Valentina arrived early to help her into her black velvet. Luzia had pressed the lace collar herself the previous night, then lain awake,
staring into the dark. With every passing hour, she felt the escape Hualit had offered slipping away, until at last dawn came and the chance was truly gone.
“I was scarcely able to sleep,” Valentina said as she finished placing the scalloped shells in Luzia’s hair. “To think I will meet the king.”
For all her talk of Águeda’s cooking, a king was still cause for excitement. Valentina had dressed in her green silk today, the sleeves spangled with silver, and she looked surprisingly pretty, her cheeks pink, her eyes bright.
“You look well, señora,” Luzia said, and wondered if she’d endure another slap for her impertinence.
But Valentina beamed, flushing even pinker.
The coaches were waiting when they descended the steps of the palace, but some of the party had chosen to ride. Luzia saw Fortún Donadei already mounted, dressed in green and gold, a plumed velvet cap set on his curls.
Doña Beatriz was seated on a sleek mare the color of cinnamon. She reached out and adjusted the chain of Donadei’s golden cross. It was a fond gesture, and yet Luzia wondered if it felt like the rider’s hand upon the reins, a tug to remind her mount that she would set the pace. But if her love was real and his was not, who really held the reins?
And where was Santángel?
Marius waited at the De Paredes coach to help them inside.
“Don Víctor will not ride with us?” Valentina asked, her worry clear. “Apparently not,” said Marius.
They saw it now too: the distance Don Víctor was creating to protect himself. He sat astride a big gray gelding, his tunic ornamented with ropes
of gold braid and jewels in every color of Philip’s crest. It wasn’t subtle, but perhaps the king didn’t care for subtlety.
Luzia took one last look at the crowd, then reluctantly settled in the coach. Don Víctor might wish to keep her and Santángel apart, but she didn’t think he would prevent his familiar from attending the third trial.
“Do we know where we’re going?” she asked, as the coach wheels jolted forward.
“Only the lead coachman knows,” said Marius.
Luzia watched the gardens, then the gates of La Casilla slide by, and then they were moving at a faster pace through the countryside, the horses’
hooves rumbling over dirt roads. They were heading west, farther away from the city, through dry hills and pastures. Luzia told herself to be grateful she was seeing more of the world beyond her tiny corner of Madrid and the confines of La Casilla. She had never thought the grandeur of a
palace could come to feel small.
She wished they could open the windows. Instead she watched her breath fog the glass and made herself think through each of her refranes.
Too soon they turned onto a narrower road and the horses had to slow. Woods crowded in on both sides, slender white-barked trees, their leaves just beginning to turn, the green giving way to sudden exclamations of
yellow and orange.
Marius tapped the window. “This is Las Mulas. It’s an old hunting ground.”
“Will they make her hunt?” asked Valentina. “Or … or battle beasts?”
Luzia wanted to tell her she was being absurd, but she had no idea what might be waiting for her or what form the whims of a king might take. What he required, she would find a way to provide. She must. Whatever Santángel might feel or Don Víctor might devise, that much hadn’t changed.
“Look!” cried Valentina.
A bright expanse of water had come into view, reflecting the cloudless blue of the autumn sky. It was so flat and calm, Luzia felt as if she might reach out and peel it away from the earth. Some kind of boathouse lay at
one end and a herd of sheep grazed in the meadow beyond. The remnants of an old pier lay on the banks, its rotted boards slumping into the high reeds.
“Perhaps the king intends to stage a sea battle?” Valentina suggested. Luzia doubted it. He hadn’t had much luck with those.
As they emerged from the coach, Luzia saw that a grand dais had been erected. The wood was highly polished, the canopy made of red and yellow silk, the chairs upon it cushioned with velvet. It looked sturdier than half the houses in Madrid and twice as imposing.
Long benches had been set just a short distance away and groups of lavishly attired guests had gathered near the shore. She recognized some of them from La Casilla, including Quiteria Escárcega in another of her fanciful quilted jackets—though the young man who usually trailed after her was nowhere in sight. There were new faces too. She wondered if they were friends of the king or Antonio Pérez.
Pérez himself stood surrounded by servants and courtiers. He met her eyes and gave her the briefest nod, a small smile on his lips. He looked confident and at his ease, but she suspected he’d look the same in a room full of crocodiles.
“Luzia.” Santángel emerged from the woods, leading the same black horse he’d ridden the night of the doomed marionette show. His fair hair was ruffled, and the horse bristled and snorted, its hooves stamping the ground.
She glanced at Marius and Valentina, but they were already chatting with the other guests, their attention diverted.
He set his hand on the horse’s flank to steady it. “When I realized your coach had left, I rode ahead.”
“Where were you?”
“Sleeping off a dose of poison. It’s Víctor’s way of making sure I don’t involve myself in his private business.”
Luzia didn’t know if she should believe him. “He would deny me your strength in the final trial?”
“He would deny me a chance to see you and trust my influence to do the work of victory. Luzia—”
“He came to see me last night.”
Santángel went very still. He wore black velvet as she did, but even he had made some concession to the importance of the third trial: a rope of silver braid spanned his chest, pinned to his shoulder by a heavy brooch, the tower of De Paredes rendered in silver. “For what purpose?”
“To warn me not to fail.” “Luzia—”
But Don Víctor was striding toward them, ignoring Marius’s and Valentina’s greetings.
“Enough lovers’ talk,” he said. “The scullion is wanted by the lakeshore.” Santángel gave a sharp nod. “I’ll escort her.”
“You’ll stay with me. She can manage by herself.” “Then you should have used a larger dose.”
“Is all …” Valentina began. “Is all as it should be?”
“May I beg an introduction?” The lady playwright had stepped away from the swarm of guests, her panache of striped feathers set at a jaunty angle. She looked like a character in one of her own plays.
Don Víctor gave a distracted wave. “The scullion doesn’t stand on ceremony, señorita.”
“I have so longed to meet the little nun.” The words were for Luzia, but her gaze was fastened on Valentina.
“It is an honor,” Luzia said with a curtsy, her head too full of Don Víctor’s threats, Donadei’s warnings, Valentina’s fears. “Your work is the talk of our small home.”
“Have you been to one of my plays?” “I have never been to the theater.”
“A scandal!” declared Quiteria. “And you, Doña Valentina?”
“My wife and I have attended the Corral del Príncipe,” said Marius.
Quiteria eyed him as if he were a fish she suspected had spoiled. “Have you? How traditional. If you’re ever in need of real entertainment you must come to one of my salons.”
She smiled at Valentina, bobbed her head, and was gone.
“What an unusual woman,” Valentina said. She had the bright-eyed look she’d worn the morning they received their invitation to La Casilla.
“Insolent,” said Marius. “Wicked, really. Rumor has it she has another conquest in her sights. Some new soul to corrupt. Camila Pimentel had to be sent to Sevilla and married off to a wool merchant to avoid disgrace.”
“If she is so very awful, why has the tribunal not taken her for trial?” Valentina asked.
“Who knows? Her father is great friends with Fray Diego. Maybe he has a cache of relics he’s promised to the king.”
Luzia didn’t care about Marius’s gossip or the playwright. She needed to think of how the lake might be used in the trial. She needed to speak to Santángel.
The thunder of approaching hoofbeats sounded through the woods and
the crowd turned, shifting and arranging their order, jockeying for position, readying themselves for the arrival of the king.
Soldiers poured into the clearing, uniformed servants carrying banners that bore the royal standard. It was grand, but not nearly as grand as Luzia had expected, and a moment later she understood why. She had heard the king had grown frail and sickly, but the man who exited the coach was heavyset and moved like a determined bull plodding across a field.
“A priest?” she asked. Had they sent more holy men to test her and the Prince of Olives?
“Mateo Vázquez de Leca,” Don Víctor said, his voice bemused. “The king’s secretary. The man who replaced Antonio Pérez.”
Luzia risked a glance at Pérez. There was no change in his demeanor, but a new tension had come into the crowd that surrounded him.
“But …” Valentina protested, peering down the road into the woods, her hope still alive. “Then the king—”
“The king is not coming,” said Don Víctor. His calm baffled her. This was a man who didn’t like to be thwarted, but he sounded as though he’d merely lost a game of cards. “Our king has sent Pérez’s rival in his stead. The man who banished the Princess of Éboli and who would see Don Antonio banished too, or hung as a traitor.”
A stir went through the gathered guests as Vázquez de Leca mounted the stage. With a soft huff, he dropped into the enormous chair that had been placed for the king, bracketed by courtiers and advisors. He slumped to the side and gestured to Pérez as if he were the host here and Pérez little more than a servant slow to fetch the wine.
“Will the trial go on?” Luzia asked.
“Nothing has changed for you,” Don Víctor bit out. “Best Donadei. Do it in grand fashion. You will compete and you will perform so spectacularly that Vázquez has no choice but to place you before the king, so brilliantly that he will be itching to present an ugly scab of a scullion and demand she be made this country’s holy champion. That is how good you must be. Your life, your aunt’s life, your lover’s future all hang in the balance. So do your best or I will be forced to do my worst.”
Valentina gasped and even Marius looked surprised. “Are you done being frightening?” asked Santángel.
“I don’t know,” Don Víctor growled. “Are you sufficiently frightened, little nun?”
Luzia nodded.
“Then go.” He turned to Santángel. “And if she fails me, drown her in the lake.”
Don Víctor had dropped every pretense of civility, and that worried Luzia
—not because the truth of him was any kind of surprise, but because something had changed. Was it the insult from the king? The end of the torneo? Or some new threat she couldn’t see coming?
Santángel herded her away from the others. “Tell me what he said to you last night.”
She resisted the urge to curl into the shelter of his black cloak. She couldn’t afford to be weak now. “He warned me away from you. He isn’t the first.”
“Has the Prince of Olives renewed his campaign against me?” “Yes. As has Valentina. She says our children will have tails.” “I can’t father children.”
“You can’t?”
“Luzia, don’t be foolish. If I could have given you a child, I never would have spent the night in your bed.”
She didn’t know what to say. Should she be glad? Grateful?
“Why do you look as if I’ve insulted you?” he asked. “That’s not a risk I would take with your reputation.”
Luzia had let herself get distracted. She didn’t know how much time she had before the trial began, and she didn’t want to think more on children or lost futures that were never meant to be.
“Did Don Víctor want Donadei as his champion?” she asked.
Santángel glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “Víctor had thoughts of building a menagerie, a collection of people like us. The torneo only added urgency to his intentions.”
“How many of them ended up in the Inquisition’s cells?” “Too many.”
“Because of you?”
Now he stopped and turned to her. “What is it you think I’ve done?” “I don’t know exactly. I only know I don’t want it to happen to me.” “Some were frauds. Some had real power but no sense. Their own
heretical talk drew the Inquisition’s attention. Víctor understood your
potential for greatness well before I did. He believed you could win the torneo and offer him a path to a title.”
Luzia could see Donadei and Doña Beatriz waiting by the ruins of the old pier, but she wasn’t ready to think on alliances.
“You never finished the story,” she said. “Tell me now. Tell me the real ending for the cursed prince.”
Santángel watched her with his strange eyes. “For him to be free, a new bargain must be struck.”
“Is that why you flattered me and fucked me? So that I would love you?
So that I would take your place in Víctor’s service?”
His laugh was low and bitter. “I never intended any of this. I didn’t want to want you.”
“You would bargain me away to him.” “That would be the price.”
“Then tell me you haven’t considered it.” It was a plea, pathetic really.
Lie to me, let me believe in you a little longer.
But Santángel had promised her truth and he would not relent now. “I have. Every day and every night.”
No anguish. No disgust at his own selfishness. And yet, even in her grief, there was some satisfaction too. There had never been shame between them. There never would be.
“I should have told you all of it,” he said. “I should have spoken sooner. I didn’t understand the trap fate had made until it was too late.”
“Víctor has made a fool of you, Santángel. He would never settle for such a trade. I’m no immortal. I can’t serve his children or his children’s
children.”
“What is death to a woman who can heal any wound?” he asked gently. “A woman who can cure any sickness—even time?”
Luzia felt the breath go out of her, a door slamming shut. The morning was cool; the sun bright. She saw herself, a woman in black beside an autumn wood, framed with her lover by the mirror of the lake. The stage,
the guests in their velvet and feathers, Vázquez brooding beneath a canopy of silk.
Last night, Víctor had been taunting her. He’d said her gift could heal any bruise or mark. A wonderful convenience.
Now she recognized the pity on Santángel’s face. She had seen it in the courtyard on the day she’d made the vines grow, when she’d first felt his
influence on her, when she had first begun to grasp what her power might become. What would it mean to live forever? How was she to know when she had barely lived at all?
“I won’t do it,” she said at last. “I won’t make his bargain. Not for you or for anyone.”
“I would not ask you to. But Víctor has a gift for impossible choices. He will connive and maneuver until he is your only protection, until he has your very life in his hands.”
Was this why he had sent Hualit away? To close off every avenue of escape? “I can still refuse him.”
“You won’t. We are too alike. For all the miseries of this world, you don’t want to leave it. To survive you’ll make the bargain I once made. You’ll
give up what you value least.”
But what was that? The magic that had come so effortlessly, with none of the misery of Latin or arithmetic? The freedom she had never known?
“And you?” she demanded. “You must give up what you value most to break the curse. How can that work when it’s freedom you prize most
highly?”
“It was, Luzia. For a very long time. But curses are cruel.”
She felt as if she’d thrown herself off a cliff. For a moment she had the illusion of flight. His words were wings and she was carried by their meaning, by the elation of being wanted in return. She was what he treasured. She was what he valued most.
But there were no wings. There was no flight. She was only falling. He had planned to trade her to Víctor de Paredes for his freedom, just as Tello had once betrayed him. Could she not even have the promise of love? Why could this belong to the women in ballads, to poets and playwrights, but never to her?
“What if I killed him?” Luzia muttered. “What if I ended all of this talk of curses and bargains with a knife to Víctor’s heart?”
“Even if you had the will for such bloody work, it would be no use. I have seen countless enemies seek to strike down De Paredes. They never succeed. They’d be better served by harming me. But if they can’t see a target, they can’t take proper aim.”
“Then I should kill you?”
“It would be an end to things. If you could manage it. Luzia … there is another way.”
“Tell me.”
“Lose. Fail and fail spectacularly, shamefully. Disgrace yourself so thoroughly that Víctor will want nothing to do with you.”
“That’s your answer? You would see me humiliated?” “I would see you free.”
Trumpets sounded from the lakeshore and Luzia saw the Prince of Olives press a kiss to Doña Beatriz’s hand. Pérez’s red-bearded courtier was waving frantically for her to take her place by the water.
On the raised platform, Vázquez pushed reluctantly to his feet to address them.
“Go,” said Santángel. “Win or lose. Do what you must.”
“You don’t yet know what I may do,” Luzia said, and strode toward shore.
