Carol Zapata-Whelan: ÁNIMA EN PENA, SPAIN 1656

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 to deploy, 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 rugs, 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 elicited her interest as she chewed and swallowed, young and alone. Circling her were ladies of silver hair and lineage: 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 and azahares syrup.

One thing only infused life in our Queen’s face: her little Infanta, Margarita, whose portrait Velázquez was newly painting. The five-year-old princess was a small sun with cerulean eyes, radiating energy and light. My role at her sittings was to lull her with English ballads I learned from my mother, whose grandfather served our Felipe II in London at a time of peace.

I was pleased, if nervous, to see my brother Tadeo back in his gray page’s 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. As happened more often, that dish was a foul smelling chicken 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, were passing the time juggling apples from a ceramic bowl. They began tossing oranges to the jester and an Italian dwarf, Nicolasillo Pertusato, whose red suit further livened their tableaux against a backdrop of courtiers in Spanish black per the King’s sumptuary laws. The Queen ignored her pages’ poor manners and they, in turn, ignored my signals ordering them to stop.

Failing to control the pages, and in preparation for Don Julio’s arrival, 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, and little moved her, 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 as my rival cousin Urraca was soon elbowing me at the looking glass, taking over with her own reflection.

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 joined by two of her minions, meninas whose endless names and titles I refused to memorize. 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 full measure of my antiquated guardainfantes, my own dear mother’s.

“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 lacquered fans.

"How is my uncle Pedro’s fortune of late?” Urraca knew of my señor padre’s decline and his poor luck at cards these days. This all began when my mother failed to return home nearly a year ago 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 preamble or context, 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 their Spanish black continued conversations. Ladies in jewel toned dresses fluttered their fans. Queen Mariana was nodding to 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 near 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 told me, The Green Book, destroyed a decade past. It traced all Spanish nobles back to Sefarad, to Jewish Spain.

Again I looked 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 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.”

This time the jester had, most certainly, memorized an entry from a Palace newsletter by a scribe of King Felipe III—-far from entertainment for a Queen’s public meal with foreign dignitaries present. Before I could redirect the jester to recite a poem while the mandolin players tuned their instruments, I overheard the English in their language.

“I hold this state to be one of the most confused and disorganized in Christendom! Anyone who speaks well of Spain is Catholic!” The oldest one was Protestant of course.

“I happen to be Catholic, your Grace,” said the fair haired Jesuit priest at his side, eyebrows raised.

“Quite!” Said the older man. “But you are English!” .

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 face. I stood indecisive, pulse quickening, anxiously 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 enunciating a polite reply in English as my mother taught me—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 land, 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 language. “My uncle is the English ambassador.” His color was normalizing.

“The English ambassador,” I repeated in English. .

“Sir Nigel Nosworthy.”

I nodded, without words of 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 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 to simply 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 desert—let alone defend the 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, when I felt myself losing hope of seeing my 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 made of lead. The book 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 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 ancestral homeland were called “New Christians,” their loyalty of belief suspect, ever subject to interrogation, torture and execution by the Inquisition. In 1609, all children of Islam, though New Christians, were banished forever from Spain.

But before the banishment, a miracle: Holy relics and a parchment prophesy in Hebrew surfaced from the rubble of Granada’s razed ancient Torre Turpiana—a tower built by a Lost Tribe of Israel. The parchment told of an Arab saint, Cecilius, a disciple from the time of Christ, bringing sacred scriptures to Spain. The parchment’s prophecy spoke of a lost Gospel and a Mute Book with a key to unity and Peace. These writings surfaced in 1595, in Granada’s caves, etched in bound lead disks, palm sized, 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 the twenty-two lead books from Granada’s caves taken to Rome for study, suspected of hoax or heresy. Before the lead books were seized by King Felipe IV and then confiscated by Pope Innocent X, they inspired pilgrimages and tales of miracles. They had been 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 stray book was thought to be a key to deciphering The Mute Book so-named in the parchment prophecy. This Mute Book, whose only bronze copy her ally holds in secret in Sevilla, has resisted all translation. Once deciphered it is believed, it will yield a powerful prayer, a plan for for peace for the People of the Book—that they might live freely in shared lands.

The inside of my mother’s ring reads: Shalom, Salam, 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. We yet seek her. 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.

Not long after, 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 at 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— could 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.

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:

Peace for the People of the Book is a personal topic for me as it was for the narrator’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 called. He was thought to be the son of a noble—and a spy, with a savant’s memory. His quotations are from 1, 2, 3 below:

*1.The 1492 Alhambra Decree or “The 1492 Expulsion Edict of the Jews from Spain”:

https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/pjhr/chhre/pdf/hh-alhambra-1492-english.pdf

**2. Anales de Madrid de León Pinelo, reinado de Felipe III, años 1598 a 1621; edición y estudio crítico del manuscrito número 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. He led soldiers in the war in Granada against the “Moriscos”. I do not name the “enemy” and elsewhere, for clarity and respect, I use “Muslim” rather than “Morisco” the common, problematic term. “Morisco” refers to a “New Christian” of Islamic descent.

4. The English ambassador’s words are taken verbatim from an earlier English ambassador to Spain, Lord Francis Cottington (1579 – 1652). There was no English ambassador in Spain in 1656 over to spiking enmity/wars with England. The last ambassador during Cromwell was given no quarters when he arrived and was murdered near his public lodging by Irish soldiers loyal to Spain.

5. There was known to be a “Green Book” destroyed in the early 17th century, tracing all nobility in Spain to Jewish ancestry. Sephardic Jews were in the Spanish Peninsula before the Romans.

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. Diego Velázquez’s iconic masterpiece “Las Meninas,” originally reported 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 young woman in an earlier version of the famous work after I conceived of writing from the point of view of an erased menina.

Carol Zapata-Whelan