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  The two-storey, three-bay neoclassical Ayuntamiento, constructed a half-century before, was the only building of any significance among the dozen structures in the otherwise unremarkable village. Mercedes, Antonio and Anselmo had arrived early for the appointment, so they drank a coffee in the four-table café across the road and then sat for an hour outside the councillor’s office on a long wooden bench.

  The clerk who called them into the high-ceilinged office had prepared the guardianship papers. All three copies were written in a clear, tight hand on official government paper: heavy cotton-rag stock with two ultramarine stamps embossed at the top of the creamcoloured page. A typewriter would not have produced more legible documents. The clerk handed them to Antonio and Anselmo to review as Mercedes sat in a chair by the door.

  The councillor came sauntering in a few minutes later from his siesta and introduced himself as he adjusted his black frock coat. It had been purchased when he was twenty pounds lighter, and he frequently tugged at it as if one more shift in the heavy woolen fabric would make it fit as pleasantly as it did when he bought it in the provincial capital of Oviedo the week he was elevated to his current position.

  Picking their names from the first page, the councillor said: “Mr. González, Mr. Cueto, you understand the responsibilities and requirements set forth in these documents?”

  “We do,” they replied.

  “And you will uphold and fulfill them honestly until the young woman achieves majority age or is wed?” he asked.

  “We will.”

  “Very well,” the counselor said. “Mr. Goméz here will show you where to affix your signatures, and I will add mine. When you have paid the registration fee, all will be complete and in order.”

  Everyone present, except Mercedes, signed the copies of the documents, and the clerk pasted on an additional stamp after they paid the fee.

  As they walked back the way they had come, along the dirt road toward Naveces, Mercedes felt relieved. She believed Antonio and Anselmo would be compassionate guardians. In a different time and place, such a transaction and legally-mandated subjugation to her brother and uncle would have chafed. After all, she was two years older than Antonio had been when he went off to Cuba, and she had been fending for herself her entire life. But Mercedes was a daughter of a nineteenth-century Spanish village. Though her upbringing was unconventional in a country where the immediate family was the most sacred and fundamental element of the society, she absorbed its culture and mores as thoroughly as anyone else.

  Chapter 5

  Catholic feast-day processions were as much a natural part of life as the changing of the seasons. In the villages, the parishioners followed the priest and four of their fellows toting the two- or three-foot tall statue of a saint up the main dusty lane for a hundred yards or so, and then they made their way back to the church. The people were the procession. It reinforced the ties of the community and inspired devotion for the saint, even among the children, but spectacle it was not.

  The cities were a different story. There, onlookers packed the cobblestone streets and crowded the balconies and open windows along the procession route. Costumed penitents marched to the steady pounding of drum corps, and the tiered wooden platforms bearing the life-sized statues were so large they took twelve men—always only men—to carry.

  When he was in Cuba, Antonio González Conde became friends with two brothers from the fishing village of Sabugo. It was nearly as old as Avilés and lay less than two hundred yards from the city, across a small river and inlet used as a harbour. Sabugo maintained its separate identity through the centuries and had lain outside Avilés’ medieval defensive walls.

  The younger of the brothers, José María Iglesias Ruíz, shared Antonio’s nationalism and misplaced pride in Spain’s rapidly-waning military might. They volunteered together to fight the Cuban revolutionaries. The older brother, Javiér, thought them foolish for distracting themselves with that nonsense. “We didn’t come here to save the scraps of the old the empire,” Javiér told José María when his brother enlisted. “We came here to get rich and go home.” Javiér had no sympathy for the rebels, rather all his energies remained focused on the dreams which had propelled them to the Caribbean colony.

  Accordingly, José María was repatriated penniless to Spain alongside Antonio, following their stint as U.S. prisoners of war. Javiér had grown rich despite the turmoil and stayed on in Havana for another five years after the war, further fattening his fortune. He built a grand house on a hill behind Sabugo, which had become a barrio of Avilés when the little river and inlet were filled and a fashionable park constructed while the three men were away in Cuba.

  When Javiér returned to Asturias, he invested in enterprises all over growing Avilés. He bankrolled fishing boats and built warehouses at the busy port. He owned a quarter interest in the Grand Hotel and opened a café on bustling Calle La Cámera, which José María operated. Both brothers were yet to marry. They lived and entertained lavishly together in Javiér’s sprawling, sky-blue mansion.

  * * *

  Naveces, Asturias

  April 1908

  It was José María’s idea to invite their old friend Antonio and his family to spend Easter with them; Javiér was delighted by the plan and quickly agreed. They stopped at Las Cepas to extend the invitation personally one afternoon as they returned from surveying some farmland Javiér was thinking of purchasing nearby. At first Antonio demurred, telling the Iglesias Ruíz brothers: “It’s a kind and generous offer, but I can’t imagine not celebrating Easter down there at San Román with our family and neighbors.”

  However, Antonio noticed the jolt of excitement which shot through his wife, sister and children when the brothers proposed the visit. After a bit of Antonio’s apple cider—the fundamental libation of Asturias, the brothers’ Cuban cigars and a long, easy chat by the fireplace in the little parlour, Antonio was transported back to their most pleasant times in Havana, and he accepted their invitation. Antonio and Maria’s children were uncontrollably giddy, and Mercedes only slightly less so, for the intervening two weeks. No village family they knew had spent the entire holiday—from Good Friday until Easter Monday—in Avilés.

  “Come along children,” María called to their sons Ramón and Pepe and their daughter Pilar. The children were scurrying around in the bushes beside the country road. “If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the procession of the saints, and you don’t want that, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” they shouted enthusiastically and in unison. The prospect of seeing the statues of the saints paraded high on the shoulders of the penitents was electrifying. They had only seen the small processions on holy days in Naveces and San Adriano, and occasionally in other nearby villages. They loved them, but they had heard stories of the cities’ grand processions. They were wild with anticipation.

  “Oh, María,” Mercedes sighed as she and her sister-in-law walked side by side down the lane through the undulating countryside. They clipped along at the steady, rapid pace of people accustomed to traveling long distances regularly on foot. “How lucky we are that the months of rain ended just as the Holy Week—Semana Santa—began.”

  It was indeed a glorious day. The sun dappled the mostly dry ground. An ocean breeze rushed through the skinny leaves of the eucalyptus trees, sounding like a swiftly flowing stream. Mercedes breathed in deeply through her nose. She did not feel that she could take in enough of the rich scent of the eucalyptus. “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be here with you and the children, coming to the fiesta. Thank you, thank you, María, for taking me in.”

  “For the thousandth time, Mercedes,” María admonished, “you don’t have to thank me—or Antonio.” She stopped and took Mercedes by the arm, turning her sister-in-law to look her in the face. “You living with us isn’t some act of charity. Those days are over for you. You’re not our servant. You’re our sister, and Las Cepas is your home.”

  Mercedes broke María’s gaze and looked do
wn at the ground. A silvery-brown lizard raced across the road between their feet. María reached out and gently lifted Mercedes’ face by the chin, looking again into her black eyes. She placed her hand on the side of Mercedes’ head and softly stroked her long hair. “For Heaven’s sake, you own a share of the farm, thanks to the inheritance laws. It’s yours as much as ours, no matter how much Bernardo tried to thwart it.”

  “I suppose it still seems like one of those dreams I used to have,” Mercedes said, looking up into the treetops, “when my bed was a pallet in the kitchen of one of the houses where I worked. In my sleep, I was sitting in the sun, surrounded by geraniums, on the steps of the granary at Las Cepas. I never had lived there, but somehow it always felt like home. Then I would wake, and I was alone in the cold and dark.”

  Seven years had slipped by since Antonio collected Mercedes from Anna Carbajal’s house. Now, several weeks at a time often would pass before she jolted awake in the night, usually without any particular trigger during the day, her chest so stuffed with anxiety that she could hardly breathe. Her life felt comfortable and satisfying to a degree she had not imagined possible for her, but that only intensified the sudden, overwhelming fear that she would lose it all.

  “Well, this is no dream,” María said. She pulled Mercedes closer. “And you’ll never be alone and suffering again.”

  Noticing the quiet around them, broken only by the breeze pressing through the eucalyptus and the squawk of a seagull, María looked back over her shoulder and shouted down the road. “Children! Don’t make me come there and drag you from the woods, or you’ll pay a penance that makes carrying a saint through the streets of Avilés look mild!”

  Ramón, Pepe and Pilar came running from the trees and up to their aunt and mother. The boys each blamed the other for their foray. Pilar, who was the youngest of the three, took Mercedes’ hand and hugged it. They all hurried off together. In the distance, they finally could see the five-story stone bell tower of San Nicolás de Bari Church in Avilés.

  Mercedes, María and the children pressed through the crowd to a spot on the street at the edge of the stone-pillared arcade covering the sidewalk on Calle San Francisco, directly across from the church. The throng silenced as the priest—dressed in a white alb and chasuble and a crimson cope elaborately embroidered in gold—delivered a benediction from the seventeenth-century portico which sheltered the main entrance to San Nicolás de Bari. After what seemed an eternity to Ramón, Pilar and Pepe, the two bronze bells hanging in the arched portals at the top of the austere tower began to swing, and then to roll end over end. Each bell was a yard wide at the base. The clanging echoed across the town. The saint was coming.

  The priest who gave the benediction, four other priests and three altar servers—one hoisting the processional crucifix and the other two holding candle-topped silver staffs ramrod straight—had stepped to the foot of the broad stone steps leading up to the church from the street. The bells tolled. The drummers assembled in the forecourt began vigorously beating out a dirge-like march.

  The tiered, wooden platform—the paso—slowly emerged from the shadow of the portico through the center of its five Gothic arches into the sunny afternoon. Atop the paso stood St. John the Evangelist, six feet tall and with a placid visage. He was haloed and dressed in a dark-blue velvet tunic and maroon velvet cloak. A carpet of red and white carnations ascended to his feet, and the rows of tall white candles ringing the statue’s base flickered in the breeze.

  Mercedes gasped and nearly laughed with delight. She crossed herself three times at the first sight of the saint, as did all the others in the dense mass.

  The twelve, barefoot penitents wore the full medieval raiment called nazerones: royal blue tunics; scarlet capes; bone-white gloves on their hands and tall, conical hats—called capirotes—on their heads. The fabric of the capirotes draped over their faces and shoulders, with holes cut out for their eyes. Each man was identically attired and anonymous—all the penitents were men. They braced the long, thick poles attached to the sides of the paso on their shoulders, one arm wrapped around for a secure hold. In his free hand, each held a wooden staff with a U-shaped iron crook at the top for supporting the paso when they rested briefly during the two-mile-long procession.

  The drum corps filed ahead of the saint from the side of the forecourt and descended the stairs, positioning themselves behind the altar servers and priests. The paso followed with great effort by the penitents. Mercedes put her hand to her mouth, worried he would topple over, when St. John angled forward precariously as the platform nosed down the stairs. Safely again on level ground, the paso took its place after the drummers. The penitents rested their burden on the crook-topped staffs.

  More blue-, red- and white-clad penitents filed out of the church and down the stairs two abreast, carrying staffs and lanterns, and lined up behind the paso. When all were in place, a penitent rang the brass bell hanging from an ornate iron hook on back of the paso. The men hefted the platform up off the crooks and onto their shoulders, and the slow procession began its route down Calle San Francisco toward the Plaza de España. The paso rocked gently from side to side with each step, and the penitents smacked the pavement with their staffs in rhythm with the beating drums.

  Mercedes was mesmerized. The crushing crowd. The deafening bells. The pounding drums. The majestic penitents. The enormous paso. The towering saint. It was nearly too much to take in, but it transported a visceral power and peacefulness. “Gracias,” Mercedes whispered as she watched the procession trail off, the drums fading in the distance.

  * * *

  The walled town of Avilés—thriving on salt production, fishing, and trade with the British Isles—all but burned to the ground in 1497. That September, the devastated merchants, traders and local officials appealed to the Catholic Monarchs—Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon—for the right to hold a weekly street market in hopes of resurrecting the town. The royals assented, and Avilés has held the market on Mondays for more than five hundred years.

  As the town expanded and the regional population grew over the centuries, so did the market. By the mid 1800s, the wagons and makeshift stalls of the vendors—who ventured there from all over the neighboring rural districts of Castrillón and Gozón—stretched all the way down Calle Galiano from the livestock market at the Plaza de Carbayedo and filled the Plaza de España. It was chaos, and a waterlogged mess when the frequent rains came.

  This weekly rustic, medieval vignette clashed with the modern, urbane image which Avilés’ leaders—public and private—were working earnestly to cultivate. The solution came in 1873, with the construction of the Plaza Nuevo: a square block of uniformly fashionable, three-storey neoclassical buildings housing shops and apartments surrounding a flagstone-paved plaza with arcades on all four sides and a covered market in it center. Plaza Nuevo filled the vacant lowland between the southern edge of medieval Avilés, where the thirteenth-century stone defensive wall had been removed a few years before, and the old fishing village of Sabugo.

  * * *

  Avilés, Aturias

  September 1909

  Every week, Mercedes, Antonio and one of the older children departed Las Cepas before sunrise for the Monday market in Avilés. María usually remained at home, tending to the younger children and the livestock. Mercedes and Antonio took their milk, butter, onions, greens and sausages—both spicy chorizo and the blood sausages called morcillas—in big woven saddlebags slung over the back of their horse. They walked the five miles. The animal was for hauling. Only the wealthy could afford the luxury of horses to ride.

  They always set up in the same spot under the high, wroughtiron arcade at Plaza Nuevo. After a few frenetic hours, the market would wind down at around two o’clock, when the last of the shoppers headed home for their daily siesta. Mercedes and Antonio would pack whatever they had failed to sell into the woven saddlebags, eat the lunch María had packed for them that morning, and take a rest themselves in
the quiet of the afternoon.

  When the shops reopened at four, Antonio and Mercedes would make the round of shops up Calle La Cámera and Calle Rivero to purchase the necessities they could not produce on the farm. Mostly, they bought coffee, sugar, salt and tobacco. Occasionally, they got fabric from the shops on Calle La Fruta, but good fabric was expensive and cash always scarce.

  This Monday, Antonio had a surprise for Mercedes.

  As they crossed the main square, Plaza de España, and walked up Calle Rivero, Antonio took Mercedes by the elbow and pulled her over to the window of the pastry shop called Polledo. The bakers at Polledo were wizards of confection, though the price of the creations matched their quality. Pausing at the window to gawk was the closest the weekly visitors from the countryside generally came to sampling Polledo’s offerings.

  “What do you think of that chocolate-pistachio cake over there?” Antonio asked, pointing toward a perfect torte sitting high on a metallic cake plate at the back of the display.

  “I think it would cost most of what we earned today,” Mercedes replied. She turned away from the window to continue on their way to buy coffee. Antonio took great pleasure in window-shopping as they sauntered along the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century streets, but Mercedes had little interest in such frivolities. What was the purpose, she reasoned, if they could not afford to buy anything?

  “No,” Antonio cried and pulled her back to the window. “How do you think it would be to savour an enormous piece of that cake? Though it looks nearly too tasty to desecrate by cutting.”

  “Oh, brother,” Mercedes sighed, “sometimes I wonder who is older, you or your boys. We’re not the Marquis and Marquess down there at the Palacio de Ferrera, you know. Why waste time thinking about such things?”