this past fall while she was helping us pick corn from the fields below the walls, she saw a person’s shadow without its head! Can you even imagine that, Pero?” she had asked in frustration. “A person’s shadow without its head? She told them that her grandmother had told her that if a person sees her shadow without its head on the seventh day of the autumn festival, that she’ll die during the year. Then, later, she told me that it wasn’t her own shadow she’d seen, but someone else’s . . . you know . . . in that way she has of speaking as though she has a secret known only to herself. Porquerias, Pero, that’s all her secrets are. Useless trifles! I know that she wanted me to ask whose shadow she’d seen, but I refused. I wasn’t going to encourage her foolishness. Thank God, she went to see her mother and won’t be back till Tuesday. Anyhow, we couldn’t be taking our baths outside if she was here.”
Ama, Catalina’s housekeeper, was a soot-splattered young urchin whom Catalina’s father had rescued from the mills where she had worked with her mother amid the stale and sour smell of millions of silkworms. Catalina and Pedro had spoken with Ama’s mother who seemed to be a sensible woman, but this ancient grandmother whom they had yet to meet, was constantly filling Ama’s head with nonsense.
Catalina had tried to tame her—this mysterious and wild thing—providing clothing and shoes for her as replacements for the rags that she wore. But Ama refused to be tamed. She reluctantly wore the clothes they provided, but refused to wear the shoes which remained hidden beneath her bed. Catalina had wondered what had happened to them and had discovered them while searching for one of Luis’s toys.
The shoes, alpargatas of the Basque region, tiny sandals of coarse canvas soled with hemp, just sat there, idle and abandoned, their toes curling toward the ceiling. There, too, hidden beneath her bed, were a tattered blanket, a sack of dried bread, several ears of corn, and, unaccountably, what appeared to be weeds from their garden—the latter with tufted roots the soil of which was still attached. Catalina recalled looking around her uncomfortably as she had halted her search, feeling that she had invaded a private space, the coop of a starving and frightened chicken. She left the items where they lay and retreated, never to speak of them to Ama, and, although Ama continued to sleep beneath the bed they provided, she spent most weekends with her own family, which gave Catalina a brief but needed respite from her.
Pedro, of course, was first as he walked across the cold stones with his final pail of water. Now clad in a sheet and clutching a bar of Neapolitan soap (made of wheat bran, milk of poppies, goat’s milk, marrow of deer, bitter almonds and sugar), he moved quickly across the cold stones of the plazuela. Then, without taking off his mantle, which he wore as a barber’s cape that encircled both shoulders, he sat in the water that he had poured for himself. His bath would be a short one, for there were two to go.
Diego and Luis were next, and their baths were also short as they sat in the water used by their father and washed with the soap and rag he had provided them. However, Diego, at least, seemed more interested in cleaning the beautiful white stone he had brought with him than caring for his own needs. Catalina had admonished the boys to wash here and there while she poured water over them with a copper cup. Diego though, continued to play with the stone he had found, noting that, with a cross seemingly etched across one of its surfaces, it looked like a cruzado. His father had told him that a white stone meant good luck and that this was a stone to cherish. Clutching it beneath the sheet his mother had provided him after the bath, he took the stone with him as he later ran into the house.
With their basin newly filled, and in the shadowed light of their open plazuela, Catalina placed Lucia and Ana within the water. Then, uncharacteristically, for she was excessively modest, she kicked off her alpargatas, let her robe slip from her slim, white shoulders and stepped in behind them.
Their bath, which now contained angel water, was a special treat. The angel water was a cosmetic made from the distillation of red and white roses, trefoil, red poppies, lavender root, honeysuckle, orange blossoms, white lilies, thyme, carnations and orange rinds which the three of them had made during the previous summer. It was a bath within which to soak. Therefore, with their knees tucked neatly beneath their chins, and with the warmth of bared flesh connecting them as they pressed one against another, they observed a small group of swifts and black martins as they flew in tight semicircles far above their heads. Then, with the flecks of orange rinds floating lazily about them, they watched as the late afternoon sun sank behind the wall of their plazuela.
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Was that only a week ago? Catalina thought. Standing alone in the small clearing, she gazed past their mules tethered beyond the small fire of their encampment, and into the shadows of the forested slopes. The sky continued to lose its light and she again became closed off and enveloped in darkness.
* * *
Their journey continued as they rode through the mountains of Toledo, through Almendralejo, Zafra, and Fuente de Cantos. Days later, as they rode by the stone markers of the Castilian/Andalusian border, Pedro told the members of his mule train that many hundreds of years before, these rich pasturelands had been stud farms for the breeding of cavalry horses. Although the number of beautiful Arab-bred Andalusians in the valley was now greatly diminished, the rich pasturelands remained. And on 23 April 1577, through a forest of olive, orange, and cypress trees which spread out before them, they arrived at the ‘City of Reflections.’ They had been on the road for 20 days. This was several days longer than they had anticipated. However, the muleteers had found Catalina’s swinging litter, the era’s utmost form of comfort, extremely cumbersome, bumping and lurching on the difficult tracks. The Robledos promised themselves that should they be required to make a similar trip in the future, each member of the family would be mounted on his or her own mule.
The Robledos had planned to arrive in Seville for the May sailing of the merchant fleet from that city to Vera Cruz. Prior to 1492, Spain’s trade center had resided in Catalonia on the Mediterranean coast, with Barcelona being the richest and most celebrated port in the world. However, with the discovery of America, trade switched from Catalonia to Seville leaving Catalan merchants and vessels high and dry. Now, Seville and Vera Cruz held the monopolies for all traffic with the West Indies. Seville was Spain’s assigned point of departure, while Vera Cruz was the only seaport through which both New Spain and the other parts of Spanish America got their materials. The Robledos knew there would be a second sailing in September. This second fleet, known as the Terra Firma,3 would be going to Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Panama. After crossing the Isthmus, the cargo of the Terra Firma vessels would be placed upon ships bound for trade in the South Sea. This, however, was not the Robledos’ destination. They were going to Vera Cruz.
* * *
In 1577, Seville, formerly the site of the small Roman acropolis of Hispalis, and now a city of 150,000 inhabitants, was Spain’s largest city. It was composed of two urban centers on either bank of the Guadalquivir River linked by a pontoon bridge. Seville was on the east bank while Triana, a gitaneria or home to a colony of gypsies, was on the west. Gigantic walls, which forced the meandering river into a new channel, separated the two sections of the city. The walls, which had served to bring the river closer to the city, also served as quays, which facilitated the rigging and provisioning of ships. Together, the two cities reflected the two main motivations for overseas travel, religion and commerce.
The mark of Christianity was clearly demonstrated by the number and size of Seville’s religious buildings. These included many monasteries and convents, innumerable churches, chapels, and oratorios, and Seville’s grand cathedral. Cheek by jowl with these were Seville’s Customs’ House, its mint, its marvelous Merchants’ Hall (a magnificent structure of stone and brick close to the cathedral), and its House of Trade, or Casa de Contratacion. These represented Seville’s position as a financial hub for Spain and New Spain. With shopkeepers from England, Flanders, France, Greece, Italy, and Portugal, it was a veritable
