Five Years and a Day

They ask me to tell the story of the lovers, and everyone expects the same one: the kiss refused, the death, the other kiss. All of Teruel knows it by heart. I can tell another, because I was the one who wrote the pact. My name is Gil de Alcañiz, I was Don Pedro de Segura’s scribe for forty years, and I am too old now to care what anyone thinks of me.

It was the eve of Saint John’s Day in the year 1212. Bonfires blazed in the streets and, in Don Pedro’s hall, Diego de Marcilla asked for Isabel’s hand with more pride than fortune. Her father looked him up and down. “Five years,” he said. “If you come back rich, she’s yours. If not, I’ll marry her to whoever I please.” I was ordered to put the bargain in writing. I wrote slowly, by the light of a candle that wouldn’t stop dripping: “Five years, counted from this day.” When I let the wax fall on the parchment, the bells of San Pedro were ringing for matins and the bonfires in the street had burned down to embers. Diego left at the break of dawn.