“Titles matter little. We are the children of our works.”
—Don Quijote de la Mancha
Madrid, 23 de junio, 1656, Stilo Novo
As we approached the Queen’s dining room, the baritone of Ánima en Pena reached us. The Queen’s jester was a “son of the earth,” with no father to his name. It was said he had an enchanted memory, a gift for recalling all utterances, oral or written, word for word.
Ánima en Pena, swarthy, spry, ever in his dark green suit, believed he was a soul in purgatory, punished for the sins of the fathers. Truly, the jester’s penance was to torture us reciting edicts, oaths and chronicles as the spirit moved him. Like most fools, he had free rein of Palace and could do as he pleased, whether this pleased anyone else or not.
Along the Liars’ Walk by San Felipe’s Church, where nobles met to gossip and craft news, some said Ánima en Pena was not a fool, but a spy, the son of a noble put to death by the Inquisition for defending secret Jews and Muslims.
But I was not at the Queen’s dinner to think of such things. As a maid of honor, a menina, to Mariana of Austria, I had arrived at her public meal with my brother, Tadeo, to shore up my bid for a husband, the handsome younger duke, Don Julio, whose other names and titles I would add to mine the day Her Highness pledged my dowry.
At her long white table, between gilded ceilings and Persian tapestries, Queen Mariana in jeweled tresses and dark guardainfantes, wore an armor of sadness, protecting her not at all from the crushing task of producing a living heir. Neither jesters nor dwarfs nor dignitaries sparked her interest as she chewed and swallowed, young and alone. Circling her were ladies of silver hair and proud lineage: before her, the Lady of the Dish; to her left, the Lady of the Napkin; the Lady of the Drink to her right. The Queen took no wine, and drank little water, whether from Madrid’s hidden springs or melted snow from the Guadarrama sierras, flavored with spices.
One thing only infused life in our Queen’s gaze: her little Infanta, Margarita, whose portrait Velázquez was painting. The five-year-old princess was a small sun with cerulean eyes, bringing her own light. My role at her sittings was to lull her with English ballads I learned from my mother, whose grandfather served Felipe II in London at a time of peace.
I was pleased, if nervous, to see my brother Tadeo in his gray doublet, black eyes, black locks dancing. I was happy, too, that he had been reinstated as a page to accompany me, and that he was to serve Her Majesty’s principal dish. But that dish was a foul smelling capon attracting flies. Meals of late had been poor at Palace. Merchants went unpaid for longer stretches, and even the King was reduced, at times, to dining on eggs and only eggs, preserved in ash and salt. Our wars over lands near and far were costly.
My brother and his fellow pages, all fourteen years of age, began juggling apples from a ceramic bowl. They went on to lob oranges to the jester and an Italian dwarf, Nicolás Pertusato, whose red suit shone in our room of courtiers in Spanish black per sumptuary laws. The Queen ignored her pages’ poor manners and they, in turn, resisted my signals to stop.
Failing to quell the pages, I found a gilded mirror to smooth the green-blue silk of my guardainfantes over its whalebone cage. This imprisoning balloon had also been banned by sumptuary laws, but our Queen loved the fashion, so its punishing shape was de rigeuer at our court. At least my dress’s aqua colors matched the butterfly pins on my brown wig and paired well with my eyes, my mother’s own lovely blue-green eyes.
But I had little time to primp for my future husband, don Julio, as my rival cousin Urraca was soon elbowing me at the looking glass.
Urraca was in her crimson dress, a tone and cut so congenial to her Arabian eyes and figure, that I deemed myself a potted plant at her side. She was trailed by two of her minions, meninas whose endless names and titles I had not learned. They all wore the mollusk's blood paint in vogue to excess, their cheeks and collarbones caked a brick red.
Was I wearing enough paint to please the Duke?
Urraca gave me a sweetened smile, teeth bared, dark eyes hard. She feigned a curtsy—but only to take in my antiquated guardainfantes, my own dear mother’s dress.
“You look—“ she paused— “—unique, dear Doña Soledad.” Her friends in blue satin skirts wide enough to wedge each in an Arc de Triomphe tittered behind pink fans.
"How is my uncle Pedro’s fortune of late?” Urraca knew of my señor padre’s decline and his poor luck at cards. This began when my mother failed to return home months past, on a risky errand for her Queen.
I lied that all was well and turned (rudely) to order a poem from the jester.
Anima en Pena bowed and, without introduction or preamble, recited:
“[In this year of our Lord 1492, we, Catholic Monarchs, ]order all Jews and Jewesses of whatever age they may be, who live, reside, and exist in our said kingdoms and lordships, that by the end of the month of July next of the present year, they depart from all of these our said realms along with their sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants, and they shall not dare to return by penalty of death and the confiscation of all their possessions incurring these penalties by the act itself, without further trial, sentence, or declaration.” *
The jester’s pronouncement, from the Alhambra Decree of 1492, was quite unusual at a Queen’s dinner. As the jester bowed and bounded off, I surveyed those present to judge reactions. But there seemed to be none. Courtiers in Spanish black continued their conversations. Ladies in jewel toned dresses fluttered their fans. Queen Mariana yawned at her Lady of the Napkin. The pages had moved on to juggle butter knives. My fellow maids of honor continued to trade looks and smiles with noblemen, eligible or not.
Ánima en Pena returned to me and resumed:
“And we command and forbid that any person or persons…shall dare to receive, protect, defend, nor hold publicly or secretly any Jew or Jewess beyond the date of the end of July and from henceforth forever, in their lands, houses, or in other parts of any of our said kingdoms and lordships, under pain of losing all their possessions, vassals, fortified places, and [more]…” **
This edict made me think of a book my mother hid away, The Green Book, destroyed a decade past. It traced all Spanish nobles back to Sefarad, to Jewish Spain.
Again, I sought to see who listened to the jester.
Only three guests had eyes on Ánima en Pena. One was a foreign Jesuit in black, his four cornered hat under an arm; the others were Englishmen dressed in the garish colors of their nation; the younger, in green doublet and blue breeches; the elder, in yellow and red. Drawn by their interest, Ánima bowed for the Englishmen, and in the same vein as before, proclaimed:
“Leaving Madrid this year of our Lord 1610 in the expulsion of the Muslims were one hundred and twenty-three families and of them three hundred and eighty nine persons sent back to North Africa whence their ancestors came in 711. In thanks and celebration for this success we shall have a glorious procession through Madrid and the Queen will found a new monastery.”
The jester had memorized an entry I knew to be from a chronicle by León Pinelo a scribe of King Felipe III—-far from suitable entertainment for a Queen’s public meal with foreign dignitaries. Before I could redirect the jester to recite a poem while the mandolin players tuned their instruments by a gold tapestry of gods in battle, I overheard the English in their tongue:
“I hold this state to be one of the most confused and disorganized in Christendom!” The older Englishman, ruddy, gray of head and beard, appeared to be confounded. “Anyone who speaks well of Spain is Catholic!”
“I am Catholic, your Grace,” said the fair haired Jesuit at his side, good natured.
“Yes, but you are English!” His elder sniffed. “In most matters, unimpeachable, my dear Antony.”
I was beginning to feel the close June air in the strictures of my corset, my cheeks warm, my neck perspiring under the hot round wig. I pulled a handkerchief from my sleeve. On dabbing my face, I was horrified to see my mollusk blood paints staining the whole of the linen. And no looking glass nearby to see the state of my countenance. I stood indecisive, pulse quickening, twisting a ring on one finger, when a deep male voice behind me said in English: “Are you quite all right, your grace?”
It was the youngest Englishman (though a redhead, alarmingly handsome).
The heretic bowed, feet together English style and said his name was William Saint James. But I did not hear it. I was too intent on the state of my face and on enunciating a polite reply in English as my mother taught us—as her father taught her.
On straightening from his bow, the heretic looked—most accidentally—directly in my eyes. His were the hue of olive trees. And his face, I noted with further alarm, had suffused the color of his flaming hair.
I had never seen a human being of such a hue in all of my eighteen years in our lands, and it succeeded in distracting me in the extreme.
“I am with a friend who studied at your English seminary in Valencia, St. Alban’s.” He continued in his tongue. “My uncle is the English ambassador.” His color was normalizing.
“The English ambassador,” I repeated.
“Sir Nigel Nosworthy.”
I nodded, without words in any tongue.
The heretic cleared his throat. “Sir Nigel is here as an envoy of peace.”
We had been at war with lands near and far through Felipe IV’s long reign thus far. And in his clearer days, my father would say: Any Englishman seeking Peace with Spain is on a fool's errand. Cromwell's pirates did nothing but sack our treasure fleets and attack our lands in the Indies to rob us of them. What manner of peace could one peevish ambassador hope to broker?
The heretic Englishman read my face, if not my thoughts. "Spain's interests are, indeed, opposite England’s.”
In this we agreed.
“Spain's end-all is to conquer more lands and souls at any cost,” he informed me. “Ours is to bring peace without seeking selfish profit."
It seemed to be my turn to inform this Englishman of something. But nothing came to mind, so unaccustomed was I to such talk. My place as a maid of honor was simply to address lies or lunacy with a polite “Ah.” To say “Ah” in this context amounted to treason.
It was at that instant that my brother bounded over to announce: "Our baker refuses to provide sweets for Her Majesty! He says he has not been paid in six months!”
Tadeo had to know that such a revelation before the English was far worse a deed than leading a herd of horses and pages into the throne room to surprise the King (for which Tadeo had been suspended until today).
Thanks to my brother’s fresh impudence, the English were sure to report to Oliver Cromwell that “His Catholic Majesty” was too bankrupt to buy his wife dessert—let alone defend our Spanish Empire.
Unblinking, I unscrewed my ring and gave it to my brother. “Fast!” I hissed. “Pay the baker with this!”
Tadeo nodded—but hesitated when he saw the ring’s signet.
“This one, sister?” Fear widened my brother’s eyes.
The English heretic glanced at the signet ring in Tadeo’s palm.
In my haste to ready for the Queen’s dinner, I had failed to exchange my mother’s signet for a simpler ring and leave the heirloom in her Armada Box. I wore her ring only in our home, whenever I lost hope of seeing our mother again—and only with its signet hidden. But it was visible now. And it had been spied by a Protestant, an enemy.
Eleven months ago, our beloved Madre, Doña Pilar de Zúñiga, failed to return from a years’ delayed errand for Queen Isabel, our King’s first wife. My mother was bound for Sevilla, where a noblewoman, an ally, awaited a treasure she transported, an ancient book. The treasure my mother was to take to Sevilla was thought to hold a key to Peace for the People of the Book: Jews, Christians, Muslims. It was made of lead, stamped with the Seal of Solomon, held dear by the three faiths: the symbol on my mother’s ring.
The tortuous history of Madre’s mission has its genesis in Granada’s fall of 1492, when Mohammed XII ceded Islam’s last Spanish kingdom to our Catholic Monarchs, who soon banished, under pain of death, all non-Christians refusing Baptism. All Spaniards of Jewish and Islamic blood who chose to remain in their homeland were called “New Christians,” their loyalty of belief suspect, their families ever subject to arrest, torture, death by the Inquisition. In 1609, all children of Islam, though baptized New Christians, were banished forever from Spain.
But before the banishment, a miracle, a possible reprieve: Holy relics and a parchment prophesy in Hebrew surfaced from the rubble of Granada’s razed Torre Turpiana—an ancient tower built, it was thought, by a Lost Tribe of Israel. The parchment told of an Arab saint, Cecilius, bringing sacred scriptures to Spain in the time of Christ. The parchment’s prophecy spoke of a lost Gospel and a Mute Book with a key to Peace. These surfaced in 1595, in Granada’s caves, etched in bound lead disks,“books,” inscribed in Arabic and Hebrew, stamped with Solomon’s Seal.
My gifted mother, María del Pilar, her bloodlines Jewish and Muslim, had deep knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic scripts, both long forbidden. She had inherited a single lead book, a companion to the twenty-two books from Granada’s caves taken to Rome for study, suspected of hoax or heresy. Before these were seized by King Felipe IV and confiscated by Pope Innocent X, they drew pilgrimages and stories of miracles. They were kept in The Secret Archive of the Four Keys at Sacromonte Abbey, where the Seal of Solomon was displayed alongside the Cross. My mother’s book was thought to be a key to The Mute Book. This Mute Book, its one secret bronze copy in Sevilla, has resisted all translation. It is believed to hold a powerful prayer, a plan for peace for People of the Book—so they might live freely, on shared lands.
My mother’s ring inside reads: Shalom, Salam, Paz, Peace.
But like a Sacromonte priest who never arrived at his destination on ushering the lead books to Rome, my mother never arrived in Sevilla to meet the noblewoman with the one bronze copy of the Mute Book. We yet seek our mother.
I yet feel anger at her leaving us on an impossible mission.
Was she not on a fool’s errand?
“Your grace,” said the redheaded Englishman, waking me from eternity in an instant of thought. “Keep your bauble.”
The Protestant handed silver to my brother, who returned our mother’s ring to me and rushed away for the Queen’s sweets.
“Bauble,” the Englishman had called our heirloom! And to imply Spain lacked means! I felt the blood rise in my own face.
And as Her Catholic Majesty found solace in sweets procured by a Protestant, the jester bowed and straightened to recite:
“Daily combat with enemies, cold, heat, hunger, lack of munitions, surprises everywhere, new dangers, continual deaths, until we saw that the enemy, all of them a warlike nation…vanquished, defeated, taken from their lands and dispossessed of their homes and property; prisoners, chained men and women; captive children sold in auctions or taken to live in lands far from theirs… Doubtful victory of events so dangerous, that at some point we doubted if it was us or the enemy whom God wished to punish.“ ***
“That is from The War in Granada of 1610, by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza,“ said my brother, astonished. “I read it to Ánima en Pena this morning.”
“Your brave jester knows more than secrets by heart,” said the Englishman, eyes thoughtful.
Ánima en Pena bowed again, his dark face full of light. And speaking only to those listening, the jester intoned:
The fountain’s clarity is never dark
I know that all light comes from it
though it is night
So vast and fierce its currents
Such hells, such heavens and such peoples does it flood
Though it is night.
A son of the earth recited “The Dark Night of the Soul” from John of the Cross, a mystic who found God’s light in the darkness of his Inquisition jail cell.
That light buried in night might yet guide me to understand my mother’s sacrifice.
The lead books’ Seal of Solomon repeated in my mother’s ring is twin of the Star of David. Some say the triangle’s base on Earth represents the ruler’s power, aiming to Heaven; and that its downturned triangle’s base in Heaven is the clergy, reaching to Earth. God granted Solomon, imperfect king, a ring with the power to heal and unite in Peace.
I do not know if the lead books of Granada sparking fervor and furor in Church and State for which my mother risked all, are scriptures from Christ’s time or a desperate invention of New Christians moving Heaven and Earth to remain in their homeland, to live in peace.
We continue to move Heaven and Earth to find my mother. And If the lead books she strove to decipher prove genuine, this means that Jewish and Arab families shared our lands together from the time of Christ, with full claim to citizenship in Spain. And that the Three People of the Book—Jews in Sefarad; Muslims in al-Andalus; Christians in Castilla— might follow God’s light as it calls deep inside to each, to live as equals, on the same lands, in Peace.
And this is truth, I realized, even if the lead books of Granada are fictions. I learned this from a son of the earth who enforced this wisdom.
Post Script:
Don Julio, noble of many names and titles, never arrived at the Queen’s dinner the night a “heretic” saved me from the Inquisition.
Though I cannot state why here, not long after, by order of the King, I was erased in “pentimento” from Velázquez’s portrait of the Infanta Margarita, “La Familia de Felipe IV.” It was Velázquez, of New Christian ancestors, who helped me find my mother, alive and well enough, her letters waylaid by wars, her lead book lost.
Madre, my señor padre and my brother, Tadeo, live with us in the New World, with new names—without titles. I wear the heirloom signet always, its face to the world on a continuing errand and prayer for peace.
Shalom, Salam, Paz. Peace.
And of course: I married the Englishman.
Editor’s Note: The above was translated to Modern English by an anonymous scribe in the Americas.
Author’s Notes, with Informal list of Sources for further Reading:
Peace for the People of the Book is a personal, family topic for me as it was for Soledad's mother.
Anima en Pena was the self-given name of a real-life jester in Spain, a “son of the earth” (“hijo de la tierra” ) as children born without a father claiming paternity were unjustly called. He was thought to be the son of a noble—a spy, of privileged memory. His recitations are adapted from 1, 2, 3 below:
*1. Adapted near verbatim, The Alhambra Decreel “The 1492 Expulsion Edict of the Jews from Spain”:
**2. Pinelo, León. Anales de Madrid de Leon Pinelo, reinado de Felipe III: Edition y estudio critico del manuscrito numero 1.255 de la Biblioteca Nacional León Pinelo, Antonio de, 1590 or 1591-1660.
***3. Historia de la guerra de Granada (1610) by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza of the powerful Mendoza family cited/translated in John Stoye, English Traveller’s Abroad. Mendoza led soldiers in the war in Granada against “Moriscos,” Spaniards of Islamic ancestry converted to Christianity. The violent uprisings of young men followed brutal government measures banning cultural, linguistic, religious Islamic practices, which the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando, originally conceded in their treaty with Mohammed XII on their taking over Granada. From Philip II on, there was fear of a plotted second invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by North African forces, replicating the 711 invasion. I do not name the “enemy” in Mendoza’s quoted passage. Additionally, many authors in English use the term “Moor” for the Spanish term “moro,” a general term for someone of North African heritage. “Morisco” identifies “New Christian” of Islamic descent; but for respect and present day clarity of story, I say “Muslim” for those of Islamic descent in 1656 (be they “crypto-Muslims” or converts—all expelled 1609-14).
4. The English ambassador’s words are taken from an earlier English ambassador to Spain during Spain and England’s Pax Hispánica (1598-1621), Lord Francis Cottington (1579 – 1652). There was no English ambassador in Spain in 1656 due to spiking enmity/wars with England. The 1650 ambassador under Cromwell, Anthony Ascham, was given no quarters when he arrived in Madrid and was murdered at an inn by Irishmen said to be loyal to Charles I, but more likely loyal to Spain.
5. British historian Henry Kamen speaks of a “Green Book” destroyed in the mid 17th century, tracing all nobility in Spain to Jewish ancestry. It is also thought possible that Sephardic Jews arrived in exile in the Iberian Peninsula before the Romans extended their empire there.
6. For more on the Lead Books of Sacromonte, see the highly informative, engagingly written The Lead Books of Granada by Cambridge scholar Elizabeth Drayson and a recent in-depth study, The Lead Books of Sacromonte and the Parchment of the Torre Turpiana: Granada, 1588-1606 by University of Amsterdam scholars, P.S. van Koningsveld and G.A.Wiegers.
7. Descriptions of poor fare in Madrid’s Alcázar (palace) and, at one point, the pranks of pages at Philip IV’s court have historical sources; In Avisos de Barrionuevo, “newsletter” of Philip IV, cronista Jerónimo Barrionuevo, tells of a capon with flies “stinking like dead dog” in 1656 served to the Infanta, and that the King has eaten “eggs and only eggs” at a meal. Barrionuevo also reports a Lady removing her ring to pay for sweets for the Queen when a baker refuses to send dessert due to palace payment in arrears. A courtier pays for the sweets. Barrionuevo also mentions Philip IV suspending pages on the spot for riding horses into his throne room. And at a public dinner of Mariana of Austria, a French visitor criticizes the Queen’s indifference to the poor manners of pages tossing apples with a jester.
8. Diego Velázquez’s iconic masterpiece “Las Meninas,” originally logged in Alcázar records as “La Familia de Felipe IV,” hides—as seen via Harvard imaging in the early 2000’s—an unidentified young woman painted over in “pentimento” (the artist “repents”). I learned of the absented young woman after I conceived of writing from the point of view of an “erased” menina.
Carol Zapata-Whelan (PhD, UCLA) has published in Newsweek, Hispanic Link, Brown Journal of Medical Humanities and other periodicals to raise awareness of her son’s rare genetic disorder FOP, which turns muscle to bone (IFOPA.org). She has published fiction in periodicals such as Story Sanctum, Kaleidoscope: The Art and Language of Inclusion, anthologies Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California (Santa Clara University/Heyday), Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs (Beacon). Her memoir, Finding Magic Mountain: Life with Five Glorious Kids and a Rogue Gene Called FOP (Hachette), also appeared in Mandarin and Korean, and elicited a film in China. She is completing a YA novel, Sol & Serafina & the A.I.R., about a girl who “lives” the diary of an ancestor erased from Velázquez’s 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas. She teaches Spanish and Spanish American literature at California State University, Fresno.
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