Luzia had hoped she might be free to rest and find some privacy after the performances, but the guests were escorted to another glorious room,
this one nearly as large as the ballroom and set with long tables blazing with candles.
The feast that followed was less like a meal than a performance of one,
course after course in an endless parade punctuated by small dishes of water scented with lavender with which to rinse their hands. Partridge simmered in milk; peacock dressed with bacon and minced almonds; quail stuffed with cinnamon and cloves, and a mousse of its own livers; boar sauced with bitter oranges, and toasted bread soaked in broth; pie after pie full of vinegary vegetables and chunks of beef stewed with pomegranate and honey, their golden crusts washed with saffron. Between each course, the
musicians played, sometimes accompanied by jugglers, or dancers in
costumes of scarlet and gold, and short scenes were performed on a wooden stage that was wheeled from one end of the room to the next.
Luzia made certain to eat plentifully from any dish with pork, but picked at the rest. She wished for wine but drank water flavored with fennel. She sat wedged between Don Víctor and Hualit, dutifully silent in her convent gown, listening to conversation about plays she’d never heard of and people she didn’t know. If Santángel was present, she hadn’t seen him, but she supposed there was no reason for servants to dine in such company, not
unless they were competitors in the torneo like herself and the Prince of Olives.
Fortún Donadei had been seated beside his patroness, and though he was doing his best to smile and look at ease, Luzia could see he wasn’t eating much either.
At last there were plates of ices and sweet cakes with stewed fruit and the ladies were permitted to retire. Footmen led the Ordoños and then Hualit
and Luzia to the rooms they’d been assigned.
“We will be in the same wing,” said Hualit, “away from Don Víctor and his household, as is proper. The Ordoños are just down the hall. Teoda Halcón is young enough that she is housed with her own family in rooms not far from your own, and the Beauty and her ladies are close by, so be
cautious.”
Luzia thought she was tired, but when the footman opened the door to her room, fresh elation flooded through her. She had never seen a bed set with linen so white, the coverlet embroidered with the Pérez labyrinth, and heaped with tawny furs. Coals blazed in a silver brazier and thick curtains had been drawn against the rain. Next to the bed, velvet slippers had been set out, and a dressing table was laden with all of the creams and powders Hualit and Valentina had assembled for her, alongside a set of heavy silver brushes and combs.
A maid was waiting and curtsied when they entered. “Don Víctor pays Concha’s wages and pays her well,” Hualit explained, “so you needn’t fear sabotage when she is near. She’ll keep your secrets.”
“From everyone but Don Víctor.”
“Precisely,” Hualit said. “Come, let’s get you undressed.”
She and the maid worked quickly to remove Luzia’s bodice and skirts and corset and stockings. When Concha started pulling up her linen smock, Luzia faltered.
“She’ll take it to be laundered,” Hualit reassured her. “You have others now.”
Luzia felt that jab of pleasure and resentment as the smock was removed and a shift of thin white linen was pulled over her head.
The shoes were traded for slippers and a fur-lined dressing gown of persimmon velvet from Perucho’s shop.
“You see how it is now,” Hualit said gently, removing the shells from Luzia’s hair and setting them on the dressing table. “You cannot go back. There is only the path before you. Whether it leads to a palace—”
“Or onto a pyre,” Luzia finished. “At least I’ll be well dressed when I’m dragged to my cell in Toledo.”
“There is that,” Hualit said with a smile, and dropped a kiss on Luzia’s head before she departed.
When she was gone the maid used tongs to remove the hot brick she’d set between the covers to warm the bed. It was shaped like the round medallion
that had hung above the stage and it was patterned with the same labyrinth. “Is there nothing he has not put his seal to?” Luzia wondered.
“There’s a sign above his bed,” Concha said with a breathy giggle. “A scroll held up by angels of solid silver. I’m told it reads, ‘Antonio Pérez sleeps here.’”
“In case he forgets?”
Concha laughed, then startled when someone scratched at the door.
Luzia assumed Hualit had returned, but Santángel stood in the doorway. “Go,” he commanded the little maid, and with something like a squeak,
Concha vanished.
“You cannot be here,” Luzia whispered furiously. “Not alone. Not with me.”
“No one has seen me arrive and no one will see me go.”
“How can you be so certain? Even a breath of impropriety—”
“It is my job to be certain,” he said, shutting the door behind Concha. “And yet I have been very wrong about you. Why did you lie to me? And do not think to make a pretty story about what God has shown you. I know which letters I carried with me the day you nearly killed us both.”
“I don’t remember your life being in danger. It was my tongue that split.” “And my fingers that broke.”
“But how quickly they healed, my honest lord.” “Answer the question,” he bit out.
“I never told you I couldn’t read.” “You let me believe it.”
“It’s good to let a man have his illusions,” Luzia said, unsure of what to do with herself, too conscious of her state of undress. “No one forced you to assume a servant was stupid.”
“I never thought you were stupid.”
“I see you are a capable liar too.” She folded her arms, trying to stymie
the anger rushing through her, as if she could knot it up in her elbows. “Tell me you thought differently that day in the courtyard, when you saw the sad stump of a wax candle that had been brought before you, without charm or beauty, and so of course, without wit. Only a woman who looks like
Catalina de Castro de Oro or Gracia de Valera can be presumed to be worth listening to.”
“You sell yourself too cheaply, Luzia,” he shot back. “That first day when you stumbled into the courtyard and made your miserable curtsy, you did an
extraordinary job of humbling yourself, of pretending to be a lump of dirty wax. An actress of your ilk is rare indeed. Can you blame me for not being able to see past your performance?”
Maybe she had wanted him to. See me. See that I am more than this charade of mumbling humiliation.
“You may posture and fluff your white feathers if it pleases you,” she replied. “But you’re like every other man who wishes for a woman who is shapely and kind and pious and only wise enough not to trouble him.”
Santángel’s laugh was bitter, the sound like dry twigs snapping. “Why not tell the truth yourself now, Luzia? Admit that the act had gotten so good you yourself had started to believe it.”
“I know who I am.”
“Do you? I know what it is to lower yourself, to keep your eyes downcast, to seek invisibility. It is a danger to become nothing. You hope no one will look, and so one day when you go to find yourself, only dust remains, ground down to nothing from sheer neglect.”
He was right and she hated that he was right. When she was young she’d been fearless—until her mother died, until her father died, until she understood that the world had no place for a conversa who could read and write, who longed to talk and to argue over nothing, who wanted to see enough of the world to have opinions about it. She had learned to hide too well, even from Santángel.
“I know who I am,” she repeated, and this time her voice rang with certainty. She was the woman who had eaten the pomegranate, and tonight she had commanded a stage. She had held a room full of nobles in her thrall.
“What other secrets are you keeping, Luzia Cotado?”
She sat down in the chair placed before her dressing table. The woman in the watery glass before her was a stranger, her thick hair free of its braids, her dark eyes wild. She had never seen herself angry before.
“Are we sharing our secrets now?” she asked. “I have none.”
“Another lie.”
“Ask me a question and I will answer it truly.”
“What are you? Why do people fear you? Did you make a bargain with the devil himself?”
He held up his fingers, enumerating his answers. “In another life, in another world, I would be called a familiar. My gifts are not my own. They exist only to serve others. People fear me because I want them to, because their fear makes my life easier.”
“And the bargain with the devil?”
“Depending on your opinion of Víctor de Paredes, there may be some truth to that particular charge. Now it is your turn to answer. What is the nature of the magic you use?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.” “Where did you learn it?”
“That is not for me to say.”
“Do you think Father Neroni won’t ask? Do you think you can mumble and shrug and that will be enough for him?”
She picked up the silver hairbrush. “I will tell them my gift is from God.” “Did He appear to you in a vision? Did He pierce your heart with an
arrow of light? Best get your story straight now. Tell me the truth and I can protect you. I can help you. What text did you study? What language do you use?”
She didn’t know how to answer. Her refranes were Spanish and Hebrew and Turkish and Greek. They were none of those things. They changed depending on what part of the world the letter came from. They were words battered and blown to all corners of the map, then returned to her, as the
people who spoke them could never return.
“No language,” she snapped in frustration. “Every language.”
She slammed the silver brush down on the table, then hissed as a black shape leapt from its pale bristles.
“Be still,” said Santángel.
The scorpion sat poised before Luzia, mere inches from her hand, its shiny black body crooked like a finger.
She thought of the symbol on Santángel’s seal. Was this his revenge on her? Had he always intended to see her killed? Had he known the Beauty would sabotage her performance and sent Luzia up there to face ridicule, expecting her to fail only to be thwarted? She hadn’t seen him during the banquet. He could have been here, in her rooms, setting a trap for her.
He was moving slowly toward her. She was afraid to look away from the scorpion but she could sense him drawing nearer. He had said he was a killer. Why hadn’t she feared him then?
“Don’t,” she whispered, ashamed of the pleading in her voice.
Her mind sought words of protection, something to keep the monster at bay. Which was the greater danger, the scorpion or Santángel?
“Luzia, do not move.” He was behind her now.
She could see him in the mirror, white skin, white hair, a creature carved from ice.
She would scream. She would run.
“Hello, friend,” he said softly. “Nen chu mem senuwak.” He set his long- fingered hand on the table and the scorpion crept onto it.
He lifted it and stepped away.
“Clever,” he said, “to place it in the brush. A sting so near the head or heart could be fatal. If nothing else, you would no longer be a threat.”
Luzia watched the scorpion resting on his hand like part of a rosary, her heart beating a jagged rhythm in her chest. If Santángel had set the trap, then why not let it spring shut? Why not let her die? And hadn’t he been given countless opportunities to harm her in the past weeks? He could have let her bleed to death when she’d split her tongue.
“How?” she managed. “Who did this?”
“It could have been any of the hopefuls. Bold to act this soon. You should be flattered that you’re so worth killing.”
“The dream of every young woman.” She hesitated. She still couldn’t quite catch her breath. “Why doesn’t it sting you?”
“We understand each other.” He gestured to a jar of powder meant to whiten the teeth. “Empty it.”
Luzia shook out the fine dust of coral and alunite, and Santángel took the jar with his free hand. He slid the scorpion inside and closed the lid. Luzia tried not to show her relief.
“It’s your symbol, your seal,” she said. “El Alacrán.” Not the nearly harmless yellow scorpion but the deadlier variety.
“So you must have noted when you were reading my private letters. At least you have the manners to look ashamed.”
Luzia was. A bit. “Why choose that for your impresa?”
“I didn’t choose it for myself. It was given to me. A little joke by a De Paredes, a warning to others of my true nature.” He held the jar up to the candle on her dressing table, and through the murky glass, Luzia saw the shape of the scorpion dance back from the heat of the flame. “But I have
come to like it. Scorpions live long lives. And choose when to use their sting. They pick their moment.”
Luzia was still thinking of how close she’d come to death. “They meant you to be blamed. If the scorpion was found.”
“Yes.” He headed for the door. “You’re … you’re leaving?”
“I need to speak to Don Víctor. We’ll arrange for guards and inform Pérez. He’ll want to know someone is plotting murder beneath his roof.
Besides himself.” He turned once more as he slipped past the door, framed by darkness, the jar gleaming in his hand. “Now we know each other. Let’s see what we may accomplish with fewer lies between us.”
