The gowns arrived on a Thursday, in trunks marked with Valentina’s initials. They were wrapped in muslin, bundles of lavender and
rosemary placed between the layers.
Valentina laid them out one by one on her bed. Three gowns, one in lush black velvet trimmed in ermine and pearls, stiff with silver brocade. One in darkest green, the ruff and sleeves edged in lace and silver spangles. One in cream velvet, stitched with birds and scrolls and pansies in ochre and umber and black. There were fresh underskirts, squirrel-lined gloves, and new velvet slippers. A new corset had been sent, of soft quilted silk. She felt a heat pass through her, a liquid pleasure that made her press her thighs together.
What is the true cost? she wondered. Will it be the devil I pay? But she clutched the corset all the tighter.
It was true she had no proper jewels, but did it matter? She would fight not to think on it.
Valentina looked around, unsure of what to feel. She wanted to celebrate, but she didn’t dare interrupt Marius. He’d taken to working in the salon rather than his study, and she couldn’t blame him. She crossed herself each time she passed the door, and she wondered if some part of Víctor de Paredes’s bodyguard might not still be beneath her feet or above her head, wedged between the floorboards, food for boring insects.
She would be practical in this moment. She would make sure that the gowns for Luzia were in order.
She found the scullion in her room, staring at the black lacquered chest as if it might be full of vipers. Valentina entered silently, skirting the spot on
the floor where they’d laid a rug, despite the fact that no stains were still visible.
In wordless agreement she and Luzia opened the chest together and lifted the bundles out, setting them neatly on the bed, carefully unwrapping the muslin.
Luzia had also received three gowns. One for day in a kind of rust- colored silk edged in gold lace, one in black velvet, and one in black wool. For performing.
Luzia ran her hand over the rough wool and gave a heavy sigh. “I thought I was being wise.”
Valentina frowned. She was glad she hadn’t squandered what might be her only chance at luxury on something sensible. “Perhaps it will be less severe on the body?”
“Come,” said Catalina de Castro de Oro, bustling in from the hallway. “We will get you dressed.”
When had the widow arrived? Had Juana let her in? Why had no one
knocked? How had Valentina agreed to grant a stranger such access to her home? She voiced none of these questions. She simply shut the door and they began the process of stripping Luzia and layering her into her new gown. It was silent work, the work of women who had not been tended to their whole lives, who had done the tasks of servants when another pair of hands couldn’t be bought or found. That Valentina knew such things was to be expected, but who was this widow who dressed so elegantly, who walked with such natural confidence, and yet whose fingers flew over
fastenings and laces with surety?
“Many will bring their own servants to La Casilla,” said the widow. “Víctor has arranged for us all to have a girl, but she will have to be shared. Luzia will be her first priority.”
And the widow her second, and Valentina would wait and be late for the banquet. That was the unspoken part of all of this.
“I will bring my own maid to see to my hair and toilette,” the widow continued, but Valentina didn’t want to be appeased.
When they finished, they were all pink-cheeked and sheened in sweat.
Valentina opened the window as Catalina opened the door to create a breeze. Then they stepped back to examine their work.
Luzia stood in the late morning sunlight. The black wool gown was austere, the sleeves tight instead of belled or flared, the fabric a kind of dull, sturdy material the color of soot. The tailor had built a corset that narrowed and flattened as it should, but the hoop was smaller and more subtle than
those Valentina and the widow wore. The white ruff was restrained, simple folds and pleats, a bare wisp of cloud. The effect was eerie. Luzia didn’t look like a nun, but she didn’t quite look like a woman either. It was as if
she had become smaller, a figurine carved from obsidian, a tiny pagan icon one might find in a cave.
Catalina cocked her head to the side and tapped her lips with her finger. “Dare I say it suits you?”
Valentina saw Luzia’s posture relax a bit, as if she had sighed in relief.
Why should she care so much what the widow thought? And yet did
Valentina not hope for her approval too? Did some part of her not long to say, Come, see what your tailor has made for me?
The widow circled Luzia slowly. “A compelling idea. It will change the game entirely if she is presented not to appeal to desire but to forbid it.
Chaste, pious, unassailable.”
Valentina was less sure. “Shouldn’t there be … some enticement?”
“The trick of impressing a man is in letting him believe you find him splendid.”
“And if you don’t?” Valentina felt her face heating but hurried on. “If you don’t find a man splendid?”
“Well, you find something you do find splendid and you think of that when you’re with him. Ices, for instance. Ripe figs. A good sunny day.”
“Freshly folded linen?” “Exactly.”
“That you didn’t have to fold yourself,” muttered Luzia.
“Hush,” said the widow. “I’m thinking. The dress is good, very good. A fitting costume. A bit of armor. La Hermanita with her milagritos. Lovely theater. The rest … needs work. Take your cap off.”
Luzia’s hands clenched and unclenched in the fabric of her new skirts. “Can I not wear it?”
“No, you may not,” said Valentina, surprised at the harshness in her voice. “You’ll look a fool.”
“A veil, then, or—”
“The king doesn’t care for veils,” said the widow. “He thinks they make it too easy for whores to pretend to be honest women. Are you not an honest woman?”
Luzia’s eyes flashed and Valentina remembered the night she had confronted her over the burnt bread. The feeling she’d had that a wolf had
taken the shape of a girl.
“I’m as honest as you, señora,” Luzia said to the widow, and for a moment their gazes locked.
Valentina wondered if the widow would strike her. Or if Luzia might
strike the widow. But Luzia simply reached for the pins that held her cap in place.
“I’ll help you,” said Hualit.
“I can manage very well by myself,” Luzia bit back. “I always have.”
Hualit only laughed and whispered, “You started this. Let’s see how we finish it.”
Luzia didn’t know what to make of her aunt’s changing moods. Where was the woman who had sat by her bedside only days before? Who had smoothed her hair and promised escape?
Hualit snatched the cap from Luzia’s head and stepped back, tapping her lip once more as if reminding her mouth to stay in place, a gesture she only used in her disguise as the widow.
Every morning, Luzia bound her hair in a tight braid and pinned it in a coil up the back of her head. She knew very well how she looked when she’d just removed her cap, the moist warmth lifting the strands around her face in an exuberant halo. The effect was comical enough that it had made Hualit and even Luzia laugh on more than one occasion.
But it was not her vanity that had her snatching back the cap from Hualit’s hands. She had few memories of her mother, but she remembered her hands gently combing oil through her hair when it was wet and pliable, a ritual that had brought her calm and that was the only way to tame the thick mass of black curls.
Desert hair, her mother had called it. Luzia hadn’t understood what it meant at the time, but it had pleased her because it felt special.
Even now that she knew better she sometimes took the pins from it and felt the weight of it in her hands. It stayed damp long after washing, held
the scent of almond oil in its coils. Hair that had survived the destruction of the temple, the Roman legions, the long road to Morocco, that had endured conquest, and conversion, to be tied up like a secret in her little white cap. Hair of the sands, of sun-washed stones, of a horizon she would never see. Desert hair.
“Is there more of it?” asked Doña Valentina. “She looks like a newborn chick.”
Luzia met Hualit’s gaze and held it, unsure of the challenge she was making as she pulled the pins from her braid, letting them fall to the floor. A silly gesture. She was the one who would have to pick them up.
Hualit moved behind her and she felt a tug as her aunt pulled her braid free, and now she did want to weep because no one had seen to her hair or touched her with any kind of care in so long. Now again there was a doubling and Luzia was a child, Hualit was the mother whose face she couldn’t recall. Her father had never gone mad with grief. He sold leather goods and pieces of tin and they were poor, but they had a home with
candles in the window. Her father whispered the hamotzi over the bread, the blessing like a golden cord, one they were all forbidden to grasp but that dangled there above the kitchen table. What does it mean? she had asked.
I don’t remember, her father admitted. I’m not sure my own father remembered.
But her mother had the words, not just the echoes. Blessed are you, Lord our God … Luzia couldn’t remember the Hebrew. Latin had seemed more important at the time.
She had known no real fear then. She had believed she would have a life like that one. She would be married and cook over her own fire and her husband would kiss her cheek at night and call her beloved. Was that why she had helped Valentina? Because she knew what it was to live without
love? To believe you would never have it and cling to anything that resembled it—an invitation, a bit of conversation, wine served in a small jade cup?
“Show her,” Hualit said.
Luzia turned. That was when she saw Santángel, his eyes glittering in the shadows beyond the doorway, sparks that didn’t burn, cold fire. She wasn’t sorry he was there. Maybe she wanted him to see something about her that wasn’t a dirty neck and a lack of manners.
“There’s so much of it!” Valentina exclaimed. “And it’s so very thick.”
“We could cut it,” said Hualit, her hands gripping Luzia’s shoulders. “Or shave it so she can wear a wig.”
Luzia’s gaze snapped to Hualit, who had twined one of Luzia’s curls idly around her finger. Why did Luzia care what they did to her hair? Because it looked like her mother’s hair? Because her vanity told her it was the one
thing about her that might ever be called beautiful even if it couldn’t be considered fashionable? Or because she didn’t want to be handled this way, talked to this way, moved about like a doll? All she knew was that if they tried to take a razor to her head she would scream and she would not stop screaming. She would fill the house with pomegranate trees. She would
cleave them all in two. She could feel the pull of that larger magic, dangerous, impossible. It was trying to offer you escape, to take you from this place. She wanted to let it.
“A wig would be easiest,” said Doña Valentina. “But—”
“No,” said Santángel. His voice was like a sudden change in temperature, the sign of bad weather to come.
Valentina and Hualit both startled.
“You shouldn’t be here,” said Valentina. “It isn’t decent.” “I instruct her every day in this room.”
“It’s not the same. A man—”
Hualit’s laugh was forced. “Santángel is not a man. He doesn’t care for women or men or anything at all besides his books.”
Santángel’s face remained impassive. “A book may disappoint, but it is far easier to be rid of.”
“Always the wit,” said Hualit merrily, but Luzia didn’t miss the tightness of her mouth. She feared Santángel and she knew she was perilously close to overstepping. Was it because he held a position of privilege with her
patron? Or did she share the same fears as Águeda in the kitchen? Did she say Santángel was not a man because he was something else entirely?
“Well, Santángel,” Hualit mused, “since you seem to have strong
opinions on fashion, what do we do with her hair? If she is to look pious we cannot leave it wild this way, and I know nothing that can tame it. The king will take one look at her and seek to set her before his judges or tumble her in his bed.”
Valentina gasped.
But Hualit wouldn’t stop. “Then again, a man who wants to fuck is a useful thing.”
Luzia brought her foot down hard on the floor. “Señora, I beg you.”
“Beg her for nothing,” said Santángel. He remained in his spot among the shadows, and yet she could see him clearly, as if he were glowing. “No one will touch her hair, or it is my temper you will face.”
“This is my home,” sputtered Valentina. “Luzia lives under my roof—”
Now he moved forward and Luzia did feel the temperature of the room change, more than a sudden draft, a storm front. Valentina took a step back and Hualit froze, Luzia’s dark hair still curled around her finger. They’d felt it too.
“You will not touch her hair,” he repeated. Valentina bobbed her head in a single nod.
Hualit released Luzia’s hair and wiped her hand on her skirts as if to forget its feel. “Not a strand of it.”
Santángel vanished soundlessly into the hall.
“The impertinence!” chirped Doña Valentina when he was gone, but her voice was too high.
“What was that?” Luzia asked, rubbing her arms.
Hualit seemed to shake free of whatever had kept her rooted to the spot. “Just do as you’re bid,” she said without looking at Luzia. “We’ll find a velvet cap or have Perucho’s plumajero concoct something with feathers and jewels. Let’s see to the other gowns. I don’t want to have to bother with another fitting.”
Perhaps they should have cut her hair that day. If Valentina had picked up the razor, or Hualit the shears, if Luzia had bent her head to their ministrations, maybe more than one of them would have returned to the shabby house on Calle de Dos Santos and lived to tell this story.
