Back in the darkness of her cell, as Neva mumbled in her sleep, Luzia contemplated the road that she and Santángel had chosen. She knew he
had intended to free her by damning himself and she had almost let him do it. She wondered if the Prince of Olives knew just how ruthless his new master was.
Donadei had approached her in the audience chamber as she waited to be taken to her cell.
“I will pray for your soul,” he said loudly, then whispered. “You see, little nun? I did win in the end.”
“Are you so certain?”
“My miracles will work wonders for him and I won’t have to listen to him moan beneath me every night to earn my keep.”
“What happened to the whispers of milagreros and your fear of Víctor de Paredes? You should listen to your own warnings.”
“Do you really still take me for an honest country rube? Don Víctor has the king’s favor and soon I will have a place at court. I will be the king’s champion yet.”
“Your ambition will bury you.”
“Give me more advice before you’re clapped in chains.”
“Then call it victory, Fortún. Over me. Teoda. Pérez. I ask only one thing: Do not come to witness my humiliation. Do not attend the auto de fe and what is bound to come after. I beg you, grant me this consideration.”
Donadei’s face split in a radiant smile. “You even beg badly. I will be there to watch you and your lover burn. Then Don Víctor will have one milagrero, and I will be on my path back to the palace.” He bowed and declared, “May God have mercy on you, Luzia Cotado.”
His ugliness should have shown on his countenance, she thought. But only stories and plays worked that way, and maybe she should be grateful
for it. If this were a tale told to children, she’d sprout horns and fangs for what she intended to attempt.
“Did you mean those things?” Rudolfo asked when he took up his post outside her cell for the night. “That you fucked the devil’s man?”
“If I can get Mariposa Baldera to love you, do you care how wicked I may be?”
He hesitated. “No. But she is already fond of me.”
“Fond. That’s nice. It’s good that fond is enough for you.”
Rudolfo pressed his face against the grating of the door. “But it is not enough for me!”
“Then you must do as I bid, for I die tomorrow.”
When she had told him her demands, he said, “Impossible! No, I cannot.” “At least she’s fond of you.”
“I want her to love me completely,” he pleaded. “Without sense. Without reason.”
What a curse to place upon someone. “Then what happens when the prize is won? When you tire of her?”
“I will never tire of her,” he said fervently.
He meant it, and maybe it would prove true. But Luzia was glad she didn’t really have the power to alter hearts, and she prayed Mariposa would make her choices wisely.
“I can tell you how to make a nuska,” Luzia said, “and where to place it.
Then it will be done, but first you must do as I have asked.”
He refused. He argued. He seemed about to cry. And then, of course, he relented. Because he believed that love was within his grasp. Was there anything more dangerous than a man full of hope?
When the bells struck ten, he brought her to Santángel’s cell. “You have an hour,” he whispered. “Do not make … noise.”
Santángel rose. He glowed in the dim light, unexpected treasure. “Why?” he said. “Why sentence yourself to death?”
“Do you want to argue or do you want to kiss me?”
He closed the space between them in two strides and took her in his arms. “I assure you I am capable of both.”
Why had she wasted time doubting him? He was a killer. He was a liar. He was not a good man. But it was possible she didn’t want a good man.
“I was trying to save you,” he said as he cupped her face, traced the curves of her neck with his fingertips.
“I know,” she said. “It was very grand of you. Very romantic.”
“And yet we die together tomorrow. Why would you not let me save your life?”
“You have lived centuries in Don Víctor’s service. Would you really consign me to that?”
“You wouldn’t be bound by my curse! You would know better than to make his bargain.”
“Despite his gift for cruel choices?”
“You would have found a way to best him as I never did.” “You believe I could?”
“I know it.”
“Then trust in me now, Santángel. As you once asked me to trust you.
Our deaths will not be in vain. If nothing else, I can make it painless.” She drew closer, grateful for his warmth, for the pleasure of leaning into him, as lovers did, as they might never do again. “I saw you once, before we met in the courtyard. You were in Víctor’s coach. When I looked at you, I felt as if I were lifting out of my shoes.”
“I know,” he murmured against her hair. “It wasn’t spring, but the almond trees bloomed, and I wondered what chance had passed.”
“That was me?”
“That was your power recognizing mine. I didn’t want to wake to the world. But you forced me to.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Let me unbraid your hair and I will have no regrets at all.”
She laughed, the sound strange in the damp misery of the cells. “You aren’t afraid to die?”
“Will you think less of me if I am?” “No. I’m terrified.”
“I wish I could have died a free man, not bound to a post. But I’ve earned my place on the pyre. You did nothing but try to live.”
“Don’t deny me credit for all my immoderate striving. I worked hard for my place in this prison.”
It was strange to know at last that she would disappear as her mother had, as her father had. Perhaps that was always meant to be her fate.
Her father had been difficult to predict, prone to sudden storms and bouts of merriment. Her mother had known how to weather his changes, letting
the rain pass with little more than a shrug. Luzia tried to follow her example. She learned to endure the deep sadness that fell over him, when all he wanted was to sleep and to be left alone in silence. She’d even made peace with the bursts of anger that seemed to arrive without provocation. But his sudden enthusiasms were harder to bear, his chattering excitement. She would smile and nod along with him, even as she felt herself closing up like a fist. Someone had to be wary, to be practical. Someone had to be ready when it all fell apart.
When he had tipped too far in either direction, Luzia’s mother had been there to reach out a hand and steady him. But when Blanca died, he lost his balance. He swayed from moment to moment, mood to mood, chased from one day to the next by loss. Sometimes he worked and came home for his meals, but more often he would wander from his route and simply stand in the street, talking or weeping, face raised to the clouds, looking for some sign Luzia didn’t know. A neighbor brought him home one evening and whispered, “I found him speaking Hebrew outside of San Ginés. I don’t
know who else heard, but he must be careful.”
Luzia had waited, frantic, sure that someone less kind had overheard and would denounce him, that the Inquisition would come for them both.
“If only he had been able to wash her body,” she said to Hualit. “If he’d been able to pray for her, to mourn her properly—”
But Hualit had no patience for such talk. “It wouldn’t matter if he’d been allowed to plead for her to find menuchah nechonah at the top of his lungs.” She tapped her temple. “His mind is unsettled.”
Then how do I settle it? Luzia wanted to know. She was twelve years old and she missed her mother and she didn’t know how to live with a man who wept and tore his garments, then vanished for days and came back bright- eyed and full of promises and plans.
One morning Luzia realized her father had returned home in the night, but without his cart. She wandered the streets looking for it, as if searching for a lost dog, whispering prayers that it would be around the next corner,
the next, that some good and honest person would say, “Oh, not to worry. I knew it shouldn’t sit out on the street where just anyone could take it.” She had walked until her feet bled, and when she’d finally made herself return home, her father had been whistling as he sat at the table, scrawling notes
on the paper they used to wrap the bread. The cart didn’t matter, he told her. They would open up a shop.
Eventually he stopped coming home at all. They lost their apartment.
Luzia went to work for the Ordoños. Her father would appear sometimes at Hualit’s house or in the alley behind Calle de Dos Santos. Luzia would try to feed him, try to get him to stay and talk. He would only take bread if it had been burnt, vegetables if she told him they were starting to rot. If she offered him money, he gave it away.
“He thinks he’s atoning,” Hualit said. “He can’t forgive himself for not burying your mother properly.”
One winter Luzia used her wages to buy him a new coat and boots. She had saved for months so that she could know he would at least be warm when he was out wandering. He’d donned the coat proudly, beaming with pride. He’d done a joyful dance in his new boots and told her that a daughter was a blessing.
Two days later, she was walking near the Prado when she saw a group of people gathered by one of the bridges. The cuadrilleros were trying to fish a corpse from the river.
She told herself not to look, to go home, that it was none of her concern. But her feet were already carrying her through the crowd. Her father knelt beneath the bridge, his hands clasped, his face tilted to the sky, exultant. He was barefoot and dressed in rags. He’d frozen to death in the night.
Hualit warned her not to claim his body. He might be a beggar, but he was also a rumored Judaizer. “It’s too dangerous, querida,” she’d said. “There’s nothing you can do for him now. We all end up in the same place anyway.”
“I killed him,” she had whispered. The new coat and boots had been too fine, too precious. Of course he had given them away. If she had simply left him to his threadbare clothes and worn-down boots, he would have been cold, but he would have lived.
Hualit sighed. “At least he died happy. That’s more than most of us can hope for.”
Now Hualit was dead too.
Days later Luzia had gone to the bridge. She’d recited what she could remember of El Maleh Rachamim. She prayed that the coat would keep someone warm. She prayed she wouldn’t end in the cold on her knees.
All curses require sacrifice, Donadei had once warned her. How she had fretted over those words, over the meaning of sacrifice, when so little ever came from loss. She had killed her father with her love, her fine intentions. Now her love would kill Santángel too. She would destroy him and herself. This would be her offering.
She rested her head on Santángel’s chest. “Do you know any real magic?
Grand magic? The kind in stories?”
He took her hand, pressed his lips to her knuckles, then he rested their clasped palms against his heart. “Only this,” he said as morning drew near. “Only this.”
