Luzia woke in the larder. It was cold and dark and the air smelled wrong, like iron and urine and damp. I was dreaming, she thought. I dressed in
velvet and met an angel. I made miracles on my tongue.
The world returned in an ugly wave of memory. Donadei’s warship, the slabs of jade embedded in his cross becoming scarabs, Santángel’s arms tight around her as they raced through the woods, his blood on her hands. She tried to sit up.
“Easy,” said a familiar voice. “You took a bad blow to the head.”
Luzia touched her fingers to her temple. Someone had struck her. She remembered now, soldiers riding her down in the woods, pain splintering through her skull.
The cell was narrow, the ceiling low. The only light came from a candle set on the stone floor. Two low wooden platforms, cots of a sort, had been placed side by side in the room, with a bare scrap of space to maneuver between them. A girl was sitting on one of them, a child, her back settled against the wall, her short legs stretched out before her.
“Teoda?”
“I’m afraid so.”
The bundle of rags beside the Holy Child shifted and Luzia realized there was a third person in the cell, an old woman with gray hair pulled tightly back from her lean face.
“This is Neva. She’s been here nearly two years.” “Two years? On what charge?”
“Simple fornication,” Neva said with a grin that revealed a sparse collection of teeth.
“We are in Toledo,” Luzia said. A statement, not a question. Just as Fortún Donadei had warned. A prisoner of the Inquisition like Isabel de la Cruz had once been, and Piedrola, and Lucrecia de León. Fragments of the
journey returned to her—the rumble of the wagon, the roar of a river. They would have passed the burning grounds as they entered the city walls through the Puerta de Bisagra.
“We are,” said Teoda on a sigh. “I … I need to relieve myself.”
“The pot is in the corner,” said Teoda. “It’s all quite shocking, but maybe you will find it less so.”
“Because servants prefer to lift our skirts with an audience?”
“I’m sorry,” Teoda said with a laugh. “Neva and I will turn our backs and I will remember that modesty is not just for ladies with rich families.”
In truth, modesty was a luxury and Luzia had urinated in alleys and behind market stalls. But she was tired and frightened and her head was aching.
“Our wait for charges will not be so long,” Teoda said as Luzia saw to her needs. “There is an auto de fe planned for Todos los Santos. They’ll want to sentence us then. If you hadn’t been in a prison wagon you would have seen the stages and scaffolding going up in Plaza de Zocodover.”
The Feast of All Saints. That couldn’t be right. Trials were meant to last months if not years. “That’s mere weeks away.”
Teoda shrugged. “I have already confessed my heresies. They have no reason to prolong my stay here. Besides, the king will want to make a show of my death.”
“Then … you are to be burned?”
“Of course. If I repent the executioner will do me the courtesy of strangling me first, but I will not repent.”
“She’s not as brave as she sounds,” said Neva. “Neither am I. You’ll hear us crying at night.”
Teoda gave a huff that might have been another laugh. “We do each other the courtesy of ignoring it. We have no secrets here. And you should know the inquisitors sleep mere feet away and can hear us unless we whisper. Of course even if we whisper, Neva may denounce us for the sake of earning herself a speedier hearing.”
Luzia stretched, paced to the door where there was a small barred opening through which she could see nothing but a dimly lit hallway. A
single window showed only the night beyond, and rags had been jammed into its seams to keep out the cold. The air felt too heavy, the damp dragging against her skin. She wished she’d been awake when they’d
brought her here. She had no sense of where she was. They could be a mile belowground and she wouldn’t know.
“Try to breathe,” Teoda said, and Luzia realized she was panting, her hand pressed to her chest. “Or at least sit down so that you won’t be injured if you faint.”
“I don’t understand why I’m here.” “None of us do,” said Neva.
“I do,” said Teoda.
Luzia sat down on the wooden cot across from Teoda. “Treason is a matter for the civil courts, isn’t it? Why am I a prisoner of the tribunal?”
“Count yourself lucky,” said Neva. “The city prisons are so crowded they force men and women into the same cells. They die in there and go undiscovered for days.”
Teoda gave Neva a meaningful glance. “A song for us?”
Neva beat her fist against her thigh and began to sing about three
fountains in her village that ran cold in the summer and hot in the winter.
“A bit of privacy,” Teoda explained. “You must be here because of Pérez. He’s fled to Aragón, where the king is no match for his popularity. So Philip has sent the Inquisition after his old friend. Only the tribunal’s power
reaches across every part of Spain.” “How do you know all this?”
“We aren’t supposed to be permitted letters, but my brother has found
ways to get news from the outside. And gossip is never in short supply here. The guards like to talk as much as we do.”
“Have you … Has there been word of Víctor de Paredes or his household?”
“I only know none of them are here.”
Santángel had promised her he couldn’t die. But what if he was wrong?
He had lied to her, maybe intended to betray her, but when trouble had come, he’d placed himself between Luzia and the king’s soldiers. What if his gifts were mere delusion and she had left him to bleed to death in that clearing without help or defense?
No, Don Víctor wouldn’t give up his prize so easily. He may have intended to replace Santángel with her, but now she was tainted by the charge of heresy or witchcraft or some other crime.
“What of Donadei?” she asked.
Teoda’s laugh was brittle, the sound strange from her child’s mouth. “I hear nothing of him. I only know he isn’t sitting in a cell. Wherever he is, he is free.”
“I don’t see how the Inquisition can pursue Pérez. Has he committed some crime against the Church?”
“They’re claiming he has encouraged heresy. The charge is flimsy, but our punishment by the Inquisition will give weight to the claims and remind everyone of the king’s strength.” She raised her voice. “He can’t very well put dear Lucrecia to death, can he?”
“Be silent, demon,” said a voice from another cell. “I’m trying to rest.
Neva, will you please cease that wailing?”
Teoda rolled her eyes. “Don’t rest too well, you may have another dream!”
Then it was true. Lucrecia de León was here, the dreaming prophet, the girl who had predicted the defeat of the armada. “She won’t be sentenced alongside us?”
“She is with child,” Teoda said gleefully. “She fell in love with one of her scribes. It’s all very thrilling.”
“One of her scribes?” Santángel had claimed he couldn’t father children, but that could have been another lie.
“Diego de Vitores. A very nice young man, I’m told. They exchange letters, though that’s not supposed to be permitted either.”
At least that was one less thing for Luzia to feel miserable about.
“The king won’t put her to death,” said Teoda. “At least not for a while.
She’s a good Catholic and everyone knows it.”
“And her predictions were accurate,” Luzia noted. “That must be inconvenient.”
Now Teoda’s merriment fell away. “They got her to confess to making up her dreams, but she recanted the next day.”
“Then why confess at all?” But Teoda’s grim look made the answer obvious. “Torture.”
Teoda nodded.
“They’ve questioned you too?” Luzia asked.
“No.” Teoda fiddled with her cuff. The dress was different from the one she’d worn the night of the second trial, and Luzia wondered how she’d gotten fresh clothes. “They brought me to the room where they do their work. They will make you guess at the charge you face.”
Heresy, witchcraft, fornication too, she supposed. Maybe Don Víctor would claim he’d been tricked with a false lineage provided by the linajista and she’d be charged with Judaizing too.
“You’ve been here since the second trial? Since the puppet show?” “Yes. My brother is moneyed and connected, so he is already filing
appeals. He knows the courts well. But it won’t matter. My nurse was taken for questioning too. She’s trying to deny she knew we are heretics. She
thinks it will save her life. And it may. If she’s lucky she’ll be publicly flogged and banished.”
“How do you sound so unafraid?”
“I have God. I know who I am. I fear torture, but I don’t fear death. So I will confess to every heresy because it isn’t heresy at all, only truth. You
see? They needn’t torture me at all.”
Luzia knew that wasn’t true. If they wanted to know the names of other Calvinists and heretics, Teoda would have to name them. But if the thought that she could escape torture made this horror easier, Luzia wasn’t going to snatch it away.
“You’ll have that same choice,” said the Holy Child. “They’ll ask if you’re in league with the devil.”
“I should have such powerful friends.”
Teoda’s laugh was high and light. “I knew I liked you.” Neva sang on.
