The Inquisitor's Wife Read Free Page B

It was a look I would become accustomed to seeing in men’s eyes as I grew older.
    The second time I encountered Gabriel, little more than a week ago, I’d been screaming again. This time I was the one pinned by his brute strength; he’d held me back from diving into the deep waters of the River Guadalquivir.
    “I’m sorry,” he had said. Those were the only two words he said to me before coming to ask my grieving father for my hand.
    I fidgeted, fighting to repress memory and tears; by then, the priest had finished his prayer, and we were obliged to stand as he read the obligatory passage from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.”
    In a strong tenor belied by his feeble appearance, the priest began to sing an abbreviated liturgy. The three men accompanying me sang the compulsory replies, but I couldn’t lift my voice. Instead, I stood, face downcast beneath my dark veil, and tried to will myself to another, happier place and time, where the events of the previous week had never happened, where the events of today could never occur.
    The priest began his homily, which he rattled off with the same enthusiasm a bored child might a Latin prayer learned by rote. Again, he invoked Paul’s words to the church in Corinth: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
    I remembered my mother, Magdalena, and her constant love, whose perfection would have pleased even Saint Paul; I closed my eyes and saw her smiling beside me. She was more than a decade younger then, stronger of body and mind because she had yet to undergo much suffering. Eager for her company, I returned to her in memory.

 
     
    Two
     
     
    My earliest childhood recollection is that of my mother, Magdalena, praying in her bedroom every Friday just as the sun sank beneath the river. I would stand quietly beside her in front of her little wooden prayer bench and altar as she lit two fresh candles, each in precious gold holders brought out only for that occasion. A white shawl draped over her plaited hair, she held one hand reverently in front of her downcast eyes so that she wouldn’t see the blessed light too soon; with the other hand, she held a burning kindling-stick to each taper. In the gloom, shadows dappled her fingers, cheeks, and lips as each wick sputtered and caught, making her handsome profile radiant with its glow. To my young eyes, her face seemed as incandescent as the moon, her expression as beatific as that of the Holy Virgin. I would watch her pale gray silhouette loom and recede on the wall as the flames flickered, her shadow melding with that of the Madonna on her altar.
    When she was satisfied that the fire had caught, she would cover both of her eyes and whisper. “Baruch atah Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat. Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has made us holy through His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Sabbath light.”
    Then she would pray silently for a moment while I repeated inside my head the prayer she had taught me to secretly preface all others with: Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. For good measure, I usually added a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys.
    Only then would my mother lower her hands and look joyfully at the light and grace me with her brilliant smile. Often I would reach for her, and she would put an affectionate arm around me, holding me to her as together we faced east and welcomed God into our home for another week.
    My mother was more