Free A Woman of Seville by Sallie Muirden Page A

courtyard. Enrique shook his head but his expression remained mild. He predicted he’d be called over to adjudicate, and in a moment he was. The old tree, wewere told by the building supervisor when we arrived on the scene, needed to be chopped down to make room for an ornamental pond. The argument was over the fate of a bird’s nest lodged in the branches.
    ‘If we remove the nest, the mother will disown her chicks. The little birds will die,’ pleaded the other man, a monk.
    ‘I’ve been waiting a month to cut down this tree, all because of you,’ the building supervisor complained, frowning at the skinny monk.
    Enrique looked from one to the other. Then he climbed the ladder and inspected the nest for himself. The chicks were squawking. I couldn’t see their mother. Perhaps she’d already flown away.
    Enrique stood with his head basted in leaves. His expression was so benign I thought he must have decided against taking any action. Then plums were shaking and leaves were rustling. Enrique had reached over and pulled the nest out of the fork of branches. It didn’t come away easily; it took some effort. I watched him climb back down the tree, cradling the nest with its noisy occupants against his breast. When Enrique was standing beside me again, I noticed his fingers and wrists were badly scratched. He didn’t seem aware of these cuts. He was looking at the monk whose name I do not know or haven’t bothered to remember. It is the same monk who’s in the painting The Penitent Woman . He was staring at the place in the branches where the bird’s nest had just been. Enrique offered the bird’s nest to the monk, but the young man didn’t seem to comprehend what was intended. Enrique turned blankly to the building supervisor and gave him the go-ahead to cut down the tree.
    We took the bird’s nest with its shrill occupants to the round tower with us. Enrique kept asking the monk if he’d like to look after the chicks, but the monk seemed not to hear. The birds were making a lot of fuss. It was going to be hard to concentrate through the sitting. Diego Velázquez seems to like birds. He told us about a goldfinch he owned that reliably woke him at dawn every day. He attempted to warble a few distinctive notes, in imitation. Diego can hold a tune it seems.
    I wasn’t surprised when Harmen Weddesteeg complained about the hatchlings. Enrique got up from the sitting and gave the nest to Diego to look after. It was lucky Diego turned up today, and that Enrique is so merciful. The chicks will probably die, he said, but we’ll keep them comfortable until they do.
    The more time I spend with the ladder-man, the more Enrique Rastro appears in my thoughts. And vice-versa. I sense these two beings are connected in some way. I come home from the convento thinking about how kind Enriqueis, and the ladder-man appears like a phantom on a distant rooftop. I go to sleep dreaming of the ladder-man and wake up thinking about Enrique. I fall asleep remembering the touch of Enrique and wake up in the ladder-man’s arms. They are like two plants growing within a single clay pot; one plant will fade as the other thrives. But I’m not sure which is to fade and which is to thrive. One occupies my afternoons, the other my early evenings. They are both love secrets. A secret from each other, of course, and also secrets I’m keeping from the world. And what of Guido Rizi? He is my official gift-giving benefactor who keeps me from penury and social scorn. For the last half year I’ve believed that the time I spend with him can be poured down the drain like his urine from my chamberpot after he leaves. That I can scrub the chamberpot clean and be none the worse. That half of the day I live and the other half I must die and that this is the natural order of things for a woman like me.
    Having eventually fallen asleep well after dawn, it’s mid-morning when I can finally bear to wake up. Bishop Rizi’s already departed, as I’d