He shouldn’t have said it, but he had no desire to call the words back. “Why didn’t you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you keep riding?”
“It would have been as good as an admission of guilt.” “Is that why you stopped?”
“No,” he admitted. “I am bound in service to De Paredes.” “Surely there are limits to one’s sense of duty?”
He could hear the hope in her voice, that the trust growing between them or his desire for self-preservation might drive him to sever his bond with his master. He didn’t owe her an answer. He could simply shake his head. He could leave.
Instead he spoke the truth. “I am bound to Víctor de Paredes as I was bound to his father and his father before him. I have served his family since before the kingdoms were brought together, since before these lands had Christian names.”
Luzia didn’t say that is impossible. He didn’t expect her to. By now she knew too many things were possible that she had never contemplated before. Scullions might become soldiers. Little girls could see into the future. Shadows could live and sometimes they had teeth.
All she said was “I’m cold and I’m tired and I need you to help me out of these clothes.”
“I’ll find you a servant or the widow.” “I don’t want them.”
The words filled the room, a bell that had been struck, a reverberation that passed through their bodies, through the walls, out into the night.
He should say it wasn’t proper. He should go. “If I’m found here, there will be nothing that can save you, Luzia. The cost will not be so high for me.”
“If you think I’m letting you leave me alone again, you’re mistaken.
Clothed or unclothed, if you’re found here, I’ll be damned, and I might as well be comfortable when I’m cursed to hell.”
Refuse her, he told himself. It’s not too late to spare her this betrayal. Sparks rose from the heated coals. Outside one soldier called to another.
He held out his hand. “Come here.”
Luzia rose and crossed the room. She turned her back to him and he was reminded of the day she’d tried to refuse his training, when she’d said she had to stir the soup. He reached for her laces, and when his fingers brushed the skin of her neck above her collar, he felt a tremor move through her. As if she were the bell that had been struck, that trembled with sound. He wanted to hear her ring out.
His hands were swift.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” she said with a weak laugh.
“I’ve been alive a long time.” His youth had been spent in countless beds, on floors, in fields, once between the rows of a vineyard. There had been
times when the only way he’d been able to cope with his own immortality was to fuck himself free, to feel briefly, truly alive in another’s pleasure. “I fear the dress is ruined.”
“You’ve lived too long among the wealthy. It can be cut apart and made into something new.”
He turned away to offer her privacy and heard the thud of the dress, followed by the corset, and then the shuffle of damp linen being pulled away from her skin.
“I’m going to bathe,” she said.
“The water will have gone cold.” “I can heat it.”
Of course she could. Desire had turned his mind to jelly. “I’d like some wine,” she said.
“Then I will find it for you.”
She had moved behind the screen that protected her bath and he heard her whisper to the water.
He slipped out the door and quickly down the hall. He could hear muffled voices, someone weeping. He knew he shouldn’t go back to Luzia’s rooms but he knew he would.
When he returned with the bottle, she was already in the bath. The room was soft with the heat of the water, the windows clouded with mist.
“Santángel?” she called, afraid. “I’m here.”
He poured her a glass of wine and set it on the table behind the screen so she could reach for it.
“You’ll stay?” she asked.
“I will not leave until you send me away.” Or until I’m driven mad by wanting.
He removed his cloak and settled himself against the wall beside the screen.
“Will you talk to me?” she asked. He could hear the sounds of her in the water and imagined her limbs slick with moisture, the glimpse of her bare knees above the surface.
“What would you have me say?”
“I don’t wish to speak of the torneo or devils or kings. Tell me what ailed you when we met.”
“I was sick because this life has made me so. Because it drains me and
bores me, but I still cling to it as a child to his mother’s hand. After all these years of sorrow, I want to live.”
“You cannot die?”
“I can,” he conceded. “But I’m too much of a coward. There’s little else to say about it.”
“Just talk. Talk to me. As if we were friends. As if there’s a future.”
“I’ve forgotten what it is to have a friend, to speak easily and openly.” “All is machination.”
“All is scheming.”
“Why do you stay with him?” she asked.
How to answer? After so many years of protecting his own secrets the habit was hard to relinquish. “I’ll tell you a story. That’s all I can grant, a bit of make-believe.”
“I’ll take it,” she said magnanimously, and he found himself smiling, despite the tale he was about to tell.
He tried to think of where to begin. “Long ago, there was a wealthy young man—”
“Was he a prince?”
“Let’s say so. It makes for a better story.” “Good. Was he handsome?”
“Some thought so. He was rich. He was well schooled. He was beloved.
He was a second son and his father’s favorite because he had a gift for learning, which his father valued even above gold. The prince wanted for nothing. He traveled to distant lands and met with scholars and brought back rare manuscripts to add to his father’s collection. He spent every day in happy debate over philosophy and science and the moving of the stars. He spent every night pursuing pleasure. He fucked when he wanted to and drank when he wanted to. He knew that he was lucky in the way that lucky people do.”
“So not at all.”
“Not at all,” Santángel agreed. “Everywhere he went he was welcome.
When he joined a party they were merry. When he left they fell into despair. He thought his life would always be easy.”
“If it had been, there would be no story.”
“True. The prince saw many wonders in his travels. Mysteries of the old world that had nearly been forgotten. Miracles, if you want to call them that. He learned to read and write in many languages in the hope that it would open up doorways to the possible, and he had only one true friend through all of it, a young man of no name and no property named Tello.”
“A servant?”
“He began that way. But Tello was twice as learned as the prince, and
twice as kind, and he quickly became the prince’s trusted friend. They drank together, they wooed women together, they spent long nights in study together, and when the prince’s father died, it was Tello who kept the prince from hurling himself into the sea. They journeyed home and the prince prayed for his father’s soul. He sat with the priest for many hours, thinking it would bring him peace. But when he stood over his father’s grave, it was as if he could hear Death calling to him. He tried to go about his business, to return to his travels and his treatises, but always he felt Death beside him. He could sense its patience, how it would wait for him, confident in its inevitability. He could take pleasure in nothing any longer because he knew it would all come to an end.”
“He was spoiled, this prince.”
“Very. He became obsessed with finding a way to live forever. He and Tello met with sages and healers and seers, with alchemists and astrologers. They went places on maps that had not yet been drawn. But for all the coin
they spent and miles they traveled, they had nothing to show for it but foul- smelling elixirs, useless amulets, and sore feet.”
Santángel heard a loud splash of water, then smelled sweet almonds. Was she washing her hair? He wanted to ask but didn’t quite trust his voice to
frame the question.
“He should have stayed home and wept for his father,” Luzia said.
“Maybe,” said Santángel. “If he had met grief as an honest man, he might not have feared greeting Death on the same road.”
“I still meet grief in sudden places, when I least expect it. A familiar song. A smell from the kitchen. Then there it is. An enemy that can’t be bested.”
“Whom did you lose?”
“My mother quickly. My father slowly. I’m not sure which was worse.
But tell me more of the prince and his friend.” “I should warn you, this isn’t a happy story.” “I don’t recall asking for such a thing.”
Though she couldn’t see him, Santángel nodded. He wanted to finish, though he knew the ending too well.
“Then let’s go on, for this is the moment in the story when a stranger appears. In a marketplace in a southern city, a man approached the prince and Tello, who had been arguing over where to travel next. Tello wished to go north, to go home. But the prince had heard of a nobleman with a text that was rumored to give life eternal if one could manage to read it from beginning to end. The stranger bought them drinks and said he had overheard their conversation. He offered the prince a bargain.”
Luzia sighed.
“Yes, I know,” said Santángel. “But the young and fortunate believe they will always be so. At first the bargain didn’t seem so very terrible. The stranger would ask for payment—”
“Of course.”
“Of course. Though it was not such a large amount. The stranger explained the particulars of the ritual he would perform, some words recited, some wine drunk, some blood spilled. The usual stuff. Then he said, ‘You will lose the thing you value least, but there’s a catch.’”
“Of course.”
“Of course. The stranger turned to Tello. ‘Your servant will lose the thing he values most.’ The prince, and maybe even the stranger, expected Tello to
refuse. But they didn’t understand how little Tello had. No family, no fortune, no home. Life was not so precious to him, and the prince’s obsession with hoarding it mystified him. Tello agreed to the bargain.
“The prince had little faith in this stranger to do anything more than take their money, but he protested anyway. ‘It could cost you your life,’ he warned Tello. And Tello agreed that it very well could. ‘Then why would you do this thing?’ the prince asked.
“‘Because I love you best in the world,’ Tello replied. ‘And if this bargain will put an end to this ceaseless travel and we can go home, I will do it.’ So the bargain was struck.”
Behind the screen, Luzia shifted and he heard water slosh over the edge. “Come, comb my hair,” she said.
“Luzia—”
“Come, comb my hair. I need to know that what I want matters to someone.”
He could have refused. He could have left the story unfinished. He fetched her silver comb.
The water was milky with soap, and only the gleam of her breasts and the tops of her knees were visible. Her head leaned back over the edge of the tub, the wet mass of her hair dripping on the linen that had been set on the floor. He knelt behind her, looking down upon her upturned face, her pink cheeks, her parted lips, her many freckles like desert sand. How had he not understood how lovely she was? She opened her dark eyes, her gaze direct.
“Go on,” she said. “You won’t hurt me.”
“I will,” he replied. “You have seen what I am. You know it is my nature.”
“Go on,” she repeated.
He had the sense that the world had shifted, that if he stepped outside, the constellations would be unfamiliar in their shapes. He lifted the comb and set it against her scalp, drew it through her oiled curls. She closed her eyes, and her sigh of pleasure made him wonder, for the first time in many years, if God was real and testing him.
“Is there no more to your tale?” she asked.
He steadied his breath and said, “That night the stranger took them out beyond the city walls and they followed the steps of the ritual he set out. There were no howling winds or flashes of lightning, and the prince felt it
was all rather disappointing. But he paid the man his fee and they returned to their rooms.
“The next morning the prince woke late. He felt no different. But when
he walked the streets, people didn’t smile at him as they had once done. The butcher offered him no fine cut of meat. His landlord demanded payment.
Can you guess what he’d lost?”
“What he valued least,” she said. “His luck.”
“The prince had never understood that there was anything truly special about him. He hadn’t grasped that the luck that kept him from shipwrecks and earthquakes and spider bites was a kind of magic, a magic he’d never recognized and so never valued as he should.
“Distressed, he went to find Tello, afraid his friend might have died in the night. But Tello was alive and well and sharing a meal with a group of travelers.
“‘My friend,’ Tello cried. ‘Such news I’ve had. My uncle has decided to make me his heir, and I must travel to his lands at once.’
“It soon became clear that whatever had happened in the ritual beyond those city walls, the prince had not lost his luck; he’d given it to Tello.
There are worse things, he told himself, than to see a friend thrive. But he couldn’t understand what Tello had been forced to give up, and that troubled him.”
“It was a trick.”
“You are wiser than the prince. In time he understood that the spell really had worked, that it hadn’t just deprived him of something but offered him a gift in return. If the prince burned his hand, it healed almost instantly. If he broke a bone, no remedy was necessary but to set it straight and get a good night’s sleep. He and Tello tested this newfound power, cautiously at first. A cut here or there. A bit of poison in the prince’s cup, then a bit more. He
sometimes grew sick, but he always recovered. And as the years passed, they realized that though Tello aged, the prince did not. He was as young and strong as when they’d met the stranger in the marketplace.
“They traveled to Tello’s uncle’s lands, and soon the uncle passed and Tello inherited. His flocks grew and his harvests were always plentiful. He assembled a group of men and offered them in service to the king. He bought himself a knighthood and more land. He married a young noblewoman and had a son. Tello grew richer and happier, and the prince
grew restless, eager to travel and return to his studies once more. He had eternal life and he wanted to use it.
“Tello begged him to stay, but the prince refused. He could remain no longer. He packed his few belongings and set out. He spent the day traveling, his spirits high, and passed the night in a comfortable inn. But when he woke he felt a strange sensation. The rising sun was streaming through his window, and as it did, the prince watched his fingers burn to ash.”
A crease appeared between Luzia’s brows. “He had been cursed?”
Santángel touched his thumb to the damp skin of her brow and waited for it to unfurrow, then drew the comb through her hair again. “It seemed so.
He leapt onto his horse and rode back to Tello’s lands, and as he did, his flesh was restored and his strength returned to him.
“‘You have come back to me, my friend,’ exclaimed Tello. ‘Let us never again be parted.’
“‘You knew,’ said the prince, for Tello showed no surprise.
“‘We are bound to each other. So long as you remain in my service, your luck is mine and eternal life is yours. Ah, my friend, I dreaded this day and the look in your eyes. I’m grateful it didn’t come sooner.’
“That was when the prince understood that the stranger in the
marketplace had been in Tello’s employ. And at last he knew what Tello had given up: the prince’s trust, the love of the person he cared for most in the world. It was all he’d had of value then.”
Santángel set the comb aside. It was time to tell her the rest.
“Since that day I have been bound to Tello de Paredes and all of his descendants. My luck is theirs. I live, I do not age, but I am bound to them forever. And if I spend a night away from them, I will burn away to ash when morning comes.”
“You cannot die?” Luzia asked. She had asked him that before. But for
the first time, her voice was less than bold, the truth of his curse and what it meant between them.
“I can. At least I think I can. If you struck the head from my neck or burned me on a pyre.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they tried everything else. Tello’s son was cruel and wished to test the limits of my immortality. I was beaten with rocks, stabbed, my
limbs broken, but still I healed. I was drowned in the river, again and again,
but still I rose from the shore. I begged Tello to release me from my bonds, not to leave me to his son’s mercy. He wept on his deathbed, he begged for my forgiveness, but he would not free me.
“With every new member of his line, I had hope one of them would see fit to set me free. That their coffers would be full enough, their lands great enough. Víctor promised he would, when he was a young man. But that changed as everything does. Everything but me.”
The room was silent. Steam rose from the water. His fingers were damp with almond oil.
She sighed. “Then we are trapped here, you and I. Despite all our gifts.” She turned her head to him. “Will you kiss me now, Santángel?”
He should say no. He should rise and go, spend his desire in his hand. For the sake of his heart and her life he should do these things. But in the end, after so many lifetimes, he was only a man.
He leaned forward. Her lips were soft, her mouth sweet, and when he felt the press of her tongue, he knew he could make no more arguments. He lifted her from the bath, soaking his sleeves to the elbows and noticing not at all. He dried her gently and laid her down upon the bed.
“Undress for me,” she said. “The only man I’ve seen without clothes was wrinkled as a walnut.”
“If it will please you.”
It seemed she had awakened his vanity alongside his desire. He took pleasure in the way she watched him disrobe, in the rapid rise and fall of
her breasts, the spreading flush on her cheeks, the shift in her body like the soft swell of a dune.
When she had looked her fill, he lay down beside her and she turned to him. “It’s not too late,” he said. “If you ask me to go, I will.”
“Is that what you want?”
“In all these many years I’ve never wanted anything less.”
She cupped his face, let her hand trace his jaw, his neck, the planes of his chest. His breath hitched when she reached his stomach and moved on, her fingers fastening around him, all hesitancy gone.
“Then kiss me again, Santángel,” she said. “It was too late for us before we ever met.”
That night Valentina woke bathed in sweat, her head swimming with the memory of a strange and beautiful dream. The air was sweet with oranges and she had been walking with Quiteria Escárcega, who had let her borrow her crimson velvet jacket. But now her room seemed too still, and in the moonlight, she saw the shadows lengthening, long-clawed demons coming for her bitter, grasping soul. She told herself to return to sleep, to drink a
little wine to settle her nerves, to stop being foolish. But she felt fretful and uneasy, as if a fire had been lit beneath her skin.
It was less that she rose from her bed than that she was driven from it, and she found herself tapping at the door that connected her bedroom to Marius’s chamber. She expected no answer and so she was surprised when he called softly, “I am awake too.” She was even more surprised when she opened the door to find him striding across the room to her, and her bafflement only grew when he took her in his arms and tumbled her onto his bed.
“I dreamed of orange groves,” he said as he buried his face in her neck.
She had time to think How strange that he should dream that too, and then she was so overcome with befuddlement and other unnamable emotions, she couldn’t think at all.
In the gardens, one of Pérez’s guards turned to the man he’d stood watch with for the better part of two years and said, “Don’t you think it’s time we stopped pretending?”
They slipped into the shadows of the hedges where the cold ground caught up their whispers and moans, and where the next day the gardener would find a mysterious patch of white blossoms.
Down in the kitchens, the cook and her husband made love on the table beside a regiment of leavening loaves. The morning bread tasted of sweet oranges.
Beneath the scroll of his silver angels, Antonio Pérez wept for his loneliness, his head full of a dream of orange trees, then he rose from his bed and tried to return to his correspondence, but only love poems emerged from his quill.
If any of them had listened closely, they would have heard birds rustling in the branches, and somewhere in the walls, the amorous squeaking of mice. But their ears were too full with whispered words of love.
As dawn broke and Luzia felt for the first time the joy of waking in a lover’s arms, she experienced a kind of desperate hope too. “There must be a way to break the curse,” she said. “And we will find it together.”
Santángel wanted to tell her that Víctor de Paredes had already offered him a way. But he drew her closer and said nothing.
