La Casilla felt empty, the quiet hanging in the air like dust. Most of Pérez’s guests had gone. There were no hunts or grand feasts, no bursts
of noisy conversation filling the halls or peals of laughter from the garden.
Marius and Valentina had spent the rest of the afternoon discussing
likelihoods for the third trial, and when Luzia tired of their speculation, she asked for permission to return to her rooms.
“Is that safe?” Valentina asked.
“Are you going to protect me if the alguacil returns?”
“She can go where she likes,” Marius said with a wave. “If she’s not safe, none of us are.”
Luzia had hoped Santángel might come to her if she separated herself from the Ordoños, but she had no visitors and Concha must have returned to Casa de Paredes or run even farther from the nightmares she’d witnessed.
Luzia lay on her bed and made herself think of her refranes and how they might be useful, not the bed, or the way it had creaked last night, or the
sounds Santángel had drawn from her, or the wriggling desire that seemed to have turned her body to eels trying to escape from a pot.
Friete en la azeite, i no demandes de la djente. The words she used to heat coals or cooking fires had always pleased her. Fry in oil before you beg.
Then the little whispers that had helped with stains and fruit that hadn’t yet ripened. No mi mires la kolor, mirame la savor. Judge me by my flavor, not my color.
Or the words she’d used to open cupboards when they’d lost the keys—
sweet words open iron gates. Boka dulse avre puertas de fierro.
The familiar song to lighten firewood or heavy buckets of water—el mal viene a kintales, se va a metikales. Trouble comes in gallons, but goes in
droplets.
They all seemed so meager. Where was the magic that would give her
wings? That would transport her to a mountaintop? That would change her into a lion? Where was the magic that would help her master this longing?
At last she could be still no longer. She took her cloak and went down to the garden. The air was cool and the terrace was empty. She wasn’t sure if she should go exploring, but she could at least walk through the roses.
They’d already been cut back for the fall, and the blooms she’d created the previous night were gone, cleared away with the wreckage of the stage and the dais. There were furrows in the grass, scorch marks where torches had toppled and the stage had caught fire. What had really happened here?
“Luzia.”
She nearly jumped at the sound of her name. Hualit’s housekeeper stood near the edge of the rose garden, bundled into a shawl, her looped braids curled against her neck.
“Ana?”
“Come with me, please, señorita.”
Luzia knew Hualit trusted Ana, but she called up the words she’d used to grow the roses last night. Two competitors had already been eliminated. If she needed thorns they would be ready.
She followed Ana past the hedges to where her aunt waited on a stone bench, enveloped in black velvet, a blue bow tied at her neck, bright
sapphires dangling from her ears.
“At last,” Hualit said, rising and opening her arms for an embrace. “Ana and I have been waiting for you to step outside all afternoon.”
Luzia let herself be held briefly, the sweet scent of bee balm washing over her.
“Where have you been?” she asked as they settled on the bench. “Why didn’t you come back to La Casilla?”
“I returned to the city.”
“I was nearly killed and you vanished.”
“Because Víctor asked me to.” As if this were answer enough. “He needed to see to his wife.”
“If he didn’t banish you, why are you hiding in the gardens?” “You learn too quickly, Luzia. It isn’t ladylike.”
Luzia waited.
At last Hualit sighed. “He is afraid I may be questioned.” “About what?”
“About you. About Pérez. About his business here.” “You promised you knew how to play this game.”
“Well, savor this moment, because I was wrong. Víctor thinks we can still make a success of this, that Pérez can win back the king, but he’s being careful. If he’s wrong, too close an association with Pérez could be
dangerous for us all.”
“Not for Víctor de Paredes.”
Hualit studied her. “How well do you understand the familiar’s power?” “I might ask the same.”
“Very little,” she conceded. “The servants talk, even if Víctor won’t. Are you fucking him?”
Luzia rose and paced to the apple trees so her aunt wouldn’t see her flush. “Does it matter?”
“Only if you let it. Only if you start imagining you can save him.” “What if I could?”
“Think to your own future, Luzia.”
“I am,” Luzia said, her anger rising, that flame always ready to catch. “That’s all I’ve been doing. I’m trying to learn to swim while the rest of you wave to me from shore.”
“You jumped into the water—”
Luzia held up a hand. “I chose to keep performing my milagritos, the
same way I chose to show your patron my power when you ambushed me at your home. So let’s say that I jumped and you pushed. Do you know what I intended that day? I had my basketful of food and I thought the Inquisition was at my heels. I was going to run.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“I’m not sorry I stayed. Or that I demanded something more from this life than scrubbing floors and groveling for Valentina Ordoño. I’m not sorry for any of it.” She should leave it at that, but she needed to know. “You had a thousand chances to lift me up, to offer me a little hope, a little comfort, but you never did. Why not? What would it have cost you?”
“I had my own secrets to keep.”
“You thought I would inform on you?” Had she really believed Luzia would denounce her as a Judaizer or a fornicator?
“Not intentionally. You were young. Your power … You had no control, and I had no idea how to teach you.”
“So you left me to sleep on a larder floor?”
“And I was right to do it,” Hualit snapped. “You did reveal yourself. You fell into Valentina Ordoño’s clumsy trap the moment it was set. I couldn’t
take the risk.”
Luzia thought back to the day when her aunt had first read the words from her letter, when she’d felt the language twist and take on a new shape, heard the melody those words made. She thought of the iris blooming with its hungry yellow mouth. If she had failed that day, if she’d had no gift for miracles, if the words had meant nothing on her lips, would Hualit have taken her in?
Maybe. But then what? She would have been a servant still. She might have had a bed to sleep in, but she would have been as dependent upon her aunt as she had been upon the Ordoños.
“You chose yourself,” Luzia said. “I can hardly blame you.” And yet she did. It was a petty sentiment, but she’d been so alone. Her mother dead, her father mad. She’d been a child. In some ways she still was one. A woman who had barely had a chance to live.
Hualit held her hand out, beckoning Luzia back to the bench, eager for peace. “Sit, please. Hear me out. It hasn’t all been in vain. I’m not quite the selfish wretch you think I am. And I didn’t come here to quarrel.”
Luzia made herself cross the soft ground and sit beside her aunt.
Hualit grasped her hands. “The life I’ve dreamed of, the future I’ve been building, it isn’t just for me. Víctor has suggested I travel to Venice until the king and Pérez finish their dance.”
A dance that would end with the king’s trust restored or Pérez in a cell. “Venice?”
“I’ll go. Just as he has instructed. But my journey won’t end there. I’ll meet another ship to take me on to Salonika. And you’ll go with me.”
“You want me to travel with you? Don Víctor won’t let me go so easily.” “He needn’t know. I have the money to get you out of Madrid. We’ll
meet in Valencia. But we have to go tomorrow night.” Tomorrow. Before the third trial.
“I can win,” she said. “I know I can.”
“Luzia … what do you think will happen if you do? You’re clever and determined, but you aren’t charming like Fortún Donadei. You don’t have his appeal. He is meant for the machinations at court. You—”
Luzia yanked her hands away. “I am meant for what? To go with you to Turkey and take another scullion’s job?”
“You could be—”
“Your maid? Could I clean your gowns and see to your jewels and wait for you to find me a husband?”
“Would that be so bad?”
“And will the rabbi welcome a woman who can make miracles?” Hualit’s eyes slid away. “There are healers. Wise women. Prekaduras.”
Salonika. Where the winds howled up from the sea and made new music through the alleys, where the Inquisition couldn’t reach. Once it would have seemed a beautiful story she couldn’t wait to tell. But now she wasn’t sure. Women prayed in the balconies in the synagogues of Salonika, separate from the men. They didn’t study Torah. They didn’t fashion miracles. She would be alone in a city where she didn’t speak the language or know the customs, with only Hualit to protect her—and Luzia didn’t trust her aunt to do that, not if it harmed her own prospects. She would always choose herself first. Luzia could try not to blame her for that, but it was time she lived by the same rule.
She didn’t want to be her aunt’s servant. She didn’t want a life of quiet and submission. She wanted her audience with the king. She wanted to eat and be full.
And yes, she could admit, she wasn’t ready to leave Santángel, who couldn’t follow her beyond the borders of Madrid without Víctor de
Paredes beside him.
“I’m going to see this through,” she said. “I will win. And you’ll learn to speak Turkish and keep the Sabbath holy. I’ll miss you, Hualit. But I’m
done being led by you.”
Hualit shook her head, her face full of what might have been wonder or worry, or just disbelief. “You are still the child who thought the city wept for her. Your ambition will destroy you, Luzia.”
“Maybe,” Luzia admitted. “But let it be my ambition and not my fear that seals my fate.”
Hualit cupped Luzia’s cheek and sighed. “Even if you win, you can’t fight Víctor de Paredes.”
“I can if I have the protection of a king.” “Víctor always wins. Always.”
Because of Santángel. But if Luzia won the king’s favor, if she made herself indispensable to him, she would have the leverage to force Don Víctor to break his hold on Santángel. His luck would be his own again. He
would be free. Free to leave. Free to stay with her if he wished it. Víctor de Paredes was used to getting his way and that meant he’d forgotten what it was to be desperate.
“Think on it, querida,” Hualit said. “There’s still time to decide. All you need do is go to the stables and ask for a horse. I’ve left money with the groom there. He’ll help you. Just consider it. I have failed you enough times. Let me make it right.”
“Only I can do that now.”
Hualit sighed again and stood. “I don’t have magic. I’m not a beata or a bruja or even a good woman. But tonight I’ll pray that you join me. And if you don’t, if you choose this dangerous path, then I’ll pray for you in Salonika. I’ll pray for you in Hebrew, so loudly the king and his priests will have to cover their ears all the way back in Madrid. I’ll pray that our suffering will be swallowed by the sea.”
The sun was just beginning to set, the gardens turning blue in the gathering dusk. Luzia hugged her aunt and bid goodbye to Ana, and made her way back to the lights of La Casilla.
She wondered if she would have to spend the night pining for Santángel, but he was waiting in her rooms.
“Hello,” she said. “I was walking in the gardens.” “I know,” he said. “I was waiting for you.”
Then the door was closed and she was pressed against it, his mouth on hers, his body a dark cloud descending. She had lived too long without rain.
Luzia had a thousand questions about the torneo, the king, Salonika.
Instead she said, “Can it be done against a door?” A kind of growl escaped his throat. “It can.”
“Please demonstrate,” she managed. Then her skirts were in his hands and she forgot about talking.
