The Girl From Oto Page 3

  She brought the record book to the cellaress, Sister Mathilde, who was counting ceramic jugs of grain by torchlight in the stone cellars.

  “Sister, what is this?” Béatrice hoisted the book into the shifting circle of light cast by the torch. “Here. This reference to books and sundries, and Carlo Sacazar.”

  Mathilde peered at the text. “Ah. Yes, the wool merchant of Nay. Always smiling, I remember. He came here with his sister. Though she wasn’t much for smiling. Looked as though she’d drunk sour milk, to my mind.” She turned her head, distracted by a scuttling sound emanating from a dark corner. “The rats are at it again. What happened to that blessed cat?”

  “Never mind the cat or the rats,” Béatrice said. “What do you remember?”

  “They came here—oh, it was long ago. The mother abbess was near the end, I remember. Begging your pardon, but some of us thought she was not right in the head in her last years.”

  “And?”

  “And—” Mathilde hesitated, clearing her throat. “She—well, it pains me to say it. She sold most of the books in the library to them. For quite a tidy sum, if I recall. Two bags of coin, they gave her.”

  “Two bags of coin for the contents of our library? And it has all gone to the home of a wool merchant, you say?” Béatrice was incredulous.

  “He bought them for his sister, for she’s an abbess as well. Built her a fancy convent in Nay, is the story. The abbess before you didn’t care for books. But I suppose that’s obvious, given that she sold them all away.”

  Mathilde lobbed a piece of cork at the shadows. Whatever skulked there fell silent.

  “Ah! That’s better.” She smiled in satisfaction.

  Béatrice shut the book and turned away without another word.

  The next morning, she composed a letter to the merchant Carlo Sacazar. She assumed a pleading tone, offering to travel to Nay and meet with him to discuss the return of the volumes to their spiritual home at the abbey. She carried on at length about the books’ importance to the future survival of the institution, to its identity, to its moral strength. Her confessor, a bishop in Pau, would be much aggrieved to learn of the sale of Belarac’s spiritual property, she added. Of course, she hoped she would not have to take the matter up with him.

  She knew, no matter what kind of man Carlo Sacazar was, the implication that a bishop might intervene would force him to at least acknowledge her request. In truth, her goal was twofold. Yes, she desired the return of the books. But more than that, she wanted to learn how the wool trade in Nay functioned.

  She dipped her quill in ink, thinking of the path that had brought her here to the edge of the wilderness.

  If her father had his way, she would have been married off at twelve to a squire or a knight-for-hire like himself. He spent most of her childhood fighting for foreign nobles in distant lands. When she was seven, he sailed away from Béarn on a ship to Castilla. He was gone for three years. When he returned, scars puckered the skin on his face and he walked with a limp. He no longer held his arms out to Béatrice and her two sisters so they could run to his embrace; instead he obsessed over their futures. Within a few years both of Béatrice’s older sisters were wed, one at fourteen and the next at twelve.

  Her mother, blessed woman, had talked him into allowing her to enter the convent of Aldefount in the north of Béarn. Instead of paying a dowry to a husband’s family, the silver went to the convent. And when her father died, with no son to carry on the family name, their modest manor house surrounded by wheat fields was turned over to a male cousin. Béatrice’s mother died an unwelcome guest in her own home.

  Béatrice, with her calm, practical nature, had proven herself worthy of the religious life. She rose quickly through the ranks of well-born sisters at Aldefount and was elected treasurer—the youngest woman ever to hold the rank, the abbess claimed—because of her intelligence and her immunity to the caprices of others. She had no use for mysticism and was unmoved when other sisters claimed to have heard the voice of God during trances or in their dreams. Béatrice found peace in the long hours of silent prayers, the measured pace of life counted out by the chiming of bells, the arc of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon.

  But now, that existence was over. Though her family’s fortune had run dry, somehow a thread of value had attached itself to her bedraggled name again. It seemed her family was last of a line that traced back to the founders of a convent in the wild Pyrenees called Belarac, a place that had survived plague and poverty and famine. A place whose charter decreed that the abbess be a descendant of the convent’s founding family.

  She signed her name on the letter and sat back, waiting for the ink to dry. Twisting the gold ring off her finger, she stared at its face, at the simple sheaf of wheat that was her family herald. She would stamp the wax seal with her ring and send the letter out into the world, but the truly audacious thing was that she would follow it out of these gates, would ride back down the mountain road to Nay with no authority from anyone but herself.

  Her father would roll in his grave to learn this, she was sure. He had paid good silver for his youngest daughter to live out her days safe behind a wall. And here she was, about to pass through the gates and travel in search of wealth just as he had. The difference was she wore no armor, nor did she wield a weapon. She was only a nun, after all—a nun who dared to enter the world of men.

  Fate was not always kind to such women.

  3

  Spring, 1486

  Nay, Béarn

  Béatrice

  Béatrice’s eyes flitted back and forth, taking in the luxurious details of the convent’s entry hall. The pink marble floor gleamed underfoot. On a side table, beeswax candles burned in fat silver candlesticks. She spied the stone likenesses of a man and a woman carved above a doorway. They both had round faces and docile expressions, their lips curling up in faint smiles.

  Amadina Sacazar descended the polished marble steps, following Béatrice’s gaze with her heavy-lidded dark eyes.

  “That is my brother you admire, Abbess,” she said in thickly accented Béarnaise. “Our benevolent patron Lord Carlo Sacazar and his wife, Lady Flora.”

  She ordered a servant to take Béatrice’s cloak and satchel to her room, then waved her through one of the doors leading off the hallway. Inside, torches burned in iron sconces along both walls, and a large fire blazed in the fireplace. Twelve identical oak cabinets lined the walls, each one filled with books. The center of the room was dominated by four long oak tables surrounded by high-backed chairs. A leather-bound record book lay open on the polished surface of one of the tables.

  “That record book lists what my brother purchased from your abbey,” Amadina said. “Once you have found the books in my cabinets, I will mark them off.”

  Béatrice looked at the silver candlesticks on the tables, the portraits of saints that hung in gold frames above each cabinet. There was more wealth visible in this room, she realized, than existed in the entire abbey of Belarac. When she turned back to the door, Amadina was gone.

  Crossing to the first large cabinet, she pulled out a book. On the spine was the seal of Belarac—an ornate B superimposed over a cross. She felt a leap of excitement and gently laid it on the table.

  By the time supper was ready, she had found nearly one hundred books. A servant led her to a private dining room where Amadina and her brother, Carlo, waited. At the sight of Béatrice, Carlo strode across the room and bowed to her, his two forefingers joined as if in prayer. She bowed her head in return.

  Béatrice had never seen such fine clothes on a man. He wore black wool breeches with blue silk stockings, a velvet vest over a linen blouse, and sleeves that were set with an alternating diagonal pattern of blue and black silk. The pointed toes of his black leather boots gleamed with oil. Several of his fingers were adorned with gold rings.

  “Please, join us.” He
nodded in the direction of the dining table.

  Béatrice was slightly unnerved by the seating arrangements, which had Amadina and Carlo seated at either end of the long table, with her directly in the middle. The siblings’ patter commenced at breakneck speed, helped along by copious servings of wine. Their conversation ranged from gossip about people back home in Zaragoza to complaints about the weather in Nay and the dismal lack of choices in the weekly food market.

  Two servants kept their cups full and deposited platter after platter of food on the table. The bread was white and fine. There was a type of dry, thinly sliced ham Béatrice had never seen before, as well as hard cheeses unlike any she had ever tasted. There was salted fish marinated in oil, and olives, and plates of tiny fried peppers sprinkled with great flecks of sea salt.

  She realized the Sacazars, who had gone silent, were staring at her.

  “This is a welcome change from our diet at Belarac,” she said, feeling foolish. “I am most grateful.”

  “Good, good!” Carlo’s smile reappeared. “We are happy to host you. How do you find our convent? Is it to your liking?”

  “I find much to admire in it.”

  “What you will not find here are vulgar goings-on,” Amadina said. “In my house, piety and propriety reign.”

  Carlo nodded. “My sister is a fine abbess. She follows the wishes of her majesty Queen Isabella to the letter. Our queen, quite rightly, desires all religious houses to once again be places of quiet contemplation, prayer, and reverence rather than boarding houses for the wealthy.”

  “This is Béarn, not Aragón,” Béatrice said. “I respect your desire to carry out Queen Isabella’s wishes, but the fact remains that many religious houses would cease to exist without boarders.” She sipped her wine.

  Amadina’s face grew red. “What you will not find here are women with private parlors entertaining visitors at all hours of the day or night,” she said hotly. “We observe strict rules of silence, obedience, and prayer. My brother is an abbot, too, you know. He presides over not one, but two monasteries. He has imposed Queen Isabella’s philosophy at those places as well.”

  “It is my duty to help her majesty bring back the proper decorum to these places,” Carlo said. “Do you know, before I took over the monastery of St. Christine, there were women living in the dormitories with the monks?”

  “That is not the first such instance of impropriety in a monastery,” Béatrice said.

  “Impropriety is one thing,” Carlo said. “Violence is quite another. Some years ago, a monk was murdered in the chapel at St. Christine’s. And the murderer was never brought to justice. The brute may still walk among us today.” He placed a spoonful of salted fish on a slice of ham and deftly rolled it up.

  “A horrible travesty, is it not?” Amadina asked, stuffing a pepper in her mouth. A spray of juices dribbled down her chin. She snapped her fingers at a servant, who rushed over and blotted her mistress’s chest with a towel.

  Suppressing an urge to laugh, Béatrice feigned intense interest in a platter of cheese tarts.

  “With the moral decay all around us, your strict regimen of prayer and reflection is all the more impressive,” she said once she had regained her composure.

  “There is ample time for work as well. Every sister in the place is spinning and weaving from dawn to dusk, save for prayer time and meals, of course. I oversee the work to ensure the nuns are as industrious as God intends.” Amadina’s dark eyes glittered.

  Béatrice imagined her patrolling rows of silent nuns as their fingers flashed, working their distaffs and threading their looms.

  “They must produce a large quantity of cloth,” she said.

  “I would better call it a torrent of cloth,” Carlo said. “Or perhaps an avalanche.” He glanced at his sister, who preened at the compliment.

  Dessert was served, a cream tart layered with caramelized almonds and apricots, set upon a crust of ground pistachios.

  “I remember the first time I ate this.” Carlo shoveled in a great mouthful. “I was with our grandfather, meeting the Moor who transported our wool to the coast. Grandfather told me it was time I made myself useful.” He laughed. “I was no more than eighteen. We went into the office of Ebrahim Mosequin, and a servant brought us slices of this very tart. It was a specialty of his family.”

  “Why did you transport your wool to the coast?” Béatrice asked.

  “The Italians wanted nothing to do with our wool until the wars between England and France strangled the English wool trade. Suddenly, our wool became fashionable in Florence. My father made a fortune sailing his fleeces across the sea. He struck up a great friendship with a Florentine wool merchant—so great, in fact, that I was named for the man.”

  “Do you still travel to Florence?”

  “Oh, no. The plague, you see. Not to mention delays at the harbor, fires on board, storms, shipwreck, pirates, wars, spoilage of the wool.” He waved a hand in the air. “Too many headaches. Now I bring my wool from Aragón across the Pyrenees and finish it here.” He drained the last of his wine and gestured to a servant to refill his cup. “My fabrics are in high demand in Paris, and that market never stops growing.”

  “Your success is impressive, sir.”

  “Do you forget my brother is an abbot twice over, and titled?” Amadina cut in.

  “My apologies, Lord Sacazar.” Béatrice imagined the pile of gold he had exchanged for his titles.

  “Think nothing of it. Yes, my business grows by the year. But there are limits, there are frustrations, which I never foresaw when I established myself here.”

  “Such as?”

  “There is little riverfront property in Nay. But a waterway is necessary for both washing and dyeing. If I could eliminate the wool washing stations on the banks, I would build more dye houses along the river, and our production of finished fabrics would soar.” He signaled to the servant for another slice of tart.

  “So if you had another source of washed wool—”

  He nodded, beaming. “Ah! Your mind works like that of a merchant. We are not so different, you and I.”

  Béatrice stared at him, a plan forming in her mind.

  On the road back from Nay in the rattling oxcart, her eyes fixed on the long train of mules roped nose-to-tail before her, she sifted through possibilities.

  There was a derelict building, perhaps an ancient chapel, that stood on the banks of the stream in the valley of Belarac. Perfect, she now saw, for a wool-washing station. The fact that she knew nothing about washing wool did not perturb her. She would tap the experience of the monks at the monastery of San Juan de la Peña who bragged of their wool washing station every time they passed through Belarac to points north. There would be expenses, of course. But come springtime, God willing, she would receive another installment of gold from Aragón in payment for raising the unwanted daughter of the Oto family.

  The unfortunate truth was this: Miramonde de Oto—a girl not yet two—held the fortunes of Belarac in her tiny hand.

  The mule train rambled slowly south into the mountains past rushing streams and cool forests, its progress marked by the creak and clatter of hooves and equipment, the grunting of animals, the shouted instructions of men.

  Béatrice gazed ahead, stiff-backed on the oxcart’s hard bench, oblivious to everything but the words that throbbed in her mind.

  Please, God. Keep Miramonde alive.

  4

  Autumn, 1486

  Castle Oto, Aragón

  Marguerite

  The balcony shutters flapped against their latches as if a great bellows blew on them, startling the boy awake. Marguerite dropped her embroidery and reached for him.

  “Pelegrín,” she whispered. “Do not fret, my son.”

  He was old enough to walk, but she could not bear the thought of him toddling away from her. So she kept
him tightly swaddled and ignored his squirming protests. When her husband was away, which was often, she insisted on Pelegrín spending his days and nights at her side. The idea of him sleeping in some cold dark chamber with only a wet-nurse for company was unbearable.

  She pulled a sachet of dried lavender from the small oak box she kept on a table next to the bed and tucked it into Pelegrín’s wrappings. The scent of lavender always calmed her, and it seemed to have the same effect on her son. Memories of her mother always crowded her mind when she inhaled the herb’s sharp, pleasing scent. She leaned back with her eyes closed, remembering.

  In the gathering warmth of a late summer morning in her ninth year, she had waited in her brocade dress and velvet sleeves, watching the stable boys hitch mules to a cart and saddle the horses. Four knights milled about in the courtyard. The dull clatter of hooves on cobblestones echoed off the high slate roof of the house. A rooster crowed.

  Leather trunks containing her dowry clothing, jewels and linens were lifted one by one into the cart. Marguerite’s father picked her up and placed her in the saddle of the little black horse that belonged to her sister. Her own horse had a sore on its back that would not heal. Settled into the saddle, she glanced up. Two small, ghostly faces peered out from a window. Her brother waved. Her sister, who was more peeved that her horse was leaving than sad at Marguerite’s departure, stuck out her tongue.

  Her father stepped back and her mother approached. Marguerite bent down to hear the whispered words: “Be brave. Make the Béarnais proud.” For the last time, she breathed in the scent of the lavender oil her mother always dabbed on her neck.