trust him. She could be herself without fear or subterfuge. They would live quietly; she would run the household and its many servants, he would sit in the library and work on his ledger or go out to oversee his various enterprises, just as her father had done. She would be a good companion, would bear his future children and try to make him happy.
She would put Miguel from her mind, forget the room on the Calle de Las Infantas with the late afternoon sun angling through the curtains, forget the passionate kisses and wild caresses and the sea-blue eyes that had probed her soul. And if dreams of a phantom lover sometimes haunted her at night, they, too, in time would vanish.
But on her wedding day, as she sat before her mirror while Beatriz dressed her hair, she thought of Miguel again. She closed her eyes and imagined that it was him she was about to wed, Miguel who would be waiting for her at the cathedral.
Beatriz, running a comb through Francisca’s newly washed hair, chattered on, her words making little impression on a Francisca lost in memory.
“I’ve heard that court ladies are wearing a curled fringe over the forehead,” Beatriz was saying. “It would suit you, Francisca.”
“Mmm.”
Beatriz picked up a pair of scissors and held them for a moment poised over Francisca’s head.
Francisca’s eyes caught the flash of steel in the mirror. “What are you about to do?” she asked suddenly in alarm, rudely awakened from her fantasy.
“Cut a few locks to make a fringe.”
“You are not to cut a single strand,” Francisca warned.
Miguel had loved her hair. He would undo the bun at the back and let it fall in a rich cascade over her shoulders and down her back. Or lying in bed, he would lift the rich ebony mass, spreading it out to make a halo for her face on the pillow. How many times had he kissed her hair, bunching it in his fingers, burying his head in its fragrance, whispering love words…?
“Cousin, we must do something different for this special occasion,” Beatriz pleaded, still with the scissors in her hand.
“Put those down. Who will know what my hair looks like since it will be covered with a caul and a lace veil?”
“The bridegroom will know.”
The bridegroom. Not Miguel, but Don Ruy. “Nevertheless,” Francisca said, “no fringe.”
Three hours later she came down the aisle of the Great Cathedral (the same aisle that Miguel had pictured for her) on the arm of her father to the full-throated chorus of “Te Deum.” Her tightly fitting bodice was of ivory satin sewn with gold braid, embossed with pearls and emeralds and rubies that winked and glittered as she walked. The skirt—also of ivory brocade and also jeweled—spreading abruptly from Francisca’s waist, was draped over a wire cage, falling to the floor in a circle as wide as her height. She moved slowly, her satin-slippered feet treading with measured grace, her back erect, her face serene under Belgium lace.
But the serenity cost her dearly. The dress was heavy; the ruby pendant (a bride gift refashioned from Ruy’s ring) she wore on a gold chain dragged at her neck. The stays of her tight bodice cutting cruelly into her ribs, and the hundreds of lit candles, smoking and guttering along the walls, made breathing an effort. Beneath the waist-length cloud of veil she could feel sweat gathering on her brow. And yet her smile was fixed in place, as though her face was on view for all to see.
Don Ruy was waiting for her at the altar. Dressed in a jerkin embroidered with precious gems, satin breeches tied at the knees with fringed ribbons, and shoes buckled with silver roses, he presented a finer figure than Francisca had imagined. She tried to keep her thoughts on him during the ceremony as they knelt before the priest, and succeeded until after the ceremony, when they were seated in the carriage and he leaned over to kiss her. A dry, dutiful, passionless kiss.
She was married. Until she died she was married to this man whose kiss she would always compare to another’s and find wanting.
Except for those few moments in the carriage, Francisca did not allow herself to indulge in self-pity. There were other, more important things to think of. She must face a hurdle that she could not avoid. After the Hebraic ceremony, the marriage would be consummated. She was not a virgin. Don Ruy was an experienced man; he had been married before, and would know at once. Dare she try the old trick she had once heard Aunt Juliana gossiping about? A girl, a certain Spanish young woman who had recklessly lost her maidenhead, had fooled her bridegroom by surreptitiously cutting her finger and staining the sheet with telltale blood. Francisca felt that deception was something Don Ruy did not deserve. But how could she be honest with him? If he knew that someone else had been to the well before him, he would rightly assume that the child she bore was not his. And it was for the child she had married him.
As it turned out, Francisca was spared the need to hide the truth.
By the time Don Ruy—having overimbibed in ritual wine—reached the connubial bed, he was very drunk. Francisca helped him undress, trying not to feel repelled by his thin, bowed legs and the concave chest sprouted with gray hairs. Clothed, his appearance had been somewhat deceptive, for Francisca discovered that he used padding for the calves of his legs and for his chest.
Again she caught herself comparing, remembering the well-shaped, muscular torso, thighs, and legs, the golden-fuzzed chest upon which she had rested her head. But I mustn’t, she reminded herself. What does it matter if Ruy is not Adonis? I and my child will be safe with him—or as safe as possible—but with Miguel I would always walk a tightrope of uncertainty. In any case, there had been no choice. The moment Miguel had discovered her true identity, he had gone through the door with a few curt words and a piercing look that had cut to the bone like a knife.
“Francisca, mi pequeña esposa, my little wife, let me kiss you.”
Ruy embraced her, his hot, rancid-smelling mouth aimed at her lips falling on her turned-away cheek.
“To bed, to bed,” he sang thickly, tumbling on the mattress, bringing Francisca with him. She lay passively under him for some moments before she heard the first rising snore and realized he had fallen asleep.
The next morning he awoke long after Francisca was up and about. But she was there when he opened his eyes, greeting him with a smile, telling him she would fetch a pot of chocolate.
“No, my sweet, not chocolate. Water. A flask of cool water, please. My head feels like a thousand hammers are pounding it. And my thirst…”
“I’ll only be a minute. Rest quietly.”
When she returned with a jug of water, he was sitting up, bleary-eyed, his thin hair in peaked tufts. “I apologize, Francisca,” he began. “It is not the way I planned our wedding night. I was remiss in my duties as husband. I promise—”
“Hsst! You were not remiss at all.” She managed a blush, not difficult since she was disturbed by the lie she must tell.
“You mean…?”
She nodded. “Yes, husband. I am truly a married woman now.”
“Was I—did I—was I gentle?”
“I couldn’t have asked for a more considerate husband.”
His sigh echoed her own relief. She would wait a few weeks, then announce he was to become a father. He would be overjoyed. It would be like a miracle from heaven, since he had tried so many years to impregnate his first wife, with little success. He would accept the child as his own. They would make a life together; they would be happy.
The only shadow that hung over Francisca’s picture of her future with Don Ruy was a fear they all shared, the fear of being discovered by the Inquisition. Only Francisca knew how much closer they were to that possibility now.
Chapter IX
Francisca's son was born in February of 1651. He was baptized as Jorge de Diaz y Silva. But in Don Pedro’s secret register, kept behind a hidden panel in the library, he was inscribed as named Benjamin Ben Imar. He was not circumcised, according to Jewish law; to do so would have put him in jeopardy.
After a few weeks, when the infant’s features began to take form, it became apparent that he would resemble his mother. He had the same dark hair, the same dark eyes. The nose, now almost lost in baby fat, gave promise of being as straight and well defined as Miguel’s. Except for that one feature, there was nothing of her lover in him. To Francisca this was a blessing, for how would she explain tawny hair and blue eyes when she and Don Ruy had neither?
As Francisca predicted, Ruy was ecstatic. To be able to sire a son in his middle age was like receiving a gift from God.
“We shall have many,” he said happily to Francisca. “Many sons, and daughters, too.”
For his family he needed a new house. He and Francisca had been living on the Calle de las Olas in a slate-roofed mansion that he and his late wife had shared. But after the advent of Jorge, Ruy began to look about for larger, grander quarters. He had agents scour the city, while he himself interviewed prospective sellers. Finally he was offered a residence he thought suitable. Situated on the Calle del Aguila, it belonged to a representative of the Crown who had grown bored with colonial life and wished to return to the more interesting bustle and intrigue of King Philip’s court.
Ruy thought the sum Don Diego asked was excessive (Ruy was a close bargainer), but the house was the equal of Don Pedro’s in elegance, and Ruy felt Don Pedro’s daughter deserved no less. It had been built from the dressed stones of a ruined Aztec temple, great blocks whose pagan carvings had been gouged and scraped out and replaced with figures of the saints. In the patio marbled columns speckled in gold and silver supported the gallery that ran around it. Imported from Spain at great cost were high feather beds with head-boards that bore the royal insignia inlaid with gold leaf. There were Far Eastern rugs on the tile floors, silken covers on the ornately carved tables, and Michoacán featherwork and oil paintings on the walls.
Francisca was happy there, or as happy as she thought she could be. Her thoughts of Miguel, swinging between longing and anger, had not faded as she had hoped. They were never stronger than on the nights when Ruy turned to her in the high feather bed. Anxious to increase his family, he made love to her as often as he could, an exercise that Francisca endured with patience. Under his wet kisses and inexpert hands, she could not help but think of Miguel, of the passion with which he fired her, of hands and lips and manhood that had left her gasping and moaning with pleasure. She would wonder if he had found another woman (whore or virgin, but Catholic) to take on his voyage, and decided that he had. Miguel, though devout, was not a man to abstain from adultery or fornication, even if he did break the church’s rules. Had he used her as he had La Flor? Or had he really loved her? He must have if he had offered her marriage, yet it was a love that was not strong enough to withstand the shock of having as its object a converso.
But he hadn’t informed on her. That much she thanked him for. As the weeks and months, then a year, went by without the dreaded knock of a familiar at her door, the watchful tenseness went out of Francisca’s eyes. She could relax, play with her growing son, preside over Don Ruy’s table, gossip with sister, Beatriz, and Juliana, read her books, or play the guitar without a tense knot between her shoulder blades.
Then one morning in church attending mass with Leonor and Beatriz, she became aware of a man staring at her. He was sitting in a side pew, dressed in vest, chupa, and linen breeches—the garments of a workman. The face was disturbingly familiar, but she couldn’t place it. When she rose to go at the end of the service, she threw him another glance. He smirked at her, a sly, knowing look that froze her blood.
It was Gaspar, the tall, burly seaman. The same one who had once referred to her as booty and had witnessed the duel and the death of Don Carlos, the dandy in French furbelows. Did his presence here mean that Miguel had returned to Mexico City? But she would have heard. The arrival of ships from overseas was an event made public with great fanfare. Miguel was known. Her father, who had done business with him in the past, would have mentioned his name.
It was on the Thursday following the day she had seen Gaspar in church that a servant came to her while she was playing with Jorge and said that a man at the kitchen door wished to see her. Like her mother, Francisca pitied the poor and followed Mariana’s custom of having her cook distribute tortillas, maize cakes, and beans every Thursday morning to the indigent who came to the kitchen door. If there were any messages or offerings of thanks, they were left with the cook.
“What does he want?” Francisca asked.
“He says it is a private matter. He says he will not leave unless he can see you.”
When Francisca entered the kitchen, Gaspar was standing respectfully to one side, hat in hand. The cook, busy at the cutting table slapping tortillas from hand to hand, threw him dubious glances.
“What is it you wish, my good man?” Francisca asked through lips that had gone dry at the sight of him.
“May we speak in the garden, Señora?” His manner was servile, almost cringing. “Your husband has ordered some orange trees and says they must meet with your approval before I am to be paid.”
She knew he was lying, but with the servants’ eyes upon her, she had no choice but to sweep past the little crowd of supplicants at the door, who made way for her.
She led Gaspar to the grape arbor, thankful that Ruy was not at home. He would be gone for ten days, occupied with overseeing his affairs at his hacienda near Tula, where he owned several thousand acres on which he grazed cattle.
Turning on the graveled path to face Gaspar, she gave him a hard look. “Now, what brings you here?”
She thought for a few hopeful, yet fearful minutes he had come with a message from Miguel. But he hadn’t.
“I have fallen on hard times,” he said. “Don Miguel dismissed me before he sailed, and I had to find a berth on another ship, a scow, hardly bigger—”
