In the mornings it was easier to be brave. She remembered Santángel telling her that servants were better equipped to be spies. So maybe a
lifetime of beatings and humiliation would give her an advantage now too. Mostly she thought about how her refranes might serve her when she was taken to the inquisitors.
Neva and Teoda had advised her there would be no formal trial, and she was ready when she was brought before the tribunal, three men who might have been anyone, priests at San Ginés, bakers at the ovens, farmers at their market stalls. Teoda had told her their names: Don Pedro, Don Gaspar, Don Francisco. She wasn’t sure which was which, but it didn’t seem to be important. Their secretary scribbled away as they questioned her about her family, her life with the Ordoños, her relationship to Víctor de Paredes, his wife, Catalina de Castro de Oro, Teoda Halcón, Antonio Pérez. She stuck to the false family tree the linajista had created, hoping that Don Víctor hadn’t revealed her secrets. She never mentioned Santángel or spoke her aunt’s
true name. She didn’t tell them she could read. She did her best to speak the truth, but there were so many lies, she felt as if she were leaping from rock to rock, always in danger of losing her balance.
Three times they warned her to consult her conscience and confess, but she didn’t know which crime to claim. She didn’t even know enough about Teoda’s faith to pretend she had been seduced by it.
When they finally took her down the stairs, she held her refranes close, all the words she had gathered in her cell, armor forged in exile.
If they used the potro as they had on Neva, the best she could do was to try to heal herself while the damage was done to her.
If they used the garrucha, the nasty trick that had popped Lorenzo Botas’s knees and ankles from their joints, she could lighten the weights they attached to her feet with the same words she’d used to lighten firewood.
She would scream and jounce as if she’d been pulled apart so that they thought the torture was working.
“They can only torture you once,” Teoda had told her. “That is the law.” “Then it’s over?”
Neva cackled. “Oh no, amiguita. They don’t stop the session. They just suspend it. It ends when they say it ends.”
They took her clothes, stripping her and describing each item to the secretary as it was removed. It was cold, just as Teoda had said, and she had been naked before no man but Santángel. She didn’t want to think of him in this room, in this place full of their ugly, awkward machines.
Think of magic, she told herself, think of how it may serve you, remember that secret music—big, dangerous, unwieldy, the song she was meant to ignore, that had swept her up when Don Víctor tortured Santángel, that had torn a man in two. It had nearly killed her, and if the pain got too great, then she would let that song loose to destroy her and maybe leave
some damage in her wake. That thought, that she might choose her death, that she could hold the end of it all in her hands, steadied her. It shouldn’t. Who knew what torments awaited her in purgatory? But still the knowledge of those words, that bloody song that was bigger than this room and the men who pretended not to watch as she tried to cover herself, that might buy her a little vengeance, gave her comfort.
“It is your guilt that has brought you here, and only your full confession can prevent this. Speak it now.”
“Please, señor—”
“Lie down on the table,” he told her. Was he Don Gaspar or one of the others?
She lay back and they bound her hands and ankles with ropes, then her hips, her chest.
“Now you will be a bride,” said the man whose name she didn’t know, and he placed a soft cloth over her face. “You have brought this upon
yourself,” he said again, “and your confession will end it.”
Luzia could only see the shapes of the men, shadows in the room. Don’t panic, she told herself. She could sing herself free of the bonds if she had to, if the pain of whatever this was became too great. All she had to do was keep her head as she had at the trials, summon a refrán, and endure.
“Tell us how you created your illusions,” said a voice. “I sing and—”
She didn’t have the chance to finish. Her mouth was full of water, her nose, her throat. She coughed but the water kept coming. She was drowning. This was not the potro or the garrucha or any other torture made by man. This was death, pushing into her chest, her lungs. She couldn’t sing, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. There were no words. There never had been. There was only death, cold and dark.
She was drowning in a bucket, a squirming rat, pink and newborn, looking up at Águeda’s face. Her aunt was above her, hands around her throat, choking her slowly, and then her aunt was beneath her, sinking to the bottom of the river. She had no eyes, no lips. The fish had eaten them.
Hualit’s lipless mouth opened. “I’ll pray that our suffering will be swallowed by the sea.”
Luzia coughed and sputtered. She vomited water over her face and neck. The cloth was gone. The room had returned. She bucked against the ropes that bound her to the table. The men were talking.
“You used too much.”
“I know what I’m doing.” “Another jar?”
Luzia couldn’t speak. She knew she was weeping and she hated them for making her weep. She could crack them open. She could set this room ablaze, if only she could find the words. But they were gone. They’d all been drowned, taken out by the tide. She was dead and they were dead too. Where is my mother? she wanted to cry out. Where is God?
“How did you create your illusions?” “I don’t know—” she began.
The cloth was laid back over her face, her bridal veil. “A magic lantern!” she screamed. “A special mirror!” “How would a scullion know of such things?”
“The devil whispered to me how to do it!” “Go on,” he said, and she sobbed with relief.
When it was over, she didn’t remember what she said. She talked of bellows and curtains and smoke and tricks with special lenses imported
from Sweden. She said she was a witch and that the devil met her daily at the market. He told her she would be his bride and put his tongue in her mouth. He had the face of a serpent, of Martin Luther, of Antonio Pérez.
Only when she was back in her cell, her shift soaked, her body still shivering and shaking, did she realize she was bleeding. The ropes had cut
into her wrists and ankles and hips when she’d struggled on the table.
“Luzia?” Teoda asked, but Luzia didn’t want to speak. She didn’t know how anymore.
Sometime in the night she woke, uncertain of how long she’d slept. Teoda brought her water heated over the coals.
“The widow is dead, isn’t she? Catalina de Castro de Oro?”
“Your aunt Hualit,” Teoda said. “My angel told me her name.” “She drowned, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Teoda admitted. “My angel saw her die.”
Luzia already knew it was true, just as she knew a shipwreck or some accident hadn’t ended her aunt’s life. Víctor had struck Hualit from the earth as if she’d never been. Santángel had called her the widow. Maybe he hadn’t known.
Did it matter who held the power? Whether it was Pérez or the king or Víctor de Paredes or a man with a funnel in your mouth? What difference did it make if the person with the power wasn’t you?
Luzia tumbled back into the dark water, where Hualit was waiting, her lipless mouth whispering in the cold. The sea is vast and can endure anything, she said. Her hands were full of jewels.
When Luzia woke, she didn’t know what time it was or what day.
Neva was asleep, snoring on her pallet. Luzia gestured for Teoda to come closer.
“Are you hungry?”
“No,” Luzia rasped. Her throat hurt. She glanced at Neva’s snoring body. “We need to leave this place.”
“You want to try to escape?”
“This power must be good for something. I can open the locks. I can kill a guard if I have to. But I have no money, no friends on the outside.”
“Valentina—”
“No one I can rely on to help us escape. You haven’t considered it? You know what my milagritos can do.”
“Of course I have, but there’s no point.” “You’re so ready to die for your God?”
Teoda hesitated, then whispered. “I asked my angel. He says I will die here. We all will.”
“I thought your angel was silent on your own future.”
“Always. But he cannot see what lies beyond Toledo. For any of us. It’s easy enough to understand. Our story ends here, Luzia. I dreamed you on a pyre.”
“Then I’ll die on a pyre, but I will not be tortured again.” “They wouldn’t take your confession?”
“I don’t know what they want to hear. I said everything I could think of, but it won’t be enough.”
Teoda tugged at the dirty lace of her sleeve. “It’s my fault we’re here. I was indiscreet.”
“I blame the king. I blame Pérez. I blame those bleating toads who tied me down. I don’t blame you.”
“You don’t understand. I … Donadei was so beautiful, so charming. I was easy prey. He told me he was in torment, that he couldn’t bear to serve a corrupt church.”
Luzia studied Teoda in the candlelight. “Prey,” she repeated. “Teoda, you don’t mean … You are a child—”
Teoda laughed softly. “Have you not guessed the truth, Luzia?” “I fear I’m failing this test you’ve set for me.”
“I’m not a child. I’m thirty-eight years old. Thirty-eight years in this child’s body.”
Luzia knew how stupid she must look, staring at Teoda, remembering every wise and witty thing she’d said. How arrogant Luzia had been, priding herself on her ability to observe and understand her betters. She shook her head, unable to accept the truth right before her.
“I’m a fool,” she marveled. “I convinced myself your visions had made you old beyond your years.”
“Everyone does,” Teoda said. “It’s the voice too.”
Luzia nearly jumped. Teoda’s high, sweet soprano was gone. Her voice was still youthful, but the effect was startling; her presence reshaped in the space of a few words, a woman in miniature instead of a child.
“Donadei knew?”
“He guessed. Perhaps he sensed that my interest in him wasn’t that of a child. Maybe he saw how desperate I was for the kind of attention I’ve never had. He pretended we shared the same secrets, complained of Doña Beatriz.” She hesitated. “I have never been kissed that way before, as a man
kisses a woman. I am the fool. And now my brother and I will die because of it.”
“Not your father,” Luzia said, understanding coming slowly.
“No. He has been protecting me since our parents died. I was given the birth date of a child who died in our parish and we traveled from place to
place to hide my true age.” She glanced at Neva, who snored on. “I can tell you all of this because there’s no more need for secrecy. Because I doomed us both with my stupidity.”
Luzia thought of the compliments Donadei had paid her, of the way he’d spoken of Doña Beatriz and his desire to be free. If she hadn’t already been besotted with Santángel and his mystery would she have let the Prince of Olives seduce her? Would she have given up all her secrets? A life lived hungry could lead you to eat from anyone’s hand. She would have fed greedily and never recognized the taste of poison.
“If you were a fool then we all were,” Luzia said. “No doubt Donadei said whatever he could about both of us that would ensure his own freedom. But I will not lie down to die for him. For any of them. Your family has resources, friends in countries beyond Spain. I have milagritos. What is
there to lose?”
“It won’t work.”
“Our choices are death or torture and death, Teoda. I’d rather die skewered by a guard than burned alive.”
“Or strangled. If you repent they’ll just strangle you.” “In that case, let’s definitely stay here.”
Teoda barked a laugh. “Very well. The inquisitors have clearly driven you mad, but I’ll see if Rudolfo will get word to my brother. He has far more freedom than I have. They even allow him paper sometimes. But Luzia … my dreams don’t lie. I watched you burn.”
“Fate can be changed,” Luzia said. “Curses can be broken.” She had to believe that, or she would sink beneath the waves.
