Bridge of Fire, page 2
His mouth traveled down from her lips to her throat, where a wild pulse beat. He rested there, a small groan escaping his lips. Francisca’s arms went around him, holding him, suddenly afraid that he might stop, yet afraid, too, that he wouldn’t. Where this passionate kissing would end, she dared not think. She did not want to think. Only the moment mattered.
“Francisca.” Her name on his tongue seemed to take on a sensuality it had never had before.
He raised his head, looking down at her with shadowed eyes. There was no mockery in them now, only a tender smile that pierced her heart.
“Come with me,” he whispered, placing his arm around her waist.
And she would have gone anywhere, done anything, had not reality suddenly shattered her trance. A clatter of wood-shod feet, and the shout of the night porter. “Who goes there?”
Miguel quickly stepped back into the shadows of a doorway a moment before the porter appeared at the foot of the stairs.
“Ahhh—’tis you, little mistress. I thought I heard a man’s voice.”
Drawing her robe together, she took a deep breath. “There…there is no one but me,” she said. To be found in Miguel’s embrace would have meant dishonor not only for her but for her family as well. The virginal Francisca kissing a stranger! She would be branded whore, the kind of stigma that could only be erased by a duel between her father and Miguel, and internment for herself in a convent.
“Pepé has run off, and I am looking for him,” Francisca told the porter. She had forgotten all about the dog. It seemed hours, years, a lifetime, since she had put on her robe and gone through the door of her bedchamber in search of poor Pepé.
“You should have called your maid—or me. We would have been happy to serve you.”
“It was of little import. But if you find him, I will be grateful. Good night.” She started up the stairs.
She heard Miguel behind her whisper her name, but she did not turn. If he tries to stop me, she remembered thinking, what should I do? Scream? Let him have his will of me?
But he made no move to follow her, and when she had closed and bolted the door, she leaned her trembling body against it, feeling a vague sense of loss.
* * *
And now he was riding past her. Miguel in all his jeweled and feathered finery, sitting upon his horse with the easy grace and arrogance he was born to. Francisca tore her eyes from his receding figure and raised them to the platform where the officials of the Inquisition and the heretics had already been seated. The clergy occupied cushioned chairs; the criminals sat on the tiered benches, those accused of lesser misdeeds on the bottom rungs, those guilty of more serious crimes at the top.
Francisca could not look for very long at these wretched souls, their white faces under the miters etched in pain, some slumping forward, their bodies broken by torture.
The voice of the archbishop preaching the initial sermon reached Francisca only faintly. But she heard enough to make her shudder, for she had listened to similar sermons many times before, and today it seemed as though he were speaking directly to her. So many sins. To doubt or disbelieve a single article of faith, to question the wisdom of the clergy, to confess falsely, no matter how trivial the invented transgression, to have read or even leafed through a forbidden book in the Index, were all sins she was guilty of. And last night she would have willingly gone to the bed of a married man and added adultery to her wickedness. But there was more that weighed on her soul, much more and much worse.
The sermon ended in a thundering promise of hellfire and brimstone to backsliders. And then the secretary of the Inquisition rose to administer the oath of faith. His words were answered by a great roar from the crowd in one shouting tongue, promising to defend the Holy Office and its agents and to denounce all heretics.
Francisca, glancing at Leonor, saw that she had gone very white.
“Are you not feeling well, sister?” Francisca took her cold, limp hand. “Perhaps you’d best lie down.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “I mustn’t. The servants here will take note and say I have something on my conscience because I have made an excuse to retire. Perhaps a glass of water…”
“Cousin Beatriz will get it for you.”
“Oh, Francisca,” Leonor went on, “I did not know it would be so terrible. The man there with the iron gag in his mouth. He will surely choke to death. Is he a…?”
“A blasphemer. The yoke is to silence him.”
But more harrowing scenes were yet to come.
The prosecuting attorney began to read the sentences imposed upon the prisoners. A half-starved Indian slave, his bony arms protruding like sticks from his sanbenito, was the first. A blasphemer also, he had cried out under the lash of his master that he would rather be a monkey than a Christian. And so he was sentenced to fifty more lashes for his indiscretion. Two bigamists were condemned to lifelong service as galley slaves, a sentence of short duration since an unfortunate condemned to the stinking hold of a ship, and chained night and day to its oars, rarely lasted more than two years.
The sun was now at its zenith, beating mercilessly down on the square. But the crowd, sweating in the unseasonable heat, still stood mesmerized by horror and fear underscored with murmuring excitement. Francisca would have liked nothing better than to retreat into the comparative coolness and quiet of the house. But she, like Leonor, dared not arouse suspicion by leaving her post. Under her heavy brocaded dress rivulets of perspiration ran down her back and between her breasts. Her forehead, beaded in sweat, was only momentarily cooled by her fluttering fan.
The ordeal went on.
There were one hundred and nine sentences to be read. Fourteen prescribed death. These were the Judaizers, the Christian converts who pretended to be honest churchgoers while adhering to their Hebraic heritage. Black-robed friars exhorted the unrepentant to confess and embrace Holy Mother Church in these final hours before it was too late for their souls to enter Paradise.
“How could they be so stubborn?” Leonor said, her voice faint with fear.
“You mustn’t think of it. Think of something else.”
The unfortunate Judaizers (termed marranos, or swine, in Spain) were mounted on mules. One of them, Francisca had been told, was Anica de Carvajal, a woman of seventy whose brother Luis had been martyred at the stake in the auto de fe of 1596. According to custom, the condemned would be carried through the streets on mules so that the populace could spit on them, reviling them with curses on their way to the quemadero, the burning ground.
Francisca, watching them, felt a terror that constricted her heart in a tight, painful vise. A silent scream rose in her throat. There but for the Grace of God go I, her mind repeated again and again in dreadful cadence. It could have been her, ignominiously astride a mule, her face and body pelted with excrement, her humiliation reaching the depths of despair.
For Francisca, like the other members of her family, was a Jew.
Chapter II
“I wish we did not have to go as angels again,” Leonor, wearing a tentlike white gown, was being fitted by Beatriz with a pair of gilded wings. “I would much rather be a Greek goddess or a princess. But Papá says no.”
“It is unfair,” Francisca agreed.
“Just because Papá pays for the Virgin’s float shouldn’t oblige us to be part of the decorations. Don’t you agree, Beatriz?”
“I don’t mind.” Beatriz very rarely found fault.
The girls were discussing the upcoming mascarada, a gala parade, in this instance celebrating the Feast of Saint Francis Borgia.
Mascaradas were frequent in Mexico City. Any occasion of major or minor importance—births, baptisms, marriages, holy days, the safe arrival of the annual fleet from Europe-served as an excuse for the organization of a lavishly staged pageant. The rich welcomed these diversions to break the dull monotony of colonial life. The poor looked forward to them as a palliative to relieve the harshness of thankless, unending toil and the social indifference of the upper classes. In the mascarada, however, all classes, all ethnic groups, Negros, Indians, gypsies, mestizos, and pure-blooded Spaniards, participated, joining in the pomp and splendor, and the fun-loving gaiety.
“Well,” Leonor sighed, “I suppose it’s better to accompany the Virgin of Guadalupe and be part of the parade than to stay home and watch from the window.”
Beatriz, having finished her task of sewing on the golden wings, held up a mirror. Leonor twisted and turned to see the reflection of her back in the dressing table glass. “How do I look, Francisca?”
“Very angelic.”
“Must you sound so sour? You’ve been like that for days now. What is it?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m simply bored.”
It had been three weeks since Francisca had last seen Miguel. He, along with the de Silvas and other notables of the city, had been invited to the viceroy’s banquet given on the evening after the auto. She had been seated with her family at the long, lavishly appointed table, separated from Miguel by a dozen other people. They had exchanged glances, Miguel’s steady blue gaze burning into her eyes with a look that brought the blood rushing to her cheeks.
Leonor, noting the high flush, had inquired, “Sister, have you a fever?”
Francisca fluttered her fan, annoyed with Miguel, annoyed at herself. “I’m perfectly well,” she had answered with asperity. “I’m simply hot. The air is so close.”
“I am uncomfortable, too. Perhaps Mamá will let us go into the garden. The meal is almost over.”
Later, as Francisca and Leonor strolled under the leafy trees, they heard guitar music and the rhythmic clap of castanets coming from the house.
“Oh!” Leonor exclaimed in delight. “The gypsy dancers! Papá said the viceroy would have them. Let us go in and watch.”
“Not just yet,” Francisca replied. “You run along. I’ll join you presently.”
Francisca seated herself on a stone bench, folding her fan, tucking it into her narrow waist, sashed in bright crimson satin. The fragrance of night-blooming jasmine wafted across the garden on a fitful breeze. She breathed deeply of the exotic perfume, thinking of Miguel. She wondered if he had remained to watch the gypsy dancers or if he had gone on to more amusing entertainment. To some woman, perhaps, who waited for him. Some…
“Doña Francisca!”
Startled, she stiffened. He was at her back. But she did not—or could not—turn her head.
“Doña Francisca!” His voice was low and urgent.
She heard his footsteps on the grass. And then he was looking down at her, the torches that lined the garden path throwing his face into angled shadows.
“May I sit?” he asked politely, his eyes taking in the bared, creamy shoulders and half-visible cleft between her breasts.
She clenched her fists in the folds of her voluminous skirts to gain control of her racing heart. “Do as you wish,” she said in a surprisingly indifferent voice. “I was leaving in any case.”
She started to rise, but he put a restraining hand on her bare shoulder, a touch that felt like a brand. “Please, don’t rush off on my account. I was hoping to have a few words with you.”
“What could we possibly say to one another?”
“The other night—”
“I’d rather not talk about it.” Nor did she want to think of that meeting on the dark stairs, his arms around her, his burning lips on her mouth, the melting weakness in her knees.
“Very well, we can speak of other things.”
“I cannot. My parents—”
“They will hardly miss you. Why run off? Surely you don’t find me that frightening?”
“Of course not.” But she did. She did not trust Don Miguel. She did not trust him because he had the power (and knew it) to excite and fill her with these new, disturbing longings.
“May I?” he asked again.
“If you insist.” She pulled in her skirts, and he seated himself beside her. His magnetic closeness made her breathless with a mixture of fear and heightened awareness.
“I have been trying to puzzle something out,” he said, breaking a long silence.
“What is that?” It still amazed her, even now when she thought of it, how calm she had sounded despite her racing heart and trembling nerves.
“I cannot understand why thoughts of you should bedevil me so,” Miguel went on. “They do, you know. I ask myself, is it because she is beautiful? But I have known beautiful women before. Because she is unattainable? But I have met the unattainable before. Perhaps, I tell myself, it is because this woman is Francisca, an irresistible creature who has captured my heart.”
She pulled out her fan, snapped it open, and fluttered it with a vigor that shook her side curls. “You flatter me, Don Miguel.”
“Do I?” And when she did not answer, he repeated, “Do I?”
She turned to face him. His eyes held hers, and in his drowning gaze she saw tenderness and desire. And the promise of passion. Her pulse quickened. Passion. Was it real? Something more than the words of a love song? Yes, his eyes seemed to say, yes, yes.
The fan dropped from her fingers, suddenly gone boneless. She wanted to turn away but couldn’t. The soft, perfumed night, his eyes…
As if in a dream, she felt him move closer, felt his warm wine breath on her cheek, felt his heavy hand on her knee. She closed her eyes, felt his lips on hers…
“Francisca! Francisca!” It was Leonor. “Where are you? Papá says it’s time to go home.”
Francisca, her heart pounding, rose quickly on unsteady feet. She did not speak to Miguel, did not look at him. But she heard his soft “Adios” as it followed her like the whisper of the jasmine-scented breeze into the house.
The next morning Miguel and her father had set out for Taxco to conclude their business. Pedro had mentioned nothing about Miguel’s future plans or whether he would be returning to Mexico City.
Leonor was still talking about the mascarada.
“Rosa is to be a handmaiden to Amadis of Gaul on her father’s float.” Rosa Rodriguez, daughter of a prosperous wine merchant, was Leonor’s dearest friend. “But she says her father is complaining that the expenses of mascaradas are becoming unreasonable.”
“Rosa shouldn’t repeat everything she hears, true as it may be.”
Rosa’s father was not the only complainant. The wealthier merchants who were called upon to underwrite the cost of the mascarada often balked. But Don Pedro de Silva, unlike his contemporaries, gladly made generous donations to these public spectacles.
He was rich, he would say. He could afford it. But in reality his paramount motive was to remain in the good graces of the local authorities, both clerical and lay, in order to preserve the facade of an old Christian, a devout Spanish Catholic.
The facade had been carefully put in place by his grandfather, Isaac ben Samseca. In 1492 when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled those Jews who would not acquiesce to baptism, Isaac, a wealthy merchant, instead of submitting to conversion, had fled Spain. Taking with him his family and a greater portion of his wealth in gold, he had settled in Venice. But he had missed Spain, where his family had lived for centuries. Spain was in his blood. Seeking a way to return, he had paid to have documents (including one called limpieza de sangre, purity of blood) forged, records that attested to his impeccable lineage as a Christian. Instead of going back to Madrid, where he might be known, he came to Seville, giving out that he was a rich landowner from Leon who had retired to the city for his remaining years. Meanwhile, he went on quietly adding to his wealth, engaging in overseas trade with Turkey, Persia, Morocco, and Italy.
After the conquest of New Spain, he bought from the king, sight unseen, silver mines near Taxco. These mines were one of the reasons his grandson, Pedro de Silva, had come to New Spain. The other, more compelling, one was the Inquisition. Wily old Isaac had never converted. He had managed to practice in secret the tenets of the Hebraic religion, celebrating in particular the seder in commemoration of Moses’ Exodus from Egypt, and the High Holy Days. His children and their children, however, had been baptized. Not to do so would have brought down the anathema of the church, which ruled the daily lives of the Spaniards with an iron hand, demanding blind obedience. But the de Silvas, marrying within their faith, had managed to keep their beliefs, transforming the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament into a loving and compassionate God. Their spiritual satisfaction, however fulfilling, was tempered by the knowledge that to be discovered as Jews would be fatal.
Pedro had thought the Inquisition would be more benign in the New World. It didn’t take him or his wife long to discover that distance had not diminished that institution’s zeal.
Francisca had often wished that her father would give up a religion so despised by everyone. But the auto de fe had changed her mind. The suffering of those poor souls sacrificed on a fiery altar to satisfy a jealous God seemed to her pagan. Wasn’t it her father who once said that hellfire, purgatory, the devil, and witches were inventions of the human mind? But of course, it was a statement never to be repeated. To do so would be blasphemy. And Francisca had seen what happened to blasphemers.
“I’m not going to the mascarada,” Francisca said abruptly. “I will tell Papá when he comes home that I feel ill. I refuse to be paraded through the streets in that ugly costume again.”
Beatriz laughed, but Leonor was indignant. “Francisca! If you don’t, I won’t either.”
“Yes you will. You just said you’d rather ride on the float than stay at home watching. I don’t mind being left behind. I’ll read a book. Perhaps I will reread Cervantes’s Don Quixote. That always amuses me.”
“You and your books! Mamá says you will spoil your eyes and get wrinkles in your forehead reading so much, and I believe her. Who will want to marry you then?”
