your pride, Pedro,” Catalina’s father responded in exasperation, his lips tightening as though he was trying to control some emotion. “Your pride kept you from working for me, Pedro, and it’s going to get you killed.”
“It wasn’t my pride that killed my children, don Alonso,” Pedro responded. “It was my fear . . . and my stupidity.”
“What stupidity?” the older man asked as they ascended the worn stairs from the zaguan. “No one could have known the river would be in flood, Pedro. Do you think God is under an obligation to give notice of a coming misfortune? No one could have known,” he continued softly, his anguish now spent. “It was just an accident, Pedro,” he said while turning away from his son-in-law so that Pedro would not see the tears. He was silent before going on. “It was a tragic accident, that’s all,” he said quietly as he continued covering mirrors and emptying standing water throughout the house.
Pedro sat on a stool that stood on one side of don Alonso’s estrado de cumplimiento, or state salon. From there he could see the pictures, the heavy, carved wooden chests, the delicate chests of drawers and the sideboards inside the room, as well as the salon’s balcony which stood outside its full length windows whose silken curtains now billowed in the wind. The balcony of forged iron, the angles of which were decorated with balls of copper, overlooked the towers and spires of the city and faced the damnable river, a sullen dark thing without obvious movement. As he looked at the balcony through the open windows, a rush of emotion seized him as he thought of the memories the balcony evoked. It was here that he had first held Diego and each of his children.
“She was the most perfect child,” Pedro said of Ana, speaking more to himself than to Catalina’s father as he rose and moved toward the windows. “So bright and eager to learn. Nose to everything. If it was there, she had to know what and why. Questions all through the day,” he said of his five-year-old. “And Luis,” he continued with a catch in his throat, “he was just a baby. My poor innocent lambs,” he said. “There’s been such suffering and I alone am responsible.”
He stood for a moment, lost in his own thoughts, and then continued as though trying to provide an explanation to himself. “I ran because I believed it to be the right thing to do,” he said. “The Inquisitors would have trumped up some charge against me. You know how they are. They might even have tried me for heresy. Perhaps I would have been acquitted,” he said, “but who can take the chance? Persons have been known to languish in prison for as long as 14 years before they might be pronounced free of guilt or blame. I couldn’t risk it, don Alonso,” he said in resignation.
The old man was silent for a long time, and when he responded, it was with a voice full of sadness. “I never wanted you to work for the Inquisition,” said don Alonso, pulling his cloak about his shoulders. “I felt it unseemly, Pedro. Baptism has done little more than convert a considerable proportion of our people from infidels outside the Church to heretics inside it. And these searching inquiries into our conduct, and the punishments meted out for those of us found guilty of backsliding, are not only unseemly but criminal,” he said. “I didn’t want you to have anything to do with it.”
“And I thought of my job as only that of a scrivener,” Pedro said. “I was lying to myself, don Alonso,” he said sadly. “Now I feel like La Susanna, carrying on an intrigue with a Christian, disclosing our secrets, and bringing all to ruin. My interests were only in manuscripts and the law,” he said. “What have I done?”
“You’ve done nothing,” his father-law stated emphatically. “You give yourself more blame than you’re due. But I know your value, Pedro” he said. “You can do whatever you put your mind to. You’ll start on a new course and we’ll be partners.”
“But passage, don Alonso. How do we gain passage?”
“Everything’s for sale here,” his father-in-law responded as he joined Pedro at the balcony’s entrance, “titles of nobility, the offices of regidor and jurado, letters of legitimization for the sons of priests. Everything. The crown needs our money,” he said gesturing with his hand as though holding a fistful of coins. “My God, Pedro,” he said, “what does don Felipe owe, 37,000,000 duats? All grants have been suspended, Pedro. He can’t pay his bills. Don Felipe needs our money. It won’t be difficult to gain your passage,” he said with the air of one who has learned how to deal successfully and shrewdly in the world of commerce and politics.
For a few moments they stood looking at each other before Pedro’s father-in-law continued. “You’ll leave tomorrow, Pedro, and Tonio will see you to the coast.”
“I don’t see how we can go, don Alonso,” Pedro responded. “Catalina . . . Catalina can’t travel.”
“You’re right, of course,” his father-in-law said as he held back the curtain to get a better view of the night. “And under ordinary circumstances she’d remain with me until she was better. But she’s like her mother, Pedro,” his father-in-law said regarding his daughter, “seemingly fragile, but strong when it comes to her family. Her place,” he said, “is with you. You must try to distract her from her melancholy. Stay away from the towns and villages as much as you can, Pedro, and buy your provisions along the road. Avoid the milliones,” he said, referring to the taxes which were imposed upon everything one ate. “You should be able to buy everything you need along the way. I’m going to the corrals now,” he said, throwing the skirt of his cloak over his shoulders. “I must see to the mules.”
“I’ll go with you,” Pedro said, gathering his cloak about him.
“No,” his father-in-law responded, while taking his broad brimmed hat from its place near the glass doors. “You must get ready for tomorrow and there must not be too much noise about it,” said this shrewd and careful man. “You’re a good man, Pedro,” he continued, with the tears again welling in his eyes. “You must not grieve,” he said as he began to provide the advice which a father must give to his son. “You must look for happiness,” he said placing his hand on Pedro’s shoulder. “You must accept your lot, Pedro. You must say to yourself, ‘Perhaps it was for the best.’ I hope and pray that all goes well with you,” he said as he readied himself to leave the salon. “You’ll always be as my own to me, Pedro, and I want only for your safety.”
Pedro entered the gallery and watched his father-in-law as he closed the street door below him. As he stood on Catalina’s balcony of joys and sorrows, he recalled with an effusion of emotion that moment in which he had sat there with Diego looking over the tiled rooftops and spires of the ancient city and toward the Tagusian moat. He had often sat there with his father-in-law, listening to the music being sung at the cathedral, but on that particular evening with Diego there had been no music, the hushed village seemingly awaiting a momentous event.
_____________
The sky had been a ghostly rose and violet in color, lilac shadowed with majestic serenity. Pedro and Diego had been sitting there quietly while Pedro engaged in the long process of filling the bowl of his pipe with tobacco he had taken from a pouch in the pocket of his shirt. Then, suddenly, without warning, an incredible flock of perhaps a hundred or more swallows, swooped down out of the sky to the top of the balcony and then off again into the amethyst heavens. They flew in a line, one after another. At times, the swallows came within inches of their faces, the glossy blue-black on their upper parts contrasting beautifully with the white on their outer tail quills. They continued in this manner, swooping down with a delicate grace, flicking the pools of street water with their dark wings and then, with a shrill twitter, returning to the open sky. They continued like this for many minutes during which Diego and his father seemed to be members of the flock, participants in their aerial display.
“Papa,
