Morning brought a strange kind of silence to the house. The previous night, Luzia and Concha had looked through every drawer, shaken out
every bit of linen, beaten every gown and knocked shoes and slippers and
boxes and bottles against the floor. They’d found no other monsters lying in wait and they’d pulled the trundle out from beneath the high bed so Concha could sleep beside her. In the morning, Concha went to empty the chamber pots and heat fresh water, and Luzia sat for a long while by the window, watching clouds of mist move over the hedges and paths like ghostly party guests. She saw gardeners at their work and horses led by their grooms to
some distant stable.
Luzia didn’t know what to do with herself, if she was meant to go find Valentina or Hualit or Santángel. Or if she was meant to wait in her room until someone came to get her. La Casilla was its own country with its own customs and language and no one had bothered to educate her in this.
It was strange to just sit. She’d been working since she was a child, cleaning the house with her mother, tending to her father’s pots and pans and bits of tin, walking the streets by his side, or helping to fix the cart. She had loved that time with him as much as she’d loved quiet hours with her mother spent studying letters and maps, or learning to add and subtract over the household accounts. She had never known a minute or an hour when
there wasn’t some task to be done. A dress to be mended, coal to be gathered, bread to be made. Her hands, her feet, her back, always put to use. Not her mind, though. Not for a long time. Her mother’s texts and lessons had vanished, as if they’d passed into death with her.
When she’d gone to work for the Ordoños, she’d trained her thoughts to be in two places, to walk the streets and see to her chores while living in distraction. She had let herself dream of foreign places, soft beds, and yes, if she was honest, of beautiful men. As a child they had been slender and
smooth-cheeked heroes on horseback, princes and poets. But she was not a child anymore, and her hopes had been tempered by time and desire that
came upon her suddenly, shamefully. The muscles of the butcher’s forearm as he lifted a cleaver, a fine profile, a long-fingered hand coaxing a scorpion into a jar. She wanted and longed to be wanted in return. And now it was as if her working self and her dreaming self were meeting in the quiet of this place, and they had absolutely nothing to talk about.
So Luzia sat, waiting for interruption, for command. She sat at her
window and watched the sun rise fully over the rose trees pruned into round tufts, the long rows of hedges. She sought the old dreams of pirate kings and princely courtiers, of unexpected vistas and foreign towns. But she was writing a new adventure now. If she won the torneo, she would become a soldier in a war she didn’t understand. And she had no illusion that victory would mean an end to competition or the danger it presented. Joining the king’s service meant entering a world of politics and rivalries, of endless scheming and status-seeking. She would never be safe.
Good. Her mind would be challenged, her wits sharpened. She might not survive, but at last she would be put to the test. Where is your own fear, Luzia? Hualit had asked her. Luzia didn’t know. Maybe she’d eaten it along with the pomegranate.
She let the rosary move through her hands. She’d examined the beads last night, carved on one side with placid human faces, on the other with skulls, reminders of the inevitability of death. Real garnets. Real ivory. The beads cool against her skin. The woman she was pretending to be should pray, but Luzia knew she was destined for hell because all she could think was that each bead strung together might make a tiny fortune.
Down the hall Don Marius had woken early to take a stroll to the stables and had returned to find chocolate being prepared. He had never had the drink, but his doctor had warned him that it could produce melancholy. He watched it being made with sugar and black pepper and cinnamon and accepted a cup for the sake of appearing cosmopolitan, but then found himself unsure of whether to drink it.
He walked with it untouched back to the rooms that he and Valentina had been given, grand rooms from which he could just see the roofs of the
stables if he craned his neck. Valentina was awake but still in bed when he entered, her brownish hair around her shoulders.
“How were the stables?” she asked.
“Remarkable. Pérez’s horses live better than we do.” He looked down at the cup in his hands. “I have brought chocolate.”
To his surprise, she sat up straighter. “Really? What is it like?”
“I … I haven’t tried it yet,” he admitted. “Would you like the first sip?” He wasn’t prepared for the smile that broke across her face. “Yes!”
Marius perched at the edge of the bed and placed the cup in her reaching hands. He waited as she lifted it to her lips and sipped.
A small laugh escaped her. “It’s strange,” she said, closing her eyes. “Bitter. But … I think I like it.”
She offered it to him and he took a sip. It was strange. He could taste the cinnamon and pepper, and maybe anise too. But he couldn’t name what the chocolate itself tasted of and he wasn’t certain it was to his liking.
“Would you care for some more?” he offered. “I don’t want to be greedy.”
“I brought it for you,” he lied.
“You did?” There was something in her disbelief he found shaming. “I thought my wife might enjoy it.”
She smiled again and Marius caught himself preening. It had never occurred to him that his wife could be happy, or that he might be the one to make her happy, or that in doing so he might be made happy in return.
Perhaps his doctor was wrong and there was something to this drink of chocolate after all.
In another wing of the house, Quiteria Escárcega was sipping her own cup of chocolate, brought to her by her young lover, Luis Lopez Venegas, and both the drink and the man had begun to bore her. She had hoped the torneo would spark some inspiration, but despite the miraculous feats and feasts,
she was struggling, writing a single line, then half a page, then realizing she’d wasted her morning on nothing she could properly use. She glanced at Luis, half-dressed and hoping for attention, and sighed. When she couldn’t write, it was almost always a sign that an affair was at an end, and that meant crying and recriminations and many ballads badly sung. She would wait until they left La Casilla to end this romance, and make what use she
could of Luis until then. She had begun to imagine a play set in a kitchen, a cook and a scullion at its center, a satire of the empty life their rich
employers led.
“My love,” she said, and he perked like a dog readying for a run. “Tell me another of your mother’s recipes.”
“Savory or sweet, my sweet?” he asked, pleased with himself.
Quiteria sighed again. “Sweet,” she said, and set her pen to paper.
North of Madrid, in the massive monastery that was also a mausoleum that was also a library that was also a palace, Spain’s king woke early as he always did and began a letter to his envoy in Cologne. His fingers and his feet ached, swollen by the gout that filled his veins with fire. But it was essential he manage such communications himself, and he wanted the
specifics of this mission to arrive in his own hand. A cache of relics had been spirited away from a Calvinist mob raiding churches in Germany. Teeth and bones and hair, a glorious jumble of saints, rescued from desecration. There was even a femur that belonged to San Lorenzo himself and that was said to have cried out when one of the heretics tried to crush it beneath his boot. He would bring them home to Spain and safety. They would join his collection and the monks would see to the making of the
reliquaries under his supervision.
He knew soon he would have to turn his mind to the matter of Pérez. His spies had reported great workings at the torneo, but he would wait to hear what the vicar had to say. He would close no doors that God wanted left open.
Someone was tapping at Luzia’s door. Concha entered and mumbled, “The
… Señor Santángel would have a word.” She was pale and shaking. “He’s not so frightening as all that, is he?”
“No, señorita.”
“What is it you think he may do?”
The girl’s eyes widened and there was something in her look less fearful than thrilled. “Anything at all.”
The maid helped her dress in rust-colored silk, since she would not be performing as La Hermanita today. The high-necked bodice ended in a gold lace ruff, and the sleeves were slashed and pinked to show the rose silk
beneath. Concha’s hands pulled and pinched Luzia’s hair into tight braids and tucked two combs of enamel flowers into the strands.
“Do you have no proper jewels, señorita? Your patron is rich, no?” “I prefer simpler things,” Luzia lied.
Her aunt had convinced Don Víctor to place garnets in her hand, but
there would be no pearls or diamonds, nothing that would give her too easy a means of escape.
Hualit entered as Concha was placing a fur-lined cape of faun velvet over Luzia’s shoulders, the satin bow set at a jaunty angle. Her face had none of the easy merriment Luzia was used to.
“I’ve come to take you to the gardens.” “I’m to meet Santángel.”
“Now, Luzia,” Hualit commanded.
She looped her arm through Luzia’s and set a brisk pace down the hall, two footmen trailing closely behind.
“I’m glad to see you survived the night. Yes, Víctor told me what
happened.” She glanced behind her. “Pérez insists it must have been an unfortunate accident but has offered guards to all the competitors.”
“Surely this can’t be a surprise to you,” Luzia murmured. “I took the place of a competitor who—”
“Hush.” Hualit halted abruptly. “Stay here,” she instructed the footmen. “I would have a private word with Señorita Cotado.” She led Luzia to the great window overlooking the gravel drive. “Listen to me, Luzia. Antonio Pérez’s position grows more perilous by the day. There are rumors the king will have him arrested if Pérez isn’t able to change his mood soon. You must be careful. You can trust no one here.”
“Even you?”
“You know exactly who I mean.” “Santángel saved my life.” Twice.
“Did he? Or did he create a situation where he would make it seem so?” “I don’t believe that.”
“This morning one of Gracia de Valera’s guards was found dead in the gardens. He suffocated on his own swollen tongue.”
“What does that have to do with Guillén Santángel?”
“Speak plainly, señora.” Santángel stood in the hallway where the footmen had been moments before. He wore boots and hunting clothes, and only now, seeing him without his long cloak, did Luzia understand how
much he’d changed. It was hard to reconcile the man before her with the sickly creature she’d met in the courtyard of her aunt’s home only a few
weeks ago. He was still lean, his face set at sharp angles, but now he looked strong and healthy, his back straight, his shoulders broad. It was irritating to realize how handsome he was. They’d been on more equal footing when he looked like he might collapse. “The good widow thinks someone put a scorpion in that poor man’s mouth.”
Hualit flinched but kept her poise. “I said nothing of the kind.”
“Then the mistake is mine. It would be a foolish thing to suggest, after all. Say only that if this guard was the kind of coward who sets traps for young women rather than sullying his own hands with blood, he met the end he should. Say it will be whispered that to act against Luzia Calderón Cotado is to court death itself. Say this tragedy may be for us a happy
accident.”
“Most felicitous indeed.”
“You may go now, señora.”
“I am not a servant to be dismissed.”
“But you will not want Don Víctor to wait.”
Luzia watched Hualit consider her options: stand her ground and risk angering her patron or capitulate and bruise her own pride.
“Remember what I said, querida,” she whispered, and with a curtsy of consummate grace, she marched past Santángel.
Santángel stalked toward her—no, Luzia corrected herself, he was not stalking, he was a man who was walking toward her with purpose. Her aunt’s warnings had put her on edge.
Her tongue resorted to nonsense. “Did you kill my guards too?” she asked.
“Yes, I stuffed them beneath your bed. Concha is in for a crowded night.” “I’m mostly sure you’re joking.” She made her nervous hands still.
“You’re dressed for hunting.”
“I will ride out with them. I won’t hunt. I know what it is to be shot from the sky.”
At least he’d had a chance to use his wings. Perhaps she should leave off talk of death and bloodshed, but he’d told her she could ask him any question she liked. “Did you kill that man? Gracia de Valera’s guard?”
“He forfeited his life when he tried to take yours.”
She wasn’t sure what she had wanted his answer to be, but she knew she shouldn’t be pleased by those words. She was worse than Concha with her giggles and gasps.
“Because I belong to Víctor de Paredes,” she said.
Santángel hesitated. “I suppose that’s a way of looking at it.” He joined her by the window, one eye on the corridor, one on the gardens below.
“Pérez has ordered the hopefuls to the eastern terrace, where you are to have your portraits sketched.”
“For what purpose?” “That I don’t know.”
“Perhaps the artist will capture the moment when Gracia tries to stab me.”
“At least then we would have proof,” he replied. “Go and meet the other competitors.”
“And do what with them?”
“Learn from them. Determine their strengths and weaknesses.”
Luzia fidgeted with the beads at her waist. “They’ll be doing the same.” “Yes, but you have an advantage. We servants are used to watching our
betters and to making ourselves invisible while we do. See what you can discover about them and the second trial.”
“When will it begin?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ve been able to learn little else, but we’ll run through your collection of miracles.”
“Why not begin the trial sooner? Why not today?” “Are you so eager to compete?”
“Yes,” she admitted, wondering if he would chastise her for her pride. “I liked being on that stage.”
He studied her. The light shining through the windows made his eyes translucent, shards of gray glass. “It suited you.”
Something new had been born between them, something with a shape she couldn’t quite determine. Álvaro’s death, the pomegranate, now the scorpion, each moment taking on its own alchemy. But was she changing, or was Santángel?
“I want to know what comes next,” she said, unsure if she meant the torneo or the wider world or just this hallway. “The anticipation … I feel it may unravel me.”
“Anticipation,” he repeated. His fingers flexed as if testing the weight of the word. “Not fear?”
“That too. The longer this goes on, the greater chance I’ll be poisoned or take a mysterious fall down the stairs. And you said the next trial would be a proof of faith. You can’t ask me not to dread an audience with the Vicar of Madrid.”
“He will be looking for signs of heresy and of treason. You will give him neither.”
“Looking for signs in us or in Pérez?”
“How quickly you learn the game. Both, I suspect.”
“The widow says his position grows more precarious.”
“You remember Don Juan’s secretary?” he asked. “The one who was murdered on the streets of Madrid? Escobedo’s widow went to see a cleric who read in the stars that her husband had been killed by his best friend.”
“That was Pérez?”
“Debatable. But Pérez’s role in the murder is not.” He kept his voice low when he said, “Pérez had Escobedo killed. It’s possible the king ordered the assassination and it’s possible he’s afraid that fact will come to light. Don Juan resisted Philip’s strategies in the Netherlands and Pérez whispered to
the king that the great war hero might be trying to take power for himself, that Escobedo was helping him turn traitor.” He shook his head. “It was all badly done. Pérez has overstepped too many times, failed too many times. And he knows far too much. His father’s motto was ‘in silentio,’ but when Pérez had his new impresa remade he omitted those words in favor of
‘usque adhuc.’”
Luzia touched her tongue to the top of her mouth, then let the translation slip free. She didn’t have to hide anymore. Not this at least. “Until now. It’s a warning, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Santángel. “A warning to the king that Pérez knows all of his secrets.” His strange eyes looked less so now, their color steady.
Now we know each other. What would it mean to be known? “Pérez believes he can still repair the rift?” she asked.
“He is the son of a politician. He has been swimming in these waters a long time. Now, go. And try not to be the fish who gets eaten.”
