Hunger's Brides (114 page)

I had never stopped writing carols for the humble—on the Nativity and the love of a child, on fishermen and the miracles of abundance, on temples of bread. But for a year, almost none of these had been sung or published. All that had been heard from me were praises of a childless king's potency and the beauty of an unseen queen. It was Antonia, on her errands in the city, who first detected that my verses on the Viceroy's dash and competence were nowhere warmly received, unless by His Excellency. No matter that Carlos had devoted an entire book to
Spanish naval prowess—he at least was not making cruel pagan rhymes on rain and thunderclouds.

Not long after the Viceroy's last visit to San Jerónimo, the Cantor de Ribera brought two pieces of news from the Cathedral. The surprising: that he'd persuaded the cathedral dean to allow my carols on Saint Peter to be sung after all, to the music Ribera and I had written. The theme of Peter the fisherman had proved irresistible this year. I managed not to ask Ribera if Master Examiner Dorantes, who had volunteered to rewrite my carols, had lost the knack. The second piece of news was a simple delight. We'd often spoken of a manuscript I had started during my years at the palace and subsequently lost.
Caracol
. Now he'd finally convinced the dean that in these anxious days the cathedral needed something rare and unusual, an eight-day cycle devoted to sacred music. I would set down my ideas for
Caracol
again and together Ribera and I would develop the companion lyrics and musical illustrations. I had written so many verses on music that it might simply be a matter of adapting the existing ones. There would not be much money but enough for three. Three? Yes, he had persuaded Sálazar, no less, to join us.

Certain to be Ribera's successor, Sálazar was already the finest composer in the empire and in his better moments the only one able to approach the great Italians, Monteverdi and Scarlatti. Where Ribera was at his best with a simple melody, Sálazar was a master of the polyphonic. My friend was the first to admit that by Sálazar he was quite outstripped.

As Ribera sat across from me I remembered that when he and I had first met some fifteen years earlier, I'd composed in his honour a sonnet painting him as a swan, sacred bird of Apollo and Orpheus. In truth he did resemble a bird, which had almost made the sonnet come off, but the bird one thought of with Ribera was another. He was lanky and tall, grey-headed for as long as I had known him and beardless, though never quite clean shaven. His neck was thin; and as with long thin necks, his Adam's apple protruded and bobbed, but more like a peach pit than an apple on a bough. Though the nose was too short to be thought beaked, and was from that point of view disappointing, his heronness lay—and bounced and dipped—in the long black brows, glossy and sweeping. Still, while one might compose all manner of sonnets on the singing of swans, herons were a stiffer challenge.

His eyes searched mine, his brows signalling antically. Did I share in his excitement?

If his idea had been to cheer me, it was a magnificent success. I felt a rush of warmth and was happy not to have to worry for once about seeming ungrateful.

June 29th. The children have a game here in the capital, one I arrived too late to play myself but of which I had often made good use in class. In this game the city itself was the music and each church and temple, each cloister and monastery, was a saintly instrument on a musical map, each ringing at a certain pitch. The lowest of these was the bell of San José—
Ut
, our C. San Bernardo, three blocks north, got
Re. Mi, Mi, Mi
, was for our most elegant, Jesús María, whose bell was said of pure gold. The cracked brass bell of Santo Domingo got the semitone,
Fa. Sol
went to the convent of Santa Teresa. And the highest of these was our own,
La
. The low note on the overlapping hexachord gave us an
Ut
in F, and so on. Depending on whose bell first struck the hour, the map gave a different melody of pitches and chords—time running through the city as Re, Mi, Sol, Fa—or Ut, Fa, Sol, La, Mi, etcetera, children leaping up when their note was struck, a good deal of laughter …

At first I heard the ringing, then Ribera's music from the cathedral. As the bells died out I could almost hear the words. The rain had nearly stopped, the sky almost cleared. I leaned far out the window over Calle de las Rejas, startling my neighbours across the way. Saint Peter Fisherman … did I hear my verses, or only imagine them?

After the music had faded away, I stayed by the window, my eyes roaming the bases of the hills beneath the low cloud. I had been hesitating to do
Caracol
. If anything, recognizing how badly I wanted to do it made me more hesitant. What I resolved to do instead was write a second birthday poem for the Vice-Queen. The one written on her birthday, when she'd come unannounced with her entire retinue, I had composed not merely in haste but in anger. Not with her for once but with one of the handmaidens, who had begun gossiping about the affairs
in the palace dovecotes with the express purpose of making a slighting allusion to stories of my own nights on the upper floors. I had written the poem on the spot, while they listened and watched, lacing it with ironies, one or two dangerous. A line referred to the Countess's sequel as
‘mondongas.'
Little used, it was a word she could be counted on not to know, yet someone would eventually point out that it could mean ladies-in-waiting but had once meant prostitutes.
¹⁶

It was during my time in the dovecotes that I had lost the manuscript of
Caracol
. Speculative harmonics. The beauty of the world as a music cascading from the mind of God. I had not been that far along. I could have started again, and yet I let the idea go, something so beautiful. For the first time in all these years I wondered if I had perhaps believed that I'd tarnished it in the puffery and the vaunting of my examination at the palace. Or that in the dovecotes I had perhaps tarnished myself.

  
Why, Señorita, if you are beautiful, is there so little harmony in you?
And why, Soul, dost thou know so little peace?

I saw what taking up
Caracol
again could be for me, and wondered how much of this Ribera had seen. Not a commission, but a second chance. A chance to say good-bye to the girl who had been seen out through the Hall of Mirrors.

To set the proper tone for
Caracol
, our eight day cycle required an opening note of cheer. I well remembered how dark and cold the cathedral felt when it rained. Something striking, new astonishments, fresh hopes. For it seemed to me that what we found most dispiriting just now was this sense that everything was being stripped from us, by Spanish incompetence, by French predation, by blights of pirates and weevils, by the waters themselves that gnawed away at our island.

And yet there was so much here that we might yet accomplish. What Ribera and I would offer them was the example of a musical clock, another project I had left unfinished years ago.

  Ladies and gentlemen,
compañeros, compatriotas …