Chapter 1: Fall of the House of Valcázar

Introduction: Spain 1494

My name is Jeannia Valcázar y Santos, although I’ve sometimes gone by other names. My tale is one of a life spent serving others, helping them achieve their ambitions. Throughout all this, I’ve served Maristela’s principles faithfully. However, that has occasionally meant stealing money and goods, or procuring sexual partners for lustful men and women. That I did those things while in thrall to another doesn’t absolve my wickedness. However, now that I am free of my bonds, I can tell my tale without fear of the consequences. Maybe it’s my way of seeking forgiveness for my actions. So where should I begin?

My association with the ancient Maristela Bracelet goes back many years ... nearly five and a half centuries in fact. If that makes me sound ridiculously old, then I shall explain. The twenty two years of my life have been spread over all those centuries in disjointed moments, often lasting only a few minutes, and rarely lasting longer than a few hours at a time. How is that possible, you ask? To understand that, you need to know the secret of the Maristela Bracelet.

When Don Hernando Valcázar helped Maristela bint Layla flee from persecution by the Spanish Inquisition, he doomed the whole Valcázar family to charges of treason and heresy. Would my family’s fate have been different had Don Hernando ignored the young Moor’s plea for help? Possibly, although by no means certain. At a time when pogroms against Spanish Jews and Moors were being fuelled by the zealots of the newly formed Inquisition, honest and caring men found it hard to stand idly to one side.

Maristela was no ordinary Moor. In some cultures she would be called a shaman, a sorceress or a witch. She possessed skills that even now are mistaken for magic. Her father was a mathematician and her mother an astronomer. That made them sceptics of the religious dogma promoted at the time, and targets for the Inquisition. Maristela’s parents were both of Moorish descent, meaning they were doubly hated and despised. Maristela never knew what became of her parents. Maybe they fled with other Moors to north Africa, or maybe they were executed at the orders of the Inquisition.