Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin

Author:Theresa Breslin [Theresa Breslin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2011-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

PRISONER OF THE INQUISITION

1491–1492

Chapter Twenty-eight

Zarita

SISTER MADDALENA LAID the cutting shears close to my ear.

The grating sound of metal on metal.

My hair, the shining locks of burnished black that Mama had brushed each evening and my papa had plaited before I went riding with him each morning, tumbled onto the cold tiled floor.

Tears trickled down my cheeks. People had always admired my hair. Many said it was what made me distinctive. From when I was the tiniest child Ardelia, my nurse, had told me the story of the princess who’d been rescued from a tower by a prince using her hair as a rope to climb up to reach her. Ardelia declared that one day a rich and handsome prince would ride up to our house, fall deeply in love with me, and I would become his bride – all because of the length and lustre of my beautiful hair.

Sister Maddalena fetched a broom and gave it to me to sweep up. ‘A woman’s hair can be her bondage,’ she said briskly. ‘Think on it, Sister Zarita de Marzena.’

In my aunt’s order of nuns a woman could keep her given name. I would still be Zarita, and I’d decided to adopt Mama’s family name rather than use Papa’s name any more, as, in my view, my father had abandoned me. Not long after the terrible day when he’d told me what was to become of me, we’d learned that Lorena was expecting a child. I realized that Papa would soon be taken up with his new family and then there would no longer be a place for me in his house. I was left with no option but to enter the convent.

My aunt was very quiet on this matter. She wouldn’t speak against Papa. I wasn’t sure if this was to do with one of the vows of her order: to be charitable in all things. Surely she wasn’t supporting Papa’s point of view? Once, when I’d been railing against him, she’d murmured, ‘Sometimes people do what they think is for the best, and their intentions are misinterpreted.’

I’d put my hands over my ears. ‘I won’t listen to any justification of his actions. As he has cast me off, thus will I do to him.’

And so it was as Zarita de Marzena that I began my new life as a novice in the convent of the Sisters of Compassion.

Summer cooled into autumn, and autumn became winter, but to my surprise the greyness of the skies was not reflected in my spirits. There was a happiness present in the enclosed community of women that I hadn’t expected. The nuns took joy from their work and prayer. They laughed when they ate and sewed together, and delighted in both playing and singing music for Evensong each night.

Removed from the tension of my home and the constant bickering with Lorena, I found calmness seeping into my mind and I began to acquire a peace and perspective that had been absent in my life.

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