Luzia didn’t have to wait long for revelation. The next morning, she returned from the market and had barely closed the door when Valentina
careened into the kitchen, waving a letter in the air as if ringing a bell.
“La Casilla!” she screeched, the words like a spell she was casting, and perhaps there was magic in them. “We are to go to La Casilla!”
This was the invitation that De Paredes had said would come. But was it good news or bad? Was God speaking or the devil?
“A palace of sin,” Águeda said with a sniff.
“Is it a very grand palace of sin?” Luzia asked, setting down her basket and unwrapping the shawl from her shoulders. She could see the broken wax seal of the letter and what looked like the impression of a horse standing in a labyrinth.
“Twenty-two rooms, works by the great Italian painters. It is said that
Pérez had his bed …” Valentina giggled at her indiscretion. “He had his bed made as an exact copy of the king’s!”
The cook slammed down the lid of the vinegar pot. “The pretense of the man.”
“What a thing to get to see such a place,” Luzia said carefully. “I imagine all of the women there dress very finely. They must have the most wonderful jewels.”
Doña Valentina’s fingers clenched around the paper, the pleasure draining from her face. She looked around the kitchen, touched her hand to the front of her gown, as if just realizing what such an invitation entailed, what it would mean to enter a ballroom in her tired old velvet, with her sad yellow wedding pearls around her neck. How would she arrive with no private coach or horses?
“La Casilla,” she said again, fighting for a smile, a bird who had been taught only one word. She turned and made a slow path up the stairs.
Luzia watched her fade upward into the gloom like a dying spark. Doña Valentina rarely looked happy, and Luzia had stolen that happiness from her. But better she take a knife to her hope and Valentina’s, before it quickened and found form.
Wishes granted were rarely the gifts they seemed. Any goose who believed otherwise hadn’t listened to a story all the way to its end. Víctor de Paredes could give Luzia a new life, scrub her antecedents clean, and he would control her as he did Hualit. Her powerful, beautiful aunt who laughed so easily and never doubted her own judgment, who took pleasure in all things and did as her mood suited. Luzia had always imagined her as some kind of sorceress, enchanting a powerful nobleman, keeping him in her thrall. But that wasn’t what she’d seen in that courtyard. Hualit could claim she knew how to play this game, but it was Don Víctor who had issued commands and they had all jumped to do his bidding, even the
strange Santángel, who had made Hualit quake with fear.
Don Víctor’s whims weren’t really what worried her. Luzia’s days were already shaped and battered by Valentina’s fits of temper. But last night she’d had to grapple with what a performance might require if she sought to climb higher. How was she meant to speak her refranes before Pérez or the king, let alone compete in the torneo? Her stomping and clapping were a
feeble shield. What was Hualit’s solution for that? And how was Luzia to explain to a man like Víctor de Paredes that she couldn’t do as she was bid? Maybe the Ordoños’ poverty would save her. They didn’t have the means to visit La Casilla, no matter who issued the invitation.
Be glad, she told herself. Be grateful you can go no further down this path. But it was hard to claim victory at the thought of spending the rest of her days chopping cabbage and feeling her life drain into the dirt floor every night. Surely this bit of magic, this little scrap of power had to mean more.
Not so little, she thought as she rolled out dough for Águeda. Amid the grapevines, her magic hadn’t seemed small. It had filled her like a well that would never run dry. It had nearly overwhelmed her. She had once ridden a horse with her father, when he was still doing business on the outskirts of
the city. It had been a farmer’s horse, old and flea-bitten, but Luzia had loved being up high, and she’d felt like someone else, a princess or a fine lady in a king’s retinue, as the horse plodded through the dry hills outside
the city walls. When they’d reached a gully, her father had said, “Hold on, Luzia,” and kicked his heels into the horse’s sides.
The animal had come to life beneath them, as if it were an entirely different beast, as if wings might sprout from its flanks. It leapt the trench, its muscles a coursing river beneath her. Less than a minute that horse had run, but Luzia’s heart had run with it, exultant with the glimpse of another life for her, for the horse. That was what her magic had felt like in Hualit’s courtyard, as the vines thundered into life around her, powerful and only barely within her control, a lunging, sinewy thing that might carry her anywhere. Or that might rear up and toss her from its back, leaving her in a broken heap on the riverbank.
Hualit had told her the refranes were nothing, a secret to be kept, small comfort for a small life. Why had Luzia been so ready to believe her?
High above someone rapped on the front door.
“Luzia.” Her name floated down the stairs. It seemed the bird knew more words after all. “Come along.”
Luzia wiped her hands and tromped up the stairs to find Valentina waiting, her face pale as candle wax, patting her hair as if for comfort. Would her mistress punish her now, for swiping away her delusions?
“Come along,” Valentina repeated. But she didn’t turn her feet toward the stairs.
Luzia followed her to the salon, the grandest room in the house, though it had no real view from its windows nor fine paintings on its walls. A fire
was burning in the brazier and Luzia could tell it had been filled with coal instead of olive stones, despite the cost. Her steps faltered when she saw the man standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back. That was why the Ordoños were showing off. Víctor de Paredes. He hadn’t wasted any time.
She was almost equally shocked to see Don Marius in the room. He was rarely home for the midday meal and spent most of his time in the house tucked away in his study. It was strange to see him in the light of day and she was surprised at how young he appeared. Because he’s smiling, she
realized. He looked pleased instead of sour and scowling because a rich and powerful man was in his home.
“I will leave you here,” Valentina said with a quick curtsy.
Luzia wanted to call her back. As if Valentina could protect her from whatever was coming.
“Don Víctor, this is Luzia Cotado,” Marius said.
If the sight of him in sunlight was strange, then the sound of him speaking her full name was utterly bizarre.
Luzia tried not to stare and performed her best curtsy, which was as bad as it had been the previous day. Of all the things she had imagined, Don Víctor in this room, in this moment, hadn’t entered her mind.
Marius’s chest swelled a little more. “Don Víctor has heard of your talents and has offered to become your patron.”
Patron. In any other context, it would have been an obscene proposition. Hualit had told Luzia about the first time she met Víctor de Paredes, how he’d seen her carriage in the gardens of the Prado and approached her, how she’d told him her name was Catalina de Castro de Oro instead of Hualit Cana, and that she was a widow so that he would know she could be had without concern for her virtue or at risk of angering some proud father.
Neither the name nor the dead husband were real, but they did the job of any good story and opened the door to possibility. Mere days later he’d arrived at her house with an emerald the size of a walnut and asked to
become her patron. Or at least that was the story Hualit told. For the first time, Luzia wondered if it was true. If life could ever be so easy, even for a woman as beautiful as Hualit.
Luzia wasn’t sure if she was supposed to look surprised or happy or fearful, so she stared dully at her shoes. Better they think her a lump of clay, suitable for molding.
“Patron, señor?” she mumbled.
“He will see you educated and appropriately dressed for an audience with Antonio Pérez.”
When Luzia stayed silent, Marius cleared his throat. “Say that you are thankful and praise God for Don Víctor’s generosity.”
Luzia knew she should simply echo Marius, but the words on her tongue somehow twisted themselves. “I thank God for the generosity of selfless
men.”
“Very good,” said Marius, relieved that she hadn’t embarrassed him. “You will begin your lessons today.”
“Walk with me, dear Luzia,” said Don Víctor.
He offered her his arm and as they set off down the hall, his hand slid around her wrist.
“You will think carefully before you speak from now on, preciosa,” he whispered. “I am not quite the fool Don Marius is, and you are not quite the dullard you pretend to be. Let us both remember.”
His hand squeezed harder and she felt the small bones in her wrist bend.
Luzia sucked in a breath but didn’t scream. Behind them, she could hear Marius and Valentina whispering to each other, trailing them like attendants.
Luzia nodded and stayed silent, as Don Víctor chattered on about the many rooms of La Casilla and the glory of the grounds and how they would need clothes for various meals and performances. Luzia’s wrist throbbed but she ignored the pain. Yes, she would remember. She would be more careful. She had wished for a beneficent king, and if Víctor de Paredes wished to play the role then she would happily be the peasant girl he rescued. She would curb her tongue and master her curtsy and she would find a way to make a success of this. She would snatch this opportunity from the shark’s mouth if she could only find a way.
Luzia looked back and saw Don Marius beaming. Valentina, walking two steps behind, merely looked nervous.
She felt as if she was being brought to some altar of sacrifice, but it was only the room on the house’s second floor they used for storing linen. It was meant to be a nursery, but no children had ever come. Now the stacks of
blankets and draperies were gone and the narrow bed on which they’d been placed had been made up. By whom? she wondered. Had Valentina beat the mattress? Aired the sheets? Smoothed the coverlet?
“Don Víctor asked to see your room,” said Don Marius, staring hard at Luzia. “He is most concerned for your well-being.”
So they didn’t want the great man to know his milagrera slept in the larder.
“Perhaps she would be better served by private apartments in my home,”
Don Víctor said. “There is plenty of room, and there she might have her lessons without interruption or inconvenience.”
Luzia did not like that thought. Just yesterday she would have jumped at the chance to be a servant in such a man’s home, surrounded by wealth and plenty. But her wrist ached and she didn’t want to imagine what might happen to her under Don Víctor’s roof.
“We couldn’t take advantage of your hospitality,” Marius sputtered.
Valentina looped her arm through Luzia’s elbow and Luzia tried not to startle. “Don Víctor, you are too kind, but this is all so new for Luzia, and she has been in our household for years. It’s best that she remain
somewhere familiar, among people she knows.”
Marius looked stunned at the way his wife had routed Don Víctor, and
Luzia couldn’t say she wasn’t impressed. If the fear of losing me is enough to marshal Valentina’s wit, Luzia marveled, I must be very valuable indeed.
Luzia waited, suspended, a wishbone caught between Don Víctor’s arm and Valentina’s elbow. The Ordoños weren’t willing to relinquish her easily. She was their servant, their unexpected treasure, plunder from an unknown country. But if Víctor de Paredes wanted her in his household, Luzia had no doubt he would have his way. In fact, he could simply offer her more wages and she would walk out the door with him right now. Money was a wonderful tonic for fear.
Instead he smiled and dipped his chin the barest amount, the gracious loser. Luzia had the sense he hadn’t lost at all. He wanted her here in this house, under the Ordoños’ roof, not his own. Yet another mystery for her to try to unravel.
“Let us discuss terms,” Don Víctor said to Marius. “We are at the start of a great adventure, my friend.”
When Marius and Don Víctor had gone, Valentina said, “It is all very good fortune.”
She had posed no question, but seemed to be waiting for a response, so Luzia simply said, “Yes.”
“I have seen Don Víctor’s palace. He had it built near the gardens of the Alcázar. It sits in such a way that one has a view of parks and meadows from nearly every window. One might forget one is in the city at all. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Then he is very wealthy.”
“Oh yes. And over many generations. The De Paredes family is well known for their good luck.” She tapped her cheekbone, recalling that bit of birdshot that had done Don Víctor no real harm. “But this time it is our ship that has landed on the right shore.”
There was ferocity in her eyes, a kind of fire Luzia had never seen there before. Don Víctor would buy them both gowns and perhaps provide the family with a carriage. Valentina must know there would be a price, just as Luzia did. But none of them could guess at it.
“Go on,” Valentina said, gesturing to the empty room. Then, as if remembering herself, she added, “Just so you understand, your station hasn’t changed. No matter where you rest your head at night.”
Luzia didn’t bother with a reply. They both knew it wasn’t true.
