Luzia woke to the sound of screaming and Santángel shaking her shoulder.
“Get up,” he commanded. “I’ll help you dress.” “Who is crying out?”
“I don’t know,” he said, pulling on his clothes. “The Inquisition’s alguacil is here with his men. They’ve come to arrest someone.”
Luzia was still trying to climb out of the night’s happy haze, but those words were enough to yank her into awareness. The tribunal’s constable was here.
She scrambled into her corset and skirts, awkward with Santángel now in a way she hadn’t been before, aware of every place on her body he had touched. She should be ashamed, she knew, frightened. But she wasn’t sorry for any of it. If she was to die, then she would die with memories worth keeping.
He helped her with her laces, then sat her before the mirror and fixed her hair in a tight braid.
“Where did you learn to braid a woman’s hair?” she asked, watching his pale face in the mirror, the concentration there.
“I don’t recall,” he said. “But I’m happy for the skill. I would spend a lifetime braiding and unbraiding your hair.”
Lovers’ nonsense. But she would grow fat on nonsense every day if she could. She only wished she had her simple convent dress to wear—as if a shell of black wool could protect her. The velvet would have to do.
There was a harried rapping at the door and Valentina appeared, her face waxen, her hands trembling.
“I was just bringing Luzia to you,” Santángel lied.
Luzia watched Valentina take in the rumpled bed, the discarded dress, and the floor wet with bathwater. But all she did was hold out her hand to
Luzia. “Come,” she insisted. “I don’t know where Don Víctor is. Marius wants us to leave, but we have no carriage.”
“The alguacil won’t let you leave,” said Santángel. “They’re searching the palace for someone.”
The shouts of soldiers rose from below, then the thud of their boots on the stairs.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Valentina gasped, as if suddenly realizing that Luzia was the likely target.
Here it is at last, Luzia thought as the soldiers crowded the hallway. No more pretending, no more challenges, her fate finally written. She drew in a breath, as if she were about to plunge underwater. But they thumped right past her, their swords rattling, their boots making the floor shake.
From somewhere down the hall, Luzia heard a new voice, a high pleading wail.
Valentina pressed her fist to her chest. “What is that?”
The answer came quickly. Teoda Halcón’s nursemaid was hauled screaming from their rooms.
“Get on your feet!” the cuadrillero demanded, trying to make her stand.
But the woman only continued to weep.
“I’m innocent! I didn’t know!” Her words came in great gulps between her sobs, rising and falling in gusts of misery. “I didn’t know!”
He seized her by the hair, dragging her down the hall. She didn’t fight him but clung to his legs, like a limp reed. “Mother of God, help me, I am innocent!”
Teoda’s father was next, head hanging, steps measured, as if he were walking in a processional, the cuadrillero’s hand on his shoulder. He wore a long linen shirt and a dressing gown, his leather shoes and stockings jutting from the hem. They looked like they belonged to someone else.
Only the Holy Child was fully dressed, as if she had known this moment and this fate were coming. Maybe her angel had whispered in her ear. Or maybe her guilt had done that work. Her face was streaked with tears, but she was calm and she was praying loudly, though the prayers were nothing Luzia had ever heard.
“I reject your priests and accept only the word of God,” she said, her small face determined. “I reject your saints and give my faith to Jesus only.”
“Be quiet or I will silence you,” snapped the cuadrillero, guiding her down the hall. He was slender and round-faced, barely a man.
“Neither you nor your Pope can silence truth. I have seen your king’s death, and he will go slowly, drowning in his own filth.”
“Be quiet,” he growled, and struck her hard across the face.
The girl toppled and slumped against the wall. She looked up at him, spat blood. “I have seen your death too, and it is an ugly one.”
The soldier shrank back but one of the others kicked her in the side.
“We’ll find a gag for you, demon.” He picked her up with one hand and slung her under his arm like a calf, her little heels kicking the air, as he clamped his other hand over her mouth.
As they passed, Teoda’s eyes met Luzia’s briefly, and she saw no fear there, only rage.
“What is happening here?” Valentina cried.
“Return to your rooms, señora,” said the young soldier who had cringed away from Teoda’s prediction. “All is well now.” But Luzia saw his hands were shaking.
For the rest of the day, they huddled in the Ordoños’ rooms. There was no sign of Hualit or Don Víctor. No word was sent.
Santángel came and went, returning with almond cake or a pitcher of wine, or sometimes a bit of information—the grounds had been searched and secured, the puppeteer had a burn on his leg but was well and ready to travel home, the Holy Child’s room had been torn apart and Calvinist texts found in her father’s belongings. Luzia remembered standing before the church officials, wondering aloud if they were meant to behave as if they were at a party or a church. Depending on the church, it can be hard to tell the difference. Had Teoda been preparing to use the performance as an attack on the vicar’s holy men? And if she was the one who had created
those monsters, what did it mean for Teoda’s predictions? Who was whispering in her ear in the guise of an angel? Or was all that invention too, another manufactured miracle?
Luzia’s mind could find no place to settle. It alighted on one thought, one feeling, then took flight again, a bird hopping from branch to branch. She would meet Santángel’s gaze and her mind flooded with images, his bright head between her thighs, the sound of his breath hitching as he entered her, the press of his thumb urging her desire forward, the grip of his fingers as
he lifted her hips. She was a marionette, a collection of limbs, an invisible
string connecting her throat, her heart, her lungs, her cleft, and with a mere glance a ghostly set of hands jerked up on those strings, making her catch her breath and clamp her thighs together.
Then right on the heels of that wild, delicious feeling came fear, a cold hand pressed against her mouth, a sinking in her gut. She saw Teoda’s
ferocious eyes, her father’s bowed head, the frightened soldier following as the Holy Child was carried away. Luzia thought of the shadows clutching at her skirts, their claws digging into her skin. She imagined the cell where
Teoda would be brought, the tortures she might endure. The inquisitors weren’t allowed to spill blood, but they could pop her bones from their sockets, bind her small arms and legs with ropes they cranked tighter and tighter until she screamed out her confession. There were whispers of worse things, of spikes that fornicators were made to sit on, of an iron fork fitted beneath the chin to force your head upright. The Inquisition treated all
heretics the same way, and a child sinner was no less dangerous to the soul of Spain.
She was surprised when Valentina set a plate of cheese and olives before her.
“You should eat,” she said. “I have no appetite.”
“Even so,” said Valentina. “Just a little.”
Luzia forced herself to eat a bite of cheese and take a sip of wine. “Better,” said Valentina. She was wearing her cream velvet today and she
ran her thumb over a line of the umber embroidery. “It’s an impractical gown. The velvet will be so hard to keep clean.”
Luzia supposed that would be a problem for Juana or some other servant now. There would be no return to the safety or the drudgery of the larder. “Do you know where Concha went?”
Valentina shook her head. Her finger continued to follow the scroll of embroidered leaves, as if trying to memorize it. “There are whispers about what you did last night. When others ran, it was you who … I’m told you were brave.”
“I’ve never been more frightened.”
Valentina glanced up at her. “But you didn’t run.” “I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.” “No.”
Valentina nodded. “Eat some more cheese.”
