The hunt was tiresome and Santángel was grateful to avoid the feast that followed. His appetite for food had returned, but not for the pomp of
such meals or the dull conversation that accompanied them. Instead he walked the palace and the grounds, listening to the idle talk of guards and servants, hoping to gather more information on tomorrow’s trial. He was not seen or heard. This was the way he’d determined who had placed the scorpion in Luzia’s room. The guard had confessed that Gracia de Valera’s patron had sent him on his murderous errand and then he had been silenced.
As for the scorpion, Santángel had ridden out to place him in a warm spot by a rocky crag and spoken the same words he’d said when he’d subdued
the little creature: “You are not where you belong.” The scorpion had crept from his hand, free until death found it.
Luzia had asked him what he was, and familiar was the easiest name to put to it. He could have answered, A servant and a captive. He could have said, I am what is needed. Isidro de Paredes had first dubbed him El Alacrán, a name meant to shame him. But he was a creature without shame.
When he arrived back at La Casilla, he sought out Luzia. He told himself it was to glean what she’d learned from the other hopefuls, but he knew that was not the only reason. He had been without friends or companions for a very long time. The servants in the De Paredes home came and went, lived and died. The scholars and philosophers he wrote to enlivened his days with their letters, suggested visits to their laboratories and libraries, places he would never get to see. He could no longer tell the days or the years apart.
Another business negotiation, another piece of land to acquire, another ambitious De Paredes to appease. Sometimes he looked at Víctor and wasn’t sure whose face he was staring into. Víctor’s father? His
grandfather? The many who had come before? They all chased power as if it were a great hunt, as if there was novelty in its pursuit. Their enthusiasm
and drive, their constant burnishing of their name, their flag, their holdings, never wavered, never changed. Always they spoke to him as if their goals were his, as if Santángel shared their endless, grasping desire. When all the while he felt nothing.
Until that cursed day in the widow’s courtyard. Now his heart beat, his stomach growled, his cock hardened. He was a man again, and he didn’t know whether to hate Luzia Cotado for this unasked for awakening or fall at her feet in gratitude. It was a kind of madness, but one that could be cured. When he was free. Then he would see the world. He would
remember what it was to be human and forget the scullion he had chosen to doom.
Concha opened Luzia’s door and scurried away without being asked. “At last!” Luzia said when he entered. “I thought you had disappeared
entirely.”
“If only it were that easy.” She sat at her table of powders and ointments, bundled in her velvet dressing gown, wiping that awful lead paint from her face. He was sorry to see her remarkable hair was still in its tight braids, but that was for the best. His grasp of this tangled situation had begun to slip, maybe in the moment of Álvaro’s death, maybe long before it. He didn’t need further temptation. “Tell me what you discovered today.”
“I saw little of Gracia de Valera, but the Holy Child and the Prince of Olives both believe she’s a fraud.”
“Because they’re not fools.”
“If it’s true, how can she hope to survive the torneo?” “That’s not our concern. What else?”
“Teoda had no kind words for the empire. She spoke of blood and plunder.”
Santángel leaned against the wall by the window. “Tell me what she said.
As clearly as you can remember.”
When Luzia had finished he thought on her words. “So she doesn’t just hear voices. She’s sensitive to objects as well. Maybe the angel is all invention, a means of tying her power to the Church.”
“Fortún didn’t like it.”
“No doubt he’ll repeat every word. That’s dangerous. She’s been very careful about flattering the king in her predictions. For gold and silver to
flow from the New World, blood must too. That’s the way of conquest. But Spain’s empire is a weak one.”
“Now you’re the one criticizing the king?” Luzia whispered, perhaps afraid that Concha might be listening through the door. But the girl had gone off to gossip with the other maids.
“All empires are the same empire to the poor and the conquered. But not all empires are the same. The Dutch and the English will build markets for their goods, colonies for their taxes, new routes of trade. They will bleed the world for an age. Spain builds nothing, just spends its stolen wealth on wars that have no end. If the walls of La Casilla are wet with blood, then so are
the king’s monastery and all of the churches in Madrid, and the houses of every noble. Víctor would drown in it.”
“And if I don’t want to help Philip or anyone else bleed the world?” Santángel had no response to that. No matter what power or position
Luzia gained, she would never be on sure ground. Even queens must fear their kings, and Víctor de Paredes would control her as he had controlled Santángel. For an eternity.
As if she could read his thoughts, she met his eyes in the mirror. “Fortún Donadei said you are not what you seem.”
“What do I seem?”
“Do you want your vanity stroked?”
“I’m a man, so the answer is always yes.” “Are you?”
The question startled him. “A man? Do you doubt it?”
Her cheeks pinked and her gaze shifted away. “Not the particulars. But you are not as other men.”
“No,” he admitted.
“You are El Alacrán. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat.” “I do eat. Quite a lot recently.”
“You didn’t eat.”
“Life had no savor.”
Luzia turned on the bench and threw up her hands, her frustration clear. “What do you mean when you say these things? You’re thriving here. I can see that. So, did Don Víctor keep you in a dungeon?”
He didn’t mean to be evasive, but he’d long since lost the habit of honesty. “Not often.”
“Then is the cook so much better at La Casilla?”
“Víctor sets a fine table. Are we really going to discuss my appetite?” “If you would only give me a real answer, there would be no need.”
“Does this mean Fortún Donadei succeeded in making you fear me?” “All of Madrid fears you.”
“Not all of Madrid,” he corrected with some amusement. “All of Spain.”
She clasped her hands and he saw her knuckles were white. “I’m told I’m to face the devil in the second trial.”
“It’s a metaphor and nothing more.” “Are you so certain?”
“If Padre Juan Baptista Neroni can actually summon the devil, we have greater problems than the torneo. But I’ll see if there’s anything else I can learn.” She had a right to her fear, and he would do his best to appease it. He folded his arms. “You’ve told me what you discovered about your competition but not what you thought of them.”
“I liked Teoda Halcón. She’s odd, but I suppose we all are.” “Even Gracia de Valera?”
“No. She’s a boil disguised as a blossom.”
At that he had to laugh. “Apt. And the farmer’s son?” Luzia turned back to the mirror.
“I see,” said Santángel. “The Prince of Olives has made you his friend.” “I wouldn’t call him that. He isn’t suited to this place any more than I am.
But he wants very badly to win.”
“And I’m sure he made his case most sympathetically.” “He is in an untenable position.”
“More untenable than yours?”
At least she had the sense to pause. “His … patroness … She …”
“She has laid claim to both his body and his soul?” Why was the Prince of Olives sharing such confidences with Luzia? Santángel had to wonder how much of Garavito’s gossip might have reached Donadei’s ears and what the farmer’s son might share with her to earn her trust. “Fortún Donadei is no guileless country boy. He pursued poor loveless Doña Beatriz. He brought his guitar and played outside of her palace for days to get her attention.”
“Maybe it was greater attention than he wished for.”
“Or he is trying to blunt your appetite for victory, to weaken your resolve.
You have as much to lose as he does.” Santángel certainly did. “Maybe.”
He pushed off from the wall, unsure of why he felt such irritation. It was like being a green youth again, buffeted by bouts of jealousy and lust.
Complications he didn’t need. That he had come to respect this woman, even like her, was understandable, if an unwanted burden given what he must do. But that he should desire her, that he should be left addlepated when she mentioned the pleasure of a hot bath? It was unacceptable. Just that morning, when Luzia had said she thought anticipation might unravel her, his mind had been overtaken by the thought of twining a strand of her hair around his finger, of releasing it and watching the curl spring back.
Unravel. A single word might drive him mad. It stuck in his mind like a thorn, infecting him with a kind of fever, the thought of Luzia Cotado unraveling.
He turned to the window, but there was nothing to see in the darkness excepting a few torches set along the garden paths. He needed occupation. He needed to be gone from here. This sickness would pass, given time and diversion.
“You’re done with me then?” she said as he strode to the door.
I haven’t even begun. He needed to leave now. For both their sakes.
“We’ll practice tomorrow,” he said. “Get some rest and dream of how you might destroy a poor farmer’s son.”
Luzia scowled. “And what will you be doing?”
“I’m going to go learn all I can to help you best the devil.” That much he could offer.
