Huddled on the floor of the larder that night, Luzia kept her candle burning, though she knew she wouldn’t be granted another for the
week. She listened to the mice shuffling in their tunnels and thought of how quickly her time as a bird, even a land-bound bird, had ended. Rat or turnip, she’d been lucky to live beneath anyone’s notice.
She didn’t sleep that night. Instead she packed her basket: the end of a wheel of cheese, red sticks of spicy lomo embuchado that she’d helped
Águeda make and that had been drying in the air above her as she slept for months. Some dried figs, a heel of stale bread, her second set of linen, and the few coins she’d managed to earn. It was all she owned. Hopefully Hualit could advance her a bit of money against the sale of Valentina’s pearl.
She had no warm coat or traveling shoes, but she would have to make do.
Maybe she should be grateful she didn’t have much to carry, but she felt a jolt of anger at how little weight she had in this world, how little she had to keep her from being caught up in the wind and scattered like dust swept off the stoop.
She’d understood too late what the man with the red beard was, not just another bored nobleman but an informer. He would go to the inquisitors. He had probably been sent by them to discover the demonic nature of what was transpiring beneath the roof of Casa Ordoño. She would be thrown in a cell like Lucrecia de León, only she had no rich friends to advocate for her. She would be flogged and tortured, then burned as a heretic or a witch, or
maybe they would decide she’d been possessed by a demon. Hualit had warned her: the Church owned miracles and their saints performed them, not scullion girls with muddy family names. She couldn’t blame her mother’s stubborn nature or her father’s madness, or even some ancestor on
her shadowy family tree. Maybe there really was a demon inside her. One that craved feather beds and fine food and applause.
She thought about leaving before sunrise, but she was afraid to travel the streets at night on her own and it was important she not look like she was running. So she waited.
At dawn, she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and set out as if
she were headed to the market, her basket swinging from her arm. Then she turned and made for San Ginés. She probably should have gone to confession or morning mass, but she was too afraid to stop moving. And what good would it do her?
It had been her mother’s great-grandfather who had been dragged from his home in Sevilla and offered death or baptism, who had seen the Talmud burned and pissed on, his neighbors’ houses ransacked for silver and silks. Once, her father had taken Luzia to a part of Madrid she didn’t know. He’d pointed to six windows arrayed in a line beneath a roof. Careful now, he’d
said, his eyes bright with excitement, don’t look too curious. This used to be a synagogue. You must remember. You must learn to see our secrets so that
your name can be written in the book.
None of it had quite made sense. After her mother’s death her father saw signs and secrets everywhere. Luzia had asked Hualit about it and her aunt had flown into a rage. She’d slapped Afonso and cursed his name. But it had been Hualit who taught Luzia those precious, perilous scraps of language, that mix of Hebrew and Spanish and Turkish and Greek that arrived in letters carried over land and sea.
“What’s the difference?” Luzia had asked when she was still a child. “My father gives me Hebrew. You give me … whatever the refranes are. Both are secrets to keep.”
“Your father’s Hebrew is as full of holes as his mind. Your mother was
the educated one. And the difference, querida, is that my secrets may do you some good.” Then she’d grinned and waved her hand over the wilted irises set on her dining table. “Ken no rizika, no rozika.”
A bit of nonsense, a little rhyme. But the curling edges of the iris petals had plumped and stretched, gently ironed by an invisible hand, smooth as if they’d just bloomed, their purple bright and new.
“You try, Luzia.”
The words had tickled Luzia’s tongue, gathering in her mouth as if they wanted to be said.
Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom. The words emerged in a singsong, and new buds burst into life on the iris stalks, their petals unfurling, their
yellow mouths springing open, a chorus ready to join the song.
Hualit had seized her chin and there had been wonder in her eyes, but Luzia had seen fear there too. “Where did you learn that melody?” she demanded.
Luzia had no answer.
“Cuidado, querida,” Hualit had said. “You must be careful.”
Luzia didn’t want to go to Hualit now, didn’t want to admit she’d been a fool or risk painting her aunt’s door with tainted blood. But Luzia had no father or husband to protect her, and if she had any hope of getting out of Madrid, she needed help. She had to laugh at the way she’d waved away Hualit’s warnings. Had she thought fear made life interesting? Well, she hadn’t really known fear, had she? She had tasted spice and found it pleasing. Now she was chewing the pepper, seeds and all.
She was sure that at any moment she’d see the man with the red beard, or one of the inquisitors, a priest, or an enforcer dressed in black, the white
cross on his chest. Maybe a mob would form. Maybe she’d die as her great- great-grandfather had, though now there was no Talmud to destroy
alongside her. Maybe she would never see trial and simply be hauled into the street and beaten to death.
But tangled up with that fear was there a thread of anticipation too? Was there some small pleasure in the drama of whispering to herself, This is the last time I will leave Calle de Dos Santos. This is the last time I will pass
through the back door and along the streets that lead me to my aunt’s house. I will go to Pamplona. I will see a new city. I will survive by my wits. As her father had gotten older and his mind had slid away like a wet hillside, he’d told only the sad and terrible stories. But before that there had been tales of girls who bested kings, and orphans who lured djinn into rash bargains. Now she held tight to those stories. They would keep her alive, not the dread chasing her over the cobblestones.
Her aunt opened the door before Luzia could knock twice and swept her inside. Her dark eyes were so wide the whites seemed to glow.
“Just be silent and do as you’re bid,” Hualit whispered, gripping Luzia’s arm. “You’ve fucked us now, querida.”
In the courtyard, she could hear the voices of men and the heavy sounds of boots on stone.
I should have stopped to pray at San Ginés, Luzia thought, her fear eclipsing every tale and parable. They’re already here.
