Caminos Read online

  “Years later, after I had grown up, I was at the Monday market in Avilés, talking with a woman from all the way over in Muros de Nalón, and she told me that when she was a little girl, a dog showed up at her farm, hungry and tired. Her family knew it must have gotten lost in the woods, probably chasing a rabbit too far, but they had no way of knowing from where. So they took her in—my little dog, I know in my heart—and she lived a long, good life with those people.”

  Chus thought about Casilda’s story for a minute. “Oh, I hope my dog found a good family too.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Casilda said. “You know God loves the defenseless creatures and cares about them.”

  “That’s what my mama always says,” Chus mumbled, his attention on the puppy, “when she’s telling me why I shouldn’t throw rocks at the birds’ nests.”

  “You should listen to your mother,” Casilda ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am, I will,” Chus promised. “Can I go now? I want to show my dog to my mama.” Chus was smiling broadly, the puppy sprawled halfway over his shoulder and chewing on his black hair.

  “Of course, boy. You go on home. And tell your mother Casilda Conde gave her to you.”

  Chus started to run off toward his family’s farm. He stopped in the middle of the narrow dirt road, dust hanging in the air around his feet, and shouted back: “Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much. I’ll call her Casilda.”

  The canine Casilda had lived a long, good life. She still was alive, in fact, a bit arthritic and grey around her muzzle but otherwise healthy. She was back at the farmhouse Chus shared with his wife and young daughter, as he stood in the rain watching the pall-bearers slide the box containing the body of Casilda Conde into the crypt. He noticed the inscription carved in the pediment of the marble façade on the adjoining tomb: Tu nos dijiste que la muerte no es el final del camino. You told us that death is not the end of the way.

  Chapter 2

  In the late-1800s, many industrial workers across Asturias were shedding their faith as they embraced socialism and rose up against the established powers. The centuries-long holy war to reconquer the Iberian peninsula from the Umayyad Muslims had fostered a particularly conservative brand of Catholicism in Spain. Thereafter, the Spanish Church had maintained strong ties with the monarchy and ruling classes. That relationship fueled a bilateral animosity between the Church and frustrated nineteenth-century laborers, but the farmers of Castrillón generally remained devout.

  The cabildo was a fixture of the church or chapel in most Spanish villages and towns. Sometimes it was located within, at the back of the nave, sometimes under a roof off the side of the building, as it was at San Román, with stone-block benches around the perimeter. Either way, seated around the cabildo, the villagers collectively decided their community affairs. Government appointees administered the law in the district capitals, but in the thousands of tiny settlements scattered throughout the countryside, there were no regular representatives of officialdom. The parishioners essentially governed themselves by direct democracy at the cabildos.

  * * *

  As always for the Sunday high mass at San Román, worshippers packed every pew. The church was small, but its baroque interior was lavish. The trumpeting angels, corpulent putti and haloed saints gazed out toward the nave from the gilded altar filling the apse.

  On this Sunday, two days after Casilda’s funeral, Carmen and Anselmo presented Mercedes for baptism. The medieval stone font was shaped like a giant egg cup. Bernardo had elected not to attend. The parishioners, who so recently were mourners, smiled and applauded when the priest lifted the newly-christened Mercedes before the altar and then walked up the aisle, hoisting her high for them to welcome into the Church.

  “That scoundrel, Bernardo,” Anselmo hissed as he and Carmen stood beside the church receiving congratulations on Mercedes’ baptism from their neighbors. Most of them were related in one way or another.

  “Oh, Anselmo, don’t taint this beautiful day with bitterness,” Carmen said. She had begun to regain her sense of balance, and the joyous occasion of Mercedes’ baptism further lifted the gloom which had descended with Casilda’s death.

  “Well, I would say,” interjected an old cousin who had overheard Anselmo’s comment, “that everyone else here agrees with your husband’s assessment. It’s a scandal for the whole village. Inexcusable.”

  Anselmo turned to the old man. “But what are we to do about it?” he asked. Smacking one of the church’s limestone quoins with the palm of his hand, he added: “My wife’s brother’s heart is harder than this block on the issue. He will not take her back.” Anselmo always referred to Bernardo as “my wife’s brother.” After twenty years of marriage, he still could not stomach calling Bernardo his brother-in-law.

  “I’ve called a village meeting,” the old man, Juan, informed them. “We’ll arrange for her to live for a while with each of the families who can afford to take her in. We all know it would be a great burden for you to bear alone, given your own new baby to care for and the troubles this year at your farm.”

  It was true. They were struggling. The floods brought on by the abnormally long and heavy rains the summer before had hit their corn and hay crops particularly hard. Anselmo was forced to sell half their cattle and hogs when their low-lying pastures were swampy for weeks on end. Much of their money went to feeding the remaining livestock. Fewer cows and hogs meant less milk, butter and sausages to sell at the market in Avilés for much needed cash. Still, Anselmo began to protest, his pride bruised.

  “No, no,” Juan said, waving his hand in a gesture more conciliatory than dismissive. “As a village and a family, we all must share in compensating for our cousin’s latest sin. Father Agustín and the others are waiting in the cabildo for us. We’ll meet there now to sort out the details.”

  Relieved to have some assistance, Anselmo and Carmen walked with Juan around the corner of the church to the cabildo. Juan quieted their neighbors and began. “We have not gathered here to cast aspersions upon Bernardo, though we legitimately could spend the remainder of the afternoon doing so. His behavior is reprehensible. This, we all know.” Pointing toward sleeping Mercedes in Carmen’s arms, he added: “Now, we must focus our attention on this child and committing ourselves to providing for her.”

  There was murmuring and shuffling. They were all farmers with large families of their own. Most lived ten or a fifteen people to a rustic house. A six-acre farm was considered a significant patrimony. Many families subsisted on plots of an acre or two, with a couple of cows for milk, a few hens for eggs and a pen of rabbits for stewing. Grandparents, parents, children and unmarried aunts worked long days growing fruits, vegetables and greens, and making sausages and cheese for the table and to sell at the market in town. Taking on Mercedes for years would be a challenge for any of them. Bernardo had a bigger, more prosperous farm than most in the area, which fed the resentment that they were being asked to make this sacrifice.

  As the discussions rumbled among the people crowded on the stone benches, a tall, bearded man stood and stepped forward into the middle of the cabildo. “God has been good to me. My animals have flourished, and I have the means to bring this girl into my household, at least for the next year. We will be the first.”

  “Thank you, Manolo. Thank you very much,” Juan said. “I have no doubt that God will note this great kindness.”

  “You’re a good man,” Carmen said to Manolo as she handed Mercedes to his wife, Noelia. Carmen stroked Mercedes’ bald little head. “I wish with all my heart that we could keep her ourselves, but … but …” She was unable to continue. It all was so unfair, Carmen thought again, as she had repeatedly over the past days. That Casilda died. That Bernardo was taking the tragedy out on this innocent child. That she and Anselmo were having so much trouble when they worked so hard and remained ardently faithful to God and the Church. At the least, they should have been able to take in her niece.

  “Now, now,” Noelia said. “We all
understand that you would keep her if you could. We’ll attend to her needs, but you always will be her mother on this Earth now that Casilda is gone.”

  Carmen nodded quickly. She sniffed and wiped away her tears with her fingertips. It was so unfair. Anselmo put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Carmen pressed her head against his thick chest.

  “Very well,” Juan said. He was not much for sentiment. “Our work here today is done. I propose we meet again, in a year, to assess the circumstances and determine which household can best afford to relieve Manolo and Noelia, if need be.”

  The group dispersed quickly into the lane, and then home to their farms and dinners. Sunday was their one day of rest, when they could take it. Each family passed the afternoons following the mass feasting as heartily as they could manage and whiling away the hours in relaxed conversation.

  Only Carmen, Anselmo, Juan and Father Agustín remained in the cabildo. “Come with me for a libation before you go home,” the priest said, motioning toward the seventeenth-century rectory across the lane. The house was half as large as the church itself. They followed as the aristocratic priest strode over to the rectory, through the arched doorway and across the wide, waxed floorboards of the spacious parlour.

  “I’ve never seen so many books in my life,” Carmen whispered to Anselmo as they stood in the center of the room surveying Father Agustín’s wall of walnut shelves filled with leather-bound volumes. The youngest son of a noble family which had held onto its wealth— unlike many of the impoverished titled in late-nineteenth-century Spain—the priest was an educated and cultured man.

  “Please, sit,” Father Agustín said as he turned from a richly-carved chestnut cabinet. Carrying a silver tray bearing a bottle of wine and four glasses, he nodded toward an upholstered settee and armchairs near the open parlour windows.

  “You have comported yourselves as well as anyone, including the good Lord, could expect in this trying time,” Father Agustín said as he poured them each a glass of the rich Aragonese red he preferred.

  “Thank you, Father,” Carmen said, taking a deep drink of the dark-purple wine. “I hope that we’ll be able to take her back next year, or the next. She belongs with us.”

  “I know,” Father Agustín assured her. “And there always is the chance that God will provide some correction to Bernardo—”

  “Oh, Father,” Anselmo interrupted the young priest, grimacing. “Even you’ll be mouldering over there in the cemetery before my wife’s brother grows any basic human decency. No, we have to be prepared for that girl to wander from family to family, an orphan with her father living fat up the road, until she’s old enough to fend for herself.”

  Father Agustín nodded slowly and took a sip from his glass. “This may well be true. If it is, it will be as God intends. And in this world or the next, Bernardo will pay for his sins. Our part is to see that Mercedes suffers as little as possible.”

  They sat silently for a while, sipping their wine, feeling the breeze through the windows and listening to the birdsong. Carmen contemplated Bernardo’s long list of calumnies.

  Juan broke the silence. “We’ve made a good start,” he said. “I’d hoped Manolo and Noelia would accept the duty, but I didn’t want to push them. They had to decide for it themselves. I’m thankful that they did.” Draining off his wine and slowly rising to his feet, Juan added to Carmen: “Don’t worry, Carmelita. We’re all with you, and with that little girl.” Glancing around the room and leaning on his cane, Juan declared: “Now, I believe there’s a pot of fabada waiting for me at home, and this old body is famished.”

  Carmen and Anselmo also took their leave and walked the three-quarters of a mile back to their farm. Carmen appreciated their cousins’ generosity, and the kind words from Juan and Father Agustín, but she was still sad and angry.

  When Carmen and Anselmo arrived home, their boys were running around the barnyard, tormenting a chicken. The weather had broken not long after dawn, dark clouds and cold rain yielding to blue sky and the bright, warm autumn sun. The dusky scent from the eucalyptus trees covering the hillsides floated on the breeze as Carmen herded the boys into the house and began to lay out the family’s Sunday dinner.

  Mercedes was oblivious, at least consciously, to her new surroundings as she entered her third home in less than a week of life. The six children of Manolo and Noelia were intrigued and excited to suddenly have a seventh in the house, especially the three girls. As Noelia prepared a cradle for Mercedes, their oldest daughter, Covadonga, carried the baby around, talking animatedly to this living doll and pointing out items around the room.

  Chapter 3

  The hilltop hamlet of San Adriano was nothing more than a few small farmhouses and the twelfth-century pilgrim chapel. The Chapel of San Adriano, with its thick walls of uncut stones and little bronze bell hanging in a tiny, off-center bell tower, sat on the coastal route of the Camino de Santiago—the medieval Way of St. James. Pilgrims walking from Irún, in the Pyrenees, to Santiago de Compostela, 200 miles farther on in Galicia, had trod the dirt lane from Naveces and passed through the village for eight centuries. Each year on September 8, the feast day of San Adriano, people from across Castrillón made their own small pilgrimages to the chapel for the fiesta to honour the district’s patron saint.

  Don Pelayo and the Moors was one of the boys’ favourite games. In 722, a Visigoth chieftain named Pelayo ambushed a Muslim expeditionary force in the Cantabrian mountains near a place called Covadonga. According to the legend, the Virgin Mary appeared before Pelayo and his men as they cowered up in a hillside cave. She assured them victory if he rallied his fighters and led them into battle carrying their priest’s wooden cross. Divine visitation or not, Pelayo and his pack of armed Asturian farmers found the courage to descend on the foraging Muslim soldiers, killing many and forcing the survivors’ retreat back into León, south of the mountains. The Battle of Covadonga marked the birth of the Kingdom of Asturias—the only part of the Iberian Peninsula not incorporated into the Umayyad Caliphate—and the beginning of the Reconquista. “Asturias is Spain,” the Asturians still like to say, “and the rest is just reconquered territory.”

  * * *

  San Adriano, Asturias

  September 1891

  “José! José!” Mercedes shouted at her brother when she saw him horsing around with some village boys in a small pasture on the hillside below the church. She had walked with Manolo, Noelia and their children along the winding, unpaved roads from their farm on this Tuesday morning to attend the annual festival of San Adriano, for whom the church and the village were named.

  Luck had remained with Manolo and Noelia since that Sunday afternoon six years before, and Mercedes had as well. Anselmo and Carmen’s fortunes had slowly improved. However, they never felt confident enough about the next growing season to bring their niece back to live with them, and though neither of them would admit it aloud, relations with Bernardo were less complicated without Mercedes under their roof.

  Bernardo still acted as if his only daughter did not exist. He never permitted her to visit the family farm called Las Cepas. But Carmen made sure Mercedes knew her brother José who still lived at the farm with their father. Her brothers Antonio, Ramón and Manuel were only characters in stories for Mercedes. They had gone to the Spanish colony of Cuba to seek their fortunes before she was born.

  “José! José!” Mercedes cried more urgently as he kept playing with the boys. When they stopped to catch their breath, sweating profusely on the clear, sunny day, José saw Mercedes waving her arms and jumping up and down. He ran over to her.

  “Hi, little rabbit!” José said, returning her tight embrace. He always used the moniker their Aunt Carmen gave Mercedes on the day she was born. “That’s a very pretty dress!”

  “Noelia made it for me, for the fiesta!” she exclaimed, twirling around for her brother. It was the first new garment she had received in her life. Noelia made such a traditional dress for each of her daught
ers when they turned five. Mercedes’ fifth birthday, and then her sixth, passed without one, and it reinforced the sense of displacement she frequently experienced. When Noelia surprised her with the dress that morning, Mercedes stood for ten minutes in front of the mirror, admiring the dark green, deeply pleated skirt, the white, puffy-sleeved blouse, and the black pinafore which covered her shoulders and tied in a bow around her waist. She finally felt like a member of the family.

  “It’s the prettiest I’ve seen all year,” José said.

  Mercedes twirled again and beamed.

  “So, they’re still being nice to you? Manuel and Noelia?” José asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Mercedes said, patting her skirt straight and adjusting the bow of the pinafore. “I have my own bed off the kitchen, and I get all I want to eat. Noelia’s teaching me to read and write, and she made me this beautiful dress.”

  “And the kids?” José asked. He had heard some stories.

  “Mostly,” Mercedes replied. “Covadonga isn’t very nice to me anymore, but the others are, and I just stay away from her as much as I can.” Mercedes could tell how Covadonga’s behavior irritated her brother. She was not eager to stoke his quick anger, but she did wish he would find her tormenter and throw her into the nearest manure pile.

  “You should tell Aunt Carmen next time you see her,” José said. “She’ll talk to Noelia about it.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Mercedes said. “I don’t want Noelia and Manuel to make me leave. I like it there with them.”

  José grunted and looked around the increasingly crowded festival. Everyone they knew was there, most of them wearing the best articles of clothing they owned to honour San Adriano.

  “Have you seen the cows yet?” he asked, turning his attention back to his sister. “There are some beauties up there at the fair.” He pointed up the hill toward the cluster of houses. “Papa has entered one of ours in the competition, and I’m sure she’ll win!”