Four coins for eggs, and no eggs in the village

ALBA DE TORMES, Castile, September 20, 1582 AD — The Duchess of Alba sent her own carriage to fetch Saint Teresa of Ávila. She forgot to put any food in it. St. Teresa set off from Medina on the morning of September 17 without eating. She was sixty-seven years old. In twenty years she had founded seventeen convents of nuns, and she had been travelling since the end of July. For months she had been running a high fever. A sore had opened up in her throat, and she could hardly swallow.

She had wanted to travel the other way. She was in charge of the convent of St. Joseph at Ávila. Her niece Teresita was about to become a nun there, and St. Teresa was to give her the veil. The Duchess of Alba, Doña María Enríquez, wanted her at Alba instead. The wife of the duchess’s son was about to have a baby. The duchess wanted St. Teresa in the house to bring a blessing on the birth.

St. Teresa didn’t get to choose, and neither did the duchess. Father Antonio de Jesús was in charge of the friars of her order. He had been the first friar to join her. He was waiting for her at Medina, and his orders were that she go to Alba at once. She had to do as he said. She had obeyed those men all her life, and she obeyed this time too.

Three days, and a few dried figs

Venerable Anne of St Bartholomew, the lay sister who had nursed her for fourteen years, was travelling with her. On the last day of the road before Alba, Anne couldn’t get her anything to eat at all. By nightfall they had reached the village of Peñaranda. St. Teresa grew faint and asked Anne for something to eat: “Daughter, let me have something to eat, I am fainting!”

Anne had nothing but some dried figs. She sent someone out with four reales to buy eggs at any price. The coins came back unspent, because there were no eggs in the village.

St. Teresa looked half dead, and Anne began to cry. St. Teresa comforted her instead: “Don’t cry, daughter; the figs are very good; how many poor people are worse off! God wills that it should be so.” The next day they stopped in a village where the only food was cabbage cooked with onions. That was all she ate all day.

Six in the evening at Alba

That evening, at about six o’clock, the carriage came into Alba. They were hardly inside the town when a messenger stopped it. The young duchess had given birth to a son. St. Teresa had been fetched all this way to bring a blessing on that birth, and the baby was already born. “Thank God! the ‘Saint’ won’t be wanted now!” St. Teresa said.

She had promised to go straight to the castle, and she couldn’t do it. Father Antonio had travelled with her the whole way from Medina. There at the entrance to the town he decided she should go into the convent instead. She had founded that house eleven years before.

The nuns of the house came to her. St. Teresa blessed them, held out her hand to be kissed, and spoke a word to each nun. Then the prioress, Mother Juana of the Holy Ghost, and the other nuns pressed her to go to bed. Her fever was burning high. She told them she was worn out, and felt as if every bone in her body was broken.

They undressed her and laid her on the hard straw mattress. The rule of the house allowed no nun any other bed, however ill she was. “God help me, daughters, how tired I feel!” St. Teresa said. “I have not gone to bed so early for twenty years! How I thank Him for letting me be with you now that I am taken ill!”