Free The Inquisitor's Wife by Jeanne Kalogridis Page B

swung open before us. A few weeks earlier, I would have been eager to explore these new surroundings—but that night, my curiosity was damped by grief and a rapidly escalating sense of dread.
    We rattled onto worn, uneven brick pavement; in the darkness, I got the impression of an immense property that stretched back to infinity. We pulled up to the north side of the house—the side facing the abandoned olive grove where, years earlier, Gabriel had beaten the old Jewish man—and came to a stop beside a one-story covered walkway. Beneath its tile roof, in the glow cast by torches freshly lit after the rain, a young woman in a white veil and plain gray dress curtsied as my husband and I climbed out and approached her. In one hand she held a flickering lamp. Beside her stood a thick-boned, brawny hunchback of about forty; had he been able to straighten himself, he would have been the taller by far. As it was, he barely came to her shoulders, for once his spine left his waist, it swelled outward and then in again so that his face naturally looked down at the ground. He was forced to bend his neck at a harsh angle in order to meet his master’s gaze. I looked at his broad, ponderous features and pale, vacant eyes and realized that he was an Hojeda, like my husband, if a less fortunate one. Both of them wore an odd look of terror, as if they wished to warn us of some impending danger but could not.
    “This is Lauro,” my husband explained, gesturing. “My valet. And this”—he gestured at the young woman, who I guessed was a few years younger than I—“is Blanca. She’ll be your chambermaid and provide whatever you need.” He looked sideways at me. “Whatever the African—what was the slave’s name again?”
    “Máriam,” I prompted, looking behind us to see whether she still followed the carriage, but she’d disappeared. “She’s a paid servant, not a slave.”
    A thunderous roar drowned out my words before I finished them. “Gabriel! In God’s name, with is this ?”
    Gabriel’s brother Alonso—known by his monk’s title as Fray Hojeda—moved his white-robed, black-caped girth with impressive alacrity to push aside Lauro, while poor Blanca jumped aside in fear. The friar’s livid round face was contorted with fury, his mouth drawn in disbelief and disgust.
    I had wondered whether Gabriel had told his brother and how he intended to get around the friar’s hatred of conversos . Or, as their father, don Jerónimo, had called me, that little marrana. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Gabriel had lacked the courage to confront his brother before the deed.
    “What are these women doing here?” Fray Hojeda demanded, as Gabriel’s height visibly diminished beneath his brother’s full-on rage. In a flash, the friar slapped Gabriel, leaving a bright red mark on Gabriel’s already flaming cheek.
    Both Blanca and I cringed; Blanca took two steps back, her eyes huge.
    “Why does she hold those silk blossoms?” Hojeda’s hands gesticulated wildly; he loomed toward me to scrutinize me more closely. I did my best not to flinch. “Good God, there is a ring upon her finger! Gabriel—you pathetic fool—you have married her! Don’t lie: I watched from the balcony. I saw her father leave the carriage, I saw the African bringing her trunk into this house!”
    “It’s true,” Gabriel said, his hand still pressed to his smarting cheek. He clearly intended to sound defensive and determined, but his voice quavered on the second word. “Brother, I have good reason. Please, if you will just listen.…”
    Hojeda was in no mood to do so; his lip twisted. “Your lust has gotten the better of you! Lust and idiocy! Insanity! We’ll go at once tomorrow and have the wedding annulled. What are you thinking, bringing her of all people under this roof? You bring dishonor to our house.”
    Gabriel straightened as he found a modicum of courage; he stepped between me and his brother. “Alonso, listen to me.”
    But Hojeda